Cambridge Mom’s Blog

The Somerville Arts council and the City of Somerville is sponsoring a free outdoor Jazz concert this Saturday afternoon, as well as evening events all week.  Check out the schedule and lineup for Saturday and the entire week.

The outdoor concert kicks off with the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, who I have seen previously during the Honk Festival, an annual funky march band event in the fall in Davis Square. This fun, energetic, goofy “marching” band that will start the concert by marching at 2 pm Saturday from Davis Square to Powder House Park (across from 136 College Avenue.)  Second in the lineup is the Somerville High School Jazz Band.  My kids love seeing other kids perform.  Then the adult professionals — all listed in the schedule.

Strawberries in the morning, music in the afternoon.  Sounds just about right to me.

Tags: blues, concert, Jazz, music, somerville

Strawberry season is in full swing.  My three year old daughter and I visited Verrill Farm in Concord yesterday and picked nearly 5 pounds (and probably ate another two) of “low-spray” berries at $2.75 per pound. The berries were abundant, so glossy, like an advertising photo, and sweet.   I kept telling my daughter to pick the ones that were “really red.” We had picked the previous week at our CSA, Waltham Community Farms, and those seemed a little smaller and tastier but it may have been just the excitement of the 1st pick of the season.  The advertise picking daily from 9 - noon, but I would call ahead because we went on the only sunny day this week and they were planning on being open until 3 pm.  Overall picking can be a quick trip.  We were done in about a 1/2 hour.  But the sun (what sun?) and the stooping can be brutal (I actually sad between the rows!)  And prepare for berry stains everywhere.

I waffled over how much to pick, and then went overboard, or so I thought.  Just over 24 hours later we have less than a handful left.  I picked up a little rhubarb at the Verrill Farm store for a cooking adventure.  A quick search on “easy strawberry rhubarb recipes” yielded a fantastic cobbler recipe.  I followed the dough recipe and fudged the rest.  It was pretty forgiving when I tried to substitute tapioca with corn starch and only had a cup of rhubarb.

I may try another farm next week or stick to Verrill Farms because it is so convenient (just west on route 2, a little further than Walden Pond, then south on Sudbury Road.)  If you are looking for a party, their annual Strawberry Festival is this Saturday, June 20th, noon - 4 pm.  I have attended their corn and tomato event in the summer — it is not a tiny little event — but we didn’t find it too overwhelming.  Music, hay rides, pony rides, food and strawberries.

I have heard that Land’s Sake in Weston (who also sells at the Davis Square farmers market) is pretty close (just off of 95 south of 2 and north of the pike.) They offer no-pesticide strawberries and also have a strawberry festival this Saturday, June 20th at 10 am.  I suspect their event might be more low key — still have live music and activities for kids, but charge admission ($4 adults, $2 for kids, 2 & under & members free.)

To find another place for strawberries, check out the Pick Your Own website or another link to pick your own in New England.   Please share your favorite pick your own farms.  I can’t wait for blueberry season!

The latest book parents I know are buzzing about….

A little over a year ago newspaper columnist Lenore Skenazy got a lot of praise and censure after writing about deciding to let her 10 year old son take the subway home alone (read the original column here).

I was quite pleased to see the column when it first ran (or, you know, when it first ran, and then got forwarded around on email until it landed in my inbox), since I spend an inordinate amount of time idly wondering when the kids will be old enough to walk to grocery store (which we can see from our front door - admittedly across a busy street - but there are crosswalks and stoplights that function quite nicely!) when we run out of something. Happily, she’s now written a book, and has put up a blog, which is an entertaining catalog of all kinds of overprotective parenting and in loco parentis news stories.

Listen to Skenazy on Here and Now with Robin Young here.

Tags: books, Free Range Kids, Lenore Skenazy, parenting

This might be the yummiest part of our current festival overload around town. Details here.

Would say more about my love of local strawberries but we’re off to attempt to get a table at The Friendly Toast for a first visit - hoping it will work if we show up when they open at 8:00. One advantage to having children who wake early on a Sunday I suppose.

