Azure Standard Order Next Week

I'm going to place my first Azure Standard order next week, for delivery on Thursday afternoon. If you would like to join my order and will be available to come pick up your items by 9pm Thursday evening, please let me know. I'll submit my order sometime Tuesday, so get in touch with me by Monday.

For Years to Come?

This afternoon, Annabel and I got to talking about her namesake, my paternal grandmother, Anna Bell Doll Musser. I have a distinct memory of when I learned Granny's full name. She had a plate commemorating her and Pop Pop's 50th anniversary on a table in her living room, inscribed with her maiden name and Pop's name and their wedding date. I remember thinking that her name was the most beautiful name of any real person that I'd ever known and that Anna Bell Doll seemed an incongruously delicate and girly name for my sturdy, sensible Granny. Somehow, I loved her even more for having this wonderful name. From the moment I knew I was pregnant with Annabel, I knew she would be a girl and early on, before the ultrasound lab tech confirmed for me what I already knew, I also had decided (after consulting Mike, of course) what what my baby girl's name would be. We never considered any other names for her...had she come out a boy, he would have likely spent his first several weeks of life on the outside without a permanent name. She would be Annabel. Pronounced AH-na-bel, with the sensible German spelling rather than the fanciful French spelling, as Mike put it.

So, I was telling Annabel some of this and she wanted to see some pictures of Granny . I have some prints around, but I knew my dad has many old photos up on his web site. I didn't realize the treasure he had put up there and so was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon this page of pictures of Musser Farm, in Manchester, Pennsylvania, circa 1942-43.

A little background about the pictures. Sometime in the early 1940s, Christian B. Musser (aka Pop Pop), decided to try contour plowing his small (acreage, Dad?) farm. The US Soil Conservation Service helped Pop figure out how to go from traditional straight furrow cultivation to contour farming and the USDA, bless 'em, filmed the process over a year long period, in an effort to create a bit of pro-contour-plowing propaganda to convince other farmers of the ease and benefits of contour farming. Contour plowing prevents soil erosion and after millions of acres of farmland lost top soil during the 1930s, the USDA began actively promoting the method through the SCS.

I've watched this short film, entitled For Years to Come, many times over the years and am always utterly fascinated watching my grandparents, uncles, and aunts, all so young, smiling shyly as the camera trains on them picking peaches, carrying baskets of eggs or big jars full of summer's bounty up from the cellar. To see these people, whom I have only known in person as "old," animated in the spring of life is such a gift. To see the Musser Farm, now in its demise with my Uncle Paul (who bought the farm my grandparents in the 1960s) turning 80 this year and none of his kids taking it over, in its glorious, beautiful heyday, pleases me to no end. I never knew the farm with such a variety of crops and animals--pastured no less! I spent weeks there every summer as a child, chasing ducks, helping my Aunt Helen sort eggs, and just generally wandering around and exploring. Many of my happiest childhood memories come from that place.

Anyway, I stumbled on this trove of stills from the film on my dad's site and as I sat there looking at these pictures with my daughter, marveling at the primitive yet ingenious tools they used and the abundant beautiful crops they grew, I couldn't help but wonder about their farming practices. Were they organic? Did they compost? My dad has often commented on the rich dark soil we have here at our place and wistfully noted that Pop Pop would marvel at my soil. What would Pop Pop think of my pathetic garden? Maybe he'd be impressed with my asparagus and artichokes.

I think of Granny everytime I can, with her spectacular bursting-at-the-seams pantry. I wish I understood its organization. It seems somewhat random, but I can't help but think there must have been some reason to it. Did she can small batches and just add jars wherever she had space? Did she put jars in the order she wanted them taken back out? Was life just so unhurried then that she didn't need some high level of organization to keep things from getting chaotic? Oh, Granny, I have so many questions for you.

Please excuse me for going on and on about this. (Well, I suppose I shouldn't have to beg your indulgence. This is my blog afterall. I can go on and on if I want to, right?) I'm rather attached to those people and that farm. I miss them all terribly, especially my grandparents. For years I have fantasized about taking over the farm myself, transitioning it to organic, bringing animals back on the land. I know I'll never live on the East Coast again and I'm too old and out-of-shape to take up farming. Unfortunately, with no one in the family to pass the farm on to and the property being worth so much now, it seems unlikely that anyone wanting to farm could afford to buy this valuable bit of land and its lovely old buildings, now surrounded by suburban development and industrial parks.

I've been sick and down for a couple days...we just learned that one friend has bone cancer and a neighbor has leukemia, another friend's company is going out of business, someone stole the catalytic converter off our truck, and my husband's job remains in jeopardy, too. I'm completely wallowing and now find myself falling even further into my pit o' despair imagining Musser Farm being no more. Could someone please send me some uplifting news?

Birthday Thoughts on Being the Change

Today is my 41st birthday! I'm so glad to find myself still growing and learning. You may already know I am hosting Monique Dupre's Introduction to Sustainable Living on a Budget workshop at my home in NE Portland on July 21st at 7pm. The price for workshops goes up to $35 on June 1st, so register soon! Come learn and grow with us!

One of my mantras these days is Progress Not Perfection. I've been making a lot of the incremental changes toward sustainable living for a while...years in fact. I first became aware of and began consuming organic food in college during the late 1980s, but the changes I made then were small. Three years ago, when my oldest was two I began making more intentional and dramatic changes in my family's diet and home life.

• It started when I removed all the commercially prepared salad dressings from the refrigerator (though we still have a vast collection of other condiments...at least seven varieties of mustard and several chutneys and curry pastes). I also began to consciously eschew most processed foods--especially those containing any of the many additives my grandmother wouldn't have found in her kitchen--instead relying more seasonal, local, and organic food. I cleansed our pantry of all the processed foods I no longer felt good about feeding to my family.
  
• To maintain our new at-home eating lifestyle after the birth of our son two years ago, I began cooking and freezing batches of stews, soups, and sauces and preparing "freezer marinades" in earnest during the last month or two of my pregnancy.
  
• Soon after Luc was born, friends introduced me to Nourishing Traditions and Feeding the Whole Family, and I started cooking with more whole grains and legumes.
  
• A year ago, I began a "buy nothing new year," which only lasted six months, but I did replace using paper napkins and towels with cloth equivalents. At the same time, I began purging our home of junky toys and anything that I no longer found beautiful or useful. These early de-cluttering efforts impacted my shopping habits and I now think twice before buying anything. I still find myself shopping for entertainment or when I'm anxious, but more than once I have walked away from a shopping cart full of impulses when I realized what I was doing.
  
• In August 2007, I began baking all our family's bread and bagels every week. I was too busy one week before Christmas and another time right before Annabel's birthday in April, but otherwise I've been amazed at how easily I have integrated bread-making into our life. It wasn't easy at first and I baked a lot of loaves that didn't rise properly, but now I consistently make decent bread.
  
