It's strawberry time again

Three years later, strawberries are going strong and we're headed up for some picking, eating, and jamming. Ollie can't wait, and neither can I!

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Exploring the real world Busy Town

One of the most unanticipated effects of having Ollie's been the change in my relationship with our neighborhood and the city's streets. Ollie's big enough that he walks around holding my hand, so we spend a lot of time just strolling around, looking at things. Today on the way home from our swim class, we stopped to investigate some Con Ed workers around an open manhole. One day we walked along slowly as the garbage truck collected trash on the block, making just the right time so we'd catch it at each stop, it would speed ahead, and we'd meet again at the next collection point. Ollie loves watching all this activity and narrating it.

After we saw the Con Ed men, we stopped to watch a guy getting his car battery replaced on Fifth Avenue. Then we swung by our local fire house, a huge favorite. Alas the doors were down and the truck was out, so we peered in the window identifying coats and boots and spare hoses. What's really neat is how friendly all the guys are. The firemen invite Ollie inside to sit in the truck. The Con Ed man showed Ollie the frayed and burned section of electrical cable they were replacing. The car guy narrated as he installed the new battery.

It's making me feel so connected to the city in an entirely new way. I just worry that it all seems so male, so stereotypically boyish to see and visit these things. I've realized that there aren't a lot of female jobs on the street that we come across, aside from the rare policewoman or mail carrier. We do stop and look at babies in strollers, and chat with nice grandmotherly women who say hello. But somehow it's not the same. I'm beginning to realize a lot of "nurture" happens outside the house, beyond my control.

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Not quite in the saddle again

A slight little tweak to the design -- removing the foodness of the site -- and I may just be back to blogging here again. Shortly after Ollie was born in July, 2007, I kind of abruptly abandoned this site. And it took me a while to realize the reason: I wasn't so interested in writing about food. My life had expanded quite beyond food, but the site was limited to that one topic. And so everything here just stopped.

Removing the constraint of 'food', I now hope to find some time to write here again. Not as much as in the past certainly, and probably not as linky as it's been. I don't spend a whole lot of time online anymore, at least compared to the ten-plus hours a day I used to.

So what's that mean? First, don't get your hopes up, this might be one of my (many) projects that I want to do (ahem, like the violin lessons I undertook back in January) but don't really have the time for. Second, there are probably lots of things broken around here.

I really rushed this "redesign" so that I could just get writing. That was supposed to the point all along, wasn't it?

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Was the change in fish consumption recommendations influenced by cash? Until recently, experts recommended women of childbearing age eat no more than 12 ounces of fish a week, and no more than 6 ounces of canned albacore tuna, because of high levels of mercury. But recently a new recommendation was released encouraging the consumption of at least 12 ounces of fish a week, the logic being that omega-3 consumption was important and outweighed the possible mercury risks. Now the New York Times is reporting that money from the seafood industry may be behind the new recommendations. Guh, and I was just about to go back to eating the nice albacore tuna too.

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Attention New York City-area readers, tomorrow night at the NYPL there's "a discussion of the complex legacy of Julia Child." Julia Child in America will feature culinary historians David Kamp, Molly O'Neill and Laura Shapiro, chef Dan Barber, and journalist and former Cullman Fellow Melanie Rehak as moderator.

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