So, I’ve taken up blogging over at:

Karen Pinco

If you want to read more about what the spy has been up to, come on over!

For an explanation (and other winners) head on over to the MSNBC!

Here are some of ours (the boys each have their own menorah).

Well, its been a long time since I’ve posted much. And since I’ve promised to post photos (just click on them to enlarge) of my trip, I figured I’d better do it before the season has passed.

About a week and a half ago, we took the boys to my hometown. But instead of staying locally, we headed an hour or so north to the Finger Lakes. Growing up in the region, I had no idea there were wineries. Not until I brought my future husband home years ago and my parents took us north on a wine trail….

Getting ready for NaNoWriMo, I decided to set my new novel in the Finger Lakes region. Well, what with a lot of school vacation days and the boys driving me nuts, I had a bright idea. My husband cashed in a vacation day, and we headed off on a ‘research’ trip (some things about writing are fun and my husband hoped on board this project willingly enough).

Its been a while since we’ve been back, but this past weekend had those perfect fall days that start off cold, but warm to a pleasant 70 degrees. The sun was out and a recent frost had caused the leaves to break out in brilliant color, but the rain and wind had yet to knock the leaves off their trees…

On a Saturday, we took the boys to Glenora Wine Cellars, mostly for the tour (but we did sample the wines and walk off with a few). They showed us the machinery that separates the grapes from their stems, extracts the juice, then filters out the sludge. Then it was off to the barrel room.

Here’s a photo of a barrel. Note the plaque? You can buy your own barrel, visit it (I kid you not, the guide says people do), and at last, collect the wine AND the empty barrel.

Here are the fermentation tanks.

The bottling/corking machinery.

By the end of the tour, the boys were getting a bit wild, so we took them to Watkins Glen. Nothing like about a thousand steps to wear them down. Unfortunately, it did us in too.

The next day, my parents kept the kids at home and we set off to sample the wines of those wineries between the lower halves of Lake Cayuga and Seneca. Our favorites? Lucas, Lamoreaux Landing, Wagner, and Standing Stone. The photos below are from Wagner.

On our way out, we passed a ‘limo’. You can sign up for tours that include a driver. No need to sip discreetly and dump the rest (or spit). Those individuals debussing had definitely not been dumping their tastings. They looked to be enjoying themselves thoroughly… Wiffer Wine Tour anyone?

I pre-ordered Out of Time by Samatha Graves, then bought a copy off the shelf literally two days before Amazon.com finally sent my copy.

I gobbled it up in under 24 hours. Had the children not required feeding, transportation to school, and other such care, I’d have finished it in one sitting.

Since the above mentioned children have worn me down today, I’ll make it easy. Tell me why you want this book and whether or not you own a valid passport, and I’ll enter your name in a drawing.

“The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food – but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.

Here’s what [they] want [me and you] to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.”

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: (comments are in parentheses)

1. Venison (grew up near hunters – school was out for buck and doe days)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (yum)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (alligator really, it had a bit of a tang – not bad)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava (yum)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas (a big mistake)
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (on Hey Day at UPenn)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail (if ‘Rabe de Toro’ counts)
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (Of course. I lived in Savannah, GA)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (yes if survival depended upon it)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail (not again)
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (gross)
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (my mom was hoping we wouldn’t ask for the wing…)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (not a repeater…)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Sorry, deadly food and organ meats are out.  How about you?

Anyway, I was at the bookstore this past weekend when I broke down and bought Sam’s new book (that’s mine on the right). I took a photo of it sitting on the kiosk at the front of the store. It only took me two days to read (many interruptions) and is, in my opinion, her best book yet! The next day, Amazon.com shipped me the copy I’d pre-ordered (as soon as it gets here, I’ll have my first give-away).

Then, I had a brilliant idea.

Since I can’t possibly buy every book I want to read, I used to write down the title and author so I could remember to order it later (from either Amazon.com or the library). Then it occurred to me that it would be a lot easier to simply photograph each book I want to read…. It was much faster than writing and within moments I had a photo of every book I want to read. Look! One of my favorite authors has a new book out!

Apparently they’re very rare and the chicks will not hatch (they can’t acess the air pocket when there are two in the egg).  For way more info than you probably want, you can read Twin Yolks and Twin Chooks?

The kids thought it was pretty cool and the oldest had a lot of questions about twins… but no remorse about eating the fried egg.

Originally, the argument against women in medicine was based on our menstrual cycles. It was first argued that we would be unable to function during the menstrual flow or that the hormonal fluctuations would damage the quality of our work. Later a man named Clark would argue in 1873 that, “The most dangerous threat… stemmed from the mistake of educating females as if they were males. Since the uterus was connected to the central nervous system, energy expended in one area was necessarily removed from another.”

Despite this bias, women continued to train as physicians.

In 1870, there were 544 female physicians.

1880: 2,432

1890: 4,557

1900: 7,387

1910: 9,015 (6% of all physicians)

As it turns out, the number of female physicians peaked in 1910 only to drop precipitously shortly thereafter. Why? In 1893, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine admitted the first ever co-educational class of medical students. Women declared the ‘battle’ for equal education won, and woman’s medical colleges began to close with the expectation that medical schools would be open on an equal basis to both sexes.  For a time, they were.

Then slowly, as women’s liberation movements focused on winning the vote, those numbers eroded. The men in control of the schools began to accept only a handful of women into their class, the bare number necessary to claim co-education. Then, women were denied access to nearly all internships and residencies after graduation, particularly the ones at prestigious institutions. Those women who continued in the face of blatant discrimination earned far less than their male colleagues and were denied positions of influence and power within the medical community (based on their ‘lesser’ internship/residency).

And so the enrollment of women in medical schools dropped precipitously.

Although women continued to apply to medical school in the face of nearly certain rejection, the number of women physicians wouldn’t begin to recover until during the second world war when medical schools recruited women out of sheer necessity. Not until the 1970s would women finally begin to be admitted on equal footing with men on the basis of academic merit alone.

Today, most medical schools admit an equal number of women and men.