Monday, December 29, 2008
Birthday Gifts
By popular demand I've stuck this list on a wishlist thingy so all two of you who might be getting me presents can confirm whose purchased what. (Click the blue underlined words for the hotlink Vicki!)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
We had a lovely Christmas break. I'm back at work today, but no olds have peeped their heads into my office yet. I'm expecting a slow day.
I finally hunted down and purchased Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" about her family's year of purchasing only locally grown in season foods. As with all of her books, it is lyrically written and very engaging. It also features tidbits of information from her husband and college age daughter about their experiences.
I'm about half way through the book and it is certainly thought provoking. The family starts their local diet (in their case, I believe means foods grown or raised less than 100 miles away from their home). This means exotic fruits, like bananas are out. They begin their year around the time their asparagus begin to sprout. They plant a ton of food and base their weekly menus on seasonal items. They raise chickens and turkeys, both for eggs and meat. Here are some good quotes.
"North America's native cuisine met with the same unfortunate fate as it's native people, save for a few relics like the thanksgiving turkey. Certainly, we still have regional specialties, but the Carolina barbecue will almost certainly have California tomatoes in it's sauce (maybe also Nebraska-fattened feedlot hogs) and the Louisiana gumbo is just as likely to contain Indonesian farmed shrimp... We have yet to come up with a strong set of generalized norms, passed down through families, for savoring and sensibly consuming what our land and climate give us. We have, instead, a string of fad diets convulsing our bookstores and bellies, one after another, at the scale of the national best seller. Nine our of ten nutritionists (unofficial survey) view this as evidence that we have entirely lost our marbles. A more optimistic view might be this: these sets of mandates captivate us because we're looking hard for a food culture of our own. A profit-driven food industry has exploded and nutritionally bankrupted our caloric supply, and we long for a Food Leviticus to save us for the sinful roil of cheap fats and carbs. What the fad diets don't offer, though, is any sense of national and biological integrity. A food culture is not something that gets sold to people. It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging. Every set of fad-diet rules is essentially framed in the negative, dictating what you must give up. Together they've helped us form powerfully negative associations with the very act of eating. Our most celebrated models of beauty are starved people. But we're still an animal that must eat to live. " pg 16-17.
"At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. Step one, probably, is to live on the land that feeds them, or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region." pg 20
Applying this attitude to our own lives, immediately, looks daunting. Facing a likely dairy allergy combined with an already diagnosed wheat gluten allergy for Bob, plus a wish to avoid meats on my part leaves little local food for us to eat in the winter months. I don't think an "absolutely only local" experiment like the Kingsolver family does would ever work for us, because the majority of Bob's food is rice based, and there are nary a rice patty within 100 miles of Kansas. However, with that in mind, I'm going to make an effort to eat seasonally, and locally whenever possible.
Another reason to avoid long distance foods? "Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. In addition to transport other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking) packing, warehousing and refrigeration. Energy calories consumed by production, packaging and shipping far outweigh the energy calories we receive from the food." pg 5. About 400 gallons of gas a year per person go to the food we eat.
The Kingsolver family starts a garden, as I'd like to do. I have a notorious black thumb. This past year Bob decreed that I was not allowed to purchase baby plants, but rather grow them from seed. Having wasted hundreds of dollars on good intentions but bad results in my past attempts. Last year, in about March or April I began my seedlings in the basement and by October I had one tomato plant with 4 tiny tomatoes. I kept my plants in pots and actually brought them inside before they produced any fruits. My peppers faired better, I had a variety of peppers during most of the late summer. Still, my first home grown tomato! And even thought they were diminutively sized, they were still delicious. This year I am going to start my seedlings much earlier (fairly soon, actually) and plant them in the ground when spring comes. The hot summer weather literally roasted my plants in their pots and they were always desperate for water. Obviously there is no substitute for ground growing. As I've 5 acres of land and beautiful terraced gardens left by former inhabitants (which have been overrun with brush since last being tended) I'll begin gardening this year again, with the best of intentions, in the ground.
I'd also like to set up a garden, fueled by grow lights on the wall of our house. I know this still uses fuel (the energy for the lights) but I'll bet it is less than having the plants arrive from California.
"Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packaging (e.g. square tomatoes) and a tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice for actual flavor... The odd notion of transporting fragile produce dates back to the early twentieth century when a few entrepreneurs tried shipping lettuce and artichokes, iced down in boxcars, from California eastward over the mountains as a midwinter novelty. Some wealthy folks were charmed by the idea of serving out-of-season (and absurdly expensive) produce items to their dinner guests. It remained little more than an expensive party trick until mid-century, when most fruits and vegetables consumed in North America were still being produced on nearby farms... In just a few decades the out-of-season vegetable moved from novelty status to such a ordinary item, most North Americans now don't know what out-of-season means." pg 48
"According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola." pg 49
I'd quote more, but I'll try to summarize her thoughts on the loss of heirloom plants instead, for the sake of brevity. Giant seed corporations genetically modify their plants to do all sorts of things. Most are modified with a "kill switch" which results in the plants inability to survive more than one year. Farmers who save seed, rather then buying again every year, are actively sought after and prosecuted. Plants are modified to react to chemicals (sold by the corporations who make the seeds) to do any number of things including kill caterpillars and survive herbicides like Round-up (also sold by the same company). Because the plants are altered in a lab, they are unable to evolve and adapt to local conditions, as heirloom plants do. Every year plants encounter new bugs, mold etc. that attack them and the plant evolves to meet that challenge. Because GM plants are not able to do this the fields they are grown in are basically sterilized with chemicals killing off natural flora and fauna that would enrich the ground and in turn the plants. Plants who are allowed to grow naturally develop anti-oxidants to protect themselves from pests. This in turn results in a more flavorful, healthy, good-for-you plant. Barbara's family visited a farmer who farms organically. One field he worked was previously farmed conventionally (with pesticides etc) they other was a new, virgin field. Even though he had been organically farming for 5 or so years the field grown on the pesticide side was noticeably more spindly and unhealthy. The always organic side thrived.
Heirloom varieties of plants self-evolved to survive in a local environment. Most heirloom varieties are being lost. Plants we eat are developed for travel hardiness rather than flavor. It is literally more difficult to enjoy today's grocery store plants, because (her example is asparagus) during it's travel the sugars are broken down (the plant attempts to continue growing) and what we purchase there is really nothing like what came out of the ground days before. Apparently you can trade and purchase heirloom seeds from "The Seedsavers Exchange".
And speaking of heirlooms, did you know the many varieties of poultry are also becoming homogenized? Fancy chickens and turkeys are very rare, being replaced by bastardized birds that can barely support their own bodies, much less survive in the wild. Barbara and her daughter raise some heirloom turkeys and chickens.
I am slowly gaining on the chickens argument with Bob. I don't understand why you would be squeamish about eating something you've raised. I think this is responsible eating. I am considering raising my own turkey for Thanksgiving. I've gone totally vegetarian, but I think this is responsible. If not a turkey of our own I'll get a locally raised one. I saw some signs up the street for locally raised turkeys. I've enjoyed cooking our Thanksgiving turkeys in the past two years and I'd certainly like to continue the tradition, despite an avoidance of meat of all other days.
While her book inspires commentary on just about every page, this blog is getting very long and is rather unlikely to be completed by anyone. However, one more really interesting thing I've learned.
Lactose intolerance is a common inherited condition in which a person's gut loses, after childhood, it's ability to digest the milk sugar called lactose. The sugary molecules float around undigested in the intestine, ferment and create gassy havoc. The effect is somewhat like eating any other indigestible carbohydrate, such as cardboard or grass. This is not an allergy or even, technically, a disorder. Physical anthropologists tell us that age four, when lactose intolerance typically starts, is about when nature intended for our kind to be wholly weaned onto solid foods; in other words, a gradual cessation of milk digestion is normal. In all other mammals the milk-digesting enzyme shuts down soon after weaning. So when people refer to this as an illness, I'm inclined to point out we L.I's can very well digest the sugars in grown-up human foods like fruits and vegetables... we just can't nurse. From a cow." pg 136-137
"But no animal is weirder than Homosapiens. Over thousands of years of history, a few isolated populations developed intimate relationships with their domestic animals and a genetic mutation gave them a peculiar new adaptation: they kept their lactose-digesting enzymes past childhood. Geneticists have confirmed that milk-drinking adults are the exception to the norm, identifying a deviant gene on the second chromosome that causes lactase persistence. (SNP C/T13910). This relatively recent mutation occurred about ten thousand years ago, soon after humans began to domesticate milk-producing animals. The gene rapidly increased in these herding populations because of the unique advantage it conferred, allowing them to breast-feed for life from another species." pg 137
Among norther Europeans this gene appears in 86% of the population. Only 1/3 of southern Europeans have the gene. Far Easterners do not have the gene. About 50% of African Americans can drink milk. People have developed many ways of treating milk to reduce or eliminate the lactose in it. Through the process of making cheese much of the lactose is broken into the easily digestible lactic acid. However, modern quick cheese we purchase at the grocery store is not made in a way that reduces the lactose. As such, Barbara began making her own cheese. Apparently this is quite easy and is cheaper. Although it is technically illegal to make cheese in your home for human consumption (weird law!). But, by making your own cheese you can guarantee that it is made with local milk and you can control the amount of lactose left in it. You can buy cheesemaking equipment here. A very solid cheese, such as an ages cheddar will have almost no lactose.
