Quinoa And...

I am noticing that a lot of our meals, particularly the ones that I throw together from whatever I have on hand in the fridge, are Quinoa And Something. I love quinoa - easy, versatile, yummy and packed with protein (listen to me, you'd think I work for the Quinoa Growers Association or something!). I also like watching it cook, and seeing the germ separate from the seed. And it can be sprouted - I am currently working on developing a recipe for Sprouted Quinoa Bread, which is turning out pretty well so far. From a local foods perspective it leaves something to be desired, as it does not grow easily in North America and is primarily cultivated in the warmer high-altitude climes of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. Even so, pound for pound I think it's a good choice.

Yesterday we ad Quinoa and Chard for dinner - yum! I sauteed one chopped onion with some garlic in canola oil, and then added finely chopped chard once the onions were soft. I cooked that for awhile, until the chard was wilted, and then added about two or three cups cooked quinoa, salt and pepper, and a pinch of sugar to counteract some of the bitterness of the chard. It warms a mother's heart to see her kids devouring leafy greens without complaint!

PS - Can you believe that Blogger doesn't have quinoa in their spell check dictionary???

Not a Toilet Paper Tube

On Monday we had our daytime meeting for the Holistic Moms Network, and the theme was REUSE, in honor of Earth Day. The idea was to just take stuff from around the house and see what we could make with it. The kids made all kinds of things - pretty boxes for their treasures, bracelets from cardboard, and, of course, monoculars from toilet paper tubes.

The inspiration for this activity was Antoinette Portis' books Not a Box and Not a Stick, which are our favorites around here. Bess especially likes them because the simple, repetitive text and minimalist drawings make it easy for her to "read" the book herself. I like how the cover of Not a Box is made of brown cardboard - like a box. Very clever! I've often thought that a really fun spin off of these books for older kids would be to just pick something, anything from around the house and make up your own book by thinking of as many uses for it as you can. You know, like Not a String, Not a Cup, Not a Chair, whatever. If you try it, let me know how it goes.

I give up!

I'm still not back to 100% (not really even 75%) so I vegged out in front of the television last night after the kids were asleep. I am starting to get into Planet Green TV, and watched a few episodes of Stuff Happens with Bill Nye (The Science Guy of my childhood).

I learned something I didn't know before. Maybe you did - that large scale hog farming is fueling the collapse of anchovy fisheries off the coast of Peru. Apparently, anchovies are considered a cheap and plentiful source of protein for pig food, so Peruvian anchovy fishermen (fisherpersons?) are netting them by the ton and shipping them off to Kansas or wherever pigs are intensively farmed. It is estimated that by the year 2050 there will be no more anchovies. Bad enough that we will soon have no more anchovies for pizza toppings and Caesar salad dressing - but penguins are on the brink of starvation because all their anchovies are being shipped to the hog troughs of the American Midwest. Not that I'm eating tons of factory farmed pork or bacon, but...that's just crazy. American pork consumption = starving Antarctic penguins? Crazy.

This reminded me of the True Price exercise that my friend Zoe Weil did during her MOGO talk at the Oasis Cafe here in Long Valley this past week. When we try to examine the true cost of the things we buy and use to ourselves, the environment, other people, and non-human animals, there are a lot of questions that we can never really answer. Was the shirt we're wearing today (for example) made by workers who were paid and treated fairly? Was the cotton grown sustainably? Did animals lose their homes so that land could be cleared to grow it? Is the dye used to color it toxic? Who knows?

Zoe's answer is to simply educate ourselves and bring our inquiry to bear when we make decisions. I agree, but I find that the more I bring my inquiry to the table, the more I find that there aren't a lot of great choices out there, or maybe it just takes a lot of work to identify them. I feel like it's always a compromise. Like the hog/anchovy thing - how could you ever know something like that? How could that ever even cross your mind? In a world as complex as ours, how can you ever really, truly grasp the full range of the consequences to the things you do? It's a little overwhelming, if you ask me.

