Fatigue

Want to dip into nostalgia for the pleasing mustiness of library stacks and the tactile joy of oak-fronted card catalogues? Click here.

CSA Week 24

I took a half a vacation day yesterday because it was my day to babysit the CSA pick-up site. I got there at about 2:15 to help unload the truck and organize the boxes. And those boxes were heavy! Moving a handtruck with four crates of cabbage uphill is hard work.

But it was fun to meet all the other participants, to share cooking ideas, to bemoan the lack of leeks, to groan about more cabbage. Everyone loves onions and potatoes. Beets? Either you love 'em or you hate 'em. Everyone was sorry that we only have one more week, but thrilled that the enrollment packets for next year were available.

• Celeriac (1)
• Potatoes (a small basket, ~6)
• Carrots (1 bag)
• Sweet Potatoes (paper bag)
• Beets (3)
• Onions (2)
• Butternut Squash (1)
• Green Cabbage (1 head)

And while I was hanging out, between checking people in and rearranging the crates, I finished one Christmas present and made some headway on another. So, a productive afternoon, in lots of ways. Moral of the story? Sign up next year for a summer day - it was COLD yesterday.

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Clothes Horse

I swear, I don't know where she came from sometimes. Me, I hardly ever wear a skirt and rarely wear heels. She changes her clothes at the drop of hat, prefers skirts to pants, and keeps asking me to buy her some "heel highs".

The last time I went shoe shopping, I was trying on some comfortable flat shoes, while she was trying on all the heels in the place. Note, please, that the shoes don't match and she has two right feet. I suppose it's better than two left feet.

[I think I am constitutionally incapable of letting the picture tell the story - hence it's almost wordless Wednesday.]

It's All About The Pegboard

Julia Child in her kitchen:
My mother in her kitchen:
And you know what? They both went to Smith.

Damned Cablevision

I watch hardly any television, but I got all excited reading the paper this morning. In December, Ovation is running the Battle of the Nutcrackers: four different versions with a chance to vote on your favorite. I'd watch that in a minute, and so would the little girl. But, our cable provider doesn't carry Ovation. I am bereft.

Watching the "same" thing over and over again is a terrific way to train the eye and sharpen one's critical faculties. In this case, two of the productions are pretty traditional (New York City Ballet and the Bolshoi), while two are a bit more out there (Mark Morris and Matthew Bourne). But they all use the same music, and the same basic story line.

Again, I am bereft. We'll have to make do by listening to lots of "covers" of the Tschaikovsky score and dancing around the kitchen ourselves. Damned Cablevision.

Rhymes With Sunday

The child is completely erratic as to identifying letters, and can't spell her name past the first two or three letters, but she’s into rhyming.

Sometimes she quizzes me:

• What rhymes with steeple? (People)
• What rhymes with pink? (Sink, mink, slink)
• What rhymes with medusa? (Kousa)

And sometimes she just announces, with glee: Cat and bat rhyme! Tree and key rhyme!

At the doctor last week, for her four-year-old checkup, I mentioned this to him and then prompted her: "What rhymes with bill?" Her answer? "Kill." His dry comment? "I saw that movie". My response? Mortification.

Speaking of rhyming, I met S. and Z. of Rhymes with Javelin the other day. It's a funny thing, knowing someone on-line and then meeting them in person. On the one hand, one learns a lot of stuff about a person from reading their blog (and their breadcrumb trail through other people's blogs). On the other hand, it's a complete stranger! In your house! I had a lovely time, and I'm happy to now have face and voice to put to a small piece of the interblogs. Thanks for coming to visit, S.

Seven Sept Sieben Siete Syv Sette Hét

Dawn tagged me to disclose seven weird and/or random things about me. There are rules and stuff, but rules? We don't need no stinkin' rules.

1. I have never colored my hair.
2. The only A+ I got in college was in Philosophy of Art - which was not in my major. I was very proud of that grade.
3. I didn't want to get married - W. had to talk me into it over several dinners at the bar in a restaurant near our apartment. The bartender was distinctly amused; he said it was usually the other way around. In the end, it was a good excuse for a party.
4. I love Christmas even though I'm a heathen pagan atheist.
5. I prefer to sleep without nightclothes, but I started wearing a nightgown when my child was born - all that getting up in the cold, cold night was too much to bear naked.
6. If circumstances had been different, I would have tried cloth diapers. But now we use cloth napkins.
7. In my next life, I want to be a coloratura soprano so I can sing Der Hölle Rache. In the meantime, you can watch Diana Damrau do it. (The aria starts at about 2 minutes in.)

*English, French, German, Spanish, Danish, Italian, Hungarian

Thanksgiving Past

Yesterday, we traveled (10 minutes) over the (tiny) river and through the (suburban) woods to Miss M.'s paternal grandparents' house, for a lovely meal:

• turkey
• gravy
• tuscan kale sauteed with olive oil and garlic
• mashed potatoes
• stuffing
• cauliflower braised in red wine*
• salad with feta and grapefruit
• steamed carrots
• cranberry orange relish
• cornbread
• rolls
• pumpkin pie
• cranberry tart

And now the turkey carcass is aboiling for stock, and so the house smells divine.

Growing up, we always had Thanksgiving at my paternal grandparents' house. The meal was always the same - turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, creamed onions, kale with hazelnuts - and my aunt always brought dessert. There was always a children's table, and one year there were two children's tables because there were so many people. I always liked hanging out in the kitchen, especially hoping for that first slice of breast meat - the one with the biggest piece of crackly brown skin.

After a time, my grandparents relinquished the cooking to one of my uncles, but the celebration remained at their house. So that he'd have everything he wanted for the preparation, my uncle brought with him a bunch of stuff from home, including a couple of containers of stock from his freezer. He merrily cooked along, using the stock to enhance the gravy. Alas, it turned out that the (unmarked) container was fish stock - not chicken or turkey. Fish stock. He swore me to secrecy in the kitchen and proceeded to serve the fishy gravy. I, knowing better, politely declined the gravy at the table. Everyone else ate it, puzzled. To this day, I can't remember if he fessed up that day or not. I've never forgotten it. The moral of the story: label what you put in the freezer!

I can think of other skeletons in the pantry, but they're more along the lines of the year I made creamed fennel for Thanksgiving and no one ate it, or the year it took me seven hours to drive from Boston to New York and my mother's lasagne was ruined and she hasn't made lasagne since. But the fish stock in the gravy - and the hush-hush surrounding it - that takes the cake.

---

Cauliflower Stained with Red Wine

• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 3/4 cup dry red wine
• Coarse salt to taste
• Freshly-ground black pepper to taste

Cut the cauliflower into 2-inch chunks. Arrange in a single layer in a roasting pan. Dot with garlic, drizzle with oil and wine, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover with aluminum foil, and bake at 450°F for about 30 minutes, or until the cauliflower is tender at the stalk when pierced with a fork. Serve at room temperature. If you're feeling fancy, simmer the pan juices until reduced some and drizzle over the top of the cauliflower. (Adapted from the Campagna cookbook)

Giving Thanks

In preparation for Thanksgiving, the children at Miss M.'s daycare discussed what they were thankful for and the teachers wrote it all up.

