ExoSkeleto

Liza's Tart Cockaigne

2011-05-21T22:44:00.014-05:00

When a child at our house does something they are inordinately proud of, like standing up for the first time or getting into college or drawing a cool picture or attending the world premiere of a new composition, we call the look on their face "prouding girlish." Kind of dumb, but that's the name of that look and there's no changing it.

So here's me, not the best baker in the world, holding a triumph deluxe, the Joy of Cooking's Tart Cockaigne/Meringue Cream Tart. This birthday gem is a cake and a meringue all in one--two layers each of cake and meringue filled and topped with pastry cream, whipped cream and strawberries.

I flavored the pastry and whipped creams with a few drops of Grand Marnier, and also macerated the berries in a few drops of said licquer. This cake is a great blank slate for a lot of cool flavors--I've had it with lemon curd, and had intended to fill it with mangoes for Liza's birthday, but couldn't find any nice ones. Lavender? Violets? Cherries?

And then there's my niece deluxe, Liza, turning twenty. Poet, activist, musician, smarty-pants and totally hilarious with some of the best hair on earth.

Don't Forget Apple Galette

2011-03-30T16:27:00.005-05:00

I don't even remember when I made this, but it was around a year ago, and I just ran into the photo in Andi's facebook photo album. I completely forgot that I was obsessed with Apple Galette for several months, and its rich, crumbly, salty-sweet goodness.

It's a bad time to be posting this, it being spring and not apple season at all, but I knew I would forget later, and you could consider filling it with asparagus or caramelized onions (both?) instead. I would If I were you.

Here's Jacques Pepin's recipe, which is definitely the best, and one of the only recipes I've ever truly followed. (Because when Jacques says jump, you say, "How high?")

Makes 8 servings

1/2 recipe pate brisée (see recipe)
5 large apples
1/4-cup sugar
3 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
4 tablespoons apricot preserves
1 tablespoon Calvados or Cognac (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

1. Make pâte brisée. Roll out the dough 1/8 to 1/16 inch thick, in a shape that fits roughly on a cookie sheet—approximately 16 X 14 inches. (The best cookie sheets are made of heavy aluminum that is not too shiny.) If the dough is not thin enough after you lay it on the cookie sheet, roll it some more, directly on the sheet.

2. Peel and cut the apples in half, core them, and slice each half into 1/4-inch slices. Set aside the large center slices of the same size and chop the end slices coarsely. Sprinkle the chopped apple over the dough.

3. Arrange the large slices on the dough beginning at the outside, approximately 1 1/2 inches from the edge. Stagger and overlap the slices to imitate the petals of a flower. Cover the dough completely with a single layer of apples, except for the border. Place smaller slices in the center to resemble the heart of a flower.

4. Bring up the border of the dough | and fold it over the apples.

5. Sprinkle the apples with the sugar and pieces of butter, and bake in a 400-degree oven for 65 to 75 minutes, until the galette is really well browned and crusty. Do not remove the galette from the oven too soon; it should be very well cooked. It should be very crusty, thin, and soft inside. Do not worry about the discoloration of the apples after you peel and arrange them on the dough. The discoloration will not be apparent after cooking.

6. Slide it onto a board. Dilute the apricot preserves with the alcohol (or use 1 tablespoon of water if the jam is thick and you prefer not to use spirits) and spread it on top of the apples with the back of a spoon. Some can also be spread on the top edge of the crust. Follow the design so that you do not disturb the little pieces of apple.

Serve the galette lukewarm, cut into wedges.

Pate Brisee
Recipe From: Jacques Pepin
“Everyday Cooking”

Makes Enough for 2 Galettes

3 cups all-purpose flour (dip the measuring cup
into the flour, fill it, and level it with your hand)

1 cup (2 sticks) sweet butter, cold, and cut with a knife into thin slices or shavings

1/2 teaspoon salt

Approximately 3/4 cup very cold water

“In a well-made pâte brisée the pieces of butter are visible throughout the dough. If the pieces of butter get completely blended with the flour so that they melt during cooking, the pastry will be tough. The flour and butter must be worked and the water added as fast as possible to obtain a flaky pastry. If you work the dough too much after adding the water, it will be elastic and chewy. If you use too much butter and not enough water, it will resemble sweet pastry dough and will be hard to roll thin and pick up from the table; it will be very brittle before and after cooking, sandy, and with no flakiness.

This is deceptively simple dough. You may get excellent results one time and an ordinary pastry the next. Try it a few times to get a feel for it. Wrapped properly, it can be kept in the refrigerator for 2 or 3 days, or it can be frozen.”

1. Mix the flour, butter, and salt together very lightly, so that the pieces of butter remain visible throughout the flour.

2. Add the ice-cold water and mix very fast with your hand just enough that the dough coheres.

3. Cut the dough in half. The pieces of butter should still be visible. Refrigerate for 1 or 2 hours or use it right away. If you use it right away, the butter will be a bit soft, so you may need a little extra flour in the rolling process to absorb it.

For one galette, roll half the dough between 1/8 and 1/16 of an inch thick, using flour underneath and on top so that it doesn't stick to the table or the rolling pin. When the dough is the desired shape and thickness, roll it onto the rolling pin and unroll it on the pie plate, tart form, or cookie sheet that you plan to use. Repeat with the other half or reserve for later use. Bake according to the instructions for the particular recipe.

Strawberry Shotcrop

2011-03-27T17:26:00.004-05:00

If you know Christian's mom Pat, you'll know she likes word-play a lot in it's many forms. So that's how the dessert known as Strawberry Shortcake came to be called Strawberry Shotcrop at our house.

And here's the story of today's dessert: several weeks ago I started getting obsessed with the pastry chef at Communal, Joseph McCrae's, biscuits. Every time I've made them, they've been pretty damn good, but have fallen short of the tall, fluted rounds he serves at breakfast downtown next to cute little ramekins of soft butter and homemade strawberry preserves. I guess there's a reason some people are pastry chefs while others are mere home cooks. My biscuits are always light, fragrant and tender, but I crave the tall layers of feuilles-like buttery crumbs and the delicate toothsome bite in the real deal. Maybe some time Joseph will invite me over and show me how it's done? Hi, Joseph!

Anyway, this week's discovery involves adding two extra tablespoons of sugar to his recipe, sanding the top of the biscuit with raw sugar, splitting them in half, and then filling them with mounds of strawberries and cream. I made them for my students last week, and Karl said it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. He may have been exaggerating, but not much.

One last note about these biscuits: working with the dough is like holding a pound of freshly bathed baby flesh in your hands. It's almost unbearably fun to touch. You might get addicted.

my book is writing itself

2011-02-12T15:34:00.005-06:00

Sometimes it seems my whole life has been a struggle between two poles: the North Pole, where I'm dominating space, in charge, on a high, in control, and the South Pole, where I can't even put one foot in front of the other, and all I can think about is how I slipped down past the equator to this gloomy, horrible failed place.

I'm on a quest to be okay with not being in charge, because I'm really not, none of us are really in charge, right? That's an illusion. I fall in and out of being at peace with this. This morning, we chanted sa ni pa ma. I think that's what the syllables were. The teacher said it meant birth life death rebirth and then sa nom which she translated as true identity. I hope this year I will know what my vocation is, what my true identity is, what my authentic life is, but if not, that I'll be okay with it.

Look at those children walking up the mountain. Are they mine? My body made them, but their spirits proceed ahead of mine, away from mine, and I can't claim them. There is both comfort and fear in that knowledge.

When I reclined into savasana, complete surrender the teacher said, I had trouble surrendering. You can't be writing your book right now came into my mind. Then: your book is writing itself.

My book is writing itself.

I closed my eyes and let darkness cover me with it's blanket.

How will it read?

What will it say?

I'm trying to have patience to discover the answers.

Small Daily Practice

2011-02-06T08:02:00.004-06:00

How did your first month of New Year's Resolutions go? Mine were spotty, which was expected, and some of them I know will be works-in-progress. I don't know about you, but I have some resolves that I've made for ten, twenty, thirty years in a row and they're still ongoing.

Here's one I'd love some inspiration for: the small daily artistic practice. One time, for several months, I read Emily Dickinson every day and made a list of cool words from her poems. The next day I would write a poem using those words that had been swirling around in my head for twenty-four hours. The process was fast and I didn't allow myself to edit, scrutinize or critique; many of the poems were not great. I'm still revising and culling from that manuscript of poems, but it gave me a lot of material and it was very calming to have a discrete task I knew I could finish every day. And then that practice ran it's course and I couldn't do it any more.

During another period of time, I submitted poems to two journals a day. I did get a lot of publications from that period, but got very little writing done. Although the submission process didn't take long, I only have a sliver of time to write every day, so anything that takes away from actual writing needs to be really important. The jury is still out on how important publication is to me. Journal submission is a practice I'll probably revive soon, but I don't want to do it when I'm not writing much because it feels like I'm focusing on a poetry career, which is a ludicrous and disheartening endeavor, rather than focusing on writing poems, which is a ludicrous but heartening endeavor.

I'd love to hear about people's daily practices. I feel the need to change mine regularly because I get bored and distracted easily. I'm still working towards doing those ten sun salutations each day. What works for you?

So here's how the other resolves went:

1) Be more aware and observant. Be present with people and don't let what you think should be happening get in the way of what is. I don't know why this is so hard for me. I had some great moments during January trying to do this, especially during family dinner time, but overall, my tendency to drift away from the moment prevailed. Any tricks for this?

2) Go for a walk once a week. Yes, for three of the first five weeks. The most memorable walk was through the marshland by Utah lake with C. and my sister Hilary on a beautiful, sunny, bright white Sunday afternoon.

3) Formally express gratitude once a week. Did this once.

4) Read the New Testament. Sort of started. . . .

5) Finish libretto started in 2010. Nope.

6) Limit screen time. Yes! This has been fantastic, though some screen time has been creeping back in for "homework." I've been making the rule that the kids can't watch t.v. or play on the computer during the week, and they've been much happier, more imaginative, and much more fun to be around. I need to deal with the "homework" thing. Sometimes they do need to do work online for school, and then the creep towards "educational games" sets in, and pretty soon they're playing Webkinz. Any suggestions?

7) In order to read more family novels. Momo and Cecy and I have almost finished The Tale of Despereaux and are about to start The Magician's Elephant. Thanks for that suggestion, Mark. I'll be working through the suggestions that other readers posted as well.

8) Go to Salt Lake once a month. The spirit and the letter of this law has been fulfilled. The letter because we took the kids to Hogle Zoo the last weekend of January. Hogle Zoo is in Salt Lake. So check off the "Go to SLC" goal.

It was freezing, so we were mostly in the extremely smelly indoor exhibits, but we saw so many active animals. It was one of the best zoo days ever in terms of animal sightings, especially the breathtaking tigers. The spirit of this law, however, was not to go to the zoo with the kids, but to get more challenging and inspiring artistic and cultural experiences in my life, as opposed to weekend after weekend of movies at the multiplex. On that front, we saw two screenings at the Sundance Film Festival, How to Die in Oregon and Kinyarwanda , and two screenings at International Cinema, Fados and Yi Yi. I especially loved Fados--the picture at the top of this post is a still from the film. So those film screenings were not actually in Salt Lake, but rather of Salt Lake, so I'm going to count Resolution Number 8 as one of the biggest successes of the year so far.

9) Work on duo with Christian. He's been mixing and editing our live Sonarchy show and it's sounding really good. We've been talking about new stuff to do, but talk is cheap. Need more doing. Fados gave me some ideas.

10) Small daily artistic practice. See above.

The yogis always say if a pose isn't working, change something small. I'm going to try to make little adjustments to my life throughout 2011 and see what happens.

Some of the most profound changes come from the suggestions and examples of the people around me, so in a formal expression of gratitude, thank you people who read this blog and who spend time with me in real life for your excellent spirits, lives, and work.

Lara's List of Lady Writers

2011-01-24T18:40:00.003-06:00

I'm jumping into the list craze here and starting a list of 100 great books by Ladies. I know, it's possible that I'm only contributing to the ghettoization of Lady Writers, and so I'm interested to know what you all think of the categorization of literature by gender and race. Segregation or separation? Necessary or not?

Since so much was made in 2010 and early 2011 about the paucity of women writers who a) win major prizes, b) get reviewed in major places by major reviewers and get praised and Great Writers and c) get big stories in highbrow magazines, so I thought I'd at least take a stab and encouraging more thought and action in this area. I do think that lists have their place in consciousness raising and in helping us to examine our assumptions and actions. I know I get thoughtless and lazy pretty quickly after I resolve to change and be more aware, and I use lists to help me set intentions and to focus my attention on Important Things. And while many bloggers are discussing this same issue currently, I'd love to hear what the readers and writers I commune with think, and what books they recommend as well.

(Also, in my New Year's spirit of reformation and retrenchment, I'm trying to broaden my reading to include some novels that aren't detective novels, reading I use to soothe myself and relax at the end of the day, lazy reading I've been trapped in since I haven't been writing papers or studying for exams. I only read Literature lately when I'm teaching it. Detective novels have their beautiful place in my life. But I'm trying to Reform a bit, and Improve. So help. Please.)

This is an off-the-top-of-my-head stab at ten books that I think are important to read, written by Ladies. A lot of the texts, but not all, chosen this week explore mother/daughter themes, domesticity, and reproduction, and these themes seem especially prone to being labelled and dismissed as "women's writing". This list is also comprised of many texts that were on the bandwagon of works that treated these subjects seriously, literarily, and as such, are pretty well known.

Each week I'd like to look at some different themes/areas of Women's Lit (again, your suggestions are greatly appreciated!) and add ten more titles to the list, using your suggestions. I think I will do a separate poetry list, unless you have a better idea.

1) Beloved by Toni Morrison

2) The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe

3) Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

4) To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

5) The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

6) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

7) The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Gertrude Stein

8) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

9) Wide Saragasso Sea by Jean Rhys

10) Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen

Pink Dresses

2011-01-20T10:13:00.006-06:00

There is always a day in each season when I think I will never want it to be summer ever again. Ever. And then there is always a polar opposite day when I think Summer is the most glorious season of all, and I can't wait for it to come. It puts me in mind of Left Handed Son of Old Man Hat who tells the story of how, when he was little, he thought summer and winter were locations rather than times--summer was up in the mountains where the sheep grazed when the heat came, and winter was down in the valley where the sheep were moved when the snows came. The Son of Old Man Hat recalled always wishing he was in the winter place when he was in the summer place and the summer place when he was in the winter place.

The day when I hate winter hasn't come yet, however. Today I was still in love with the soul moving crests, shadows, contours, and declivities on Timp when she's covered in snow and tinged with pink from the sunrise, and wrapping a rabbit-fur stole of clouds around her shoulders.

Though I had some tiny stirrings of longing for spring when I looked at spring dresses on the Nordstrom's website (their dress ads always suck me in), and I saw this picture of the girls at Easter in 2003. Just for a minute I thought I wish I was in Arizona sitting on the back porch with my family, smelling orange blossoms.

Then I pulled myself back to the present and realized I am still enjoying my leftover Christmas decorations, hearty stews, and long, cozy nights at home with kids, dinner, homework, and stories.

Today I 'm grateful for enjoyment. A year ago I was depressed, and today, for now, I'm not. How things always, always change!

P.S.--I'm also grateful for a warm home. One time the director of Food and Care Coalition told my students about a client who froze to death in his car outside their facilities one winter night. Please take a minute to vote to give them funding to expand their shelter--see the widget on the right side of my blog.

Resolves

2011-01-06T14:27:00.005-06:00

I've been explaining these resolutions to myself in my head for several weeks now. I think I have them sort of worked out, even though my very first resolution was against resolve:

1) Be more aware and observant. Be present with people and don't let goals and what you think should be happening get in the way of what is. So all of the things on this list are subject to number one, and I have to be ready and willing to let them go if they interfere with number one. Number one is my guiding principle for 2011. Unless observation tells me to get rid of number one. Or something like that.

2) Go for a walk once a week. This seems modest and attainable, and perhaps shocking to you folks who love the outdoors. Christian has dubbed me the indoors-y type, and he couldn't be more right. I'm so happy in a small, cozy hole, like Mrs. Tittlemouse. But I think I'll be happier if I get more sunlight, look around more.

3) Formally express gratitude once a week.

4) Read the New Testament.

5) Finish the libretto begun in 2010.

6) Limit kids' screen time to weekends only, thereby giving us more time for:

7) Family novel reading. Ingrid jolted me into this one last week when I commented about how much she and Eva used to read and loved to be read to. "Yeah," she said. "No computers." I've become lazy with the kids and don't read to them as much. They get crabby, lazy, and unimaginative when they're online or watching TV too much. Eva and Ingrid didn't have a TV a lot of the time growing up, and I want the younger kids to have the benefit of limited screen time. If you're so inclined, list your favorite read alouds for an almost six and almost eight year-old. I read Harry Potter to E and I at that age. We read Stuart Little and Little House on the Prairie last year.

8) Go to Salt Lake once a month. Now that the kids are a bit older, I need to get out of my rut of a quick dinner or movie in Provo and get back to my earlier, more adventurous ways. We used to go to so many cool events, which was easy to do when we lived in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle. It's a little harder to do here, but necessary to maintaining a connection with what's going on artistically in the world.

9) Work on duo with Christian. In the picture above, snapped by our friend Hailey Meyer Liechty, we are performing with master percussionist Greg Campbell at our December Salon. A link to our duo can be found on the side of the blog. I really enjoy this work, and want to do it more. It feels like a perfect meshing of our particular skills and relationship. The text, the improv (it's all improvised except for the text), Christian's genius with timbre and form, etc.

10) Work in small, daily practice, like I learned to do in yoga, but with my job/career/art or whatever it is called. I don't even know what it's called or what it is. Be comfortable with that. Let it be what it is and just do little, enjoyable things with little enjoyable challenges. But don't be in charge. Don't try to control. Just live and do. (Please don't mock my mish-mash of eastern philosophy influenced thinking here. It's working for me right now.)

There is almost nothing I love more than hearing other people's New Year's Resolutions. Feel free to post many of them in comments.

xo

Bedraggled Tree 2010

2011-01-06T13:52:00.007-06:00

This photo of Eva and Ingrid reminds me, for some reason, of when they were little and they used to play "Lizzie and Jane" from Pride and Prejudice, which used to play constantly in the background of our lives in Seattle.

