Yellow cake

This week has been school vacation for my older, but Kita was still in session for my younger for Monday and Tuesday. That allowed us to sleep in a bit (although T1 still gets up at 6 am) and to wait for the plumber this morning.

But when I picked T2 up today, she was unhappy: by coming in late, she had missed making a small cake, which everyone else had done and then taken home (I assume for Shavuot, which is a dairy holiday). So on the way home we stopped to pick up some strawberries and some Schlagsahne (whipping cream- I couldn't find a can) and then I googled around and we made this recipe:

(I love Allrecipes.com for the ability to change to metric, which allows me to toggle back and forth between my preferred method, weighing ingredients, and the ability to use volume measurement for liquids.)

Yellow Cake from Scratch (with a few changes)
160 g all-purpose flour
150 g white sugar
50 g butter
120 ml milk
5 g baking powder
5 g salt
8 ml vanilla extract
2 eggs

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 9x9 inch pan.
In a large bowl, cream sugar and shortening until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add flour, baking powder, and salt alternately with milk, beating just to combine. Finally, stir in vanilla. Pour batter into the prepared pan.--- I beat it a lot more and added the baking powder last.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Frost and enjoy.

Nutritional Information
Amount Per Serving Calories: 139 | Total Fat: 5.2g | Cholesterol: 27mg

Review: The cake is nice, I overbeat the Schlagsahne and wound up with flecks of butter (what's with that:)) and so sprinkled powdered sugar and sliced strawberries instead. Next time, I will decrease the sugar by 1/3 and increase the flour- the cake was a tad sweet for me. But the kids were happy, so that's a plus.

Clueless and Vitriolic

I was reading the comments to this when I just couldn't stand it any longer.

The vitriol and hatred flying from the "non-parents" at the "parents" was insane. I might say from the dog-owning to the child-owning, but that's really not what the tenor of the comments were. The tenor seemed to be that children should, as Mark Twain said, be put in a barrel and fed through a bung-hole until 18. I am more used to seeing this type of open and semantically veiled hatred from misogynists and racists but clearly I haven't been reading enough.

We live in a society and children are a part of that society. In Germany, women and children (and men ) have rights both as individuals and as family members within society. So when Germans, the most litigious nation in the world, sue because children are crying, they run up against the fact that children have a legal right to cry. And to play. And to make noise.

There are limits and bounds for everyone, of course. But some of the "child-free" should just live in a world where no one actually curtailed their lives to raise other people and see how they enjoy a dying society. Clearly they don't have enough empathy or forethought to understand the concept though.

Recent randomness...

1. For the last thirty years or so, I have been an sf fan. Part of that is going to sf cons and the moveable feast is Worldcon. This year it will be in Australia and I'm afraid that we won't be able to make it. However, a few years ago, John Scalzi and some others decided to put together a reading package of all the works (where made available by publishers)that we had nominated for the Hugo. This year, all the graphic art nominations were also available and I have been sucked into Girl Genius. What a rocking strip! I'm pretty sure it's got my vote, I have now read through inception, and I plan on buying the books (because reading comics on line rots compared to having the book). How late I am to this show: it won the Hugo last year, but I've just ignored comics since I went cold turkey in 1990. Now, this is the type of comic I want my daughters to grow up reading.
2. After surviving my own mini-flame war, it seems that a lot of the blogs I have been reading have their own. Some are even related to the topic I was embroiled in: misogyny and sexism. See Racefail (on cultural appropriation), Mansplainin, How difficult life is for the Menz, the craziness on fanfic, which started with a reasonable post on Diana Gabaldon's blog (in a post which has now disappeared- and I don't blame her- the vitriol was amazing and the vitriolic made ad hominem attacks), but exploded through Boingboing and GRRMartin and ever outward. Watching how these things degenerated into insanity and how trolls took over was illuminating and shows the difference between an editorial page and the internets in all their glory.
3. We caught up with Lost. The last episodes are coming this month and we want to watch them semi-real time. And Fringe is getting better and better. As for Castle, what is not to like about a mystery writer as the hero of a series, with a kick toosh woman Police detective in charge. Nathan Fillion (from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog) is fab.
4. Working on math... the way it's taught here is so non-intuitive that my husband can't understand it. I can, but I understand the issues. It's rote utilization of certain table formats and we just need to get Thing1 understanding that when there are lank boxes, a null is a perfectly correct way of filling them.
5. Same with reading. We are getting there, but the way that the German system (here at least) utilized the whole word method at the beginning, then moves to phonetics, makes it hard. There are far more "letters" here, though, so I understand why they operate the way they do. They didn't finish learning all the different vowels and consonants until after the winter holidays (there's a whole separate section to learn with the umlauted and conjoined vowels). And they don't sing the alphabet song, they learn "A wie Affe, Ei wie Eis... usw.) Fascinating to get a look into the basic culture and how it is indoctrinated.
   

Rolling with the Changes

I had expected to spend the weekend with friends, re-visiting the Keukenhof, but they bagged the trip Thursday night and without the lure of their children to play with ours, we threw the towel in ourselves.