So with Bob, and the imminent dairy problem we face, we have two courses of action. Because of the damage gluten does on his intestinal villi it is possible that he is just allergic to lactose, or that he just doesn't have the SNP C/T13910 gene. Or, quite possibly he is allergic to casein (as previously discussed in another post). Casein is shaped remarkably similarly to gluten and I believe (from the hearsay of the Internets) will result in similar damage to his gut. A poor-mans solution is to go off of all dairy for 2 weeks and then introduce some aged cheddar into his diet and see how he fares. If he is sick, it's the casein. If he is not, it's the lactose, which is an allergy imminently more easy to handle. A lactose allergy means we can still do cheese, butter, ghee, yogurt and other handy things for cooking. A casein allergy means no dairy.
I have no idea how to apply every change to my life in the ways I'd like to. With Bob's food allergies a diet of completely local food is farfetched. However, there are many reasons for choosing local foods whenever possible, and choosing seasonal foods. Not only does it save precious resources, provide more nutrients, but it also keeps your money in our local economy, in the hands of the farmers I see in my office every day. I'd like to try to raise more of my own foods, an can and freeze in the summer.
I finally hunted down and purchased Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" about her family's year of purchasing only locally grown in season foods. As with all of her books, it is lyrically written and very engaging. It also features tidbits of information from her husband and college age daughter about their experiences.
I'm about half way through the book and it is certainly thought provoking. The family starts their local diet (in their case, I believe means foods grown or raised less than 100 miles away from their home). This means exotic fruits, like bananas are out. They begin their year around the time their asparagus begin to sprout. They plant a ton of food and base their weekly menus on seasonal items. They raise chickens and turkeys, both for eggs and meat. Here are some good quotes.
"North America's native cuisine met with the same unfortunate fate as it's native people, save for a few relics like the thanksgiving turkey. Certainly, we still have regional specialties, but the Carolina barbecue will almost certainly have California tomatoes in it's sauce (maybe also Nebraska-fattened feedlot hogs) and the Louisiana gumbo is just as likely to contain Indonesian farmed shrimp... We have yet to come up with a strong set of generalized norms, passed down through families, for savoring and sensibly consuming what our land and climate give us. We have, instead, a string of fad diets convulsing our bookstores and bellies, one after another, at the scale of the national best seller. Nine our of ten nutritionists (unofficial survey) view this as evidence that we have entirely lost our marbles. A more optimistic view might be this: these sets of mandates captivate us because we're looking hard for a food culture of our own. A profit-driven food industry has exploded and nutritionally bankrupted our caloric supply, and we long for a Food Leviticus to save us for the sinful roil of cheap fats and carbs. What the fad diets don't offer, though, is any sense of national and biological integrity. A food culture is not something that gets sold to people. It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging. Every set of fad-diet rules is essentially framed in the negative, dictating what you must give up. Together they've helped us form powerfully negative associations with the very act of eating. Our most celebrated models of beauty are starved people. But we're still an animal that must eat to live. " pg 16-17.
"At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. Step one, probably, is to live on the land that feeds them, or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region." pg 20
Applying this attitude to our own lives, immediately, looks daunting. Facing a likely dairy allergy combined with an already diagnosed wheat gluten allergy for Bob, plus a wish to avoid meats on my part leaves little local food for us to eat in the winter months. I don't think an "absolutely only local" experiment like the Kingsolver family does would ever work for us, because the majority of Bob's food is rice based, and there are nary a rice patty within 100 miles of Kansas. However, with that in mind, I'm going to make an effort to eat seasonally, and locally whenever possible.
