The Girl's Guide
Issue 92: The Sixth Love Language
Welcome back to The Girl’s Guide! If you missed the last issue, find it here. Keep reading for a special recipe!
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The Sixth Love Language
Every time the bananas in my fruit bowl start to brown, I make a batch of my great-grandmother’s banana bread – one loaf to keep and one loaf to share.
I hadn’t given this habit much thought until recently. I’m certainly not the first person to think that food is the sixth love language. (It’s a pretty universal way of expressing love, after all.) But now that I spend so much of my time cooking for my family, I can see what a gift homemade food is.
I recently had a curveball thrown at me when it comes to my cooking, though. It turns out that my daughter Margot is severely allergic to dairy, and since I’m the main source of her nutrition, I’ve got to cut it out of my diet, too. Guess what ingredients feature in my most-used recipes? That’s right, butter, cheese, and even heavy cream. We certainly won’t be having any of those at dinner for a while.
Maybe it’s because I’m a mom now, or maybe I’m just getting older, but I think I enjoy making delicious food for others *almost* as much as I enjoy eating it myself. That’s why I plan to continue stocking my fridge with butter and milk (as long as it’s safe to do with Margot’s allergy). Like many new parents, Nick and I are stretching every dollar right now. We can’t always do something extravagant for our friends and extended family, but we can bring them a meal to celebrate a new baby or bake them muffins just because.
I can’t lick the spoon after whipping up a batch of banana bread, but I can enjoy giving a loaf to a friend. That’s definitely worth it to me.
Evelyn’s Banana Bread
½ cup cooking oil or butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
3 very ripe bananas
2 cups flour (sifted)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons milk
Directions: Mash bananas. Beat eggs well.
Combine bananas, eggs, oil and sugar. Beat well.
Add remaining ingredients and mix well.
Pour into greased pans (2). Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour (your oven may take less cook time).
Interview with Andrea Mew
In today’s newsletter, I’m very excited to introduce you to Andrea Mew! Everything she writes for Evie Magazine is a must-read, including her recent essay about leaning into her femininity. Connect with Andrea on Twitter and Instagram.
What does your life look like right now?
I’m utterly blessed to be living on the coast in Orange County, California. My husband Brian and I moved from central, landlocked Orange County — closer to where we had both been working — back to our hometown where we originally met, working at a little retro candy and soda shop.
We wanted to be closer to his parents anyway, but when our apartment lease was about to be up and I was researching a townhome which would give us a bit more room, it felt quite serendipitous that the most affordable, most spacious option was right back in the town we came from.
Our townhome isn’t just home to me and my husband, it’s also the home of our little fluffball chinchilla named Millie and our pretty, ghostly pink rosy boa snake named Minerva.
I work remote (while Brian works mostly in-office but sometimes we get work-from-home dates together!) for the IW family of policy organizations! My main line of focus is with the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), the nation’s leading women’s organization for public policy that enhances freedoms, celebrates women’s accomplishments, and fights to expand women’s options and opportunities. I also have the opportunity to work with our sister organizations under the IW umbrella, Independent Women’s Voice (our advocacy arm) and Independent Women’s Network (our membership organization).
In my role as part of IW’s new Storytelling team, I humanize the issues by sharing the stories of real Americans and how certain policy issues impact them or their loved ones. For instance, you probably have heard Riley Gaines tell her story about competing against Lia Thomas and how progressive gender ideology, translated into public policy, is gutting women’s sports. Well, she’s my colleague here at IW! We document and spread the stories of women (and men) like her, and in a bunch of other interesting issue areas as well. That includes policy areas like school choice, economic freedom, health care, ESG, and more.
IW is fully-remote, but based on the East Coast… which means an early worm like me can get ahead of my work while all other Californians are waking up or commuting to the office. As such, I’ve got extra time in the evenings to write for Evie Magazine, accomplish (nearly) daily exercise, and spend time at night either with my husband watching movies, playing games, or going on long walks together, or relaxing solo with a good book.
