Turning up the heat

"Sexy Scissors" courtesy of HeadOvMetal.

Five minutes from my house a barber shop offers topless haircuts, or at least that's what the sign said. The word was scrawled in large black letters on cardboard and posted above a painted barber shop sign. It caught my eye as I drove home with groceries.

Topless usually doesn't raise eyebrows in Nevada, but this one apparently was operating in a strip mall that included a Christian bookstore, an H&R Block, a supermarket and a laundromat. I had to investigate. So I bundled up the toddler, deposited the big kids at school and headed toward the strip mall, all the while thinking about boobs and buzz cuts. This was the conversation in my brain:

Is it really that erotic to receive a haircut while checking out titties in the mirror? Would I offer to cut my husband's hair while topless? Hah, I'd probably end up with a chest hairier than his! How much can you charge for such a cut, anyway? Wait a minute. I have given topless haircuts -- to my sons when they were very small. Remember chasing them around the yard with scissors, until I grabbed one of them, stuck a boob in his mouth and, as he nursed, quickly snipped his hair.

The first point of investigation on my walk was Razor's Edge Barber Shop, located across the street from where I spotted the sign. As I passed, I glanced inside: Two men were getting their hair cut by two other men. They all wore shirts.

So I crossed Pyramid Way and headed north to New Image and The Establishment, both located in the strip mall. At New Image, a sleepy woman sat like a lumpy potato in a barber's chair waiting for the first customer of the day. Could I imagine her taking off her shirt? Uh-uh. I kept walking, past a bar, a laundromat, an empty store-front, and then came to The Establishment. The dark tinted windows prevented me from seeing inside.

I took a deep breath.

I opened the door.

My face flushed.

"Hi, I'm looking for the topless barber shop."

"Oh, that was an April Fool's joke," a woman said. "One of the barber's played it on the other barber. We cut men and women's hair while wearing clothes."

"Oooh, I wondered about the sign. Did you get any reaction?"

"Nah. You'd think there'd have been a long line, but nothing. Must be the economy."

Face sizzling, I slipped outside. My cheeks radiated heat, my brain harangued:

What was the point of that, Rach? Heat. Heat. Heat. Embarrassing heat. Erotic heat. Spicy heat. Like this week's soup with smoky chipotle chilies, sliced thin, like lines of burning filament in a bowl, in a blog post.

In the bowl:

Chipotle Turkey Stew

Chipotle Turkey Stew
Adapted from Sunset magazine, January 1999

1 pound cooked turkey or chicken (I used smoked turkey)
6 cups chicken broth
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup masa or flour
15 ounces tomatoes, diced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons canned chipotle chilies, minced
sour cream and cilantro (optional)

Saute the onions. Pour in the broth and bring to a simmer. Ladle out about a cup and whisk the masa into the broth. Then slowly whisk that thickened broth into the main pot. Add tomatoes, oregano, turkey and chilies. Garnish with sour cream and cilantro.

Sweet inspiration

In my home, cookies trump cleaning.

Lately, I've been thinking that the chocolate portion of this blog has been neglected -- not for lack of eating my favorite food, but because I'm eating it too quickly. And, well, once out of sight, out of mind. But I'll try and make amends by sharing my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Okay, okay, I know I've said that before, but my faithfulness is fleeting and mostly I like whatever is in my hand.

As I've cooked up batch after batch of these cookies in the past few weeks, a fine sprinkling of flour has settled on top of the existing thick layer of dust in my kitchen. For you see, although I revel in the results of spring cleaning -- a sparkling home scrubbed free of grime and smelling like sweet grass -- it doesn't inspire me to action. But these cookies do, so perfectly balanced, crisp and chewy and loaded with warm, bitterwsweet chocolate. And I'm excited about a few other things too, all of which don't require rubber gloves, scrub pads and buckets of soapy water, but go quite deliciously with cookies. Check out "What I'm Loving" at the top of the right-hand column.

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated, May-June 2009

1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) butter
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli's 60 percent cacao bittersweet chips)

Melt butter. Mix butter with sugars, salt and vanilla. Add egg and egg yolk. Stir in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Form dough into large balls (about 3 tablespoons) and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 10 to 14 minutes or until golden brown and still puffy. Edges will be set, but centers will be soft.

Up in smoke

Image from Halo 3, courtesy of commorancy.

My son Max spent a recent Saturday afternoon visiting a new friend, A.J. The days leading up to this were filled with anticipation and planning, most of it centered around A.J.'s xbox. Below is a chart showing 27 activities and the amount of time the two boys planned to devote to each one. For example, in their three hours together, Max and A.J. planned to play a board game for just 6-1/2 minutes, eat for 19-1/2 minutes and play video games for a whopping 32-1/2 minutes.

When Max returned home, I asked him how the afternoon went.

"Great!" he said. "We played video games."

"Did you do anything else on your list?"

"Well, we jumped on the trampoline for five minutes."

Rambling through red

Crimson

It's two in the afternoon, sunny and cold, and the kitchen door is open wide to the backyard. I'm wearing a fleece jacket as I scrub bits of cooked oatmeal from a pot. My one-year-old climbs the back steps and stands at the doorway in his red hat, strings together gibberish, grins and toddles off again.

