I’m baking a cake for my son’s birthday party tomorrow. Now, today was a busy day and I had to do a lot of shopping, so when I was making the list, I considered picking up a box o’ cake mix and making one from that.
I didn’t.
This isn’t a “go me, look at what a good Mommy I am” moment. The cake I am making probably won’t taste much different from a mix. It’s your incredibly basic chocolate cake that I’d be perfectly comfortable talking a ten year old through making. The reason I didn’t buy the boxed mix was nothing more than looking in my pantry, realizing I had everything I needed to make a cake anyway and figuring it was stupid to spend the money, plus the knowledge that in terms of time, it would have been six of one, or a half a dozen of the other. If I hadn’t had all the ingredients, it might have been a box o’ cake.
I would have felt no guilt about that, either.
It did get me to thinking, though, about how we perceive the effort involved in making a meal as well as a book I’d read recently.
When researchers watched thirty-two two-income families cook dinner for four days, here’s what they saw: It took people an average of fifty-two minutes from the time they opened the refrigerator door to the time they sat down at the table, whether they used a box kit like Hamburger Helper or cooked everything from scratch. The only difference was that meals cooked from scratch required about ten minutes more active time— minutes spent chopping and sautéing, for example— than box mixes.
McMillan, Tracie (2012-02-21). The American Way of Eating (pp. 211-212). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
While it’s partially a matter of perception, she goes on to say something else that’s a really interesting point:
Box meals don’t save us time any more than going out to eat does, and they don’t even save us money. What they do instead is remove the need to have to come up with a plan for dinner, something that’s easy when you’re a skilled cook— and bafflingly difficult when you’re not. The real convenience behind these convenience foods isn’t time or money, but that they remove one more bit of stress from our day.
McMillan, Tracie (2012-02-21). The American Way of Eating (p. 212). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
It’s why I, who am definitely a skilled cook, considered choosing a box mix for a cake when preparing for a party. It wasn’t that it was going to save me time, really. What it meant was that I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble to look up a recipe for the materials I already had on hand. (My smartphone has become my cookbook. What can I say?)
Though one thing Ms. McMillan may not have considered (and this is probably because as she mentions in her book, kitchen skills played no real part in her childhood or growing up years) is that even skilled cooks will order out or have an easy go-to when tired or stressed. There are ways to avoid it if one knows how, of course. Meal planning, shopping to a list, planning meals based on likelihood of how busy one will be on a particular day – all of these things are necessary to being able to have cooking be less of a stressful chore and more of a pleasant routine. And this isn’t a skill that’s generally taught, even in home ec classes these days.
I used to boggle at my mother being able to keep her house as neatly as she does. I always rather had visions of her spending hours sneaking in cleaning when I was at school, or during the summer, when I was at friends’ houses or summer jobs. It had to be that way, because keeping my room neat was such a damn ordeal! When I moved out, I found trying to keep a neat house totally overwhelming, and wished I had the energy to spend those hours and hours cleaning that I thought my mother put in. In the last few years I’ve learned this wasn’t really so. Most of the cleaning I actually saw her doing was the work that was getting done.
My house is quite as neat and clean as hers is these days. No, I don’t spend a great deal of time on the house. Know why? I don’t bloody well have the time to spend hours cleaning. If it took that kind of time, neatness simply wouldn’t happen. Call it an average of 15-20 minutes a day doing actual cleaning, and tack on a few minutes for clutter patrol.
What Mom Really Tried to Teach Me (And I Didn’t Listen)
My mother really did try to teach me to keep a clean house. No, it wasn’t Housewife Training, but more Grownup Training. She tried to teach my brother the same thing, after all. She grew up with someone who kept house the way I used to – let the clutter and mess get so overwhelming that it’s intolerable and/or embarrassing, then spend an effort worthy of the Augean stables only to be worn out and not really into doing any more housework for a long period of time. Mom, who actually learned from that nonsense, did things differently when she became mistress of her own home.
If you’re a Reader, there might be times that you’ll get a big kick out of someone walking into your house then seeing their eyes go wide at the wall-to-wall bookshelves and piles of books everywhere. It’s your proof, your badge that you’re an intellectual. Or at least a bookworm, right? People know you’re a part of The Club the instant you walk into the house. Or maybe, if you’re a female Reader, you’ve spent most of your life choosing purses based on the book-carrying capacity. If you’re out and about, you’d use the downtime to read a bit, the cover of the book proclaiming your literary tastes.
