Standby Recipes #4: Stepping It Up a Notch

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empty brownie pan

What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s Friday and you need some brownies this weekend.  I can tell.  Sure, you could pick some up at the coffee shop or the bakery section in the grocery store on the way home.  But I’m pretty sure what you really need are these brownies, hands down the best homemade brownies I’ve had.

So far in the standby recipes series I’ve gone easy on you and I’ve focused on dinner.  But everyone needs a little sweetness in life and what’s a snow day without a warm concoction to delight and indulge in?  I hope you don’t wait until it’s snowing again to try these because they are worth heating up the oven in summer.

Smitten Kitchen is a beautiful and tasty site for finding new gems and fresh takes on old favorites.  You don’t have to be an accomplished cook to follow along and you can spend a surprising amount of time hitting the “Surprise Me!” random recipe generator link. 

Here is the link to her “My Favorite Brownies” recipe, which is now my favorite brownie recipe, too.  A few tips from me:

  • I make them exactly as she describes, though I had to go out to find “flaky sea salt” (Maldon salt – you should rub it together between your palms after measuring, to break it up a bit before adding it to the other ingredients).  It’s a fancy ingredient and you can certainly use kosher sea salt (I did this the first time or two I made them), but the Maldon salt is a nice touch – and then you have it around for sprinkling on other dishes.
  • Before using this recipe, I had never tried her method of spraying and parchment in the bottom of the pan.  Try it!  It is wonderfully efficient.
  • Please don’t fret if you have never tried melting chocolate and butter together in this double boiler method she describes.  It is easier than you might think.  You put about 1-2 inches of water in the bottom of a saucepan and put a bowl on top of that pan (a glass Pyrex bowl is perfect for this).  It just needs to rest on the pan without touching the water below.  You put the butter and chocolate in the bowl as she directs and stir while the water below simmers (once you’ve got it boiling, turn it down to a simmer or very low boil so it doesn’t get too hot and burn the chocolate).  It is really that simple and now you can impress people by throwing around terms like “double boiler.”
  • One more note on ingredients:  Other than the splurge for the fancy salt, the ingredients are common kitchen staples and there are only 6 of them.  This is so easy to whip up!  I use regular Baker’s unsweetened chocolate and I have even made these with gluten-free flour on occasion and they were still amazing.

Happy Friday snow day in summer!

Standby Recipes #3: A Study in Simplicity

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frozen peas package

As I wrote recently, I’m posting a few of my standby recipes, and here’s the third one.  Since my aim is to share a few tried and true, go-to, standby meals, this is one of those simple but satisfying gems.  Because I want you to actually want to prepare a meal for yourself from genuine raw ingredients –at least every once in a while – this is about as low-prep and raw as it gets.

I present to you the humble baked potato.  Seriously.  Real food, the oven does most of the work, and you feel truly fed.  Comfort food at its simplest and best.

If you have no other choice, you can microwave your potato but you will thank me after you’ve tried it in the oven.  If you happen to have a gas oven, stand back and be prepared to swoon.

Here’s what you do (and just multiply this for however many people you are feeding, other than yourself):

Turn your oven to 400F.  Use any type of “white” potato you like (russet, Idaho, Yukon Gold).  Scrub it clean in water and trim off any eyes or bad spots with a paring knife.  Leave the rest of the skin intact.  Poke a few holes in it with your knife or a fork.  When the oven is up to temperature, put the potato directly on the oven rack in the center of the oven and set a timer for 1 hour.

Go off and enjoy a glass of something, read a chapter in your novel, or watch an episode of Frasier on Netflix.

When the timer buzzes, check the potato by sticking a fork or knife in it.  The skin should be somewhat crackly and the knife should go in easy and smooth.  If you meet resistance, let it cook another 15 minutes or so and check again. 

Even if you think you don’t like peas, get some frozen green peas and be prepared to change your mind (by all means, use fresh ones if it’s summer or you can find them).  While the potato is finishing its last few minutes of cooking time, put a generous ½ – 1 cup of peas in a small saucepan with about an inch of water.  Turn it to hi and let the peas cook in the boiling water for 1-2 minutes.  They barely need cooking and should still have some texture (not mushy) when they’re done.  Drain the water off.

