I found this recipe in Real Simple (where I also snagged the picture because we ate ours all up before I could get out the camera). So although I’ll link to the original since that might be easier to print, I’ve made some changes below: roasting the sweet potato rather than sauteeing it (it takes longer, but it’s no more effort, and I think it tastes better), and also deglazing the pan with some white wine.

Of course, only Tony and I ate it as written; Ben ate his pasta sprinkled with nuts, the sweet potatoes on the side, and Eli, having rejected the sweet potatoes and the leeks, ate pasta with grated cheese and sprinkled nuts, but at least we all ate versions of the same thing. I’ll call that a success!

2-3 small sweet potatoes (about 1 pound), peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces, or an equal amount of winter squash, peeled and diced

12 ounces penne (whole wheat or multigrain pasta is especially nice here)

3 leeks (white and light green parts), cut into half-moons
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 T white wine
3-4 T olive oil
1 or 2 tablespoons fresh sage, chopped

salt and pepper
toasted pumpkin seeds or slivered almonds
3/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 400 while you peel and chop the sweet potatoes or squash. Oil a roasting pan and toss the sweet potatoes/squash in the pan with a drizzle of olive oil and some of the chopped sage. Roast the vegetables, turning once or twice, for 15 minutes, or until tender and caramelized.

While the vegetables are roasting, bring a big pot of water to boil and cook the pasta. When it’s done, drain, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water.

While the pasta’s cooking, heat a couple tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook, stirring, until they begin to soften, 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and a bit of sage and cook 2 minutes. Add the white wine and cook another minute or two.

At this point, you can turn off the heat under the leeks until the pasta and roasted vegetables are finished. Once all three elements of the dish are cooked, add the pasta and roasted vegetables to the leeks in the skillet, add the sprinkle of nutmeg and stir, adding a bit of the pasta-cooking water if it seems too dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with grated parmesan and the slivered almonds and/or pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top.

This has not been a good winter for San Francisco. We have not, for example, been to the zoo to ride Eli’s beloved Puffer train since the Christmas Day tiger escape, and I’m not sure I’ll ever feel safe enough there to return. I have mixed feelings about zoos, but there’s something about the SF zoo, the sight of the giraffes’ heads bobbing along above the eucalyptus trees, the waves from Ocean Beach crashing in the background, that always appealed to me.

Meanwhile, in other local news, the governor has slashed the public school budget (how are our teachers, already stretched to the limit, going to continue under these conditions?), and our street car line recently struck another pedestrian.

My kids don’t know about any of this, of course, but it’s all been wearing on me and I badly needed a good city day. And we had one last Friday. We started at Ben’s school, where his kindergarten class, their fourth grade buddies, and assorted teachers, staff, and families gathered for a peace march in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. The kids paraded across the park to a shopping district, chanting slogans (“2! 4! 6! 8! We think Dr. King is great!”) and singing Happy Birthday to the bemused smiles of shoppers and shopkeepers. We walked along beside them, Eli asking the whole way, “This the ha-pade? Where the ha-pade?”

After some time in the playground’s train structure and lunch, I collected Ben from school (Tony and Eli having driven home for a nap), and we rode the bus downtown. A few stops along our journey, an older man boarded the bus and sat down next to Ben and me. He listened to us chatting about the parade and MLK for awhile, then pulled a piece of paper out of his bag and started to fold. Ben watched intently as the bird (pictured above) took shape. When he was done, the man handed it to Ben, who was delighted with his gift. “For me? Really?” and then checking with me, “Caroline, can I keep this?” The man and I both smiled our yeses to Ben, and the man then got out two more pieces of origami paper; handing one to me, he indicated (I only realized later that he never spoke to us) that I should fold along with him and learn. Two more birds emerged from the papers, just as we got to our stop. Ben bounced off the bus, holding his bird, delighted with this interaction with a stranger.

Next stop, the Museum of Modern Art for the Olafur Eliasson show. If this comes anywhere near you, go see it! Take the kids! It’s a gorgeous, light-filled, fascinating exhibit, with many of the installations exposed so that you can see how they were created. Ben and I had a ball poking in and around the various pieces, and I think a Friday afternoon bus ride to MoMA might become a regular part of our monthly routine.

Ben then remembered the MLK memorial across the street, so off we went. It’s a Maya Lin-inspired fountain/waterfall, with lines from King’s speeches engraved on the walls next to huge photographs from various moments in the Civil Rights movement. Streams of water pour down (“let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream”), and the whole thing always makes me cry. Luckily Ben was there, threatening to topple headlong into the water, hollering at the pigeons, lightening up the mood.

