The Zog Blog

We packed up, we moved separately so that I didn’t hit any too-pregnant-to-fly limits, we unpacked, we found a preschool for Jacob, we unpacked, we got Jacob through the many transitions, we unpacked, the baby grew, I swelled, we all slept, we cursed the humidity, we unpacked, we started working, the baby grew, the baby grew, the baby grew.

We’re still alternating between this idyllic, lazy, warm, and sunny life that I imagined we’d lead here in Boston, and the utter hell that is trying to unpack and set a house up and get a toddler to understand why we don’t live in Monterey anymore and start new jobs and deal with the million-and-one things that a move dumps onto you while one adult is essentially incapacitated and cranky with a late pregnancy.

But now that we’re through the worst of it, I think we do have a fairly idyllic stretch ahead of us. Jacob certainly already things things are wine and roses. Or, translated into toddler speak: Popsicles,

sprinklers,

and chocolate-zucchini cake.

And we’re all hoping that this baby comes just a bit early.

Jacob enters the room with a tape measure and the mouse to our computer.

“This tape measure is not sticking! Maybe the mouse can help it!”

*****

Also, an addendum to the last post: I took a picture of my scraps from the last pie crust.

We are likely to disappear from internet-land for the next couple of weeks. See you on the other side, hopefully with both mouse andtape measure intact. No promises about our sanity, though.

So the thing about pie crust is this. While a lot is made of whether a crust is flaky, the most important thing to remember is that any crust must also be tender to suit most people’s taste. And to enhance tenderness, you absolutely need to be fast. There are lots of other things you can do to help matters, but the bottom line is that your speed in combining the fat and the flour is way more important than the method you use to combine it. If you knead that dough too much, too much gluten forms and your crust will be tough.

Lots of people look down on using a food processor or stand mixer, but if they’re used properly they can produce a far better crust than a hand-made one that took 10 minutes or more to get together. Make an honest evaluation of how quickly you can get a dough together, and then decide how you want to combine your flour and your fat. (I use my fingers, the stand mixer, or the food processor depending on how much mess in the kitchen I’m willing to tolerate that day.) A couple of good tips: Add a little acid to your pie crust to break down a little of the gluten that will form. Only barely work the dough after the liquid has been added.

Finally, and this is the single best thing you can do for your pie crust, in my opinion: Break your fat into 2 groups (roughly 1/3 - 2/3 works best for me). Cut in the first group (quickly) until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. This fat is doing a great job of really coating the proteins and protecting them from the liquid you’ll add later, giving you some tenderness. But it will also melt really quickly in the oven, and give you zero flakiness. So, have the second group of fat (you can use two different kinds of fat, here, to change the flavor of the crust) cut into small cubes and frozen for at least half an hour. Add the second batch of fat to the flour mixture and quickly combine it until the fat is no larger than small-pea sized. Now use your hands or a rolling pin to flatten out that fat and coat it in the flour. It should look like paint flakes, almost. Get the dough together into a disc and refrigerate overnight. These long, cold flakes of fat that never really get *combined* with the flour will melt slowly in the oven, producing steam and giving you lots of nice pastry layers in your crust–the flakiness you’re after. This method works no matter how you’re combining the dough initially.

I prefer the flavor of an all- or mostly-butter crust, but butter melts very quickly and so can be trickier to work with than shortening or lard. (Lard in particular takes forever to melt, which is why so many people prefer to use it in pies. You can work a lard dough for much longer than a butter dough before the fat really starts to break down, so your chances of getting big flakes of fat are that much higher.) If you want a crust that’s a little easier to work with than an all-butter, try subbing in some shortening, lard, cream cheese, or even mascarpone for some of the fat.

Other pie tips: If you’re using a cream or custard filling, take steps to make sure the bottom crust isn’t soggy! For pie shells that aren’t blind-baked, press cookie or graham cracker crumbs (depending on the filling) into the bottom crust–they’ll absorb some of the moisture. Bake your pies at the lowest rack of your oven, or even on a baking stone, so that bottom crust gets set quickly. For blind-baked pie crusts, brush the baked crust with either egg white or white/dark chocolate (depending on the filling) to give yourself a moisture barrier. And, sad though it is to type, always let your fruit pies sit up for a few hours after removing from the oven to avoid the ooze.

