My daddy loved to cook, whether we were on a camping trip or at home. My momma was always delighted that he did, because she wasn’t what you would call a “domestic goddess.”

Not by a long shot.

She never learned to cook until after she married, and (as much as I loved my momma) I have to say she never mastered the art. Daddy, on the other hand, could have been a chef if he had so desired. The problem was that daddy hated cleaning up dishes. When he cooked, there were lots of messy dishes.

Daddy enjoyed chopping stuff. Maybe it’s a guy thing with the sharp knives, I don’t know. He’d start chopping fruit for a salad. His first bowl would be about the size for salad for a family of six. Then, he’d keep chopping. He kept graduating to bigger bowls until he had to have a bowl the size of a garbage can and could have fed the whole Dallas Cowboys football team.

Daddy also enjoyed deep fat frying, broiling, baking, and boiling. He liked to concoct new dishes.

At some point, my daddy discovered the joys of using aluminum foil instead of pots and pans for his oven experiments. He liked to take a round steak and hammer it thin, then fill it with finely chopped vegetables, roll it like a jelly roll, wrap it in foil and bake it. I liked that dish, but I went delirious when he cooked an onion or a cabbage!

He quartered either vegetable, put salt, pepper, a garlic clove and a strip or two of bacon in it, wrapped it and either baked it or threw it on the grill. Oh, my word! It was delicious! It’s the bacon, of course, that makes it so.

Even though I grew up watching daddy cook with foil, I very rarely used it until recently (when I got sick and tired of washing the broiler pan). Pam Anderson, the author of several cookbooks, had an article in USA Weekend called “It’s A Wrap.” She offers recipes that mix and match ten vegetables, a choice of meats, and three flavor options to create meals in 15 minutes! You simply mix them together and bake at 500 degrees.

For you vegetarians out there, Marcia, I’m thinking you could use a portabello mushroom, another vegetable, and one of the flavorings, and you’d probably love it. We have enjoyed the Italian flavoring on both chicken and pork. I plopped the cooked concoction on top of some pasta and added mozzarella cheese. With some fruit on the side, it made a great meal.

Print off Anderson’s recipes and give it a try. They are designed to serve four people; we halved it and the servings were generous. I’d offer one other flavoring combination: Tex-Mex!

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 large garlic cloves, minced
• 4 large green onions, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup of chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/2 (to 3/4) cup of your favorite picanti sauce
• 1 tsp. each, salt and ground black pepper

While that cooks, make some guacamole and you have yourself a meal!

Anybody else have any flavoring ideas? Or, other recipes to cook in foil? Now that I’m “foiled again,” I almost like cooking!

That was the headline for a CNN article, and you know I had to read it! I was wondering how a banana could do that.

Turns out you have to eat them.

It seems that researchers in England spent untold amounts of money studying to see if what a woman eats before she conceives will influence the gender of her baby. They were trying to test some of the old wives tales about choosing your baby’s sex. You can skip over to the Baby Center to see some other folk “wisdom.” Those old wives were pretty obsessed with sexual positions! Who would have thought?

Yes, the researchers found that women who eat lots of bananas tend to have baby boys.

So, I’m wondering if eating lots of mangoes makes little girls? Ba dump bump. Ahem.

Seriously, in this study, scientists evaluated 740 women in their first time pregnancies to try to determine if the mother’s eating habits are connected to the baby’s gender. They found that women who ate food with high levels of potassium, high levels of calcium, or who ate cereals tended to have boys. In fact, women who had high caloric intake seemed to be more prone to having boys while women who restricted their diets most often had girls.

Hmmm. And, this is important why? It was always my opinion that you took the child you got and were delighted if it was healthy. What’s the deal with spending this kind of money on something that stupid? We could be spending the money to help prevent global warming, help cure cancer, or feed the children who are already on the planet?

