April 28, 2018

You Can Be a Powerful Feminist and Love to Bake Pie

Planned Parenthood’s outgoing CEO shares her favorite recipe.

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Cecile Richards is not a woman who messes around—she’s best known for her stint as outgoing president of Planned Parenthood, her time as deputy chief of staff to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and her work for her mother Ann Richards’ campaign for governor of Texas. What’s less known about her is that she takes pie very, very seriously. 

Richards’ new memoir, “Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead,” has several references to pie. As a Southerner who has lots of opinions about baking, I could not pass up the chance to ask her about her baking secrets for Bite, our food politics podcast. (Our conversation begins at 29:00 of the episode below).

Richards told me that cherry pie is her “desert island” pie—as in, the pie she would choose if she had to be stranded on a desert island with only one. The fresh sour cherries that ripen during Maine summers are the gold standard. If you can’t find those, do not fret, Richards says—the jarred ones from Zabar’s will do just fine. Tartine’s pie crust recipe is her go-to, because butter crusts “are the best crusts.” (Hover your mouse over her Instagram post below to scroll through the full recipe.)

“Back in Texas, food and meals, those were the ways in which you really got to know people and be together,” Richards told me. “As a family, we were constantly camping and cooking out. Any meal, there was always a chance you’d just invite some more people over.” She also talked about starting a food co-op as a student at Brown University, how food became an organizing strategy for her, and the dishes she falls back on for comfort during stressful times. 

Image credit: searagen/Getty; Sonia Moskowitz/Globe Photos/ZUMA

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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