Heating the outdoors for 20 minutes is a small price to pay (I think), for chores without a toddler's interference. Another five minutes pass and I glance up, spot the flash of crimson against drab greens and browns. He's fine, giving me time to get dinner started before the older kids get out of school.

I love my son in this hat, intensely red and oddly shaped, with its two small hills resembling the top of a heart. It's a complicated thing, loose enough to keep him from yanking at it in irritation, yet securely attached by long ties that cross under his chin and clasp in the back of his neck with Velcro. He wears it everywhere, and as spring approaches, the thought of packing it away makes me a tiny bit sad.

I imagine all mothers must feel sentimental for innocuous items their children wore. I know my own did. When I had my first child, she pulled out a box of small clothes, my clothes, carefully folded and waiting more than two decades to be worn again. There was a blue flannel plaid ("Your camping shirt," my mom explained), so soft and worn it quickly tore. My mom took it back, patched it and returned it to me. But after the fifth child, even the patch needs patching.

A shirt, a hat, they symbolize a time, a place, a child, a mother, they are our madeleines, and the thought of tossing an outgrown snow hat into a thrift bag feels sacrilegious, a rejection of these chilly spring days in the kitchen and the flashes of red as my own flightless robin hops about the backyard.



Russet

I'm happy when the robins visit my yard. They pinch the last of the shriveled berries off the Hawthorne trees and stab the grass for worms. The robins' arrival means that the worms, huddled deep in the earth below the frost line, should be uncurling and tunneling upward.

"When spring comes and frost leaves the soil, the earthworms become migrants again," naturalist Edwin Way Teale wrote in his 1951 book "North With the Spring." "At the same time, the robins return from the South. This is part of the endlessly meshing gears of nature's machine -- the appearance of both earthworm and robins when the thermometer rises to a given point. All over the North, the return of the humble earthworm, the completion of its vertical migration, is a symbol of the arriving spring."

The robin's song is the only bird call I know, a recognition made from desperation now eight years stale. I was pregnant with twins, so swollen and heavy that I could not roll over in the night without holding my belly and a kind push from my husband. Usually, I gave up and slept on one side, only to wake stiff and sore at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of a bird. One bird, singing loudly and happily in the cold dark of predawn. As night disappeared, so did its call, and I would drift back to sleep.



Burnt Orange

Here is a recipe for a beautiful soup to honor the red of the tulip, the toenail ready for a sandal, the robin's breast and my son's hat.

In the bowl:

Masoor Dal
Red Lentil Soup with East Indian Spices

Masoor Dal
Adapted from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair

Serves 4

2 teaspoons butter
1 onion, chopped
1-2 tablespoons garlic, minced
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1 cup chopped tomatoes (I substituted tomato puree)
1 cup dried red lentils
4 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon each cumin and mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon butter
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

Heat butter in a large pot. Saute onion and garlic until brown. Add spices and stir for a few minutes. Add tomato and cook until they begin to brown. Wash and drain lentils. Add lentils and water to pot. Simmer for 45 minutes, stirring often. Stir in salt. Heat 1/2 teaspoon butter in a small skillet and fry seeds until they pop. Stir fried seeds and cilantro into soup.

Creation

"Mother-love is not inevitable. The good mother is a great artist
ever creating beauty out of chaos." -- Alice Randall.

In the beginning, when Mom created the family and the home, the home was a formless void and darkness covered it. And Mom said, "Let there be light." And she opened the curtains so sunlight poured in upon the sleeping heads of husband and children and woke them. And Mom saw that the light was good, and she separated the light from darkness, calling the light "Light" and the darkness "Night." And time ticked by, the first hour.

And Mom created food and drink. "Let the box of cereal be taken down from the cupboard, the banana sliced and the coffee poured with cream to sustain us in activity," she said. And time ticked by, the second hour.

And Mom created land and water. "Let the path be cleared of toys, and the dirty clothes be gathered in one place." So the floor appeared in the living room and water poured into the washing machine. And time ticked by, the third hour.

And Mom created sea creatures and plants. "Let the fish thaw in time for tonight's meal," she said. Then she went to the pantry and found one cup of rice and said, "Be fruitful and multiply so that you may fill my family's bellies and subdue their hungry clamor." And time ticked by, the fourth hour.

And Mom created human beings and land animals. "Let the school bring forth my children," she said. "Let the cat meow and scratch at the door so that I may let it in." And all this was done. And time ticked by, the fifth hour.

And Mom created the heavens. "Let there be an expanse of space so my children can kick a ball," she commanded. And the children went outside and played, and Mom called the solitude "Heaven." Then She gave both humans and animals food to eat. Mom saw everything she had made, and indeed, it was very good. And time ticked by, the sixth hour.

Thus the home was finished, and the family thrived. And in the seventh hour, Mom, having completed her work, rested from all She had done. So Mom blessed the seventh hour and called it her own.

For more stories about beginnings, check out some of the entries at Sunday Scribblings.

Of mom and minions

One day in photos and rhyme.

