Son of pioneers

Second-generation Attachment Parenting activist Bob Sears circles the wagons
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Isthmus weekly newspaper,
September 16, 2004

Bob Sears, M.D., has a lot to live up to as a pediatrician, father of three and champion of the high-touch parenting style known as AP, or attachment parenting. After all, it was his own father, pediatrician and parenting expert William Sears, M.D., who coined the term in the early 1980s.
For the last three decades, Dr. Sears the elder, with his wife, Martha Sears, R.N., have promoted gentle – but intensive – child-rearing practices that turn much mainstream advice on its head.

Examples: Toddlers can breast feed until they self-wean. And the phrase “Let the baby cry it out” simply is not in the Sears vocabulary.

Now Dr. Sears, 35 (along with his older brother Jim, also a pediatrician), is taking up much of Dad's duties, including making public appearances, co-writing books in the Sears Parenting Library (a thoroughly revised -- and controversial -- The Baby Book was published in 2003) and keeping up Web sites like AskDrSears.com and SearsParenting.com.

Bob Sears is coming to town Saturday, Sept. 18 as a featured speaker at the Madison Birth Center's second annual parenting conference. What does he have to say to local parents?

Vesna Vuynovich Kovach: What was it like being raised by the canonical attachment parents?

Bob Sears: They didn't really figure out a lot of the details of their parenting style until their fourth child [of eight], and I was number two. What had the most impact on me was watching them raise my younger brothers and sisters. Seeing the bond they formed. Seeing how happy the babies were.

VVK: What is the Sears tradition, and what changes have you made to your parents' message?

BS: It's basically summed up in what's now eight “Baby Bs”: Birth Bonding, Breast Feeding, Babywearing, Bedding With Baby, Belief in the Signal Value of Baby's Cry, Beware of Baby Trainers, Balance. The one that I added was “Both Parents.” That's really critical. That both parents not only agree with the parenting style, but are equally involved with bonding and attaching to baby. That helps you maintain balance. It helps you avoid mother burnout.

VVK: Have you seen AP affect parents negatively?

BS: Only when things are completely out of balance. Some parents will get a toddler who will nurse all night long, not just for weeks but for months. Dad needs to step up and start to “father-nurse”: to wear, snuggle, and rock the baby. In the early AP writing, that aspect was ignored. Mom was just an all-night buffet. And got no sleep. Once we identified that trend, we started to make additions to our sleep-related writing.

VVK: I was surprised by the mainly neutral attitude toward circumcision in The Baby Book. How does that square with your otherwise super-gentle approach?

BS: I am anti-circumcision. My kids are not circumcised. When I helped my dad revise The Baby Book, I noticed what you’ve pointed out. I revised it completely to be ... slightly discouraging of circumcision. We chose in this book not to come out against circumcision completely since we try to stay mainstream as best we can so we can include as wide an audience as possible. My article on AskDrSears.com comes out more strongly against it.

VVK: Some see AP as anti-feminist: an artificially intensified mothering style that infantalizes and enslaves women, with “babywearing” tethering mother to the child, co-sleeping robbing her of dignified, comfortable, adult sleep with her partner, and AP-style solicitude in picking up crying babies just going overboard.

BS: Their observations are correct in that AP tethers parent and baby together. The issue is, is this a negative thing or a positive? Shouldn’t feminists give each parent the freedom to choose just how attached they want to be? One of the main concepts of AP is that each parent chooses their own way of parenting. It’s about freedom and not adhering too strictly to any one written philosophy (even the Sears philosophy), but rather using your own instinctual philosophies to decide what’s right and what’s best for you and your baby.

VVK: Do you teach AP to parents in your pediatric practice?

BS: Usually people come to us because we share their natural philosophy. They're happy to read in the books that we'll support them in their choices.

VVK: Some say AP is just a fad.

BS: How long does a fad last? Because AP is how most of the world parents. In many countries in Asia and South America, most in Africa, most parents co-sleep, they wear their babies with them, they have the nursing for an extended amount of time, they carry their babies, they don't let their babies cry too much. That's been demonstrated by anthropologists. You can't call something that's been around thousands of years a fad. My parents started writing about it 30 years ago and it's as strong as ever.

