Lunches.

2011 Week 15. Monday. Asparagus based salad. ( +2 ) (all the previous lunchboxes can be seen week by week here... and now also introducing the photo-only option to see all the lunchboxes here!)

Huh?

Sign that I may be getting old or that I've been around LJ too long - the whole move from community.livejournal.com/com-name to com-name.livejournal.com is very frustrating. Seeing something-something.livejournal.com in the address bar for me equals to a single user's journal and seeing a community name there bothers me. I like my first world problems.

I should take up knitting again.

Often on my daily commutes I listen to podcasts. The other day I was listening to Stuff Mom Never Told You's podcast on Home Economics. It's amazing the history that we often ignore for this often looked down on subject. I highly suggest that you go check out that podcast, it's from 03/11/2010. So the story is that actually the vision we have of Home-Ec today is largely influenced by second wave feminists who never bothered to really check the history and the true goals of the original Home-Ec classes. We think of this as a high school class where some old lady teaches to sew and cook and perhaps gives some info on child rearing, it's mostly girls and often they're too ashamed to tell their friends they're taking it. The truth is, the person who started Home Ec classes made those classes for college students and as means of getting women into colleges because prior to that... well, higher education was definitely not on most women's agenda. The main goal for the classes was to provide women with scientific information such as hygiene, child development theory, nutrition (super useful during rationing times), etc. Back then they didn't have refrigerators and proper kitchens so actually knowing how to keep things fresh and knowing how to quickly go about chores as to have time to do other things during the day, such as going out, were absolutely necessary. They got to learn how to use things they never encountered before such as washing machines. The colleges even had special apartments where everyone would practice and they also had real babies brought from local orphanages on which all the theories learnt in class could be applied. And apparently those "test" babies were very sought after for adoption because they basically had the best rearing possible, good food, good education, etc., stuff that wasn't available at an orphanage. Basically the original Home Ec courses empowered women. They had an opportunity to put that foot into the door and get into college. They learnt scientific methods. And, unlike what second wave feminists claim, those classes are not responsible for keeping women in the home. They got them out of the home, not only to attend the classes, but they also taught women how to be efficient as to be able to get out of the house more. Back in the day everything was done by hand, that took a lot of time, an hour gained per day was a lot. What brought an end to those courses was the fact that someone had the brilliant idea to say that those courses would only get funded if they followed a more vocational training style and the quality went down and they only started attracting people who wanted to teach Home Ec in high school, the classes we know today, the sewing and cooking. I think that the original Home Ec college courses should be brought back. At the end of the day, whether you're a working man or woman, stay at home mum or dad, you're going to be spending time at home. I think that home life would be much more meaningful if people actually had decent scientific information on nutrition (hello obesity problems!), hygiene (we're over clean these days and it's starting to cause problems), medication, cooking, basic appliance functions, etc. Even sewing, it's amazing that many people don't have a basic sewing kit at home, you're always going to get tiny holes here and there, why not fix them instead of throwing things out or desperately waiting till you go back to your parents' so mum fixes it? Recycling could be another subject, when you have the hard facts behind it, I'm sure more people would take it more seriously. Let's be honest, when most people hit freshman year in college, they're still kids. I say, empower those kids with good hard facts and useful skills. So there, just listen to the podcast, it's quite good, you get tons of interesting dates there and a lot more facts.