In which Ziad apologizes, and I have mixed feelings

Behold Ziad's latest poem:

I'm not very smart and I know it
I'm also a terrible poet
I'm almost as smart
As a blackberry tart
I'm not very smart and I know it

This poem accomplished it's intended purpose, which was to make me laugh. Maya also found it very amusing. Still, I can't help wondering ... am I too hard on the boy?

Science Camp: The Good

A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to get a week at Science Camp. This is essentially the same Science Camp that public school children get, but the program was slightly modified to accomodate homeschoolers and their propensity for participating as families. So the children got to go off with their naturalist during the day and do various cool project, while the mom and siblings still to young to hit the trail chilled back at camp. It was a good setup.

There were cabins for the families to sleep in (bring your own sleeping bags, natch) and a dining lodge where meals were held. The lodge had a big fireplace, with a fire going all day, and the meals were surprisingly non-horrible. A few of them even attained goodness. In any event, we all ate a ton in an attempt to ward off the cold. Calories! Give me calories!

The meals also featured a surprisingly popular appearance by a recurring character, the Waste Wizard. Who was played by the naturalists, dressed up in ridiculous costumes. The kids went nuts! They loved it. Although the Waste Wizard had various things to say about reducing all kinds of waste, they would also carry around a bucket for the table scraps, which was used to measure how much food people had left on their plates. If, like me, you think the sight of children filling up their plates and then eating two bites is an abomination, then this is the place for you. After the first meal, there was much less of this behavior -- in fact, there was never a meal after that with more than half as much leftover food. Go, Waste Wizard!

We really enjoyed our time in the redwoods, even though it was colder and darker (those trees just don't let much light in, not even at high noon) than we had expected. A couple of mornings we were the first up, so we got to light the fire in the dining hall. There was actually an early-morning patrol, in the words of one regular attendee. She was the mom of a young child who didn't really let her sleep in in the morning, and it was great fun to hear her reading board books to her little boy. There was a guitar-strumming dad and his son, and various other drop-ins. Then breakfast, then off to the woods!

Ziad and Maya were in the same group, at my request. Not having been to this place before, our personal family protocol dictates that I keep them both in my visual sphere as much as possible, which means they HAD to be in the same group, and I had to accompany them. The very cool thing was that, despite the prevailing ethos of "Butt out parent! Your child cannot possibly achieve their full potential with you breathing down their neck!" we managed to land a naturalist who completely understood that I was NOT their to police him, my children, or their interaction, but merely to keep an eye on things and back him up if he needed it. Also to take note of any interactions during the day that might merit some discussion amongst ourselves in the evening. Because, really, no one needs to be in a group where Ziad has decided he is justified in carrying out some vendetta against a perceived slight. I actually think I may have averted that scenario, although, of course it's possible I'm exaggerating my own importance.

The days were very cool. There was a stream day, where they studied the invertebrate population of a stretch of water, and learned that the presence of the caddis-fly larvae, which cannot survive in pollution, indicated clean water. They also learned about a bunch of interesting insects and got to observe the fern-like gill structure of a salamander under a microscope. Then lunch on a huge fallen redwood, featuring runny grape jelly that was the most delicious I have ever tasted.

Next was a forst day, where they hiked up a hill to Big Tree, a large sequoia that we could not encircle with our arms, even though out of the eleven of us there, three were adults. That was also the Professor Trail, or each-one-teach-one day, where every student got to be an expert of one member of the forest biosphere and impart their wisdome, one-by-one, to the other members of their group.

The last full day was the ocean day, where everybody trucked down to the coast to look at the nature center, take a hike on the bluffs, then head to the beach for some habitat restoration. Then they got stainless steel water bottles with an insulating cover and carabiners attached to the tops! Way cool.

The last day ended at noon, and consisted largely of cleaning the cabins, cleaning around the camp, and saying good-bye. It's a very good program, and I would recommend it highly.

Two links

First, second in a series of articles on homeschooling, first appearing in Salon:

Second, an article on women in Iran. Sadly, I can only link to an abstract; however, anyone wanting to read the article in it's print form is welcome to borrow it. Just give me a call.