Also, Jacob is a cutie.

Apparently the blog decided that if I wasn’t going to update it, it would just stop working.

Posting appears to be the apparent fix for this. As I’m knee-deep in upgrades and work just at the moment, how about a classic Jacob expression?

(He would still like me to put the camera away.)

Well, this seems to be a year for big changes, so why not go with it? In June, we’ll be moving our family back to our house in the Boston area. There are still plenty of details to figure out, but all major decisions have been made.

Certain family members are jumping for joy.

(Thanks so much, everyone, for your kind words about my grandfather. Time, of course, heals all.)

*****

Business trips (both of us), guests, planning another major move (more on that later), trying to come up with names for the healthy BOY that seems to be crushing my internal organs, the beginnings of potty training, keeping up with a two-year-old…

It’s all enough to make you want to spend $10 on a ridiculously unnecessary kitchen accessory…

…make a metric ton of gingersnap cookies…

…and then eat them ALL UP ALL BY MYSELF.

On February 7, after more long illnesses than any one human should have to encounter, my grandfather Ray passed away. He was a few weeks past his 80th birthday.

As an adult, I knew Ray better than any of my other grandparents. I thought, as I started Gram Lois’ essay back in August, that whenever Grampie Ray died his would be the easiest to write. But instead, it’s been the hardest. I suppose I just haven’t been ready for the closure represented by the memories I’ve shared with you of my other relatives over the last 6 months. Gathering the thoughts to write this is such a final step, and a large part of me wants to still imagine him on the other end of this blog, sharing it with my father or sending me back thoughtful email.

*****

His eyes were poor enough that he couldn’t fight in the war. With his ready smile and his slightly wicked sense of humor, he was “quite the dancer” at the USO dances and swept my grandmother (who was really quite a hottie) off her feet. They had three children when they were still quite young: My aunt Terri (dead this past November), my father, and then my aunt Lynn. He was a born salesman, as they say, and while his family was never what anyone would call “well off”, he provided for them well enough that in 1959 they purchased a house kit. With help from friends, he built the house they stayed in for almost 50 years with his own two hands. He wired it, hung the cabinets, ran the plumbing, put on the roof, installed windows and floors and doors. He built it next door to his own father’s house, raised his 3 kids, and then cared for his parents until they, too, left. His most incongruous hobby, from my perspective, was his love of guns and shooting. He was a championship skeet shooter “back in the day”, and I don’t know if my grandmother ever really knew how many guns he had. But by the time I was old enough to know anything he was pretty much only terrifying to the squirrels in the yard. (”Heh. That bastard won’t be eating out of the bird feeder again, let me tell you.”)

He had a long career of a variety of jobs, from working in the shipyard to a brief and failed furniture business with my dad. Eventually, he discovered that his job at the yard gave him emphysema and asbestosis in addition to the paycheck. My memory is hazy now, but I’m pretty sure he finally succumbed to his doctor’s urging to use oxygen shortly after I started college. He retired around that time, too, and he and my grandmother drove each other crazy until he went back to a part-time job selling cars. (Eventually his health prevented that, too.)

I have to be honest and say that I didn’t really know Ray at all until I was edging toward adulthood. I don’t know if this was just because he worked so much, whether I just wasn’t around when he was, whether he just plain wasn’t great with children. But starting when I was a teenager, I felt more of a kinship with Grampie Ray than with any other grandparent. He was the only member of my family who shared my love of books, of knowledge, of learning. When I was in high school, I’d sneak whatever he’d finished off his shelf, read it, and talk to him about it. We’d play cribbage together, me always losing but us both always having a good time.

Ray loved people, he loved being clever, he loved a good laugh. As his body started failing him, he threw himself even more into mental hobbies. Crosswords, crypto-quips, and eventually (thank heavens for this) the computer. I don’t remember exactly when he convinced my grandmother to get one, but eventually he wore her down and they got a computer (and, in quick succession, dial-up and high-speed internet service). I was fond of joking with him that he was the hippest grandfather anywhere, and the only one to point out the latest security issue to his information-security-worker granddaughter. Sometimes his unending technogeekery about software and hardware and whatever he was doing that week got on my nerves, but I never lost sight of how damn lucky I was to be able to keep in touch with him so regularly. As distance (economic, physical, and cultural) brought me further and further away from most of my family, I was never more than a heartbeat away from Ray. I cherished that, and still do.

