mean girls

I have a confession to make. I was a mean girl.

This is hard for me to believe or accept, all these years later. I'm a feminist raising a feminist daughter, and the whole mean girls phenomenon makes me so angry. Mariah went through it a little bit, being on the receiving end of mean comments from popular girls, though nothing like what we saw in the movie. I mean, the whole use of three-way calling to humiliate each other, the rules, the ritual quality of it all, that didn't happen. It was more garden-variety testing of limits and of the rules of popularity, and we did our best to alleviate it with good friends who didn't do that, a change of schools, and lots of talk at home.

So it pains me to tell my story, but I've told it to her more than once. And yesterday I told it again, because my dear dear friend, Mariah's godmother, who was on the receiving end of my meanness, was visiting, and the subject came up. Turns out she had completely blocked the incident for years, but had recently remembered it and wanted to check her recollection against mine. I don't remember all the details, including who started it, but I remember enough.

The scene is a New England boarding school. We are all seniors. We are not the popular kids. A few years back someone had dubbed the popular kids "the Rat Pack," and dubbed us "the Book Pack." We were smart, and didn't care who knew it, not the prettiest or the most popular girls by any means. But we were a pretty tight-knit group, especially at the core, which had been established by sophomore year.

I can't remember why we did this. Some of us were particularly close to one teacher, a guy who taught history and was funny and a little subversive in a very conservative environment. As often happens in boarding schools, we formed a little coterie around him, a coterie that probably existed more in our minds than anywhere. Two of us became the managers of the (boys') team he coached. It got us out of gym class, into contact with boys who otherwise wouldn't have given us the time of day, and (most importantly, I think) further into his orbit. We weren't allowed in the boys' locker room so our duties were minimal.

For some reason some of us decided to pretend that he was taking us on an international trip, and --the most important and mean part-- that the spaces on the trip were limited and my dear friend was not going to be invited. Now, we didn't tell her this outright. That would have been too easy, and not mean enough. Rather, we spent a week or so in whispered conversations which we broke off when she came into view. We dropped the name of the city we'd be visiting, and then looked stricken. We staged a phone call or two to make her think we had tickets. We even, I think, involved the teacher. (With hindsight I am appalled that he would have played along. What was he thinking? What were we?)

After a week or ten days one of us--not me--confessed, and apologized. Later we came up with another scheme that involved the excluded one, but that one was less successful and nowhere near as mean. To this day I feel guilty for what I did to my friend. I've apologized over and over again--and we have remained friends, for all that--but I still can't quite get the taste out of my mouth. I was surprised she'd been able to forget it, since I never have. But that's how these things work, I guess. It had turned into something she couldn't think about, while I always had to.

I know I did it precisely because we weren't the popular ones, the Rat Pack. They did this kind of thing all the time--then again, they really went on international trips without each other. We didn't live that kind of life, none of us, which is why this was so effective, and so mean.

Mariah and Mark just stare openmouthed when I tell this story. They can't square it with the person they know, and I'm grateful for that. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Mark thinks it couldn't have happened if we weren't in boarding school, but I'm not sure. It might not have gone on so long, or involved the teacher--I'm not sure teachers outside of boarding schools have quite the involvement in their students' lives that our teachers did--but the stories I hear from middle and high school suggest that this kind of thing does, after all, still happen. I could spin a story about how this demonstrates our creativity, our ability, in fact, to spin stories, but that would miss the point. We were mean and awful and I wish we hadn't been, but we were.

Of course she should also cite Miriam...

Mommy wars -- a false battle - Los Angeles Times: "IN HER MUCH-DISCUSSED new book, 'Mommy Wars,' Leslie Morgan Steiner likens the tensions between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers to 'a catfight.' Personally, I think it's more like dueling roosters: a cockfight.

In a classic ethnographic essay on Bali, anthropologist Clifford Geertz described the Balinese cockfight as a form of 'deep play.' For the Balinese, Geertz argued, the 'meaning' of cockfights went far beyond the surface conflict between the birds. Cockfights formed 'a symbolic structure' that both reflected and affected every aspect of the Balinese social structure.


When you apply Geertz's insights about deep play to the alleged mommy wars, the Balinese cockfight and the mommy wars have a lot in common. "

Nice insights from Rosa Brooks, about whom I know nothing at all.

Friday Food #12: Pasta with Sausage and Lettuce

Ick, that recipe title sounds pretty awful, doesn't it? It sounds a little better on epicurious, which calls it "Spaghetti with Italian Sausage and Mixed Greens," but I don't use mixed greens. Truth in advertising, that's what we strive for here.

A little history, maybe. Although my children are ardent segregationists about their food, carefully dividing the veggies from the meat, the pasta from the sauce, I am an equally committed integrationist. I love a mess on the plate, somehow. This has been known (avert your gaze, purists!) to extend to piling up spaghetti on top of a plateful of dressed salad. Spaghetti with a meaty red sauce, especially. I can't say what I like so much about this, but --though it looks disgusting, I freely grant-- somehow it tastes better to me than the already-delicious components presented separately. So when I found a recipe on epicurious that basically authorized my practice, I had to try it.

There's no red sauce in this one, though. You can click the link above to get the epicurious version, but here's mine.

Ingredients
One pound pasta, preferably something long and skinny: spaghetti, linguine, fettucine, etc.

1/2 cup olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
zest of that same half lemon
1 tbl. chopped or minced garlic

1 lb. Italian turkey sausage (my kids will eat the sweet/mild sausage, not the hot)

10-12 cups of romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces

grated parmesan cheese

a very large bowl

Put up a pot of water to boil the pasta, and then start cooking the sausages. You can remove them from their casings and just fry up little lumps of sausage, or you can try to slice them nicely. I usually try to slice and end up with lumps, so you might as well start there.

While the sausage and the pasta cook, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice and zest, and garlic in the bottom of your very large bowl. (Yes, this is basically the dressing for the lemony potato salad as well. When I like something, I make it work extra-hard for me.)

Toss the greens with the dressing, making sure all the greens are coated. You can use mixed baby greens, as the recipe suggests, but the romaine retains its crunch pretty well and tends not to disgust people who hate wilted lettuce. Your call.

When the sausage is cooked, toss it in the bowl with the dressed greens. Drain the pasta and add it to the bowl when it's done. Toss it all together and serve with grated parmesan on the side, or mixed in, as you choose.

This also works with shrimp instead of the sausage, but the sausage makes it a pretty hearty meal for the end of winter when you'd like to be eating more salads but it's still not quite warm enough.

My kids do actually eat this, though they try very hard to pull the lettuce out and eat it first. Nick usually counts the number of leaves, too, but we are working on that.

Let's have a revolution! Does July 14 work for you? - Salon.com Life

Anne Lamott wants to reclaim Bastille Day for a gentle revolution.

"In this revolution, there will not be any positions except kindness, and libraries. We will not even have a battle cry, as that can lead to chanting, and haranguing: Hey, hey, ho, ho, all that chanting's got to go! We would simply look one another in the eyes, shake our heads, and say, 'This just can't be right.' "

(I happened to be eating a banana as I read this, which seems appropriate. You'll figure it out.)

reading lists

I like keeping the reading list here. I really do forget what I've read, sadly. I read so much, very little of it sticks unless I am teaching it. So, for instance, although I recommend Gilead to everyone I know, I actually remember very little of it myself right now, other than the overwhelming sense of beauty and loss with which it is suffused. Sometimes I wish I wrote little reviews right when I read stuff, so that I could remember it better. So, for instance, I might write of Welcome to Lizard Motel that the critique of the high school curriculum seems spot-on, but that merging that with a critique of YA literature is wrong-headed and misplaced. I might write of When Dad Killed Mom (one of the books Feinberg objects to simply on the basis of the title) that it's not Julius Lester's best work, but it's an interesting novel about, among other things, sibling rivalry. (I happen to be on a quest now for books about siblings, but that's another story.)

Then I'd write that Beyond Beowulf engrossed me through two bumpy plane rides, despite the fact that iambic pentameter usually puts me to sleep (sorry, Dad!). That it didn't is a tribute to the imaginative sweep of the storyline, which tracks Beowulf's followers from their home in Scandinavia to a new settlement in Britain, following the death of their hero. I love stories that consider "what happens next"--what happens after the ending, when those who live must carry on?

In an odd way that ties my last two books read together, I'm surprised to discover. The Time Traveler's Wife also considers how one lives on "after," though in this case one of the characters is always displaced from time, sometimes finding himself "after" and sometimes "before." But the novel for me is especially poignant with the title character's "after," which moves inexorably forward, denying her the movement her husband is afflicted with.

