Monthly Archive

Cost of food per person per day: $2.90 Wow, that’s MUCH more like it. That figure includes my raw milk CSA for March. Also included is a one-gallon purchase of coconut oil, and a $120 deposit on the veggie CSA, expenses that will reap benefits over several months.

Of my food expenditures, the total breaks down as follows:

Cost of produce 24% of budget, (of which 25% was conventionally grown 25% and 75% was organic and or local produce)
Cost of dairy (including local pastured eggs, raw milk and pastured butter) 15% of budget
Cost of meat (includes all meat, fish, poultry whether grassfed, organic or conventional) 15% of budget
Cost of bread 3% of budget
Cost of staples (sweeteners, grains for milling, leaven, salt, coconut flour, coconut oil, coconut milk, peanut butter, etc.) 32% of budget
Cost of non-food food (treats, ice cream, cookies, son’s crackers, soy milk, coffee, boxed cereal) 10% of budget

I’m really relieved. I always try to buy local and organic, but I didn’t know I was doing that well. I also like how the “percentage of budget” worked out. I feel I’m spending money on the right things. I wouldn’t have known this information unless I had done a spreadsheet, and my estimates were way off and very subject to my “feelings” about how I am doing.

Relevant books read or re-read: Cooking with Coconut Flour by Bruce Fife, Savoring the Day by Judith B. Hurley, Keeping Food Fresh

Energy Level: Very much improved over last month. I’m finally past the cold and cough and able to go all day without a caffeine pick-me-up in midafternoon. Weaning off coffee is a long-term goal of mine. I’m down to two cups in the morning now, and my short-term goal for April is to get down to one.

Visible health improvements: I’m no longer achy in the mornings at all. I can roll out of bed and get right on the treadmill if I want, without careful, painful movement. This is a huge relief for me. Last year in March, my journal says I was feeling 100 years old, aching and hurting for a half-hour in the morning, walking stooped and limping until my “blood gets flowing.” I haven’t had any twinges of arthritis in my right hand this month. Last March, I noticed rheumatoid lumps on three fingers which are now gone. I walked 15 miles this month, still not up to my first-level goal of a mile a day, but I did spend the first week of the month unable to exercise without setting off paroxysms of coughing. The girls’ allergies are subsiding but I do notice a setback for a day or two after we have a snack full of refined sugar or chocolate. There were fewer of those this month, too.

Other notes: Here’s a shocker for you: John got up in the middle of the night one night (he has insomnia) and was cruising the kitchen for something to eat. He found leftover tuna from a previous meal and ate it. He said during the meal that he really liked it, but that he would choose to eat it when there were other things in the house was a jaw-dropping miracle! Contrary to my original fears, there might be hope for this boy yet!

I’m on the waiting list at the library for Wild Fermentation. They only have one copy and I was the sixth request. Popular book! I spoke to the librarian about perhaps getting another copy.

We took one step backward this month. My mother-in-law sent Blair a recipe for “Chocolate Cake in a Coffee Cup” that is cooked in the microwave. Of course, she had to try it several times until she got it “right.” She was forced to make some healthier substitutions because we don’t keep white flour, white sugar and canola oil in the house. I guess I need to just not keep a microwave in the house, too. Blair does not need this kind of non-food. She has hypoglycemia and gets very ill from eating sugar. One experiment with the cake was eaten on an empty stomach. The “crash” she had to live through afterward was a great object lesson on the evils of sugar! Hard for Mommy to watch, though.

I want to try some of the recipes in Keeping Food Fresh. This will be a huge leap of faith for me. Freezers and refrigerators have dominated my kitchen landscape for so long that the thought of preserving food in my (year-round cool) garage is a little daunting. But it’s not really the season for the foods I’ll need to preserve yet, so I’ll have to wait and be patient.

I am compiling a cookbook for Blair. She turns 19 this year and is thinking about leaving home to either go to college or to live with a friend’s family several states away. She would look after her friend’s children part of the day, work part time and pursue her education as an author there. I am writing up all our family recipes for her as well as a lengthy introduction on cooking methods, food and nutrients, tools and techniques, everything I’ve tried to teach her in 19 years in the kitchen. This would normally take about two weeks to finish, because I have been keeping notes for the last several years for just this purpose. But since changing our foodstyle this year, I want to make sure I adjust recipes toward healthy fats and include sections in the intro on raw dairy and the dangers of low-fat diets. I also want to include in her “going away package” a copy of Nourishing Traditions. I think one of the children in the hosting family might be on a gluten-free diet. If so, I will also include a copy of Cooking with Coconut Flour, some coconut flour and coconut oil. I want to get her off on the right foot nutritionally, especially since the first few years away from home can wreck havoc on a young woman’s body.