Another reason to avoid long distance foods? "Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. In addition to transport other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking) packing, warehousing and refrigeration. Energy calories consumed by production, packaging and shipping far outweigh the energy calories we receive from the food." pg 5. About 400 gallons of gas a year per person go to the food we eat.
The Kingsolver family starts a garden, as I'd like to do. I have a notorious black thumb. This past year Bob decreed that I was not allowed to purchase baby plants, but rather grow them from seed. Having wasted hundreds of dollars on good intentions but bad results in my past attempts. Last year, in about March or April I began my seedlings in the basement and by October I had one tomato plant with 4 tiny tomatoes. I kept my plants in pots and actually brought them inside before they produced any fruits. My peppers faired better, I had a variety of peppers during most of the late summer. Still, my first home grown tomato! And even thought they were diminutively sized, they were still delicious. This year I am going to start my seedlings much earlier (fairly soon, actually) and plant them in the ground when spring comes. The hot summer weather literally roasted my plants in their pots and they were always desperate for water. Obviously there is no substitute for ground growing. As I've 5 acres of land and beautiful terraced gardens left by former inhabitants (which have been overrun with brush since last being tended) I'll begin gardening this year again, with the best of intentions, in the ground.
I'd also like to set up a garden, fueled by grow lights on the wall of our house. I know this still uses fuel (the energy for the lights) but I'll bet it is less than having the plants arrive from California.
"Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packaging (e.g. square tomatoes) and a tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice for actual flavor... The odd notion of transporting fragile produce dates back to the early twentieth century when a few entrepreneurs tried shipping lettuce and artichokes, iced down in boxcars, from California eastward over the mountains as a midwinter novelty. Some wealthy folks were charmed by the idea of serving out-of-season (and absurdly expensive) produce items to their dinner guests. It remained little more than an expensive party trick until mid-century, when most fruits and vegetables consumed in North America were still being produced on nearby farms... In just a few decades the out-of-season vegetable moved from novelty status to such a ordinary item, most North Americans now don't know what out-of-season means." pg 48
"According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola." pg 49
I'd quote more, but I'll try to summarize her thoughts on the loss of heirloom plants instead, for the sake of brevity. Giant seed corporations genetically modify their plants to do all sorts of things. Most are modified with a "kill switch" which results in the plants inability to survive more than one year. Farmers who save seed, rather then buying again every year, are actively sought after and prosecuted. Plants are modified to react to chemicals (sold by the corporations who make the seeds) to do any number of things including kill caterpillars and survive herbicides like Round-up (also sold by the same company). Because the plants are altered in a lab, they are unable to evolve and adapt to local conditions, as heirloom plants do. Every year plants encounter new bugs, mold etc. that attack them and the plant evolves to meet that challenge. Because GM plants are not able to do this the fields they are grown in are basically sterilized with chemicals killing off natural flora and fauna that would enrich the ground and in turn the plants. Plants who are allowed to grow naturally develop anti-oxidants to protect themselves from pests. This in turn results in a more flavorful, healthy, good-for-you plant. Barbara's family visited a farmer who farms organically. One field he worked was previously farmed conventionally (with pesticides etc) they other was a new, virgin field. Even though he had been organically farming for 5 or so years the field grown on the pesticide side was noticeably more spindly and unhealthy. The always organic side thrived.
Heirloom varieties of plants self-evolved to survive in a local environment. Most heirloom varieties are being lost. Plants we eat are developed for travel hardiness rather than flavor. It is literally more difficult to enjoy today's grocery store plants, because (her example is asparagus) during it's travel the sugars are broken down (the plant attempts to continue growing) and what we purchase there is really nothing like what came out of the ground days before. Apparently you can trade and purchase heirloom seeds from "The Seedsavers Exchange".
And speaking of heirlooms, did you know the many varieties of poultry are also becoming homogenized? Fancy chickens and turkeys are very rare, being replaced by bastardized birds that can barely support their own bodies, much less survive in the wild. Barbara and her daughter raise some heirloom turkeys and chickens.
I am slowly gaining on the chickens argument with Bob. I don't understand why you would be squeamish about eating something you've raised. I think this is responsible eating. I am considering raising my own turkey for Thanksgiving. I've gone totally vegetarian, but I think this is responsible. If not a turkey of our own I'll get a locally raised one. I saw some signs up the street for locally raised turkeys. I've enjoyed cooking our Thanksgiving turkeys in the past two years and I'd certainly like to continue the tradition, despite an avoidance of meat of all other days.
