The Mom Belly Diet

Since April 5, I've lost 1.5 kilos or about three American pounds, almost painlessly. I saw the need to lose them while trying on sweaters at the Eileen Fisher outlet in the East Village. I would have looked great before developing The Mom Belly, which in my case means eight-to-ten pounds of extra flab retained after three C-sections and a few chocolate bars. I was with a sympathetic friend who revealed her diet secret. It's got a low-carb element, but it's not like most low-carb regimes.

For the first time in my life I've been able to follow a diet. That diet, my friends, I will now share with you:

Breakfast: Anything you like. Really. I'd recommend going healthy as opposed to jelly doughnut, and have gone relatively healthy myself. Here are some breakfasts I've had while losing weight:

(1) Oatmeal (half cup dry oatmeal with cold water and teaspoon salt stirred in, cooked until warm and smooth) with a banana sliced over it, and about half a can of sweetened condensed milk. Plus coffee with a half cup of hot milk.

(2) Oatmeal with about a half-cup of fresh sliced strawberries, heavy cream, and sugar. Plus coffee with a half cup of hot milk.

(3) Banana bread (find the recipe elsewhere on this blog)--two or three slices, with butter or a butter substitute, plus coffee with a half cup of hot milk. And sometimes sugar in the coffee

(4) One or two large blueberry pancakes made in a not particularly health-conscious way, that is, I do use white flour and two eggs, plus maple syrup, plus coffee with a half cup of hot milk.

Even you folks who don't eat breakfast will feel like eating it on this diet--I did, after the first day or two. 

Now for lunch and dinner. With lunch, cut carbs in half--if you're used to a sandwich, use one slice of bread only. So not much pasta, rice, potato, bread, or pizza crust. Actually, I've pretty much eliminated those from lunch, so here are some of my lunches:

(1) Salad made with prepared mix (comes in a little envelope, you add a little olive oil, maybe a tablespoon, and a teeny bit of water. For Germans--Aldi or Knorr brand salad dressing is fine, even though it has an infinitesimal amount of sucrose in it). Then add hunks of Gouda or Feta, plus a few olives, or fresh avocado, or both; add slices of ham and hard boiled egg, tomato, bell pepper. 

(2) One large avocado, halved, with the juice of one whole lemon, salt and pepper. You might want an apple and some cheese, too.

(3) One or two large Mettwurst from your local butchers--delicious. Plus apple and cheese.

Now dinner, girls, is where we get to the nitty-gritty. No carbs, EXCEPT for one glass of wine. Not sweet wine, though. So, Chardonnay or Merlot, say--not the Moldavian sweet red stuff that goes great with milk chocolate which, by the way, if you follow the diet, you will stop craving. 
SO: No potatoes, no rice, no pizza dough, no bread. Just meat and vegetables. Or fish and vegetables. Or tofu and vegetables. I think you can do bulgur, because it's more of a grain, and other grains are probably okay too, even with a little cheese on top. I steam the asparagus, but I sauté the bell peppers in a little olive oil and fresh garlic.

I find this diet very bearable--the first night or two I woke up from hunger and ate one slice of Cheddar cheese around two in the morning. After that I was okay.  I anticipate continuing to lose at a very slow rate, two pounds or so a month, for the next few months, and then I'll be done. And when I'm no longer trying to lose weight, I will have very small amounts of pasta or other carbs occasionally at dinner time.

Tip: a pleasant dessert is strawberries with whipped cream. Add McCormick's Vanilla, or Bourbon-Vanilla--just no sugar.

Jan Böhmermann, Blasphemer

Don't get me wrong--I love the guy and at our house we've got "Be Deutsch" playing on continual loop. The current uproar is the best way in the world to get German schoolchildren to memorize Böhmermann's hilariously crude lyrics about a certain thin-skinned (oh, in my opinion) leader of a state that Germany's got to keep relatively happy. Mutti Merkel has her hands full, and I wonder sometimes if she's ever taken aside her easily insulted colleague and said, "Listen, old buddy, old pal, have you ever seen the stuff the kids put up on You-Tube about me and about Barack and hey, these Panama papers are really more the kind of thing you should worry about. . . ."
Naah, she doesn't count, 'cause she's a woman, except when she's a head of state. Oh, I do hope my favorite young satirist hasn't Salman Rushdied himself. And God forbid Charlie Hebdoed himself. He should have thought of Osip Mandelstam's remark: "Only in Russia is poetry respected, it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?" Unfortunately, there is. Humor is on trial. Blasphemy is a concept immune to humor. Now supposing I was going to insult--not this tiresome Turkish president, but God, him or herself--can't he or she take it? By definition yes, one would think. If Herr Böhmermann had just dipped into some of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's remarks about how and why fundamentalists think the way they do, he might be out having a beer right now with his friends. Oh, but the poem is so good. It really is. Was the thrill worth it? And where are other satirists? David Sedaris, vault to your feet and defend this guy, please! Coda: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." Thank you, Horace Walpole. We could use some thinking around here.

P.S. Why doesn't Erdogan take a hint from Dolores Umbridge's failed suppression of Harry Potter's interview disclosing the re-appearance of Voldemort? 

