Citizen Beta

Wow.  That is…well, ahem, bananas!

I haven’t had the energy to post all the old cityscape images to Flikr yet so they are still huge…

someday, someday…

I have been thinking about food a lot lately. Not just because I like to eat, which I do, but because over the past couple years I have become concerned with the kind of food I eat and where it comes from. Don’t worry, I am not going to preach at ya! This is just to say that I have read two books lately that have really given me a lot to think about and confirmed for me what I have been thinking all along.

First I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I loved that this book was really a collaboration with her whole family. I loved that she spoke so wistfully about asparagus. I love that she included yummy recipes and the truth about slaughtering your own animals and the difficulties of eating healthy in America. Next I read Michael Pollan’s latest In Defense of Food. Now, I think I would’ve preferred to read this one first because Kingsolver’s book seems to be, in many ways, Pollan’s ideas in practice. But, it was still a really thought-provoking read. I didn’t like it as much as the two other books (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Botany of Desire) I have read by him but it was short and to the point and packed with good and useful and interesting information about how Americans eat and how we can, quite easily really, eat better.

Related to all of this was our decision to get chickens and to finally join our CSA (community supported agriculture). The chickens are about good, fresh, organic eggs and also raising animals that, unlike dogs and cats, we cannot cuddle with but we still benefit from. We give then a good, peaceful life in our yard and they give us eggs and poop for the garden. Our five chicks have grown so big in the past few weeks and as of last night live outside (still in the brooder but out of the garage!). I am growing suspicious however, that one, if not two, are roosters. One rooster we can deal with. Two? Nope. The girls are already invested in the chickens, too. They like to check on them, watch them and feed them. It is a family project I am really proud of and I know we will learn a lot. I have read a bunch of chicken books and am addicted to this website and forum.

When we planted our garden this year we put in fewer tomato plants (I’m not a huge fan) and more pepper plants (yum!). We also put in broccoli which we eat a lot of, but too late and so it is not doing anything. I also planted two kinds of beans because they are good to eat and fun to pick and easy to grow. We tried to simplify the garden and really think about what we will actually eat. Both my mom and D’s parents have huge productive gardens every year so we end up with spinach and squash and cucumbers and things we don’t grow ourselves. We also end up with lots of local peaches. To complete our own garden we have lots of herbs, which we use faster than they grow: oregano, thyme, basil and rosemary. And, I cannot forget the silverskin garlic I have growing on the kitchen windowsill.

In an effort to reduce what I get at the grocery and compliment the healthy foods I am growing myself I join the local CSA on a four week trial basis. I opted to get the box every other week to start out with: I am not much of a cook so need to get up to speed with some new recipes and make sure that we eat the food fast enough (although chickens love scraps!). This week we got: 2 mangoes, 3 avocados, head of bibb lettuce, bunch of arugala, blueberries, strawberries, 4 yellow onions, green beans, broccoli, two cucumbers…am I forgetting anything? It was a lot of food! Of course not all of this was local but some was and all of it was regional (although our food region is pretty large because we live in the blasted desert). All was organic. Next, I had to cook.

Tuesday night I was suffering from a cold and it was a million degrees and our swamp cooler was broken so I wanted something cool to eat. I made cucumber soup which I liked and A ate. D ate but didn’t really like and L wouldn’t even touch it. I also made this green bean dip from the Kingsolver books which I thought was super yummy and again, A liked and D ate but didn’t like and A pretty much went hungry that night. Last night I made some pasta with veggies from the box (green beans and broc) and herbs from the garden. I also grilled the trout that L and I caught at her preschool summer camp fishing trip yesterday. We had a big salad with the lettuce, arugala and avocado. Besides the pasta in the pasta salad all was (essentially) local, all was fresh and organic. Nothing besides the pasta was processed. It was delicious and comforting and just the type of meal I am aiming for.

I am not sure what we will have for dinner tonight…maybe leftovers, maybe even a big box of processed mac and cheese. I am just happy to be on a path of mindful eating and happy to have chicks to feed and plants to tend and books (books!!) about chickens and gardens and food to keep my busy on these long light summer nights.

Anyone want to share a favorite heat-of-the-summer recipe? It is close to 100 every day here lately and we need some refreshing new dishes to try!

It really is!  97 degrees today and the same expected all week.  And lordy lordy, it is only June.

