The other day, I got a message on Facebook from myself.  Well, at least that’s what it looked like.  I had gone 30 years thinking I had a completely strange name that only my hippie parents could come up with.  I suffered through all the mispronunciations and misspellings and mocking from kids who thought my name was similar enough to “Tomorrow” to sing.

But it turns out there are several Tamara Keiths out there, and one of them went through the trouble of finding me.  My friend Rob Sachs thought this was so funny he decided to do a podcast all about people who have the same name.

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Yummy latkes.

If there was a Tamara’s Greatest Hits album, this story would be on it.  Luckily for all of you no such album exists.  Learning to Make Latkes is a funny little story – and more like a personal essay than anything I’ve done since my teenage years as an essayist for Weekend Edition Sunday.  Here’s the audio from the version of the piece that aired on The California Report:

The story was also featured on the NPR Holiday Favorites album.

This may be the ultimate parable of Jewish cooking tradition. Growing up Methodist in a small, central valley town, my first introduction to latkes was through my college boyfriend, Ira, when I went to visit him at his parent’s house in L.A. during Hanukkah.  The whole house had this distinctive scent of grease and potatoes – and it was sort of fishy.  The potato pancakes Ira’s mom and sister made were terrific.  They were crispy and warm and dunked in apple sauce for that perfect balance of grease and fruit. Read More

For some reason this story keeps coming up, so I figured I’d re-post it here on Adventures in Radioland.

I recently placed an order with neighborhoodies.com, a website that makes custom clothing.  When I received my items, something was horribly horribly wrong.  Here’s the note I sent to their customer service e-mail:

“Well…I ordered a pair of the boy-style underwear with the slogan “I heart Ira” printed on them. I had also ordered an “I heart public radio” sweatshirt. The very kind, well-meaning neighborhoodie artist put two and two together and printed an image of Ira Glass on the front of the undies. Problem is, I don’t actually heart Ira Glass in that way (though I do enjoy This American Life). My husband’s name is Ira.

The underwear are totally hilarious, but not what I was going for.”

This is what I ordered. Cheesy, yes.

This is what I ended up with. Yikes!

I new pair arrived a couple of weeks later, sans Mr. Glass.  If you want to hear me telling this story, check out this old episode of B-Side.

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A billboard for the California Milk Advisory Board. I'm the one crawling.

I wouldn’t have picked my first career.  But it started before I was old enough to pick much of anything.  At that time I wasn’t in control of what I wore or ate or even where I went to the bathroom.  I was a child star.  Well, calling me a star might be a bit of a stretch but I was a model and an actress.  Read More