I will be starting a Healthy Child, Healthy Planet study group at my house this week, and one of the readings in the first section is about a family who chose to not buy anything for one year, except consumables (like food and shampoo). The author even reused vacuum bags, opening them when they were full, emptying them, and stapling them closed again. I'm starting to think that isn't such a bad idea. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of MOGO, you know?

Natural Life

I have an article in the latest issue of Natural Life magazine outlining the principles of Humane Parenting. It doesn't seem to be online yet, but I can email a copy to anyone who is interested - or better yet, check out their website and subscribe to the magazine! It's pretty cool, it has a lot of articles about natural parenting, alternative education, and sustainable living - I always look forward to its arrival in my mailbox.

Our Newest Addition

Yes, still talking about laundry. What has my life come to? Actually, it's amazing how much you think about it when you can't do it easily - though our dryer did get fixed yesterday. That said, I currently have laundry drying on the fence anyway. Why waste a warm sunny day?

We decided to install a ceiling mounted laundry airer in our newly-renovated laundry room, for drying small loads of laundry or things that shouldn't go in the dryer. Unfortunately, I don't think outside drying is a good long-term solution for us. For one thing, the winter up here is LONG, not conducive to line-drying laundry. The other thing is that our house is surrounded by trees, which means 1. shade, 2. bird poop, and 3. pollen (which is not a great thing for my boys, both of whom have respiratory issues that are aggravated by allergens to varying degrees). So I think an indoor clothes line is the way to go for us. This one is on pulleys so I can lower it to put the clothes on, and then raise it to get it out of the way and make use of rising heat. So far, I LOVE IT!

And you can't see it in the picture, but I also sewed curtains for the laundry room myself. The hem isn't great, and I had to pull it out a few times on a couple of the curtains (I made three), but you have to start somewhere!

How about "Refuse"?

I have spent the last several days stuck in bed with a wicked sinus and middle ear infection which I mistook to be allergies until it was totally out of control. As a result, my plans for TV Turnoff Week were waylaid as I was desperate for ways to keep Bess occupied and quiet as I laid prone, unable to turn my head, moaning in pain (a slight exaggeration, but unfortunately not by much!).

Yesterday being Earth Day, naturally every children's program we watched was about "environmentalism" - recycling, turning off the lights when you leave a room, or turning off the water when you brush your teeth. Clearly, I don't expect any sort of examination of Deep Ecology on Nickelodeon. However, by the end of the day, if I heard one more mention of recycling I was going to FREAK OUT (my tolerance was pretty low).

Hey - recycling helps. It minimizes the need to manufacture or mine raw materials, and it keeps some trash out of landfills, particularly trash that does not readily decompose. Reduction and reuse helps too. That's all fine and well. But to teach children that they have fulfilled their obligation to the Earth, that they can call themselves "environmentalists", because they put their newspapers in the recycling bin is missing the boat. Big time.

Let's say that 100% of recyclable materials actually found their way to the recycling plant, which they don't. And let's also say, for the sake of argument, that 100% of these materials were used to make new products and packaging, which also does not happen. But even if that were true, recycling still uses energy - lots of it - which is probably not from renewable sources, and it still produces pollution - lots of it - which enters our air, land and water.

So I say, let's add a fourth R to the equation: Refuse. Refuse to believe the consumerist culture that tells you that it's okay to buy, buy, buy as long as you reuse and recycle when you can (or when it's convenient). Refuse to believe that the answer is that simple, and that the only thing required of us in order to "save the Earth" is to bring an extra can or two to the curb on garbage day. Refuse to participate, when you can, in the use of energy and resources by only taking what you need from the Earth and making the most efficient use of what you do take. Refuse to stay quiet, but instead speak up to your friends, neighbors, community members and legislators. Refuse to take anything at face value, but commit instead to thinking it through on your own. You'll be surprised at what you might find if you do.

An Ode to Laundry

Our dryer broke a week ago. With two small children, two adults, and four animals, this is not a small problem. I realize that people used to have two outfits - everyday and Sunday - but that's not how things are in our house. The laundry has been piling up waiting for the repair person to come.

This week I have learned how often we wash things that aren't really dirty simply because we can. No longer must we wait for a sunny day so that we can put things out to dry - now we simply throw clothes in the washer and then in the dryer, rain or shine.

