Raquel Maria Dillon

Octuplets’ grandma: Unmarried mom conceived all 14 babies in vitro, ‘obsessed’ with having kids

(Nadya Suleman’s mother sounded exhausted and exasperated when I reached her on the phone only days after the octuplets were born, but she shared a few emotional details before hanging up abruptly. This story went unmatched and kept my byline throughout the weekend.)

By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week conceived all 14 of her children through in vitro fertilization, is not married and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager, her mother said.

Angela Suleman told The Associated Press she was not supportive when her daughter, Nadya Suleman, decided to have more embryos implanted last year.

“It can’t go on any longer,” she said in a phone interview Friday. “She’s got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn’t want to get married.”

» Read the rest of this entry «

Culinary tourist eats his way around the world in Los Angeles

By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Noah Galuten spent the past three months eating his way around the world – all within a day’s drive of his Santa Monica apartment.

The 25-year-old playwright was broke and unemployed when he decided to eat cuisine from a different country every day and write about it on his Web site, Man Bites World.

Galuten figured he could stomach 60 traditional dishes from a different country on consecutive days until he ran out of options and was sated. But the project took him further than he ever imagined, stamping his culinary passport with food from 102 cultures by his final bite of Slovakian poppy seed cake more than three months later.

That he could cross so many borders so close to home is both a testament to Los Angeles’ cultural melting pot and the help he got from strangers who invited him into their homes to share traditional meals.

“If there’s anywhere you should be more inclusive, it’s eating,” he said.

» Read the rest of this entry «