Today's Bloomberg news offers up a recipe for pumpkin pie that is circulating online at The New York Times and elsewhere.
It's a lighter pie, with the addition of meringue to decrease the density–a plus in Julia's mind.
Julia Child’s Aunt Helen’s Fluffy Pumpkin Pie
Serves 10
One 15-ounce can pumpkin puree 1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp. granulated sugar 1/2 cup light brown sugar Kosher salt 1 1/2 tbsp molasses 1 1/2 tbsp bourbon or dark rum (optional) 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon ½ tbsp ground ginger 1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg 1/8 tsp ground cloves 2 large eggs, separated ½ cup heavy cream 1/4 cup milk, plus more if needed 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust Whipped cream, for serving (optional)
And the ever informative Smith College grapevine (on Facebook) notes that Julia's D.C. home is now for sale, although it looks significantly altered from the time when she lived there. See the owner's Instagram pix for his renovations.
The 2021 harvest marks a special milestone for Salvestrin's Dr. Crane vineyard - it will be the first time the grapes are certified organic.
Owned by the Salvestrin family for 77 years, this historic Napa site first planted in 1859, achieved organic certification July 21. Pictured here are Rich Salvestrin, an owner, and viticulturist and associate winemaker Natalie Jane Winkler.
The Salvestrin family purchased 25 acres of the Crane vineyard (which was originally 335 acres with a winery located where the St. Helena High School sits today) in 1932. The site is among the oldest to be continuously farmed in Napa. Fifteen acres of vines are still part of family's holdings of the historic Crane vineyard.
Uniquely the winery also offers lodging in the historic Dr. Crane house, now the Inn at Silvestrin.
If local climate change mitigation experts have their say, vineyards in the Ahr Valley, planted on steep hillsides, may no longer want to keep their row orientation facing downward in long rows that send water rushing down to the river and towns below, says Professor Lothar Schrott, a geography professor at the University of Bonn who heads the university's disaster management program.
Instead, vineyard owners may consider terracing the steep hillsides.
Forests composed of a high number of spruce trees and a low number of deciduous trees also pose a risk in the region, says Schrott.
(His comments on this topic begin at 24:24 in the program.)
According to the documentary, it can take 100 years to transition to a more balanced, mixed forest.
The German government has devoted $30 billion for disaster recovery in the Ahr Valley, which was devastated by severe flooding July 14, damaging more than 46 wineries in the region. Eighty percent of the wineries grow Pinot Noir, which is called Spatburgunder, on the chilly, slate slopes here.
Schrott's assessment is that many mistakes were made in the region. He says preventive measures would have been more cost effective than dealing with the disruption and damage of the flood.
More than 160 people died in the flood.
In a story familiar to California's growers, insurance companies have agreed to pay only a portion of the damages, so winemakers in the local coop reached out for help and hundreds of volunteers came to their aid to help clean out warehouses and preserve wine that could be rescued.
Though Germany provided more than 4 billion Euros to Mozambique for climate mitigation, climate change experts there and in Bangladesh criticize developed countries for not providing more funding to deal with relocation and mitigation efforts, saying the funds Germany gave to Mozambique were 1/8th of the amount Germany gave to the Ahr Valley.
I have been following Beate Ritz's work for about ten years now - ever since the German born, UCLA epidemiologist released studies about Parkinson's in the Central Valley associated with pesticide use.
Her 2019 research showed links between the paraquat and insecticides used heavily in the Central Valley - doubled the chances for farmworkers and residents to get Parkinson's, a disease that affects the nervous system.
Paraquat, a widely used herbicide, was banned in the EU in 2007, but is legal in the U.S. Until 2018, it was used in vineyards in California, including those certified sustainable by the Wine Institute's CSWA program.
I saw her in person for the first time in Federal District Court in San Francisco during the Daubert hearings over Monsanto and glyphosate. (Daubert hearings are when a judge decides what experts are qualified to speak in court. See the story I wrote at the time for Civil Eats here). I didn't realize she was the same researcher I'd followed. I just heard her speak and thought, wow, that's a remarkably intelligent person.
I would say she single handedly probably had more to do with the judge's rapid science education on epidemiology (which he initially dismissed as sort of a loosey-goosey science) and may have been the main reason that the Judge Chhabria decided to recall her and other experts for an unanticipated extra week of scientific input so he could learn how to evaluate specious claims (especially those coming from Monsanto) in those early days court proceedings on glyphosate.
So I was more than a bit surprised and pleased to tune into a German TV new documentary from DW (the German equivalent of PBS) and there she was. The German TV producers even included graphics of her California studies in the program.
For those of you who would like to see what decent, responsible journalism looks like when it comes to pesticides, look here. (If only we had this kind of reporting in the U.S.)
Ritz is on the California Air Resources Board's Scientific Review Panel and in 2018-2019 was named one of the most influential scientific researchers for her work from 2006-2016.
In 2021, her most recently published studies include one on the association of childhood brain tumors linked to mother's exposure to pesticides. The study showed that residents living in areas where pesticides are used, not just farmworkers, were affected.
From the UCLA press release:
The research – “Residential Proximity to Pesticide Application as a Risk Factor for Childhood Central Nervous System Tumors” - is being published in an upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environment Research, and is available online. Pesticides have been investigated as possible risk factors for childhood cancer since the 1970s, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified more than 100 as possible or probable carcinogens, based on toxicological and epidemiological data.
To see the specific focus on vineyards and pesticides in the program, see this video excerpt, which begins with the vineyard pesticide use in Bordeaux, where Parkinson's has now been listed as an occupational health risk for vineyard workers.
