bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
Got a bacon-topped recipe you're dying to try, but just discovered there's a non-pork-consuming person coming to your dinner party?
You need a recipe for Vegan Coconut Bacon.
You're welcome.
(p.s. "Bragg's Aminos" is some stuff that tastes an awful lot like soy sauce. Go ahead and substitute.)
From Jamie at Light and Momentary. To my delight, much like another silly physics joke I have long appreciated, it also involves cows.
Of course, I might change it to "interrupting viscosity" or possibly to "interrupting chemical potential." We are, after all, engineers here.
From Jamie at Light and Momentary. To my delight, much like another silly physics joke I have long appreciated, it also involves cows.
Of course, I might change it to "interrupting viscosity" or possibly to "interrupting chemical potential." We are, after all, engineers here.
From Reason.com (h/t Radley Balko's excellent The Agitator), the latest update on the policy issue that was recently voted "Policy Issue Most Likely To Turn Bearing Blog Into A Flaming Libertarian Site Devoted to Deregulation:"
The Wall Street Journal reports that "a nationwide resurgence in illegal methamphetamine labs" has caused state and federal legislators to re-examine the effectiveness of the Sudafed crackdown. They plan to do what prohibitionists always do in the face of failure: double down—in this case by requiring prescriptions for a cheap, safe, effective decongestant that not long ago was readily available in convenience stores across the land. That requirement will force doctors to police Americans' pseudoephedrine consumption…
Yes, you heard it: the feds (and some states; Oregon's already done it) want to turn Sudafed into a prescription-only drug, not because of safety concerns, but because making it difficult for us to get it has not worked to stop methamphetamine production, and even less to stop methamphetamine use.
Leaving aside the ridiculously bad timing of such an endeavor (we already spend HOW MUCH on health care? And you want to turn an effective self-treatment option, a well-beloved one measured in the dollars spent on pseudoephedrine every year, into one that requires a doctor's visit? Perhaps an emergency room visit, for the uninsured?)….
…aw, what the hell, I've ranted about this before, here's my post from 2007 about the stupid guidelines on children's "cold medications" that don't distinguish among the several different compounds commonly sold as "cold medications."
And can I just add to the comments on the Reason website…
"have you ever tried to breastfeed a baby who has a terrible head cold and can't breathe through her nose? It's awful. Bleeding awful, both for you and the baby. An effective decongestant can mean the difference between a sick baby who can't easily take in her only source of fluid and nutrition, and a baby who can do it easily. Believe me, saline spray does NOT do the trick.
(disclaimer: nursing mothers should be cautious taking decongestants because of anecdotal evidence that in some women it compromises milk supply)"
I haven't attacked anything around here in a long time, and woke up early to sleeping children, so I decided to try to put together an organized meal planning/grocery shopping binder.
You would think I would already have this, wouldn't you, given my detailed menu planning algorithm? I don't. I have all the necessary stuff, but it's either saved in files on my computer or scattered around the house. Let's pull it together today.
First thing I did was print off my aisle-by-aisle grocery list and stick it in a page protector for reference and as a photocopy master. (Here's a file so you can see what it looks like: Grocery list.ods – Warning, it's probably not useful to you as is unless you shop at the same South Minneapolis Cub Foods that I do)
Next thing I did was to get out the box in which I have been saving weekly menu plans for a long time, and sorted them out from the other random stuff I've tossed in there (printed recipes, receipts, junk) along the way. I counted them: I have about 30 weeks of menus.
The next step is to mine data from the menu plans. More later…
11:11 AM. I have mined data from my menu plans.
It is interesting to see which meals repeat frequently. In thirty weeks of menu plans, we saw repeats of
There are a few other obvious-to-me family favorites that didn't appear on the list at all, don't know why. Calzones, for one thing, and spinach-ricotta pie, and chicken-and-noodles; hummus and cut vegetables, and chicken-pepper-cashew stirfry with hoisin sauce. But this sampler should help. I printed it out. And then I threw away the piles of meal plans!
11:43 AM. Actually, before I threw them away, I also mined a list of lunches I've brought to feed 6-10 kids and 2-3 moms with minimal fuss and complaining. That list (for the 30 weeks) is shorter.
Hannah has perfected a crispy salmon loaf that all ten children love, but that's her territory…
Today Hannah and I sat down and made a supply list for our (between us) four youngest children's school days together.
To recap, our family co-schools with Hannah's family on Tuesdays, and with Hannah's and usually Melissa's family on Thursdays. Partway through last year Hannah and I completely revamped our school schedules to sync them together, so that on T-Th we were working together on the same subjects, more or less, and the stuff we couldn't do well together we segregated to the other days of the week.