When the potato is ready, use pot holders to take it out of the oven and plop it on your plate.  Immediately slice it open and insert copious amounts of butter, mashing it into the flesh so it all becomes one lovely substance.

Top your butter-infused potato with peas, salt, and pepper.  If you are in the mood, add grated cheese.  Allow yourself to moan as you enjoy it.

Standby Recipes #2: Beans – No soaking required

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dial on a crock pot

As I wrote last week, I’m posting a few of my standby recipes, and here’s the second one.  You are going to need a crock pot for this one but it will be a purchase that’s worth it.  This is satisfying and filling year-round and doesn’t heat up the kitchen the way an oven does.  You can let it cook overnight or during the day while you’re at work and you’re ready to go at dinner time.

Put the following ingredients in a crock pot and turn it on hi (if you want to eat in 3-6 hours) or lo (if you want to eat in 6-12).  Give it a stir every once in a while and add more liquid if it seems too dry.

  • 16 oz package of dried kidney or black beans, rinsed under cold water.  Examine the beans and remove any small rocks that may be hiding out in the mix.  (You really don’t have to soak the beans before cooking in a crock pot.  Yes!)
  • 1 can diced tomatoes, fire-roasted if you can find it
  • Generous pinch or two of salt and some fresh black pepper
  • 1-2 tsps of chopped jalapeno peppers.  I use prepared ones from a jar, so we always have a few in the fridge.  Test for heat if you are using fresh and adjust the amount as needed.
  • Water or vegetable stock to cover the other ingredients by about an inch.  (I use store bought cartons of stock and just refrigerate any portion I don’t use.)

About 30-60 minutes before you want to eat, dice a medium yellow onion and sauté it in butter or vegetable oil until it is nicely browned or even blackened in a few places. 

Dump the onion and butter/oil into the crock pot and stir.  Let the flavors mingle while you make some rice and/or grate some cheddar cheese to sprinkle on top.  These beans are great ladled over rice or a baked potato, but they are fabulous all by themselves in a bowl, with or without a little cheese on top.

This should make about 6 full servings.  If you have leftovers, they make a tasty addition to homemade nachos.

I’m a Feminist and I Cook

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kitchen in the midst of cooking, dishes everywhere

I grew up with a grandmother who made turkey and ham at Christmas, a chocolate meringue pie every time she knew my dad was visiting, and who once spent an entire week preparing food for a family reunion.  I grew up watching my mother wrestle apart a whole chicken in the afternoon before dinner and thinking of frozen TV dinners as treats because we only had them when my parents went out and we were with a babysitter.  For a long time I didn’t quite believe that anyone actually ate Kraft macaroni and cheese.  Though I saw the ubiquitous ads, I never once saw it on my plate or in our house, so it remained one of those bizarre things I both knew about and didn’t – until I got to college and found out that other people had different versions of cooking.

I’m not glorifying anything.  My grandmother was an excellent cook and my mom is, too.  Many meals were homemade, though both of them routinely used boxed mixes for cake and brownies.  I’m not trying to talk about purity here.  I’m simply describing what I grew up with as “normal.” 

It was also normal in our family for women to work.  I’m not adding “outside the home,” because for the first 37 years of her life, my grandmother worked on farms.  She was back and forth between the fields and the kitchen and they were long days.  After that, she worked in a Woolworth and I remember many Christmas Eves waiting for her shift to end so we could have dinner and open presents – yes, she cooked the dinner, too.  My mother earned her graduate degree part-time while we were very young and then worked full-time from the time I was 10 years old.  Among their many responsibilities, both women cooked for us.  (It was also normal in my family, at least sometimes, for men to cook.  In the hectic days of high school, my dad was the one to have breakfast ready for all of us each morning before we zoomed out the door in multiple directions.)