Looks like we won’t get a gorgeous sunny day, but it will be mostly cloudy until late afternoon, so get out while you can and check out the 30th Cambridge River Festival. All kinds of art and performance along the river, sponsored by the Cambridge Arts Council.

I will be down there all afternoon helping out at the Cambridge Public Schools exhibit, which will be highlighting some of the arts achievements at schools across the city - there will be performances, crafts, a puzzle to solve, and art on display - come and check it out!

Growing up we had a rhubarb patch, and I loved it then and love it now. Anything sweet and tart (sometime, if you have some extra rhubarb, peel a stalk and dip it in sugar - my mom was very conscientious about our eating and this was one of the few times we had access to pure sugar - YUM).

I love love love strawberry rhubarb pie, and at a friend’s block party yesterday was eagerly gobbling up rhubarb crumble - So I can’t honestly say I ever really feel like I need new things to do with rhubarb, since it’s a seasonal thing and I enjoy it so thoroughly in crumble and pie concoctions.

But these pictures of Rhubarb Rosemary Daiquiris are so luscious I’m tempted. Like a do-it-yourself Om Restuarant cocktail. Plus, I have a bunch of rhubarb in my fridge intended for strawberry-rhubard pie - but we keep eating all the strawberries before I get around to it -

Now that Harvard and MIT have wrapped up their commencements and other festival rites, it’s festival season for the rest of us -

Jose Matteo is putting on the Dance for World Community Festival today - with performances until 6:00 and dancing in Harvard Street thereafter.

Down by the river, The Boston Dragon Boat Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary - race finals are tomorrow starting at 9am.

Next weekend, the Cambridge River Festival will also be putting on its 30th.

I am a big fan of Steve Parker’s stand at the Central Square farmer’s market and was so glad to see him there yesterday (last year he didn’t start coming to Central until later in the season). He was there yesterday with all kinds of early spring goodies - radishes, white turnips, spinach, chard - and pea tendrils, which I hadn’t tried before.

As my daughter pointed out, they were cute and curly (tendrils, you know) and tasted just like peas. Great to munch on raw or chop into a light spring salad. Sauteed with garlic and olive oil they reminded me of a sweeter version of what my mom always does with broccoli rabe. Bright and fresh - like bites of spring - maybe just psychological, but I felt like my body was sucking up something it hadn’t had in months, some depleted nutrient of some kind….My daughter (6) gobbled it up - son (4) not so much, but he’s a bit of a meataholic, and suspicious of things that aren’t made of sausage.

The radishes we nibbled on, dipping them in salt. However, if you’re looking for something fancier to do with them, check out this recipe from Tony Maws of Craigie on Main.

11:30am-6:00pm in the parking lot behind Harvest Co-op.

As I recall from early days last season, it will be plants (flowers and veggies for your flowerbeds/patio recession garden!), lettuce, radishes, and other early things. It seems a little early yet for local berries but that is right around the corner - hurray!  Austin Brothers  will be there with locally raised meat, and they usually have delicious fresh eggs as well.

We’ll be heading over after school. The kids are really excited - although I suspect that may have something to do with the prospect of cookies from the Hi Rise stand…..

Lots of other markets opening around town this week and next:

Cambridge Charles Square Farmers’ Market
Charles Hotel at Harvard Square
Fridays, 12 noon - 6 p.m. (June 5 - November 20)
Cambridgeport Farmers’ Market
Morse School parking lot
Magazine Street & Memorial Drive
Saturdays, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. (June 6 - October 24)
Cambridge/Harvard University Farmers’ Market
Near Sanders Theatre
Corner of Oxford and Kirkland streets
Tuesdays, 12:30 p.m. - 6 p.m. (June 16 to October 27)
Kendall Square Farmers’ Market
500 Kendall Street, Kendall Square, Cambridge
Thursdays, 11 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. (June 4 to November 5)

