not so super woman

These past few days so many opinions have been written and shared around International Women's Day, centered on empowerment, rights, gender equality, super women, super moms. In our society, you are a part of this list if you are able to work, have babies, manage a household, keep up with family and friends, stand for something meaningful. I don't consider myself on this list: pregnant and jobless. I keep busy with a list of things that need to get done, but I'm still a house wife with all the its ups and downs. It's not easy to acknowledge this mostly because of all the negative connotations it involves. Super women are those who can do it all and I surely don't! But as I say this out of a privileged situation: I have a wonderful life partner, a home and we are starting a family. Life is good. 
Before going to bed we practice thankfulness: we write down a few things for which we are thankful for each day to remind us of what is truly important. It also helps us retrospect on what went well during the day and what didn't. I honestly feel that this practice has helped me to be more accepting of my life and focus on the good things that come with it.  

I may not be a "super woman" but I feel fine just being a "woman". 

Christmas in ATL

This year, my sister Helena, her fiance Gusto and our cousin Jessica came over over Toronto to spend Christmas with us. It's great to have a full house and fancy breakfasts every morning, game nights and a to-do list of things that was almost fully accomplished.

For Christmas Eve dinner we had friends over which we were very thankful for. Obviously, we prepared our typical Portuguese Christmas dinner with our family's secret sauce that makes the tedious boiled potatoes and cod a most delicious treat! This is when we most feel like emigrants cultivating the nostalgia for the motherland or, as we Portuguese put it, "saudades". 

Pedro had some fun filming this time lapse video of the preparations for dinner, enjoy!  

We really hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!! 

green is my favorite colour

For about 3 months now I've changed my diet. I'm not on a diet. Goodness gracious! I've simply changed my eating habits. More raw green vegetables, more fresh fruit, more nuts, less dairy, less meat, less sugar and above all no processed stuff. It's not that I completely turned my back to the "bad stuff", after all I do work in a bakery, but I decided to indulge in more healthier habits. It all started with coffee. I cut off the usual morning coffee with milk and toast for an almond milk smoothie with fruit, nuts, chia and flax meal or just a plain bowl of raw oatmeal porridge (which is delicious by the way!). Soon I found myself blending spinach and kale with a whole bunch of other fruits and vegetable and gobbling down green smoothies and loving it! The energy I get from this new and improved lifestyle is incredible! There is no turning back. 

Special request!

Pedro, my darling, when will you return to being a blogger again?! I miss reading your long, descriptive, carefully laid out and curated blog posts about the amazing things you've done. 

Dahon

Pedro has just got home with this:

This is what happens when you let your husband go to yard sales by himself: he come home with 2 Dahon bikes! 

Drying for freedom

There are many things about living in the US that I enjoy: second hand stores and unlimited access to torilla chips! Then there are other, more structural aspects, that make me want scream (or do other less lawful things, but Pedro doesn't let me). We live in an apartment complex in Atlanta where one of the many rules is that we can't put our clothes out to dry in our patios. Nope! You can't reduce you carbon footprint because it doesn't look nice. Patios are for chairs. If you put clothes out to dry, your nice friendly neighbors tell on you! Don't forget, America is the land of the free: where you are free if you have a good lawyer!

Drying For Freedom - Official Trailer from White Lantern Film on Vimeo.

a clean house is a sign of a misspent life

dear blog, 

after being away from the house for almost 3 weeks, we have to "misspend" our life cleaning and getting everything organized. our house is a mess! this cross-stitched reminder hangs in our house, one of the many curiosities we got at a yard sale. so when this gets done, I'll get back to more important things, like our wedding!

yours truly, 

the Atlanta housewife 

ooh la la, elle a fait croissants!!

I finally ventured in the complex art of homemade butter croissants. Following the Tartine recipe, it took me 3 days to finish! Patience is really the key here, along with strong muscles to hammer down the butter and roll out the dough. In the end, they tasted delicious!

DAY 1: prepare the overnight poolish and a sourdough levain, they will serve as ferment allowing a slow rise and a more complex flavor.

DAY 2: mix the dough, beat the butter into a flatten sheet and laminate the dough with the butter. Before spending the night wrapped in plastic in the fridge, the dough is folded and laminated with the an immense quantity of butter. The folding and rolling out the dough is what gives it its ultimate butter flakiness.   

DAY 3: after a slow rise in the fridge, I rolled out the dough, cut it into triangles and rolled the croissants. I made 2 batches of small and regular croissants and froze 1/3 of the dough to use next week. 

These are going to lucky fellows over at Outsystems.  

hurray!!!

A follow up post: after much wait and despair these past weeks I received in the mail 2 beautiful pieces of plastic: my Social Security Card and my Employment Authorization Card. This means I can have a driver's license and legally find a job. No more loafing as an Atlanta housewife... 

But not all is peachy: on the down side, we found out we don't have health insurance. This means we'll get on the first plane out of here if anything happens! Don't you just love "first world" countries!? 

bread in a dutch oven

Kinfolk's Dutch oven bread 

Making bread is a process. A slow and patient process. This film by Kinfolk portraits bread making beautifully: with every step follows a waiting period, so you need to take the time.
I've always read that to achieve better results in retaining moisture during baking to use a cast iron dutch oven. I finally got one. Last night I baked my first loaf with it.

Everyone always asks me for the recipe, but I don't really follow any recipe. I just randomly mix the ingredients. But I promise I'll write a post with a step by step recipe to make a loaf. 

This is an image you don't see here in Atlanta: clothes hanging out to dry.