I’m contemplating family and cooking after reading Emily Matchar’s fascinating book Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity.  It’s a bigger book than this one issue, but this is the one sticking with me at the moment.    In the book she describes women who are hands-on about every moment of the food process, from growing and raising it, to canning and slaughtering, to preparing it for the plate.  She highlights people who grind their own flour, make their own baby food, and attempt to become self-sufficient producers of all the food their families eat.  Clearly, that’s one end of a continuum. The other end is the person who buys only prepared and fast food and uses the oven for storage. 

Matchar has written in other places about the new tyranny of cooking imposed by people like Michael Pollan.  She points out that not everyone likes to cook and that now it’s easier than ever to find healthy fast food and prepared food alternatives to the drudgery of cooking.

Anything can become drudgery.  I suppose there may be some folks for whom preparing food would always constitute drudgery.  Certainly, working 12 hours in the field and then coming back to the kitchen to prepare a full meal for the rest of the hungry field crew would wear on you.  I’m sure there were days when my grandmother didn’t feel like making dinner.  I suppose there may even be people who just aren’t that into food and honestly can’t taste the difference between homemade marinara and sauce from a jar.

What’s interesting in Matchar’s book is the prevalence of the phrase “from scratch cooking.”  In fact, she rarely talks about cooking without the word “scratch” in front of it.  Having grown up as I did, this is sort of like saying “cooking cooking.”  It highlights how little many people actually cook and it emphasizes a purity test for what counts as cooking (think, grinding your own flour vs. buying an already roasted chicken and making a few side dishes to go with it).

I’m a fan of utilitarian, go-to meals and I also like exploring new recipes, occasionally even those that should only be tried with a culinary degree.  I know the comfort of ordering take out after a long day, which I invariably think of as “someone else cooking for me.”  I also know the satisfaction of watching the raw ingredients turn into something amazing, just because I followed the steps.  Many, many days, I know the comfort of a good enough meal, pulled together and eaten at home without much fuss or time. 

Bottom line:  It doesn’t all have to be Julia Child and it doesn’t have to take hours to prepare.  You can even use some pre-made ingredients to help yourself out.  It is almost always less expensive and better-tasting when you cook/make it yourself.  There is nothing wrong with a tub of store-bought hummus but why not learn or collect a few easy, inexpensive, healthful, and delicious standbys?

In a week in which we had this throwback to 1950s advertising, it’s important to say it outright:  I’m a feminist and I cook.  One of the themes of Matchar’s book is the way in which the “new domesticity” young women assert that they are “reclaiming” cooking after “feminism told women that cooking was drudgery and shoved them out of the kitchen.”  This is not and never was feminism.  Feminism is about expecting all of the people who want to eat to help cook it.  Feminism is about expecting the world outside of the kitchen to treat men and women equally for the work they do there.

I cook because I need to eat and because it’s a creative and rewarding endeavor.  (I also work because I need to eat.)  And I work because I am called to it.  That’s the best of both worlds and I know it.  To truly love your work and to love the creativity and beauty of feeding and being fed are all blessings.

A few years ago we had a bread-baking retreat at the campus ministry where I work.  We spent the afternoon learning how to bake bread and, while it was rising, reflecting on the prayer we offer during Communion.  Men and women – none of them who’d ever made bread previously – created the loaves we carried into worship that evening.  This wasn’t drudgery or a waste of our time.  And that bread tasted better than our usual loaf.

Working with young folks and having read Matchar’s book, I realize that a lot of people just don’t know where to start.  If you didn’t grow up with pies and homemade macaroni and cheese, it isn’t too late!  To help anyone else out there who may be tired of your own standbys or who may want to learn a few, I’ll be posting 4 or 5 of my simplest and most satisfying recipes over the next few weeks.  So for all of you men and women who may want to include a few more meals at home, here’s the first of my standby recipes.  Bon appétit!

Standby Recipes #1:  Greek Salad

This one is especially refreshing and satisfying in the summer months.  Use any variety of the items below and feel free to change it up to fit your mood.