In one go-round, Miss M. said "I am thankful for my family, my aunt and uncle".

On the other? "I am thankful that I am going to marry Nico."

Oh dear.

Happy Thanksgiving, to one and all.







(Nico is a boy in her class, not the Nico of the Velvet Underground. We have not gotten that far in her musical education.)

We Shall Not Be Moved

I was going to post a picture for Wordless Wednesday, but I got waylaid by Julie’s Hump Day Hmm topic – music: What does it mean for you, in your life? Do you simply listen? Are you a singer? A musician? Were you one? The picture can wait. The earworm in my head is trying to crawl out.

My musical upbringing was idiosyncratic, completely.

I grew up with show tunes and folk singers on the stereo – Hair, Joni Mitchell, A Chorus Line, Tom Paxton, Candide, Odetta. I grew up with a favorite recording of Britten’s "Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra" – a rare recording without narration, because who needs narration when the music tells you what’s happening?

By high school, I was hanging out with a geek crowd. Other than classical music, the only two songs I remember listening to in high school were “Stairway to Heaven” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”. Pretty lame, huh? Don’t bother with the math – I graduated from high school in 1978.

I ended up as a music major in college – and therefore listened to and played mostly classical music. And I went to a lot of concerts. The aberration was Bruce Springsteen – I spent many an evening listening to Bruce while drinking Mount Gay rum & Tab and playing Boggle.

The fall after I graduated from college, I spent four months in London, working but alone. I still had my student ID, and I used it to go out to concerts, operas, ballets 5 or 6 nights a week. And while in graduate school, I went out a lot – to concerts, operas, ballets, and the occasional night club.

But gradually, slowly, I’ve very nearly given up attending live performances of classical music. I’d simply rather not be in a concert hall. Because, it’s boring. And that saddens me. Because if I can’t bear it – me – who used to play the flute and who majored in music in college and who actually knows some stuff about what's going on – where the hell is the audience going to come from? I don’t even listen to all that much classical music anymore – because too often I’m in the car or on the train and I just don’t have the attention span that a 25 minute symphony requires, not to mention the fact that many of my CDs never got unpacked when we moved more than three years ago.

I’d much rather listen to stuff on my iPod – I’m addicted to shuffle. I put the thing on random and enjoy the felicitous (or not) juxtapositions of Bob Dylan against Stephin Merritt, Wilco followed by Sweet Honey in the Rock, Emmylou Harris after Brian Wilson, Billie Holiday next to the Talking Heads, Morphine before Jeff Buckley. Or sometimes I listen to all the versions of "Hallelujah" in a row (I've got five). And I add stuff – I rummage around on the web or in iTunes, I follow through on suggestions, I hear what co-workers are playing through their computers in the office, I buy the new Springsteen record. I own one Fiona Apple song because I heard it on Jonathan Schwartz’s weekend radio show – and it’s divine, though nothing else of hers grabs me. I even downloaded a free song that I got because I bought a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And that’s today’s earworm: Mavis Staples singing We Shall Not Be Moved. It’s a great song, a protest song, and she does it with power and subtlety. It’s so good that I think I need to buy the whole record.

Julie - you pushed a couple of buttons. I think I have at least two more posts related to this one, if not more. Because I didn't talk about playing music. I didn't talk about singing. I didn't talk about the future, I didn't talk about the joys of modern technology. So, stay tuned.

Mother Goose in the Night Kitchen

Every time I read Mother Goose to Miss M., I think of In The Night Kitchen, and vice versa:

Mother Goose (Iona Opie & Rosemary Wells)

Blow, wind, blow! And go, mill, go!
That the miller may grind his corn;
That the baker may take it,
and into bread make it,
and bring us a loaf in the morn.

In the Night Kitchen (Maurice Sendak)

…Where the bakers who bake till the dawn,
so we can have cake in the morn…

So, which is it? Cake for breakfast, or bread?

Wonderful Women Who Hit the Mark

It's prize season again! Maybe it's because all the NaBloPoMo participants (6152 last I looked) are looking for easy content. After all, posting EVERY SINGLE DAY starts to feel like a millstone around the neck.

I've gotten two prizes recently. BLC, a feisty person of the female persuasion, gave me the "Wonderful Women of the Web" prize (originated by Marci). And I am tickled to pass it on to Alejna, because she's cool and smart, and also of the female persuasion.

And the lovely and funny Jessica of Oh, The Joys gave me the Splat, also known as "Blogging That Hits The Mark". That one I'd like to give to Emily of Wheels on the Bus - who writes beautifully of her dysfunctional family, and her functional one.

Just What is an Opera Singer, Anyway?

When I picked up Miss M. at daycare yesterday, she announced to me: I'm going to be an opera singer when I grow up, when I'm 16.

Later in the car, while listening to Springsteen's Girls in Their Summer Clothes, she declared that Bruce Springsteen's a good opera singer.

And this morning, with Ella Fitzgerald singing over breakfast, she wanted to know who it was and then asked Is she an opera singer?

I think her musical education needs a little work.

Just Posts Kvelling

I'm thrilled to be on the list of Just Posts again for November. Thrilled. Especially because while I nominated one of my own posts (yes, that's kosher), a second of my posts also made the list. The whole list is at Mad's and at Jen's. Check out the many voices of conscience.

In the past month, since I wrote a Blog Action Day post about the environment, I've been on a junk mail rampage. If there's a postage paid return envelope, I return the address panel marked "REMOVE FROM LIST". If there's no envelope, but there is a fax number, I fax back the address panel, marked in the same way. If I have to, I resort to using the web or (horrors) the telephone. I've faxed back 62*. I didn't keep track of the phone/mail/internet removal requests, but maybe there were another twenty.

But I have a new outlet for my crankiness. My mother-in-law told me about a website where you can enter your name (and variants) and decline various catalogues. I don't know if it'll work, but it feels like a pro-active thing to do. So I declined five yesterday.




*Yes, I kept them in a pile and counted them yesterday before I threw them out - I'm some kind of a crazy person.

Non-Local Eating, or This is Not the CSA

I'm home sick today, and the doorbell just rang. It was the mailman, with a box that was too big for the mailbox.

Within?

Meyer lemons, persimmons and baby artichokes - mailed from California by a friend, out of the blue, unexpectedly. I am delighted and flabbergasted and excited.

Thank you, Alisha!

CSA Week 23

It's dark now when we pick up our vegetables. And last night, the light in the barn went out just when we got there. So while someone was scrambling for a new light bulb, I was feeling around blindly in the potato bin. By the time she was back with the bulb, I could nearly see what I was doing. Still, the potatoes that came home with me are somewhat less than beautiful.