This week's Die Zeit, Germany's version of The Guardian, asks why The Queen, the most powerful woman in the world (aka Angela Merkel) is reprimanding the court jester, the considerably less powerful Jan Böhmermann. I know she's between a rock and a hard place, but between you and me, I think she ought to ask him how to handle dickheads. There's a long and honored tradition of the court jester knowing best. Just read King Lear. If the old king had only listened to his Fool . . . who knew the score from way back . . .

I wish I had Böhrmann's wit. But here's my two cents:

Erdogan's a great big drip
Not one bit of him is hip
Get this man a better life
So he won't be filled with strife.

*************************

I know: doesn't quite cut it. Well, nobody reads me, anyway. Boys and girls, go memorize Herr Böhrmermann's lines! Now!

The Critical Mom and the Nightmare Tenants

If you own a co-op apartment in New York City, you're generally out of luck when you want a caretaker or house sitter--every since September 11, 2001, when panic rose and rules changed. Many a co-op forbids any occupants who are not owners or immediate members of owner's families on principle, or because the co-op thinks that otherwise the bank won't respect it, or for less clear reasons.

My co-op building has a rule: subletting is allowed two out of every five years. The rest of the time, the place must lie fallow, and your super, or a friend, can come in to water plants. But nobody can live there, and if you can't live there yourself, the apartment remains empty.

I'd had lovely subletters who stayed three years, because when I wrote to request a third year, somebody at the managing agency said yes, and that somebody, unbeknownst to me, got fired. 

Enter, stage left: a board member. This board member owns most of one floor of the building, and could her daughter live in my apartment and provide upgrades for a few months, that is, reside as my guest?

Could I say no? Yes, I could and should have said no. But I was afraid to do so, since the board member's vote could turn down any future sublets I might want to have. Overlooking a certain mayham in her personal style--she comes with the aura of her public intellectual ancestor and is a writer herself--I agreed, despite knowing my previous experience with her. She'd asked to use my apartment over Christmas for her family and said she'd "leave you something for the phone." What she left was a Santa hat and a phone bill for $272.

Right before my lovely subletters who stayed three years moved in--and she'd approved them--she suddenly asked to use my apartment: "The board need not know," she added. She was in the middle of a divorce, and oh, please, could she just stay in my place for three weeks. I said the board had to know and made sure the board did know.

She paid for two of the three weeks. So I should not have been surprised, but I was, to find, when I returned to my home halfway through her daughter's sublet to find that my convertible sofa, my Victorian love seat, and all of my wooden straightback chairs had vanished. Along with my French press coffee maker, my pots and pans, my can openers, a baking dish that had been a wedding present . . . .

Was there a security deposit? No. Is it worth suing her? Not really.

The lease ended and I changed the locks. I count myself lucky that the place is structurally sound, that the super only had to fix one minor leak and put one bathtub faucet back on, that the windows could be repaired, and that the stove--whose insides looked like the mammoth cave--could be cleaned and still works. 

I'm awfully fond of my little apartment, and hope to have a worthy caretaker some day. I'm wondering whether co-ops will ever allow worthy caretakers.  In my dreams. In my dreams.

What To Do When The Thirteen-Year-Old Calls You a "Fucking Idiot Retarded Bitch" and Almost Takes a Swing at You.

It's evening. It's Saturday. You just want to sit down for dinner with your husband. The younger kids have been watching TV for over an hour. You ask them to turn it off, please. Your children appear to be deaf.
"It's after 8:30--time to turn off the TV now!" you say brightly. Occasionally you let them watch later, because you dread the sullen looks, the begging, or the insults. But tonight you say the box must really go off, and then the kid, who looks extremely sleepy, says, "I'll go upstairs at 9:00," which would normally be okay but tonight you just think he looks tired plus you know he's not particularly interested in the show plus you'd like to clean the table and make it look nice for dinner. So you say, "I'll be back in a few minutes--you watch another couple of minutes--and then I'll turn off the TV." But when you do, the kid yells.
So you throw out a threat: I am going to unplug your computer and remove a few items from your desk unless you move.
This is, incidentally, exactly what all the best books on childcare tell you not to do. My favorite, How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk, which you can see here: http://www.amazon.de/How-Talk-Teens-Will-Listen/dp/0060741260#reader_0060741260
wasn't lying around on the coffee table near which the teen was cussing me out, and I was too rattled and sad to come up with anything better than "You can't talk to me like that," which he'd already succeeded in doing, and "you have to apologize," which he wasn't about to do. So what do you do? Well, you don't beat the kid to a pulp, though I must say the idea is tempting. Nor do you actually unplug his computer. But you do keep talking to the kid, and then you do something that takes a very long time indeed when things aren't going well: you wait for him to grow. P.S. When he was really little, say, age three, the other book in the same series, about younger children, told you that when the little one flops down screaming and won't stop, you can hand him a crayon and a piece of paper and ask him to draw what is making him mad. Worked like a charm. Aren't there charms for managing boys who turn fourteen very soon? Perhaps not, except in the world of Harry Potter. Meanwhile, I'll keep investing in hair dye, since about ten more of my no-longer- blonde tresses went gray during the above-described encounter. 

