Relaxing in Saluda

Last week I went to Saluda, North Carolina to visit with family again, and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the newest member of my family. The beautiful baby above was the center of everyone’s attention the whole time we spent in the mountains. The rolling blue peaks of the Appalachian mountains were a dramatic backdrop against which to relax and catch up with family & friends.

PS. On second thought, basically my entire family voted for the Athena dress and as my ‘first love’ among wedding dresses I must say I kinda agree.

Cubic Foot Kitchen: Cornbread

This recipe was supplied by my dear mother and adapted to be cooked in my rice cooker. There are no eggs in the dish, but there is milk so it isn’t vegan. When I made it, I also included dried peppers because of my love for spicy food, but I omitted that from the recipe itself. This recipe was so easy, so simple, and exactly the Southern cornbread flavor I was looking for. The recipe calls for buttermilk, but if you add lemon juice to milk, 1 tbsp per cup, you get about the same flavor.

Rice Cooker Cornbread

Ingredients

• 2 cups cornmeal
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ cup oil
• 1½ cup buttermilk

Mix all ingredients very well. Put in your rice cooker, and cook on normal settings. After the cooking cycle is complete, let it stand in ‘keep warm’ mode for 15 – 25 minutes, or until the top is both dry and golden brown.

PS. Sorry about the cell phone pictures.

Jared Diamond Drawing & other thoughts

I snuck in a few hours of ‘painting’ in my sketchbook. I am thinking I will order a pack of higher pound paper so that I can let loose on weekends and scratch this nostalgic itch that I have been suffering from lately. When we left Wesleyan we all agreed someday our memories would have only retained the good and forgotten the stressful, frustrating and the bad, but I would never have predicted how rapidly this rose tinted nostalgia would take hold! More on this later, but for now just know that I miss being able to walk to my studio space every day and pursue projects based on creative energy and whim alike.

Also, despite my foray back to my undergraduate days, and my responsibilities in all of my courses, with the Global Concerns Forum and with the IR Council, I have found some time to read lately. One of my favorite authors is the anthropologist slash ornithologist slash biophysicist and all around thoughtful academic Jared Diamond. His best seller Guns Germs and Steel was on a summer reading list of mine in high school, and I devoured that book with a hunger that I have rarely surpassed. At the time, I romantically though that I wanted to be a linguist, as those sections of the book fascinated me the most. My father gave me a gorgeous hardback copy of Collapse, the companion to Guns Germs and Steel, when it was first published and I also already had a copy of The Third Chimpanzee. So recently when I was doing some shopping on amazon I decided to purchase a copy of one more of his books to add to me collection. I always find Jared Diamond to be both an engaging and satisfying read.

“It must be acknowledged, however, that the obstacles to male lactation are not only the physiological ones, which can evidently be overcome, but also psychological ones.  Men have traditionally regarded breast-feeding as a woman’s job, and the first men to breast-feed their infants will undoubtedly be ridiculed by many other men. Nevertheless, human reproduction already involved increasing use of other procedures that would have seemed ridiculous until a few decades ago: procedures such as eternal fertilization without intercourse, fertilization of women over the age of fifty, gestation of one woman’s fetus inside another woman’s womb, and survival of prematurely delivered one-kilogram fetuses by high-tech incubator methods. We now know that our evolutionary commitment to female lactation is physiologically labile; it may prove psychologically labile as well. Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices. Most of us choose to renounce murder, rape, and genocide, despite their advantages as a means for transmitting our genes, and despite their widespread occurrence among other animal species and earlier human societies. Will male lactation become another such counter-evolutionary choice?”

Jared Diamond, Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality page 62 (emphasis added)

My old Blogger (is no more)

When I was living in Osaka I kept my very first public blog, where I drooled over all things Japanese, and never lost interest in people watching. Well, in part of an ongoing effort to consolidate and take control over the public information I have sent flying out in to the internet, I have deleted that blog. But, worry not! For I exported all of the content first, and have reposted it here on wordpress for posterity’s sake. If interested, head this way to join me in basking in nostalgia! Archive Diary 2006-2007 (there is also a photoset for all of my pictures from that year.)

Oh, and thank you very much to all the friends and family who have sent letters. Each and every one has made my day a degree brighter. ♥