• Winterboer Kale
• Onions (3)
• Green Cabbage
• Sweet Potatoes
• Carrots
• Carnival Winter Squash (3)
• Potatoes (7)
• Tomatoes (1 quart)

Unlike the tuscan kale and red russian kale of past weeks at the CSA, the kale this week reminds me of the unloved kale of my childhood. Every year for Thanksgiving, my paternal grandfather served kale with hazelnuts. And he - I think - habitually undercooked it, because it always seemed to me to be like eating steel wool. It was not one of my favorites.

In The Forest

Among the pleasures of raising a little person is the revisiting and rediscovery of books from my childhood. And, as my mother saved everything and my sister has shared the spoils (she had kids first), many of these books really are from my childhood - the actual, tangible copies, battered and repaired.

One that we've come back to again and again is a sweet illustrated story by Marie Hall Ets, called In the Forest. The book is a little bit of make believe: a boy plays in forest with imaginary animals, with the refrain "when I went for a walk in the forest". They make a parade and then a picnic, and then poof! Dad comes and the make-believe evaporates, and the last line is "when I come for a walk in the forest". It's dear, with lovely quiet poetic text and sweet black & white drawings. The book was originally published in 1944, and received a Caldecott Honor in 1945. Alas, the copy we have is a cheap Scholastic edition from 1966. It kind of makes me want to find a first edition.

(PS - #3 for Children's Book Week)

Boys in Ballet

Through work, I came by a copy of a new kids book by Denise Gruska called The Only Boy in Ballet Class.

It's quite sweet - it's written by a mom whose son loves ballet - but other parents looked at her disparagingly, "how could you let your son take dancing lessons?". In the book, the boy takes ballet classes, and his schoolmates tease him - until the day he gets roped into playing football because they're short a kid, and he saves the day because he knows how to move. And the day after they win, all the boys from football turn up in his ballet class so that they too can learn to move.

Ballet dancers are athletes, and awesome athletes at that. They train hard, they take care of their bodies, and they have a grace about their movement that can enhance other activity. See here and here if you don't believe me. Remember Lynn Swann, football player?" He credits dance classes with his grace on the gridiron. How about Edward Villella? He played baseball AND was a welterweight boxer.

I read the book to Miss M. last night and realized that the book's message - that boys can be ballet dancers - is a good message for both boys and girls. Both need to understand that ballet isn't just pink and tutus and pink and sparkles and pink. It's hard work in the service of music and beauty and line. Hard work. You can't do it without being a superb athlete.

(PS - #2 for Children's Book Week)

Rhymes with Wright

It's Children's Book Week this week, or so says the Children's Book Council, and since I've had some musings on books rattling around in my head, I thought this would be a good week to get them out.

Despite the fact that Miss M. is now FOUR, we have a sweet little board book that still comes out from time to time. It's called Bear and Kite and it's a quick poem of opposites, in which all of the second words rhyme:

Bear and kite
Black and white
Play and fight
Loose and tight
Wrong and right
Day and night.

Best of all? The author is Cliff Wright.

Aftermath

The party was a success. The birthday girl wore her Glinda costume until it was time to run around outside. Adults ate adult food, kids ate peanut butter and jelly. Everyone had cake, even though the frosting was more mauve than pink. [Red food color plus yellow butter equals a peachy color; I tried to compensate with a little blue and ended up with mauve.]

I may have been a little harsh yesterday - there's absolutely a place in the world for juice boxes and pizza. It's just that I think there should be food for the grown-ups too. We're not yet at the drop-off stage of birthday parties, so there are at least as many adults as kids at the parties we attend, and I am tired of hanging out for hours at birthday parties making small talk with no food or drink.

Now that the dust has settled, I've had a chance to render my verdicts on the gifts. Her favorite is one of the scariest things I have ever seen: Ariel's disembodied head, with a comb and a spritz bottle and clips and rollers, so you can style her hair. It is truly appalling, and, of course, it was the hit of the four-year-old set. My favorite? A divine and witty book called Tidying Up Art.

Party!

Party favors for kiddie birthday parties are a scourge to which I am generally opposed. Usually it's a handful of junky plastic toys and some candy, neither of which we need. Last year, for Miss M.'s third birthday, I didn't bother. Each of her little classmates got to take home one of the mylar balloons - which meant that there were fewer balloons in my little house. This year, inspiration struck me and I put together what I think are fabulous party favors.

Each kid gets a translucent plastic harmonica (a real one, by Hohner), wrapped in a pair of cotton bandannas, held together with a ponytail holder.

A harmonica! To make noise with! And pretend to be Bob Dylan!

Bandannas! To wear as skirts or scarves! To wrap your dollies or teddies in!

And it didn't cost an arm and a leg - the harmonicas were $2.49 each and the bandannas were $9.90 a dozen.

I am easily amused. I hope the four year olds are too.

And, to amuse the grown-ups, we're having real food and real wine. No pizza, no juice boxes. Instead: smoked pork loin, onion pie, coleslaw, potato pie, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, bread & jam sandwiches, local apple cider, seltzer, a dry riesling from Bonny Doon and a red velvet cake with pink icing.

Happy Fourth Birthday, Miss M.!!

CSA - Make-up Week

I had the strangest dream last night. I was in a drugstore, and hanging on the wall, for sale, were plastic bags of onion sets. But they weren't like any onion sets that exist - they were pelletized in dirt, and had fake greenery coming out the top (like fake scallions). Peculiar.

I reported this to W. who instantly told me that it was because I hadn't yet catalogued this week's CSA produce. I do believe he's right! We'd gone out on Wednesday night, so not only had I not catalogued it, I hadn't even looked at it - my mother-in-law had picked up the vegetables.

My mind's at rest now. Here's what we got:

• Tomatoes (3)
• White Potatoes
• Salad greens
• Carrots
• Onions (5)
• Red Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Tuscan Kale

Yes, tomatoes again, a week into November. I confess that I am very nearly tired of tomatoes. I may just roast the rest of them.

13 Google Searches

It's time for another edition of search queries! Here are thirteen ways that people ended up on my blog.

1. Magpie eggs for sale
2. What happened to my 9 cell embryos
3. How to paint leopard spots on bathroom
4. Is your husband in green paint
5. what does it mean if a cyst biopsy on my forehead comes back positive?
6. My chickens are sick
7. worksheets on the woods for preschool
8. Bun hairpin how to old-fashioned
9. Cabbage kings sea pigs
10. breastfeeding husband photo
11. "did you really make that face?"
12. one day at a time what was julies stuffed teddy bears name
13. leif garrett mom's birthday

The last one slays me, in part because I never wrote anything about Leif Garrett...it shows up in a comment left by the inimitable Bossy.

One of the things about looking at other people's search queries is parsing how they construct the query. Do they use full sentences? Do they use a question mark? In what order do the key words appear? And then there's the subject. Was query #10 trying to find a picture of a father breastfeeding? Apparently it is possible to induce lactation in men, but I think it's pretty rare.