(Meanwhile Hannah and Melissa set up other days to work together for their two families. It's a weird sort of three-family co-schooling thing we've got going. But it's working pretty well now, fantastically well compared to before when we weren't sync'ed together.)
Hannah's and my oldest boys, who are both fourth graders, are pretty much scheduled out for the rest of the "school year." We have a few vague plans — When we get to the end of the second level of the writing curriculum, how about we have them do a subject report with library research, and take however long that takes, before we go on to begin the next book? – but mostly we know what they're up to. I run world history, American history, and Latin. Hannah runs English grammar and composition. We are chugging forward through curricula and book lists, and it's all pretty much worked out at least till mid-June.
The younger children are harder to fit together, maybe because of a slight age mismatch. Our middle boys are an "old" kindergartener and an "old" first grader. They're not too far apart in reading skill, i.e., "can read many sentences with help, not much independently yet;" but there's a big gap in attention to detail and ability to sit and work for a while. Our youngests, both girls, are still wider apart; Hannah's girl will be 5 soon and so is nearly ready for kindergarten-level stuff, but mine has only just turned 3. They play together beautifully, but will they be able to work together? Or will Hannah's youngest, the 5yo girl, wind up being the natural schoolmate of my middle child, the 6yo boy? How will that work? Maybe we will be doing some cross-pairing from time to time. We are experimenting right now with teaching an early-childhood music theory curriculum to the younger four as a group, and seeing what happens.
Despite not being exactly sure how to put it all together, a year or so of working together like this has made it easier for us to identify "stuff" that will probably work for us. So we really enjoyed sitting down with the Rainbow Resource catalog and picking out some things we can do with each group of children.
The middle boys have been learning about common Eastern mammals via the Burgess Animal Book for Children, and coloring pages and doing narrations about what they've learned. When they finish that book, we've decided to spend some time working on birds — not an exhaustive study, but focusing on the dozen to twenty species they might actually see in the backyard. We'll use the Burgess Bird Book for text, and the Peterson Field Guide Color-in Book for coloring pages (with attention to correct coloring — it matters more with birds than with bobcats), and the Cornell Ornithology Lab site for birdsong. And spend several sessions on each bird. And use it as a starting point to jump into the Usborne First Book of Nature, bird section, for generic bird anatomy and lifecycle and stuff, and see where that takes us, through the winter I hope. We also hope to dabble in the activity suggestions in One Small Square: Backyard, which has a couple of winter activities, but mostly we would gear up for that in the spring.
As for the younger girls, Hannah will probably take the lead in their adventure together, since she's got a child who's approaching Real School Age, and mine is only a preschooler tagging along. Still, my 3yo's "first exposures" to things like letter formation and number theory can happen alongside a kindergartener's "firm grounding in the basics." They love to do worksheets together (to my MJ, "schoolwork" = "Mommy sits and does a worksheet with me, or better, ten worksheets in a row"), and so we identified some books that they can do together (because the nice thing about worksheet books is that they are easy to tote and easy to pull out the instant the girls come clamoring to us, "We want to do our schoolwork!") We think we'll teach them how to use the telephone in the coming months, and to remember a parent's phone number and their addresses. We found a great prewriting worksheet book that incorporates nursery rhymes — memory work! — along with practice with the basic handwriting strokes and shapes. And we've got some old Charlotte-Mason-y tricks in our bag from when our older kids were younger… a listen-and-parrot Spanish phrase curriculum that they might like, Aesop's Fables to hear and narrate back, a stash of art prints to show and talk about. When we were done with our list, we were satisfied that the stuff we had would make part of a proper kindergarten curriculum for Hannah's 5yo, while still allowing my 3yo to join in fully as much as she wants.
Hannah and I enjoyed the work session so much, we didn't even notice that we had forgotten to have our "schoolwork's done, pour a cup of tea and sit down" ritual. That's something we don't miss much — it was one of the things we resolved to make time for, way back when we revamped our awful schedule so we would enjoy life more, and enjoy the kids more, including each other's kids.
Which just goes to show what inveterate curriculum geeks we both are. Which is one of the reasons why it works so well, I think.
If you're interested in some of the things I wrote about obesity and finding the power to change, maybe you might be interested in reading other writers coming at the same subject from a very different perspective. Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic has been blogging about obesity, class, and race. This meditation is outstanding. I recommend it.
I may have pointed to this before, but I wanted to recommend again this animated map of the imperial history of the Middle East. A very cool survey of 3000 years in 90 seconds.
We used it today with the 4th-grade boys to accompany Chapter Eight of Story of the World: Early Modern, which contains a too-exhausting-to-remember survey of the history leading up to the Ottoman Empire. The animation worked a lot better.
