I never intended this blog or project to be about cooking, but with 900-some pages of recipes, the BOHM spends a relatively FRIGHTFUL amount of time in the kitchen. While I wanted the project’s focus to be spread throughout the household, I also knew I’d be forced to whip up a few dishes Victorian-style eventually.

So I elected to start with a course I never make: dessert — something new for me, unexpected for Mike and the girls, and a treat for all of us. And I opted for Baked Lemon Pudding, which I thought we’d all enjoy.

Yeah, doesn’t exactly look like the pudding I grew up eating. Certainly didn’t taste like it, either. Already, I’m discovering that when it comes to adapting recipes from the BOHM, we’re going to need some kind of Victorian-to-contemporary-kitchen TRANSLATOR. . .

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Why didn’t I start this project last winter, when I could’ve just holed up during the short days, cooking and trying to persuade little girls to eat things with grotesque names, like “Apple Hedgehog,” or cooking actual grotesques — perhaps Mrs. Beeton’s recipe for Boiled Calf’s Head, or Hashed Calf’s Head (really, nothing to shake up dinnertime like announcing, “We’re having HEAD!”). . .

Instead, I’ve taken up this project at the busiest time in the year: spring, when a house emerges from winter dormancy, and too, the world around it. According to the BOHM, I should be budgeting the 2010 equivalent of $40-80 annually for a gardener. (This presumes that I not only HAVE that much disposable cabbage to throw at home-grown cabbage, but that I’ve even gotten around to creating a budget. Oh, Mrs. Beeton, how disappointed you would be in me already. . .)

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The week started with something I would’ve previously dreaded: Spring Break. As my four-year-old’s preschool schedule follows that of Seattle public schools, that meant an entire week of breaking up our routine, of potentially being cooped up in the house for copious extra hours together, and of being forced to Find New Things to Do.

But in the spirit of Mrs. Beeton, I entered the week with a radically adjusted attitude, following this Book of Household Management directive:

It ought. . . to enter into the domestic policy of every parent, to make her children feel that home is the happiest place in the world; that to imbue them with this delicious home-feeling is one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.

As if to test my mettle, the week opened with a cracking wide of the skies — and the gray-cold rains continued to visit us daily. No matter: I was prepared, and for additional supplies we may have needed, we simply togged up, grabbed them, and headed straight back to the house.

This was Easter week, so I’d planned lots of projects around that: we spent the days making rabbits out of cotton balls, coloring or painting Easter pictures, hopping like bunnies and skittering and peeping like chicks. In line with Mrs. Beeton’s admonishments on thrift, we made homemade cookies and checked out and read (then re-read) a half-dozen holiday-related library books, and naturally, food-colored and painted Easter eggs.

Later in the afternoons, we’d throw on some jackets, pull out some umbrellas, and head outside to play in the rain: jumping in puddles, or pretending to be chickens “eating” weeds from the garden. And soon after, I’d be tugging off rain-beaded Wellies, tucking two uncomplaining girls into plush, warm beds for a nap, and wondering if my own attitude about all of it — about child-rearing, about homemaking — hasn’t been half the problem; after all, just by making the home a haven for the girls this week, it certainly seems to have made them happier, and by extension, myself.

The larger question is, can I maintain (even increase) this level of devotion — to my home and the people in it? Not simply Michael and the kids, but (in the essence of hospitality) all who pass through its doors? The prospect of it sounds exhausting; then again, so did the idea of this week, prior to changing my attitude toward it. And perhaps doing so holds exponential rewards. . .

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Michael has kicked me out of the house.

I might well be Sam Beeton, Isabella’s husband, doing a bit of scrivening at the corner pub; instead, this evening, I’m sitting at a two-top at the Old Town Ale House, riding their WiFi on my MacBook, because Mike informed me that two nights a week I should really get out of the house. (He then proceeded to program it into my iCal, every Monday and Wednesday, repeat infinity, and cc-ed himself so he’d remember to head straight home for dinner with the girls. Apparently he was serious about this.)

So Monday and Wednesday nights, whether I feel like it or not, I get the hell out of the house.

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While spring cleaning some of dusty and unnecessary items out of the house, I’ve decided to follow the advice of the 1960 version of the Book of Household Management and bring a little of the outside back in. These fine daffodils were growing in a row along the garage, and Nola helped me cut them and choose a vase.

It’s almost ridiculous how cheerful they really are, and I can’t remember the last time we did it. (As an added perk, Mrs. Beeton would most certainly applaud our thrift.)

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It couldn’t just be a brisk, beautiful day, could it? IT COULD NOT.

Today is the first day of Spring, and according to the Book of Household Management, I need to get my ass in gear. To be honest, I can’t even tell you I knew the roots of spring cleaning before reading Mrs. Beeton: spring was when the fireplaces were no longer needed for heat, and when the longer light of day and warmer air meant you could marginally throw the house open and give a good douching to everything that had acquired a coat of smoke, soot and grime since the fall, and prior to the overly hot months of summer.