Now that I’ve gone WFH, I don’t know if I can ever go back. I mean, in what other work environment can I chill in my comfy Brandy Melville fits, make my own nutritionally-balanced girl lunch, get my laundry done, maintain other elements of the household, and walk on my under-desk treadmill? I understand that not everyone can afford the luxury of a fully-remote job but while I’ve got one, I’m soaking up every blissful moment not spent in Southern California’s dreadful rush hour traffic.
What's the biggest lesson you've learned in your career?
You don’t have to be the girl who does everything. There’s something to be said about being a “jack of all trades, master of none,” right? Well, when I was in college I really felt that I had to hustle to support myself financially, grow in my career, and gobble up as much knowledge as humanly possible.
It was actually a hard pill for me to swallow. For context, when I was in my final year of school, a typical day would start for me around 5 a.m. to do an opening shift as a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf barista, then spend the rest of the daylight in classes, and then make it into the gym, which I tried to do every day without fail. If I wasn’t at the gym in the evenings, I was at my school’s College Republicans club where I was the Communications Director and a very active member. On top of all that, on the days I didn’t have classes I would log countless intern hours at the public relations firm which I then translated into my first real career-type job during my last semester in college.
Understanding how unsustainable that grind could be was somewhat of a tough pill to swallow. I was soaking up every experience which would get thrown my way except for truly cultivating relationships with my friends and with myself. I thought, naively, that I’d feel fulfilled by just the fruits of my labor and my relationship with my then-boyfriend (now husband) alone. But, I wasn’t giving myself enough breathing room to develop more intimate friendships with likeminded girls — though I did spend time with many of them, just in work, school, or activist contexts. I also wasn’t giving myself enough breathing room to discover what was best for my body.
There are two paths a person can take: specialist or generalist. I’ve learned that while I can certainly adopt characteristics of the generalist, I feel more fulfilled when I lean into the specialist category. When I was finishing up college, I had no aim beyond working broadly in public relations or communications. Once I left the public relations firm to run communications for my county’s largest conservative non-profit donor organization, I still kept running into the issue where I knew I was productive, but the work that I was doing lacked the more narrow-focus that I craved.
While at that donor organization, I had also begun writing part-time for Evie Magazine and recalled introspectively that, as a young girl, I had always wanted to “be a writer.” I didn’t know what exactly that would look like since I had very little life experience, but that passion was what had driven me to write short stories as a kid, fan fiction as a Tumblr teen, slam poetry as an angsty high schooler, and then becoming yearbook editor before that passion was somewhat squandered by pursuing public relations in college.
So, I endeavored to live out that vision for the future which my childhood self was drawn to. I narrowed my career focus by pursuing a different job where I’m much more of a specialist than a generalist. By reducing the aimless “hustle” I was subjecting myself to, I’m now more fulfilled by my day job, more energized to write for Evie, more satisfied with the caliber of female friendships I have, better balanced with exercise and nutrition, and I’m able to give much more mental energy and quality time to my husband.
What's your favorite topic to research and write about currently?
When I first started writing for Evie Magazine, I was really itching to cover more political topics. But, what has truly captured my heart is women’s wellness. I’ve been a bit of a buff bunny for some time now with my love for strength training, I’m no stranger to the those seemingly endless hot girl walks, and I can easily find myself consumed by the pursuit of nutritional and dietary knowledge — pun intended.
Evie did, however, redpill me on reproductive wellness back when I was just a reader of the magazine during its first year. I can actually credit Evie writers for being the reason that I got off of hormonal birth control and fundamentally saved my fertility. Had I not fallen down that rabbit hole, taken my Nexplanon implant out, and ditched my past OB/GYN who just wanted to put me on the pill to get my period back, I can’t even imagine how my body would be functioning right now.
