Architect Barbie

I learned about this new Barbie several months ago, but was a little annoyed at her design and decided not to say anything. I'm still annoyed, but after reading the article linked at the bottom of this post, I'm a little more understanding.

http://shop.mattel.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11529384

There are many things wrong with this Architect Barbie.

1. Women architects don't wear skirts on job sites. Duh... Ever tried to climb a ladder in a skirt? I was on a jobsite once in a skirt, right after I started working as an intern, and had not been given notice by the architect that I was going on a site visit that day. We were supposed to do a roof inspection on a church. I decided instead of giving the contractor a view of France, I'd stay on the ground.

2. Architects don't wear much color, especially not pink. In school, you're frowned upon if you wear anything other than black. Then you get out in the real world and realize only the "architects" who teach wear black all the time, like they are attending a funeral everyday. Maybe a funeral of their career as an architect because they take life too seriously.

3. We don't make ammonia blueprints anymore. We now print drawings directly from CAD to a large format printer that puts black toner on white paper. A lot less stinky.

4. The designers forgot the pantyhose. Thank goodness. I don't wear pantyhose because they're a pain in the butt. But when I do decide to wear a skirt to the office, I'm frowned upon for not wearing nylons. Seriously, this is 2011, I'm going to bare-leg it.

5. Side ponytail? Again, this is 2011, not 1980s.

6. The two things they got right: the hardhat (architects are not exempt from safety measures on the job site) and the black glasses. Take a look at any famous architect and they wear these black, thick framed glasses. I don't understand the whole thick frame part; I don't like having frames around items when I look at them. I do understand glasses, though, because we stare at computer screens all day and ruin our eyesight.


But then read this article, and realize there are reasons architect Barbie looks the way she does (like the prototype of Barbie's body, and the stereotypes we teach children). I look at her and think she's encouraging sexism in the workplace, but the designers look at her as encouraging little girls to consider architecture as their career and reducing sexist barriers. Does it work? I guess we'll look at the male:female ratio in the architecture field in 20 years and evaluate then. For future evaluation purposes, the office I work in currently has 13 licensed professionals and only 1 is female. 

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Hello Friend!

Welcome! Whether you stumbled across my page, or came here from Kristin's, I'm glad you're here!

A little bit about me:
I grew up on a small cattle farm in southeast Missouri, then moved to southwest Missouri for college, got married, and am starting my career here. I went to school for architecture and am very close to having a license to practice architecture.
The Hubs and I have a greenhouse and raised bed garden, and are also gardening at the MiL's house down the street this season.

Here's a list of a some posts you may find entertaining:

- A short series on Putting Food By: corn, tomatoes, mint liqueur , blueberry jam, peach jam

- Schematic Design ARE - this is about the last exam I took on Monday of this week

- My dream orchard

- I try to do a weekly garden report.

- I love music, so every Monday I post a music video. This month I'm focusing on songs I remember from my childhood.

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Minty drinks and Lunches

Couldn't wait any longer and broke into the homemade mint liqueur Monday night. Mostly because I was extremely wired about the exam I took that morning and really couldn't sleep.

I don't know what you call the drink I made:

juice of half a lime
2 shots mint liqueur (basically 2 shots of minty vodka with sugar)
top it off with club soda

For lunches this week, I made a couple different dishes. One was this squash dish, based off the Squash Gratin on Food &Wine's website. I didn't make the whole recipe in case I didn't like it. And I added bacon.

1 acorn squash, cut in half, seeded, and roasted at 400 for an hour
1 leek, sliced thinly
olive oil
salt &pepper
baguette slices
3 oz. mozzarella cheese
4 slices bacon, sliced, fried and drained
1/4 c milk
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 c chicken stock

Roast the acorn squash.

Saute the leek in the olive oil until tender. Add salt & pepper, chicken stock, milk and sugar and cook until reduced.

Peel the squash and smash it with a fork. Press into the bottom of a 9" cake pan.

Place baguette slices on top. Pour leek mixture on top.

