Culinary Fashion Sense: Does this vegetable match my protein?

So, we have pots and pans, rasps and sieves, knives and tongs. We know that buying good ingredients will make our meals taste better and might even inspire us to cook more. And now, we move on to planning your menu.

The question I get asked most, whether online or in real life, is this: how do you come up with your menu? The restaurant where I work has a chalkboard menu. That means that every day, at the beginning of each shift, we decide what people will be choosing to eat at the restaurant that night. And it changes almost every day. There is a certain, loose formula to that decision. I like to have 6 to 7 main courses and I start with the protein element of the dish. There needs to be at least one vegetarian option. There should be at least one fish or seafood dish. There is often a burger of some kind. The rest depends on what we have in the restaurant that is fresh: beef, venison, elk, ostrich, lamb, pork, scallops, halibut, tofu, and so on. Once I have decided on the protein element of the dish, I decide how to prepare it and then I pair it with a vegetable or series of vegetables. This is the part in which people seem to be the most interested. How do you DO that?

The answer is that it takes some practice. Before I worked at this restaurant I just cooked what the chef told me to cook. It was his job to figure out the menu, it was mine to cook it properly. For my first week here, the chef did the same. He wrote out the menu, gave it to me and I prepped and cooked it. Easy. I’ve done this before.

Then came the night when he called from downtown saying he was stuck in traffic and wouldn’t be back for an hour and a half. I needed to come up with one item for the menu. The rest he had already written out. I panicked. PANICKED!! WTF?? Are you kidding me? I’m not ready for this! I can’t DO this!! He made some supportive comment like, “Don’t be so retarded. Of course you can.” Then he hung up.

Thus ended my orientation and training period. From that night forward I was expected to figure out what was on the menu. I was pretty cautious and I asked a lot of questions. Does this make sense? Will this work? Is this too weird? Eventually, I came to understand that planning a menu is much like learning a language. There is vocabulary to be learned (ingredients). There is sentence structure: some adjectives (accompaniments) just support a noun (protein) a little better than another. And there is learning to be concise: a plate with too many elements is like a run-on sentence; there are too many things happening and I just can’t comprehend it all.

There are literally thousands of combinations that work when planning a menu. Many are classical: tomatoes and basil, beef and potatoes, pork and apples, fish and lemon, game meats and berries, pasta and tomato sauce, lamb and rosemary, lentils and raisins. Many are found in dishes which may come from different ethnicities. For example, a curry can have sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, lime, nuts, cilantro, basil, sesame and coconut milk. In other words, any or all of those ingredients will work together. A South American salsa might have pineapple, peppers, red onions, tomatoes, cilantro, basil, and lime and any of those combinations will work together too. The same goes with spices and herbs. If I want to give a dish an Asian twist, I may marinade pork in soya sauce with fresh ginger and lime and a few chilies. I might pair it with a sweet potato puree because you can find sweet potatoes in a Thai curry. Maybe I’ll add sugar snap peas. And to finish the dish I’ll use Thai basil and cilantro. The dish will be far from Asian, but it will be Asian influenced. Something with a Mediterranean flair will have olives and capers, lemon and olive oil, parsley and mint. Generally, things that are grown in the same part of the world will also go well together on a plate.

I’ve been asked to end each blog with a recipe of some sort. However, for this particular blog I thought I’d try something different. Lots of people have said that they cook the same things over and over. To help get out of that rut, pick one thing that you like to eat and I’ll come up with things that would go well with it, along with a recipe for how to prepare it. That way you’ll have (hopefully) a new idea for preparing something that you like to eat. And, if many people participate, then there will also be ideas for things that other people like to eat, which may help to open up your food horizons. Include any dietary restrictions as well so I know what not to include.

Annnnd … GO!

Discuss this article on our forum!

Written by food_geek

food_geek was once a successful finance professional. Tired of money, nice things, equity, and the possibility of retirement she decided to pursue a career in the food industry at age 35. She is now a sous chef at a small restaurant in a tiny Quebec village where she works the fry station. She looks forward to being promoted to Manager, Drive-Thru. food_geek has been cooking professionally for 30 months.

Scouts’ Honor

These days, I spend one night a week in the basement of a local church, watching six boys in blue uniform shirts and yellow neckerchiefs. I stand, hand over my heart, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, watching my sons pause their kinetic energy briefly to salute the flag. Somehow, I am a Boy Scout Mom.

When the ultrasound midway through my second pregnancy confirmed my woo-woo hunch that both little people inside me appeared to be boys, I felt like I’d just learned I was going to visit a country where I’d never been before. My firstborn, daughter, had never been a particularly girly-girl, her one princess dress was blue not pink. So we already had the wooden trains, some trucks, and an array of plastic farmyard animals, appropriate for young farmers of any gender. I was used to a highly physical child, an early climber, fearless adventurer with trees and cats, the kind of toddler who, upon meeting a new potential playmate would knock the kid down; if they got up, she’d play with them, if they cried, she’d walk away. I thought I was ready for boys.

I looked forward to raising sons in the same sort of (relatively) gender-bias-free household I’d begun for my daughter. Despite what your Happy Meal tells you, there aren’t ‘boy toys’ and ‘girl toys’, there are just kid toys that you either enjoy or don’t enjoy. I figured that without an everyday household structure that differentiated boy behaviors and girl behaviors, I had a shot. The boys loved the play kitchen we gave them for their second birthday, although I was surprised by how many times I walked into the room to find the little purple telephone being used as a weapon (”pow-pow!”).

As they got older, and their other parent, X, left us and transitioned F to M, I’m sure our family’s discussion of boys and girls was a little different than most preschoolers’ families.

“Is Nigel a boy cat or a girl cat?” “He’s a boy cat.” “How do you know?” “Well, under all his fuzzy, he has a penis, like you do.” “But X doesn’t have a penis and he’s a boy now… you told me he’s a boy because he says he’s a boy. What if Nigel says he’s a girl cat?” Sighhhhh. Five-year-olds don’t like ambiguity. It was an interesting time.

Back when my daughter was born, I had declared No Barbies, and over the years had filled her toybox with various stuffed animals and funky soft dolls. But still the Barbies appeared, from grandparents, uncles, and especially at birthdays from her friends, ensuring her fall from innocence into a world of tiny clothes, shoes, and accessories. In the same way, my sons’ friends introduced them to a world of uniforms and weapons, as well as the idea that some things were Boy Toys, from the World of Men.

When they came home declaring that RED and BLUE were Boy Colors, their sister shot them a glare and pointed out her red shirt and blue jacket. When the dress-up clothes box got separated into one pile of hard hats, firefighter hats, and neckties, and another pile of princess dresses, high heels, and silk kimonos, I made an effort to remind all the kids playing over that it was okay to wear whatever looked like fun. My house was a place where anyone could wear a Darth Vader helmet and a Cinderella dress together. As the parent in charge of soccer trophies one Fall, I selected ones without little boy or girl figurines on them just in case there were girls who didn’t like to be reminded that their soccer skills required a pony-tail. Really, I tried.