Second Annual Madison Birth Center Conference
Saturday, Sept. 18, 2004
Marriott Madison West
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

For a complete schedule and information on registration and fees: madisonbirthcenter.com or 608-821-0123

Speakers include Dr. Bob Sears and Ariel Gore (editor, Hip Mama: The Parenting Zine)

Topics include Attachment Parenting, Parenting Teens, Natural Pregnancy, Mama-blogging, Postpartum Depression, and Sleep and the Family Bed. Childhood Immunization panel. Journaling workshop.

Activities for kids include juggling, yoga, West African drumming, and a concert by Ken Lonnquist.

Three Madison Chefs

Around the world in Madison: Lao Laan-Xang, Sole e Sapori, and Nadia's
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Isthmus Annual Dining Guide, 2000

For a mid-sized city in the heart of the Midwest, Madison is lucky when it comes to dining out--and it’s not just because we have so many diverse restaurants serving dishes from all around the globe. It’s the exuberance and creativity of the people who run them. In bringing us their foods, they also bring us their heritage, their skill, and their personal zest for life.

Earlier this spring, I visited some of Madison’s favorite international restaurateurs, folks who dish up everything from home cooking to haute cuisine from the far-flung lands where they used to live.

I met Salvatore (Sam) Vitale, who, with his wife Celina and their three sons, opened a second Sole e Sapori at 2827 Atwood Avenue about a year ago--a sequel to their popular Sicilian ristorante on Main Street in Mount Horeb. Closer to downtown, Christine Inthachith and her mother, Bounyong, recently re-opened Lao Laan-Xang at 1146 Williamson Street after a two year hiatus, and now Madison once again boasts a restaurant that’s exclusively Laotian. And then there’s Abdul Bensaid, who runs two restaurants on the 500 block of State Street: Oceans Brasserie, with specialties from his native Morocco, and Nadia’s Restaurant, serving the Mediterranean cuisine of the south of France.

They shared with me their philosophies of food and of life--elements as inseparable as the ingredients of a fine sauce.

When a sales representative from a food service company came calling on Sole e Sapori one day, he found Vitale in the kitchen, cooking marinara from scratch. Vitale relishes telling what happened next: “He says, ‘Geez! Why do all that work? We sell this stuff.’ So I say, ‘Okay--if your sauce is better, I’ll buy it.’ The guy tastes my sauce and says, ‘I better get out of here! I can’t compete with you.’”

In fact, Vitale makes not one but three separate marinaras at Sole e Sapori: chunky for spaghetti, smooth for pizza, and a third variety for good measure. Each takes three to four hours to make, by the time all the fresh veggies are prepped, sautéed, and simmered. Pasta, too, is handmade, using a small hand-cranked chrome gadget. Scalloped squares ready for stuffing are cut out with a single handheld ravioli cutter not much bigger than a date stamp.

Why go through all this trouble, when there are so many shortcuts available these days? For Vitale, “everything that’s part of life is an art. Whatever you make, you’ve got to have class. Style.” But, he says, many Americans are conditioned to pay little attention to quality where food is concerned. “The priorities are confused. People buy the canned stuff. Of course it’s not as good. You go to some restaurants, and the food is just flat. You see,” he says, lowering his voice almost to a whisper and leaning forward in his chair, “that’s what I’m trying to fight for. Piato de vesere gustoso. A rich, flavorful dish.”

That's often accomplished by balancing strong flavors with milder ones. “Anchovies,” he says. “People don’t want them, or else they put them on a pizza with green and black olives. But anchovies are strong and salty, so you have to think how to tone it down. You add tomato, onion, oregano, and olive oil--mild tastes--and that’s the best pizza there is. The soul from the anchovy comes out.”

Making me a pizza de mare, or seafood pizza, Vitale pulls a handful of dough from a five gallon bucketful and works it into shape. He ladles on some fragrant red sauce, then adds fresh mozzarella, capers, bell peppers he’s roasted and then marinated, and a crumbly blend of oregano and grated parmesan. Using a well-worn wooden paddle, he slides the pizza into a blazing hot oven--but he’s not done yet. Vitale steps down to the back kitchen and reappears after a minute, a sizzling pan in one hand. Opening the pizza oven, he arranges shrimp and spinach leaves sautéed with olive oil and garlic over the partly baked pie.

The finished product is incredible--full of complex, vigorous and yet harmonious taste. I see what he means about balance: the zingy capers and garlic seem to enliven the milder shrimp, spinach and cheeses. “What you make, it’s got to be ...up,” Vitale says, waving his hands for emphasis, “Cheerful.”

