Ululate

ul-yuh-layt; yool-

intransitive verb

Photo courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

1. To howl, as a dog or a wolf; to wail; as, ululating jackals.

If Ivan's ululating is a foreshadowing of the Terrible Twos, then bury me now.

Tomato seeds

"Tomato" courtesy of eqqman.

More words on the broad subject of tomatoes:

A New York Times article investigates whether the tomato plant -- a member of the poisonous nightshade family -- is edible, plus a leafy tomato sauce recipe. (Thanks to my sister Kyna for the heads-up.)

Then check out "The night my world caved in" at Blog Nosh, which is a round-up of great blog writing. This essay, written by Dawn Friedman of this woman's work, takes on the issue of body image. I liked it.

And finally, a small fact, which I wanted to include in "Summer flesh," but couldn't make it fit, but now I can. ... The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the debate over whether the tomato is a vegetable or fruit. In 1893, it ruled it a vegetable, despite the plant's ovaries, because it's generally served with dinner, not dessert.

Summer flesh

If the woman wants to be a poet,
she must dwell in the house of the tomato.
-- Erica Jong.

Red zebra tomatoes courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

While I was at the seashore, sizzling hot temperatures at home caused my vegetable garden to explode, and upon my return I was greeted by waves of rainbow chard, giant zucchini and the summer's first tomato, a red zebra, rosy with yellow stripes. The season's first tomato is cause for celebration in my family, where we eagerly watch the vines and stroke the warm globes as they ripen and turn red. I'd waited 55 days to enjoy this.

Children's author and illustrator Rosemary Wells is another who knows how a tomato deserves a party (and who, incidentally, grew up on the New Jersey shore where my family spent the last week vacationing). In "First Tomato," which is part of her tiny trilogy "Voyage to the Bunny Planet," she writes: "It smells of rain and steamy earth and hot June sun. In the whole tomato garden it's the only ripe one. I close my eyes and breathe in its fat, red smell. I wish that I could eat it now and never, never tell."

I sliced our first tomato thickly, sprinkled it with sea salt and served it to my family with ceremony. And when the last slice was divided and consumed with relish, I sneaked back into the kitchen and licked the cutting board of gelatinous juice -- anatomically, speaking, the placenta. I slurped up the tomato caviar, tangy, slippery sweetness mixing with the woodiness of the cutting board, then wandered to the bookshelf where I pulled down "Fruitflesh" by Gayle Brandeis, whose book links the act of writing to the heart and the tongue, and offers writing exercises to wake up both the body and the writing. There I found a part of a poem by Portuguese poet Maria Teresa Horta, who was jailed in the 1970s for her explicit poetry:

I am lost to time
I am lost to time

enclosed in my
fruit
with breath inside

Breasts are obvious fruitflesh.

"We humans are nothing more than soft machines built to sustain impossible longings, endless desires. We recognize these things by the sense of yearning they produce: stomachs rumble, hearts ache, minds search lips parch," writes Kim Adrian in a recent Tin House cover essay "How to Buy Peaches." "But to nurse is to be overfull, overripe, literally leaking with that which some else both needs and desires."

My belly after three pregnancies is a ripe fig, yielding, wrinkled. Then there are rounded shoulders and full hips, but what of elbows, toenails, tongue? Author and illustrator Shelley Jackson invites us to explore her body and the result feels like lovemaking.

"I have a gold ring through the little lip of flesh at the bottom of my belly button," Jackson writes. "When I am writing, I lock myself to my desk by a chain through my navel ring. Otherwise I would get up every five minutes to clip my toenails or refill the ice trays."

Go check out her tomatoes.

Gone swimmin'

Avalon, New Jersey photo courtesy of Jeff Weston.

I'm taking time off for sand, surf and salt water taffy, and will return Wednesday, July 29. See you then!

Departure

"Buckled in" courtesy of kcl_seattle.

We made a special trip to our independent bookstore to stock up on reading material for our Summer Vacation. Then each child was tasked with filling his or her backpack with items to keep them busy during the eight-hour flight to Washington, D.C., and from there, the five-hour drive to the Avalon, New Jersey. Here's what I found when I took a peek:

Max

• Aquaphor for perpetually chapped lips
• "The Prisoner of Azkaban" and "The Goblet of Fire" by J.K. Rowling
• Space workbook
• Uno

Sam

• A bag of Legos
• U.S. presidents workbook
• Pocket knife (which was returned to its drawer after he learned backpacks would be searched)
• Coloring pages of pirates
• "Red Wall" by Brian Jacques
• "Stormbreaker" by Anthony Horowitz

Chaja

• Paper dolls
• MP3 player
• "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
• "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
• Journal
• Scissors, colored pencils and sharpener
• Deck of cards on the 50 U.S. states

Ivan (with a little help from his mama)

• Bubbles
• Animal crackers

In my own pack, I've got my knitting, "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and reinforcements: books of sudoku, mazes and word searches, as well as granola bars, string cheese, raisins and nuts, and, when all else fails, M&Ms to bribe my babies.

Preparations

My family's packing for our Summer Vacation, and I think it interesting to see how my husband and I both achieve peace of mind before locking the door: He buys a packable porta potty. I spend two days washing comforters, sheets and pillows.

