Come visit our new Web sites:

Vesna's blog:
http://vesnavuynovich.blogspot.com

Don's blog:
http://bloggingforpancakes.blogspot.com


Vesna's published work:
http://vesnaswriting.blogspot.com


See you there!

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Here are some photos we took during November 2006.


Roar! Frozen grapes are delicious!

November includes Thanksgiving and some luscious pecan-topped pumpkin praline pie from the pages of our favorite new magazine, Cook's Country. Oh, boy.
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Saturday. We needed lots of groceries. After a leisurely breakfast, and with U in a good mood, we ran some errands together and then headed to Woodman's. U was in a good mood, but evidently it was not a mood for grocery shopping. Don pushed the cart around the produce section while I alternately ran in circles after U or held him while he squirmed to be put down. As we began down the meat ...   more »

So excited that my comments got included in the unofficial Project Runway podcast! With my name and everything!

Dinksontv.com is a DC-area couple who produce two podcasts each week that the show is running -- a pre-show and a post-show. Sound obsessive? Sure, but what the heck. A few weeks ago, I'd never even watched the darn thing and it sounded completely uninteresting: a reality show based on a competition among fashion designers. OK. So what.

But this is what happened. Don and I watched Hell's Kitchen on Fox all summer, and boy, were we disappointed. Didn't learn a darn ...   more »

U and I went to the Orton Park Festival with our friend Michelle, who recently moved to just about a block from there. It was the third year in a row that U and I had gone down there.  I think. Maybe we just went once, two years ago. We saw Lou and Peter Berryman play -- fantastic, of course -- and bought a dark red long-sleeved T-shirt with the Orton Park Festival logo on it (No year on it, so can't use that as a clue) from a table manned by Cynthia Nolen, who was at the time a ...   more »

Inventing the Child

To use the type of language that quickly becomes familiar to a reader of this book:

The dominant culture reproduces itself by telling itself stories about itself. These stories tell of the rightness of obedience to authority, of the natural order of hierarchy, of power, of the obvious right of the strong to use violence and force to coerce the weak, of the need of the subjugated to be controlled. Children learn these stories, which reinforce the realities that they themselves experience and that they see around them.

By telling these stories about children (or stand-ins for children, as...   more »

In July 2004, I posted this picture of me and Baby U here. This year, we wanted to get an updated shot while the daisies were in bloom.
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A good honest burger made over hot charcoal. Mighty hard to argue with.

Cole slaw recipe courtesy of Tyler Durden, I mean Tyler Florence.

In the background: Southern Sweet Tea, our own recipe. Also, a sliver of Don in his Hawaiian shirt for the day. Chillin' on our Fourth of July weekend vacation.

I picked up the burger ingredients at the new neighborhood grocery, Pierce's, after spending a couple of hours there writing my article for ANEW magazine for August. Subject: beekeeper Mary Celley. Pierce's has a comfy coffeeshop-like area, with free wireless Internet. They even have free coffee, which   more »

Tonight was the biggest fireworks display in the Midwest. It takes place every year in a park 1/2 mile from us. We thought about walking up the hill and watching it from the mobile home park where a lot of people set up lawn chairs every year. But the thought of Ulysses running around in the dark in that big crowd near the main road and possibly getting away from me scared me. And if he got lost he couldn't even talk to explain to anyone who he was and where he belonged. Maybe next year he'll be mature enough ...   more »

A few weeks ago, Don saw a Good Eats episode where host Alton Brown, a fanatical do-it-yourselfer, constructs a smoker out of terra cotta flower pots, using a hot plate and a pie pan for heating wood chips and a round grill to suspend the food. He's been talking about it ever since. Then he sat me down and made me watch the episode, too (he had recorded it). "After you watch this, you'll want to do this right away!" he said. He was right.

So we've both been excited about this and laying plans to built this clay smoker contraption for our long weekend together around the Fourth.

The Fourth is on Tuesday this year, and I have paid holiday from my wonderful job where they actually respect workers; I also requested, months ago, to take Monday off as well.
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Ulysses likes to nap on the couch. Well, maybe it's better said: when he naps, Ulysses would rather be on the couch. Any sentence inlcuding the phrase "Ulysses likes to nap" is probably overstating the case.
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Ulysses held up a toy T-Rex -- a dark purple, realistically styled, suede-ish critter about 4" high, once merchandise from my street vendor days in Philly -- and said, all throaty and gutteral,   more »

Today is our 14th wedding anniversary! It's been a long road from that June morning in 1992 that we drove to Las Vegas, six days after we met, and got hitched by   more »

Ulysses's latest favorite thing to do is the big sneeze. He tilts his head back, opens his mouth and preps expertly with a series of stacatto inhalation-exhalations: "Ahh-a, ahh-a, ahh-a..." His head bounces and forward and back, just a little, with each one. Then there's the big pause, as he faces the ceiling, his back arched. Then the denoument: "Aaaa-TOO!" He looks up at me with a grin. "Aah-choo!" I echo, and we laugh together at the drama.