• For the last several months I have been learning about long term food storage, making cheese, and raw food fermentation, though I haven't begun to put what I've learned into practice, but for a batch of yogurt cheese and quark.
• I continue with my de-cluttering efforts throughout the house and I donate, freecycle, sell, or recycle as much as possible. I am learning more and more ways to keep my "trash" out of the waste stream.
  
• I have also been de-cluttering my calendar, keeping our family's outside commitments to a minimum. This is still hard and I find myself over-committed occasionally, but I am getting better at saying "no" to requests for my time--even when an activity sounds fun or interesting. My husband and I now share a Google calendar which helps us keep our schedules synched. Annabel just has two scheduled activities each week, outdoor school Friday mornings and German school Saturday mornings, instead of the five she had a year ago. She still sees at least one friend a week during my weekly childcare swap and we inevitably arrange one other playdate or outing every week. I worry less, though about getting her "socialized" by other kids and spend more time with her one-on-one.
  
• Last week I made another step on the path and ordered a whole Oregon grass-fed steer to share with a group of friends. As I mentioned in a previous post, we've reduced our meat consumption by half over the last few months.
  
• After a hiccup in the plan to drink raw milk from a Sequim, Washington, dairy, I picked up a gallon late Wednesday evening and hope to have better luck with persuading Annabel to enjoy it this time. She wants to make cheese with me and I think we'll make some raw milk mozzarella on Tuesday.
• I'm currently now working on my first Azure Standard order. I've been diligently comparing prices with WinCo, Bob's Red Mill, and New Seasons, and Azure Standard has significantly better prices on everything. It's like Costco for those of us who appreciate whole organic foods, but they deliver.
  

I have listed all these changes not to brag--not at all--but to demonstrate that these changes take time. I know some people are able to incorporate them more quickly than we have. I still don't have the gardening thing down, despite over six years of trying. It's one of my great frustrations--I come from Pennsylvania Dutch farm stock, afterall! We still eat out more than I would like. Each of these changes has come with some failures and frustrations (bread baking day was NOT as happy time here the first few weeks I tried to experiment with using whole grains, for example).

Success with these changes, I have found, is finding a system that works, attaching the new habits to old ones, assessing what's working and what isn't, tweaking the system, and trying anew. It took me six months of baking bread and making bagels separately every week to figure out that I could bake bread and make bagel dough on the same day (the bagel dough ferments overnight in the fridge). Now, I only have to pull out all my flours and grains and wash my bread mixer once a week. Duh! I can't believe it took me so long to figure that out! I'm sure there will be some issues with this big order of beef and my first few orders from Azure Standard, but I'm also sure I'll figure out ways to make it all work for our family.

I spent my 20s and 30s being an activist but now I find myself more satisfied with making changes at home rather than trying to change the rest of the world. I feel like that's all that I can do these days and maybe that's not enough, but at the same time, I do believe I'm doing exactly what I should be doing. Afterall, I have the next generation watching what I do, very intently!

Calculations and Ruminations of All That Is Grass-Fed

After weeks of research, mulling, querying, and more mulling, I have figured out where to get our meat for the coming year. I decided to buy a quarter of beef and a side of pork from Deck Family Farm near Junction City, located west of Eugene. I hope to go in with friends on those purchases and now just need to get confirmation and deposits from all the people who said, "Yeah, great idea!" when I suggested getting shares of a steer and hog. I'll also be getting a lamb from local writer and homesteader Mary Rosenblum and I just ordered six chickens from Rebecca, who organized a large order of roasters from Deo Volente Farm near Mulino. Later in the year, I'll order a turkey from the Deck family.

When I last wrote about finding pastured local meat, I was still not sure how much of everything I should order. Figuring out how much of a steer our family is likely to eat within a year led me to deciding to make some fairly radical (for us) changes to our eating habits. Usually, we eat meat at least once a day, at dinner time. Lunch often includes meat too, though breakfast rarely does. I know eating so much meat is not sustainable, both in terms of our food budget and planetary resources. I also found trying to calculate our annual meat consumption overly taxing and decided it would be easier to reduce and simplify--my mantra with just about everything these days. So out of both altruism and laziness, I decided to limit myself to cooking meat for the family to just once a week. For about six weeks now, I've been doing just that, cooking a rump roast, pork loin, or whole chicken at the beginning of the week and then using the meat variously--in sandwiches, soups, salads--throughout the week. This has been working out well for us. We're eating more eggs and legumes and while I haven't been keeping any tallies, it seems like I'm spending less on food lately at the same time everyone else seems to be complaining about spending more.

Here is how I arrived at the various amounts of meat to order for our family for a year. The typical steer yields about 195 pounds of meat per side, roughly 65 pounds of steaks, 65 pounds of roasts, and 65 pounds of ground beef. Half that amount, 97 pounds, will more than suffice for our family for a year. That's about five pounds of roasts or steaks and 3 pounds of ground per month. Currently, average American beef consumption is about 60 pounds per year. I estimate that our kids each eat about one-sixth of whatever meat we cook and that my husband and I eat one-third each. If we limit our beef consumption to what we eat at home, my husband and I will eat half as much beef as the average American over the next year.

The typical whole hog yields about 144 pounds of meat, including three pounds of feet, five pounds of head, and 23 pounds of back fat. So, minus the that stuff we wouldn't eat, a side of pork would have about 60 pounds of meat that we would eat. If we again assume Mike and I would each eat a third of that total, our annual pork consumption would be less than half the current American average.

Whole roasted chicken is such a favorite at our house and again, we can feast on the remains for the whole week. I brine the bird overnight, air-dry it in the fridge all day, put butter mixed with salt and pepper beneath the skin, fill the cavity with garlic and a quartered lemon or orange, then roast at 500 degrees for an hour or so (usually less). Although any chicken cooked with this method will yield crispy skin and succulent flesh, I can really taste the difference between pastured chicken and conventionally raised birds. Even the organic, "free-range" chicken from New Seasons isn't as tasty as the pastured ones we've gotten from Abundant Life Farm.

We get a dozen or two eggs a week from my friend Chrissy and her in-laws and I've decided to go back to getting raw milk from the Portland Real Milk network. I stopped getting it for a month or so because Annabel says she doesn't like it, but when I pick up our order next week, I'm going to put it in a container from the store and see if she notices the difference. I think her reaction wasn't to the taste so much as the unfamiliar container and a wee bit of contrariness for its own sake. Some days, whatever I like, she does not, and such is the nature of five-year-old girls.

That's all on the pastured meat, dairy and egg front! I'm so pleased to be saying goodbye to mystery meat and hello to real, live farmers and their fantastic offerings.

Joys of Decluttering

Wow! I have been decluttering our bedroom for a week or so and after a big push yesterday to get the closet cleared of everything that I didn't want in there* while my kids were at a friend's for our weekly childcare swap, I am really beginning to enjoy the benefits of a less cluttered space.

