Getting Dinner on the Table

Oh crap, my blog. To be honest, I love, love, love starting things…but, other than my wife/mama title, I am also a big fan of change & get bored rather quickly - so there.

Time to remind myself of my GOAL:

The goal: Getting it together -- on time -- feeling good about it, and enjoying it when it’s done.

Am I talking about my blog?

No.

I am speaking to a much greater, more daunting challenge known as…

…Getting Dinner on the Table.

As much as I’d sometimes like to avoid doing my blog entry, this week’s topic is really coming to me full-force and if you read it to the end you’ll even get a tasty RECIPE (starring a Theo Chocolate bar no less) out of it.

When I first got married, I didn’t have a kitchen. It belonged to my husband - his turf. Seriously, if I was in the kitchen putting some utensil away, he was tailing me, micromanaging all the way. If I was using a utensil, he was putting it away. If I was wanting to know where a utensil or tool was, he had just put it away. We evolved, thankfully, and learned to enjoy cooking together and share all of the rooms in our house.

But now, pragmatically, it often makes sense for me to do the greater part of the meal preparation. And, to be fair, I really do enjoy cooking. Not that I am the best chef but I do make my fair share of tasty dishes.

No one told me they expected dinner on the table by 5pm – I didn’t grow up with the expectation that it was “women’s work” nor do I get that message from my sweetie, friends, or society as a whole. But somewhere deep down, my innerhousewife^® believes there must be some wisdom from the golden oldies whence many housewives did indeed get supper ready for their families by the time their honey’s came home from work. I don’t know the history but I can hope that this was less about gender equality and hopefully more about practicality. Also, I imagine, it was seen as a gesture of love. Food = Love in many forms.

So, I thought for this latest entry I could focus on, or at least TRY to focus on, getting dinner on the table – at a reasonable time – during the work-a-day week.

I’ve done more challenging things. But in the current configuration of my life – this one vexes me.

First of all, there is this unfortunate alignment, where dinner making time just happens to be when both I and the kids are most exhausted and cranky. Just the perfect time to make a beautiful meal that will bring us all to the table.

Assuming dinner does get made we eventually reach the end of the meal. And then, just when we are all on the verge of food coma, it’s time to do dishes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank goodness for Trader Joe’s where I can simply heat up a meal that sounds luxurious but sometimes it just tastes a little like wax. Or frostbite. Or they taste like the tamales and the tomales taste like their pizza which tastes like their granola (but that’s another topic). I really don’t have anything against “leaning on” Trader Joes or Costco. I use it often. But…There’s nothing like a homemade meal when I CAN swing it.

Here is one of my innerhousewife^® attempts at completing this mystifying task: getting dinner on the table.

Meal Plan #1:

Ravioli & Green Salad

(cue Inner Housewife monologue):

4:00pm: Here we go – dinner tonight, ravioli & green salad. From Costco. Cheating a little, yes, but this is pretty easy. I can do this.

4:05: Hmmm, I think I should make the tomato sauce.

WHY??? Someone stop me now.

Eh, why not?

Famous last words.

I have 9 tomatoes – that’ll work.

OK, recipe, find a recipe. {Eli squeaks from the baby swing} Ooh, Eli needs a diaper change but that has to wait because, I just need to look on epicurious for a recipe. Ok, Eli, hold on – this is veeeeerrrryyy important. Ok, got one!

4:15pm: {Change Eli’s diaper, lots of smiles, coo’s, tickles}.

5:00pm: Back to the kitchen, recipe for sauce in hand (and Dan gets home from work). Ok, blanch tomatoes. What?! Do I have to? Submerge in boiling water 10 seconds…ooookaaay. Submerge in ice bath (that’s the tomatoes, not me). I only have two ice cubes. {fill ice trays}. I guess I will just submerge the tomatoes in just a cold water bath (the water isn’t really cold so somehow we went from freezing water to lukewarm water with a rice-crispy floating in it). Trial and error. Ok, error – watery tomatoes. Oops.

