For peanut:blueberry waffles, honey stix, popcorners, fruit salad (red currants, blue and black berries, raspberries) and grape tomatoes.  For nibs: pb&j, raspberries, and blueberries.

I almost got my 2 year old arrested once.  For public indecency, because i let her pee in a parking lot, after the mechanic of the garage we were stopped at explained that they didn’t have public restrooms.  FAIL!

i guess that’s what the ~idea~ of the ‘courageous conversations’ workshop was, but her presenter lost an opportunity to present, and instead, acted out, and alienated the very people we count on to solve the achievement gap issue.   she mangled the relevance of white privilege, she screwed up the mythology of ‘white culture’, and instead of teaching, she attacked.  so some valid conversations that could have been had (examining the idea behind why so many girls of color flunk PE for not swimming), the inclusion of ‘african american history’ as an elective course, rather than a social studies credit, and things of that nature, weren’t had.  moreover, there was no dissection of ~how~ culture, both ‘white’ and ‘black’, and privilege, and social influence affect education, in every way from how it’s perceived, to how it’s valued.

her presenter gave them the task of filling out a privilege survey.  this is SUCH a useful tool, when used properly.  a lot of people in a dominant culture have a skewed perspective of how pervasive that dominance is.  because when you ARE the baseline, it’s hard to see the baseline, but it’s easy to see the variations.  i like to compare it to people who can tell you that there are 15 handicapped spots in front of the wal-mart, but have no idea how many ‘regular’ parking spaces there are.  so in the survey, it asks the standard questions, i’m guessing, from how well are you represented in media, to how often do you see people who look like you in positions of authority, and things like that.  i’m guessing that most (white) people would be surprised to know that as of 2008 (most recent data available), the SAG boasts a whopping 13.3 % of roles in film and TV go to black folks.  and that’s DOWN from 14.7% in 2007.

the thing is, our brains are hard-wired to look for difference.  i guess it’s a survival mechanism, or something left over from our monkey years, but it has a drastic effect on how we view the world we exist in.  when you are the majority, you see the minority more clearly, but likewise, when you are the minority, you see the majority.  so when you ask white people, for example, to tell you how many black folks they see on TV, they’re likely to quote a statistic closer to 40%, but if you ask black people to tell you how many black folks they see on TV, they’ll estimate 10%.   imagine going through the day where you were reminded at every turn how different from the ‘norm’ you were.  in text books, on teen dramas, in the pages of magazines, in the faces of the authority figures around you, this constant awareness that society has a baseline, and you aren’t it.  it works on all levels, though the most evident, i think, is racial, but you can replace race with ability, or gender, or sexual orientation. a good litmus is how often you hear people use it as a description: ‘i know this black dude/gay chick/handicapped person’.  if you don’t assign an adjective, the default assumption will be white, and, generally male, straight, and able-bodied.

anyway, that’s the point of the privilege survey–to show how being the standard is a privilege in and of itself.  but the presenter of my friend’s class failed epically in demonstrating that fact, i think.  and sure, there might be other times to learn about it, but now it’s always going to be associated with ‘that angry black chick’, and chances are, that will diminish the credibility people assign to it.

so then the other thing that this chick piloted the failboat on, was the ‘culture’ debate.  basically, the idea behind the exercise is to show the difficulty in describing ‘white’ culture, because white culture is american culture.  you can assign some things to ethnic traditions, italian, or irish, for example, but that’s a privilege in and of itself, because knowing what country you hail from is hard when there are no records of your family before the first entry of their names in a slave register.   that’s the point of the culture exercise, as i understand it.  that ‘black culture’ exists, specifically because slaves were lumped together, regardless of country of origin.  so things that could be traced to nigeria, or sierra leone, are instead categorized as ‘black’.  as a bi-racial woman, i can tell you a bakers dozen of my ‘ingredients’, and 12 of them are european countries, and the 13th is ‘black’, because i have no idea what country in Africa my father’s people came from.  if i’m feeling froggy, i might say we come from Tennessee, since that’s as far back as anyone can recall.

but all of that only brushes the surface–because white folks are the base, because black folks were excised from any specific culture and turned into a monolith, because for 400 years, education was punishable by death, because black folks were pitted against each other based on skin-tone, because house-slaves were often offspring of slave owners, they might be secretly taught–then, when slavery ended, and jim crow created separate schools with inferior texts, when you consider that desegregation is younger than my mother–you see how education has a vastly different perceived value in black culture, as compared to the dominant culture–why being educated is often brushed off as ‘acting white’.  there are hurdles, and there are ways to overcome them, but you have to be able to see the course to fix the compass, you know?  and for a workshop designed to open the dialogue, i’d say that was total fail.