And then last stop, reunited with Tony and Eli, who took the street car (without incident) downtown to meet us for dinner at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Out the Door. We filled up on lemongrass tofu and chard with carmelized shallots, picked up some chocolate gelato for dessert, and then loaded two tired boys back on to the street car for the ride home. It was a fine day in San Francisco.

My, there’s quite a lot of ink being shed on this film! And my little column doesn’t cover all I could say about it, either, but here’s an excerpt from my contribution to the conversation:

The best thing the new movie Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007) achieves as it traces the impact of one teenager’s unplanned pregnancy is its refusal to shy away from the complexities and odd juxtapositions of life; in fact, it embraces them, insisting that we look at the messiness of relationships, the rapidly shifting peaks and valleys of emotional intelligence, so that we can begin to understand how a smart girl could have sex without birth control and how a sensitive girl could give a child up for adoption. When sixteen year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) discovers she’s pregnant, she puts her head in a noose — made out of licorice ropes (she frees herself by taking a savage bite). When she contacts a clinic to arrange an abortion, she makes the call on a hamburger-shaped telephone. Her boyfriend, the father of her child, sleeps in a racecar-shaped bed. As Juno responds when her dad asks where she’s been, “Out dealing with things way beyond my maturity level.”

You can read the rest of my column here at Literary Mama. And while you’re there, check out some of our other columns and a new book review, too!

I’m not at all a proselytizer, generally, but apparently my efforts to eat a bit more seasonally have not gone unnoticed.

Exhibit A: A blueberry-pear tart a friend bought at a local shop and brought to share for lunch.
Ben’s reaction: “Blueberry tart?! What?! Blueberries aren’t in season!”

Exhibit B: Dinner at a friend’s house (the same friend, in fact), with pesto pizza.
Ben’s reaction: “Pesto?! Impossible! Basil doesn’t grow in the cold winter!”

Meanwhile, the cafe that Ben and Eli have set up outside our kitchen now sports a spiffy “USDA Organic” sign, which Ben found on the computer and printed out himself, and the boys now grow imaginary crops for the cafe in our living room. As of last night, their garden included carrots, potatoes, an olive tree, a caper bush, and a maple tree, for syrup. They also harvest their own cocoa beans. Of course.

Thanks for the suggestions on the Amazon boxes! I have written Amazon customer service to suggest that they could have used one less box, and broken down the boxes (all too big to mail my PIF books, alas; I need to be giving away more and bigger books, apparently). We didn’t build a fort with these, but will save them in case one of the birthday boys this spring wants a rocket or train-building party.

And thanks even more for the words of sympathy and concern about Eli’s encounter with the new book case (this is what we get for unpacking all our books from the nice, soft, cardboard boxes). Ten of Eli’s stitches came out last week. He was stoic, saying only afterwards that “the teeny-tiny scissors hurt a teeny-tiny bit.” One of the dissolving stitches has dissolved, and one’s still hanging on, like an umbilical cord stump that won’t drop.

And, finally, as for my movie-watching binge, I wound up writing a column on Juno. Look for it at Literary Mama next week.

What’s a trying-to-be-green Mama to do when a new kitchen purchase comes packaged in all this:

My new printer came in less. I could pack and ship my children in less!

I know, I know: should have tried to get it from the local hardware store.

Elrena wins this week’s Pay It Forward Book Exchange, but stop by again soon for another!

If you’ve glanced over to the right recently, you’ve noticed that the “watching list” has grown quickly as I’ve tried to find a subject for my next movie column. No column-fodder yet, but if you’re curious about what to spend your time and money on, here’s my two cents on some current releases and rentals:

Volver: I love Pedro Almodovar movies. I saw my first in New York City a million years ago, when I was volunteering for an avant-garde film house and we somehow scored the premiere of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! for a fundraiser. At the party after the screening, Victoria Abril danced and Liza Minelli sang “New York, New York.” It’s hard to believe now that I was once in the same room with those women. Meanwhile, Volver is classic Almodovar: an incredibly dark subject (incest, patricide) painted in candy-colors; intensely complicated relationships between a group of women (all sisters and mothers in this case); men who are mostly dolts and quickly dispensed with; allusions to Hollywood classics (here, mostly Mildred Pierce). And extra bonus: watching Penelope Cruz cook!

