Kushies

Yesterday I ran across some baby booties by Kushies in the Carnegie Museum of Art store (they are branching out and diversifying I suppose). They were very stretchy and so perfect for clothing babies. At two for $11 I didn't think they were too overpriced but since our splurge over the weekend at the Japanese store in DC, I was reticent to continue buying. Plus they were sized 0-3 months and yet had non-slip soles - what baby walks before 11-12 months? But there were cute enough for me to look up their website http://www.kushies.com/ and browse through it and their online catalog - which is very well done in Flash with turnable pages. That's the way online books should be and maybe in the near future they will be. Then will fingers get fat for lack of exercise? Hardly, since with typing at the computer, they already get more exercise than in the past. The only problem with the Kushies catalog is that you can't order directly from the catalog pages but have to go to a separate online buying site.

They have reusable fitted cloth diapers. I'm not sure how to convince Will and Jen to use cloth diapers rather than disposables. I did it for all 3 kids and was very dissatisfied with disposable diapers when I did use them on trips. Plus the Kushies diapers are so colorful and cute - ours were just plain white.

Skunk Cabbage

I went for a hike in Boyce Park this morning and towards the end of it, as I was forging Pearson's Run, I came across a patch of Skunk Cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) peeking through the oak leaf litter. Naturally I was tempted to pull one up and take it home but I didn't because basically I'm a good person. It has been a relatively cold winter with few warm days and so there are still no leafbuds out, except for the skunk cabbage and some nubs on the wild roses. Not even any mushrooms, no chipmunks or squirrels or deer but a lot of birds singing, especially cardinals, and a flock of about 30 Canada Geese flying north. More information on the skunk cabbage from the US Forest Service.
Although we were supposed to get sleet and freezing rain (what's the difference?) last night, we've only had light mist. The ski and tubing slopes at Boyce are still operating and they have torn up a lot of the land with the construction. They also have put in settling basins that look pretty stagnant so I wonder what their plan is for those and whether any environmentalist was consulted.

1001 Foods to Die For

This is one of those big heavy 1001 books that are full of photographs and slick paper. Since they are compiled by a group of English schoolmates, you have to take them with a grain of salt but then you have to take any book like this with a grain of salt no matter who writes it. Oh, wait a minute. This isn't the English "1001 Foods to Eat before you Die" but a Kansas City upstart compiled by Corby Kummer from contributions by a number of well known food experts like Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Julia Child, Elizabeth David, Donna Hay, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Diana Kennedy, Nigella Lawson, Claudia Roden, Jane and Michael Stern and Alice Waters (plus a bunch I am unfamiliar with). At the beginning of the list of Contributors, Kummer writes "The original entries were written by the specialist contributors listed below; subsequent versions of the entries may have been altered." Unfortunately no article is attributed to the contributor so one has really very little idea of where it came from and so has no place to go to. A dead end, as it were, which is very frustrating to librarians.
Should all be forgiven because he includes Chiles Rellenos?

Apparently there is a British version of this afterall: 1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die, although the cover at amazon says 1001 Foods you Must Taste Before you Die (you wonder who made the change). We must have a taste comparison! The library doesn't have this one, which isn't surprising since the publishing date is September 2008.