BUT! i also think there’s a place for understanding the anger of the presenter.  when you see just how skewed things are, it can be easy to slip into a blame-y sort of mentality, which can make you aggressive, rather than assertive, and that’s great for motivating ~yourself~, but it kind of sucks for fomenting any sort of community revolution, when you’re attacking the people you want by your side.

that’s my 2 cents.  i had more–but the baby woke up. 

me: come on, we have to go vote. (we vote early here, because we can.)
peanut: didn’t obama already win? why are we voting for him some more?
me: we’re not voting for obama this time. this is a mid-term election. we won’t have to vote obama for another 2 years.
peanut: so what are we voting for?
me: other places in government, like, the governor of SC, and also senate and congress.
peanut: oh. what are those?
me: they’re helpers for the president. they tell him what each state wants to have happen.
peanut: so why do we have to vote for them, why can’t he just pick helpers?
me: well, some people really like obama, like we do. and they agree with the things that obama thinks should happen in our country. and some people disagree, and they think the country should be run differently. and so we have to go vote for obama’s friends, so that the things that happen in our country are the good things, and the people in the congress and senate will agree with obama and help him make things better.
peanut: cool. will i get a sticker again?
me: put your crocs on.

My first attempt failed miserably.  We had a power outage, and the crockpot didn’t come back on to ‘warm’ when the power came on, and so i ended up with weird smelling coconut milk.

My second attempt was a little better, because I bought a yogurt maker at amazon.com for 18 bucks.  But I skipped the rice milk powder and the tapioca starch, so I ended up with a final product that tasted like yogurt, but had the consistency of a smoothie.

My third attempt finally worked.  Here’s the modified recipe:

2 cans of coconut milk (I used Thai Kitchen).

3.5 tbs of tapioca starch

1 tbs Better Than Milk Rice Milk Powder

1 probiotic capsule.

Sterilize all your shit.  This keeps the bad bacteria from arguing with the good bacteria, and spoiling the party in your yogurt.

Pour your coconut milk into a low, wide pot. Clip a candy thermometer to the side.  Whisk in your starch and rice milk powder.  then, turn on the heat, and keep whisking it, til it’s 180 degrees.   Let it cool to 110 (took about half an hour or so in my house, with AC on.) and then scoop out a cup, and add your probiotic/yogurt/whatever you’re using to culture to that, and whisk it up til it’s thouroughly combined.  Put that cup back into the pot, and whisk it all together.  Then, either put it in your yogurt maker, or put it in a covered container like a crockpot, and put it on a heating pad, or put it in a cooler with other jars of hot water to keep it at temp, or put it in your oven with a 60 watt bulb, or whatever.  Keep it at 110 degrees for 8 hours or longer, depending on how tart you  like it,

At the end, put lids on your final containers, stick em in the fridge for a few hours, add your fruit or whatever (we add vanilla & sugar) and get your Nom on.

So for the jelly, I just follow the instructions on the pectin box. It’s like, 8 cups of juice to 7 cups of sugar, and an envelope of pectin. easy peasy.

The apple butter was 2 bags of apples, (organic fiji and gala in this case), 2 cups of sugar, and 2 tbs cinnamon. I peeled the apples, and then cored/sliced them with that thing that looks like spokes with 2 handles. I put them in a wide, low pot, with enough apple juice to cover them, and set it to med-low, and simmered it til the apples were soft, then went after them with a potato masher, and smooshed them into a thick applesauce consistency. I greased the crock, and then transferred the apple mixture to it. i set it for low, and vented the lid with a wooden spoon. the recipe suggested 12 hours, but i think my crock runs on molten, because i stopped after 8, and it probably would’ve been best at 6. anyway, you stir it every 2 hours, and then at the last hour of cooking, add 2 cups of sugar, and then in the last 30 minutes, add your spices. (some people like nutmeg and stuff, but i stuck with basic cinnamon, largely because i had no organic nutmeg, and i wanted to keep it all organic.) Then, I spooned it into sterilized 4 oz jelly jars, and processed it in a water bath, for 10 minutes.