Negative Capability and Donald Trump

They're opposites, obviously. It's just that if you don't know the meaning of the first, it appears to describe the latter. 
"Negative Capability" sounds like a diagnosis for whatever ails Donald Trump. But the poet John Keats was describing the state of mind that allowed him to write: "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
 In other words, you don't judge whatever pours into your mind, you don't mind the contradictions and you don't wince at things that normally make you cringe or feel guilty. You don't try not to think those things. Uncertainty becomes a pleasure instead of a torment. You're in a state a layman might call Zen or even the Zone:  you just are. Then you write. Later, much later, your thoughts float back to earth and you start to edit. That's where Coleridge's notion of poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquility enters," the part where you say to yourself, "Oh, that line really sounds bad," or "I should maybe put this line at the beginning of the poem." But if you'd been doing the Coleridgeian thing while you were trying to do the Keatsian thing, you'd have impeded your intention to write that poem. 
Let's pretend we've never heard of Negative Capability. It does sound so The Donald. He's great at nixing any positive statement; he's wonderful at being negative. He so enjoys stirring up hatred. What would it take to make Donald Trump look and feel uncertain? Anyone capable of doing so might have a chance to deflate him. Have a wind machine blow out Trump's comb-over? He'd probably laugh that off. But there must be a way. Pundits, pundits, think: think as you have never thought before! Find a way to make The Donald doubt himself. Slip him a mickey? I suppose that's the only way, but such a move would come back to haunt the decent person who did it, and in the long run would probably not be enough to topple Trump. 
I suppose you've heard about the boy who fell through the ice and got rescued by a slightly older boy? The four year old who almost drowned grew up to be Adolf Hitler. The kid who rescued him grew up to be a Catholic priest. If I'd been standing on the icy banks of the river Passau armed with my knowledge of the flailing four-year-old's future, would I have let the kid drown? What if that kid had grown up to be Donald Trump?
Only the decent feel uncertainty. Poor Obama with his "uh . . .uh . . . ." laced through every CNN moment, poor CNN interviewers--I've never seen Amanpour tackle Trump in person, but maybe he's wise enough not to let her stare him down, because she's the only journalist who seems to me capable of doing so. The others turn to goo, or if they don't, their faces betray their disgust and shock. Their questions stumble, the "uh, ah," or the inability to speak distinctly damns them: the juggernaut force of his personality crushes them before they can ignite a spark of their own confidence.
The secret of Trump, that he never doubts himself, is an open one. He doesn't give a damn about anything--he is capable of ultimate negation, and if suicide became part of his game, he'd play that with panache, the way Hitler did, destroying himself as part of his grand finale. At the moment, the desire for pleasurable sensations keeps Trump alive as it kills what's left of American democracy. A philosopher might feel sorry for a guy like Trump, never experiencing the moment of uncertainty that makes you human. But as Dumbledore says to Harry, when Harry is thinking about Voldemort's childhood: "Harry, are  you actually feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?"

Schengen, Schmengen: Racheting up the Controls in Europe

Germany and the Netherlands are parties to the Schengen agreement, right? Last time I looked, this agreement still held, meaning that German citizens and most other folks traveling between these countries by train can sleep through their journey without being awakened by the ticket-taker for a passport check. Here's what Wikipedia still says:
The Schengen Area operates very much like a single state for international travel purposes with external border controls for travellers entering and exiting the area, and common visas, but with no internal border controls. It currently consists of 26 European countries covering a population of over 400 million people and an area of 4,312,099 square kilometres (1,664,911 sq mi)
But yesterday when my German husband took trains from our small city in the Northwest to Utrecht, plain-clothed inspectors, a man and a women, showed identification as people were getting ready to disembark in the Netherlands, and demanded to see passports. 
As Merkel continues her mantra--"Wir Schaffen das!" (We can manage this! We can do it!) she's increasingly shouted down by those favoring closed borders decorated with barbed wire, plus guards who shoot at anyone scaling the barbs. People do scale those barbs, with their bare hands, too, babies on backs. I just switched off a CNN display of Trump asking admirers to raise their hands and vote for him--yes, it calls to mind the Sieg Heil! of Hitler's minions. Folks don't need much to get them very scared, and any thug can manipulate that fear. Why am I writing all this when nobody reads this blog anyway? Because I hope one or two people who just want a safe haven can manage to fake a passport that'll get them into Amsterdam or one of the larger German cities, where I imagine them seeking shelter with a friend, working at street cleaning, then opening up shop as greengrocers and living happily ever after.

