Year of the rat

My father always said that he and my mother stopped at two children, because he had read at the time that one in three babies born in the world were Chinese, and they didn’t want a Chinese baby. These were different times, and my grandparents were staunch Republicans.

Today is our annual pilgrimage to Uwajimaya, the Asian supermarket up the hill. My shopping list includes things the co-op is lacking, such as wood ear mushroom and lily pod, but I assure you, they're for a traditional dish, not for a witches' cauldron. The list also includes recognizable items like sake and fortune cookies (always add, “between the sheets” when reading your fortune).

Every year about this time, we get together with some old friends; she and I bonded when we applied for unemployment together after being laid off during the tech bust of ’92. We get together around this time of year because we love Chinese food, and we know that if we don’t schedule a date many months in advance, our calendars fill up and we’d never manage to see each other. The date has evolved from tossing a coin to see which yuppie couple buys the take-out to splitting up the menu and messing up one kitchen or the other. This year, they’ll have to clean up after my mu-shu.

I spent the last week doing what management-types call sharpening my saw: With the addition of more board work (Create new task: learn to say “no” more often), I simply had to get my ducks in a row. I’ve upgraded software, and for the first time since I got email (right about the time I was laid off), I have an empty email inbox. No, I didn’t throw out emails like soybeans to drive away the devil, I just learned to file them where they belonged—on a task list, not the inbox. I feel like a new woman, and fully intend to keep up this good habit.

I find that this is the time of the year that I tend to adopt new habits: The holiday frenzy has died down, and it’s a good time to curl up with my thoughts (and seed catalogues). Sometimes changes are seemingly small, like buying heads of lettuce instead of bags, sometimes of greater personal import, like controlling portion sizes (and losing weight) and emptying my email inbox so I can focus on what actually needs to be done. Perhaps I really was the third child: That would make this my new year, and what better time to make a resolution.

Brown steel

Little One came bounding into my office yesterday afternoon with his latest treasure: a crumpled brown paper bag. It seems that his friend Opa R had supplied him with some rolling stock for his new train set (actually my brother’s old one), and he had an idea for the paper bag. We can use it to make popcorn, he said. I smiled and absently told him that was an excellent idea, and gave it no more thought.

When I was a young girl, my uncle worked for American Can Company. In addition to cans—they pioneered the aluminum can (they’re now called Alcoa)—they made lots and lots of steel cans, and as a sideline, steel lunchboxes. Every Christmas, our family would exchange a box of luxury paper goods from my father’s employer (we called it the “bumf box”), for two steel lunch boxes from his family. We were the envy of all our classmates, as we had the latest, most coveted lunchboxes in the multi-purpose room, and we had a new one every year. Remember, they were made of steel somewhere outside of Kansas. They were built as solid as a Chevy, and a good lunchbox could make it through your entire elementary career if you took care of it. The thermos was the limiting factor, being made of glass.

The year before he retired, my uncle sent along the cream of the crop: a Snoopy doghouse for me (I loved Snoopy when I was 11), and a Land of the Giants lunchbox for my brother. I loved my lunchbox, so when I dropped the thermos and heard the telltale crack, I wept. Its replacement was an orange vinyl Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus lunchbox. The black plastic handle broke early on, to be replaced by one made of clothesline using my mother’s new macramé skills (hey, it was the 70s). My brother, however, was more stoic. When his Land of the Giant thermos met its demise after three full years (he was really careful), he refused another lunchbox, and switched instead to a brown paper bag.

Freudian analysts might say it had something to do with a teenager wanting something to do with his father (Daddy still worked at the pulp mill, where they made Kraft paper for the brown bags), but I think it was a question of convenience. My fastidious brother managed to make a single paper bag last an entire semester: it went to school with his peanut butter sandwich (Skippy creamy, grape jelly), and came home folded in thirds in the left rear pocket of his Levis 503s (more than once it got washed with the jeans, and yet he still used it afterwards). I recall how we admired it on the last day of school, all soft and leathery from the wear, before we finally threw it out.