My fondness for him really didn’t know any bounds, these last few years. Ever interested in learning something new (and always more attracted to alternative explanations than was really good for him), he began studying Reiki about 3 years ago. I wonder sometimes if I was the only one he felt took his latest pursuit seriously, and if I look back our conversations about Reiki were the start of the strengthening of our friendship. (I can’t say that I personally get anything out of Reiki, but it was so clear to me how much Reiki helped my grandfather that I couldn’t help but respect it.)

When we moved to California and I started this blog, he quickly became a daily reader (and emailer, if I hadn’t posted yet that day). In many ways, he provided the motivation to keep this thing going. He was so supportive of it, and of me, especially the more personal writing I’ve done here. I can’t say how much I miss his IM chats and quick messages (always, always signed with “Luv ya…” and a smiley face wearing sunglasses, mind). How much further away from my family and my roots I feel, now that we’re not constantly chatting.

With some doubts about whether or not he would really be up for company, I stayed with him the weekend of my grandmother Lois’ funeral. I am so, so happy I did. We watched movies and baseball, drank beer, did the crosswords, talked about his latest conspiracy theory passion, indulged in ice cream together. We’re both such quiet people, and I think we did one another a world of good that weekend. It was one of those rare and wonderful moments of adult friendship with a relative. We were two people who had loved the same person, who enjoyed the same things, giving one another companionable silence when it was needed most.

Jacob, Jon, and I stayed with him for a few days when we visited in December. I am glad I didn’t know it would be the last time. Again, despite my reservations, he seemed to love having us around. I cooked him dinner, he played with Jacob, we gossiped about his new Mac and how much easier it was to maintain than his old PC. I helped him get all of his digital pictures migrated from one system to another. We had nice chats. He laughed at what a handful Jacob could be. He shared some of his (more precious than gold!) deer meat with me, and we ate more ice cream while we watched the cat watching the snow fall.

Ray’s health took several turns for the worse, after the new year, and he confided to me early in January that he felt like he ought to “check out” before his 80th birthday. He was off by a few weeks, but kept up with the jokes until the very end. He was a great man, and is greatly missed.

Pregnancy still sucks, but fortunately (?) I have plenty of other things keeping me way too busy to dwell on that fact. In lieu of complaining about them, though, I want to share something I wrote today.

This is about politics. I’ve wanted to write something for awhile, about my feelings on the upcoming election, but haven’t wanted to start a flame war or spark any name-calling. I still want to avoid anything but a respectful and honest exchange of ideas, so if you feel you might have something nasty to say… look! Jacob got a haircut!!

I have donated to a campaign for the first time in my life (to Barack Obama), and have been getting the predictable slew of campaign announcements since then. Today, I got a request from the campaign to share my story. They’re collecting stories from supporters to make a stronger case to the superdelegates likely to decide who receives the Democratic Party nomination. This is mine.

I might be one of the last people you’d expect to dive into a Democratic primary battle. I was born and raised in Maine, a state that values independence and unorthodoxy for their own sake. I’ve spent most of my life on the libertarian edge of conservative politics. My family’s values, which became my own, center around the core belief that the government should generally stay out of my business. I was even registered Libertarian, for a few years.

As I’ve gotten older, and spent more and more years *in* our society (rather than critiquing it from a liberal-arts campus), I’ve come to settle in pretty solidly as an independent. But even as an independent, I tend to lean more to the economic right. If I were forced to pick a party, the democratic party would probably be my third choice.

Like most Americans, my views are centrist. Like most Americans, I despair at the lack of compromise and common sense in the current political atmosphere. I’m tired of the expansion of power in the executive branch, I’m tired of the erosion of our civil liberties, I’m tired of the effect rising healthcare costs are having on our small businesses, and I’m *really* tired of these major issues being ignored in favor of yet another fear-mongering jab from one party to the other.

Which brings me, I suppose, to my support for this campaign. I thought I was incapable of truly supporting *anyone* in this fall’s presidential race. I was convinced that the whole thing would be summed up by two positions: “Whatever you think of the current administration, know that the Democrats would hand us all over to the terrorists without any hesitation!” and “We’re the only hope for salvation from the Pure Evil of the Republican Agenda!”

