TKD

Nick started studying tae kwon do, a Korean martial art, about two and a half years ago. At first it was a once-a-week after school class at his school: little kids in the basement yelling and kicking. It was actually pretty fun to watch them all work on their patterns, but we weren't sure it would last.

When that class ended, though, he wanted to find another one. He'd tested for his first belt at that point, gotten over the jitters of being in a big room with strangers and working through his routines, and he was ready to do more. So we called around and found a class only a few blocks away. Perfect!

We didn't know quite how perfect. While the first class had taught him some basics, in the new class he was getting real discipline. I knew I'd love this class when I saw the teacher get his small group of boys to sit cross-legged and meditate for a few minutes after stretching and before beginning their practice. (I still wonder what goes through their heads at that time.)

Nick quickly advanced, earning a new belt about every three months. He memorized complicated patterns of kicks, punches, blocks, chops, and turns--sometimes as many as 38 moves in a single pattern. He focused his sparring techniques. He (mostly) kept quiet when the teacher asked, stood, bowed, and addressed him as "sir," and helped the other kids. He broke a board or two.

After a while I started noticing adults in the class. Apparently parents of the kids had asked if they could take the class rather than just sitting and watching, and the teacher agreed. (Actually, to be more accurate: moms of the boys in the class joined up. Although there's one small girl in the class, and more recently one adult male, there's an interesting gender dynamic going on that I'll analyze another time.) So this summer, I joined too.

Pause here to remember that I'm not an athlete. I have no storied past as a runner or swimmer or softball player to regret. I started taking yoga classes about seven years ago and had recently fallen out of the habit. I don't like to sweat. But I was feeling the lack of exercise, and it seemed like time to start something new. And I was a little frustrated at work, and I thought maybe a more active, aerobic exercise practice than yoga would be a good release. Maybe I'd even learn how to break a board.

So far I'm nowhere near Nick's level--like most of the other parents in the class, I lag behind my son, which makes for an interesting dynamic: the sons outrank the mothers, but the mothers are bigger and stronger than the sons. We used to laugh when we first started sparring--it seemed so silly, trying to hit someone else! But now we don't. We practice our spin moves, our kicks, our punches, and we ki-ya (shout) as loud as the kids when we have to. We take our tests and advance through the ranks. I know three patterns now, and my kicks are getting more focused and stronger.

And yesterday, when I tested for my orange (third) belt, I broke a board with my foot. Didn't hurt a bit.

Thanksgiving recipes, #2: Garlicky Cranberry Chutney

It looks like I don't quite qualify for NaBloPoMo because I'm posting on two different blogs. Ah, well. I didn't sign up in time, anyway, so I'm really just doing it for the glory, not the prizes. Or something. (I'm on the list anyway...scroll down from that above link, if you care!)

And I am really trying to post every day, just to see if I can. So here's today's effort, another Thanksgiving recipe. You need to know that my family thinks cranberry sauce is one of the vegetables on the Thanksgiving table. Or two or three of them, actually. We do usually try to provide something green, but there's lots of the red stuff: often three or four varieties. My dad likes cranberry-orange relish. Others like Mama Stamberg's cranberry-horseradish concoction--something I have to confess I have never tasted, though it certainly looks pretty. Then some plain whole-berry sauce (but I said "plain," so skip the orange zest!) is nice, and I even really like the jellied cylinder that comes right out of the can and can be cut into neat round slices.

But my own favorite is this garlicky chutney, loosely adapted from a recipe Susan Stamberg posted along with the horseradish one (in fact if you scroll down from the above link you'll find her version). Here's how I do it: easy and delicious.

Ingredients:
1 12-oz. bag cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

1-inch fresh ginger (or 2-3 tbs. chopped ginger)
3 cloves finely chopped garlic
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
4 tbs. sugar
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. salt (or less)
ground black pepper
1/2 cup toasted walnuts or pecans (optional, but I think they make the dish)

Combine the first three ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, or until the berries pop. Let cool. (If you're in a hurry, just use a can of whole-berry sauce here.)

Cut ginger into paper-thin slices, stack slices and cut into really thin slivers (or, use the pre-chopped stuff in the jar, as suggested above).

Combine ginger, garlic, vinegar, sugar and cayenne in a small pot. Bring to a simmer, then simmer over medium heat until there are about 4 tbs. of liquid left. Add the cranberry sauce, salt, and pepper; mix and bring to a simmer. Simmer on gentle heat for about ten minutes. Cool before serving. If desired, stir in 1/2 cup toasted nuts, just before serving.

Thanksgiving recipes, #1: sweet potatoes anna

I think we're gathering with friends this year for Thanksgiving, so I'm starting to think about the various fabulous sides and desserts I can bring. This one has been a family tradition on my side of the family for over a decade now, I think: I just tracked it down in an email from 1999, at which point we'd been making it for a while. It is for those people who prefer their sweet potatoes savory--I have another terrific sweet potato recipe for a more dessert-like concoction--and it does take some time, but it's well worth it. Here it is:

Sweet Potatoes Anna

5 sweet potatoes, peeled
2 leeks, whites only
6 tbsp butter, melted
1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme, or 1 tsp dried
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Slice potatoes very thinly (1/8"); cut leeks in half lengthwise and slice those thinly as well. Butter a round, shallow 10" baking dish. Arrange a layer of potato slices in the pan in overlapping circles. Brush with 1/4 of the melted butter, top with half the leeks & thyme, s&p. Repeat with another layer of potatoes, the remaining leeks & thyme, then a final layer of potatoes. Brush the top layer with melted butter. (Yes, you are using a lot of butter. It's worth it.) Cover the pan with foil, and weight it with a heavy skillet to bake for 30 minutes. Remove the skillet & foil, baste with the remaining butter, and bake uncovered for another 30 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes and then turn out of the baking dish onto a plate before serving, and prepare for compliments.

weekend update

That title still makes me think of Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin, which I guess dates me, but so what? This was a quiet weekend--with the teenager out of the house most of the weekend the rest of us spent a lot of time quietly reading. There were things we could do (and we did a few, like go to the library and to a concert on campus) but mostly we were quiet. And we caught up on sleep, which was nice.

I did, of course, bake. With, I have to say, somewhat mixed results. I was intrigued by the no-knead bread in last week's NYTimes--I have a long love affair with no-knead bread, after all. But this one used less yeast and sat around a lot longer. In my case, about 20 hours. In the end, I was frustrated: the bread did not rise anything like as high as I expected, it stuck to the kitchen towel I was raising it on, and it didn't brown up in a lovely way. It did, however, make a more than edible loaf of bread. I'm thinking that maybe he really meant it when he called for "instant yeast," since that's the only deviation from the recipe I made. (Believe it or not!) And in some ways it was fine that it didn't rise up very high because I don't actually have a casserole big enough to bake a bigger loaf in. So we'll see if I try that again.

I also decided--because we had two pears, and because it seems to be pear baking season--to try this pear upside-down gingerbread. And it is very tasty, I must say, even if you bake it in the toaster oven because the regular oven is already full of pork tenderloin and roasted vegetables and bread. The toaster oven does, you will remember (a bit too late) bake a bit faster than the regular oven, so the cake may be a little, um, burnt on top--but that becomes the bottom anyway, so who cares?

All in all, a perfectly fine weekend, rain and wind and all.

November 11

is not only Veterans' Day, and/or Armistice Day, it's also Corduroy Appreciation Day. On account of the 11/11 looking like corduroy wales, naturally.

the names of the trees

I don't know most of them. The big tree on our corner is an elm, one that so far hasn't succumbed to Dutch Elm disease. It's already lost most of its leaves. When I park the car on that side of the street I drive on top of a thick carpet, almost up to the curb. They're wet and springy and and slippery. What's left on the tree are brown and dead-looking.

In front of the house the crape myrtle still has most of its leaves. In the interior, among the multiple trunks, the leaves are still green, tipped with light yellow. Moving outward they turn more yellow, then gold, then orange, then almost red at the tips of the branches. This tree is only about as tall as I am; a few years ago it was taller, but there was an accident on our corner and a car ended up on top of the tree, pushing it down to the ground. Amazingly, it has come back, with more trunks than before.

In the backyard the dogwood still has leaves and they are a dark, burnished red. No matter how bright the sun they don't really catch the light as the red maple leaves do; they look dull but rich.

