Yes, we’ve got a lot of pears these days, and since I’ve got lots of writing projects to juggle, I’m doing a lot of baking. This one’s simpler than the Pear-Rosemary bread, and possibly even more delicious. The recipe’s straight out of the no-longer brand new Joy of Cooking (not the super brand-new Joy of Cooking, which, so far, I don’t feel the need to buy, but that may change…)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9″ loaf pan.

Whisk together:
1 1/2 c flour
1 c sugar (I used brown, which gives the bread a delicious carmel flavor)
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt (forgot this)
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg

Whisk together in a large bowl:
1 egg
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 t vanilla
grated zest and juice from 1/2 lemon
1 1/2 c peeled, grated pears, with their juice

Add the flour mixture to the pear mixture and fold until the dry ingredients are almost all moistened.

Stir in:
1 c toasted pecans (I didn’t have pecans, so used my Dad’s hickory nuts. Yum!)

Fold until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes (put a piece of foil over the top of the bread if it’s getting too dark before the bread is cooked through). Cool on a rack 5 to 10 minutes before unmolding to cool completely.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched the news program 20/20, but I’m tuning in tomorrow night: To mark the return from maternity leave of ABC correspondent, Elizabeth Vargas, 20/20 is airing a program about motherhood and work. The show features an interview with Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising. Tune in on Friday night, November 10th, at 10 p.m.

In the meantime, head on over to 20/20’s website and vote on whether you think mothers deserve paid maternity leave. I’ll be curious to see the final tally on the program tomorrow night.

Ah, The Queen… A good election-week movie choice! The story, which focuses on how Queen Elizabeth and Tony Blair navigated the tricky week after Princess Diana’s death is interesting enough, and it’s wonderful to watch Helen Mirren’s nuanced performance.

I didn’t expect it to get me thinking much about motherhood, but in fact it did, as Prince Charles and his mother politely, quietly dispute over what makes a good mother and the Queen uses her wish to “protect the boys” as her public justification for remaining isolated in Balmoral, far from London’s clamoring crowds. She sticks to one model of motherhood (remote, formal; no doubt necessary for one who was continually on public view from the time she was a teen), and Diana presented a very different one. They were bound to clash.

I don’t know, of course (nor really care) what these people are really like, whether the Queen really is a concerned grandmother or just a cold-hearted slave to protocol. She’s likely some combination of both. What I loved watching depicted in the film was the dynamic between the Queen and her mother, a woman that she has to refer to as “Her Highness.” In my favorite scene, the Queen, worn out by the demands that she return to London, make a statement about Diana’s death, appear in public, fly the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace, stands outside her mother’s door, finally seeking her advice. She squares her shoulders, takes a deep breath, and knocks once on the door, calling quietly, “Mummy?” Because even the Queen is just somebody’s daughter.

I don’t normally buy single-ingredient cookbooks (with an inventory of over 100, I’d be seriously jeopardizing my shelf space if I did), but years ago I found a small, beautiful pear cookbook on a remainder table. For $2, I figured if it had just a couple good recipes, it’d be worth the money. In fact, it has several good recipes, but this one is my favorite, a sweet-savory loaf that’s delicious with a smear of mascarpone or cream cheese.

2 c flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 pound Bartlett, Comice or Anjou pears (about 2 medium), cored, peeled, and chopped
2 t chopped fresh rosemary
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1 T lemon juice
6 T buttter
1/3 c plus 1 T sugar
2 large eggs
1 fresh rosemary sprig

Preheat the oven to 350, and butter and flour an 8″ loaf pan.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, then set aside.

Use a food processor or blender to puree the pears with the chopped rosemary, lemon zest and lemon juice.

Beat together the butter and 1/3 c sugar until creamy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time (don’t worry if it looks a bit curdled). Now add the flour and pear mixtures alternately to the butter mixture, mixing just until the flour is incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes. Dip the rosemary sprig in water, roll it in the remaining tablespoon of sugar, and place the sprig on top of the loaf. Continue baking for another 30-40 minutes, until the loaf is brown and springs back to the touch.

