ROSEMARY CIDER CARAMEL APPLE GALETTE.

I woke up Monday morning with a sinking feeling in my stomach, the same kind of near-vomit I feel after I get into a terrible fight with someone I love, a fight where we both got a little unhinged and said things we didn’t mean at all. Things we never would’ve said had we been in our right minds. Except I didn’t get into a fight with anyone Sunday night. Sunday night I listened to the United States’ presidential candidates claw at one another in debate with a ferocity that felt nothing short of eerie.

First of all, let me get this out of the way: I’m staunchly #WithHer. #ImWithHer for a million reasons under the sun, and for one very critical reason: She is the only sane human in the race. Which brings me to my current state of pit-stomached confusion. At what should be a seminal point in US history, the election cycle presents us with only two choices: Sanity or insanity. And, of course, this American-as-apple-pie rosemary cider caramel galette.

But I’m no political ideologue. Here’s what I am: A living, breathing, pussy-owning cis-gendered heterosexual white female citizen of the United States who believes in equality, freedom, and safety for all. Who believes that, no matter how horrific the acts of terror and hatred we see on a regular basis may be, we have come a ways from where we were fifty years ago. We do know a bit about how to love one another better. How to take care of one another more empathically. How to acknowledge and deliver fundamental human rights to LGBTQ, immigrant, and othered communities. And yes, how to elect a brilliant black man and his brilliant black family into the highest political office on earth.

We did all those things. Because we have come a ways. And we’ve (I’ve) got a lot farther to go.

There’s one other thing I believe in, and that’s sanity. As we reach a breaking point where one of our presidential candidates is himself entirely unhinged, the bipartisan system upon which our democracy is predicated is also beginning to implode. I can hear my more radical political friends chastising me, reminding me that this implosion has been happening for decades. The system has long been broken.

But here, now, we have a Republican presidential candidate so unhinged by the fear and greed in his own heart that he turns even his own party against him. This is not a Republican running for president, this is America’s shadow self. This is misogyny and xenophobia and racism and cowardice. This is everything we have worked so hard not to become. This is our greatest fear: A white man delusional with power, privilege, and money, a white man who sees the world as a cornucopia of objects to “grab”: Property, people, pussies.

And so, yesterday morning, I sat horrified by the display of insanity I saw in the debates: A man intoxicated with the possibility of other people calling him President of the United States, a land he wants you to know he owns. And a humble, hardworking, highly intelligent political servant who has dedicated her life to bettering our own. Yours. Mine. Your gay cousin Tom’s and your hardcore conservative Aunt Cecile’s. Because, at the end of the day, I believe politics must be about bettering the governing policies that affect human experience. If not, it fails at its own agenda, is rendered purposeless.

Of course, politics these days feels much more “House of Cards” than Marcus Aurelius. We’ve come to expect corruption, lies, backtalk, and taking the low road. But, as First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama so courteously reminded us—in a speech, may I add, that caused millions of people to push for her presidential candidacy in 2020—”When they go low, we go high.“ Why? Not because it’s a fight. Not because we want to win. Not because it’s about the volleys and the tallies and the score.

Because there are real lives at stake. Real policies. Real human rights. Real people who live in real towns that don’t have the infrastructure to properly ensure safe drinking water. Real children growing up without enough to eat. Real people being killed because America has let a cancer of fear in its heart grow far too big for far too long. Because, at the end of the day, it’s really just about being sane.

So maybe, just maybe, the falling away of support for Mr. Trump by his own party is a good thing: As the Republicans flee his demagogic rhetoric, they’ve nowhere to go but somewhere saner. Somewhere that looks a whole lot more like the Democratic Party. I’m sure I’m a fool to think that the best possible outcome of the 2016 election cycle is a return to stable-mindedness, but a pussy-owning woman can hope, can’t she?

I can’t say I’m happy—and I’m certainly not proud—that it took a megalomaniacal racist sexual predator to wake up the Republican party to the dangers of extreme ideology, but still, I am hopeful.

And so I bake. Last week, I went apple picking with my niece and my friend Chad. It’s our yearly tradition, and this year I reprised the first galette we made after our inaugural trip: A rosemary cider caramel apple galette. The rosemary cider caramel is good enough to drink, so the recipe makes much more than you’ll need for the galette alone. Drizzle leftovers on ice cream, yogurt, fresh apple and pear slices, or straight into your mouth. It’s a galette easy enough to make while you’re still processing the shock of the second 2016 presidential debate. And it’ll fill up that pit in your stomach, too.