Lea Zeltserman

I don’t talk about parenting issues too much on this blog. But an article in the Globe and Mail yesterday (“Why is it single people who get stuck working weekends?”), arguing that parents are “privileged” in the workplace, and moreover that maternity leave is an unfair form of privilege/discrimination, left me so enraged, I have »Read More

Flickr photo by Arild Langtind Someone once said to me that denial is the cornerstone of civilization. Being a “glass is more like three-quarters empty” kind of person, I’m inclined to agree. And when denial meets obesity meets well-meaning studies, that glass is woefully empty. We are blessed to live in a time and place »Read More

*This post has been updated.* Things recently noted on the food front, all courtesy of the New York Times… Exhibit A GROWING up in Montreal, Noah Bernamoff had an issue with his mother’s kasha varnishkes. “My mom’s had so much kasha with a noodle here and there,” he said. “I wanted to reverse the process »Read More

Apparently Michelle Obama took a vacation last week. To Spain. She stayed, as is to be expected of the wife of the US president, in a rather swank hotel. And as is also to be expected, she’s been roundly criticized for it, because, as Anna North points out on Jezebel.com, “God Forbid Michelle Obama Takes »Read More

Imagine a teenage girl in a little black dress discovering that a previously inaccessible writer who had moved her with his words, who was world-renowned and had appeared on multiple best-of lists, was powerless to her inner thigh. That in a world where girls were practically invisible, literary influence could exist under the hem of »Read More

Too many links. Not enough time to comment with the wit and/or intelligence deserved. So, a link round-up. Now known  among more enlightened (ok, smarmy) internets circles as “curating.” Not to be confused with that thing people with degrees do in museums.

So circumcision. I’ve been neglectful of this blog lately (vacations, dead computers, more vacations…), and why not jump back into the game with something that’s sure to piss people off. In a post titled “Taking On The Difficult Obligation of Brit Milah,” on The Forward‘s Sisterhood blog, Debra Nussbaum Cohen defends the practice, characterizing it »Read More

I have conflicted feelings about mommyblogging. It’s an activity which, like much of online living, presupposes some kind of inherent relevance to your personal life. But what about the child as art canvas? I’m not talking Sally Mann or Tierney Gearon style photographs of their children in day-to-day life. I’m talking about costuming and photographing »Read More

Tired of hearing about gender bias in professional kitchens? That’s too bad, because the problem isn’t going away. Amidst the hubbub over the recent James Beard Awards, more than a few people noticed the nearly uniform lack of women on the winners’ list. Three out of 24, to be precise. In the four years of »Read More