katie allison granju

more on cooking September 29, 2006

As I’ve noted, I am trying really hard to cook more actual, sit down meals for the fam. I cannot cook because my mother never taught me. So I am trying to teach myself and soon, I will try harder to better involve kids in cooking.

I thought I had the worst cooking skills on the planet until I married J.H. I now know that my beloved, who has MANY other wonderful and important skills, is, in fact, the least skilled cook on the planet

The very act of being asked to turn on the oven appears to frighten him. But he is very sweet about trying.

COOKING TRIUMPH OF THE WEEK: I made a sausage and potato casserole that was pretty tasty.

Tonight I am attempting a simple, roasted pork tenderloin with some grilled pearl onions and asparagus. DRAT - just realized I have no lemon juice at home…

lots of game theory on youtube

Wow! I found a treasure trove of Game Theory (videos, concert footage) on You Tube RIGHT HERE

This makes me wildly nostalgic for being 19 years old again. I had me some serious fun in college…

the abstinence outlet

Via FEMINISTING, I stumbled onto this ONLINE STORE that excluively carries abstinence-promoting products…like, this one:

elizabeth edwards

I am a big John Edwards fan. I hope he runs for president in ‘08 - and I think he will. He’s exactly what the country is ready for right now.

I will definitely buy and read his very cool wife ELIZABETH’S NEW BOOK

liberals aren’t having enough babies September 28, 2006

According to a number of sources, and most recently, THIS ARTICLE IN USAToday, we progressive types aren’t reproducing fast enough, while the Republicans and particularly the Republican Mormons continue to go forth and multiply like crazy.

At least I’m doing my part to keep up our liberal ranks… In fact, my whole family is. We’re a rare breed of fertile, highly procreative, southern liberalistas.

Answers from the Author of "The Complete Organic Pregnancy"

A week or two ago, I asked readers to submit questions for the author of THIS NEW BOOK. It’s called “The Complete Organic Pregnancy” and it’s a comprehensive guide to avoiding toxins while pregnant and breastfeeding.

-kag

BLOG READER QUESTION: What is the tone of the book? Will reading it make me feel like my already-born children are irreparably damaged because I did not know
to avoid all this stuff? Will it make me feel like a bad mother if I can’t successfully avoid it in subsequent pregnancy?

DEIRDRE REPLIES: We didn’t know a fraction of what we now do about organics before we started researching our book, so we think the tone is more helpful than doctrinaire. We say over and over that it would be pretty hard to do everything we recommend, so people should do whatever percent they can – be that 5% or 95%. From our friends who are second-time moms who want to get on the organics bandwagon, we’re hearing an “A-ha!” response to a lot of what we point out. As in: “That makes sense, and now I know why and what to do.” We assume that how ambitious you decide to be about the information in our book will directly correspond with how much it resonates with you. If it resonates strongly and you don’t decide to make changes, perhaps you’ll feel bad. But it’s more likely that you’ll do what makes sense to you, and feel comfortable ignoring the rest. We’ve never read a pregnancy book (before ours of course) that we followed every word of, and so we wrote this one with that in mind. Of course we’d love it if you go more organic than not, but ultimately it’s up to you to pick and choose what works for your life.

BLOG READER QUESTION: What gets top priority for the pregnant momma? There are organic cotton diapers, and organic chocolate, along with organic-fed chickens
and grass-fed beef. And of course fruits and veggies. What is most critical?

DEIRDRE REPLIES: Here are five great steps we think worth taking to protect your baby during the childbearing year:

1. Buy non-toxic cleaning products because basically everything conventional is bad. This will help your indoor air pollution considerably. (You can make your own cleaning products for a fraction of the cost with a combination of liquid soap, baking soda, water and white vinegar.)
2. Chicken, fruits, veggies, and chocolate fall into the same category for us. Eat organic and whole foods – unprocessed foods as close to the form they were grown in as possible.
3. Have your house and water tested for lead, particularly if your house was built before 1987.
4. Read the ingredients in your beauty products. Can you pronounce, let alone recognize, what’s listed? Our government doesn’t (yet) regulate cosmetics as organic which means any producer can claim to be organic. Choose products with fewer and more natural ingredients. We have trustworthy brand suggestions in the book.
5. Don’t renovate while pregnant. If you need to make basic changes, especially where the pregnant mother or baby will be sleeping, use zero-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint, and nontoxic wood and glue.

BLOG READER QUESTION: Is there ever a time in your opinion that the price of organic
foods and household products is not worth the cost? In other words, as
a pregnant woman, what non-organic foods and products (if any) can I
feel safe and confident about?

DEIRDRE REPLIES: The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) has investigated and determined which are the most and least pesticide-laden conventional fruits and vegetables. We urge you to eat organically but if you’d like to still buy conventional, check our their least-contaminated vegetable list which includes: sweet corn, avocado, cauliflower, asparagus, onions, peas and broccoli. The five conventional fruits least likely to have pesticide residues on them are pineapples, mangoes, bananas, kiwi and papaya. (The vegetables MOST likely to expose consumers to pesticides are spinach, celery, potatoes, and sweet bell pepper. The most contaminated fruits are peaches, strawberries, apples, nectarines, pears, cherries, red raspberries, and imported grapes.)

As we mentioned above, we also advise eating whole foods, which doesn’t have to mean organic, but food that is unprocessed and unrefined, or at least processed and refined as little as possible before being consumed. Whole foods retain more of their nutrients than processed food. A potato is good for you (even with the pesticides), certainly better than potato chips. There are a number of processed and packaged “organic” foods now on the market, too. Just because they’re organic doesn’t mean they’re better for you than whole foods.