A block or so away there's a stand of gingkos. Their leaves are so yellow they look, from a distance, like flowering trees with blossoms as bright as forsythias. In the late afternoon, when the sun is low, they look lit up from within and below, glowing a deep bright golden yellow.

There are a few more I know but not many. And I can't quite capture the colors when I photograph them; that late, low light just doesn't come through in my pictures. They look almost on fire, some of them, and as I drive down the street away from the sun the remaining elms and their younger, newer cousins, whatever they are, lean across the street making a canopy of flaming color to drive through. I wish I knew all their names.

I'm just asking...

why is it that my box of 100% organic, whole wheat pasta had an extra layer of (non-recyclable) packaging? Normally the pasta is just inside the box; this time there was also a plastic bag inside the box--one that I had to cut my way into (no "easy open" here) and then discard.

Sigh.

new column

check it out here, and leave me a comment!

And, then, go vote. Or, you know, vote first. The column will still be there when you get back.

(And, yes, this post is a duplicate of the one at my other blog. I'm busy today, ok?)

must be the weekend

because I've been baking. Every other meal, I think, since Friday evening: casserole that night, (Nigella's granola) muffins the next morning, biscuits with dinner Saturday, (pumpkin) muffins this morning, and flatbread with dinner tonight. It's madness, but no one complains.

This morning's muffins, below, are shamelessly ripped off from Susan, who got the idea elsewhere. Yum.



BTW, this recipe is basically what I did, though I only just discovered that. I actually made mine from a recipe for pumpkin bread from a falling-apart paperback cookbook, The Art of Cooking for Two, that I always just scoop into muffin cups instead. So I didn't do the nice cinnamon-sugar top, but otherwise it's really almost the same, except that I used a cup of brown sugar rather than the 1-1/4 called for, and two cups flour (one each white & whole wheat).

another thing about fall

in Virginia... you can go pet the alpacas here. Who knew so many people were raising (and showing) alpacas? Much cuter than sheep, and bigger...

edited to add a picture, just to prove cuteness (not my picture--and, actually, we saw even cuter ones!)

fall in Virginia

If I earlier disparaged the fall colors in Virginia, I now retract that false and erroneous statement and give you this:




Thanks to H for reminding me.

where I'm not

I'm not at all sure I'm going to blog every day during November, though there are those who would encourage me to try. I'm definitely not writing a novel this month. Still, if I were going to post every day this month, I might do it this way, with pictures.

Here's someplace I'm not, today. It was lovely; I'd go back in an instant, and I get why Wordsworth wrote "lines" while he was there. I was inspired, too (but not to poetry).

Very Scary

The headless wonder heads out for the night...

Roasted Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges

My, was this good. I made it up as I was going along, but I think I can recreate it reasonably well here.

Preheat the oven to 425.

Take three good-sized sweet potatoes, scrub them, and cut them into wedges. I split them vertically, then cut each half into three wedges, then cut each wedge once horizontally, but you can do what works for you. Dump them in a bowl with some olive oil--enough to coat them but not so that they are sitting in oil.

In a small bowl, mix together a tablespoon of brown sugar, a half teaspoon of cumin, a half teaspoon of cinammon, a dash of cayenne (more if you like things spicy and your family won't object), and a quarter teaspoon of salt.

Toss the sweet potato wedges with the spice mixture. Not every surface will be coated; that's ok.

Spread the wedges out on a rimmed baking sheet, with one cut surface down if you think to arrange them. Put them in the preheated oven.

After about ten minutes, stir them around so that a different cut edge is down.

After another ten minutes, stir them around again. If a surface is browning, turn the wedge to another surface. They will be softening up by now and browning nicely.

You get the point. Turn them every so often and they should be done in about 35-40 minutes.

Enjoy.

This will serve three people who like sweet potatoes, by the way. We have one who doesn't so we were fine. Add another potato and more spices if you need to, but try not to crowd the baking pan.

picking apples

I'm feeling a bit too busy to blog, so here's a picture from last weekend in CT. Pickings were actually a little slim at the orchard--late in the season, after frost and high winds, many of the apples were either damaged or on the ground. But we managed to find enough to bring some home, and last night we ate some fried up with pork chops. And roasted sweet potato wedges, which now that I think of it are good enough for a recipe entry. Stay tuned.

Apparently I'm registered with the wrong party

So, if you haven't taken it already, here's the Applebees Quiz. I'm a 10 on the 12-point scale, which puts me well into Red America, somehow. I think this may be because I have been known to shop at WalMart, drink a Dr. Pepper, and buy a local brand of bottled water. Though, really, often the choices were a case of flipping a coin: I don't really buy bottled water (but if I did it's the cheap stuff); I don't really drink soda, and between Pro Wrestling and Monster Trucks I'd choose, um, a mammogram instead. I mean really, either one sounds like torture. I got the quiz from Stone Court, and so far the folks taking the quiz through their site are almost all coming up red despite their claims to blue-ness. So I'm not sure how useful it is.

(By switching Saab to Audi, Dr. Pepper to Sprite/Pepsi, local water to Evian, WalMart to Whole Foods and USNews to TVGuide, I got it to put me in the "Tipping" Tribe. And when I switched bourbon/scotch to gin/vodka (which for me is a weather-related choice, not a political one), Monster Truck to Pro Wrestling, Coors to Bud, and auction site to dating site, it moved me all the way over to blue. Since most of these are really "none of the above" answers, I may just not fit the categories at all.)

Fall in New England

We spent the weekend in New England, which certainly does fall right. We can get good colors in Virginia, some years, but they don't seem to have quite the vibrancy of New England's sugar maples. This was the first time in years I'd been in New England in the fall--it's a tough time of year to travel, but we had a family event that brought us north and it was well worth it. I didn't take these pictures--my brother did--but they'll give you a sense of what we saw.

bread pudding

I meant to make a pumpkin bread pudding the other day, but it turned out I didn't have canned pumpkin in the house. I always have canned pumpkin--I buy it up in the fall when it appears in stores, and shelve it. It's always there--just as there are always cranberries in the freezer, bought up against some future shortage. Apparently I slipped up last year and didn't lay in quite the pumpkin supply I had expected. So, chocolate bread pudding instead, and it was pretty tasty, I have to say. This is not a dessert I grew up on -- or, if it is, I have somehow forgotten it. But it's certainly one I'll repeat while the days are cold and damp and it's a comfort to have the oven on. Easy, delicious, and thrifty--what more could you want?

Here's what I did:

Dug in the freezer for the half-baguette I knew was in there. It was. Pretty stale, and not very big, but there nonetheless. I let it sit out a while to thaw, then broke it into chunks and dropped them into my 3-quart (or so) casserole. That didn't look like enough bread, and Mark had brought some big sub rolls back from his camping trip with Nick, so I ripped one of them up and put it in there, too.

Then I melted half a stick of butter in the microwave. Most bread pudding recipes seem to want you to butter the bread, but I didn't see that happening with the chunks I'd just thrown in the casserole. So I broke three (well, really, two, but that wasn't enough and I added another one later) eggs into the same container with the butter, then added three cups of milk, and whisked it all together. Oh, with about half a cup of brown sugar and a teaspoon or more of vanilla. It was a big container--a one-quart pyrex measuring cup, as a matter of fact. I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

So then I poured all that nice stuff over the bread and let it sit there for a while as the oven preheated to 350. (What really happened is I had only two eggs and two cups of milk and the bread absorbed it all, so I added another one of each and it looked much better. But you can skip that step.) Just before I put it in the oven I threw a handful of chocolate chunks into the casserole as well, trying to push most of them down under the bread/milk mush. At this point I was pretty skeptical, I have to say. It looked like strata. In fact, of course, it was strata, with sweet instead of savory fixings. Who knew?

Then I baked it for about 40 minutes. Towards the end I turned the heat up a bit to brown the top.

While the pudding baked, I made a caramel sauce by melting a stick of butter in a pan with a cup of brown sugar, then whisking in half a cup of cream when it was all melty looking. I poured half the sauce over the hot pudding and let it soak in before we ate it--and if I make this again I'll probably only make half a recipe of sauce, since I don't have any vanilla ice cream to pour the sauce over. But that's easily fixed, of course.

fall break

The fall study break is two days in October with no school. That's it, just a slightly longer weekend and some time to catch up. We need it, too. Mostly so we can finish things that we've started.

