I will post recipes as I’ve got time, but here for now is a list of what I served; I should have taken a picture, since it all looked so pretty spread out on the table, but here instead is a picture of the cleared-off table the next morning…

brownies
apricot crumble bars
pistachio-cranberry cookies
spiced nuts
cheese gougeres
white bean-pesto spread
hummus
cheese, crackers, baguette
satsumas

So hosting a MotherTalk is my idea of the ideal evening: I get to stay home and cook snacks and sweets; a group of friends and friendly others comes to my house; a writer arrives and talks about her book, her writing process, the people she meets on her book tour. What’s not to like?

This evening’s MotherTalk, with Santa Montefiore, came the evening after my son’s preschool auction, so several of us were not at our most-well-rested best, but Santa is such a terrific storyteller, we were rapt. She told us about writing her very first novel while working a beautifully-appointed (but apparently not too busy) desk at Ralph Lauren; about fictionalizing real people (and how rarely they recognize themselves); about making the most of her writing time by compiling a soundtrack for each novel (when she sits down to write, rather than read over her last pages to get in the mood, she just starts her music. This apparently works better for her lush historical novels now that she no longer shares an office with her 80’s pop music-loving husband); and about meeting Helen Mirren and Anna Wintour.

We ate and talked and everyone went home with a new book to read in bed, and I’ve got some good leftovers: a perfect evening.

I’m not over the shock of the Virginia Tech shootings yet, but my sadness now is tinged with more anger at the sheer needlessness of it. It could have been prevented. And I’m not talking about the Virginia Tech administration, I’m talking about our country’s administration. I’m talking about gun control laws. I’m moved by my dad’s J’Accuse blog post to lobby more strongly, today, right now, for gun control.

And here are some links so that you can, too.

Here’s the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

Here’s the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

Do something.

A bad day can always be redeemed with biscuits, although who’s going to make themselves biscuits at the end of a rough day? Until I learn the biscuit recipe that involves melted butter and no rolling pin (Libby?), not me.

But today was a good day, and that included time to roast artichokes and then, when I saw the beautiful ripe strawberries in our produce box, make biscuits for a strawberry short cake.

2 c flour
1 t salt
1 T sugar
2 1/2 t baking powder
4 T cold butter, cut into small cubes
1/4 c cold shortening, cut into small cubes (didn’t notice this until transcribing the recipe just now, left it out, and the biscuits came out just fine…)
1/2 c cold milk, half and half, or cream
1 egg

Using a food processor, mix the dry ingredients. Add the butter (and shortening, if you remember), and pulse a couple of times until the mixture has the texture of coarse grain. In a small bowl, beat the egg into the milk (the fattier the milk you use, the richer the biscuit), then add to the mixture in the food processor and pulse again until the dough just starts to come together.

Turn the dough out on to a floured dough and knead just a couple times, to bring the dough together. Now shape it into a roughly 6″ x 6″ square, approximately 1/4″ thick, and roll across the top once or twice with a rolling pin to smooth it out. Wrap in plastic, and freeze for an hour.

Toward the end of the hour, start preheating the oven to 400. Take the dough out of the freezer, unwrap it, and slice with a very sharp knife (so that the biscuits will rise well) into 9 2″ squares. Put the squares on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Serve hot, warm, or room temperature.

The first time I was pregnant and poring over name books, I quickly realized that naming a child is the one decision a couple makes that allows no room for compromise. If your favorite name happens to be the same as your partner’s 3rd grade playground nemesis, that’s it; you have to find another option. An old Saturday Night Live skit shows a couple arguing so fiercely about naming their baby — each of them turning the other’s suggestion into a playground taunt — that they wind up divorcing.

The second time around, we had to at least pretend to consider our son Ben’s suggestions, like “Telephone” and “Benna.” Eventually we agreed on two girl’s names and crossed our fingers that these would be enough. But I packed the name books in my hospital bag, just in case. In the pictures of us in the hospital after our second son’s birth, a whiteboard listing various possibilities is visible in the background: Daniel; Josiah; Leo; Elijah. We left the hospital with our red-haired beauty still unnamed, and the hospital staff distressed. “What’s really the problem with filing this paperwork later?” I asked. “Well,” someone finally admitted, “If the baby doesn’t have a name, it makes it harder for us to bill you.”