We go into more depth about specific products in the book, but be wary about buying expensive cosmetics or other products that claim to be organic. Like we said, there is no such thing as certified organic beauty products (for the moment, the government is working on standards) or paint or laundry detergent, so before you lay out the cash, make sure the manufacturer is the real deal.

Another thing to keep in mind when paying a bit extra for organics is that you’re not only buying for you. If you buy the organic potato, you’re helping a farmer (and his or her family) not have to breathe in toxic pesticides, you’re keeping insecticides out of the very earth and the groundwater your baby is inheriting.

———–

Thanks blog readers and thanks Deirdre (and Andi!).

Now run on out and buy the book!

black-sounding names and white-sounding names

The always obnoxious John Stossel is apparently doing a report on 20/20 this week looking at discrimination against “black sounding names” like Shamiqua and Jamal. Here’s his LIST OF THE WHITEST AND BLACKEST SOUNDING NAMES.

I will admit that I do love the old Anglo classics (my children are named Henry, Jane and Elliot ;-)), but if I were a black mama, I would have serious reservations about naming my child something that has a history associated with slave ownership only a couple of generations ago. You know?

Black Americans were given names like “Elizabeth” and “Robert” (and Henry, Jane and Elliot ) when they were forcibly brought to English speaking countries. But those weren’t their real names. This practice of assigning an Anglo name to a black slave was actually sort of similar to Jews being tatooed by the Nazis. These Anglo names were attached to black Africans brought to the U.S. and other English countries because it stripped them of their real names and made them easier for their oppressors to identify.

So black parents today face a bit of a naming dilemma. Because so many don’t have access to their actual family histories, they don’t have much to draw on in terms of giving their children meaningful, family names. So they’ve created a new type of name for their kids. And now John Stossel says little girls named Tanishia and boys named Terique will eventually be at an immediate disadvantage in the job market. They are more likely to lose out on jobs and promotions to the kids with names like William and and John and Molly. So basically, black parents are screwed either way you slice it. They can either give their “white” names that have an ugly association for them, or they are messing up their kids’ chances for success.

I suspect that this bias will change in only another generation or two. There was a time when a name that sounded “too Irish,” like Bridget, could put a kid at risk for discrimination. And Jewish Americans have a long history of changing their names to sound less Jewish. That rarely happens these days because Jewish and Irish-sounding names are no longer an obvious disadvantage.

As more Condoleezas make their way into our national consciousness, “black-sounding” names will become less and less of a disadvantage or even an issue.

I hope.

the rich really ARE different…

As evidenced by this INCREDIBLY BIZARRO STORY about a faux marriage between a billionaire and his adult daughter.

This story gave me creepy nightmares.

good parenting days/bad parenting days

When my children were little - particularly with the first two - if I had a day or two where everything went wrong and children were whining and I felt like throwing myself into bed at 7pm, I wondered if I was failing as a parent.

Now that they are older (14, 11 and 8), I am resigned to the fact that part of the natural flow of family life is that there will be good days and bad days as a parent. And often, I cannot figure out why some days go better than other days.

Yesterday I was tired. I woke up in a rather inexplicable bad mood and didn’t really shake it all day. Harold Ford, Jr was supposed to appear on the talk show I produce and a scheduling problem on their end left me without a guest and seriously irritated.

The children, when I finally got them home at 7:15 pm, were all in weird moods. Henry was hyper and picking at his sibs. Elliot whined and was lazy. Jane wanted to stay in her room most of the evening. And I didn’t deal with it that well. I felt overwhelmed by the mounting pile of clean laundry now piled on the dining room floor. I felt overwhelmed by all the stuff we need to get done to the house. Basically, I just felt crummy.

But nowadays, I know that this too shall pass. I breathe through the bad parenting days way better than I did in the past, when I would feel the need to cajole and convince the children to improve their moods. Now I mostly ignore them when they act like this.

And then this morning, almost magically, they all seemed to wake up in a fine mood. We had to leave for school early today and no one complained. No one was late. We all had interesting, pleasant discussions in the car. Jane happily loaned Henry the iPod earphones he asked for. He thanked her politely. Elliot asked clever questions about what we were listening to about Iraq on NPR. We talked politics some. Jane asked whether God would be a Republican or Democrat and that led to some back and forth on Buddha and Jesus and the nature of the afterlife. Henry shared his views on astral projection (!!!).

So today has started better. But I know that could change later today, like the weather. But mostly I just don’t sweat it any more and instead try to be actively conscious of how nice the fun, pleasant parenting moments are.

currently reading September 27, 2006

A birthday gift from my brother in law, Joe, who is with LEMURIA BOOKS, a very cool bookstore. My copy is signed, too.

Thanks Joe & Wendy

jane & sloane

This is Jane on “Can-Do” (barn name: “Sloane”). Her trainer bought Sloane recently and is allowing Jane to school him and bring him along in hopes that he will become a nice large pony for her to show. Once again, Susan has stepped up to the plate to help Jane continue to progress in her riding far beyond my financial ability to do so. She’s so good to us and I love her for it.

Sloane is VERY green and so far, has thrown Jane off just about every time she’s gotten on him, including not long after this photo was taken. But he’s really sweet and a nice mover and cute. Jane is thrilled to get to ride him.

syd and jane get silly with sloane

sloan gives jane a kiss

me, circa age 39 - at my bday supper

dr. neighbor and henry play guitar