Mrs. B is vague enough as regards spring cleaning that I can only infer she actually intends it as a mammoth undertaking:

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Already, Mrs. Beeton and I at an impasse, and I’ve scarcely turned page two of the BOHM, where she’s informed me the source of all my household (and subsequent existential and emotional) woes is my Basic Nature. To wit:

Early rising is one of the most essential qualities which enter into good Household Management, as it is not only the parent of health, but of innumerable other advantages. Indeed, when a mistress is an early riser, it is almost certain that her house will be orderly and well-managed.

I won’t say that my basic nature is “sloth,” exactly — more that I’m not and never have been a Morning Person, not even as a kid. Wakefulness is something that comes on slowly for me each morning, the shift from dreams to consciousness rolling out as gradually as the dawn, and in the slow, sweet time it takes to boil and drink two cups of breakfast tea.

But because I’m not a morning person, I wake with the household, while Mrs. Beeton is suggesting something entirely different: that I rise early in PREPARATION for it. . .

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Beginning this project has been a perfectly reasonable excuse to bust out the research material on the Victorian Era. I can’t say that I knew much about it going in — bustles and poetry, pique-niques and prudery? — so the day-to-day realities of 150 years’ past have come as a refreshing surprise.

And by surprising, I mean by how very similar those day-to-day details are to my own life. The Oxford World Classic BOHM (the version still in print today) has an invaluable introductory chapter to the book, and this paragraph alone might well be talking about 2010 instead of 1861:

Beeton gives such detailed instructions on every aspect of contemporary middle-class life because many of her readers were in need of such guidance. In particular, many middle-class women found themselves living completely different lives from those of their mothers and grandmothers. . . where food was not produced locally but supplied by numerous potentially unreliable tradespeople, and where neighbours were unknown to each other unless and elaborate system of calls was initiated. . . Husbands, as noted earlier, increasingly travelled into the centre of London and other large cities to work, and took the midday and often their evening meal in town. Consequently, mealtimes shifted, with the midday dinner moving into the evening, and a light luncheon replacing it in the daytime. Wives would often eat this meal with their children in the nursery. . . These women had increasingly complex lives, and Household Management offered guidance on virtually every aspect of their domestic existence. As well as recipes for and information on an enormous variety of foodstuffs, there is advice on the principles of cookery, the organization and planning of a kitchen, invalid food, the etiquette of dining, domestic servants, children, and medical and legal matters. The role of the mistress and that of the housekeeper are dealt with in consecutive chapters at the beginning of the work — a masterly piece of tact given that in most middle-class households they were the same person.

Well, damn lucky thing THAT. And I’d been worried about leaping head-first into this project by having to convert the single-car garage to servants quarters. . .

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Straight away is something I’ve put off all week: my pal Rudy has emailed me to announce something of a last-minute birthday bash at his place, and invited us all to the family-friendly evening.

I’ve already gone through enough of the BOHM to know that I’m going to spend a lot of this year doing something I do very little of: entertaining. For Mrs. Beeton and her middle-class Victorian contemporaries, entertaining was an opportunity for a woman to showcase her home, her means, and her hostessing talents, to bring liveliness to a home’s routine, and to share a family’s bounty with friends, the choice of whom were “very important to the happiness of a mistress and her family.”

Entertaining: let’s work up to that.

But Mrs. B also says this:

If the duties of a family do not sufficiently occupy the time of a mistress, society should be formed of such a kind as will tend to the mutual interchange of general and interesting information.

Well, as my friend for some 10 years, Rudy would qualify as an established member of my “society.” And in my growing funk, it’s been easy to deflect social invitations — but Rudy is a good friend, I haven’t seen his new place, and I think we all know what Mrs. Beeton would do.

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The whys of incorporating the principles of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (BOHM) into my 21st century life are abundant: since becoming a stay-at-home Mom, I’ve gradually lost control of my household, and with that, lost my understanding of my role in this house — of its day-to-day value, its purpose. While I have come to dread its burdens and responsibilities and flee it (be that physically, or even through daydreaming), Mrs. Beeton’s book commands the precise opposite — that I ENGAGE this house and its duties directly and heartily:

Of all those acquirements, which more particularly belong to the female character, there are none which take a higher rank, in our estimation, than such as to enter into a knowledge of household duties; for on these are perpetually dependent the happiness, comfort, and well-being of a family.

Pretty antiquated thinking, right? But the truth is, in only half-attending to this house in an abundance of ways over the past year or so (or doing only the minimum amount of maintenance to get through the day), I feel like I really have been short-changing my family. A small part of me — the tiny flicker that hasn’t yet been ground into numbed inertia — wonders if I haven’t been short-changing myself, too.

In any case, I’ve chosen to be a stay-at-home mother, and my youngest doesn’t start kindergarten for another two-and-a-half years. This house and I need to come to terms, and frankly, I’d rather feel like the one in charge for a change. And from where I’m sitting, where the chores never end and the invitations sit unsent and the unfinished projects cloud any prospect of joy, the only way out is through.

The question is, where to begin?

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