Two queries that I get a lot are choreography ideas and extended breastfeeding. Extended breastfeeding I understand - I did write about it, and it is something that's a concern to people. But choreography ideas? It wouldn't occur to me that there were enough choreographers out there needing ideas and thinking that they might find ideas on the interwebs. Get in the studio, put on some music, and get your ass in gear!

Commenting Etiquette

A question. If you comment on a post of mine, and your comment triggers a response from me, I usually email you back instead of responding in the comments (that is, assuming I can find your email address). Mostly it’s because of how I behave with regard to other people’s blogs – I nearly never go back and read comments that appear after I’ve commented – not because I’m not interested, but because there’s only so much I can keep up with.

• Do you like that?
• Do you hate that?
• Do you like to get a response via email?
• Or do you prefer to see responses in the comments?
• Do you know that Blogger now has an option whereby you can subscribe to comments via email? Have you tried that?
  

Despite this looking like a quiz, it isn't. I'd really like to know your habits and your preferences. Do tell!

Grammar Woes

I got an email from someone that read, in part, as follows:

...brought to my tension the error on the...

Um, that should have been attention. The scary thing? He's the principal of a public school.

Housekeeping!

I never dust at home, so there are scary things under and behind all the furniture. But I've taken advantage of a sick day - the girlie, not me - to move prizes and the blogroll to another home: virtual dusting. I suppose I should have been actually dusting.

Gender Questions

This blew my mind a bit - at work recently, I got a survey about non-profit leadership. The general demographic information at the end asked the following question:

What is your gender?

• Male
• Female
• Transgender
• Inter-sex
• Decline to State
• Self-identify:___________

I travel in liberal lefty arty circles, and I have never seen those available responses before. Not that there's anything wrong with it, I'm just amused.

And eBay seems to be on a similar bandwagon. I was listing some of my spare possessions (yeah, I get on that kick once in a while), one of which was a brand new baby blanket. There was a drop-down window with the following choices for gender:

• Boy
• Girl
• Unisex
• Enter Your Own
  

I clicked "girl" because it was a pink blanket. But why is it generally understood that "pink is for girls" and "blue is for boys"? It apparently wasn't a convention until the 50s, when the rise of the middle class meant that "people who could afford to make the gender assignment did so". And it may date to 1868, when Louisa May Alcott published Little Women, and "Amy put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French fashion, so you can always tell."

The head spins.

At this very moment, my little girl is curled on the couch in her Glinda the Good Witch costume from last week, home sick with a fever. That is, dressed in PINK! Because it seems to be hard-wired into her.

Butter Tarts

A couple of weeks ago, Beck mentioned some butter tarts, and followed up with the recipe. I was intrigued; anything called butter tarts sounds good to me. Apparently they're some kind of Canadian treat. And since I have a Canadian sister-in-law who had a birthday not so long ago, I figured that butter tarts would be a perfect thing to make.

The recipe called for corn syrup. Not having any in the house, I trotted off to the supermarket to get some. The bottle of Karo corn syrup was emblazoned with "With Real Vanilla". Hmm - I don't remember that corn syrup had flavor added. So I read the label: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, vanilla and salt. Damn HFCS is in EVERYTHING - even corn syrup. But nearby on the same shelf was Lyle's Golden Syrup - a pure cane sugar syrup - nothing but cane sugar syrup. So I bought and used that instead.

And, those butter tarts were FINE. They are very sweet, and maybe could have used a touch more salt in the filling, but splendid none-the-less. I left out the raisins. They are rather like pecan pie without the pecans.

And the Canadian? She said they were better than her Grammy's. I thought that was pretty good validation.

CSA Week 22 - Tomatoes, Strawberries, Squash and Kale

We finally turned the heat on on Wednesday, the same day that I picked up a quart of tomatoes from the CSA. And yesterday, there were strawberries at the greenmarket. Local strawberries! In November! I bought 2 pints. How could I pass them by? But, what strange weather it's been.

• Potatoes (~3 1/2 lbs)
• Cauliflower
• Toscana Kale
• Beets (3, ~2 lbs)
• Salad Mix
• Tomatoes (quart)
• Red Onions (3)
• Parsley

Brave girl that I am, I finally tackled a squash - one of the acorn squashes from a week or two ago. It smelled revolting while I was scraping the seeds out, it smelled disgusting in the oven, it smelled nauseating while I was spooning the pulp out of the shell. But I persisted and made Pinknest's pumpkin bread - without icing, with some whole wheat flour, with dried lemon peel instead of fresh orange rind, and with freshly cooked acorn squash in lieu of canned pumpkin. It's terrific. Even the girl and the husband had some. Of course, it's not really bread. It's cake. There's no two ways about it.

For dinner tonight, I may try a recipe for the black kale that was in the Times last week - a salad of raw kale with a garlicky cheese-laced dressing. Then again, it's blustery and raw, and salad might not be in the cards.

CSA Week 21

Hmmm...

Somehow I completely forgot to post this - this was the CSA distribution for 10/24. I think there are too many posts in my drafts folder...

• Broccoli
• Red Cabbage
• Red Russian Kale
• Acorn Squash (2)
• Salad Mix
• Beefsteak Tomatoes (5)
• Collard Greens
• Onions (1)
• Red Onions (2)
• Carrots (3+ lbs)

Spanning the Centuries

Yesterday would have been my grandfather's 108th birthday. He was born in 1899, in the 19th century.

Next week is our daughter's 4th birthday. She was born in 2003, in the 21st century.

I'm the fulcrum - born more-or-less midway through the 20th century with close relatives in each century surrounding. Of course, my mother can say the same - it's her father, and her granddaughter.

My grandfather was a sweet man. He was good with his hands - at drawing, building, fixing. He composted his leaves, but always called it humus. He smoked a pipe and watched baseball from his recliner. He ate his corn off the cob because he had false teeth. He didn't drive because he couldn't feel his feet - much later, it turned out that he'd had a benign brain tumor, probably for 20 or 30 years. He ate, or claimed to, peanut butter and sardines on rye - using the peanut butter to glue the sardines in place. He was a first generation American - born in Brooklyn to parents from the Frisian Islands. His surname is German but three of his four grandparents had Danish names. He loved CDB!

Owl, this is for you.

F U N-E X ?
S, I F X .
F U N-E M ?
S, I F M.
OK, I-L F M N X .

13 Kinds of Apples

Continuing last week's apple thread...

There's a world of apples out there, beyond Macintosh and Granny Smith and Red Delicious. I just ordered my annual sampler pack from Apple Source. They'll send you a divided box of 12 perfectly picked and packed apples, with a chart like on the back of the Whitman Sampler chocolate box so you know what you're eating. Side by side, the many varieties are surprisingly diverse and differently delectable. And, they have fabulous, whimsical, evocative names. Like these thirteen:

1. Black Gilliflower
2. Dr. Matthews
3. Gold Coast
4. Grimes Golden
5. Hidden Rose
6. Moyer's Prize
7. Newtown Pippin
8. Kandil Sinap
9. Pitmaston Pineapple
10. Razor Russet
11. Turley Winesap
12. Ashmead's Kernel
13. Esopus Spitzenberg

I ordered the Antique Sampler, so I don't know what I'm going to get. But whatever turns up, it'll be fun. And tasty. And different. And not Red Delicious.