This morning, I let Annabel look through my closet--one of the first times I've ever allowed her to because prior to this week, it had been so full I didn't dare let any curious child even peek inside for fear of the mess that would get made, the purposely hidden (yet forgotten) items that would get found, and so forth. All day, I have felt a small wave of relaxation every time I saw the warm glow of the wood surface of my dresser, no longer covered with dust or piled high with my children's out-of-season or outgrown clothing, digital camera, tape gun, ugly hair ties, and broken toys, but displaying a small collection of pretty containers and momentos. I found myself putting things away in the closet, because I knew I wouldn't have to see grocery bags of outgrown children and toys, staged for delivery to the consignment store or shelter and the boxes of unsorted items from the all areas of the house, hidden there during some rushed clean-up before a party.

I realized today that opening that closet always reminded me of this seemingly insurmountable task of organizing my whole house. Recently, I decided to break down the job of organizing my whole house into manageable tasks and have managed to complete the first major one on time and under budget. There are only five rooms upstairs and five rooms in the basement: master bedroom, Annabel's (and someday Luc's as well) room, bathroom, kitchen, living/dining room are up and Mike's office, the laundry, utility room, craft/guest room, and second bathroom are down. I decided to attend to some major task in each room, plus the hallway, front entrance, patio, carport, and sheds, every season for the next year. For example, in both the bedrooms, I'll de-clutter the closets in the spring, underbed storage in the summer, prepare outgrown and unwanted warm season clothes for consignment and donation in the fall, and de-clutter the dressers in the winter. As another example, in the kitchen, I'll de-clutter the base cabinets, the island, and the fridge this spring, the upper cabinets, counters, and freezer in the summer, the wine cabinet and built-in this fall. By winter all areas of the kitchen will have been de-cluttered and I'll just have ongoing maintenance de-cluttering and cleaning to do.

This evening, I was tossing a ball down the hallway for the kids in some game Annabel made up for us and realized that I was not worried about them running into my bedroom and knocking over piles of clutter and laundry in baskets or tripping over stray shoes. I think this is where serenity comes from--knowing that I don't have to worry about things getting broken, lost, and strewn about or try to shove aside that nagging sensation of undone work. For me, this is the goal of de-cluttering. It's serenity.

Funny thing is, after all this work in my bedroom, I still cannot find my favorite pair of pants. I don't remember where or when I last wore them, but they've been missing for over a week now and I've done the laundry twice since. My house is more organized than at any time since I moved here--particularly my bedroom, where most of my other garb spends its time when its not on my body and to a lesser extent our laundry room, where it usually spends the rest of its time off. Where in the world are my brown velour pants?

* There is still excess, unwanted, never-t0-be-worn-again clothes in our closet, including one large plastic shoebox of neckties, at least half-a-dozen ill-fitting dress shirts with ring-around-the-collar, and some ugly sweaters, which should not be hanging in the closet, but laying in someone's (already overfull) dresser or underbed storage. Those neckties, shirts, and sweaters are not mine.

Some Kids Listen

"Some kids clean up their rooms and listen. Most kids don't."

--Annabel, after getting caught sticking her fingers in the jam jar this morning.

New Sources for Meat & Dairy

I've longed wished to buy our meat and dairy direct from farmers. When I was a child, my family bought much of our meat from my uncle, who by then owned the family farm my dad grew up on. Annually, we would purchase a side of a beef, a whole pig, and a turkey or two. It was so nice then to go to our deep freeze and get meat out for dinner. Having been there, working alongside my grandparents and parents, while they butchered our pig every year (steers were butchered off the farm), I knew exactly where our meat came from at an early age.

While I still appreciate the convenience and cost benefit of purchasing meat in bulk, more importantly, I want to know that the animals I eat lived well and were harvested humanely, that the milk my children drink is pure and made by healthy, grass-eating cows. I want to pay the real cost of real food and I want to support small family farms. I have been intimidated, however, by the prospect of coping with a side of beef and put off by the inconvenience of driving to the country every week to buy milk. Reading In Defense of Food finally inspired me to get over my objections. Pollan comes across as more hopeful in his latest tome than he did in The Omnivore's Dilemma, reminding us that it is easier than it's been in half a century for regular people to find real food.

I know he's right. I realized recently that I've been striving to eat organic and local for 20 years, since my first visit to an erstwhile farmers market, held on Saturdays in some in Beltsville, Maryland, warehouse. Things are so different today, with places like Wal-Mart and Whole Foods selling organic (though not necessarily local or, despite the latter's moniker, whole) food. More importantly, the Internet has made it possible for those living far from farms to find and connect with farmers and ranchers directly, through sites like Eat Wild and Real Milk. As much as I enjoy the shopping experience at New Seasons, when it comes down to it, I prefer to buy food from places like Rossi's (family farm with a retail "barn" just a mile from my house that sadly went out of business a year or so ago) or Growers Outlet (another family-owned retailer of local produce...when it's in season, anyway). I know when I shop at those places, more of my food dollar is going to the people who grew the food and less of it is going to marketers and middlemen and building fancy stores full of irresistibly merchandised, utterly superfluous stuff. And while I can buy local produce at Growers or at our neighborhood's new farmers market and even grow much of our own, meat, eggs, and dairy are a different story.

Since I am chomping at the bit to make my own cheese, I decided to start with getting a new source for dairy, since I had been buying ultra-pasteurized Organic Valley milk at Winco, which is no good for making cheese. Initially, I just wanted to find a local farmer selling milk from pastured cows that was not ultra-pasteurized. I had heard of Noris Dairy years ago, from Lynn Siprelle, that delivers to homes in Portland. Their prices are competitive with the price of organic milk in the grocery store, and for a few days, I thought I had found the answer. The dumbest thing prevented me from ordering from them and, fortuitously, led me to another path. We don't have a fax machine and that seems to be the only way the dairy takes orders. I called and left a couple messages, hoping to just place my order by phone. After waiting a few days for a call back, I lost my patience and and I decided to try another source. The Campaign for Real Milk listing of raw milk dairies led me to Real Milk PDX, a group that gets milk delivered from Dungeness Valley Creamery, a Sequim, Washington, raw milk dairy. For once, my impatience paid off. I picked up our first gallon of raw milk last Wednesday--at the home of an acquaintance in NE Portland who happens to be one of the people who drives to Vancouver where the dairy delivers its milk--and have been raving about it to anyone who will listen since. It's so delicious--I drank three glasses of milk in 12 hours! I have to admit, I was a little concerned at first about raw milk, but having learned more, I now feel convinced that raw milk from grass-fed cows is safer and healthier than pasteurized milk from grain-fed cows.