Our obsession with keeping dry and clean date back to 2002 when we took our 3-year-old daughter and two 1-year-old sons to Amsterdam to visit family. While waiting to board the return flight home, one son vomited. Shortly after take-off, the second son joined him in what turned into a 14-hour pukeathon across the Atlantic. We ran out of clean clothes, then we ran out of dry clothes. The stewardesses avoided us, a U.S. Customs agent waived us through without an inspection, and as we waited to catch the last leg of our flight, our daughter began throwing up. When we arrived home, we hauled our stinky, damp, exhausted bodies into bed and slept.

Seven years and one additional child later, we're about to board a plane and not get off again for eight whole hours. In the face of such insanity, we take comfort knowing that in our carry-on luggage is a tiny toilet, and in our home are freshly laundered sheets on all the beds. Just in case.

First summer soup

Photos courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

With three pounds of cherries pitted using a paper clip, I made cherry brown butter bars that were a hit at our backyard barbecue (three people asked for the recipe), and a soup that never made it into the bowl. Here's why:

I gave my love a cherry
That had no stone
Steeped in a broth of chicken
That had no bone
I added sugar, salt and pepper
And simmered it on the stove
I called the soup supper
For my love

How was that soup of cherry and chicken broth?
My love took a sip and began to cough
He spat into the sink and cried
It tastes of dirty socks
You're right, I answered

Let's order pizza from Black Rock.

What's NOT in the bowl:

Cherry soup adapted from Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters.

Saving the farm

"MarketFallout" by bepop717.

My street bristles with signs -- a short sale, an estate sale and a foreclosure -- all in a row just east of my home. If this were Monopoly, you'd buy the set and put a hotel on the properties, but this ain't no game. Everyone on the block is watching these homes, checking out the prices on Zillow and wincing as our castles crumble. (My Zip Code area had the second-highest decline in value according to a Reno Gazette-Journal comparison between housing values in 2005 and 2009.) When I play make-believe, my monopoly isn't a row of rentals nor a hotel, but a little bit of suburban anarchy. I'd buy all three houses, raze the buildings, and expand my yard to include a flock of chickens and maybe a goat.

Photo courtesy of Pingu1963.

Gambol

gam-buhl
intransitive verb or noun

Photo courtesy of Max Levy at Dance in the Kitchen.

1. (verb) To dance and skip about in play; to frolic.

1. (noun) A skipping or leaping about in frolic.

Chaja gamboled in the driveway as her brother snapped her picture.

Melting

Photos courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

"The hot days melted into one another like our Popsicles."
-- Susan Senator, "Summer Without Structure"
The Washington Post, 2005

Summer comes and my stash of chocolate sits on the shelf. The recipes are too rich and dense to whet the appetite, and I'd sooner bake my brain than turn on the oven when it's pushing a hundred degrees outside. But this recipe from Karen Solomon's "Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It: And other Cooking Projects" tempted me enough that I temporarily abandoned my spot in front of the swamp cooler and went back to the stove. Little hands, a few stops to fish out Cheerios tossed in by one eager cook, and a short chase through the house with a chocolate-covered spoon resulted in one decadent dessert. Enjoy the illustrated recipe for fudgesicles and have a happy Fourth of July.

Chocolate Fudge Popsicles
Excerpted from "Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It: And other Cooking Projects" by Karen Solomon

Makes 7 (4-ounce) pops

3/4 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 cup water
3 tablespoons golden brown sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa (I used Hershey's unsweetened)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon butter

In a pot, whisk the milk, water, corn syrup, sugar, cocoa and salt. Heat over medium heat for about 5 mintues, stirring occasionaly, until there are no lumps. Remove from heat. (I couldn't get rid of the lumps, so I strained the mixture at this point.) Add vanilla and butter, stir until melted.

Cool to room temperature.

Pour into molds and freeze for about six hours or until solid.

Twin tales

The 1950s Japanese film is the story of a crime committed and four widely differing witness accounts. The stories are mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer to determine who, if anyone, is telling the truth.

My eight-year-old sons are keeping journals this summer, and this week they wrote about the same topic, then read their work aloud to each other and me. The differences were stark. I enjoyed the stories not only for their detail and creativity, but because so much of their own personalities were exposed in the telling, and for the combined Rashomon effect. Below are the two accounts, verbatim.

The Terable Adventure at the Library
By Sam

One day, me, my mom, and Max and Ivan were going to the library. Everything was just fine. I got books and so did Max and Mom. Ivan liked the puzzles. It was good intill the checkout. Ivan saw this thing for old people. He was screaming his head off and so mom asked us to go outside with him but Ivan didn't. So after Mom was done she came through the detector. Suddenly BEEB BEEB the alarm went off. Meanwhile Ivan was screaming so Mom handed me her books and told me to go give them the books but it wasn't it so she [the librarian] asked Mom to go inside to check our stuff, but Mom said no, so she [the librarian] went inside to check our basket. Soon she came back. Ivan was still screaming so we went to the side of the library to nurse Ivan but Ivan was restless. Finally he nursed and had an apple. Finally we rode home and I started righting this story and now I'm finished. Then End.

The Terrabile Library Trip
By Max

"Why don't we ride our bikes to the library" Mom said.

"Sure," me and Sam said.

So we got ready. Me and Sam started going around in circals. I banged my shin twice! I said "Ow" two times. When we were at the library Iven had a tantrum so we went home.

THE END.