Here are a couple of easy recipes for weekend togetherness. Get out in the kitchen with the kids - you can even let dad play, if he’ll do the dishes. When my kids were little, working in the kitchen with me was high on their list of cool things to do. Outcome? Both my boys and my daughter are good cooks and can keep a kitchen organized and friendly. Their spouses love that.

Baked Pancakes:

You need measuring cups, spoons, a jelly-roll pan, a mixing bowl, tools for stirring and stuff, sharp knife.

Ingredients:

1 whole egg
1 1/2 c reduced fat milk
1 tsp vanilla

2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 teaspoon cinnamon plus a pinch of nutmeg if you have it
2 c Bisquick-type mix, buttermilk flavor is good
1 c raisins, any color, any brand

Preheat oven to 425 and grease or spray the pan. Combine egg, milk, yogurt and vanilla whisking until blended. Stir in dry ingredients, then add the raisins. It’s ok for the batter to have small lumps - pancakes work better that way. Scrape the batter into your prepared pan and spread it evenly. Bake, on center rack, 10 to 15 minutes until edges turn richly golden. Cut into square pancakes and serve with more yogurt, mixed with honey, or with syrup or with peanut butter and jelly. Or applesauce.
Later, before y’all watch a movie Saturday night, whip this up.

Raisin Krispy Treats

You need measuirng cups and spoons, 8″ square pan, large sauce pan.

Ingredients:

1/2 c peanut crunchy butter
1/4 c firmly packed brown sugar
1 bag miniature marshmallows
1 tsp vanilla
2 c krispy rice cereal (you know, Snap, Crackle…)
2 c rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 c crushed walnuts or pecan
1 c raisins, craisins or dried cherries
Small handful dark (60% cocao) chocolate chips (optional)

Grease the baking pan. Melt peanut butter and sugar in the pan over low to medium heat then add marshmallows and stir till it’s too hard to stir more. Stir in the vanilla then add all the rest of the stuff and fingure out how to get it all combined so everything is coated. Keep folding - you’ll get there. Spread it evenly in the pan — again, not an easy trick. Now, while it’s warm, scatter the chocolate chips on top and spread them as they melt to create a kind of icing. There ya go. I didn’t say it wouldn’t be sinful! These will keep in a tight container for about a week, if they last that long.

Mamma Maryan’s Household Tips

Get done with chores and tasks more quickly by streamlining. These sorts of tips have been passed down from woman to woman for generations, so we might as well haul them out and give them new life. If you’re in to this stuff, drop a comment with your own ideas.

Broken glass? Sweep up the big chunks, then dampen a paper towel and swipe the area carefully. Wear a rubber glove to protect your skin. The towel will grab the tiny shards you can’t see.

Love pomegranates, hate opening them? 1. Score the fruit’s rind in about four or five places. Fill a bowl with cold water. Submerge the pommie, break open the segments, and scoop the fruity bits out with a finger. The good stuff sinks, bad stuff floats. Easy to separate. Or 2. Cut the fruit (skin on) in half. Hold a half in your palm, cut side down, take a kitchen mallet, heavy screwdriver handle or any other bludgeon and bash the thing till the fruits are all out.

Forever losing one sock? Safety pin the pairs together before you throw them in the wash.

Want gorgeously scented lingerie, cheaply? Couple drops of you favorite perfume or essential oil in the final rinse cycle for sheets or undies leaves a soft, muted scent. Or cut a strip off one of those micro fiber dusting thingies, put a couple drops of scent on it and throw it in the dryer with your clothes.

Garbage disposal smell a bit, umm, funky? Grind up citrus rinds in the disposal, then shut it off and run cold water for two full minutes.

Reheat pizza or French fries or anything that should be crispy, not soggy. Don’t nuke ‘em. Use a no-stick fry pan, preheated. Reduce the heat to medium once the pan is hot, pop in the snack and watch it till it’s heated through.

Windshield fogged up? If you can’t get your passengers to stop breathing, then keep a chalkboard eraser in the car. It’s magic on foggy windows. No lint. No streaks.

CD or DVD skipping and hiccupping? My grandmother didn’t tell me this, my teen son did, years ago. Put the disk under hot running water. Rub on some dish detergent. Rinse thoroughly then dry completely. It’s not foolproof, but works often enough.

What to do with shredded junk mail and office files. Call a local animal shelter or stable. Many now use shredded paper for animal bedding. What a fantastically green idea!

Room deodorizer. If your home just has that winter-has-been-too-damned-long closedup smell about it try this. Put small, shallow dishes of apple cider vinegar or vanilla extract around. One in each room, out of reach of kids, of course. Leave them for 12 hours. You’ll be amazed.

Dusting tight places or shelves full of knickknacks. Put a cotton sock on your hand, spray it with a small spritz of Endust or something like that and just pass your hand around the stuff, or under it one piece at a time. You have more control and are less likely to whisk something to the floor.

Maryan Pelland

Maryan Pelland, old, curvy, healthy, and happy

Diet advice. Lose weight. Change your self. Hooey! We want health advice. Nutritious eating plans. Our best selves!