Sunscreen slapped, hats attached.
Shovel dirt? We we're willin' to try.
But with wagon tires flat,
there the mountain sat.
And so best laid plans go awry.

What did we do,
me and my crew?
Why, we slurped time away
with technicolor soda-y,
Knowing the tire would be fixed soon.

Soup, soccer and scavengers

Two turkey vultures courtesy of Lost Bob.

There are three things that mark the arrival of my personal spring, and it's not the lemony daffodil, nor the robin and its morning worm. My spring came this week with the start of soccer, the return of the turkey vultures and today's soup made from Saint Paddy's Day leftovers.

Soccer imposes a new routine, a maddening, demanding structure that wrings the patience out of the family chef and chauffeur. But first practice is mercifully free of the tedium to come. First practice is about possibilities: of soil and grass and colorful balls bouncing through the twilight as the players dream of a winning season.

The turkey vulture really isn't such an odd choice to herald spring at close inspection. Firstly, this big, ugly bird makes an annual migration to my neighborhood, spending its days drifting on the warm winds and its nights roosting in our tallest trees. Last week, I spotted my first vulture and today I counted thirteen thawing their stiff wings in the sun. Secondly, the turkey vulture is a scavenging bird of prey and carries the scientific name Cathartes aura, which means breezy cleanser, and isn't that a perfect description of spring?

And then there is my spring soup, a light broth of simmered corned beef that holds the last slices of meat and chunks of potatoes and carrots, and is topped with a dollop of sour cream. The inspiration for this recipe came from The Mustard Seed, a tiny deli in Silver Springs, Nevada that served as the heart of its community until it closed. If you have the remains of Saint Patrick's Day dinner in your refrigerator, give it a try.

In the bowl:



Saint Patrick's Day Soup

Saint Patrick's Day Soup
Adapted from The Mustard Seed

Broth from simmered corn beef or chicken stock.
Left-over potatoes, carrots, cabbage and meat, cut into small chunks.
Canned hominy.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Sour cream (optional)

Bring broth to simmer, add hominy, cooked vegetables and corned beef and heat thoroughly. Spoon into bowls and top with sour cream.

My life as a screenplay

"Empty Stage" courtesy of 笨笨的小B.

Five Minutes of Afternoon

By
Rachael Levy

Based on My Life on Monday, March 16, 2009.

Ongoing revisions by Chaja, Sam, Max and Ivan Levy.

FADE IN:

INT - KITCHEN/LAUNDRY ROOM/LIVING ROOM - AFTERNOON

MOM is transferring a load of wet clothes into the drier. At the kitchen table is a mountain of clean clothes. A toddler, IVAN, roams nearby. A daughter, CHAJA, stands at the stove, cooking Top Ramen as she practices her upcoming solo at the fifth-grade music concert. Off-stage are two sons, SAM and MAX. MAX is at the computer.

CHAJA
(singing "We Shall be Free" by Garth Brooks)
When the last child cries for a crust of bread ...

SAM enters, wiggling his tooth. He carries a long string of dental floss and walks over to MOM, who is bent over the drier.

SAM
Look at my tooth. Do you think it's ready to come out?

MOM
I don't know. Can you twist it?

SAM
(twisting tooth)
Yeah. See?

MOM
(looks up from drier and shudders)
Yep, it looks ready.

SAM
(holding up the dental floss)
Can you tie this around it?

MAX
(off-stage, yelling)
Mom! How do I reserve a book from the library on the computer?

MOM
(tying the dental floss around the tooth)
I'll show you in a minute, Max.
(to SAM)
There you go.

SAM exits with a long string of floss dangling from his mouth followed by MOM and IVAN.

CHAJA
(singing and stirring soup)
When the last man dies for just words that he said.
(pauses)
Hey, Mom how do I sound?

Mom enters. She turns on drier and begins folding the mountain of clothes on the kitchen table.

MOM
You sound great, honey. Remember, just sing loud and sing strong.

MAX
(off-stage)
Mom, what's our library password?

SAM
(off-stage, speech hampered by the dental floss)
Mom, Ivan's bothering me! Can you come shuth the thoor?

MOM
Coming, Sam! Max, the password is the last four digits of our telephone number.

CHAJA
(singing at the stove, louder)
When there's shelter over the poorest head ...

SAM
(off-stage)
Mom, the thoor!

MAX
(off-stage)
How do you spell Olympian?

MOM
(folding clothes, sighs heavily)
O-L-Y ... I'm coming, Sam! ... M-P

SAM
(off-stage)
Mom, Ivan pulled out my tooth!

SAM enters the kitchen. He's grinning. Mouth is filled with blood and hand is outstretched, showing a small white tooth. IVAN follows SAM.

SAM
Look! He just grabbed the string and pulled!

CHAJA
(still singing, even louder)
... we shall be free!

FADE TO BLACK.

Oh my, we love pie!

We have a winner! Courtesy of katyethinks.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the pie survey. Turns out, most of us love to eat pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream while listening to "American Pie" by Don McLean. The daring among us wanted to try shoofly pie, a molasses pie popular among the Pennsylvania Dutch and in the South. For more in-depth results, check out the pies and links below:


Pumpkin's popular:



Vanilla, please:


What's in a name:



Definitions excerpted from Wikipedia. Click on the pie for a recipe.