Wordless Wednesday: Dancing

One day last week, the above photos were in the Times accompanying that day's dance reviews - three different reviews, three different companies (click on the photos to get to the reviews). I was struck by the similarities in the poses. You think the photo editor was having fun?

(I thought of posting pumpkin pictures because it is, after all, Halloween - but they came out terribly, and surely everyone else is doing it.)

Knitting for Bears

I had the idea that it would be sweet to knit a sweater for one of Miss M.'s many teddy bears. I found a pattern at Wee Wonderfuls, and printed out a picture to show to her. Her response? "They're not chilly because they have coats."

Okay kid, no sweaters for your bears.

Spam, Close to Home

The following spam email message turned up in my office account last week:

Dear Benefactor Of 2007 Masory Grant,

The Freemason society of Bournemout under the jurisdiction of the all Seeing Eye, Master Nicholas Brenner has after series of secret deliberations selected you to be a beneficiary of our 2007 foundation laying grants and also an optional opening at the round table of the Freemason society.

These grants are issued every year around the world in accordance with the objective of the Freemasons as stated by Thomas Paine in 1808 which is to ensure the continuous freedom of man and to enhance mans living conditions.

We will also advice that these funds which amount to USD2.5million be used to better the lot of man through your own initiative and also we will go further to info that the open slot to become a Freemason is optional, you can decline the offer.

I recognized it for what it was, but I shared it with our Director of Development - I thought she'd be amused. Her eyes opened wide and she confessed to a fleeting feeling that it was valid, because we are - for real - due to be notified as to the renewal of our annual support grant from the local Order of Masons. It's just a coincidence, but an odd one none-the-less.

What a Wonderful World

All's right with the world - the little girl is asleep in her own bed, before 9:00. And she fell asleep in my arms while I was mangling the lyrics to What a Wonderful World. Here's the master:

And the lyrics, if you need them:

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...

Bread and Jam - and Frances, and Ellyn, and Jessica

Me: You're full of beans this morning.

Miss M.: No, I'm full of lobster.

I can only think that this is because we've been reading (and re-reading and reading again) Bread and Jam for Frances before bed. Because, after Frances remembers that there are all sorts of wonderful things to eat beyond bread and jam, she trots off to school with a lobster salad sandwich. Maybe lobster was cheaper in 1964?

Frances is often held up as a poster child picky eater, but it's hard to argue that she really is - her bread and jam kick doesn't even last two days. The book starts with breakfast, at which meal she chooses not to eat her egg - there is no indication that she's refused everything but bread and jam prior. At dinner that same night, she chooses not to eat her veal cutlet in favor of bread and jam - and confesses to having traded her lunch for a friend's bread and jam. At breakfast on the second day, she isn't offered an egg - because, her mother says, "you do not like eggs." At lunch on that second day, her friend has an elaborate lunch with sandwich and pickle and hard-boiled egg and fruit and dessert, while Frances has bread and jam. At night on the second day, when presented with bread and jam, she realizes that "What I am / is tired of jam" and so has spaghetti and meatballs for dinner with the rest of the family.

And on to the finale - her own complicated and elegant lunch at school, complete with doily, a tiny vase of violets, celery and olives, a tiny basket of cherries, and the afore-mentioned lobster salad sandwich.

Meals with our small child are the typical mix of cajoling and rejoicing. She'll scarf down risotto like nobody's business, but steak? Nah. Hot dogs and cheese sandwiches, yes. Peanut butter, no. Sometimes we'll resort to white lies: "This is Pat's chicken - she told me how to make it." [Pat's the cook at school.] The chicken in question was a butterflied charcoal grilled chicken, with all the black stuff cut off, and ketchup on the side - and Pat had nothing to do with it. And the kid ate that chicken.

Mostly, I've tried to take to heart the Ellyn Satter dictum: "The parent is responsible for what, when, where - and the child is responsible for how much and whether." She's not going to starve. Sure, I wish she'd eat some more vegetables, but I'm not going to start pretending that pureed cauliflower is ricotta and neither am I going to lace chocolate chip cookies with chickpeas. And hey, even fancy organic hot dogs are cheap! If she starts demanding lobster salad sandwiches, we're going to be in the poorhouse.


[This is loosely in response to the Parent Bloggers blast in connection with the release of Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld.]

13 Ways of Looking at a(n) _____*

The constraint of Thursday Thirteen appeals to me - and I find myself constructing odd lists in spare moments.

1. It is crunchy.
2. It is indented.
3. It is juicy.
4. It is nutritious.
5. It is past.
6. It is portable.
7. It is potential.
8. It is prophylactic.
9. It is round.
10. It is sweet.
11. It is tempting.
12. It is versatile.
13. It is waiting.

So. What is it? Tiny prize to the first person to guess right.




(*with many, many apologies to Wallace Stevens)

You think I do what?

Last week, Suburban Turmoil had a great post about how marketers do and should approach the mommy bloggers. I read it with interest, though not with much recognition - I don't get a lot of unsolicited marketing solicitations via email, though they happen from time to time. When they come in, they’re usually understandable and usually pointed towards the parenting aspect of my blog – review a kids book, check out a parent-oriented website service. I actually accepted a copy of a book, which I’ve yet to do anything about, and it sits there making me feel guilty, which is really asinine because I don’t owe them a damned thing.

This morning, though, I got one that made me laugh out loud: “I contacted you because you have a pharmacy / medicine related blog”. I guess it’s all that talk about Follistim and Repronex and progesterone-in-oil and baby aspirin and microdose Lupron – not to mention cancer and emergency rooms and cancer and gall bladders.

Cocktail Playdates, revisited

When we picked Miss M. up at daycare yesterday, it was a beautiful fall day and all the kids were outside. We hung out for a bit chatting with people, she demonstrated her tricycle riding prowess, we discussed playdates, and Miss M. asked a teacher if she’d like to come to our house for a “wine-over”.

Some neologism, huh? Grown-ups drink wine and she's pining for a sleep-over, so the next best thing is a wine-over.

As it happens, it's the one teacher I would invite over for some wine. Though I did discover this morning that another teacher and the daycare director went to the Springsteen concert at the Garden last week. I'd have gone to that in a minute.

Aging and Illness

Last week's New Yorker* had a profile of Jacques Barzun, "the eminent historian and cultural critic" which included this bit about getting old:

A few weeks shy of his hundredth birthday, Barzun is still pressed to read manuscripts, give talks and attend affairs in his honor. He tries to accommodate everyone, but there is simply less of him to go around. He's five inches shorter than he used to be, a decrease due to aging and spinal stenosis, which causes pain and numbness in the legs. He relies on a cane or a walker to get around, and, as one might expect, he is alert to the irony of aging: when time is short, old age takes up a lot of time. There are doctors' visits, tests to be suffered, results to wait for, ailments and medications to be studied - all distractions from the work. "Old age is like learning a new profession," he noted drily. "And not one of your own choosing."

