Dillards 66: Appropriate Spaces for Inappropriate People

[patsymae]

14 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

The thing is though, JILL is the one who actually should have the widest culinary exposure.   After all, she's the only Duggar to have lived in a foreign country, and she has learned to cook Nepali food for Derek.  Many of the canned ingredients she uses in large quantities would likely have been hard for her to come by when they were on their "mission", so Jill MUST know how to cook without them on some level.  

I would actually enjoy it if she shared some of the recipes she used in El Salvador or how she cooks Nepali inspired food using ingredients you can find at any US Supermarket, but she doesn't.  She CHOOSES to share this nonsense. 

And I honestly think that on some level it's because she idolizes her childhood to such a degree that she honestly does think this is AMAZING and worth sharing.  It's really a commentary on how their adjustment into adult life has been that Jessa, Jana, and Jinger all have branched out in some way, while Jill seems "stuck" trying to re-create her parents' marriage and her perfect childhood.  

Why thank you!  And I agree with your assessment on Jill.  I was one of those kids who had a lot of things kids are generally judged on come naturally to me as a child...and I definitely think it contributed to my mental breakdown as an adult.  Recovering from mistakes is a SKILL.  It was a skill I didn't have robustly when I entered adulthood, and that made the adjustment very difficult because I was already adjusting, so I was making a lot of mistakes, and then I didn't know how to handle all those mistakes, which made the adjustment harder, which made me make more mistakes...

My therapist had to walk me through essentially "How to respond to making mistake in a productive manner".  I think Jill, who like me may like rules and stress out about mistakes due to anxiety, would really benefit from the same.  Whereas Jessa, Jinger, and Jana all made enough mistakes regularly in childhood that they already had a framework they could use to ease into making mistakes as adults.  

You make some good points. I do think that Jill is just clueless and trying to fit in. This may sound weird, but it's the same way I felt about Josh making inappropriate statements like about going to school "in the little bus" and similar. He had no idea what the small bus meant or how that comment would come across, but just was trying to fit in and imitated something that he heard, assuming it was making him fit in somehow. That's how I think Jill is trying to fit it--didn't work with midwifery (other midwifes have educations), didn't fit in in Central America (don't speak the language and they aren't adoring me), didn't fit in on her husband's "mission trips" or get huge audiences for her lectures at colleges--so she's doing a Mommy blog trying to imitate what she thinks they are about.
From their public personas, the other "older" sisters have somewhat adjusted and got what they wanted: Jessa has a husband who seems to care for her, work with her as a partner and is a good dad; Jinger gets to live in a city and wear cute clothes; Joy does whatever she does with Austin but seems OK with it; and Jana manages to keep herself busy with things that apparently interest her.
And there is Jill, with a dick for a husband who has no idea what he wants to do with his life; a useless midwife "education;" small children whom she has no idea how to relate to or educate; and absolutely nothing, nothing to do with her life. Josie supplanted her as the Golden Child, and Dickwad has probably pissed Daddy off, so she's probably not getting her ego fix from him.
So Jill is imitating what she thinks Mommy blogs are. It's not just fundie--even the Seven Sisters have interests and skills—and, to go back to this post, has no clue that making mistakes, and examining your life and making THAT relatable, might be a way to create a Mommy Blog that some people might actually find relatable.

[TheOneAndOnly]

I doubt I could ever make it as a Mommy/Housewife blogger, I'd be too honest. On a good day it'd be something like -

Potato Salad Recipe

When I was a small child my mother would boil lots of potatoes to have with dinner, lots more than were needed for the meal. She'd put them in the refrigerator and sometime in the next couple days she'd take the potatoes out, mash them up, add other ingredients and voila! A delicious potato salad! The way I've been making it recently isn't quite the same but it's tasty and filling.

Ingredient List

Potato Salad

Directions

Go to Aldi. If you aren't near an Aldi, move, then go to Aldi. Buy potato salad. Bring it home and eat it. Directly out of the container is fine but it can be served on even the finest of china! 

There's my recipe for potato salad. I hope you all enjoy!

[Maggie Mae]

3 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

All the tomato soup I ever had, growing up, was condensed - and designed to be diluted 1:1 with water or milk.

Me too. One can of Campbell's soup + one can of milk or water. 