While her book inspires commentary on just about every page, this blog is getting very long and is rather unlikely to be completed by anyone. However, one more really interesting thing I've learned.
Lactose intolerance is a common inherited condition in which a person's gut loses, after childhood, it's ability to digest the milk sugar called lactose. The sugary molecules float around undigested in the intestine, ferment and create gassy havoc. The effect is somewhat like eating any other indigestible carbohydrate, such as cardboard or grass. This is not an allergy or even, technically, a disorder. Physical anthropologists tell us that age four, when lactose intolerance typically starts, is about when nature intended for our kind to be wholly weaned onto solid foods; in other words, a gradual cessation of milk digestion is normal. In all other mammals the milk-digesting enzyme shuts down soon after weaning. So when people refer to this as an illness, I'm inclined to point out we L.I's can very well digest the sugars in grown-up human foods like fruits and vegetables... we just can't nurse. From a cow." pg 136-137
"But no animal is weirder than Homosapiens. Over thousands of years of history, a few isolated populations developed intimate relationships with their domestic animals and a genetic mutation gave them a peculiar new adaptation: they kept their lactose-digesting enzymes past childhood. Geneticists have confirmed that milk-drinking adults are the exception to the norm, identifying a deviant gene on the second chromosome that causes lactase persistence. (SNP C/T13910). This relatively recent mutation occurred about ten thousand years ago, soon after humans began to domesticate milk-producing animals. The gene rapidly increased in these herding populations because of the unique advantage it conferred, allowing them to breast-feed for life from another species." pg 137
Among norther Europeans this gene appears in 86% of the population. Only 1/3 of southern Europeans have the gene. Far Easterners do not have the gene. About 50% of African Americans can drink milk. People have developed many ways of treating milk to reduce or eliminate the lactose in it. Through the process of making cheese much of the lactose is broken into the easily digestible lactic acid. However, modern quick cheese we purchase at the grocery store is not made in a way that reduces the lactose. As such, Barbara began making her own cheese. Apparently this is quite easy and is cheaper. Although it is technically illegal to make cheese in your home for human consumption (weird law!). But, by making your own cheese you can guarantee that it is made with local milk and you can control the amount of lactose left in it. You can buy cheesemaking equipment here. A very solid cheese, such as an ages cheddar will have almost no lactose.
So with Bob, and the imminent dairy problem we face, we have two courses of action. Because of the damage gluten does on his intestinal villi it is possible that he is just allergic to lactose, or that he just doesn't have the SNP C/T13910 gene. Or, quite possibly he is allergic to casein (as previously discussed in another post). Casein is shaped remarkably similarly to gluten and I believe (from the hearsay of the Internets) will result in similar damage to his gut. A poor-mans solution is to go off of all dairy for 2 weeks and then introduce some aged cheddar into his diet and see how he fares. If he is sick, it's the casein. If he is not, it's the lactose, which is an allergy imminently more easy to handle. A lactose allergy means we can still do cheese, butter, ghee, yogurt and other handy things for cooking. A casein allergy means no dairy.
I have no idea how to apply every change to my life in the ways I'd like to. With Bob's food allergies a diet of completely local food is farfetched. However, there are many reasons for choosing local foods whenever possible, and choosing seasonal foods. Not only does it save precious resources, provide more nutrients, but it also keeps your money in our local economy, in the hands of the farmers I see in my office every day. I'd like to try to raise more of my own foods, an can and freeze in the summer.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sensing objects when blind...
I just read an article in the nyt about blindness, and blind people's possible ability to pick up visual information despite their blindness. It has a crazy video of a man, completely blinded by a stroke, navigating a debris strewn hallway easily. It's absolutely amazing. Unfortunately I can't embed the video on my blerg for some reason.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
INTERNETS ARE HERE!!!
I am writing on the Internets from my bed!!! I can't move, or I lose 3G, but I have them! Internets! Next I will have a much much more powerful antenna!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The faintest glimmer of hope...
Our long dark internetless hell may soon brighten a bit. Yesterday my brother came over to our house with his 3G compatible phone, and lo, we had 3G where we live! 20 or so minutes later it was back to the lame "Edge" network, but AT&T has not officially announced the 3G presence in Lawrence, so we are hoping somebody is randomly flipping a dial over at the mysterious 3G headquarters. But, internet at home maybe soon!