• Banoffee pie is an English dessert made from bananas, cream and boiled condensed milk (or dulce de leche), either on a pastry base or one made from crumbled biscuits and butter. Its name is a portmanteau constructed from the words "banana" and "toffee."
• Buko pie is a traditional Filipino pastry style, young-coconut(malauhog)-filled pie. Similar to coconut cream pie, it's made with just young coconuts (buko in Tagalog) and has no cream.
• Chess pie is a traditional Southern dessert. Most recipes call for a single crust and a filling of eggs, butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla. What sets chess pie apart from many other custard pies is the substitution of corn meal for flour.
• Funeral pie, also called raisin pie, traditionally was served at funerals, probably because it could be made at any season and kept well without refrigeration. It was common at the funerals of Old Order Mennonites and Amish.
• Shoofly pie is a molasses pie considered traditional among the Pennsylvania Dutch and the South.
• Sugar pie is a typical dessert in France and Belgium, Quebec, and the Midwestern United States. It's a single-crust pie with a filling made from flour, butter, salt, vanilla, and cream, with brown sugar or maple syrup (sometimes both) often used as additional filler. When baked, these ingredients combine into something like caramel. The name "finger pie" for the dessert was due to stirring the pie during baking with one's finger. It was stirred this way to avoid breaking the crust.

Pie in the sky

"Pi Pie" courtesy of no-frills marilyn.

The week started with snow and is ending in sunshine, crocus sightings and a Saturday of Pi(e).

In celebration of 3.14, I'm creating some self-referential charts using Google Docs, which allows the easy and free creation of documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. I thought I'd check it out after my husband mentioned it in preparation for last weekend's Nevada Interactive Media Summit, where he gave the rockin' presentation "Data-Driven Web Publishing (without a programmer)." Check it out here.

Aaaanyway, I'm also not going to let March 14th pass without a big piece of pie, or at least a close approximation to one. I've been drooling over pictures of a dark chocolate tart with gingersnap crust, and now I've got a reason to make it.

But we can make some pie together if you participate in my short survey, and come Monday, I'll post those glorious charts. Thanks for participating, and don't let Saturday slip by without a piece of pie!

Max, unedited

"It takes a long time to grow up," courtesy of nattu.

Today I'm featuring a poem written by Max. It was found among a bunch of crumpled math papers.

I am Strong and Fast

I wonder how there are boys and girls.
I hear laughter.
I see the waves of the ocean.
I want to go to San Francisco again
and see the glimmering lights of the city.
I am strong and fast.

I pretend I'm a wrestler.
I feel happy.
I touch the stars.
I worry about my grades.
I cry when there's a sad part in a movie.

I am strong and fast.

I understand crying.
I say no more wars.
I dream of swimming.
I try to keep my grades high.
I hope I get a torpedo on my R.C. sub.

I am strong and fast.

Scatterbrained

Max! Courtesy of Jim "Toady" McNaulty.

While hanging by his mouth from a rope,
his tooth was yanked out with a jolt.
His head's on a bit tighter,
otherwise he just might-a
lost that as well, the little dope.

An abbreviated list of items Max has lost:

• Twenty-one out of 42 pages of math homework.
• Progress report: Disappeared as he walked from the classroom to his mother, waiting outside the school.
• Lunch bag: Found in the trash.
• Seven quarters: Left on the couch five minutes after receiving it. Later discovered in his brother's piggy bank.
• His family: Located three aisles over at the grocery store.
• An undetermined number of Lego pieces to the kits "Indiana Jones Motorcycle Chase," "Street Sweeper" and "Coast Guard 4WD and Jet Scooter."
• Seven passwords to the computer game Poptropica.
  

Why does he lose things? "I don't know. They just disappear. They just get away from me so quickly."

The most valued item he has lost: The toy plastic missile he shot up the chimney.

A book he's lost: Spiderman. "I was sad and mad, but then I found it. Now I've memorized most of it, so it doesn't matter."

Other book's he's trying to memorize:

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan.
  
• "The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm" by Nancy White.
  
• A joke book.

Out of hardship, happiness

Proof of our folly: passport and alien card.

"We're alike. I, too, believe that everyone should have a chance at a breathtaking piece of folly once in his life. I was twenty when they said a woman couldn't swim the Channel. You're twelve; you think a horse of yours can win the Grand National. Your dream has come early; but remember, Velvet, it will have to last you all the rest of your life."

- National Velvet

My husband said it was like salmon spawning: He needed to live in The Netherlands for a year in order to retain his Dutch citizenship. So we quit our jobs, stuffed suitcases to the gills and moved half-way around the world.

It was absolute craziness.

For despite my husband's newly updated passport and job, he couldn't find a crack in the Dutch society to skitter through and thrive there. Having lived outside the country, he wasn't eligible for the cheaper rents most of the Dutch paid, but neither did he make the salary of most ex-pats. Instead we struggled. Oh, how we struggled in that gray, gray world. We burned through more than $14,000 in savings in one year. I was so lonely I'd sometimes spend a whole day not speaking but a few words to another soul:

The checker at the grocery store: Een tasje? (A bag?)