Like these:







These are felted clogs for Nick. See how big they were before? (Pear for scale.) I hope they fit--I measured them against his sneakers.







I also finished this yesterday. The cool part is I started it yesterday, too. I love quick knits.

bullet points

I don't think well in bullet points. When people ask me for quick summaries I inevitably end up with paragraphs. I start outlines and part-way through realize that I'm writing out the material, not summarizing. Nonetheless I'm time-limited today and I'm going to try for bullet points for a quick weekend update.

Cooler weather means dinners in the oven, and dinners in the oven means cream sauce. Or so it seems. Creamy cheesy chicken bake (thanks, H!) on Friday, chicken pie (leftovers from Friday, with veggies, more sauce, and a crust on top) on Saturday, and tuna casserole on Sunday. Time to exercise more.

Rain. It rained all day Friday and Saturday. I literally didn't leave the house on Saturday. The roof, however, did not leak, and the Jetta didn't, either. Praise be!

If you've got to stay in all weekend there are worse things to do than watch MirrorMask, a Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean movie that evokes Coraline quite nicely without in any way recreating it. Nick, who often finds movies too scary to watch, enjoyed it just as much as Mark and I did. (Mariah was out and missed the fun...)

Of course, you can also watch baseball right now, so I did that, too.

Sunshine on Sunday meant we actually did get to the Fall Fiber Festival. What, you didn't know about the fall fiber festival? I'm not quite sure how I found out, but once I learned there'd be sheepdog trials, I had to go. Come on, you remember Babe, right? Mariah kept chanting "Baa, Ram, Ewe!" as the dogs were trying to herd the sheep. And, yes, it was terribly muddy. But Nick learned to spin on a drop spindle (we'll see how long it takes him to make me some knittable yarn), and we bought yarn, and we walked around in the sunshine. A good time for all.

It's midterm time, so I'm now officially a grading machine. See you in a while...

my lovely sister

Is in yesterday's NYTimes. I almost never open the Business Section, so I'm glad she let me know.

stuck in the mud

You've Changed 8% in 10 Years

You've hardly changed in ten years, from your lifestyle to those very retro clothes. And unless you were really ahead of your time, you probably need to acquaint yourself with the modern world!

How Much Have You Changed in 10 Years?

Saw this on Raising WEG. OK, so I did have a child in the last ten years--not a question on the quiz--but otherwise, truly, much is the same. (But why doesn't the quiz care about my fabulous new refrigerator?)

beta

So now this blog is in beta, too. I'm told the commenting issue has been fixed--let me know if you see anything different.

[edited to add more detail, in response to Mom's comment]
So: blogger has two different interfaces, now, and I'm testing out the new one (thus, beta). My understanding is that at some deep level it's very different from regular blogger in how it manages posting, but as far as I'm concerned the difference is that it's easier to edit and change the layout, and that I can add labels to posts, which can help with searching out old posts later. Or that's the theory.

this isn't really Friday food

Because I'm not doing that any more. But last night I made this tasty dish of stir-fried beef and vegetables (I added snap peas and haricots verts to the red bell pepper) and everyone liked it. In fact Nick, who has been unreasonably picky of late (sweet potatoes! Who doesn't like sweet potatoes?) ate a second helping.

three chocolate-covered espresso beans

and a cup of tea, taken late in the afternoon, conspired to disturb my sleep from about 2:30 until 6, when I had to get up anyway. I know this about myself: caffeine doesn't keep me up, it just disturbs my sleep. But those espresso beans tasted so good!

How not to start the work week

1 a.m. The house is dark; everyone is asleep. I become aware of several things at once: Mark is moving next to me, there's movement upstairs, and some horrible noise has broken through my sleep. Out of bed, I hear it again. It sounds like a child being tortured: a high-pitched scream of pain.

Before I can begin to imagine the possibilities that the sound holds, I flip on the downstairs hall light. I shout: "What is it?" Mariah comes down her stairs--I register, then, that she's not hurt, that she didn't make the sound.

And as I hear it again I realize that the sound that woke me was slightly different, involved hissing and scratching. As I hear it again I see Anna the cat leaping at the front door, fur pointing in every direction, tail fluffed, hissing and--yes, that's her--screaming at the black cat on the front porch, who is on the other side also leaping at the door, at Anna. A cat fight, with a door and a pane of glass in between the combatants.

Mark goes down and shoos both cats away from the door. I make sure Nick is all right (he seems, in fact, to have slept through it all, though he looks up groggily at me when I ask him if he's ok). Mariah goes back to bed. It's over by 1:05.

Friday update

• Nick is learning to play the saxophone. Twice a week he goes early to school for "band practice"/group lessons. He got the sax (a rental) Wednesday, and learned how to make noises with it yesterday. To all my neighbors: I apologize.
• Nick, by the way, does not apologize. He announced at dinner last night that passers-by were stopping to listen to him when he was demonstrating his prowess for our neighbor. We did not correct his impression, but I'm afraid they may have been looking for the goose that was being strangled.
  
• Mariah is taking voice lessons but we are not privy to her practicing. Again, I apologize. That might be nice to listen to.
• It is the autumnal equinox and the weather is appropriately crisp and cool today. But I hear it's warming up again tomorrow. It's hard to get dressed these days.
• The sky this morning looked like the sky on a summer afternoon just before a thunderstorm: dark overcast with bright light at the tops of the trees and buildings. Lovely, but a bit ominous.
  
• So far fall classes are going well for everyone. Mariah loves her government class, Nick is full of information about the history of Virginia, and I'm all children's lit, all the time.
  

what is up

I'm working on a fellowship application lately--or should I say, I am working on a fellowship application? Get the difference? I've spent the last five years or so working hard to rid my academic prose of its stiffness, its stuffiness, its (let's be serious) unreadability. Though I always thought I wrote conversationally, the years in graduate school and beyond had an effect, and when I first tried to sell some non-academic writing I got smacked down, hard, for my pretentiousness. Over the years I've tried to adjust, and I think I've been reasonably successful.

So anyway. I'm applying for this fellowship, and the person who advises me on such things tells me to avoid contractions in formal prose. I've been teaching writing for 20 years and I've never told a student to avoid contractions.

But audience is everything, and if she says formal contractions won't fly, out they go.

You'll be glad to know this equanimity took at least an hour of me growling at the keyboard and refusing to remove my apostrophe. But it's like parenting, this writing gig: you have to pick your battles, and the apostrophe was starting to look a lot like a meal Nick didn't want to eat--not worth this fight, even if I still want to hold to the principle.

OK, so the analogy is strained. But you get the point.

blogger hates me

I have just tried three times to update my viewing list (for the record, we watched "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" two weeks ago, and it's well worth watching) and every time, blogger tells me it doesn't know who I am, despite the fact that I have just signed in.

Watch this post disappear, too.

Maybe it is mad at me for getting a beta blog as well? But I thought they wanted me to!

Reading

Becca's going to think I'm copying her; but really, who better to imitate? I'm blogging about my reading here. It will take a few weeks, I think, before I really get moving on it, but at least I've made a start.

new column

Here's my latest: on Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, and 9/11.

The Last Friday Food for a while

It's that season of the year when summer food seems too light, not quite substantial enough, but we are not yet ready for the soups and stews and casseroles of winter. It's a hard time, cooking-wise, for me. I'm busy at work, the kids are busy, we all need to eat, but nothing seems quite right.

Luckily we can still fire up the grill. Here's a marinade for grilled chicken thighs that works every time. If you slice up some grillable veggies (maybe a late-season zucchini or two, an eggplant, a couple of red peppers) and brush them with olive oil to grill alongside (really, you'll need to start them first) you'll have dinner in no time. Especially if, like me, you delegate the grill-work.

Marinade for chicken thighs (enough for 6-8 boneless skinless thighs; also works for breasts, bone in or out, but the thighs are more flavorful and juicy).

5 minced garlic cloves
1 tsp. kosher salt
juice of two lemons (1/3 cup)
grated zest of one lemon (2 tbl.)
3 tbl. chopped fresh rosemary
2 tbl. olive oil
1/2 tsp. sugar

Mix together the minced garlic and the salt and rub it all over the chicken. (Messy but worthwhile.) Mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour over the chicken; marinate for at least an hour, or up to a day, covered and in the refrigerator.

