Happy Canada Day!

....and as that's the only Canadian thing happening to me right now, I'll move on.

Can I just say that as my cooking life is entirely taken up with what to feed baby these days I have nothing to say about food at all and seem to have even lost my appetite for the stuff, to the extent that I've lost at least ten lbs and two dress sizes... It's a strange thing, but I seem to have gone off eating altogether. Has that happened to any other new parents besides me?

My mother, who is visiting me right now, says the same thing and it makes sense: she's been running her own restaurant for twenty years and I've been reading, researching, writing and thinking about food for at least that long. So all of a sudden I don't really attack it with the same gusto I used to. I've lost my curiosity for new tastes! We even went for sushi last week and I just thought: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............ Boring.

On the other hand, I haven't lost my taste for food-as-process and project, especially for canning, and I've been planning to put up some preserved lemons and harissa for weeks now. Maybe once I get this latest writing deadline met, for next Monday.

Above is a picture of me at my favorite writing spot, filling up with my favorite fuel, diet coke. Get this KF and DR, my fellow DC-junkies: I don't even really like diet coke anymore!

not much going on...

So....not much happening except this:

1. We are now the parents of a one-year old boy, code named the A-dude, whom we brought home three weeks ago from Ethiopia.
   
2. I am on parental leave
3. I am trying to start blogging again
4. We are moving up to San Francisco on Saturday for ten weeks
5. I am still trying to finish my book (and write one chapter for an anthology and also two articles, but who's counting?)

On the issue of #3, above, I'm going to take a cue from The Dinner Files, which I hope you're reading, and start off with a discussion of what A-dude likes to eat, because that's pretty much what occupies my days these days. Here is what he likes:

1. everything

Seriously, the kid eats everything, with two exceptions: mushy cereals, which he is clearly outgrowing, and avocado, which he technically eats but only after spitting out once or twice. Sara G. assures me that food spitting is an important, though irritating, developmental milestone.

poulet

I've been trying to give the A-dude more spices recently, as we battle the giardia he brought home from the orphanage into submission. Above is chicken stuffed with garlic but as you can see from the picture below, I've been encouraging kitchen exploration.

Last week we pulled kecap manis, sour cherry syrup, tamari, corn syrup (shut up food psychos, you need it for shoofly and pecan pie!), fig balsamic, truffle olive oil and red wine vinegar out of the cupboard and got to sample them all. This week we're on a restricted diet because of the giardia meds (no dairy!) so we're doing a lot more tofu and veggie products.

I've also been trying to make some baby foods, though at one years old I obviously have to stop pureeing everything (but can be forgiven for babying him as I only got him two months ago). I made a mangu-like dish of yellow sweet potatoes, butter, milk and nutmeg last week that he also seemed to love.

I highly recommend this advice from Molly on raising an omnivorous child. And thanks to cousin C. in New York for our first foodie baby book.

Still a Crap Blogger....

why i'm not food blogging these days

...but I am trying trying trying to do better! I've been considering a blogger re-org lately, moving the blog away from a food-centric focus and back to the more cultural commentary format I used to have. Problem is, I'm working on three writing projects, teaching, chairing the Gender Studies program at my college and - news! - expecting to bring home a one-year old baby boy in one month. So blogging is still going to be slow.

Anyway heads up that a blog shift is coming. Just don't know what it's going to be. I really don't want to do mommy blogging that's for sure. Just not my style.

The cat has nothing to say about this:

toasty

Sorry to have been such a terrible blogger - I've been finishing a manuscript and starting a new article. But more soon.

I actually made the cornmeal pizza recipe from the Nigh-Times this weekend using fresh bocconcini. Malgre moi my flash wasn't working and I ended up with pictures that could have been captioned: Bocconcini Caught In Headlights.

Thus: no recipe for this week, just a picture of some toasty coriander and cumin seeds.

Garbage Soup

before

Well I think we can all agree that I've been a terrible blogger for the last three months, while I finish another project. (FYI, look for a major article in the next Gastronomica.) However! I'm going to try to do at least minor posts for the next while, until my commuting schedule (SF-LA for three days a week) slows down.

welcome to northern california....