Me: Nay, dankje. (No, thanks.)

We ate pots of beans and spent the weekends window shopping. Dining out meant dropping some coins into machine for a kroket. We kissed our travel-plans goodbye when we realized that we could barely afford the train ticket needed to cross town for the Dunkin' Donuts I was homesick for. And every month we bled red and were forced to withdraw money from our savings account to make ends meet.

Yet, joy was able to pierce this sad fog I lived in. I felt it when I spotted my shadow for the first time in weeks, and when I fell asleep to the scratches and coos of pigeons roosting on the attic roof. It left a small, permanent smile in the corners of my mouth when I became pregnant.

But then one day the savings account was empty: Our race had been run, lost and left us breathless. So we repacked our suitcases, turned in the key to our apartment and flew home. Poorer in our wallets, but richer in experience.

I think today's economic crisis is a time to take great leaps of folly (on a national and family scale) -- and for cooking beans. So while a pot of pintos simmers on your stove, let some new ideas simmer in your head. Here are two worthy of thought: The advantages of renting and The era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.

These brothy beans are delicious straight out of the pot.

A pot of beans

Adapted from instructions by chef Rick Bayless.

2 cups of dried beans
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons bacon fat
Enough water to cover the beans by about four inches

Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and cover, leaving the lid cracked. You want the beans to barely bubble, so just a whisper of steam should escape from the lid. Keep an eye on them, adding water when needed. (You should have about an inch of water above the plumped beans.) Simmer until beans are soft, maybe two, four, six hours depending on how old the beans are. About a half-hour before they're done, add salt to taste.

Oh, I forgot to mention that you must sort through the dry beans, discarding any pebbles or moldy beans. Then give them a quick wash and follow the recipe.

Inspired by this week's pot of black-eyed peas and Sunday Scribbling's writing prompt: Listen up, this is important!

Fill me up

Threadless T-shirt design by Jeff Sapulettey.

Today I woke to an automated phone call from the school informing me of a two-hour delayed start because of the snow. So the kids and I celebrated with pumpkin pancakes (which I'm crazy about), and now I've corralled them all upstairs for the next 30 minutes so I can write.

I gotta write; it's my passion. Just like my neighbor Pat's got a thing for birds, and my toddler's drawn to destruction, writing feeds my spirit. The act of stringing sentences into coherent paragraphs keeps me chugging all day long.

Some passions inspire us for months, such as my daughter's desire to live life as a musical, singing her way through most conversations. (Which, incidentally, drives one of her brother's into his own fit of passion.) Other love affairs burn through us in minutes, like the hour my bigger kids spent running from drain spout to drain spout, filling buckets and then pouring them out in a wheelbarrow. Their short-lived mania didn't make a bit of sense to me, but it didn't need to. Our passions don't need explanation; either another person gets them, or they don't. But they do need to seize us by the heart and send us careening through our world. Our loves need to leave us gasping for air, panting for more, more!

So every now and then I'll share some of my passions with you. You'll find them in the right-hand column under the tag line: What I'm loving. But now I've gotta run. Apparently, the pancakes are no longer taking the edge off hunger, and the kids are yelling (passionately) that my time is up.

The bird lady

"Red-tailed Hawk on Arm" courtesy of Jim Frazier.

Pat stood in her yard and glared at the sky. Clutching her drink, she gestured at a small spot high in a tree more than a half-block away. The ice rattled in her glass and she took a long drag on her cigarette.

The spot was a Red-tailed Hawk, a fierce predator of the dozens of sparrows, finches, doves and quail that visited her yard. She loved these birds, their daily visits to her feeders, the splashing they made in the pan of water she put out for them.

"And then this drip came along," she spat out. "I called animal control, but they said he was doing exactly what God meant for him to do. Well, he's not going to do it in my yard. I wish I had a BB gun. But I can't shoot him because he's protected."

I met Pat just a month ago, though I'd been walking past her home daily for more than a year. My footsteps would startle dozens of birds, busy stealing seed from the feeder just a few feet from her front door. The cloud of feathers and the excited fluttering of wings always caught my eye. And I would wonder why anyone would put a feeder so close to the front door, wouldn't it make the walkway a mess of seeds and shit?

Pat's a short woman with pointed nose, eyes that have yet to smile, and long, gray hair that she pulls into a loose nest on top of her head. The morning after our introduction, she hurried to her fence to catch me as I walked past. She was anxious, agitated, because the hawk had killed a dove and was eating it in her yard. There were feathers everywhere, she said.

I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling, from lecturing her for creating the situation she now loathed. I can't understand her passion, but I can appreciate its intensity, the way it defines her. I listened to her struggle with the sorrow and guilt she felt because her joy in the birds brought about one's death.

Conversations and a cure

"Conversation" courtesy of bensonkua.

Most conversations with my kids are an exchange of words aimed at keeping the family unit humming along. I'm talking about communication currency, a little give and take, and the table gets set, the laundry gets folded, and everyone goes to the library. But sometimes, there's a hiccup in the family action that allows for an actual conversation with one of my kids, and a chance for me to peer into their growing minds.

