My mom did almost all of the cooking in our home. When I was young my father worked a lot and wasn’t home much, and when I got older my mom would get frustrated by a messy kitchen and my dad’s penchant for buying ingredients he only used for one meal. He usually cooked things he knew and loved, meals that built slowly and were made great by his constant attention and tweaking of spice and flavor. I don’t remember why he decided to make sauerbraten with a starter of cold pear soup one night, but I do know that I’ve never had one as delicious as that first time. No chicken was ever as moist as that which came buried in a pot of arroz con pollo. And while I’ve come to modify his chili recipe to make it my own, I still dump plenty of cumin in it, remembering the day my dad taught me that the “chili” taste I knew and loved came not from chili powder but from cumin.

Image from Feathering My Nest

I cook exactly like the daughter of my parents would – I buy more expensive and exotic ingredients than did my mother, but I plan out menus and budget carefully the way my father never did until he started cooking and eating for just himself. Since I’ve been on bed rest, though, NJS has done a lot of cooking. By stepping back and letting NJS get a little creative, I’m seeing a side of his future dadness that I know our kids will come to love. He makes fantastic stir fry (mine is always too saucy, too salty, and too bland all at once.) His omelets are perfection. And he’s in the middle of perfecting his American Chop Suey with a hint of cinnamon.

One night when I was in high school, I went on a date. It wasn’t my first, but it was my first that didn’t also include the presence of a parent or older brother or other couples. I don’t even remember what that date entailed (probably the movies) but I remember coming home and finding my father awake in the kitchen. “Are you waiting up for me?” I demanded. “Nope. Soup is simmering,” he answered, my mother explaining to me the next morning that as soon as I’d left my dad had started chopping. Sure, it was a clever excuse to take out his aggression on some carrots and wait up to see what time I got home, but a dad knows that nothing, not even a boy who pays for the popcorn, can touch his daughter’s heart better than a bowl of soup her father has made for her.

My dad’s cooking meant a lot to him, and he did it to share his love and life with the people who mattered most. I see NJS putting more of himself into each meal he cooks and I know that to him, adding a sprinkle of goat cheese to my salad is a way for him to take extra care of his family. Don’t demean anyone in your life, especially not a dad, by assuming all they want to do in the kitchen, all they can do, is open a jar of sauce.

What are your favorite dad-made meals? 

Side note: I googled “dad cooking” to find an image for this post and came across a lot of great blog posts by writers talking about foods they loved that they learned to love when their dads made them. Really sweet.

I worked with a woman with whom I had been very close personally and professionally who, when she got pregnant, suddenly determined that she had to work twice as hard to prove herself. She was almost paranoid in her certainty that she had to focus only on her career and work more hours than anyone else to show that she could still contribute, to the point where she actually undermined her own contributions to the team, ignored her family, and alienated her friends. I worried I would end up like her.

When I did get pregnant, I absolutely struggled with paranoia and feeling like I was letting my team down. I fretted that I would regret my decision to go back to work after the baby was born, and that if I chose the opposite I would hate it. I also started to worry about my career in the big picture, and how having a kid (or two or three) might slow down or change my goals. But these were all in the background of my daily life, and I knew I’d work them out for myself with plenty of guidance from friends and people in my network who had been there themselves. Now that I’m on bed rest, though, these questions are at the forefront of my mind and weigh on me in much more immediate ways.

The physical limitations of bed rest are astounding: I can stand only for daily showers and trips to the bathroom, and can sit up only for meals. I spend approximately 22-23 hours a day lying flat on my side or back. Trust me, I’m not whining – I am actually among the very luckiest of those who’ve been given this prescription. Although I’ve been ordered to stop working entirely I’ve been able to develop a schedule that keeps me from going crazy with boredom but that doesn’t put me up against deadlines that will make me stressed.

Even so, I find limitations to what I can do within that. I can’t contribute to a radio ad, even though the team was willing to recreate the entire setup at my house, because there’s construction outside. I don’t always get much done during the day because, as you can imagine, typing is kind of a bitch in this position. Some days there are a million things I want to move forward and can’t, and some days it feels impossible to motivate. I wonder if it’s not more frustrating to butt up against these things than it would have been to take leave and remove myself entirely. I still wonder how I’ll handle it when I have a newborn.