That same Wednesday evening, I attended the second meeting of a group of home cheese makers at Foster & Dobbs. While discussing milk sources with some people there, I got into a conversation with another woman who had just picked up her raw milk, from the same home where I picked up ours. She raved about how raw milk cured her allergies after just three weeks. Well, that was all I needed to hear. No more allergies! I've been trying to drink a little bit everyday--not that I mind drinking it, but it's a new habit to establish. So, we'll see if it helps with my allergies. Wouldn't that be incredible? Anyway, I ordered rennet, cultures, molds, etc., from New England Cheesemaking Supply last week and hope to report the results of my first cheesemaking experiences soon.

As far as finding local sources for the rest of our animal related food: We're getting about half of our eggs right now from my friend Chrissy, who has three chickens and is presently overwhelmed with eggs. I feel so lucky to have a ready source of local eggs! Next year, I would like to get our own chickens, fulfilling a dream I've had since I first heard about urban chickens in 2001. (I gave up on this particular fantasy with the birth of my daughter, but now I know so many families with young children and chickens that I can see it's doable.) I am still researching sources for meat. One of the big questions I have had about buying a side of beef is how much of everything is there? It's one thing to say that the hanging weight of a half a beef (that is, the weight of half a steer carcass, before being trimmed of fat and bones) is about 300 pounds, but just how many rib eyes come with that? I learned here that a side of beef includes approximately 25% waste, 25% ground beef and stew meat, 25% steaks, and 25% roasts. I'm pretty sure we won't eat 225 pound of beef in a year, even if it was all rib eyes. I asked Chrissy if she'd be interested in going in with us on a side and I'm excited that she'll be joining me this new venture! Now we just have to figure out just exactly where to get our beef. And our pork, lamb, chicken, and turkey.

In my next post, I will relate my new meal-planning strategy, based on the calculations I started doing as I tried to figure out how much meat we should buy.

Our Weekly Bread

I make bread once a week now, usually Tuesday or Wednesday. Pictured above is yesterday's production, which turned out pretty good despite this week's "whoops," forgetting to add two cups of water until I'd almost finished adding all the flour. (There's a whoops almost every week, some make me cus more than others. I got through yesterday's whoops cus-free, though it did get kinda messy.) I make enough dough for four sandwich loaves, but I only have two loaf pans. I make two sandwich loaves (each with two pounds of dough--yes, I weigh it!) and then get creative with the rest. My husband like hoagie-style rolls, so I usually make a couple of those for him. I like bread with melted cheddar cheese, celery, sesame, and poppy seeds, so I make a couple "cheesy sticks" for me. Sometimes, I make a braided loaf, to take with us to our friend's weekly potluck or to give to a neighbor. If we're going to have young friends over that day, I'll make pretzels for the kids to enjoy. Lately, I've been experimented with crackers...I roll out the dough as thin as I can, sprinkle it with kosher salt, cut it into squares with a pizza cutter, and bake 'til golden.

Annabel and Luc don't get interested in what I'm doing until it's time to shape the risen dough. I give them both a small amount of dough, a big pinch of flour, they get out their rolling pins and do what kids do with dough. The little ball of bread in the far left of the picture above is Luc's handiwork. I don't know what happened to Annabel's piece of dough. Here's my current recipe for multigrain bread:

5 cups warm water
2 tablespoons yeast
2 tablespoons evaporated cane juice or sugar
2 tablespoons sea salt
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup vital wheat gluten
1 cup 10-grain cereal
2 cups whole wheat flour
8 cups unbleached bread flour

Sprinkle yeast and pinch of sugar in one cup of water. Whisk together and allow to proof while you get the rest of the ingredients measured. Mix wheat gluten, 10 grain cereal, whole wheat flour and 2 cups unbleached flour in a bowl. Put yeast mixture, remaining 4 cups of water, sugar, and butter into mixing bowl with dough hook. Add flour mixture to mixing bowl and mix until incorporated. In the bowl you used to mix the flours together (which should now be empty), mix the remaining 6 cups of flour with the salt. Begin adding this flour and salt mixture to the mixing bowl 1 cup at a time, waiting until flour is incorporated before adding the next cup. Continue to mix until the surface of the dough is smooth--no more than 10 minutes total mixing time or the bread will become over-kneaded. If you feel unsure about things at this stage, take the dough out and finish kneading by hand.

Put kneaded dough in a large bowl. Note the size of the dough ball. Cover with a damp dish cloth, piece of plastic wrap or wax paper. Set bowl in a draft free spot and allow to rise until doubled in size, about one hour, depending on the temperature. Gently punch dough down and divide into whatever size batches you want to bake. As I mentioned, I bake two-pound sandwich loaves. If using a loaf pan, butter pan before you begin shaping the dough. If you will be baking on a sheet pan, cover the pan with parchment paper (I use Beyond Gourmet Unbleached Parchment Paper, which I am able to reuse multiple times for baking bread).

Shape dough and let rise again for 45 minutes, until doubled. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 25-35 minutes, until crust is golden brown. If you feel unsure, stick a thermometer in the underside of your loaf. This bread is done when the center is 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Put bread on a rack to cool. I store mine in plastic bags (which I reuse, over and over again, of course). I freeze one loaf and find it is perfectly good a few days later when thawed.

I wish I could address dough shaping now, but I've run out of time. It's an important aspect of making good bread and shouldn't be overlooked. I will try to take pictures as I shape my dough next week.

Spring's the Thing

OH, thank the gods it is almost spring! Between my emotional state most of the winter (that would be anti-social, depressed, and uh, let's just call it moody...Mike probably has another name for it) and the kids' cabin fever, it was starting to become rather stifling indoors. After two years of not having much of a garden, I'm especially excited to be getting out and working in the garden. We didn't put in much in 2006 because with Luc being a newborn (oh, and me getting all caught up in breastfeeding activism), I wasn't up to planning and planting. (I do all that, Mike does the weeding, grass eradication, bed prep, compost turning, and well, lots else.) Last year, our newly toddling number one son constantly ran out into the street, making it next to impossible to get any work done. This year, he's only heading for the street 43% of the time, and usually there's some impetus, like a neighbor outside or someone walking their dog, that gives me a heads-up that he's about to make a run for it. He and his big sister have actually been somewhat helpful in the garden, though never for long.

So, we've gotten a fair amount of work done outside in the last couple weeks, though I am still feeling a bit behind. What gardener doesn't? We've cleared last fall's leaves out of the bed, spread lime (yes, I know, I shoulda done that in the fall, but it's done now, so give me some slack), thoroughly weeded the asparagus bed and covered it with steer manure. Two weeks ago, I planted peas, carrots, and radishes. I staked the peas with branches that fell from the sycamore in our front yard and am pleased with how my little branches look "planted" in the freshly sown bed. This is the first time I've been satisfied aesthetically with a staking method, though we'll have to wait and see how well it works in practice. Mike has also begun working on the grass that constantly encroaches into the beds. His plan is to cover the alleys between the garden beds with cardboard and cover that with wood chips from our yard. You can see where we've already got one alley covered in the picture above.