But slowly, my kids moved more into the world, and the world crept in in odd ways. Television shows I didn’t mind at all were bookended by commercials that deeply reinforced the World of Girls and the World of Boys.

Through happenstance or temperament, my daughter moved in an existence filled with Pokemon and plastic animals. Her grandmother’s indulgence in American Girl dolls came with storybooks full of adventure and resilience. Even Girl Scouting reinforced a message of empowered self-sufficiency - camping, photography, world-awareness (okay, okay, and sewing and cooking). And the Girl Scouting organization is surprisingly inclusive, its policies written to strive for common character among personal difference. I didn’t even consider that by being a Girl Scout Mom, I’d put myself on a slippery slope to someplace I’d sworn I’d never go.

The Boy Scouts as an institution have planted their flag square on the mountain of homophobia and intolerance. They’ve spent millions of dollars to defend their right to be there, and lost millions of dollars more in support from organizations who won’t endorse their positions. Their requirement that Scouts be “morally straight” has stripped years of accomplishment and recognition from young men who later acknowledge their male lovers. It means no matter how much I love my sons, I cannot be a den leader like some of the other moms. The requirement of a belief in God would now remove my late grandfather from an organization he loved, having spent years as a Scoutmaster, leading his son and many other young men on the path to Eagle Scout. That day when the ultrasound threw us into guyville, we sat for hours and debated the circumcision decision. We were wholly united and adamant: No Boy Scouts.

What I hadn’t counted on was the day one of my sons came running out after school, yelling “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease can I be a Cub Scout?”

Maybe for him it was an opportunity for that sense of belonging. Maybe it was the promise of events and camping. Maybe it was the spiffy uniform (this). I told him I would consider it. That night I sat and, as the Grinch would say, puzzled until my puzzler was sore. I talked with his classmate’s mom who would be the den leader, a woman who I knew and liked. She understood what the issue was, and tried to reassure me that at the local level the institutional policies had little effect on the great experience of Boy Scouting. In the end, I came to a conclusion that it’s about my son’s life, not mine, and that until I see evidence that he is being taught intolerance, we’d give it a try. At meetings, he looks sharp in his uniform. I always feel vaguely unclean.

Once his brother discovered there were snacks at the meetings, he joined up too, and I’ve watched them rise from Bobcat to Tiger to Wolf. I’ve sewed badges on shirts, and proved to them that moms can build the little wooden Pinewood Derby cars just fine. I accompanied them to Boy Scout daycamp last summer, and we all learned to shoot bb guns together (!). This is about them, not me.

It’s still awkward, though, at area-wide events with families we don’t know, when one of the other parents asks if their dad was a Boy Scout. I launch into the history of Boy Scouting on my side of the family, while inwardly wry that until my sons were four, their dad wasn’t even a boy, let alone a Boy Scout.

Beyond the registration fees, I do not give money to an organization that requires its members to be ‘morally straight’. I question my own cognitive dissonance, and bristle at the implication that I am not good enough. I’m hopeful that in a year or two they’ll move on to some other activity, guitar lessons or some sport, so my two-activity-per-kid policy lets this experience pass out of my world as fluidly as it appeared.

If not, as they get older they’re going to hear from me about the organization and its policies. They’ll have to set their own moral compass. For now, I stand, reciting, hoping someday my children get to live in a world where “liberty and justice for all” is true.

Written by Darby Blue

How do you deal with sending your kids to organizations whose policies you don’t support, such as religious organizations or even, sometimes, Grandma’s house? How do you raise kids to appreciate tolerance when intolerance is taught in so many organizations?

For those of you without children, you likely face the same issues for yourself, such as in the workplace. How do try to live your beliefs when it can be so difficult?

Please join the discussion for this topic on our forums!

Cheap & Dirty? You are what you eat

I remember eating dinner once with a friend’s family and hearing my friend’s 17 year-old step brother say, “It’s hard to make good food with bad ingredients.” Once I could hear again over the din of my gay-dar, I realized how right he was. I had made that discovery at 34, only a year or two before he made that dramatic statement across a crowded dinner table. I allowed him his early insight because he is a child of privilege. The son of two doctors. I grew up middle-class. In a family of 6, food was for survival. And not much else.

However, once I made this discovery, I couldn’t quite look at dinner in the same way. I knew if I spent a bit more on certain ingredients, meals would come alive. Food wasn’t entirely about survival anymore. It had started to become about pleasure. Spending a bit more on a good olive oil, using fresh ingredients instead of canned or frozen (both of which have their place), or buying good cheese; combined, all of these things made for a great experience.

This all may sound a little strange in the midst of a recession. Aren’t we supposed to be cutting corners? Living more simply? Saving what we can so we don’t get into trouble again? Have you learned NOTHING food_geek?

Well, perhaps.

But say it’s Friday night. You order a pizza ($20) and pick up a 6 pack of beer ($10). You’ve just spent $30 on food and drink that will feed maybe 2 people. Do you have any idea what ingredients you can buy for $30?? I catered the following 5-course dinner party for 15 people just before Christmas:

Course 1. Fresh fig wrapped in prosciutto with balsamic and honey glaze
Course 2. Roasted beet salad with chevre, fresh dill and lemon
Course 3. Seared scallops with cauliflower puree and wilted arugula
Course 4. Pork tenderloin with oyster mushroom and green pea risotto
Course 5. Rum & raisin bread pudding with butter sauce and fresh whipped cream

Five courses for 15 people cost me $100. One hundred dollars! Six dollars and 66 cents per person. For five courses!!

So how WAS that pizza, anyway?

I’m not saying that you need to break the bank on everything. But the following are things for which I will pay good money. For the most part they are like an investment because, properly stored, they will last awhile.

Olive oil: I have a relatively inexpensive bottle for cooking and an expensive bottle for garnishing soups, making vinaigrettes, and finishing tomato sauces

Butter: I like the taste. I also tend to like things that are bad for me. And a little goes a long way.

Dijon mustard: French’s mustard = blech

Good rice: Basmati, Jasmine, Arborio

Black olives: nothing from a can

Balsamic vinegar: the older it is, the sweeter and more flavourful it will be. Look at the label, it should show how many years it’s been aged, displayed either as a number or a number of barrels. 8 years and up is good.

Peppercorns: I don’t buy pre-ground pepper because while there is heat, there is little flavor. And I like controlling how big the grind is. Some things, like steak, should just have larger chunks of pepper.

Salt: Sea Salt, not table salt. I like it a bit coarse.

Maple Syrup: the real stuff

Spices: Everything! I prefer whole seeds - like coriander, fennel, cumin, etc. They stay fresher and hold far, far more taste than their pre-ground counterparts. Grind them in either a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle (but only as much as you need for whatever you are making).

Fresh herbs: Nothing lights up a dish like fresh herbs either thrown in at the end of the cooking process or added, freshly torn, to the plate. It can be difficult to buy fresh herbs in quantities that won’t go bad, so I usually have a small garden (indoor in the winter, outdoor in the summer) of my favourites… Italian parsley, thyme, basil, cilantro and chives.

