Archive for February, 2011

Cheese and Ice Cream and Butter, oh my!

Shortly after my son was born, we discovered that he was intolerant to cow’s milk protein. That meant that for as long as I chose to nurse him, I would have to be completely milk free. Problem….No cheese, No ice cream, No butter, Oh my!

What would I eat?

What was left?

I quickly became an obsessive label reader searching for the hidden milk in my favorite products. If any of the following words appeared in the label, then it was out of my diet:

• ammonium caseinate
• calcium caseinate
• magnesium caseinate
• potassium caseinate
• sodium caseinate
• casein/caseinate
• rennet casein
• curds
• lactate
• lactose
• delactosed/demineralized whey
• lactoferrin
• lactoglobulin
• milk derivative/protein/fat
• modified milk ingredients
• hydrolyzed casein
• hydrolyzed milk protein
• lactalbumin
• lactalbumin phosphate
• whey
• whey protein concentrate

I carried a cheat sheet list of no-nos while shopping, checked online at such websites as www.godairyfree.org and just generally ate less processed food for fear that my son would break out into a rash with a distended, gassy belly! What I discovered while going through this process is that by cooking with fresh, locally, organically grown food and not eating out I felt better! I lost weight (a lot of weight!) and I was shaping the way my children would eat for the rest of their lives.

I am no longer nursing and I have begun to add dairy back into my diet, but only a little and very judiciously. I continue to keep processed foods out of my family’s diet as much as possible and am very happy with the results.

Next up: What my family actually eats now!

Grab an apple, steam those vegetables, and spread some hummus!

After 4 years of living in Florida I have finally found a Kula.

Sometime in November, a friend introduced me to IRB Yoga studio. She had not practiced yoga before, but was looking for something new and challenging. Three of my coworkers/employees/friends and I started going on a regular basis. I practice in a class every Sunday, but they practice as often as they can manage, thanks to the monthly unlimited pass. Since attending their first class in November, the three of them now practice yoga three or four days a week, sometimes taking two or three classes a day! Now that’s enthusiasm!

Next month my daughter will turn four…just in time for spring! To honor this special day, she is allowed to share treats with her classmates at preschool. After much thought I’ve decide to green up her birthday by providing each of her classmates with a seedling starter kit!

Each goody bag will contain a starter pot (cowpots.com has ingenious and affordable biodegradable poo pots), potting soil, radish seeds (small radishes will germinate in 3-5 days and can mature in 3 weeks) and instructions for getting those little hands dirty!

I am so excited to be “giving” spring a head start this year! Why not give it a try yourself?

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The following article was written for TheEcoDivas by a guest blogger and my friend, Mike “Green”wood.

The holidays are over. Snow blankets the ground and the frigid mid-January air is more ruthless chomp than nip. Just as I have for the last several years, I am spending much of my free time working on my garden.

Well, I’m not in my garden – not much anyway. I am sitting in my living room making calculations, drawing up plans, ordering seeds and supplies on-line and taking time to visit the local horticulture supply or hardware store. Having a garden changes your relationship to time and the seasons. Some believe that it brings us into a closer relationship with the natural world. Compared to a typical urban or sub-urban life, I have to agree. But the horticultural revolution that happened thousands of years ago presaged something far different – it was the first step on humanities’ long path to subjugating nature. Well, attempting to subjugate nature.

The hunter-gatherer moves from place to place, using the resources available and then moving on. The gardener takes a piece of the natural world and separates it, declaring it his own kingdom even building fences to keep others out or domesticate predators like wolves and cats to patrol his realm. I doubt our hunter-gatherer ancestors had ranges which they claimed as their own. It was the gardener who first built permanent settlements and walls. The gardener laid the foundation for civilization.

Many of us yearn to bridge that very divide. While few wish to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, we sense that something has been lost. We romanticize nature. We think dualistically about it: Nature is everything pure and innocent, while we are everything corrupt and debased. Alternatively, we view the natural world as brutal and unpredictable, and see our world as both reliable and just. We are alienated, not only from the natural world, but from a part of ourselves. In our psychosis we both glorify and vilify nature.

In the garden we confront the divide between humanity and nature at its foundation, a divide that extends even into our own being as “mind-body dualism.”  Gardening is a kind of time travel. We walk to the edge of that great divide and find that while it exists in our culture and psyches, nature does not recognize it. We can come to the beginning, when man was at the mercy of nature, seeming capricious and cruel yet beneficial and kind. But we bring to this place a power our ancestors lacked; we are in many ways only at natures’ mercy to the extent that we hold back this power. We can bring in great machines, chemicals, even enclosures of plastic, glass and steel while taking little notice of the seasons. We bring with us our modern mentality. Many of us do not often fear nature – and perhaps this is a good thing; but we often hold nature in contempt, an attitude I believe to be unjustified and even dangerous. Above all we survey nature and we believe we can do better.

Can we? Across the wide spectrum of gardening philosophy and practices there is a universal assumption that we can do better, from accelerating and augmenting natural processes to replacing those processes entirely with synthetic chemicals and machines. To assume we cannot improve on nature, at least for our own selfish benefit, is to abandon gardening entirely and become foragers. Even planting food bearing crops in the wilderness and then leaving them to themselves is an attempt at an “improvement.” Can we make such “improvements” respectfully, without contempt? Perhaps more important for our survival, can we make such improvements without being idiots?

How each of us negotiates the relationship between our world of artifice and the natural world determines how we garden – and gardening is an incredible opportunity for constant re-negotiation of that relationship. We encounter nature directly, which incurs choice between antagonism and partnership.

From year to year my gardening values don’t change much. On one hand, I want to grow the most productive, nutritious and flavorful crops as sustainably as possible, while being as cheap and lazy as I can get away with. On a more subtle level, I seek an honest communion with the natural world without the need or desire to pretend that it’s any more or less than what it is.

In a few weeks, I will be starting my habaneros, followed by peppers, tomatoes, then on to sprouting sweet potatoes . . . The frenzy of spring feels as if it’s almost upon me.  I couldn’t be happier!

The above photos are of Mike’s lovely garden.