In fact, many illnesses could be looked at as similarly like entering a new profession - be it infertility, cancer, multiple sclerosis, or what have you. You're plunged into learning all there is to know and doing all there is to do, leaving less to time to just live life. Life is complicated.







*the issue dated 10/22/07

Respect and Old Age

My mother’s lived in her house since 1972, and the people across the street were there before her. They were a sweet couple of teetotallers, he a Methodist minister, she the cookie-baking minister’s wife. He died five years ago. She’d been doing well, but fell a couple of months ago and landed in a nursing home. Bang zoom: her kids put the house on the market, moved their mom to a facility in the mid-West, held a tag sale, and filled up a dumpster with the detritus of two lives.

It’s so sad.

The tag sale was yesterday. It was run by a hostile incompetent hired gun – the place was a mess and the stuff was priced completely erratically and mostly unmarked (so you had to ask, whereupon she made up a price on the spot). You’d think that someone running a tag sale, working on commission, would want to maximize the income by keeping things presentable, by clearly pricing everything, by acting knowledgeable and helpful. In this case, you would be wrong.

There were still spices in the kitchen cabinets and Q-tips in the bathroom. For all I know, they were for sale. There were clothes in the closets and piles of linens on the floor. There was no order to anything.

My mother and I wandered around – I found a handmade double wedding ring quilt in a heap upstairs, and asked how much. $5, said the hostile incompetent. So I bought a quilt for $5 – I don’t need it, but I couldn’t walk away from it. There was a handsome mirror in the dining room – my mother said she’d been asking $400 at the pre-sale earlier in the week. By yesterday, the price was down to $75. I went back at the end of the day and offered $20. She countered with $30. I left. About 10 minutes later, my husband showed up – I sent him across the street, and he came back with the mirror for $25. And my mother went over and came home with a little upholstered rocker for free – earlier, the hostile incompetent had been asking $60. So erratic.

Once the tag sale was over, they starting heaving things into a dumpster. Plaques given to the minister. Antique clock parts (his hobby was clock repair). Dishes. Books. Christmas ornaments. Napkins. Space heaters.

It’s so disrespectful.

It’s so wasteful.

My brother and sister and their spouses and a family friend and a neighbor headed across the street after dark and, wine-fueled, dove into the dumpster with flashlights.

It seemed right to rescue some bits of their life. A pressed glass citrus reamer. A crochet hook. A pinecone-shaped iron cuckoo clock weight. A Horatio Alger book.

It could have been done so much better. They could have found a way to let her stay in the house. They could have found her a place to live in the area - where she has friends and neighbors and acquaintances and church folk - instead of shipping her off to the middle of the country where she'll know no one but her dead husband's elderly brother. They could have hired a more sensitive person to run the tag sale. They could have been more respectful of her stuff, her life, her things, his life, his hobbies, their life. They could have packed off much of the stuff to thrift shops, to shelters, to people to whom the stuff would have made a difference. A space heater tossed in a dumpster does no one any good. A box fan...the same.

It sounds like I'm blaming her children - and in part I am. But it's also our society. We think nothing of discarding things and people, we disrespect the past. In that is our curse for the future. It's environmental. It's societal. It's human. We should do better.

Little Kid Couture

The things that can happen when you let your child dress herself:

• Plaids and stripes
• Shirt with little flowers, pants with big flowers, socks with other flowers - "Look Mama, I'm all flowers - I match!"
  
• Skirts with pants underneath

• Pants with tights underneath

and, the discovery, at the end of the day, that she's gone to school without underpants.

CSA Week 20 - Of Cabbages and Kings

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax -
Of cabbages - and kings -
And why the sea is boiling hot -
And whether pigs have wings."

The "cabbages and kings" phrase popped into my head when I saw the size of the cabbages at the CSA pick-up - huge, enormous, bigger than my head. I knew the stanza from which it came, but what surprised me was realizing that whole poem is eighteen stanzas long, and the cabbages and kings one is number eleven. Why then is that one middle stanza so burned into my brain? Maybe just because it's pretty damned wonderful.

• Cabbage (1 enormous head)
• Red Russian Kale
• Broccoli Rabe
• Potatoes (6)
• Onions (2)
• Plum Tomatoes (quart)
• Salad Mix
• Parsley

Maybe it's the Irish peasant stock in me, but I'm looking forward to a batch of colcannon with the cabbage and potatoes. Colcannon is basically mashed potates with cooked cabbage (and/or kale) stirred in, but somewhere I have (or maybe my mother has) a recipe for colcannon with an unseemly amount of butter, thereby making a transcendent rendition of the peasant dish.

13 Bears for Thursday

I don't know what possessed me to count the bears, but there are thirteen of them. Thirteen! Is that good luck or bad?


Top Row, Left to Right

1. Night Bear (in night cap)
2. Pinky Teddy (given to me for her, at my baby shower, by my sister, Pinky)
3. Purple Bear
4. Kiki
5. Ginger Bear (a gift from an erstwhile neighbor of my mother's, named Ginger)

Bottom Row

6. Brown Bear
7. Ganny Bear (lifted from Granny's house)
8. Roofus (in the red shirt, a giveaway from Habitat for Humanity, hence the idiosyncratic spelling)
9. Sparkle Bear (with wings and star, his fur is a little sparkly)
10. Pink Bear
11. Tiny Little Teddy
12. Butterfly Bear
13. Brown and White Bear

Pink Bear and Brown Bear used to go to school every day for nap time - they've been mended so many times that they look like Frankenstein.

Tiny Little Teddy used to be a teething object - frequently completely saturated in spittle. He's never been the same since.

Sparkle Bear is a Beanie Baby. He used to have a companion, a white bear with (I think) Mississippi embroidered on it (or maybe Louisiana). I sent the companion to Iraq. The problem is, she still asks about that missing bear. Oops.

Butterfly Bear was a baby present from some neighbors down the hall in our NYC apartment. We didn't know them much beyond hello in the elevator, but I think of them often because of the bear.

Not only do I know the provenance of each of these bears, I know all their names. How is it that my head has room for all that clutter?

Wordless Wednesday

Okay, they need a couple of words: it's a mailbox, attached to a tree, about nine feet off the ground, in Union Square park. Who is getting mail there? And how does the mailman get the mail in the box?

Guest Curator

My friend David, a former colleague and accidental brother, blogless at present, sent me the following email. You might want to watch these clips at home, not the office cubicle. And I'd start with the second one, though I completely understand why he led with the first. And don't blame me if you get an earworm out of it.

Subject: Pepto Bismol audition (A Chorus Line for our times)

• A mockumentary?
• The original British commercial (great ensemble work).
• Hip hop version (it's got a beat and I can't help but dance to it).
• I'm totally jealous of this.
• Attack of the dyspeptic monsters: (as seen on your TV, an instant classic).