My house did used to look like that – shelves and shelves of books. I also did choose purses based on being able to carry a couple of standard paperbacks.
You wouldn’t know it if you looked in my house now. Oh yeah, I have three of the old billy IKEA bookshelves. You know the ones –six and a half feet tall, holds loads of books. Yeah, they’re stuffed to bursting, but that’s hardly an amazingly large book collection. They’re also upstairs in a hallway. I don’t show this off in the living room. I also don’t have the teetering piles of the books I’m currently reading piled on side tables or anything even close to that. If you were a guest in my home and were not invited upstairs, there would be very little indication that I am a Reader. In fact, you’d be more likely to think I’m a major television addict due to a large and heavy entertainment center.
I’m not a TV addict, though I like the occasional movie. I am still a Reader. I read mostly using electrons these days – my Kindle, my phone, my computer. There’s no immediate badge any more. Shoot, I can fit a library in my pocket.
However, like many a bookworm, there is a sense of identity you derive from it. No, you weren’t one of the Cool Kids, but dammit, you were well-read. It was something that could make you feel good about yourself. The comments about, “Wow, what a lot of books!” were a small and sometimes rather needed ego-boo.
I wonder if this is what drives the popularity social media sites like Goodreads. You can still show that yes, you are a Reader, even if books are no longer shoving you out of the house, and that discrete little device means that there’s no real way to tell that yes, you’re reading your way through five books at once.
My non-fiction words for the day are written. (Though frankly, when you’re writing about possible uses for developing technology, I think it’s more in the realm of science fiction. See, my youth wasn’t wasted after all!)
On to fiction. It’s kind of my reward for the duller stuff, even if writing can be tedious no matter what.
I think it’s something that we writers don’t talk about with any great clarity, and I think we should. Getting good at anything requires daily tedious practice. It’s not all about when the words are flowing and we feel godlike in our ability to express ourselves. Those moments are awesome, but that’s not how we get better at what we do. It’s when it’s a slog to meet the word count. It’s when we re-write a sentence five times before we feel like we’ve conveyed our exact meaning. That’s when we are getting better.
I read a book recently called “Talent is Overrated” that talked about stellar performance, and the make or break in almost any endeavor was not about the moments when it was good and wonderful, but when you were willing to tolerate the repetitive and tedious. I keep that in mind a lot when I write. Yes, I love to write (obviously), but I don’t love it all the time.
I was thinking about this also when I read an article talking against having word count goals when working on fiction. Now, I’ve never completed a single project that did not have a daily word count goal. I’m in favor of them. If I write when the Spirit moves me, in general I neither write much nor well. The author was arguing that if you’re meeting those word count goals, maybe you’re just vomiting out drivel and that’s hardly going to make for good writing.
I guess my argument is, “What the heck do you think editing is for?”
Like many children, I always looked forward to dying eggs at Easter time. My mother, father, brother and I would gather around in the kitchen, each of us “in charge” of gathering some piece of equipment. We had Corelle ware when I was a youngster, and as Mom bought most of her household goods during her “green phase”, the cups we had were the standard white with the green floral pattern around the edges.
Mom would carefully measure out the vinegar and boil the water in each cup, letting my brother and I drop the little dye tablets into the mixture. The tablets would fizz for a bit, and then the perfect white insides of each cup would have this liquid of the most beautiful and vibrant color. To this day, there’s something about that image that just plain makes me happy.
We would save the wire hoops that came in each kit from year to year, so each cup got its own hoop so as not to mix the colors and muddy the eggs. My brother and I would ponder each white boiled egg carefully, trying to decide exactly what effect we wanted to produce. Should we write our names in the clear wax crayon on the egg? Should we dye the egg, write something on it in the crayon, then dye it another color for a more layered effect? One year Mom made a baby chick out of one of her yellow-dyed eggs. I was very young, and not very neat-handed and envied her ability to do something so clever and cute.
My father also shared that admiring envy of my mother’s ability to do little artistically clever things with almost anything. He, himself, is not particularly an artist for all that he appreciates beauty and while he joined in the egg decoration for the fun of it, he never expected that he would create an artistic tradition that has endured nearly four decades.
