Check out the write-up of Mama, PhD in the latest issue of eGrad, a newsletter for Berkeley graduate students:
Up on the web — it’s a site, it’s a blog, it’s a book!
Mainly, at the moment, it’s (almost) a book. It just happens to have the regulation 21st–century promotional bells and whistles, so it’s an instant community, and not a tiny one at that.
Amtrak + California State Railroad Museum = two happy boys.
Ben: “I almost forgot that after the train ride, there’s still the whole train museum!”
Eli: “I love this train. I want to stay on this train forever.”
Plan A: 5-day road trip to visit cousins in Santa Barbara and Long Beach. The kids play, the adults talk books and art, we all curtsy to the Queen Mary and enjoy the warm weather. Canceled due to illness.
Plan B: Ride Amtrak for a day trip to the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. The kids play, the adults enjoy the scenic train ride, we all enjoy the warm weather. But, we get to the train station bright and early, our bags packed with camera, picnic and coloring books, only to discover that the trains aren’t running due to an accident on the line.
Plan C: It’s 9 AM Monday morning, a day when most of the Bay Area kids’ museums are closed (why, why all on the same day?), all our Berkeley friends had spring break last week so they’re in school, and it’s a little too early and too chilly to go to a playground.
But we’re near Berkeley, and I spent long enough there to know a couple things to do. So, we visit the T-Rex in the Berkeley Paleontology Museum; we go to the Campanile, hoping to ride to the top (but it’s closed on Mondays, natch) and then we go to the Lawrence Hall of Science, where there’s an exhibit involving build-your-own Lego race cars (did they know we were coming?)
After a picnic lunch, we call an old friend from the city who’s moved to Berkeley. School’s out for the day and the family is free! The big kids make scenery and rehearse scenes from The Magic Flute (somehow, both of their kindergarten classes have recently learned the story) and the littler kids play trains. The moms catch up and drink tea. After a couple hours, we’re treated to a short and well-rehearsed performance of excerpts from The Magic Flute. We head out for Chinese food, follow it up with some gelato, and finally head home after the evening rush hour’s over.
Thank goodness for Plan C.
I’m not sure I’d make this again — somehow it used every mixing bowl in the cupboard — but it tasted great, and looks beautiful. I think next time I’ll just make the compote to serve on biscuits or with cookies.
Here’s the recipe, as published originally in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Serves 8
The compote
* 1 pound rhubarb, cut into 1-inch chunks
* 2/3 cup sugar, or more to taste
* 1 pound strawberries, hulled, cut in half and sliced
* — Lemon juice, to taste
The spoonbread
* 2 cups diced strawberries (from about 3/4 pound fruit)
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 3 cups milk
* 1 1/2 cups cornmeal
* 6 tablespoons butter, softened
* 6 eggs, separated
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* — Whipped cream for serving
For the compote: In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, cook rhubarb with 1/3 cup sugar, stirring occasionally, until fruit is softened, about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, toss the strawberries with the remaining 1/3 cup sugar and set aside to macerate while the rhubarb is cooking. When the rhubarb is done, combine with the strawberries, and add lemon juice to taste.
For the spoonbread: Preheat oven to 375°. Generously butter a large oval souffle dish or 13-by-9-inch baking dish.
Toss the strawberries with 1/4 cup of the sugar, and set aside to macerate.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, scald the milk until it is just about to boil. Whisk in the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and cornmeal in a steady stream, and continue to whisk constantly until the mixture is smooth and thickened, about 2 minutes.
Remove from heat and transfer to a large bowl. Mix in butter while the cornmeal mixture is still warm. Set aside and cool to room temperature.
Beat egg yolks lightly and whisk into the cornmeal mixture along with the baking powder, salt. Combine well. Fold in the strawberries and their juice.
In a clean bowl of a stand mixer, whip egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold in a quarter of the egg whites to lighten the batter, then fold in the remainder. Spoon into prepared dish and bake until golden and puffy, about 40-45 minutes.
Serve with the compote and whipped cream.
