Ladies - This is NOT proving the point you think it is!

Here's a quick recap of the rationale behind the Stay-At-Home Daughter movement. 

The "theology":  Bible says that women need a male authority figure at all points so girls need to live at home under their father until they are handed off to their husband.  The theology is neither deep nor reflecting any portion of the Gospels, but no one seems to notice or care.

The educational correlation: Women are meant to be wives and mothers.  The main forms of post-secondary training in the Western world make women less likely to be wives and mothers so girls should avoid traditional education options once they graduate from homeschool.  The traditional works of women including cooking, basic household chores and childrearing are so complicated that a young woman who stays at home and helps her mother (or other Godly Woman (TM)) will end up so far ahead of women who attend college, receive vocational training or work after high school.  (No part of this section is demonstrably true, but no one seems to notice or care, either.)

I have a rather dark sense of humor and I've been enjoying watching the recipes published on the Maxwell Family's Titus 2 blog by Teri Maxwell or Sarah Maxwell along with Jill Dillard's published recipes on the Dillard Family site.  I'd call the recipes basic, but I feel like that's insulting the recipes found in real basic cookbooks.

I'm going to share my favorites by writer:

Teri Maxwell:

I have a sneaking sense of sympathy for Teri Maxwell.  I believe she really wants to be helpful to women who don't know much about cooking - but she's not great at explaining the theory that underlies the details.
How to Flash-Freeze Strawberries:

• The process she describes is not flash-freezing; it's just ordinary freezing.  
• There's no tips or anything that is noticeably different from what I have in the standard Ball Blue Book....
• The reason we half or quarter strawberries and other fruits is two-fold.  First, cutting a whole fruit into smaller pieces speeds the freezing time up markedly since the amount of time it takes to freeze is mostly dependent on the size of the fruit.  The second benefit is that smaller pieces can be packed more tightly when frozen.

Make the Most of Your Leftovers:

• This post demonstrates how to make a casserole out of leftover rice, pork spare rib meat, ham gravy with ham bits, and a few biscuits.   The resulting casserole sounds heavy for my tastes - but that's no sin.
• My bigger issue is that she doesn't - or can't - generalize that specific example into a broader idea.   I think the post would have been so much more useful if she explained that leftover meat and vegetables can be made into a casserole by combining them with a grain product like rice, tortillas, hearty breads or noodles and a condensed soup or sauce.  To assemble, put a layer of grain product on the bottom followed by the meat and vegetables.  Top with a shallow layer of grain product.  Pour sauce over top.   Cook at 350 for 30 minutes or until heated through.     
• For leftover chicken, I use tortillas, tomatoes, corn, ricotta cheese and green enchilada sauce to make enchilada casserole.  
• Leftover beef combined with egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, a little bit of wine, and green beans makes a nice casserole, too..  
• I don't have a great leftover pork casserole - but pork fried rice is a household favorite.

Sarah Maxwell - the dedicated Amazon Affiliate writer:

How to Make Taco Meat in Your Instant Pot:

• That's a fascinating title.  An equally honest title would be "Brown meat.  Add commercial taco seasoning.  Buy an Instant Pot through our Amazon affiliate link so we get cash!"  The reason they didn't use that title is that there would be nothing left in the body of the post.
• An Instant Pot is a pressure cooker that can also be used as a crock-pot.  There are a lot of times that a pressure cooker is a great choice.  A pressure cooker speeds up working with dried beans, lentils and rice of all types.  Pressure cookers can do amazing things with tender foods that can get gross if over cooked like shrimp and eggs.   Using a pressure cooker/crock pot to brown hamburger or ground poultry makes NO sense.   That wastes so much energy that it is insane. 

How to Make a Pour Over Mocha

• I've always found this one painful due to Sarah Maxwell's angst seeping through the post.  The post is so clearly written to list six fairly expensive items in the Maxwell's Amazon affiliate links program.  The purpose is obvious - but Sarah also seems to realize that most of her most dedicated readers don't have around $100 to drop to buy a ceramic coffee dripper, coffee bean grinder, milk frother and reusable insulated tumbler to make the perfect cup of mocha.  But she needs to drum up the income and so we have this post.

This post feels like it has multiple writers involved so I'm assuming that Teri and Sarah were involved in this classic:

The Maxwell Burrito Recipe:

• An excellent recipe to use for an open house or any other party where you invited 500 people and forgot to ask them to RSVP.   
• Let's see: 70 cups of cooked pinto beans and 15 pounds of onions with 4 cups of spices/flavorings.  I have a well-supplied kitchen but this would overwhelm every pot, pan, bowl and cup I own in the process including my boiling bath canner and pressure canner pressed into service as really big pots.
• I have to give Sarah (or whoever wrote the post) credit for detailing all the steps the family goes through.  At the same time, the process is completely crazy!  The process of cooking the mountain of beans separately from the hill of onions and the peppers simply creates more dishes to wash and more time on the blender/mixer without adding anything to the finished recipe.  
• If they were to add some cumin, garlic and oregano to the burrito mix, it would change their lives.  Just saying.  It's a magical part of burritos.

At least the Maxwell recipes require some skill at cooking.  Jill Dillard seems to be specializing in creating/remembering recipes for children too young to reach the stove. 

Cinnamon Toast:

• Like Joseph Duggar, I enjoy cinnamon toast.  Unlike his sister, I've never even thought about writing out a recipe for adding sugar and cinnamon to a buttered piece of toast.  
• Do I get credit for "Honey-flavored Breakfast Cereal" if I explain how to drizzle honey on corn flakes?

Poor Man's Pizza:

• Tortillas, pizza sauce, and cheese.  Microwave for 1 minute.  
• If this is really for a meal instead of a snack, I'd substitute bagels instead of tortillas and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.  It's amazing - but probably not cheap enough for large broke families.

Jill Dillard's secondary theme is accidently exposing how huge families need to skimp on protein to feed everyone.  After all, Cinnamon Toast has very little protein and Poor Man's Pizza is only slightly better because of the protein in the cheese.  Here are some more:

Easy Chicken and Noodles

• This is a giant pot of egg noodles and diluted cream of chicken soup.  Using cooked chopped chicken is optional.   
• She notes that her family would eat it with homemade bread (ATI teaches that the line about "Give us this day our daily bread" in the Our Father means you have to bake bread daily), a big salad and fruit.  That sounds yummy - but unless the big salad is made with lots of hard boiled eggs or beans  - this meal is really low in protein.

Cheesy Chicken and Rice Enchiladas

• The Duggars got this recipe from a family friend.  It makes 20 enchiladas out of 20 tortillas, 5 cups of cooked rice, 4 cans of cream of chicken soup, four cups of cheddar cheese and one 12.5 oz can of cooked chicken.  Each enchilada has 0.6 oz of chicken in it; a serving of meat for a child age 5 and up is supposed to be around 3 oz.  My toddler routinely eats more than 0.6oz of meat at a sitting - and he's tiny!
  

I know I'm supposed to be a dunce at cooking since I went to college - but this week we've had citrus-stuffed slow roasted chicken with green beans for dinner one night followed by chicken soup made with the back, rib, wing, neck and thigh meat from the roasted chicken combined with fire-roasted tomatoes, corn, green peppers and zucchini. 

I think I'll stick to the cooking I learned from my parents.....