Having certain ingredients in the house, for me, is an invitation to start cooking. Sometimes, when I buy something special, like truffle oil, I’ll just uncork the bottle and smell it. It smells rich and earthy and extravagant and it makes me want to find a reason to use it. Good ingredients can be a source of inspiration to create something wonderful. And they are extra special if you are creating it for just yourself.

Roasted Beet Salad

1 bunch of organic beets, with beet greens attached
Good Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
1 lemon
1 package of chevre (goat’s cheese)
Fresh dill

Preheat oven to 375F
Cut off beet greens and save for another dish (they are delicious cut up and sauteed briefly in olive oil or butter).
Peel beets and cut into quarters.
Drizzle with olive oil, season generously with salt and pepper and wrap in aluminum foil, shiny side IN. Place in oven for approximately 45 minutes - 1 hour. You’ll know when they are done by sliding a knife into the center. If the texture feels consistent the whole way in (firm, but not crunchy), they are done.
Remove from oven and allow to cool. They can be served either warm or cold.
Get yer rasp out and remove the zest from lemon. Mix zest with beets.
Squeeze a little lemon juice and drizzle a little more olive oil over beets - enough to coat
Roughly chop fresh dill and mix with beets. Quantity depends on how many beets you have cooked, and how much you love dill.
Taste and add more salt or pepper, if required
Plate beets either alone or on a bed of arugula, also dressed lightly with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Place several small pieces of chevre on top and around beets. Or don’t and make it vegan.
Garnish with larger piece of dill.

Serve and enjoy.

Written by food_geek

food_geek was once a successful finance professional. Tired of money, nice things, equity, and the possibility of retirement she decided to pursue a career in the food industry at age 35. She is now a sous chef at a small restaurant in a tiny Quebec village where she works the fry station. She looks forward to being promoted to Manager, Drive-Thru. food_geek has been cooking professionally for 30 months.

When Worlds Collide

A strange thing is happening over on Facebook. As the sons and daughters of some of my high school friends are reaching high school age themselves (!), suddenly their parents are showing up on FB. And while it’s great to see them, it’s presenting an interesting cross-pollination of the neat compartments of queer mommy life.

For a while, it was all neat and tidy. Queer friends online, mommy friends offline or e-mail only. That kept things nicely compartmentalized, so I could plan play-overs in a totally separate world from checking out a friend’s erotic art-photography or reading critical analysis and comparative theory of vaginas over on the boards. As someone who is a tad bit paranoid by nature, I’ve been something of a lurker in those discussions, but you know, I’ve shown ya’ my legs and all.

I got my first inkling, however, that things were changing, tectonics in motion, the day earlier this year when my eleven-year-old called from the kids’ computer in the kitchen, “Did you know that if you Google *** (my Significant Other’s first/last name) you don’t get anything relevant at ALL?”

This is like suddenly the needle on the seismic event monitor of my life starting to bounce like a superball. Shit. What might be out there? I’m pretty Googlesafe, but what about her? Or my other friends who hang out here at my house all the time? I know, I know, we’ve all dealt with the ‘what happens if my mom Googles me’ question forever. But there are some people quite dear to me, whose lives (when they’re not playing videogames with my kids in my basement) aren’t rated G. Or PG. Or PG-13.

As the weeks went by after those first tremors, the aftershocks continued, for this was the year my daughter and her friends enveloped themselves in the interwebs, cruising YouTube for Fruits Basket vids; Google-chatting about endangered animals, Twilight, and who’s crushed out on whom; sending brightly colored e-mails splattered with emoticons. I try to be a responsible mom, monitor as best I can, and have some small advantage that I’ve conducted friendships via IM and e-mail, and can counsel appropriately that sometimes the medium is lacking. By being the Parent Over Shoulder I’ve also discovered that she and her friends have a larger vocabulary of cuss words than I thought, and are all finally learning to touch type with some speed. She’s still too young for Facebook or MySpace, but I know that’s coming. And Google? She’s dangerous with Google. So it’s only a matter of time.

See, over on FB, somehow I friended a couple of my best buds from high school. I don’t have my full name on my FB (see note above about paranoid), so I’m not easily searchable. But either they found me or I found them, and it’s been great to have them back in my life. These were my closest circle for some important times, who happened to be online types, so we added each other in. Then, some of my other high school friends appeared. And then my brother found me.

This means I now sit in the middle of a FB friends list with my bro and his wife’s Mormon family on one side, and my queer erotic-arts and porn producing friends on the other. And my high-school-friends’ Mason buddies circling. Is it any wonder I keep telling my daughter, no, no FB until you’re fourteen?

Then it hit me one afternoon… if I’m on my brother’s friends list, then my mom can find me. And if she can find me she can find my friends… she can find you, Queerky, she can find you! And oh boy, if my mom can find you, that means your mom can find you too! And I sat there (in an almost Dr. Seussian way… too many bedtime readings of The Cat In The Hat), and thought… what does your mom think when she’s reading you talk about your cunt? When she’s reading about those life changing moments? When she’s looking at the pictures you took of the guy at the doctor’s office’s boner? What does she think of my legs? (No really, what does she think of my legs…?)

And circling back to the beginning… what do your kids think? Those of you with five-year-olds have a while to ponder this one, but those of you with older kids or pre-teens are facing it square on.

I belong to a book site too, one of those places where you log what you’re reading and have read, and can see your friends’ books as well. I was recruited there by my kid, and have her and a few of her friends on my friends list. But I have some of my grown up friends there too. Some who occasionally read rather grown up books. And whose settings aren’t locked down tight, their lists are public, their lives not guarded and girded against inappropriate onlookers.

I pondered this one as well. I don’t really have a problem with my eleven-year-old reading through my friends’ booklists and finding books like Exhibitionism for the Shy or The Ethical Slut. Well, maybe a little, but not enough to shut them down. However, because her friends link to her and to me, I found myself reluctant to take responsibility for putting those titles in front of someone else’s kid. Thus I created a second me. Now I have me and me lite. I feel like new Coke.

But when I stopped to think about it, I’d just done the kind of thing I wouldn’t want my kid to do, sneaking around, hiding parts of me that are real to try to look better in someone else’s eyes. So I sat her down and we talked, and I explained my reasoning, and that I get to parent my kids but not other people’s. She nodded and agreed, and I’m sure made the mental note, ‘oh, so you can make a second name and just not tell everyone, cool!’ And I went back to pondering the Facebook conundrum: tattoo artists and teeball mommies…can they all just get along? And what will they think of you?

Written by Darby Blue

food_geek’s Ladder: The Steps to Heaven are built on Good Pots

food_geek spoke.

She said, “Let there be food.” And there was food.

She said, “Let there be cooking.” And there was cooking.

She said, “Let there be a blog”. And there was a blog.

And it was good.

