THE MEANDERWALKER

The idea of being a “homemaker” has never really appealed to me. I associate it too much with wearing frilly aprons, pearls around my neck, ironing constantly, and all of those other cliches left over from the 50’s. I’m almost certain that I will never find myself in a ‘normal’ kind of domestic setting: house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, basketball hoop in the driveway, golden retriever, minivan, etc etc. Not that there is anything wrong with that kind of lifestyle, but it just will never be me (no matter how hard I could try).

I do make some feeble attempts at “homemaking” every once in a while, though. Like, for instance, last weekend we hung up a lot of the artwork we had lying around. And by “we,” I mean that I walked around pointing and and saying “I want that there.” And I even picked out curtains and hung them (and by “hung” I mean, I stood across the room and said “Yes, that looks straight”). I like the way the apartment feels after making those kinds of little adjustments, more home-ish. Making home. Decorating, if you will.

Another one of my occasional attempts at homemaking, that makes me feel like I am an adult because I can create things and feel like I am good at things and feel a temporary burst of homemakerness, I documented last night: BAKING. And it was a successful one.

I am not very good at cooking, as well as a lot of other things when it comes to domestic activity, but I do love having houseguests and preparing for them to arrive. Back when I first moved out of the dorms in college, I used to have lots of people come over to the apartment to eat baked ziti and cupcakes. I do make a mean baked ziti, but that’s pretty much the extent of my skills, so any other preparation for houseguests must include BAKING to compensate for it.

Today (or maybe tomorrow), my brother and Emily are coming over to my house for a couple of days to see a show at the Cat’s Cradle and hang out before Emily has to fly back to Minnesota. They are my first houseguests in the apartment, so of course, like the anxiety-ridden control freak that I am, I’ve spent the first part of this week brainstorming places to go, things to see, and places to eat while they’re here, so we don’t end up walking around the mall and eating at some lame place like California Pizza Kitchen.

I was feeling pretty good about the options and the plans I had made in my head so far, but then I looked in our refrigerator and realized that I do not have a supply of food of any kind that would be suitable for regular people to survive on. Contents include: 2 water pitchers, 1.5 cartons of orange juice, several kinds of mustard, a little bit of whole milk, half of a bag of shredded cheese, some veggie burgers (in the freezer), and an unopened carton of soymilk. There are also some granola bars in the cabinet, and Total cereal, but houseguests don’t like to “nosh” on that kind of stuff. This was obviously unacceptable, since I would be having houseguests and I would be leaving them alone one morning in order to goto work, so the solution to this was of course: BAKING.

I stayed up well past midnight baking 2 things:

• Banana French Vanilla Cupcakes with Whipped Chocolate Frosting (vegan!)
• Peanutbutter Chocolate Chip Cookies (not vegan!)

Baking stuff is really easy, especially since pretty much everything can come half-made already, and you always have step-by-step instructions for times and amounts. Unlike cooking, in which you need to have some sort of natural understanding of how long it takes to sauté garlic before it burns. But I take a little bit of homemaking joy in customizing stuff a little — I’m like that freaking “semi-homemade” lady on the food network, minus all the pink. And doing so allows me to conscientiously tailor my baking to my houseguests’ tastes, and also not feel like a total schmuck.

For example, Emily does not like eggs. She will eat baked goods that have eggs in them as long as she doesn’t have to see the eggs going in, but she really doesn’t like them. I also like to use egg substitutes whenever I can (for no reason really), so I chose a French Vanilla cake mix and altered the recipe specs a little by using 1.5 bananas + 3/4 tablespoons of baking powder in lieu of 3 eggs, and reduced the amount of oil it called for in order to balance it all out.

The result: delightful, egg-free, banana bread-like mini cakes with a bit of chocolate frosting and garnished with banana chips.

The cookies were far less innovative. I just got regular peanutbutter cookie dough and added some large Girradelli chocolate chips to each. They come out spectacular that way though.

This is definitely a win for Team Fauxburbia. Unless, of course, my houseguests don’t eat all of these baked goods during their stay at my house. In which case, I’m back on my way to being a chubby housewife who reads romance novels and cries a lot. Or something.

See the whole photo set HERE!