When it's time, get someone to grill them. Yum.

Back

Well, it took six days, but we now have phone & internet at home again. When so many didn't have power at all, and when in the scheme of things our problems are so small, it seems churlish to complain, but just believe me when I say I have not been fun to be around the last few days. What this says about my internet addiction I don't care to examine, though I will say that I do increasing parts of my job online (course management software, online course reserves, etc., etc) so part of the issue was that I was feeling hamstrung about work. And, then, the other part.

Blogging will no doubt slow down for a while anyway. It's the kids' first week of school (praise be!) and my second week of the semester, and there is a lot going on. This will be a busy fall, mostly in ways I'm quite looking forward to, but that will necessarily cut into my internet time. And that may not be a bad thing at all.

Do I still exist?

We've had no phone or internet at home since yesterday afternoon, and no power on campus today, so I'm feeling a little out-of-touch. I'm in a cafe with free wireless this morning so I can update and check e-mail and all. But I'm about to head back to our digital-free-zone at home, hoping that we'll be reconnecting later in the day. Wish me luck!

(And if you came here this morning looking for a recipe, my apologies... As usual at the turn of a season, I'm tired of all the food I've been making for months but haven't quite shifted into the new mode. Maybe next week.)

Why Hemingway Is Chick-Lit -- In These Times

Why Hemingway Is Chick-Lit -- In These Times: "“When women stop reading, the novel will be dead,” declared Ian McEwan in the Guardian last year. The British novelist reached this rather dire conclusion after venturing into a nearby park in an attempt to give away free novels. The result?

Only one “sensitive male soul” took up his offer, while every woman he approached was “eager and grateful” to do the same."

Click the title above to read the whole article. The take-home message: women read to "experience other ‘minds in action’—which is another way of defining ‘empathy’." Or maybe the take-home message is, the novel is already dead, since men don't care about it. (Shades of the nineteenth century, when novel-reading was derided as an effeminate pastime, as Chaudhry points out.) Men, by the way, do read: they just read non-fiction, according to the article.

I want to think about this more, especially since when I teach children's literature women are (slightly) less likely than men to have an interest in fantasy, which most people think of as the polar opposite of non-fiction. Hmm.

Friday Food #29: Microwave Chocolate Cake

This is a fabulous recipe stolen from a blog I keep forgetting to link to, but love: Now Norma Knits. I think I saw it when she first posted it, but didn't make it for a while. Frankly, I was skeptical: microwave cake? It just didn't sound...right.

Well, it isn't really cake. Or, it is, but if you think of it more like British steamed pudding you might be closer. The main thing is, it's quick, it's chocolate, and it's dessert in under fifteen minutes. Not only worth a try, but worth saving the recipe. I have lightly edited this, but if you click the title you'll get the original.

Norma's Microwave Chocolate Cake

1/4 cup good quality cocoa powder (I still have some Valrhona left...mmm!)

2/3 cup hot water, divided in two 1/3-cup portions

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (Norma swears this makes the cake, but I've left it out both times I made it and everyone was still very happy. I just get a little nervous putting cayenne in things for the kids, who seem to have an unerring instinct for all "weird" ingredients.)

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Grease or spray a round microwave-proof baking dish. My 1-1/2 quart Corningware casserole is perfect for this. A glass pie plate would do, but it will spill over the edges a little.

Line the dish with plastic wrap.

In small microwaveable bowl, mix 1/3 cup hot water with the cocoa powder; microwave on high 45-50 seconds or until slightly thickened.

In medium bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add oil, remaining 1/3 cup water, egg, vanilla and chocolate mixture. Beat by hand until batter is smooth and well blended. Pour into prepared dish.

Microwave on high 5-6 minutes, until cake begins to pull away from side of dish. Some moist spots might remain but will finish cooking on standing. Let stand 5 minutes; invert onto serving plate. Peel off plastic wrap and devour.

You can get eight decent-sized portions out of this: we ate it two nights in a row. It's good hot, room temperature, or cold. The other night we had it with raspberries--perfection! (Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream would have been good, too, but that would have required going to the store, and the whole point of the cake was how quick and easy it was...so, no ice cream.)

quick and easy

OK, say you made ricotta cheese. Or bought some, for that matter. And say you have some peaches. (They are so good right now, I am buying them every time I go to the store.) And say you saw that recipe for grilled peach pizza, but the whole pizza dough on the grill thing seems like too much work. Frankly, everything seems like too much work right now. It must be the last week before classes start. But I digress. We were talking about peach pizza.

If you don't feel like starting the grill, you do this instead. You toast a couple of flour tortillas (those are a staple in our house, handy for so many meals), and you spread the ricotta and the peaches on them instead of on pizza dough. And then you bask in the compliments. Amazing.

(Yes, I did put the toasted pumpkin seeds on, and yes, Nick did pick them off.)

may it always be so

Mariah is driving these days.

Deep breath.

She has a permit, not a license yet, and is driving around town pretty easily now. It took a while for her to get comfortable behind the wheel because our cars are both stick shifts, but she's now got the hang of shifting and not looking down at the gearshift while she does it. (That does tend to cause a little lane drift, we've discovered...)

So today she drove on the highway for the first time. This is from her e-mail to me after she came home (no, I wasn't there for this momentous occasion. I have an irrational aversion to witnessing members of my family endangering themselves, so I decided to come to work instead):

"My first merge was the hardest, but the guy in the lane I needed to be in changed lanes for me."

Whew.

Friday Food #28: Grilled Eggplant "Pizza"

This is an epicurious recipe, like so many of mine. I haven't made it yet this year but whenever I have it is a surprise hit: a surprise, because I'm the only person in the family who will admit to liking eggplant or will actually buy it in the grocery store. But this is so good and, really, so easy. This recipe makes enough for two for a main dish or four if you have something else to eat along with it, maybe pasta salad or a big green salad and some bread. Or, just buy another eggplant and some more tomatoes and make more.

1 1/3 cups shredded four-cheese mix or pizza cheese (for this one, don't use fresh mozarella, as it's too moist to work: you need dry little shreds of cheese)
2 tablespoons Italian-style dry breadcrumbs (plain ones are also fine)
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
1 medium eggplant (about 1 pound), cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch-thick slices (lengthwise slices are, of course, bigger than widthwise and so you make fewer "pizzas" this way, but you can of course slice it any way you like and it will work)
8 ounces plum tomatoes, thinly sliced (3 or 4 tomatoes, I think, depending on how big they are)
1/4 cup garlic-flavored olive oil (plain olive oil works just fine)
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Stir cheese mix, breadcrumbs, and 1/3 cup basil in medium bowl to blend. Prepare barbecue (medium heat). Sprinkle eggplant and tomatoes with salt and pepper. Brush 1 side of eggplant slices with some oil. Grill, oiled side down, until bottom side is tender and grill marks appear, about 3 minutes. Brush second side of eggplant slices with more oil; turn over and top grilled side with tomatoes, then cheese mixture. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Drizzle with remaining oil. Cover and grill until tomatoes are tender and cheese melts, about 7 minutes. Transfer eggplant slices to plates. Sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons basil and serve.

five cookbooks

OK, so Caroline didn't quite tag me for this, but she certainly laid down a little challenge. So I'm taking on last summer's cookbook meme, because, well, I can.

Total Cookbooks I Own: 42. Clearly I'm a slacker. (115, Caroline? And without unpacking them all?) I do also have half a shelf full of old Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, and Food & Wine magazines that I haven't thrown away, and an overstuffed binder of epicurious printouts and various recipes ripped from magazines or the backs of boxes and bags.


Last cookbook I bought: I try not to buy them much, though I welcome them as gifts. So I have to confess that the last one I bought was at least two years ago, and it was the South Beach Diet Cookbook. I actually made things out of it, too. The last one I received was either Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone or Nigella Lawson's Feast; I'm not quite sure which was first.

The last food book I read: I've read it before, but I just re-read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, which I love. I don't know if I'll ever make one of the recipes, but she just says such sensible things, like this: "When people enter the kitchen, they often drag their childhood in with them. I was brought up on English children's books, in which teatime and cottage life play an important role. These formed my earliest idea of comfort: a tea table in a cozy cottage." While I can't myself recall a tea table in a cozy cottage in any of the books I love from childhood--Alice's mad tea party is more like it--I do know what she means about childhood, food, and literature being intertwined. One of my favorite food books, after all, is Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy.