And so we begin. At the beginning. Genesis, Book I, if you will. Like all Good Books, we begin with nothing. Or at least we can pretend that we do. Let all of your previous negative experiences with food be wiped away. You have been absolved of your cooking disasters. Your fears of trying something new are gone. You are left with nothing but the desire to try.

Can I get a “Hallelujah!”?

When I say we begin with nothing, I am assuming that we are, in fact, starting with nothing. No tools. No food in the house. No experience. This is obviously not true. Most people own at least a knife of some sort. Hopefully people have some food in the house, even if it ’s just an old bottle of ketchup. And just about everyone has some cooking experience, be it good or bad.

As I was thinking of writing this blog, I went through my own kitchen and its groaning array of miscellaneous crap that I have accumulated there. The thing about being a chef is that everyone thinks you want some gadget or another. So for every birthday and Christmas for 5 years I received some sort of kitchen … thingy. I now have 5 cheese knives, all with handles that displays some cute thing related to cheese … fruit, swiss cheese, a mouse. And really, a normal knife works fine. It really doesn ‘t cut cheese any worse than a “cheese knife”. All that to say, if I had to start over, I would buy the following items for my kitchen. I ‘ll break them down into three categories: Tools, Gadgets and Appliances.

Tools

A knife. On this particular item, I would spend a lot. That ’s me. But a knife is something that you will use pretty much every day. I would buy a chef ’s knife, either 6″, 8″, or 9″ for the size queen. There is no brand that I would recommend, but I would suggest that you ask to hold several different makes and models because the right one should feel balanced in your hand. Not too heavy. Heavy does not necessarily equate to high quality. A good knife will run you about $100-$150. A lot? Perhaps. But, properly cared for, a chef ’s knife will last you your entire life.

So, if you have a knife, now you need …

A Cutting Board. Depending on your dietary choices, I would suggest several. One wooden board for cutting vegetables and any cooked meat. One (plastic) for raw meat. Another (also plastic) for raw fish. The plastic ones can go in the dishwasher. The wooden one should be washed by hand so it won ‘t dry out and crack.

A Cast Iron Pan. I cannot live without this. I have a cast iron pan because many normal frying pans are so thin that they get too hot and burn what I am trying to cook. I also have a regular stainless frying pan, which I only use for vegetables, because they don ‘t need as much heat.

A Roasting Pan. I have two kinds. The thin, black, speckled, light-weight one that everyone has and a “Le Creuset”. The Creuset is great because it has a cast iron bottom which means it can go from stove top, direct heat, to the oven.

A General, Everyday Set of Pots. Not too thin or lightweight, but you really don ‘t need to break the bank. If it has a bit of heft to it, it ‘ll be fine.

A Stock Pot. It won ‘t be part of an everyday set that you ‘ll buy at Walmart. It ’s taller and a bit thinner.

A Non-Stick Pan: No, it ’s NOT so you don ‘t have to use butter or oil. I like non-sticks for all things eggs.

Mixing bowls. Mine are aluminum. Not because they are better, but because they were a gift (see above). I have a set of 7, which I find quite useful.

The Small Stuff:
Tongs (a must!)
Rubber Spatula
Wooden Spoon
Sieve
Whisk
Flippers (one metal, one plastic - for the non-stick pan)
Vegetable peeler

Gadgets

Rasp (it ’s a small hand-held grater for zesting citrus or grating nutmeg)
Grater - for cheese and other grate-o-licious things
Ricer - ONE of the secrets to the best mashed potatoes on the planet …
Pepper grinder - pre-ground pepper is an anathema
Mortar and Pestle - a big clunky one that doesn ‘t crack in two the first time you try to crush coriander seeds with a bit of enthusiasm

Appliances

Blender or a Hand-held blender - for soups and/or sauces
Mini-chopper - like a small food processor with about a 1 cup capacity. I do use this at home regularly to make vinaigrettes.
Pasta roller - for the more adventurous.

There are a few other small items which are perhaps obvious … sheet pans, 9×9 square pans, cooling racks, casserole dishes of various sizes, including a 9×13 glass casserole in which I make lasagna.

I ‘ll end off saying that you don ‘t HAVE to have these things. And it ’s also not an exhaustive list. But these are my top choices.

So if you had to choose, what kitchen tool, gadget or appliance is a stepping stone to your heaven?

Written by food_geek

food_geek was once a successful finance professional. Tired of money, nice things, equity, and the possibility of retirement she decided to pursue a career in the food industry at age 35. She is now a sous chef at a small restaurant in a tiny Quebec village where she works the fry station. She looks forward to being promoted to Manager, Drive-Thru. food_geek has been cooking professionally for 30 months.

The Once and Future Lego Queen - Coretta Scott King

Anyone who has ever tried to play “Montgomery Bus Boycott” at home probably realizes how hard it is to make Martin Luther King out of Legos. First of all, it’s difficult to find black minifigures unless you buy the NBA 3-packs which feels, if you think about it, either deeply insulting to black people or to white basketball players. Secondly, the hair. Put a black minifigure in a suit with accompanying hair and it will look like a second string Eddie Murphy character from “Coming to America”. In fact, Legos are so poorly representative of ethnic diversity right now that the posted versions of Martin Luther King Jr. on Flickr look identical to the posted versions of Will Smith as Agent J in “Men in Black”; right down to the suit. It’s hard to tell, from a distance, if he has a dream or a neutralizer.

As hard as it is to get good Martin out of little plastic blocks, it’s even more complicated to get a good Coretta Scott King. Legos are notoriously bad at replicating women in minifigures as well. For most of her husband’s non-plastic life, you would find her right behind him, supporting him. In reality, Mrs. King had the singular distinction of being witness to every single “Lego Block” that went into building the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. Each piece of this fight for justice went through her hands at one point or another. If anyone were looking for deeper insights into what King believed and how he followed the arrow of justice, looking through her eyes is our greatest opportunity.

Mrs. King was reluctant to take up the role as leader of the civil rights movement after her husband’s death. In fact, she went to Josephine Baker, asking her to act as leader of this community. When she declined, Coretta Scott King became the soul and heart of American Civil liberties. She fought to ensure that even though Martin Luther King was gone, his dream would be visible, relevant, alive. She made sure that he had a voice even when surrounded by people without her unique insights into his mind. She made it clear to the world that the battle for civil liberties and freedom did not end at the color of people’s skin. Just as Frederick Douglass found that he couldn’t be free as long as anybody remained in chains, fighting for Irish Home Rule and the women’s suffrage, Coretta Scott King explained that the Civil Rights movement was there for the poor, for women, for LGBT people, for everyone.

In 1968, during a Solidarity Day Speech, she called for women to “unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war.” She opposed Apartheid when the word was unknown to most people. In her fight for equality for gay people everywhere she spoke out to say “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”

She indelibly linked the fight for gay rights to the Civil Rights battle in one of her most famous speeches of all, calling out that, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people…But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.” She was completely unequivocal and absolutely clear. In 2003, she invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to be a part of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington. She crossed bridges to support a group she wasn’t a part of - to honor the dream. She fought for the equality guaranteed to all of us when she fought for equal marriage, calling an amendment preventing marriage equality “a form of gay bashing that would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriage.” She took the hardest road she could and she handled it without falling.