I can't bring myself to take down the now sagging and brittle lopsided Christmas tree. Is there a way to savor the days more slowly? It is so dark and cold, and we still need the suggestion of warmth from our tree lights--I'm not ready to give it up. In years past, I've been so glad to put away the decorations, so sick of holiday music and rich food and festive gatherings, but this year it seems to have barely happened. Is this what happens when you get older?

Though it passed in a blur, little highlights stand out, like Yorshire pudding, many versions of the Hallelujah chorus, Christian's homemade eggnog, pierogies, paper cranes, onion tart, old friends, cheese platters, and the kids' nativity.

This was a sweet, sweet year. Christian gave me one of the best presents of my life when he compiled all of my emails from the nineties, when he and I shared a University of Washington email account, printed out and bound. I used to write a weekly news update to my family and friends, and so it's somewhat like a journal, and I've made so many little discoveries in there, found so many things that shed light on my life and my children's lives now. I've been reading it like a suspense novel every night. And then Christian went back through old hard drives and printed out all of my poetry since 1985, that's right, 1985, when I wrote my first poem and gave it to Leslie Norris so he could tell me what a genius I was, and organized it alphabetically with different versions, etc. I know this was very time consuming, and I can't say how touched I am by this labor of love.

The day before Christmas, Ingrid rounded up all of the kids and went with her friend photographer Nate Lebaron to Rock Canyon where he took many beautiful photos of the kids, including the one above. How did she know I'd been wanting a group photo of the kids for so long? She framed these photos and had them ready by Christmas morn, although she had just barely arrived home from her first semester at college and was in an extreme state of sleep and food deprivation. Eva made a great collage and framed it--I love her art work so much--and Lula gave me a silvery gray scarf that I wear every day. Last but not least, Moses and Cecily gave me two enormous plastic cocktail rings, one in green and one in blue that they purchased and wrapped without my knowledge at Santa's Secret Workshop at school. They know my taste so well.

Thanksgiving Feast 2010

2010-11-27T18:11:00.006-06:00

This is the beginning--

Lula created beautiful tables:

Kids' Table with Oreo Turkeys that they made:

Tony and Mom:

The Feast laid out:

My Dad always finishes his dinner:

And he's a master carver:

Cecily, Tony, and Jared:

The tastiest nugget at the table, baby Lara Eva with her first sweet potatoes:

Hilary and Alexa:

The Snow boys, Kiwanis football:

Taylor and Ingrid, not on Thanksgiving:

For me, this was a perfect day.

Thanksgiving Feast Leftovers

2010-11-26T11:41:00.004-06:00

My favorite day of the year has come and gone.

As is my wont, I went nuts over the feast and ended up with way too much food and a blown food budget for the next few weeks, so I sat down this morning and made a plan to use everything up, (and also to keep the feast going for a while longer.)

The thing I miscalculated the most was the stuffing (I have two gallon-sized Ziploc bags full of leftover stuffing) and so need to be extra creative there. The stuffing was really, really good this year, I thought, with a delicious sour dough crouton (and expensive, because I used good bread), apples, sausage, and parsnips (yum!). I also bought a good bottle of ruby port for the cranberry sauce, which was terrific and had the most beautiful color I've ever seen, and a bottle of Grand Marnier, so I need to get busy with those. I bought seckel pears, persimmons and pomegranates for garnishes and centerpieces, and the pears and persimmons are at their peak of ripeness and need to be used soon. And, oh yeah, I bought ingredients to make a clementine/jicama salad with queso fresca and pepitas, but ran out of time/energy. So that's on the menu for next week.

Finally, since I have such bad camera karma, I had to borrow a photo from Chow, which you should be reading anyway, of what I hope my stuffed acorn squashes will look like.

And any thoughts on interesting things to do with Grand Marnier and pomegranates would be lovely. I also want to hear about what you all ate yesterday, with recipes!

Leftovers Deluxe:

*Stuffing in Acorn Squash and Mushrooms

*Beef Stew w/Port

*More Cranberry/Fig Sauce in Ruby Port

*Persimmon Pudding

*Something with Grand Marnier (suggestions?)

*Apple/Pear/Cranberry Pie (or Galette if I'm feeling lazy, which I probably will be)

*Chicken Breasts Roasted on Stuffing w/Mornay Sauce

*Something with Pomegranates (suggestions?)

*Jicama/Clementine Salad

10/20/10/20

2010-10-21T00:06:00.004-05:00

One morning I woke up and felt some cramping, and this was different from any other sensation I'd ever had. I was going to have my first baby. We lived on 4th Avenue, right off of Geary in the Inner Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco. In the mornings fog came off the beach and then burned away.

During my 38 hour labor, I walked the aisles of the corner grocery store, the beach at Ocean Beach, sat in the tub, and went to the hospital twice before I was finally admitted. Finally, at 10.30 pm, Eva was born, and we were blessed with the most beautiful baby I could imagine. Today we've been graced with her presence for 20 years.

Here's a list of some of my favorite qualities about her:

1) She's gorgeous, as you can see--

2) She has a very, very kind heart

3) She's amazing with children

4) She's brilliant, but completely modest in her brilliance

5) She's curious about everything

6) She has great insight and wisdom

7) She has complete integrity of thought, spirit, and conscience

8) She's hilarious

9) She plays the string bass

10) She's got awesome chops in the kitchen

I'm sad I don't get to see her every day now, but so happy she's out in the world doing her thing, and so grateful she's my daughter.

Happy, happy birthday Eva, dear!

Produce

2010-09-25T15:40:00.003-05:00

(This image is from this article on the Provo Farmer's Market)

I've been a little (read: a lot) crazy in the past six months. Today feels like a coming together--all the kids are settled in school, the house is clean, the laundry caught up, and I'm rested and practiced yoga five times this week, which keeps me so much calmer than I've ever been in my whole life. In addition to calming me down, yoga is keeping my body free of pain--I can't believe how many years I went waking up every morning with sore hips, back and/or shoulders.

Lula and I had a little date to the Farmer's Market, where, though I promised myself I would be restrained, I spent my entire food budget for the next few days on produce: the prettiest pair of twin stripy aubergines, a bag of perfect peaches, Jonathan apples, peppers, a big, leafy head of cabbage, some tomatoes and zucchini. Kindra also gave me some sweet yellow tomatoes from her garden, three acorn squash, cherry tomatoes, and some overgrown summer squash with the tough skin (what to do with those?). We also admired some beautiful hand-made tin jewelery, soaps, and lotions.

The new calmer, less busy and anxious me is returning to the kitchen a little bit at a time, and renewing my commitment to local, from scratch family cooking to the best of my budget and ability. So, here are some things I'll be making this week:

*Roasted Acorn Squash/Carrot Soup

*Zucchini Bread

*Sausage Stuffed Peppers

*Eggplant Lasagne

*French Onion Soup (I have to use up my 50 lb. bag of onions)

*Apple Galette

*Spaghetti w/ Fresh Tomato and Basil Sauce

bing

2010-07-15T11:12:00.004-05:00

Ingrid can even make this monstrous prom dress look good, especially with the addition of vintage silver heels and by calling it her pink mermaid froth gown.

Ingrid at Viewridge Park in Seattle on her 3rd birthday. Tonight we'll celebrate her 18th in Seattle--she's a Seattle girl at heart.

Right before we left Magnuson beach on Lake Washington last night, right before Ingrid emerged from the water, she lay down on the pebbles right at the shoreline for what she called a "cold stone massage." Her eyes were closed and the wake was washing over her and she was, as always, reveling in the sensory input from the world. Though Ingrid rarely gets from point A to point B very quickly, I imagine that her journey is much more interesting everyone else's.

Today she's 18. Though she's been mature and independent for a long time, this milestone feels huge. I want to mark it with a list of things I adore about her, and a little bragging.

1) She notices EVERYTHING. She can quote any line from any movie she's every scene, or describe the corner of a painting she's viewed only once. I sometimes use her as my own personal google.

2) She has the most amusing fashion sense. On bad days when I don't want to get out of bed, I sometimes motivate myself by thinking that I'll get to see Ingy's outfit. It may include chemistry goggles, wings, or tiger ears, or kitten heels, a bathing cap or a tiara. You never know. I love her fashion writing, too, which you can see at her blog Shaggy Jasmine.

3) She makes me laugh. Yesterday on the drive from Boise to Seattle she kept throwing out the most hilarious, incisive comments phrased with a poet's ear. Did you know she raised a significant amount of money to go on school trips by selling custom written limericks outside of the Creamery, and sometimes door to door?

4) The girl has guts. As witnessed by this, and her work at Planned Parenthood, for which she has been vilified by some in our very conservative community. She's not afraid to speak out and up, and she can usually win over her audience (if not to her point of view, at least they always end up loving her despite her point of view.)

5) She always knows what she wants. The famous family story goes like this: Ingrid refused to wear pants or shorts of any kind as a 2-6 year old. One time my mom was convinced she could get Ingrid to wear a skort, and purchased a cute pink one with little pink rosebuds. Ingrid took one glance at it, lifted up the front flap revealing the shorts underneath and said, "These are formen." Not even Grandma Wendy, her match in stubbornness, could prevail. Ingy knew, when she heard about Bryn Mawr College at 13 years of age while watching Some Like it Hot, that she wanted to go there for school. Guess where she's headed this August?

I could go on and on about this fascinating, wonderful creature who I'm lucky enough to call my daughter, but it would be in poor taste, so I'll stop.

Let me just say that Ingy makes my days ever so much better.

Lula

2010-07-02T10:16:00.007-05:00

Maybe it's because she tries so hard to make everyone happy

or because she's so full of ideas, energy, and fun,

but something about this girl makes me want to do anything to please her.

Like throwing her two full birthday parties, including one with thirty tweens. . .

or creating a recipe for lettuce wraps for her birthday dinner. . .

and most of all, making these (what were supposed to be completely adorable) slightly creepy toadstool cupcakes. I don't do crafty crafts or foods,

but anything for my girl.

Happy 12th, Lula Marni!

Discovery & Some Rhetorical Questions

2010-06-30T19:09:00.004-05:00

How have I not known about this blog and it's recipe for bacon ice cream?

Or this recipe, from the same blogger's cookbook, for coconut saffron ice cream featured on David Lebovitz's blog?

And, why does D.L.'s blog make me not want to live in Paris?

And how excited am I to take 7 teenagers to NY on Saturday (my birthday, so they'd better be nice)?

So, that's me up there with my laptop, and here are the things I'm doing with it right now:

1) Looking up summer recipes--chicken mango slaw, ice creams, bbq sauce, refreshing beverages.

2) Planning NY itinerary--Fela, fireworks, Evensong at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Dumplings, Coney Island, St. Ann's Warehouse, Yoga to the People and much, much more.

3) Teaching 2010 online at Salt Lake Community College.

4) Summer tutoring for Lula, Cecy and Mo.

5) Preparing a show in this space with C for Seattle in July.

I'm always on my laptop. I love my laptop. It's a problem.

More later.

the same, and different

2010-06-17T15:33:00.003-05:00

So many things are different this year.

So many things are the same.

Last year, I carried around many more pounds. Last year I worked less. Last year was better and worse than this year. This year, the spring is colder. This year I do more yoga. Last year I had all my kids home for the summer. Same with this year, but the kids are different. Last year, I had never published a book. Last year I wrote many more blog posts than I have this year so far.

Something about getting older makes me appreciate the cycles more than I used to, the constancy and the change.

Here's me, pounds lighter, with a published book, reading from it in Amsterdam:

Last year, I cooked more, and I worked less. This year I'm cooking differently. Fewer carbs, fewer sugars, more animal, which goes against what I've always believed about eating healthily and ecologically. Last year I cooked a lot more pasta. Here's last summer's pasta:

This year, I have all of these same flowers in my garden, but at this same time last year, the lilies had bloomed, and this year, I'm still waiting for them. This year Eva's flower arrangements sit on top of a white oval Ikea table, and the wallpaper is torn down, but not replaced.

Last year there was no oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, though our waters were in danger already.

Here are my eco-inspired poems in Poets for Living Waters.

This year I want to think about different and same, not better and worse.

Here's to peace in accepting the way things are, not the way I wish they would be.

Happy New Year in June!

Pomp and Circumstance

2010-05-30T14:55:00.001-05:00

So, I graduated from high school yesterday. Woah.

I was Co-Salutatorian, and I gave a speech. Here she is:

“Hope and future are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.” Henry David Thoreau was very much endeared to a specific kind of beauty—he learned from the East Coast, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lush property and from Walden Pond. This quote connects deeply to Walden School Philosophy because at Walden we learn truth from the world around us as well as in books and in the classroom. While Thoreau spent time discovering himself by the famous Walden Pond, Waldenites gain experience from the amazing, rare, and unique ecotope that we’ve created at the school.

Thoreau is often criticized because he would make bold claims about escaping humanity and embarking on his own, only to take in numerous visitors at his cabin, send his laundry back to his mother, and head to town to spend an evening in the tavern. We named our school after Thoreau’s book in hopes that we could, like Henry David, learn by creating makeshift shelters, foraging for food, and gazing at moose. Anybody associated with Walden can tell you the extent to which we have taken Thoreau’s words to heart—in the spirit of emulating his idealized “impervious and quaking swamp,” we have acquired reptiles, more than a little mud, and sometimes even a pair of waders worn as a fashion statement. Our ecosystem also contains a few decrepit couches, large piles of pseudo-wearable detritus, and many moldy Tupperware containers.

We operate as something of an ecosystem—after witnessing nature on our many Walkabouts and Moab expeditions, we seem to have done a great job of emulating the organic, symbiotic communities that are present in the mountains and deserts of Utah. Many say that 80% of Walden’s biomass consists of one species—a certain barefooted, heavily empowered herbivore with certain political views and a fondness for outlandish clothing. Though many students fit this description, I think it’s safe to say that many also defy the stereotype. One such mammal is a friend of mine who has very different political views from me. One issue he is very passionate about is gun control and second amendment rights. About three times a week, we have a conversation that sounds like this:

“Oh hi, Ingrid! Listen. You know I totally respect your beliefs, but let me tell you about this article I was reading that supports my argument!”

Then approximately forty-five minutes of lively debate ensue, during which we both learn about the issue and practice what we just learned in class about the rhetorical triangle. The discussion inevitably ends with, “Well Ingrid, I may not share your views, but I just love ya to death. Thanks for talkin’ to me.” And I say, “Well, the feeling is mutual. At least we can agree on that!”—regardless of who fits the Waldenite stereotype, I think the most important thing we have in common is respect and love for each other… at least, while we’re not in the middle of a heated political argument. This little-know biodiversity translates into an amazing education when it is placed on fertile soil.

Anybody who has experienced the stunning Fiery Furnace hike in Moab has been subjected to the Cryptobiotic Soil video—it is shown mandatorily at the visitor’s center before any hiker may embark. At Walden, this piece of cinematic genius is a classic—though the dialogue is occasionally lackluster and the aesthetics experimental, we all heed the oft-repeated warning that hikers should NOT walk off of the path for fear that the vitally important living soil that is the foundation of the arid ecosystem will be disturbed. Like Cryptobiotic soil, the Walden faculty is an often underappreciated foundation of the school’s ecosystem. Though our teachers may not contain many lichens, mosses, or cyanobacteria, they are a earthy, dedicated, and expert part of Walden and of the lives of the students. Cryptobiotic crust is known for its ability to improve stability of otherwise easily eroded soils, and similarly, I have seen many teachers help the current graduating class with college applications, coaching them through the infamously hectic and draining senior year. My math teachers along the way have had to deal with some real emotional instability on my part, for any long and seemingly incomprehensible equation can sometimes render me teary-eyed and whimpering. The crust also serves the purpose of increasing water infiltration in regions that receive little precipitation, and the teachers have been extremely gracious when it comes to making sure that students have access to and knowledge of every cultural opportunity in Utah. I will never forget afternoons spent this fall in Park City watching documentaries with Bev, or going to physics lectures in the Marriot Center (with such speakers as Neil Tyson and Brian Greene), or that amazing field trip we took during my sophomore year to see Michelle Obama speak in Salt Lake City. And, of course, the faculty is never hesitant to lead us halfway around the world if that is what it takes to quench our cultural thirst. This metaphor, however, is somewhat weak because the Walden teachers are significantly more resilient than soil—a simple footprint is enough to destroy a patch of cryptobiotic crust, whereas I’ve seen the teachers weather the literal and figurative elements many times.

Teachers, in case you are ever discouraged or have moments where you believe that your tireless work has been in vain, I would like you to know that you have made an enormous difference in my life. I came to this school feeling discouraged about and intimidated by my own education, feeling like I had no future and no talent, and I graduate today, having been treated and taught as an individual, which has given me the understanding that even frightening subjects can be my friends. You have instilled in this class an enormous and insatiable intellectual curiosity, and I cannot thank you enough for the education you’ve given me. In addition, I believe that there are students whose lives you have not only changed, but literally saved. Watching your tireless dedication to service has inspired many students to follow in your path—I cannot tell you how many of my peers have told me that they want to become teachers because of how much they respect and admire you. Your passion for your subject areas has shown us the value of pursuing our own passions. Thank you.

The Walden School was founded with Thoreau’s ideas and journeys in mind, and has evolved into a strange and lovely ecosystem. This week, Walden took a group of students to Capital Reef. Standing at the top of a cliff with my classmates and teachers, I knew exactly what Thoreau was talking about when he noted that hope and future could be found in the wild swamps rather than the manicured lawns—I saw hope and future reflected in the wild, untamed beauty of the sagebrush and the boulders, but I also witnessed it in the wild, untamed beauty of my fellow Waldenites. Ecosystems in their natural state function in a seemingly chaotic, but in fact perfectly balanced manner. As you cultivate your minds, don’t neglect your inner wilderness—our world could really use the symbiosis that the uncivilized wilderness seems to have perfected. Congratulations to the class of 2010, today is your day!

funeral potatoes

2010-03-29T16:25:00.002-05:00

Yesterday in Relief Society, Sister B. got up to thank everyone for helping out with the four funerals we've had in the past seven weeks in our ward.

I've been so disheartened lately by the hateful rhetoric and irreconcilable differences heightened by the healthcare reform process, and even uncomfortable at church thinking about how I might be worshipping next to someone who thinks I'm a communist or a baby-killer because of my political views, so when Sister B. said that, I felt the balm of creamed soup come over my soul. After all, no matter what our political views, when asked to bring potatoes to a funeral, we all combine two cans of cream of chicken soup, one pint of sour cream, 1/2 bunch of scallions, and 2 c. of cheddar cheese with a bag of frozen shredded potatoes and bake at 350 in a 9x13 dish. At least that's what I've been doing since I moved to Utah seven years ago. (Although some of us choose to top with crushed cornflakes or potato chips and some of us don't). For a moment I melted, became molten inside, as Scarlett Lindeman described funeral potatoes in this beautifully written article.