Life in the Spectrum

Reading this article about autism made me grateful. I'm grateful that my own son's condition is so mild, but grateful also that someone has articulated so clearly what it's like to coexist with such a child.

Interestingly, I just read an article in the New Yorker about a neuroscientist, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, who is looking at autism, among other disorders, in light of brain structure and neuronal organization. This link is to an abstract, but the article itself is good reading if you care to register (It's free).

Time it was, oh what a time it was

My husband's aunt is in town. She is the kind of woman who will always be the favorite aunt -- warm, affectionate, funny, interested in everything, and always open to new experiences. We wanted to have her over to dinner before she went back to her home in Florida, so we bit the bullet, cleaned the house as best we could, and got cooking.

Because she is on a restricted diet, I made some food especially for her:

chicken marinated in fat-free yogurt with onion and spices, then broiled and sliced and served with the baked marinade as sauce

potato salad with olive oil and apple-cider vinegar instead of mayonnaise

apple sauce

string beans lightly steamed and then tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and fresh basil

steamed corn

For everyone else I made

hamburgers stuffed with feta cheese

macaroni and cheese

lavosh rollups with cream cheese and smoked salmon

and lastly, a tossed green salad that was probably enough for about twenty people


It was a lot of food for twelve people. In fact, I had trouble fitting the leftovers into the refrigerator. At least I won't have to cook too much this week!

While I was putting the food away and getting desert out, Maya and Ziad played the piano and the guitar for their family. They sounded surprisingly good, at least the part that I could hear from the kitchen.

For desert we had the plum sorbet I made from Village Harvest plums, a chocolate cake from the bakery and elephant ears from Costco. With coffee and tea.

After dinner we all went out on the deck and looked at the moon through the telescope.

After everybody went home, my husband and I sat at the kitchen table for a long time, just talking about his childhood and his family.

It was a lovely evening.

Fruits of Summer

For the last few years, the apricot tree in my in-laws yard hasn't really had much fruit. I've gotten out of the habit of making jam. This year, however, there was a fair amount of fruit; my brother-in-law, who often picks the fruit for them, was unavailable; and my mother-in-law, who makes the most amazing fruit preserves imaginable, isn't as energetic as she used to be and isn't really up for making jam. Slow on the uptake as ever, I didn't really mobilize myself to get the fruit picked and preserves made until it was almost too late. To make matters worse, I seem to have completely lost my jam-making touch. I hope it comes back to me next year.

Anyway, in addition to making jam, this year I decided to try to glace some apricots. I started out with this technique, which is flat-out insane. I was OK for the first couple days, but taking the fruit in and out of the syrup got old after a while, and when I tried to add the extra sugar and it just sat there on top of the old syrup, it seemed as though there was just too much sugar in the mix. My plan for next year is to modify the technique as follows:

Make a simple syrup of one cup sugar, one cup water
Simmer the fruit in the syrup briefly, remove from heat.
Next day remove fruit, add 1/2 cup sugar, boil the syrup, return the fruit, remove from heat. Do this two or three times.
Leave the fruit in the syrup for a few weeks, bringing it to a mild simmer every two or three days.
Remove the fruit and dry it.

The apricots are drying now, and they are more sugary than any fruit has a right to be. Until today I had several cups of very fruity syrup which I was thinking of using in champagne cocktails, but instead I am using most of it in a plum sorbet.

Here is my plum sorbet technique:

Wash the fruit, put it whole in a pot and heat until the skins pop open. Simmer briefly. Put the whole thing in a strainer and press out as much of the flesh as possible, discarding the pits and skins. Add syrup. Cool, then add one or two egg whites, depending on how much puree you have, and freeze in an ice-cream maker.

I am also making plum brandy. This is a very simple technique as well. You take two pints of plums, add 4 cups sugar and 1 quart vodka. Put them all in a container in the refrigerator, stir once a week for four months, and strain. Voila! I thought I had a foolproof plan in deciding to make park day my plum-stirring day, but I have forgotten to stir every Tuesday since I put the plums in the refrigerator. As far as I can tell this is an arbitrary exercise, though, because when I open it up to stir it there is just a clear purple liquid with a bunch of fruit in it, and I can't see what purpose stirring it serves. It's probably a good idea to keep checking on it, though.