Such an opportunity came last night. I'd curled up on the couch, nursing the baby and a new cold, when another son snuggled next to me to renew a conversation about his lack of friends and the dilemma it will cause at his next birthday. And as I listened, I began to pick up a few eggcorns, a linguistic term for when a person substitutes a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect. For example, for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes. Here are a few of my 7-year-olds':

"When we play tag, they run around like bunnies being chased by a dog. They're just custling around."

"Their eyes just burgled out when they saw my lunch, and I said, 'Noooooo, this is not a hot pepper.' "

When my son's schoolmates aren't "burgling" or "custling," they're recreating scenes from the video games they play. And since my kids' computer time is limited to a half-hour each week, they just don't share their peers' obsessions, though they know how to talk-the-talk.

"Daniel didn't go to school because he caught Wiiitis," my son told his dad.

"What? What's Wiiitis?"

"I don't know. Probably when you hurt your arm or your leg."

"How do you know he got Wiiitis?"

"His mom said so."

Apparently, the cure for Wiiitis is a couple ibuprofen and a day off from school. The cure for my cold? Chicken soup and pizza bread. Here's my comfort food when I'm sick:

Chicken soup

+

Pizza bread

In the bowl:

Lipton chicken noodle soup

+

On the side:

pizza bread

Pizza bread recipe

serves 12

1 loaf of sourdough bread, sliced lengthwise.
1 large can of tomato paste
4 cups cheddar cheese, grated
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
1 small can of black olives, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil

Mix tomato paste, cheese, onions, black olives and olive oil. Spread over bread. Bake at 350-degrees until bubbly. Feel free to modify ... like cheddar? Add more cheese. Doesn't seem squishy enough? Add a bit more oil.

A fish out of water

"Swim day" courtesy of smohundro.

Usually, my exercise is a solitary walk with my sleeping toddler, but a few months ago I started swimming, and immediately felt out of my element. There's a good mix of people who spend their lunch hour swimming laps at the university pool: The strong, young swimmers whose arms slice through the water like knives, the old professors whose bodies can't take anymore joint-jarring jogs, and then there's me. During one session, I was flanked by two men who created giant waves that tossed me like drift wood and left me gulping water. Another time, I shared a lane with a woman whose strong, smooth strokes ended in a beautiful underwater flip turn. When I tried it, I ended up thoroughly irrigating my sinuses with chlorine.

I admire the vigor of those college students, but my inspiration comes from the skinny, old women, with their basketball bellies, curved shoulders and raisin skin. The other day one of them asked me to save her lane while she dashed back into the locker to shower. Upon her return, she adjusted her bathing cap, eased herself into the water and thanked me.

"It's another beautiful day!" she beamed, and swam away.

Chivalry

"Through a world turned upside down" courtesy of sandcastlematt.

I know of a modern-day knight
who every day gets up and fights
exhaust-spewing dragons,
of mincemeat they'd make him,
were it not for his quick steed, the bike.

My husband's round-trip commute: 9.5 miles.

The time it took him to rescue me when I locked myself and the baby and a cart-full of groceries out of the minivan: 15 minutes.

Level of his annoyance on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being extremely irritated: 2

His favorite piece of gear: Dinotte road light 200L-AA-S and battery charger.

The price: $160

My favorite piece: The balaclava.

The price: $15


Photo courtesy of Libby.

Why we won't buy a second car: For God, king and country, of course.

Just horsin' around

A site for everything you never wanted to know about "The Black Stallion."

There are horse-girls who plait the hair of their My Little Ponys and trot about the playground. There are horse-women who shovel manure and tame Mustangs. I'm not one of them. The nearest I've ever come to understanding this infatuation was when I raced through the Black Stallion series as a girl. The closest I've come to comprehending this love as an adult is when I make Santa Anita Race Track beef stew.

A race track throws together the blue-collar and the blue-blood. When I slice leeks and cut potatoes, I like to imagine the classy and the common savoring the same stew as the horses thunder by. (For an illustration of this, check out this clip from "My Fair Lady.") Anyway, who can say naaaaay to a steaming bowl of equality?

Santa Anita Race Track beef stew

+

King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking's maple cornmeal biscuits

In the bowl:

Santa Anita Race Track beef stew

On the side:

KAF Whole Grain Baking's maple cornmeal biscuits

Clipped from a newspaper by my grandma; the notes are hers.

The explorer

Sam!

I like to wander
around my brain and find things,
he said, sleepily.

A short catalog of things he was searching for at bedtime:

• Do you believe in magic?
• How do birds fly with such tiny bones?
• Do trees have brains?

An inventory of his pockets:

1. Small spiral notebook.
2. Stub of a pencil, sharp.
3. Padlock.
4. Lego pieces.
5. Various rocks containing tiny crystals.

What he's reading:

• The fantasy series "The Secrets of Droon" by Tony Abbott.
• "The Knight's Castle" by Edward Eager.
• The graphic novel "Benjamin Franklin, An American Genius" by Kay Melchisedech Olson.