This can't be a bad thing, to come together in this way, even with processed, industrial food, to support each other in our trials. And though I've had my moments of alienation in the past twenty-plus years as a sister, this communal spirit keeps me in the fold year in and year out.

p.s.--photo of molten funeral potatoes stolen from this website.

p.p.s.--are funeral potatoes served in any other churches, for instance, midwestern churches, where they also serve a lot of jello?

the edge of spring

2010-03-16T15:11:00.003-05:00

Yesterday two students in my cooking class requested that we learn to poach eggs, which inspired a trip to Clifford Family Farms for fresh eggs.

Driving south from the school towards the farm, the eastern mountains were jagging up from clouds and mist and edges of sunlight were just glowing around the peaks.

It was very happy.

On the way back from the farm Timpanogas was in full sunlight, really the most beautiful thing I remember seeing. I love this time of seasonal transition--all the anticipation and first moments of sandals (three of my students wore them yesterday), or arugula, spring dresses or asparagus.

And the eggs? We poached them.

Cali was scared to eat them. "They're slimy," she said.

"Not slimy," I said, "silky. Eat the yolk with your hash brown."

She did. She and Katy split one, said they liked it. Amanda is still processing her first poached egg. "I'm not sure what to say yet. It was a different taste for me."

Megan and Mackenzie didn't taste. Maybe by the end of the week?

I have many stories and recipes to post over at Walden School Cooks and Eats, so stay tuned, and eat a fresh egg (preferably laid by a galavanting chicken) with asparagus soon.

Breakthrough?

2010-03-07T13:30:00.003-06:00

For the past ten years I've been moving towards doing more with writing and cooking. I have several projects going now, but the most tangible and imminent work comes from my teaching job. I'm working on a really good curriculum that integrates language and culinary arts, and finally, after three years, feel I'm on the right track. This project is far from done, but if you're interested in seeing what my young students are learning and writing about in my "Locavore Eating and Foraging" class, beginning March 22nd or in my "Cooking Around the World" class, an intensive cooking class learning from a variety of cuisines, check out our new blog. The blog is in beginning phases, but will hopefully grow quickly, and will chronicle the growth of this curriculum. I'm posting some writing from last semester, which wasn't a cooking class, but we did have several food experiences to draw from in our writing assignments, including two outings to the Amano Chocolate Factory and a cheese tasting day.

Next week, so far, we're doing crepes, pots de creme, spinach crepes mornay, apple galette, japanese noodles and tamales. Any more suggestions for fun, basic recipes? Anyone want to teach a dish? Speak to my students? Host a tasting at their fabulous local restaurant (I'm talking to you Rooster, Pizzeria 712, and Communal)?

My ideal language arts classroom would be a kitchen. Class would meet every morning after breakfast in a comfortable sunny nook. We would read, write, cook, clean up and end with lunch.

more faith, less hope: an apology and a sermon from brother revell

2010-02-28T11:42:00.003-06:00

Every day I have between 4 and 6 hours of good energy--enough to do some dishes, fold some laundry, teach some classes, and then collapse on the couch. A few hours later, I can sometimes muster 2 to 3 hours more of low energy to help kids with homework, make a simple dinner, read stories, and put kids to bed. Sometimes, thanks to a laptop I can use in bed or on the couch, I write some things and send them to publishers. Sometimes, if I budget well, I can go to a party or take a child shopping for a birthday present. The bard says how I too often feel here, as if he had already read the Elizabethan DSM-IV:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
   I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
   And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
   Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
   With what I most enjoy contented least:

I've been under this energy constraint for the past five years, and sporadically before that for my whole life, when I've had episodes of depression. It's held me back from doing things I want to, and know I can, do, kept me from consistently putting in the hours required to do everything I'd like. Every day I hope it will change. I plan on things changing in the future while feeling frustrated with the present. Today I want to assess the damage that too much hope has done to my life, to my relationships with my children, my poems, and my world, and to make a shift from hopefulness to faithfulness.

A few years ago, in poetry workshop with the amazing poet and teacher Donald Revell, he taught us that we should have more faith and less hope in our poems. His reasoning goes like this: you can't write poems hoping that someone else will love them, or that they'll win a prize or adulation because you have no control over the way other people respond to you or your loved ones, and because the reward of external approbation is never big enough make it worth spending time doing things you don't love. You can write poems that you love and send them out in the world with your faith. Some misunderstood poets, like Emily Dickinson, have eventually become better understood. I love Dickinson because she loved her poems so much, and wrote them believing (as opposed to hoping) that others would love them, too. And they did. Eventually. After she was dead. And that's because she wrote poems she loved. Which doesn't ever guarantee that someone else will love them. Only that their author loves them. Which is enough. Should be enough. And because her poems didn't receive love until she was buried in her beloved earth. Dickinson says:

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

(I love how much Dickinson loved the world. Loving the world makes good poems.)

During Don's lesson, I had a major parenting epiphany. This statement about hope and faith holds true for children as well as poems. I realized then that I had not been displaying a full acceptance of my children. Instead of reveling in their unique presence, I spent too much time correcting, hoping for change and improvement. This was a huge mistake that robbed me and them of the full measure of love and joy we could have had then. Here's apology number one: To my children, especially the oldest two, for not backing you with full faith earlier in your lives.

Apology number two: I'm sorry world. I haven't loved you enough. I have wished you to be different, not lived in you enough. I want to change. Here's what Brother Revell says about the world in his poem "My Mojave":

A perfect circle falls Onto white imperfections. (Consider the black road, How it seems white the entire Length of a sunshine day.)  Or I could say Shadows and mirage Compensate the world,  Completing its changes With no change.

Mormon doctrine, the one I was raised with from the day of my birth, has (what seems to me in my fuzzy understanding of Western Christina Traditions) a less dualistic view of heaven and earth, body and spirit, than many Christian traditions. The earth and our bodies are not so much fallen states as they are stops on a journey. Every Mormon knows this scripture by heart from the second book of Nephi: Adam fell that men [and women] might be. Men [and women] are that they might have joy. And here's what what we sing as small children:

Whenever I hear the song of a bird,

Or look at the blue, blue sky,

Whenever I feel the rain on my face,

Or the wind as it rushes by,

Whenever I touch a velvet rose

Or walk by a lilac tree,

I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world,

Heavenly Father created for me.

Children, world, poems, Brother Revell says:

I'm not needed

Like wings in a storm,

And God is the storm.

But I need you.

I love you better and better, live in you more and more.

Convergence

2010-02-24T16:44:00.002-06:00

My friend Courtney from Seattle (now Portland) who used to sing with Seattle Experimental Opera sent me a message on Sunday night to see if I wanted to get together while she was in town and meet her good friends, Rachel and David, who are starting the magazine Edible Wasatch in our lovely Deseret.

Do I want to meet some folks trying to promote more local food in Utah? Heck yeah.

So we had dinner at Rooster, which they kindly kept open late for us, and had wonderful conversation about food, photos, music, Utah, etc., etc. And I got to see Courtney after more than ten years, who has always been one of the coolest, smartest, foodiest people I know(plus she looks like a beautiful Modigliani, wears sandalwood oil and excellent jewelry and clothes).

It was the perfect happy antidote to this cold grey end of season.

cardiothoracic & publicity shot

2010-02-23T16:19:00.003-06:00

A new poem in Free Verse. Don't be too grossed out. I sometimes write poems about pretty things, though I happen to think that veins and needles and organs are really beautiful. After finishing two books about trees and flowers, I just completed a little chapbook about surgery, diagnosis, doctors, patients and the weirdness of healing/treating/ministering.

My student Caitlin, a talented photographer, took some photos of me yesterday for my book cover. Here's one of them. I think it's the coolest one, but not the one I'll use for the book. My students liked the ones where I looked happy the best.

Super Pressed Tofu

2010-02-10T15:19:00.002-06:00

Does anyone know where to procure this stuff in the Provo area? Bittman claims it will obliterate your need for non-industrially raised white chicken meat, which we never buy because we would need a second mortgage on our house to fit it into our budget. I'm loving tofu right now, and had the best tofu of my life at Rooster last night. (Andy and Simy: please put these on your menu permanently).

We ate our fantastic tofu with shitake chicken, ginger/peanut/spinach dumplings, and Thai hot wings, with La Donna Smith, an improviser extraordinaire from Birmingham and an appreciative eater. Seems like all of the experimental composers/improvisers, etc. that Christian hosts in Provo really appreciate the gustatory pleasures of our town. I don't know if they're just being gracious, or if the food is really good around here these days. It's definitely better than when we first moved here seven years ago. It could also be that these artists, who were marginalized for at least half of their lives and many of whom still exist on what I imagine to be pretty slim margins despite attaining international renown in their fields, still appreciate a good meal.

Locust Salon Chilli

2010-01-28T16:05:00.002-06:00

I have a feeling I've written and posted this recipe before. Have I? We had a Salon on Friday night, and I got several requests for this recipe, though Christian's beef and black-eyed pea chilli got eaten more quickly, and seemed more popular. Not that it was a competition or anything.

I really wish I had a camera and more skills in the photography department. Words will have to do for now.

The Locust Salon Vegetable Melange Chilli

adapted from/inspired by The Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook’s Vegetarian Chilli recipe

serves at least 20 people (we serve it over rice)

1/3 c. extra virgin olive oil

2 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped

1 head garlic, peeled and minced

1 large bunch Italian (flat-leaf) parsley

2 T. dried oregano

½ c. fresh basil

¼ c. cocoa powder

1-2 T. chilli powder

1 T. cumin

1 T. fennel seeds

3 squirts (or less) or sriracha (if you don’t want it spicy, leave it out—go slow and add one squirt at a time so as not crank the heat up too high for your taste)

8 oz. brown or white mushrooms, cut in half

2 sweet red peppers, cut into uniformly sized chunks

3 zucchini, cut into 3-inch chunks

3 white, yellow or red potatoes in 3-inch chunks (skins on)

1 eggplant, in 3-inch chunks

1 c. sweet frozen corn

2 16 oz. cans each of black beans, garbanzo beans, and red beans, drained and rinsed

2 32 oz. cans of whole tomatoes with juice

2 c. water

½ c. polenta

fresh lemon to taste

salt to taste

1) Saute onion and garlic in olive oil over medium low until translucent. Turn up the heat a bit and add parsley, basil and dried herbs and spices, then cocoa powder. When everything has roasted a bit, add vegetables one type at a time and soften them slightly.

2) Add tomatoes and water, then beans.

3) Simmer for about 20 minutes until vegetables are barely tender, and then add corn and polenta.

4) Simmer for about 15 minutes more, until polenta and vegetables are at desired tenderness.

5) Add salt, sriracha (if desired) and a few squirts of lemon until the chilli meets your desired level of spiciness, savory-ness, and brightness.

Last Minute Christmas List

2009-12-24T08:39:00.003-06:00

I just found Cecily's wish list in her back-pack. Here it is, with first grade spellings maintained:

*iphon

*sel phon

*500 bux

*swimming pool

*yoyo boll

*bendaroos

*laptop

*kamra

and, best of all:

*servint

I'm running out to the store right now.

Merry Christmas!

introduction/conclusion

2009-12-05T06:54:00.002-06:00

Even though I cringe when my kids bring home their fifth/sixth grade five paragraph essays with the thesis repeated in both the intro and conclusion, a practice I have to undo in every writing class I teach later on down the road, this particular example of thesis restatement transcends with it's incredible cuteness:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Doesn't everyone love a family bike ride? Or a beautiful peace of art?

or even just a great pair of shoes? Well those happen to be the 3 things I want for christmas and I'm about to tell you why I want those things.

The first reason I want a bike is because we live in Provo and if I had a bike I could ride so many places like school. It would also be better for the earth. And plus I've always wanted a bike.

The second thing I want for Christmas is a set of markers. The first reason is Grandma and Grandpa always ask me to draw pictures for them but all my markers are kind of dried out so I gave them to Moses and Cecily. And if I get a big set of markers I won't have to get markers for school.

The next thing I want for christmas is simply a couple of pairs of shoes. The first reason is, winter is coming and I'm going to need some good shoes, and also there are these shoes called Uggs that I really want.

Those are the reasons why I want shoes, a bike and a set of markers.

Sincerely,

Lula

winter squash and root gingered soup or if you think i have a squash fetish you would be right

2009-11-24T17:21:00.003-06:00

Last night I felt my stride once again in the kitchen (it's been gone for a while) when I created this soup in honor of my mom and dad's arrival for Thanksgiving, which brought me an unexpectedly exuberant feeling of joy during a dark few weeks of life.

I had only a butternut and a blue hubbard left from the Farmer's Market (now closed for the season, but opening for a single holiday market on Friday, so I can hopefully procure more squash) and decided to make them into a soup. The farmer who sold me the blue hubbard told me they were best combined with other root vegetables because they were too mild to stand on their own. After tasting them, I'm not sure I agree with her, but I'd already started the carrots and roasted the butternut squash, so I went ahead with my plan to combine a variety of squash and vegetables. I suppose you could leave the tomatoes out, but I like the balance of the acid brings to the sweetness of the squash ( I sometimes find butternut soup cloying). This soup is quite easy even though you need to plan on roasting time for the squash--you can use that time to make a salad, set the table and get everything else ready for the soup:

Winter Squash and Root Gingered Soup

½ stick unsalted butter

2 medium yellow onions, chopped

6 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 small butternut squash, roasted

1 small blue hubbard squash, roasted

1 32 oz. can whole tomatoes

2 quarts chicken stock

1 quart water

1 t. cumin

¼ t. cayenne

1 t. (or more, to taste, if you like it spicy) sriracha

½ pint heavy cream

1. Wash and pierce squash and roast whole in a 375 oven. Cool slightly, seed, and scoop out flesh.

2. While squash is roasting, peel and chop and then sauté onions and carrots on medium low in butter. Grate ginger into onions and carrots and continue cooking. This amount of ginger gives a very subtle background note, so if you really dig a gingery soup, add another inch or two of root.

3. Combine stock, water, tomatoes (and juice), cumin, and cayenne. Let soup simmer for 10-15 minutes.

4. Purée soup until smooth. Heat soup through then finish with cream and a teaspoon of sriracha.

I I I went all out and put on a table cloth, dim lighting (my best solution for bad wall paper and a non-spotless house), lit candles, etc. Mom and Dad, Pat and Bonnie and all the kids save Eva were there. I didn't photograph the soup because the moment was too good and I didn't want to leave it. In a moment, one single moment, my depression lifted and was completely gone. Almost twenty-four hours later, I still feel great. What happened? It feels miraculous, or maybe my soup is medicinal.

P.S.--My mom said I should enter my soup in a recipe contest. That was pretty much the highlight of my cooking life, coming from my cooking idol herself.

Ill

Hercules Beetle

2009-11-19T16:32:00.002-06:00

I saw one of these today, a real one, dead, pinned against moth-repellent in a drawer of beetles housed in the Bean Museum's insect collections. The most interesting things in the exhibit, however, were the boy specimens--four seventh-grade boys I was chaperoning on a tour of the insect collection guided by a nerdly entomologist who somehow captivated their attention for an hour and patiently tried to find specimens that would satisfy their curiosity about:

*the biggest insect in the collection (do you want wingspan? no, just massive.)

*the smallest insect in the collection (fleas on alcohol slides)

*the most deadly (the bee, fyi, who is the most dangerous animal by far in the U.S.)

*the weirdest (these huge walking-stick type insects from New Guinea)

*butterflies with clear wings and owl moths

Suddenly those boys were the cutest things I've ever seen, their baby faces, that in three or four years will be handsome, animated and looking engaged with the material in a way that I don't often see in the classroom. Being that I teach English. (In my limited experience with Jr. High and High School boys, many of them seem particularly resistant to writing in the classroom, or maybe they're just resistant to me.)

I wish I could make this happen every day, but for now having a beautiful moment among 2,000,000 specimens of insects was just really, really good.

Hunger Banquet

2009-11-18T09:41:00.000-06:00

Hello All!

A few friends and I are hosting an Oxfam Hunger Banquet for our senior service project. We would be honored if you would join us. It will be held on November 19 at 7:00 pm at the Walden School (4230 N. University Avenue), tickets will be $10.

There will be talks from Gerald Brown and Warner Woodworth, as well as some musical entertainment and a photo slideshow.

We hope to see you there!

Ingrid Asplund

ps: email me (asplundingrid@gmail.com) or call my friend Hillary (801-400-8182) for tickets and more information

lame links

2009-11-17T07:36:00.002-06:00

I was so proud of all my links in the last post until I tried opening them all and found I had posted them wrong. Ingrid calls this my "old person's problem." They were really cool links, so I'm posting them again, sans old person's problem:

1) Julie's Blog

2) Shahid's Ghazal

3) The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

4) The Medical Detectives

5) House and Philosophy

6) Yoga

7) My Poetry Press Blaze Vox

8) Ravishing Disunities

Oh My Goodness

2009-11-16T15:58:00.003-06:00

If you're too overwhelmed for narrative, write a list. I got inspired by my friend Julie's awesome blog to finally update again.

Here's what I've been doing lately:

1) Teaching my students to write ghazals, haiku, sestinas, and sonnets, which they totally hate. I love the ghazal, especially this one by Shahid, and using my favorite book on the subject, Ravishing Disunities. The Ghazal works with fragmentation and avoids the kind of unity that we look are trained by our English teachers to look for in say, the sonnet. This is why my students hate me and ghazals right now--they're struggling to learn to live with ambiguity, multiplicity, lack of closure, actually things I love the most in poems.

2) Yoga. I'm trying to go four or five times a week in the hopes of not resorting to pharmaceuticals to keep my mental health in check. Nothing against them--I love them and have used them and would use them again if necessary, but I love not feeling dampened by them, and love not paying for them every month, and love the absence of side effects when not on them. So I'm trying not to develop my yearly full-blown depression.

3) Squash--acorn, sphagetti, butternut, amber cup, green hubbard. Roasted, pureed, mashed, and so on.

4) Reading Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches Me and I Fall Down and Berton Roueche's The Medical Detectives in preparation for teaching a writing/ lit. class on medical writing, idea inspired by my friend Teri from Mills who now teaches bio-ethics at Gallaudet and who contributed a chapter in this awesome book on House.