I’ve joined bed rest chats and forums, and there is talk from many women about how hard it was to slow down, but I haven’t as yet seen anyone talking about how bed rest affected their careers overall. Mostly we talk about how worth it all this is/will be in the end, which I know and is why I keep my butt here instead of going for a walk around the block. But I find myself in a truly unique position (a flat one – HA!) when searching for guidance. It’s not like being laid off  - I haven’t lost my job, for one, and even if I had I don’t necessarily have the physical ability to move in another direction. It’s not like coping with a sudden physical disability because mine is absolutely temporary.

I know there are some moms in my circle with bed rest experience, so I’m asking: how did bed rest change your career? Did it slow down your momentum or stop it altogether? Did you try to go back to the way things were when it was over? Were you able to? How did this affect your career goals, if at all?  How did you cope with such a dramatic shift in priority? If you work/worked in social media, how did you manage the urge to be “always on” with the lack of energy and need to factor in plenty of offline hours? I’ve noticed that my energy and motivation have changed a lot, and while I expect myself to be able to hustle even though I’m lying down, I really can’t. Did you feel the same? How did you communicate this to others? How did you manage other peoples’ expectations of you and your own expectations of yourself?

Recently, Jennifer lost her husband very suddenly. I don’t know why her loss has hit me so hard. Maybe because the pictures she painted of her family with her blog posts seemed so happy and full of love. Maybe because she never makes it look easy to do what she does, but she does make it look fun, and I know that her husband and daughters are a huge part of that. Whatever the reason, I was horribly sad to learn about this and wished there was something that I, a total stranger, might do to make any sort of difference.

In her most recent entry, Jennie noted that many have asked how they can help and she has responded with a recipe for Creamy Peanut Butter Pie, a dessert her husband adored and she’d been intending to make for him for a while. We are invited to celebrate Mikey by making this pie and sharing it with someone we love. The amount of tweets (#apieformikey) and blog posts I’ve seen – well into the hundreds – of this pie being made all over the world is really beautiful.

So I made a pie.

Okay, I didn’t make the pie. I’m on bed rest right now, so I can’t get to the store or even the kitchen. But NJS can. And so my husband made the grocery store run, brought all the ingredients and tools into the living room, and together we created this amazing pie that we will share with friends who are coming over for dinner tonight.

The set up

Whipping cream on the floor attracts the attention of a fuzzy inspector

I got this.

Gonna bake a pie with some seriously delicious shizz in the middle

NJS fills the pie hole

You don’t have to know the story of Jennie and Mikey to know that you should probably get offline right now and go tell the person you love the most that you love them. Then make each other pie, or go eat pie, or take a walk. Celebrate your love today, right now. Don’t wait.

I’ve been thinking about the implications of that statement for a while, more specifically recently inspired by a post on Google+ from Don Martelli, and more so this morning when Sean Laurence emailed me and asked me what I thought of this:

I gave him my gut reactions. I wanted to put them here to encourage conversation around your thoughts of the video, and to acknowledge that I think I’m have my own personal social media revolution:

-When people hear “media” they think journalism, marketing… when my grandmother likes a photo on my Facebook wall, she doesn’t know or believe she’s engaging in social media. I think there’s a huge disconnect among everyday users between the words “social media” and “connecting.”

-It’s starting to get weird to me that people are fascinated by social media and how it works. Were we all this fascinated with how letter writing changed the world? Phones? I mean, probably, but I wasn’t around then. Maybe I’m just too close to it in my line of work but I’m starting to look forward to the day when we just stop talking about it and examining it and just DO it. *mails small royalty check to Nike*

-I don’t have an ereader (I could write for days on that subject and am working on a blog post in my head now about that in fact) so maybe I’m missing something but I don’t see how books on a reader instead of in my hand makes them more social. In fact, I lend books all the time, many of them with my own notes which I think is a much more social use of my media.

-The statistic that shows how many more Farmville farmers exist than do real farmers almost brings tears to my eyes. The implications THAT has on being able to feed a growing world population is heartbreaking. That there is more room and motivation to farm online than to actually create food is… I mean… I’m speechless.

-Using the tools of social media for marketing is different that direct mail, yes. But most marketers would agree that only focusing on one channel will yield crappy results no matter the channel. If you’re not thinking about the way that direct mail supports TV works with Twitter… you’re dead in the water. Focusing too much on social media and singling it out is starting to get dangerous. Let’s all just calm down and start using it.

