Polite husband of the bad housewife

Stepford Husband is a very nice man.   He is pretty, sensitive and polite but to balance all that niceness – he is no great shakes in the kitchen.  Sometimes I suspect this is deliberate so as to fool me into taking over the chores he doesn’t like to do e.g. ‘Here Honey, taste this nice casserole I made with some chicken, some discolored broccoli and the vegemite I found in the bottom of the pantry,’  or ‘But, I DID vaccum the family room!’

See, I’m not entirely sure when he’s really trying to help me or when he’s really trying to get on my nerves – all the while maintaining an innocent look on his pretty face.  So, I get my own back just in case it’s the latter.  I like to defrost some nice meat and leave it on the counter, making no moves towards the kitchen whatsoever.  He walks through the kitchen and spies the defrosted meat.  He may even turn it over to get a good look at it.  And I just leave it there and see how long it will take him and how he can creatively and non-offensively say those words of the 50′s TV husbands: “What’s for dinner, Sweetie?”

I giggle when I hear him mutter in a stage whisper “Mmmm this looks interesting!”  I chortle when I hear him stretch and yawn and say “I’m starving!”, and I snort through my nose when he says “Sausages!  Fantastic!” but I will downright glower at him if he says anything resembling “What’s for dinner?” no matter how pretty he is.  Got to keep him on his toes, after all.  And if this just sounds like another excuse to be a bad housewife, stuff it!  You may be right.

Domestic Scary

Today I vaccumed, tidied, made mini chocolate donuts, planted a plum tree, potted geraniums, prepared a nice dinner and turned some vintage fabric I bought recently, into an A-line skirt from a pattern I made myself from a sheet of newspaper.  No, don’t refresh your browser – you have come to Laugh in the Sun, homeplace of the bad housewife.  If it’s any consolation, when I sewed the first version of the skirt and tried it on, I could have fit another half a person in there with me. 

At which point I called my sister and asked her if she would like the skirt – before you furrow your brow (or call me up and swear at me, Em) I figured that I could be bothered making the adjustments required for her to wear it, whereas I figured I would be over it and know exactly how I had cut corners and therefore never want to wear it again.  Follow me?  It’s a logic I understand anyway, so trust me, OK?  She pointed out that she had seen the fabric, and while she thought it was nice – she doesn’t really do autumnal colors.  This really doesn’t sound like my post at all, does it?  It’s all Martha Stewart and stuff. Weird.  My sister also suggested, that if I persevered, I could get the skirt to fit and end up with a pattern that was perfectly custom-made for me.  And so I did.  I know, shock horror, right?

I’m not a born sewer, nor terribly well taught and I tend to read recipe and pattern books by starting with a general understanding rather than reading the fine print.  I have never made anything without unpicking at least one seam.  This skirt was no different.  BUT – after unpicking that one seam, and applying a bit of brainpower, I ended up with a skirt that is quite nice, a perfect length, different, vintage, with a black rickrack hem.  I like it.  And as I was holding it up admiring it, Stepford Husband returned with the boys from chopping firewood.  He looked at me and the floor and the house and stuff, and I showed him the skirt.  He had one of those looks – you know, ‘who are you strange Stepford person, and what have you done with my wife?’  He wasn’t worried, you understand, possibly mildly hopeful – but certainly confused.  It was only when I modelled my hard-work skirt for him, wearing fluffy blue bed socks and with my legs as hairy as a goats, did he seem to recognise me.  His wife.  The bad housewife, in all her glory.

The bad housewife’s Easy cake

Sometimes you need a recipe to whip up because it’s nearly time for the kids to get home from school and you want to greet them with a warm vanilla scent and some good home cooking. 

Sometimes you need a recipe to whip up because your neighbour is going to pop over and not only is the housework not done, but you have nothing to offer her with coffee.  It’s not about being hospitable or feeding her sweet tooth but to distract her from the fingerprinted, dog nosed windows and the dust bunnies that look like they might attack her chiuahua.  This is such a recipe.

Easy Cake  (with thanks to wonderful neighbour Judy!)

Ingrediants:
2 eggs
cream (can absolutely be the questionable stuff in the back of the fridge as long as there aren’t any furry lumps growing in it.  Come on, it can’t be just me, can it? Fine.)
2/3 cup of sugar
1 cup self raising flour
dash of vanilla essence

Method:
Break eggs into a measuring jug and beat with a fork, add cream to this mix until liquid measures 1 cup and add the dash of vanilla.  Mix.  Put SR flour and sugar into a bowl and stir to combine.  Add the egg mixture and stir with a fork until combined.  Put into a greased loaf tin or prepared patty tins for cupcakes.  Cook in moderate oven 30 – 40 minutes for loaf, or 15 minutes for patty tins.  Ice as you like when cooled.  Or not.

Instead of icing the cake, I would use the time to fill the sink with suds and hide the dirty dishes in there, throw everything off the bench into a washing basket and wheel the chinese laundry into the children’s bedroom, now stick a denture tablet in the toilet (it works), a tablecloth on the sticky kitchen table and put some citrus peel on the fire.  But that’s just me.