Patriotic Pie

In 1894 Congress legalized Labor Day as a national holiday to celebrate the achievements and contributions of the American worker. Coming out of the often unsafe and unsanitary conditions that many American workers faced under the Industrial Revolution, Labor Day was a major historical achievement for labor unions and for the cultural history of the United States. 

Over the years, Labor Day has become a celebration focused on the end of summer, the last weekend before the children return to school and before autumnal responsibilities take over for the grown ups. The best thing about Labor Day, as celebration of the end of summer, is that it is, like Memorial Day or like Independence Day, another opportunity to celebrate all things American, which means that it is definitely a great opportunity to eat pie.

Here are some reasons to love all things Americana:

1.     Americana is a general category of artifacts that celebrate the history and cultural heritage of the Untied States. Relying heavily on the nostalgia of the American imagination, Americana collections usually include needlepoint pillows, daguerreotypes, silver sets, Civil War mementos, and all things with eagles, and red, white, and blue. This is super cool, because the artifacts themselves are usually well-preserved and lend themselves easily to nostalgic and captivating stories to Americans and to exotic stories about American forefathers to non-Americans: these include the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the plight of Alexander Hamilton, or the design achievement of Betsy Ross, as she sewed the American flag. Evidence of this craving for Americana is in the runaway success of Hamilton, and in the runaway success of all things that suddenly became super-marketable after the runaway success of Hamilton. 

2.     Americana elucidates simpler times, when women made quilts, children made maple snow, men made cabinets and motorcycles and boats and shoes, and everyone ate cherry pie, or molasses pie, or whatever pie they could get their hands on. Even if this time exists only in our imaginations and may not be as revelent to the ever-changing cultural landscape of the United States as it exists today, the pie part is still pretty great.

3.     Walt Whitman explains why to celebrate Americana, in his poem “America." Basically, America is full of equal daughters and equal sons of all ages, full of moral and physical fortitude, united by nature, freedom, law and love. Even better, when Walt Whitman hears American singing in "I Sing of America," what he hears is the singing of the laborers, and finally the singing of the wives and mothers, each singing their own, but profoundly, American tune. Whitman himself called American "the greatest poem." When the grandfather of American poetry finds America that poetic, and equates the poetry of America with the poetry of its laborers, it is a sign that it is time to eat pie (on Labor Day, and after Labor Day too). 

4.     Pie is great. Pie reminds of a mythical or very real time when people at pie and their lives were simple and happy. The simple pleasure of eating pie is evocative of the maternal, paternal, patriotic warmth that we aspire to recreate every time we eat pie.

Now that we have established that pies have something profound to do with Americana and the innocence of the American consciousness, let’s talk about blueberry cream pie. When I was a child, my mother would buy me blueberry cream pie from Brieremere Farms in Riverhead every weekend. This pie was sold only at the height of blueberry season, which was roughly mid-June to mid-August. This pie became a key fixture of my childhood.  Summer weekends were great, because, apart from the swimming and sunning and sports and family time, we also had pie, and this pie was the best pie ever, and not only because my mother bought it every weekend. This pie was perfect: flakey crust with just the right amount of crunch, an overflow of super fluffy and smooth whipped cream, and just perfectly ripe blueberries, which were just the right amount of chewy, and just the right amount of hardness. 

Blueberry cream pie is amazing. Blueberries are on every super food list: they are one of the highest antioxidant foods, they provide anti-inflamation and anti-aging benefits, they are a natural source of antifungal and antiviral gallic acid, which also boosts focus and memory. Blueberries are also low in calories, low on the glycemic index, and high in fiber. Go eat some blueberries now. 

Now let’s talk about my personal favorite part of blueberry cream pie, which is the cream. Cow’s milk cream is pure fat, much of which is saturated fat. At the end of the day, fat is fat and too much of a good thing is still too much of anything, but not enough cream on a blueberry cream pie is a real tragedy. 

Sally Fallon Morell, author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats, first published in 1995, has argued that the best part of cooked fruit or cooked vegetables is the cream or butter that we put on top. Her book is the ever-relevant and ever-ever-influencial bible of the traditional nutrition movement. Her research and her writing suggest that many of our ancestors would have prized raw grass-fed dairy from well-loved and traditionally raised animals for its nutritional value. Most prized would have been the fat of the dairy produced while the livestock eats the rapidly growing grass after the snow melts.

Sally Fallon has even argued that buying organic butter, cream, whole milk, whole yogurt, and pasture raised eggs is a move of American patriotism, which she defines as upholding the “Jeffersonian tradition,” a throwback to the time when strong and sturdy children raised on high-quality milk fat built the foundation of a strong and sturdy nation.Cream and butter are the Standard American Diet’s most available source of Vitamin A and D. In fact, saturated fat is necessary to help your body absorb fat-soluable vitamins, such as A, D, E, and K. 

Grass-fed cream and butter are also good sources of energy-boosting and appetite suppressing Medium Chain Fatty Acids (one of coconut oil’s claims to fame) and CLAs, a compound that has been shown to encourage the body to store muscle instead of fat and to protect against different types of cancer. Because grass is a good source of omega-3s, and cows spend all day eating grass, grass-fed cream and butter are a pretty decent and absorbable source of omega 3s. 

Anyway, let's just celebrate America, its laborers, and Walt Whitman by eating some pie. 

Patriot Blueberry Cream Pie

1 storebought pie crust prebaked, or make your own

2 cups of heavy cream, my favorite is Trickling Springs

2 tbsp sugar

3 cups mostly blueberries, and some raspberries or strawberries

Prebake your crust. Whip your heavy cream and sugar together in a stand mixer or with a handheld mixer. Start off at a low speed and increase the speed of the whipping. Whip for about 5 minutes, or until the cream has reached a sufficiently thick texture. Wait for all ingredients to come to room temperature. Fill your crust with whipped cream, and then the berries. In fact, overfill your crust with whipping cream and then overtop the whipped cream with blueberries. For best texture, refridgerate the pie, or just eat it immediately.