Food = Nourishment

Clearly, I am way too busy to have a blog.

My inner housewife has a funny relationship with food. And till recently I thought that made me special.

But then I realized, don’t we all have a “funny” relationship with food?

For me, there are various layers when it comes to food and I am not just talking about lasagna [cue drum beat].

Food = Sustenance

Food = Pleasure

Food = Rules*

*kosher, casual kosher, peanut free, dairy-free, aaahhhh, and etc.

Food = Parenting

The layer most present at THIS moment for me is this one:

Food = Nourishment

Nutrition is important but I am talking about a deeper, more meaningful kind of nourishment. In this circuitous way, food as nourishment leads me straight to my core identity as a mother, a “housewife”, a woman…

…so, I read a terrific NYT’s article this morning and it really reminded me of how intensely connected many of us still are to our childhood and adolescent experiences – and, how that is woven into my identity as a mom. The article focuses on an inspiring woman, Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out and founder of a camp for girls and empowerment -- and it’s also a fun read.

I’m seeing my almost 5 year old daughter in one of the most beautiful spirited phases of girlhood. And…

…I keep coming back to food and what happens to us along the way. I love Rachel Simmons’ camp chant that begins every meal, “Food, Good!”

I may incorporate this chant into our own mealtime traditions.

Together – mother and daughter – each with very different needs for nourishment but also both connected through our gender and how we experience food in our lives. I ask myself all the time: How to capture and sustain that incredible magic that is age 4, 5, 6, and 7 and on until…

until 13?

How can I help my daughter avoid the train-wreck of negative body image and disgusting levels of self-consciousness that I, myself, fall into on a daily basis? Food, of course, can be one of the myriad of derailing issues for girlhood. And womanhood.

Just some food for thought.

But…it’s not all so HEAVY! There’s another side to all this NOURISHMENT talk and it’s pretty fun, actually. In experimenting with nourishing and sustaining foods for my kiddo, I make plenty of mistakes and discover wonderful surprises (like cooking together, shelling peas, baking cupcakes, and picnics indoors and out).

I read a magazine with parenting advice from Tori Spelling (yes, that Tori Spelling from 90210). I know, I should have stopped reading immediately but I’m open-minded. She suggests putting hummus in your kids lunchbox?

Cue sarcasm: Wow. Why didn’t I think of that. Now come on! Have you seen hummus that’s been sitting in a plastic container for 3 hours inside a lunchbox? I have – and it’s not pretty. It’s warm and mushy -- yuck. Another time, more recently, I sent Gabi to camp with a healthy mama-made snack pack….whole grain crackers, an ounce of cheddar cheese, fresh washed and chopped carrot sticks and homemade balsamic vinaigrette. At the end of the day I opened the remains of her lunch bag, only to find some soggy crackers and oily cheese – unopened. It’s hard to compete with the ease of individual snack packs from the grocery store. Just sayin’.

Don’t even get me started on dinner again…

Till next time.

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…

Baking 101

I thought I would start with something my newly hatched inner housewife could manage, something simple, something well proven: chocolate chip cookies.

I couldn’t ask for a better experience or a better illustration than this to justify why the title of my blog is “Finding My Inner Housewife”.

Project: bake chocolate chip cookies

Outcome: Fail

Ok… re-imagined. Even though my goal was baking chocolate chips cookies, the project evolved and I rolled with it. And by rolling with it I mean that when all attempts at turning this batter into cookies failed, I tried to make a cake out of the batter.

[NOTE: I will later fill you in on the time I had to staple a cake together].

Cookie dough is different than cake dough, right? I think I just got lucky this time. Bonus.

Here is the image of what the recipe says these cookies should look like (thank you Mrs. Fields, housewife and businesswoman extraordinaire):

Here is my mega-cookie (squint and you will realize that this is evolving into a cake):

And here are some other shots to give you a better idea of this process and other activities calling for my attention:

Broken glass with melted chocolate (oops #72):

Trust me, I didn’t try to make these “cookies” turn out like this. This is real, this is me! So, I am embarking on a new chapter in my life. Some people call it a “stay at home mom” or SAHM, others “instructor for future generations” and still others, “housewife”.

My daughter made us a salad with the fresh veggies I chopped up as a snack. Her creation involves a half cup of carrots and celery (me) and a cup of ranch dressing (her):

Meanwhile, my infant son has gripe water spilling onto his onesie.

Anyway…We’re still having fun. That’s not the point – or maybe it IS the point. I am rediscovering that the point is really to have fun with my kids – while trying not to burn the house down.

Next week, I’ll let you know if the cookie-cake was any good…

Introduction to My Blog: Finding My Inner Housewife

In honor of Mother’s Day 2010, I’d like to acknowledge the wisdom of the Mothers, Grandmothers, and other maternal figures in my life. These are people that I have looked to for guidance, advice and orientation as I have tried to figure out who I am as a woman, a friend, wife, and mother.

I am fortunate in many ways to be the daughter of a generation of women who broke the rules and broke barriers. Feminists: intelligent, capable, savvy, beautiful, resourceful women who knew what they wanted. They were willing to takes risks and face losses, to secede a more comfortable path for OUR sakes, for my sake…and I appreciate the benefits and freedoms of my position. I have choices available they could not have imagined. For example, the choice to work in a field I am passionate about or to stay home and raise my children – and to feel positive and empowered by either path. I have the added benefit of living in a generation and culture of self-exploration (eg. “Eat, Pray, Love”; Oprah, etc.) and “safe space” to process my identity and experiences. But, somehow along the way, I lost one of the threads (no pun intended) that has connected women for generations – the thread of homemaking. And somehow, I never learned to do even the simplest homemaking/housewife tasks: such as how to sew button.

So this is my journey. My journey is to lean the staples of underappreciated housewife daily productivity. As my best friend Marcus once told me: “are you good at homemaking? No. you are good at hiring people to do things!”

Which was followed by: “why don’t you pay ME to do any of this stuff?”

Granted, he’s a remarkable gardener – another of the things my ideal inner housewife will discover on this journey.

My goal is not to fit someone else’s definition of expert. My goal is to fill in some missing pieces about domesticity that I somehow missed out on.

I will learn from a variety of sources – my very wise and sassy friends, classes, workshops, books, mothers, fathers, teachers all - and I will enjoy paying attention to some of the tasks of maintaining a home, marriage, children, friendships, parents, in-laws, siblings…I’d like to learn some new skills and to have some laughs doing so.