Here, clothes dyers are a "bare necessity" and also a major energy consumption, not to mention a source of house fires. I do recognize that sometimes it comes in handy, but this is Georgia, with sunny weather most of the year. In Portugal hanging out your clothes to dry is a cultural thing!

We've been trying to be sustainable in small daily things and buying this rack (on craigslist of course!) is just another step towards a more eco-friendly life. Aside from air drying our clothes, we've been using biodegradable laundry and cleaning detergents. They cost a bit more, (but not a lot more) and in the long term are better on the environment and on more gentle on our clothes. 

no more empty walls

Slowly I'm going to fill them up with more frames and embroideries. I'm finally finished with this work I started last year and now I'm starting a special embroidery gift, aside from getting some tea bags together for a tea swap with meiadeleite.

have a great weekend!

traffic signs

In Portugal, as in the rest of Europe, traffic signs are intuitive: a series of color codes and pictorial symbols that are very easily interpreted. So, imagine after a 24h flight to Atlanta, having to learn to drive an automatic car at 2am and then encountering a 14 lane highway with this type of traffic signs:

Fun, right?! East, West, North, South, miles, etc, etc. 

Aside from my still very complicated understanding of the imperial metric system, most signs are in writing: sentences that must be read in a split second while driving down a highway. You can imagine my first experience behind the wheel: I either paid attention to traffic or I read the traffic signs. Pick one!

When people ask me what the biggest difference between Portugal and Atlanta, first I say that everything over here comes in extra-large sizes and then I say traffic signs. 

After being here for a couple of months, I still don't understand another thing: traffic sign duplication. Traffic authorities need to make sure that a driver thoroughly understands the signs. A simple pictorial symbol is very often supported by a written reinforcement of it's equivalent meaning: 

It's not enough that a red circle with a white horizontal rectangle universally means "do not enter", they have "do not enter" written right over the sign. I suppose it's to aid the color blind? They do this all the time: imagine a turn right sign and under it the words "turn right".

I'm now collecting traffic sign photos! (Sorry, not the best quality photos, they were taken from inside the car.)

friends of a certain age

Joanna Goddard's husband Alex has just written an article for the New York Times, Friends of a Certain Age, that I really relate to:  making friends as an adult. This article really hits a nerve.

Moving to Atlanta and turing 30 made us realize we need friends, local friends. That's why is was wonderful to have Michael and Halef over at my "massive" birthday party. They made us feel at home.

The article says that adults have a hard time making new friends because marriage, work, family, kids, narrows people into a tighter network, very often closed off to new comers. Aside from this, Alex says that "Self-discovery gives way to self-knowledge, so you become pickier about whom you surround yourself with" and easily set someone aside for very selective reasons. 

According to the article, we must return to our 20's where we would met anyone just because! And we have, at least we've been making the effort to do that. I really feel the need to have people over for dinner. Sitting around a table with food is always a perfect way to makes friends. 

2 months, 3 days

It's been 2 months and 3 days since we moved to Atlanta and we are still slowing finding our way.

We've meet really nice people, been to couchsurfing meetups, visited different neighborhoods and festivals, attended social events, become members at an amazing indoor climbing gym, bought a really cool car that we've been fixing up, and did a whole bunch of other things. 

I'm still waiting for employment authorization to come through, so legally I can't work. But as a good housewife that I am, I've been baking and decorating!

Recently I also applied for a tour guide volunteer position at the Atlanta Preservation Center and so I'm reading up on the whole 160 years of Atlanta history. This way I can feel a bit more connected to this new place we call home. 

Next step: look for more volunteer positions and buy a sewing machine! 

blueberry jam

A few days after we went blueberry picking, I made jam.
Simple recipe with no measurements: blueberries, brown sugar and apples for pectin. 

hero and villain

Have you ever noticed that in super hero movies, the hero, being a the personification of good, never really "kills" his arch enemy, the villain? Even though the hero has this thriving urge to aniquilate the bad guy (and we all do too when we're watching the movie), he'd rather catch him with life. If, by chance, the villain dies, he simply dies in a way that was impossible for the hero to prevent his plunge to death.      

Have you ever thought about it? It´s a matter of principal: if the hero actually killed the villain then he would be nothing different from the villain. 

here

We don't have television, so we don't watch the news. Which sometimes makes me forget that I'm even living in the United States.  But the other day we were listening to the radio in our car and the local news comes on: this man is going to be executed on July 18th, here in Georgia. An then I'm remembered that I now live in a country were there is no difference between hero and villain. 

homemade pesto

I've always wanted to make homemade pesto. I love the taste of it with pasta, salads or smudge potatoes with it before roasting them. So good.... 

In our last trip to the farmers market we bought 3 bundles of basil, Parmesan cheese and walnuts (you're supposed to use pine nuts, but walnuts are just as good). 

You can find hundreds of pesto recipes online, but read up on 2 recipes and based on what they said, I did my own pesto: with no accurate measurements, a blender, a bit more garlic than usual (cause I love garlic) and not too salty. It probably won't preserve for long, but I doubt it will last long in the fridge, because it tastes so good. 

101 cookbooks has an amazing pesto recipe straight from an Italian grandmother, but she chops it all by hand... which I think it really does make a great sauce, but I had no patience, so Just tossed everything into a blender. The other recipe is Jaime Oliver's pesto. No secret here. 

Honestly, it takes about 10 minutes to make and the flavor is just wonderful. Try it and you'll never want to buy supermarket pesto ever again! Oh, and the bread was also made by me: cinnamon, raisin and cranberry bread.