5) Editing and revising my manuscript of poems for this press, forthcoming in winter of 2011.

6) Finishing up fourteen. That's 1-4. Loads of laundry.

7) Revising a new manuscript, tentatively called Gentian Weaves her Fringes and a chapbook Physic at the Table so I can start submitting them.

8) Thinking a lot about finishing the novel I started last year. Totally discouraged about not having enough time right now.

Favorite Forgotten but Just Rediscovered Annotation

2009-08-30T20:03:00.002-05:00

From p. 192 of MTAOFC (method for making crepes), it's a poem, actually, especially the yellow enameled iron pan:

8/14/80
yellow enameled iron pan
r. front on 6 to 5 1/2--let
it get hot enough!
let edges of crepe get
crisp and it doesn't
stick in the middle

My Julia

2009-08-30T16:03:00.002-05:00

I resisted telling my Julia Child story for a while because I didn't want to be seen as trendy, or as one of the many people promoting the movie. But I finally saw the Julie and Julia, and couldn't resist pulling out my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which, like all well-loved cookbooks, has it's own story.

It was August of 1993, and we had just moved to Seattle from the Bay Area, and had decided it would be cheaper to leave the furniture behind that we had scavenged and salvaged when we moved to California than to rent a moving truck. So we arrived in Seattle with nothing, and immediately started scavenging.

If you're not familiar with Seattle, one of its many good features is its yard and garage sales, and one of its other brilliant features is September. September's yard sales were bright blue, not too hot, not too cool, and full of treasures. For eating on, we got a small wooden table with two small chairs for the little kids, and a marble bistro table for family dining.

For cooking, I picked up MTAOFC and a Moosewood Cookbook, both annotated with the marginalia of careful, thorough, tidy little cook--her recipes were accompanied by notations in a small, neat hand, notations like "6/27/77 very good" or sometimes "v. good" or sometimes just "good." Other times she suggested substitutions: "Used veal stock instead. V. good." I took the book home and made tahini dressing from Moosewood, then soupe aux choux, potage veloute aux champignons and soupe a l'oignon. I made them a bunch of times that fall, mastered them, actually, because they were the recipes I could afford to make. I carefully honed some skills that fall.

After coming home from the movie the other night, I got all excited about learning some new skills and pulled out my cookbook. I'm not sure what I'll make yet, but feel like, after the tired and not too delicious chicken teryaki I made last night, It's time to take the cooking up a notch. I was inspired by Julia's energy and dedication, which is what I need in my life right now.

Here's to more energy, more dedication to delicous food, a better brown sauce, Navarin Printanier, Moussaka, and Epinards en Surprise.

(My kids are telling me this resolution will only last two weeks, the length that most of my resolutions last.)

(And for pete's sake, can someone tell me how to put accents into this damn blog?)

momo post-it

2009-08-30T08:49:00.002-05:00

Look who's making progress. . . . Moses did a fantastic job today with his gentle hands! Anytime he thought about forgetting, I'd remind him of his kudo, and he'd snap right back into gentle mode. He is such a great kid! Keep up the awesome work!

Love,

Miss Bryn

momo post-it

2009-08-24T21:04:00.003-05:00

Moses did a great job of having "gentle hands" this afternoon! I only had to remind him once, and he did a good job of listening. He is such a darling boy! When we were doing an activity, he was the only kid who knew that when the teacher was giving instructions, he needed his listening ears! Way to go, Moses!

Love,

Miss Bryn

simple masochism

2009-08-23T10:44:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to quell my tendency to complicate everything. Since my many-years-ago resolve to cook dinner every night but Friday, things have been just a little tougher. Better, but tougher. As I emerge from my one-year teaching sabbatical, facing six classes this fall, something needs to fall off the handcart I'm hoisting uphill.

Will it be dinner?

Will we start going through the Wendy's drive-thru on a regular basis? This makes me shudder. Will I get hard-ass on my kids and start making them do more housework? Will I buy pre-made food at Costco?

The answers are hopefully not, no, maybe, no.

One idea: only one item for dinner every night, like a buttery sweet potato (Monday), a pot of beans (Tuesday), a big salad (Wednesday). And if I tell myself I can only have one item, that means I will allow myself two, since I have to break every rule that exists to make sure I'm really alive and that such a thing as cause and effect still exists in the universe (I have to check in with cause and effect every day).

So two items: a pot of beans and rice? Spaghetti and marinara? A salad and lamb chop?

See the inexorable move towards complication?

This week, other people have cooked or are cooking dinner for us thrice. Happy day! So here are some happy menus:

Menu One:
*Matt's BBQ Chicken
*Many Platters of Corn on the Cob
*Tomatoes and Basil
*Suzette's Big Salad
*Seared Garlic Green Beans
*Fresh Peaches with Ice Cream

Menu Two:
*Wine-braised pork-chops with a sour cream pan sauce
*Rice
*Seared Garlic Green Beans

Menu Three:
*Seared Petite Sirloin
*Tomatoes and Onions

Menu Four:
*Zucchini/Chard Frittata
*Vegetable Curry Soup
*Andi's Artisan Bread
*Bruschetta
*Emily's Cinnamon Brownies with Ganache

Today friends are feeding us again and I'm making salad, need to do something with the beets I bought at the Farmer's market last week.

But friends don't always feed us. I still have the complication dilemma. People out there who don't have fuzzy, weird, non-logical brains out there, tell me what to do.

Public Option!

2009-08-18T13:47:00.001-05:00

Dear Representative Chaffetz,

Six years ago I went in for a routine ultra-sound at 12 weeks into my fourth pregnancy. At the exam, on one of the darkest days of my life, my technician found a large tumor growing on my daughter's lung. In the ensuing months and years, I fought the monstrous bureaucracy that is private health insurance (and I have one of the "good" providers) in order to get care for my daughter. In addition to the hundreds of additional hours a year I spend on her care because of resulting chronic conditions, I spend another hundred each year dealing with insurance on providers, over-billing, and fighting for coverage of the proper drugs for her; then there is the two to three hundred dollars a month on out of pocket expenses for co-pays on drugs and doctor' visits.

I often wonder how many years of my life are gone due to the hours I spend in pursuit of health for my daughter, and to the enormous amount of stress I feel about procuring the funds and the approval needed to insure her care.

I compare this to my experience 19 years ago when I was living in California attending graduate school, pregnant with my second daughter, receiving care through California's Medicare system. We had choice, excellent care, and a very limited amount of red-tape to deal with, as well as a measure of peace-of-mind that comes with knowing that if the absolute worst happens, we had some security.

I would like to see the option to buy into Medicare made available to all because I would like the option of health care coverage by an entity whose concern includes public health and welfare rather than the only choice that is currently available: a private provider whose sole concern is their own bottom line.

I'm writing to encourage you to support comprehensive health care reform in order to help reduce health care costs and to provide greater security for the people of our country. Offering the choice to buy into Medicare to everyone seems to be the most logical, simple, and moral way to provide us all with a more stable health care system, and thus a physically and economically healthier population.

Thank you for your attention and quick response on this most urgent matter.

Sincerely yours,

Lara Candland Asplund

darling blog,

2009-08-14T06:39:00.003-05:00

I missed you whilst in Seattle and whilst being too hot and covered in children to really write you. And I got a little freaked out about posting pictures because, you see, everyone else's blogs have beautiful pictures and mine is so text-heavy. Because the shape of letters is so beautiful and, though they take so much longer to decode than picture images, have so many more layers to them. The pictures readers make from the words they read in their own minds are so much more varied and mysterious. I guess that's what I'm after. Mystery. Like film noir--so much is off-screen.

So picture this, from Seattle:

*Eva's Curryish Rubbed Roast
*Alice's Roast Pork Braised in Cherry Juice
*Chard Frittatta made with Farm Box Produce
*Pizzettas topped with Wild Mushrooms or Baby Zucchinis or New Potatoes
*Alice and Jim's Salmon, maybe doused in Pernod? with Fresh Sage
*Dick's Deluxe Burger
*Alice's Chocolate Cake (from Chez Panisse Desserts?) featuring Ground Almonds
*Molly Moos' Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream
*Lara's Mashed Potatoes, Made the Way Jim and Robin Like Them: 8 lbs. Potatoes to TWO sticks of butter, Hand Mashed (I don't think I left enough lumps in)
*Alice's Korean Pancakes with Dipping Sauce

Add the smell of brine from the sound, or the smell of misty Seattle and the layered beauty of that town--all hillocks and nooks and crannies and ocean, lake, mountain, concrete, neon, tree, and boat mashed and crashed together--

some poems

2009-07-30T16:29:00.001-05:00

of mine just came out: http://www.ghotimag.com/.

Hope you like!

Church talk!

2009-07-27T01:23:00.001-05:00

(I was assigned as the youth speaker this week, and asked to speak on the Word of Wisdom. I thought it was kind of relevant to this blog.)
Ingrid Asplund
June 26, 2009
I recently spent a foreign exchange year in Germany, where it is legal to drink alcohol at 16 and where beer is always present at social gatherings. Many times I would have to explain that alcohol is verboten in my religion, and often it also became clear that I don’t smoke, do drugs, drink coffee, and so forth. After all of this, I was often asked, “Well, what do you do then?” I usually answered with an attempt to be funny in German (with is a far more fearsome endeavor than one might expect) and say something along the lines of “Oh, we do have fun… twice a year, on Christmas and our Birthdays!”
But jokes aside, that is a very valid question—it always seemed to me that there are a lot of “don’t”s and “shouldn’t”s in the Word of Wisdom, but upon closer inspection I noticed many more “do”s and “should”s.
Although it is easy to remember not to drink coffee or smoke cigarettes, certain words and passages can be harder to interpret —for instance, what does it mean to use resources with “prudence”? It seems that many of our problems come from a lack of prudence when it comes to food—eating without thinking, without pausing and savoring has clearly led many people into health problems, and unsustainable farming practices have contributed to great environmental disasters.
It is certainly plausible that our Heavenly Father would want to protect the Earth as well as our bodies with the Word of Wisdom—they are both His holy temples, both beautiful and precious gifts from the Lord, and our lives depend on the health of both of these things. Also, many of the suggestions in section 89 are vital to the preservation of our Earth and our bodies—it mentions eating “every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof”, which was perhaps a strange idea at the time, because there weren’t many other options, but now seems very relevant, because everything that makes it possible to eat, for instance, a strawberry in December has proven to be quite harmful to the environment. In Germany, there is a very delicious variety of white Asparagus called “Spargel” that is very valued but is only in season for a few weeks of the year. Spargel season is greatly anticipated, especially in my rural community, and as soon as it ripens special meals are prepared in its celebration. Once, I was riding home in the bus one day through the farmland. Our bus driver pulled the bus over in the middle of nowhere, and got out, for he had seen a spargel stand by a farm and wanted to get the first of the season. I loved that, instead of eating it year round and taking it for granted, we waited excitedly for this special food and ate it gratefully when the time came.
It also says there that we must eat meat sparingly, and only in “times of winter or famine”. As a vegetarian, this section resonates with me in particular. It is not healthy for anyone—for our Earth, for us or for the animals—to eat it in great amounts. I know it’s not my place to preach a completely meat-free diet from the pulpit, but I will urge you all to look at these verses, twelve and thirteen, more closely.
Another word that is often overlooked in this section is “thanksgiving”. Out of habit, I always think of the holiday when I see this. I used to dismiss this instinct because it seemed a little silly, but recently I’ve started to consider that this might be intentional—perhaps every meal should be more like Thanksgiving… which isn’t to say that we should have enormous feasts every night, for that would certainly not be prudent. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had more frequent meals that were colorful, heartfelt, and festive, as well as a family gathering during which we can all learn about and build family traditions, and (perhaps most importantly) be grateful for the abundance of food that we can have, and the wonderful flow of the seasons.
Which brings me to the passage to which I was actually assigned, verses eighteen through twenty-one: “And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel, and marrow to their bones; and shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures; and shall run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them.”
In this passage, I believe that there are things promised that the Lord will give us, but also many things that we must create ourselves, or that will come as a natural course of our actions—of course we’ll receive “health in our navel and marrow to our bones” if we follow the very health-conscious advice found in the Word of Wisdom, but what does the mention of “wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures” mean? I believe this is referring to many things, but among them might be the clear head and uncompromised judgment of sobriety and companionship of the spirit, the anticipation for seasonal favorites, the joys of planting a garden, as President Kimball so often advised us to do, or the excitement of searching a farmer’s market for, as verse sixteen puts it “the fruit of the vine; that which yieldeth fruit, whether in the ground or above the ground”. I also feel that I have gained many “great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures” through wholesome food and drink. This is true of both preparing and partaking. Once, a friend and I participated in a school cooking competition. We were assigned to prepare something involving spinach, and hoping to do something creative we turned to a cookbook called “the Greens Book”. On the last page, there was a recipe for “Spinach Layer Cake”. We decided that it sounded disgusting but that there certainly wouldn’t be any other dessert entries, and went for it. In the end, it tasted surprisingly delicious, was a beautiful color, and won the golden spoon. This experience was a delightful opportunity to stretch our minds and taste buds and try something new.
But one of the greatest treasures I have gained from Word of Wisdom-conscious eating and drinking is time around the family dinner table. At mealtimes, I learn a great deal about politics, religion, literature, geography, music, and many other magical things that could certainly be termed “great treasures of knowledge”. For instance, in my family somebody is chosen every evening to give a prayer, and that person gets the special privilege of choosing the dinner music. It is very interesting and fun to hear the music that is chosen from the different members of my family, and my musical taste has become much more diverse because of it. Perhaps most important is an opportunity to take a moment out of our noisy and hectic schedules to talk and learn about one another. If we manage to pry the iPhones out of our hands and the earbuds out of our ears and talk with our families and friends around a beautiful meal, we will gain close friendships and deep family ties that have truly become “hidden treasures”. I testify that the Word of Wisdom is a beautiful and truthful scripture that our Heavenly Father gave us because he loves us, and that he will keep his promises if we keep ours.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.

menus

2009-07-25T08:02:00.002-05:00

Projected and past menus of the week:

Pioneer Day Party (aka Pie n' beer party):

*Grilled Eggplant
*Grilled Sirloin
*Wade's Grilled and Marinated Elk Steaks
*Hand-churned Butter
*Cowboy Salsa (that was actually a salad)
*Watermelon
*Chocolate Creme, Lemon Meringue, and Butterscotch Banana Pies from Kindra
*Emily's Blueberry Trifle
*Mormon Mojitos
*Rootbeer

For next week I'm thinking mostly cold dishes and minimal stove time:

*Mark Bittman's Not-Sesame Noodles
*Salade Nicoise (and then learning how to insert symbols on blog posts so I can spell my beloved French words correctly)
*Zucchini Cakes
*Migas
*BLT's
*Grilled Bone-in Pork Chops
*Another Cowboy Salsa

There are Many Versions of Cowboy Salsa out there, but here's mine:

*1 can red beans, rinsed
*frozen corn measured in the red bean can
*1 sweet red pepper, diced
*3 roma tomatoes, diced
*2-3 cloves garlic, grated into mixture
*1 jalepeno, seeded and chopped
*1 bunch cilantro, chopped
*1/2 c. fresh lime juice
*1/2 c. olive oil
*salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients but cilantro, lime and oil together. Next add lime juice and oil, salt and pepper, then gently turn in cilantro. Serve with chips or as a salad.

scalloped cabbage

2009-07-12T17:19:00.002-05:00

So Marni told me about a new recipe on Pioneer Woman called scalloped cabbage wherein you open a can of cream of chicken soup (I'm substituting cream of celery so Ingy the vegetarian can eat it), a big jar of cheez-whiz, chop up a jalepeno, mix it all together, pour it over wedges of par-boiled cabbage and bake it until it bubbles. I'm sitting here blogging as the cabbage boils, mulling over my first ever purchase of a 15 oz. jar of cheez-whiz (that's the big size).

(GOTTA GO)

(I'M BACK)

So I overcooked the cabbage. Instead of par-boiled cabbage, we have boiled cabbage. Instead of wedges, we have leaves. I also added a cup of sharp cheddar, for health reasons, and a misting of bread crumbs, rather than paprika, to the top.

I don't know what the deal is. I'm tired, crabby, and having lady troubles, complete with a huge zit on my chin. That might be why I cried three times during Hannah Montana yesterday and found Billy Ray Cyrus incredibly hot. (Cecily was mortified, especially when I broke out my version of "The Climb" in the car on the way home.)

And I just made Choux Gratin with Cheez Whiz and Campbell's soup. I'll let you know how it tastes. So far, the sauce makes me hopeful, especially the salty, spicy, 7-11 nachos vibe I'm getting from a bowl-lick.

Simple Summer

2009-07-10T16:09:00.001-05:00

For when it's too hot outside:

Cabbage Rice Chicken Salad

1/2 roasted or rotisserie chicken, shredded

3 scallions

1/2 head cabbage, thinly sliced

3 chopped heads of baby bok choy

3 cups cooked rice, brown or white depending on your mood

1/2 c. roasted peanuts

large handful of purple basil

large handful of cilantro

Mix cooled rice and chicken in large bowl, then add greens, herbs, and peanuts. Mix in dressing gently so as not to mush your greens too much until the salad is dressed to your taste. Season with salt, pepper, or soy sauce to taste. For additional crunch you may wish to top with crispy chow mein noodles.

Dressing

1/2 c water

1/2 c rice vinegar

1/4 c sugar

1/4 c fish sauce

1 T. sesame oil

1 T. hot chili oil

1 c. olive oil

3 cloves garlic, grated

2" piece of ginger peeled and slivered

1 t salt

1) Simmer together water, vinegar, sugar and fish sauce. After mixture cools, transfer to a jar or cruet and add garlic, ginger, and salt. Then add oils, cover jar tightly and shake vigorously. Leftover dressing can be stored in the fridge for several weeks and is delicious on a quick shredded cabbage salad.

A Bit of Calm

2009-07-09T18:00:00.002-05:00

We were fortunate enough to have both Christian's and my entire family in town for the last couple of weeks. As you can imagine, it was tough to divide the time. My family is resplendent with toddlers and babies, beautiful, funny, squeezable, sometimes crying, sometimes vomiting (they all got a stomach thing, efficiently passed from tot to tot) red, tow, and chocolate-headed wee ones. Christian's family now seems staid in comparison to mine (yes, I'm referring to the riotous, combative, hilariously fun Asplunds). Today I had breakfast with two of my four sisters before driving the last one to the airport. Christian's brother Mark is freshly in town from his new home in Delhi, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with him in the near future.