OK, so I just did what I said I might do. Maybe I'll do it again some time, too.

(I also get to remove an asterisk from this list!)

evidence of spring

There's no snow on the cherry trees today. The sun is now breaking through after early morning clouds. We're told it may rain later, but it may not. And the weather is warming slowly, not all at once as it did the last couple of times. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is really it.

Here's what I see when I look out my office window.



If I actually open the window, it looks like this. I notice as I do so that the heat is on. Hmm.





It's really not cold enough to have the heat on. I go outside to get this one.




If I have spring fever, imagine how my students feel. I love the slow build of spring, but it does get harder and harder to focus in class. No wonder our semester ends at the end of April.

Our Alice

It may not be immediately apparent from my blog, but I think it's a fact that in some ways, at least, I am pretty cheap. Not frugal--I wish I could claim that, because frugality implies a sensible rationing of wealth for a common good. Rather, I practice small meannesses most of the time--not buying books if I can get them for free, shopping at Target and the thrift store, clipping the occasional coupon--and then lament that I could really have done better if I'd just spent the money.

Because I am cheap I wait to renew my magazine subscriptions until the last minute or beyond. Often I cancel after the first, trial issue, but there are a few--and The New Yorker is one--that I really do mean to renew, but I keep thinking I'll get a better deal. So, in fact, I just inadvertently let my subscription lapse, and it won't re-up until May.

Which means--as being cheap often does--that I had to shell out more than usual for something I consider a basic necessity. (Let's not talk right now about why The New Yorker has become a necessity.) I bought the March 27 issue in the Charlotte airport, and read it en route to Gainesville, where I spent the weekend at a conference.

(I should note that I somehow think money spent traveling to and from a conference doesn't count. Next week's New Yorker may be harder to buy.)

I ended up in tears somewhere over Georgia, reading Calvin Trillin's lovely profile of his wife, Alice, who died almost five years ago. I am linking to Rebecca Traister's appreciation of this piece because she so beautifully expresses just what I felt on reading it. It says lovely things about marriage that I found both true and lovely, and I welled up with tears both at the loss that Trillin obviously still feels, but perhaps even more at the happiness he clearly had, and in some ways therefore still has.

Because I am forgetful, I left the copy of the magazine in the hotel room. And I am not so cheap that I won't go out and buy another copy just so I can read it again. It's that good. So, go, read Traister's piece--but then buy the magazine, too. You won't be sorry.

Dad's cherry tree sonnet

It's great to have relatives who will create content! This is one of my dad's first published poems, a sonnet on cherry trees that he recently sent me in response to my failure to take pictures of the tree outside my office window.

Who could believe . . .
Who could believe a cherry tree; its thin
Lines cracked against the glaze of winter sky
As if all hope had fallen leaf by leaf
And curled and died, leaving where life had been
Silent appeal, uplifted, cold and dry,
A black and twisted diagram of death:
Could work a miracle of sun and earth
And bring the glory in its arms to birth:
Could cast a haze of silver on the night
And cloud the eye with bursting cry of joy,
Soften the wind with drift of falling rain:
Could fall, and in its graceful fall of light
Leaf the green branches to fulfill the void:
Could show belief and truth are one again.

--C.L. Webber, first published in Japan Christian Quarterly, 1971

Friday Food #11: Lemony Potato Salad

Nick doesn't like potatoes, have I mentioned this? It's inconceivable to Mark and me that we made a child who doesn't like potatoes, but alas, this seems to be the case. Even as a baby, he spit out the mashed ones we lovingly provided. (At the time, he would eat sweet potatoes, which I guess aren't really potatoes, but since the verbal years I think he's rejected them as well.) He will, of course, eat french fries and potato chips, which bear no resemblance to actual potatoes, and occasionally he'll even eat a "potato wedge" that comes with the fried chicken, despite the fact that you can tell where they came from.

Nonetheless I persevere in believing that one day he will like potatoes. So I made up this potato salad a few weeks ago when it was very warm and we barbecued and it seemed as if spring was on the way. In fact it was, it was just dragging its feet, and it will be here soon. So I'm told. But you can make this potato salad even if it doesn't quite feel like spring.

I'm guessing a bit on the amounts here, as I just dolloped (dollopped? dropped dollops of?) sour cream and mayo in at the end. But my dollops are probably about 2 tablespoons, or so I figure it. If it doesn't look right, add more. Or start with less if you don't trust me.

Lemony Potato Salad

6-8 fist-sized yellow (in my grocery store that's Yukon Gold) potatoes, cut into slightly larger than bite-sized chunks. You can peel them first if you like, but I prefer just to scrub them well and keep the peels on.
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbl. chopped or minced garlic
2 tbl. sour cream
2 tbl. mayonnaise
1/4 cup chopped parsley

Fill a large pot with cold water and drop the chopped potatoes in. (Or, you know, put them in the pot as you chop and then run cold water over them. Either way.) Boil until tender--stick a fork in and check after five minutes or so, and keep checking until they're the way you want them. This will depend on the size of the chunks and the heat of your stove. I don't mind if the potatoes get mushy in the salad, but if you do, drain them the minute they seem tender, and run some cold water over them to stop them cooking. When I do this, though, I end up with slightly crunchy potato salad, which just seems weird to me. So you be the judge.

While the potatoes are boiling merrily away, whisk the lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic together to make a nice lemony dressing. As soon as the potatoes are drained, put them into a large bowl and pour the dressing over. Turn them over several times with a rubber spatula so all the potatoes are coated with dressing. If you like, let everything cool a bit at this point, while the dressing soaks into the hot potatoes. Or don't; I like warmish potato salad and I'm always running late, so I move onto the next step right away. Dollop in the sour cream and mayo, folding it into the potato/dressing mixture. Fold in the parsley and you're done.

I'm sure this would be good with tiny frozen peas folded in right with the dressing (so the hot potatoes thaw them and you don't need to cook them), or with chopped celery added along with the parsley, but I really liked the simplicity of this when I made it. I tend to prefer one or two-note salads rather than kitchen-sink ones; if you like more textures all together, though, go for it. Potato salads are pretty forgiving.

A note about potatoes: I think red ones would also be fine here, but just make sure you use something called "boiling" potatoes rather than "baking" ones. Baking ones get mealy, which is great in a baked potato but not so good in a potato salad. Go for the waxier ones. If they fall apart a bit when you boil them, they'll still taste good, I promise. But no, Nick didn't think so. He ate one bite under protest and then went happily back to the rest of his meal.

no snow

The snow melted by noon, so even if I'd bought batteries after class there would have been no snow pictures, alas. (In the event, I didn't buy batteries anyway.) Lilian, though, has some lovely pictures of cherry blossoms, so you can head on over there and check them out.

Foiled

I brought the digital camera to work with me this morning, hoping to document for you the loveliness of the snow on the cherry tree outside my window. I got it out of my bag and turned it on...and the little green light went instantly red, and the lens cover refused to open. Dead batteries. I actually have a bag full of batteries sitting in my office--I've been waiting for a good time to drop them off over at the student commons for recycling--and I even went through them, hoping two of them might possibly have enough juice for just one picture. Just one! But nothing. I did, actually, take a picture of "my" tree once before, but the glare off the window and the sun over the roofline made for a lot of whiteness and not much else. So maybe I'm just not meant to photograph this tree. Instead, I'm reduced to words.

I'd been planning to get a shot of the cherry tree for a couple of days now--it bursts into bloom so suddenly, I never know it's ready until it's in full swing. And I usually like to throw my windows open during the week it blooms, though I know that means shriveled up petals on the floor--it's just too beautiful to keep a barrier between us.

This week, though, the cherry trees have been shivering along with the rest of us, and my window has stayed closed. They've bloomed, but they may be regretting it. I imagine the azaleas and tulips--still several weeks away--smugly whispering to the daffodils and forsythia: "See? I told you it was too early!"

Last night it snowed. The forsythia in the backyard is blanketed with snow, and when the snow melts I fear the blooms will be gone. The daffodils have been fading anyway, and the cherry trees...

Well, actually, the cherry trees look much as they did yesterday. Blobs of snow instead of blobs of blossoms, lacy branches outlined by pinkish white. Driving in to work this morning I was struck by the beauty this late snow brought us. The trees may not like it, but--despite the windshield-scraping, the cold, the inevitable mud to follow--I'm happy.

Nigella, Donna, and me

I love cookbooks. I read them in bed, bring them on vacation, fondle them in the bookstore, and greedily peruse them before dinner time. (I also spend far too much time on epicurious, but that's another story.)