Steal my heart

Chocolate pancakes + whipped cream = A decadent breakfast.

I hope your Valentine's Day was just as sweet!

Chocolate pancakes
recipe torn from the pages of an old Sunset magazine

Makes 8 pancakes; 4 servings

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg
1 cup milk
About 3 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

sweetened whipped cream
sliced strawberries (original recipe calls for raspberries or bananas)

In a bowl, stir sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Add flour and mix. In a small bowl, beat egg with milk, oil and vanilla. Add egg mixture and chocolate chips to flour mixture, stir until evenly moistened. Spoon onto griddle. When finished, top with whipped cream and strawberries.

Primordial soup

Finch painting courtesy of merwing✿little dear.

My fingers paused on the keyboard and my eyes darted to a flash of feathers. Just beyond the computer and on the other side of the window pane, were a half-dozen playful finches chattering and fluttering as the stole seed. These birds, small enough to cup in my hand, are symbols of the genius of Darwin.

The world commemorated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday this week with town celebrations, a one-man show, and a wealth of diverse news articles highlighting the peculiarities of this man's life. What I found fascinating in this flood of information was how Darwin balanced his professional and private life. He seamlessly merged his insatiable scientific curiosity with the demands of his family. Darwin's specimens were found in the family vegetable garden, his laboratory included a sandbox and swing, and his children helped him with his experiments. But his pragmatic approach to his work didn't develop in response to parenting. As a young man collecting and studying animals and plants on the HMS Beagle, he regularly ate the specimens he collected.

"Young Tortoises make capital soup — otherwise the meat is but, to my taste, indifferent food." -- Charles Darwin, October 9, 1835.

It's fitting to honor the man who contributed so much insight into our primordial soup with a pot of my own. But not just any recipe would do. I wanted a soup that tasted of that balance Darwin achieved and I'm trying to strike: a soup infused with the flavor of the garden, loved by children, quick to make, yet could evolve into a more complexly flavored dish.

You'll find that recipe below. And while the potatoes bake, why not celebrate Valentine's Day by listening to a beautiful story of love within the Darwin family. It can be found here.

Baked potato soup
+
toppings

Vintage poster
courtesy of atomicjeep.


In the bowl:

Cottey College's baked potato soup,
courtesy of one of its alumna, my sister Kyna Moser.

On top:

Anything you'd put on a baked potato,
such as cheddar cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, chives ...

Baked potato soup

Serves 4

6 ounces butter
2/3 cup half-and-half
1 1/3 cups milk
2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup flour
3 1/3 cups vegetable broth
pepper
4 baked potatoes, peeled and cubed

Melt butter. Stir in flour until smooth and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add broth while whisking. Add milk and half-and-half. Broth will thicken. Add potatoes and heat thoroughly. Serve.

This is a rich soup, but can be easily modified without harm. In lieu of milk and half-and-half, I've used powdered milk and water. I've eliminated the salt and used chicken bouillon as my broth. I've sauteed onions, celery and carrots in the butter, and added clams and clam juice to make clam chowder. You get the idea.

Collisions

"Bubble Love" by jurvetson.

The other day my daughter walked into the kitchen as I washed dishes and announced:

"I've started puberty."

"Oh?" I said, pulling hands out of soapy water.

"I have hair growing under my arms," she explained.

"Oooh. Well, congratulations!"

This girl is terribly excited about growing up. On her last birthday, she received the American Girl's "The Care and Keeping of You," and read it cover to cover. She discovered "It's Perfectly Normal" on the bookshelf and spirited it away to her room to study the pictures in private. "The Period Book" still sits on the shelf, but I bet it'll disappear soon, now that she's taking sex-ed at school.

"Mom, what's AIDS? Capital A-I-D-S," she asked, as I snuggled with her in bed last night.

"It stands for Acquired Immune Definicency Syndrome," I said. "It's a sickness that attacks you're immune system so your body has a hard time fighting off other illnesses."

"Will I get it?"

"Probably not if you use a condom," I said, then explained what a condom was and how it worked.

"Eeeeew. Gross!" she said. "I bet it's uncomfortable for the woman. Can they break?"

"Naw, they're actually pretty strong."

And I told her the story of how, when I was a little older than she is now, my brother and I found condoms in my dad's dresser drawer. We blew them up like balloons and tossed them through the air, our hands slick with lubricant.

"They never popped," I said.

We giggled, and our laughter floated up and bounced against the older memory.

Hurried haiku

Ivan!

Silky smiles smirk,
as he giggles, runs. With brush,
I chase happy hair.

Life as hard as rocks

"Rocks in still life, early morning" by cobalt123.

Nowadays, I'm nervous. My friend lost her home, my brother-in-law lost his job, and I know we're just a stone's throw away from their situations. Trying to keep my jittery nerves in check isn't easy. I plumb websites like The Simple Dollar for tips on frugal living. I listen to public radio's Marketplace regularly for its excellent economic news. I'm trying to beef up my resume after 10 years of mommyhood. And I cook more soup.

"Worries go down better with soup." -- A Jewish proverb.