"Aaaa-too! Aaa-TOO!" The game continues. Ulysses throws out the faux sneezes, one after the other. It's easy to miss how carefully he's ...   more »

The weather has been beautiful for about a week now, climbing sometimes even into the low 70s. That means taking Ulysses to the playgrounds and parks for the first time since last fall, and it means more opportunities to see adults interacting with their children and grandchildren.

And once again, nearly every encounter makes me cringe. Am I just judgmental, and a kook? Am I so far outside the mainstream in my thinking? Or is there some validity to my point of view?

It feels like what I'm hoping for is so basic, something that should be the norm rather ...   more »

2nd birthday Photo album



Ulysses turned two today. He doesn't know about birthdays -- not as far as we know -- but he has been carrying around a tiny little board book called "The Birthday" for several days. One of his favorite pictures is a closeup of the birthday cake.

U napped (conveniently and miraculously) while   more »

Don's mother -- U's "Amma" (the Hungarian term for Gran) -- suggested that we take pictures of Ulysses while he's upset, not just when he's happy. So that we remember. This was the first opportunity after the suggestion. Denied a fourth bowl of whipped cream, Ulysses tugs helplessly at the refrigerator door.

Black marks on his face are washable marker from earlier.

The Star Wars undies are on over his diapers, encouragement to potty train. And because I wanted to see them on him. Amma bought him a bunch of big boy undies from Farm and Fleet today while we ...   more »

Today Don's mother arrived on the 10 p.m. Greyhound. Well, it was supposed to be the 8:45 Greyhound, but they had to change out the bus in Chicago. For hours before that, lights flashed and warning beepers had squawked as the first bus rolled along the highway. But when the beepers fell silent, the driver decided there was no need to call for service.

Fortunately, if not especially efficiently, the driver decided in Chicago to ask for a new bus in Chicago after all. "I feel stupid enough broken down on the highway in the summer," she told the passengers ...   more »

I don't how long I've been wanting to make sausage. Here it is! I'm doin' it! Homemade kielbasa! Loaded with paprika and spicy goodness. Delicious roasted in a cast iron skillet or boiled in a big pot with a head of cabbage and a load of potatoes and carrots.
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I've made it by feel in the past, but I looked for methods for Turska Kava preparation on the Net anyway. The best was this extensive "tutorial" -- also the top "Turkish coffee" hit on Google.
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/04/turkishcoffee/

The worst was this Food Network entry, unattributed to any show:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_1852,00.html
One foaming only, medium roast instead of dark, and no mention of the coffee being anything other than an ordinary grind!

Ulysses discovered that the bottom canister of the Turkish coffee grinder was the perfect storage case for bows from Christmas present wrapping. Up to two bows fit inside, if you push really hard. If you have very small fingers and hands, it's convenient to reach all the way into the bottom of the canister to retrieve   more »

Merry Christmas! Donald got me a Turkish coffee grinder. I've been wanting one for years. This one is brass and made in India. You turn the crank and pulverize whole beans into a fine dust. Finally, we can have freshly ground Turkish/Serbian coffee at home, like I remember from Yugoslavia and from so many Serbian households in America.  Why not just use an electric coffee grinder?

It doesn't work. You can run that thing all day, and once the coffee is chopped (it's not truly ground in those little whirling-blade devices) down to a certain size, it won't get any ...   more »

Today I brought a platter of these cookies to the James Reeb Unitatian Universalist Congregation's Holiday Bake Sale. I wrote up the recipe, and the story of how I came to the recipe, and took it along. I sold the cookies for 50 cents -- 3 for a dollar -- and the recipes for a buck!

The cookies sold out. Selling the recipes made it so I could raise more $$ for the church than with just the cookies alone!

One parishoner is part Croatian. She remembered vanilice as her favorite cookies, that her grandmother used to make. She said ...   more »

Here's a post-apocalyptic road movie created straight from the heart. The score is terrific -- an ideological and artistic mash-up of 50's rock and Sputnik-era Soviet optimism. Mad Max meets Shane meets Viva Las Vegas.