To my surprise, this artful dish isn’t on the menu. “I like creating,” he says. His favorite order? An open-ended request for something to eat. “Just ask--I’ll make you something special,” he promises.

The secret of good cooking according to Vitale: “With food, the point is, you gotta like what you’re doing. You gotta like what you’re making. Enjoy the customers. It’s not to make money--it’s to make people happy.”

Willy Street’s Lao Laan-Xang is also family business, rooted in a culture where good cooking is pivotal to life. “Food is everything,” says Christine Inthachith. For Inthachith and her brothers, Sone and Son, who were children in 1980 when the family arrived in the United States, food is also a way to stay connected with their Laotian heritage: “The whole family cooks. We love it.”

Bounyong, Christine’s mother, does most of the cooking, while her daughter creates the menus and manages the business. A graduate of the UW-Madison in Southeast Asian studies, Christine Inthachith is still a student, working on a Master’s in educational administration, with a full time job as a UW admissions counselor. Still, she comes in to cook for a few hours each night. “It sounds crazy, but I think of it as a hobby,” she says, “It’s fun cooking and watching people finish everything that’s good.”

Lao Laan-Xang’s dishes are prepared individually, and except for a few preserved specialty ingredients, everything is fresh. In summer, the Inthachiths buy much of their produce--hot peppers, lemon grass, Thai eggplants and more--locally, from Hmong vendors at the Farmer’s Market.

Inthachith takes me into the kitchen, warm with the comforting aroma of sticky rice freshly steamed in traditional woven baskets, where her mother is preparing kang som taley for us--it’s a seafood soup in a broth flavored with Thai basil (the leaves are smaller, narrower, darker, and more pungent than the herb you’d find in an Italian kitchen), galanga (a rhizome like ginger, but with a mild taste), citrus leaves and lemon grass.

Meantime, Inthachith helps me make tum som, papaya salad. She hands me a deep aluminum mortar and a wooden pestle. In goes what appears to my uneducated eye an improbable combo: a hunk of garlic; some sugar; a few tiny (but doubtless murderous) hot peppers; dark, earthy-smelling shrimp paste; tamarind juice; fish sauce (a fishy kind of soy sauce); a little salt. After I pound these into pulp, Inthachith slivers in fresh lime, cherry tomato and minature Thai eggplant. Finally, she scrapes a handful of strips from huge green papaya (it’s used as a vegetable when green; a sweet fruit when ripe), and we toss them in, making a salad a little like cole slaw in consistency.

Moments later, we’re eating the traditional Laotian way: squeezing little balls of sticky rice in our fists, using them to scoop up papaya salad and shreds of marinated, fried chicken into delicious fingerfuls of flavor. The salad is...spicy, fruity, fishy, garlicky. And heavenly. “If you can eat this, you can survive in Laos,” says Inthachith, “You can buy this on every street corner. Kids compete to see who can eat the spiciest.”

Not all Laotian dishes are spicy hot, but those that are can be positively incendiary. Diners specify their individual preference, from “timid” to “native Laotian.” “We warn people, but a lot of people want to try 'native'.” What happens when someone overestimates their ability to take the heat? “I think they’re too embarrassed to admit it,” she says, “They say, ‘Yeah, this is really good--I’ll just take it home with me. With lots of rice.’”

Opening his own restaurant was Abdul Bensaid’s dream since he was a boy growing up in Asilah, near the international port city of Tangier in Morocco. At fourteen, he got his start washing dishes, and he worked his way up from there, studying at Morocco’s premier culinary institute, interning with great chefs in France, and working at the Royal Overseas League in London, a private club owned by the Queen of England (Though Bensaid never met Her Majesty, he still remembers what he cooked for her: Andaluse rack of lamb with fresh mint sauce).

Marriage to a UW student (now his ex-wife) brought Bensaid across the Atlantic to Madison, where he eventually opened Oceans Brasserie, serving Moroccan and Andalusian dishes, colorful and varied: A saffron yellow sauce flavored with preserved lemons served over chicken and calamata olives infuses slices of potatoes with a savory tang; a rich brown cardamom and cinnamon sauce enriches caramelized prunes and chunks of lamb.

