futurebird's Diaryland Diary
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The Anarchist Housewife
I like cooking, but I don't like food.
I love cooking, no, that isn�t quite right, I love the idea of cooking. Pots and pans, copper bottom kettles, dish towels, white aprons, whistling tea pots, the sound of water bubbling on the stove, egg beaters and strainers, woks, garlic presses mortars and pestles. All those words are music to my ears.
The only thing better than culinary objects is having someone to cook for so you can put them all into use. Cooking for one is no good. And cooking for myself with my limited appetite is worse than cooking for one. I make the most of it though. I glaze and blanch and broil my little lumps of food with passion. I half eggs to make salad for one.
I�m not a very good cook, I fear. I still have to check the directions on a box of Jiffy cornbread before baking it (is it a third of a cup of milk or a half?). But, I try. I can make a pot of tea expertly. I serve it wrapped in a towel in true Midwestern petty bourgeois style. I wish I owned some saucers, that�s the only thing that�s missing from the tray.
I love the way kitchens are depicted in magazines from the 1950s, bright and clean with solid pastel coloured blenders and mixers sitting like dada art objects on a flawless formica countertop. It reminds me of my grandmother�s kitchen. Where nothing is made of plastic, where everything is spotless and out of time, where apple pies sit cooling on sandstone tiles under a chequered cloth.
I guess I�m an American girl in many ways. The Anarchist Housewife. I�d like to spend my days writing politically charged plays and articles then waltz off to the kitchen in a ankle length summer dress tie on and apron and cook a fabulous meal for my family, served in pink and yellow and light blue corningwaretm, remembering every food group of course, timing the rolls so they are brown just as they sit down.
06:40:34 - 2001-03-19
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