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. 

Summer Vignettes Begun

Vignette is a word that originally meant "something that may be written on a vine-leaf." (Wikipedia) --followed by about 15 varied uses for this little French word.

For me, it's a way to capture what may be stream-of-conscience, little thoughts that I don't want to slip away. Now that summer is here, I might actually have the time to hold onto these thoughts. A post on Facebook feels too self-important, personal, or trivial (and I don't want to end up as someone's example in an "are you THAT kind of Facebook poster" survey). For example:

*I love how, upon getting down from his high chair, O will survey the damage he has caused, pointing and saying NananananNANAnana, and occasionally picking up an especially nice morsel to re-eat. 

*I love how he scrunches up his face when he's trying to smile, when he's aware that he's smiling, rather than just smiling out of the joy of new discoveries. 

*Everything is temporary. When a child goes through phases, it's sometime hard to see them as a phase. I tend to think "Oh, he's grown out of sleeping in the car" or "oh, I guess we're done with macaroni and cheese." I need to remember to be flexible, and try these items again, not give up on them. Today, we had a one-nap day that went from a few hours at the zoo (THANK YOU TIAs for our membership that makes a few hours reasonable), to falling asleep in the car (what? He can still do that?) to me going through a Starbucks drive-through to kill some time, to a successful transfer from car seat to bed! I'm thankful that he can grow in and out of these things.

*When I'm woken up early in the morning, I easily decide to take a nap at the same time as my toddler, but in order to get successfully to nap-time, I must ingest enough caffeine that a nap becomes out of reach. Elusive. A mirage. (Easy solution= go to bed earlier. Easier said than done.)

*I'm not one to covet. But I'd like to have a gene or magic trick, whatever it takes, to make my house even an iota of the clean-level of our superhero (pregnant) moms' group host. It might take a whole personality augmentation. Recently, we've had a fruit fly outbreak. I've become cleaner, for sure, and obsessed with my super-secret guilty pleasure, the counter wipe (Seventh Generation, but still surely killing all the good bacteria with the bad). But I cannot seem to achieve even a bit of the shiny floor, glistening (and clutter-free) table top, or fly-free environment that I experience at her house. Now I don't actually want to be a neat-freak, I'm glad that my priorities are 
on fun, flavor and, well, occasionally blogging, but it would be nice if the hours I spend cleaning up the kitchen and the same high-chair messes actually produced a cleaner home. Ah, well.

*Ollin keeps getting more fun. I used to think it would be sad to leave behind baby-ness, but every day is a new adventure with a cooler, more interactive, more intense, expressive, amazing little boy. I cannot get enough. From increasing sign language, to dancing, to singing, to watering the garden, to understanding exactly what we are saying and responding (to the point that we realize we need to really watch what we are saying), it certainly doesn't allow me time to miss the tiny baby that I started with. 

Okay. Those are your paragraphs-on-a-grape-leaf. 



Upcoming posts: The Garden Mafia, Summer Recipes, Toddler Adventures...

A Simple, Hard-To-Say Truth

Hi. I'm a working mom. Even though I worked part-time last year, I still worked five days a week. Even though I just decided to take next year off from my regularly scheduled work, I will still be working. Amazingly, as a teacher, I have most of the summer as a reprieve from working to focus on time with my son. Working moms have a hard balancing act, obviously, but I never really understood how hard until I became one.

The choices we make. Are very personal. Are easy for others to judge. Are really, truly our own. Are not always the best ones, even when we try really hard. Do I wish I had the ability to stay home the first three, four, five years of my son's life? Sure, in many ways. The idea scares me, too, as much of my identity is wrapped up in my career. Or even just interacting on a professional level, if I had a different career. So, if given the choice, I don't know that I would want to stay home full-time for that long.

But here's the truth I recently admitted: my son does better when I'm home. Don't get me wrong, we've had some wonderful care-providers who have loved him fully, but I'm Mama. He has gradually transitioned to not having milk while I'm gone. That's fine, and maybe even natural, though I fought it by pumping even when it was hard and unproductive and getting his nanny to push the milk whatever way possible--sippy cup, in food, etc. But now I'm home, and he gets as much milk as he wants. During the hours I used to be gone, he nurses at least twice. So, he's getting the nutrition from milk AND food, and many may say he doesn't NEED the milk, but it's certainly healthy for him.

And sleep. He's finally getting on a schedule that was not happening while I was working. The only way for our nanny and my parents to get him to sleep was by going for a long walk. This made for an interesting winter. It made for a frustrated nanny many times, until she just succumbed to it and planned accordingly. My mom just looked at it as a way to get in all of her daily steps.