Per serving: 435 calories, 11 g protein, 63 g carbohydrate, 16 g fat (9 g saturated), 195 mg cholesterol, 407 mg sodium, 5 g fiber.
JP Mom won this week’s give-away, but here’s another for all of you. I confess I haven’t read either of these books, but they look like good curl up on the couch with a cup of tea kind of novels…
This week’s books:
The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs and Shopaholic & Baby, by Sophie Kinsella
Leave me a comment saying you want to enter by the end of the day Tuesday, April 8th and I’ll announce a winner next week.
The fine print, as devised by Overwhelmed with Joy:
“1) Once a month (or so) I’ll pick a book to give away to one lucky reader (you don’t have to have a blog to enter). It may be a book that I’ve purchased new or used, or it may be a book that someone has shared with me that I really like. It’ll probably be a paperback, just to make things easier, but no guarantees.
2) Details on how you can enter to win will be listed below.
3) If you’re the lucky winner of the book giveaway I ask that you, in turn, host a drawing to give that book away for free to one of your readers, after you’ve had a chance to read it (let’s say, within a month after you’ve received the book), or donate it to your local library or shelter. If you mail the book out using the media/book rate that the post office offers it’s pretty inexpensive.
4) If you’re really motivated and want to host your own “Pay It Forward” giveaway at any time, feel free to grab the button above to use on your own blog. Just let her know so she can publish a post plugging your giveaway and directing readers your way!
So there you have it, the Pay It Forward Book Exchange, designed to encourage people to read, to share good books, to possibly get you out of your reading comfort zone, and to get fun stuff in the mail instead of just bills!”
Not so bad that anyone had to stay in bed but feeling too crummy to leave the house, we cooked and played Lego and cooked some more and played airplanes. Not too bad, really.
It’s been a while, and the pile of books on my desk threatens to tumble over and crush me, so I’m giving away two books this week; look for another give away soon!
This week’s books:
Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too by Susan Callahan, Anne Nolen and Katrin Schumann
I didn’t read this one — it arrived in the mail last week, I don’t know why. I don’t need to spend my time off reading about taking time off, but maybe you know someone who does?
I Married My Mother-in-Law and other tales of in-laws we can’t live with — and can’t live without, edited by Ilena Silverman, with essays by Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, Kathryn Harrison and others. There are some nice pieces in here, and it’s not all in-law bashing. And who doesn’t love an anthology, really? Not me.
Leave me a comment saying you want to enter by the end of the day Friday, April 4th and I’ll announce a winner next week.
The fine print, as devised by Overwhelmed with Joy:
“1) Once a month (or so) I’ll pick a book to give away to one lucky reader (you don’t have to have a blog to enter). It may be a book that I’ve purchased new or used, or it may be a book that someone has shared with me that I really like. It’ll probably be a paperback, just to make things easier, but no guarantees.
2) Details on how you can enter to win will be listed below.
3) If you’re the lucky winner of the book giveaway I ask that you, in turn, host a drawing to give that book away for free to one of your readers, after you’ve had a chance to read it (let’s say, within a month after you’ve received the book), or donate it to your local library or shelter. If you mail the book out using the media/book rate that the post office offers it’s pretty inexpensive.
4) If you’re really motivated and want to host your own “Pay It Forward” giveaway at any time, feel free to grab the button above to use on your own blog. Just let her know so she can publish a post plugging your giveaway and directing readers your way!
So there you have it, the Pay It Forward Book Exchange, designed to encourage people to read, to share good books, to possibly get you out of your reading comfort zone, and to get fun stuff in the mail instead of just bills!”
When astronauts come back to earth, they spend a period of time in limbo, back on earth but not yet quite home. They get their muscles back in earth shape, and the doctors make sure they’re ok. I like to think it’s a little bit relaxing for them, this in-between time, but realistically, it’s probably about as relaxing as being a hospital patient. After that time in their space capsule, working through a busy schedule of experiments and projects, they’re probably longing for some real downtime, hanging out with their families and friends, eating real food and watching tv. I imagine the re-entry limbo must drive their families a little bit crazy, to have their mom or dad or husband or wife back, but still out of reach.
