Suzie Homemaker

Despite my mother's urgings, or perhaps because of them (and her example), I've always had home-making aspirations. I think I would love to be a homemaker, though I'm not sure I could or would give up working now that I've found and trained for a career that I love. But my recent reading list and the move have definately rekindled those thoughts.

I spent much of last night cleaning out our food cupboard, pouring mysterious Indian ingredients into glass jars, emptying expired food into the garbage or drain so we could recylce the packaging and adding my food to A's collection. We are not going to starve, this much I know. Although we may get food poisoning if we're not careful. We both had food expired anywhere from 2002 to last month. Though part of me wants to exit much of these Indian ingredients that A keeps around for when his mother cooks, I feel like putting them in my jars gave me a kind of ownership over them and now the other part of me wants to cook them. I'll probably never make food like his mom's, but at least I can try to make Indian recipes without having to buy everything myself.

So, recently reading A Dress A Day has got me interested in sewing again. E bought me a sewing machine a couple of years ago at a church rumage sale and I've never cleaned, tuned or used it, but I find myself now wanting to learn to sew. I'm all ready to take it to the shop and sign up for a class. There's something about having one-of-a-kind clothing that you chose yourself that really appeals. Being able to make 8 dresses of the same style with different fabrics and details is also amazing - talk about a different take on a work wardrobe! The financial argument in this post helped me feel good about sewing even if something doesn't turn out right. Another couple posts I really liked are this one about style and this one about packing. Oh, and yes, this is what got me obsessed with packing.

On a totally different reading list topic, I've been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. In discussing raw food with E of late, I've had trouble accepting that raw food is THE way, mostly because so much raw food travels so far (coconut, tropical fruits, etc.). It wasn't even a carbon footprint issue with me, but more of a macrobiotic ideal. This book provides both an inspiring and entertaining memoir as well as many reasons to enjoy one's local food economy. I am sad to see that I'm beyond the 1/2 way point and will soon have finished this book.

Next up, a good Madhur Jaffrey cookbook for those Indian recipes. If my boss can make great samosas using her recipes, I should be able to make a passable Indian meal.