On Martin Luther King Day, this year, I want to honor the woman that he honored when he said “without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment…” There is still a long way to go, but to the woman who got every single building block right, the woman who understood every word he said better than most of us, the woman too beautiful to be constructed out of Legos - to you I want to say thank you.

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s latest release, Vinyl88. Not the Best of DW, will melt your face and is available wherever you buy or steal your music.

NEW YEAR - NEW QUEER (Start by tackling your closet!)

As I lay on my bed yesterday, idly flicking my holiday fat roll and wondering how the heck fudge is made, my wandering gaze landed on the chaotic mess in the corner of the room, otherwise known as my closet. Somehow over the course of the last few hectic months, it has come to resemble a large pipe bomb explosion.

Suddenly, my scattered mental state became clear to me: how can I organize my life when I can’t even organize my closet? It took me five hours and a whole lot of cursing but I managed to not only get through it but also compile a list of Ten Helpful (hopefully) Tips for Organizing Your Closet (and Your Life).

1. Get yer ass in there and do it. I don’t care if you have to put on a Hazmat suit and protective head gear - just do it.

2. Start with the under naughties. Here’s an idea - let’s all say, “NO” to granny panties in 2009, OK? Ask yourself, “If I get in an accident today, do I want the paramedics to see me in these?” If the answer is no, get rid of them. Buy some new panties, bras, sports bras, boxers, etc. New year - new naughties.

3. Whoever said, “One size fits all” lied. I found a leopard print skirt that I bought years ago, still hanging there in the back of the closet, just mocking me. It was too small when I bought it and it’s too small now. I’m never going to lose that last 30 pounds of “water weight” necessary to make that damned skirt fit. On the other hand, if you’re a size 4 and you just know you’ll eventually fit into those size 2 pants again, then, by all means, hold onto them. And when they do fit again, come over to my place so I can kick your sized 2 ass. If it doesn’t fit - get rid of it.

4. No one needs 64 t-shirts with slogans like, “The John Tesh Jesus Refresh Weekend”, “I’m Not Gay but Your Girlfriend Is” or the dreaded, “Visualize Whirled Peas”. They’re not just gay - they’re Ace of Base gay. This might sound wacky but try to pare it back to a comfortable 30 or so. That way, you’ll make room for all the ridiculous slogan t-shirts you’ll get gag-gifted with this year.

5. We all have certain items in our closet that we have absolutely no idea how they got there. In my case, I was probably stinking drunk when I thought the turquoise fringed leather vest was a good idea. In your case, maybe you were impulse shopping or ya know, stoned. My girlfriend has really bad taste in clothing. She has a bright pink, ruffled shirt eerily reminiscent of Seinfeld’s puffy shirt. She looks like a pirate in drag when she wears it. I’m going to sneak into her closet, steal it and give it to the unkempt homeless man on my street who already looks like a pirate. Moral of the story: if it’s ugly - get rid of it.

6. As my friend Sharon (name changed to protect the innocent…her real name is Cyndi) said when I asked why she still had the Working Girl blazer (complete with shoulder pads) in her closet, “It might come back in style!” GAH! It would take a miracle but yes, it might come back in style. Do you really want to wear it again? It looked awful the first time around; rest assured it will look awful the next time around. That is, unless you think “linebacker” is a good look for you. There’s a reason a particular look went out of style and just like your youth - it ain’t coming back. Ever. Get rid of it.

7. I don’t know about you but I have pants in my closet that have been in there so long, dust bunnies made a nest in the crotch. Much like the jeans I can’t bear to get rid of because I was wearing them the day I met Maxwell Caulfield, I got lucky the last time I was wearing those dust bunny pants. That should tell you just how long they’ve been in there. Sometimes we hold onto an item of clothing, long after its use is over, not because we’ll ever wear it again but because we don’t want to let go of the memory associated with it. It’s time to pass along those items to someone who will actually wear them (not just sniff the leg and dream about Maxwell) and make room in the closet for some new memories. Rule of thumb: if you haven’t worn it in 2 years - get rid of it.

8. If you were wearing the same thing in every profile pic in 2008, it’s time to change things up a bit. Pair the shirt with different trousers or replace it altogether with a similar shirt in a different color. Or hey - go nuts and create something completely new and fresh. If every time I see you it looks like you’re wearing the ‘You Uniform’ - it’s time to rethink the Go-To Outfit.

9. It may seem at this point I’m recommending you get rid of everything in your closet and if you’re my friend Sharon, aka Cyndi - I am. But most of us, after clearing out the clutter, will find a lot of things truly worth holding on to. And let’s be honest, who has the money for a new wardrobe these days? So, if something is in good shape, fits well or has way too much sentimental value (a plaid shirt belonging to your Auntie Genevieve, the school teacher, never married but who visited her “friend” who lived 50 miles away every other weekend and who you recently found out is most likely the first lesbian on your mother’s side of the family) - keep it.

10. Don’t throw away the stuff you’re getting rid of. Well, OK, granny panties go in the trash…ewww. Donate your good items to Goodwill, get a receipt and write it off on your taxes. Hey, poor people need your crap now just as much as any other time of the year.

Bottom line, if it doesn’t make your socks roll up and down, if you don’t look at it and think of one reason why it would make you feel good to wear it, then let it go. I found that something as simple as cleaning out my closet made me feel lighter, more organized and ready to tackle the new year. Now if I could only figure out how the heck fudge is made and why it’s so damned addicting, I’d be doing great.

Written by Lane West

Lane West is currently awaiting eviction from her ghetto apartment in Los Angeles where she resides with an exasperated girlfriend, a geriatric beagle and a ridiculously large hat collection. Although she has no degree in fashion, per se, she is an opinionated Leo and therefore, an authority on most anything.

Touched by the brainless, shuffling, rotting reanimated zombie hand of love

Science rocks. Unless you bought 900 acres of Nagasaki farmland in 1943 and were hoping to flip that shit. But let’s assume that this is not the case.

Science rocks. And today on Science and You we’re going to be looking at Dicrocoelium Dendriticum, a tiny microscopic organism that, much like seasoned veteran cult filmmaker George Romero, speaks English poorly, weighs very little, has trouble getting a date, and creates zombies.

Dicrocoelium Dendriticum (Which we will call, for the purpose of brevity, “Dinky”) lays its eggs up inside the ugly bits of a cow. The problem is that it’s a fast and furious world inside a cow and there’s one way out and it’s pretty much the way you would expect. Not long after Dinky eggs emerge from Bessie’s Fire door, a species of snails gobbles them up and hosts the tiny parasite inside it. Please remember this last part when ordering all willy-nilly off the French Menu this weekend.

Like most heterosexual male bulls and a statistically significant number of 15 year old young men from Macomb, Illinois, Dinky wants to get back into a cow. And like most female snails in the wild have discovered, when you need a helping hand, a snail is not the place to look. So Dinky forces the snail to throw it up, along with a healthy dose of ant-attracting yummy phlegm. Ants come along, eat Dinky and that’s where the odd begins to happen.