The mountain of laundry was beginning to become overwhelming, and we have been informed that it will be at least another week before our dryer is repaired. We finally had a nice sunny day, so I decided to wash the clothes and hang it out over the fence to dry.

I will concede that it is not the most attractive yard adornment in the world, but I must say that there is something meditative about hanging out the clothes, then bringing it in. It reminds me of Zen Buddhist philosophy. There is also something fresh and invigorating about the smell of clothes dried outside (though the towels are a little crunchy). I am anxiously awaiting our next power bill to see how much we've saved during our involuntary dryer amnesty.

During my laundry meditation today, I began to think about how divorced we have become from the cycles of nature. We do our laundry no matter what the weather. We eat asparagus in November and apples in May. We no longer have any concept of what foods belong to what seasons, and are barely affected by the weather (except, perhaps, for our hair). The change in seasons is a time to rotate our wardrobes...and that's about it.

My husband commented about our use of solar energy to dry our clothes - so of course I felt the need to remind him that, on some level, it's all solar energy. It's just that some forms are more efficient than others. Oil was once solar energy that was captured by plants which were eaten by animals who died and decomposed over millennia and became fuel which was then burned to produce the energy we use to run our dryer (in addition to pollution as the carbon is re-released into the atmosphere). On second thought, the term "solar energy" is probably a misnomer, or at least a misleading term.

I am becoming pretty attached to my laundry meditation time already. It may be time to install a clothesline.

Just a Quote for Today

"The mothers of the world hold the key to the healing of our wounded planet." - Deepak Chopra

When BEARS (?) Attack

Yesterday morning John was watching the news, and I just caught a glimpse of one of the "human interest" stories at the end. I didn't hear the commentary, just saw the footage and the headline at the bottom: "Polar Bear Attacks Human".

This was not a polar bear in the Arctic who, starving, raided a research camp looking for food. No, this was an animal who lived in a zoo and attacked a person who was in his enclosure. It was not clear from what I saw whether this was a keeper or a patron who somehow ended up with the bear, but either way, I'd have to say that it is not a very good idea to get yourself into that sort of situation. After all, if I were a wild animal who was trapped in a completely unnatural enclosure, unable to fulfill my natural drives, and probably pretty uncomfortable given that I am designed to live in a climate where temperatures can reach fifty degrees below zero or colder - I doubt I'd be all that inclined towards hospitality myself.

I had to wonder - who's attacking who here?

Home Grown

Yesterday I spent much of the day making bread and cheese from flour and milk. A few years ago, you would have never caught me doing that. In fact, I rarely touched a vegetable if it wasn't in a can or from the freezer case. But these days, there is a lot of fresh food in my house, and things are made from scratch if possible.

Why the change? As my husband often wonders, why bother taking the time to peel, boil, and mill apples when I could just as easily, or more easily, buy applesauce at the store already made? Why would I boil the milk, add the starter, and strain the cheese by hand when it would be much faster to just throw it in our grocery cart?

Well, I can't say that I always choose homemade over convenient, because I don't. Sometimes I don't have the time, energy, skills or inclination to do things myself. But when I do, I like to make things at home. There are many reasons for this. One is that it is often much less expensive to do it that way, particularly as it relates to my daughter's many allergies and food sensitivities. Another is that I prefer throwing apple peels in the compost, knowing that they'll someday feed my garden, as opposed to consuming the energy and packaging that is required to get the same product at the store.

But mostly, it's because I like doing it myself. There is something about the satisfaction of eating something, knowing that you made it with your own hands. Food tastes better when you know where the ingredients came from and what they looked like before. The exhaustion felt at the end of a day of hard work is satisfying. I think it is important to know, in our culture of consumerism and specialization, what it takes to make the world tick.

On the New York Times' Motherlode blog, Lisa Belkin interviewed Carl Honore about Slow Parenting. It's worth a read. He talks about how Slow does not mean at a snail's pace - it simply means that you give tasks the time they deserve to be completed properly. Instead of rushing through life in the name of efficiency, people who embrace the ethic of Slow take the time to enjoy the things they do, and do them well.