My mother had bought a package of small paper bags, thinking she would have to replace them frequently, but he only used half a dozen or so (there was a mishap with an overweight bully that caused the messy demise of both bag and PBJ). When I moved out, my mother placed the bundle in the box of things she was sure I would need (one in a continuum of confusing gifts), and I’ve been moving with them every since. They’ve finally found a use recently as a way to pop real popcorn in the microwave. Thrift runs in my family, as I reuse them until they’re brittle and singed before chucking them in the compost bin.

I found a bright shiny metal lunchbox at the thrift store two years ago, and Little One used it happily. Unpainted metal, he could drum loudly on it, stick stickers on it, and generally bang it around with impunity (we use stainless steel thermoses). When the plastic handle inevitably broke, his kindergarten teacher wove a new one out of bright orange cotton. I fixed the hinge a half-dozen times before giving up, and switched him to the ubiquitous-at-a-Waldorf-school basket. But he didn’t like it, since the handle didn’t fit in his cubby. I toyed with the brown paper bag, but given what he did to Detroit steel, that didn’t bode well for our forests, so I grabbed an oversized dishtowel, placed his lunch in the middle and tied up the corner. It serves as a lovely tablecloth when he unwraps it, and when it comes home muddy, I can throw it in the wash.

I found Little One’s paper bag in the kitchen this morning, quasi-folded and tucked behind the canister of popcorn. Soft and leathery, it reminded me of my brother. Call it Freudian, but we’ll pop popcorn in it until it can give no more, and then quietly bury it in the compost to give it back.

February bites

A good friend of mine started a part-time job last week at a local non-profit. I talked to her yesterday, and she noted how working at the same thing all day was mentally quite fatiguing. I couldn’t agree more: my days have been a flurry of emails and actual, real-life paying work, which leaves precious little time for digesting new information and writing. So, after sending off various and sundry invoices (there is a silver lining to the work cloud), I whipped up a few quick tidbits in between ticking things off my to do list.

Michael Pollan and I curled up with a cup of cocoa last night (actually, I don’t know what he was having, since it was only the words in his book, In Defense of Food that actually saw me in my jammies), and I laughed out loud when I got to his rule about avoiding foods “containing ingredients that are … unpronounceable.” For as long as I can recall, the menu posted at our couscous bash lists ingredients so folks can make the choices that work for them. And at the bottom, it reads, “this cook doesn’t use fillers or weird polysyllabic ingredients (except zucchini).”

Darling Husband wanted to go dancing the other night, and I was feeling sluggish, so I motivated myself by dressing up and putting on a face. I think back to those peer-pressure days in high school when I got up early to put on makeup every day, and what a freeing moment it was when my Darling told me he disliked the smell of makeup and how it made kissing me less pleasant. I have learned over the years that his instincts are usually spot-on, and the Washington Post confirms it—makeup may help us feel good, but it is only skin deep, as women slather mercury, asbestos and formaldehyde on their bodies and then wonder why pregnancy seems elusive or they’re feeling bloated. The database at http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ reassures me that my Burt’s Bees stuff is fine, but the stuff I used to battle my teenage zits contains endocrine disruptors. And unfortunately, the soap I use to wash the makeup off scores higher on their toxicity scale than the makeup itself. It’s a bit daunting to wade through the ingredients list, but I shudder at the thought of my father’s lye soap, which would no doubt meet Pollan’s requirements.

Alaska’s in-flight magazine tempted me with a blurb about the Chocolate Fest in Portland last weekend. Darling Husband was ready to jump in the car without packing so much as a toothbrush, but I reminded him that we had children who can’t manage without us for the weekend (yet). He was crestfallen, as he had clearly hoped to witness and partake of the world’s largest truffle. Undaunted, I prepared our own little chocolate fest, a tray of representatives from Amore here in Bellevue, Recchuiti confections in San Francisco’s Ferry Building (just a few of those left), and a big box of truffles from Kingsbury chocolates in Alexandria. I can tell you that we made a dent in all the boxes, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but our sampling was less than scientific, which is how it should be.