I also didn't realize (until i was pointed out) that not all soups should be diluted with milk instead of water. Now that I'm a grownup, water is the default, not milk. Not that I've had a can of condensed soup in probably a decade, but still. Water is so much better than milk. 

13 minutes ago, TheOneAndOnly said:

I doubt I could ever make it as a Mommy/Housewife blogger, I'd be too honest. On a good day it'd be something like -

Potato Salad Recipe

When I was a small child my mother would boil lots of potatoes to have with dinner, lots more than were needed for the meal. She'd put them in the refrigerator and sometime in the next couple days she'd take the potatoes out, mash them up, add other ingredients and voila! A delicious potato salad! The way I've been making it recently isn't quite the same but it's tasty and filling.

Ingredient List

Potato Salad

Directions

Go to Aldi. If you aren't near an Aldi, move, then go to Aldi. Buy potato salad. Bring it home and eat it. Directly out of the container is fine but it can be served on even the finest of china! 

There's my recipe for potato salad. I hope you all enjoy!

That's better than me. 

Here is my recipe for mac salad.

I didn't even use amounts or ratios. Generally speaking, most recipes can be modified down to "throw that away, get out some ice, add equal parts of gin and tonic, splash of lemon, and call your local favorite take out place." 

[mollysmom]

2 hours ago, Georgiana said:

It's fine to be average.  It's fine to be mediocre.  It's fine to not be good at everything.  But what Jill lacks, and I say this all the dang time, is HUMILITY.  She's not humble enough to admit that she's just regular, maybe struggling a bit and not as together as some, and that everything in her life isn't THE BEST EVAR.  She creates a narrative that is disingenuous because of that, and her posts often fall flat because they fail to measure up to the expectations created by her narrative.  

Must be a "Jill" thing haha (Yes, I'm looking at YOU Jill RodrigueZ!!!) 

1 hour ago, Georgiana said:

My therapist had to walk me through essentially "How to respond to making mistake in a productive manner".  I think Jill, who like me may like rules and stress out about mistakes due to anxiety, would really benefit from the same.  

Holy cow! This is me!! When I find out I messed something up (usually at work) I instantly burst into tears. It's annoying for me & for the unfortunate soul who had to tell me I messed up. It's terrible! It's something I work on all the time! I know in the moment that I'm being ridiculous but I can't stop. 

[Maggie Mae]

20 minutes ago, mollysmom said:

Holy cow! This is me!! When I find out I messed something up (usually at work) I instantly burst into tears. It's annoying for me & for the unfortunate soul who had to tell me I messed up. It's terrible! It's something I work on all the time! I know in the moment that I'm being ridiculous but I can't stop. 

OMG me too. I also hate that when I start crying (or vomiting) I basically can not stop. I hope I'm never in a "trapped in the ceiling during a bank robbery" situation. 

[VelociRapture]

36 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

Thank you!  I have never waded through her post history, but I guess i should have before running my mouth!

You’re welcome! I got curious a while back and took a look through the posts because I had a feeling she wasn’t just sharing the “Duggar” type recipes. I think people tend to only share the super unhealthy recipes here because it’s easy snark material, but doing that doesn’t really provide a full picture. 

[OGEmoji]

On the topic of bad foods we grew up on:

As I mentioned earlier, we were very poor at times when I was a kid. the grossest poverty meal I can remember is that sometimes my mom would want to have sausage gravy amd biscuits for Sunday breakfast, but all we'd have in the freezer is a bit of ground chuck, and we had no biscuits, so she used toast instead. Hamburger meat in white pepper gravy over toast. It was sooo nasty, but we ate it because the alternative was hunger.

Corned beef hash was also quite repulsive. I always thought it tasted a. it like vomit.

[SassyPants]

I had an unusual childhood in that my dad worked evenings(24 hour shifts) and my mom was overwhelmed and never, not once, cooked dinner on the nights my dad was away. We ate dinner at my grandparent's house 3-4 nights a week, easy. On the other nights, my dad cooked. My parents were from the original, organic, healthy food generation. In terms of fruits and veggies, we ate what they or their parents grew. We lived in the fertile Central CA Valley where all kinds of vegetables, fruits and nuts grow abundantly. So we ate what we grew. Banana, which obviously is not native to CA ,did not grace our table. Our meat was purchased at the Farmer's Market, which in the 60's was not trendy or pricey. It was where the penny pinchers shopped. Boxed anything did not happen, ever. Now people would consider us food snobs, but where I grew up, this how the thrifty fed a large family!