Re-entry has been a mushy kind of limbo for me this week, which is why it’s taken me so many days to write about our visit. I don’t have much to add to Elrena and Libby‘s posts about it; they cover most of the highlights (the food! the Mama, PhD conversations! and more food!) Of course neither of them could write with detail about Eli’s ER visit, but neither can I — all three of us missed it, busy with the Mama, PhD round table. But Mariah knew how to get Tony and the boys to the ER, and when I got home, Eli came jumping down the hall to show me his hospital bracelet. “Stitches on my head!?” he exclaimed, “That’s crazy!” You said it, buddy.
We went to the Air & Space Museum the last day of our trip and wandered around marveling at the planes and space capsules hung from the ceiling. We looked closely at the Spirit of St Louis, which is fabric-covered, and carried Lindbergh across the ocean even though it has no front window. Eli climbed into the cockpit of a Cessna, which was roomy for him, and we all squeezed into SkyLab. I cannot imagine climbing into one of these vehicles if it weren’t safely bolted to the museum floor, but Ben and Eli are at that explorer age, and the prospect of zooming suddenly off into space, like the boy in their beloved Planetron book, or Jimmy Zangwow, delights them. I like that in both stories, the boys are home in time for dinner.
Now we are home, and the boys have each built and rebuilt their new Air & Space Museum lego sets many times (space shuttle for Ben, airbus for Eli). We continue to read Planetron every night before bed, and have just started another boy-in-space book: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Ben has suggested a Virginia field trip to his kindergarten teacher (“It’s a pretty long trip,” he conceded); meanwhile, Eli has announced that he is a dog, and so sleeps with a ball (as well as with his patch blanket, his bear, his two doggies and his bunny). Life is returning to its normal orbit, quirky though it may be.
Easy travels don’t make good stories, but I think I will take a painless plane trip over good material any day. The trip did net one good picture: this is Eli asleep in the car on the drive from Dulles to Libby‘s house. (Before anyone calls Child Protective Services on me, the blanket–his beloved patch blanket–was looser than it looks and I could hear him breathing.)
We made it from San Francisco to Virginia in under 12 hours door-to-door, which is one measure of a good trip. We made it without running out of snacks or needing any changes of clothes, which is another measure of success. I won’t write any more because we have to do this in reverse on Wednesday and I don’t want to jinx myself.
So now we are here, and the boys have eaten 3 bowls a piece of their beloved honey O’s, a cereal they only get at their aunt’s house, Eli has made friends with Anna the cat, and Ben has smashed his previous speed record on the go-cart. We’ve dyed some Easter eggs, I made a chocolate cake, and my niece heard today that she got into college! Life is good.
Happy Easter!
This month’s movie is no feel-good date night escape, but it is one of most moving and intelligent films I’ve seen in ages. Here’s an excerpt from my new column:
Washing my hands in the theater bathroom after watching the new film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007), I noticed I have a lot of gray hair. Maybe I should be grateful that the dim lighting in my house has been keeping this revelation from me. Somehow without my noticing, the blonde that has always lightened the brown has gone several shades lighter. The movie made me realize another subtle way that I’ve aged: it used to be, I’d watch a movie like this, about two women in their twenties, and identify with them. Now I wonder what I’d do if I were their mom.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is set in Romania, 1987, and follows a pair of friends over the course of a single day. It opens in their dorm room as they’re preparing for a trip; they don’t seem happy about it, but it’s easy at first to chalk their mood up to their living conditions: the dingy and crowded room; the talk of using Palmolive for shampoo; the hunt for cigarettes in black market shops operated out of other dorm rooms, where the girls can buy half-packets of birth control pills and nail polish, too. Gabriela frets about whether to bring her notes so that she can study while they’re away; Otilia tells her brusquely that there’ll be no time. Gabriela complains of a toothache, moans that her stomach feels weird; Otilia, tense and losing patience with her friend’s fretful inactivity, snaps at her. She goes over the plan for Gabriela: the money, the possibility of bribes, the meeting place, and it gradually becomes clear that the pair isn’t going on vacation, but arranging an abortion for Gabriela.
Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest.
