Determined

Ok - so now the day is done and the laundry sits in big mounds in my basement. There's dirty dishes everywhere (even on the back porch - because I couldn't fit them on my counters). The day's emails are unanswered - and I know there was more book promoting that I could have been doing. But - today I made LASAGNA.

It's in capitals because this is different from your everyday lasagna. You betcha. This is certainly different from the packaged "Amy's" single serving lasagna I used to eat in the teacher's lounge when I was a school counselor and needed something to get me thru the day.

No, this was make your own ricotta, make your own pasta, stick it to the man kind of cooking. This was, I am more than a consumer, Whole Foods has nothing on me, I may move out to a farm kind of lasagna. Yes and "I don't mean maybe" - as my mother used to say when she was being really firm.


Last night I edited Fredrica Matthewes-Green's AFR podcast for this week. It was written when her granddaughter was a newborn and was published in Again magazine during manic Christmas shopping season. She spoke of the "Hypnotic Mall." You know the kind - with all of the people and lights and action that you turn to a zombie and make you buy lots of stuff you don't need. She then talked about how years ago mothers were teachers and chefs and artists and now they buy stuff. I'm paraphrasing, of course. You should listen to it, because it's inspiring.

Anyway, I woke up today and decided that this day, I would not be a just a consumer . No way. I've already found this amazing man that sells raw milk (for animal consumption only, ofcourse, since it's illegal to sell raw milk in Indiana). I was going to make lasagna with real fresh ricotta and homemade noodles and local beef - yes, and dangit, it took me all day - so I don't really understand how those Italian women did it without their pasta rollers and blogs to brag on - but...

I did make it. And sure, part of the reason I'm blogging is to stretch the oohs and ahhs, but I'm also blogging about it because our culture doesn't really support this kindof slowness. It's not acceptable to waste your whole day cooking. But why not? Because it's so much better to spend your day driving around or hurrying or doing weird marginally important errands? Isn't this day important enough?

Well, for my weird little household (remember, my 20 something brother lives with us) today was important enough. each individual in this house was important enough. And while I may not do this everyday (no one needs that much saturated fat in one sitting) today was quite special.