Why I Voted For Madame Clinton

Yes, I took "where you stand on the issues" quizzes on websites, trying to line up Bernie and Hillary with my beliefs. My seventeen-year-old, whose knowledge of politicians, political machines, American politics, German politics, and political systems is probably second only to that of Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour, and Anderson Cooper combined, thinks I should judge exclusively by the issues and the records of both candidates. He thinks I should have voted for Bernie.
I disagree. Personality and experience mean a great deal to me--and Madame Clinton has had the experience of being president. Technically, she was the woman behind the man, but we all know how that works. She got Bill up on that pedestal and she kept the morality dogs off his, so to speak, tail, when he was in trouble with Whatzerface--why use her name? W. doesn't want to remember any more than the rest of us do. It is Hillary who has the judiciousness, the self-restraint, and the huge gyrating brain. Bernie's pretty smart. I'm sure he'd do a great job too, and I'm with him in most areas, including not going after Mom-and-Pop shops selling guns that get used the wrong way. But Hillary's got 'sperience. She's been there in a way that Bernie never has. If he'd had a term already, I'd probably vote for him. I can hear my children yelling: It's because she's a woman! It's because you're over fifty! It's because you don't keep up with things! And what about those emails? Plus, what about her voting to go to war in Iraq? 
What about it? Here's what: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-marburggoodman/five-myths-about-hillary-iraq-war-vote_b_9177420.html
And I say, children, there comes a time when you brush aside all the issues and look not so much at faces as at personalities. The shrewdness and the smarts belong to Hillary. Only time will tell whether my hunch was a good one. I would not be disappointed if Bernie won. But I'd be relieved if Hillary did. I'd think: NOW we can get something done!
Thank you, Democrats Abroad, for making my vote possible.

The Critical Mom's Well-Mom Tea

You've got a cold, the flu, the Winter Doldrums generalized sick-'o-the laundry exhaustion, and you need a little pick-me-up, only it's ten in the morning, not ten at night so don't reach for the bottle of sweet red Moldavian wine. Instead:

(1) Get out a large thermos and fill it with boiling water. Refill water boiler and boil more water.

(2) Slice several large chunks of fresh ginger root and set aside.

(3) Slice in half a large lemon (or lime. Why not both!) Plastic-wrap the half you're not using and pop it into the fridge.

(4) Get out the jar of honey

(5) Get out your favorite tea. I like Moroccan Mint or fruit tea, but better yet fresh mint leaves.

(6) Pour out the water you used to heat the thermos and add the chunks of ginger, the lemon or lime, which you'll possibly have to slice in half, and the honey. I put in two heaping tablespoons of honey, sometimes more. 

(7) Pour in some boiling water to melt the honey; swish thermos around so the honey doesn't end up at the bottom and so you don't end up like Pooh Bear.

(8) Put in the tea bags, holding on to the little tags while you pour in the rest of the boiling water.

(9) Screw on top. Gently (gently!) hold and swing the thermos, to distribute flavors inside. Set aside.

(10) Wait at least half an hour. Drink. Then chew and eat at least one of those pieces of ginger. Zing! Doing so is very good for you.

Alternative: for a really bad cold, forget the tea bags and instead add Tabasco sauce--as one blogger said, a scary amount.

P.S. Chase your tea with one large clove of garlic. Chew and swallow. Keeps away bacteria, virii, and vampires. One of the Delaney sisters attributed their longevity to daily consumption of one raw garlic clove. Here are some of their tips: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19950206&slug=2103452

And if all this doesn't work, go get the horrible antibiotics from your doctor.

The Reluctant Refugee: Trauma, Manners, and Morale

A friend, who in addition to her considerable duties as a Gymnasium teacher runs a B&B, offered to take in two refugees, and the first has arrived. She speaks no Arabic and he speaks no German, French, or English, the languages she tried. She showed the middle-aged man up to her best bedroom, thinking he'd be relieved to have a nice view and plenty of space. He shook his head, and after a number of gestures she understood that the room did not meet his expectations. He wanted a TV. She took him to the other bedroom, which is much smaller, but does include a TV. He frowned. Too small. 
If you're already either laughing or feeling outraged, don't. And don't expect people with terrible experiences to remember their manners. Maybe he'll calm down. I'll see her in a day or two, and if he does, I'll update the post. UPDATE: He speaks German after all, at least enough to communicate basic needs, but seems to have been unable to speak it on the day he arrived. He locks his room door whenever he leaves his room, even if only for a few moments, like to go to the bathroom. But the refrigerator door gets left open. The garden gate, too, and even the front door . .  . classic signs of trauma: "I am in charge around here!" This man is desperate to feel that he can control his world. He was a professional, much sought after in his field, a lucrative one, back in Syria. Here, he has no chance. A middle-aged guy losing his profession loses his identity. 
I'm surprised he's only leaving doors open.  He can't seem to stop doing this, even though he does try. 
 I'm surprised he's managing to put together his own meals.  The door should be open to him, to his loved ones. The German door. The European door. And his life, his belongings, his world, should be safe. So his own private domain is carefully locked.
When my husband and I had dinner with friends involved in helping refugees, I heard similar tales: a man who had been living in a nice apartment at the expense of the local Catholic church disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving a note explaining he had become terribly homesick and had to return to his country of origin which is not, fortunately, at war--it's just that there's no work or possibility of getting an education there. He didn't pay the small amount he was supposed to pay for gas and electricity. 
Another refugee had dinner at our house, sat silently, sadly, and toward the end of the evening relaxed a bit, and in the car--my husband was driving him back to where he's staying with friends--the man said he really desperately needed a desk. He was studying and had no desk. My husband turned the car around, since we have several unused desks in the basement. The man looked the desks over gravely and decided none of them would do. He would maybe go to Ikea.
If I had lost everything, if I had seen death, if I had braved oceans, I don't think I'd be particularly reasonable. When I think how my lack of sleep when my children were young turned me into a meanie, and I try to multiply that crankiness by the experiences of Syrian and other refugees, I begin to understand. People need to make choices, and to believe that they are in charge of their lives. Most of the time, I believe that I'm in charge of mine, but of course that illusion is the thing that makes me relatively sane. Anything could happen, any day. I am lucky that I haven't faced such utter loss so far.

Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark: Robbing from Refugees

According to The New York Times,

A law approved by the Danish legislators allows immigration authorities to seize valuable items, including jewelry and cash, to offset the cost of resettling them.

Move over, Nazis. I thought the Danes were the good guys. I thought most Scandinavian countries were the good guys in the Syrian resettlement saga. Sweden, until recently, did what the Statue of Liberty was always supposed to do: welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses trying to get away from terror. 
The Danish justification for its policy of seizing the personal belongings of refugees is that the refugees should not get a better deal than Danish citizens who happen to be on welfare, because such unfortunate citizens are not allowed to possess assets valuable enough to make welfare payments unnecessary. 
If you're running from watching your mother choke her life away on poison gas, or your child beheaded while still clutching her doll, or your city reduced to rubble, and you manage to grab grandma's pearls on the way out of the building that's crumbling as you leave it, you're supposed to hand the necklace over? If you've spent days on a leaky boat, then half- froze to death crossing Eastern Europe while Hungarians throw expletives, or worse, at you--you're supposed to hand over the wad of cash you grabbed off the table before you left? Your credit card? The deed to the house that might still be standing if you get to go back? Your grandmother's fur coat? If a refugee walked across the border with the Syrian equivalent of the Hope diamond in her pocket, she should keep it.  What Denmark is doing now is a form of rape--ripping away memory and identity from people who have already been robbed of everything worth having. Plus, the Danish government reserves the right to strip-search. More rape.
Supposing you'd been at the top of the doomed tower on September 11, 2001 and you'd grabbed your pocketbook on the way downstairs. Would the city of New York have had a right to take your pocketbook to pay for the mess the terrorists made? 
Denmark is expected to know better. Bad Karma, Denmark--this policy will, in the end, harm you, is harming you right now.

The Nuts Allergy and The Restaurant

The Critical Mom is very allergic to nuts--the siren-whirling, ambulance-calling kind of allergy, and one that's often easy to deal with in large American cities, where nut-free zones have become popular. But tonight when my husband took me out to dinner for my birthday to the cute little Italian place--oh, it reminded me of the village! It reminded me of Bleeker Street!--I ended up in a bad situation. No hospital this time--two spoonfuls into my tartufo, I realized I'd eaten something with nuts. My tongue itched and saliva was pouring into my mouth. If you were a pediatrician and you'd taken my blood pressure you'd think it was fine--a regular internist would have blanched and hoped it wouldn't drop. 
The spaghetti alla vongole proved delicious: filled with fresh parsley, juicy little clams, and some elegantly garlicky olive oil. The waiter did not approve when I added cheese, and looked as though he might faint when I drank Lambrusco. He actually told me, after I'd finished, that one didn't drink sweet wines with fish, and that one never put cheese on fish. I laughed. 
I wonder if dessert was revenge. 
I did ask whether the tartufo had nuts. He said no. I should have told him to ask the cook. I did ask, "Do you make it here?" and impatiently he repeated, "I'm sure it has no nuts!" In other words he did not really answer. Two bites in, I felt the familiar symptoms and I wondered how long they'd last. I'm sitting home typing now, an hour after the incident, and the salivation has stopped but I still feel faint and my skin itches, slightly. My mouth is very dry, despite two glasses of water and a cup of peppermint tea. I won't feel normal before morning. When I'll still be slightly weak, and need two coffees.
The waiter noticed I'd stopped eating my tartufo. What was going on, he wanted to know? I said there were nuts in the dessert.
"Catastrophe!" he said, as if he didn't believe me. Then he asked the cook and I heard her say, "Yes, little pieces."
Waiters, cooks, restaurant owners--ye who serve desserts in Northwestern Europe: please find out whether your desserts have nuts. Advertise nut-free zones. Business may pick up. And personally, I'd be very grateful.

Good Grains and the Critical Mom

Our German friends used to tell us only two starches would work at any well-rounded meal: parboiled white rice or potatoes. Or bread. But I go to all the places the German ladies don't go. When we lived in Bavaria, I always shopped at Norma, the supermarket that had the freshest vegetables. A German friend, unwilling to mingle with non-Bavarians (she made an exception for me) would only go to Tengelmann, which has more expensive vegetables and classier butter. My husband and I got a kick out of revealing to her that all the vegetable dishes at her favorite Italian restaurant came from Norma: we'd seen the chef there buying in bulk. She continued to order the same dishes at the Italian place, but has yet to stick a toe in Norma.
If she comes to visit, I'm going to drag her to the local Turkish grocery, where you can buy four or five different kinds of bulgur.  And here's how you cook this affordable and highly nutritious grain:

(1) Rinse portion (a large coffee mug full will suffice for two adults) in a sieve briefly. Drain. Set aside. Heat olive oil--about two tablespoons--in a pan on the stove. Dice onions--garlic, too--peppers, if you're feeling adventurous--and sauté for a bit; when the onions are transparent and the peppers soft, add the bulgur and stir, toasting it lightly. Meanwhile, boil water and pour a mugful or two of instant chicken broth into the bulgur. A bit more if you like. Lower heat. Stir. Eat when soft, and when all the water is absorbed. You can also add frozen peas to this. 