Last night as I was looking for something to do with bananas, I pulled a representative batch of books off my shelf. I'd just recently made the delicious Nigella chocolate-banana cake, so that was out. There's a lovely lemony banana "breakfast ring" in Feast, but I really did want a dinner dessert. Fannie (who's really Marion) and Irma (who's really a different Marion) didn't have anything I wanted, despite being old standbys. So I ended up with Donna.

Only, the thing is, I'm not on a first-name basis with Donna. I have two of her books, Modern Classics I and II. That's the same number of books I have by Nigella. But Nigella, she's all over her books, from the picture on the front cover to the anecdotes throughout. I know Nigella. I know Irma/Marion and Fannie/Marion, too. Irma told funny stories which mostly had to do with her family's German cook, while Fannie wanted to make sure I was cooking things myself. And there are other women on my shelves, women who speak to me and help me out. Marion (of Fannie fame) wants me to eat dinner around the table every night, while Suzanne wants me to appreciate how they do it in Rome. Mollie and Deborah want to help me eat my vegetables, Mollie with cute pictures and Deborah with exhaustive--but never exhausting--detail. The only man in heavy rotation in my kitchen, I have to say, is Pierre, who makes me laugh with his stories of learning to cook in French kitchens and finding American ingredients that work just as well, except when they don't. Pierre also isn't above a little trickiness to look fussier than you are, as when he smears the fish fillet with mayonnaise instead of making a real sauce. It works; he's a little embarassed by it, but he's not above sharing the tip, either.

Donna doesn't tell stories. Compared to Nigella, she's a sleek Danish modern coffee table next to an overstuffed couch. I love to look at Danish modern. It looks so clean, so calm, so peaceful. But my life is overstuffed, not sleek at all, and I want someone who recognizes that. Donna not only doesn't tell stories, she assumes I know stuff, like that stirring the caramel sauce will keep it from thickening. (I figured that out well after her specified eight minutes were up). Now, of course, I did know that once--which is how I figured it out again--but in my overstuffed life I need constant reminders, maybe even stories of how Nigella forgot once too, and made something else instead when it didn't work out.

Donna's banana cake was very good, by the way, as was the caramel sauce on it. Maybe a little fussier than I would have liked--did it really matter that I used extrafine sugar in it? Does she know that my grocery store doesn't offer both single and double cream? But still, very good. Nonetheless, I'd rather sit down with Nigella any evening. Donna intimidates me, just a bit, and there's nothing I like less in cooking than intimidation.

Really, everything you need to know about Donna and Nigella--or everything I need to know, anyway--is expressed by their book covers. Donna's is all sleek and modern and beautiful. Even that artfully-placed drip is, well, artful. I want to make food that looks like this, though I know I won't. I don't know anything about the woman who made it (except to suspect that she's just a little obsessive). Nigella's is all her, her proffering food and making me want to take some, even though that sleevey thing is really dumb. She may wish she'd worn something else on that cover a few years from now, but the food inside, and the stories, will still be good.

reader-response theory

We heard a sermon yesterday about sin and grace, appropriate topics for Lent. Or, really, any time. So the preacher told a story about when he was a kid and stole comic books from the corner drugstore/soda fountain. ("Must have been the olden days," Nick later commented. Ouch. That hurt.) Nick, who was not sitting with me but was in fact up front, buried in his own comic book (actually an anthology of Superman comics from the library) looked up when he heard the word comic book, and seemed to be paying close attention throughout this part of the sermon. The preacher went on to say his dad caught him with his stash, and marched him back down to the drugstore to confess to the owner. "Longest walk of my life," the preacher said. The drugstore owner, as expected, gave him a little talking-to about stealing. But then he asked him "what's your favorite kind of sundae?" The preacher said he didn't really understand the question, but finally admitted that yes, he loved hot fudge sundaes. So the drugstore owner proceeded to make him a hot fudge sundae: "the sundae of grace," the preacher said, "the sundae of redemption, the sundae of forgiveness." He can still taste it now.

I asked Nick later what he thought the story was about. "It's about how it's bad to steal," he said promptly. He knows how sermons are supposed to work, after all. Then he thought for a minute. "But you could say it's good to steal, because when he did, he got a hot fudge sundae."

This is why I tell my students authorial intention is only part of the story; once the reader/listener gets involved, all bets are off.

what she said

On the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, Becca nails it.

Friday Food #10: Rhubarb Apple Pie

I don't make a lot of pies. I get nervous about the crusts and make a crisp or a cobbler or a cake instead. I'm all about easy food.

But it's starting to be spring in Richmond. Spring means a few days in the 80s, then a few back in the 40s, a repeating cycle that creeps slowly upward until, suddenly, it feels like summer and you realize the cherry blossoms are gone. During those up-and-down days there is rhubarb in the grocery stores, and the first strawberries, trucked up from Florida. Ignore the strawberries; find a couple of last fall's apples, instead, and make this pie. In some places rhubarb is also known as pie plant; one taste of this and you'll see why.

Start with the easiest pie crust ever. I don't use the crisco anymore, as earth balance has a nice non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening in sticks that works really well. Again, half and half with unsalted butter. And if you have a few hours, don't put the crust in the freezer. Put it in the fridge, go and pick up the kids at school or whatever you have to do, and then come back and roll it out after you've put the filling together.

Preheat the oven to 450 F.

Then prepare the filling:

1-1/2 lbs. rhubarb, cut into 1-inch chunks (more or less). If the stalks are big and stringy remove the strings.
2 medium apples, cut into 1-inch chunks as well. Peel or not (I never do).
3 tbl. instant tapioca
1-1/4 cups vanilla sugar (or plain granulated sugar. Vanilla sugar is made by putting a vanilla bean into your sugar canister, but it takes a few days. Don't sweat it.)
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg
dash cloves

Let all those ingredients sit together in a big bowl while you roll out the crust.

Once you've got the bottom crust rolled out and fitted into your pie plate, dump the filling in. Then roll out the top crust. If you want to be traditional, cut it into 3/4 inch (or so) strips, and weave a lattice crust. (The Joy of Cooking has a very clear diagram for this--it's easier than it looks, and very impressive!)
Or simply roll a top crust, place it over the bottom and seal up the edges, and cut vents in it.

Place the pie plate on a cookie sheet (the juices will boil over and make a mess of your oven) and place the whole thing in the oven. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 and bake for another 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. My pie took an hour altogether, and even then the middle wasn't bubbling up as much as I thought it should; keep checking to make sure the juices are bubbling and the top is not burnt.

And enjoy! This is a little less sweet than the traditional rhubarb-strawberry pie and tastes just like spring to me.

Books every adult should read

This list came from The Guardian, which is the newspaper we read when we read a newspaper in England. It cares about literature, it publishes Annie Proulx and Germaine Greer, it's fun to read. They're reporting on a survey of librarians and archivists in England (amusingly, they're the MLA, for Museums, Librarians, and Archivists rather than for Modern Language Association, as it is in this country).

Here's their list. I put an asterisk next to the books I haven't read, and bolded the books I've taught, just for fun. These are in rank order, by the way--do you agree that To Kill a Mockingbird is the one book every adult should read before dying? (Can we just see the movie?)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible (portions--more read than taught, but I've taught Genesis, Matthew, and Luke)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quite [sic] on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman (I've taught book one)
*Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D'urbevilles [sic] by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger [edited to remove asterisk 4/1/06]
*The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
*The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
*The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
*Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
*A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Fun with logic

Laura over at 11D has a great discussion of this David Brooks piece from the NYTimes.


I'm just struck, though, by this one little bit here (this is Brooks, not Laura).

"Lareau says working-class children seem more relaxed and vibrant, and have more intimate contact with their extended families. 'Whining, which was pervasive in middle-class homes, was rare in working-class and poor ones,' she writes.

But these children were not as well prepared for the world of organizations and adulthood."

Here's what I want to know: Does this prove that whining prepares children for the world of organizations and adulthood?

For another fun example of this kind of false logic (correlation does not equal causation) check out the Literary Mama blog right now and the comments.

just the links

Here's something that's so cool, I just have to link to it...juggling to the Beatles. Why not?

My tiny moment of fame (hardly!). I always want my references to Literary Mama, and to Miriam's book, and to all the hard work other people are doing in thinking and writing about motherhood to make it into articles like this, and they rarely do. Still, it was fun talking to the reporter.

Finally, my dad's latest book, Beyond Beowulf, is now available for purchase from a variety of sources. I have a copy at home, but alas, it arrived at the end of spring break so I won't be reading it for a while. But I'm looking forward to it!

spring cleaning, home edition

1. Even if you think the kids should be helping out, the job is really easier if you do it when they're out of the house. This may be poor parenting but it's more effective cleaning.

