I’ve never been a big fan of pecan pie; it’s a little too rich and too sweet for me. So imagine my surprise when, with an extra pie crust and some time on my hands a couple Thanksgivings ago, I made a chocolate nut pie (straight out of Joy of Cooking) and, voila! Neither too rich nor too sweet! It tastes like a nice fudgey brownie inside a pie crust. Now it’s a standard part of our Thanksgiving menu.

I made this with hickory nuts, which are smaller and more flavorful than pecans, but the only source for them I know is my dad, who gathers them every fall and painstakingly shells them. You can also use pecans.

Prepare one 9″ pre-baked pie crust (recipe below).

Preheat the oven to 375.

Spread on a baking sheet:
2 c nuts (hickory or pecan), coarsely chopped

Toast the nuts, stirring occasionally, until golden and fragrant, about 6-10 minutes. Cool slightly.

Chop 6 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (or a combination) and melt. Set aside.

Whisk until blended:
3 large eggs
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c corn syrup
1 T melted butter
1 t vanilla
1/2 t salt

Whisk one quarter of the filling into the melted chocolate, then blend the result into the remaining filling. Stir in the toasted nuts. Warm the prebaked pie crust in the oven until it is hot to the touch, then pour in the filling. Bake until the edges are slightly puffed and the center seems set but still soft, 25-30 minutes. Let cool to room temperature before serving.

Pie Crust
There are plenty of other recipes for pie crust, and some may well be better, but this is the one I remember, and it tastes perfectly delicious to me.

For one crust:
Whirl in the food processor (fitted with steel blade) for a few seconds:
1 1/4 c flour
1/2 t sugar
1/2 salt

Add:
1/2 c cold solid shortening (I use half butter, half vegetable shortening), cut into small chunks

Pulse in the food processor in short bursts until the fat is the size of small peas.

With the machine off, drizzle 3-4 T ice water over the top and pulse again until the dough begins to clump into small balls. Press the dough into a flat disk, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for an hour or so.

To prebake crust, preheat oven to 400.

Roll the chilled dough out and fit it into your pan. If your kitchen is warm or you’ve spent more than a few minutes rolling out the dough, stick the pan of dough into the fridge for 15 minutes or so to chill.

Smooth a sheet of aluminum foil over the bottom and sides of the crust, flaring the excess foil out over the edge to keep it from overbrowning. Fill the liner with raw beans, rice, or pie weights and bake for 20 minutes. Now carefully lift the foil with the weights out of the pie pan, prick the crust all over with a fork, and return to the oven to bake until golden brown, an additional 5-10 minutes. Check the crust occasionally to make sure it doesn’t puff up along the bottom (prick it again with a fork, then press down with the back of a spoon if it does, but if the crust was nice and cold going into the oven, you shouldn’t have this problem).

Whisk together, and brush the inside of the crust with a glaze of
1 egg yolk and a pinch of salt

Return to the oven to set the glaze (1-2 minutes), then fill the shell while hot.

Ben didn’t want to take a bath. Negotiations were going badly. Finally, I resorted to the timeworn, last resort of the weary parent:

“Ben, we’re the parents. We’re in charge.”

But he has an answer for everything, our newly government-conscious boy:

“Actually, I’m the mayor of this house. I’m in charge.”

Ah, he may be the mayor, but he still wound up in the bath.

Last year, we were given the wonderful Oreo Matchin’ Middles game, a set of plastic cookies that you can open just like real oreos.

Last month, I made some cotton ball “ice cream” because Ben wanted to play scoop shop.

Today, Eli invented the ice cream cookie sandwich.

We are so proud.

Literary Mama is doing a special issue focusing on STEPPARENTING, and we need your help and your writing!

Literary Mama has always welcomed — encouraged — made it our mission — to feature the many voices and faces of motherhood. That includes stepmothers, of course.

Next March, we’re publishing a month’s worth of writing by stepmothers about the stepparenting experience. Please submit! And please, if you know a stepmother who has something contribute, pass this Call for Submissions on to her.

And if you’re a mother who is not a stepmother but who writes about stepparenting, please send us your work, too.

Call for Submissions
(Please circulate widely)

Literary Mama, an internationally-acclaimed online literary magazine (http://www.literarymama.com) seeks top-notch writing for a special March 2007 issue: Stepparenting.