I'm missing the chance to see the gardens at a later stage of development than we have in the last three years (this year's visit was disappointingly early), and if we had known that they would not make this weekend, we would have gone last weekend. But it is what it is.

So, instead, we 1.took the kids out to practice bike riding. Not that T1 needs to practice, but T2 is gong great guns on practicing her pedalling. The 12" bike that we have for her (garnered through freecycle Berlin) would normally suit her for at least the next year, while we waited for her to grow over 110 cm to fit a 16" bike, but the seat height control is busted, and according to our local bike shop, irreparable. We also discovered at the local bike shop(s) that although there are 14" bikes, they are not really available in DE (although they are in the Netherlands and Belgium). Now there was our reason for heading to Leiden anyway— if only we had known!

It turns out that they are available in Berlin, although at Spielwaren (toy shops) rather than bike shops, and at quite the price (we couldn't find one under €149).But we found one for about half online, in T2's desired lieblingsfarbe of blau. We should have it in a few days and just in time: T1 and 2 switched bikes and it was a bit of a circus act, with T1's knees up around her ears and T2 only able to stop by falling over (her feet couldn't reach the ground)!

then we headed over to Idee, to pick up materials for a craft project that T! found online: a witch's broom in Snow White colors.

We followed up with a quick trip to Ikea, so the kids could play in the "Marienkaeferplatz" (the playground) but, due to remodeling in the cafeteria, our usual follow-up of salmon and new potatoes with bottomless lattes and apfelschorle was derailed. When we asked at customer service, no one could tell us when the remodel would be done, real tables and chairs would be replaced, and whether the play area would be returned. I was very annoyed and next time we will head to the Spandau outlet instead. We did get the desired wooden spoons (for the above project) for .49 cents and the German had a latte while we sat and waited for the kids at the downstairs table display.

Why couldn't anyone tell us when the remodel was expected to be completed and whether a play area would be reincorporated in the design? Ineffective management.

On Sunday it was raining again, but T1 had a Maidchen party that the mother of one of her classmates was throwing and we bundled her off to the announced crafting and painting party. We had hoped to get some quality time with T2, but she fell asleep in the car and we carried her home and let her nap: it's tough having a sister who is an early morning bird and wakes her to play, while T2 is definitely a late owl.

The crafts were great- a pot with a flower (for Mutterstag:)), a little box painted in acrylic, and they had pizza. Lots of fun.

We were sorry to miss the final opportunity to see the Keukenhof (it's closed after next weekend and we have other plans), very sorry to miss our friends (T1 was very sad- she is in love with the baby!), but very glad not to have a 14 hour road trip with intermittent rain, especially since the volcano canceled flights again and the German needed to take the train back to Munich this morning.

What I am reading: April 2010

It seems that I am reading less, yet it also seems that I am reading a lot. I think that I have been concentrating more on catching up and keeping up with current events and with Newsweek, Businessweek, Money, and USNews and World Report. In addition, I am a bit addicted to the Washington Post and the NYT, with a side glance into Der Spiegel.

1. The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald. Every time I read an old classic (increasingly likely, as they are out of copyright and freely downloadable to my Kindle), I reel in wonder at the openly racist writing. Sometimes I can look past it and enjoy the book for itself and sometimes I am just grateful that this type of thought is no longer acceptable to be written. Betty MacDonald led a far more interesting life than I would have gathered from this book alone and I will look for other books by her. As I read the book, I was intrigued by mention of Maw and Paw Kettle and their family, because as I child I saw many films with Maw and Paw, old MGM movies. I was intrigued when I researched MacDonald, to discover that those movies were in fact based on her book, as the characters were extremely popular after first appearing in the movie with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, which I also remember as charming. (I'm a huge fan of both those actors and I grew up on MGM light-hearted musicals and movies- gave me what I guess is a really American and optimistic view of life which has been slowly degraded by reality over the last few decades). MacDonald wrote several other semi-autobigraphical books as well as the famous Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories. It's worth reading within the context of books from the 1940's, although I think the movie is lighter and more charming, and I think I'll try to get a copy for the children to watch. I'll be interested to discover whether there are things in her other books that also give me pause.
2. Silver Born by Patricia Briggs: Another welcome addition to an urban fantasy series. The coyote-shifter mechanic protagonist continues leading her life, dealing with a rough world, and forging intricate and realistic relationships (realistic in the between people way, not in the Pack dynamics way, per se:)).
   
3. Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison: I recently discovered that Kim Harrison is actually Dawn Cook, who wrote a series of fascinating fantasies about a young woman's coming of age and discovery that she is not entirely human. It's set in a medieval style world and the climax population was originally not human. Fascinating use of genetics too. Those books have recently been re-issued with terribly soppy covers highlighting that Dawn Cook is actually Kim Harrison because the series of books as Harrison have been extremely popular. This is book 8 and I was a bit worried, as I had read mixed reviews. However, I liked it very much. There has also been an interesting running theme in these books of genetic manipulation and changes in species and race as a result of genetic manipulation and control: the similarities in writing between her two names is very strong. This book also showed one of the results of the recent struggle between Amazon and certain publishers: I pre-ordered this book on Kindle and by the time I read it (about a week after release), I could have purchased it in hard cover for about $1- less. That annoys me and it makes me unhappy with the marketing decisions of the publisher in a way that will make me re-consider pre-ordering titles from HarperCollins imprints in the future.
   
4. Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr: Here Amazon has succeeded in it's purpose: by giving me the first book in a series, they have tempted me into purchasing the following books. A modern, or urban fairy tale with a twist. Iliked it very much.
   

It doesn't end! Happiness keeps coming!

First, I get this in my inbox from President Obama, at 10:27 am ET:

G --

It has now been well over a year since the near collapse of our entire financial system that cost the nation more than 8 million jobs. To this day, hard-working families struggle to make ends meet.

We've made strides -- businesses are starting to hire, Americans are finding jobs, and neighbors who had given up looking are returning to the job market with new hope. But the flaws in our financial system that led to this crisis remain unresolved.

Wall Street titans still recklessly speculate with borrowed money. Big banks and credit card companies stack the deck to earn millions while far too many middle-class families, who have done everything right, can barely pay their bills or save for a better future.

We cannot delay action any longer. It is time to hold the big banks accountable to the people they serve, establish the strongest consumer protections in our nation's history -- and ensure that taxpayers will never again be forced to bail out big banks because they are "too big to fail."

That is what Wall Street reform will achieve, why I am so committed to making it happen, and why I'm asking for your help today.

Please stand with me to show your support for Wall Street reform.

We know that without enforceable, commonsense rules to check abuse and protect families, markets are not truly free. Wall Street reform will foster a strong and vibrant financial sector so that businesses can get loans; families can afford mortgages; entrepreneurs can find the capital to start a new company, sell a new product, or offer a new service.

Consumer financial protections are currently spread across seven different government agencies. Wall Street reform will create one single Consumer Financial Protection Agency -- tasked with preventing predatory practices and making sure you get the clear information, not fine print, needed to avoid ballooning mortgage payments or credit card rate hikes.

Reform will provide crucial new oversight, give shareholders a say on salaries and bonuses, and create new tools to break up failing financial firms so that taxpayers aren't forced into another unfair bailout. And reform will keep our economy secure by ensuring that no single firm can bring down the whole financial system.

With so much at stake, it is not surprising that allies of the big banks and Wall Street lenders have already launched a multi-million-dollar ad campaign to fight these changes. Arm-twisting lobbyists are already storming Capitol Hill, seeking to undermine the strong bipartisan foundation of reform with loopholes and exemptions for the most egregious abusers of consumers.

I won't accept anything short of the full protection that our citizens deserve and our economy needs. It's a fight worth having, and it is a fight we can win -- if we stand up and speak out together.

So I'm asking you to join me, starting today, by adding your name as a strong supporter of Wall Street reform:

http://my.barackobama.com/StandForWallStreetReform

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

(edit: I have changed the link from my personal, my.obama.com, to the posting that links to the President's address on the issue. I hope that anonymized it sufficiently:)  And the speech is interesting in itself, for those who follow it out).

immediately followed at 10:39 am ET by:

US accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud

Can my day get any better? (Politically, economically and socially, in a realistic way, that is.)

Every day brings a new joy.

Who could be against this?

Officials said Obama had been moved by the story of a lesbian couple in Florida, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, who were kept apart when Pond collapsed of a cerebral aneurysm in February 2007, dying hours later at a hospital without her partner and children by her side. 

Apparently, the law. It was a heartless act and any decent person who read this story wept for all the people involved. 

One more victory for decency, true decency, in the USA.

This makes me happy part 2

This.

Exploring space is a dream that I had given up on. Perhaps my dreams will come true for my children, or grand-children.

What do the German and Crown Prince Haakon have in common?

Stranded due to volcanic ash.

The NYT is inaccurate: Munich closed at 7 pm.

This makes me so happy...

One of the many things that I hoped for when I voted for our President:

The United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) applauds the passage of the health care reform package, in particular, the workplace breastfeeding support provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The provision states that employers shall provide reasonable, unpaid break time and a private, non-bathroom place for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for one year after the child's birth. Employers with less than 50 employees are not subject to the requirement if it would cause "undue hardship."

This was the primary reason that I did not return to my last job: after discussing what would happen when I returned before I went on maternity leave, my workplace told me, two weeks before my scheduled return, that my "private place" would be the bathroom on my floor. They were aware what issues I had had with breastfeeding my first and how dedicated I was to being able to breastfeed my second.

So I did not return to work and we started looking for a way to live on one income while being a two income family. 

Hello, Germany!

When we think about when or whether we will return to the USA, one of the most important factors has been health care. I was laid off after 9/11 and luckily COBRA covered me until I found a new job, as the German and I were not yet married. I never want to be in a place again where the loss of a job could leave me or my family without healthcare. Our lives are too important to take that risk.

Thank heavens it looks like this will not be an issue in the future.