A Map of the World: Sigh. There’s so much to recommend this movie: a great cast (Julianne Moore and Sigourney Weaver); a compelling premise. The film explores what happens to the friendship between two women when one’s daughter dies while in the other’s care. I thought it might be too harrowing to watch, really. But instead it was annoying. The two women are painted in such broad strokes (Weaver is the bad mom because her house is a mess, she confesses that her child bugs her; she loses her temper); the director just takes the easy way out every time, going for the big emotion rather than the subtle reaction. And although it got a little less simplistic, a little more gratifyingly murky and real toward the end, by then it had lost me.

Junebug: I rented this because I loved Amy Adams so much in Enchanted, and she’s the best thing in the movie; otherwise, it sort of made me angry. A newlywed, sophisticated urban couple travels to rural North Carolina to visit his family and try to sign up a new artist for her Chicago gallery. The husband’s family (including Amy Adams as his sweet, very pregnant sister-in-law) is every stereotype of poor, white and southern, and the couple’s visit turns the family a bit upside-down. Then tragedy strikes. The couple leaves, breathing a sigh of relief at escaping the sadness and poverty, and we’re left with… what, exactly? I was just shaking my head at this one.

Juno: I enjoyed this, but it also left me confused, so I’ll probably write about it further so that I can figure myself out. Mostly, I just loved Allison Janney, who gets the Movie Stepmom of the Year award.

Romance and Cigarettes: A working-class musical about lung cancer and infidelity, why not? You’d think it’s a John Waters movie, but it’s directed by John Turturro, with an amazing cast including Susan Sarandon, Mary-Louise Parker, James Gandolfini, Aida Turturro, Kate Winslet and Steve Buscemi. Rent it if only to see Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro and Mandy Moore sing their cover of “I Want Candy.” It’s so much fun.

Enchanted: I would have just eaten this up when I was 7. Instead, I sat there watching it with my inevitable Mom-glasses on, a little distracted thinking about the mothers (one absent, and why; one wicked, and also, why? Well, because she’s a stepmother, that’s why. Or something.) Anyway, take your favorite little girl to this one because the brunette gets the prince, the princess is a toughie, and there’s a lot of fun singing and dancing.

Home for the Holidays: Oh my goodness, I just loved Robert Downey Jr. Watch it for him alone.

Dan in Real Life: This is very pretty and entertaining, and it’s nice to see a portrayal of a fairly competent single father. I didn’t at all care about the main couple (will they or won’t they find true love?), played by Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche; they are well-spoken and fun to watch, but the minor characters, the family members on the side, were far more interesting (though honestly, the family jazzercize was a little too much for me.). Plus, it was nice to see an adopted child in a movie and not have it be a big deal.

Margot at the Wedding: Do you sense a trend? I was in my Family Reunion Mode with this and the previous two films. I loved Noah Baumbach’s first feature, The Squid and The Whale, but this is just recycling too much of that story, without any of the humor, and with the extra added feature of a mean and critical sister. Didn’t like it at all.

Committed: Another totally likeable cast (Heather Graham, Mark Ruffalo, Luke Wilson), an interesting premise (young woman chases after the husband who leaves her), and a director I love (Lisa Kreuger also made Manny & Lo). But this one bored me. Am I too old to care about the problems of young childless couples in their 20s? Maybe so.

The Station Agent: This is another of those movies that didn’t actually tell the story I was interested in watching. It’s very well done, very talky and slow, and the characters — a dwarf, a hot dog vendor, and a woman (Patricia Clarkson) who’s suffered the death of a child– are interesting, but I wanted more Patricia Clarkson and less of the quirky oddball men. Also, there’s lots of long shots of the men watching trains which I wanted to cut and paste out of the movie somehow for my boys to watch.

I’m forever tearing new recipes out of magazines and needing excuses to try them out, so baking birthday cakes for people I love — even if they aren’t here to share the cake — is one of the ways I work through the inventory.

This is a buttermilk caramel cake from the recent Gourmet. The cake is light and not too sweet; the caramel topping (and you know I’m all about candy–making right now) is easy and delicious. I think Dad would like it a lot. Ben and Eli certainly liked helping to make it, almost as much as they liked helping to eat it.

So happy birthday, Dad, and maybe next year we’ll be together on your birthday; for now, a picture will have to do.

As promised, I’m clearing out my bookshelves in a giving mood right now, so hard on the heels of last week’s (won by Kim, who only wanted one book, and Violeta), I’m running another Pay It Forward Book Exchange. This week I’ve got two novels: Andrea Barrett’s moving Secret Harmonies and Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (coming soon to a movie theater near you).

Here are the rules, as created 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!”

Post a comment telling me you want to enter by Wednesday, and I’ll announce the winners as soon as I remember to.