The radishes we planted began to peek out a few days ago, though I couldn't get a good picture of them. This week, I want to plant a row of Rose Finn Apple potatoes outside and get tomato seeds started inside. Rose Finn is our family's favorite potato, a fingerling that has excellent flavor and stays firm when boiled--perfect for potato salad. We're going to try growing from potatoes we dug up from the garden last year (which grew as "volunteers" from potatoes left behind when we last planted them in 2006). I also plan to pick up another couple rhubarb plants at the nursery when I get tomato seeds. And there's a daphne I bought last year blooming in its pot that really deserves to be planted forthwith! So much to do and I always feel like we have to make the most of every not-pouring-rain day we have in February and March. The last few weeks have been remarkably dry, though of course, Mike or I had to get sick during some of the best days we've had for gardening. Oh well. We're still ahead of where we were this time last year.

One last thing. Notice the sign in the picture? I just found out last week that Parkrose is getting a farmers market this year! Hoo-ray!

Crafty, or Just Crazy?

So, in the last six months or so, I have tried out several new crafts and some have become bad habits.

• Waldorf doll making--I made five dolls as Christmas gifts for my kids, niece and nephews. Here's the one I made for Annabel. I also made several small (3" and 4" tall) dolls as angel ornaments. I want to make one of these for Abba's birthday.
  
• Wee Folks doll making--Never finished any, didn't like wrapping embroidery floss around pipe cleaners so much. Also, these dolls don't stand on their own and that annoys me. (Yes, for an additional $2.50, one can buy wooden feet that would help them stay upright, but I'd already lost interest.)
  
• Needle felting--OMG I love this! So sculptural! I have made two very respectable hummingbirds (one went to my dad for his birthday, the other with go to my mother-in-law for hers), a lovely robin, with nest and eggs, some Easter eggs, and itty-bitty chicken eggs for a small chicken I sewed with wool felt.
• Hand piecing--I am currently working on a doll quilt. I enjoy this--it goes a lot more quickly than I would have thought and is much more portable than machine piecing.
• Embroidery--I took a class a couple weeks ago and found a lot of inspiration in some Japanese embroidery books the instructor brought for us to look through. I subsequently went to Uwajimaya with my friend Chrissy for the sole purpose of buying Japanese embroidery books. Found one I especially like...it's called Needle Work and has designs for herbs and flowers and I just love it. Deciphering books written entirely in Japanese has been interesting, to say the least. Now I want to take up silk ribbon embroidery as well.
• Finally, last Saturday I took a "make a pioneer era dress in a day" class at Newell House with master dress maker Kim Demlow, owner of Lavender's Green. Soon, I'll be able to volunteer at Champoeg Park's living history events.

I feel conflicted about all these new crafts. I'm enjoying them, but feel I should focus on one, say for more than a week at a time? There's a part of me that feels like I am making up for lost time, learning all these skills now, when I "should" have learned to embroider, hand sew, and make simple dresses as a child or adolescent. In fact, I did learn to embroider when I was younger, but as I recall, I gave up in frustration over French knots.

Well, I am forced to focus on the dress making for now. We are supposed to get as much done as we can before the group meets again on March 22nd for the second and last class. I hope to at least get my fabric cut out and determine if the bodice will fit me correctly (there's a question as to whether the sleeves will fit my, ugh, flabby arms). After that, I will need to get working on Abba's doll, if I'm going to finish it by her birthday. Oh, and she'll want a dress like mine the moment she sees me in it.

Snack Attack!

Healthy, minimally processed snack ideas came up somewhere recently (I tried to recall where, but alas, I cannot). I no longer buy packaged snack foods, except for occasional bags of locally made tortilla chips and boxes of graham crackers (which I am determined to make at home...I even have the right flour). Right now, there are no packaged snacks in our house. Wow. I had to think about that for a minute--I hadn't realized how completely we have dropped the habit. I buy nuts, seeds, dried fruit in bulk. When the kids come to me wanting a snack on the run, I usually give them a bowl of dried fruit and nuts. Lucasaurus likes pretzels, too, and I buy those in bulk as well.

We make "Sweetie Pies," little granola cookies baked in the bottom of a muffin tin, so they're kinda pie-shaped. These are messy but fun to make with the kids, as they can smoosh the butter, oats, sugar, honey and mix-ins like dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, and coconut, together in a bowl.

Another delicious and healthy snack we enjoy is fruit salad with yogurt and honey. It takes a few minutes make, but we've developed a bit of an afternoon ritual around it. This time of year, we indulge in citrus and other "fruits from afar" so fruit salad is oranges, baby bananas, kiwi, plus local apples, local walnuts (cracking them is part of the ritual), local honey, and Nancy's whole milk yogurt.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are a daily part of the kids' diet. These days, they're eating oranges and apples. They also like peanut butter on celery, which was one of my favorites as a kid and something I find helps me get through those afternoons when I'm feeling peckish. I also stopped buying those "baby" carrots a while back and now just make carrot sticks whenever we need them. I store them in a glass container with a little water to keep them crisp, though that's probably not necessary as they're eaten within a day or so.

Recently, we tried peanut butter on toast with dried apples. As I kid, I use to top peanut butter on toast with marshmallows, and I swear, those dried apples tasted far better than marshmallows! Also, I made crackers during last week's bread-baking session. They turned out okay--a little tougher than I expected, I think I should not have cooked them as long as I did--but they were still delicious when spread with cream cheese. I'm going to continue experimenting with those and also make some graham crackers soon.

Snacks are more of a sit-down affair than they use to be. I still allow a little grazing, but I try to have one "formal" snack time a day. It's nice to sit at the little table with the kids have short and easy dining experience with them.

Locavoracious

I have a number of wishes when I reach for food in the supermarket (rarely), natural foods market (occasionally), locally owned and operated discount food chain (bimonthly), year-round or seasonal farmers' market (weekly). In no particular order, I wish for quality, locally grown/harvested, minimal processing/packaging, freshness, fair price (that is, fair to my family's budget and fair to producers). Here's how I handle the juggling match currently:

From WinCo

• bulk dried apricots, cranberries, apples, and raisins
• bulk flours, sugar and cereals for baking (I believe much of these come from Bob's Red Mill)
  
• Organic Valley milk
• Tillamook cheddar cheese
• Nancy's whole milk yogurt
• store brand cream cheese
  
• mozzarella, fontina, asiago, parmesan from who knows where
• canned tomatoes, tomato juice
  
• beef bottom round (roast for sandwich meat)
  

From Grower's Outlet

• fresh, seasonal vegetables
  
• fresh, seasonal fruits, plus citrus, kiwi, tropical fruit during winter
  
• local nuts
• pasta, dried legumes, sugar, salt (I think this stuff comes from Bob's Red Mill)
  

From New Seasons

• Niman Ranch (northern California) ham
• salsa verde with green olives
• whole organic chicken
• "natural" buffalo, beef
  
• cheese
• wine
  

From Bob's Red Mill

• flour, yeast, sugar, salt for baking
• oats and other whole grains for baking
  
• local hazelnut syrup, raspberry syrup
  
• lunch!
  