Let cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, then unmold and cool completely before slicing.

In a hotly-contested election today, crackers and apples tied for the lead in the preschool snack vote. Cheese ran a close second.

Vote, vote, vote, vote. It matters for you, it matters for your kids. Don’t forget to vote!

And next, back to our regularly scheduled programming: a recipe!

Sonya Huber submitted this piece for Mama, Ph.D., and I poached it for Literary Mama. Here’s just a taste:

I lose myself in my work, then I worry that I’ve been cheating: have I somehow made myself un-pregnant, broken the shallow membrane between my hopes and the multiple worlds in my head? If I stop thinking about the baby, does it die? If I leave my body for lines of text, who reminds the baby’s cells to divide, and who keeps it from getting lonely?

It’s week sixteen. Happy sweet sixteen, goat-baby. I promise I’ll stop calling you goat when we find out next month what you are. Goat-baby, I love you so much, but I’m glad you’re not here yet. Rather than counting down the weeks, I am banking against them, hoping for the full forty.

In the coffee shop, I met with an accomplished writer who’s also the mother of an eight-year-old. “Look, you can do it,” she said as she glanced down at her watch, timing the minutes until she had to go pick up her daughter. “Just make sure you have a draft of the book done before the baby comes. You think you’ll have time afterward, people always say, ‘Oh, I’ll write when the baby sleeps,’ but that’s bullshit. You’re going to be sleeping or staring at the baby. So get to work and have the most productive summer of your life.”

When friends ask me how I’m doing, I am honest only if I know them well. I say, “I’m panicked. I haven’t ever had this kind of a deadline before.” To one friend who is also a writer thinking about getting pregnant this year, I say, “You know, it feels like somehow December 2 is the date I’m going to die.” Then the disclaimers: “I mean, I know that’s sick, and of course, I don’t really think that…”

She nods. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s like, goodbye to everything.”

Click here to read more about life “In Media Res.”

Don’t Forget to Vote
http://youtube.com/v/A1P328y4joY
I know not all of you have a 75-page voter information guide to study like we do in California, but still, this election’s an important one across the country. Study up, and don’t forget to vote!

50 years since my dad was ordained to the priesthood, the celebration which inspired our trip

45 minutes waiting for our friend, stuck in Oakland Raiders post-game traffic, to pick us up from the airport

40 minutes spent waiting for a Chicago bus one night before we gave up and took a cab, Ben and Eli’s very first unbuckled car ride ever (quickly followed by 2 more in the following days)

35 submissions to Mama, Ph.D. which I carried cross country and back but did not read (potential contributors, fear not; I’m reading them this week!)

30 pounds of mail waiting for us at home (no, I didn’t weigh it, but with 30 pound Eli on my other hip, I was nicely balanced)

25 pounds of magazines that I will never have time to read (time to cull the subscription list…)

20 days until we go out of town again

15 glorious, peaceful minutes when Ben and Eli played together on the plane

10 days away

9 hours travel to get home

8 family members we visited at our family reunion (Muzz, we missed you!)

7 years since our friends R&L; were married, our “who needs an excuse?” excuse to stop in Chicago and toast them

6 trips on Chicago’s El, to Ben and Eli’s great delight

5 trips on Chicago buses, to the boys’ equally great delight

4 long hours on the plane home

3 memorable dinners in Chicago: at the corner trattoria, where the host looked like a character from The Sopranos; at Frontera Grill, where my pomegranate mimosa made it ok that Eli wouldn’t stay at the table; and at Gourmet’s best-in-America Spring, which thinks perhaps it’ll keep kids out by not providing high chairs, but Eli picked the great northern beans out of Tony’s vegetarian cassoulet, R&L;’s son ate roasted Brussels sprouts with pancetta, and Ben ate one of the three just-in-case pb&j; sandwiches we’d brought while the rest of us focused on the beautiful, delicious food

2 tired, wired boys at the end of the long trip, torn between playing madly with all their toys and collapsing into sleep

1 happy family, glad to get away, and glad to be home.

Road trip! My new movie column is on Little Miss Sunshine; check it out at Literary Mama.