FamiLee Life

Speaking of Two Tongues

It's timely that Mark Bittman wrote a NYTimes article on the meat industry and its links to pollution because I just received our butchered beef which we purchased with a group of friends. As I previously wrote, we purchased the beef from a local, small production farmer who raises the grass-fed cattle without hormones/antibiotics. So, we now have stuffed in our freezer about 40 lbs of beef, including 9 lbs of ground beef, a few thick steaks, some roasts, and soup bones. Plus, I got 2 cow tongues and some liver. Wait, huh? How does one get two tongues from one slaughtered cow? Well, it turns out that the butcher had leftovers from another cow and offered it up to us. Because I had asked for one tongue, I got two!

If you have any recipes on how to cook cow tongue, comment on this post! All I know thus far is that you need to boil it to soften the meat and then peel off the bumpy skin!

Second Place Finish (with help)

What a gorgeous Winter weekend in Minnesota to enjoy the Art Shanty Projects. On Saturday, I loaded up my single-speed stallion (aka SS Amnesty) and drove out to Medicine Lake for the BIcicle races. The track is about one-half mile in length and we had to race twice around. In the first race, there were about 8 to 9 [correction - 10 or 11 based on videoclip] of us riders ranging in age and type of bicycle. Among the more serious entrants, there were probably about 8 of us. After riding in the middle of the pack, I got a lucky break when Paul who was in the lead wiped out on a turn and took out another rider. So with not much left in the race, I was able to slip into a second place finish. Afterwards, I enjoyed the beauty of the lake, visiting other shanties, talking with friends, and snacking on some food. At 3 pm, I decided to compete in the third race of the day along with good friends Erin and Liesl (and again with Paul). At one point during the first lap, I was actually in the lead, but Andrew M. sped by me on his 21-speed mountain bike and I just stared at his back the rest of the ride. Then, near the end of the race, I hit a patch of ice, got off-course, and ended up 4th. Not bad given that my legs were burning and I was exhausted. Phew! Nothing says Minnesota like riding a bicycle in the middle of Winter on a lake! After warming myself up in Paul's woodworking shanty, we went to eat some bbq and then had a private karaoke session in the Norae Shanty. A perfect day.

Injured Reserve on First Day of Class

I had planned to go into work on Monday despite it being the MLK holiday. I planned to work on a manuscript and prepare for my graduate course which is meeting today (Tuesday). Braving the cold, I bundled up and drove to campus. I walked up to the building door and.... it was locked. I forgot that it was locked on holidays and I did not have access to the building. The facilities management people recently switched our building locks from keyed to keyless entry, but my employee card was not working. Argh! I looked around the building, hoping someone was around to open the door, but it was to no avail. So, I made my way back to the parking garage and drove home.

Once home, I procrastinated for a bit and then started to clean up the office. HW and I have lots of unopened boxes that needed to be sorted through and filed away. I decided to move the table and bookcase and just rearrange everything. At one point, I went upstairs to drop off some stuff. On my walk back down the stairs, I slipped while holding a few small items and fell hard on my right elbow and left hand. Of course, as bad luck would have it, I had placed three framed art pieces on the steps (temporarily as I was cleaning the office) and that is where my left hand landed. Crash! Shattered glass everywhere but (amazingly) just a small cut on my palm. Phew. Major accident diverted. My right elbow also stung but there appeared to be no blood through the shirt. Another phew.

As the day went along, my right elbow stiffened up and I noticed that my neck really got kinked/stiff from the jolt to the ground. By evening, I noticed that I actually did cut my elbow. Moreover, it was really swollen and black and blue. And my range of motion was quite limited. Oh great. I touched the area and made sure I could move without sharp pain. All was okay or enough okay that I don't think there is a broken elbow or anything. Still, I am definitely on injured reserve. Enough so that I didn't play basketball last night.

So here I am today. Able enough to type (and blog!) and, although on injured reserve, I am good enough to work and fortunately to teach tonight. Let's hope the fall and injury was not a premonition for the rest of the semester. Wish me luck.

It Has Begun...