I no longer live in that particular area, but a similar one, and we eat basically the same way.

I was always baffled that the Duggars did not have a garden or orchard to help offset food costs.

[Maggie Mae]

2 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

I was always baffled that the Duggars did not have a garden or orchard to help offset food costs.

That's because the Duggars are pretty lazy. Yes, they had 14 kids in a tiny house. No one asked them to have 14 kids and to keep having more. Also, at some point it doesn't matter anymore - there will always be chores, but the duggars will always find a shortcut.  They were lazy about their diet, lazy about schooling, lazy about everything. Instead of working hard for their nice big house, they prayed and eventually a TV show finished it for them. Instead of using their nice kitchen, they combine cans of crap. Instead of sending the hordes of kids out to plant & weed & tend to the earth, they take however many can fit in a van to aldi for more cans of crap. 

[SilverBeach]

53 minutes ago, VelociRapture said:

You’re welcome! I got curious a while back and took a look through the posts because I had a feeling she wasn’t just sharing the “Duggar” type recipes. I think people tend to only share the super unhealthy recipes here because it’s easy snark material, but doing that doesn’t really provide a full picture. 

I never go to the source blogs or whatever for any of the folks we talk about. If someone wants to post one of Jill's better recipes to provide balance, I'll be sure to give her credit. I still think she is a shitty mommy blogger, based on her awful kid pictures (stroller hack anyone?). Maybe she has pictures that balances that crap out too, I don't know. Don't care a whole heck of a lot. My real problem is Dwreck's hatefulness and her likely sharing his ugly beliefs. And her holier-than-thou superior attitude. I didn't like Jill in the frumper days and I still don't.

[VelociRapture]

37 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

I never go to the source blogs or whatever for any of the folks we talk about. If someone wants to post one of Jill's better recipes to provide balance, I'll be sure to give her credit. I still think she is a shitty mommy blogger, based on her awful kid pictures (stroller hack anyone?). Maybe she has pictures that balances that crap out too, I don't know. Don't care a whole heck of a lot. My real problem is Dwreck's hatefulness and her likely sharing his ugly beliefs. And her holier-than-thou superior attitude. I didn't like Jill in the frumper days and I still don't.

I was speaking specifically about the recipe posts, but I agree she’s just not good at social media in general. I’m still not over that car seat “hack” you mentioned. So fucking stupid that it actually hurts my head to think about it.

Jill is pretty much hit or miss with her instagram and blogging. Either she posts something passable and decent (mostly of her boys being normal kids) or she posts something that leaves you feeling disgusted/horrified/righteously angry. I know people have said “if she just focused on X she’d be fine!” but I’m starting to think her best bet is to just forget about social media for a while. I just don’t see a way to really salvage her accounts between her wildly inconsistent posting, her shitty husband, and their tendency to be vocal and hateful assholes. 

[Beermeet]

Things I wonder:

1. Jill seemed great with the siblings.  What happened with her own that seem so off?  Was she only able to thrive under Jim Bob? 

2. IF Jim Bob does in fact dislike or is disappointed in dWreck, does he blame Jill?  Like, she's not satisfying him in the bedroom and otherwise? Possible in that family. I doubt JB would say, "sorry, I picked wrong for you,  how can I help". 

I realize we only see a glimpse.  So, hard to tell anything really.  Part of me feels like a person like Jill was doomed and should be the Jana of the family. A permanent SAHD. Or, found a man just like her dad and brothers. She seems to need to be led, she needs a leader and dWreck is just not that kind of guy.

[HarleyQuinn]

28 minutes ago, Beermeet said:

Things I wonder:

1. Jill seemed great with the siblings.  What happened with her own that seem so off?  Was she only able to thrive under Jim Bob? 

2. IF Jim Bob does in fact dislike or is disappointed in dWreck, does he blame Jill?  Like, she's not satisfying him in the bedroom and otherwise? Possible in that family. I doubt JB would say, "sorry, I picked wrong for you,  how can I help". 

