Two dinners, bits of news

Spiced yogurt is really a fantastically good and easy marinade for chicken, and what you don't use to marinate makes a fabulous dipping sauce for your finished product. Chicken prepared in just this way was our dinner last night. I seasoned some Greek yogurt with lots of cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, cumin, salt, lemon juice and freshly chopped mint; then I tossed most of it into a Ziploc with two chicken breasts, sealed the bag, shook the hell out of everything and let things stew in the fridge for an hour or so. Then, into a hot Lodge went those chix and voila, a wonderful main. The boys enjoyed our leftovers today and said "that chicken is SO good, Mom. You are the best cook EVER." I love it. I also made some mustard and panko carrots for a lovely side!

It's a good thing they had darling moments today because those were interspersed with Pill of the Century behavior from both. Oh my god! Not 10 minutes ago I heard Jack wailing that he couldn't sleep. So, I went in and asked if he'd been reading Harry Potter since 6:58; he fessed up and I removed HP from his room. Yes, I'm thrilled he loves to read so much it makes him want to stay up late; little is as good as a book you can't put down. But post-9pm on a school night? After a service trip to a farm that included two hours on a school bus? Before a full day of school plus baseball practice tomorrow? I think not.

Anyway, for tonight's meal I made my farro with gold beets, feta and candied pecans salad, heated up the rest of the romanesco cauliflower and grilled T his favorite sweet Italian sausages from the farmers market (Cibola Farms is the vendor if you're interested). Also, I had an Applejack Rabbit.

The BlogHer '14 conference was just announced and open for registration. San Jose next July, here I come!!! I'm totally excited. In other news, my French Silk Pie (an old recipe from my Nanny's older sister, Hilda, that I've reworked a bit) is going to be included in Just Desserts, a cookbook published by KCTS, a PBS affiliate serving more than 1.5 million folks in Seattle, Central Washington and British Columbia. I'm so pleased and flattered and placed an order today!

Sub-par morning

This morning is one of those that feels endless and terrifying. Like the road in Kenya I was once on; I thought surely that's where I'd die. It all started off so sweetly what with Oliver coming in for our morning snuggle, J sleeping in a bit, the cat sharing bed space generously before retiring to the bath tub. Then breakfast-time happened, and now, an hour later, I'm sitting here in stunned silence, stomach aching, very much wishing I didn't have all to do today that I do including chaperoning second graders at a farm-based service trip. I actively disliked the children for nearly an hour. They were whiny and annoying and loud. Their ears appeared broken. Brushing teeth was a monstrous parental mandate that couldn't be handled. Socks provided irritating bumps that literally couldn't be dealt with; new ones had to be found. Oliver went to school looking like Rainbow Brite meets Santa Claus in need of a haircut while Jack insisted on wearing his snow gloves despite the fact that it is only 44 outside. It's possible people will wonder, based on their appearances alone, if something really whacked went on over here this morning.

I try very hard to respect the fact that relatively speaking the boys are still mere babes. They often seem more capable than they are, and I feel it is unfair to children to expect them not to act like children. That robs them of a special time.

That said, g-damnit, brushing teeth is not negotiable. Ever. And so I completely and, I think rightfully, expect that by now we will no longer be having full-scale meltdowns and resultant Come to Jesus' about this basic act. I resorted to extreme threats this morning when I told Ol that if he didn't brush his teeth they would all rot and fall out and his breath would smell and no one would ever talk to him again.

It worked.

Probably because yesterday morning, during our traditional snuggle, Ol suddenly said, "YEW!!!" (his way of saying yuk/ew/gross). I asked what was wrong, and he said, "I came close to your face to tell you somefing secwet but somefing smells SO bad." Long story short, I had morning breath. So sue me.

The idea of THE Woman

Sheryl Sandberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Judith Warner, Stephanie Coontz, Gail Collins, Anne and Kate Roiphe and many, many more have prominently and publicly discussed the changing roles of women since, primarily, the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement which is generally considered to have run from the 1960s through the 80s. Warner, Coontz and Collins are three of my favorite writers about this (and a whole host of other) subjects; if you haven't read their work, consider doing so! If you read Em-i-lis regularly, you'll know that I sometimes put in my own two cents about what I will henceforth call, The State of the Women. Within that meta-term reside questions and discussions about: women having it all; what that means; should they try to have it all, and if so, why?; the general concept of leaning in or not; who are the women who can "lean in" and who are those who feel doing so is no more than a fanciful musing of the wealthy; the mother wars, aka working versus stay-at-home moms; and on and on.

The question, Can Women Have it All, has always seemed somewhat silly to me because a) why on earth would anyone presume all women want the same things, and thus, b) what meaning can such a vague question and resultant discussion really illumine? It seems infinitely more valuable to consider what each woman might consider having it all and then trying to assess how many of us get it, get close to or remain awfully far off from our personal all.

I'm thinking about this again right now because in yesterday's New York Times, a contributing writer, Clemens Wergin (a German and the foreign editor for the German Welt newspaper group) wrote a piece entitled, The World's Most Powerful 'Little Girl.' Online -why the change?- it's entitled, "A Woman for All Seasons." In any case, the article begins with the recent story of an eight-year-old Berliner asking her mother if it's possible for Germany to elect a male chancellor; for this little girl's entire existence, Angela Merkel has headed Deutschland. In case you're wondering, I think this is FABulous, and I appreciate Wergin going on to say just how grateful he is for the role model Merkel is for little girls, including his own two young daughters, in Germany.

That said, he also discusses the fact that Merkel: doesn't have children (so has never been pulled in the ways one presumably is when both powerful and a mother); is able to rein in any ego she might have when important decisions need to be made; was once underestimated because of her gender (Helmut Kohl once called Merkel a 'little girl,' hence the print title of Wergin's piece; don't you love that Merkel then dethroned Kohl??!!) and so could stealthily outfox other pols; and doesn't over-emphasize women's issues in public and politics (this has frustrated women's groups in Germany).

Long story short, I just cannot understand why we ask and explicate and parse and analyze all these facets of a woman leader's being when we do NOT do this to their male counterparts. It gets a little old, frankly. It's like women have to repeatedly prove why their lady-parts don't hinder their extra-gender abilities. Why should Merkel mean much more for Germany's "little girls and others" than what she is: the most powerful individual in the country? Indeed, why should any woman have to stand for all the experiences and positions one might have?

I'm not trying to slam Wergin here (I do think he admires and is grateful for Merkell) except to call out what his article highlights to me: that there is still a different experience in having a female rather than male leader. Perhaps that's because there are still so relatively few of us, but really, are women still surprise spectacles?? Are we not literally all around?

Maybe if we stop noticing when women get somewhere, especially places vaunted and rare, it'll start to seem normal rather than surprising. And then we can simply study the jobs they do, judging them based on performance rather than their being "F."

Naturally all of this presupposes equal starting points, equal pay and reward, equal opportunity, but in the ways it might help to STOP differentiating leaders based on gender, well...let's get to it!