We picked every one of the (local, organic) berries for this pie by hand over the course of the summers of 2008 and 2009. The blueberries came from a school, and the strawberries and raspberries came from our CSA farm. All of our parents had a hand in this pie's creation, which made it really special. My dad and mom picked blueberries with us, my spouse's dad made the awesome crust from scratch, and my spouse's mom helped us to get the filling's flavor right. We rolled out the dough and mixed up the filling and baked this pie on the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. The next night, late at night, we were at a grocery chain store, people-watching. A woman picked up a boxed commercial pie and said to her shopping companion, "Wow! Awesome! This is two dollars! Why would *anyone* ever bother making things themselves at home?" And she laughed. Eating locally helps us to do our part to reduce environmental pollution, as well as to increase local economic stability. Picking all of the berries ourselves connects us quite literally with our food chain. Berry cultivation is not always easy to do; berries are delicate, and must be picked by hand. Our local CSA is good to us by providing berries, delegating the labor-intensive berry harvest to us. Otherwise, there'd be no way to make it cost-effective for shareholders. Every berry you eat has been picked by a human hand. That fact is humbling in and of itself. It makes me even more humbled to spend hours each summer picking those berries myself; I can barely take the hot summer sun for an hour per week, yet billions of people worldwide cultivate, tend, and harvest all day, every day. So that others may eat. It is incredibly important to me that I remember this, and that I honor this process with gratitude and respect. And with sweat. Because I am incredibly fortunate to be alive, and to have enough mobility in my body to pick fruit. Each bite is a gift, a blessing. It is an homage to many hot hours under the sun, squatting, reaching, bending. It speaks to dirt, to prickers, to bugs, birds, swarming around as we worked and sweated and stained our hands with juice. But I have a diabetic condition. I probably eat one piece of this pie per year, tops. Why do I bother? It's just pie. So indeed, it's just a pie. It's made of grains, roots, bark, cane, and fruits. But it's so much more than that, for me, for the both of us. I've been making this pie since 1995. It's a super-simple recipe, and the lattice technique couldn't be more straightforward, but the outcome is really wonderful. And then we all get to eat this pie together, for Thanksgiving. I'm not for colonial imperialism, but I *am* for celebrating sustainable harvests, and families, and the sheer miracle of living. And with this, I rejoice.

Galaktoboureko: Milk Pie Recipe courtesy Cat Cora 4 cups milk 1/2 cup fine semolina 1 cup sugar 2/3 cup unsalted butter 4 eggs 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 pound thick, commercial phyllo dough 2/3 cup clarified butter, to brush dough 3 cups water 2 cups sugar 1/2 lemon In a heavy pot, bring the milk to a boil. Sprinkle in the semolina, whisking constantly over very low heat. Add the sugar, then simmer for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring from time to time. Remove from the heat and add the butter and the eggs, 1 by 1, stirring. Blend in the vanilla. The mixture will be thick but pourable, like a sauce. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a deep 10-inch baking pan. In the bottom of the pan, layer 8 sheets of phyllo, leaving the edges hanging over the sides of the pan. Brush each sheet generously with clarified butter. Pour the milk mixture over the phyllo layers. Cut the remaining sheets of phyllo about the size of the pan and brush each sheet with clarified butter. Place the buttered sheets on top of the filling, then brush the hanging bottom sheets with clarified butter and roll them up to seal. With a very sharp knife, score the top diagonally in 2 directions to make diamond-shaped slits on the surface. (This makes it easier to cut later, and also allows the syrup to penetrate the pie.) Sprinkle with a little water and bake about 1 hour, or until top is light brown and filling has set. The minute you start baking the pie, begin to make the syrup. Simmer the water with sugar and the 1/2 of lemon for about 1 hour. Remove the lemon half and squeeze the juice into the syrup. Discard the lemon. Pour the syrup over the pie the minute you take it out of the oven. Be careful, syrup will bubble vigorously and can burn you. Let cool, and serve, cutting pieces along the slits that you made before baking the pie.