There's no place quite like the
MidWest. It reminds me of one of those relatives that you love because you're
related to them, but there are quite honestly no other legitimately valid
reasons why. As I crossed the Michigan/Indiana state line, warmly welcomed back
by the Pure Michigan sign, the happy feelings welling up inside of my chest
were quickly squelched by the memory of a sign I had passed a while back on the
highway advertising Deer Pee for sale. At first I thought surely I had read it
wrong, but realized after several minutes of thought that my first instinct was
correct. Flabbergasted, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to sell
urine. ...Or, perhaps the better question, why anyone would want to buy it. My older
sister kindly set me straight later by informing me that deer hunters spray it
on themselves to cover their scent and/or attract all the boy deer.
Fantastic. At least the buying and
selling (and hopefully spraying) of the urine was happening in Indiana.
And after that fascinatingly random
side-story, back to the weekend. I’d been planning this weekend for two weeks.
Nothing and no one was going to stand in-between me and my perfect weekend. At school,
I have neither the time, energy, resources, or space to cook food, bake things,
make crafts, or all the other various "domestic" kinds of things that
litter the Pinterest boards of girls across the country. All my pent-up
crafting and homemaking energies were going to expend themselves in one massive
creative explosion. Determined to be all the stereotypes of a woman hyperbolized
to the max for two days, I had my Friday and Saturday planned to a
"T".
On Friday morning, I would go out
to an early breakfast with my momma, go grocery shopping, and pick up craft
supplies, then in the afternoon I would start the soup for dinner in the
crockpot, finish my laundry, wash the dishes, bake a pumpkin spice cake, and
sew a shoulder bag all before my family came home for dinner, at which time I
would present them with a three-part dinner and a clean house. On Saturday, I
would create my own laptop cover, go thrift store shopping with my sister and
my boyfriend-in-law, and complete with excellence the mountain of homework that
has accumulated in my planner. I AM WOMAN.
Surprisingly, those two days were a
great success.
When I say surprisingly, I really
do mean surprisingly. That wasn’t facetious. Most of the time, my grandiose
plans for homemaking involve an extreme excitement for starting a project,
which quickly deteriorates into bewilderment and frustration when I realize
that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with this project and my life in
general, leading to an existential crisis wherein I despair at the fact that I
am an untalented blob with no use to anyone or anything. At this point, feeling
as helpless as a one-finned platypus in the Sarahan desert, I turn the half
finished disaster over to my mother. She finishes it for me. Every time. (God
bless that woman. She is a saint.)
This time, however, I was
determined to finish everything myself. I would be accomplished if it killed
me. I would like to be a wife someday (at this point, the probability of that
happening is somewhere around the odds of winning the lottery or getting struck
by lightning 7 times in 6 years, but the point still applies), and I figured that
I should probably start practicing those skills that most wives effortlessly seem
to have.
So, what were the results of all my
hard labor?
Well, I’m glad you asked cause I was about to show you anyway. I’m
a bit addicted to Pinterest, and I found a recipe several months ago for a
Tomato Basil Parmesan soup. Freaking kidding me? That sounds delicious. I was
determined to make it at some point in my life, and this weekend seemed like as
good a time as any, so the soup was the first part of my family’s three part
dinner. It was a huge hit with my parents, at least (my sister was slightly less
enthused), delicious, and so easy to make.
Here’s a link to the original
recipe: http://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/2009/03/day-56-tomato-basil-parmesan-soup.html.
Contrary to the image people get when the word “vegetarian” is used, I am not an
animal rights extremist, nor am I one of those individuals who doesn’t bathe
for weeks on end and weaves all of their own clothes out of hemp fiber and
dandelion greens, but I do try to eat healthy, so I avoid meat and most animal
products for that reason. In order to maintain my vegetarian ways, I substituted vegetable broth for the chicken
broth, soy milk for the half and half, and Chobani for the butter.
I didn’t take pictures of these,
but I made grilled pepperjack cheese sandwiches to go with the soup. That was
the second part.
The third part was a pumpkin spice
cake. I found a terrific idea (again, on Pinterest) of stacking two Bundt cakes
on top of each other to make the shape of a pumpkin. How cute and clever,
right? What an awesome harvest time food idea. Let’s just say that my efforts
were a little less like the cute harvest time food buffet and more like the dessert
that would be served in a Tim Burton themed Halloween dinner.
Cooking: 2 for 3.
Hey, I’ll take that. In baseball, that’s a kick butt batting average. It’s all
about perspective. The crafting projects I took on went fantastically well,
though, so I’m happy enough.
Here’s the shoulder
bag that I made (pattern available at http://crazylittleprojects.com/2012/09/messenger-bag-tutorial.html):
And here is the
laptop cover that I made (no pattern for this one, because I did it ALL BY
MYSELF. That’s right. Be jealous.):
I discovered that embroidery is
actually kind of fun! I started toying with this dangerously tempting idea of
making all my Christmas presents this year by embroidering things for my
friends and family. Better be careful, April. You had some successes this time
around, but that existentially challenged Saharan-dwelling platypus could
reemerge at any moment…
No comments:
Post a Comment