I’m going to start designing “studies” and see if I can get in on some of this free grant money action. I’m just delighted that the study was done in England, because if my tax dollars were being spent on such foolishness I’d go apoplectic.

Y’all don’t tell me how my tax dollars are being spent. I’m living in blissful ignorance.

Sheesh. Bananas. Somebody is nuttier than a fruitcake.

The last many months for me has been nothing but go. . . go. . . GO! Every woman out there knows what I mean, and I believe that most men understand it, too. Some of us fill our lives so full that we barely get to enjoy the things we do. I’m one of those people.

Aside from duties as wife, homemaker, parent, and self-employed professional storyteller, I’m also a blogger, a “crafter,” and a self appointed “do-gooder.” I don’t know how that happened except that I just kept saying, “yes.” I got so disorganized, and my life got so unbalanced, that my body is currently teaching me how to say, “no.” I stressed myself to the max, exhaustion hit, and then I came down with a cold that I can’t shake. I have spent three days barely motivating from bed to couch and back again. My physical body reached its limit and has caused me to come to a screeching halt.

I’m not getting any work done, and of course I feel guilty about it.

I think part of my problem has been that I was brought up to fully embrace the demands that society puts on me. Momma didn’t mean to do it, but she taught me that if my house is dirty it is a reflection upon me as a homemaker…not on the other people sharing a house with me. When my Sweet Spousal Unit washes dishes for me, I am conditioned to take that as a silent rebuke of my homemaking skills (when that is not his intent at all!). I also, somehow, absorbed the idea that a woman must be out in the real world earning a wage. I feel guilty if I don’t bring home some bacon and then fry it when I get home! If there isn’t enough storytelling work, I fill my time with other projects that give me a sense of self-worth.

Our whole society has made some pretty impossible demands on women (and men, too). I’m conditioned to feel guilty and unworthy if I don’t meet those expectations of “Super Woman.” How about you?

I recently read an article by Martha Beck, who is an author and a life coach. In her article “In defense of an unbalanced life,” Beck postulates
“I can tell you with absolute assurance that it is impossible for women to achieve the kind of balance recommended by many well-meaning self-help counselors. I didn’t say such balance is difficult to attain. I didn’t say it’s rare. I said it’s ‘impossible.‘”

Beck likened our ridiculous guilt over not meeting society’s expectations to any individual feeling “guilty” for not preventing Hurricane Katrina. It’s not our fault that we can’t meet those expectations. It can’t be done. She suggests that we recognize that society places impossible demands upon us and join a “gentle rebellion” to create our own cultural paradigm, by seeking the balance within ourselves.

Is that possible?

How do we sift and sort through the ideas of our expectations to determine which are ours alone and which are taught us by our society? How do we create our own balance? Those are questions I will be pondering for myself over the next several weeks, as I try to re-claim my life from the hurricane that I have created.

Ms Beck said, “Women describe the moments when they really “got” that the expectations they’d been trying to fulfill were unfulfillable. They say this epiphany was terrible because it meant relinquishing the goal of total social acceptance. But it was also the beginning of freedom, of learning to seek guidance by turning inward to the heart, rather than outward to social prescriptions.”

I’ve “got” that it’s time to change my expectations of myself. Now, I’d love to hear your views on the subject. I propose something of a “group writing” project. I have no clue what to call the project; maybe just “Finding Balance.” If you’d like to write a post, do so by May 9th, and then come tell me. If you don’t have a blog, send me an e-mail and I’ll post what you have to say. I’ll combine the links to any posts.

I’d like to know how you define “balance.” Do you believe there is there such a thing, and how do you achieve it? Have you joined the “Gentle Rebellion” of which Beck speaks? Do you cling to the expectations that our society has upon you, or do you make up your own rules?

Maybe with your combined wisdom, I can figure out my dilemma!

[Find other Group Writing Projects]

UPDATE: The results (though not many) are posted here. But, what I’ve really learned about balance, I discovered while dancing.