Five cookbooks that mean a lot to me:

Peg Bracken, The I Hate to Cook Book. This was the first cookbook I ever cooked something from. It was crazy cake, and it went rather badly (I used Nestle's Quik instead of unsweetened cocoa, and may have subsituted salt for the sugar as well), but I went back and did it again and it came out fine. Peg Bracken makes me laugh while I cook, which is always a good thing.

Suzanne Dunaway, No Need to Knead. This one taught me that I could bake bread. And there is nothing so satisfying as being able to serve home-baked bread at a dinner party or potluck.

The Art of Cooking for Two. This is a tattered old paperback that my father gave me the first Christmas or birthday after I graduated from college (along with another cookbook, Sweets for Saints and Sinners, by Janice Feuer--both are now out of print). I suspect both came in some kind of QPB special. The Art of Cooking for Two was great for me starting out, as the recipes really did work, they tasted good, and you didn't have to keep eating them for days on end. I love leftovers now, but when you're living on your own they do get old fast. I still make banana bread out of this cookbook, though not much else.

New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant. I didn't have the classic first Moosewood cookbook until it was out in a 10th anniversary edition, but I had this white one years ago. My copy has tape along the spine, stains on many of the pages, and is the source for more than one of my Friday food contributions. (For example, something like this, something like this, and I think also this one, which in their version has cauliflower and tomatoes, not tuna and peas.) I alter the recipes recklessly because they are the kind of basic rule-of-thumb recipes that one can alter and still succeed with. Everyone needs a cookbook like this.

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and The Joy of Cooking. Peg Bracken refers to "your big encyclopedic cookbook" throughout The I Hate to Cook Book, and she usually means one of these two. Most families seem to prefer one or the other; as far as I know, we were a Joy of Cooking family--that's the cookbook Mom kept the lists of Christmas cookies in, that's the one Caroline has in three editions, etc. But someone gave me a Fannie Farmer paperback soon after I got my first apartment, and I cooked from it until it fell apart. I think it's still on the shelf in all its tattered glory, but I now have a hardcover as well. I use them both, usually consulting both on various basics (pie crust, buttermilk biscuits, crisps and crumbles, how to boil an egg) until I have a sense of the parameters, then I improvise.

here they are

This morning's peach biscuits, just out of the oven. Yes, they look lumpy, but they taste good. According to Nick "they're a little bit like pie. Crusty on the outside, but soft because they soak up the juices inside. They're a little floppy."

Friday Food #27: Peach Biscuits

Nick is like his cousin Ben in waking up on weekend (and other!) mornings with a yen for baking. Hmm, wonder where they got that? One morning a couple of years ago, we had fresh peaches, and I saw no reason to bake. After all, fresh peaches on cereal are one of my favorite breakfasts. But Nick insisted, and even came up with an idea: "how about peach biscuits?" After we got over my desire for shortbread (real New England peach shortbread, with biscuits and whipped cream), we invented these.

You'll notice that I don't roll and cut out the biscuits. That would be hard to do with the little peachy chunks anyway, but I never do. They are lighter if they're handled less, after all, so if you don't mind the lumpy tops of drop biscuits, go ahead and make all your biscuits this way. (If you leave the peaches out this is really a perfectly fine biscuit recipe.)

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tbl. sugar
1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)
1 cup buttermilk (or, 1 cup milk left to stand 10 minutes with 1 tbl. vinegar or lemon juice)
1 cup chopped fresh peaches (chop into bite-sized pieces)
Optional: sugar & cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425. Grease or spray a large cookie sheet.

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar in a large bowl. Quickly stir in the butter and buttermilk to make a wet batter (sort of like muffins, though you want to get the lumps out). Fold in the peaches.

Drop by quarter-cupfuls onto the prepared baking sheet. If you like, sprinkle the tops with sugar & cinnamon. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and crusty.

These are best consumed as soon as they've cooled enough to eat them. They're ok reheated, but much much better right out of the oven.

The Book Meme

I've seen this in a couple of places, though there seem to be variants out there. So here's my version.

One book that changed your life: Might as well get the embarrassing answer out of the way right at the beginning. Honestly, I have to answer Gone with the Wind for this one. It was the first book that ever made me cry (make of that what you will--I was in the eighth grade), I read it in a two-day reading binge that I can still remember, and it somehow formed a lot of my ideas about success and failure for many years. It is no doubt deeply ironic, then, that I ended up living in the capital of the Confederacy.

One book you have read more than once: This is hardly fair, as I have such a terrible memory that I have to re-read everything I teach, and I teach a lot of literature. I'm going to say Charlotte's Web, though, as I've recently decided it is the perfect novel (and I tell my classes so, every year).

One book you would want on a desert island: Well, I've never read the bible cover to cover, and it would certainly occupy me for a while. But see below.

(Sam's addition to the list) One book you wish had been written and would want on a desert island: Hmm, how about: How to Get Off a Desert Island ?

One book that made you laugh: Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird has me shaking with laughter every time I read the bit about the school lunch. I can't even read it aloud to a class, though I've tried. I'm not quite sure what this says about me. Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books have also made me laugh out loud, because I'm a nerd.

One book you wish you had written: This one's just too hard. Diana Wynne Jones's books often fill me with envy because they seem fun to write and almost, but not quite, within my reach; the Fforde books combine all my favorite genres and make use of the kind of useless knowledge that seems to rattle around my head; Marilynne Robinson's Gilead just had me lingering over every page wishing I knew how to do what she was doing.

One book you wish had never been written: Mein Kampf and The Da Vinci Code are both good answers to this. But, you know, it's not the writing that really matters, is it? It's the publishing...

One book that made you cry: See above (sigh). I'm not sure it would now, though. Charlotte's Web. Bridge to Terabithia. Love that Dog. I'm pretty easy, really. Name a tear-jerking sentimental Victorian novel and I've probably cried over it, too. East Lynne? check. Jane Eyre? check. The Mill on the Floss just makes me mad, though, and I'm pretty sure Little Nell's death left me cold.

One book you are currently reading: G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

One book you have been meaning to read: There are stacks of them, all over the house, in the library, on the wishlist... Right now, though, I have to say The Hauerwas Reader. And, um, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, though that may have to wait for the desert island.

I'm not tagging anyone else, since that never seems to work, but do take it on if you're so moved. It was kind of fun--and kind of humiliating, to tell the truth.

More on An Inconvenient Truth

Caroline's got a great take on it here: Mama at the Movies: An Inconvenient Truth.

You should also take this quiz. If everyone lived like me, we'd need 3.4 planets. Time to go unplug that cellphone charger, and find someone to carpool a little more often.

malteser-ish cake

We had a great birthday party for Nick on Saturday. Five boys met us at the Science Museum, played in the exhibits for an hour (note to self: that could actually have been longer), and went to see the IMAX movie, Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag. This wouldn't have been my first choice. We had thought we might check out Superman Returns (also playing on IMAX) but at 2 hours, 34 minutes, that seemed like too much PG-13 violence for Nick, if not for his friends. But one of the big draws of the Science Museum is the opportunity to see an IMAX movie. So, they saw what amounted to a recruiting video for the Air Force--though as such, it did stress the difficulty and danger of the job, so it could have been worse. It was hard for me to get into the cool effects of the movie, though, as I kept thinking that any of these boys could be in the military in 9 years. That was scary.

But not, apparently, for them. And then we came home and had cake (see above) and presents, and they all went home without killing each other or fighting over the Legos, so all was well.

As for the cake, it was not really the Nigella chocolate malteser cake, as you can probably tell from the picture. (Here's what it's supposed to look like.) But, as I mentioned the other day, I couldn't find Horlick's (OK, I didn't look very hard) and I wasn't sure I really had any malt fans in the house anyway. So I substituted chocolate ovaltine for the small amount of Horlick's in the cake (and scanted the sugar, as Ovaltine is a lot sweeter than Horlick's), and I substituted unsweetened cocoa for the Horlick's in the frosting. So instead of a chocolate malt buttercream I had a plain chocolate one.

