Women Buying Health Insurance Pay a Penalty

When are we going to move past the "children are a choice" argument and realize that the continuation of society depends on at least some women having babies?  

The worst part of this is that many of the women who are paying more are childless but are paying as potential childbearers.  Yes, pregnancy and childbirth are more expensive than not having children.  Yes, I am a "redistributionist" for suggesting that the costs of pregnancy and childbirth should be distributed over the full insurance pool instead of over one gender.  I also want future generations to exist and I'd prefer it if they had adequate prenatal and postnatal health care so I'm not paying their emergency room bills.   Grrrrr.

Old faithful.

The Times published an article on the new fall cookbooks this morning, but the comments on the article are far more insightful than the piece itself. The question raised was, "What cookbooks do you find yourself returning to over and over?"  If you know my family at all, you know my mom collects cookbooks from all over the country, and that we all love to cook and really enjoy sharing recipes and cooking techniques with each other.

I have several new ideas for cookbooks I'd love from reading the first few hundred comments--if you're interested, you can look through the list here--but thought I'd share the ones we use most in our household:

1. Cook's Illustrated, The Best Recipe.  Goes through the science behind each recipe and explains things like "Why use butter instead of margarine for baking?" and "Do you have to sift the flour for cakes?" and "Why braise meat before roasting?"  The idea is that they cooked many, many versions of each recipe to test out the most effective techniques.  

2. The Best Make-Ahead Recipe. Same basis, but this time you can refrigerate or freeze things and serve them later.  Great for feeding larger groups of people, and the cinnamon roll recipe alone is worth the price of the cookbook.

3. Joy of Cooking.  I don't think we'd get through two weeks in the house without it, and I love all the explanations of ingredients and techniques.

4. Patricia Wells' cookbooks.  We haven't started working our way through the Bistro Cookbook yet but have made at least half of the recipes in the Paris  and Provence Cookbooks even though some of them have rather exotic and expensive ingredients.  She makes meat taste incredible.

5. Luscious Lemon Desserts.  My go-to cookbook for spring and summer desserts as Matt doesn't like anything too sweet so lemon desserts are an acceptable compromise.

What cookbooks do you use most?  Where do you get your recipes?

Tagged!

So I'm home with a sick preschooler, a two-month-old just starting to sniffle, and a cold. Recipe for a great weekend, no? But so far, today, so good. One is napping and the other is watching Mary Poppins. God bless a spoonful of sugar.

My friend Jenni tagged me to write a meme, but I realized I'd done a similar one before. So I kept the number of items on each list the same, but switched up the list headings a bit:

20 years ago I was:
1. In seventh grade "junior varsity" volleyball.
2. The tallest girl in my class...
3. With the earliest acne. (Darn puberty.)
4. Practicing piano 1.5 hours a day.
5. Obsessed with INXS, Tretorn sneakers, Esprit de Corps jeans, and Yo! MTV Raps!

5 things on my perpetual to-do list:
1. Clean out old papers in the basement
2. Write my mother a thank-you note
3. Job-hunt
4. Count my blessings
5. Family snuggle time

5 snack foods I don't understand why people eat:
1. Butterfingers
2. Pork rinds
3. Twinkies
4. Caramel corn
5. Powdered-sugar-dipped donuts (I ALWAYS inhale accidentally and get it up my nose)

5 things I would do to save money in a recession:
1. Get a job.
2. Go mostly vegetarian (meat is EXPENSIVE).
3. Turn down the thermostat to 67.
4. Re-evaluate "necessities" and "wants."
5. Clip coupons for foods we already eat, and use them.

5 places I would love to live besides here, at least a few weeks a year, if I had the means to do so:
1. New York City
2. North Shore, Hawaii
3. Omaha, Nebraska (in the penthouse apartment just off ConAgra Park in the Old Market, or in a big old fixer-upper in Happy Hollow)
4. Salida, Colorado
5. Minneapolis, Minnesota (especially in the summer)

5 jobs it would be fun to have some day:
1. Spa service-quality tester: Just how good is that facial and hot-rock massage?
2. Yoga instructor: fit, flexible, and getting paid for it.
3. Restaurant critic: see #1, but with food instead, preferably paid for by the place I work.
4. Director of American Revolutions: Theatre in-joke; it's the job title of the person at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival who is in charge of a series of new plays about American history.
5. Helpdesk technician at the Pentagon. (I stole that one off best-of-Craigslist, but seriously, can you imagine the phone calls?)

Road trip!

Last week we drove to Nebraska, in part for my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. In spite of a tanking economy, increasing job insecurity, my new status as a stay-at-home mom, and general reasons to freak out, a road trip is still a beautiful beautiful thing. Especially when we got to see friends with new babies, like this gorgeous gal:



And we got to catch up with some (young) old friends for a break from the drive:





Of course, the drive was pretty arduous, and led the bug to sleep in some unusual positions:



Reaching the grandparents in Omaha provided numerous opportunities for high-quality grandchild time. This unsurprisingly led to some new perspectives on the world:



Cousins also played a meaningful role in the weekend. First, the bug and monkey got to hang out with their cousins:



Then we headed north, and cousin-wise I saw relatives I hadn't seen since before Matt and I were married. Our extended family is even cooler than I remembered. The anniversary party was up north in the town I grew up in, South Sioux City, at the Knights of Columbus Hall. So, further driving led to travel back in time as I revisited the scene of my eighth grade graduation dance. Mom had also been to her share of dances at the KC Hall, but never before with so uncoordinated a dance partner. At least he couldn't step on her feet:



And here are the amazing couple. I should really write another post at some point about my Aunt Jo and Uncle Ray, but their family of three kids and multiple grandkids and their love for each other are really inspirational. No joke. They love each other so much and have stayed really close to their kids and grandkids, which is a beautiful thing to witness. It's hard to capture them in a brief post, but my aunt is the kind of person who could never let a stray kitten go to the pound, and my uncle is the kind of guy who is patient when a 7-year-old terribly uncoordinated girl is just learning to play pool.

Here they are opening their present:



In short, a lovely weekend was had by all Beasleys, and we returned to Colorado much refreshed. Thanks and love to everyone we saw along the way!

Bug entry, stardate 10.4.08.

I'm sending a big email. No, not that kind of email. A different kind of email. I want to blog. Mom, I have to type it. I will try.

vniey4687yn7n5n785yy7u8yttunyiujtnigujorgoutjrdli hbbifhgiuyhrtunfknesr4feshiuysfsdshrhdfu

How do you cross out? How do you get away the line? Delete it?

Oh, that button is how you do it.

I want to write something and you're not letting me to. You're not being nice. This is not yours.

[time out threatened] Oh, okay.

crocodile. stop picture.

mouse.

I'm spelling more words after crocodile and mouse. I want you to help me spell them. Up there where we already typed.

Mom, I don't want to think about the words before I type them. I want my own blog where I don't have to do what you say. Or think.