THE ART SHANTY PROJECTS 2008 opens TOMORROW on Medicine Lake in Plymouth, MN. The ASP runs for five weeks, open on Wednesdays and Weekends for visits and activities. Come check it out!

This year's crop of artist renditions of Minnesota's ice house tradition looks quite promising. A group of us helped Hapa9 and PhT move and build their shanties last weekend before the weather got bitter cold. I'm curious to check out the weekly bicycle races that are purported to take place. I suspect though that I will mostly be singing.

Brrrrr! Get out and exercise!

Yesterday was the "warm" day of the week. I believe the daytime (and early evening) temperature hovered around 20 degrees and then dipped to the single digits by nightfall. There also was a fairly strong wind, so I am sure wind chill (that elusive gauge) dropped the temps down further. Still, it was a lovely day/night. It was a night of birthday celebration for PhT, so some of us decided to ride our bikes to/from various locations and go ice skating at Bryant Square Park. It was indeed chilly, but I felt fine with the right clothing and as long as we kept our bodies moving. Of course, no amount of clothing can prevent me from feeling sore after falling down so much while skating. I am not a horrible skater but I am by no means graceful. The falling largely occurred because we were playing a game of tag and I had to make some evasive maneuvers and quick stops. Oh well. It was certainly a workout!

In a recent NYTimes article, researchers discuss myths associated with exercising in the cold and emphasize that it is very do-able. It's a worthy read for those of us stuck in the midst of the Winter cold.

Getting More Sleep (for our kids' sake!)

Drawing by Tamara Shopsin, from NYTimes

I was always an early riser as a child. Too early, in fact. Add in that I was not much of a reader (except the sports and comics sections of the newspaper which was not delivered early enough) and you had a kid that used to sit in front of the static waves of the television until the first program began around 5:30 am. Yep, I got up early. I was the energizer bunny back then. By high school, my body started to slow down and I was getting up a bit later. Still, I was never one who needed lots of sleep. Today, I get an average amount (8 hours) but can operate fine on much less (or so it seems to me).

That all said, I never really appreciated the beauty of sleep until I began to conduct research on it after college. It was my first "real" full-time job upon graduation and it lasted about 10 months before I left for graduate school. In that time working in a sleep research lab (at the esteemed Brigham and Womans Hospital/Harvard Medical School), I learned to read/score EEG waves, hook up people with electrodes, run cognitive performance tests, and watch people take naps repeatedly throughout the day. It was pretty fascinating stuff (and boring for long stretches of time because watching someone sleep is only so enthralling). I learned quickly how much our quality of sleep determines the quality of one's waking hours.

In a nicely written NYTimes op-ed, Nancy Kalish makes a case for having later start-times for high school. It's worth a read. It's nice to see UMN research cited and to see Minneapolis has been at the leading edge of making the switch.

14 More Minutes...

of daylight each day. Since the passing of the Winter Solstice, the days are back to getting longer. There is one week left of Winter break before the Spring semester begins. It's also good to stay positive right now with temperatures dipping below zero this week (and the wind chill makes it even worse) and, more tragic, the recent death of a fellow cyclist. I did not know Rachel Dow but she was a UMN student and avid biker. She was a dear friend of many people whom I know and used to work briefly at my favorite coffeeshop in town (CRC). So take 14 minutes to remember loved ones who have passed on and to show your love for those in our lives right now. And then take the next 14 minutes to enjoy the extra bits of sunshine and the last week of quiet on campus.

Growing Up Dangerously (and Loving It!)

Having parents who worked all day (and night) and not being over-scheduled to death with after-school activities left me with lots of time to wander, explore, find things, take things a part, build things, and all the other glories of childhood play. But at some point between childhood and adulthood (actually, more like late adolescence), I stopped doing as many "dangerous" things. As I aged, I became more caught up in consumerism (buying instead of making), lazy with my time and efforts (TV was intoxicating), and eventually I lost a sense of self-efficacy in tinkering. Gevert Tulley's mini-lecture at the recent TED conference reminds me why doing dangerous things are good for a child's development.