According to The Stepfamily Foundation, 64% of families today live in some form of divorced and/or stepfamily relationship. From Snow White’s evil witch of a stepmother to Hamlet’s stepfather (who killed Hamlet’s dad, married his mother, and stole the throne), stepmothers and stepfathers get a bad rap in literature. And the stepparent point of view? Rarely seen and explored.

For our Special Issue on Stepparenting, Literary Mama seeks fiction, creative nonfiction, literary reflections, poetry, and a guest column (“Faces of Motherhood”) BY stepparents ABOUT the stepparenting experience.

Deadline: December 31, 2006

Our guidelines vary by department. Before submitting, review individual guidelines at: http://www.literarymama.com/submissions/

FICTION:
Submissions in the text of an email along with a brief cover letter. Please put “Stepparenting Submission from Your Name” in the subject heading.
Editor: Susan Ito — fiction@literarymama.com

CREATIVE NON-FICTION:
Submissions both in the text of an email and as an attachment.
Editor: Shari MacDonald Strong — nonfiction@literarymama.com

LITERARY REFLECTIONS:
Submissions of 750-5000 words in the text of an email and/or attached Word document, along with a brief cover letter.
Editor: Caroline Grant — litcrit@literarymama.com

POETRY
Poems of any length and form. Maximum of four poems per submission. Please send submissions in the text of an email.
Editor: Rachel Iverson — poetry@literarymama.com

“FACES OF MOTHERHOOD” COLUMN:
Seeking personal essays of 600-1200 words about how being a “mom-by-marriage” makes you feel out of step with the mainstream image of mothers. Send submissions in the text of an email, along with a brief cover letter.
Editors: Marjorie Osterhout and Erin Sullivan — columns@literarymama.com

General notes:
* Response time up to 4 weeks.
* Authors retain rights. Please credit us if your work is republished.
* Simultaneous submissions okay as long as you notify us if accepted elsewhere.
* We prefer previously unpublished work. We will consider reprints, however, if you have the rights and the work is not currently available online.
* Electronic submissions only.
* Literary Mama attracts over 30,000 unique visitors a month. We do not, however, pay our writers or editors — we are all volunteers here.

More Questions? info@literarymama.com

We’re looking at a lot of schools this fall, trying to decide which will be the best fit for Ben and our family. We’re trying not to fall in love with any one place, because the school district places kids by lottery and the private schools are as exclusive as Harvard. Most of the schools make it hard, though; elementary school looks like fun, after all, with the brightly-colored cubbies, the reading nooks, the art on the walls.

And then, some of the schools make it easy not to fall in love. The facilities aren’t great, or the teachers aren’t welcoming. Or, you see a sign on the door like this:

Welcome, Kindergartnrs!!

Moving right along…

Ben’s low-key, co-op preschool has a casual relationship with an occupational therapist named Alanna, who is available to assess the kids when concerns develop about their motor skills and other developmental issues. The relationship is so low-key that I didn’t know about her until very recently (over a year into Ben’s preschool experience), when someone at school, commenting on Ben’s development from a very grounded guy into a climber and jumper, asked how we’d enjoyed working with Alanna. “We didn’t,” I said, “He’s just growing up.”

But he’s going to kindergarten next year, and apparently people want to know if he can stack blocks, hold a pencil, and walk in a straight line. So Alanna comes to preschool a couple afternoons and plays “kindergarten games” with all the older kids, and reports to the teachers so that they can write their recommendations for the kindergartens and let all the parents know if we need to be concerned about our children’s kindergarten “readiness.”

We didn’t have advance notice of Alanna’s first visit. We got to school to see lines of kids trooping over to meet her, but Ben wasn’t interested. His teacher tried to make it sound enticing, but he was busy with some project or other and wouldn’t be budged. So we figured we’d try again next time.

Yesterday morning, I glanced at the calendar and spotted my reminder: “Alanna.”

“Ben! Guess who’s going to be at school today!?”

He looked up from his book, but he could obviously tell from my tone that I was trying to make something he didn’t want to do sound appealing.

“Alanna’s going to be playing kindergarten games with the big kids! Remember? Don’t you want to play kindergarten games with her?”