As you can see from the picture above, it's horrid out: freezing, rainy, ugh. Lizzy and Lucy have hunkered down to do nothing today - seriously, they are totally immobile - and I've got a pot of garbage soup on, to keep us fed for the next week.

lizzy and lucy in action

As you probably already know, garbage soup is a big pot full of whatever-you've-got plus some whatever-is-leftover all chopped up and cooked down together. Here's today's version of

Garbage Soup

One leek; one green pepper; one small green cabbage; two large heads of broccoli; lots of celery - all the above chopped, obviously - and four cans of diced tomatoes with jalapenos. For flavor backbone and just that so the soup doesn't taste like wet mulch add two cubes of vegetable bouillon, one poblano pepper split down the middle and a parmesan rind, the latter an old and excellent corrective to otherwise pallid and depressing vegetarian soup. Before serving add a bunch of chopped cilantro and maybe a dollop of sour cream.

after....

Strategic Essentials, Issue #7: In Which Our Heroines Vote No On Proposition Eight

Having once indulged in a major wedding of her own, yr. faithful servant is in a position to say that everyone who wants to go through that financial and familial trauma, should be able to.

This is not simply because of the tax benefits, the right to be present for hospital care or the right to maintain parental rights. No: it is for the right to dress up, feed and liquor up your friends, dance the night away and charge it to your parents!

Everyone should have that right, or no-one should have that right, and this is why yrs truly urges you to Vote No On Proposition 8. Don't let the anti-fun-and-love people win, this time or the next time they put this on the ballot. If it takes ten elections before they feel the smackdown, let's do it.

Did you know that it is largely the Mormon Church who is behind Proposition 8? Bigotry is not chic. Vote no on Prop 8.

Vote For Change

Shop Runway for Change at the Obama/Biden site. Get 25% off with the code 25OFF. Or don't take the discount at all....

Quick Trip to Pasadena

A quick trip to LA this weekend for a wedding reception gave me the opportunity to utter four words I never thought would leave my mouth: I miss L.A. I really do! It was hot and muggy and smoggy but driving up the 110 I got a real wave of nostalgia for our year of living in Pasadena. Despite the traffic going through downtown.

Any of you who have driven in LA know that the above is not a good example of bad traffic.

On our way home we flew into SFO and took a quick side trip through Daly City to Koi Palace for what is purportedly the city's best dim sum. I've been to Koi Palace twice now and it really is the most complex and interesting Chinese food I've had since moving to the States. And I say that as a resident-in-exile of one of the foremost Chinatowns on the continent, where some of Hong Kong's top dim sum chefs decamped after Hong Kong went back to the China. A few examples:

One of Koi Palace's signature dishes are the coffee spare ribs, which while decidedly not authentic - not that I care about what is authentic - beats any ridiculous fusion invention that you'll ever find in SF's Financial District. See the cream on top? Get the joke? I'll eat anything that tastes like coffee, especially sugary, meaty, fatty spare ribs. From the other side of the tracks:


Tim got this agedashi-tofu-like tofu dish, which we both liked a lot, plus something called "Mexican Rice" (to be seen in the back of the lead picture) and an order of kai lan. T. and I always order the kai lan and in this case the waiter was thoughtful enough to offer to bring the oyster sauce on the side out of consideration for vegetarian T. I really wish I had better access to an Asian supermarket where we are; I'd love to get back into cooking more Chinese greens.

My not-very-adventurous but central reason for going for dim sum: har gow or some variation thereof:

These dumplings had shrimp and scallop in them so they're not strictly speaking har gow but I loved them nonetheless. These are the crab dumplings which I wasn't as crazy about:


Granted, none of these dumplings reach the heights achieved by Din Tai Fung in Arcadia, or even Monterey Park's Ocean Star - the rice noodle is a bit stickier and thicker than I'd like - but they're pretty good especially when you can order them with dishes like the coffee spare ribs, or the peking duck, which I had the last time we went. In fact, as I recall, I ended up eating a half duck alone, over the course of the week. Maybe I shared the skin with Lizzy.

