Sassafras writes:

Talk about your relationship to femme community. What does it mean to you? What does it look like? How has it it changed your life? How have you struggled with it? What are your dreams for what it could be?

I think that my real introduction to the femme community was when I started reading Sinclair’s thoughts about butch and femme… I think it has been almost four years since then, since I stopped denying my femmeininity. Even for a long time after that, I had little true communion with other femmes. I had plenty of androgynous/butch friends. I’m not sure why I never made better friends with other femmes. One reason may be that folks around here aren’t too concerned with intentional, conscious gender. Even now, four years out as femme, the majority of my femme oriented friends are scattered across the country and the world because I met them through this group beautiful sex/work/gender/survival/power/erotica bloggers. I have met almost none of them, although I feel like close friends with some… Curvaceous Dee, who has seen me through a number of hardships. My local femmes don’t all get along, due to disparate value systems and lifestyles and it’s disappointing… but each of them brings unique blessings and dilemmas to my life.

To me, femme community means: having someone to make sure you look ok when you leave the house. Or if you don’t look ok, they’ll muss the bun on their head and crimp some wrinkles into their shirt so the two of you match. being able to talk to another femme about shared struggles in life and relationships that stem from your queer femininity. Maybe femme community is about having your own personal gender posse who will defend you from the judgments of outsiders. Knowing that you’re unique, but you’re not alone.

Maybe femme community is not comprised of femmes only, but also any who identify differently but still support and affirm the power and legitimacy of a queer femme identity. Maybe femme community also means having friends and lovers provide opportunities for us to shine… by thanking you for being an excellent hostess, or acknowledging the effort you put into your appearance, holding you in the way you like most of all, or simply exhibiting chivalry so that you can behave in a courtly manner… if you’re that type of gal. Ivan Coyote gifts femmes with this beautiful poem, a very tender expression of femme community from someone who does not identify this way.

I know that this glittering femme community has affected me because I feel its lack of influence in my life so dramatically right now. I know that I flourish and thrive when I’m deep in femme-affirming territory. I sometimes dream of moving to a place with more intentional femmes and butches, to a place where it’s a little easier to be queer, where I could start over anew. But I cannot, and if I were to do that I think I would be giving up the chance to find the femmes who live right here. I would miss the out on being the voice of a Floridian Femme at the upcoming femme conference. Perhaps I underestimate the quality of community that I have, since I get to contribute to the conversation about intentional, queer femmeininity right her on Femme’s Guide. Although my comments may not be the most eloquent ones here, I’m not afraid to stand up and speak my mind. Maybe that’s what femme community is: a place where you can stand up and speak your mind about femmeininity without fear of judgment or retribution. Can we all agree to disagree and affirm each other despite our differences? When that happens, I can stop searching.

Like many people, I have had an ambivalent relationship with food for most of my life. My mother is diabetic and a couple of years ago my pancreas finally pooped out on me and I developed type 2 diabetes as well. That *should* have been the beginning of a revolution in my health (really, it should have happened when I found out that I was pre-diabetic many years ago) but I did not really focus on my wellness until this year. First, in March I began getting treatment for depression and mental illness, about which I had been in denial for at least a year. At the same time, I also began tracking my blood glucose levels with more diligence and paying attention to the kind of food I was eating. More recently, I’ve begun working out with a friend once or twice a week, and using sparkpeople.com to track my food intake, blood sugar and exercise. Finally, things are starting to come together!

Today I’m going to share with you my shiny new breakfast routine! It includes oats and a morning smoothie that is full of nutrients and (I think) tastes amazingly delicious! One thing I’ve learned since tracking my food intake is that I actually do no eat enough to keep my body strong and healthy. How weird is that? Usually when I do get enough calories, they’re the wrong kind. In order to resolve this problem, I gave breakfast a big makeover. Prior to this makeover, breakfast included nothing, a granola bar, or a bowl of cheerios. That kind of breakfast can really put someone off to a bad start! Now, I have a very small bowl of quick oats and at least two big servings of fruits and veggies!

Oats for Wellness
Ingredients:
1/4 to 1/2 cup of dry quick oats
boiling water
1/4t to 1t unsweetened cocoa powder
1-2 T raisins or other dried fruit
spices to taste (I use ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove)
1-2 T peanut butter or other nut butter

Directions: Boil water in a pot or tea kettle. Scoop your oats into a heat-safe bowl and add the spices, cocoa and fruit. Add the boiling water just a little bit at a time until you have achieved the consistency you like. (Note: the directions on my quick oats say to add oats to water and cook for 1 minute. This makes my oats way too mushy. Cook the oats by your preferred method.) I add the peanut butter at the end, but when I’m not paying attention, I put it in before the water. Either way is fine. Serve hot.