“No. I don’t know her. I’m shy of her.”

Fair enough. Except, as I pointed out, he’s not particularly shy. He’s dropped his pants at the playground to show off his skateboard underwear, after all. But that’s a different situation, to Ben’s mind, and my tactic met with no success.

At some point, Tony came in and reminded Ben that he likes to show people things he’s interested in, like his engineer’s cap or his muni t-shirt (not to mention those skateboard boxers). No dice. We backed off to regroup. We’d made ourselves anxious by this point; if Ben didn’t see Alanna at school, we’d have to make an office appointment with her, we’d have to get babysitting for Eli, we’d have to delay the kindergarten applications.

And then, with a flash of inspiration that makes me think I am kind of a good mom, I remembered the allure of role play.

“Ben!” I asked. “Do you want to pretend that I’m Alanna, and you’re coming to my office to play kindergarten games?”

This, amazingly, worked. We walked to the bottom of the stairs, where I introduced myself to him as “Alanna-mama.” Then we went up to his room, took turns stacking blocks, drawing shapes, and building train track. After 10 minutes or so, I made him a construction paper certificate noting that he had successfully completed his day of kindergarten games. He went to school that afternoon, met with Alanna, and we’ll get her report next week (at this point, really, who cares what she says? I’m just glad he went).

But now, I’m stuck. Ben keeps asking to play with Alanna-Mama. We don’t play any differently than we normally do, except that I have to pretend not to know him very well.

I’m still pondering the implications of this. Plenty of kids have imaginary playmates. Adam Gopnik’s daughter famously had an imaginary playmate who was too busy to play with her. But when your child prefers playing with an the imaginary version of his mama, one who doesn’t know him, what’s the real mama to think?

This week, a Thanksgiving column, of sorts, on Transamerica, about a woman who discovers she’s a father and meets the son she didn’t know she had.

Here’s a taste:

It took me one month to get pregnant.

It took me 38 1/2 weeks (gestation), 5 hours (labor), and 37 minutes (pushing) to become a mother.

My route to parenthood, that is, was just about as quick and direct as it gets.

But whether a child lands in your arms as a wet and squalling newborn, or arrives on your doorstep with baggage both literal and emotional, once you become a parent, you need to learn how to be a parent. And that, we all discover eventually, can be a matter of continual reinvention and recommitment.

In Transamerica (Duncan Tucker, 2005) we witness the complicated road to parenthood taken by a woman named Bree (Felicity Huffman, in a remarkable departure from her role on Desperate Housewives), who learns how to parent while driving her new-found son from New York to Los Angeles after she bails him out of jail.

Read the rest here on Literary Mama, and leave me a comment!

We’ve embarked on our biennial Thanksgiving week in Stinson Beach and life is good. So far:

Within an hour of our arrival, both boys were so wet and sandy they had to be hosed off before re-entering the house.

Ben has played with his favorites of his uncle’s various cool things: the carousel full of poker chips and the electronic card shuffler.

Eli has “woofed” at his uncle’s new puppy approximately 73 times (every time he walks past Dusty’s crate…)

The refrigerator is so full there’s no room for the turkey (good thing we have a few days to eat down the food supply before, um, we make a ton more food…)

And as I type, Ben and Eli are, for the first time, sleeping in the same room, so that Tony and I don’t have to share with either of them. Here’s hoping this is the first of many peaceful nights of the brothers sharing a room.

Years ago, when Ben was a baby and my mom-friends and I started up a Monday playgroup, our husbands started gathering with the babies on Saturdays, and “Dadderday” was born: a break for the moms, social time for the dads, happiness all around.

Today was an inadvertent Dadderday. I’d spent the night up with a stomach bug and was in no shape to handle the kids, so Tony took over (though without the support of any other dads) and I laid in bed, first reading, then watching a movie. And my choices, really just the nearest things to hand, portray a couple men who are a sharp contrast to the dads I know.

