Verily, the record of history is thick with wacky diets (and someday I hope to stumble across The Drinking Woman’s Diet) and among them there are some real lollapalosers of recipes, including the Cabbage Soup Diet (how do you sell 300 pages of “put cabbage in water, cook it, and drink it”?) not to mention oddities like Slug Fritters and their ick ilk. There’s even a sub-group of cannibal-chic dishes like Hufu, human-flavoured tofu, and ClooFu, the George Clooney-flavoured tofu. And anyone who knows what a doula is has heard about the miraculous, all-natural benefits of eating one’s placenta, just like animals which haven’t learned to read, write, walk on their hind legs or exercise bowel control.

Now the world offers a queasy welcome to: placentawiches.

That’s right, folks.  Master chefs Chrissy and Kathy Schilling used the placenta from Chrissy’s newborn to spice up pasta, panini and other delicious meals over the weekend — and generously posted pictures of the afterbirth-filled dishes on their Facebook page.

Although doctors claim placenta offers no nutritional benefit for people who already are well-nourished, the sisters believe otherwise.

Among the benefits reported by the self-cannibalizing new mother, hallucinogenic effects must rank as the only one which interests me, but one which, in the current War Against Drugs political climate, we must ignore, lest pregnant women everywhere be shipped off to Gitmo for the proactive protection of American slackers.

Let’s raise a toast to free-range mothers-to-be!

Placenta Cocktail

Ingredients:

1/4 cup fresh, raw placenta
8oz V-8 juice
2 ice cubes
1/2 cup carrot

Method: blend at high speed for 10 seconds. Serve. A tasty thirst quencher!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a stiff drink.

Here comes Dr. Laura and she’s got a new book entitled “In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms.” She’s got some controversial things to say in a new interview with the Wall Street Journal. I think you can guess by the title of the book what those things might entail.

WSJ: At what point do you advise mothers to go back to work?

Dr. Schlessinger: The answer is never. One woman asked me the other day when I think mothers should be home, and I told her, “Whenever your kid is at home.” When [my son] Deryk started kindergarten, it was from 8 to 3. So I arranged to be on the air from 11 to 2. That was it. He always had a mom. Quite frankly, my mom was one of the least warm mommies out there. Nonetheless, when I came home from school, she was always there and it made me feel safe.

Previously here on Teeny Manolo, I’ve tried to avoid the subject of SAHMs vs. Working Moms because I think that it pits women against each other for no good reason. All moms work hard, all moms love their kids.

But I will say that it never fails to amaze me how entrenched both sides are. SAHM’s absolutely think they are doing the right thing, and the perspective from working moms that I hear is that they think they are doing the right thing, too.

As a SAHM (who happens to have a very part-time job writing on this website) I will say that people tend to either see me as an unambitious woman who has no life, or a selfless person who is “giving up” her life to raise her kids. I don’t see myself as either.

I simply see myself as someone who chose the path that was best for me and my child. Do we have a lot less money than we did when I was working? Of course. Do I sometimes chafe at the things we don’t have or the things we can’t do because of that lack of money? Of course.

But at the end of the day, the choice to stay home was the right one for me, and the one that is most beneficial for my son. And as long as every mom at the end of their day can say the same thing, all is good.