(2) And here's another great, affordable grain: Kasha, or buckwheat groats. If you're lucky, you might find these in the bio section of Edeka--otherwise, try the local Russian supermarket. Kasha can be cooked like rice: approximately double the water to the Kasha. I don't rinse Kasha, though I do rinse bulgur and rice. Cooking method:

Put the Kasha in a pot; add a bit of salt, and pour twice the amount of boiling water in. Stir and let boil, then lower heat and stir and simmer until all water is absorbed. You can have this very plain, adding a little butter, or you can sauté onions and peppers on the side and put them in later. You can also melt a slice of Gouda cheese or Cheddar cheese over bulgur or kasha for a healthy, delicious, and most inexpensive meal.

Scamming The Critical Mom

We almost fell for one scam geared to academics: calls for papers from an international journal . . . until we happened to see the email address, a private one somewhere not in the U.S. Then there's the indefatigable "Microsoft" man, the one who pronounces his supposed company "Mick-ro-soft," as if he knew perfectly well he were slipping me a mickey: if I'd just drink in his words and follow his advice, as did, alas, an elderly friend, he'd ruin my computer for me. I just got a new scam today, claiming to be from HSBC Hong Kong--but with an email address in Russia, and since the lady in question is not, in my considered opinion, employed by that estimable bank, I'm going to reprint her message here in full, entirely without her permission, and throw in a free English lesson as well:


I am Ms Donna Kwok, HSBC Hong Kong, head of corporate sustainability Asia pacific region. A sum of USD$21,300,000.00 Million was deposited by our Late customer who died without declaring any next of kin before his death in 2006.My suggestion to you is to stand as the next of kin to Fadel Ahmed.We shall share in the ratio of 50% for me, 50% for you.if interested please email: Ms.DonnaKwok1@qq.com

Thanks,
Donna Kwok.


Ms. Kwok, pick a name that doesn't sound like "quack," for starters. About that  

head of corporate sustainability Asia pacific region

The guy or the gal who is really in that position thinks very highly of him or herself, and would capitalize his or her title: Head of Corporate Sustainability. In order to emphasize the importance of the title, they'd also put the second part of it on its very own line, capitalizing all:


Asia Pacific Region


It's "your late customer," not "your Late customer," but no bank would ever use such a phrase. Why don't you go look at real letters that real banks write? Do a little research, I always tell my students, before you write that term paper. 

I'm going to let you find the other errors in your message, which at the moment gets a grade of F, but if you fix all the errors and throw in a little imagination you might even get a B from me.


And Ms. Kwok, if you're really out there, do yourself a favor and buy the following books:


Strunk&White, The Elements of Style: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453024968&sr=1-1&keywords=elements+of+style


Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed: http://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Transitive-Vampire-Ultimate-Handbook/dp/0679418601/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453025028&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Transitive+Vampire


Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions On Writing and Life: http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp/0385480016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453025249&sr=1-1&keywords=bird+by+bird


The first will prevent you from making really dumb mistakes in grammar that reveal you as a quack before your message does. The second will help you to learn to write perfect sentences. The third will, I very much hope, inspire you to write something better than that  silly email. My God, Ms. Kwok, if you've got brain enough to write that, you've got brain enough to write something better. Why don't you write about your life--how did a nice girl like you end up scamming Western Europe instead of writing her memoirs?

Schwarzfahrer: The Criminal Critical Mom

 So I forgot my monthly tram ticket. In my town, you don't stick your card in a slot to get through a turnstile, the way you do in New York. You buy a ticket that you leave in your wallet all month, unless an official from the local transportation authority appears with a gadget and an identity card and demands to see your monthly pass. 
Once upon a time about a year ago, I forgot to buy one until I was three days into the next month. Actually, this has happened more than once. This has happened, if I remember correctly, three or four times. I always buy a ticket, and usually I buy the next month's ticket in the last week of the month. But as I say, I forgot to buy the thing soon enough on a very few occasions. 
The first time I got caught I barely spoke a word of German, so that I did not understand the man when he said there would be no fine, but that I just had to go buy my ticket. But the Germans . . .  they keep records. He took my name and address. The second time, months after the fact, I actually had a ticket, but I'd left my wallet at home during an altercation with a child who either did not want to wear a jacket in sub-zero weather or who could not find a musical instrument. This time I'd forgotten that I'd forgotten my ticket. Only during the minute when I was searching for my wallet in my bag, the indignant official tapping his foot impatiently, did I see, in my mind's eye, my orange wallet lying on the bottom step of the stairs, where I, at that very nanosecond, realized had left it--and where I found it when I got home--later than usual--as a result of my altercation with the official. 
That's when I had to go to the authorities, get a finger-wagging lecture, and pay for my next month's ticket right in front of them, sofort! instead of buying it from the machine at my stop, as I normally do, for convenience. 
Ah, but there was a third time, you see, during another altercation about Where Is My Sweater or I Can't Find Any Underwear! And that time, I had to pay a fine. A large fine. 
Just a few weeks ago, I was on the tram again when I realized that I'd left my wallet on the stairs again. This time I can only blame myself--I hadn't had more than four hours of sleep. Along came the official and I thought I Just Cannot Do This Again Because They'll Ask Me To Pay A Figure In Three Digits Which Is The Cost of Four Months Of Cards.
I had my card at home, remember. My legitimate card.
"May I see your ticket?" said the spider to the fly.
"I'm so sorry," I explained, "I left it at home with my wallet." Which was perfectly true. So I had to exit the train, at a stop not too excruciatingly distant from my own, and I was asked to give my name. Which I have always done in the past. This time, what came out of my mouth was:
(1) The first name of the last person I had spoken to at work that day 
and
(2) The last name of the first Austrian novelist who popped into my head. Why? Because I went to graduate school with a person who also happened to have that name.

