All middle-income families use carbs to stretch meals, across any ethnic group - whether it's kugel or rice and beans or macaroni and cheese. I remember having pancakes for dinner. But as kids, we thought, 'Breakfast for dinner? This is great.'
I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.
Following the Second World War, we are a country of one ethnicity. After the moving of the borders, after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of Polish Jews, we don't have large minority groups.
When I saw Neneh Cherry singing on TV, I was so glad that there was someone of the same ethnicity - and with the same curly hair - for me to look up to.
My singing voice had rescued me from the scene I was in at school - I was an unpopular, bookish kid who had an indeterminate ethnic background. I became fascinated with women sopranos because they had a future that I didn't as a singer.
As a young writer, I questioned the idea that I had to write fiction in a world where I could write my own ethnicity only and nothing else. 'Fach' to me was a little like that. As a biracial person, that's an inherently unstable identity.
I had to marry a Greek; I had to stir up the ethnic pot. Otherwise, my children would have been anemic and sickly. Now they've got some good Mediterranean blood in them.
I have a B.A. from UCLA. In ethnic studies.
After 'Arrested Development,' I didn't know for sure if I wanted to be an actor. I was hitting this wall, where I was the 'ethnic best friend' or the 'sassy teenager.' It felt like the same note, and I didn't feel like I was growing.
While we can work hard at improving our health, size is no more in our control than the color of our skin, our ethnicity, or our sexual preference.