Put any or all of these ingredients into a large bowl or plate and drizzle with your favorite salad dressing:

  • 3-4 leaves of lettuce, torn by hand into bite sized pieces (red-leaf, green-leaf, romaine, or whatever you like)
  • Handful of canned garbanzo beans (Rinse them first. You’ll have leftovers for another salad later in the week.)
  • Chopped red onion
  •  Sliced or diced cucumbers
  • Diced fresh tomatoes (you can use cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half)
  • 4-6 halved, pitted kalamata olives (you can often find these on an olive or salad bar at the grocery store)
  • Generous sprinkling of Feta cheese, crumbled or diced
  • 2-4 pepperoncini peppers
  • Hardboiled egg, sliced in half or quarters (The only cooking required in this one!)
  • Black pepper, sprinkled on top

 

Mad Men, Freaks, and Netflix Binges

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Before Netflix I went to the video store.  (This is not a new phenomenon.)  My favorite one was like a used book store, with stacks and vintage posters and narrow aisles just wide enough to get lost in.  It had two floors and foreign language films.  Rows of French movies I would pick up and put back and re-rent, following from one to the next on the trail of a director or writer or actor who stood out.  At this store, you could shop without a smart phone and ask a question about What year or Wasn’t he also in and the clerks rarely had to look it up, though they sometimes argued with one another.  art music ideas coffee sign in floyd va

When they started carrying whole seasons of television I changed my habits.  I still watched obscure foreign films or fondly remembered classic ones, but I also started renting several discs at once right before the weekend when they let you keep them for three days.  Whole seasons of Northern Exposure or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but from the beginning this time and all the way to the finale.  I picked up shows I had never seen or cable programs I didn’t have access to and dove in, years after they’d aired, coming up for air three days later, satisfied but also ready for the next binge.

But it really started before video stores.  I was the kind of kid who could easily spend the entire day on my bed with a book, so immersed in what was happening in the world I was visiting that I’d actually startle when someone came in calling my name.  It was like coming up from a delicious dream into waking life, trying to pull myself back out of the page and into the room with the real live people in it.  I loved reading a novel in one sitting or in one luxurious weekend, watching closely as the story and the characters set off on their arc and eventually bent towards the final pages of the story. 

That’s why I do things like watch five seasons of Mad Men in two weeks, popping them like candy and staying up way past my bedtime.  It’s reminiscent of those long summer days on the bed in my room, reading until reality intervened.  It’s the long story arc of a season, and seasons combined, that seduces me.  Just one more.  I have to see where it’s going.  This is so delicious the way they’ve brought back the image from season one.  Watching them back-to-back in a condensed time period brings into high relief the details that build to create a world, or an undercurrent.  Watching with the remote control in hand, I often skip back to a previous scene or episode to check out a hunch.  That is exactly what so-and-so said to the other guy in the second season…  The blocking in that scene is an exact mirror of this other one.  Dipping back into Freak and Geeks last month, which I had obstinately missed out on when it aired, was a way to re-visit my own adolescence as well as a “when they were younger” guessing game of surprises.  So that’s how Judd Apatow ended up working with so-and-so.

It’s a literary, cinematic, artistic payoff and it’s also extremely indulgent.  So Friday, alone in the house and in the mood to be lost in another place and time, I leave Netflix for iTunes, where Don, Peggy, and the gang from season six lives.  Imagine my surprise when I see Don having a new affair with the older sister from Freaks and Geeks.  But she was just in high school, debating a runaway summer on the road with the Dead!  (Never mind that she was last seen in 1980 at 18, wearing an oversized army jacket and now, a decade later in my own life, she’s a middle-aged housewife in 1968.)  I stay in my pajamas well into the day, snuggled on the couch, sinking back into the tail end of this arc, anticipating and dreading the end.  But knowing I’ll find another story to follow soon.

Live Small

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graduates on UVA rotunda steps_picture by melissa holmes

Tonight’s baccalaureate sermon for the Wesley Foundation at UVA, on Mark 14: 3-9.

I’m going to tell you the opposite of pretty much everything everyone else is going to tell you this weekend.