We ended the meal with mango jelly which, to my total delight, they serve with a dish of evaporated milk the way I used to order off the dim sum dessert trollies as a child in Toronto (with canned fruit salad and almond tofu - fabulous).


Jellies are perfect slurped down with hot oolong. Now back to grading.

Issue #6, The Femme Issue: In Which Our Heroines Go To Market

In all things sartorial related to the academic job market, take your advice from Flaubert:

"Be neat and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be creative and violent in your work."

How true that is! Look at our arch-nemesis Sarah Palin, so demure in her $150 K collection of suits, and yet entirely ready, at a moment's notice, to butcher wildlife!

This week we consider the job market and its congruent clothing issues. When it comes to the job market there are four spaces to consider.

1. The interview room (esp where you will be sitting)
2. The hotel elevator and hallway
3. The reception (if you're lucky)
4. The job talk and visit

Let us tackle them one by one. When it comes to the job market all (or almost all) fabulousness must withdraw from sight. More Condoleeza Rice, less Sherri Shepherd. More Madonna in her Express Yourself moment (sans bra slits), not in leather gear and monocle pace Justify My Love.

This is for two reasons. One, your mind is auditioning, not your body, and academics are terrified of bodies, which is why they theorize but don't accessorize, decorate or celebrate them. Oh no! That is for those people: the working class, the colored, the gays.

this is too fabulous

Well, we all know that is le b.s. However, while trying to get a job in this difficult market you, like our man in black, the faux prisoner Johnny Cash, must walk the line. You must not distract from your ideas and you mustn't let anyone think that you care about such frivolities as fashion. Do that after you get your contract in hard copy and do that even more after tenure.

Walking The Line


1. The Interview Room. Here's the basic rule of interviewing: the poorer the institution the more likely you will be interviewing in somebody's bedroom and not in a suite, and therefore you want to test your suit by sitting down on a bed. Beware of the skirt suit that looks schoolmarmish when you stand up and scandalous when you sit down.

do the sit down test before you buy it

Make sure your skirt goes below your knees and wear hose even if you are interviewing in Rio de Janeiro. Make sure that it does not rise above your knees when you sit down. Alternately, wear a pant suit but make sure you can sit comfortably in it. You can cross your legs at the ankle but not at the knee. Or don't cross them at all. Make sure that your shirt is not so tight that it stretches across your chest. Unbutton your jacket when you sit down but not before.

2. The Hotel Elevator. Nothing but nothing is worse than the hotel elevator at those big conferences where the disciplines interview. They go up, they go down and on every voyage they carry the stench of fear. Carry a small deodorant in your purse/satchel/whatever. Do not wear perfume in case people have allergies. In fact, invest in a small satchel to carry extra resumes and cv's. You never know who hasn't looked at your dossier carefully.

3. The Reception. You've interviewed at Top School and they like you. You are invited to their reception. Mazeltov. Wear your interview suit but let your hair out, modestly. This is where they will test you to see if they want to hang out with you on an every day level. Drink very little and wear low heels or flat shoes.

low enough for you?

You'll be standing for a long time. Wear very little lipstick or gloss so that it doesn't smudge on your glass and gross everyone out. Carry a small napkin and hold it in the palm of your hand so that you don't get too sweaty. Get a manicure; you'll be shaking hands like crazy. (Get a manicure anyway; they're good for you.)

low enough for me, anyway

4. The Job Talk. Things you must bring with you and carry in your purse: deodorant, toothpicks/mini toothbrush, gum and some sort of power bar/emergency calorie thingy because you won't be able to eat much. In fact bring two Odwalla bars just in case. Things to bring to your talk: tissues in case you get a runny nose (horrible: I saw that happen once), bottle or glass of water (they should provide you with that but they might not). Ask to have half an hour alone before the talk to prep, calm down and brush your hair. Wear something you can walk around in, that you don't need to fiddle with. At this point you may have been wearing the same suit for two days so make sure to buy a suit that is a poly blend. They don't wrinkle as much.

General hints: Never give your suit to the concierge to steam in case they lose it and never ever check your suit on the flight to your interview. If your luggage is lost, you will need to buy another suit fast in a city foreign to you. This is not going to keep you cool, calm and collected and also God knows what you will find.