From Gartner's Meats

• pork sausage, pork loin, pork ribs
• beef steaks and roasts

From From Old Country Sausage (nearby family-owned German market)

• uh, sausage
• Fleiskasse
  
• cheese
• German potato salad
• jarred sauerkraut, pickles
• mustard

From Lily Market (nearby family-owned Thai market)

• fresh Thai produce...eggplants, cilantro, lemongrass, etc.
  
• canned coconut milk, canned soup
• jarred curries
• green tea ice cream

Changes we've made over the last few years:

• making all our own bread, bagels, rolls, etc. (started last September)
• buying vegetables that grow in our region
• buying local fruit, except for the intentional exception during winter, when I buy citrus, kiwi, and occasionally other tropical fruit
• buying organic milk, local cheese, butter, and yogurt
  
• eliminating heavily processed foods (meaning: anything I can't replicate at home)
  
• buying pasta, dried fruit, flours, pretzels, nuts/seeds in bulk
• buying from locally owned businesses (even if everything they sell isn't local)
• eating out less
  

Changes we're making this year:

• growing and preserving more vegetables and fruits
  
• using our food dryer for the first time since we got it six years ago!
  
• planting fruit trees in the fall
  
• buying local organic milk and butter (probably from Noris--I love the idea of home delivery)
• making our own soft cheeses
• empty freezers of all old stuff, fill with local meat, home-frozen produce
• cooking with whole grains and legumes more
• eating less meat, more eggs
• eating out even less
• learning to cook even more simply
  

Changes for the future:

• rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and maybe a goat
• putting more of our property into vegetable and fruit production
• making hard cheeses

I can't at this moment place an exact figure on how *much* more produce we will grow and preserve this year, though it won't be hard to do more than we've done the last two years. I would like to have, at a minimum, 30 quarts of tomatoes, plus some dried tomatoes. I'd really like to have enough tomato juice to get through the year (about 50 gallons to have enough for breakfast 5 mornings a week). I want to try canning in small batches, multiple times a week, rather than spending a whole weekend making canning several dozen quarts at a time. I think small batches will suit our lifestyle and our current equipment better.

Recently, I realized that one thing that's kept me from purchasing a large amount of meat and freezing it is that our freezer is full of stuff we will never eat! While I've been decluttering throughout our home, the freezers are still quite cluttered. Also, there's a problem with the two basket-drawers that no longer hang properly, but simply collapse onto the floor of the freezer/the bottom basket. This summer, before the first bag of berries goes in there, I am tossing all the old freezer-burned junk! Same with the freezer in the kitchen. What the heck is in there, anyway?

Something else, that Mike has helped me realize, is that I overdo when it comes to dinner prep. I have this notion stuck in my head that dinner should be this elaborate combination of meat, starch, and vegetable, and despite him telling me he doesn't expect a big dinner, for a long time, I still felt like I haven't done my job if dinner didn't meet this outdated standard. I've already done some simplifying, to be sure. Generally, I roast or steam vegetables. The steamed ones we eat only with a bit of salt and butter or Bragg's Aminos. The roasted ones, I toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper before putting in the oven. Meat is usually roasted, comes from the freezer already prepared (think frozen coq au vin, bolognese sauce, etc.), but if I don't have something out of the freezer, or my feet are hurting too much for me to stand and prep dinner, we often resort to take out, because just suggesting to Mike that he make fried eggs for us all seems like I'm asking too much (which is ridiculous and Mike's generally happy to pitch in with cooking). But, I've been looking at other people's meal plans and seeing they are even simpler, with less meat, less dishes and getting inspired to make some changes. So, I'm going to use our crock pot more, concentrate on learning more one-pot meals, and more egg dishes that don't involve making pastry (frittatas are my favorite, but I've been kind of a one-trick pony, making only smoked salmon-cream cheese-asparagus frittatas).

I am glad to have taken the time to do a little inventory of where we're at and where we're going. We'll re-evaluate our goals and make some adjustments, of course. Where are you at with eating locally and seasonally? What changes do you want to make this year or further into the future?

The Tomato Seedlings That Saved My Life

I was inspired by a post over at GNMParents to write about how I returned to my creative self after the death of a precious person in my life.

Ten years ago, my most beloved friend, John, committed suicide, leaving behind his beautiful wife, their newborn son, loving parents and enough friends and colleagues to overflow the chapel where his memorial was held. My anguish was unbearable and instead of dealing with it, I buried myself in software engineering studies and my new career as a technical writer. I began a relationship with a no-good loser I had previously shunned. I moved to Silicon Valley, a place I had previously swore I would never live. I invited No-Good Loser to live with me there. My life went to shit. I was massively depressed, supporting a man who had me convinced I owed him something. After three years, I reached a breaking point. The day things finally fell apart, I found myself on the floor, alternately screaming and moaning in anguish--over the loss of my friend, the loss of my self. I knew I would go insane or die if I didn't get help.

I did get a lot of help from the traditional source--a good therapist whom I still see occasionally. But what really brought me back from the brink was something quite unexpected--a pack of tomato seeds. I planted those seeds in a flat, set them under lights in a closet, and waited. I wondered, and often doubted, if I could possibly do something as extraordinary, yet ordinary, as bringing seeds to life. I did. And when those seedlings began to make leaves, their scent transported me across decades and thousands of miles, back to the greenhouse where my parents raised tomato starts when I was just five or six, back to a time of full infinite possibilities and nearly empty of responsibilities and sadness. Their scent reminded me of where I had intended to go, back before John died. I had intended to have a welcoming home with a big garden full of healthy food. I had intended to live independent of transnational corporations. I had intended to practice creative self-sufficiency wherever possible--sewing my own clothing, growing and cooking my own food, limiting my consumption, and bartering talents and goods with like-minded friends. By remaining in a codependent relationship, ignoring the origins my food, clothing, and the other "things" in my life, and working for companies that were part of the global corporate machine, I was living in denial of those intentions. My heart knew I was in the wrong place, but I couldn't get out of it until those tomato seedlings showed me the way back.

I don't beat myself up for getting lost. When John died, I had only recently moved to Portland and had no real friends here to lean on during that awful time. My friends back home were mostly in the same circle and were reeling with the loss themselves. I have had trouble with depression most of my adult life, though rarely had the resources (i.e., decent health insurance) to pay for the help I needed, so it's little wonder things got so bad.

