Sweet summer pies & a snippet of scientific inquiry!

This summer's been filled with memorable and very heartening pies indeed!

First: A generous gesture of kindness 
Blueberry Pie at a technical conference
Kindness in the form of an Amish blueberry pie gifted to me by a duo of Kansas professors.  We shared a dorm at Alfred State College in upstate New York for a technical conference on sustainability in higher education.  As I've written elsewhere, most people I know of suit up to power network, I treat it like a sport.  But the people there savored the good conversations that arose from the event and over meals sourced from the campus and nearby farms.  It must have been the most humane sustainability conference I've ever attended (I even titled a new viola tune of mine and wrote an essay called "emotive mechanics" thanks to the experience).

While the pie was way too sugary, diabetes by the first bite, the story and trip made it worthwhile: they bought the pie from a stand on the side of a country road run by two Amish girls, had a slice during the conference (no one had utensils available) and gave it to me before they departed for the airport.  For me, the pie reaffirms the value of a personable story.

Second: Wondrous pie
Huckleberry Pie--the finest pie I've had yet & a taste of curiosity

If sound could represent taste, I'm pretty sure it would be akin to the joys heard in this song (if you're a synasthesiac--where you taste sounds, let me know if it's a good approximation).

Just the right sweetness from the berries and sensible use of sugar, with a crispy salted crust and topped with delectable crumbles made a wonderful counterpoint in texture and taste.  Best of all, made by a friend to enjoy at the end of an excellent meal with her family!

Huckleberries are new to me--I thought they'd be a fruit of the South thanks to Samuel Clemens' (AKA Mark Twain's) book Huckleberry Finn, and the accent of Huckleberry Hound, the cartoon.  My friend picked these fresh from a farm in the Upper Peninsula (before freezing them for safe keeping).  Even her father was curious about their origin and distinguishing features.  We speculated that blueberries were a commercialized agricultural cultivar of the huckleberry.  Our reasoning:

1) blueberries tend to be larger,
and
2) huckleberries tend to be sweeter.

To substantiate that line of thought, the best fruit I've ever had was from foraging a wild strawberry native to Michigan before a storm in May at the University of Michigan-Dearborn's Environmental Interpretive Center (even captured the moment in shaky video!).  If you've seen them (or watched the video) commercial strawberries are huge, and frequently nearly flavorless.

After consultation with whatever scientific consensus I could find through an un-scholarly and brief google search, I learned that our joint hypothesis was incorrect.  Huckleberries are a different species altogether, and their ranges differ too (I'm guessing we ate the fruits of Vaccinium membranaceum).

In any case, the findings have no bearing on how much I enjoyed sharing the pie and evening with everyone at a table in Traverse City.

Wonton folding technique

I didn't realize there were region-specific styles for folding wonton wrappers.  It's almost on par with endeavors in origami, except with food.  After much googling, I found what might be the best video so far:

If you even think you hear the phrase "will generate much happiness" (I don't think she ever said it in this video, but somehow I recall hearing it) and "secret ingredient", it's almost definitely the real deal.

Side note about the video:  her chopping/knife wielding technique would benefit from a few things: 

1) modify the grip so that the index finger wraps onto part of the side of the blade surface 

(yields better grip/leverage, interestingly, this is similar to the grip I use to hold the bow of violins and violas too)
2) use a forward/backward rocking motion with the chef's knife as you slice/chop rather than chopping straight up and down
3) angle the green onions so that slices are diagonal (which should release more flavor--see the great diagonal cut/microbiology argument I posed in a previous year)

Someday I'll figure out how to make a variation for vegetarian and vegan friends...