5:30pm: Next, cook the ravioli. But, I just used the large pasta pot for the sauce. I can use this extra wide soup pot instead.  Bowls, knives, plates, peeler, multiple spoons, mixing bowls, etc. spilling out of the sink. Hm, how did I use so many items for just making ravioli? In the back of my head (well, actually front of my head) I hear my husband asking this same question.

5:45pm: {Gabi comes out of her room covered in some sticky substance…}

Me: ”Gabi, what is that?”

Her: “Your lotion.”

Me: Inside voice: Oh.

Me, Again: Outside voice: “Gabi, that’s so great you are experimenting. Ok, now let’s clean it off together [translation: I am going to be cleaning this myself]. Where did you get this? My room. Please ask for permission to use my lotion. Do you want to help me make dinner? You can wash the lettuce.”

6:15pm: And curtain up! The result is dinner at 6:30pm: watery tomatoes = watery sauce, oddly sweet tomato sauce served over mild and under flavored, previously frozen ravioli. From Costco. Very nice green salad. Thanks Costco for nothing…

Meal Plan #2:

Vegetarian Chili with Theo Chocolate served with Cornbread

Spoiler alert: The result is delicious, on time and makes very good leftover burrito filling.

Stef’s veggie chili with Theo chocolate bar

Ingredients:

• 2 tbl. olive or vegetable oil
• EITHER: ¼ tsp. Chili powder, ½ tsp. Garlic powder & 1 tsp. Cumin OR: Chile spices mix packet (PCC if you are local)
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 1 small or medium onion, chopped
• optional: 2 celery ribs & 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 15 oz. can kidney beans (wash and drain)
• ½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes (with juices)
• 1 package fake meat (also known as ground beef substitute)
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• ½-1 cup veggie stock
• Salt and pepper
• 1 bar Theo Nib Brittle chocolate
• non-fat plain Greek yogurt
• 1 bottle wine – red or white

Directions:

Sauté spices in 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat for 2 minutes; add 1 tablespoon of oil, green pepper, onion, celery and carrots, sauté 5-8 minutes over medium heat; add fake meat and break into crumbles; add kidney beans, dice tomatoes, broth, cayenne, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about an hour. Pour glass of wine and open Theo Chocolate Nib Brittle bar. Slowly eat & enjoy one section of chocolate bar and sip wine. Break off remaining 3 parts of chocolate bar and toss them into the chili. Stir until fully melted and mingling with other ingredients.

Serve with fresh cilantro and a dollop of plain non-fat greek yogurt, cornbread, or rice and simple green salad.

Dinner is on the table!

Identity

My friend J.C. asked me today “how are things going with your new identity?”

During the first four months of my pregnancy with our second baby, Eli, I spent a fair amount of energy concerned with the impending identity crisis that would inevitably come from having two kids and a Volvo or mini-van. My questions ranged from:

Would I ever read a book again that wasn’t about parenting as a verb? Being home all day, would I eat my own lunch and my kids’ lunch, gain 20lbs. and start watching Ellen on a daily basis? Who would I talk to? What the hell would I do all day (remember: my skill set as a natural domestic goddess leave me with much to be desired)? Do Volvo’s have seat-warmers?

Despite real living examples of many dear friends who are employing various wonderful models of how to make family life meaningful and enjoyable, I found myself writing a story of what life “must” be like for a housewife and stay-at-home Mom – it was a role where I couldn’t imagine being cast – I just couldn’t see myself clearly in it.

Well, two kids later (but no minivan… …yet) I’ve sort of arrived at the moment I feared – the “who am I now?” fork-in-the-road. But…

…it feels different than I expected. It’s scary but not exactly frightening; daunting but not really insurmountable; uncomfortable but…

…profound.