The kids seemed to like it fine. It's certainly not the best cake I've ever baked--the cake part was a bit dry and since it was neither malt-y nor particularly chocolate-y it didn't really thrill me--but it's gone now. So the whole thing still counts as a success. And it's a year before Nick has another birthday party.

respite

It was 74F this morning on my back porch. I ate breakfast out there, drinking hot coffee for the first time in two weeks, reading the paper and enjoying the morning cool.

Friday Food #26: Raspberry Ripple Ice Cream

I've had an ice cream maker for several years now, but I rarely make ice cream. Last summer I'm pretty sure I never even made it once. But lately it's so hot (I know, I know, it's boring to whine about the heat) that I can't bear to do anything in the kitchen. And yet, I must. For example, Nick had a birthday. Oddly, this required pie rather than cake. (Well, he's asked for a cake for his party, which is Friday. He wants Nigella's malteser cake, which I've agreed to make despite Becca's lukewarm recommendation, and despite the fact that I have yet to find Horlick's malted milk powder in Richmond.) So, OK, I made a pie. With peaches and raspberries, both from the freezer. (Dad's raspberries from last fall, peaches we picked last summer.) Then there was half a bag of raspberries left after the pie was made. And, well, I had to do something with them.

And I had gotten the ice cream maker out a few days earlier to make Nigella's baci ice cream from Forever Summer. As soon as I made it I remembered that I'd made it once before and it was, amazingly, too rich. It was like frozen mousse, not ice cream. A fine thing, I guess, but not what I expected. And this is the experience I keep having with the ice cream maker: I make something that's fine, good even, but not exactly what I expected. (Umm, not only did I make it before, I blogged it--and I liked it better the first time!)

So anyway, where was I? Back to the ice cream recipe. Sorry.

Nigella also has a recipe for raspberry ripple ice cream in Forever Summer, but I decided to simplify my life a little bit and use the custard technique I found in the latest Gourmet (which I bought after Becca recommended it) instead of following Nigella precisely. Which actually struck me as a very Nigella thing to do, you know?

So. On with it.

Here's what you need:

4 large egg yolks
1 cup whole milk
1 cup cream
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups frozen raspberries
1/4 cup sugar

Here's what you do:

Whisk the egg yolks and 1/3 cup sugar together until the mixture is light yellow and comes off the whisk in ribbons. Heat the milk to boiling. Pour the hot milk slowly into the egg yolk mixture, then return the mixture to the pan (Nigella wants you to clean it first, so I do, but no one else seems to care) and heat it slowly until a thick custard forms. Stir constantly as it heats. As soon as it seems custardy (like hot pudding), take it off the heat and whisk in the cream. Add the vanilla and cool the mixture to room temperature, then chill it in the fridge.

While it's chilling, puree the frozen berries with the sugar in the blender. Push the pureed mix through a sieve into a container that can go in the freezer. (Nigella adds some syrupy balsamic vinegar, but I didn't have any and didn't know how that would go over with the kids.) Put the raspberry mixture in the fridge for now, but remember to stick it in the freezer while the ice cream's working in the machine. You want it to get thick but not frozen solid, in other words.

OK. When the custard is cold, pour it into your ice cream maker and let it do its thing. Mine takes a good forty minutes to get something even remotely resembling soft-serve ice cream; yours may go faster. In any event, when it starts to look like ice cream, get the raspberry puree out of the freezer. Layer it with the vanilla ice cream in an airtight container--three layers of each, starting with ice cream. Use a wooden skewer to swirl the puree through the ice cream to make it look pretty, then set it in the freezer to harden up. Mine takes three or four hours, but it's actually better the next day. (After that, eat it fast before the ice crystals form.)

I would try more ice creams, but I already have eight egg whites in the fridge and no one here is a big meringue fan. (Not to mention that in this weather they'd be tricky...) So I'm looking for whole egg recipes only now. But this is really tasty.

boredom and the dog days of summer

Everyone has already commented on the article about boring kids, so I probably shouldn't even enter the fray. But being late to the party has never stopped me before, so here I go anyway. The thing is, this is hardly a new thing to say. Susan Maushart managed to get at it a little bit in The Mask of Motherhood, for example. (And I think I managed to mention that little bit when I reviewed the book years later.) I think Helen Simpson has the best fictional depictions of the occasional moments (or, ok, depressingly long stretches) of boredom that come with parenting in her fabulous book of short stories, Getting a Life.

The Daily Mail article is, of course, annoying because the author can send her nanny to do the "boring bits" instead of simply sucking it up the way most of us do. So there's a class problem here: is it ok for poorer women to be bored so we can be fulfilled? I don't really think so. But the boredom, she is real.

Andi's take on this is not quite the same as mine, perhaps because we define the word "boring" a bit differently. For her, as she says, "life with small children, or even big children, can be tedious, repetitive, and exhausting... but I only WISH I had the time to be bored. Being bored means there's nothing to engage you, nothing to do, nothing to consume your time or occupy your mind." That's a great way to think about it...but to me, "tedious, repetitive, and exhausting" often does equal boring. But that doesn't mean it's not a necessary part of life.

Here's the definition of boring for me: being commanded to watch your kid play, but not really participate. This used to happen to me all the time: "play blocks with me, Mommy," Nick would command. So I'd get down on the floor, ready to engage, pulling out blocks to build some fabulous creation, and Nick would say "No, you can't have that block! No, do it this way! " And I would be reduced to watching, frustrated because there were things I could be doing (reading, writing, preparing for class, building a fabulous creation), but his need for a witness stymied those while not, somehow, allowing me to participate fully, to engage, to occupy my mind (to go back to Andi's words). There wasn't fear in there, there was simply, mind-numbingly, boredom, tedium, exhaustion. And no nanny to send in to do my shift, either.

Watching soccer games was another intensely boring part of parenting, one that is thankfully over for us. Talking to other parents on the sidelines was not so boring, so there were compensations there, but I will not lie and say I enjoyed it or found it engaging. And that's ok. I did it, as I've done other boring things in my life (practice scales on the piano, read certain academic books, pay bills, clean house), because they were (and are) necessary. On occasion I can surrender to those necessities and do them with a certain amount of grace, but most often I grit my teeth and just get through it. Attitude does matter, of course, but sometimes just showing up is good enough.

Andi is, of course, absolutely right when she says, "When she says she's bored with her life as a mother, I think what she really means is that she is scared of what it means to surrender to it. This "boring" is a provocative-sounding label to give a problem that is too scary to name when you're in the middle of it -- the huge identity shift that happens when you become a mom, and the crazy-making emotional, psychological, cultural, and political contortions women -- and only women -- are still expected to make when they enter the world of motherhood." There's certainly a great deal of truth to this analysis--which is, again, much like what Andi's already said in MotherShock and what Maushart says in The Mask of Motherhood (hey! Amazon.com is packaging those two together!) and what Anne Lamott says in Operating Instructions. Which is also to say, again, this is not a new issue by any means. Why is it that we have to keep hashing it out instead of trying to do something to, oh, I don't know, alleviate the boredom? And why do we have to keep publishing provocative articles to stir up yet another storm of mom-bashing? (Tell me dads don't find fatherhood boring on occasion. Frankly, I think we expect them to.)

So what's my point? We're in the boring days of summer right now. It's beastly hot (but you know that), and there are hours to fill that shouldn't be filled with TV or videos, but can't be filled with scooter-riding or other outdoor play. Thankfully, Nick has reached the stage where he can (mostly) entertain himself. He may claim he's bored, but a book or a piece of paper and some colored pencils can usually alleviate that, which means I can get on with the things I need to do. Sometimes I'm with him, sometimes I'm not--and, since he's now nine, that's OK. I may miss the cuddly days of earlier childhood, but I really don't miss the boredom. And I'm willing to call it that.

[edited to add: why do British writers get to say their kids are boring? I think it's actually some kind of strange self-deprecating humor.]

[and edited again to add, Miriam already said this more concisely.]

Nick is nine

He shares a birthday with Francis Scott Key and Herman Melville. I doubt he cares. [Edited to add, also with Jerry Garcia and William Clark, of Lewis & Clark fame. That last one, he cares about.]

