Cooking w/Anna M (new blog).

[Black Aliss]

]

Steve once said he does nothing to find spouses for his kids. I think Sarah is using the blog to point out the wonderful homemaking qualities Anna has. Sarah manages the blog and it's really the only tool she has to help her sister.

If she can get Anna and Mary married off, at least she will have her own room. I think that's about as good as it's going to get for Poor Sarah.

[terranova]

I feel sick.

I really feel sick.

That is an abomination.

Really? We use tuna quite a bit in similar dishes. I like it with beans, onions, celery, lots of spices, a few breadcrumbs, then lightly fried and in a bun with lettuce, tomatoes and avocado. It's cheap and cheerful and my daughter will eat it!

[lilith]

Surely Anna could read some cookbooks? Wouldn't they count as instructional manuals?

Steve may have to sharpie out the luscious pictures lest they incite gluttony and lust, and I know that they easily become idols (I have shelves of them, they are the only books I haven't switched to ebooks for), but with careful supervision surely she could expand her cooking abilities a bit. If she truly does love cooking I feel very sorry for her, stuck cooking the same crap day in day out, without room for experimentation. Even though it's relatively rare for me to make a complete recipe from a book, the ideas and combinations and techniques read about stay in my head and influence my cooking every day.

[FloraKitty35]

Anna should learn how to cook with cannabis. Stevehovah may not approve, because of the potential giggling, but it is all natural and therefore God approved.

[Odd1Out]

]

If she can get Anna and Mary married off, at least she will have her own room. I think that's about as good as it's going to get for Poor Sarah.

Can you imagine how lonely she will be though. She can't have friends. She comes across to me as unable to make decisions on her own. Like she'd have to ask her mom how she should arrange her room and closet if her sisters were no longer there.

[Justme]

Can you imagine how lonely she will be though. She can't have friends. She comes across to me as unable to make decisions on her own. Like she'd have to ask her mom how she should arrange her room and closet if her sisters were no longer there.

You see, this would be a real problem. Maxwells aren't allowed to be alone, except maybe for a quick shower or pee. She can't be alone for an entire night in a bedroom. She must have an accountable partner to vouch she didn't do anything 'ebil.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Anna should learn how to cook with cannabis. Stevehovah may not approve, because of the potential giggling, but it is all natural and therefore God approved.

Having that for special meals when they go on what some might call a vacation would be just the ticket - they can do that legally now!

Make up a batch of ghee with the herb in when they arrive, use it to cook yummy veggie meals (and desserts!) all week, happiness ensues!

[Rosie]

Anna's on-the-road menu is pretty heavy on the meat, actually. It's almost entirely big box store ground beef. Personally I'd go vegan before eating Costco (or Walmart) ground meat. It's no different from Emily's tube meat, really.

Actually Costco ground beef is good quality, and has no pink slime:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2 ... free-beef/

Costco sells excellent organic ground beef.

[Sobeknofret]

Actually Costco ground beef is good quality, and has no pink slime:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2 ... free-beef/

Costco sells excellent organic ground beef.

Their organic ground beef is the only ground beef I'll buy now. It actually has a *flavor* unlike most ground beef that's available.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Crushed pieces of Anna's spirit are in every recipe, giving it that extra special Maxhell taste of misery.

[fundiefan]

I'd starve with their food. I like variety, creativity, having fun with the menu and cooking process, and with eating as a whole. I've never actually seen a recipe or food picture or description from them that was even remotely appetizing to me.

[WonderingInWA]

While most of their food doesn't look very creative or appetizing, the photos of that turtle cheesecake they sometimes have for birthdays looks yummy. Of course, they are probably only allowed very slender slices -- it probably lasts them a month.

[Jezebel]

One thing that just occurred to me: A lot of the fundies who are really into cooking and do it well also see extending hospitality as an important part of their lives as Christians. Having church members over to eat, inviting potential converts into their homes, taking dishes to church gatherings or to families going through a crisis, taking cookies (and Jesus) to new neighbors--food is a huge part of social life. Providing good food is not only a much-touted domestic skill for women, but it also plays to ideas about service to others.

The Maxwells, as an isolated family cult, don't participate in the kind of social life that includes bonding over home-cooked meals, however. On the road, that fellowshipping over food occurs in restaurants. At home, short of holiday baking to give as gifts to neighbors, they don't participate in that kind of hospitality. They almost never have non-family members at the table (and IIRC, they make special meals on those occasions, as well as family birthdays). The old folks they minister to can't participate in a social life of shared meals.

So, within the Maxwell family cult, there is no need to show off a large variety of frugal-but-tasty dishes. Who else are they going to cook for?

I suspect the rote repetition of simple dishes may have been initiated by Teri, along with the tight scheduling, as a depressive's way of dealing with the ongoing chore of keeping a household fed. Having been deeply depressed, I remember how having to make decisions over things like what to make for dinner, then actually do what was needed to make it, and hope everything went as planned, seemed like a mountain to climb.