Ants that eat Dinky find themselves partially zombified. The ant acts perfectly normal during the day but at night, when other ants are sleeping or making the ant with two backs, Dinky ants crawl along slowly, hypnotized, until they find a tall stalk of grass. Then, with their best “please eat me, cow” pose, they hang from the top of the stalk of grass, waiting for nature to take its course. If they aren’t eaten tonight, they just wake back up and do it again tomorrow.

Dinky is interesting because, as I discovered in my “Defiling the dead” class at Miskatonic University, if you inject a human corpse with a RNA bath solution containing Dicrocoelium Dendriticum and a series of other ingredients (one being Diet Dr. Pepper, which tastes much more like regular Dr. Pepper, as a quick aside) you can reanimate the dead. It’s actually a pretty easy operation, but you have to inject the solution directly into the spinal column leading to the brain and, therefore, need a honking big needle.

Here’s the thing. Dead people are like the unending, infinitely sustainable resource of planet earth. There were so many deceased folk to choose from, I had trouble figuring out where to start. So I tried to think like an American and I resurrected someone about whom there is soon to be released an almost assuredly Oscar winning biopic. Upon scanning through IMDB I decided to steal the body of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the State of California, assassinated on November 27th, 1978, almost exactly 30 years ago. In doing this I created a historical first in that the result is the only currently animated homosexual male in America with no idea who Madonna is.

I document here, for posterity, my conversation with the acrid, corrupt, mephitic (thank you thesaurus.com), zombified corpse of famed civil rights icon Harvey Milk.

Me: Harvey. Harv. You ok?

Harvey: Wow. That is, hands down, the worst party I have ever been to. Honestly. And I know Belushi.

Me: Ok, I have some good news and some bad news.

Harvey: Hit me.

Me: Bad news. You were shot to death almost just about 30 years ago today and the guy who shot you claimed it was because he ate too many Twinkies and only served a few years in jail.

Harvey: Well, bad trip. And weird, but not the dumbest thing that’s ever happened. Good News?

Me: That massive brushed gold plated needle hanging out of your nearly severed head matches your bracelet almost perfectly.

Harvey: Sweet. I can work this.

Me: So, I didn’t mean to just dig you up but I figured you’d be someone I could talk to.

Harvey: I’m in, brother, you know it. But I haven’t eaten in 30 years. (Harvey began opening and closing the drawers in the beat up Day’s Inn mid-priced suite I had reanimated him in. )

Me: all right, this might be seen by some as bad news as well, depending on your sense of humor, but the recommended diet for a newly created zombie such as yourself is human brains.

Harvey: Yeah, that’s not going to do it for me. Why don’t we just order up a couple of Kahlua and Creams and let things happen the way they happen.

Me: Excellent. (I dial down to room service, keeping Harvey in sight out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. Hanging out with Zombies gives you this feeling that your brain is absolutely huge and completely accessible)

Harvey: Ooh. And some ladyfingers. I love those. So, fill me in, doc. What’s happening in California these days? How’s Belushi?

Me: Um. Ok, well, for a while we had completely equal marriage in California. Over 18,000 couples were legally and happily married. Many of them started adoption proceedings. It was nice.

Harvey: Groovy.

Me: But then 700,000 signatures were entered into a petition that created a ballot initiative called Proposition 8 that amended the California constitution to prevent Gay people from being treated as equals as far as marriage was concerned. The amendment passed.

Harvey: ok. Ungroovy. But expected.

Me: They spent over 35 million dollars passing that amendment.

Harvey: ok, now who do you mean by “They”?

Me: I don’t know, Harvey. It’s the same they as it always is, isn’t it? I remember how young I was when you were killed. Some of my older friends told me “They got Harvey” and I remember wondering what they meant. It didn’t sink in until later that you were dead.

Harvey: And in a state of the art, silk lined casket, by the way. Comfy. (Harvey eyed the room as though under blacklight. He made a move to fold the sheet over a stain that I hoped was only semen)

Me: Sorry. They say that marriage is a religious thing and that allowing gay people to marry violates their religion. That marriage is a religious institution.

Harvey: Well, that’s untrue. People have been getting married since long before Christianity happened. Characters from the oldest pieces of literature we have were married, and it had nothing to do with religion. Beowulf’s parents were married. American Marriage certificates say marriage but have no mention of God.

Me: And they say that letting gay people marry is redefining marriage.

Harvey: Marriage is being redefined all the time. In this country alone, marriage has gone from possession to personhood to partnership. Consanguineous marriages are the norm all over the world, with polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, secular marriage, all forms of marriage in all sorts of cultures.

Me: They say that homosexual relationships are unnatural.

Harvey: Unnatural? All the animal species we observe engage in heterosexual and homosexual behavior. Some of them are monogamous, but not many. Hell, look at spiders, nasty fucking things. Natural and unnatural is a crappy argument. Eating your partner’s head after sex is natural. (Harvey leaned over to look in the mirror)

Me: Well. Hm. They say that it will cause marriage to collapse.

Harvey: Jesus. Look at my head. (Harvey was staring in the mirror at his pus filled head, large flaps of skin falling down over one eye from decay) Do I put anything on this?

Me: I don’t think it’s going to do much good.

Harvey: Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I have to look like an asshole.

Me: I hear you

Harvey: Besides (back on point) We know what the top ten or so things are that cause marriages to collapse in this country. Time, Money, Children and Childcare, Sex, Jealousy, Work, Household maintenance, Arguing methodology, Extended family, and emotional distance. If we really cared about marriage we’d put the money into newlywed programs that helped create time management skills and fiscal competence, we’d fund childcare facilities, create adult partner sex education and connectivity classes, organize group therapeutic programs to address jealousy and anger issues, offer work-life programs in small communities, teach home economics, household maintenance and mediation skills, help young couples to tell their parents to go fuck themselves and slap everyone until they learned how to cry. How do gay people factor into this unless we get to do the slapping?

Me: Why don’t they understand all this?

Harvey: this is you with the “they” again?

Me: Well, it’s pissing me off.

Harvey: Naw. Don’t fall into that trap. It’s not an us versus they issue. Or even an us versus them issue. This is just fighting bad ideas. Don’t turn it into fighting people.

Me: I think that’s big of you, but what do you say to people who think you shouldn’t be allowed to have the same rights just because you’re gay.

Harvey: I don’t say anything to them, brotherman. I say we fight the bad ideas with good ones. A hundred years ago, being openly gay would get you hung from a tree. Gay people didn’t come this far by fighting with people all day long. Not with insults and name calling. We got here a different way.

Me: Fabulously?

Harvey: Actually, yes. Gay people got everything we have in the most fabulous way possible. By standing next to people and not taking ourselves too seriously. By listening better. By being better friends than anyone ever thought possible. What does it mean now in movies to be someone’s gay best friend? It means the person who doesn’t judge. The person who loves you. The person you call at 3 am because you need to talk to someone and there’s one person who will wake up and talk to you and only half mean it when they yell at you.