Top with mozzarella and bacon.

Bake at 375 for 15-20 until cheese melts and starts to brown.

The other recipe was Stuffed Eggplant, from Beth's Journey blog. Except I didn't put it in the eggplant shell, added about 1/3 bag of frozen spinach, and I added Sriracha at the end.

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Peach Tart

Saturday at the Farmer's market there were peaches. I couldn't pass them up. I made Paula Deen's Peach tart. Not sure if there was enough butter in this for it to be a genuine Paula Deen recipe, but that's how it was labeled!

For the custardy part, I made a few modifications:
2 whole eggs instead of 3 egg yolks
added 1/4 tsp cinnamon
added 1/4 tsp nutmeg

For the glaze, I used about 2 Tbsp orange juice instead of frozen orange juice concentrate. Who keeps that in their freezer anyway??? Test kitchens maybe?

Putting the dough in the tart pan was fun. I smooshed it around the pan with my fingers. It is almost like a shortbread dough.

That's what 6 sliced peaches looks like in a 10" tart pan. They didn't cook down as much as I would have liked.

To change for next time: I was hoping the egg part would be more "custardy". I need to look up Great Grandma Ettling's custard pie recipe and copy that.

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Music Monday - Al Stewart "Year of the Cat"

The next month will turn back time to songs I remember from my childhood. Mom always encouraged music appreciation when I was growing up, so I've turned into a music snob of sorts that can't stand music that claims to be "music" without any real instruments. Not sure if that's what Mom's objective was, but that's what happened.

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Garden Report 09.11.11

Today was mowing day, which also means I got to check on the plants down at the MiL's house.

The Hubs warned me of the mass destruction of the tomato plants. They've been getting eaten all summer, but just the tops of them, and a few random green tomatoes that I had been waiting on to turn red. I haven't harvested any tomatoes from that garden yet but there have been plenty set on!

 Earlier this week, The Hubs spotted the culprit. A groundhog. I can see where he's been getting under the garden fence in two places. One spot you can see in the middle top of the next picture, to the left of the corner post, where the ground is rubbed to dirt.

 I do have to give the groundhog credit for being smart. At least he only eats the tops of the plants and doesn't break the stem off at the ground. However, the Hubs is going to call animal control this week about trapping it for us. Otherwise someone might camp out on the MiL's back porch with a pellet gun.

 There are a lot of poblano peppers set on. Thankfully the groundhog is concentrating on the tomatoes and leaving the peppers alone (although I did see some damage on some of the strawberry plants).

 Can you tell where the grass gets watered by the sprinkler? I think next year we're going to try drip irrigation.

You need to prepare yourself for this next photo. One of the wonderful aspects of living only a block from your MiL is that you can share lawn mowers. I mean, really, what's the point in two families each owning a push mower, riding mower and weed eater when they live so close?

And really, what's the point in breaking out the car trailer every time you need to haul the lawn mower from one house to the other?

That's where our redneck side comes into play. Yes, that's the Hubs, riding the riding mower down the street with a weed eater in his lap and pulling a push mower. If you would have been in our front yard an hour or so earlier, you would have seen me doing the same thing (sans weed eater). At which point you're neighbor would have called you "Turbo" when you ramped up into the driveway, and agreed when you called yourself a redneck.

The first time I did this, I was laughing so hard driving down the street that I was almost crying.

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Greek Festival!

 Today Michael and I went to the Greek Festival. It's at a Greek Orthodox church here in town. Michael works for the structural engineer my office works with.

 It was like being back in Greece: souvlaki, gyros, tiropita, spanikopita and baklava. I was hoping for fried small fishes and saganaki (fried cheese) but I guess that's not as popular...

Chicken souvlaki

Baklava

 And of course Greek dancing.

 Lots of Greek dancing.

Ohhh, how I miss Volos...

 About 5 minutes after I left the Greek festival it started pouring down rain, and then we got a double rainbow.

 I tried to back up to get the whole rainbow in one photo, but that wasn't working...

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