All of that said, of course, my daily interactions fascinate me. It’s staggering to me that people want to have discussions with their bank, let alone on Facebook. A customer wrote a blog post yesterday about why he follows us on Twitter and not Wells Fargo. What? But the truth is if that post had been about why he prefers our TV ads to Ally’s, I would have been just as pumped (well, since I’m not personally responsible for the TV ads maybe not JUST as.) What I love the most about my job is not the social medianess of it, it’s the connecting. It’s getting to know people without having met them. It’s helping our customers, it’s changing lives. It’s living with PerkStreet pumping through my veins and stepping back to realize – holy crap, this is ostensibly a BANK I’m talking about here.

Sorry, tangent, but I think sometimes we think too much about what we’re doing. Social media is like driving: the more you learn it, the less you should think about it, but always keep in practice and stay current on any changing rules/laws/directions.

So what do you think? Are we in the middle of a revolution? Is there change happening now that we don’t see because we’re too busy spitting out statistics about change that’s already happened?  Is it time to shut up and do or is this constant state of exploration and dissection necessary to move forward?

I went to an awesome event tonight. It pulled some true startup heroes onto a panel and introduced community management and customer evangelism to a big crowd of curious people. As someone who works in that area, I was pleased to see plenty of new faces and meet some very smart, motivated people who are hungry to get involved. At one point during the event, I snuck through the back of the room to head to the restroom. I was embarrassed to be so rude and hoped that my pregnant belly might offer a silent explanation for my behavior. I needn’t have worried.

Upon my return I decided to stand, and chose a spot out of the way and in between the room where the audience sat and a wide hallway with a few empty tables in it. Not long after I got back, the speakers wrapped up their presentations and were invited to sit on a panel for audience Q & A. The MC mentioned that food was on its way and before he could explain that we would get to it as soon as the quick Q & A was over, about ten people got out of their seats and walked over to the tables as servers placed food on them. Look, I’m five months pregnant, so you don’t have to tell me twice about being desperate for chips and salsa. But I thought that was kind of rude. As the Q & A got underway, another ten people got up. And then another. Soon the large open hallway was filled with people, piling food onto their plates then standing around talking. One man sitting next to me took a phone call. Two people stood directly in front of me and began talking, and when I tapped them and said, “Excuse me” and pointed to the panel I was trying to pay attention to, they seemed rather put out and stood next to me instead to continue their conversation. There was no whispering, no murmuring, not any sign from easily more than half of the audience that had originally gathered that they were, in fact, there to hear the people on the panel.

Was it because it was a free event? Was it because the event was held in the back room of a bar? Was it because human civility has eroded so far as to become nonexistent? I have puzzled since leaving as to what could have caused such an incredible show of disrespect by so many people, and I can’t come up with anything that holds any water. I was furious when I left the event, but by the time I got home to start typing this I was just sad and tired and confused.

Have you been to professional events where people were anything but? Would you also have wanted to kick the guy on his phone in the nads? (sidebar: he introduced himself to me later as I was having a conversation, and it turns out that speaking on a cell phone in the middle of an event is as polite as he gets.) I know there’s no real solution, no answer. I guess behavior like that makes me feel a little lonely, and I’m seeking some sign of friendly life out there on the interwebs to let me know that I (and Miss Manners) are not alone.

There are some meals and drinks I enjoy at restaurants that I want desperately to recreate at home. Maybe it’s something I want to eat often, maybe it’s something I think I can tweak a bit to be more my own taste, maybe it seems like a cool challenge to undertake. But then there are some things that, were someone to begin to tell me the recipe, would result in me sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling, “LALALALALA.” until they stopped. The homemade raspberry seltzer at Flour Bakery + Café is one of those things.

None of Flour’s three locations are convenient to my day to day. All of them are reachable, but I have to go a little out of my way to get there, which means I’m not there often. It means that each time I go it’s because I’ve carved a little extra time out of my day just for myself. This already means that a visit to Flour is a little bit special.

The first time I had the raspberry seltzer, I was hungover. I was also struggling with finding a balance in my life. I remember it was a beautiful morning: bright blue sky, clouds so clearly defined it looked like they may have been sketched into the sky, cool breeze and warm sun. I decided to go a little bit out of my way and visit the Flour in Central Square to get breakfast. Coffee sounded too heavy, and something about housemade raspberry seltzer sounded really nice, so I got one (and a scone which was of course delicious, but this is not a post about scones.)

