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in which our heroine rides a wave of nostalgia and harbours wistful thougths for an evolving english language
February 17, 2010
I have nothing important to say. So let me show you something I bought!*
This is the same recipe box that my mom had when I was growing up. It’s also the same recipe box that Peter’s mom had, although unlike my mom, she never got rid of hers (my sister-in-law** has it now). I’d been keeping my eye out in secondhand and vintage stores for pretty much forever until I realized that everything ever made can be found online. And what would you know. I got one that’s in better shape than either my mom’s or my mother-in-law’s were (from this Etsy seller). It’s not even a rare thing, so I was able to pick and choose for quality and shipping costs. Yay! This brings me one teeny tiny step closer to my dream kitchen.
So one of my little projects for this summer will be writing out our favourite recipes (and some of the old family staples I’m always losing and having to phone my mom for, Mom can you tell me one more time how to make rhubarb pie/pumpkin bread/whatever-I-promise-I’ll-write-it-down-this-time?) onto cards so I can get rid of my overflowing binder and my floppy manila envelope of photocopies and the heavy stack of slips of scribbled-on paper stuck on the side of the fridge. The box did not come with the little section dividers I remember my mom’s box having, but that’s just as well, as most of those old 1970s categories are useless in a vegan home. Making my own dividers with letraset means I can have a whole section dedicated to TOFU! if I want. And a whole section dedicated to salsa. Hell, yeah.
Those Marina Jaques banana bran muffins are top notch, by the way. Not that I follow the recipe much, what with my picky eating habits and all.
*an old joke about a group of friends Peter and I used to hang out with a lot whose conversations (in which I wholeheartedly took part) seemed often to revolve around shopping adventures and the occasional “my new techie toy is better than your new techie toy” pissing contest.
**there has got to be a better set of words for extended family members gained through dedicated long term partnership that is quite deliberately NOT marriage. It feels like having made the life choice not to partake in the patriarchal institution of marriage dooms one to either using the “in-laws” terminology and thus being constantly thought of and mistaken for married OR having to use terms like “boyfriend” and “boyfriend’s sister’s long term partner” to describe people who, by dint of lifelong commitments made without the interference of state or church, are more than that. These words, much needed by contemporary families, should be:
1) short and to the point;
2) NOT trite and/or cutesy;
3) most definitely not a bunch of silly made up or pastiche words that any thinking person should be embarrassed to utter aloud (like, for instance, “ridonkulous” or “printstallation”).
Posted by jodi on February 17, 2010 at 8.23pm
Categories: mama's in the kitchen, navel gazing
Comments on "in which our heroine rides a wave of nostalgia and harbours wistful thougths for an evolving english language"
I totally agree on the ‘in law’ thing. I’m not married and not because we have just fogotten to do it (we’ve been together for nearly 13 years). We use the term partner. My dad obviously has issues with it as we had a stare down when he introduced Chris as my husband and I firmly corrected him on the matter (my dad’s been married 4 times, so is obviously committed to the idea if not the ’til death do us part bit).
Posted by Claire on February 17, 2010 at 9.26pm :: link
I concur on the “in-law” issue. My brother’s long term life partner is “My sister in law, but not really my sister in law, but that’s easier than saying my brother’s girlfriend.”
Posted by FyreHaar on February 18, 2010 at 2.07pm :: link
I call my sister’s boyfriend my brother-in-common-law. But I’m inclined to call my boyfriend’s family my in-laws, and I don’t even live with him.
Posted by Heather on February 18, 2010 at 6.35pm :: link
I always have to call my mom for the rhubarb pie recipe as well, and I refer to my “in-laws” as my “in-loves” (sister in-love, mother in-love etc.) which is super dorky, but plays up the point that we are not LEGALLY bound, we are bound by love.
Posted by Ragnar on February 19, 2010 at 4.51pm :: link