2. Or you could at least reduce a job or two to manageable size while they're gone.

3. That little rechargeable floor sweeper that came with the vacuum cleaner can't really handle the accumulated detritus of the last three months.

4. But it makes things look a little better, anway.

5. Isn't there something you should be doing outside?

6. Turning the music up makes the job go faster.

7. For a while.

8. Where are those kids, anyway? Why aren't they pulling their weight? You've got to go pick them up in a bit anyway. It's probably time to stop. Don't want to overdo things.

spring cleaning, office edition

1. Those book catalogs that you were going to look at "when you have time"? You're not going to. Toss them.

2. Even the ones with really cool pictures.

3. Students who graduated before 2000 are not going to pick up their papers. Toss them.

4. Even if you think they might be famous some day. You'll never be able to find their work again when that day comes anyway. (I have in fact, years ago, taught athletes who later made it into the pros. No one cares.)

5. Manuals for computer equipment you no longer own do not have historical value.

6. When the recycling bin is full the job is done, even if you can't yet see the top of your desk. (For the record, I can, at least in patches.)

7. Remember all those things you saved "for later" and then threw out? Do yourself a favor and don't do that anymore.

(Famous last words.)

Friday Food #9: Sesame Cabbage

I can't believe I'm going to post a recipe for cooked cabbage, the idea of which is enough to send me screaming in the opposite direction. It conjures for me notions of dank tenement hallways, crying babies, and depressed women in housedresses. Not that I have ever experienced any of the above (well, except the crying babies). I don't know where I got this idea.

The thing is, my kids like cabbage. Especially red (or purple) cabbage, which is pretty, crunchy, and sweet. What's not to like? We shred it and use it as the lettuce for tacos. But then we forget it's in the fridge.

So the other day I found most of a head of cabbage and it was still perfectly fresh. (Another plus: it keeps much better than other greens.) And I had some rice, and some steak that needed to be cooked up that day. So I thought: stir-fry!

This recipe is adapted from New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant. I think their version may be a little bland, but of course kids (my kids, anyway) don't mind that at all. Mine is a little zingier than theirs, and the kids were fine with it.

Here's what you need:

One head of cabbage, more or less. Shred in the food processor or chop into bite-size bits.
3 tbl. vegetable oil
2 tbl. sesame oil
3 tbl. rice vinegar
3 tbl. soy sauce
a pinch of sugar (optional)
1 tsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. minced ginger

2 tbl. toasted sesame seeds

Heat the vegetable oil in a large saute pan or wok, and add the cabbage when it is hot. Stir-fry until tender, moving it around constantly so the bits on the bottom move up to the top, etc. Mix the next six (through the ginger) ingredients together, and pour them over the cabbage when it is cooked. If you prefer, you can saute the garlic and ginger in the oil until fragrant, before you add the cabbage, but you do run the slight risk of burning the garlic if you do that. I did it anyway because I prefer the garlic cooked. Toss with the sesame seeds and serve over rice. If you like, make Caroline's caramelized tofu to go with this, or do what I did and stir-fry some beef (I think pork would be good, too) in a similar marinade and toss it together with the cabbage before serving.

You can also use other greens for this, of course. Spinach won't take very long at all; chard or kale would take a bit longer, and cabbage takes the longest.

By the way, I wasn't going to post a food thing today; I've got a bunch of stuff to do and I was thinking I could skip it. But then Kate linked to me and I figured I'd better do it! Peer pressure strikes again.

worth watching the ad

Even if you're not a Salon Premium subscriber, do read Dawn Friedman's lovely piece here:
Salon.com Life | Open adoption, broken heart

Nick makes lunch

We've been having something of a "treat" week, since I'm on spring break and feeling expansive. Still, when Nick makes his own lunch sometimes I need to exert a little control.

This morning he was unusually cooperative--clothed, shod, lunch made long before he needed to be done. (OK, I had to remind him to brush his teeth--nobody's perfect.) He agreed to make his lunch when I suggested it, since I wanted time to shower. But when I asked what was in his lunch I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

"Cheese stick. Jelly bagel. Apple."

Hey, not bad!

Independence, Fear, Mothering and Writing

Please read this fabulous interview up on the Literary Mama site right now--Susan Ito's interview of Rachel Tzvia Back. Here's a taste of it:


[RTB] One of the things my siblings, who all are raising children here in America, envy is that the culture at large [in Israel] puts its greatest emphasis on family. Everything is structured to promote and sustain family life. Family time in Israel is sacred, while the culture in America doesn’t promote it. There is plenty of rhetoric but it doesn’t happen.

SI: I’m intrigued. Can you give a specific example of that?

RTB: In practical terms, there’s every expectation that everyone is home at 6:30 and they will have a meal together. You’re supposed to be in your family and in your community, both together. There are no sports practices or anything that anyone needs to attend at that family dinner hour. There is also less of this kind of obsessive structuring of time, like "playdates." Children in Israel are much more independent. I don’t need to take them anywhere. There’s a bus that takes them back and forth from school, and they’re completely independent. My six-year-old takes herself to and from the bus and to her afterschool activities. I don’t ever pick them up. These things do not seem to happen here in America.

SI: It’s ironic. There’s much more fear here, and yet the real danger is actually more present where you live.

RTB: It’s true. We really allow children much more independence. We step aside for a moment and everybody grows, and that’s the way it should be. They’re growing, you’re growing. Just yesterday, when I phoned Israel, my husband said: "Wonderful things happen when you go away." They stretch a little, when I am not there taking care of everything. He told me that my 11- and 6-year-old took a 90-minute train trip, which included a transfer, to visit their grandparents, on their own. They did great. The train was full of soldiers, and they had to stand half the way, but they were so proud of themselves and I was so proud of them, and glad for them.

self-promotion

Here's my latest column: The Reading-Aloud Years

better than spam

Somehow this summer I got on Virgin Train's email list. I never actually traveled by train in the UK, but I guess I was thinking about it and signed up for something that I've been too lazy to stop.

Today I was glad I'd been lazy, when this arrived in my inbox:



(Because, see, the train goes so fast...ah, never mind. You got it. I'm just glad to have TLOTR reduced to three panels.)

not an Oscar post

I missed the first half hour of the Oscar telecast, putting Nick to bed, so I missed George Clooney and the monologue and the gay cowboy montage. That is, I apparently missed the best part of the show. Though I did love the woman who thanked the academy for seating her next to George at the nominees' dinner.

Unlike Lizbeth I did actually enjoy Lily Tomlin and Maryl Streep, mostly because they were so obviously having fun, when so many of the presenters and recipients seemingly weren't. And we don't get to see Jon Stewart on The Daily Show since we don't have cable, so I enjoyed his snarkiness when he allowed it out.

But mainly I was annoyed by the ridiculous hypocrisy of the repeated "go see movies in the theatre" mantra. After all, even the academy voters now get to watch most of the films at home on DVD. The (desperate?) injunction was most obviously ridiculous when they showed the montage of clips from "epic" films (which weren't all epic by any stretch--The Sound of Music, epic?). Just as we were told these scenes wouldn't translate to TV, we were showed them all...on TV. Hmm.

crazy cake update

Remember how I said not to use the good vinegar in crazy cake? You certainly don't have to. But last night I made it with raspberry vinegar and valrhona cocoa powder, and oh, my is it tasty.

more places I've been...

And here are the countries I've visited. (10 countries; 4%.) "Visited" is a nice, ambiguous word, don't you think? I've lived in two of these countries, spent weeks in one or two more, and spent more than a day in several. Two of them I only stopped in long enough to shop. I do have a spoon from Iceland, bought at some strange hour of the night when the sun was out and our plane stopped over; I don't know if I actually have anything from Germany, but I know I spent several hours there when our ship was docked. Both those visits come from my big adventure, when our whole family (Mom, Dad, and four kids under 11; I was 8) traveled from Tokyo to the UK via the USSR in the days when it was the USSR. If I remember rightly, there was a ship from Yokohama to Nahodka, a train and then a plane to Moscow, another plane (?) to Leningrad (now Petersburg), then a ship that docked briefly in Bremerhaven before leaving us in England. After six weeks in England there was a plane to the US, which involved the Iceland stopover. After some time on the east coast there was a train across the states and then a ship from San Francisco back to Japan. I missed the end of third grade and the beginning of fourth, and it was all worth it. I still have the scrapbook, too!


create your own visited countries map

Friday Food #8: Pizza or Focaccia

I make my own pizza, and not because I'm too good for pizzeria pizza, though I am perhaps too cheap. Rather, as long as I've got an hour or two before I need to eat, I find this is easy and makes everyone happy. The recipe is adapted from my favorite source for bread recipes, No Need to Knead, by Suzanne Dunaway. Sadly, the book seems to be out of print. If you can find a copy, though, it's worth the price just to make the rosemary filoncino, which will make you the hit of any potluck and is ridiculously easy.