One year, he decided he was going to dye an egg in several colors — green on one side, blue at an end, yellow on another side. He was careful to go light on the dye, so that each color was a light pastel. In looking at it, the egg reminded him of a coat of madras cloth he was especially fond of as a very young man. So, with great pride, he dubbed the egg the Madras Egg.
It was lovely, and all the more because he’d done something beautiful. We all decided that the Madras Egg was the egg we’d leave for the Easter Bunny, as it was so pretty.
Every year after that, the egg for the Easter Bunny was the Madras Egg.
Now, I have a household of my own and a nearly grown son. We still color eggs because it is so fun. We don’t always use the color kits, sometimes preferring just to use food coloring, vinegar and water for our dyes. My son almost always starts with a solid yellow egg, bright and happy, because yellow is his favorite color. My artist husband likes to try for a new effect, or something clever and memorable. Every year, I’ve made a Madras Egg in honor of my own childhood memories. But this year, we have the tradition going into its third generation as my son also made a Madras Egg of his very own.
I went on a cruise last week (Carnival Pride, if you’re interested) with my husband, son and parents. It was amazing fun, but it did get me to thinking about several things.
Our ports of call: Port Canaveral, Nassau and Freeport (Bahamas).
So, we embarked in Baltimore around noon. The weather was cool — in the 40s, but there were plenty of places on the ship to be out of the wind. We had lunch and waited to leave Baltimore for sunnier climes. We’d cruised out of this port before, so we were out on deck waiting to watch as the ship passed under the Key Bridge. It’s quite a sight. As you approach, it looks like the ship won’t actually clear the bridge. I think there’s about a meter of clearance, so there’s not much. It’s why as cruise ships get bigger, Baltimore is a less popular port for pleasure cruises, I think.
We spent a couple of days at sea, and yes, the weather was cool until we got as far South as Florida. This is mostly because 70 in calm breezes is much warmer than 70 in a brisk wind off the deck of a ship! But I’ve discovered that my love of being on a ship is not solely due to my love of sun and warmth. Up until fairly recently, I’ve been resistant to the idea of sailing North out of Boston, but I think I’ve revised my opinion. This graphic was apparently more accurate than I realized.
The sea days were sea days. You dance, you meet interesting people, you eat good food, you read books, you see shows, you play games, or soak in a hot tub, or go to the gym or…. I find drinking too expensive on a cruise ship, so I don’t much. I’m not into gambling, either, but if that’s your thing, most cruise ships have a casino. For me, it’s really being on the ship that’s awesome. Being spoiled rotten for a few days doesn’t hurt, either. Our stewards and waiters were really good. I still can’t get over the serving staff’s memories in the dining room. One day and they were remembering our tastes and preferences, and they were doing this with hundreds of people a week.
Speaking of tastes, my son made me very happy the first day when I asked him how he’d slept. His comment, “Now I know why babies like to be rocked to sleep.” I was terrified the boy was going to be a landlubber. His tastes when it comes to swimming had me wondering, but no. While certainly he’s allowed his own tastes, it pleases me beyond belief that he likes cruising and ships as much as I do.
Unlike some people who seems to think the dining room is “too formal” I rather enjoy going to the dining room for meals rather than the buffets. We had some great table mates — a pediatric oncologist doing her fellowship and a science teacher. Intelligent, fascinating young women. The conversation at meals was just delightful. We totally lucked out.
After a couple of days at sea, we docked at Port Canaveral where of course we took the Kennedy Space Center tour. It was a lot… fancier… than I expected. I’d never been before, amazingly enough, and I need to go back, as the six hours we were there wasn’t really enough to fully explore it. It was sad in a way, because a lot of the exhibits were made when the shuttle program was an ongoing thing, and now… Well. However, there was a great IMAX show about the International Space Station, and other things about current exploration. I learned a fair amount about the first Moon shot that I hadn’t know before. I was also under the impression that Apollo 11 went a lot more smoothly than it actually did. I’m sorry to say our lack of commitment to the space program is depressing me more now than it ever did.