Check out the suit ideas at Style.com or keep it real at Ann Taylor. Best deals to be found at Nordstrom Rack or Loehmann's.

Person Ann Taylor

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Issue #5, A Manifesto on Joyfulness. Or, "Speak Truth To Power, Or I'll Kick Your Head In"

Darling Deconstructors:

Derrida this: joyfulness is not just for the frivolous, or even the oblivious. We need to move through the world with pleasure; we need to engage our senses and our intellects with beauty. A concentrated, engaged joyfulness might be just the thing right now: not a turning away from pleasure but a deeper engagement with pleasure as a world-making activity.

This, in the end, is why I write about fashion and food on my blogs. To choose, over and over again, the different self that I want to become all the while living within a space that, in general, doesn't want me. To take up space in a world that seems resolute on convincing those I love and admire that they don't count. To remind myself of what it is like to move through spaces that are not hostile, amongst those who, like me, treat shared space as theatre. So that we can see each other.

Choosing beauty, in other words, is a space-making activity. It is the way that we armor ourselves. Our being-excessive is the way that we create too much of ourselves and thereby resist being consumed. Our too-muchness sticks in the craw, gets stuck in the throat, won't go down. Too-muchness, as Pamela Robertson tells us, via Mae West, is a feminist aesthetic. It is a response to dominant affect, which is characterized as being too little.

On that note: do you think these Christian Louboutin boots are too much?

They're only $1300 at Saks.

Don't they just say, "Speak truth to power, or I'll kick your head in"?

Issue #4, the Economic Downturn Issue

Fellow Thinkers.

Do. Not. Panic. As the economy spirals downward and the ugly cost of neo liberalism becomes apparent to the first world, surprising no-one in the Global South, there is no need, I repeat no need, to sacrifice style. Consider the depression, when women used flour and chicken feed sacks for their dresses.

People knew how to cut corners then, that's for sure. We however, having survived the sartorial strictures of grad school stipends, are ahead of the game. Pity the poor Lehmann brothers consultant as she trades her Armani suits in for much-needed cash. Pity her and then go buy it back at your local Crossroads store, for a solid discount.

In any case, we are all figuratively - and some of us actually, thanks Pilates! - tightening our belts, and none of us can afford to careen from trend to trend anymore. With this in mind, welcome to the Sale Issue, in which we consider ways to cut your fashion budget down

For instance, here are some things you can hold on to:

1. that one pair of high heeled boots [have them dyed, or take them to a cobbler to be re-heeled)
2. those low-rise Juicy jeans you swore you'd never wear again [wear them under a tunic or mini dress, preferably purchased at one of those super-cheap teen fashion sites]
3. jean jackets [obviously one never throws away jean jackets, just wear it with a big scarf]
4. black dresses [get the hems altered]
5. Skirts [have the tailor turn them into this season's pencil skirts]

In the meantime, some spots to save money while kitting up for a long, cold, economic winter:

Grechen's Closet has sale codes for some of the best online boutiques.

Delia’s Closet has ridiculously cheap clothing for teens, including great shoes that I know my mother NEVER would have let me wear to high school. Some of their dresses would look great on top of leggings or jeans.


You generally have to get their shoes reinforced at the buckle or whatever, but it’s worth it. Check out the kitten heel for $39.50.

GoJane has a “fashion under $15” section, but I’d avoid the feather earrings, if I were you. The 21st-century hippy look doesn't say "I've got my PhD

And, last of all: awesome news! TopShop has gone online in the U.S. following the opening of their New York store.

What are you waiting for?

The Diva Citizen

Issue #3, The Travel Issue (but still hating on Sarah Palin, especially her hair)

Hail Fellow Proletarian in the Mines of Intellectual Work!

As many of you know I recently switched out the lovely sedate life of sabbatical for this new thing called a "lifestyle." What kind of lifestyle, you ask? The commuting lifestyle, I answer.