This is so easy, especially when I wake up with a “fasting” blood sugar level! I know the cocoa sounds weird, but it actually provides some extra protein and nutrients. Same goes for the fruit. Peanut butter has lots of calories but they mostly come from good fats that your bodies needs to stay in tip top shape.

Whirled Berries
Ingredients:
1 banana, any size
3-5 blackberries (the seeds don’t grind up and they’re hard to chew. I use 3)
5-6 strawberries with leaves removed
1/4 c blueberries
1/4 c raspberries
Big handful of baby spinach leaves (trust me!)
1 Serving of protein powder (I use 2 T Bob’s Red Mill Hemp Protein Powder)
1 t chia seeds (optional, I get them in bulk from the health food store)
No-sugar-added fruit juice, milk, or milk substitute to taste

Directions: No complicated instructions here! Add all ingredients to your blender and blend until smooth, adding some milk or juice to taste if needed, or if your blender is having a hard time blending frozen fruit. I use my bullet mini blender because it’s way less to wash afterward!

This is the way I make my breakfast, but it is just one example of a nutrient-packed meal to give you a good foundation for your busy day. Switch up the ingredients! Try different kinds of fruits, or combine them in a different way. Add a low-calorie sweetener like Nu-Stevia, if you like, but I think the fruit alone gives it a great flavor. You can’t taste the spinach, I promise!

Be well or pursue wellness, my lovelies!

I did not feel comfortable and settled into my femmeininity until I started realizing how very much I adore female masculinity. Obviously not everyone who is femme is drawn toward butches and vice versa. Not all femmes were born female. Not all femmes are gay (although I do believe we are all queer, despite various sexual orientations). Masculine women did not make me feel threatened like most men did at the time. They supported my feminine side, did not make fun of me or force me into the cult of true womanhood. Maybe it was the type of butches with which I was associating at the time, but I felt encouraged and valued and seen… That’s how I came out to myself. Little by little, as I became less and less afraid of the attention my femmeininity would attract. As I started learning about how femme and butch are radical rather than conformist (and what if they are? does it matter?). After that, every time I ever came out to anyone it was both at once: my mouth said “I’m gay” and my body, my grace, my curves said “I’m femme.”

I’m becoming a different kind of lesbian and a different kind of femme, and it has all been surprising.
I quit shaving my legs about 2 months ago.
I’m becoming the type of lesbian who gets excited about canning and pickling.
I’m that girl who gets excited about baby making, and sewing cloth diapers and pureeing my own baby food.
I’ve been thinking a lot about capitalism, and its role in my life.
I want to know more about where my clothes and food come from.
I’m feeling less and less concerned about grad school and more and more concerned about becoming a responsible human being who tries do to with less.
My cravings for a more open and poly-leaning relationship are waning dramatically because the One I’ve got keeps on seeming more and more like the One I want. Other People ™ are too hard to manage.
What I’m craving now… there is a long list of things… nature walks, community meals, cooperative parenting, knitting groups, quilting circles, vegetable and fruit gardens and cotton summer dresses…
To think I haven’t worn a high-heeled shoe in months, and only recently purchased clothes at a retail store for the first time in almost a year! My sewing and knitting repertoire keeps growing, and so does my skill at home cooked meals. I know how to make pie crust from scratch!

Life is so different for me lately. Am I still femme if I don’t shave my legs? I think so. Do I still count as lovely, sexy, beautiful? Yeah, I think so. But all these words mean such drastic different things from when I was first beginning to belong to this bright glimmering butch-femme community. It would seem that I’m in the process of refining and redefining my femmeininity all over again. How does it happen that way? Just when we decide that we’ve figured ourselves out, something throws a wrench into the gears. I’m taking apart the cogs and unscrewing the wheels, trying to decide what to change when I put it back together next…

Anyone interested in a holiday card, some of my Grandma’s cookies/recipes, or just a little surprise treat of my choosing, feel free to write to me with your mailing address. If you’re feeling vulnerable, but would still like to remember the art of hand-writing letters, I’ll give you my address first.

I love you all so dearly…

Now folks, I realize that femmes aren’t the only people who cook. For me, however, cooking is one of my life’s most basic joys. If I can’t cook, and I can’t eat, then what the hell am I living for?

Apologies aside, I have to share with you a food that I have been eating for family holidays my entire life, and that has please my girlfriend’s tummy on many glorious occasions. It first made it for Dana about a year ago and her joyous moans signaled to me that I should make it a recurring theme in our meal planning, not just for the holidays. The ingredients are so simple and there is only one instruction: to mix. It’s vegetarian but also pretty high in fat… oh well! Northerners beware, I have a sneaking suspicion that this is Southern food. Without further adieu. I give you this family tradition. You’ll never look at a can of creamed corn the same, I swear!