Me: Is this going to be in your movie?

Harvey: A movie? About me?

Me: Yeah, with Sean Penn.

Harvey: ooh, the kid on Little House on the Prairie?

Me: Yes (I said declaratively, upon looking through his wikipedia page. Sean Penn was in freaking Little House on the Prairie. How does he not just get constant, never ending shit for that? Why the cover up?)

Harvey: I liked him. Look, gay people got where we are through love. We fought hard for it. We’re not going to give it up now just for the right to hate the people who don’t want us to succeed. We’re going to fight this the way we always have.

Me: fabulously.

Harvey: Ugh. You really need to step it up when you say that word. When you say it, it just lays there. Do you think calamine would help this any? (Harvey now held out part of his arm, below the elbow, which had apparently fallen off during the conversation)

Me: It’s really not a skin condition. More of a… Like a thing that happens when you try to defrost a chicken in the sink and you leave it out for 30 years or so too long. With the water running.

Harvey: This is sucking a little bit now. (as he tried to reattach the appendage)

Me: (perking up after the knock at the door) Oh. Here are those Kahlua and Creams. That’ll make you feel better.

Harvey: Oh yeah. That’ll take the edge off of falling apart in a Day’s Inn Bathroom.

Me: How do you do it? How do you stay so centered?

Harvey: I see the whole road, you know. It goes far back that way (he waved his unattached forearm in the direction of the bathroom) and for ahead this way (As he pointed with the appendage towards the armoire that held the small, old fashioned television.) We have to stay on the road we built. We can’t walk it any other way. (At this, Harvey took a big swig of his Kahlua and Cream, causing a spigot of Creamy Liquid to come spraying from an apparent hole in his gut. He looked at the mess on the floor.) I should probably clean that up, then.

Me: Meh. You can barely tell

Harvey: (He paused for a moment, as if to finish the thought with a flair.) I really probably could use some brains now.

That day spent with Harvey was the first day, in a way, of the rest of my life. In the way that most days that come before at least one other day before you die are. I closed the door behind me, thinking about everything that Harvey had said. The cute young bellhop rushed past me with a plate of ladyfingers.

Bellhop: I forgot. Sorry.

Me: No worries. He’s in there. And hey. ( I thought about the road and what it looked like today. I suddenly felt a little better. I handed the Bellhop all the cash I had in my pocket, about 120 dollars). I bet he could use, you know…A little head…

I winked at him and walked away.

Written by Jim Marcus

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s latest release, Vinyl88. Not the Best of DW, will melt your face and is available wherever you buy or steal your music.

Because I said so!

Do as I say, not as I do. Whoever first said it, I’m sure she was somebody’s mother. Sometimes it seems like one of the primary tenets of parenting survival. Other times, it stinks of double standards, hypocrisy, and the head-in-the-quicksand approach to parenting - the “if I just assume my children’s lives aren’t as complex as mine, this will all be easier” route. Sometimes it is a reasonable solution. Stretching an allowance to cover new Pokemon cards and a candy bar is not the same as budgeting a mortgage, utilities, and putting groceries on the table. But what am I really saying when I deny my daughter the extra dollar she needs, give the lecture on not spending money you don’t have, and then whip out the plastic at the checkout? Where’s that line?

“No biting!” I admonish my son, reminding him sharply that I have no tolerance for animals or children that bite. Then I catch my significant other smirking quietly while reading the Sunday comics, and my mind flashes to the deep bruise on soft flesh barely covered by her t-shirt. No biting without consent is what I really mean, I tell myself, but I’m not going to sit here and try to explain the particulars of consent to my six-year-old. I’m big on consent as a concept with my kids, having reinforced a consistent no-means-no message ever since they could comprehend. As a parent, though, one has to stick with the “pain is bad” message, even as the irony oozes around the edges.

Parenting is about setting boundaries, creating safe space, and protecting our young. From the cupboard latches and padded corners of the toddler’s world to the curfews and over-the-shoulder computer monitoring of older kids, we remain ever vigilant against the bad, scary forces of evil out there in the world. So many things could go wrong. The implication is constant: to be a Good Parent you’d better anticipate all of the things that could go wrong. An entire industry of products and services has developed to help you. Childproofing services, Net-nanny software, home drug testing kits, and cell phones for children with GPS tracking built in. And the list goes on: movie and video game ratings, car seats and even car seat inspection stations. None of us want to be the parent on the six o’clock news. ‘NEVER LEAVE CHILD UNATTENDED’ said the sticker on the car seat I brought my tiny baby home from the hospital in. Never? I remember thinking… Never?!

Safe space is easy to define as a new parent, when one is talking about baby gates and padding sharp corners. It gets harder, and slopes rapidly toward the hypocrite’s quicksand, as they get older and safe space becomes a discussion about behaviors, choices, and associations. These days, the four horsemen of adolescence’s apocalypse are alcohol, drugs, sex, and the horrors of the Internet. You can lose a kid to any of these, or more importantly, a kid can lose him or herself. As a parent, somehow creating a safe path through those influences is as clear an imperative as locking up the cleaning products and putting away the matches was just a few years earlier. The question then becomes, what exactly is safe?

One of the things I delighted in most about coming out (besides getting to have sex with the ladies, of course), was the feeling of being freed from all the expectations of being ‘normal’. I had hopped off the prix fixe menu of life (boyfriend, fiancee, husband, motherhood, etc.), and could choose my route a la carte. Or, as I once explained, I was already a fuck up, so what did it matter if I got another tattoo. But here in Mommyland, I’m ever alert that the route I consider my ‘normal’ may be outside other people’s safe space. Occasionally, I wonder whether it is even outside my own safe space.

Sometimes I look around at my assorted friends and associates and among us we read like a laundry list of parental hazard warnings: Use of alcohol, sometimes to excess? Check. Recreational drug use? Check. Casual sex? Check. Forming relationships with strangers on the Internet? Check. I know, I know… so far it sounds like fun, right? And it goes on! Non-traditional relationships? Check. Pornography? Check (both making it and looking at it). Body mods and funky hair colors? Check. It goes on.

So where exactly will I find that safe space I, as a responsible parent, must create for my kids? How do I create it without treading into the do-as-I-say quicksand? I can’t pretend that the scary things out there don’t exist, because I know that for lots of folks, I’m one of them. Try explaining that to your kid sometime.

Actually, I find I explain a lot. I explain about the different choices people make. I teach about treating people decently and requiring that others do the same of you. I periodically throw in the preachy moral lesson about non-equivocal things like drinking and driving. And bike helmets. In general, I try to remember that the farther my head is in the sand, the sooner my kids will write me off as stupid.

At times, I do catch myself wishing for nice, normal paths through life for them, and then just as quickly remember how badly I chafed at “normal”. Still, who am I to deny them normal if it is where they truly fit into the world? While my observation has been that children of queer parents have a sort of heightened awareness of their own individuality, I suppose it is entirely possible I’ll have kids who never question their sexuality. They could grow up, get married, move to the suburbs and vote Republican. At that point all my lessons on tolerance and agreeing to disagree will really come home to roost.