I realize we only see a glimpse.  So, hard to tell anything really.  Part of me feels like a person like Jill was doomed and should be the Jana of the family. A permanent SAHD. Or, found a man just like her dad and brothers. She seems to need to be led, she needs a leader and dWreck is just not that kind of guy.

1) Her kids probably don't worship her like her buddy team did. Jill needs to be constantly told she's the BEST. Her kids don't do that.

2) Probably. It's always on the woman when the man does something whack. 

On a side note, someone on reddit made Jill's spaghetti goop and graciously provided photos that look 100 times better than Ofwreck's do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DuggarsSnark/comments/9os31d/review_jills_recipe_for_canned_soup_spaghetti/

[SilverBeach]

17 minutes ago, HarleyQuinn said:

On a side note, someone on reddit made Jill's spaghetti goop and graciously provided photos that look 100 times better than Ofwreck's do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DuggarsSnark/comments/9os31d/review_jills_recipe_for_canned_soup_spaghetti/

This thread was hilarious! Thanks for posting!

[Vivi_music]

1 hour ago, Beermeet said:

Things I wonder:

1. Jill seemed great with the siblings.  What happened with her own that seem so off?  Was she only able to thrive under Jim Bob?

I can't answer question number two. But for your first question, I think she was good with her siblings because that was what her parents asked of her? I don't know. I am thinking aloud here.

Young Jill must have realized at one point, even unconsciously that she needed to be a good sister-mom to please her parents. By being the best buddy leader, the one with the most effective buddy team, her parents probably rewarded her, praised her, thanked her for it. Of course, like any child (and even teen), it makes you feel loved, appreciated, useful. I bet she thrived to be the best sister-mom with her buddies, because again, it was something to add to her badge as the golden child. And by saying that, I don't mean that the connection and bond she formed with her team is artificial or done only to be a pleaser. For the one thing, I often found Jill seemed the most genuinely happy when we used to see her with her buddies.

At least that is how I see it. I know if I take myself for example: most of my academic success in elementary school and high school was because it was something that was valued by my parents and I wanted desperately to please them. (Mind you, I liked school too. I wasn't forced, but that is not the point). The role of sister-mom was certainly something JB and Michelle valued and Jill wanted to be recognized.

As for her own kids, I don't think Jill is UNABLE to have a connection with her own children. Like you said, we only see a glimpse. I don't know why it doesn't come off on her blog or on her instagram posts though.

 

[PennySycamore]

@patsymae and @HerNameIsBuffy, the cranberry sauce at our house better have those lines from the can on it!  

And I love watching Martha and Snoop Dog!

[Beermeet]

1 hour ago, SilverBeach said:

This thread was hilarious! Thanks for posting!

Life giving comedy!  

1 hour ago, HarleyQuinn said:

1) Her kids probably don't worship her like her buddy team did. Jill needs to be constantly told she's the BEST. Her kids don't do that.5

2) Probably. It's always on the woman when the man does something whack. 

On a side note, someone on reddit made Jill's spaghetti goop and graciously provided photos that look 100 times better than Ofwreck's do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DuggarsSnark/comments/9os31d/review_jills_recipe_for_canned_soup_spaghetti/

Seriously.  No one's kids do that, especially when very young. They are tornado's ( my phone is offering a few spelling options, none seen right???) of truth. I think you nailed it. The constant head pats is what she craves and needs to exist.   She's lost without that approval.  And, she's the one to blame on the flip side.  Never stood a chance with her personality.  She'd be better off as Pecan's wife.  Stable, at least.  Corny to the max. She'd dig it the most.

[Beermeet]

"My boyfriend said “It’s creamy AND tangy, and I do not like creamy and tangy together with pasta.” And “It’s like a f***ed up chicken cacciatore. I feel like when it cools it will congeal to a solid” (He was right). But he also continued eating it while I took these notes, he would take a bite, exclaim “Ugh! The bell pepper, why!?” Then take another bite while shaking his head. He is Sicilian and he was simultaneously repulsed by it, and unable to stop eating it (because pasta)."

This part. A fucked up chicken cacciatore. ??? Ha! For real.  And, her BF is scicillian? Oh man.  He can't stop, because pasta.  I'm dying. ?

 

[LacyMay]

It's taken me 3ish days of here and there reading to catch up.

And again. I feel like I missed nothing. This is the song that never ends. 

That sauce looks awful. 