There is supposed to be a massive ice storm today, but it's just foggy so far. We shall see if the olds cower indoors or if they make their way out into the world to visit me in my office.
There is supposed to be a massive ice storm today, but it's just foggy so far. We shall see if the olds cower indoors or if they make their way out into the world to visit me in my office.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Gluten Free Vegetarian and Vegan Meats
I've had a successful week of eating vegetarian, and Bobby is more convinced that milk is an issue (we are testing it on a trial and error basis before spending the money to go get him tested again). However, yesterday our vegetarian gluten free pizza (topped with sliced tomatoes, onions, a variety of peppers, mushrooms and pineapple) was just bland. So I've been looking at veggie alternatives for pepperoni. Apparently you can make vegetarian pepperoni. You can make gluten free pepperoni. But a vegetarian gluten free pepperoni? Impossible! Basically every recipe I've found is a big ol' hunk of "Vital Wheat Gluten", basically a concentrated anti-Bob powder. I'd imagine if he were even to breathe it he would die.
Also, the powers of Google seem to prohibit the search for "gluten-free vegetarian pepperoni recipe".
Also, the powers of Google seem to prohibit the search for "gluten-free vegetarian pepperoni recipe".
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Dirty Eating...
I just finished reading this book called "Skinny Bitch" which is ostensibly a book about healthy eating. While it is certainly compelling in its health reasons to go completely vegan, I took the chapters about the horrors of the meat packing industry most to heart. I followed this with some delightful videos on goveg.com about how cruelly animals we eat are treated (really really horribly) and have decided to think more about where we are getting our food from.
One of those heartbreaking videos:
Don't misunderstand me... I don't really have issues with eating meat. It's paying for meat that has been raised in small dirty cages, tortured, boiled alive, skinned alive etc. that I don't want to continue endorsing with my hard earned dollars. I actually take especial issue to thoughtless militant vegetarians/vegans because it seems both dramatic and vaguely ostentatious. Dealing with a real food allergy makes a lifestyle choice pale in comparison. I'm not sure how serious I want to go with this. Always vegetarian? Sporadically omnivorish with locally raised meat? Fish only?
Bobby, with his Celiacs disease, really puts severe restrictions on what we can or cannot eat. While I would like to avoid eating meat it's not very realistic for him to. So I'm looking into locally raised, farm grown animals for any beef or pork... but can't seem to find any decently raised local chicken providers. You can obviously purchase "cage free" eggs but it doesn't seem to guarantee that the chickens ever see the light of day. Apparently it's quite possible they still spend their lives in piles of dead chickens and poo. Thankfully Lawrence has some eggs available from local farms. However I am much more eager to get a few hens for our land. This is not a short term solution as it will take almost a season for the hens to start laying, and I can't get any chicks until spring. But, I've lived with chickens before and think it would be a fun, green project. Bobby doesn't believe me, but farm fresh eggs are soooo much more tasty.
Militant vegetarianism/veganism is annoying in one way, but militant meat eating is annoying for the exact same reason. Bobby's recent argument "I like eating anything that fought for it's life" is a good example. No animals we are eating actually "fought" for their lives. We didn't go out and hunt them down and carve the animal ourselves. Cultures who did do this ate meat far more sporadically than we do. The animals we are eating were raised in a cage only slighly bigger than they were, given hormones that make their bodies grow fatter than their systems can support, given antibiotics to combat their horribly dirty surroundings, beaten, moved in uninsulated trucks to the slaughterhouse, and if they were lucky blasted through the skull with a metal bolt before being skinned and boiled. We never see these animals. Even 100 yrs ago meat eating was a special occasion, it took some time to grow the cow or the pig you had for the holiday meal. I think eating meat that was raised on a local farm with a minimum of drugs (although I don't disagree with using drugs to heal a sick animal) and who lived a healthy life before being taken to a slaughterhouse where it was humanely killed is fine. Meat eating should be sporadic and more of an event than an every meal thing. Paying a little more for meat that has been raised this way will keep your meat eating in check. I found this local farm that sells meats at our grocery store that I think we'll purchase from.
