Emerge

I've been spending the last few days trying to scrabble my way out of this dark pit of somnolence and sluggishness. A lovely morning with our dear friends yesterday seems to have been just the ticket and I find myself coming alive again.

Yesterday was a day of experiments and I didn't manage to take any pictures of them but definitely had some great successes to recreate!

First up, pizza dough in the bread machine. Nothing could have been easier. Add to that a $9 pizza stone and we had a delicious birthday lunch with our favorite 5 year old. I have dreams of finding a gluten free pizza dough solution for the whole family. Any suggestions?

For dessert, we made chocolate coconut milk ice cream in my friend's Hamilton Beach ice cream maker. It was beyond delicious and so easy. By the way, my friend, I finally read through this recipe and the comments connected to it (after the fact, of course) and it looks like for this recipe the texture is like soft serve right as it comes out of the machine but you can freeze it for an hour to get a texture closer to the Purely Decadent version. Who can wait an hour though?!? It was heavenly just out of the machine.

There will be many more experiments to come because my friend gifted me with a treasure of a book called Make Your Place; Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills by Raleigh Briggs. It is a gem, all hand lettered and illustrated in a style similar to Mollie Katzen's original Moosewood Cookbook and it is filled with recipes and concoctions for everything from salves and ointments to face oil and deodorants to everything there is to know about getting a garden started. I love this book! I also want to give props to the publishing company Microcosm Publishing. Definitely check these folks out.

I think I'm going to need to be more conscious of getting my iron and B vitamins because I think that was what really tipped me over last week. I assume at some point my cycle will become more regular as the breastfeeding wanes and I can't afford to be totally knocked out for a week out of every month.

A work in progress, that's me!

Empty

I feel like I'm running on empty today. I did a presentation on music at the local library that was so much fun and as I was walking home, I felt like I wanted to just lie down on the sidewalk and have a nap with my head on my fiddle case.

I'm having a flare-up which is frustrating me to no end. Having an illness that can be kept largely at bay by good health practices has the unfortunate shadow side of causing an incredible amount of guilt when I'm struggling because I know I could have done more to fend it off.

Grumble, grumble...not much else to see here folks.

Hormones

I had to laugh at that last entry from two days ago (hello dark and broody, haven't seen you in a while) especially in light of my period arriving yesterday.

If only there were some rhythm to that area of my life. It would be nice to be able to see these things coming in the distance and prepare for them a little.

Hormones are so powerful. I'm unraveling over the tiniest things right now. I miss my sister who was here over the weekend. We've had a lot of accidents the last couple of days as this potty thing has not become intuitive yet. Pimples. Such are my tales of woe.

Heavy

Water bubbling through the ceiling. The familiar becoming strange. Tearful partings. Anger quickly followed by regret. Bittersweet memories.

July is always an explosion of one kind or another, it seems.

Independence

Big weekend for this little fellow

Goodbye to daytime diapers

Goodbye to his very last pacifier

Ran his very fun run

Made his mama very proud.

Failure

My yoga class starts in ten minutes and I'm not going to make it. I fell back into bed after the alarm clock went off this morning and didn't get back up in time to be ready for yoga. This sleep thing is hard. I daresay, harder than changing food habits. Not to mention inextricably linked. By the time I get the kids to bed, I stubbornly cling to my habit of falling onto the couch and doing nothing for a while. Doing nothing is so appealing that I keep doing it until it's past my bedtime.

I really want to learn more about biorhythms (speaking of rhythm! gotta sneak that theme in!) because I find it fascinating that the same four dishes that it takes me 30 seconds to cheerfully wash at 7 in the morning feel like an immovable yoke around my neck at 9:30 at night. Most nights, I don't even want to walk across the room and get my knitting. The same knitting that you can find me merrily knitting away at during every spare moment of the day. Are the "idon'twanna"s curable?

We have a big weekend ahead of us. The pacifier fairy is coming during naptime to collect all of the things we have in our home that babies might need, including every last diaper and pacifier. It should be an interesting weekend, to say the least. I have been reminding the kids about this upcoming event and Liam became very concerned yesterday that she would not be able to carry everything on her own, possibly hoping to lighten her load by a pacifier or two. I told him, "Oh no, she's very strong and she has big helpers". The pacifier fairy has taken on a whole new mental image. I think she used to be loosely based on one of his favorite books The Dreamtime Fairies. I suspect he is now picturing something closer to a gaggle of pteranodons wearing tutus.

Wish us luck.

Junk

I listened to a fascinating conversation on NPR this morning. The program was On Point and they were speaking with former FDA chief Dr. David Kessler about his new book The End of Overeating; Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.

Dr. Kessler was responsible during his tenure at the FDA of taking on Big Tobacco and also for requiring that nutritional information be placed on all food products sold in mass distribution in this country. He had a lot of interesting things to say about the role of big business in our country's current culture of poor eating.

His main point was that somewhere along the line, food corporations figured out that our brains are hugely stimulated by fat, sugar, and salt and so they began craftily layering these substances in such a way as to procure an addictive response from consumers.

From his wikipedia page:

His 2009 book "The End of Overeating" (a New York Times best seller) highlights for the consumer the amount of fat, salt and sugar in their food intake. He asserts that this trio of elements in restaurant and processed foods conditions us to eat more in a manner that changes our brain circuitry and that children may develop a pattern of overeating and obesity that they might retain for life. He stresses that this outcome of lifelong obesity is not genetic but environmental and avoidable.

I think what I appreciated most from his interview is that Dr. Kessler seems to have compassion for the consumer in a way that you don't often hear from an allopathic physician. He acknowledged the responsibility of personal choice but he also continued to underline the reality that we are fighting an uphill battle in regards to food because we are being manipulated at every turn.

While listening to the interview, we were eating strawberry ice cream for breakfast. That's not strictly true. We were actually eating stRAWberry ice cream made from frozen berries, frozen banana and fresh cashew milk. I think this breakfast crystallizes the appeal of the raw food movement for me. It isn't just that the novelty that you can raw-ify any food so that it resembles its junky inspiration. It isn't even just that the ingredients are raw. The beauty is taking a food that was previously indigestible, packaged and preserved, loaded with sugar and saturated fat, and relatively low in nutrition and converting it into a nutrient dense and delicious choice. I don't have plans to be 100% raw because I lack the pedantic attachment to detail. I am, however, so inspired by the idea of all of our food has the potential of being so rich in nutrition. The whole idea of 'junk food' is so bizarre when you really consider what it is. Here's a substance that isn't exactly food because it doesn't nourish you in any way, but it's not exactly toxic either (at least not immediately) so have at it! Go ahead and swallow it. It won't kill you. Today.

To be clear, I've never been the sort of parent who requires two bites of this and three bites of that and they you can have xyz. As a person who overcame an eating disorder, I don't want to criminalize any foods for my children causing an unhealthy attachment or detachment to develop. The reality is, though, that there are lots and lots of foods that shouldn't even be allowed to be considered food. Aisles upon aisles of it in the grocery store. Bereft of nutrition but filling our shopping carts and our arteries. What's the answer?

I don't know. Truly, I have no idea. I think the answer is different for every person, for every family. My approach today is that I try to create the most nutritious and appealing food that I can in my own home and when we are out in the world, they can make whatever choices they wish. I can see how this approach will most likely break down severely when 'out in the world' is a more frequent occurrence than it is currently with little ones. I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Today's breakfast, composed of strawberries, banana, cashews, and a little honey because I don't keep agave nectar on hand.

It was delicious.