Ms. magazine encourages readers to write manufacturers and media outlets to protest negative, derogatory, and unrealistic portrayals of women. I wholeheartedly second that - sharpen your keyboard, crank up your email program. This is for us, our daughters and our daughter’s daughters. Once women were beautiful and curvaceous. They did not look like men with breasts. They looked like an embodiment of Earth’s fertile nature -now, we’re ruining our planet and our women.

After an magazine’s article said gorgeous actress Kate Winslet used the services of a diet doctor, Kat sued the rag-mag (I won’t publicize their name) and won. She’ll donate the settlement to charity - but her point was, and always has been, curves are womanly. We needn’t struggle to fade away into thinness. I read somewhere that Winslet keeps no “women’s” magazines in her home, because she is not interested in promoting the media version of how women should look.

She has reportedly said she doesn’t want her daughter to grow up worried about that kind of body image and with shaky self-esteem. I say, “brava!”

Now, Oprah drives me nuts with her perpetual dieting obsession. Consider, over her decades as a talk show guru, how many diet books, coaches, chefs, programs, hypnotists and advisers she has had on TV. She talks a good game of “be who you are,” but her advertisers evidently love the crowds she draws by sending the subliminal message that none of us, least of all her, measures up to some twisted standard. I’d love to see Oprah develop little-girl cajones and stop using body doubles, air brushing and all that other crap that allows her to “grace” the cover of her magazine. Tell Dr. Phil to get a life, Oprah, and be at home in your own skin, however expensive the care of that skin is.

My own beautiful daughter took years, after her high school experiences with loony friends always seeking to remove one more inch of flesh form their bodies, to reconnect with her own beauty. She’s 5′6″, weighs about 120 pounds and has not once ounce of body fat that I can see. A en-Navy airman (airwoman!) and mother of a one-year old, she is all muscle. Loves to be active and play hard in her free time. Still, it’s a struggle for her not to feel panicky if she gains a pound or two. She’s learning though, to focus on excellent health, not skinniness.

Bottom line advice, me to you — If you have extra weight adversely affecting your life expectancy, or limiting your ability to move around and enjoy your world, or threatening your health — see your doc. Talk seriously about getting help and support. Work on body, mind, and spirit. Find real people who really care about you as a person. Bond with them. Work together to protect each other’s health and well being. Hug each other.

Be beautiful and healthy like Kate Winslet, Queen Latifah, Bette Midler, Scarlett Johannsson, Rosie O’Donnell, Mae West, Khadijah James, Marilyn Monroe, Camryn Manheim, Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg (except for her diet commercials!), Fergie, LeAnn Rimes, Patti LaBelle, Serena Williams, Trisha Yearwood, Missy Elliott, Sophia Lauren (!), Mia Tyler, Toccara Jones, Margaret Cho, Yvette Wilson, Jenifer Kuhn. Focus on being healthy and happy and womanly. Spend your time and money on loving your life and yourself, not filling the purses of mega companies hawking all manner of diet B.S.

My best congratulations to Slimfast (though I hate the product) and to Dove (soap, not chocolate, thought the chocolate speaks to me, too) for their incredibly cool portrayals of real women.

A huge thumb-down to Jenny Craig for their ugly marketing methods and to Nutrisystem for commercials that make any woman over 110 pounds, even if she’s 6′2″, feel like she can’t possibly have a “hot” body or be a “trophy wife.” If you Google for those products, you’ll find many ex-users claiming the food to be absolutely raunchy. I, personally, couldn’t say. Thank goodness.

Attention active military women, women vets, or families with women in the military–there’s a very helpful website for you. Called Military Women Resource Guide, it is positively jam-packed with useful information and a veritable database of links and resources. Military Women Resource Guide isn’t the most glamorously programmed Web site you’ll ever see, but if you can handle your scroll-down bar, you can navigate it and find out everything you always needed to know to survive the military. Here’s a sample of the topics they cover:
WOMEN BURIED IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
WOMEN FLAG OFFICERS
WOMEN IN AVIATION
WOMEN IN AVN MAIL LIST
WOMEN IN DESERT STORM
WOMEN IN VIETNAM
WOMEN IN WW I
WOMEN MARINERS IN WW II
WOMEN MARINES ASSOCIATION
WOMEN OF THE WAVES
WOMEN ORGANIZING WOMEN
WOMEN POWS
WOMEN SPIES
WOMEN VETERANS COMMITTEE REPORT
WOMEN VETERANS POPULATION JULY 2000
WOMEN VETERANS
WOMEN’S ARMY CORPS VETS ASSOCIATION OF OKLAHOMA
WOMEN’S ARMY CORPS
WOMEN’S HEALTH CARE
WOMEN’S RECRUITING POSTERS
WOMENS ARMY CORPS
WORLD OF WOMEN IN MILITARY AVIATION

That’s a tiny portion. Hop on over there and get what you need or want. Moms - if your daughter is military, this site may help preserve your sanity.

The site has been around since 1988 and is updated from time to time. I can’t tell how often — some links are broken. Still - it beats the heck out of Googling for all that stuff.