Experiments in Domesticity (with recipes) Part I

Shannon didn't marry me because of my potentiality as a housewife. I never really valued domestic skills, as I always thought they would be a trap into traditional gender roles that I rejected. Sure, I started to see the value of being crafty over the years, but I never fully embraced it.  But here I am, at home while he works, caring for our son and our home (and enjoying it while it lasts). 
Overall, the biggest teacher this summer is pacing. Every day I clean the kitchen, and every day it gets messy again. Some days I fight that and feel very frustrated, other days I embrace it as the zen practice it is. The high chair gets used every few hours, gets dirty every time and needs to be cleaned every time. I AM starting to create systems for myself, which is something I think has always made Shannon crazy: he has a system for everything, from recycling to keeping receipts, and I go over the same issue--losing something, cluttering a drawer, etc.--repeatedly without ever thinking I need a system. Finally, it's the sheer amount of "time-on-task" that is forcing me to figure out systems. And it feels great! 
There are some areas that I am getting better at, and while it feels a little silly to share my newly-acquired knowledge with people who figured it out long ago, I consider myself a student displaying my own work (and I suppose, the teacher facilitating the learning as well...) So while I have a long way to come in the areas of sewing, de-cluttering and ironing, here are some of my recent accomplishments, mostly in the kitchen: (OH, PS: I'd like to think that my life experience thus far has informed some of my creations, for instance, my time in Japan has definitely influenced my kitchen work.)

The O-Maki: a kid-friendly "sushi" roll that is fun to make and eat

Ingredients: 
1 egg
yogurt (whole milk, organic--for kiddos)
cucumber
rice (optional, small amount)

Directions: using a small pan (cast-iron works well) and some chopsticks, crack an egg and whip it smoothly as the pan heats. Use the chopsticks to pull the egg back from the edges, cover and cook mini-omelet on low heat.  Chop cucumbers into thin strips. Pick up little omelet with chopsticks and lay it on a flat surface. spread with yogurt. Spread cucumbers along the middle, all the way to the edge. Add small amount of rice (makes it harder to keep together). Tightly roll egg up. Slice into small sushi-sized pieces. 
Variations include almost anything: avocado, cream cheese, cooked carrots, canned tuna or salmon, quinoa, etc.)

Cross-cultural O-maki: 
Ingredients: 
corn tortilla (refrigerated versions do not contain as many preservatives)
cream cheese
avocado
1 egg

Warm tortilla, cook egg as above and slice into strips, spread cream cheese on tortilla, lay avocado in a strip through the middle, add egg strips, roll tightly, slice.


Garden-Fresh Recipes: 

Eggplant casserole
Eggplant (from someone's garden)
1 fresh tomato
tomato sauce (with some flavor, either made by you from last year, or store-bought
lunch meat or proscuitto
polenta (easy option: the polenta sold in a tube in various flavors)
fresh basil
mozzarella
salt
olive oil
Optional: ricotta, provolone, or cream cheese to fill spaces)

Slice and "sweat" the eggplant--very thin slices, possibly with a mandarin slicer. Salt it on a rack and let it sit until it starts to sweat. Wipe dry. Layer ingredients in an oiled pan, starting with polenta (already cooked), then eggplant, then other ingredients how you choose. Most tomatoes will make it watery, so use sparingly. Top with cheese.  Bake at 400 degrees, covering with tin foil halfway through. Eat when eggplant pieces feel cooked, no longer rubbery. (Option: grill or saute eggplant first, then cook for a shorter time.) 

No-Cook Hot Day Asian Noodles

Ingredients: 
Rice Noodles
Bottled Peanut (or Pad Thai) sauce
2 cups rotisserie chicken, shredded 
2 cups fresh spinach
green onions or cilantro, depending on taste
sesame seeds (optional)
fish sauce, soy sauce, hot sauce, whatever you like to enhance your bottled sauce. 

This is a no-cook dish if you boil water in a kettle and pour it over the rice noodles in a glass bowl, then let it sit for 7-8 minutes. Put spinach in just before you strain the noodles. Toss noodles with spinach, add peanut sauce, add chicken, add green onions/cilantro. Serve warm or cold. 


Other domestic discoveries: 
These tricks I have learned are probably quite obvious to most people. But maybe there is someone out there with domestic inclinations as hopeless as mine, and maybe I am saving them a few minutes or one more frustrating day...