How is it where you are?

So here are the lovely ladies I have referred to a couple of times. They are keeping us quite busy but are entertaining as hell. I am also busy with a couple reviews, an article and teaching two summer classes. More on chickens, books and summertime soon.

A recent Bookreporter review: The Outcast  by Sadie Jones.  I liked this book a lot. 

Also an interview with Holly Lisle and a review of her first book for young readers I did for Teenreads.com 

I always enjoy doing author interviews and I think Lisle’s responses were interesting and thoughtful.  The book was fun, too!

Okay, I have changed the design once again…but now the non-Flickr images are all janked up.

But, this one below is my first Cityscape on Flickr so at least something is working.

Still playing with all this…

I am going to be buying a book or two soon, hopefully used and, as always, am looking for recommendations. What has blown your mind lately?

I am actually right in the middle of a huge stack of books for summer reviews. But, sometimes when I have a lot of “assigned” reading I crave books of my choosing. I have read some good ones recently and will post when they are published. Only this one is out right now and not everyone’s cup of tea, I am sure.

As for non-reviewed books I just finished Pamela Norris’s The Story of Eve* which was good but a bit unfocused. I was hoping for more of an academic discussion of Eve but this was more more concerned with Eve’s manifestations in literature and the visual arts though Norris does spend some time exploring her role in the history of the Christian church. Generally, I liked this book quite a bit even though the end dragged a bit and I think she was really reaching in some of her literary examples.

My mom lent me The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates which I really liked as well. Oates is sort-of hit or miss for me. Some of her more precise and focused novels I have enjoyed (We Were the Mulvaney’s but not The Falls) though I like some of her odd stuff, too, like Foxfire and some of the early short stories. This one was really readable (I think that says a lot for an Oates book) and the story interesting. It follows one woman who knows little about her family’s background and only of their struggles as immigrants in what they perceive to be (and often is) a hostile America. Hostility and fear are the two big emotions in this book and trauma and violence and sadness follow this woman, even after she fashions a new identity for herself to protect her son. But, she remains an outsider always and Oates captures that well. There is a lot going on in this novel and the author touches on some of it very lightly, leaving the reader to do some of the heavy work. A good, and often strange, story overall.

I am working on A.S. Byatt’s Possession right now, but people, I don’t know that I can finish this one.

A business note: I am not keeping this particular design for the blog but am still looking around at other ones that I think will work better. Bear with me. Today I am going to play around on Flickr and see if I can get some cityscape images up on my photostream…If I can I will also post a photo of the special girls who have come to live us!

Biggish changes around here.  We have some new little ones living with us (more on that soon), I am going to start using Flickr to host my images, and I am, obviously, playing with the site design.  I like this current one better than the old one but am not loving certain things like the fact that most of each post gets put under a fold and I can’t figure out how to get my own banner up…

What do you think?  Better, worse?  Close to great but still some work to do?

When L was littler I longed for the days she was old enough to just hang out with me at art museums and cafes and such. Those days are here and she is a great and thoughtful and fun companion on all sorts of adventures. But, now we are, honestly, slowed down by A who is not yet 2 years old. This week, however, L had no school and I had only my online class to teach (my other summer course doesn’t start until June) and so yesterday with A watched over by the babysitter, L and I headed out.

First to the art museum. We went through pretty fast but mostly because all but one of the exhibits were there the last time we visited. It was a nice quiet way to start our day. Especially because our next stop had the potential for chaos. At her recent dentist appointment, L had no cavities and so got choice of gift certificate. The one she picked was to an indoor “jumpy place.” Now, there are three things that L really truly loves. In order they are: dinosaurs, astronomy and jumpy things. By jumpy things I mean those big inflatable rooms people rent out for festivals or street fairs or other events when be-socked children jump and slide inside until either they are dragged out by their ankles against their will or sustain a minor head injury. Turns out there is a huge indoor jumpy place in town…who knew?

We were the only ones there. This place was a dressed up warehouse with 7 or so gigantic inflatable deals. None had been inflated outside and so they were all pretty clean. In fact the whole place was so clean I am pretty sure we were the first visitors ever. Her certificate gave her unlimited jumping time but she only lasted 40 minutes before she got hungry and tired. It was a great (free!) experience. Parents are allowed to jump, slide, etc along with their kids so I did even though that sort of thing makes me feel like a total goon even when no one can see me. I didn’t like how loud it was, however: each jumpy thing had its own little fan and generator and there was really loud early 80’s tunes blasting (including, and I am so not kidding, “Jump” by Van Halen. “Listen,” I told L, “They say we might as well jump!”).