One the plus side…

One piece of this I didn’t realize is the remarkable experience I am having just being a mommy to Gabi (4 ½) and Eli (12 weeks) – I’m falling in love with being a mommy. How deeply grateful I feel to be in the beautiful position of being a mother to two incredible individuals. I find myself enjoying each extraordinary moment getting to be “mommy” most of the time. I enjoy breaks too of course – being a wife, being a sister, a daughter, a friend, a social organizer, a soon-to-be booty camp member, a “Stef” -- but I also especially like simple tasks such as…

…making Gabi’s bed in the morning. It’s as if I discovered a different dimension to myself; sometimes, I feel like I can channel a piece of motherhood bliss from Kanga (Roo’s mama in Winnie-the-Poo). And, the thing is, I never thought of myself this way; but here I am discovering, enjoying, and bathing in it. In the first four year stretch of motherhood when I had just had Gabi, I was working, interning, and still maintaining a decent social life. I don’t intend to give up any of these things forever but I realize sometimes when I am making Gabi an omelet for breakfast or reading a book to Eli, that it’s just sort of nice to do these things without ALSO having to also get transformed into “work” mode.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy my professional identity and challenges, experiences, whatnot…

…I’ve been very fortunate to work for amazing causes, with incredibly inspiriting people – colleagues and clients – but, I am just sayin’ – I used to feel like a was literally juggling all the time, with this impending worried feeling: one wrong move, one hand out of place, and the whole dance is coming down. With one kid and an equal partner in marriage, I managed to keep it going -- but with two – whew – I wasn’t ready to take on that song n dance.

On the minus side…

…so, here I am – making this choice to be home. For now. But, it’s hard mentally. I am driven. I am curious. I am scared. Scared that I may lose the me I know and have worked hard to become. I worry about the future and what will happen if I get too far away from the rest of the working world.

I made this choice because I didn’t want to make decisions about life out of a place of fear. I wanted to make them out of love. From this place of love, I am choosing to be a housewife, a full time mommy - In doing so, I am realizing that something can be right for me but still be uncomfortable. I’m glad I learned this now so that I can teach it to my kids.

Am I alone in this? How do you reconcile these identity issues?

Reality TV vs. Reality

After 14 straight hours of being “on” today my inner housewife blog was almost titled: To be honest, I’m too tired to blog. Seriously, today was one of those days where even a 1 minute bathroom break felt like a vacation. This is reality.

My initial reluctance to come to the keyboard led me to think that this was a good opportunity to explore the idea of Reality TV versus, you know, Reality.

So, we all already “get it” that reality TV is not real – that it’s editing, that characters are provoked or persuaded to move things in a climactic direction to create a story, an arc, and a resolution – and most especially, that the job of reality TV is to create the drama, so that we are entertained, so that we keep coming back for more, so that advertisers pay more to the network, and etc.

But…I like watching Reality TV sometimes, especially when I feel like I want to escape my own reality a little.

[SIDENOTE: There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who feel better about their lives when they watch “crazy” people on Reality TV and those who feel worse.]

But herein lies the problem: Reality TV is screwing with my inner housewife’s reality. I have my limits (usually if the topic is too close to home i.e. “The Jersey Shore”) but overall, I can get deep into such lively and dynamic drama’s including “Wife Swap” and “The Real Housewives of…”. I sort of hate ‘em but I love ‘em too. I am not a stupid person - I know how media influences me. How it influences and women and men everywhere and not necessarily for the good. I have been fully made aware of how body image, gender roles, and self-esteem can be warped for a lifetime in subtle and overt ways from the evils of media. Maybe because I know it, I feel like I can fend it off, that I can shrug it off. And usually, I can. In areas of my life where I’ve become aware of it, I can manage and deconstruct unhealthy media messages – I can take the entertainment but leave behind the sense of inadequacy some entertainment serves up as a side dish.

Yet in the case of my newly hatched inner housewife, well, this new inner housewife is vulnerable! This inner housewife doesn’t yet have strong inner beliefs and messages that can be pulled out of a back-pocket in times of self-doubt! Instead, this inner housewife is very impressionable and thinks something like this:

Housewives of Reality TV	Real Housewife	Inner Housewife Thought
Confrontational with friends and business associate	vents to confidants, but diplomatic and strategic in dealing with conflict	I need a vacation!
Has time for shower and make-up	Has time to splash water on face, put hair in ponytail, clean underwear	get it together!
No gray hairs	a few new gray ones each day (with names)	ooh, I think I’ll have time for a haircut in a hmmm, maybe a few months?
Wears size 2	Wears size 10 or 12	these pants make my butt look big and there’s spit-up on my shirt – but HEY I am fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothes!