I gave as my address something vaguely in the same street, but well, not exactly mine. The thing that tripped me up was my birthday. Even though I know that thirty days hath September, April, June, and November . . . . you get the picture. Rattled by the thought that Zeus would fling a thunderbolt at me for lying, I gave a date that does not exist, and fluttered off some explanation with the checker, who spoke German as well as I do--almost not at all.  I tottered away with my piece of paper:  my fictitious counterpart had two weeks in which to pay. Somehow, that person has not showed up. 
When I got home, I scooped up the wallet that was cooling its heels on the stairs, took out my monthly ticket, kissed it and promised I'd never forget it again. Then I discussed the matter with my boys, one of whom has used exactly the same technique and worried about doing so in exactly the same way: his card was at the bottom of his bag, but he thought he'd left it at home. The other kid is sure they're coming after me. Brrrrr.

In these times, you should watch this classic film that is nominally, but not exactly, about being a Schwarzfahrer: 

The Empress's New Clothes: Who Is Lena Dunham?

Don't let the apparent exhibitionism take you by surprise. What makes Dunham's Not That Kind Of Girl so dull isn't just the vapidity.  Dunham's hiding the real story.
What made me buy her memoir--the stratospheric praise of Judy Blume and David Sedaris--had me flummoxed as soon as I'd read a paragraph. I closed the book again and read those blurbs: Sedaris says calls this a "fine, subversive book." Blume calls Dunham "always funny, sometimes wrenching," adding that Dunham is a "creative wonder." (Because Dunham reminds Blume of her fictional character, "Sheila the great?" And Sedaris--maybe it's fun for a brilliantly funny man to enjoy the company of someone trying to be as funny as he is? But here imagination fails me.)
Meanwhile, my revered book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, with whom I cannot remember disagreeing, loves Dunham, comparing her to Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, and Helen Gurley Brown. To be fair, in her review, Kakutani quotes two or three snappy remarks of Dunham's but not snappy enough that they staple themselves to your thought processes, the way Dorothy Parker does. You'll never, ever, get Parker's  "Men seldom make passes/at girls who wear glasses" out of your head. Try it, you won't. 
Parker, Ephron and Brown sink in like chocolate melting in a crepe. But Dunham's more like a piece of Bazooka bubble gum: you're glad you found that childhood pleasure you remember, but now that you're no longer a child, the pink chew has lost its charm--the stuff is too sweet and loses its flavor. The gum's still wrapped in a waxy comic strip, but the comic strip's no longer funny. You can still blow a bubble or two. Big whoop. 
That's Dunham--a bubble or two.
 Surely Sedaris, Blume and Kakutani, whose writing delights because it's really about something--surely they don't genuinely believe that Lena Dunham is a talent? But clearly they do. They've said so, enthusiastically, in print. The evidence is out there that Dunham's got something: a show on HBO that's won golden globes, plus the honor of being parodied by Tina Fey,which you may see here. 
I like the Tina Fey version. I don't like the original. What has memoir come to? 
If you've read Maya Angelou, Maxine Hong Kingston, Edwidge Danticat, Mary Karr, Susannah Kaysen, Jeannette Walls, Cheryl Strayed--to name the first that come to mind--you've read tales of girls and women facing challenges and struggling to overcome them. The closest to Dunham in the exhibitionism department is probably Daphne Merkin--but Merkin is fascinating, readable. Merkin reveals--a cold, almost sadistic mother, a household of regimented, unloved children, a longing for love. 
Dunham doesn't. I find many hints--she hopes to find a mother in her psychotherapist, to whom she offers a portrait with "big Keane eyes" and a poem in which the therapist "will never be my mother." The comment that matters the most to Dunham--I'd bet my bank account on this--is her mother's. And here is what the mother says, via Amazon: 