My Evie writing and my own fertility journey are a mutually beneficial relationship where I’m constantly challenging myself to learn more about the female reproductive and endocrine systems. In turn, I’m discovering better ways to solving my own long-lasting, serious complications from hormonal birth control.
What's the best piece of relationship advice you ever received?
I grew up in a pretty far-left environment and one could say that I was even a feminist. I wouldn’t have used that term, and probably would have naively said that I was a socialist or that I hated labels, but I digress. The fact of the matter is that my social circle was full of man-haters and I grew up constantly at odds with my own father. With only two sisters and no other male influences in my life, my ability to communicate with men was undoubtedly stunted!
Though I’ve both received and read up on a lot of really quality relationship advice, one of the most impactful, yet simple messages that I needed to hear was that men need to feel respected. My guy friend had randomly sent me some Instagram quote graphic. It was really simple and explained from the male perspective how many women don’t realize the ways they may be subtly or overtly disrespecting a man. It really opened my eyes to my own behavior and made me question if I’m being the most effective communicator with my husband.
However, I will say that the best source for relationship advice which I have received was Timothy Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage. I received it during my engagement from my pastor friend who officiated our wedding. As an atheist-turned-believer, taking a deeper dive into holy matrimony from an… actually holy perspective helped clarify the Christian wife’s role in marriage. You’ll often find me paraphrasing the chapter where he addresses the biblical term of “ezer,” in my writing because of just how much it blew my mind to read about how women are best suited to the role of a man’s “strong helper.” It was getting a diagnosis for something you always suspected you had all along, but just didn’t know the right way to explain it.
As a self-proclaimed snack queen, what are your go-to snacks?
If I’m looking for something starchy, my favorites are the Lesser Evil brand of Himalayan pink salt popcorn and “paleo puffs.”
If I’m craving something sweet, I love frozen grapes and blueberries, fresh apples, Bare banana chips, a handful of medjool dates, or Lily’s Sweets dark chocolate chips.
If I’m craving something creamy, I’m obsessed with Good Culture cottage cheese, Big Spoon Roasters nut butters, and True Nutrition protein.
But, my most frequent snack is raw veg. You probably don’t want to know how many carrots, cucumbers, celery, daikon radishes, bell peppers, or zucchinis I actually go through in any given month.
LIGHTNING ROUND
What's your go-to coffee order? Americano. Black. Unsweetened. And usually, in the largest size possible. No espresso? No problem. Plain, black dark roast is the GOAT. Never, never, never light roast.
What book is on your nightstand? I’m currently reading The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq. But, next in the nightstand queue is At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace… in that order.
What's the most-worn piece in your closet? Every girl needs a black leather trench coat. It’s my prized possession that, since buying it, has been a reliable BFF for cooler-weather travel both abroad and domestically. It’s also the perfect top layer to don ahead of any nighttime event. It’s endlessly versatile. It’s chic. It makes you feel like a total baddie… and of course, a model off-duty.
The Haps
Arlington’s Deer Problem
One of the weirdest experiences I ever had walking around DC was encountering a family of deer leisurely strolling across a crosswalk near Washington National Cathedral. Neighboring Arlington has a deer problem of its own. Friend of the ‘stack Gabriella Hoffman takes a deep dive into the silly solutions proposed by the county’s Deer Management Program (check out her column and video).
Downtown DC Is About to Get Crowded
DC-based federal employees might be returning to the office soon, if they haven’t already. The Biden administration is not happy that so many downtown DC office buildings are sitting empty. “A government report published in July found that ‘17 of the 24 federal agencies used on average an estimated 25% or less of the capacity of their headquarters' buildings,’” reports FOX5 DC.
Here are a few more links to what I’m reading this week:
Heavy burden: Student loan debt hits some Christian college students particularly hard: Emma Freire writes about the impact of student debt for WORLD.
How Linen Earned Its Rightful Place As The Best Summer Fabric: I really love wearing linen in the summer, so I was fascinated to learn more about the amazing fabric!