(I guess if I'm going to post, I need to settle for shorter posts.)
Some time ago, Mary Jane informed us: "If the new baby is a brother, we will throw him in the trash can, and Daddy will have to take care of him."
Now I have been through this sort of thing before. Oscar used to say when I was expecting Milo: "We will put the new baby in the pot, and stir, and burn the baby!" So I am not, shall we say, worried about it.
But after we learned that the new baby is indeed male, or at least looks that way on the ultrasound, I did do a little bit of coaxing about baby boys, and yet MJ remained unmoved. Nope. Baby boy = in the trash, Daddy = primary caregiver.
However, a week ago MJ and I flew out West to visit friend and commenter Christy P, who happens to have a daughter "Z" the same age as MJ — and a new baby son, whom I assume I can call, James-Bond like, "Q." (The last time I went out to visit her, we were both pregnant with the girls.)
It was an interesting weekend. We learned, for example, that not only can you fit 3 kids in the back of a Prius (that's one rear-facing carseat, one front-facing carseat, and one booster), you can in fact fit — in the back of that same Prius—3 kids PLUS one nearly-6-months-pregnant 35-year-old, crouching in the backseat behind the passenger seat clutching her screaming daughter's legs to keep her from kicking the baby, and calmly (under the circumstances) requesting that the driver drive, um, carefully.
(An impressive amount of legroom, the Prius has. I'm just saying.)
Also that the best thing to do with two three-year-olds sentenced to spend lots of time together over the course of three days is to take them outside. Park, zoo, whatever: It's all good. Mr. Rogers also made a welcome appearance.
But since I have gotten back I have also discovered something else very pleasant. I think MJ was very taken with little Q, who is 3 months old and placid and wide-eyed and chubby, and also with Z's big-sisterly attitude toward Q. She has been describing our trip as "I went on an airplane to visit Z and Q." And since we have been back, she has been telling people rather proudly, "My baby is going to be a brother too."
She has for a long time referred to Oscar and Milo as "her boys:" – "I'm going to go up to bed with my boys now and read stories." "I'm going downstairs to watch a movie with my boys." Maybe #4 will become one of her boys now, or maybe — being younger — he will occupy a wholly new spot in the family ecosystem. Either way, I think she has come to some kind of acceptance. Nice to see.
Here it is. The only thing is, you have to be comfortable with recipes that say things like "combine a good amount of turmeric with pinches of cumin, hot pepper, coriander, fennel seeds, and enough soy sauce to cover the tofu."
I fried the tofu in 1/4 inch of coconut oil in a nonstick pan, and it didn't stick at all. I wish I had made twice as much — one 14-oz package didn't go very far! The pickled veg were a hit — with a fairly sugary marinade, my kids loved it, especially crunch-loving Milo. I made my own peanut-coconut sauce (had a lot of basic sauce left over after an attempt at autumn fruit salad earlier this week, and stirred in some Thai green curry I keep around for just this sort of thing). Served it with steamed brown rice and garlicky stir-fried broccoli.
Really, it's worth clicking over — lovely pics.
(Can you tell I've been uninspired lately? It's all recipes all the time these days.)
First, this traditional sourdough rye. No baker's yeast added!
Notice how the heel of the bread mysteriously acquired a coating of butter and lost a bite or two before I got around to fetching the camera.
This one turned out nicely. I described my last couple of disasters to Hannah and she suggested modifying my routine to shape the bread only an hour or so before baking it, so the shape wouldn't collapse. That seemed to help.
So now the sponge — I think that's what it is, it's some fresh sourdough plus the flour and water from the recipe — is resting for several hours; it's getting mixed with the other ingredients (things like oil, sugar, caraway) in the bread machine the night before; I'm letting it sit in the bread machine pan, covered, overnight, on a heating pad that takes it up to 78 degrees F or so; in the morning or early afternoon, I'm shaping it, letting it recover for an hour or two tops, and baking it at 350 deg F until it reaches an internal temperature of 210 deg F.
Another thing different about this loaf is that it's a white/rye combination. So far my rye-white traditional sourdoughs are turning out better than my whole-wheat-rye traditional sourdoughs, and my 100%-whole-wheat traditional sourdoughs are turning out better than my white-flour ones. No idea if that's just random or if there's some reason for it.
Oh, and this time I did an egg wash, which certainly made it LOOK nice. Now if only I'd slashed the top maybe it wouldn't have split along the side — you can't see it, it's the other side of the bread…
Tastes great, by the way.
Here's my other success from yesterday evening:
Not too bad for a rank amateur, I thought. Milo is my little apple devourer — he eats apples like an autumn piglet. I think he eats at least three pounds of apples a week. Anyway, it seemed like a nice enough theme for an October birthday, so that's what I put on his cake.
