a small update

1. Favourite new smell, which is actually almost intoxicating: in a dry pan, stir two teaspoons of whole cumin seeds until the pan begins to smoke. Pour into a (coffee) grinder and blitz for about 20 - 30 seconds. Remove lid, bend over, and put nose directly into the smokey aroma coming out of the grinder. It's a trip, man.

2. There's nothing else like the experience of plunging my finger into my daughter's diaper while she's still wearing it, and coming out with a finger covered in poo.

3. Cooler weather started last weekend, and I brought out my winter cardigans. Bring on the cosy.

4. When we go to Australia in December, I think I will have to buy the Stickmaster. And an adapter for when I bring it back to America.

5. This raita is the one of the best I've ever tried, and, although the flavour changes somewhat, the vegan version using coconut milk instead of yoghurt is equally delish. I've been eating it with toasted pita bread.

6. The only animals that spot the fields surrounding our suburb are cows. Black cows, and only a handful at that. Nevertheless, Marzieh is super enthusiastic about bovines, bellowing MOOs whenever she sees one (on a flashcard, in a book, etc.), and that makes me look twice at things like the World's Smallest Cow.

7. After recently finishing watching the second season of Masterchef Australia, I can't separate this song by Katy Perry from the experience of watching that show, but the visual of being on Sesame Street does actually add something different:



8. Although the book that I've been reading since 4 July is a good one, it's also a slow-moving long one ("Eleanor and Franklin" by Joseph Lash). So every so often I'll read another book for a few days, which mostly has the effect of making me like the old tome more, appreciative of its writing, etc.

Speaking of good writing, this article is not. Iris Krasnow's "Surrendering to Motherhood" is a book I bought at the library for a few cents, and, knowing nothing about her, I googled her to just get a grasp on the basics.

'Feminists took homage with Krasnow’s ideas. “I was at Stanford in the 70s when women were fighting for equality. I was a features writer for UPI before my son’s were born, roaming the world interviewing celebrities ..."'

Of course I could just be under-read and have never come across this construction before, but is it possible to "take homage with" something? I look up "homage", and it indicates that it means, "respect or reverence paid or rendered". I think that even if you want to say "took homage" it would have to go with another preposition, most likely "from". So, to me, that sentence is a mess---to read, to understand, to fathom.

And even if you think that's okay, how can "before my son's were born" be condoned? I mean, I know that the internet is full of this stuff, and I have no idea what kind of newspaper "The Examiner" is, but it looks to me like a published article, and underneath the author's profile pic, there is a link that invites you to read more stuff by her. Did no one else proofread this? I feel baffled by the idea that people were paid to produce this content.

9. Just this weekend I went from the cheapest phone out there to the most expensive. After just over a year with Motorola Tracfone, which would deduct (paid-for) minutes without sending messages and for which I had to spend approximately one week of my life on hold, I decided that I needed a cellphone that actually worked, even if I had to pay for it to do so. This feeling was compounded when our landline---and that does cost us a bunch---also began to screw up, cutting out my voice from phonecalls, especially ones in which I was trying to get across very. important. points.

So on Saturday I got an iPhone 4. The phone part hasn't been connected yet, but I have been LOVING taking videos of Marzieh and immediately sending them to family through email, or uploading them to flickr with one or two clicks. I know that the monthly plan could support the entire magazine industry of a small country, but in this case it's justified (in my mind, at least) by our cutting not only the old cell phone, but the landline as well.

10. One of my other favourite recipes is this on Girl's Gone Child, for kale. Crispy kale. The combination with parmesan cheese is almost unreal---such an unusual, new sort of umami flavour---but they are seriously delicious alone with salt. I've been making it about once a month since that post came up ... and in fact, I have some kale in my fridge right now.