I know I'd like to avoid eating cows, pigs and chickens. I'll consider sporadically eating local meats. I think I'll allow fish, provided it's caught in the wild. Cheese is my one big hang-up. I loooove cheese (but have always disliked milk) and know from experience that vegan cheese is disgusting. Cooking with gluten flours is bad enough, I can't imagine what horrors I would face with soy cheese. Ironically Bobby is beginning to think he is lactose or casein intolerant, as when he drinks a glass of milk in the morning his tummy is upset and he has celiac like reactions. I vaguelly remember reading that casein is very similar to gluten and so it's fairly common to be allergic to both. I'd already planned to switch from regular milk to rice milk (again, milk is eeewwwey and makes my tummy hurt) but will be totally sad about losing cheese. Apparently milk cows are pretty horribly treated as well. The milking machines cause sores and puss gets into the milk supply. They are fed drugs to keep them lactating far longer than they normally would. The book also argues that milk serves to fatten a baby cow into an adult cow in a matter of months and thusly cannot be good for our bodies. It argues that cultures with dairy as a staple in their diets are more likely to have osteoporosis than cultures who do not have dairy as a staple. So for health reasons and ethical reasons eating dairy products seems to be a bad idea. I'm going to look into locally made cheeses, paying slightly more will make it appear less frequently in our diet.
The book also rails on unnatural additives like aspertine in soda and caffine. While I understand the issues with odd chemicals and additives I'm not sure I'm ready to give up coffee. It suggests replacing soda with good old fashioned water. I'm making an attempt. I drink several sodas a day and generally end up with a pounding headache around 2 o'clock. It occurs to me that it's probably because I'm totally dehydrated from my morning coffee followed by a soda. Having had kidney stones in the past I'm betting I tend towards dehydration.
Finally the book rails against sugar. Also, an understandable thing to avoid. I don't eat a ton of suger thankfully (except in prepackaged foods and coffee). I'm going to order some agave nectar from amazon which apparently has a very low glycemic index (good for diabetics Vicki!) to use in recipes. I've actually had several GF recipes call for this but I can't find it locally.
I'd like to get the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver about her families experiences purchasing local and growing their own food.
One of those heartbreaking videos:
Don't misunderstand me... I don't really have issues with eating meat. It's paying for meat that has been raised in small dirty cages, tortured, boiled alive, skinned alive etc. that I don't want to continue endorsing with my hard earned dollars. I actually take especial issue to thoughtless militant vegetarians/vegans because it seems both dramatic and vaguely ostentatious. Dealing with a real food allergy makes a lifestyle choice pale in comparison. I'm not sure how serious I want to go with this. Always vegetarian? Sporadically omnivorish with locally raised meat? Fish only?
Bobby, with his Celiacs disease, really puts severe restrictions on what we can or cannot eat. While I would like to avoid eating meat it's not very realistic for him to. So I'm looking into locally raised, farm grown animals for any beef or pork... but can't seem to find any decently raised local chicken providers. You can obviously purchase "cage free" eggs but it doesn't seem to guarantee that the chickens ever see the light of day. Apparently it's quite possible they still spend their lives in piles of dead chickens and poo. Thankfully Lawrence has some eggs available from local farms. However I am much more eager to get a few hens for our land. This is not a short term solution as it will take almost a season for the hens to start laying, and I can't get any chicks until spring. But, I've lived with chickens before and think it would be a fun, green project. Bobby doesn't believe me, but farm fresh eggs are soooo much more tasty.
Militant vegetarianism/veganism is annoying in one way, but militant meat eating is annoying for the exact same reason. Bobby's recent argument "I like eating anything that fought for it's life" is a good example. No animals we are eating actually "fought" for their lives. We didn't go out and hunt them down and carve the animal ourselves. Cultures who did do this ate meat far more sporadically than we do. The animals we are eating were raised in a cage only slighly bigger than they were, given hormones that make their bodies grow fatter than their systems can support, given antibiotics to combat their horribly dirty surroundings, beaten, moved in uninsulated trucks to the slaughterhouse, and if they were lucky blasted through the skull with a metal bolt before being skinned and boiled. We never see these animals. Even 100 yrs ago meat eating was a special occasion, it took some time to grow the cow or the pig you had for the holiday meal. I think eating meat that was raised on a local farm with a minimum of drugs (although I don't disagree with using drugs to heal a sick animal) and who lived a healthy life before being taken to a slaughterhouse where it was humanely killed is fine. Meat eating should be sporadic and more of an event than an every meal thing. Paying a little more for meat that has been raised this way will keep your meat eating in check. I found this local farm that sells meats at our grocery store that I think we'll purchase from.