We were surprised to see that the Enchantment of the Seas (the cruise ship my husband and I took for our 20th Anniversary trip) was also at Port Canaveral. Apparently it was having engine trouble, and the cruise line had comped the entire cruise. You know, while I would be maybe a bit annoyed to have to call at different ports than expected, hey… free cruise!
After Canaveral, we set sail for Nassau. I’d been there before, and was happy to go back. It was a strange sensation to sit on the deck going into Nassau’s harbor. When we went about 18 months ago, it seemed exotic and different. This time, it felt odd to know the harbor.
What I was most interested in was seeing my son’s reaction to a foreign port. His comment? He was a bit surprised at seeing Burger Kings and Starbucks there. I don’t think he found the Bahamas all that different from the US in a lot of ways. And in truth, I’m sure it looked like any beach area to his eyes. That’s more or less why our excursion was a historical tour of the island, so he could get an idea of the history of the place and its culture. We saw the Queen’s Stairs, of course, and Fort Charlotte. The guides tend to take you through really fast, so you don’t get a chance to analyze the structure or even read the exhibits as well as you could. I guess most people find historical buildings boo-ooring (some of our tour mates sure seemed to), but I don’t. How did/do they live and why did they make the choices they did is always of interest to me.
As we were making our way back to port, another ship was arriving. It was the Enchantment. I recognized it from quite far away, which was kind of neat. My parents and son returned to the ship, and my husband and I decided to wander around Nassau within walking distance of the port. I only had one lady bug me to ask if I wanted my hair braided this time. I declined!
We set sail from Nassau late in the evening, but we did watch as we left port so we could see the lighthouses (Mom loves lighthouses) and it was neat.
The next morning we got to Freeport. We’d intended our excursion to be a snorkling trip, but the winds were far too high. The excursion was cancelled, so we took a taxi to the beach at Lucaya. I liked Freeport better than Nassau. Seemed more “real” if that makes any sense. The people were considerably less pushy to sell to tourists, which makes sense. From what I understand, Bahamians looking for work tend to go to Nassau, so it’s the aggressive go-getters that tend to find their way there. Still, I liked feeling free to look at wares without being pressed hard to buy. Hair braiding was considerably cheaper at Freeport than Nassau. If we were going to be there longer than a few hours, I definitely would have gotten my hair done there. I like cornrows when you’re on a ship. As long as my hair is, it’s a much easier hairstyle to manage in high winds. But it’s a minimum of a two hour job on my mop, and there just wasn’t time.
One thing I notice about cruise ships, though. Many of the passengers sure didn’t seem to have a clue about anything nautical. I’m not talking about stuff you’d need to know professionally. I’m hardly a sailor, myself. I mean terms like “bow” and “stern” or “starboard” and “port”. The cruise director would actually give directions using terms like “front of the ship”. And, of course, he had to or he’d confuse many of the passengers. But you’d think that someone going on a cruise would at least get into the fact that you’re on a ship, for pity’s sake.
The last day of the cruise was a sea day and we got to do something really fun. We toured the galley. Maybe that sounds dorky, but I really enjoyed seeing more backstage, and seeing how things were set up. Of course we toured during downtime, so there were a couple of sous-chefs doing prep work, but otherwise the place was calm, quiet, sparkling clean and perfect. I know that’s not what it looked like during dinner hours :) However, the organization was definitely impressive.
Disembarkation was really smooth. We decided to get our own luggage off so it was just a matter of getting off the gangway, going through Customs (they didn’t inspect anything of ours and just glanced at passports) and getting in our car to go home.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to take a cruise again, but it can’t come too soon for me.
I'm not vegetarian, but I loves me some beans and rice
I saw a TED-talk about nutrition today. No, I’m not going to link to it because several bits of the science were weak or outright inaccurate. But it did get me to thinking about how the household eats. In reviewing, I realized that while we were doing fine in terms of lunches,1 we just weren’t eating enough veggies when it came to dinner, doing far too much “sauce onna carb”type of meal. That’s fine when it’s a really veggie-intensive sauce, but I still wasn’t satisfied.
Being lazy, and wanting to do the whole recommended filling of half one’s plate with veggies and fruit, I went the salad route. I like salads and always have. When I was a small child, this was the only way I would eat vegetables. Yes, that meant we had a salad with dinner almost every night when I was a youngster.