Corn Pudding
1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin mix
1 (8 oz) container of Sour Cream
1 can Creamed Corn
1 can Kernel Corn, drained
1 cup of grated cheddar cheese (slightly more or less if you like…)
3 eggs

Bake at 350F for about 45 minutes. (Good cooks will set a timer check it at about 35 mins to see how close to done it is.)

The order makes no difference. But if you want instructions, you got it.

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Grease a large casserole dish (I usually skip the grease, you can experiment with the size of the dish, too…. I think mine’s about 11″ square?)
3. Whisk eggs just a few strokes just until beaten in a large-ish bowl, then add the corn muffin mix.
4. Add the creamed corn, drain the kernel corn and add that too.
5. Finally add the sour cream and then mix in the cheese. (For all this mixing, I just use a spatula. You can also use a fork. No stand mixer needed!)
6. Pour into the baking dish and bake in the oven until you stick a knife in it and it comes out clean and the top is a very light golden brown. Do not overcook.

This tasty treat goes great with poultry (or substitute thereof) and a green vegetable. Go back for as many seconds as you want. Don’t be intimidated by the large dish – it’s so freaking YUMMY! I can’t even show you a picture of the one we had the other day because there’s only one serving left. Also, don’t be scared by the name “pudding” – it is more like a bread pudding or a soufflé. Only tangentially related to corn casserole, as I understand it. I’ve never had corn casserole.

Feel free to share your thoughts, recipes, or memories of foods you love!

But I’m frustrated by my reaction. She asked if I went to church, and I fumbled for the words to say… “uhm… I’m uh… I’m sort of in between churches right now.” And I’ll probably be like that for awhile the way things go.

I’m frustrated that I did not suggest to them that I sometimes go to the MCC (which I do). I’m frustrated that I didn’t say, well actually I am differently spiritual, now that I came out as a lesbian and left my mission work to others who will do it with much more passion than I can do anymore. I’m angry that I didn’t say, “I’m gay, now whatcha gonna do about that?” But sometimes much more care and tenderness is required in gently opening the minds of people who are unaware of the beautiful diversity that exists in the world. I wanted to be the one to tell her that she doesn’t have to be afraid of the unknown. But it wasn’t my time.

She didn’t even know she was speaking to a queer. I feel like that’s a problem, yet I don’t know that I would ever have had a connection with her if she knew…femme invisibility.

Brown and Turqoise Polka Dots

The best part about crafting is the parties! Tomorrow night we are having drunk knitting night after our regularly schedule tea-and-knitting-circle. Everyone’s going to knit a drunk square – imagine what it will look like when we sew it all together!

Ingredients:

4T unsalted butter (or vegan margarine)

1/2 c all purpose flour, sifted

1/4 c buttermilk (I used 1/8c soymilk, 1/8c pineapple juice)

yolk of one large egg (or equivalent in egg substitute)

2 t grated orange (lemon) zest

1/2 c sugar (i used 1/3 c)

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/4 t salt

1/4 t ground cinnamon

1/4 t ground nutmeg

1/8 t ground cardamom (YUCK! I used ground cloves)

1/8 t ground ginger

You will need a baking sheet and two single serve baking pans such as these square pans or this heart spring-form pan.

Preheat oven to 325F. Lightly grease and flour the insides of your baking pans and tap off excess flour. Place on a baking sheet and set aside. Combine the milk (and pineapple juice), egg yolk and orange (lemon) zest in a small bowl and wisk to mix. Place the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom  (clove) and ginger in a medium size mixing bowl and wisk to blend well (I just sifted all of these ingredients together). Add the butter and the milk-egg mixture. Beat with a hand-held mixer (i’m sure any mixing method is fine) on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 45 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl (very important because you are making a smaller batch so it could throw off the math if you don’t scrape thoroughly with a silicone spatula – I got those from our $1 store too!) Spoon the batter into the prepared pans, dividing it evenly between them. Bake the cakes until a toothipick inserted comes out clean, 30-35 minutes. Cool in a wire rack for 15 minutes, then run a thin, sharp knife around the edge of each pan and invert them to release the cakes and allow them to cool completely.

Problems: My cakes came out really crumbly – the top half was cooked perfectly and the bottom half fell apart. I have several guesses as to why. 1. Perhaps my substitutions caused the mixture to be unstable. 2. Perhaps my oven is the wrong temperature (have had that problem with other ovens before!). 3. I forgot to flour the pans, I only greased them. 4. did not allow them to cool completely because Dana was coming home and I wanted to feed her a lovely cake! Phew. I should really start following directions, don’t you think?

