Where can you go to hear inspiring talks by fabulous Bay Area women, taste delicious food and wine, and connect with other women like you? The 2010–2011 Speak to Me Series offers all this over five evenings from October 12, 2010 through May 10, 2011 at the Mill Valley Community Center, located at 180 Camino Alto.

Come listen to influential speakers like Jessica Herrin, founder of Stella & Dot; Emmy award-winning TV host Lisa Quinn; and UC Berkeley sociologist Christine Carter, Ph.D. Each evening begins when the doors open at 6:30 pm. Presentations, followed by a question-and-answer session, start at 7 pm, with a food and wine tasting and book signing following at 8 pm.

Single tickets are $75 each, and you can buy a series ticket of three of the five events for $195, or a season ticket for all five evenings for $300. Learn more about the Speak to Me Series and order tickets online, visit www.speaktomeevents.com. You can also call (415) 888-2329 for more information.

This guest article is from our friends at Laurel Fetility Clinic, a local fertility practice with offices in Mill Valley, San Francisco, and Modesto. Visit them online at www.laurelfertility.com.

Secondary infertility is a growing issue among women. According to experts, in 2005 an estimated 3,000,000 people suffered from secondary infertility. Whether you’ve had one child or three children, mothers who are unable to grow their families after conceiving in the past are heartbroken. However, with the success of fertility treatments, more options are available today than ever before. Below is a list of common questions patients have asked at their visit to Laurel Fertility Care. We hope these will help you through your fertility journey before seeing a fertility specialist.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission and toy manufacturer Fisher Price are recalling more than 10,000,000 toys, including Fisher Price Trikes and Tough Trikes toddler tricycles and Healthy Care, Easy Clean, and Close to Me high chairs.

Apparently, children using these toys can injure themselves by falling onto prodruding parts, and small parts used on them are choking hazards as well. Learn more about the recall from ABC News.

This week's book is Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festivalby Grace Lin (32 pages, Knopf, 2010). As the name suggests, it's the ideal story to share with your children at this time of year, especially with the gorgeous "Super Harvest Moon" we've had in the night sky this past week.

Here's another yummy and easy recipe from Bay Area moms, Stacie and Simran. They recently started a kids' food adventure blog called “A Little Yumminess”. They cover easy recipes (often with an international twist), food-related adventures you can have with your children in the Bay Area, cooking with kids and basically how to have fun with food and your children (vs. think of it as a chore or a challenge). Here is a recipe to make some fun taquitos.

My friend Luisa, who taught me how to make Sopa De Tortilla recently, also taught me how to make Taquitos. Taquitos are a Mexican dish made of rolled-up tortillas with a filling. The filled tortilla is fried and served with a variety of toppings. Luisa demonstrated the dish with store-bought rotisserie chicken but these little crunchy rolls can be easily made vegetarian by using beans and cheese or any other vegetable of your (or your kids’) liking. A side of rice and beans will complete this meal. I am thinking these are a good vehicle for any kind of leftovers – I may try them with leftover curry one day! :) Could work for school lunches and this will be a tasty addition to your birthday party buffet.

Last week the California Department of Education released its 2010 Growth Academic Performance Index (API) report. The report provides public school rankings that enable parents to match the performance of their child's school with other California public schools. Rankings are based on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, and rankings are also weighed agains public schools of similar type.

You can search the state's database of schools and see how your child's school did in 2010 here: API school level reports.

This week we got our hands on a review copy of the new book from acclaimed musician Gordon Titcomb and amazing illustrator Wendell Minor, The Last Train(32 pages, Roaring Brook Press, 2010). Although it's a children's picture book, The Last Train should appeal equally to parents and grandparents and anyone who appreciates the vanishing world of our country's trains and railroads.

Based on a 2005 song by Gordon Titcomb, The Last Train is a nostalgic look at the steam trains that used to pass through nearly every American town, and celebrates the passing of the golden age of railway travel. Let's face it—everyone loves trains to some extent, and this book celebrates them and the culture surrounding them. Even if you're too young to have experienced this time in America's history, you surely know about it, and you'll feel probably feel pangs of nostalgia for a era long before you were born.

This guest article is by Marin County therapist, writer, and mom Lisa Brookes Kift, MFT.

Whether or not you’re a married, divorced or single mommy, the common tie that binds us together is that we are responsible for loving, caring for, shaping and guiding our children. I can’t think of a more important job! But the reality is that many of us do have other roles and hats we wear each and every day. Aside from mothers you may be wives, girlfriends, friends and caretakers. Some of you probably work full-time and race home to spend precious moments with little ones, others are full-time homemakers managing the logistics of running a household and I’m fairly sure many of you fall somewhere in the middle, doing your best to balance the need for financial stability with the needs of your family. Wherever you are on the continuum…

The Thursday San Rafael Civic Center Marin Farmers Market will move to the Embassy Suites in San Rafael this Thursday, September 9 to accommodate Rosh Hashanah services at the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium.

The market will take place during its regular hours from 8 am – 1 pm, in the parking lot in front of the main entrance to the Embassy Suites, just a stone’s throw from the Marin Center. It will return to the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium parking lot on September 16th. For more info, go to their website.