Donna’s Day: Rustic Pear Galette Junior Whirl

KIDS &FAMILY

Donna’s Day: Creative Family Fun Kids Can Help Make a Rustic Pear Galette

By Donna Erickson

Signal Contributing Writer

Pears star in this easy-tomake rustic galette that school-age kids will enjoy helping you prepare. The crust can be mixed quickly with young hands and muscle (or you can roll out a store-bought pie crust). The final step is fanning out the pear slices and admiring the culinary “art” before you pop it in the oven.

For a free-form family-style “Rustic Pear Galette” of 6-8 servings, you’ll need:

Dough

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 5 tablespoons unsalted, cold butter cut into 1/2 inch chunks 1 egg 1 teaspoon milk 2 teaspoons milk for brushing on crust

Filling

3 tablespoons fig or apricot fruit spread 2 large Anjou pears 1 tablespoon melted butter 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

A tasty, handmade rustic pear galette is ready to serve.

1. For the dough, place flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl and let your child stir it together with clean fingers. Scatter butter chunks into flour mixture, and toss and rub between fingertips until mixture resembles small peas. Or, use a pastry blender. 2. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg and 1 teaspoon of milk. Add half of the egg-and-milk mixture to the dough. Mix well. Add remaining portion and mix until the dough comes together. Shape into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. 3. Roll out dough into a 10-inch circle. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush the center portion with the fruit spread and return it to the refrigerator while you prepare the pears. 4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Halve and core the pears, then slice lengthwise. Arrange them in a fan shape on the chilled dough, leaving a 1-inch border.

Drizzle the melted butter over the pears. Sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg. 5. Fold the border edge up and over toward the pears in slightly overlapping pleats to form the edges of the galette. Brush dough rim with milk and bake 25 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. 6. Cool slightly, slide onto a serving plate and enjoy with vanilla ice cream.

Donna Erickson’s award-winning series “Donna’s Day” is airing on public television nationwide. To find more of her creative family recipes and activities, visit www.donnasday.com and link to the Donna’s Day Facebook fan page. Her latest book is “Donna Erickson’s Fabulous Funstuff for Families.”  © 2022 Donna Erickson

Distributed by King Features Synd.

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SUNDAYSIGNAL · 21 CROSSWORD TIME

SOLUTIONS

Opinion Unless otherwise stated, the views and opinions expressed are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent the views of The Signal.

READER LETTERS

Not Learning During the Pandemic!

According to the New York Times, the pandemic lockdowns of our schools have been disastrous to our children. It’s reported that the reading and math scores of 9-yearolds has dropped to what it was two decades ago! The damage to minority children is even more profound! They are finally admitting what most of us knew all along. I know it’s not very stylish to criticize the education cartel, but they have it coming. They locked kids out of school who had a zero chance of dying from COVID absent other health issues. Nobody, including and especially the teachers union leadership, thought to do an analysis of what would happen if you locked kids out of school for up to two years.

In many states the lockouts continued even after teachers were given priority for vaccines. Of course this disruption can’t happen in a vacuum. It takes collaboration with political leaders to drive this kind of insane policy. In California and many other states, politicians lined up to do the union’s bidding. Political leaders did so willingly and eagerly and to hell with the kids and what it meant because they knew there were millions of dollars in campaign contributions at stake.

Even worse, the United Federation of Teachers consulted directly with the Centers for Disease Control on pushing for lockouts. I guess this is the state of our society where a public-sector union can direct public health policy for tens of millions of children with zero expertise in the matter. The teachers’ unions had no more expertise than a firefighter or banker or a pilot in directing complex pandemic public health policy. It would be interesting to compare and contrast test scores between lockdown states like California with those that did not lock down. Maybe California isn’t the best state to use as a comparison anyway, given our dismal 44th ranking (scholaroo.com/state-education-rankings). The entire situation wouldn’t be nearly as bad if they would just own their mistake, but we all know that’s never going to happen. “Oh, your kids are dumber? Nothing to see here, move along.”

Finally, I want to state that the public schools here in Santa Clarita are excellent. But this isn’t really about kids here in Santa Clarita although I’m sure a large number of them suffered as well. It’s really about the kids in urban and rural areas of the state who were already having a tough time at it.

You know, the ones unions and politicians pretend to care about the most.

Brian Richards Stevenson Ranch

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ETHICALLY SPEAKING

We Don’t Trust Each Other

Editor's note: Pastor David Hegg's regular column will return Sept. 25. The following is a reprint of a column that originally appeared Oct. 31, 2022.

While much attention is focused on America’s rising financial deficit, there may be an even more troubling social trend on the rise. According to a recent AP-GfK poll, only onethird of our neighbors think we can be trusted.

The fact that we live in an increasingly suspicious society isn’t really news to most of us. We’ve all been taken in by the half-truths and blatant untruths that regularly flow from both Madison and Pennsylvania avenues. But it seems even more insidious when we realize we have good reason not to trust the each other. Apparently, we have a pervasive problem with our individual ethics.

The research speaks to a falling off of what is termed “societal trust.” This refers to the common tendency to trust those around us to do the right thing, mean what they say, and keep their commitments. It also assumes that in a given situation, honesty will rule, and the good of the many will drive personal action. In practical terms it means we don’t have to lock our cars when we go into the store, can leave our iPad to reserve a table at Starbucks while ordering our drink, and assume that a briefcase left at the restaurant where we ate lunch will be kept safely until we return to retrieve it.

And if you winced at any of those examples, you’re probably part of the 66% who increasingly believe it is unwise to trust people.

The problems that flow from a general lack of trust are many. Without trust there can be no profitable negotiation, no assumption that directives will be carried out, and no certainty that production and efficiency will happen. Without trust there can be no true fiduciary responsibility, and every enterprise that depends on our entrusting something to them will ultimately be degraded. And it goes without saying that an erosion of common, societal trust will leave us even more isolated from one another than we already are.

In every human society relationship is essential. You can’t live without it. Yet, every healthy relationship springs from the soil of trust. Think about it. Businesses flourish because of relationships built on trust, as do sports teams and families. Marriages that provide long-term joy and safety are trust-dependent and trust-driven. It is not an overstatement to say that trust is to relationship what oxygen is to life. Without it we die. But if we dig down deeper we’ll find that trust is not an end in itself. It rises from something even more fundamental. Trust is the flower that grows on the stem of a radically consistent way of life. You can only trust what you can safely predict when it comes to the way another person will think and act. And this kind of consistency will be evidence that the trustworthy person has, at his or her core, an inviolable belief system composed of propositional truths to which they have made a purposeful commitment. In other words, a worldview that shapes who they are, and who you may safely trust them to be. They are people who possess, and are possessed by, conviction.

The problem we are facing is not merely a diminishing level of societal trust. It is much graver than that. What we are seeing is a pervasive dismantling of the very concepts of right and wrong. Absolute truth has suddenly become passé while pragmatism and relativism have become fashionable. But these can never provide a solid foundation for belief, much less action. And so we watch as America leaves its intellectual and ethical moorings in order to sail on the sea of individualism and tolerance run amok.

It’s time to reconsider our tendency to throw away traditional values. It’s time to reconstitute our fundamental American belief that we are one nation under God, and that God’s Word still provides the best option for creating and maintaining an ethical society that desires to be the best hope of the world. It’s time to recover our convictions. It’s time to become people our clients, neighbors and children can trust.

It’s time. Trust me.

Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking”

appears Sundays. 