At the moment there's a rare lull in the summer fun: Lula invited in-town cousins "The Twins" to our house for a tea-party, over which she is presiding with aplomb. Christian, Eva and Ingrid are headed for Salt Lake to see Bon Iver perform, and I will soon take Lula, Cecy, and Momo to the Creamery for burgers and then to Kiwanis Park so Lula and Cecily can hit a few balls on the tennis courts.

I'm taking a quick blogging break from reading War and Peace--it's really funny and entertaining, did you know? Because the big girls and I are holding an impromtu W and P book club for the summer. Let me know if you wanna join. You'll need to read about 50 pages a day for the next five weeks to keep up. I'm surprised at how fast it's going. I'm not sure I chose the right translation (Constance Garnett, Modern Library Edition). We're discussing every Thursday. The thing I'm really happy about right now is that I have the entire rest of the evening, minus a time out for dinner and bedtime routine, to read a big, absorping novel. Nothing better than that.

No real cooking has occured here for at least a week, but some good eating happened: Green Corn Tamales at McCondo, Potato Rosemary Pizza from Pizzeria 712 (and Amano Chocolate Pudding), Shrimp Dumplings and Grilled Potatoes with lime mayo and srriacha from Rooster, a Veggie Scramble at Guru's and oh yeah, the one thing I did make: a decent, but not perfect, rice pudding. I'm still working on getting a consistency that is pleasing when the pudding is hot or cold, and on getting the right amount of sweetness. I have to confess that I also loved eating KFC at the park in South Fork, right by the river, with the really, really delicious watermelon that mom brought. If you have to eat fast food from a chain, it's hard to beat the Colonel.

Tell me more summer stories. I know there are some good ones out there. Especially from people who are in Trinidad right now, all hot and sweaty.

India OR All In a Panic

2009-07-07T05:42:00.002-05:00

So, on Feb. 25, 2010 the Walden School is taking a trip to India. The cost is $3000, and not going would be... out of the question. Heartbreaking, if you don't mind me being dramatic. The problem is, I have no idea how to earn this kind of sum. Does anybody have any ideas?

cooking lessons OR all in a panic

2009-06-24T14:48:00.004-05:00

You know those lists of things you should have taught your kid by the time they're eighteen? Things like how to change oil, balance a check book, etc.? I'm in a panic realizing I only have one year left to get Ingrid's list checked off, and though Ingrid bakes a killer cake or batch of cookies, I haven't really taught her how to cook.

Where do I start? What are five dishes you need to know before you have to start feeding yourself like a big girl? I was thinking Marinara, as that was the first thing I really learned to do on my own (besides cookies, toast, and scrambled eggs.) But what else?

lula's birthday

2009-06-24T14:39:00.003-05:00

Post blow-out

All ablaze, foreshadowing the unsupervised fireworks that took place in the cul-de-sac moments later.
Cake by Mom, prettiness by Eva

Last night I had twenty screaming 11 year-olds at the house for Lula's birthday party. Today I'm lying on the couch an exhausted quivering jelly. I'm all partied out, as you can see from the last few posts. We're hosting a Locust Salon at our house on Saturday night and then that's it. No more entertaining until fall, I swear.

father's day

2009-06-24T14:31:00.002-05:00

Daddy's day brunch--flowers by Eva

Cherry turnovers

Not nearly as fancy as he deserves.

welcome home ingrid bash

2009-06-24T13:50:00.004-05:00

Nathaniel in a tree.

Ingrid's darling foot getting henna'd
Beautiful cake (authentically German) made by beautiful Mirjam

German flag, sort of

Veggie Luv

2009-06-16T11:59:00.004-05:00

Crispy Roasted Potatoes, Carrots and Onions

Daikon Spears

eva's spinach gratin and crusty french bread

2009-06-16T11:52:00.009-05:00

Eva told me I had to wait at least one day before putting up another post, but it's raining and thundering outside, and I'm procrastinating on three other less pleasant tasks, and I'm really excited about photos. So here's another post--posted much too soon.

Eva's going nuts in the kitchen. She made this outrageous spinach, which she wilted with vinegar, garlic and red chile flakes on the stove top then doused with an egg yolk, a few tablespoons of cream and baked in the oven. It was creamy, crunchy, spiked with vinegar and chiles--part custard, part souffle, part quiche--c'est magnifique!

Eva's other specialty is bread--she made this braided loaf of crunchy-soft French bread. T'was beautiful and delish.

Aunt Annie's French Bread
(from my Aunt Anne Whitaker Law's cookbook, which I heart)
makes 2 loaves

2 packages dry yeast
1 T. salt
2-1/2 c. very warm water (not too hot or the bread will taste yeasty)
3 T. sugar
5 T. vegetable oil
6 c. unsifted flour
1 egg white
sesame seeds

*In large bowl combine 2 c. hot water, sugar, salt, oil and 3 c. flour.
*Mix well by hand or in bread mixer.
*Stir in proofed or dry yeast, add remaining flour. Dough should be barely sticky. Add more flour if necessary.
*Mix well. Allow dough to rest for ten minutes and stir again. Repeat five times for a total of 50 minutes.
*Turn dough out onto oiled counter. Knead once or twice.
*Divide in two Roll each half into 9x12 rectangle. Starting at long edge, roll losely. Seal edges.
*Place both rolls seam down on one large baking sheet brushed with cornmeal. Gash tops diagonally three times with sharp knife. Brush with beaten egg white. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, cover and rise for 30 min.
*Bake at 400 degress for 25-30 minutes.

I have to tell you guys...

2009-06-15T13:16:00.003-05:00

I just made a beautiful sandwich. It was on that wonderful honeywheat bread that can only be found at Utah Costcos, with raw mozz (also from Costco) and basil from Chao's (Confession: I can't tell the diff between asian and italian basil. At least not when I'm not doing a direct comparison with one right after the other). I grilled some onions and tomatoes with garlic (and by grill I mean sautee with a lot of butter) until they were all melty and then added basil for a second so that it could wilt a little and distributed evenly over the mozz (which I had torn up and put on the bread.) Then I added some avocado and grilled all this (and again by grilled I mean added butter to the pan and then placed over heat) in the remaining juices.
I am not usually one to be moved by sandwiches, but this one was so beautiful I almost cried.

(I made it again with home made french

bread and olive oil instead of butter)

Sexy Close-up

Grilled Zucchini Couscous Salad

2009-06-15T10:56:00.002-05:00

This is a variation on a salad I made a lot last summer. It's super flexible and you can mix up the vegetables, cheeses, and vinaigrette to match what's in your garden and pantry. I can't wait for zucchini season. Note to farmers: let's see a lot of small, sweet zucchini this year!

Grilled Zucchini and Couscous Salad

8 small zucchini
3 cups prepared couscous
3 scallions, thinly sliced, including some greens
1 bunch italian parsley, finely chopped
1 sweet yellow pepper, diced
2 vine-ripe tomatoes, chopped
1/2 c. crumbled feta
1/2 c. shaved parmesan
1/2 c. olive oil
1/8 c. red wine vinegar
1 fresh lemon
salt and pepper to taste

*Wash and dry zucchini. Remove stems, then slice in half length-wise. On a medium hot grill, grill zucchini until tender and juicy and not too black on the outside.
*Let zucchini cool, then cut each slice in thirds so you have big juicy chunks of zucchini in the salad.
*Combine vegetables, couscous, and cheeses, salt and pepper, and gently toss.
*Gently toss with oil, then vinegar, then lemon, adjust seasonings and vinaigrette to taste.

übermorgen

2009-06-15T03:08:00.002-05:00

I am going home on the day after tomorrow. I don't quite know how to feel, but I think that I could either let my conflicting emotions have a fight to the death inside of me, or just try to let them coexist and live in the moment. I am going for option two, and I try to focus on things like packing rather that sitting on my bed with Chester, staring at the wall and trying to wrap my head around the concept of June 17.
Everybody told me that I will have changed, and I think they're right. So here is fair warning:
-I like sparkly water
-I sometimes take action against cold (for instance using sweaters, tights, and sometimes even socks)
-Yes, socks. Though I rarely wear shoes and socks at the same time
-I get lost rarely, and can even travel alone and reach my destination
-I can fit my hair into a bun. All of it.
-I use nail filers more often than clippers
-I am probably twice as tolerant as I once was
-I can build a habit now
-I am a lot blunter, and less passive agressive

I think that last one is going be a problem, so I want to tell all of you that I am probably not trying to be rude if I say something uncouth. The Germans are just not very well acquainted with tact, which I actually started to find better.
You know what else? And everybody warned us about this: I do have problems with English now. I spent the entire Physics class last Thursday trying to remember the word "misanthropic" (making it the most productive physics class I've had yet). But sometimes I mix up "your" and "you're", and I have problems with sentence structure. I might also incorporate German words in English sentences, which I also do when I speak German (with English words)-- It's really embarrasing.

Looking back on this post, I think it is very self-indulgent. As a disclaimer I will say that my mom requested it for posterity purposes.

pizza topping epiphany

2009-06-14T10:58:00.001-05:00

*caramelized onions, briny black olives, rosemary, goat cheese

*grilled zucchini, slow-roasted tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, sea salt, basil

*spinach, roasted red peppers, feta

menus

2009-06-13T22:38:00.002-05:00

Next week's forecast:

*Dorie Greenspan's Brownies with Walnuts

*Minced Chicken Lettuce Wraps

*Coconut Curry with Tofu and Jasmine Rice

*Zucchini Fritters with Mashed Potatoes (welcome home ingy dinner)

*Homemade Pizza, toppings as yet to be determined, probably using dough from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Starry Pasta Soup

2009-06-12T22:42:00.004-05:00

If you're one of those people whose kids beg for Campbell's Chicken n' Stars or Alphabet soup, but you just can't bring yourself to go there, this post is for you. If you're like my heroes Mark Bittman and Alice Waters and you have wholesome ingredients washed and prepped in your fridge and a pantry full of delicious, high-quality staples, look away.

If you've ever found yourself on a Friday night, home alone with little ones while nursing a hot water bottle and popping Midol, letting your six-year-old watch Avatar for the 10th time that day, letting your four-year-old play Starfall over and over again, and then at 8 p.m. realizing no one's had dinner yet, or if you've withdrawn from human contact and descended in to agoraphobia with a laptop standing in for a best friend and can't leave the house to shop, or if you've realized you can only spend seven dollars in the next week on groceries or you'll be living in your mother-in-law's basement with your five children come September, and then your six-year-old starts rummaging through the cupboards saying, "I wish we had soup," and you know it's because she's only eaten goldfish crackers all day and is craving something healthy and warm, this recipe's for you.

On the other hand, if you have beautifully organized crocks of pre-cooked organic beans and brown rice in your fridge ready for a quick little salad or soup in a snap, or if you have blocks of Valrohna chocolate dry-packed in storage in case you need some brownies in a trice and were caught unprepared, look away.

This soup is my answer to Campbell's and other canned soups (which my kids occasionally ask for, but will rarely actually eat). It takes about five minutes to prep and fifteen to cook. It uses cheap, cheap ingredients (look away, Alice Waters) that I almost always have on hand, even when I've hit the dregs of the pantry and my wallet, and uses canned and dry goods, minus the awful throat-closing corn syrup after-taste or soggy, mushy vegetables and pasta of said Campbell's soup.

It's inspired by a caldo, but is vegetarian, and could be gussied up with some oregano or chiles, basil or grated parmesan, but I think tastes great and homey with just the salt, onion and tomato savory-ness.

Starry Pasta Soup

2 t. butter
2 t. olive oil
1/4 cup finely diced onion
1 minced garlic clove
1 small yellow crookneck squash, diced
1/4 c. canned red beans
1/4 c. star pasta
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
3 c. water
2 T. heavy cream
salt to taste

*Gently soften onion and garlic over medium heat for two or three minutes.
*Turn heat to medium high and add pasta and squash until a light browning appears.
*Add water, tomato sauce and beans and give it a stir.
*Turn up heat until soup is at a rolling boil.
*Continue at this heat for ten minutes, stirring every minute or two, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot. (You can adjust cooking time so squash and pasta have the bite you like, which may be more or less al dente then my timing calls for.)
*Remove from heat, stir in cream, and adjust salt level to taste.

church and food

2009-06-09T15:43:00.000-05:00

My favorite part of this article is the end, the suggestion that every church have a food garden--something the LDS sort of do, but in a more centralized manner. How wonderful would it be to have both the centralized farm/welfare system in addition to a localized one? (Are you imagining a calling as "Ward Weeder"?)

intractable

2009-06-08T15:19:00.002-05:00

'Tis a churlish day.

Spent the morning re-typing my poetry manuscript, the electronic copy of which was stolen when my rental car was broken into in Seattle last January. It sounds like no big deal, but it's kind of a hairy manuscript, and I've hit a patch in the mss. where I don't like the poems anymore (right now) (did I ever?), so I want to give up now, give up the whole thing, the whole writing thing. Which means the whole existence thing.

(Don't worry, I'm not suicidal, just, just. . . bothered in a kind of restless, unsettled way, as the Bard says with what i most enjoy contented least.)

What do you do with a day like this? And how do you keep it from seeping into other days?

I did bake Cracked Wheat Honey bread today.

So I guess that's two things on my to-do list--retyping the mss. and baking bread. I should feel good about that, right?

Gimme some advice: what do you do when you suddenly feel your whole idea of yourself is built on a faulty premise? Start over? Ignore it? Decide it's too late to turn back?

Blah.

menus

2009-06-04T18:00:00.002-05:00

I'm already bored with this week, so I'm thinking about next week: what to buy at the market, what to cook, what to plant, what to write, etc. I suppose I could start next week right now, but I'm not very good at rearranging my plans. Here are some ideas for dinner next week, and as always, there's nothing I love more than hearing what other people are making for dinner (and in my case, in honor of summer, random snacks, desserts, appetizers, and small dishes that may or may not make for a well-rounded meal).

*Chicken Cabbage Rice Salad with Chinese Greens

*Patrick Barber's Bistro Style Tuna Noodle Casserole via Facebook

*Lula's B-day Dinner: Homemade Fettucine with Alfredo, Garlic Bread, Cucumbers with dip (her menu)

*Bruschetta with the new rye-ish bread I've been making (have you heard that rye makes you skinny?)

*Homemade Ricotta with Cherries

*Spaghetti Frittata (with leftover spaghetti, repeat from last week because it was a ginormous hit, both the original spaghetti and the frittata.)

Tell me what you're making so I can be jealous.

everything i know about monsanto is bad

2009-06-04T17:50:00.003-05:00

So don't let them eff up our wheat supply! Seriously, we don't want Round-up Ready Wheat, and this website will tell you why and how to contact some people who can help stop this from happening.

Love you all! Love you even more if you help make our food supply safer and more sustainable.

styrofoam

2009-06-02T12:01:00.000-05:00

I found this link on Bitten, and was taken aback by one of my least favorite things about school lunch in the US: styrofoam. Notice that none of the other school lunches from outside the US are served on disposable dishes. They even use metal chopsticks.

What's wrong with us?

For the love of all that's holy, people, let's stop eating food out of styrofoam. A) it's completely disgusting and B)what's so hard about cleaning and re-using dishes and C) paper containers work just as well as styrofoam (unless you're eating something you should really be sitting down at a table to eat, instead of, say, slurping down in your Jazzy at Silver City in Branson)?

Someone please tell me how this degradation has occurred. And by the way, I do all of the dishes at our house, for three meals a day, so you can't use that excuse on me. (And for my taste, I would also ban plastic ware for use in food consumption as well, if I had dictatorial powers. I just know it's wrong. You can get really cheap, strong stoneware at IKEA for dolls and use it for your little ones. They'll learn to eat more in a more civilized manner and more carefully with a breakable dish as opposed to an unbreakable one.)

For some reason this is making me really angry right now (might be PMS). It might be that my kids' lunches in Utah are absolute rock-bottom nutritionally: an anemic leaf of iceberg lettuce, a brown and wilted apple slice, maybe pizza, maybe a corn dog, maybe nachos, and of course the ubiquitous chocolate milk, which ends up being the most nutritious item offered. It might be that the styrofoam is just staring me in the face right now as an indicator of how far we've fallen, how out of hand our values have become.

That's my self-righteous rant for the day.

p.s.--Bittman points out the awesome French lunch with mussels and an artichoke. Now that's a school lunch I can get behind.

I saw her.

2009-06-01T06:10:00.002-05:00

Angela Merkel. With my own two augen (=eyes). We had our Abschlussseminar in Berlin this weekend with all of the kids from language camp. The day when we all saw Frau Merkel was our "Bundestag.. Tag". It started at 5 am and ended at 2 am the next day, and filled up a good five pages of my journal. I will try to abbreviate:
There is a big room in the Bundestag (German parliment) building where all of the work gets done. It sits under an enormous glass dome and has a metal eagle (which actually looks more like a chicken-- an appearance of harmlesness was intentional when it was designed because the Germans wanted to keep the eagle but avoid Nazi conotations), which weighs 2 tons or something. We weren't allowed to bring cameras, otherwise I would have taken a picture, because it's all a little hard to explain. In any case, there are seats for the civilians who want to listen (ie us) way above, and we got to watch lots of important things get done. They told us not to get our hopes up about Angie being there, but we all hoped deep in our hearts, and I had promised to "bestell schöne Grüße" (give pretty messages) from my host sister (for whom Angela Merkel is something of a hero) but when we got there and everything got started, we didn't see her. The members of the Bundestag who were there did give a little speech about our program and how proud they were of us and applauded, but it just wasn't the same without our beloved Bundeskanzlerin. But then, as we were all sitting trying to concentrate, guess who came around the corner and sat in her seat??? Angela Merkel! She chewed gum the entire time, which somehow made me really happy.
After this, we were ushered into a big room with 400 other exchange students and several important people (the ambassador from the US, Bob Bishop, Norbert Lammert, some other members of the Bundestag). A few exchange students gave speeches and there was a question and answer session (during which I completely humiliated myself by forgetting every German word I know)and we got a video message by Hilary Clinton (yes, the Hilary Clinton) about how proud she was of us and a letter from Nancy Pelosi (sp?), also telling us she was proud of us. It was all quite exciting, I think I got a copy of the letter and will try to get a copy of the video. After this, we were let go and I walked around Berlin until 10:00 pm. This, of course, was wonderful, we saw all sorts of buildings and memorials and other things that I won't try to describe because I'm trying to keep this shorter than five pages. My day ended with a dance party, where I shared a glass of ginger ale with another Utahn and put my roommate and a few other kids to bed, wishing them pleasant dreams and mild hangovers.
I am coming home in two weeks. We all fully realized this together, but I can still hardly believe it. I have heard that reverse culture shock can be brutal, and I have changed a ton since going-- I wanted to warn everyone because I've heard that it is hard for other people as well. So expect the same old Ingy deep down, but don't be shocked if I don't structure my sentences well anymore or get lost.
I can't wait to see all of you. Bis später.

i want to make this

2009-05-31T21:30:00.001-05:00

Do you think I could do it?

menus

2009-05-31T17:42:00.002-05:00

I'm scaling back for the summer on menus and having items a la carte only. I might not serve two vegetables at every meal, or I might serve only vegetables. We'll see. I will be making items that I love and am excited about and won't be worrying about how they fit into the grander scheme of things. So here's a list from this weekend and for the coming week:

*coconut cream pie

*fried potatoes and onions

*spaghetti frittata (my kids loved this more than almost anything I've ever cooked, and dubbed it spagetti pizza)

*polenta topped with seared zucchini

*rye bread

*pizza topped with arugula and homemade ricotta

*vietnamese style noodle salad with eggrolls

I want to hear what everyone else is making.

twenty years

2009-05-31T17:23:00.002-05:00

On Friday night, Christian and I went to hear the Bernstein Mass performed by the Utah Symphony, a prelude to our twentieth wedding anniversary on Tuesday. It was a book-end of sorts as our first date was to hear the Bach Double at the Madsen Recital Hall performed by the BYU chamber orchestra and the Gruppmans, a husband and wife violinist team.