Now I'm able to work out the sleep issues that have built up, from bedtime to nap time. One informs the other. The chicken and the egg. Not that we are done. Currently I am going back and forth between a one-nap day and a two-nap day, depending on when he awakes. 

That my son does better when I'm home must be the most obvious statement in the world to some of you. But we who work, while we try hard to see the situation for what it is, do everything we can to soften transitions, and see the big picture as well, sometimes justify our need or choice to work over what is best for our kid. I am still grappling with this and I'm not done. Down the line, there are probably elements where I'll be proud for O to see me with a career, see my values played out in my work, when he has a teacher, for him to recognize that his mama is also a teacher to other kids. Down the line, maybe without knowing what I'm missing, I'll recognize that O is more well-rounded when his mama is well-rounded, intellectually stimulated and in touch with the world, not isolated or unfamiliar with how to talk to adults. For right now, I am simply going to enjoy every moment of these three months being at home, for him and with him.

Gardening with a Baby

I googled this theme and did not come up with many helpful suggestions. I wanted some advice on how to carry your baby while gardening, what kinds of contraptions to rig to put your baby down where he would be happy, safe, and relatively bug-free. Perhaps I rely too much on the google. We'll just have to be innovative.

We started with O in the car seat, which only lasted about six minutes before he would squirm and cry unhappily. I would then put him in the baby bjorn, which worked alright for him but I could only water and not really bend over. We also tried "the grandparent", which is very effective but time-sensitive and not always available.


We have settled on bringing his bouncy chair and putting him under whatever source of shade is available, from the neighbor's raspberries to our ever-expanding sunflowers. It seems to work pretty well. We also put down a blanket with a blue and white umbrella over the top and he seems to like kicking his legs up and feeling the breeze. Now that we finally have a comfortable situation for him, I think he's getting out of gardening what I'd hoped: exposure to the sounds, sights and feel of nature, from the birds to the soft breezes to just getting his eyes filled up with all the different shades of green.


Let me back up and explain a bit more about our garden. (First, see my other post about our community garden plot.) Last year our plot was prolific. We had broccoli, tomatoes, tomatillos, strawberries, daikon, corn, arugula, cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers, eggplant, artichoke, spinach, lettuce, and sunflowers. We also had an earlier start and an easier time gardening pre-baby. This year, we got a notice in May saying that we needed to tend to our garden or give it up. We had visited once to survey but didn't get started until O was about one month old. We gave them our reasons and got to work. In the fall, Shannon had become disinterested in gardening and I had become increasingly larger and less mobile, so we didn't "put our garden to bed" as we should have. Thus, we returned to mostly weeds. It took some work to clear out, but some brilliant person had brought a ton of used burlap sacks from coffee shops in to kill weeds. We covered most of our plot with these sacks.


We also learned that in our absence, a killdeer family had nested in our plot, and people staked out the nest so no one would disturb it. We felt glad that we had inadvertently provided a space for another fledging family.


Other changes had occurred in our absence. A number of the plots had not sold, so the city decided to give them away to immigrant families in the area. We now have about five plots being worked by Eastern European families who have brought with them their knowledge of cold-weather gardening and have created amazing structures (cold frames I guess, though they are solid enough to call green houses). These families must have some agreement to raise food for their community, because there are so many tomatoes they could feed hundreds of people!


With new community members comes some strife, of course, and it came in the form of cultural misunderstandings. I have noticed that some of the greatest issues between cultures has to do with the use of space. In this case, I think being helpful has been confused with being invasive at times. We so far have thoroughly enjoyed the exchange. Shannon can speak a small bit of Russian, which quickly ingratiated us with George and Maria, who have given us tomato plants, cucumbers and a great big zucchini. When I asked George what kinds of tomatoes we got, he said "good". But apparently, not everyone had this experience. Early on, a woman came up to me to complain about pillows in the shed which might lead to homelessness (or something like that. I couldn't quite follow). She began yelling at me as a way to get me on her side (not effective, obviously) and in her rant, she said something about "the war with the Russians and you have to pick a side". I decided she was crazy and tried not to find out too much more about any war with the "Russians", who are not Russian. On the other hand, it has helped me to see others advocating for each other where I did not expect. A woman who can sometimes be interested in drama was defending the Eastern European families by explaining the difference in how people view ownership, and mentioning that they were impressively multi-lingual. Ultimately, we all will grow from this experience.

So, back to our plot: this year we have not taken on as much. We are being realistic about what we can handle (though with donations from George, our plans have changed a bit). So far we have seven tomato plants (two volunteers from last year's heirlooms), two butternut squash, a tepee trellis of green beans, a whole bed of strawberries, six broccoli plants, onions, arugula, cucumbers, three peppers, eggplants, and sunflowers. Actually, it sounds like a lot. We still have paths of burlap sacks and a small and dwindling weedy section, but it is a great work in progress, and now we have another person to share it with, which makes it even more meaningful.

