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Women's Lib and Cooking at Home
Thursday, March 30, 2006

My mom was never one to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. She taught me at a young age that women were always being pushed into the kitchen, but that I did not have to grow up that way. It being the late 60s and early 70s, and she being the quintessential women's libber in training, she told me that there were people who could be hired to do the cooking (and cleaning and anything else that I might not want to do.) While this did not make for the best role model for a stay-at-home-mom, it was the way my mom was and I do not fault her for it. She was a product of her environment, to a large extent, and she taught me a lot.

Ironically, my mom was very socially conscious. While she preached to me that I never had to cook, she spent a lot of her own time trying to cook; or more specifically, trying to find easy and speedy ways around cooking. She loved the concept of frozen dinners, and she was always trying to cut corners. The microwave oven was, to her, the next best thing to sliced bread. My mom cooked when she had to - to feed the family - but she never put a lot of time into cooking and food preparation other than during the holidays or when she was having people over to the house.

I do remember the one time my mom was having a formal luncheon at our house, and she spent all morning in the kitchen, making various goodies. She could make almost anything, and had a whole slew of cookbooks, but she really only made something unusual when company was coming. Since a bunch of church ladies were coming on this day, my mom had prepared a huge, green jello mold. It contained fruit, cottage cheese, and a bunch of other things that she whipped together and put into her large plastic bundt cake mold the night before. I, being the know-it-all teen that I was, popped into the kitchen when she had just gotten her hair done and was all decked out in her Sunday best. It was at this time that she decided to take the jello mold out of the refrigerator and put it on the serving tray. As she took it out of the refrigerator, I quipped that I hoped she didn't drop it or break it, with all those people coming. Well, guess what? The serving tray was lying on the countertop, just next to the kitchen sink. My mom, being ever so careful, turned the jello mold upside-down and onto the tray, where she hoped and planned that it would sit, right-side-up. But something went terribly wrong. The serving tray was not steady and was somehow lying partly over the edge of the sink. As soon as the jello hit the tray, it flopped into the sink. My mom attempted in a panic to somehow save the whole mold. She grabbed the tray to set it right again, but she overcompensated and jello flew all over her and onto the floor. Needless to say, the jello mold was not served that day. I watched my poor mom collapse on the kitchen floor in tears.

Now that I am grown with a family of my own, I must admit that the entire jello mold incident has been permanently branded into my mind. I have since apologized to my poor mother for my lousy teenaged attitude, but I also have never even thought about attempting to create my own jello mold. I have struggled mightily with the whole women's lib thing that my mom pumped into my brain from an early age. I am now a stay-at-home mom who would rather read a book or take a hike than spend any exorbitant amount of time in the kitchen. I actually envy women who enjoy cooking and baking, but I cannot seem to wrap my brain around the idea of why anyone would really want to do it.

Thank heavens for fast food, quick meals, mashed potatoes that come in a box, and of course, bread makers. I can stay and home and still have a bit of women's lib in me. My mom would be so proud.

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