And of course, it's an apple spice cake, too. I used this recipe from Bon Appétit for Fuji apple spice cake with cream cheese frosting. The recipe promised a "not-too-sugary cake" that was "inspired by carrot cake," and I don't like a hugely sweet cake, so that's what I went for. (Remind me to search for the term "not too sweet" in the future.) I still thought it was pretty sweet! I substituted whole wheat for 2 of the 3 cups of all-purpose flour, which makes for a tenderer cake as well as a more healthful one (and works extremely well with spice cake). I also added an extra egg yolk just because I had one lying around after the egg-white wash on my sourdough bread. And, of course, I didn't split and fill it, but instead put it in the 9×13 pan and decorated it with green and yellow apples and chocolate writing. I think raisins would have been very nice in this cake but I was afraid some children would not like them so didn't try to add any.
I think it's easier to write on a cake with melted chocolate from a snipped Ziploc bag than with any sort of frosting contraption.
I think the cake was appreciated more than the sourdough.
The birthday is really Wednesday, but with friends coming over we thought it was as good a day as any to have a birthday cake.
Incidentally, this came after one of the nicest get-together dinners (foodwise) we'd had in a long time. It was T. O. M.'s idea, after he came back from a business trip to Brazil. They brought black beans and rice, oranges, and (weirdly, I thought at the time) a couple of bags of pork rinds. We grilled kielbasas and cooked a pot of garlicky collard greens with a little kale and cabbage thrown in. When it was all together on one plate with the juices running together, and the pork rinds crunched up on top, it was a kind of magic, let me tell you. Lubricated with bottles of Crispin's Hard Cider, Extra Dry, over ice, a perfect autumn dinner.
Here's the apple spice cake recipe from Bon Appétit, minus the fancy decorating information and with my changes in orange. Click over if you want a 2-layer filled cake decorated with pecans.
INGREDIENTS
CAKE
• 3 cups all purpose flour [I used 2 cups whole wheat and 1 cup APF]
• 1 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg or ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 3 large eggs [I added 1 egg yolk to this as well, only because I had it]
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons bourbon, apple brandy, or rum (optional) [I used Maker's Mark bourbon, and it was yummy, let me tell you — forget bourbon-and-Coke, anyone want to come over for my new cocktail called "Bourbon 'n' Cake (batter)"?]
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
• 2 medium Fuji or Gala apples (13 to 14 ounces total), peeled, halved, cored, cut into 1/3-inch cubes [one of my organic Fujis was rotten when I got it home from the store, so I added enough McIntoshes to make up the weight — I think the important thing is to have a firm apple here]
• 1 1/2 cups finely chopped pecans (about 6 ounces)
FROSTING
• 1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt
• 3 cups powdered sugar (measured, then sifted)
PREPARATION
CAKE
• Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Line bottom of each pan with parchment paper round. one 9×13 inch glass dish. Whisk first 7 ingredients in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat 1 cup butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add both sugars and beat until smooth. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla, then bourbon, if desired (mixture may look curdled). Add flour mixture to egg mixture in 3 additions alternately with applesauce in 2 additions, beating until blended after each addition. Stir in apples and pecans. Divide batter between cake pans; Pour batter into prepared pan; smooth tops.
• Bake cakes until tester inserted into center of each comes out clean, about 50 minutes [it was about 1 hour 10 minutes, I think, and the cake got a little done on the edges, but no harm for a birthday cake] . Transfer cakes to racks and cool in pans 15 minutes. Cut around pan sides to loosen cakes. Invert cakes onto racks; peel off parchment paper. Place another rack atop 1 cake and invert again so that cake is rounded side up. Repeat with second cake. Cool completely. DO AHEAD Can be made 1 day ahead. Wrap each cake in plastic and store at room temperature. I just stuck the cake in its dish in the fridge for a while.
FROSTING
• Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl until smooth. Beat in vanilla extract and pinch of salt. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until frosting is smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes.
• Using long serrated knife, trim off rounded tops of cakes to make level; brush off any loose crumbs. Transfer 1 cake to platter, trimmed side up. Drop half of frosting (about 1 1/2 cups) by spoonfuls atop cake. Spread frosting evenly to edges of cake. Top with second cake, trimmed side down. Drop remaining frosting by spoonfuls onto top of cake, leaving sides of cake plain. Spread frosting to top edges of cake, swirling and creating peaks, if desired. Sprinkle with pecans. Let cake stand at room temperature 1 hour to allow frosting to set slightly. DO AHEAD Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover with cake dome and refrigerate. Let cake stand at room temperature at least 2 hours before serving. Aaaah. I frosted the cake. What more do you need to know?
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