You have probably already heard and will hear again tomorrow that you are the best and the brightest, that it’s your job to go out there and make the world a better place, that you are the leaders now and it’s time to take the helm.  You will be told that the sky is the limit and your dreams should be big.  You will be told to make something of yourself – especially through your professional accomplishments.  You will be told to enjoy the places your lives will take you – especially when they are far away, glamorous, unexpected, and can earn you more money.  You will be told, as you have been so many times already, that the impressiveness of your résumé is how you are measured and valued.

I’m not going to tell you those things.  Because you are UVA people and because I know that you will do big, amazing, impressive, world-bettering things no matter what we say to you.  It’s part of why you are here to begin with.  You are high-achieving, motivated, conscientious.  You don’t need encouragement to be who you already are.

But you probably need a lot of encouragement to consider living small.

I don’t mean miserly, shut-in, cut-off, or inhospitable.  I don’t mean afraid and cowering.  Just small.  Humble.  In proportion.  Manageable. Close to the ground and centered around the people, places, and things you really mean to have at the center of your life.

Like Ruthie Leming.  She was the younger sister of writer Rod Dreher and they grew up together in rural Louisiana.  From early childhood, Ruthie’s world was that town.  She married her high school sweetheart, taught school, and raised kids there.  Rod, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to leave town for some place bigger, faster, more “cultural.”  He felt trapped in that small town and he never understood why his sister seemed so happy there.  Even content.

In his book about their lives, he writes:  “I had somehow come to think of her living in a small town as equivalent to her living a small life.  That was fine by me, if it made her content, but there was about it the air of settling.  Or so I thought” (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming:  A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life, by Rod Dreher, p. 194).

Then, in her early 40s she developed cancer and died within a couple of years.  In the course of her illness and during the weeks after her death, Rod developed a different relationship to the town.  By that point he and his family had moved around between Washington DC, New York City, and Philadelphia.  He was a widely-published writer, made a lot more money than his sister, and he lived in impressive, happening places.  But he realized during his trips home that he didn’t have any friends or neighbors in any of those places who would come take care of him if he got sick.  He witnessed the town coming together to support Ruthie, raising tens of thousands of dollars for her care, providing meals, watching out for her kids, and traveling back from places like California to be at her funeral.  He heard the stories of her former students, now teachers themselves, who said they would never have even finished high school if Ruthie hadn’t taken an interest in them.  And though the time was full of struggle and pain, his trips back home opened his eyes to what was missing in his own life and to what had been there all along in that small town and those small-seeming lives.  His epiphany was that Ruthie’s small life was bigger and deeper than he had ever grasped – bigger in some very important ways than his own well-crafted life.

Why am I telling you all this?  Your families here tonight will be pleased to hear that I am not trying to get you all to move back home and never leave.  But I encourage you to read the book (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming) and to think about what living a small life might mean for you.  As Rod makes sense of his sister’s death and their very different lives, he comes to terms with the fact that if he had never left he would have been bitter and always wondering.  He doesn’t come to the conclusion that his sister was right all along.  He had to take the journey he did in order to find his way back home – literally to Louisiana and his family but also to the kind of life God was calling him to live.

It’s not an either/or proposition, but graduation clichés and platitudes can make it sound that way.  Either you go “make it big” or you settle for something that pays the bills.  Either you make your mark on the world or you start a family.  Either you “use” your degree or you don’t.  Either you impress other people or you satisfy yourself. 

But it’s not an either/or choice between a big life or a smaller one that counts.  Some of your biggest most God-centered moments will not be televised or public or result in a bigger paycheck.  Some of the smallest-seeming moments will reverberate the loudest in terms of how you organize your life and live it out in the ordinary details of every day.

Jesus’ disciples protested and complained because they thought there was an either/or choice between big acts of justice – feeding the poor – and small acts of kindness – anointing one man’s feet.  Jesus doesn’t recognize this choice.  He says, You can (and should) help the poor regularly.  You have that opportunity every day.  But this opportunity is the one in front of you right now and it’s good, too.  She cared for me (vv.3-7).  He says, “She has done what she could” (v. 8).