“I’m surprised by how successful this was. I couldn’t finish it.”—Laurie Simmons

Maybe the two of them cooked up this blurb together--that's sadder. Either way: Dunham's mother is surprised at her daughter's success--and she does not want it. She does not want it so much that she won't finish reading the book. No wonder Dunham is a mess. Her father's paintings of penises and vaginas, with bodies and backgrounds as backdrops, established the narrative focus for his daughter.  No, he didn't show her his, but he might as well have done so. But the poor kid had no other interests. Her mother's art--photographs of women with strange, elongated eyes; selfies of her own vagina, doll house figures in kitchens--suggests disgust with all things domestic, or perhaps with all women who like domestic pleasures like cooking or cleaning. Mothers--who needs 'em? asks her art. 
Clearly her daughter needs one. But she won't write about that. Or will she? Have we yet to hear the real story from Dunham?
I wonder what Dunham would have been like with a passionate, all-consuming interest. What if she'd thrown herself into ballet or clarinet? Archery? Sculpting? Helping refugees? Working for a political campaign? 
There's still time, Lena. There's still time. 

P.S. Somebody get this girl to take "The Rules" seriously.
P.P.S. Or at least listen to Adelaide singing "Take back ya mink! Take back ya poils! What made you think that I was one of those goils . .  ."

The Christmas Eve Cha-Cha

Waiting for Santa

I got up to bake Christmas cookies around five this morning; by seven, my daughter was so eager to load them into cute red tins that one cookie leaped to the floor.
"Only one died, Mommy," she said.
"R.I.P. cookie, 2015-2015," intoned her brother.
She gave him a candy cane. It broke, so he gave it to their older brother, who crunched down on it, commenting: "I like my candy canes with a broken neck . . . just the way I like my brother."
Then in church, as I was singing "Gloooorrria, in excelsis deo!" my daughter asked if I were singing, "In egg-shells-is deo."
Nope.
 My husband's cooking the goose, the aroma of which is making my stomach rumble. Yum. Raisin-apple stuffing. Dumplings. Red wine.

Christmas Goose, Bavarian dumplings, red cabbage, gravy, gravy, gravy . . .

It won't be a silent night--it will be lovely. 
We were amused by some of our presents: a certain relative re-gifted a 2015 weekly planner with her name on it in gold leaf--which she'd magic-markered out. But it doesn't even have the last few weeks of December 2015 . . .  

Last of the Turkey

Since we didn't celebrate Thanksgiving until Saturday, November 28, our leftovers lasted until a few days ago. . . turkey sandwiches, lunch after lunch, but fortunately the boys love turkey sandwiches. We had an 11.73 kilo bird and when my eleven-year-old daughter saw it she remarked, "it's as big as me, mommy!" 

BEFORE

What I hadn't known, but which my bible, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, confirms, is that a bigger bird takes less time to cook than a smaller one. If the turkey weighs sixteen pounds or less, it needs fifteen minutes per pound in the oven at 325ºF or 165ºC. If the bird's over sixteen pounds, and ours was closer to twenty-four, it needs twelve minutes per pound.  I was wondering if some physicist might tell me why that is so. Could it have been the bacon covering my turkey, the greater amount therefore of hot fat? I had a brand-new cooking thermometer that I found at our local TK Maxx.
I can't compete with Robert Benchley's wonderful recipe, which you may read about here--for one thing, I'd never be able to drink that much while preparing a turkey, although I do believe a cook should be "well-oiled." Makes you spontaneous. A little wine, but gee, Mr. Benchley, your capacity was amazing. And now for my recipe, which is considerably easier:

Rinse the bird in cold water. Pat dry. Then, depending upon your mood, do one of the following:

(1) Cover the bird with strips of bacon. You can stretch them a bit, and for a turkey over twelve pounds you'll definitely need more than one pack of bacon. Maybe two or three. Hardly any of the turkey skin should show--all should be covered in lovely bacon.  
.

AFTER BEING DRAPED WITH BACON

(2) Gently--using a small knife if necessary--work your hand under the skin, creating a large pocket. Fill this pocket with thin slices of butter. Lots of them. Pat down. Rub more butter on the legs and any other part of the skin that has somehow failed to come into contact with it.

Then, salt and pepper the bird. Here's the stuffing I make: Let two bags of a very ordinary supermarket bread--Pepperidge Farm white bread, or even Wonderbread, if it still exists, dry slightly in an oven set on low heat. Load the slices into your food processor and make breadcrumbs. While the bread is being processed, melt a large amount of butter--at least two sticks (Germans, at least 250 grams) into a pot or pan. Wash and chop fine many stalks of celery. Add at least one onion, chopped fine. Let the celery and onion get soft in the heating butter, but don't turn the heat so high that the butter burns. You can't turn away from the pan for a nanosecond. Add breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and combine all, mixing until it smells and tastes good.

If there's anything left over after you've stuffed the turkey, and there should be, put the leftovers in a separate baking dish. You'll bake it when it is almost time to take out the turkey. Now, the bird should be accompanied by the usual--see below: corn muffins (the dry, Fannie Farmer kind), cranberry sauce (an orange, some cranberries, some fresh ginger, a half cup of sugar, a dash of cinnamon go in your food processor) and the vegetables and gravy of your choice. Pies follow . . .  but here's the main course:

DONE!

THE FEAST