I don't remember much about the night and early morning he was born (not even the time!), but I do remember the sandwich I ate before I went into labor. A cheese columbo from Copolla's Italian deli. Mmm. It was a great sandwich and we went for a walk afterwards--Mariah was with her grandmother, on her way to a wedding--and then to the hospital. They told me things didn't look too promising but it was my due date and it was hot and I'd already had two false alarms and I was tired of being pregnant so they agreed to let me come in. Less than twelve hours later I had Nick in my arms.

Today he'll have presents and then go to his camp. As on the day he was born, Mariah has a previous engagement tonight, but we'll celebrate this evening anyway--with a National Night Out party on the block, moonbounce and all. Happy Birthday, Nick!

Mama Sez

Mama Sez:
write for the Literary Reflections section of Literary Mama. Check it out!

Friday Food #25: More Muesli

Like Caroline, I can't leave a recipe alone. So though I love my dad's muesli, which he's been making pretty much the same way for years, I found myself tinkering. It didn't help that Nigella had another way of doing it (or maybe it did). The key difference, I found, is that Nigella toasts the ingredients--and that, if you've got the time and the inclination, is well worth it.

So here's how I made muesli yesterday, even though it was too hot to turn on the oven.

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix in a large bowl, or simply on the rimmed baking sheet:

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup mixed cereal (or another cup of oats)
2 cups chopped mixed nuts (I used almonds and hazelnuts this time)
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 cup sunflower seeds

Toast on the baking sheet for 20 minutes, stirring after 10 to make sure everything toasts evenly.

Remove from oven to cool when the nuts look a little toasty. When the cereal is completely cool, add 1-2 cups dried fruit (I used "craisins," but raisins or chopped dates and apricots would also be good) and 1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar. Stir the sugar and fruit in thoroughly, then store in an airtight container.

See, that wasn't too hard, was it?

not a paid political advertisement

If you are anything like me, you have avoided seeing Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. You figure you know it all already--global warming is real, the government isn't doing what it should, we can do better. You figure you know him already--after all, there were those eight years as vice president and then an endless campaign which, though he didn't lose, he let get too close so the other guy could win. And you don't want to be depressed.

So here's the surprise (which shouldn't be a surprise, because you're really not like me and you already saw it): none of the above makes any difference. It's a good movie, you don't know Al Gore like you thought you did, and the movie's not depressing.

It's the last point that's really what makes the difference, of course. I know it feels like buying energy-efficient lightbulbs and driving a slightly "greener" car won't make a difference, but now I'm convinced it will. Not enough of a difference, all by itself, but maybe enough of a difference to make more of us work at making a difference, at holding our politicians accountable, at educating our kids. (Here are more suggestions.)

Mark and I went to the movie when we had an unexpected gift of free (i.e., no kids) hours. But I think we might go back, with them.

essays by the numbers

It's always fun to figure out the formula for a certain kind of writing. Miriam Burstein, aka The Little Professor, has done so now for the "First Person" column in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I find myself nodding in agreement, even though I think the categories, and certainly the issues, are worth talking about. Sigh.

Thanks to Dr. B. for the link.

back

I spent last week at a workshop for college teachers and I'm beat! I haven't spent this much time talking about teaching since my "pedagogy class" in grad school--I put it in quotation marks because mostly it was a desperate effort to keep us from quitting mid-quarter, I think, and didn't offer nearly as much helpful content as the title might imply. Not that the folks teaching it were inept or corrupt--far from it--it's just that pedagogy gets, or got, very little attention in my graduate program. And while I've certainly tried to keep up with things over the last twenty (gasp) years, it's rare that one really gets a chance to sit down and talk about pedagogy while in the thick of the teaching year. So it was nice to talk about what we do and why we do it, and whether it works.

And now I have plenty of new ideas to try out, and a backlog of work to do here, and a family to catch up with, and blogs to read, and...well, you know the drill. I've got a few things in mind, and (I hope) a recipe for Friday, but things may be a little sparse here for a while.

yes, I know it's Friday

but I'm out of town and I can't get wifi (grr) and so all the fabulous recipes on my laptop--or that I am imagining are on my laptop--that I might have shared with you, will just have to stay there. I do have computer access, as you can see, but the no wifi thing is starting to get old.

I should say, though, that my biggest hit as a cook last week was "make your own salad" night. Lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, marinated chick peas (there's a nice gingery chick pea recipe in the very first Moosewood), olives (only for me), crumbled feta, leftover grilled steak and peppers, carrots, tomatoes from the garden, and a nice balsamic-basil vinaigrette. A loaf of good bread. Everyone took what he or she wanted and piled it up on a plate and they were all happy. This is what hot weather does to us.

I've got some siblings who are going to be surprised...

I saw this on Lilian's blog and I had to post it here. Um, because it's wrong. Second of four, actually. Though I have to say, I think the descriptions are reasonably accurate. Hmm. Maybe I should go work on that self-help book!

You Are Likely an Only Child

At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated. At work and school, you do best when you're organizing. When you love someone, you tend to worry about them. In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic. Your ideal careers are: radio announcer, finance, teaching, ministry, and management. You will leave your mark on the world with organizational leadership, maybe as the author of self-help books.

The Birth Order Predictor

hottest day of the year...

...so far. It's officially 98, with a heat index between 100 and 104. The affable weather guy on the radio assures us that temperatures will drop "into the more normal 90-degree range tomorrow." Gee, thanks.

the post about purses

Becca seems to be done with her fashion posts, but I am just getting started. Or maybe not. Maybe it will just be this one. In any event I need to begin with a bit of personal history.

This happened many years ago. Probably more than thirty, but less than forty. My parents were out, and my (older) brother and I were exploring. We found ourselves in our parents' room, looking (I guess) for something to do. We must have been bored. I opened a drawer in my mother's bureau and collapsed on the floor laughing. There in the drawer were, it seemed, a dozen or more purses, different colors and sizes. Could they have been wrapped in tissue paper? So memory says, though my memory is faulty when it comes to things like this. In any event it struck my brother and me both as the funniest thing ever: "she's got 100 purses and no money to put in them!"

Fast forward 30-40 years. I don't have a drawer dedicated to purses, and mine don't match my outfits. For years I carried black purses on the theory that they didn't call attention to their non-matching-ness. But the matching thing was always at the back of my mind. And the need for a purse. I've never really resented the "need" to carry a purse; just as skirts seem like a nice additional option, rather than an oppressive requirement, so purses seem like a sensible way to carry your stuff. But if you don't want to, well, that's what pockets or backpacks are for. No sweat.

Anyway. I carry a purse. And I am shocked to discover that I have, well, let's say a lot of them, squirrelled away in various places in my house.

There is the lovely brocade one made for me by a skilled craftswoman and artist who was trying out a new style and used me for a guinea pig. I carried it for several years. It doesn't match anything I own, which (I figured) meant I could carry it with anything. But it's a little big, and if I put too much in it the strap hurts my shoulder.

There are the two felted bags and the two non-felted knitted bags and the one crocheted bag, all roughly the same size and style. One of the non-felted bags was my belated Knitting Olympics project; one of the felted bags was just finished in May. Here it is:




The problem, I have finally decided, with all the bags I made, is that they are too small. I was trying to force myself to carry fewer things in the purse (this is a perennial problem for me, especially since my back hurts when I carry too much) but the small-purse-method was defeating me. I just overstuffed them and they looked it.

So now I have a new bag. (Oh, and have I mentioned that since I can't knit things that have to fit, but I like to knit, I end up knitting a lot of bags--well, you guessed that--and then I feel that I can't really buy a bag, because I could just, you know, knit another one...) So I made this bag, using more of the recycled sari yarn, finishing it last week. I even lined it (sewing is not my forte) so that things won't just fall out of it. And, you know, it works for me. It's big, and it's pretty shapeless (unlike in the picture) but I made the strap short, it holds all my stuff without getting over full, and it's not too heavy. So now I, like my mother before me, have many many bags, and little money to put in them. But at least I have one I can carry my stuff in.

We'll see, though. I thought the pink felted bag was the bag to end all bags. The moral, I suppose, is that there is, as Nick would say, no such.

home

I have in mind a long post about home and how that's a complicated concept for me, but at the moment I just want to say it's nice to be home, at this home where I now live. And yet it was nice, this past week, to visit family in homes that I've never lived in, too.

And one of the most fun things about staying at my parents' house was having Mariah go through photo albums and even a trunk or two and explore my past, and even my mother's past, through our pictures and clothes. She scored some "vintage" outfits from Mom, and tried to convince me that my 12-year-old self was cute...Nice try, honey!