I have been picking fruit with Village Harvest (thanks, Vivian) for the past few weeks and also have a nice pile of greenish apples and large plums. I will probably make applesauce with the apples, but I think I will try my modified glace technique on the plums. As I've been working on the apricots, it made me think a lot about preserving fruits, and candying them, and the fruitcake my family always makes, which uses candied fruits made from dried fruits. I wonder if making candied fruits from fresh fruits and putting them in fruitcake would make the fruitcake even more wonderful, or if it would just ruin the texture. Come Thanksgiving, I am to find out. Stay tuned.

Early one morning

I'm going to preface this entry by mentioning that we appeared to be having a yellow-jacket free summer. That is, until my husband decided to bait the yellow-jacket trap. Now they are attracted to it, but apparently unable to actually get into it, and last night for the first time we were unable to eat dinner outside because they were so ferocious. I am not pleased.

A more charming addition to our back deck is the large family of quail that now feel comfortable coming to eat crumbs and seeds we leave on the fence railing for them. Quail have to be the most adorable birds in existence. Their plump little bodies, their cute little beeping noises and charming call, their odd little flutter as the jump on and off the fence, the way the adults always keep guard while the babies forage. California quail are especially handsome, to my way of thinking, and I love watching them. There are also some scrub jays who seem to take a proprietary view of the fence, but the quail aren't scared of them, and it's especially fun to watch them negotiating boundaries along the fence.

So this morning, there they were, quails and jays, eating and chirping and fluttering around. Suddenly there was a big commotion and a smallish hawk swooped quite low over the quail, easily coming within six inches of the fence where they were feeding. They disappeared into the bushes beyond the fence, and the hawk, having failed to snatch one, perched on a nearby fence post. The quail expressed their alarm in loud and agitated peeeps from the bushes as the hawk shook out his feathers and scratched his leg. A yellow-jacked flew around his head, but he took no notice. A pair of swallows circled his vicinity, but he didn't really care. He kept his eyes on the bushes where the quail who continued voicing their distress in no uncertain terms.

I saw a pair of hummingbirds make an almost vertical rise into the air, flying beak to beak. I don't know if they were courting or contesting territory. I've never seen them do that before. Eventually they perched in the branches of a young oak sapling, along with some finches. The quail were gradually growing quieter. The hawk was still sitting on the fence. He switched his attention to a mockingbird in the next yard over. Finally I decided that I really should be watching with my binoculars, so I went into the next room and got them. And of course when I got back, there was nary a bird to be seen. No hawk, no finches, no hummingbirds, nothing. Only a lone yellowjacket, circling the trap and looking frustrated. That trap has got to go.

Crazy days of summer

I found a summer camp I want to enroll my kids in. (Did she just end a sentence with a preposition? ZOMG!!!)

Anyway, money is a consideration. These are some pretty privileged kids, with the guitar lessons, the piano lessons, the tennis lessons, and god knows what else from time to time. Yet for some reason, I still think it's reasonable to send them to summer camp in Santa Cruz to cook for 5-6 hours a day (I'd be glad to tell you why I think that's reasonable, but really, how many digressions can one blog post support?)

So I asked my husband, "Well, how about if they trade some music lessons for cooking lessons?" my estimate being that about four guitar lessons would be the equivalent of the cooking camp. His answer? "No, that's OK. They can do it, but you owe me." Which made me realize how much I personally want this for them. It's not for me, it's for them, but still I really want it. Enough so that when my husband said, "OK, well, we'll just consider it your birthday present," I was actually on board. WHO SENDS THEIR CHILDREN TO SUMMER CAMP FOR THEIR OWN BIRTHDAY PRESENT???? Especially since this not one of those getting the children out of your hair kind of thing. I like being around them and miss them when they're gone, plus if I drive them to Santa Cruz, where the camp is, I'm not going to be coming home to get stuff done or anything. Is that the attraction for me? Guaranteed six hours out of the house for five straight days? Probably not. That actually sounds kind of tiring.

Being a mom is confusing, that's for sure. I still haven't untangled this all in my head.