Every spring, as I plant peas and think about which varieties of tomatoes to start, I renew my commitment to those intentions. I think that's why I feel so energized this time of year. This year, after a couple years hiatus as we brought our second child into the world, we're putting in a big garden again. Yesterday, my daughter, son, and I planted peas, staked them with branches that broke off the trees in our yard this winter. We sowed radish seeds together and created a nice sandy bed for our carrot seeds (carrots love sandy, loose soil...this is the first time I've gone to such trouble for them). I felt so connected to them, to the earth, and to myself as we spent a unseasonably glorious, sunny February afternoon planting our good intentions.

As usual, I've run out of time (the kids are awake) before finishing my thoughts, but I feel like I must explore the transformation I've undergone since sprouting those seeds and will return soon. Have you been transformed by something as unexpected and seemingly insignificant as a tomato seedling?

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Purchased New, but Locally

With so many people I know reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, (one friend simply calls it "The Book"), my own love of the subject matter, and my propensity to buy almost any book that's even vaguely interesting, you might have assumed that I had purchased it some time ago. Unfortunately, the book came out while I was just starting (and therefore highly committed to) my "buy nothing new year" and I was determined to borrow it from a friend or the library. Well, I was on the wait list, twice at the library. First time I was 238th in line and waited a few months for it, then couldn't get to the library within the requisite week to pick it up when it was finally my turn. I put in on hold again, this time landing 524th in line. That time, my turn came up a week or two before Christmas. Clearly there was no chance I would finish the book in three weeks, so I let that one go as well.

Having given up on the library route, I asked my friend about borrowing her copy. She was willing to lend it to me, but with the caveat that I keep her first edition copy, signed by Kingsolver, her husband, and daughter (!!!) in good condition. I could not bear to take on the responsibility. I am careful with books. My children are generally careful with books, but I still couldn't take the chance of damaging such a treasure.

So, finally, last night I went to Broadway Books and paid FULL retail for The Book. I haven't begun devouring it, but I know once I start I won't be able to put it down. I am hoping it will provide me with lots of inspiration as we get our garden back in full production for the first time in years. I'll be sharing my thoughts on it soon.

When "Not Listening" Has Reached a Fever Pitch

My almost five-year-old has begun to act quite disrespectfully toward me and her dad and often disregards everything we say. The battles over basics like picking up her own toys and clothes were becoming exasperating. I too have begun to "describe the problem," rather than asking her to do things that I expect her to do as part of a member of our family.

"There are toys underneath the dining table that belong in your room."

"It's your job to put your toys back where they belong."

"Toys that are left out will be put in storage."

I find it so much easier to maintain my equanimity when I am just describing the situation rather than asking. I realized that part of *my* irritation was that I do not like having to ask that these things be done...I would feel like I was asking her to do me a *favor* and of course, since I want to model good manners, I would say, "please" with all my requests and would feel like pleading. By simply describing the problem, I don't put myself in the position of asking her to do things that are her responsibilities. I just tell her what I expect.

Feeling Full

I realized this morning that simplifying--letting go of possessions, commitments, desires--has allowed me to experience a state of psychic fullness. Not so long ago, I was feeling a lot of anxiety, about where to put all our household stuff, meeting all my commitments, and acquiring all that I wanted. I was experiencing both an overwhelming sensation of fullness as well as scarcity. Actually, I've been letting go of scarcity feelings for some time, but only recognized the effects of that since I started letting go the stuff and the commitments.

Having a Home-Based Routine

I've gotten bread and bagel making well incorporated into our home routine, largely because our routine is based around activities at home, rather than how it has been in the past, that is, based around lots of activities outside the home. With Annabel having one day for swim, yoga, and dance lessons, plus Fridays for playdates, I'm less harried, the house is becoming more and more orderly, we're cooking everyday, baking multiple times a week, and doing our homeschool lessons regularly. I'm less harried because I'm less hurried, but also because I am accomplishing things that I wasn't able to accomplish when we were going out almost daily and thanks to the house being more organized, I can find things, which also makes me less stressed. I feel good about all the baking and cooking I do for my family. We are spending less money on groceries and eating tastier, healthier food.

I had worried in the past that Annabel would be bored or unhappy being home so much, but she doesn't appear to be at all. I suppose I am pressed into service as her partner in pretend more often, but I still have more time for my "own" pursuits (in quotes because these pursuits--the organizing, planning, cooking, baking, housekeeping, etc., I do for my family, not just for me) than I did when I was paying someone else to entertain her a few hours a week.

Bread Baking as a Form of Exercise

Mike and I have been talking about losing weight. Somehow. Some way. Weight Watchers has been discussed, though neither of us has gone to the web site and signed up. I'm less enthusiastic about the thought of paying for someone to tell me how much to eat than he. Instead, I would rather force myself to put so much effort into making something eat that I will one, burn calories in the process, and two, limit my consumption because I will want to savor my efforts (that's usually how I think).

So, for the first time in about a billion years, I made a menu plan last weekend and except for last night, when we made a rare family appearance at the Oregon Hunters Association meeting (I decided to attend, which of course meant the children would attend, because a couple falconers were presenting and that sounded interesting enough to me to get out of the house) that Mike had to go to right around dinner time, we stuck to the plan all week. This is what we've been eating (never fear, I'll get to the bread baking bits soon enough):

Saturday dinner: grilled ratatouille (or at least that's what I call red bell peppers, patty pan squash, sweet onions, cherry tomatoes, and eggplant marinated in balsamic, EVOO, and herbes de provence, then grilled and returned to said marinade), corn on the cob, and ??? It seems like there was something else, maybe a salad?

Sunday breakfast (for me, anyway): the last store bought bagel I will allow myself. In theory.

Sunday dinner: citrus-marinated chicken (from the freezer, cooked days ago) in my "Chinese" Chicken Salad. What is Chinese about this, I don't know, but that's what they called the inspiration dish at The Cheesecake Factory, where I used to eat lunch almost everyday as a manager at Borders Books well over a decade ago.

Monday lunch: leftover Chinese chicken salad, this time with the wild & brown rice mix that should have been in it the night before. Ooops.

Monday dinner: ratatouille quiche...this was marvelous...must repeat. Used ol' Julia's pie dough and quiche recipes, natch.

Tuesday lunch: leftover quiche and cheese soup from leftover mashed potatoes, cheddar, and dried onion.
Tuesday dinner: grilled tri-tip (I kept my mouth shut while Mike stuffed no less than 10 cloves of garlic into that poor slab of beef, but he later admitted himself that it had too much garlic), grilled patty pan, carrot & dried cherry salad tossed with balsamic, and the last of the grilled ratatouille, tossed with wheat berries. Problem was, while I had soaked the wheat berries for some time, I forgot to cooked them. This turned out to be a blessing...

Wednesday lunch: per Mike's suggestion, I tossed the wheat berry salad into a pot, added water to cover, and made soup. He threw in the garlic and the tri-tip. Sublime. So, out of one batch of grilled vegetables and a bit of leftover grilled meat, we got three meals--all quite tasty.
Wednesday dinner: grilled tuna, cucumber soup, and sugar snap pea-radish-and-carrot salad, tossed with rice vinegar, sesame oil, and toasted sesame seeds.