The date started at my apartment in The Truman where we ate frozen burritos that Christian brought and I prepared, and tried to dress up with some avocado, salsa, and cheese (I remember them being quite delicious) and then proceeded to a bike ride up the hill to the Harris Fine Arts Center (C rode me on the handle bars and told me that I had pretty skin) where we heard the piece. It was, as always, a fantastic piece, and we learned that we are both freaks about Bach. Since the Bach was over, we left the concert at intermission, biked back down the hill, and went to 7-11 for a pint of Hagen-daazs honey vanilla ice cream which we ate on the steps of the then-condemned Academy Square building (which is now the library, thanks in part to a campaign that C was active in as a student to save the building). We sat there and talked until the wee hours of the morning, and I knew then that I had met my life's partner (what happened next is a long story for another day.)

But Friday night at the symphony reminded me of this instant connection made way back when I was 19 years old with Christian because, as with the Bach, Christian and I again had the exact same reaction to the Bernstein piece. I could just tell what he was thinking through the whole piece, and I was thinking the same thing. I'm not going to go in to great detail here because people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but I'll just say the piece was highly problematic (I know a lot of people are aware of this, and hence it is rarely performed, but a lot of people liked it, even loved it, and that's when I'm sooooo glad I'm married to someone who doesn't love the Bernstein mass.)

So, xo, C.

Here's to 20 more years of music, bicycles, and honey-vanilla ice cream.

june to-do list

2009-05-31T17:11:00.002-05:00

Some new, mostly leftover from May:

*finish planting garden

*update resume

*write book reviews for the Provo City Library's Adult Summer Reading Program (did you know they had this?)

*read Mormon Sisters for bookclub (the venerable Claudia Bushman, editor of the volume, will be there in person to talk about it--I'm so psyched because she's one of my heros)

*summer reading with kids

*sign up for swimming lessons

*appointment with ENT in Salt Lake

*appointment with pediatric dermatologist in Salt Lake

*Christian's Trombone 4-tet concert

*sign up for netflix and watch some good (as opposed to trashy) movies

*read at least one good (as opposed to trashy) novle

*finish revision on book proposal

*send to agent who asked for it ten days ago and hope she still remembers me

*revise Alburnum manuscript

*finish compiling Gentian manuscript

*try to find pink desert trailer manuscript that I lost in 2002 when we moved here from Oklahoma

*as always, yoga 3X a week, walking five days a week

*become better at baking bread

*become better at baking pies

*Lula's b-day

*20th wedding anniversary

in memoriam

2009-05-26T13:59:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we made our annual Memorial Day trek to the Midway cemetery to visit my Grandpa Scott's grave, Scott Merrill Whitaker, as well as the graves of his parents and siblings. On the way there, we read snippets from some family histories and the transcript of his funeral. Christian and Emily told stories about their dad, Grandpa Tom, and grandparents, Joe and Marie Redd and Julia and Charles Asplund. My Grandpa Scott was legendary in his day--he was an excellent singer, a Disney animator who purportedly worked on Dopey in Snow White, one of my all-time favorite moves, and a writer and director for BYU Motion Picture. He wrote the script for Man's Search for Happiness, one of the masterpieces of LDS doctrinal films. He was also proprietor, with his brothers, of the Homestead in Midway, for a number of years, hence the Midway connection. I also need to mention that he was an all-around general ham and comedian, as well.

After the cemetery, we drove for about an hour looking for the perfect spot for our picnic, but it was nowhere to be found. Finally, when we were all so hungry we were getting ready to gnaw off our own hands, we found it in an old pioneer homestead sitting on the banks of Snake Creek complete with plaques containing stories and poems written by and about the original homesteaders and their families, a creamery, an orchard, and a gigantic fir tree with a soft cushion of pine compost underneath and branches overhanging the creek. Moses and Cecily were in heaven, and all of the adults were as well. Even the lively squirrels were extra magical, and the birds were plentiful and visible. Emily said it was like being inside a cross between Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie.

For feasting, we had a number of delicious items: I made bread in the morning (my Aunt Annie's French bread recipe with sesame seeds) and brought the leftover London Broil from Sunday dinner for roast beef sandwiches and an assortment of mustards, jams, and my favorite pickles. We stacked our sandwiches on location, an for accompaniment ate crudite, fresh fruit, potato chips, Lula's fabulous chocolate chip cookies, and, last but not least, Red Vines in classic red and black.

It was a really, really perfect day, surrounded by the Wasatch mountains, a trickle of water, and a lot of inspiring memories.

spring hunt

2009-05-23T16:15:00.002-05:00

So lately our Saturdays consist of a series of grocery errands that the kids think are incredibly fun: today we went to Chao's, the Provo Farmer's Market, and Macey's, and now I'm super excited about my cooking for the week and Christian's excited about the chopsticks made of various materials (metal, plastic, bamboo) that he'll use for making awesome noises on his viola. Here are a few of the highlights:

Chao's

*bok choy

*chinese chives

*massaman curry paste

*new crop rice

*assorted chopsticks

Farmer's Market

*clifford eggs

*arugala

*artesian well-grown watercress from zoe's

*korean taco

Macey's

*games, prizes, and 50 cent hot dogs for the kids

*king arthur flour on sale!

*kosher pickles on sale!

*happy, happy nice workers

So, some menus for next week:

*tofu spring rolls

*poached eggs with polenta triangles and asparagus

*london broil

*massaman coconut vegetable curry

*spaghetti with veggie marinara

*hawaiian haystacks

*orange rolls

Also, with Eva's inspiration, I'm going to attempt Andi's beer bread and a sour dough starter.

xxoo

winners and losers again

2009-05-19T07:59:00.003-05:00

I want to clarify one or two things after my track meet post: 1) I'm not necessarily talking about after school sports or sports in general, but the use of competition in the schools as a pedagogical method and the false binary of "winning" and "losing" that is imposed on young children by this paradigm in the schools, and 2) of course some children gain self-esteem from winning and competing, but I think this type of self-esteem is fragile and built on the misfortune/lack of ability/confidence/motivation of others, and from what I've observed, breeds unhappiness in the winner and loser both. Winning becomes an addiction for the gifted child and a millstone around the neck of the loser.

(I also want to acknowledge that my daughter's school tries to be inclusive in many ways, and everyone at the track meet was trying to make all of the children feel good about their performances, but those attempts are always transparent to children who always see through those attempts to bandage the wounds of failure.)

I just want a whole new paradigm for the public schools, one that veers away from a hyper-capitalist hierarchy of winners and losers.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

One month.

2009-05-17T11:25:00.003-05:00

That is how much time I have. Where did the first nine months go? I don't know either.

The events in my life have been...
1: Circus Baldoni-- not exactly the Circus McGirkus, but cute. It's run by this family who has been in the business for 8 generations, which I find astounding.
2: Crazy German swimming pool-- my host family decided that we had a free day and wanted to do something in Thüringen. I was disappointed at first because I can swim anywhere and wanted to see, say, a church, but then I realized that there is no better place to observe culture than swimming pools. It reminded me of the ones I'd been to before: In Mexico, which had a secret tunnel and lots of flora, where we had to ride back in the back of a pickup truck (which we flagged down with our thumbs/bikini-clad American girls), or in Turkey in the Hammam (which isn't really a swimming pool but was close enough), where we sat in a huge beautiful old building with a domed ceiling, being scrubbed by stern Turkish ladies and trying not to make eye contact with any of the chaperones (because we were all. naked.), or Seven Peaks, which... well, you all know it already. Anyway, this one was mostly inside. Everybody had to shower before and after swimming, and there was an enormous waterslide which they ingeniously got into the building (well... it's hard to describe. It wasn't exacly in the building... but I promise, it was brilliant). There was a pool for laps and a pool for children (with a whale in it, no less) and a pool for swimming and a salty therapeutic pool that was partially outside and full of jets. Apparently once a month is Naked Day, where everybody swims without a swimsuit. Would that be legal in the United States? I don't think so. Like I said, it is very German.
3: Friends-- Did I already say how I finally made them? Because I did. They are awesome, they like me and I like them. They even call me "unsere kleinen Sonnenschein" (our little sunshine), which makes me really happy. We write lots of notes to each other, because most of them are in a different grade from me.

Is there anything else? I don't believe so. I love you all, every single one, and I will see you soon! Which is a big deal!!!

jesus & the track meet

2009-05-15T11:24:00.002-05:00

Can you believe I've gone through 18 and a half years of motherhood without ever attending a child's sporting event? Lest you think I'm a neglectful mother, you should realize that it's not because I forgot to go, but because my children never participated.

I settled in early at the Hershey Track Meet that happens at Lula's school every year to watch her run the first event, the 1600. It's a beautiful day, the bleachers were still empty, and YMCA was blasting on the speakers. This is fun, I thought. Maybe I've been too harsh on competitive sports, I thought. But then the sick feeling came and settled into my belly. I find it unbearably painful to watch children come in last place. Maybe, in fact surely, this is a reflection on my own over-sensitivity and subsequent trauma as a child, but if even one child feels as sick and miserable as I did at events such as these (and they were way more cut-throat in my sports-crazed hometown) it's not worth it. Am I happy that Lula had fun running and preparing for the meet? Yes. Do I think that the motivation of "winning" is a worthy one? Absolutely not. I've been guilty in my own teaching practice of occasionally resorting to competition as a motivator, but I've always chickened out at the last minute and awarded everyone. I noticed that it was a cheap trick that damaged the winners and losers alike, with no positive long-term outcomes. I've carefully weeded out as much comparison and rivalry as I could from my mothering and pedagogical approaches.

So I sat through the meet and took deep breaths, feeling o-so-alienated--was anyone else feeling the same way? I thought about Jesus. I thought about Quakers. I thought about my friend's daughter's way more progressive school on the Lower East side of Manhattan. Do they have formal competition at her school? I thought about the time Lula "borrowed" a ribbon for her Arbor Day poster in second grade, and I got fresh anger about the impending end-of-year ceremony where they always hand out medals to students who score above the 90th percentile on state testing. Isn't that illegal under FERPA (the student privacy protection laws)?

Am I too angry and sensitive? Please tell me, because right now, in the context of old-school values and education, I feel like a freak, and like I have no one to talk to about this because I've used up all of my credibility in this community by being a constant nay-sayer.

Jesus would support me, wouldn't he?

When Ingrid was little, and to this day, she always refused to be a part of any competition, explicit or implicit. When she got older, she happily became a volunteer cheerleader for her peers and siblings, but has never herself participated.

I think she has it right.

O Friends School of Provo, where are you? My Great Aunt Helen called herself a Feminist Quaker Mormon. I think she had it right, too.

I wish she were still here to consult with.

I'm breathing.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Please advise.

confession and addendum

2009-05-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

*i don't wear sunscreen. ever.

*cook something en papillote.

All flowers remind me of you.

2009-05-10T13:40:00.002-05:00

My mother is clearly the best one there is.
She reminds me of a story I heard about one the Presidents of the United States and the first lady (but I don't remember which)-- They saw one of the first lady's old boyfriends working in a gas station and the president said "Aren't you glad you married me instead of him?" She replied, "If I had married him, you'd be the one working at a gas station right now and he would be president".
(Okay, I know that wasn't delivered very well, but it was really funny when I heard it, I promise)
In any case, if I had been born to somebody else, I'm sure I would never have achieved anything without her-- I certainly wouldn't be in Europe. Whenever I tell her that I can't do something, she looks at me as if I'm being ridiculous and says, "Ingrid, of course you can do it. Just cut out your first paragraph." (those of you who were fortunate enough to have her as an English teacher will understand this). I am inspired by her good food, by the pragmatism that is very foreign but very impressive to me. I feel blessed to have shared a roof for 16 years with somebody who has such a power over words, who is so full of wisdom. She taught me to wear dresses and that no matter how bad your day is you always have dinner to look forward to. She insisted every night on knowing the highs and lows of our days, a habit which I found irritating at the time but have started emulating in my host family.
Happy mother's day, Thank you mama!!!

hand-cut noodles

2009-05-05T11:53:00.002-05:00

I'm sort of bored with everything I cook right now, so I decided that on Sunday, when we had company coming, I would finally try making my own pasta. Creating the dough was the easiest thing I've ever done, thanks to my Cuisinart, and Lula took to the pasta roller we borrowed from the Jasplund's with great aplomb (I actually think it would be worth it to purchase one of these just to keep Lula entertained)--(I highly recommend getting your ten-year-olds into the kitchen because they are finally able to synthesize their brains with their hands, and are very curious and eager learners), but when I started to cut the noodles, they stuck together and wouldn't unroll.

At this point I almost gave up and pulled out an emergency box of dry pasta, but I took a deep breath and kept going. I made really wide, ragged noodles, which I love, and was the reason I wanted to make hand-cut rather than putting them through the Atlas. And just in time, Emily arrived, Emily who is the queen of doughs, pastries, and cakes, and saved my noodles.

So, long story short, the noodles were terrific, but our poor company had to wait a very long time to eat. Next time I'll know to plan a lot more time for the endeavor and to follow Julia Child's dictum: never experiment on company.

Scratch that. I always experiment on company. Company be warned: come prepared to wait.

I used these proportions for the dough:

3 c. flour
5 eggs
1/4-1/2 c. water, poured slowly into the food processor until dough begins to hold together
1 t. salt

*this makes a sticky dough and I had to use generous amounts of flour in the kneading and cutting phases.

Mo Op

2009-05-05T11:48:00.002-05:00

Also, a brief mention of the operas that Christian and I have written together appears on the Mormon Artist Group's website:

http://mormonartistsgroup.com/mag/mormons-opera-and-mormon-operas/

on sunday

2009-05-05T11:43:00.001-05:00

An essay of mine appears in this new collection ON SUNDAY:

GLIMPSES--THE MORMON ARTISTS GROUP NEWSLETTER:

What is it like to go to church in prison, or in an Islamic country, or in Africa, Australia, or Asia? We say that the Church is the same wherever you go, but how is the experience of LDS worship different throughout the world?

Mormon Artists Group is pleased to announce the publication of

On Sunday

As part of Mormon Artists Group’s tenth anniversary, we invited authors around the world merely to go to church and write down what they experienced on a Sunday.

We were curious to know what their buildings looked like, how people arrived at church, who were the members, what they did for a living, what they looked like, how they treated each other, what they talked about, what worried them, what inspired them, how they sang, how they worshipped: what went on.

Our authors wrote from their home congregations in Singapore, Australia, Angola, Kuwait, Brazil, and throughout North America, from Harlem to Seattle. There are eleven essays altogether, accompanied by photographs of the church buildings taken by the authors. For the most part, the episodes in the book occurred on a single, ordinary Sunday, March 1, 2009.

Buildings, above, in Angola, Seattle, Harlem, Brazil.

The Authors

The authors of On Sunday are Adam Anderson, Stephen Bennett, Claudia Bushman, Harriet Petherick Bushman, Lara Candland, Mario V. L. Cardoso, Glenn Gordon, Stanley Hainsworth, Thomas Holst, Glen Nelson, and Astrid S. Tuminez.

Each of the essays is a journalistic snapshot. Some of these stories come from turbulent landscapes: the aftermath of civil war in Angola, a raging wildfire in Australia, expatriates living far from home and family in Kuwait and Singapore. There is economic turmoil everywhere as well as the issue of equality of race and gender.

Tough individual choices are faced: will a mother risk arrest to take her children to a Christian church in an Islamic country, should a woman leave her husband and children in the Phillipines to work and send money back home, can forgiveness come to those in prison, can we care for those around us in need?

Flowing through the writings is a undercurrent of hope and a declaration that the social communities of LDS worship—whether the members gather to eat Jell-O, collard greens, or camel—work miraculously, joyously well.

The stories are of common people. A Brazilian native tells of his first Sunday as a missionary, a Provo author writes about the uneasy pull of utopia, a Californian describes a wealthy community in transition, a visitor to Harlem tries to put race in perspective, men in Mesa and Seattle compare their current, suburban lives with their former congregations in Japan, Denmark, New York, and Mexico. Together, the essays form a composite of real LDS life on a global scale.

The Church is the same everywhere you go. That is what we say. To us, it means that wherever one goes in the world, stepping into an LDS church house is a welcome and familiar act, a good thing.

The Church has thirteen million members at present, the majority of whom live outside of the USA. The eleven authors of this book don’t speak for the world, but their voices offer a hint of what the world of our Church is like and how we are alike (or not) right now.

Buildings, above, in Mesa, Chicago, Pasadena, Provo.

The Volume

Mormon Artists Group presents On Sunday in two formats: a limited edition volume and a digital PDF file edition.