The Environment

I've been mulling over today's post for a while now - what to do, what to write, to somehow address the issue of the environment as part of Blog Action Day. And then, with great good luck, the Nobel Foundation awarded this year's Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC - thereby spot-lighting the problems facing the world in a way that even multitudes of bloggers can't hope to touch.

The New York Times had a good editorial the other day - read it if you haven't already. It basically slams the US government, and others, for not stepping up to the plate and addressing the multitude of environmental problems facing our world. Paul Krugman follows that up with an op-ed piece today, about why the right hates Gore - because he "keeps being right".

It's hard to know what to do as an individual, but I find that every day, I get a little more vitriolic, and a little more conscious as to my actions. I bought reusable shopping bags and stashed the big ones in the car, and a small string bag in my so-called briefcase. We've replaced some light bulbs with compact fluorescents. I can't remember the last time that I ran a load of laundry in warm water (much less hot). We're about to replace the windows and door in the basement with energy efficient ones that fit properly and aren't patched with duct tape (and we should get a tax credit for some of that cost). We've been buying local produce and organic dairy products. We have a programmable thermostat that is set to drop the heat in the house to 55°F at night - although we haven't yet turned the heat on, though it's been about 40°F out in the morning the past few days. They are tiny little gestures, but important gestures none the less. We could do much better, as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a country. And I hope that we will.

Master satirist Tom Lehrer was talking about the environment way back when. Pollution was written in the early 60s, and is a scathing indictment of the then state of the environment. If you've never had the pleasure, the video is here and you can buy the record here.

Rock, Revisited

The rock has been returned to its brethren, though it appears to be the black sheep of the family. It is now residing in a stone wall outside my house, and it will be there for all eternity, or until the wall falls down again, at which time someone will wonder why the erratic was engraved with the name of a law firm.

Friday Fluff

This morning, in the four blocks between the subway and my office, I saw the following:

• A small boy in a stroller, wearing a Yankees cap inside out, so that the logo was visible but backwards. I couldn't decide if the cap was inside out as a way of making it fit better on a little head, or as a "damn you, Yankees" gesture.
  
  
• An old woman, smoking a cigar that smelled like a pipe. It reminded my of my grandfathers, both of whom smoked pipes from time to time. Why is it that the aroma of pipe tobacco is so pleasing and evocative?
  
  
• A young man, probably in his early twenties, striding up the sidewalk piloting a radio-controlled car ahead of him. It was almost like his dog. I did think that he was a little too old to be playing with toy cars.

And then, I found this when I got to my desk. Enjoy!

CSA Week 19

I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - her account of a year of producing most of their own food, and obtaining the rest locally. It's fascinating and inspiring, even if I'm not likely to start raising chickens in my own back yard, or growing much in the way of vegetables. I know where to get live chickens nearby, I have the CSA for a goodly amount of our annual vegetables, and I'm lucky enough to work near a terrific greenmarket wherein I can plug the gaps.

Kingsolver's book has an associated website, which includes all of the recipes that are in the book. I haven't tried any of them yet, but some of them look great.

• Spinach
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli Rabe
• Asian Greens braising mix
• Salad Mix
• Ping Pong Tomatoes (pint)
• Plum Tomatoes (quart)
• Delicata Squash (3)
• Onions (2)
• Parsley
• Sage

Because we're getting a little behind the CSA vegetables, I've been blanching, chopping and freezing the greens. And last night, I made another batch of oven-roasted tomatoes. I left them in a slow oven while I went out to a meeting; when I came back, the house smelled delicious.

And maybe, just maybe, the kid has taken to a new vegetable. While we were at the pick-up yesterday, she was surreptitiously stealing bits of cauliflower. Go figure.

Breast Fest

I breastfed my child for two years and 364 days, and we haven't got a single picture of her nursing. It's not that we kept it a secret, it's more that we're inclined to forget to photograph much of anything.

However, the League of Maternal Justice put together a montage of many many mama-baby pairs, to remind the world that breastfeeding is normal and right, not dirty, and that nursing mothers should be proud, not shamed into hiding in closets. Because Bill Maher is an ass, and Facebook sucks, and Applebees ought to be hauled into court.

Book Karma, October edition

It's time for another Book Exchange. This month, I'm giving away Susan Jane Gilman's Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress. If you'd like it, leave me a comment on this post by Monday October 15. I'll pick a random winner and mail you the book. Please make sure I can find your email address, either in the comment or on your own blog. The only requirement is that you pass the book along when you're done - either through a Pay It Forward post of your own, or by just giving it to someone who wants to read it.

The book is fun - it's a fluffy quick read - a non-fiction account of growing up in Manhattan.

Edited to add: Aliki2006 won!

Five Questions

The five questions interview meme is rattling around blogland again. In a moment of madness, I stuck up my hand over at Flutter's place. Here goes!

1) A hippie, an archaeologist and a chef are at dinner, what do they talk about?

Sustainable agriculture –the present implications for the environment and for the culture of eating, and the lessons from the past as to old farming techniques. Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Mineral might be a good discussion provoker, or party favor.

2) Taking note of your Bush countdown clock, who do you hope is elected next term and what is the most important thing you hope they accomplish?

I’m vacillating between Edwards and Clinton. There’s a piece of me that would very much like to see a woman in the White House, and I think that she’s an impressive candidate. That said, Edwards has less baggage, great heart and sound policy ideas. In any case, I hope that universal health care is a priority, that we get the hell out of Iraq, and that a serious attempt be made to address global warming through energy efficiency and a carbon tax.

3) Think of yourself as a wee little one, what was your biggest dream? Are you living it, or has it changed?

I remember saying that I wanted to be a philanthropist – as a five year old. I’m not sure how I even knew the word! And I am not living it, not by a long shot - one needs rather more money than I've got. But, I’m on the other side of the fence. I’ve worked in non-profit arts organizations for the past 20 years, and have had direct and indirect responsibility for raising contributed income, and therefore I interact with philanthropists regularly. Once upon a time, when I was casting about for career direction, I spoke to a man – an erstwhile family friend – who was the head of a largish foundation. I told him that I was interested in working in that area; he convinced me that it was completely dull and pedantic work. But, in the back of my head, it still sounds like a good thing. Foundation jobs are awfully hard to come by, though, and my bank balance doesn't support more than modest charitable contributions.

4) Birkenstocks, Manolo Blahniks or running shoes? Why?

Um, none of the above? That said, my shoe tendencies lie more towards the Dansko/Merrell/Mephisto spectrum – so I guess Birkenstocks would be the closest match. I’ve never owned Birkenstocks though.

5) What is your writing process and what do you feel like you gain by blogging?

I don’t have much of a process…I get a random idea and just go with it. It might be a bon mot from the kid. Or I see something in the paper or on the street. Or I get an idea from a bit I read on another blog. Since June, I’ve been cataloguing my CSA vegetable share, but I feel like I can’t just put up the list and call it a day, that I need to add something whether it’s a recipe, an anecdote, or a paean to the CSA movement. I like playing with words – the phrase “greens, greens, salad and herbs” tickled some part of me. As to what I gain? I have an outlet for all the weird ephemera rattling around in my head. I’ve gained an amorphous set of friends. And it’s just fun.

