I can’t really explain how excited I am to visit the school, meet the students and hopefully share some of the things I’ve learned over those 10 years.   Most of my time will be spent in classrooms, but there is one public event planned.  Here’s the official description:

The Big Story: National Public Radio’s Tamara Keith

When: Wednesday, October 6

Reception: 5:30 PM
Lecture: 6:00 PM

Where: North Gate Hall Library

NPR Reporter and Journalist-in-Residence Tamara Keith discusses radio journalism, the challenge of covering disasters, and NPR’s transition in the digital age, while outlining her experiences covering major stories ranging from the world financial crisis, to the earthquake in Haiti, to the BP oil spill in Louisiana.

…

Let’s hope those improv comedy classes I’ve been taking pay off!

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.

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.

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.

Wedding photo: Bob, Andi, Tamara, Ira and Shannon.

So, Ira and I kept dating (for like a decade) and recently got married.  Over the years, I’ve tried making him some traditional Jewish foods — dishes he remembers from his childhood.  But I’ve basically screwed everything up.  I put dill in the matzo ball soup (big mistake), and my matzo balls were fluffy in stark contrast to what his mom makes.  And my brisket, while quite tasty, is nothing like his mom’s.  So several years ago I asked for her latke recipe.  She photocopied it from a small paperback cookbook, and I followed the recipe exactly, more than once.  But my latkes also were a dud.  They were like over crispy little hash browns.  I gave up and started using Manishewitz latkes in a box — which is essentially admitting defeat.

Then my friends at The California Report convinced me that I should do a story about celebrating Hanukkah as a newly converted Jew.  For me, Hanukkah is all about latkes, even if I make them using a mix.  But with my in-laws coming to town, I decided this little radio story would be a perfect excuse to actually learn how to make the family recipe.

So there we were in my kitchen, my expert latke-making mother-in-law (Andrea) and sister-in-law (Shannon) and me.  I pulled out the recipe and put it on the kitchen counter.  I might as well have left it hidden away in my recipe binder, because they hardly used it!  Instead, they kept referring to what we were making as “Poppy’s latkes.”  Poppy was the patriarch of the family (my mother-in-law’s grandfather) who continued making latkes well into his senior years.  The secrets of Poppy’s latkes are lots of oil in the frying pan and the perfect mixture of shredded potatoes and mushy potatoes.

Clearly, following the printed recipe all those years was setting me up for failure.  The real recipe is in the nuances passed from generation to generation.  Here’s the recipe as close I can recall it.  It contains elements from Sara Kasdan’s cookbook “Love and Knishes,” but has been modified over the years by Ira’s mother and sister working under heavy influence from Poppy’s latke-making tradition.

2 cups grated raw potatoes (measure after draining)
2 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaping tablespoon of flour or matzo meal
1 pinch of baking powder
1 small onion grated (optional)

Put potatoes and onions in a food processor (exact quantity is up for interpretation).  Ideally your food processor will have both a grate and a chop blade running at the same time.  Otherwise grate, then chop until the latkes reach the appropriate mixture of mush and shred.  Add a little lemon juice to the mixture so the potatoes won’t change colors.  Push the mixture into a strainer removing the excess moisture.  Add flour and eggs until it looks right.  Don’t put in too much salt because people are on low sodium diets these days.

Cook the latkes in vegetable oil about a half inch deep in the pan.  Really, there’s no such thing as too much oil.  It is best if the latkes float in the oil just a little but aren’t fully submerged.  Cook until they are quite crispy.  You’re aiming for brown, not golden brown.

Sara Kasdan adds in her book: “Note:  This recipe should serve 4-6 people, but when some people see potato latkes they act like they haven’t eaten for a week.  They will want to make from latkes alone a meal.  When you have people who enjoy so much, you won’t mind grating potatoes all day long.”

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.

Wedding photo: Bob, Andi, Tamara, Ira and Shannon.

So, Ira and I kept dating (for like a decade) and recently got married.  Over the years, I’ve tried making him some traditional Jewish foods — dishes he remembers from his childhood.  But I’ve basically screwed everything up.  I put dill in the matzo ball soup (big mistake), and my matzo balls were fluffy in stark contrast to what his mom makes.  And my brisket, while quite tasty, is nothing like his mom’s.  So several years ago I asked for her latke recipe.  She photocopied it from a small paperback cookbook, and I followed the recipe exactly, more than once.  But my latkes also were a dud.  They were like over crispy little hash browns.  I gave up and started using Manishewitz latkes in a box — which is essentially admitting defeat.

Then my friends at The California Report convinced me that I should do a story about celebrating Hanukkah as a newly converted Jew.  For me, Hanukkah is all about latkes, even if I make them using a mix.  But with my in-laws coming to town, I decided this little radio story would be a perfect excuse to actually learn how to make the family recipe.