Nowadays, I feel the urge to get back to those tinkering days. I think getting back into bicycling has been a good first step. Initially, I was taking the easy way out and just bringing things to the bike shop to get fixed or replaced. Now, I am re-learning what I used to know how to do as a kid. Taking a part a bike and fixing it up. The upcoming Art Shanty Projects is another good opportunity to live more dangerously with power tools. Despite being a homeowner for 5 years or so, I still have a dearth of tools (manual and power). But helping my friends put up their shanties will give me a chance to get back in the groove.

Hm...I don't usually do New Year's Resolutions but maybe this can be sort of one. Hold me to it now!

Surrogate Mothers, International Adoption: A Case of Entitlement?

“The legal issues in the United States are complicated, having to do with that the surrogate mother still has legal rights to that child until they sign over their parental rights at the time of the delivery. Of course, and there’s the factor of costs. For some couples in the United States surrogacy can reach up to $80,000.”

Would you want this woman owning your womb?

Judith Warner's blog post in the NYTimes titled Outsourced Wombs provides a critical examination of the business of international surrogate motherhood whereby Americans are paying poor women in India to carry a child to term so the American couple/parent can adopt the child.

It's a powerful essay that causes us to pause and perhaps for some to reconsider the larger geo-political consequences and implications beyond the desire to have a child, to form a family.

Update: Here is another story on Indian adoption with a different twist. Again, there are no clear cut right/wrong answers. Just more for us to consider in earnest.

New Website to Explore

I noticed that my departmental colleagues at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research have a new website up and running. MCTFR was mentioned in a recent post on twins separated at birth and have been conducting groundbreaking research in twins and adoptive families for decades.

I have been associated with the center for the past few years and am fortunate to collaborate with Dr. Matt McGue on the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study. This study has been following the lives of adopted and biological siblings in families. Because of the demographics of adoptive families in Minnesota, many of the adopted adolescents in the study are Korean American. Herein lies my interest in the SIBS project.

Having a Cow and Eating It Too

Courtesy of KPN

Meet Melody. She is around 18 months old and soon will be slaughtered for beef consumption. I am not sure if the recipients of her death will be us, but we are slated to receive one-tenth of a cow in a few weeks. KPN has been coordinating this beef purchase for Team Potluck and has blogged about it here. Our group is actually purchasing 3/4th of a cow with another person taking the last quarter. Of this three-quartered purchase, HW and I are receiving about 50 lbs pre-butchered. We expect the final weight in butchered beef to be around 35 lbs.

I have never been a huge red meat eater. In fact, I have not had a beef hamburger since I was 16 years old and don't plan to eat one anytime soon. Since moving to Minnesota, I have resumed eating beef a little at a time. Initially, I ate beef after a decade+ long hiatus when I visited South Korea in 2001 because my hosts would take me out to Korean restaurants and order lots of bbq for me to eat. Culturally, I could not say no to this kind offer. Then, my colleague and surnamed sister Erika in history joked that I would be eating beef after a couple of years living in Minnesota because the same thing happened to her. Ever the prescient historian, I am now a semi-beef eater. In fact, I ate some Korean short ribs last night with some friends.

With this beef purchase, HW and I will have to become creative in how we make use of it. I am thinking of hosting a beef-fest to share the bounty with friends. I also strangely enough really wanted the cow tongue and will make something with it. I recall eating cow tongue as a child and will try to recreate the meal. When I told my dad about the beef purchase, he immediately asked if I was getting the tail bones. I don't have dibs on the ox tail (used for soups) but I did tell him about the tongue. He went on to say how to cook it (basically, boil it).

So, comment if you have some tasty beef recipes for us to try!

Chinese Couple Reunited with Daughter

Photograph from New York Times

I believe that I blogged about this news story a couple of years ago (and tried to find local resources to help) and am glad to say that it has been successfully resolved in the courts (finally!). The story involves a young Chinese girl who was placed temporarily in private foster care because her parents (who were international graduate students from China) could not afford to care for her at the time. When they were more settled and stable in their lives, they sought to regain custody, but the White couple who was caring for the child refused to relinquish the girl and wanted to adopt her. The ensuing legal case reeked of racism, White privilege, and cultural ignorance. Finally, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in favor of the girl's parents and she has been reunited with them. Read here for more info.