The Plight of an Oregonian

Some say that summer actually starts here after the Fourth of July. When I finally resign myself to this expectation, I have a much more enjoyable summer. Many Oregonians live in constant denial and June is a whole series of disappointments. Well, the disappointments actually start in April, when we are ready for just one glimpse of the sun. If we do see the sun for an afternoon, there are more accidents because everyone gets crazed or blinded by the light. I have the Oregonian's plight, where if the sun comes out on a weekend, I am frantic to get outside and enjoy it at all costs. If it's rainy, I can stay inside all day on a Saturday. Shannon, a total homebody from Arizona, is completely unaffected by the weather and thinks I'm wonky. 

But once summer actually starts here, it is the best summer in the world. I've been to other summers in the world, so I can say that. July and August are filled with warm, occasionally hot, long, dry days. The weather is perfect for ripening the sweetest berries, pushing forth tomatoes and even peppers in a good year. 


As a teacher, I should really live in Arizona during the school year and vacation here. The time that I can leave is the best time to stay. I became a teacher in part so I could adventure in the summer, but it's awfully hard to leave Oregon's glory. 

In the past, my summers were full of road trips, river swimming, backpacking, hiking, gardening and biking. Now they are shifting. Shannon's immovable character kept me from being quite as active the last few years. Now that Ollin is in our lives, I hope to find some good summer rituals and traditions to help him enjoy Oregon summers as much as I do. Last week my dad and I took him to Powell Butte and watched his eyes take in the lush, green tree canopies, the forest floor, the cool air and birdsong. The garden is also a great place for him to absorb nature. Soon we'll begin exploring the rivers, the ocean and beyond. 

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. 

Mama Blogs to Inspire

Busy day. Here are some awesome blogs to check out. I've highlighted my favorite posts.


The Rookie Moms Blog has this brilliant idea that I wish I'd thought of: 25 things to do on maternity leave. It's awesome because the writing is great and the ideas are exactly what a new mom needs. Here's one: http://www.rookiemoms.com/write-a-did-do-list/ .
She also has tips for how to fit a shower into your day---[HOLD THE PRESSES! My baby just smiled in his sleep]--- Okay, anyway, she has this great list that includes things that will help you build confidence going out and about as a new mom, like scouting out the baby-friendly bathrooms and nursing spots, and going to a Mommy Matinee, which I have already done! She also has the brilliant idea for couples to pretend one night that they are teenagers babysitting rather than parents in their own home. 


The other one that I just have to read daily is Mommy Shorts. She is a brilliant writer with the right sense of humor for me. Here are a few of my favorites:
 http://www.mommyshorts.com/parenting-math and for father's day, this one.


I also adore the writing (and the people) in this one: 
http://therhodeslog.blogspot.com

How to Tell the Days Apart

How was yesterday different than  the day before?  The days really sort of run together when all you seem to do is breastfeed and empty the dishwasher. I try to fit in some outing almost every day. So yesterday, being a Tuesday I think, I had organized a playgroup walk on Mt. Tabor. Originally I had scheduled it for Monday,  it was pouring so I cancelled it. No one showed up Tuesday either. Again the weather was drab and gray (it's currently gorgeous and sunny, no plans made). So I walked by myself (with O) on a forested path to the top of Mt. Tabor. O was asleep in the baby bjorn. Halfway up, in the deepest part of the forest (to set the mood) I heard a clunk and saw something smack against a tree trunk. When the thrower saw me, he picked up said object and slipped it back into a holster on his belt. Great. The man with him was wearing shorts over his track pants and smoking a pipe. I wouldn't say I was afraid; the two white-haired gentlemen seemed harmless, but I did briefly consider my lone adventures differently with a bundle of baby in front of me. You never know when you might run across a knife-thrower. 

I usually divide up the days by visiting the garden if it hasn't rained, going to the store, walking, and having an occasional visitor. Last week I even made it to someone else's house! And Fridays I have a facilitated moms' group, which has been one of the best thing so far for getting information and having confidence about each stage that O goes through. 

Other things that made yesterday different:

• I cooked something from The Chew. Well, sort of. It was chicken Amandine, but I didn't have almonds, so I just used garlic (because garlic is always a good substitute for almonds). And then I realized I had a red cabbage, so I decided I should make coleslaw. I looked at a Chew recipe and then made it totally different. It was actually great!
• I had a doctor appt and left O (with his papa) for a whole hour and 20 minutes; the longest I've been away from him. And everything was fine!