Thursday lunch: took the kids to Subway after a trip to the library.
Thursday dinner: worst pizza ever at the Pizza Baron.

Friday: leftover tuna and cucumber soup.
Friday dinner: al pastor, black beans, and corn on the cob.

Saturday breakfast: applesauce-buckwheat pancakes with sliced apples
Saturday lunch: leftovers
Saturday dinner: spaghetti with Bolognese sauce from the freezer

Sunday brunch: garden vegetable (uh, that would be tomatoes and some chard) and mozzarella omelette.
Sunday dinner: roasted chicken, boiled potatoes from the garden, steamed broccoli, roasted carrots, celery, and onions. I'll make chicken salad and chicken soup with leftover vegetables, corn, and black beans.

I started making bread twice a week about three weeks ago. Haven't bought a loaf at the store since (though I did continue to buy bagels). For the first couple weeks, I only had bleached all purpose flour in the house, purchased accidentally while I was bargain hunting and not reading labels carefully at Winco. Started with a French baguette, from Julia's Way to Cook. Next, I made sandwich loaves (from Baking with Julia) that were predictably Wonderbreadish with the bleached flour. I had promised myself to use up all that flour before making a run to Bob's for something better, but after about four loaves of the stuff, I couldn't stand it anymore. I took the kids there for lunch and shopping last Friday and we now have unbleached organic white flour, organic white whole wheat flour, cracked wheat, amaranth flour, and some other Bob's goodness. I've made one loaf of sandwich bread with the unbleached white, but left the dough to proof too long (as I learned later from Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking) and the loaf came out half as tall as it ought to have been.

My greatest flour, water, and yeast triumph, however, has been with bagel making. The first batch, not so pretty. Returning to Baking with Julia, I seasoned the dough with black pepper and I just love the results. Shaping the bagels takes some practice, as it's important to develop a gluten coat by rolling the dough into a ball with a gathering up motion. I hurried while shaping the first batch and also left the boiled bagels sit on a towel to drain too long--they stuck when I tried to move them to a baking sheet. Anyway, that batch wasn't so great. Batch two received a "Looks like the ones you get at the store," from Mike, which I suppose was meant as a compliment. The taste is so superior to store-bought!

I also started a batch of sourdough starter and will bake a cracked wheat loaf from that this weekend. I also need to start another batch of bagels.

This bread baking is exercise, though. I mix the dough in my stand mixer, but knead it by hand for 8-10 minutes. I enjoy look forward to kneading. It's my favorite part of all this homemade bread business (besides slathering my own strawberry jam on a still warm slice).

Time to make the bagels.

I'm Awake

Literally and figuratively, I'm awake.

I'm literally awake at an unusually early hour because some dude with a pile of rocks in his mouth called at 4:30 this morning, looking for Owen. Our daughter is on a sleep over, so I was wide awake and in perfect enunciation form when I picked up the phone and responded, "You have misdialed."

"Can I speak to Owen." It's 4:30 in the morning, you're making unapologetic phone calls, AND you're not listening?

"You have misdialed." Click. Damn if the rock-mouth didn't call back again 10 seconds later.

"Dude!! It's 4:30 in the morning." (There's something about these gravel-mouthed boys that brings out the surfer girl in me.)

I'm guessing it was my use of a big word like misdialed that threw him off?

I have read conspiracy theorist explanations about the purpose of our public education system. The story, of course, is that it is meant to produce mindlessly consuming docile workers, which sounds plausible, yet is so disturbing to think about that it was always easier to dismiss it as mostly baseless paranoid ranting. Yes, that does seem to be the effect of public education, but I didn't care to believe that the outcome was anyone's conscious intent. I was awoken in a more figurative sense last night while reading John Taylor Gatto's 2003 Harper's Magazine piece Against School. Holy crap, "they" really did mean to create a system that produced unquestioning, conforming worker bees and to push those who refused to go along with the plan to the margins of society, where they hopefully won't get the chance to breed.

The US education system was not based on idealized notions about egalitarianism or democracy, but on the 19th century Prussian education system designed to prepare men for service in the military and bureaucracy. "The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will," said 18th century German philosopher and father of the modern Nazism Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

How much does this matter now, that public education was based on such views? One could argue that while some founders of the modern school system did advocate the production of weak-willed lemmings, surely the all the of good people who have strove to improve public education have made some changes that negate the original intention? Looking around, at the mainstream media, the people I have worked with at various jobs, the people I meet in most social situations, I have to say that it seems the founders of US education did a fine job of creating a self-perpetuating system that more than adequately meets the needs of the ruling elite. There seems, in fact, to be cumulative effect and as the schooled school the succeeding generation, the adults they churn out seem more and more childlike, in the worst possible ways. It's almost an insult to children to compare them to petty, jealous, greedy grownups who obsess about celebrities while our unelected administration commits atrocities around the globe, who ponder which new green gadget to buy while our continued consumption, green or black, destroys our home, who go on diet after diet as our corn-fattened bodies betray us and our government does nothing to change the subsidy system that created the abundance of unhealthy food marketed by multinational corporations that have no responsibility to the public they should be serving.

I'm ranting and writing run-ons now, aren't I.

I blame the dude.

Portland Hospitals Give Babies the Best Gift of All for WBW!

That is, they are no longer giving away formula-filled discharge bags!

As of today, all major hospitals in Portland, Oregon, will no longer serve as formula company marketing hacks, sending new babies and moms home with formula in the traditional "gift" bag. This was managed without government intervention, but by staff lactation consultants and others who persuaded their hospitals administrators to voluntarily stop issuing the bags. (Once a couple hospitals agreed to stop, an LC at one holdout warned, "You don't want to be the last hospital in town still giving away formula, do you?") Altogether, five hospital systems, totaling 16 medical centers (including several outside the Portland area, as far off as Medford, Oregon), have stopped giving out formula in discharge bags. Some still are giving bags, but without formula or coupons.

Today, during its annual Benefit Luncheon, the Nursing Mothers Counsel of Oregon awarded the following hospitals for "Maternity-Care Best Practices" for eliminating infant formula sample packs:

• Adventist Medical Center
• Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center
• Legacy Emmanuel Hospital and Health Center
• Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital and Medical Center
• Legacy Meridian Park Hospital
• Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center
• Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital
• Providence Portland Medical Center (where my two came into the world!)
  
• Providence St. Vincent Medical Center
• Providence Milwaukie Hospital
• Providence Newberg Medical Center
• Providence Seaside Hospital
  
• Providence Medford Medical Center
• Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital
• Oregon Health and Science University
• OHSU Doernbecher Neonatal Care Center

Thank you to all those who worked to make this happen. Oregonians once again lead the way in the US, supporting, protecting, and promoting breastfeeding!