We don’t even know her name.  It was an extravagant act but small, intimate, and fleeting.  Only a few disciples knew about it and even though we are still talking about it tonight, we don’t know her name.  If she were graduating tomorrow, people would advise her to etch her name into the jar of alabaster before she breaks it so everyone present will remember it better.  If she were graduating tomorrow, people would tell her to get more bang for her buck and organize an Alabaster Day on the Lawn or on the National Mall and have hundreds of people breaking jars and anointing feet all over the place in a synchronized and well-publicized movement.

She did one generous, personally-extravagant, but relatively small thing.  That is what Jesus noticed and praised her for and I suspect that at the end of her life, that moment was one of the highlights.  I suspect that throughout her life that moment was a touchstone that helped her make other generous, personally-extravagant, Christ-centered decisions.  It was small and, despite Jesus’ words, almost forgotten.  What was her name again?  But I am telling you, it was enough.

You are already on an amazing trajectory to do big, impressive, résumé-building things that I look forward to reading and hearing about.  You are also already enough.

What I want is for you to be on the lookout for the brilliantly small life, wherever you go next.  Be ready to get generous, personally-extravagant, and Christ-centered – even if hardly anyone else sees it and you can’t put it on your résumé.  Like you have been living here.  I know you have had mind-blowing classes, trips around the world, challenging internships, and incredible professors here.  I also know that some of your most important, memorable, reverberating moments have been the small ones.  Talking in my office or over coffee, offering comfort to a struggling first year, on spring break mission trips, in worship, trying to work out your beliefs in a hot topic forum, around the countless dinner tables, in late night car rides back to your dorm or on couches in the Cottage, in marathons or minutes spent in Study Camp…  You have done what you could.  You already know what the big, good, small moments can be.  Keep it up.

Thanks be to God!

*

photo credit: © 2011 Melissa Holmes, Used with permission.

Break Free

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Here’s what I want for Mother’s Day:  I want the church to break out of its bondage.  I want us to stop our incremental “improvement” about how we speak and act in worship on Mother’s Day and claim a real holy-day instead.

canadian rockies

Jessica Miller Kelley’s article at Ministry Matters earlier this week included some helpful and sensitive advice for making it through this Sunday’s worship without stepping on some of the biggest landmines.  I appreciate her inclusion of the wide spectrum of mothering and her sincere effort to include mothers who may come to church on Sunday expecting the “traditional” celebration, while not excluding women who are dreading the day.  But in her effort to include all sorts of women with all sorts of reproductive experiences, she effectively simplifies women’s experience.  (And, though I’m sure it wasn’t her choice to use the photo, the accompanying picture of a mother and her baby didn’t help expand the topic.)

 I finished her article thinking, It’s not all about (in)fertility.  Mother’s Day is not only uncomfortable because some of us are unsettled or unhappy about our circumstances, whatever they may be.  Mother’s Day is uncomfortable – especially in church – because it defines womanhood as motherhood.  Yes, it can be difficult to be a woman who has not borne children or one who has miscarried or one who cannot have children.  But it is not all about (in)fertility issues.  It is not all about having or longing for children. 

At the most basic level, this is still a painful day because our culture and our church are still having the same conversation we were having 50 years ago:  Can women “have it all”?  When and how does a woman decide to be a mother?  How should she prioritize or find balance between work and family life?  And we are still not asking these questions about men.  Notice that we don’t fret when Father’s Day is coming up.  Notice that we don’t make serious, expectation-filled mention of men when we talk about women having it all.  The onus is still on women to make the accommodations, to make it all work – or to stop working or to settle for being a “sub-par” mother.

The focus of our conversation on children or lack thereof simplifies and pokes at something potentially painful, and reduces the conversation back to our biological role.  The focus on Mother’s Day in church is then like a spotlight aimed right on each of us women, all eyes on us, waiting for a performance we are not interested in giving on this narrow stage of expectation.  The lines are prescribed and rehearsed and there isn’t really room for new plotlines.  These are complicated issues and merely trying to avoid offending people, or worse, trying to name and include every reproductive experience possible, are both inadequate.   

So I want the church to break free and to stop worrying over how to “do” Mother’s Day right in worship.  I want a new conversation and a renewed focus.