How do I describe it without sounding like a food blogger who’s run out of words? It’s completely Baby Bear’s Porridge – not too sweet, not too tart, just the perfect mix of fresh and refreshing and fruity, but also soothing. This beverage reaches into your soul and hugs you, and when you’re done you realize you really needed that hug. The world seems nicer and much more tolerable as you drink it down.

I say this confidently because feeling a little stressed and confused and with my brain in a knot I wandered over to Flour’s Fort Point location recently and had the same experience. Soul hugging, self-soothing raspberry seltzer.

I heard a rumor (most likely on Twitter) that Joanne Chang is planning to include the recipe in her upcoming cookbook Flour Power. I mean no offense to her incredible culinary mind when I say that I will buy the book and make my husband turn immediately to the raspberry seltzer recipe page and rip it out. Some things are just meant to remain pure magic.

photo stolen from FoodSpotting. My friend Trish took it and I hope she doesn’t mind that I posted it here. I was too distracted by the soul hug to snap a photo. 

If his behavior during ultrasounds is any indication of his future self, he will be born as a grumpy old man, refusing to turn where the doctor can best see him and scowling when you shove soundwaves into his face. Hard to predict a personal brand for a baby, and I’m not sure he’ll even be interested in it when he’s old enough to update his own status, which won’t be for many years. NJS and I have developed social media policies for him, then, since we’re the parents and we say so.

He won’t have his own Twitter handle.
I barely have time to keep up with my personal one and the one I manage for work, let alone a third on the baby’s behalf.

No ultrasound photos on Facebook.
As he gets bigger he looks more like a person and less like a kidney bean, but it’s a little more information about my insides than I’d like to share.

I will never have a profile photo of just the baby.
When he’s old enough to have a presence, he will have his own presence. Save for joke profile photos, I’ve never featured a photo of just someone else as my own profile photo, and I won’t start now no matter how damned cute he is.

Keep in mind that these social media policies are what’s best for our family. They may not be the best for yours, and they in no way should cast any positive or negative judgements on how anyone else chooses to use social media in their families.

It’s always exciting to anticipate what the future holds for social media. Pretty cool to consider what role it will play in my kid’s life, and vice versa.

Do you have a family social media policy? How did you come up with yours?

No one in my house made poached eggs when I was growing up. It’s always interesting to me to see what food opinions are formed differently from mine based on foods that someone else’s mother loved or hated. I didn’t have asparagus for a long time because my mother didn’t like it. When she grew up it came from a can and was slimy and bitter. But I love fresh asparagus, steamed with a little snap to it – it’s in the top 10, maybe even the top 5 true tastes of spring. I wonder if my kids will like it, too, or if the love for asparagus in my family begins and dies with me. Fascinating.

On the other hand, I could never stomach raw yolk on my plate. My gut would churn at the sight of the bright yellow swirls left on my father’s breakfast plate, dappled with toast crumbs and pepper. Scrambled was the only way I would eat an egg; even the gray coated yolk of a hard boiled egg triggered my gag reflex. It wasn’t until I was much older, maybe my early 20′s?, that I tried Eggs Benedict for the first time and quickly got over my revulsion. A few years later, my roommate Gillian returned from a trip to a friend’s grandmother’s house, raving about the poached eggs she was served, and we tried to recreate them in our Allston kitchen. It wasn’t bad, but I’ve since left the poaching to the experts.

Tagliatelle with poached egg from Spork or Foon

Twice in March I’ve had dishes where a simple but perfect egg on top has changed the food entirely. One Saturday a few weeks ago after exhausting ourselves on belly laughs at a Why Not Boston taping, we decided to refuel at Russell House Tavern in Harvard Square. While we were there we had a surprise serving of crispy pig’s head cake. If you’ve ever been to a pig roast, you know that some of the most delicious meat to be had on a pig is from the head. It’s only going to get more delicious if you mash that meat with spice and fry it up into a light, crispy cake. The poached egg that came on top of this dish was so perfectly delicate that it was almost a shame to break it open. But doing so pulled together the crunch and the softness of the dish into a beautiful blend that should have been savored and that we practically inhaled. It would have been good without the egg. But with the egg it was perfect. And I know I’ve already used that word in this paragraph but it’s appropriate in both places so there.