One of the main reasons I live in a city is because you can walk or take public transportation everywhere.  That is why I was shocked to find myself loading my kids in and out of the car everyday to get to school.   We were always running late, I couldn’t get the little one in the little one to stay in the stroller, it was raining — all the excuses that sent me to the car. But a few months ago, some parents at my son’s school (Healey in Somerville) pushed Walk Ride Day (last Friday of every month) organized by Green Streets.  So we walked with the “walking school bus” and got our photos in USA Today (check out the photo gallery to see a close-up of my son’s feet!) I cannot tell you how thrilled my son was to be walking to school with a gang of kids and parents.  The next month it was rainy out and most bailed, but we were committed and discovered the most wonderful thing — the MBTA bus.  Yes, people ride it every day but I felt like I had struck gold — several buses run during the morning rush our, it drops us off a few blocks from school, kids 11 and under are free (with paying adult) and most importantly my kids finally have an incentive to get moving in the morning.  “If you don’t get dressed right away we won’t be able to take the bus to school…”  A neighborhood family has joined us on our bus run, and we picked up another friend to walk the last leg to school once we get off the bus.  We leave the house only 10 minutes before I “try to” leave when we take the car, and it is fixed time, if we don’t leave we don’t make the bus. A little activity and meeting friends dramatically improves my son’s transition to school in the morning.  I am really happy about the change.  I don’t know if I would have been willing to make the time to see what a different commute was like if it wasn’t for the Walk Ride day.

So find the MBTA bus or subway schedule, figure out car free commute and join in the Walk Ride day this Friday, May 29th.  Or volunteer to organize Green Streets at your school.  And check out the Green Streets Initiative Sponsors and Promotions offering discounts of 5 - 20% on local retailers you probably already shop at (Tags, Cafe Zing, bike shops, Vintage, Redbones, etc.) including a free 1/2 scope of ice cream at Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Central Square.

‘Tis the season - for buying a new home on the spring market, or planning a warm-weather renovation. With many thanks to Cambridge mom Erin Rowland, we are able to share a very comprehensive list of key issues and resources to keep in mind when considering this important health concern. More resources may also be found through Lead-Safe Cambridge.

Erin Rowland writes:

Growing up, I never heard much about the issue of lead exposure or lead poisoning. Like many people, I assumed the problem had been taken care of years ago, when gasoline was deleaded and lead paint was banned. As a result, it came as a huge shock when, in the late 1990s, blood tests for my eldest niece found elevated levels of lead. A year or two later, tests for my eldest nephew showed the same thing. The lead was detected in routine tests administered when each child was about a year old.

The similarity of the results was especially surprising to me because the kids are from different sides of the family and live in different areas. My nephew lives in Michigan, while my niece lives nearby in Newton. As I watched both sets of parents scramble to figure out what was going on, my education about potential sources of lead exposure began.

Several years later, when I became pregnant, I considered myself educated and aware of the hazards posed by lead, and my husband and I took many steps to reduce exposure as much as possible for our son. But we chose not to have our home professionally tested for lead; our realtor had scared us into thinking that it might make it harder to sell our house later. Also, we were worried that if we tested the house professionally, we would be compelled to completely remove all the lead-tainted trim in our house.

As a result of that mindset, we relied on home kits to test for lead paint in our house. We thought we knew where all the lead was, and we thought we had contained it. We were wrong - and came perilously close to embarking on a home renovation project that almost certainly would have resulted in lead poisoning for our son. Thankfully, that did not end up happening, but as a result, I have become a strong advocate for raising the level of public discussion about lead and passing more effective laws to reduce the surprisingly high number of lead poisoning cases that still occur today.

Jump to this page for a summary, with links to other resources, of what Erin has learned about sources of lead exposure. She hopes it will be helpful to other parents who are concerned about minimizing the threat posed by lead in the home environment! If you have further question for Erin please leave them in the comments.

A beautifully simple concept and well-executed set of photos. Amuses, entertains….then really gets you thinking.

http://www.good.is/post/picture-show-you-are-what-you-eat/