This is a fascinating article from Reuters News.

I grew up in a generation where the mysteries of the human body were still being discovered, very slowly. Doctors used to say to parents of children with frequent sore throats, “Oh it’s okay, those tonsils (adenoids, appendix, wisdom teeth, etc.) are what we call vestigial organs. The cave men needed that for their raw diet, but we don’t need them today. Eventually, evolution will get rid of this excess baggage. We can go ahead and remove them and no one will ever be the wiser.” Yes, I heard that myself as a child. My mother, bless her, was steadfast.

I personally don’t believe that we have any “excess baggage” in our bodies. It is all there for a purpose, and any removal puts our system out of balance. Sure, you can live on, but you’d better address the cause of the problem first before removing something that your body needs.

All my friends had their tonsils out. I was such an oddity that as a teen, I’d go to the doctor and he’d call in all his nurses and staff to see what an “unimproved throat” (his actual words) looked like. Yes, I eventually grew out of the sore throats and ear infections. To some degree, I think minor undiagnosed allergies might have been to blame, but allergies weren’t something doctors were particularly adept at diagnosing and treating back then.

We know more about the function of these so-called vestigial organs now. We now know many of them are essential parts of the immune system. But what if there’s more we just haven’t discovered yet?

Here we go again! Please visit Blisstree and search your cupboards for Salmonella-contaminated nuts. If you shop at: Kroger, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, King Soopers, Smith’s, Dillons, QFC, City Market, Foods Co., Jay C, Scott’s, Owen’s, Baker’s, Gerbes, Hilander and Pay Less in any of the 31 states they represent, look for Private Selection Shelled Pistachios sold in 10-ounce containers with a “Sell by” date of DEC-13-09 and DEC-14-09 with this UPC Code: 1111073615.

Some readers didn’t quite catch on to the twisted brand of sarcasm I used in my post, “Baby Steps are for Babies.” That’s okay. I understand. Many times I’m being what I think is wryly funny and my family looks at me like I’m speaking an antiquated dialect of Sanskrit.

I ran across an error in logical reasoning called the Nirvana Fallacy. I seem to fall victim to its romantic idea of utopia frequently. Harold Demsetz coined the phrase in 1969 when he said (read this out loud in your best ‘local newscaster voice’) :

The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing ‘imperfect’ institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.

Huh? That’s gonna take some serious thought-time to work through. I like Voltaire’s approach much better:

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

“The better is the enemy of the good.” It’s often misquoted as “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

I had to learn “good enough mothering” as a young mom. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do everything perfectly for my baby every day. There was always some point during the day when I just couldn’t read one more story; push the swing one more time; smile my way through one more pile of laundry. That didn’t mean I wasn’t cut out to be a mom and it would have been better for me not to have kids at all, it means in my human imperfection, I came to the end of myself and had to find strength outside my own to get through the day, hour, minute at hand.

I have to constantly beat back the idea that I can do anything perfectly. I often feel that doing just “well enough” is laziness—that I’m not really applying myself to the task at hand, no matter what that task is. A pan that refuses to let go of a chunk of burnt on food is not failure, it’s an opportunity to perhaps discover a new method of removing burnt-on food. A son who insists on one box of saltines a week is not due to my failure to educate and nourish him properly, it’s just a hungry kid who wants to eat something he likes.

Here’s my deep, dark secret. My perfectionism isn’t really a desire to be perfect. It’s an excuse at-the-ready for my all too frequent shortcomings. I am all too well acquainted with my own humanity; all too familiar with my own sloth. Knowing I am destined to fail somehow, sometime, allows me to dream big and then totally abandon the dream at the first sign of humiliation.

But it’s not all humiliation and broken dreams. Like I said about finding strength outside myself, I am learning day by day to give my dreams to One larger than myself. He loves me despite my imperfections and failings, and uses my shortcomings for good!

My kids are wild about this song. I’m so glad she wrote this song. Sometimes I think she wrote it just for them. It can’t be easy living with me!

Win a free case of Zukay naturally fermented salsas and relishes!

This blogger tells you how!

I like to keep an eye open for unusual things for the dinner table. I think this qualifies as being unusual.