On Sunday – PDF edition - $5

On Sunday – Limited edition - $100

To Order

The limited edition is printed and bound by hand over boards with linen tapes, silk headbands, and with an embroidered cover image in thread on natural Irish linen. The image, a hendecagram, is an 11-pointed figure that represents the eleven congregations described in the book. The volume is 9.5” x 6.25”, 166 pages, printed on Mohawk Superfine paper with Fabriano Tiziano endpapers.

The digital edition is a PDF file of the complete volume, sent as an email attachment. It is an experiment to determine whether Mormon Artists Group can distribute volumes with extreme speed and cost-efficiency to the reader with payments via PayPal, cash or check.

On Sunday – PDF edition - $5

On Sunday – Limited edition - $100

To purchase, reply to this email, and we'll assist you.

Mormon Artists Group
457 West 57th Street #601
New York, New York 10019 USA

PayPal account: mgknelson
Telephone: 212-586-7826
E-mail: mgknelson@aol.com

www.mormonartistsgroup.com

may to-do

2009-05-02T09:38:00.003-05:00

All through April I worked on March's to-do list, and the good news is that I finished my book proposal! The bad news is that I haven't planted my vegetable garden yet, but I will, O believe me I will! So here's the list:

*Revise book proposal

*Send book proposal to agents

*Draaaag myself to Hope of America. . . .

*Return library books (I should just become a library donor with all the fees I pay)

*Get compost from city

*Fix blender, or find my waranty, or take it to the Mending Shack, which is one of my favorite places in Provo

*Plant seeds!

*Wash and vacuum car

*Re-enter poems from Alburnum (still have hard copy--electronic copy on stolen laptop)

*Clean back porch

*Buy camera cord

*Fix cell phone, or transfer sim card to old phone, or send a stink bomb to the Sony Ericsson people

*Get Eva's room ready for home from college summer

*Organize bag closet

*Back yard clean up

*Provo Farmer's Market!

*Yoga 3 X a week!

*Walk every day!

What's on your list for May?

pain dinner

2009-04-28T15:42:00.004-05:00

"Do you want Mommy to have to go to the hospital for a long, long time where you won't be able to see her very much?" I ask MoMo.

"I'm feeding my fire engine ice gas!!" MoMo says, in his extra-charming voice, the one that sounds like knows he might be in trouble but thinks he might be able to bluff his way out of it.

"Seriously. I'm going to have to go to the hospital and get lots of shots if you don't stop pouring water all over the floor."

"And my fire engine likes apples."

I give it up. I guess I haven't trained my three-year-old well--he doesn't respond to guilt trips. I'm in too much pain to try to stop him from washing his fire truck with ice chips and feeding it bits of apple.

I have one of those backs that likes to "go out" on me. I don't know what the actual medical phenomenon is that makes it do that, but it creates a sharp stabbing pain in my lower back whenever I move.

But can I just stop moving?

No, I cannot.

A snapshot of the kitchen floor in front of the stove looks like this: Momo holding a damp rag, sans pants, over his fire engine, a bowl of crushed ice, a butter knife, a syringe with a blue bulb, chopped up pieces of apple and red cabbage, splotches of dried hot chocolate blooming on my white tile (I hate the person that chose that white tile).

My dinner menu plan starts out like this:

*Carrot Tomato Bisque
*BLT's on Wholegrain Bread
*Purple Cabbage Slaw

I think about my options.

It's 6.30 pm and Christian won't be home until nine. It's February, and sort of half slushing/half snowing outside. My back is KILLING me, and Cecily has just squirmed onto my lap and said, "I feel like I'm going to throw up!"

Scratch the Carrot Tomato Bisque.

Cecily needs me.

And my back screams every time I even think about chopping onions and carrots.

I walk Cecily to my bed and turn on PBS Kids. (I love you, PBS Kids!) We lie down (Cecily lays herself down while I lower myself to my knees and then roll on to the bed, breathing through the pain.) I snuggle with her until she doesn't feel like she's going to throw up anymore, and take her temp: 99 degrees.

Back in the kitchen, I think about dinner again.

Here's the thing: every time I decide it will just be easier to skip dinner and let the kids eat cereal, it backfires. I don't know if it's just me or what, but take away my routine and all hell breaks loose. Someone spills cereal all over the kitchen floor, everyone's hungry an hour later, and it somehow seems it takes almost as long to make and clean up cereal as it does a more proper meal.

And no one's happy, especially not me.

So I decide to cook through the pain, and my menu shifts slightly:

*Build your own BLT's
*Purple Slaw

I hobble around, turning on the oven, stretching out strips of bacon on a jelly roll sheet, and gain a minor amount of satisfaction at how straight the rows of bacon are.

(Did I mention that I decided to take one of Christian's muscle relaxers for HIS back pain that the doctor had given him a couple of months earlier? Did I mention that you're not supposed to take those during the day, which I always thought was just so you wouldn't fall asleep when you should be working or driving a car or something, but I discovered that those little puppies make you catatonically depressed?)

Somewhere between catatonically depressed and suicidal.

So that's where I'd been all afternoon. A place called Catatonia, willing myself to go on and praying, not hoping, actually praying, that the hours would pass.

By 6.30, I was only a teensy bit better.

I put away the groceries I had bought six hours earlier.

I scatter a handful of walnuts onto a cookie sheet and brown them in the oven, thinly slice a tomato.

(I'm sorry, Alice Waters, for eating a tomato in February. I know it's wrong.)

And then sit down on the couch to rest my back. I check my email, my blog, my facebook.

Nothing.

My caller ID. It's been nearly 24 hours since anyone called. Not on my land line or on my cell phone. So in addition to feeling alienated by February, I'm now alienated by the human race.

With five easy modes of contact, not one human being has attempted. Not even my mother.

I go to Bittman's blog. That always makes me feel better. Lula snuggles against me on the couch and we watch Bittman make a "simple chocolate souffle." Then a parmesan cream cracker.

Lula is so excited by the cracker, as am I. I really hate paying four bucks for a box of un-tasty crackers.

I agree to let Lula try making them, telling myself it's good for her math and reading skills, and maybe it will cheer us up.

It sounds hokey, but the cooking and baking smells really do make me feel better. The bacon comes out of the oven, the walnuts are cooling on the chopping board, and I'm seeing my way clear of the muscle relaxers and into dinner.

We might actually get a meal out of this.

And I love how straight and flat my bacon strips are, how thin and uniform the tomato slices.

I plate the lettuce and tomatoes, and put slices of bread in the toaster. I don't plate the mayo, just open the jar and put a knife next to it.

(I'm so sorry, Alice Waters, for not making my own mayo, especially when I have those Clifford Family Farms eggs in the fridge, the ones that would be perfect for homemade mayo. I just couldn't. I promise I will soon. I will soon stop purchasing mayo and making only my own homemade mayo. I just can't do it tonight.)

As I start to make the slaw, I'm having trouble cutting, due to back pain. I wanted a thinly sliced cabbage that is slightly more substantial than a shred, but I can't do it because it requires a back-killing stance.

Looking at the walnuts gives me an idea--I'll cut my cabbage all skiwompus and call it rough cut slaw. Looking at the walnuts gives me another idea: Waldorf salad. More chunks. It'll be a chunky, sweetie purple salad. I glob a spoonful of mayo into a bowl, pour a glug of apple cider vineagar over top (after sadly realizing I'd used my last lemon the day before), and squirt a glop of Jack Daniels' mustard on top, a tsp. of sea salt, and a big spoon full of cousin Stan's fantastic honey. (More about cousin Stan and honey later). I whisk it together, grind in some pepper after I can't find the pinch of cayenne I'd wanted to use, and chop up the apple and walnuts. This salad is really tasty, and my kids like that it looks pinkish from the cabbage.

I'm feeding a crew of mixed eating levels here.

Fifteen years in the classroom taught me to design assignments that could extend out for the faster learners or break down for the slower learners. This meal has some extension and break-down options.

Has anyone noticed that kids don't like sandwiches? Number one, they can't see what's inside, number two, everything's mushed toghether, and number three, sandwiches are often too tall for a three-year-old's tiny mouth.

So I break it down.

Normally I try not to dumb down dinner for my kids, but, given how badly my back was hurting, I made an exception. I put ingredients on the plates so that the kids could either make their own sandwiches or eat everything separately.

Momo and Cecy opted to eat everything separately, though Momo enjoyed wrapping his bacon in lettuce and eating it that way. Cecy opted to eat a couple of bites of bacon and then go back to bed, which confirmed that she really was actually sick, as she loves bacon very much.

Lula opted for a bacon and lettuce sandwich, tomato on the side. And when Bonnie dropped by 30 minutes later, and Christian arrived home two hours later, they could make their own sandwiches and plop some chunky purple Waldorf on the side.

Final Menu:

*Build your own BLT's
*Rough Cut Purple Waldorf Slaw

The crackers come out of the oven and are quite delish. Lula breaks them up into squares and I eat a couple topped with purple waldorf. And she comes up with the genius idea of scoring the scraps of leftover dough into tiny squares and baking them into soup-sized crackers. If I had made the carrot tomato bisque, those crackers would have been perfect on top.

After dinner, Bonnie works on my back while Momo sprays himself in the eye with air freshener.

And regales us with stories about fires and the Statue of Liberty and how his "Chef's Glove" caught on fire. He even brought us the Chef's Glove to show us the char marks from the heating element in the oven, and a piece of blackened bread that he had cooked while I wasn't looking.

I would ground him for cooking without adult supervision, but he's only three.

What can I do?

Momo's on his own now.

Dinner is over, I'm flat out on the bed getting my back fixed and feeling like, if nothing else, I had made dinner. Like a champion Olympic athlete for making it through dinner. For making it through the whole day, really, but there's something about cooking through the pain that gives me an extra modicum of satisfaction.

No one can take that away from me.

I really do feel inordinately proud.

It's silly.

But it's the one thing that made the day okay.

Dinner plus pain is a challenging menu, a palate stretcher, but if you come out on the other side, you'll find it has it's own purifyingly character-building rewards.

menu forecast

2009-04-27T14:33:00.002-05:00

Here's what I want to cook this week:

M Chicken & Black Bean Chilli

T Red Lentil and Butternut Dal with Cucumber Raita

W Mushroom and Sirloin Stroganoff

TH Baked Campanelle with Tomato Cream Sauce (last of Summer '08 frozen tomatoes!)

F Lula Cooks! C & L have dinner date.

Sa Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

Su Waiting for inspiration--what to make for a dinner party, six adults and seven kids. Feel free to post your ideas!

stellet licht

2009-04-26T12:44:00.002-05:00

Last night in Boise we saw this strange and beautiful movie directed by Carlos Reygadas. It's set in a Mennonite community in Chihuahua, and has a slow, minimalist feel that reminds me of 80's art cinema. Christian especially loved the sound in the movie, which substituted for music. I loved the silence. And the big Van Gogh painting shots. See it, and let me know what you think of the ending.

depression dinner

2009-04-21T16:03:00.004-05:00

You are craving a meal that is gentle enough for an invalid and will be spooned to you by a stern nurse. One who will enforce the rules of recovery in such a clear, strong way that you know: follow her dicta and you will be ok.

Something with a mild broth, a piece of tender white-meat chicken, a turnip or potato, maybe.

The craving for clarity is overwhelming.

All of my life I've suffered bleak cycles of depression that I still can't fathom. Sometimes they come every year, sometimes every two or three, sometimes they connect to hormonal fluctuations like pregnancy and nursing, or weaning, or puberty. Sometimes to seasons. Or sometimes not. I can one time assign causality to an episode, but another time not. Once it seemed the death of an aquaintances' four-year-old son from leukemia triggered a mourning that stretched into a deep black crevice. One time it was weaning Lula. Another time it was rain.

It seems bleak to write about it, it feels like a moral failing, and a self-indulgent topic, and yet it's the only thing I know: this enemy, this friend. My long-standing companion.

I work to keep above it, but sometimes work isn't enough.

Here's what it feels like, and I'd give my eye teeth, as my mother used to say, to know how many other people go through this, and how often: a dream verging on a nightmare where you feel a vague sense that you should be finding someone, or driving somewhere, or running, but you can't remember what it is you are to do, you just know something is wrong. So you try to call out to ask, or stop someone on the street, your mother, or a police officer, but you can't lift your arms, and your voice won't come out. The call to action is there, but the ability to move is gone.

And then it gets worse. You start praying. You ask God to make the time pass quickly, because, like in a bad dream where a part of you knows that when you wake up, normalcy will return, you know that only the passage of time will get you to the other side. But you want to get there before you begin doubting the existence of normal.

So you sit on the couch and you pray.

Please God, make the time pass.

And then it gets dark.

The stern nurse says briskly, "Get up now, and start dinner."

So I go to the kitchen. One of the things that happens in this dark valley is disordered thought. "What was I thinking?" I ask myself, out loud. "Oh yeah, make dinner." I need to hear my voice to know what I am thinking.

So I know I am trying to make dinner. Now I have to make decisions, but the choices are overwhelming.

I could make macaroni and cheese, but the pot I use to make my bechamel sauce is dirty. I would have to wash it first. Could I do that? And could I also grate cheese? And the table is cluttered. Will I clear it off? Or could I just hand everyone a plate of food and let them clean their own spots?

Both options seem odious.

I feel unable to find a solution to this simple problem: can I make dinner and set the table? Both ways seem wrong and hard.

I just don't know what to do first. So I sit back down. "You need to make dinner," I say aloud.

"Yes," the stern nurse says, "Get going."

Please, God, help the time to pass.

When I turn on the lights, I start to feel a glisten better.

"Okay. I'm making dinner. I can make. Rice. A fried egg. Greens."

I get out the rice cooker.

"What was I doing? I was making dinner. I am making dinner. And I need to start the rice first because it takes 25 minutes." A small space clears on the disorderly desk in my mind.

But which rice am I making? The white rice seems a good choice, comforting and unchallenging.

It is wearing to lift the big rice bag, to measure six cups of water, to pinch in a teaspoon of salt and a pat of butter. But when the rice is cooking, and its new baby smell steams out into the kitchen, a modicum of ease spreads to my shoulders, up my neck and into my brain.

We have rice to eat, the most humble and beautiful food.

Eggs are easy. I have one carton left from Clifford Family Farms, and their prettiness lifts one more ounce of heaviness from my arms, one of the first flashes of pleasure I feel all day. Because they come in so many different sizes and colors, and I know the yolks will be bright and unclouded, and I've seen the chickens myself, and they seem happy enough.

I set out five eggs on the counter to temper. Half a stick of butter.

Greens are more challenging. The chard seems too hard to eat right now, too bitter. So I decide to make a salad with red leaf lettuce and cut the chard into a thin frisee that will make it easier to eat. I wash leaves and pat them dry. Rip up the lettuce, frisee the chard, smash a clove of garlic. Sprinkle kosher salt in the wooden bowl. Massage garlic into the wood. Feel another spark of pleasure at the lettuce and chard in the bowl, such deep greens and reds, such leaf.

"See," the stern nurse says, "the fog is clearing out. Keep it up, young lady. You're almost there."

Melt butter at medium heat. Toss greens and oil with my bare hands, then vinegar.

Grind salt onto the eggs, flip their fragile bodies upside down.

I plate up the food: a few tablespoons of rice, three lettuce leaves, an egg slid from the buttered pan onto Cecily's plate. Leave space between the foods.

Christian taught me that. Make it easy for her, make it clear and doable. Don't overwhelm her with too much food. For so many years I thought if I put a lot of food on my kids' plates, they might eat more. The opposite was true, and I've just learned this truth in the year that Eva went off to college, eighteen years after I first became a mother, three years after the last time I will have a baby.

Something to feel bad about is what a slow learner I am about really simple things. And then to feel bad about feeling bad. How do I feel bad about finally figuring something out? Shouldn't I feel proud?

Ask my dear friend, the black cloud crammed underneath the refrigerator.

With all of the lights on, the quiet fry of eggs, the loud, laughing children, though, waking up from the nightmare seems plausible.

It is six-thirty, the children's hour, and I know where everyone is. Momo is lying on the floor guiding his remote control car around. My mother is picking out ties at Ross for the groomsmen at Katie's wedding. Eva is watching House with her new best college friend in New York. Ingrid is sleeping in Oberdorla, Germany at the home of her host family with her stuffed bunny Chester at her side. Lula and Cecily are coloring Valentines.

Christian, the inadvertent partner in my depression, is trying his best to leaven the evening with jokes and happy talk with the kids. All are accounted for.

All of the tangible beauties in my life, the soft egg and the soft cheek, the soft word and the buoyant giggle, softnesses that should be enough to envelope and blot out the darkness.

Vinegar, salt, butter, oil. Yellow, white, green. The plate, the fork, the laugh, the clink.

My Nurse crosses her arms, purses her lips, gives me a meaningful look. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself," she says. "Get up, get out, and get on."

Today is not the day that I will fall under the train, or drift to the bottom of the ocean. Today is the day that I will cook an egg, fluff some grains of rice, salt a salad.

Today is the day that I will reassign created matter into plates of food: colder, hotter, smaller, flatter, firmer.

I will hold on to the table and the glass of water as proof that this was only dreaming.

That this darkness was only a mirror for the light.

poached egg

2009-04-20T10:21:00.002-05:00

A poached egg is really the most delightful food in the world. I love a bite of firm white dipped into the yolk, love to salt each spoonful individually so as to get the flavoring exact, but here's the thing: I want my poached egg to be round and smooth, firm with just enough runny yolk in the middle, but I'm not so good a poaching an egg--mine come out with the white dispersed or frilled, the yolk too runny or too firm.

I'm looking for the perfect method. Anyone?

It's been awhile.