I know I'd like to avoid eating cows, pigs and chickens. I'll consider sporadically eating local meats. I think I'll allow fish, provided it's caught in the wild. Cheese is my one big hang-up. I loooove cheese (but have always disliked milk) and know from experience that vegan cheese is disgusting. Cooking with gluten flours is bad enough, I can't imagine what horrors I would face with soy cheese. Ironically Bobby is beginning to think he is lactose or casein intolerant, as when he drinks a glass of milk in the morning his tummy is upset and he has celiac like reactions. I vaguelly remember reading that casein is very similar to gluten and so it's fairly common to be allergic to both. I'd already planned to switch from regular milk to rice milk (again, milk is eeewwwey and makes my tummy hurt) but will be totally sad about losing cheese. Apparently milk cows are pretty horribly treated as well. The milking machines cause sores and puss gets into the milk supply. They are fed drugs to keep them lactating far longer than they normally would. The book also argues that milk serves to fatten a baby cow into an adult cow in a matter of months and thusly cannot be good for our bodies. It argues that cultures with dairy as a staple in their diets are more likely to have osteoporosis than cultures who do not have dairy as a staple. So for health reasons and ethical reasons eating dairy products seems to be a bad idea. I'm going to look into locally made cheeses, paying slightly more will make it appear less frequently in our diet.
The book also rails on unnatural additives like aspertine in soda and caffine. While I understand the issues with odd chemicals and additives I'm not sure I'm ready to give up coffee. It suggests replacing soda with good old fashioned water. I'm making an attempt. I drink several sodas a day and generally end up with a pounding headache around 2 o'clock. It occurs to me that it's probably because I'm totally dehydrated from my morning coffee followed by a soda. Having had kidney stones in the past I'm betting I tend towards dehydration.
Finally the book rails against sugar. Also, an understandable thing to avoid. I don't eat a ton of suger thankfully (except in prepackaged foods and coffee). I'm going to order some agave nectar from amazon which apparently has a very low glycemic index (good for diabetics Vicki!) to use in recipes. I've actually had several GF recipes call for this but I can't find it locally.
I'd like to get the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver about her families experiences purchasing local and growing their own food.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Educational
I just found this website of a doula who documents the daily change of her cervix in photos. She keeps track of her basel body temperature as well and gives the reader a new take on how our bodies work. Read and feel informed!
Monday, December 01, 2008
Christmas/Birthday List: Depression Style
I'd rather not fill my house with more clutter, and we are saving for the rest of our sectional couch (so cash gifts are encouraged) but both Christmas and my birthday are coming up, so here are some ideas.
Reasonably Affordable Items Here:
How to Make Almost Everything: Book by Readymade $25.00
(This won't let me link straight to it for some reason)
Reusable Produce Bags Size S and L $2.77 each
Tights! Size M-L please.
Wool tights (I wear skirts alot to work) in Mocca and Nero. $18.75
Colored wool tights in Rubino and blu $19.25
"Artitocratic Chic Backstream tights" $15.75
Emilio Cavallini Fencing Tights $30.95
Jonathan Aston Kay Fantasia Tights $24.95
Kaplan GRE Exam book with CD $23.10
(or another highly rated GRE test prep book. An audiobook/CD would be lovely as well.)
Subscription to Craft Magazine - 34.95
Paverpol Garden Sculpture Kit $21.95
this stuff looks really neat
2009 Susy Jack Calendar $34.00
Work Appropriate Dresses (all on sale!)
Sleeveless Dancing Dress- Coldwater Creek size 12 $29.99
Cotton Sundress size- Coldwater Creek 10-12 $27.99
Other Work Appropriate Attair
Pintuck Godet Skirt Coldwater Creek Size M - $29.00
Flowering Willow Wallet in brown - $88.00
Probably too expensive to list in this section, but I've been looking for a cool wallet since my faux Louis Vuitton from Malaysia died. This one is it!
Things that are too expensive to gift, wish list:
(a list for my own reference)
Cat Genie with poo box top $369.99
my cat is picasso and her box requires more cleaning than I would prefer.
Long Tweed Skirt- Coldwater Creek PM 89.00
Defy the Odds Sweater - Anthropologie Size M 198.00
Passerby Cardigan in Sky - Anthropologie Size M 198.00
"Belly Up Bootie" by Nauty Monkey $119.00 at Amazon.
Toasted Almond Heals $149.99 (sadly out of stock everywhere)
Not Rated Women's Tipsy Boot $64.95
Chocolate Blu Womans Carson Boot $200.95
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