So there we were in my kitchen, my expert latke-making mother-in-law (Andrea) and sister-in-law (Shannon) and me.  I pulled out the recipe and put it on the kitchen counter.  I might as well have left it hidden away in my recipe binder, because they hardly used it!  Instead, they kept referring to what we were making as “Poppy’s latkes.”  Poppy was the patriarch of the family (my mother-in-law’s grandfather) who continued making latkes well into his senior years.  The secrets of Poppy’s latkes are lots of oil in the frying pan and the perfect mixture of shredded potatoes and mushy potatoes.

Clearly, following the printed recipe all those years was setting me up for failure.  The real recipe is in the nuances passed from generation to generation.  Here’s the recipe as close I can recall it.  It contains elements from Sara Kasdan’s cookbook “Love and Knishes,” but has been modified over the years by Ira’s mother and sister working under heavy influence from Poppy’s latke-making tradition.

2 cups grated raw potatoes (measure after draining)
2 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaping tablespoon of flour or matzo meal
1 pinch of baking powder
1 small onion grated (optional)

Put potatoes and onions in a food processor (exact quantity is up for interpretation).  Ideally your food processor will have both a grate and a chop blade running at the same time.  Otherwise grate, then chop until the latkes reach the appropriate mixture of mush and shred.  Add a little lemon juice to the mixture so the potatoes won’t change colors.  Push the mixture into a strainer removing the excess moisture.  Add flour and eggs until it looks right.  Don’t put in too much salt because people are on low sodium diets these days.

Cook the latkes in vegetable oil about a half inch deep in the pan.  Really, there’s no such thing as too much oil.  It is best if the latkes float in the oil just a little but aren’t fully submerged.  Cook until they are quite crispy.  You’re aiming for brown, not golden brown.

Sara Kasdan adds in her book: “Note:  This recipe should serve 4-6 people, but when some people see potato latkes they act like they haven’t eaten for a week.  They will want to make from latkes alone a meal.  When you have people who enjoy so much, you won’t mind grating potatoes all day long.”

Off Label Drug Marketing Costs Pfizer:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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)

When I came through the door of the Hanford Sentinel and said I wanted to write a column, the editor I spoke with agreed to let me try it out.  I’m pretty sure he figured he was signing up for a one off deal.  I had different ideas.  So, a couple of days after my first column ran, I sent him another one.  This one charted the course for weeks of columns to come.  Basically I used this column to tell the paper and the readers they’d be hearing from me weekly.  Amazingly, the Sentinel published it too…and another 28 after that.

A pretty bad photo of the family minivan.

Finding America by Tamara Keith (June 1995)

Chevy Chase did it. So have the guys from Easy Rider (a cult turned main stream film that came out in the 60’s. It starred Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, and Peter Fonda.). But it somehow seems different with my family. The great American family vacation can be a pretty scary thought. Movies like National Lampoon’s Family Vacation, Lost In America or Easy Rider have glamorized the idea of crossing America in (or on) a motor vehicle.

For the next six weeks I will be putting up with my little brother, motion sickness, unfriendly locals, and strange insects (I’ve heard Texas has some really huge misquotes) all on the quest to find America, or what’s left of it. Are there places in our country where the true spirit of America is still alive? I certainly hope so. However, could it be possible that the history books and folk tales have created an America that never really existed. I’d probably be more likely to find “America” in Euro Disney than in our nation’s capitol. Washington, DC’s beautiful statues and government buildings are now marred by security guards and “no parking” zones (to prevent car bombs). Maybe America isn’t the wholesome Mecca that we want it to be.

This vacation (if you can call it that) will include visits to all the major tourist attractions across the country (Mt. Rushmore, Niagara Falls, the Statue of Liberty, plus the Washington, DC experience). However, it will also include several non-traditional (and non-educational) stops. We will be traveling to all of the 6 Flags Theme Parks in the U.S. Great! We’ll sit in the car for 5 hours (at least), and then stand in line for 2 hours just to go on a 30 second ride. Oh well, it sounds a little better than searching for the headstones of my dead ancestors in all the nation’s graveyards (I have a friend that actually had to do that with her parents).

This trip is just another episode in my father’s ongoing mid-life crisis. So far he has bought a motorcycle (that’s too powerful), hundreds of CD’s (he already has them on vinyl), and now he’s planned a forced march across the country in a Lumina mini-van. 30 years ago he went on a trip around the country and now that my brother and I are old enough to “appreciate it”, he plans to give us the same experience. It seems that my father has roped us into his most recent nostalgia trip.

As my father searches for the fountain of youth somewhere in America, I am forced to become a pre-teen again. At least as far as hotels and restaurants are concerned I’m still 12. I wonder what they’ll think if they see me drive up in the family van.