How can this housewife find her bearings when many of the every present examples on on TV are so unrealistic? What if my experience doesn’t match up to theirs? What happens if I can’t have a clean house and car, popular and adorable children, be able to cook AND bake, and look hot while doing it all. What happens if I don’t measure up?

I know, I could argue that it seemed like a great idea to go from old TV, you know - the type with writers and actors prescribing our roles and identities through likeable and consumable characters - to reality TV, where we could relate to real people. But, COME ON! I surmise that the characters of housewife-related reality TV don’t look nearly as good as TV would have us believe nor do they behave quite as bad as it may seem. I believe in basic human goodness and most peoples’ ability to be capable and decent. So, that’s my reality – for better or for worse…

An update:

The cookie-cake – some of you asked, “nu…how was it?” Well, it was kind of dry but with a glass of cold milk, I have to say, not that bad. I have a 1:1 cookie making tutoring session with one of my fairy-housewives’ (J.P. that’s you, girl) in the near future!

Thanks for all of the fantastic laundry advice – In a future blog I will compile all of the great ideas and share. For now, can anyone come over tomorrow and help me fold?

- Stef

A Letter to My Laundry…

Can you tell if these FOUR baskets of laundry that have been sitting in my hallway for a week are clean or dirty? Why we have so many laundry baskets, I have no idea!

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Dearest Laundry:

Why do you look at me so….menacingly? What did I ever do to you? Just because of that one time in college when I used powdered detergent?

You just sit there – smug – waiting to be attended to…I hear your rants: “wash me, fold me, and put me away!”

Well, tell me, laundry, just how can I keep up with you? Before I know it, you’ve multiplied. I didn’t know that this was how our relationship would turn out. How was I supposed to know that you have such a fast metabolism? How do I get rid of your incessant piling up?

Sincerely,

Inner Housewife

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Dear Inner Housewife:

Why did you ignore my friend request? We already have so many friends in common – you can trust me. As to your message, you misread me. I am not here to antagonize you but to teach you the deeper meaning of life’s purpose. “Life is a journey, not a destination” – you’ve heard that popular and pithy phrase, haven’t you? In fact I’ve heard you say that to your daughter when she is pining for desert.

Just be one with me and accept my ways – for that, dear inner housewife, is the true meaning – this is why we are here.

Regards,

Laundry

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Dear Laundry:

Suck it.

Sincerely,

Inner Housewife

p.s. I am not going to “friend” you.

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My inner housewife goal for this week (and future weeks) is to find a way to keep the laundry in its place. Right now, I am not in control of laundry, Laundry is in control of me. I remember how my Grandma Rose used to wash all the laundry by hand in her kitchen sink in Brooklyn, NY and hang it outside to dry (I really did watch her do this). There’s no way she could have kept up with all the laundry that I have using that method but she had 3 kids and I only have 2. So something doesn’t add up to me. Something is fishy here. I know what I am going to do, I am going to call her:

Ring, ring…

GRANDMA ROSE: Honey, how are you? You know, you and your family should be so happy, God Willing.

ME: Grandma, remember how you used to hand wash all the laundry? How did you keep the laundry under control in your house?

GRANDMA ROSE: in my time, when my sons were still in diapers, I had to boil the diapers! I used to wash all the clothes in ivory soap and rinse them well.

ME: did you make the kids wear the same clothes so that you didn’t have to wash them all the time?

GRANDMA ROSE: no! no, they wore everyday new clothes. i used to wash every day – yes i washed every day.

ME: wowww, so that’s how you kept up with it – you washed clothes EVERY DAY!? (inner voice: yikes, that doesn’t sound very glamorous or liberated).

GRANDMA ROSE: it was very hard, it wasn’t easy. because you have a machine and you have a drier too, right?

ME: oh, yeah, i do have a washer and dryer, well now i just feel like a loser Grandma.

GRANDMA ROSE: but you have a baby, it’s a lot more laundry.

ME: true, true, thanks grandma. I can always count on you to help me justify and rationalize my slacking.

GRANDMA ROSE: so how’s the baby?

Boy, the Grandma Rose method – laundry EVERY DAY – doesn’t sound good to me. If you have any better ideas or strategies that work for you, my inner housewife is dying to know…