I’m not sure you can imagine my disbelief, and then relief, upon discovering that the Democratic Party’s young darling was actually a candidate who made considered decisions based on reason and realism. Someone who didn’t just welcome independents like me, but who reached out to those with good ideas *regardless* of political affiliation. I don’t know how I could *not* support Barack Obama. He’s everything that has been missing in American politics for an entire generation. And I, for one, am really looking forward to being welcomed back into the national debate.

I hope that, whatever your political affiliations, you’ll take the time this year to figure out who you support, and why, and then vote for them.

First of all, if your primary elections are today, get out and VOTE! Go. Go now.

Second… well, the little mister is going to be pretty surprised, come his birthday this year.

Around then, a new zog will join our family. The crib notes: I’m 12 weeks along, everything looks healthy and fine, I’m having as many annoying symptoms this pregnancy as I did with Jacob, we plan to find out the gender, if we can.

Wish us luck!

Don’t have much to say, I guess. Our lives are pretty consumed by logistics large and small, at this point. We’re planning like busy planners, waiting, trying to make decisions, etc., etc., etc.

So here’s a grainy, over-exposed view of our morning:

…and a statement that you’re all in our thoughts. Hope you’re well!

Except we’re not, really. Returning to California feels like the vacation, our time in New England like home. I don’t know exactly when or how, but I’ve got to get back there.

It’s impossible to pick highlights, because even with all of the moving around and illness and difficulty, I had such a wonderful time being back in New England during a proper winter. So here are some fun shots of our time there, in lieu of highlights or a complete recap:

(Does this even need a caption?)

Jacob’s first snowman, shared with cousin Zachary and uncle Andrew. Yes, his features are made from car parts.

I got a few precious moments alone in a December fog while we were in Providence.

Jacob got to tote around a snowman more his own size, in Sturbridge.

Of course the best part was all of the time we got to spend with friends (related to us and not). 2007 was a difficult year, but we hope for better things to come in 2008.

So far, Hanukkah and Christmas are running neck and neck. Hanukkah has singing books, which are pretty cool:

But Christmas definitely has better hats.

Time: 6:52 AM.

Temperature: 24 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dude’s scraping the ice off of his windshield in shorts.

(At least he was wearing a fleece vest.)

The holiday season is upon us. Hanukkah has started, and it’s much more enjoyable this year due to Jacob’s vastly increased ability to grasp the whole thing. “Happy Hanukkah!”, he shouts to random passers-by. “Hanukkah a HOLIDAY!”

He’s really enjoying the little safari animals we’re giving him this year, and it’s so much fun to see him play with them. “Mommy, Daddy Lion needs take a naaaaaaaap. Close eyes?” But the show-stealer so far has been the jigsaw puzzle. We upgraded to a 24-piece puzzle since the 12-piece ones no longer hold his interest for more than .02 seconds, and hooray! This one takes him a full five minutes to assemble. Blessed silence, how we cherish you.

He’s not so sure about the latkes, though.

Or the kugel. Or anything else I put in front of him. Oh, well. At least he doesn’t appear to be starving. Maybe he’s synthesizing food out of the air, somehow?

He’s excited for our trip on Monday, too. We’re trying to prepare him for snow. I’m not so sure he gets the “cold” concept, but he sure is having fun running around the house in hats and mittens.

I don’t know whether I’ll be able to blog in Maine, so in case I can’t, happy holidays to all of you from all of us!

Wednesday was a pretty good day. Jacob decided in the morning that he didn’t want to attend the Mommy & Me-type class we usually go to (”Jacob no go class today pleeease, Mommy?”), so we stayed at home and Jacob helped me work.

But my favorite part of the day was unwinding at the end of it, knitting next to Jon on the couch while he started a new video game. It’s so quiet, after 9:30, and I’m really coming to treasure that time.

Yesterday, hands-down the best moment was when the play Hanukkah set I’d splurged on for Jacob arrived. He’s been fascinated with dreidels lately, and he immediately picked it up and started spinning in the living room.

“Jacob spin just like dreidel, Mommy!”