CupCakeFlop...

I know there are a lot of people out there who have trouble believing that being a housewife, homemaker, stay at home Mom, or what have you can be a real job. I remember once when I was doing a lesson on job values with a class they were supposed to evaluate each job based on a number of different criteria. They were based on things from level of importance, salary, difficulty, etc. One of the jobs included on the list was "housewife." I was curious to see where my Czech students would rate this career choice on their priority lists. In a country where they pride themselves on their work ethic and allow three years of maternity leave followed by instant enrollment into "kindergarten" I had the feeling that most of them wouldn't be able to see the importance of staying at home to raise your own children. The funny thing was that they went a step further than I had even expected, basically assuming that this was a made up job title. They had no concept of what a housewife could possibly be.
I know that in our world of enlightenment and liberation, there are a lot of women who find the belief that they would even want to stay home insulting. They have fought so long and hard for the right to be out there making a living so they can afford to pay for the highest quality childcare. I'm not at all saying that women shouldn't be allowed to work or anything like that. If that's your drive and your dream, go for it. All I know is that, if I ever have kids, I want to be able to stay at home with them. Not just because I want to be the one who raises my children, but because, even without children, this taking care of the house business is excessively time consuming.
I've taken care of myself for a goodly long time now. I'm pretty low maintenance. I like my place to be clean. I like to eat mostly healthy food. These things aren't that hard to manage for a person alone. But you add just one more person into the equation and suddenly it seems to take every waking moment just to manage things. And I still don't even have a "job."
On Sunday I decided I wanted to add one more thing into the mix and make cupcakes. Basically that meant I didn't cook any other meals in the day so I was able to do this project. Honestly, I have no concept of how people end up with multiple meals on the table every day without literally spending all their time in the kitchen. Rachel Ray might claim there's something called a "30-Minute Meal" but I'm quite convinced that belong prepackaged salad or PB and J sandwiches, if you're trying to feed more than yourself it takes an excessive amount of time!
Anyhow, I did find the recipe for these little goodies in the Rachel Ray magazine and they didn't look too terribly difficult so I thought I'd give them a go. There were two parts to this recipe. One was a batter that could be used for multiple dishes and the other was the recipe that the batter was to be added to. It looked simple enough.
The recipe was supposed to make 6 cupcakes which I thought was rather silly because who only makes 6 cupcakes? Besides, I've watched enough Cup Cake Wars to feel like they can't be all that hard. Right? So I was going to double the recipe. The only thing was, I just needed to double part two, not the batter part. But naturally I doubled the batter bit and then realized how stupid I'd been.
However, since this batter had multiple applications I thought, if nothing else, I could make myself pancakes instead of just eating a mini bowl of yogurt at some point during the week. Only problem was, when I went to add my cupcake ingredients I dumped them in the batter. That might not sound like such a big deal, but with the doubled cupcake ingredients I only needed two cups of the batter, and I dumped them right into 5 cups. Not being accomplished in baking rescue missions, I was in a bit of a quandary. I didn't have enough ingredients to quadruple the cupcake bit, so I just threw in some extra flour so it wouldn't be a soupy mess, and decided to throw it in the oven anyway. The result? Big fluffy Muffcakes I think would be the best description. They're pretty eggy, and definitely not cakey enough to fall into the cupcake category. It was an interesting experiment to say the least, and once again shows that just being enough to read isn't enough to save you when you lose the ability to concentrate and reason and all of that good stuff. They still tasted okay, but calling them weird would be a bit of an understatement.
So the battle over capturing life and making it my own continues. I still feel like I haven't a clue how to manage it all. But I'm trying. I honestly am.
Tonight's plan is to make fajitas. Let's just say the ball is mostly in Julie's court but I'll do what I can to assist.