Frosting:

4 oz cold cream cheese (or vegan cream cheese)

2 t unsalted butter at room temp (or room temp vegan margarine)

3/4 c confectioner’s sugar (I used 1/2 c + 2 T)

1 t grated orange (lemon) zest (or just toss in the rest of what you grated)

1/2 t pure vanilla extract

1 T thawed frozen orange juice concentrate

(rather than the orange juice, I put in about 1T fresh squeeze lemon juice and 1T pineapple juice)

Place the cream cheese and butter in a medium mixing bowl and beat with a hand-held mixer on medium until blended. Add sugar, zest, vanilla and beat to mix. Add juice and beat until fluffy. Use right away or chill (then let stand 1 hr before using).

The lemon pineapple frosting is by far the best frosting I have ever made in my entire life! The book recommends cutting the cakes in half through the middle and putting a layer of frosting between the cake layers. Top with nuts, more lemon zest, sprinkles or whatever! Baking is all about having fun and improvising. All great food is made when someone says, “I wonder if this and that would go nicely together?”

I’m still trying to perfect my small-batch homemade mac and cheese – I’ll let you know when it shows up!

Ingredients:

2 T Cooking Oil (I used EVOO)

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 cup chopped bell peppers (any color)

1/4 cup chopped green onions

2 1/2 cups cut carrots

4 small cut potatoes

1 large can 100% Pure Pumpkin

2-15.5 oz cans Garbanzo Beans (Chickpeas)

Handful of pine nuts, pan toasted

1 Can of Coconut Milk

Combine olive oil, garlic, peppers. pine nuts and green onions and brown them in the bottom of a large pot to bring out the flavors. Add the carrots and then quickly dump 1-2 quarts of water into the pot and bring to a boil. Cook the carrots until they are soft enough to blend. Scoop into the blender with a slotted spoon and add some of the carrot broth to the blender. Let them cool for a few minutes and then pulse the blender until the puree is complete. Return the puree to the pot and add the potatoes, can of pumpkin, the garbanzos and the coconut milk, stirring after each one.  Cook on medium heat until the potatoes are cooked.

This soup has no animal products, and therefore is completely vegan and super delicious! I know this is two recipes in a row, but culinary fabulosity is something I consider to be integral to my own femme identity. Once again, this can also be separated into individual portions and refrigerated or frozen for meals to take to work with you.

took the classic cocido madrileno, a boiled Spanish equivalent of French pot-au-feu. Cocido was traditionally served in two steps, first the broth, then the main course of meats, garbanzo, and potatoes. He came up with the idea that all should be served together. That’s what became Spanish Bean Soup. It’s from Tampa. You cannot order Spanish Bean Soup in Spain. They don’t know what it is. Today Spanish Bean Soup is a favorite dish found in all six Columbia Restaurants located in Florida. This was created circa 1910.

As you can see from that link, their recipe is somewhat more complicated than ours, but I think they taste about the same! One ingredient to this recipe that you will likely have to forgo if you do not live in sunny, happy south-central Florida will be the Cuban bread. Ohhh Cuban bread. When Grandma first took me to North Carolina as a 12 year old, I wanted to pick up some Cuban bread while were at the grocery store. “Honey, they don’t have Cuban bread here” she said. I was shocked and appalled. My mother and grandmother beg me to bring C bread every time I visit them in North Carolina. It’s just that good. Day old french bread will do, but there’s nothing like the crunchy on the outside, soft and light on the inside goodness of Cuban bread. Without further adieu, Mom’s recipe!

Spanish Bean Soup
2 cans Garbanzos/Chickpeas
1 lg onion cut into one-inch pieces
Potatoes, cut in one-inch pieces (1 large Russet, 3 mediums or 5-6 new)
1 Package chorizo sausage, sliced (includes 2, or Soyrizo for the non-meat eaters)
1 Vigo Yellow Rice Seasoning (a tiny envelope with saffron, paprika, etc)
1 ham slice cut in one-inch pieces (can be omitted or replaced with a meat substitute)
Cuban bread and butter
salt and pepper to taste

Method of Preparation: The fast way!
Use a large pot with lid. Combine all ingredients with a generous covering of water and cook on medium until heated and potatoes are done. Mom says at least one hour, I say cook it on almost-high with PLENTY of water so stuff won’t stick to bottom. Don’t add too much water or your soup will be all broth.

Method of Preparation: The slow way!
Place all ingredients in a crock pot with water and cook on low for 4-5 hours keeping the liquid at a good soupy level.

Method of Preparation: The extra really slow, but good way!
Use dry garbanzos/chickpeas and soak them in the refrigerator overnight. Drain, then cook in the crock pot all day. She specifies all day otherwise they could be crunchy. Add the potatoes during the last 1-2 hours of cooking so they don’t get mushy! Add water if it starts looking like stew instead of soup.

Serve with Cuban bread or toast and butter! Like I said, I made this in a pot on the stove with canned beans in less than one hour – it’s a great meal when you’re hungry but don’t want to eat something overly starchy that came out of a mystery box. Really. And this can totally be frozen in individual portions to take to work for a filling, energizing lunch.

Bon apetit!