Nadia's southern French cuisine is more labor- and ingredient-intensive. The stocks, for instance--chicken, beef, pheasant--take up to four days to make. Bensaid shows me a huge, barely simmering pot of water, fresh herbs, chicken, vegetables. "We keep reducing and reducing until it becomes like jelly. He shows me a gallon of finished stock cooling in the walk-in: "This started as twenty gallons."

Why two restaurants? “Why not?” answers Bensaid. Creating food that’s different and exciting is important, he says, and that’s why there’s always room for something new.

And Bensaid offers a philosophy of food and of life for cooks and diners alike to share: “Food is a passion. You have to have that passion to really taste it."

A Serbian Christmas

Celebrating according to Old World custom

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Isthmus, the weekly newspaper of Madison, Wisconsin
Dec. 17, 1999

When my parents left Yugoslavia after World War II to build a new life in Baltimore, they wanted to assimilate, but also to pass along the culture they left behind. So each year, we celebrated Christmas twice: American-style, on Dec. 25, with presents, a tree and stories of Santa Claus, and on Jan. 7, according to Old World custom.

Slavs who are Eastern Orthodox (including Serbs, Ukrainians, and Russians) clock religious days by the ancient calendar devised by Julius Caesar. The Julian-reckoned December 25 falls on the modern Gregorian calendar's January 7. We didn't do everything required by custom on Serbian Christmas, but I heard a lot of stories.

To practice the full complement of Serbian Christmas rites, you'd need a whole Serbian village around you, and five days off from work. Full time preparations and festivities traditionally began two days before Christmas, and involved dozens of people: a crew of boys to bring in your Badnjak (a massive oak Yule log) while you toss handfuls of rice, wheat, and oats at them; more boys carrying a creche and men dressed as the Three Kings to sing carols and recite the story of the Nativity; a man to knock on your door at 2 a.m. on Christmas morn to wish you a happy one; and assorted groups of folk popping in here and there on this day and that, for snacks of figs, prunes, flatbread, and cheese, and plum brandy boiled with water and honey. But we didn't have access to the required cast of characters in Baltimore.

Even without celebratory rifles fired in the air and roast suckling pig (whose severed head is displayed on a platter on the dining room table till it's finally eaten on the third day of Christmas), there was plenty left for us to do – including some customs you might enjoy trying for yourself this year. You don't even have to wait till January 7.

One tradition definitely went beyond how far my modern mother was willing to go for the sake of heritage, but it's always intrigued me as being Fellini-esque: the whole family walks three times around the table, then throughout the house, imitating chickens. The father crows like a rooster, the mother clucks like a hen, and the children follow behind, peeping and cheeping. Dad-as-rooster liberally strews hay and straw in every room. Depending on the source, this custom is said to bring happiness and prosperity in the year ahead, or symbolize Christ's birth in a manger.

Later, the father throws a nut in every corner of the dining room. No sweeping is allowed till the three days of Christmas have passed. Let me know how it works out for you.

More sedate is the custom of sprouting wheatgrass on a plate. By the time it's about six inches high, it makes a striking solstice statement: new, green life growing lush during the darkest days of the year. With a red votive candle in the middle and a red ribbon tied around the outside, this mini meadow glows splendidly in a softly-lit room.

To grow your wheat, or zito (pronounced zhee-to), soak half a cup of whole wheat berries in water for a day. Rinse well and spread out on a large dinner plate, one or two berries thick. Sprinkle water on them a few times a day, or keep them covered with a damp paper towel. Balance the moisture carefully: if the berries stay too damp, they'll begin to grow mold. Too dry, and they'll wither. I wish I had more masterful instructions on this point, but it's an annual struggle for me, too. Sometimes I have to start over. It's worth it. Insert the votive candle on about the fourth day. It's supposed to take three weeks to grow, but I've gotten pretty crops within a week.

The Bozicni Kolac (pronounced bo-zheech-nee KO-lach), or Christmas bread, is not like any other bread I've ever seen or eaten. It's gloriously decorative: tall, cylindrical, and rounded on top, like a crown, and decked out on top with tiny sculptures made from dough. It's firm, yellow, crumbly, and slightly sweet, with a thick, tasty crust. Even if you skip the dough sculptures, it's a wonderful, rich bread.

Traditionally, the Kolac (or Kolach) is baked on Christmas Eve (Badnje Vece), which is a day of fasting from animal products. Because the Kolac is made with eggs and milk, it can't be eaten on that day. I part from tradition by waiting until Christmas Day (Bozic, or Bozich) to bake it – because it tastes best on the day it's baked.