So, “Model the behavior you wish to see in your child” is the modern parenting mantra that rings in my head as I harangue them about dishes left in the playroom while hurriedly clearing five days of coffee cups off my desk. I know full well that actions speak louder than words, but consistent follow through, she’s a bitch. The follow through becomes more important though as the reliance on baby-proofing declines. When a discussion with one of my boys about how anything covered by a bathing suit is personal space and other people are NOT allowed to touch you there was countered by a challenge from him, “Then how come She (my S.O.) touches you on the booty all the time?” I both laughed and cringed. Mostly though, I liked it that he felt he could call me on my shit.

We’re still in the thick of modeling behavior and setting boundaries, but I know that not far down the road, they’ll be on their own; having to set their own limits and define their own safe space. Then my job as a parent will be to back off, and cross my fingers that, while they may not do it the way I would, and it can’t be the pain- and worry-free existence that I as their mom might wish for them, they’ll find their way through. I’d really be a hypocrite if I didn’t.

Written by Darby Blue

Don’t Scare the Mommies

Identity. It is a fundamental human construct. It’s interesting to watch my kids move from the puppy dog-level questions of “Who are you?” and “What’s that?” to the infinitely more complex question of “Who am I?” But unlike being able to name “ducky!” and “kitty!” for them, “Who am I?” is a question they’ll have to struggle lifelong to answer for themselves. Sometimes I can barely answer it for myself.

“Mom,” says the apron I wear in the kitchen when I’m cooking something particularly spattery or messy. A number of very thoughtful writers have explored what happens to individual identity when one makes the jump into parenthood. In my quest to understand this process, I read lots of them. Having done the coming out thing previous to parenthood, the process of transition, of crossing over, was at least a little familiar. That is, if the total unknown can ever be described as familiar, and whoever gave you directions was a little drunk, and then it snowed so the whole place looks different anyway.

But I’m not the only one who has seen the similarities between these processes. Meg Wolitzer’s essay in a book on new motherhood describes that period of indoctrination into motherhood with a story about a friend of hers, who (yes I’m going to quote it for you, shush): “had realized she was a lesbian, and partook of everything gay or lesbian-related she could find. She joined groups, she marched for miles, she stuffed envelopes, and she had lots and lots of sex with women. Then, after a while, she didn’t need to remind herself she was a lesbian so often, and even when she wasn’t reminding herself, the title stuck.” We stalk, capture, and eventually inhabit these new identities, until it’s no longer that we are them, we are just us.

Neat and tidy. I have a baby, I become a parent, I am Mom. Great. But wait… am I still a lesbian? I look up at Wolitzer’s list and notice marching for miles, stuffing envelopes, and having lots and lots of sex with women doesn’t seem to have much to do with breastfeeding and diapers and which sippy cup doesn’t leak. Even now that I’m out of those years, the list also doesn’t have much to do with making school lunches, arranging playovers, and being the homework bitch. Sometimes these identities don’t play nicely together at all. Sometimes the juxtaposition is awkward. Unfortunately, it is identity we’re talking about, and stifling any part of it, especially a hard-fought-for queerness, will only work for so long.

Some lesbian mothers, usually happily coupled ones, settle graciously within motherhood. Both the earth mothers and the overachievers delightedly trade their cats for offspring with opposable thumbs. Others of us feel each identity grate on the other like cogs that just don’t mesh. I found myself pondering recently while driving carpool that I know a number of queer mommies with pierced nips. Well, I do! Then I realized I cannot imagine any of the straight mommies I know even contemplating such a thing. I know it’s just as likely they have blindfolds and riding crops in their closets, and yet, that still falls so much more clearly into queer identity than motherhood. Although the blindfold comes in handy for the birthday party Pin the Tail on the Donkey games!

Thus I juggle these two equally legitimate but sometimes quarrelsome facets of my own queer mommyhood. I’m the one who is always on edge when reading at the local x-rated open mic, alert in case one of the school mommies stops into the women’s bookstore for a book on sensitive parenting. I’m the one debating whether wearing that stylish skirt would tip me into anyone’s femme column. This queer parenting thing constantly requires one to work for balance between Somewhat Hip Dyke and Responsible Mommy, elbowing new spaces into both roles. The compromises show up in odd places.

For a number of years now, since I’ve worn my hair cut short again, I’ve implored my stylist with one simple warning: cut it as short as you want, but please, don’t scare the mommies — because of course it’s one thing to be a little edgy, to be (whispered) gay, to wear boots instead of sneakers and button-flys instead of track pants. But you don’t want to scare the other mommies. The tricky thing about motherhood is that your identity is no longer just about you. If you scare the mommies, your children don’t have playovers anymore. Even if they have friends at school, their social sphere does not extend outside school hours.

My eldest attended a Catholic school in suburban Chicago for three of her tender years. I scared the mommies a lot. We had ended up there after a couple of bad preschool experiences with a very challenging little person. The school was very good to her, absence of playovers excepted. It was very bad for me. I was not managing much balance in those days, and turned my identity inside out trying not to scare the mommies. Long hair. Nail polish. Skorts! But to no avail. I’ll never forget the time one of the other Girl Scout mommies pulled her daughter out of the restroom as I walked in with mine, saying, “No, no! I don’t want you in there while she’s in there.”

Now we’re in a relatively welcoming environment, and even though I’m somewhat more a one-mommy family than a two-mommy family, it’s amazing to me to find two-mommy kids on our Tee Ball teams, or families at the PTA meetings. I know most of this world doesn’t have that luxury. Still, we definitely have that see-how-tolerant-I-am minority status in some ways. You find us on the periphery, worker bees, but not part of the mommies and daddies social scene. My kids have friends; they even get to have their friends sleep over without anyone balking at their exposure to The Gay. The balance, while not perfect, is much more livable. But I decided to put my identity dichotomy on the line recently when I conducted a small social experiment.

The school’s annual Sock Hop is a dress-up affair. Boys in white t-shirts and rolled up jeans, girls in poodle skirts and pony tails. There’s the occasional girl in white shirt and jeans, though I’ve never seen a boy there in a poodle skirt. Hmm. My hair has been growing unchecked all winter, partly from procrastination and partly for warmth. I’ve kept it mostly tucked under caps and hats. I don’t like the way it looks as it creeps mullety down the back of my neck. For the occasion, however, I blew it all fluffy dry, tied a flowery scarf round my head, put on scarlet lipstick and wore an old pair of ballet flats with my cardigan and jeans. I wasn’t ten feet inside the door when the compliments started. I was grabbed. And gushed over. And told how amazing I looked. The mommies kibitzed that I must grow it out. One of the dads told me he didn’t even recognize me. That’s because I didn’t look like me, I looked like one of them! And I am. That apron, it still says, “Mom”.

But I’m getting my hair cut next week.

Written by Darby Blue

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