the joys of domestic life and alternative careers

The scene above is from the movie Julie and Julia where Meryll Streep played Julia child (from this 2009 Time article http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1914995,00.html#).  A few posts ago, I've dreamt of being a sort of Nigella Lawson or maybe a super Martha Stewart...maybe even a humble mother from Sub-Saharan Africa. I know--why would one ever dream that. My train of thought is focused on the complex nature of 24/7 lifetime employment, that is, a housewife.  In at least 1/3 of my pregnancies, the strings of the universe have whispered that I may be destined for something noble and challenging. It's a truly altruistic profession, isn't it? Your target market and source of fulfillment are the same people, while outsiders (even kin) consider you lowly, unintelligible, and incapable of greater things. I am not a housewife, but I can relate to the prejudice that housewives experience. Perhaps, it's a woman thing. A woman can't drive, a woman isn't physically strong enough, a woman can't be as good as a man in politics, science, technology, math, engineering...etc etc. 

And you as a woman can only sigh a thousand sighs after exhausting all the vindictive scenarios you can come up with in your allegedly less intelligent mind. 

*** Out-of-time rice to be paired with anything (my husband's recipe--he is the exception to my hasty generalization that most men are misogynists): On day old rice, put an appropraite amount of your preferred butter/margarine (we like Becel's margarine with olive oil), a dash of garlic powder, some ground black pepper (a little salt too if you like but we don't do that for this recipe). Microwave for about a minute or so. Serve with any leftover meat or fish with vegetables. ***