This same dough makes great pizzas and also makes the easiest focaccia I've ever done. For this one you need a food processor and maybe a gallon-sized ziplock bag. And yeast, flour, water and salt.

Basic Dough Ingredients:
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
4 –4 1/2 cups unbleached white or all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

In a container that pours easily, measure the water and sprinkle the yeast over it. Stir the yeast until it dissolves. Put the flour, olive oil, and salt in a food processor (use the metal blade). Blend for a few seconds, then add the yeast and water with the motor running, blending just until the dough begins to pull away from the sides. It will be sticky. Dip your fingers in a little olive oil and lift the dough from the food processor, shaping it into a ball. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Oil two cookie sheets or jelly-roll pans. Divide the dough in two pieces and place one on each sheet. Gently push the dough away from the center, stretching it to fit the pan (or nearly so). The thicker the dough, the thicker your pizza crust or focaccia (and, of course, the smaller). Push it up around the edges to form a little "lip" at the edges. Do not knead, toss, or roll out the dough: handle it gently, and as little as possible. It will take some work to stretch it out, but be patient and gentle.

Also--for pizza, we like to make four individual ones rather than two big ones, and everyone gets to top their own. Use cake pans (8-9"), pie pans (ditto), or the bottom of a springform pan instead of cookie sheets or jellyroll pans. The smaller the pan, the thicker your crust will be.

Preheat your oven to 525° F.

If you're making pizza, top the crusts as desired with a thin layer of tomato sauce and whatever cheese and toppings you like. One of my favorites is caramelized onions with smoked mozarella (no tomato sauce with this one). I have to confess that I am not a purist about fresh mozarella for pizza--the shredded stuff in bags is easier for the kids to handle and makes something closer to pizzeria pizza, actually. But by all means use the good stuff if you like. These are not pizzas to load up the toppings on, though--they will get soggy. Choose one or two, no more than three. Another reason to make four small ones rather than two big ones, if you have a hard time limiting yourself on toppings.

Place the topped pizza on the two lowest racks of the oven and turn it up to 550°F. Bake for 7-10 minutes, rotating the pizzas halfway through the baking time. (It may take longer—watch until the cheese is bubbling & beginning to brown.)

Dunaway says if the top is browned but the bottom still seems a bit underdone you can put the pizza pan on a burner turned up high and move it around until steam stops rising, or until the bottom seems brown. I have done this once or twice, and it does work, but I am also willing to eat slightly floppy pizza or to turn the heat down a bit towards the end so the top doesn't burn. I also have a pizza stone that just lives in my oven, and putting the pans on the stone does seem to help crisp the bottom crust up a little bit.

Immediately after removing the pizza from the oven brush exposed crust with olive oil. You'll thank me later.

If you're making focaccia, brush the dough with a little olive oil after you've stretched it into the pan, then top the breads with (easiest) chopped rosemary and kosher salt, or caramelized onions, or shredded mozarella and parmesan, or whatever other focaccia topping you like. Bake as above. Brushing with olive oil after the breads are baked is still a good idea.

For arugula focaccia, simply brush the crust with olive oil before baking. Immediately on removing it from the oven, brush with a little more olive oil, then sprinkle fresh arugula over it all.

To start it the night before, put the dough in a big ziplock bag and let it rise in the fridge. It can stay there a day or two. Take it out a couple of hours before you want to use it so it can come to room temperature.

apparently I'm related to Ira Glass

From today's Writer's Almanac:

Ira Glass said, "There are people who are fundamentally lazy, who only get anything done because they put themselves under dreadful deadline pressure. Those people are all my brothers."

where I've been

create your own visited states map


I included states I've only driven through, though I may have missed one or two of them. I wasn't going to, and then I realized that I'd spent the night in many of them, visited a hospital in one, and certainly looked out the window and taken pictures; I figure that counts as a visit.

I had forgotten Ohio, but looking at the map made it clear I'd obviously been through,since I drove from Massachusetts to Wisconsin once (don't ask!) .

(Edited to add: seen on Raising Weg and Republic of Heaven.)

The Happiest Wives - New York Times

(Thanks to Laura for the link.) The Happiest Wives - New York Times:

From a report on a recent study of 5000 married couples:

"Having an affectionate and understanding husband was by far the most important predictor of a woman's satisfaction with her marriage.
(what a shock!)

But it turns out that an equal division of labor didn't make husbands more affectionate or wives more fulfilled. The wives working outside the home reported less satisfaction with their husbands and their marriages than did the stay-at-home wives. And among those with outside jobs, the happiest wives, regardless of the family's overall income, were the ones whose husbands brought in at least two-thirds of the money."

OK, is there any chance that this was the most common arrangement anyway, and that there were simply more happy wives in this largest group?

Even if not, Tierney raises but then fairly quickly dismissed the sensible suggestion that it's hard to be a "social pioneer." But really, it is. It's hard to have people assume the mom does the pickups when in your house it's the dad. Hard not to be the one who does the pediatrician appointments if you always expected you would. Hard to want to cook the dinners and not have time to do it. And equally, hard to have to cook the dinners, do the pediatrician visits, do the pickups, and not have the training or the role models for it.

I'd say I'm fairly happy (I know I whine a lot, but really). I bring in most of the family income. Would it make me happier to bring in less of it? Sure it would: it would allow me to slack off every now and then. But, as Laura notes, the "two high earning model is too difficult to maintain." When we both worked full time, that was rough. No time for cooking, for cleaning, for just sitting around with the kids--what kind of life is that?

seesaws and sandals

It's the first day of Lent and I haven't decided what, if anything, to give up. I'm not inclined to fast in any significant way this year, for some reason. I would like to let some things go, but most of them don't feel optional right now. Grading? Chauffeur duty? Housecleaning? (Oh, yeah, already gave that up...)

I like the idea of discipline, spiritual or otherwise. It's good for me to think about what to do, and when, and why, instead of just going through the motions. Practice is another useful word in this regard; too often we just do, especially as adults. We don't think (or I don't, much) about practice, about repetition, about improvement. Even in writing, I focus much more on product than process/practice, despite my training as a writing teacher. The blog may be process of a sort--but is it practice? Is it a discipline?

Lent interests me as spiritual practice because it feels so counter-intuitive. It's the time of year things are springing back into life, the world is reawakening, hope rekindles--and yet the church says, ignore that (for a moment, for forty days) and focus on what's going on within, on the tension between yes and no, on the in-betweenness, the not-yetness, of so much of our lives. Now that I think about it, though, maybe it is precisely the right season for that, as we seesaw between cold and warmth, sweaters and sandals. Focusing on the seesaw, not the sandals, might be just the way to go.

lazy blogging

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

I'm just happy I made the team

Well, I didn't finish my knitting olympics project. Like Bode Miller, I've got a DNF after my name. I tried, but I ran out of yarn and my LYS says it'll be in the middle of this week. So I made a start, and it's a gorgeous scarf (or will be when it's done). Now I'm just hoping I finish it before the cold weather disappears.

On the other hand, I did finish another object, a purse that I made out of some of the recycled sari yarn my mom gave me for Christmas. I even finished it during the closing ceremonies, so it sort of counts, right?

And I taught both kids to knit. This is really to me the most amazing part. Nick has not only (sort of) learned to knit (his work is still a little hole-y), he has also started a yarn stash. The other day when I went by the Yarn Lounge for more yarn, and inspiration, he ended up buying a skein of this (brushed, not kid), for when he gets better at knitting. He wants to make himself a pillow out of it.

It's good to have goals.

Friday Food #7: Proper English Scones

Like Caroline, I could just eat breakfast all the time. I do a lot of breakfast baking on the weekends, but I'm also often up for an eggs-and-potatoes meal (mm, maybe tonight!), or pancakes, or oatmeal, which is what I eat every morning.

I got this recipe from The Rose Tea shop in Oxford, which Becca recommended to me. I ate them for tea, not breakfast, and they were amazing. Mine aren't the same, because I'm not buying organic flour and I'm not serving them with fabulous tea and I'm measuring by volume instead of weight--but they are still pretty good. And they don't take very long. No special equipment, either, though I use a food processor because I'm lazy.