Thanks, Christine! Next?

Blood and Guts

Are you signed up to be an organ donor?

Irish Goddess wrote a lovely post last year, a thank you to the person who became a heart donor for her father. As it happens, she just referenced that old post and it struck a chord with me as I've been thinking about organ donation and blood donation recently.

Several months ago, another blogger wrote about her sister-in-law's receipt of a double lung transplant, and it prompted me to sign up, on-line, through my state's donor registry. I just got the paperwork back in the mail - it's a little eerie to contemplate my own demise, but if it happens in such a way that there are usable organs, they should be recycled.

But.

Last weekend, our town had a little fair - local merchants, community organizations, hot dogs, a bouncy house, and free tote bags from every single real estate agent around. And the Blood Mobile was there. I've been wanting to give blood and it seemed like the perfect opportunity as W. was there to mind the irascible one. So I sat down and filled out their form - no untoward sexual history, no illicit needle use, no dread diseases. Good to go? No. I spent four months in London in 1982 - and if you've spent more than three months in the aggregate in the UK between 1980 and 1996, you are "indefinitely deferred". I can't give blood. I might have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease). Argh.

So, here are my questions.

1) If I can't give blood, can I be an organ donor? Unclear - a 2001 CDC article implies that blood and organ donations both pose a risk of transmittal, but the same article says that US policy is to exclude "donations from anyone who has lived in or visited the UK for a cumulative period of 6 months or more during 1980 to 1996". So either, the rules have changed since that article was published or the New York Blood Center has more stringent guidelines.

2) Who can give blood in the UK? If the rule is the same there, that would mean only children and recent immigrants can give blood. But if the recipient lived in the UK in that same time frame, they'd have the same risk factor. So it would be okay to give blood in the UK today if you'd spent three months there between 1980 and 1996? The head spins.

This is all neither here nor there. Are you an organ donor? You should be.

CSA Week 18

It was a very green week: greens, greens, salad and herbs. I think I'll blanch and freeze the spinach and the braising greens.

• Broccoli
  
• Broccoli Rabe
  
• Spinach
  
• Braising Greens - Asian mix
  
• Salad Mix
  
• Plum Tomatoes (quart)
  
• Juliet Tomatoes (pint)
  
• Red Potatoes (5)
  
• Onions (2)
  
• Basil
  
• Parsley
  

The potatoes are piling up - we didn't get any last week, so I wasn't aware of just how many potatoes we had until I put these new ones away. So, I think I'll make a fennel/potato gratin tonight with the fennel from last week. I've never made this recipe before so I can't speak for it, but it sounds good. That said, I've not had much success in feeding fennel to the family in the past, so it could be a disaster. But that's part of the beauty of the CSA - experimenting with things you don't usually eat or actively shy away from. That said, last week's kabocha squash is still in the fridge...

Fennel and Potato Gratin

1 medium fennel bulb, cut crosswise into 1/8-inch slices (about 2 cups)
2 cups thinly sliced Yukon gold potatoes (about 2 large potatoes)
Salt and pepper
2 cups half-and-half
2 T. butter

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly coat a shallow 2-quart baking dish with butter.
2. Cover the bottom of the baking dish with a layer of fennel slices. Cover with half of the potato slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Repeat layers until you’ve used up all your slices.
3. Bring the half-and-half to a gentle boil in a medium pan over medium-high heat. Pour it over the fennel and potato. (The half-and-half can be replaced with whole milk for a less rich dish.)
4. Using a large spatula, press down on the top layer to submerge it. Dot with butter. Bake until potatoes are tender and the top is golden, about 1 hour.

(from Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables)

SCHIP Vetoed

Well, he did it, he vetoed the children's health bill.

He'd said previously that he would veto it, because it would be a step “down the path to government-run health care for every American.”

And, really, what's wrong with that?

I tend not to air my political laundry here, but this is something that really rankles me. This country SHOULD have single-payer universal health coverage. And maybe this children's insurance business would have been a small move in that direction. MomsRising (with help from MoveOn) is organizing rallies tomorrow evening, to try and get the 20 House votes needed to overturn the veto. I'm going to try and go.

Delurk!

"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious, it's dilemma, it's de limit, it's deluxe, it's de-lovely..."

And it's delurking day!

So say hello to everyone you visit.

Delurk, And The Perils of Tonic

Tomorrow, the 3rd of October, is delurking day - as decreed by Schmutzie, Sweetney and Jenandtonic. So delurk tomorrow! Here and elsewhere. And, as a refresher, delurk means getting up the gall to post a comment to a blog where you've been reading posts without commenting (a/k/a lurking). You don't need an account. Go ahead. Try it.

Jenandtonic's blog name reminds me of a little piece I read in the Sunday Times Book Review, about the remaining one of the Two Fat Ladies and her penchant for gins and tonic:

About Wright’s heft, The Daily Mail’s interviewer comments: “It wasn’t the alcohol that damaged her health. It was the quinine in the tonic water she added to her gin — two pints of gin a day for 12 years, which I calculate as roughly 9,000 pints of gin and over 50,000 pints of tonic water. The quinine destroyed her adrenal gland, and now she can’t lose weight, even if she lived on lettuce — which I doubt she ever would.”

Imagine. It's not the gin that's hurtful, it's the tonic. Who'd have thunk it?

Engraved Rocks

Every year, Working Mother magazine publishes a list of their decreed 100 best companies for women to work at. I actually have a subscription to Working Mother – a freebie from somewhere or another, because lord knows it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, and paying for it would be adding insult to injury. The issue with that list arrived recently, and I skimmed through it in horrified fascination – I’m a working mother, and I can’t imagine working for any of those soulless corporations with such nebulous “benefits” as knitting classes.

Last week, Toddled Dredge pointed me towards Deep Muck Big Rake where Becky posted some incisive analysis around that Working Mother list – and pointing out that many of the recipients are also advertisers in the magazine. Were they advertisers first, or coerced into advertising in order to receive the award? Or guilted into advertising because they received the award?

I work for small non-profit that happens to be a small-time client of one of the big law firms that ended up on that 100 Best list. This morning, I arrived in the office to find a small heavy box that had arrived in the mail. Inside was a card from said law firm, patting themselves on the back for "Breaking Barriers One Rock at a Time”, along with an engraved ROCK. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

Am I - a woman, a client - supposed to think better of them because of their appearance on that list? Am I supposed to want to hire them more often? Am I supposed to want to go and work for them? Actually, wasting $6.20 on Priority Mail postage to send an engraved rock (value unknown) and printed card makes me more than a little irritated. I’d rather pay less in legal fees than support such nonsense.

And now, what do I do with the rock?

Edited to add a photo of the rock - the other side has the name and logo of the law firm: