1 Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust (or make your own, M. Fancypants)
1 cup (C) blueberries, tossed with 1/2 teaspoon (tsp) flour
1 C buttermilk
3 eggs
2 tablespoons (Tbl) flour
1 1/4 C sugar
1 stick butter, melted (let cool for a few minutes)
1 tsp vanilla
zest of 1 lemon, and the juice of half of it, or all if it you like lemony things
Some cinnamon (like 3 shakes-ish) and 5 or 6 grates of nutmeg
Pull pie crust from fridge to come to room temp. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss the blueberries with the 1/2 tsp of flour. Mix together the buttermilk, eggs, 2 Tbl flour, sugar, vanilla, melted butter, cinnamon and nutmeg, and lemon parts.
Unroll the piecrust into a 9” pyrex pie pan (other materials might work as well, but I always make this with pyrex so I know that works). After you have it arranged, add the blueberries. Pour the pie filling over the blueberries.
Bake for 50 minutes, but check at 45. The pie should be a little jiggly when you move it. It will finish setting as it cools. Let cool for an hour, then refrigerate.
Put an empty pan on the rack under the pie in the oven, just in case it tries to escape the crust.
Love Pie?
I originally started down the path of buttermilk pie because I wanted something new for Pi Day, and buttermilk is a chemistry funshow; so this felt like a good science pie. It’s easy, it comes together fast- it’s everything you want a pie experience to be (other than pretty, but beauty is fleeting, as is pie). It is as good a celebration of science in the service of human joy as I can think of and execute in my kitchen on a whim.
I love science and understand it some. I love math and understand it only in glimpses, like picking up a word in a language you don’t speak. What I love about both is the capacity to illuminate mysteries, and the language to share the illumination and make the world a better or more interesting or larger place. The other thing I love is that the people with passion for science and mathematics have the zeal and imagination of artists, and the energy of children. I don’t know many gloomy scientists or mathematicians. For gloom, you need economists.
And lo and behold, the chambers of commerce and titans of industry decided that science and math should serve the economic interests of the market, so we got STEM education. Because competition. So screw passion, screw art, screw literature and poetry. Those don’t impact shareholder value. The purpose of education was twisted from Horace Mann’s vision of quality education for every child, with the goals of dignity, happiness, and a citizenry with the capacity for self-government; to a taxpayer-funded jobs-training program to ensure an abundance of workers. Supply and demand will take care of the rest.
Listen to education leaders and politicians. Note how often they talk about jobs versus how often they reference citizenship. Note how often they promote STEM as an economic panacea for students, versus how often they promote careers in finance, which is where the serious money gets made. No one at the chamber is looking for more competition in the finance sector.
For any child excited about insects, calculus, blood, computer game design, building things, writing, teaching, graphics, planets-anything- I say pour them a Red Bull, ask them a hundred questions, and juice their passion. For any child who doesn’t know what they’re excited about yet (like I was), open doors, make space for changes, encourage exploration without an opportunity cost. But if you’re just interested in funneling students to existing worker slots, please leave our kids alone.