I really don't get the canned food hate that comes out of this thread either. I mean my cupboards aren't full of cans (3 cans of Amy's no chicken noodle soup that I hoard and the corn, chickpeas and beans for chili.) But I feel my relationship with canned food is ambivalent at best. 

I agree with someone earlier who said it's not the use of canned food that I object to, it's how it's used. 

 

Also I'm sorry to beat a cold dead horse so please forgive me, but saying there are two types of poor is a huge oversimplification of socioeconomic status. I grew up in a single parent home under the poverty line and due to situations of domestic violence we had some periods of housing instability (staying with friends, one night at my mom's place of employment) we were never homeless or on welfare BUT to compare that situation to what we see of the Dillards? It's hard not to be a tiny bit riled by that. 

In other news...hey FJ!! After 8.5 weeks in a cast with a fractured scaphoid I am finally cast free. I was able to wash my hair tonight unencumbered by a cast cover and it was marvelous. 

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 hour ago, PennySycamore said:

@patsymae and @HerNameIsBuffy, the cranberry sauce at our house better have those lines from the can on it!  

And I love watching Martha and Snoop Dog!

I make homemade sauce that my family loves...but I break out the can for me every time.

[Georgiana]

2 hours ago, HarleyQuinn said:

On a side note, someone on reddit made Jill's spaghetti goop and graciously provided photos that look 100 times better than Ofwreck's do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DuggarsSnark/comments/9os31d/review_jills_recipe_for_canned_soup_spaghetti/

It’s so much worse than I ever could have imagined. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

3 hours ago, HarleyQuinn said:

On a side note, someone on reddit made Jill's spaghetti goop and graciously provided photos that look 100 times better than Ofwreck's do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DuggarsSnark/comments/9os31d/review_jills_recipe_for_canned_soup_spaghetti/

From the pictures she linked to, it looks like she used the lower sodium versions of the 3 cans of soup,

Spoiler

but she still describes it as salty. I hate to think how salty it would be with the higher sodium versions! It also looks like she had to substitute for the Rotel. (That probably didn't make a difference.)

Quote

Disclaimer: we don’t get rotel in our grocery stores so I combined a small can of green chiles with an extra can of diced tomatoes. 

In any case, she's much braver than I am! Thanks for the link!

[Sky with diamonds]

10 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I'm with you on both counts!  (Try the jarred beets - just as good and don't need tupperware to store left overs)

Jarred beets...a staple in my family for sure. I could eat a whole jar by myself.

[Flossie]

There was a couple that were friends with my in-laws.  They cooked turkey a lot, but after it was roasted the wife would peel the skin off and serve the meat 'naked'.  Then she'd use pan drippings to fry up the skin, put it on a slice of buttered bread and top it off with another slice of bread that had a generous coating of mayo.  Salt it up and serve.  It was her husbands favorite treat.  They had a lot of really disgusting things they cooked because her massively obese hubby liked them.  He eventually had a heart attack and while in the hospital it was discovered in addition to advanced heart disease, he also had diabetes.  But he survived and with that scare to encourage him, they changed the way they cooked and he lived at least another ten years.

My FIL remembers that during the worst of the great depression, his mother once looked at her brood of seven and came up with unseasoned mashed potatoes, added some flour and a couple of eggs, and for flavor she poured in some cod liver oil.  She fried it up in bacon fat and maybe it was hunger talking, but my FIL said the kids ate it happily.  He said it tasted kind of like today's fish sticks, without the breading.

Now, back to Jill and her sad recipes.  She continually posts recipes that are supposed to feed a crowd even though she's feeding two adults and two toddlers.  She just can't let anyone forget that she grew up in a huge family.  It's such a vital part of her identity that she seems incapable of not referring to it every chance she gets.

[formergothardite]

11 hours ago, SassyPants said:

I was always baffled that the Duggars did not have a garden or orchard to help offset food costs.

The Bates were the same way. They had land, but grifted instead of attempting to have a garden. During parts of my childhood we were pretty poor(in my parents defense they stopped having kids during these times), but we always had a huge garden. During the spring/summer/fall we had fresh veggies and during the winter we had the vegies we canned or froze. 

It is just amazing that these mega-families who have the land won't garden at all to help with their food budget and make it easier for their kids to have fruits and veggies.