My mother cut the bread in wedges, but my husband and I like to slice off rounds from the bottom instead. That way, the dough decorations are preserved for as long as possible.

Every family's Kolac is decorated a little differently. My mother and grandmother made wine barrels and bunches of grapes, representing the old family vineyard. Following this custom, I fashion four barrels from bread dough, and stick on hoops and nails made from the special sculpting dough (see recipe below). My own additions include a computer, a silhouette of a ferret (we have three), and a frying pan.

Customarily, there's an emblem in the center, engraved with letters written in Old Church Slavonic, the language customarily used in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy among Slavic peoples. It's made by pressing a carved wooden stamp into a square of sculpting dough. Fashion a central emblem that's of special significance to you, spiritual or otherwise.



Bozicni Kolac
(Bozhichni Kolach, or Christmas Bread)

Bread:

8 cups flour
4 tsp. yeast
2 cups milk
4 yolks (reserve the whites)
4 tbs. sugar
1 stick butter, at room temperature
1/2 tsp. salt

To get the right shape, bake this bread in a one-gallon saucepan or pot that's narrow, round, and straight-sided, with ovenproof handles. The best utensil I've found is a stoneware crock liner from an electric slow cooker.

Warm the milk to 105º or until it feels warm, but not hot. If it's too hot, it'll kill the yeast, and your Kolach won't rise.

Dissolve the yeast into a small amount of the milk, then gradually stir in the rest of the milk and the sugar. Let stand 10 minutes.

Mix in the remaining ingredients and knead well, to make a fairly stiff, stretchy dough that pulls clean from your fingers. If it's too stiff, add milk as needed. Put in a greased bowl. Spray with vegetable oil. Cover. Set to rise in a warm place, at least one hour. Test by pressing the center lightly: if it springs back, it has more rising to do.

Punch down and knead just enough to work out any big creases. Pinch off about half a cup of dough and set aside for decorations. Butter the baking pot well, put the dough inside, and let rise again. Meanwhile, make the dough sculptures and decorate the bread with them.



Decorations:

* 1/2 to 1 cup dough, pinched off from bread
* 2 tbs. flour
* A little milk
* 1 yolk
* Egg whites (left over from bread), beaten slightly
* Sprig of fresh basil
* Red ribbon or thread
* Assorted nuts in the shell

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, yolk, and enough milk to make a dense, pliable lump of sculpting dough. This dough won't rise while baking, so it'll retain any shapes you mold it into, or carve into it.

Pinch off some sculpting dough and roll two long cylinders thinner than a drinking straw. With a rolling pin, flatten them into ribbons. Make them two inches longer than the Kolac is wide. Dip them in egg white and arrange in a cross over the top, forming four quadrants.

Roll a third cylinder, this one about two-thirds the length needed to encircle the bread. Flatten it, rolling out to the right length. Dip in egg white and rope it around the bread.

For an alternative to a plain band that encircles the bread, try my grandmother's specialty: an elegant fringe. Roll the band to 1" wide. Use a paring knife to cut fringes 3/4" long and about 1/4" wide. Dip in egg white and place on bread. With the tip of a paring knife, bend back every other fringe 180º, flat against the bread.

Use the reserved bread dough and the rest of your sculpting dough to make shapes that represent things meaningful to each member of your household. Keep in mind these properties as you form your sculptures: the bread dough will rise; the sculpting dough will keep whatever shape you give it. Think of it as a mixed media project. Tip: bread dough barrels are fun to eat!

Dip your sculpting dough objects in egg white before placing on bread. The egg white will glue them in place, and will be glossy when baked. But don't dip your bread dough objects in egg white: they'll slip off the bread.

When you're done, brush top lightly with egg white--sculptures and all. Bake at 400º for 10 minutes, then cover loosely with a sheet of foil folded into an inverted V. Turn down heat to 350º and bake 60 to 80 minutes more. Bread is done when a light thump produces a hollow sound. Let partly cool, then carefully turn it out into a dishcloth.

On a platter, arrange nuts in a ring around the bread. (Some people balance the bread on three red apples, and cover the platter straw, hay, and dried grains; some surround the bread with fruits instead of nuts.) Lay the basil, tied in the ribbon, on top.