Michelle Obama Does Not Have to Cook

Last week, before I'd read anything about Mrs. Obama's feelings for meal preparation I was washing cauliflower (again) and wondering if she missed the kitchen. Seriously. I was like, "Does Michelle Obama wish she had time to cook?" I decided she didn't. Which is to say that I wasn't surprised by her admission that she's fine with other people doing the cooking. In fact, if she didn't like other people doing the cooking, I might shoot myself. I mean, there she is, out in the world every day being an icon, a paragon, an exemplar of a real live working mother. How would she have the time to cook, never mind the energy to enjoy it?

In today's paper, however, Amanda Hesser writes that Mrs. Obama, the country's most prominent proponent of local ingredients and healthier meals, missed a great opportunity to improve the nation's eating habits when she admitted she doesn't mind other people doing the cooking. "Because terrific local ingredients aren’t much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth."

This is true. It's true, as Hesser writes, that it's cheaper to cook for yourself and better for the environment in all kinds of ways. (Just think of all those plastic take out containers!) But it's also true that cooking can be a chore, and it's not just the food companies trying to sell me easy-make food that makes me say that. I cook a lot, sometimes I love it, and sometimes, meh. But is that so unusual? After all, anything you have to do every day can be a chore. That's the definition of chore -- a task that must get done not when you feel inspired to do it, but when it has to happen. Take my word for it, I tried to get pregnant for three and a half years and I can tell you that sometimes even the best way to pass the time can come closer to chore-like than you ever imagined. And on the flip side, sometimes chores have hidden pleasures you'd never uncover without all that, you know, practice.

All this to say denying the chore-like aspect of cooking doesn't help anyone get closer to the stove. And if Michelle Obama doesn't want to cook, she shouldn't have to. Her plate is plenty full as it is.

Playing the Racism Card

Of course the charges that Judge Sonya Sotmayor is a racist are absurd. Just in case you missed it, Charles Blow explains why.

I would be going bananas about all this, but I can't imagine that Sotomayor won't be confirmed and all this stuff and nonsense from the far right is nothing but the frantic grasp of a green warlock splashed with water but still grasping at straws as he melts away.

Everyday Cake

I made Orangette's Everyday Cake. Actually, my daughter did a lot of the making and somehow we ended up both AOK at the end of it. (Things always get hairy when it's time to add the flour in batches.) I didn't have yogurt or whole milk, but I did have buttermilk, so I used that. I also used regular Whole Wheat Flour, not the White Whole Wheat Flour orangette had. The cake is very, very.....pleasing. Very pleasing. I feel like it's a little heavy on the baking powder, but I might investigate tinkering with that. Otherwise, it's a cake I'd make again, and I recommend it to anyone looking for an easy cake to make. It'd be nice at brunch, or at a four o'clock snack and it's nice with some tea after the kids are asleep . Plus, it's the first cake my daughter ate without frosting and sprinkles, which, for her and her brother, is usually the entire point of cake.

Double X

Slate seems to have spun off a site chock full of stuff to interest women. It's called "Double X" and in case you didn't get that XX chromosome reference, were you to visit the site you'd know in an instant you were on a site for the ladies because the font color of choice is a shade I think of as "Ob/Gyn" purple. It's the purple of your pill packs and ovulation predictor kits, of cervical cancer information booklets and breast health reminders. Because the good folks at Slate seem to have agreed with all the big pharma designers out there that grown up girls just can't let go of lavender.

Here's the thing, Double X is a spin off of the Slate blog "The XX Factor." For whatever reason ever since it started (I believe they introduced it during the campaign), I've resented it. Now, I know there's a place for web sites devoted to "women's issues" and "women's politics." I know sites can spin off the way Jezebel spun off from Gawker, but somehow a ladie's celebrity/politics/women's site doesn't bother me in the way that the Slate site and the XX Factor itself bother me. I mean, I went to a women's college, I believe in Women's Studies and it still drives me up the wall.

Maybe it's because Slate, a web site devoted to analyzing culture and politics, has a bunch of women writing about culture and politics without laboring under any taglines like that of the "XX Factor" -- namely, "What women really think." The fact of their womanhood didn't seem to matter particularly until the XX Factor came along and they along with family issues and education moved over there. I'm not saying that those writers don't write the way they do because of who they are and gender contributes to that, but male writers do the same thing. In any case, something about the whole thing just seemed entirely too bogus. The women staffers of Slate were already writing about the campaign, so why did they have to write about it in the women's blog? And why did the women have to write about the candidates' position on family leave and why should those kinds of stories be pushed to a section labeled as of special interest for women?

Can't those smart guys over there just pretend like we're all part of the same culture and equally invested in education, health care, and tort reform? Because sometimes pretending is like smiling when your heart is breaking -- you might know in your soul what you're pretending isn't real, but it still makes it better.

And, seriously, did they have to go with that purple?

Project Runway

I'm going to have to find Lifetime on my cable box! Come August, Project Runway is back. I did watch five minutes of Bravo's knock-off/replacement "The Fashion Show" and it was B. A. D. Seriously. Who doesn't love Issac Mizrahi? No one, but still, he's no Heidi.

Pay It Forward

Five minutes ago, I staggered to the checkout line at the market around the corner. I'd just walked with my kids to our local fire station. The door was closed, I didn't see a soul, I wouldn't ring the bell (we'd been there three times in the last five days and yesterday, firefighter Rich gave Elliot a tour of the truck and put on his mask for Elliot to see), my son became hysterical. Just as he was calming down, a block and a half later, we passed the Card-O-Mat. My daughter she wanted a card, a princess card to send to her cousin. Making a card wouldn't work because she didn't have princess stickers. She became hysterical. I finally got to the market where I got eggs, which we need, and whole wheat flour, so I could make this cake, which we don't need. I went to pay, but my wallet was nowhere to be found. I couldn't remember my credit card number, my daughter was desperate to eat a sort-of-mini chocolate muffin which I, in my desperate state, had allowed her to have. Suddenly, a woman appeared before me with two crisp fives, complete with purple numerals, and a big smile. "You forgot your wallet?" she asked pleasantly. "Yeah," I sighed. "Take it. Pay it forward. I'm serious." So, after some protest, I decided not to deprive this woman of her obvious and heartfelt good will. "I've had toddlers, too," she said. I got home and there was an email from the American Jewish World Service asking for money to help fight world hunger. What else could I do? I paid it forward.

A Hot Day.

I had a bad day. This didn't help.