The Joyful Housewife

One of the tons of wonderful things I’ve learned from my husband is how to make vinaigrette. He’s very anti-bottled-dressing (I’ve gently reminded him that I grew up in a single parent home and wasn’t even aware that there was an alternative, aside from ambitious, gourmet types).

It’s incredibly easy and it’s almost the only thing we put on our salads. The only bottled dressing we’ve used this past year is Annie’s Goddess dressing (and ranch, which we don’t put on salads, but which I use to dip many, many different foods into, from veggies to pizza.)

Anyway, it’s so easy that, although we were too tired to cook tonight and Tim picked up pasta from our favorite Italian restaurant on the way home, I still made a salad AND a dressing.

So how does one make a vinaigrette, you ask? The materials I like best are a small teacup (see photo), because I’m usually making a small salad for two people, and a fork to whisk with. I’ve tried a bowl and a real whisk, but for me, the fork works better (I also use it to scramble eggs for french toast batter).

Next, choose your vinegar. We have been using sherry vinegar lately, but in the past we have used red or white wine vinegar, or balsamic vinegar. I’ve also heard you can use lemon juice, but I haven’t tried it. For myself, I’ve used a fancy fig flavored balsamic vinegar that I bought for my husband and he never used once. I put this on a salad that featured strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries.

Put one or two tablespoons in the cup or bowl (eyeball it.)

Next, add seasonings that you would like to dissolve in it. I always add salt and cracked black pepper. You can mix it up by adding a dash of cayenne, as well, or white pepper instead of the black. This is also when we often add garlic. Usually a fresh clove pressed in a garlic presser. Raw garlic is very good for you but causes potent burbs, so beware!

The final ingredient before the oil is a tiny bit of dijon mustard. We sometimes leave it out, but it’s very good in the dressing. Try not to use too much.

Whisk a bit with the fork to mix the additions into the vinegar.

Finally, add extra virgin olive oil. A good rule is about 2:1 oil vs vinegar. If you are using a teacup, completely cover the top of the vinegar with the oil. Whisk, whisk, whisk, and taste. Add whatever you think is missing, toss on salad, and enjoy!

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I’m hard pressed to believe that anyone actually enjoys housework. It is something which simply must be done. One cannot allow the dust bunnies, toilet grime, and shower mildew to take over (though in my house, they have been allowed to proliferate robustly without actually hindering us from our duties in the outside world - it’s just gross, that’s all). But in fact, there is nothing in the constitution of women that is better suited to performing those household duties which prevent too much filth from accumulating. It simply falls to the person in the house who feels it is her duty to do it, or to the person for whom the tolerance threshold is the lowest. 

Division of Chores

For my good friend C, it is her husband who has the lowest threshold and who indeed does most of the housework. They each do their own laundry; he tends to do one load per day, and she tends to leave her clothes in the dryer indefinitely, with him removing them for his needs and then putting them back in to “fluff.” He sweeps and vacuums, dusts and mops, and stacks the things she may have left out on the one messy shelf in their house. Because it is understood that the existence of one dirty dish in the sink will give him an aneurism, they both rise after a meal and clean up the mess together. They are both in the habit of cleaning up messes as soon as they occur. They both seem to enjoy cooking equally. 

In my house this is not so. It seems both my husband and I have nearly equal tolerances for messiness. The problem for me is that I am the one most disturbed by it, but we have let things get so bad that I cannot bear to deal with it. And not once in the time that we have lived together has he ever decided to wash a dish or take out the garbage, without my having goaded him into doing it. 

Cooking vs. Baking

It seems that cooking is often done because one must eat, but baking is an art which imparts love and care to the household. There is no such thing in our home as the smell of fresh baking and the accomplishment and comfort that it provides: Neither of us are bakers. And the cooking, if it is done at all, it is seven times out of ten, done by him. I do my best to keep that ratio more even, but it seems, his threshold for getting sick of eating out is lower than mine.

Dishwashing

One difference is that dishes, unlike vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping, etc, must be done or we cannot cook. That task unfortunately falls to me. Two facts which make that intolerable: we do not have a dishwasher, and he is unable to cook a meal without demolishing the kitchen. Hence, the constant state of my kitchen which I have illustrated in former posts.

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I’ve been meaning to post pics of Tim’s Deconstructed Pesto for weeks. When counting my blessings, I note how lucky I am to have a husband who does half of the cooking. One of my favorite of his creations is his Deconstructed Pesto:

Ingredients

• olive oil
• tagliatelle, fettuccini, or linguini 
• cherry tomatos, halved
• pine nuts, toasted
• six heads of garlic, roasted*
• fresh basil, roughly chopped 
• freshly grated asiago or parmesan cheese
• freshly cracked pepper

Method

1. Cut off tops of garlic heads and roast them in the oven for 45 mins to an hour. Squeeze out the roasted cloves and keep them whole.

2. Saute the garlic in olive oil for a minute then add chopped tomatoes and chopped basil. The oil will infuse with garlic flavor and the tomatoes will release enough juice to caramelize into a sauce for the noodles. Add salt, pepper, and a bit of grated cheese as desired.

3. Meanwhile cook the noodles in boiling, salted water and toast the pine nuts in a small pan on medium to low heat (don’t let them burn!).

4. When you are happy with the consistency of the sauce, toss in the cooked noodles and toasted pine nuts. 

5. Serve when mixed thoroughly, topped with shredded cheese and cracked pepper.

Eat this with a tossed salad and garlic bread as you wish. Perfect for a night when you want a cozy restaurant meal at home!

*My husband insists that the roasted garlic is the whole point of the dish. You could certainly do with fewer heads of garlic, you could also just mince some garlic and saute it in the olive oil and forget the whole roasting thing. The choice is yours.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Have I got your attention? I have to admit, it’s hard to hear this p-word, and the phrase “porn for women” itself, without cringing and wondering what’s coming next, but the answer is so hilarious and true, that I had to post about it.

I gave it some thought: Often less is more when it comes to what women find attractive in the male body: most of us really don’t need to see it all hanging out thank you very much. And as has been proven time and time again, it’s really more about the story, the big picture that puts us in and out of the mood. As in, they sometimes do or say things that just turn us off - no matter how good they look!

And as I thought more, I realized that although I do love to make life easier for my husband as much as I can - because he is the one working the longest hours for our household outside of the home- the truth is (and I wonder what my husband will think when he stumbles upon this post someday ~wink!~) the idea of him doing more around the house really does turn me on!

In the end, I decided that there would be two big advantages to him doing more housework:

1. I would be in an awesome mood! I’m the type of person that is just plain stressed in too much mess (and stress is my number one mood killer), and yet I’m too dysfunctional to keep things as tidy as I need them to be happy.
2. I’ll be honest, I would feel thankful and sweet towards him and would want to do something to make it up to him….**

If you are interested in buying this calendar (and no, I don’t work for the CWCP, I just found their product to be amusing - Oh, would that I’d thought of it myself), or Porn for New Moms, or in taking a quiz, or in sending an e-postcard of these gorgeous hunks doing housework, check out The Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative (CWPC) here.

I originally found out about this calendar in an article by Boston Food Culture Examiner, Jacqueline Church, entitled: Holiday gifts: Hunks and Housework is porn for women.

(**Note: If it offends anyone’s feminist tendencies that I would think I owe my husband anything just because he did his share of housework, realize that I love being married and that I believe partnership is all about give-and-take (and to be honest, sometimes take-and-give)- a delicate balance - for both partners.)

Popularity: 5% [?]