The Week Without a Country?

When I was a kid, I watched an ancient movie (50's?) entitled 'The Man Without a Country.'  This guy had done some spying against his homeland and was condemned to spend the rest of his days without a country, basically he got to live on a ship but was never allowed to go on land.  It was really sad.  That's sort of what the week between Christmas and New Year has always felt like: an awkward span of days that is bereft of the Christmas jollity yet prior to the purpose and excitement of a dawning year. The hangover after Christmas?  At least that's what it has always felt like.  This year, it feels more like a time of rest and reflection, a time to recover from the busyness of the holiday marathon, to reflect on what has been and what will soon be.  As a kid, it was pretty much torture, but as an adult who just bid farewell to the last of our in-home celebrants, I am rather relishing the quiet.  I guess I must be all grown up at last; scary thought indeed!

Exploding Egg Salad

So we had to get a new stove and I'm still learning this one's quirks, one of which is that it doesn't heat as quickly as my last stove, meaning I need to adjust my mental timing when planning meals/cooking things to make sure they are done on time.  Or that my food is fully cooked before serving…

Eggs were on sale this week so I thought I'd whip up a batch of egg salad:

4 eggs
Mayo, mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper, simple!

Except my eggs were only partially cooked (think soft, squishy tomato consistency).  I peeled one but threw away half of it as it stuck to the shell.  Instead of reboiling the other three, I thought I'd speed things up and use the microwave, and yes I know things like eggs and potatoes tend to explode therein if not treated carefully.  So I cracked the shell on Egg 1, threw it in and took it out the second it split in half and scooped out the cooked innards with a spoon, much easier than peeling!

Enter Egg 2, same treatment, except this one blew up quite spectacularly.  It was a mess but I haven't had this much fun in the kitchen in ages!

Clean microwave and crack Egg 3 completely in half, perfect.

So there you have it, a new holiday tradition!

How to eat, or not?

It is a challenging world we live in, at least dietarily, especially when feeding company.  I had a friend who had one side of the family that was vegan (no eggs, milk, or meat) and the other side was gluten free (no flour type products) and they were all at her house at the same time!  Some people have a medical necessity to avoid certain foods (allergies, sensitivities, celiac disease, etc.) while others have basically jumped on the idea as a fad or alternative religion.  Is gluten free still all the rage or have we moved on to paleo or something else?  Remember the atkins diet?  Even the scientific opinion on the subject seems to shift sporadically.  Eggs are either bane or blessing depending on the year.  Salt and cholesterol and red meat were going to kill us back in the '90's but now it is okay; coffee and red wine are also either miracle or poison, depending on the most recent study.  So how do you cook for people at all in this day and age when everyone has a medical necessity or a strong preference?  Especially when many who have elected to eat a certain way get highly offended when you don't bow to their wishes?  Why is it people who have a medical reason for their diet are so much more accommodating than those who choose to eat a certain way?  I've never been preached at by a celiac patient that gluten is evil, but I've heard plenty of sermons on why I need to eat organic or go vegan or avoid red number 5.

Even the food labels have gone bananas.  They no longer say what's in the product (well they do, in teenie tiny letters) but the big bold lettering goes to such proclamations as fat free (jelly beans, 100% sugar), gluten free (salt), no antibiotics (poultry, but you get in big trouble if you sell tainted meat so I'm not sure what the point is), natural flavoring (soda, definitely a healthy alternative), no preservatives (this really irked me, granola bars are supposed to have a long shelf life!)…you get the idea.  No wonder people are confused by what to eat and how to cook.  But a little common sense will go a long way in this as in all else.  Eat what you like, a wide variety and all things in moderation.  There is no magic diet that will let you live to 100 regardless nor will eating bacon (or whatever) once in a while kill you.  On the other hand, worrying about it too much may just give you an ulcer.  Also, if you are enthusiastic about your new diet, that's fabulous but please don't beat us nonbelievers over the head as dolts and evil doers, we're living as we think is best, just as you are.

An answer at last

It happens more often than I'd like: I'm somewhere minding my own business and either a former acquaintance or a complete stranger who has discovered my professional proclivities asks how business is going.  I stand there rather embarrassed and wonder how to answer when I work in my professional trade hardly at all right now and spend most of my waking hours saying things like 'don't ride your trike down the stairs' and 'no, you can't put peas up your nose.'  Why am I the embarrassed one?  Why is it a cultural faux pas to ask how motherhood is going rather than assuming my career is the only thing of import in my life?  Since when is being a stay at home mother something categorized in the 'don't' ask, don't tell department?'  There seems to be a cultural assumption that if you don't have to stay at home, you don't.

The last time this happened, I heard myself saying in answer to their perplexed look at the idea that I only work part time, says I, "I'd rather be a mom."  And it was true and rather freeing!  Society may look down on parenthood, see children as a nuisance, and wonder that anyone would spend any more time than necessary with their kids, especially with the ubiquity of public school and day care, but as a former kid who really didn't have parents (with my raising left to said ubiquitous institutions), let me tell you that society has it all backwards.  Family is the most important thing to a developing person and to the future of society as a whole.  We're raising a whole generation of screwed up citizens who think work or football or social media is the most important thing in life, which does not bode well for the future of our society.  I think raising two or three happy, healthy, well adjusted people is a whole lot more important than whether I'm fulfilling the cultural norm, and it's okay, I'm just weird like that.