Proper English Scones

Ingredients:

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tbl baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/8 cup granulated sugar (same as 3 tbl, if you don't have a 1/8 cup measure)

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter

3/4 cup milk

1 egg for the egg wash

Preheat the oven to 350; spray a cookie sheet or put baking parchment or silpat on it.

Put the dry ingredients into your food processor or into a big bowl. Cut the butter into small cubes, then mix it into the dry ingredients with a pastry fork, two knives, or even your fingers (the Rose prefers this method), or pulse the processor until the butter is in pea-sized bits. Add in the milk, either (again) pulsing quickly in the processor until the dough begins to come together, or stirring it in by hand.

Scatter some flour on your (clean) counter or a board and dump the crumbly, not-really-doughy dough out onto it. Pat or roll the dough into some semblance of a circle about an inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter (or my trusty green chili can) cut into circles. Bring the scraps together and pat them out again to cut a few more circles; you should end up with about twelve.

Place the scones on the prepared pan. Beat the egg gently and brush some egg on the top of each scone. Or, don't. They will still taste fine but they will not be as glossy when they come out. Bake for about 20 minutes, until palely golden.

You could use cream instead of milk, but I've made these successfully with 1% milk, even, so don't sweat it.

February birthdays

I've always known a lot of people with February birthdays, including two who shared mine (one no longer living), and two the day after. My dear friend Wendy follows me by about a week. Susan says she wants virtual nothing today, so I'm trying to oblige.










empty space, for you, Wendy! Happy happy.

oh dear

(Edited to add: This is in honor of Edward Gorey's birthday, which Sam reminds me is today...)

I found this quiz on a knitting blog I hadn't read before, and I had to take it. In 10th grade my friend Caroline & I were obsessed with Edward Gorey. I think she may have had a poster of the Gashlycrumb Tinies up on her wall. Many many years later I directed a summer research project on Gorey with a fabulous student; I keep waiting for her to publish something from it, but she's holding back. In any event, I'm not sure I agree with this result--but then again, knowing how most of these little stories go, this may be one of the better results.


You will be smothered under a rug. You're a little

anti-social, and may want to start gaining

new social skills by making prank phone

calls.


What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
brought to you by Quizilla

Happy Birthday, Erma!

Here's a role model for our times:

It's the birthday of columnist and humorist Erma Bombeck, (books by this author) born in Dayton, Ohio (1927). She got a job at the Dayton Journal-Herald writing obituaries and features for the women's page, but when she married a sportswriter there she chose to quit her job and stay home with the kids. She spent a decade as a fulltime mother, and then in 1964 she decided she had to start writing again or she would go crazy. She said, "I was thirty-seven, too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair."

Within a few years, she was one of the most popular humor columnists in America. She went on to publish many books, including Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession (1983) and Family: The Ties That Bind ... and Gag! (1987).

She wrote, "My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?"

(From the Writer's Almanac, which tells me it's also Chuck Palahniuk's birthday, but I have nothing to say about that.)

Lilian's technology meme

1. Do you remember when you saw your first computer? When did you actually use one? What about having your own? Do you own a laptop? (PC or Mac?) Have you gone wireless at home yet?
My dad bought a computer some time in the 80s, I think. It was an Osborne portable--looked like a sewing machine, and was just about as heavy. I bought my first computer when I was in grad school, after we got married, so that would be sometime after 1987. I had an electronic typewriter before that. I did use the mainframe in college to word-process and laser-print my thesis, so at one time I was reasonably proficient with dot commands! (points for anyone else who remembers them...)

I now have a mac laptop that belongs to the U and a mac desktop that's ours. And yes, we went wireless a few years ago and could never go back.

2. When did you first go online and/or use email? Who did you email back then? How did the internet change your life? When did you discover blogging? What about your home internet connection - is it dial-up, DLS, cable?
I got my first email account when I got this job in the fall of 1994. I joined a listserv and emailed friends who were still in grad school. At first I had to go to the computer center, then I got a laptop and had to unplug my phone to get online in my office. The internet changed my life in two ways: one, the listserv connected me to others in my field right away, when I was feeling a little isolated in my first job. I was asked to review books and articles based solely on my listserv postings. It was pretty empowering. Second, I was able to keep in touch with people without the phone. Since I'm not much of a phone person (see below) this was terrific--I love to write, but people don't answer letters. They do, however (sometimes) answer emails.

Like Kate, I think I discovered blogging through my small online writing group. And then Literary Mama came along and encouraged me to blog as well. And here I am, almost three years later, still chugging along despite what The Financial Times thinks.

3. Do you remember your first VCR? What about a video camera (there were some bulky ones back in the 80s and 90s) and home videos?
Hmm, no, I don't. I don't think we had a VCR until after moving to Richmond, though, in the mid90s. Mark's mom had a video camera in the late 80s and we have some video of Mariah as a baby thanks to her. We also used to check out a huge bulky camera from the media resource center occasionally to take video of the kids. We never do it anymore. My parents donated their outmoded video camera to us sometime in the mid to late 90s (maybe around when Nick was born?) and we used it some, but then let the batteries run down and never charged it again. It's still gathering dust in the living room. We are terrible parents, clearly.

4. When did you switch from VCR to DVD? How did it change your video viewing experience? Do you use TiVo or any such "contraption" to tape TV shows? Do you use Netflix or some other internet-based DVD "renting" service?
We were late adopters for DVD; I think we bought our first one only about three years ago, and we still have a VCR hooked up to our TV as well. I'd love to have TiVo, but we don't have cable, so it seems pointless. We do have netflix, though, which is great--though I still maintain a blockbuster membership for last-minute rentals.


5. What about music? Did you enjoy listening favorite music in Long Plays or did you prefer cassete tapes? When did you buy your fist CD player and switched to CDs? Did you abandon them (and turned to dowloaded music) for MP3 players or Ipods or do you still buy CDs?
I remember eight tracks! Though I never had one myself, as I didn't have a car until after they'd already gone out of style. I still have LPs as well, though I'm sad about how many I gave away years ago. We bought a CD player in about 1990 or 1991, I'm guessing--all I remember is that it broke and we returned it, with our lone CD still stuck in it. (Bonnie Raitt...) Mariah has an iPod shuffle and we burn CDs from iTunes now more often than buying physical CDs.

6. Do you own and use a cell phone? Do you think it's useful or just annoying?
(Did you always have a telephone in your house growing up? Did you have a phone in your own room?)
Ha! We bought a cellphone last fall (2004) when Mariah started high school. Mark doesn't carry one. It's useful, occasionally, and everyone else's are annoying! Mariah's pretty much the only person who calls me on it (oh, and other carpool parents, occasionally), and I mostly only call home on it. Not much of a phone person, again.

We had a telephone in our house, though I went to boarding school and had only one phone per dorm. Phones in dorm rooms in college were a great innovation, even though they were pre-answering machine/voicemail... I never had a phone in my room that I remember, though Mariah does now (on our line, though, not her own line).


7. When did you first buy a digital camera? What kind was it (3.2, 4.0, 5.0 mega-pixels or better)? Did you start taking more pictures or were you a photo afficionado before then? What about a digital video camera?
I think our digital camera is pretty low-end. We bought our first one when Mariah was in 7th or 8th grade, so two or three years ago, and yes, we did start taking more pictures then. Previously we'd gotten all our photos on disk or online, though, so we'd been sharing them online for a while before we got the camera. No digital video camera, though. (See above on bad parents.)


8. What about televisions? Have you already embraced the new technologies, such as HDTV, plasma, and flat screen? (On the other hand, you wouldn't remember black & white TVs, would you?)
Of course I remember black and white TV! And Soupy Sales! When we lived in Tokyo in the 60s we had a b&w and we had a live-in maid who had a color TV--my younger siblings used to go hang out with her and watch it.

We now have a plasma TV, to our great astonishment. The idea is that it's less obtrusive. And the picture is pretty good, too. We've had it about a year, I think.

OK, if you're on Lilian's blogroll and you still haven't done this, take a stab at it. Easy blogging...

Friday Food #6: Crazy Cake

In honor of yesterday's cakes, I decided not to post a dinner recipe today but a cake. This one came, originally, from Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cook Book, though there's also a version of it in Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. Peg (we've always been close) calls it Cockeyed Cake, and the Moosewood Collective calls it six-minute cake, but we always called it crazy cake when Mom made it for us, so that's what I call it, too.

This is not a cake that turns out of the pan. Rather, serve it from the pan and then enjoy the fudgy scrapings. I remember fighting over them with my brothers.