Even addresses the modern-era martial-arts-movie question of "Why doesn't somebody just shoot him?"

Clearly a labor of love for everyone involved.

Enjoy.
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Score! Today we got a Dipsy doll (the green Teletubby) and a play slide (Little Tykes Easy Store Jr., retails for $35!) for Ulysses at Savers. We also got a nice area rug for the carpeted area by the couch where he eats (and hence makes a mess).

Rug: $5. Slide: $4. Dipsy: $3. While Don was at the checkout and U and I were elsewhere in the store putting back a big stuffed Spongebob Squarepants and U didn't seem interested in (far less than Don and I were), I suddenly remembered! -- and then scooped up U and went   more »

OK, as promised, here it is: the best stuffing I've ever eaten!

This was influenced by some stuffing recipes in Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition. (Not the nasty, upscale-designer-y New Joy, updated, tamed and eviscerated for the new, "lighter," modern lifestyle!) No fear-mongering about the dangers of food poisoning from stuffing cooked in the bird that wasn't cooked to a high enough temperature. You just make sure to cook it long enough - duh!

The other influence was the recipe on the bag of Brownberry stuffing bread cubes, unseasoned.

In Joy, I learned that oysters were once a staple feature in   more »

This was our first Thanksgiving at home together as a family. (It was Ulysses's second TG; last year we went to a dinner at James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Congregation.)

Don and I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner at home together plenty of times, and even had people over. But somehow, because of Ulysses, it was a family thing.

Even though all he ate was a ring of canned cranberry jelly at dinner and some of my homemade pumpkin pie later, at dessert.

The food was incredible! The roast turkey with olive oil and fresh marjoram and laurel was the best turkey ...   more »

Ulysses and I were hosing off in the showers after our usual Saturday morning swim at the Princeton Club. From 10 a.m. to noon is their so-called "Family Swim," one of two scheduled times in the week when the lap markers are hauled out of the water and parents with kids of all ages can get in and splash around. Unstructured fun and adventure.

In the shower across from us, a mother and daughter were in conflict.

The girl was behind the shower curtain. The mother was outside, still in her swimsuit. She was reaching in and applying shampoo ...   more »

Today is the first day of my new job. I am so excited. I feel like -- somehow -- it's my first real job out of college. You know, that expression people use: "my first real job out of college."

So what have I been doing for the past twenty-plus years? Good question. Well, let's see, there were several years of unstructured adventure, including that handmade jewelry business that involved street vending and town festivals. And college student unions. And beloved Jazz Fest in dear, magical New Orleans. Also those years at the ashram. Somewhere in there was the performance ...   more »

Ulysses and I went to Tenney Park. I had planned to go to Rev. Darryl Richie's installation as settled minister at James Reeb Universalist Unitarian Congregation this afternoon, but Ulysses was having a rough day. It would have been too agonizing for him to sit through the event in the sanctuary, where it was happening, and too pointless for me to sit through it playing with him in the nursery.

U and Don have been sick with colds since last week. Somehow I dodged that bullet. U seemed pretty much recovered from his cold, so I got him up earlier ...   more »

We had had a swell time swimming at the Princeton Club. Ulysses rode on my back as I used a double layer of blue kickboards to take the strain off my neck as I kick-propelled us back and forth through the big pool. In the hot tub, he stood on the tile bench, his chin just above the water, and absolutely unafraid as I disappeared under the surface and came up spouting at him. When it was time to go, he turned and pushed the heavy glass door shut behind him when we left the pool area and headed to ...   more »

Ulysses and I visited our friend, Talia.
 We used to work together at Dr. Zhou's House of Horrors, I mean the East-West Healing Arts Institute. I was supposedly the school administrator and she was supposedly the office manager of the acupuncture clinic. I say supposedly because we were each micromanaged so meticulously that neither of us really did anything but follow tiny little orders. But that is another story. Don and I put a bunch of U's little things in boxes and gave them to T for her coming baby, Chase. He will be coming any day now!
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Ulysses's first Happy Meal. There's a milestone for ya.

On a day where there were many occasions to take him out of the car and put him back in, he was exceedingly miserable with getting in. We'd drive a little and then have some reason to get out, and then putting him in to get to the next place was a screaming, tortured nightmare. It didn't help that his midday nap had been cut short by a soaking wet diaper and he never managed to drift back into it again.

Finally, errands out of the way  -- and    more »