First I read Geraldine Brooks’ March, a novel that imagines the story Louisa May Alcott refers to, but does not tell, in Little Women, about the father gone to war. She bases her portrait both on what’s known about Bronson Alcott and plenty of other historical research, so it’s very detailed and quite plausible but I was so put off by the flowery writing and melodramatic tone that halfway through I had to put it down, drag the computer into bed and email my sister to ask if it would get any better. She advised dropping the book, but I was too stubborn (and didn’t have much else within reach) so soldiered on, irritated both by the writing, and increasingly, by the portrayal of this man who abandons wife and family to assuage his guilt over slavery. Marmee gets a word in toward the end of the book, but it was too little, too late, for me. I finished the book glad I’m not a nineteenth century wife and mother.

Fast forward over a century to my movie choice, Sydney Pollack’s documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry. Now, this is a fascinating movie. Two men, Pollack and Gehry, at the top of their game, talking about art and architecture. Often there’s a second camera on Pollack, so we can watch him filming Gehry while they talk, look at sketches and models, or walk around the incredible spaces that Gehry has designed; it’s a terrific portrait of two artists at work. And we see others: the plainspoken, regular-guy Ed Rauscha, as clear as his paintings, who contextualizes Gehry’s work for someone like me, makes the neophyte understand just what is so radical about it; or the flamboyant Julian Schnabel, resplendent in his white robe, gesturing with his brandy snifter; Dennis Hopper and Bob Geldoff and an array of other men (yes, with one exception, all men) all with interesting things to say about Gehry’s art.

But like many such portraits (Rivers and Tides, about the artist Andy Goldsworthy, comes to mind), I began to wonder about Gehry’s personal life. We hear about his childhood, the grandmother who played blocks with him (whom he credits for the idea that he could be an architect), how he changed his name (from Goldberg) to duck anti-Semitism. And then, in an interview with his therapist, we learn that early in Gehry’s career, he was at a crisis, financially and emotionally bankrupt, and the therapist advised Gehry to choose a path: leave work and devote himself to his wife and two daughters until he’d sorted himself out, or leave the family. And for a moment, I indulged a fantasy of Gehry as an artist who buried himself in his family and then emerged after a time, renewed, rejuvenated, ready to contribute again to the art world.

Like I said, a fantasy. He left the family. A second marriage is mentioned, in passing, later in the film, and that’s all we hear of the artist’s personal life.

So fine, not everyone’s cut out to be a parent, and certainly it’s difficult to combine a passionate commitment to anything (to political ideals, in March’s case; to art, in Gehry’s), with any kind of commitment to family. I’d just like to see more representations of men who try. In the meantime, I am newly grateful for Dadderday and the dads who make it happen.

Well, give ABC credit for trying, but their 20/20 report on working mothers was not the hard-hitting call for action one would hope for. Elizabeth Vargas hosted a toothless overview of the issues working mothers confront: the need for safe, affordable day care; paid maternity leave; flexible work schedules.

The interview with Joan Blades of MomsRising must have been cut, so the remaining experts included Senator Christopher Dodd (D, Connecticut) who is plain-spoken and compelling, reminding viewers that the government provides more oversight of pets and cars than daycare centers. But his voice was fairly well drowned out by a conservative talk radio host giving airtime to people who think mothers simply shouldn’t work, and the (female) deputy assistant Secretary of Labor, a bootstrap conservative who believes that individuals are responsible for saving their own money as a hedge against times when they cannot work, since the consequences to businesses for offering family benefits would be “dire.”

In fact, the statistics show that the 12% of companies offering paid maternity leave report increased profits and productivity when they do. It’s discouraging that these benefits need to be sold as “good for the company” to be adopted, but if that’s what it takes, I’ll take that as a start. Even the (female) VP of Human Resources at IBM downplayed the company’s apparently excellent benefits, including paid leave, flextime, and on-site daycare: “We don’t do these programs because we’re doing good for society, we do them because they’re good for IBM and good for IBM’s business.” Goodness, no, we wouldn’t want to do good for society!

Change will come, I hope, but it won’t come quickly with outlooks like those expressed on 20/20. The panel of “regular moms” concluded that advocating for corporate and government change is just “asking for help,” and added that women aren’t good at asking for help. “Well,” noted Vargas cheerfully, “that might need to change.” Still, her conclusion was less upbeat, characterizing work for change as just adding one more task to “our endless to-do list.” With that attitude, the U.S. will remain awhile longer in the fine company of Lesthoto, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland, the only other nations in the world without a national maternity leave program.