I don't know about you all, but in North Carolina today it is POURING rain. Leftover tropical storm, I guess. It's also only in the 60s, which is weird for this time of year. We've had an extraordinarily cool spring here in North Cackalacky.

Today would be a good day to make soup (if I weren't already making bbq in my crock pot). I thought this recipe sounded good, and I like the name of it: Meat Soup with Pickles. Gets straight to the point. It's from Ruscuisine.com.

· Ingredients... more

When Little J visits the salad bar, this is what he wants: a boiled egg, beets, and anything with sour cream. He's funny. He loves a beet. He also knows that when he eats them they stain his lips red so he always asks me to "wook at my wipstick." Cute.

Can you tell that kid is from Russia? Beets, of course, are a popular vegetable in Russia as they store easily, are a colder weather vegetable, and are chock-full of nutrition. We mostly have dark red beets in our grocery stores in the US, but I know from my more adventurous gardening friends that they come in many... more

Yesterday I posted about my brainstorm to create a newsletter chock-full of fun cultural things for kids who were adopted from Eastern Europe. I still think it’s a great idea and I’m definitely going to work on it.

The thing is, after 12:30 this afternoon it’s summertime, dear readers, and although Big J has some camps and Little J is going to go to pre-k part time, I’m going to have my kids around me a lot more than during the school year and that’s a great thing! So I need to put... more

Ya'll, since you don't really know me you don't know that my everyday self is a housewifey/writerly/mommy type (you probably could have guessed that) but all of that hides the real me: IDEA LADY.

I have five hundred "amazing" ideas a week. Typically they come to me when I'm in the middle of something else, like trying to write a blog entry or folding laundry or revising something that's due in 24 hours. My husband just rolls his eyes when I tell him I have an idea; my friends are in awe (and they wonder how I ever get anything done from thinking so much). My mother sighs. My sisters laugh.

But... more

I have a little cooking dilemma this weekend. My sister and her family are in town and Sunday night we are having a family cookout. What's the problem, you ask?

Everything! I answer!

My mom and step-dad are vegetarian, I am gluten intolerant, my brother-in-law is a serious foodie, and my oldest son as well as my husband are picky as all get-out.

What to cook?

I thought about shrimp and grits (minus the shrimp but plus some sauteed onions and peppers for my parents) as a possibility. My sister and her husband are visiting from San Diego, which no doubt has... more

According to this article in the New York Times (you may need to login or sign up or something to see it), President Putin has urged the Parliament in Russia to give money to women who have children in order to address the problem of rapidly decreasing population growth in Russia. Fewer children are being born to Russian people than are needed to replace the death rate "driven above norms in industrial nations by high rates of heart disease, cancer, alcoholism, accidents, violence and suicide."

Women... more

Beautiful pictures and maps of the historic Moscow subway are all over the Internet...but what they don't show you is what it's really like down there under the city.

I grew up outside of Boston, so I'm intimately familiar with that subway system. I've been on the subway in NYC, DC, Atlanta, London, and Paris, and despite the characteristic ancient stinkiness in the older metros, I've enjoyed riding on those trains. But never have I been so far underground and so amazingly confused as in the Moscow Metro.

About the underground part - there are some stations... more

Last week I posted about a wonderful cookbook that Lisa Finneran, an adoptive parent, created to raise money for children in Russian orphanages: Ya Tibya Lublu. "Ya Tibya Lublu" is Russian for "I Love You." Food=Love, Love=Mother, Ya Tibya Lublu=great gift for a mother with children adopted from Russia.

And no, I am not getting a kickback from this organization! All of their profits go towards the orphans in Russia. When you order the cookbook (from arkangels.org) you can give an additional donation to the organization. Wouldn't... more

I have a confession to make. I just sat at my computer, ate a mess of potato chips, one of my husband's frozen peanut butter cups, and followed it with an orange (my lame gesture at eating healthy) and a glass of water. Oh, the bloat! And I still plan on eating lunch in an hour.

Not good. Bathing suit season is coming! (Note to those of you who are waiting to adopt: once you have children you CANNOT just tell people you aren't fond of swimming, which was my long-used strategy before children. You must accompany them into the water, and you can't do this in your capri pants.)

My... more

When I went to talk to my older son's class last week about my book, I asked the children to give me feedback about my presentation. I want to do more of these types of talks to kids and I don't want to bore them. They told me they liked it and that it wasn't boring, and they also told me they wanted to know more about life in Russia and life in the orphanage (the teacher asked me to focus on how a book was made...so I had only glossed over Russia and orphanage life).

I told them a little bit about life... more