But it also got me to thinking about how much veg I really do eat. When I make spaghetti sauce, yes, there’s real tomatoes in it, as well as a green or red bell pepper and a fresh onion. The beans in that beans and rice pic were cooked with the New Orleans Trinity of green peppers, onions and celery, and we’re not talking garnish for flavoring, here. That pot of beans had about five cups of the Trinity in it! When I make soups, it’s similar.
Yet when you see pictures of “healthy” plates of meals, you do tend to see pictures like this one – displaying half the plate with easily-identifiable vegetables in it as a side rather than cooked into a dish. While in part that’s marketing, does loading up a sauce like spaghetti sauce with vegetables “count” to the nutritionist? I mean, logically speaking it should, yes?
What do you think? If you’re trying to eat more vegetables, do you tend to throw them into dishes that don’t always have them, or do you make a special place on your plate?
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1 As I’ve posted here, my bento tend to be pretty heavy on the fruits and veggies.
Black pants. You’d think this would be an easy thing to get, right? I mean, if there’s a standard wardrobe staple, this would be it.
Well, I need a few pair of black pants. I also don’t have much time, so I figured I’d just go to Wallyworld and pick up a few pair of cheap pants and be done with it. There’s a million women with my shape, and plenty of us get quickie clothes off the rack, right?
HA!
Keep in mind before we begin that I do not exactly make pants for myself that are exquisitely tailored that take seventeen fittings before I get the exact fit. Hardly! I made a couple of incredibly minor adjustments on the fly to get the fit right in the butt, leg length and waist, but I even eyeballed that. We’re talking elastic waistband, even. You really can’t call me picky about fit.
Or so I thought.
Yet, no kidding, I could not walk into that silly store and find a pair of pants that would not require at least an hour of tailoring to get a sort of okay fit in the waist, leg and butt. This is for a $20 pair mind! If it fit me in the rear and thighs, I’d need to take in about four inches in the waist. Any commercial pair of pants I buy needs hemming. I’m short.
Friends, it only takes me an hour and a half to make a pair of the kind I wear from start to finish. If I don’t have time to make pants, I don’t have time to alter them, either.
It boggles me that there are women who like shopping in the face of that. I can only imagine that it must be the challenge.
I needed some new clothes and thought I’d sew myself a nice capsule. This doesn’t anchor well with a lot of the rest of my wardrobe, ‘cept a couple of purple pieces and the new wavy print here.
The brocade was a haori I made a few years ago.
Everything but the jacket was a tried-n-true pattern, so this was very much a quick-n-easy SWAP and it only took me a couple of weeks to sew up.
II’m four garments in to a nine garment wardrobe capsule. Yes, I’ll post the composite photo when I’m done, but I wanted to talk a bit about the jacket I just completed.
I’ve been eyeing the Saf-t-Pockets patterns for years. The idea behind most of the garments designed by the company is to have an attractive garment with enough pockets to carry your stuff without having to resort to carrying a purse. There are garments with visible pockets, but the one I made has all the pockets hidden on the inside. Yes, I like gadgety cleverness of design even in clothes. Stop looking at me like that. I can’t help it. I was scared of trying it, though, because I was worried it was above my sewing abilities. You’d want a year or two of sewing under your belt before you tried it solo, but I wouldn’t have a problem coaching a beginner through this.
I just wore this gadgety goodness to a business meeting and a few errands. I am in love with the design.
There are four internal pockets to the Flounce About Jacket. Two of them are fairly commodious. They fit anything from a smartphone and keys to a Kindle with no real problems. Yes, this means you can slip a steno pad in there to take notes! The other two pockets are smaller – about the right size for a business card or credit card.
So, I didn’t need to take a purse to my business meeting.
Now, I’m sure you’re saying, “Yeah, but a lot of pockets make the garment bulky and clumsy. We all know what a cargo vest looks like.”
And you’d be wrong. This is the genius of the design. Yes, those pockets are big and can hold a lot of stuff. But they’re not sewn into the front panels of the garment. They hang from the front band so that the drape of the flounce skims over it without ever making it clear that there’s pockets in there with lots of stuff inside! The pockets also have a nice velcro closure, which makes them useful to carry more valuable things.This is smart designing.
I’ll probably make another one of these jackets in a heavier material as more of an inter-season coat and travel, as this is sheer genius.