So always making the same things on the same days removes that burden of making a decision, not only in the kitchen but in the grocery store. It becomes automatic--you just buy the same ingredients every week, cook the same things in the same way you already know how to do, and the mountain that is getting food on the table three times a day every single day isn't so hard to climb. You can be pretty far checked out, and still do it on autopilot. And if the major decision-maker is happy with that kind of monotonous regularity, and the kids have no say in the matter? Awesomesauce.

One thing I notice is that none of their regular dishes are anything an eight-year-old couldn't make. I wasn't raised to be all that domestic, and I didn't have to cook every day, but French bread pizzas? Burritos? Soup? Salads? That was all simple stuff I could make unassisted as a kid, once I knew how. And if you're the depressed mother of seven kids and wife of a domineering, control-freak husband, making your way hand-over-hand through the day in 15-minute increments? Yeah, you're going to enlist your kids (or, in this case, daughters) as cooks as soon as they can reach the stove.

And of course, the girls think their regular menu is perfectly normal, appealing, and offers plenty of variety. They don't know any better. But to outsiders, who may be used to more varied, ambitious, flavorful cooking? It looks really sad, boring, and low-skill. Teri's taught her daughters to cook about as well as she's taught them to write, unfortunately--and they don't even know it.

[WonderingInWA]

Can you imagine if the Maxwell girls were allowed to go on Pinterest? Their heads would implode with all the recipes and food photos, not to mention the crafts. Good thing Stevie keeps them so sheltered or they might be tempted to deviate from the schedule.

[homeschoolmomma1]

Aren't all the maxwell kids teen's or adults? Or am I confusing them with some other family..

Edited... I just looked at the website Anna has little kids and is one of the son's wives. lol

sorry

[Justme]

Aren't all the maxwell kids teen's or adults? Or am I confusing them with some other family..

Edited... I just looked at the website Anna has little kids and is one of the son's wives. lol

sorry

They are all adults, except Mary, who was 17 last August. Sarah is the oldest unmarried and will turn in Jan.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

Aren't all the maxwell kids teen's or adults? Or am I confusing them with some other family..

Edited... I just looked at the website Anna has little kids and is one of the son's wives. lol

sorry

Anna Maxwell is their daughter, age 20, not to be confused with Anna Marie, a daughter in law

[Peas n carrots]

I am not mother-tongue English but... the grammar in this sentence sounds rather odd:

You are correct. This Yoda-speak is.

[denimjumper]

My first reaction was hot dig hot dog beef bread. It's awful and repetitive and just bleh. They have a full size fridge with freezer. I'd like to see some chicken. Can't they bring a small grill? They are driving a huge RV. Assume they don't eat pork? Tortillas everywhere.

[anjulibai]

You know, I remember them loading up a bunch of frozen aluminum casserole dishes during the last packing session - what happened to those and what were in them?

[lilith]

Anna Maxwell is their daughter, age 20, not to be confused with Anna Marie, a daughter in law

Anna Maxwell is the oldest "reversal" (post vasectomy reversal) daughter. Anna Marie Maxwell is Christopher Maxwell's wife. She was christened Anna-Marie upon marriage so we wouldn't be confused by two Anna Maxwells. They are often referred to here as Reversal Anna (original recipe Anna Maxwell) and Non Reversal or NR Anna (non origin recipe Hot & Spicy Anna Maxwell).

[Coconut Flan]

Didn't they have chicken enchiladas in their menu lineup at some point?

[lilith]

Didn't they have chicken enchiladas in their menu lineup at some point?

Steve removed the meat from their burritos, he probably removed the chicken from their enchiladas too, all the while insisting that they couldn't taste any difference.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

They have a full kitchen in their bus, don't they? At least a nice built in campstove in there? (I'm jealous of the bus - I'll let myself into the prayer closet now.)

When my husband and I stay on forest lands with our SUV, we have a fridge built into it but not a stove, we have to set that up separately (in a fancy tailgate tent next to the car, usually) but we can cook pretty well, with a LP gas stove and the items from the (tiny, in our case) fridge. Usually we don't make too many meals in advance to go, we just stop at supermarkets before entering the forest and make various "it all cooks up in one skillet/pot" type items. Camp stew is awesome. If you can grill (either on a fire or with some bring-it-along appliance) then yeah, just grill up some meat with a marinade and then do the sides on the camp stove. Handy thing about meat is it pretty much is easy to do and tastes fine just stuck over a fire with no skills even :)

I'm sure their schedule is tight, as they're out there giving seminars rather than just lazing it up in the woods on vacation, but they should be able to cook pretty good.

[Arete]

I can feel for a depressed mother of eight who also has to homeschool and needs meals to come automatically and routinely. But now there are four adult women in the house (we won't count the men in wimmiz work). None of them has ever shown an interest in trying something different in the kitchen? I just don't believe it is possible out of so many people who essentially do nothing but clean and read the Bible all day that at least one of them would not have found creativity in the kitchen as an outlet.

Probably at least one made moves in that direction, and Steve with Terri's help quashed it because he would have seen both pleasure in cooking as well as in eating as an unfit use of time. Takes 15 minute increments for crying out to the Lord away.

The only time I have ever cried out to the Lord over the stove was when I was afraid my béchamel was about to curdle.