While writing this column I was handed the latest itinerary “update.” It is 4 pages long and filled with dates, times, confirmation numbers, and little descriptions like “…scenic drive to Chicago” or “after having fun….” This booklet of mandated enjoyable activities has the title “Trek Around America 1995” plastered (in 24 pt. bold Star Trek font) across the top. I Should never have said that there is nothing to do, because the way my schedule is filled with “interesting experiences” I won’t have time to just do nothing this summer.

Before I let my negative expectations run away with me let me establish the fact that I really will have a good time and learn something…I think. The next time you hear from me I will be “on the road” while each member of my family will be “in search of” something different. Mom will be looking for the holistic herbal cure to claustrophobia. Peter Pan, I mean Dad’s quest is for the hair he lost on his last trip across the country. My brother is looking for the happy medium between junk food and gravity defying rides. For me, I would be thrilled to get a look at the Mtv studios, meet Betsey Johnson in her design studio, check out some colleges without “C” in their initials, and try to get some career advice from anyone on the staff at NPR. Well, sitting in the back seat of the “Yuppie Van” that’s my view from Generation neXt.

Tamara when she was 15, penning, literally penning a column.

In the summer of 1995, I started writing a column for the local newspaper in the relatively small town where I grew up.  The paper was the Hanford Sentinel, the town was Hanford, California – population 30,000.  At the time, there were by far more cows than people.  I was 15 years old and about to start my senior year of high school.  For the next several months I will be posting the columns I wrote for the Sentinel and later the the Fresno Bee.  Some of the columns are pretty bad, like this one, my first.  But they get better, I swear.  They also clearly reflect a 15-year-old me.  I was cocky, and clearly thought myself both more intelligent and cosmopolitan than I actually was (oh yeah, and I also loved parenthesis). But that’s what it’s like to be a 15 year old writer with limited editing.

There’s Nothing to Do in Hanford by Tamara Keith, June 1995

We are constantly complaining that there is nothing to do in Hanford and as far as I can see these complaints are valid. Right now there just isn’t anything to do. Though the future is looking promising in terms of recreation centers, it would be nice if the community could produce some places for us to hang out right now.

A few years ago everyone was excited about Hanford getting a new mall. Mall rats from miles around swarmed to the newly built “hang-out” spot. However the novelty has since worn off and even the most loyal mall lovers can only spend a few hours there before being overcome by the stark white walls and “muzak.” There are three forms of entertainment in the mall other than shopping (and I consider that more like torture than fun); the movies, the food court, and Aladdin’s Castle. The movies and food are great, but out of the question if you are low on funds (which most teenagers are) and the arcade is another challenge. Overrun by sticky fingered, dirty faced, glassy eyed 9 year old Mortal Kombat fiends, that jingle when they walk (their pockets are full of “get out of the house quarters”). That’s just not my idea of a fun time, especially since I have the home version of Aladdin’s Castle in the room next to mine with my little brother and his friends.

Basically the mall is good, only if it’s taken in small doses. However this town doesn’t have enough other little diversions to keep our desire for enjoyment satisfied.

There are only a few community activities that even acknowledge there are high school students in this community. There is the Renaissance Fair (that gets old after the second or third year, unless it’s your career choice), County Fair (are you sure all those bolts are tight on the rides, who is papaduerunrun, and what is that smell?) the Mother’s Day art extravaganza, homecoming, and a wide variety of other activities, unfortunately targeted for elementary and junior high kids. It seems that adults are afraid to even make an attempt to entertain us. These fears are unfounded, we are teenagers, not delinquents.

The recreation department sponsors many exciting activities for young children and pre-teens, however it seems to me that they must have ditched class on the day they taught the unit on “cool” teenage activities. Hey guys, what about a teen only dance and barbecue at the plunge. Or a battle of the garage bands in Hidden Valley Park (sorry neighbors). Some cities have Rollerblade and skateboard facilities in their parks. And I had a great time playing Frisbee golf in a public park in Altedena.

Private industry has also failed to tap into the financial jackpot that resides in the pockets of teens all over Hanford. Sure there is a pool hall and bowling alley but they are out of the question unless you thrive on second hand smoke. How about one night a week without the smoke and beer just so we can have a good time.

There is amazing potential for entrepreneurs everywhere if they would just pay attention to our needs for clean, cheap fun. In general we identify with the 20 something crowd, however we can’t get into their clubs and concerts. Can you imagine how much money an “all ages” dance club or a live entertainment coffee house could bring in. Well don’t just imagine, get out there and do it! And we will support you.

There is no one good solution for this lack of stuff to do in Hanford, although Applebee’s is a start. There are some creative and adventurous people out there that are trying to make a difference. However when anyone tries to get us involved in solving the problem, we seem to just sit back and wait for someone else to fix it. The major difficulty with this is that we end up with people twice our age trying to tell us how to have fun. Our generation needs a few articulate spokespersons to sound off in a way that will be heard, and create something to do in Hanford. That’s my view from Generation neXt.

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Part 1 – The first road project launched:
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:
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:
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)