Sunday Brunch: Baked Eggs with Peashoot & Apple Salad

Every Thursday I post a recipe I’ve successfully made during the week using (mostly) non-processed, grocery store ingredients.
I’m giving Dinner Thursday the week off; Sunday brunch is filling in.
This past weekend we had friends over for brunch, and I made baked eggs, which look elegant, but are about the easiest way of cooking eggs I [...]

Your Family Needs a Vacation

Between the still depressing economy, the possible swine flu pandemic, and the new cyberweapons race, I’m feeling the need for a vacation.
About this time of year families like us, who are a little behind the eight-ball, start thinking about summer travel.  (Smarter and better organized families have booked by February/March.)  Even though vacationing may seem like a [...]

Is Breast-Feeding Making Working Women Poorer?

Ah-ha! says Hanna Rosin in a recent post on Slate.com’s blog The XX Factor titled Breast-feed More, Earn Less.  She finally has proof that breast-feeding really does hold working women back: a new study from Princeton University that, she writes, shows a correlation between women who breast-feed and lower earnings a decade later.  
But there’s [...]

Management Friday: Stop the Squabbling

I don’t have any scientific data on this, but anecdotally I’m hearing about an uptick in office squabbling from a number of managers.  In this time of cost-cutting and recession, people seem to be more suspicious; more likely to ascribe bad motives to each other; less receptive to good ideas from others; and more prone [...]

Dinner Thursday: Mushroom Risotto

Every Thursday I post a recipe I’ve successfully made during the week using (mostly) non-processed, grocery store ingredients.
Risotto is one of those things that sounds difficult, but is actually very, very easy.  It’s a great quick, vegetarian (or not) main dish that can be adapted to whatever vegetables you have in the house.  Some of [...]

Quality Time with YouTube

Baby Bee and I love YouTube.  A couple of nights a week we sit together a watch clips of different shows — many from my childhood, some in other languages, some from more contemporary shows.  Our time with YouTube is fun, interactive, often educational.  In short, it’s quality time for us.
The great thing about YouTube [...]

Michelle Obama and the Fashion Statement of Working Motherhood

Yesterday the Toronto Star ran this article how about Michelle Obama is inspiring Canadian working mothers, who hope that her focus on work-life balance will spread across the border.  I was partly interested in this because, when compared with the US, Canada’s family policies don’t seem too bad.  Mothers can take up to 52 weeks of [...]

Career Change a Luxury for Most Working Parents

Over the weekend The New York Times ran this article in the Business section suggesting that the recession might offer an opportunity for people to “chase their career dreams.”  I liked the break from all bad news, all the time; however, based on the people profiled, I was struck by how impossible shifting careers might [...]

Management Friday: Counting the Hours

Every Friday I write about a topic of particular interest to working parents who manage people.

I recently came across the TimeCorder, a product that allows employees to input their tasks hourly so managers can track activities and determine how long it takes to complete tasks.  Reading about the TimeCorder I couldn’t decide whether it was [...]

Dinner Thursday: Artichokes with Lemon Butter

Every Thursday I post a recipe I’ve successfully made during the week using (mostly) non-processed, grocery store ingredients.
The beauty of a good artichoke is that it requires virtually no preparation.  My mother used to just chop off the stem and steam them whole.  I do a little more, peeling back the tough outer leaves and [...]