I've made a few changes to the Bracken version, mostly to try to make it chocolatier. I have to confess, it's not the most chocolate-y chocolate cake every made. But it's quick, and I always have the ingredients. Just don't use the good vinegar.

Preheat oven to 350, and spray or butter a 9x13 pan. (Yes, I doubled the original version. It doesn't take any longer to make it, and there will be cake the next day.)

Now, sift these dry ingredients into your cake pan. That's right, directly into the cake pan. Crazy, right?

3 cups flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt (I don't think I have ever put this in, but Peg does)
1 tbl. espresso power (optional, but good)


Once the dry ingredients are all in the pan, make three holes in them. Get out the following wet ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tbl. vinegar (cider or plain white)
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups cold water

Pour the oil into one hole, the vinegar into another, and the vanilla into the third. Then pour the water over the whole thing, and stir with a fork until everything is one somewhat pale brown color (don't worry, it gets darker as it bakes). Peg says you'll feel like you're making mud pies. Make sure you go around the corners a couple of times and get all the baking soda mixed in nicely.

Stir in 3/4 cup chocolate chips. (Or don't, but it will be much better if you do.)

Bake for half an hour, until dark and fudgy looking. The top will spring back when the cake is done; it might take a few extra minutes.

Best with vanilla ice cream, but just fine as is.

cakewalk

I don't feel like this today.

They started arriving yesterday. This one, and then more in my email. Photographs and clip art and e-cards and pictures.

Then this one, and this one (from the instigator).

I can't possibly show you all of them. Every time I come back to the computer there are more. But here's a representative sampling.












There's also a recipe or two in my mailbox, and promises of RL cake later. Thank you, thank you!

I'm actually spending much of the day home with a sick kid (Nick woke up at 4:30 going "ow, ow" about his throat), but dropping by for more cake every now and then will lighten that up.

I should have whined about my birthday years ago!

Hallmark, Valentine's, and things like that

Like Mamacita, we used to say Valentine's Day wasn't important, that we didn't really need to celebrate it. And we thought it was true. My birthday falls soon after (yes, tomorrow), so it really seemed unfair to be demanding gifts for Valentine's.

And yet. It is nice to have a small something, just because. And, there's the whole elementary-school-Valentine-thing. If the kids are making a big deal of it, maybe that's enough, but maybe we want to put our own stamp on it, too.

So yesterday we had a Valentine's Day celebration the likes of which I don't think we've ever done before. I came home early-ish from work and found Mark wrapping a gift --he had something for everyone all ready. We'd actually bought Mariah's gift together, but he'd taken on Nick's gift on his own. And mine. I had little godiva chocolate boxes for everyone, and a promise of a gift for him. And then when it turned out the late-afternoon run to Mariah's school was going to be a little earlier than we'd thought, Mark took that on while I picked up Nick from his after-school class and then hit the grocery store for a few things. So we sat down together to shrimp with pasta, artichokes, brownies, and ice cream. The pasta was overdone and the brownies underdone, but the kids insisted that they liked them that way.

That is, not only did no one complain about the meal, they liked the substandard fare I put in front of them.

Well, ok, so it wasn't so terribly substandard, but I've got to say, I prefer my angel hair pasta al dente, and it really really wasn't. The underdone brownies, though, were fine with ice cream.

So, to sum up: apparently I can cook a meal for the whole family that no one will object to if (1) I mess up a few dishes, and say so and/or (2) there are presents and/or chocolate on the table.

Valentine's Miscellany

We did not make valentines this year. Nick got a spin-art set for Christmas, and we talked about making spin-art valentines, but in the end we took the easy way out. So his classmates will be receiving Incredibles valentines today. Dibs on Elastigirl for me.

A good friend passed me a valentine note on my way out from the drop-off this morning. Made my day, really. The unexpected card is so much sweeter than the obligatory one. But see above. They really are obligatory in elementary school.

I have had a crush on Stephen Stills's voice (but really, only his voice) for thirty years. I heard "Teach Your Children" on the oldies station on the way in and sung along the whole way, even though it's nowhere near my favorite CSNY song. I'm aware that this confirms my status as a big dork. I can live with that.

I had to renew my driver's license today and I steeled myself for the long wait. I had a book, a pen, and my reading glasses, and I was ready to finish the book and start taking notes for class tomorrow. Instead, I was in and out in fifteen minutes, including waiting for my picture. Which does, remarkably, look like me.

I'm feeling the love.

not a recipe

One of my favorite indulgences a few years back, when I was driving Mariah to piano lessons about twenty minutes from campus, was to stop at Starbucks on the way for a snack. I know, I know, corporate blah-blah, but they have these incredibly yummy maple-oat-nut scones. They are huge and rich and probably not at all proper-English-scones*, but I loved them. So much that I gained a few pounds that year. I blame the scones.

Mariah isn't taking piano lessons any more and so I don't drive by that Starbucks too often. Or at all, in fact. There are others, of course (there is always another Starbucks just around the corner, isn't there?) but I have stopped stopping in for the scone.

I do buy coffee from the little coffee shop on campus that sells Starbucks coffee but is not a Starbucks franchise, but that's another story. They have only little bitty scones--blueberry and cinnamon--and they are just not the same.

So on Saturday I pulled out Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and found a recipe for oat scones. I didn't add nuts, or maple syrup for that matter, but they were nonetheless remarkably like the Starbucks ones. Not so pillowy or big, because I cut them out using my little round biscuit cutter (in a former life it was a can of green chiles, and it is just the right size), but just as tasty.

I liked them so much I almost made them again Sunday morning, but reason prevailed. Later in the day I made Nigella's granola instead. I'm sensing a little bit of a trend. Mmmm, breakfast.

*I have a recipe for proper-English-scones, too, that I got here, thanks to Becca's recommendation last year.

snow and the olympics

We had snow last night, but we're not going to have a snow day tomorrow. That was painfully clear to Nick from the moment he woke up and looked out the window. "Oh, no!" was the first thing out of his mouth, despite the prospect of pretty white snow to play in today. The roads were clear, and that means school.

I feel his pain. We're at that stage in February when I just think we need a day or two off. He'll get his, next week (and he had one Friday, actually, which was a teacher conference day) but we go straight through until early March. February's a short month but a long psychic slog, if you ask me: it's time for the grey skies to clear and the weather to warm up, but they won't. And if they won't do that, they could at least snow hard, and make winter worth having.

We're having a lot more TV than usual in our house since the Olympics started. We liked the flaming skaters in the opening ceremonies, and the throw-triple-axel. And I have started my piece for the knitting olympics at least six times. So yes, it is a challenge, and no, I'm not giving up yet.

Yarn Harlot: Needles Raised

The Knitting Olympics start today. I'll be there, trying my first lace pattern (a scarf, I'm not crazy); and, if time permits, wrist warmers, too. (Baby steps: I've never done a thumb before.) If I can do this, mittens may be next! Yarn Harlot: Needles Raised

Friday Food #5: Chilaquiles

I think I'm actually making the chicken/edamame dish tonight, but here's one I invented recently that worked out well. In some ways you might as well be eating seven-layer dip with chips, but the fact that you serve it out of a casserole makes it feel healthier.

Chilaquiles

Ingredients

1 bag good tortilla chips
1-2 cups salsa (or see below)
2 cans organic refried beans
1 lb. Mexican cheese (queso fresco or queso blanco, I think. Jack cheese would also be fine). Slice or shred the cheese. This was a lot of cheese to use, and I think it would have been fine with less, but the block I had was one pound so I just sliced it all up.

Layer the ingredients two or three times in a casserole dish, starting with a little salsa under some chips and ending with cheese. Bake, covered, for about 30 minutes at 350, then uncovered for another 10-15 (long enough to brown the cheese on top). You can raise the temp a bit at the end to brown faster. You can serve this with sour cream, guacamole, and/or additional salsa on top if you like.

Salsa:

I made this because I didn't have any salsa in the house, and it was pretty good!

1 onion
1 red bell pepper
1-2 tsp garlic
small amount cooking oil
1 can (14.5 oz.) no-salt tomatoes
1 small can ortega chilis, chopped


Chop the onion and bell pepper and saute in the cooking oil with the garlic until fragrant and tender, but not brown. Chop the tomatoes (a food processor or blender is great, because you want them pretty smooth) and add them and the chilis. Cook 10-15 minutes, until the flavors meld.