I want us to remember our baptismal calling, that we are a family formed by God’s call.  I want us to remember what we vow when one of our young ones is baptized, that all of us together as the body of Christ have responsibility for raising children in the faith.  Sure, mothers of all sorts would continue to be lifted up as disciples who take on a special measure of this calling.  But so would teachers, Sunday school teachers, police officers, fathers, social workers, artists – all men and women.  Wouldn’t that be an interesting, theologically sound, give-us-a-reason-to-be-in-church way to observe this day and make it holy? 

Charlie Rose has Never Changed a Diaper

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thyme growing on kitchen window ledge

Well, you didn’t think I would have a picture of that, did you?

I was drinking coffee, enjoying the leisurely wake-up of a day off, and watching CBS This Morning when I heard it.  Gayle King mentioned changing babies’ diapers and turned aside to ask Charlie Rose if he had ever changed a diaper.  He answered “no.”  I stopped drinking coffee.  I think I repeated it aloud.  I was astonished.   Charlie Rose is 71 years old and he has never changed a diaper?

I know he doesn’t have kids.  But how does a human being make it to 71 without this most basic act of care for another human being?  I suspect girls still babysit more than boys do, and so, get more practice in this skill before they ever might have children of their own.  I think King’s comment was meant, in part, to highlight the fact that women engage in this sort of domestic task more often than men, even in 2013.  But still.

I am not trying to disparage Rose himself.  I like him and have eagerly followed his work on multiple networks and shows.  But the fact of this simply astounds me.  I have not raised a child from infancy but I have changed diapers since I was in elementary school.  Visiting friends and family, babysitting, family reunions, giving a tired parent an extra hand.  I think of these as normal in-the-course-of-things moments when the possibility of changing a diaper can present itself.  I think of myself as one of the people who can help with this when needed.  I absolutely cannot imagine either never finding myself in this position or opting out of the line-up.

Let it be said, I have opted out.  I have on many occasions thought to myself I know they are tired but that is a particularly smelly one and I’m going to let his parents handle it.  But those have been momentary choices rather than a permanent status.

On CBS This Morning King joked that she and the third co-host, Norah O’Donnell, both mothers, had changed a lot of diapers:  “We don’t mind poop.”  There is a liberating matter-of-factness about dealing with someone else’s body so intimately.  Routinely changing diapers for another person can raise the bar on what you consider “gross” but it can also be a peculiar blessing.  I think this is the part that startles and saddens me when I consider Charlie Rose.  What is it like to be 71 and have lived that apart?

To be sure, I have no idea about the contours of Rose’s life and he is mostly serving as my muse today.  He could have had other experiences providing a similar connection.  I had the privilege of being with my grandfather as he died.  I also helped a friend as she gave birth to her daughter.  In addition to the diaper-changing, I have tended to others’ bodies in these intimate ways, caring for them when they needed things they could not do for themselves.  In both instances I knew I was on holy ground.  Maybe Rose has stood there, too.

My husband astutely reminds me that, besides the gender difference in cultural expectations for nurture and care, there is also the cultural fear of unrelated men caring for children in such intimate ways.  That is a fair point and one that certainly can explain the lack of opportunity for men to join in and lend a hand.  But it is sad.  For all the warranted suspicion and fear, this prevailing cultural stance also excludes and limits perfectly upstanding men from participating in some of the most important, human work in life.

So this morning’s revelation has me wondering.  We are accustomed to thinking about certain markers or milestones in life:  graduation, marriage, children, buying a home.  But what are the other markers?  What are the markers of connection and humanity that really matter?  Assisting at someone’s death or birth? Bathing and feeding a child?  Sitting with someone while they wait for treatment in the hospital?  Baking a cake for someone’s birthday?

I don’t know what goes on my list, except diaper-changing.  But I am thinking about it.  And I am giving thanks today for the real, tangible, necessary, messy, and beautiful ways I have been blessed with caring for other people.  What goes on your list?  When you are 71 (or 101), how will you know when you’ve lived a full life?