2009-04-19T06:27:00.002-05:00

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Here is what happened:
1: Went to Lübeck. Had chaperone crush. Learned about Europe. Befriended Slovakians, avoided neo-Nazis. Decided to be myself.
2: Went to Italy, about which I will say slightly more:
I was staying with three of the Jacobies right by Florence. We took exciting day trips to San Gimignano, where we climbed a big huge tower and pranced through meadows of daisies, and Siena, which has a wonderful and big church designed by Bernini, aka my favorite artist. Also, the center square was voted the best in Italy. It was really good. I drank from the Fountain of Joy and bought an orange bra.
In Florence We visited lots of art: The Birth of Venus and David of course, a whole exhibit of Bernini's, and a lot of other things. For Easter Kendall and I both searched and received enormous chocolate eggs-- the Easter Bunny, looking to test my limits of uncouthness, hid mine in Wade and Kindra's closet, but in the end Kendall found mine and I found hers (in the dryer). In Florence every year a cart full of fireworks (pulled by four white oxen with flower hats) is exploded in the center square at noon. It was pretty killer, except for the enormous crowd. I saw over them by standing on a pole (really, on top of it-- I haven't balanced on such a small point since the circus troupe days)I was wearing a skirt and angel wings, but I decided getting a proper view was more important than dignity.
New discovery: wisteria. It smells so good. Mom, you should plant some asap.

cooking fast broken

2009-04-17T08:58:00.002-05:00

I broke my ten-day no-cooking streak yesterday by making the following:

*mini-quiches (ham, artichoke heart, asparagus, swiss cheese) in cupcake tins

*oven-baked sweet potato fries (wanted to put tamarind paste in the fry sauce, but alas had none in the pantry)

*vegetable tray w/lightly steamed and raw vegetables: broccoli rabe, asparagus, yellow peppers, jicama, and purple fingerling potatoes with an red pepper hummous dip

*today will make pasta w/ leftover broccoli rabe and potatoes

wedding

2009-04-07T16:11:00.003-05:00

In lieu of me posting pics and describing Katie's wedding, check out her photographer Maria Nissen's blog: www.marianissen.blogspot.com. She did a good job of conveying the warm feelings/raucaous vibe of the event.

xo,

Mom

family dining

2009-04-04T08:40:00.002-05:00

Spring fever has really taken over my brain, and I'm really neglecting my cooking, but I have created two new recipes lately that were quite good: Rolled Italian Meatloaf and Chicken Black Bean Soup. Like most of my recipes, I use a lot of ingredients, but they're not difficult to make. First, the meatloaf:

Rolled Italian Meatloaf
(serves 20 +--perfect for the huge Mormon family Sunday dinners we regularly attend/cook for if you don't mind taking out a second mortgage on your home to pay for it)

2 lbs ground chuck
2 lbs sweet italian sausage
3 large eggs
1 med. onion, finely chopped
1 bunch italian parsley, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, grated
6 oz. grated parm. reggiano
1 can tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup fine bread crumbs
6 oz. fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced
6 oz. oil-packed sun dried tomatoes
large bunch of basil
s + p to taste

*In large bowl, mix together ground meats, parmesan cheese, eggs, tomato paste, garlic, parsley, bread crumbs, and s + p until thoroughly combined.

*On two overlapping sheets of parchment paper the size of a jelly roll pan, press mixture into a large rectangle a little wider and a little shorter than the jelly roll pan.

*Sprinkle sliced mozzerella, basil leaves, and chopped sun-dried tomatoes over the rectangle, leaving a one inch margin around the sides of the rectangle.

*Using the edge of the parchment paper, begin rolling the meatloaf.

*When the roll is formed, press the edge into the meatloaf to seal.

*Bake on fresh parchment paper in a jelly roll pan at 350 degrees, or until your meat thermometer reads 170 degrees fahrenheit.

Cheaper, healthier, even more delicious, and still capable of feeding a large Mormon family, is

Chicken Black Bean Soup

1 3 lb whole chicken
2 large onions
9 cloves garlic
1 T. chili powder
1 T. cumin
1 T. smoked paprika
2 T. whole dried oregano
2 14 oz. cans chopped mexican tomatoes
2 small cans chopped mild chiles
2 cans black beans
1 cup sweet corn
1 cup hominy (optional)
1/2 cup white wine or apple juice
s + p to taste
olive oil
vegetable oil

for toppings
1 large bunch cilantro, washed and leaved
6 limes cut into quarters
1 cup finely grated swiss cheese
1 cup crema or sour cream thinned with milk
6 corn tortillas cut into thin slices

*Cook chicken in slow cooker with one quartered onion and three crushed garlic cloves on low for eight hours (or, if you don't have all day, simmer for an hour on the stove top in large stock pot.)

*At dinner time, chop remaining onion, peel and grate 6 cloves of garlic and begin softening over medium heat in 2 T olive oil. Add all dried spices and continue cooking for several minutes. Meanwhile,

*Strip meat from bones of chicken and tear into large, but manageable pieces. Skim fat from chicken stock, and, when onions are completely soft and spices slightly browned, pour stock into soup pot.

*Add chicken, rinsed beans, tomatoes and their juices, corn and hominy, s+p, and apple juice or wine. Simmer for about 20 minutes.

*While soup is simmering, prepare toppings: fry tortilla strips in vegetable oil over medium heat. Drain on paper towels.

*Fill small bowls with limes, cilantro, cheese and crema.

*I like 2-3 lime wedges per large bowl of soup.

*Of course, everything will be more delicious if you cook your own black beans, roast your own chiles, and slice your corn off the cob, but people in BMF's just don't have that kind of time.

xo,

Lara

family vacay

2009-03-31T12:22:00.002-05:00

When I was a kid, between the ages of 7-18, I always thought that other families' vacations were way better than ours. As the oldest of seven children, and the daughter of frugal parents, we never bought treats at the gas station, souvenirs at gift shops, or any of the other frivolous little tchotchkes that back then seemed so cool and exotic to me. Who were these mysterious children (the ones from back East always looked pale and overprotected, the Europeans wore snug little shorts and sandals with socks) whose parents bought them Mickey Mouse ears, or giant snow cones? I used to wish I was an only child, or at least from a family with only two children, so I could ride in a small tidy car eating verboten foods like twinkies and snickers, instead of a station wagon with the back seat folded down, rolling around with sticky, wind-blown younger siblings, stopping at rest stops to make sandwiches and eat yogurt.

Last week in Arizona, Auntie Brook rented a cabana by the pool at the Hilton Pointe Tapatio resort, which you can do without being a guest there. Each cabana has a fridge, table, lounge chairs, a pack of cards, cable tv, and heavy drapes you can pull for shade and privacy. The three pools feature water slides, palm trees, hot tubs, and a zero-depth area for toddlers. I don't think you're supposed to bring in 8 adults and 20 children per cabana, but that's what we did anyway. Auntie Brook is from a family of 10, and they have lots of tricks for having fun on a budget. In comes Lindsay and Whitney with smuggled bags of contraband: uncrustables, granola bars, grapes, oreos, etc., etc. I thought I saw the pool attendants looking askance at our cabana before I pulled the curtains to unload the snacks into the mini-fridge, and I made the kids pull the curtains while eating our contraband snacks as well. I watched the only children or the two children eating 15 dollar salads, nachos and chicken strips and had that feeling again: these are the real people, paying full price for everything, spending unimaginable loads of cash on meals and activities and shopping. Easterners in cowboy hats and boots, golf regalia, pale and over protected, while our Mormon clan ran around under supervised, already tan in mid-March, swimming like olympians.

My therapist has been helping me to discipline my thoughts away from negative thinking, and I checked my thoughts: look how happy the kids are running around with all of their cousins! Those nachos don't look good at all. And those forty-year old women in bikinis sparkling mules with tummy tucks and boob jobs? Their husbands probably cheat on them. Okay. I check my thoughts again. Disciplining them doesn't include ranking on others. I love my belly. It gave me Eva, Ingrid, Lula, Cecily and Moses. And, now that I'm older, my best memories are of the camping trips we took as a family (and I marvel at my parents, packing seven children, tents, camp stoves, and food for a whole week into and on top of our station wagon.) My favorite thing was watching my dad, who is an excellent outdoorsman (well, he's excellent at almost everything) put up the tent and then getting his militaristic orders: police the perimeter and make sure we haven't left any garbage behind, damp the fire, dig a three inch deep trench around the tent. My brother and I loved this, and all of the facts about the flora and fauna of our camp area he would impart.

And the thing that I missed out on the most during that narcissistic and depressed time of my life was a strong relationship with my siblings. I was too absorbed in my own existential spiral to notice what was going on with them. Now that we're grown, they are the people I treasure most in this world. When we were fighting as kids, my Mom would always tell us, "Be careful what you say. Your brothers and sisters are going to be your best friends when you grow up." She was right. I have four incredible sisters and two hilarious, cool brothers. All brilliant, all kind and dependable, all excellent people.

So, Scottsdale fashion be damned. I love the matching short and tank top outfits sewn by my mother that we wore and then handed down throughout the late seventies and early eighties, our cool "woody" station wagon, our cooler full of granola and yogurt for the road.

gazela

2009-03-26T14:45:00.002-05:00

I need to do a lot of posting of descriptions and pictures of our lovely week in Arizona, but for now I will abbreviate by saying that for me, the best part was bonding with brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, parents, in-laws, and our new family members, Tony, his daughter Alexa and son Jared, and his family.

Until I get the energy to post a more detailed account, I'll put up the poem I wrote for the wedding and read at the ceremony. It might be more sentimental than what I usually write, but sentiment was running high.

Or maybe I'm just not as good at hiding my sap as I think I am.

Wedding Ghazal

for Katherine Anne Candland and Marco Antonio Perez

21 march 2009

In the desert they thirsted: clouds high above the Arizona sky;
they found oasis: a tree, a well, love beneath the Arizona sky.

He strung a thousand lights for her, around saguaro, candles in jars,
a field of shimmer against black night sky--a dove of stars in the Arizona sky.

The house they built stands waiting: Jared, Alexa, Tony, Katie;
four hearts, one home, and four hands hold one brush: paint the Arizona sky.

The wrens build a nest inside cactus, peep out, is it safe?
Return with food for their chicks, babes of the Arizona sky.

After the tree comes desert, but Adam and Eve prepare;
clouds part: pink and gold, mountains rising past the infinity of the Arizona sky.

2:28

2009-03-26T01:28:00.003-05:00

Just thought I'd stop in.
Got back from Cambridge Sunday night, which was wonderful. Cambridge, and getting back. I really love it here, and am starting to feel like it's my home. I think since I've moved so often I make that adjustment more quickly than most other people, which I'm grateful for. I pulled my first all-nighter of the semester writing a paper on Wordsworth's Prelude, and maybe it was all of his romantic bs or the lack of sleep, but when I watched the sun rise over college walk I got a little teary.
I hope the fam is doing well. I'm so jealous of your tans, tamales, and ... well, I can't think of anything else that starts with t, but the point is I am expecting Mom to Remember what I showed her long ago, or to enlist Dad's help, to post pictures from the trip/wedding for my viewing pleasure.
I forget what you all look like already! And I want to make sure the littles haven't gotten any bigger.
Love you guys!
xoxoxoxoxo
Eva

arizona slang

2009-03-18T16:30:00.001-05:00

Moses and Cecily have come up with some new term whilst in Arizona:

*Chin Strawberries= Strawberries with dimpled chins

*Crabby Patties= McDonald's Hamburgers

Up Next: Scottsdale resort wear

Lonesome

2009-03-17T22:25:00.003-05:00

Kinda lonely here with all green themed jazz tunes on Kuer. I just removed a couple of black garbage bags of food frozen in mid-rotting stage from our twin deep-freeps that kids turned off. For once I'm grateful we have to take the cans out to the middle of our ocd circle. Now to do something about the moths. I am killing about 30 a day and their numbers seem to be going down.

I'm getting less and less enamored with being in the house by myself. I used to enjoy it for about 3-4 days. Now it's about a day. I really miss Lara and the kids. Reading Lara's posts make me miss them more. Such remarkable writing and such remarkable people.

I had a really fun and interesting time in Seattle last weekend. I played with Jessica Lurie and Greg to Danijel Zezelj's live narrative painting. I even got to bring 4 of the 8 paintings home. Really amazing, white on black panels painted with tiny rollers. We also did a couple of little performances in schools where Danijel did really nice paintings of a long-legged elephant with a ballerina on top holding a parasol. Incredible economy of strokes. Maybe I go to Seattle too much, but it always restores my perspective, musically and artistically. Greg's playing is always surprising, creative, sonically and rhythmically tasty beyond description, and both thoughtful and visceral.

elders

2009-03-14T22:01:00.002-05:00

Today I taught a poetry workshop for the Utah State Poetry Society, and, though I was dreading it just a little bit because I'm crazily trying to get ready for our trip to Arizona tomorrow, single-parenting, and trying to find the last thousand words of an essay I'm writing, and also because I swore off teaching for the year, I loved it.

There were about fifty people there, and probably 45 of them were sept- or octogenerians, and here's the deal: I think that generation is the best generation living today for several reasons.

First of all, they were around during the depression, and I think this instilled proper, sensible values in them. They are the last generation who didn't live in ginormous houses or have excessive spending habits. They seem to value people more than things, with their societies and clubs, luncheons and dances. They are always gracious and thoughtful, interested in the well-being of others, and really fun to be around in general. My Grandma Beth is of this generation, and she exemplifies all of these traits. Secondly, they are people who walked places, didn't have tv's, gardened and preserved, and made their food from scratch.

BUT, this is also the generation who doesn't seem overly nostalgic, and who seems to appreciate things like antibiotics and the benefits of technology (remember Hinckley?), and progress in general.

I know I'm making huge generalizations, but I realized today how fun teaching is with such a great audience. When I lived in Oklahoma seven years ago, I was the writer-in-residence at Oklahoma City University and one of my duties was to teach a community outreach workshop at a nearby retirement home. Same deal there. I taught a memoir writing workshop there and had the time of my life hearing all the stories and just hanging out, and at the end we had a tea and all wore fancy hats.

Today after the workshop, they took me out to Chuck-a-rama for lunch, and one of the members, a hilarious guy named Bob slipped me a poem he had written at the workshop about me. Then he said, "I haven't been widely published, but probably 1,000 ladies have poems I've written for them, maybe in their lingerie drawer. What could be better than that?" And as we were all saying good-bye, he shook my hand with his two hands and said, "Lara, you're full of words, you're full of vitality, you're full of music, you're full of many things, but one thing you're not full of is yourself." Then he turned and left, and I was charmed by this little poem that he has probably said upon leaving about a thousand other ladies.

If there was a faculty job that involved only teaching seniors, I'd reconsider my whole anti-teaching thing.

If you really want to have a great day, spend it with the eighty-plus crowd. It's enriching and inspiring.

Do it before it's too late.

Sneeva

2009-03-14T21:40:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about her lately.

My first baby. We named her Eva, but we called her Sneeva (and Diva or Bereava, as the occasion demanded), and Christian wrote a set of three jazz tunes for her called the Sneeva Suite during her first week of life. Sneeva was for her little snuffling babyhood. Diva was for her tiny legs walking at eight months, her little head bolt upright on my shoulder at one week, and her teeny fingers on the keyboard as an infant. Bereava, well, all babies cry, but I didn't understand when she was a babe the weight she would carry on her shoulders of worry, anxiety and a certain kind of understanding way beyond her years. So maybe that's what it means. Or maybe it was just the hour between 10 and 11 pm, every night in our cute little Richmond District railroad flat in San Francisco when she would wail, wail, wail, and then finally droop into sleep.

So now my baby is a big girl off at college in the big city. I'm awestruck by her. She is one of the most fascinating people I know, and still wise beyond her years. I love her sure touch with children, part stern and part tender, that makes them feel so safe. She's always had that, always loved babies. When Cecily was a sick newborn, Eva understood how her oxygen, oximeter, and nebulizer worked (she was 12) and was the person other then me or her father that I trusted the most with Cecily. She seemed like, if Christian and I were suddenly struck dead, she could have easily stepped in and made everything work with aplomb.

I love how attached she is to her two little nanny charges, and the concerned phone calls I got from her as she worried if they were on track developmentally.

But that's not all.

This girl can cook up a storm, write a beautiful sonnet, short story, or essay, make these amazingly detailed paper cuts and drawings, play the bass, program "almost anything," teach herself physics and calculus, breeze through symbolic logic, write a stern letter to the sexist Columbia paper, and still retain a great sense of humor and a killer smile.

Sorry to brag, folks, but I just can't help it, so I'm giving in to the urge to splurge wholeheartedly. I'm so proud of my baby, one of my favorite companions, my first born, eva snow.

family dining

2009-03-13T19:10:00.002-05:00

sigh.

i've been breaking all of my rules.

i bought lettuce wraps at costco for dinner tonight.

for heaven's sake.

it must be spring fever.

and real fever, as i was sick for a week.

i did manage to make over the last several weeks:

*chicken & dumplings

*pork chops with an apple cider-dijon pan sauce

*frozen grapes--my new addiction

*three cheese mac n'

* a really good arugula salad--yay arugula, yay spring!

so, i'm having a block about what to cook lately. any ideas?

tell me about your menus, pleeeeeez.

xxoo in advance for any inspirations.

heaven--a dialogue

2009-03-11T13:38:00.003-05:00

Cecily: What does heaven look like?

Mom: I don't know.

Cecily: Yes you do.

Mom: No, I don't. Nobody does.

Cecily: (laughing) Yes they do.

Mom: What do you think it looks like?

Cecily: It's all yellow and bright.

Mom: And what else?

Cecily: With little bumps. I'm seeing it right now in my brain.

Mom: What are the people wearing?

Cecily: Ummm. Just their dancing clothes.

Mom: How old are they.

Cecily: I don't know. Teenager.

Mom: What are they standing on?

Cecily: Their feet.

Mom: What are their feet standing on?

Cecily: Air.

Mom: Are there plants and buildings and animals and mountains?

Cecily: No, but there's a sky.

Mom: What are they doing?

Cecily: Just laying around relaxing.

Mom: Do they ever get bored of relaxing?

Cecily: (laughing) No!

buttery eggs

2009-03-11T13:30:00.002-05:00

When Lula was a toddler, all she wanted to eat for breakfast were "eggys," so I would soft scramble two eggs in a tablespoon of butter which she would consume in seconds. What a baby she was! Cornflower eyes, raspberry lips, apricot curls--all wide-eyed summery perfection--I couldn't walk through the store with her without being stopped by customers wanting to comment on her beauty.

Not to brag or anything.

She is now 10 and a half, and has recently been ravenous, and growing out of her clothes and shoes every six weeks, and once again wants her soft scrambled eggs "the way you make them" every morning for breakfast.

Why is it so flattering when your kids request food the way only you can make it? Perhaps it is the last hold out, the last bit of control one can wield over one's child. Even with Ingrid and Eva happily settled far from home at the moment, I still love to hear that they can't wait to come home for family dinner.

clean air

2009-03-05T22:41:00.003-06:00

Hey! The Daily Herald published a hastily written (telling you it was hasty because embarrassed by some awk sentences) letter to the editor I wrote last week. There are some interesting and/or amusing comments in the discussion section.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/301560/56/

I've been meaning for years to join Utah Moms for Clean Air.

(If you're from out of state, you might not know that we have major air quality issues here.)

I'll become a mom for clean air eventually.