We all travel a lot more than we used to: we travel for conferences, we travel for interviews, we travel to interview, and some of us travel to work. Which brings me to this issue: how's an intellectual gal like you or me to keep our cool on our way to our latest Southwest flight? We carry books, we carry our laptops, ipods, cameras, PDAs, and then we need to start on clothes, shoes and - hello! - product! In short, we have needs.

Seriously, when you enter the world of professional luggage you find such ugliness! In the world of business travel for women we are still in the land of shoulder pads, pinstripe and passive-aggressive scarf-wielding!

We do our best to lead by example. For instance, I found this awesome travel set on sale this week, from Diane Von Fursternberg luggage in fabulous "beet" colour with tangerine satin interior.

Only $269, reduced from $760. Or check out, at the same discount, the "Lizard on the Go" luggage set.

What says MLA more than Matched Luggage Accessories? None of this, however, solves the problem of electronics. We are too wonderful to have those dreary black travel sets with the attached laptop bags that every business traveler seems to have.

Despair not!Spring/Summer '08 Stella McCartney for Sportsac is on sale at 75% off at Le Sportsac. Remember LeSportsac from your childhood I like their laptop sleeves in "posh" print.

I also like the Melissa Beth laptop sleeve at Neiman Marcus.

It's a bit expensive, though. Less expensive is this laptop envelope/sleeve -- you know you can put your laptop through the xray machine inside a sleeve now, right? - at Etsy.

Or the felt laptop sleeve at Better Living Through Design. A little less effusive is the Cool Metal Jacket Laptop Bag.

We, however, are confident enough to be playful. Check out Jane Marvel's laptop bags.

Well, whatever you do, remember that nothing says I'm Empowered like a solid updo, pace the woman we love to hate, Sarah Palin.

Incidentally, there are excellent tops for professional wear at the Beauty Tips For Ministers website.

Back to shoes next week, I promise!

Your amiga,

The Citizen Diva.

sparse notes from a busy week (or three)

Artichoke season! Which doesn't apply to me because for the life of me I cannot ever cook these pain-in-the-butt vegetables properly.



More important and fun, it's melon time and T. and I have been dining out on the same cassaba melon for about two weeks. He's on a smoothie kick and we have been getting our 4 servings or whatever in liquid form. Throw in some white nectarines (see background) and you're in smoothie heaven.


We've also been going nuts on heirloom tomatoes and the last of the season's basil, as in these two pictures, taken from Friday's dinner party with visiting family:


This is a local Bulgarian feta that I bought at the new New Leaf in Half Moon Bay, and it's accompanying TWENTY DOLLARS worth of heirlooms, bought to feed a party of eight. We'd done a similar dish the weekend before when Cousin Baby Momma visited and we made our own pesto to go on top.

Besides that, nothing interestingly foodie to report, really. I'm going to have to try and put something up soon or there won't be anything to give away for the holidays....

Issue #2

Hey brainy divas.

As you know, in the academy, one day you're in and the next you're out.
Here is your classroom couture update, Issue #2 in what promises to be an ongoing series.

Please feel free to write an tell me to leave you off the list. I won't be offended!

Number one. All Nanette Lepore is 40% off at Bluefly. Does this skirt say: I have mastered Deleuze? Yes it does!


Two: We continue to see the Michelle Obama effect on the fashion world as purple becomes the color to wear, at least until November. I love love love Lori's shoes from Chicago and they're featuring what they call "wine-dark" shoes this week. In case you drop a glass of merlot from that bottle you keep stashed behind the Norton Anthologies:

Lori's Shoes of Chicago. Click your heels three times and say "THIS is why you didn't get an A!"

Third: On Thursday September 25th, your local Loehmann's is offering an extra 15% off your purchase when you donate $5 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

Fourth and most important, this comes to me via a colleague:

"PBS is doing one of those instant online polls to ask America if they think Sarah Palin is fit to be Vice President. The GOP has launched a successful all out blitz to get Republicans to go on the site and click "Yes". As a result right now it looks like 50% of "America" thinks Palin is qualified. Please cast your vote and forward this message to others."

Say NO to Sarah Palin, the worst thing to happen to feminism since Anita Bryant!

Your colleague in taking over the world, all the while looking fabulous,

The Diva Citizen