•  I try to have times that it is OK for the kitchen, living room, house to be a bit cluttered. Mid-project cleaning is for the birds! While I'm learning to be less messy, I get too distracted when I worry too much about the mess while I'm in the midst of something. Cleaning up right before my husband comes home or before going out feels more satisfying.
• I have a number of "yes" places for a toddler. A balcony can be a safe place with proper supervision and the right things to do. One or more kitchen cabinets can be a lifesaver to just say yes to (there are tupperware lids under our rug every day. We just look for them there). A small broom can come in handy as a toy... Allow more help than is really helpful. 
• I have learned to plan high chair time strategically. Recently, I've discovered that O can spend much longer than I had thought in his high chair if he has fun foods, a toy, or just music on in the background. I don't leave him here forever, but if he's content, it allows me to clean up the kitchen after a meal, finish unloading the dishwasher, or finish cooking something.
• I start prepping dinner at lunch time. Never thought I'd say that. It relieves the hardest part of the day: pre-dinner, when O is getting tired or hungry, I am too, and Shannon has just come home to feel torn between snuggling his kid and getting some down time after a hard day. 
• I can clean the bathroom or fold laundry while O is in the bathtub. 
• I have started to save the salad greens plastic containers for future salad greens, toys, bathroom organizers, outside scoopers, etc.
• Other people have told me that in the kitchen I should try these things: prep more than one meal at a time, double recipes and freeze half, clean while cooking (you know how I feel about that), keep a bowl for garbage/compost on the counter to make less trips to the trash/compost, shop smart and have the ingredients for some basic meals at all times. Also, someone's suggestion was pre-shift cocktails. That one sounds dangerous to me, but I should probably test it. 
• Please feel free to comment here on my blog (smileyface) and leave your suggestions for domestic success. 

Fall Update and Big Questions

Hi. It's been a while. Thanksgiving has occurred. Solid foods are happening. O's body is inching toward various crawl-like positions, and the desire to move without the full understanding of how is making him alternate from frustration to excitement and back again. Working and having a babe is still hard, even though I'm working part time.

Thanksgiving: we had a very quiet one with my mom and step-dad, O, Shannon and I. And O's favorite new being, Ollie the cat. Now this cat is not like any other cat I have met. He's a Dr. Suess cat, with a long, curling orange tail and body that springs out of his tail. He purrs like a Tibetan Throat Singer. I think he has a triple purr. O's face upon touching his soft, orange fur is pure bliss. So much so that I may have convinced Papa that we need to get a cat for him. There is one caveat: we must get rid of our shedding rug before we get another "pet". 

Working. I know I have little to complain about compared to most. But I have to say, this working thing isn't currently working very well for me. Maybe it's because I'm working almost as hard as I did full time and every month don't know if I'm going to have enough money to cover my basics. After paying for four days worth of childcare from my part-time check, I have about $600-700 left for my student loan and groceries. Will I need to use a handful of change to get gas? Will I need to float the check to my childcare person or ask her (god forbid) to wait a day to cash it? Will I need to make something with all of the dry goods I have in the kitchen and avoid shopping again? Will I need to sell back clothes that I actually want to keep, rather than just the ratty ones that no one wants to take anyway? Now, I know I'm being a bit dramatic. My husband still has a full time job and we have only reduced our expenses somewhat. I still go to New Seasons a few times a month. I still get  a hot beverage when I really think I deserve a treat. We still have cable (i.e. high speed internet).  But there is something about a bank account being tight that affects me psychologically more than it should. It takes up more emotional space than it needs to. The stress affects other parts of my life inordinately.

It could be because I don't feel I can really give my all to my job, and at times I feel like I don't give my all to O because I'm distracted by work. I'm sure this push-pull will always exist. Some days though, I feel like I don't do anything well when I try to do everything. Would starting new jobs feel the same way? Is it easier to just push through this and keep doing something I know, rather than start something new that will take more of my energy to get started?

Sometimes the effects are on my milk supply. Feeling rushed at school when pumping, feeling pressured in the morning when I'm getting ready, and feeling stressed in general all take a toll on my milk supply, and I'm not producing as much. 

