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.

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It’s called a quick turnaround, a piece with an incredibly tight deadline.  As a reporter it’s scary, exillerating, thrilling and ultimately very satisfying (if it turns out well, which amazingly it usually does).  Here’s how it usually works.  The assignment comes and then I start frantically calling everyone who might possibly know anything about the topic.  If I’m lucky, a couple of them actually pick up.  If they don’t, I just keep calling more people because with a short deadline there’s barely any time for call backs.  Then once the story is almost completely written and it’s basically too late, the call backs start coming.  Here are some recent examples of stories reported and written in 3.5 hours or less.

Off Label Drug Marketing Costs Pfizer:

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So you go to your doctor, she gives you medicine. So far so good. Within the limits of ethics and good medical practice, she can prescribe almost anything she wants to treat whatever ailment you have. Where it gets tricky is when you bring pharmaceutical manufacturers into the equation.

They can only market the drugs they make to treat the specific illnesses the FDA has approved it to treat. To do otherwise is what you call off-label marketing. And that is why Pfizer’s going have to come up with $2.3 billion in civil and criminal fines. From Washington, Marketplace’s Tamara Keith reports. (09/02/09)

Judge Wants Another Look at BofA SEC Settlement Deal:

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There was a great set of news alerts that crossed the wires earlier this week. Monday morning I’m sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when up pops the news that Bank of America will pay a $33 million fine to settle charges it misled investors. Specifically, about billions in bonuses it gave executives at Merrill Lynch.

Not two minutes later came the news that, oh by the way, the Securities and Exchange Commission was suing BoA over those bonuses. So it was pretty obvious that the two sides had worked everything out before hand. Trouble is they didn’t tell the federal judge in charge of the case. He’s put a hold on the deal and set a hearing for Monday morning. It’s just the latest development in the BofA purchase of Merrill Lynch late last year. From Washington, Tamara Keith explains. (08/07/09)

I also covered this issue on the Marketplace Morning Report in a live Q&A with host Steve Chiotakis.

Geithner Tells Banks to Improve:

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Some of the country’s biggest loan-servicing companies have been summoned to the capital. The White House is unhappy with their progress on its Making Home Affordable program. That’s the Obama administration’s plan to help more than three million homeowners modify their mortgages and so stay out of foreclosure. Five months into the program, just 200,000 families have been helped. Tamara Keith tells us what happened at the meeting. (07/28/09)

Banks Told to Improve Rate of Mortgage Modifications:

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The White House has spent a lot of time and energy and political capital on home loan modifications. The administration’s Making Home Affordable program is supposed to modify mortgages for as many as 4 million people at risk of losing being foreclosed on. Today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner let it be known he thinks banks and loan servicing companies aren’t doing their part. And he’s going to be watching. From Washington, Tamara Keith has more. (07/10/09)

Putting Jobs Numbers Into Perspective:

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There are more economic statistics out there than anybody can really keep track of. There are the A-list figures, like gross domestic product and the monthly unemployment report. And then in descending order you’ve got things like the leading economic indicators, which we learned today were positive for the second month in a row. Also the weekly unemployment report — the number of people making their first claims for jobless benefits. That is a notoriously volatile number. It can change a lot from week to week.

But given how important unemployment is in this recession, it’s getting a lot of attention. The Labor Department shared with us this morning that the number of people on the unemployment rolls has fallen for first time since early January. It is a promising sign, to be sure. But also, as Tamara Keith reports now from Washington, more less bad than actually good. (06/18/09)

This weekend (Sept 12-13) on Maryland’s Eastern Shore you can check out a tradition unique to the Chesapeake Bay – log canoe racing. Log canoes are historic boats…on steroids. Their masts are so tall, their sails so large that they have a tendency to tip. A few weeks back I went out to Oxford, Maryland to learn more about these crazy canoes.  My story about them and the interesting bunch of folks who race them every summer airs today on Metro Connection on WAMU.

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This is a series I launched back in May for Marketplace.  The idea was to ask larger questions about the federal economic recovery act by focusing on a single stimulus project.  The project I chose was the first recovery act road project to break ground, a mile-long stretch of potholed pavement.

Part 1 – The first road project launched:

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It’s been about three months since President Obama signed the stimulus bill. Now, some of those shovel-ready projects we’ve been hearing about? They’re actually happening. Tamara Keith takes us to one transportation project in Maryland. (05/21/09)

Part 2 – A new asphalt factory:

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This week, the Obama administration announced accelerated stimulus spending that it says will save or create 600,000 jobs in the next hundred days. But how do you calculate that number of jobs? Tamara Keith tries to figure that out by revisiting a stimulus project she first told us about last month. It’s the very first road project to start construction as part of the stimulus package . (06/12/09)

Part 3 – Road worker takes a vacation:

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On Thursday, the Council of Economic Advisors releases its estimates of how many jobs were created or saved by The Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Package. The first road project funded through the package is just almost complete. All summer, Tamara Keith’s been tracking the repaving of New Hampshire Avenue just outside of Washington, D.C., and she filed this update. (09/08/09)

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A recession is a time to hunker down, work harder than ever and avoid extra expenses…oh like say maternity clothes and diapers.  Or is it…? As I reported on Marketplace yesterday, some women are waiting out this economic downturn by getting pregnant.

A couple of cool notes about the reporting of this story.  First, it was inspired by a couple of fellow reporters who tried to convince me that now was a great time for me to have a baby.  I’ve been working as a temp reporter and freelancer for the last year.  It’s the ultimate “between jobs” status, which they decided made this a perfect time to have a kid.  I didn’t take the advice, but I decided there might just be a story there.  With a kernel of an idea, I needed to find some real people actually bucking recession logic.  I put a query out on Facebook, telling my “friends” that I was working on a piece about people having babies because of the recession.  Amazingly, I got more than one response including the one that led me to Sara Steffens.  See, Facebook is actually good for something other than procratination and publicly saying things you’ll regret.

Any day now, the state’s water supply from the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta could be cut drastically. This time of year the powerful pumps in the delta should be sending millions of gallons of water to cities and farms to the south and the west. But a recent ruling from a federal judge to protect a tiny threatened fish, the Delta smelt, means water operations in California will be anything but business as usual this year.

An epic version of this story aired this morning on The California Report .

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It airs this afternoon nationally on All Things Considered .  In the meantime, enjoy the photos below, shot during the day I spent with a team from the California Department of Fish and Game searching for the ellusive Delta Smelt.  Read More