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Mom, housewife & life hacker! Corporate drudge escapee writing recipes, tips & discount alerts. Still bring home the bacon & cook it up in 101 healthy way. You’re also going to find out that I’m a total Disney geek. I don’t know if it started with the Read-Along records (“When Tinker Bell waves her wand – bbblllliiiinnnggg – turn the page!”) or the Disneyland book my grandfather gave me around age 3, but however the innoculation happened, it was very effective. I’m happy that my kids share my passion, and I’m even happier that Portland has one of the fancy-shmancy new Imagination Park Disney Stores!
Photo credit: Daniel Ferenčak / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND
We’re past this stage with the kids, thankfully, but there was a time when there were serious concerns about the mysterious regions known as Underbed and Closetback. You see, that’s where the monsters lived.
There were a few rough nights, there, I’m not too shy to say.
“Mom, I’m not tired.”
“Mom, I’m still thirsty.”
“Mom, I’m scared!”
Poloroid by Elsa Dorfman, 1988
Some pretty intense things happened in 1963. The Kennedy Administration severed our ties with Cuba. Alcatraz Penitentiary closed up shop. Bob Dylan released Blowin’ in the Wind.
Most importantly to me, The French Chef premiered on WGBH, introducing America to Julia Child.
It is impossible to overstate how much influence Julia Child had on American eating habits. She wasn’t the first cook to have a TV show, since that honor belongs to Philip Harben, a restauranteur from England. She wasn’t even the first celebrity chef in the US, since that was unquestioningly James Beard. But she was so fun and genuine, so distinctive, so large and good natured and real that she seemed to invite viewers into her kitchen — but even moreso encourage them to enter their own. American cuisine was never the same.
There was something supportive about Julia’s approach. Even now, when I watch clips on YouTube, I feel like she’s on my side, like she really wants to share the pleasures of good cooking and good food. And she wasn’t interested in making fine cuisine intimidating! There’s a famous episode of her first show in which, after cooking a massive potato pancake, she fumbled flipping it onto the platter, catching half the dish while the other half fell on the stovetop. But the show was filmed live, and Julia was a live wire — so she just scooped it up, patched it back together, and looked right in the camera as she asked, “If you’re alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?”
Early in her marriage, Julia was trying to please her older, more worldly husband with a duck dish. It exploded and set the oven on fire. If she could recover from that and go on to become one of the first culinary superstars, well, you and I can surely bounce back from a bad day.
Her kitchen, with its extra-tall counters to accommodate her six-foot-two height, is now at the Smithsonian. It this video, staff and lucky volunteers pack it up to be moved to a new exhibit. It’s amazing and gratifying to see the care they take with her well-worn pans and cookbooks. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, even if we don’t use quite as much butter as she liked.
1 Peter 1:3
It’s been a busy Spring, but today we enjoy a moment to rest and take stock and celebrate blessings with family: Easter. While I love Christmas — and so do the kids — there’s something special about Easter. The return of leaves and birds and yes, even yard work, but also the reminder that our lives have a greater purpose not of this world.
And then there are the Easter eggs!
I don’t know about you, but I vividly remember hovering anxiously nearby as my mother boiled eggs and dissolved the dye tablets, the sharp, stinging scent of vinegar filling the kitchen. Then there was the little ritual of bending the flat wire loops into hooks to fish the eggs out of the bright bowls of coloring. It’s a tradition I’ve enjoyed passing on to my own children.
If your own children or grandchildren are young enough, I’d like to suggest a little magic trick to impress them. After the hard-boiled eggs are cool enough to work with, use a white crayon and carefully draw crosses initials on the shell. Of course, it isn’t magic, just the wax keeping the dye from reaching the surface of the eggshell — but you should see those eyes widen as the shapes become clear. You’ll be creating memories that will last a lifetime.
Of course, Portland has its own Easter traditions, and my favorite is the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. Strictly speaking, it isn’t just for Easter since it runs from the end of March to the beginning of May, but it certainly reminds us that Spring has officially sprung. I hope you have something just as special in your neck of the woods, and a very Happy Easter!
I like to think of myself as a frugal shopper. I look at the sale circulars, subscribe to “deal” websites, and clip coupons. Going to the store is not a simple task for me, because I will actually read the “unit price” labels on the shelves and evaluate my options. I have felt the thrill of saving almost $100 in one trip to the grocery store by adding coupons to store specials. I’ve even watched a couple of episodes of “Extreme Couponing.” It’s obvious some people can really make coupons work for them.
I’m not one of them.
Compared to these people, I’m a very lazy shopper. My epic trip to the store was exhilarating- but exhausting, especially when I got home and had to figure out where to put all the extra stuff I’d had to buy to get the deals (you know, “save $2 on 3 boxes of blah-blah”). On my next trip to the store, I actually looked at shelf labels for products that I’d essentially ignored, thinking them inferior: store brands. In my mind, store brands equaled the white generic boxes from my childhood. The few of those my family tried did indeed turn out to be inferior; the toilet paper was thin and almost sandpaper, the crackers were pretty much the same, and the mac & cheese….well, I prefer to keep that memory blocked. Read More→
Housewife and DIY mommy blogger! Corporate drudge escapee writing recipes, tips & discount alerts. Still bring home the bacon & cook it up in 101 healthy ways. 🙂
