Karen Sandler

Tag: economics

  • Pride and Education

    In the last week, my son and daughter-in-law have both been awarded their PhDs in economics. To say I’m proud of them is an understatement. I’m pretty much doing the Snoopy dance of joy in response to their accomplishments. It’s made even more impressive by the fact that both of them achieved their bachelors degrees in three years rather than the usual four. And they did that by excelling in their high school AP courses so that those classes counted toward their BA.

    On my husband’s side of the family, his dad was an attorney. His mom completed some college. But on my side, both my mom’s mom and dad’s dad only went as far as the 8th grade. My dad didn’t finish high school. He got his GED from the Navy. My mom graduated high school, then attended beauty school. She ended up spending much of her working life as a waitress (although in the last part of her life, she owned a restaurant).

    Of my three sisters, only the oldest one went to college, and she got an AA. I knew I wanted more than that. I remember sitting down with my dad one day, telling him I wanted to go to college. He asked, “But what if you get married and quit?” I told him, “Oh, Dad, I won’t do that.” It seems so old-fashioned for a dad to ask a daughter that question, but at that time, we were on the cusp between women being homemakers only and women beginning to test the waters that only men swam in.

    So I got my BA and later a masters. The first one in my family to go that far. And when I had my own kids, we never lectured them about college, we never pushed them, but it must have been in their DNA. They went straight from high school to college. Leading to a BA for my older son and an eventual PhD for my younger son.

    This blog post is a bragfest, but it’s also me announcing how fanatical I am about education. I feel strongly that kids have to do something after high school, whether it’s four-year college, trade school, apprenticeship. If they want a job that’s going to pay more than minimum wage, that might eventually earn them a profession, they need education. And if there’s any way to do that without a pile of debt at the end, that’s ideal. It sucks that education costs so much at many institutions.

    So I’m going to bask a little in the reflected glow of my son’s accomplishment (and my daughter-in-law’s even though that’s even more reflected). And there will be a massive grin on my face (and a few tears) when they graduate June 14th.

  • Breadapalooza

    On Saturday, my son Ryan and I engaged in a bread-baking extravaganza. I’d requested the day as a Christmas gift–I wanted him to teach me how to make artisan breads. As an extra-special, wonderful bonus, he and my daughter-in-law, Dani, brought my beautiful granddaughter over to spend the day. Dani went shopping with her mother and sister and my husband did the babysitting while Ryan and I baked.

    Although he bakes fantastic breads, Ryan’s not a professional baker. He and Dani are working on their doctorates in economics (yes, in addition to being new parents). Baking artisan breads is a hobby (edging on an obsession :-)) for Ryan. I taught him the basics of bread baking when he was a kid, and now things have gone full circle with him teaching me graduate level yeastonomics.

    The night before our breadapalooza, as instructed by the master, I made two pre-ferments, a biga and a poolish, and left them out on the counter to do their yeasty magic. We started the first actual dough around 9:30am on Saturday. Our goal for the day–two batches of each of three varieties. Each batch made two loaves. The idea was that he would mix, fold and stretch, pre-shape, shape and slash two loaves of Italian, then I would do the same when my turn came. Repeat with potato rosemary bread and with rustic French.

    Here’s the tricky part. I don’t have a commercial oven (alas), and I own only one baking stone. So only two loaves fit in my oven at any given time. We couldn’t make our Italian bread side by side because all four loaves would be proofed and ready to go in the oven at the same time.  As a consequence, everything had to be staggered on the schedule. So what does any self-respecting doctoral candidate do to prepare for a breadapalooza? Create an Excel spreadsheet, of course.

    I printed the schedule out on legal-sized paper and we taped it up onto the stove hood. That schedule was our lodestar. We spent half our time running over to check what we were supposed to be doing next. If you haven’t yet done the math–four loaves of each of 3 varieties of bread–we were making a dozen loaves. And because of the staggering effect, we had six sessions of mixing, six of stretch and fold, six of pre-shaping…you get the idea. Mass confusion at times, even with the schedule.

    Which led to one bobble–the wrong batch of potato rosemary bread got shaped and put into the proofing basket. Instead of using the earlier one that my son had mixed, the one that wasn’t ready for shaping (which I had mixed), got prepped for proofing. This may sound like not a big deal, but when you’re going for perfection in appearance, crumb and taste, it was near disaster.

    With a few adjustments, all turned out fine. The end results were quite spectacular as you can see from the picture.

    We took one each of the three types over to Dani’s parents’ house for dinner that night to celebrate Dani’s dad’s birthday.

    It was a lot of bread, but it was oh-so-wonderful. And what a fantastic day with my son. Bonding over fermentation, gluten development, and autolizing. What more could a mother ask for?

    If you’d like to see Ryan’s perspective of the day, hop on over to his blog entry at The Fresh Loaf. He’s got more pictures to admire.