More on home another time. That's all for now.

Friday Food #24: Crepes

I'm not a fancy or an elegant cook, but I can put a good meal in front of a family relatively easily most nights of the week. When I get too tired Mark cooks or we go out. Sometimes Mariah even cooks, and I keep meaning to encourage that. But the fact is that I like to cook, so it's usually not a big hardship.

But I do get bored with our usual stuff. Doing these recipes has been a nice way of reminding myself of some old favorites that I haven't made lately, and also of coming up with new things.

Last Friday night was a new thing: I made crepes for dessert. Who knew they were so easy?

Here's the story:

In a blender, put 1 cup flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 eggs, 1 cup milk, and tablespoons of melted butter. Blend until you have a thin batter. Now let it sit for twenty minutes while you do something else.

In my case, that was peel and pit three peaches, dip the cut halves in sugar, and place them in a heated non-stick pan over medium heat for about five minutes: sugar-grilled peaches! Yum! I also pitted about a dozen cherries and cooked them along with the peaches, then cut the peaches into bite-sized chunks and put the whole mess in a bowl.

Then: I heated a small non-stick skillet over medium heat (I sprayed it with non-stick spray because I don't really trust the pan). Poured about a ladleful of crepe batter in, swirled it around a bit, and waited for it to look dry on top. Flipped it (this was the only hard part: I loosened the edges with a metal spatula and then carefully lifted and flipped) and cooked the other side until the whole thing was dry and lightly spotted with brown in places. Put it on a plate, spread a little nutella on it, and folded it up. Repeat until the batter's gone (or, in my case, until you have two crepes per person. I had leftover batter which made one nice breakfast the next morning.)

I did these just before we sat down to dinner, and put them in the oven (along with the peach/cherry mixture) with the door closed while we ate. I didn't turn the oven on, though I might have put it on "warm" if I thought we'd take a long time over the meal. We didn't, though, and I served each person two crepes with some fruit on top (or, in case of picky children, on the side). Everyone was delighted, and it was so easy I felt almost guilty. Why haven't I been doing this for years?

Family vacation

Top three reasons to visit the northwest corner of Connecticut in July (other than the very top reason, the ability to spend time with family):

1. Fresh asparagus from the garden (Nick points out that this is a special treat for us because we are visiting someone who has an asparagus patch...)
2. Ten degrees cooler than Richmond
3. Badminton and croquet on the lawn (including expert coaching from Granddad...)


Top three reasons NOT to visit the northwest corner of Connecticut in July:

1. The gnats
2. The gnats
3. The gnats


To be fair, the rain today seems to have kept the gnats away.

Nick is nostalgic

I liked Oxford because we got to bike around all the time. And it was a really nice house. And candy was inexpensive and I got to buy it all the time!

Friday Food #23: Quick Fish Dish

We don't eat a lot of fish, but I always think we should: it's healthy, it's low fat, it cooks quickly. But I don't much like cooking it or think I do a good job of it.

Then a friend gave me this recipe. She made it for my birthday, in fact, and I liked it so much I asked for it. How the story is supposed to go now is that I've been cooking fish all the time, weekly maybe, because the recipe is so good and easy.

It really is that good and easy, but I don't always remember to buy fish. So in fact I made it yesterday for the first time. I'll give it to you as she gave it to me, and then I'll note a couple of easy changes, too.

You'll need as many fish steaks (or fillets) as you think will feed your family adequately. I made it last night with a single swordfish steak and a largish piece of halibut. I think they were each about a half pound. Everyone would have eaten more, but there was enough.

Mix together 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise and 1 tablespoon each of honey and dijon (or, in my case, Gulden's Spicy Brown) mustard.

Spray a baking pan with nonstick spray and lay the fish in it, skin side down (if there is skin; the swordfish steak only had it on one small side, of course). They can be pressed up pretty close together. Smear the mayo/mustard mixture on the top of the fish. Sprinkle generously with chopped parsley and season to taste with salt and pepper (I only used pepper).

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes, or, as I did last night, at 400 or so for about 20 minutes. Pierre Franey has a version of this for which he uses flounder fillets and broils very briefly. Just check to make sure the fish is flaking and it's done. It's really pretty flexible: the mayo/mustard mixture keeps it moist and as long as that gets brown on top you're probably fine. Squirt some lemon juice over the fish when it's done if you think of it (I didn't), or serve with lemon wedges on the side.

Both kids loved it. Nick scraped most of the sauce off of his but ate the fish happily. My friend says it works with all kinds of fish: best if all your pieces are roughly the same thickness, but after that all bets are off.

Blogaversary

A year ago today I was in England, in the midst of my first week of classes. We'd made it through the first two weeks abroad, battling the weather and the new surroundings, and things were looking up.

Two years ago Mariah was away at camp, Nick was in day camp, and he had a swim meet.

Three years ago we had a French exchange student living with us, Nick was taking swimming lessons, and I began the blog with this entry.

Four years ago we were in CT for my nephew's baptism, and five years ago we were in the middle of a bathroom renovation. Six years ago Mariah and I were just back from England and the family was getting ready for our trip to CA for Caroline & Tony's wedding later that summer.

Seven years ago I didn't have a palm pilot, so I don't have daily entries, but I was recovering from the previous year's tenure anxieties. Eight years ago I was putting the tenure portfolio together.

And 21 years ago, on this date, my brother and his wife were married. Happy Anniversary, Mike & Muzz! Wow, 21 years! I guess you guys are legal now.

Celebrating the Fourth

I don't think much about the 4th of July, or other national holidays. In fact they often seem to sneak up on me and I'm unprepared. As I was this year: we didn't invite anyone over, didn't make plans, didn't stock up on beer and burgers and corn and all that. I've never put up a flag, and even if I ever had I'm not sure I would this year with the silly debates over "flag desecration" going on. Sigh.

Sometimes I envy Stephanie the Yarn Harlot, who twice a year manages to post something entertaining and heart-warming about being Canadian. (Of course if we had Homo Milk, which I also saw in England, I'd be pretty proud, too.)

There are things I love about the US, and one day I'll find time to post about them. But for today I have a line I came across this morning, in a review of a book of Ishmael Reed's poetry. The review's author, Joel Brouwer, calls Reed "among the most American of American writers, if by 'American' we mean a quality defined by its indefinability and its perpetual transformations as new ideas, influences, and traditions enter our cultural conversation."

OK, that's a kind of "American" I can proudly be.

movies and more

Did I already mention going to see The Break-Up while we were at the beach? Probably not, because it really is hardly worth mentioning. Not a bad way to spend two hours or so of an evening--Judy Davis and John Favreau are especially delicious--but I really wanted more about real estate and less stupidity about relationships. That is, the Aniston and Vaughn characters are supposedly breaking up because he's a selfish boor--and that is so well-established in the first few minutes that you're with Jennifer, agreeing with her as she enumerates the reasons she just can't do it anymore--but then she changes her mind, and not just because they share a fabulous condo. It's one of those relationships that works only for mysterious reasons--they really seem to have nothing in common--and so when it stops working that makes total sense. It would have been much funnier if the break-up had been real, if they had both really wanted to break up, but they couldn't give up the real estate. As Caroline said, they were acting like they were in their twenties when they were obviously not, and that made the whole thing just fall apart in places. Oh well. As I said, John Favreau=very funny.

Then this last weekend we went to see Cars, which I didn't hate. I even liked some parts of it--especially Paul Newman parts--but overall I found it predictable and a bit tedious. There's just something a bit weird about glorifying the open road, Route 66, automobile travel, in an age of global warming and gas shortages, don't you think? And then there's an interesting critique of corporate America (="Dinoco," a fuel company), except it turns out that really Dinoco is run by a big-hearted Texas oil man who values loyalty and friendship above winning. Yeah, right.

OK, so I'm cynical and jaded and I overthink my entertainment. But really, when my entertainment asks me to think and then wants me to stop thinking, all in two hours, I get annoyed.

The best part of Cars is the closing credits where a bunch of Pixar hits from the past are recast with cars. That was genius, well worth staying in the theatre and annoying the people trying to get out and go on to the next thing.

I'm ranting over at LiteraryMama today as well, this time about kids' books by celebrities.