Then we were off to a favorite diner for lunch. French fries and milk and a chocolate sundae and she was a happy, happy kid. And I was a pretty happy kid, too.

What teeny adventures have found you lately?

It is a good thing we have decided to stop at two children because a third one would make me an invalid. I was rarely sick before L was born; a cold here or there but nothing much. After she was born I got colds more frequently. In the almost year and a half since A was born I have gotten every cold going around and each one has wiped me out. I have been sick for over two weeks now, first with this awful stomach flu that was going around (I have never had the flu as an adult) and now with a lingering head cold. I blame it on fatigue, stress and also preschool germs.

Needless to say my house has been a bit messier than usual. And, that is pretty messy because I don’t go in much for housework. Our house isn’t dirty but messy if you know what I mean. Ever since moving out at 17 every place I have lived has been cluttered: piles of books, clothes, mail, etc. Add two kids under 5 and you add more laundry everywhere and scraps of paper, legos, apple cores, tiny socks and crayons littering the landscape.

Yesterday while L was at school and A was napping I was in on the computer getting some work done. I ventured out for something to drink and noticed a kid created trail snaking through the house. It was comprised of the following:

wooden cash register, several play dollars, empty plastic bowl, play chef’s hat, plastic cup with straw, notepad, pretend ice cream cone, cat puppet, blue lego, hairbrush, photograph, one of my shirts taken from my room and used to dust furniture, another play dollar, another plastic bowl, cloth napkin, play kitchen knife, doll stroller with doll riding up-side-down, kids shirt, 2 kids books, another lego, another cloth napkin, decorated toilet paper roll, magazine…

I stopped at this point because it was a tad depressing. This was just three rooms. I spend a lot of time picking all this stuff up but I mostly ignore it. Everything does have its place here but everything is also fair game for imaginative play. I much prefer them wearing cloth napkins on their heads as babushkas and dragging stuff into another room to build a submarine than having them obsess over some gimmicky, plasticky branded toy (and they have some of those, too, because, well, they do have grandparents).

My house is a mess and my kids are ragamuffins: mismatched clothes, messy hair, faces smeared in yogurt…but, on mornings like this, when we get up early enough to enjoy hours before it gets too hot to move (94 degrees yesterday), when I am ahead on reviews and the beginning of summer term went smoothly, when L and I finish a chapter book over tea and I get to listen to a bit of the morning news on the radio the mess and the piles don’t bother me much at all.

I admit I have very little energy to blog lately.  This spring has not been as springy as I would’ve liked.  But, the garden is (mostly) in, the days are (mostly) sunny and I am (just about) ready to start a new term.  I have review books through June and recently did an author interview.  I think I will be back in the swing of things soon.  In the meantime here are some (but not all) of the things I have been reading and writing about.

Various short reviews in print and also online. 

Belong to Me by Marissa de los Santos 

House Rules by Rachel Sontag 

The Truth about my Bat Mitzvah a children’s book by Nora Raleigh Baskin 

Tub Toys a children’s picture book by Terry Miller Shannon and Timothy Warner 

The Buddha’s Diamonds a children’s book by Carolyn Marsden and Thay Phap Niem  

An early memory: I am about four years old so my sister is about two. We have the stomach flu and so does my mom but she is up and moving between our rooms cleaning us up and bringing us crackers and water and ginger ale. Then, in the hallway, she faints, face first onto the hardwood floor. Luckily she doesn’t smash her face or break or nose or drive her teeth through her lips. But, she does crack her chin open. My aunt is called to come tend to my sister and I and my dad takes my mom to the hospital. I either forget the next part or fell asleep and then what I remember is being tucked into my parents bed on one side of my mom with my sister on the other. I looked at my mom with the purple stitches and knots in her chin, the skin white and bloodless, and told her, “Mommy, I can see your bone.” Then someone, maybe all three of us, threw up all over the bed.

So, take away the stitches and send the dad away for a week to a conference in California and you have an idea of what was going on here.