Do you remember the story "Stone Soup"? The gist of it is this: Once upon a time some tired soldiers straggled home to a village empty-handed, in a land destroyed by war. They were hungry, but the villagers didn't think they had food to share, and slammed their doors. The soldiers pulled out a big pot, filled it with water and put it on a fire to boil. Then they added a large stone to the pot. The villagers peeked out of their doors.

"What kind of soup is that?" they asked.

"Stone soup. You can have some when it's ready," said a soldier, "though it would taste better if we had an onion or two."

"Well, I have that," grumbled one old woman, coming out with a shriveled onion and tossing it into the pot.

And so, one vegetable at a time, the villagers added food to the pot, and everyone feasted.

During the Great Depression, people placed a large, porous rock in the bottom of their soup pots. On days when they had food, they believed the stone absorbed some of the flavor from the soup. On days when there was no food, they boiled the stone, releasing flavors and making a weak broth. Nowadays, there are groups of friends who make soup together, always with a small stone at the bottom of the pot. The person who finds the stone at the bottom of her bowl plans the next soup gathering.

"A soup like this is not the work of one man.
It is the result of a constantly refined tradition.
There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup."
Willa Cather, "Death Comes for the Archbishop"

As I poured over cookbooks for tasty bowls of soup, a plan simmered. As I counted the people lining up at the doors of a neighborhood church to receive free groceries, a plan simmered. As I thought about that fable of cooperation amid scarcity, a plan simmered. As I reminded myself how fortunate I was to have a steady income, a warm home and a pot of soup on the stove, a plan simmered.

And now it's ready to share:

Firstly, I'm going to cook more soup. Sometimes I'll take a picture of the soup and share the recipe with you. Secondly, I'm going to buy twice the ingredients needed for my soups in order to regularly donate half of it to the church down the street.

Soothing. Simple. Sustenance. Sharing. Stone soup.

Florentine white bean
+
polenta

In the bowl:

Food Made Fast: Soup’s Florentine white bean

On the side:

The Barefoot Contessa Family Style’s rosemary polenta

Excerpted from Food Made Fast: Soup by Georgeanne Brennan

Serves 4

2 tbsp. olive oil

3 ounces pancetta or bacon, chopped

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

2 carrots, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 tsp. dried oregano

1 tbsp. tomato paste

4 cups chicken broth

2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups spinach, chopped

salt and pepper

2 tbsp. parsley, minced

rind from Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (suggested by The Splendid Table’s Lynne Rossetto Kasper.)

Fry bacon until lightly browned. Add onion and carrots, and saute until soft. Add garlic and oregano and cook for a few more minutes. Stir in tomato paste, add broth and beans and bring to boil. Lower heat, toss in the Parmesan rind (loaded with umami) and simmer. Add the spinach shortly before serving and cook until it is wilted but still bright green. Season to taste with salt and pepper and ladle into your bowl. And don’t forget to fish out the Parmesan rind and set it aside for your next soup!

Hungry bellies

Children line up for free soup and bread during the Depression.

At 8:50 every Wednesday morning, people bundled against the cold and burdened by their belongings form two lines along Fourth Street. One line is a group of neighborhood children cocooned in their coats and carrying backpacks heavy with homework. The other is made up of adults standing outside a movie theater-turned-mega-church.

"What are they waiting for?" my daughter asked.

"Food."

"You mean, like communion?"

"No, just food. They're hungry."

The New York Times reported this week that despite the recession, the number of people on welfare rolls remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years. Eighteen states cut their welfare rolls, even as more people received food stamps. (Nevada wasn't among those. It actually added people to its program last year. For a state-by-state comparison, click here.)

"This clashing trend," the Times reported, "suggests a safety net at odds with itself. The program’s structure — fixed federal financing, despite caseload size — may discourage states from helping more people because the states bear all of the increased costs."

To help cash-strapped states deal with the needy, Congress is considering subsidizing the welfare rolls. The economic stimulus bills pending in Congress would provide matching grants to states with increased caseloads.

While politicians debate and bureaucrats react, more hungry people are lining up on Fourth Street. Outside the doors of Sparks Christian Fellowship, more than 100 people gather for their two grocery bags of non-perishable food they're eligible to receive six times a year. Across the street, Greenbrae Elementary School also gives away food. More than two-thirds of the students receive free lunches, and some of those children eat breakfast and dinner there, too.

These are today's soup lines, and they're in my neighborhood.

Cake confession

The Levy children celebrate their sin-free souls.

Saturday we celebrated the kids' First Reconciliation with a sinfully delicious chocolate cake topped with gobs of gooey marshmallow frosting.

The cake recipe, originally published in Gourmet magazine, is Epicurious.com's most popular recipe, receiving more than 1,000 reviews. The frosting recipe, also from Gourmet, was one I had made before with great success.

But, apparently, the devil was in the details. The middle of my cake fell during baking, (perhaps because I didn't make an altitude adjustment). And my mixture of egg whites, sugar and corn syrup refused to whip itself into a mountain of fluff.

An emergency trip to the store for a jar of marshmallow creme saved the cake, and I don't think even God would've tasted the difference!