Well then, I thought, I’ll be rushing right back.

It took us three days to settle on Elijah, three days during which our friends and family — all of whom had seen that whiteboard — kindly kept their opinions to themselves.

This all came back to me when I went to see The Namesake (Mira Nair, 2006) with a friend who is expecting the birth of her second daughter any day. She and her husband haven’t yet settled on a name (although their four year old lobbies hard for her choice by making elaborate drawings of the letter C) and as we waited for the lights to dim I thought of how often lately she and I have sat through to the very end of a film, reading the credits carefully in search of potential names.

Read the rest of the column here at Literary Mama.

I’m so proud to have been nominated for a Thinking Blogger award from one of my favorite foodie-writer mama bloggers; Feed Your Loves writes beautifully, always makes me hungry, and does it all with two toddlers (two!)

So now I get to pass the nominations on. Here, briefly, are 5 blogs that make me think. Go check them out.

Midlife Mama blogs about family life and food, while her blog, Lessons from the Tortoise, covers children’s lit and her other reading, too. Since the award is to the blogger not the blog, I’m linking to both!

Everyday Mom inspires me with her passionate political activism and her quiet thoughtfulness about mothering.

The bloggers at MomsRising make it easy to find out what’s happening and what I can do to work for mom’s rights.

Traveler’s Lunchbox is gorgeous, in its photography and its writing about food. Plus she’s a graduate student (or was — I see that she’s defended her thesis now), and you know I have a special place in my heart for them.

And speaking of higher education, go check out what Bitch, Ph.D. has to say about academia, mothering, and how to buy a bra, too. She makes me think and she makes me laugh.

And now, nominees, go on out and tag some more bloggers:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Another idiot off the airwaves. Thanks to the efforts of MomsRising‘s petition drive, bloggers like Everyday Mom and loads of other thoughtful people (and, of course, worried advertisers), Don Imus has lost his platform.

Good news.

Check out my little essay, The Cookie, at the fabulous Hip Mama!

I keep experimenting with recipes that use whole lemons (peel, pith and all) and having made this twice now (once for my parents, once for my sister and her family, so both times for excellent baking critics!) I think this Meyer Lemon Cake is a winner. You boil the lemons (regular ones or the milder Meyer variety) for thirty minutes or so and then seed and puree them so that you don’t have any big chunks of peel, just lots of intense lemon flavor in a moist cake which uses ground almonds in place of most of the flour.

Try it and let me know what you think!

The Easter Bunny brings books to our house along with chocolate, and this year I got a sweet Margaret Wise Brown story, Home for a Bunny, for Eli and then finally remembered to get one of my childhood favorites for Ben, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes.

When I was little, I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes Easter egg logistics that this book details: the “fact” that there are five Easter bunnies; how bunnies are chosen to become Easter bunnies; the palace stacked with Easter eggs, carefully sorted by color, style, and flavor.

As an adult, and as a parent, I appreciate the feminist message in this seventy year-old story. The Country Bunny is told that she’ll never be an Easter bunny because her 21 children take up so much her time. And it’s true, she says, that as babies they do keep her completely occupied. But then they grow, and she teaches them to run the house, assigning pairs to cook and clean and garden and even to dance and paint, to entertain the bunnies doing more “necessary” chores. We’re shown, in fact, that mothering gives her skills that make her more qualified to become an Easter bunny than she might have been otherwise.

All of this is very gently conveyed, not at all beating the reader over the head with its message, for which I am grateful. But the thing that gets me is, why does the Country Bunny need to teach her kids to do all this work? She has a husband, we read (he’s never shown), which is how she comes to have 21 baby bunnies, but then he falls out of the story and the Country Bunny is effectively a single mother. And so good for her for managing as competently as she does. But of course I wish for a story that shows the daddy bunny staying home with the kids while mother bunny follows her career dreams.