The long and short of it is that I have started looking at other options for work. My boss has actually suggested that I could take the rest of the year as unpaid leave of absence and still have my job in the fall. I wanted to quit right then, but I still need to come up with that $700+ a month. There must be some work that allows me to be home more days a week and make that much money. If nothing else, there's taking care of someone else's kid at the same time as taking care of O, for maybe 10-15 hours weekly. I've applied to some online jobs that look promising, and if I can come up with enough semi-guaranteed work, I will take that leave of absence!

Things I've Gotten Better At, and Things I'm Not So Much

This post is inspired by Daddy Doing Work's Six Things I suck At Now that I'm a Parent. I realized that I have gotten skilled at a few odd tasks which never seemed useful before but now I am thankful that I am such a natural at them. Here they are:

Using my Feet

Actually, this one isn't really new. My step-dad used to get mad when I used my feet to turn on the VCR, press play, remove the video, etc. Now the dextrosity of my toes is very handy. I walked around today picking up all the items I needed with a fussy baby who wanted to be upright in my arms. Cloth is easiest, or things with straps. Books are hardest. Blueberries are not recommended. The trick is once you get it about knee high-- can you then grab it, or must you bring it all the way to your waist? 

Typing One-handed/at Very Odd Angles

I've always been pretty uptight about grammar and punctuation. As an English teacher, it seemed a requirement. I'm considering relaxing my stance, but I still feel really weird if I don't correct a missing apostrophe, or if I don't capitalize. It stays with me all day. Almost makes me want to give up typing completely. 

Eating/"Prepping Food" One-Handed

I put "prepping food" in quotes because I just got up with one hand supporting O on the breast-friend (pillow), got out a container of refried beans, cut some cheese rudimentarily, and plopped back down to my "meal". I called beans a la tupperware.

Being Bossy

Believe it or not, I used to have a hard time asking others to do things for me. Now that I have no choice, it's liberating. My dad has probably received the majority of my bossiness, but that's because he is utterly untamed, and every domestic item must be explained: how to change a diaper, boil noodles, open the dishwasher, etc. 

Cooking

It's amazing what can be done when you don't come home exhausted after wrangling 13-year-olds all day. When Shannon entertains Ollin, I can come up with some pretty decent meals. This will most likely change in September. At least I have time to get a few favorites under my belt. 

Sitting on the Couch

Well, honestly, I perfected this one during pregnancy. And then someone told me that this most relaxed position wasn't good for my baby's birth position. Dammit! So I perfected laying on the couch, which is not as easy as it sounds when you're huge and your couch is actually a puffy love seat. I got so good at it that sometimes I had to wake up in the middle of the night, have a snack and lay on the couch rather than go back to bed. 

Now, I could still use more exercise, but I have no guilt about sitting here, breastfeeding for hours upon hours. For some reason, my baby sleeps best with a nipple in his mouth. So I have a station set up, and I'm quite good at sitting here. 

Efficiency

I am getting this one, but it's still a work in progress. I know the importance of it, and at times I succeed in getting the diaper packed, the baby packed, and myself some water and a snack without going back upstairs five times or re-opening the garage door. Today I was actually on the freeway before I realized I had to go back for something. But in general, I'm more efficient than when I just had myself to tend to and I still made multiple trips back inside and upstairs. And, I often do something ahead of time because I know that by the time it needs to be done I'll be breastfeeding or otherwise indisposed! So proud of myself.

Things I'm worse at:

Being passive. I don't have time to sit around and wait for someone else to decide to take action or wonder if it is my place to say something, etc. I do try to sensor myself at our moms' group, though you probably wouldn't know it. I'd like to have an individual conversation with each person, or just co-facilitate. But apparently that's not my job. 

Thinking about work. 

Exercise.

Taking my vitamins on schedule.

I'm sure there's more, or at least there will be when I go back to work part time in September. I'll keep you posted...

GJ

Shannon's in NYC eating at Momofuku, 

and mom, or GJ for Grandma Jan, is helping me take care of O for a few days. 


We're having lovely adventures including but not limited to food cart exploration, neighborhood walks, IKEA, the garden, sushi, shopping, dressing and redressing the baby, cookie making, laundry, and visiting friends. Irony: driving to the garden in the rain to water the garden & realizing that if we'll get soaked watering, perhaps we don't actually need to water.
When I'm not anchored to the couch, I'll post some pics.