A dash of cumin or cayenne wouldn't hurt in the salsa, either, but of course you may already have a salsa you like This one is quite sweet because of the bell pepper--my kids don't much like spicy food so that was ok with me. Nonetheless, I have to confess that Nick didn't like this much at all, but his friend who was over for dinner that night asked for seconds and then pestered his mother to get the recipe. So I felt vindicated.

stuff I don't really want to talk about

OK, Becca's post on Caitlin Flanagan and the Rainbow Party review was so great that I have to say something, even though I really don't want to. I don't want to because I think the book is sensationalist and pornographic and, umm, ridiculous, and I don't really want it to get any publicity. I'm on a fabulous listserv for discussing children's lit and we "talked" about it there for a while--or other people did, as I hadn't read it, and won't--and I thought that was it.

But the more I thought about Caitlin Flanagan and her insistence that yes, these parties really are happening, or something like them is, or something else bad really is, I just flashed back on the mid-80s and the pre-school abuse stories. Does it strike anyone else that this panic is a lot like that one? That this is middle class parents worried about their own parenting, or lack thereof, and especially worried about how to think about children and sexuality, and projecting all those fears and anxieties onto someone else? Of course it's harder with teenagers, because--well, because they're teenagers, so probably sexuality is entering the picture in a lot more overt way than it was when they were toddlers, but in many ways the rest of it seems much the same.

Which is why I'm waiting for Jim Kincaid to chime in on this one, because this is the kind of thing he's really smart about.

I'm not sure how I feel about this

Lately I don't feel as if I have enough time to write. There's just too much else going on right now, though I know that writing, like exercise, will make me feel better. (See here for a much more thoughtful post on this.)

Another thing I don't have much time for is reading poetry, but I subscribed to the e-mail version of Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" a while ago, and it pops up in my inbox (or, lately, my junk mail filter, but that's another whole issue) and poetry presents itself to me every now and then.

Today, according to Keillor, is Elizabeth Bishop's birthday. I studied Bishop in a grad school survey class; I'm hardly an expert, but I've always liked her work. One year I taught some of her poems in a first year course.

One of my favorite of her poems is "One Art," which begins: "The art of losing isn't hard to master." It's a poignant, beautifully wrought little poem; a modified villanelle that retrieves its rhyme words, obsessively, as it comments on losing larger and greater things.

So here's what I learned from Keillor this morning: "She worked on her poem "One Art" for more than fifteen years, keeping it tacked up on her wall so that she could rearrange the lines again and again until she got it right."

She did get it right. Fifteen years, though! I'm definitely still in the minor leagues.

Thanks for reading, I guess

I check my stats occasionally to see what topics seem to be bringing more readers, but I can rarely figure it out. Other than tragedy (the Harvey murders) and feminism (I made it into one of the carnivals of the feminists) I can't see a pattern.

But clearly some folks are looking for homework help. Recently these searches came up:

nick hornsby about a boy analysis

Tangerine test questions by Edward Bloor

teacher resource - 'Private Peaceful' M. Morpurgo

Niobe myth

edamame scarf

OK, so the last one probably wasn't homework help. I am curious about it, though!

Motherhood and Solitude

Susan has lots to say about them here: ReadingWritingLiving: More on Motherhood, Solitude and Writing

I struggle with this myself. My kids whine and lament when I leave (for business! I have to go!) but I know they'll be fine. Mark, after all, handles the home duties most of the time anyway. But more than two or three days and we all get a little antsy, a little off-kilter. Maybe we just need practice. Because we all (houseful of introverts) need that solitude, too.

edited to add: I wrote a column about this once. For me I think the issue is not quite so much solitude as it is the lightening of responsibility. They're related, but not entirely the same. I can only use solitude itself in pretty small doses--a few hours here and there, and then I start to get antsy and lonely and play too much online sudoku. But knowing I don't have something to do for someone else the next minute, the next hour, the next day, is a rare sort of freedom that I truly treasure. It was in short supply this weekend--I had blocked off Saturday to get things done for me and instead ended up driving someone or another somewhere much of the day, or doing laundry, or moving furniture. All necessary stuff, but not for me, and not what I wanted. It's times like that, when I am overwhelmed with the neediness of the world around me (even my small world), that I wonder if I should take up running. Bad knees, lousy breath control, bunions, and all. There must be a middle ground, though, right?

Friday Food #4: Superbowl Chili

There's no real reason to call this Superbowl Chili except I've made it for a superbowl party once or twice and will again on Sunday. The original had chicken, and I'll include that version below, but I usually make it this way now, veggie-friendly. I actually came in second in a chili cook-off with this once, and won a waiver of the parent association dues at Mariah's school that year. Score!

Chili Blanco

1 pound white beans (navy beans or great northerns are fine), rinsed
6-7 cups veggie stock
2 onions, chopped
1 tbl oil
6-8 cloves garlic, minced
7 oz can diced green chilis (you can add two if you like, and some jalapenos might be good if you like things spicier than I do)
2-3 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less, according to taste)
1 cu sour cream
3 cu shredded Monterey Jack cheese (I have used 2 cu pepper jack and 1 regular, or all regular, depending on what was available)


Cook beans and stock for about 2 hours, or until the beans are tender. (Don’t presoak the beans.) When the beans are almost done, saute garlic and onions in oil until golden. Add onion, garlic, chilis, cumin, oregano, and cayenne to beans. Simmer 30 minutes longer. Add sour cream and cheese. Heat slowly, without boiling, until cheese is melted. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I think I usually end up adding some extra water or stock at some point, and I’m never quite sure whether to cook the beans with the top on or off. The last time it was off, then I put it on during the last 30 minutes, after adding the onion & garlic, etc. If you start with shredded cheese—and chop the onion in the food processor—this is really really simple.


If you want to make it with chicken, use water (or, I suppose, chicken stock) instead of veggie stock, and put two chicken breast halves (with skin and bones) in with the beans at the start. When the beans are tender, remove the meat from the bones and shred it, then add it back in when you are adding the onions, etc. Either way is good.

Check this out

So now my sister's blogging (she has help, btw), and for you vegetarians out there--and, actually, anyone else who likes to eat and/or cook--they've got some great recipes up. She and Tony are two of the best cooks I know, so you're in for some good eating. I may even try that tofu stir-fry! (I've eaten it--it's fabulous.)

Four Things

Claudia didn't tag me with this, but I like it.



Four Jobs I've Had:
Ice cream scooper, restaurant cleaner, editorial assistant at a VERY small (two-person) specialty car magazine (don't ask!), breakfast waitress

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:
My Neighbor Totoro, Toy Story, Endless Summer II, Midnight Run
Special bonus fifth movie, Groundhog Day. I don't think that counts, right, because 1) today is Groundhog Day and 2) watching it once is like watching it over and over.

Four Places I've lived:
Tokyo, Los Angeles, Connecticut, New York (state, not city)

Four Places I've Been on Vacation:
The Outer Banks of NC, Oregon coast/Washington coast (one vacation, camping), San Francisco, Montreal

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
ALDaily, google, Literary Mama, the library website on campus

Four Bloggers to Tag:
Ah, do it yourselves. Can't you tell I'm feeling lazy today?

Blog Book Tour: The Literary Mama Anthology

Today's my day on the Literary Mama Anthology blog book tour. I'm so excited! I've been involved with Literary Mama since the beginning, I think. I got involved in Amy Hudock's Books and Babies online writing group and website, and then when Literary Mama launched I was one of the original editors and columnists. So it's fabulous to see the site, and the anthology, doing so well.

If you haven't done so yet, check out the introduction to the anthology here. This serves as a rationale for the site as well, but particularly for the book. This represents some of the best of the best: pieces that continue to inspire, challenge, entertain, enlighten.

Of course everything in the book is still on the site, so why should you buy the book? One reason: reading in bed. Honestly, much as I love the internet, you can't curl up and read it wherever you want. (OK, Susan, I know you do, but not all of us are quite as addicted...or enabled!) So the luxury of reading these essays in the comfort of my own bed, or reading chair, with pen in hand (I always read with pen in hand...), without a screen in front of my face, is just lovely.

As are many of the essays, stories, and poems. What a joy to re-encounter "Packing the Car," for example. I don't always read the poetry on the site, but Andi and Amy have placed it so well among the other works that it's a joy to read it here. What a pleasure to find that "Analyzing Ben" still makes me laugh; that "Acts of Contrition" still has the power to move me. Throughout, the collection builds on itself, develops so many of the important things about motherhood: recognizing your children as part of yourself, as individuals in their own right, as inheritors of your own family story, as progenitors of their own.

I was going to give my review copy away, I must say, thinking, well, I can always read it all again on the site. But instead, I'm buying a couple of others for friends, so I can hang on to mine, mark it up, and read it in bed--again.