More soon…

If it is not one thing it is another, as my oh-so-optimistic mother likes to say. So here we have been dealing with continued teething and tantrums, pediatric dental appointments, night-wakings resulting in zombie-like waking states and all the general hoo-haa related to the end of the academic term. We did manage to squeeze in a lovely, sunny and fun trip to visit old and dear friends in Durango and of course I have been escaping into books as often as possible.

Recently I read two books that I wouldn’t have normally chosen and I am glad I did.

At first glance, and mostly because I am not familiar with her previous novels, Meg Wolitzer’s The Ten Year Nap didn’t really appeal to me. I get sick of the whole fabricated “Mommy Wars” thing. But, as I am at a particular critical professional juncture yet again having to decide whether or not to apply for a much coveted and very competitive tenure (full-time) position I had Bookreporter send it to me. You can read my review here but I would like to say how pleasantly surprised I was with this book. It was a lot different than I thought it would be and really, I think, captures both the joy and the tedium of parenthood, especially when you spend the vast majority of time at home with your kids. The children in this book are older than mine so in school all day, giving the moms a chance to reflect on whether or not they should return to work and if so what type of work will make them happy? I love my job (well, most aspects of my job) but do I want to go full-time and miss out on all the time with my girls? What are the trade-offs? Is the money and prestige (or maybe sense of accomplishment) worth seeing less of my kids and having to cram it all into the weekend? My issues are not exactly the ones Wolitzer is concerned with but she does speak beyond her immediate subject and characters in thinking about work and motherhood and feminism (ideal and actual). Plus, it was well written: she has a way of rendering the small details or moments of the way with grace and accuracy. I am keeping my eyes open for used copies of her earlier novels.

I also read The Book Thief. As a writer for a small Jewish newspaper, mostly doing book reviews, I have to be honest and say that I get a little weary of Holocaust related novels and non-fiction. This is something I studied in school and in fact the foundation of my thesis (which actually dealt with identity). Still, not every Holocaust book is good or well-written (although arguably they are all important and worth reading) and I have read a lot of not-so-good ones. So, even though everyone loved this book I had no desire to read it. My aunt lent it to me and it sat on the table for a couple months in the “going-to-read-or-maybe-not” pile. I finally picked it up and was instantly hooked. It is narrated by Death but it is so not cheesy or over the top. Death is the silent witness not only to individual deaths, but individual lives, is a perfect guide through the story of Liesel, a young orphan living with foster parents in a poor suburb of Munich during World War II. Books become an addiction for her representing power and knowledge and love and comfort. It is not a Holocaust book (although it does address that subject) but about one young girl living in the Nazi Era in Germany and how she copes with that, among the many other things put before her.  I really don’t even want to tell you too much about this one first of all because it would take more energy than I have right now (see above reference to zombies) and it is just so good you should read it yourself. It is quirky and deadly serious and quite funny and very sad and it has been a while since I have read such a meaty and interesting and compelling book. I didn’t want it to end and then I wanted to speed through it to get through all the emotions I knew it would pull from me by the last page.

Bonus review by yours truly.

Amid an often chaotic household, two things were constant growing up: books and baking.  I am happy to see L is in love with both of those things.  She reads more than I do which is a lot!  She loves books of all kinds, but especially books about dinosaurs.

My mother is a fantastic baker.  She can’t really cook as far as I can tell but her breads, cakes, cookies are wonderful and win blue ribbons every year at the state fair.  Her and L bake a lot together.  The extent of my baking with L has been to get pre-made cookie dough, bake it and decorate it.  It is fun and they cookies always taste good.

One of our favorite children’s authors around here is Elisa Kleven.  As a gift last year L got one of her books, Sun Bread along with  an actual sun bread baked from the recipe found in the back of the book.  Lately L and I have been baking this bread quite a bit.  On Sunday morning my friend from down the street and I sat out in my driveway having a yard sale, trying to sell the clothes and toys the kids had outgrown.  Mostly we just talked about parenting and a little bit about Clare getting kicked off America’s Next Top Model.  I was telling her about this bread because her son likes to bake and cook.  It is the perfect baking activity for kids because there are few ingredients, and they are easy to mix by hand.  There is a lot of kneading involved and you can shape this bread dough into animals, flowers, suns or whatever.  Plus, it tastes yummy, sort of like a croissant or challah.

Other popular authors with L right now include Helme Heine and Lauren Child.   

What are your kids reading (and baking?)