Last night was the one year anniversary of the day that NJS proposed. It snuck up on us, and we hadn’t really talked about doing anything special, but when evening events conspired at the last minute to keep us apart it was disappointing. Instead of being with him, I headed to one of my favorite neighborhood spots that isn’t in my neighborhood but should be (remind me later to do a post about those – I have a few scattered across the Boston area) Green Street. Sitting alone at the bar for dinner, I wanted to choose a salad and oysters or salmon or any of the other better-for-my-scale choices and instead chose what sounded the most comforting: housemade ricotta cavatelli with wild mushrooms and a poached egg. It made me think about the word “creamy” and how something without cream can taste and feel more creamy than something containing it. I love the way homemade pasta melts away in your mouth, and adding the egg pulled the mushrooms into the creaminess without losing their texture. It felt so decadent to have so much comfort in my meal.

Any tips on how to best prepare a poached egg at home? What are some of your favorite ways to use poached eggs?

Lent is not about self-flagellation, but it is about penitence. Penitence isn’t very fashionable these days, but that does not diminish its importance. We have all messed up. Badly. And we need to say we’re sorry — to God and to one another.

After having a pretty ugly fight with NJS this morning, this definitely hit home. The fight was about a topic we’ve been visiting often lately, and with a great deal of tension. It has to do with how much I struggle emotionally in winter, how the meanness of cramped city attitude wears my soul down to a nub, how the crippling expense of living here can steal your dreams and drown them in high rents, and how desperately I miss spring in March, streets lined with Dogwood treees, grits, sweet tea, and people who smile and say “y’all.”

Lately all of these things have turned me into a Negative Nellie, if you want to put a cute name on a real problem. I’m critical and dismissive of just about everything around me, and while it’s lead to some pretty witty barbs, I’ll admit, it’s also dragging me and NJS and anyone who has to listen to me down. It makes NJS feel like he’s the bad guy for keeping me here in Boston, while I feel like the bad guy for pushing so hard to go to Carolina in more than my mind.

The truth is that NJS isn’t keeping me here – I’m keeping myself here because I love my job, I love my friends, I love digging my hands into the city like a garden and finding ways to let the buds of innovation be free to grow (yeah, I said it.) Once the green space here is actually green, I’ll be much happier living here and will say as much often. I, however, have been one hell of a bad guy, by whining and wheedling at every turn when what we both need is positivity, and probably 14 billion hours of sleep.

I am truly penitent. I am sorry for the negativity I’m putting out into a world that clearly doesn’t need it. I’m sorry to Boston for only loving you when you’re nice to me and kicking you back when you’re mean. I’m most of all so sorry to NJS for being a point of stress and not a point of support. This year for Lent, I am giving up negativity. I am going to scale back the snark, because it doesn’t make me feel good to be That Girl Who Rants. I am going to focus my energy on finding the good, promoting the positive, and making the best of what’s already a pretty good life.

I do not have secret recipes that I guard like treasure, refusing to share and only occasionally obliging to make the resulting dish. If I find a recipe that works for me I want to share it with everyone, because I want them to be able to taste the amazing thing, too. I want to hear what changes they make, and introduce possibly even more layers of deliciousness to my face.

Amazeballs

I have no idea where I found the recipe originally, but I recently rediscovered it written on a piece of notebook paper in my recipe file, a hodge podge of handwritten and computer-printed ideas dating back to about 2001. Last week  I went so far as to buy extra bananas that were already turning brown so I could make this bread without having to wait so long for the bananas to ripen. You will thank me for the smell that permeates your house alone. And you’re very welcome.

The Good Stuff

1 tsp vanilla
3-4 ripe bananas, smashed (I use 4)
1/3 cupe melted salted butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp bourbon (I use Elijah Craig 18 year we received as a wedding gift, and no I most certainly do not consider it a waste of good bourbon. Life’s too short. Use the good bourbon.)
1 tsp baking soda
1 pinch of salt (I use a little less, since the butter is salted)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves (I never have them so never use them, but do what you will)
1 1/2 cups flour

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the butter and bananas. Separately mix the sugar, egg, vanilla and bourbon. Mix into the banana mixture. Mix in the spices. There is a lot of mixing going on. Sprinkle salt and baking soda over the mixture, and mix some more. Add in the flour, then bake in a loaf pan for about an hour.