Hobbledehoy Days

It's the Fourth of July. It's officially summer time. At least it would be if it would stop raining. The yard was sporting a three week growth before I spent the day chasing hurly burly Hobbits through the yard with the lawnmower. In late afternoon, the annual erecting of the tent will arise with all the pomp and ceremony accorded to such an occasion. The adults are approaching it with all the trepidation that the weather accords to such an occasion. And, per usual, rain stalks the annual local fireworks display. I think in seven years, we've only not been drenched once. You'd think it was Louisiana. Except the mosquitoes there are bigger. State bird, you know.

Mrs. Elton's prim and disdainful voice echoes to me. "Are we to sit down with hobbledehoys?" Yeah. That would be us. Not much standing on ceremony and elegance around here. Just straightforward, what you see is what you get. I'm barefoot in the kitchen (though the prospects of pregnancy are fading fast, but I'm not complaining) most days. The Hobbits, of course, being Hobbits, shun footwear at the soonest possible temperature in the season and don't resume without duress until the absolute brink of frostbite.

It's a hobbledehoy summer for us. Lots of outside and doing fun things. While Tool Guy was away from home, the four of us packed off for a day at a nearby amusement/water park. It was small and intimate enough--and crowded with enough of the adults in our "village"--for me to cut the apron strings and let Dog and Bug run loose. A first for them. They hardly knew how to contain themselves. About once an hour, Princess and I would suspend whatever we were pursuing at that moment (usually another trip on the roller coaster or another wet and wild spin down the oh-so-descriptive "Toilet Bowl") and go do a head count. I think that it was about three or four hours before I actually saw Bug, but there were adults who were able to give me Bug "sightings" and describe how relentlessly he and Dog were pursuing a good time. Something about being an unencumbered, uninhibited child to be able to have such unalloyed fun. We got there at 10:00 am and I don't think I was able to convince anyone to eat anything until 3:00 in the afternoon. We didn't leave the park until the last vestige of enjoyment could be wrung from the opportunity and they couldn't stop talking about it for three days.

Lots of hobbledehoy goings on. Bee stings. Bug bites. Dog insists that he knows what poison ivy looks like, yet somehow manages to overlook it when he's beating the bushes...literally...and exploring. Even Princess picks up the odd scrape and rug rash. Despite her regal dignity, she careens across the floor of the activity room at church with a scooter and no shoes, yodeling to make way for "The Magnificent Princess." So much for decorum.

I have the magic potion. Plantain. Early in our Breatharian days, I had a friend tell me about her herbal stuff. She told me that plantain is a must in any medicine cabinet. She even claimed to have healed a gangrenous chicken wing using it. It strains credulity, but she swears it's true. Plantain is one of those "weeds" that is available in most places just for the picking. Another herbalist told me that it used to be called "settler's hoof," since the seeds for it were supposedly brought over with the settlers and favors high traffic areas. I have noticed that it has gradually proliferated through the yard in just such a pattern...the high trafficked areas.

Plantain Oil

Plantain leaves
Olive oil
Glass jar
A few drops of rosemary essential oil
A tincture of time

Herbals like this are relatively easy. I've begun sending Dog into the yard to collect the plantain leaves for me. Just a bowl and a directive not to stop until it is full. I figured that if he was the young jackanapes who couldn't remember to steer clear of suspicious foliage, then he could assist in replenishing the store of plantain that he depleted. After he brings in as much as he possibly can motivate himself to gather, I spread them out in the shade in shallow layers in baskets or on drying racks. An herbalist suggested letting them wilt a bit before processing to reduce excess moisture. After a few hours of wilting, collect the leaves and jam them into a glass jar, packing the jar as full as possible or using all of the leaves available, whichever comes first. Then cover the leaves with oil...as much as the leaves will absorb and then a little more so that the leaves are submerged. (A vacuum sealer helps to remove air bubbles and the oil to permeate the leaves.) Cover and let sit for about six weeks. Strain out the leaves. Add a few drops of rosemary essential oil as a preservative. I store surplus oil in the refrigerator and keep what I need handy in the medicine cabinet.

I understand that this oil can be used to make a salve with beeswax, but I haven't ventured that far yet. Maybe later on this year. Plantain is good for cuts, scrapes, rashes of all kinds and helps clear up topical infections.

There's something to be said for having herbal magic that only needs reach out the back door to acquire. Especially when one has hobbledehoy Hobbits at home.

Now Is the Spring of My Discontent...

We've past Easter and the First Day of Spring. It's definitely in the air. All over the Internet, too. Every search engine homepage has "March Madness" plastered across it and even articles on coping techniques. It kinda piqued my curiosity. I have my visions of what March Madness means. It means that I'm bored with most conversations on most of my email lists and I do mass deletes. I'm sure that there are treasure troves of information that will be forever lost to me and my life will never be the same for being bereft of those gems, but I dare say I shall survive. Can't sit still for doing much on the computer these days. It means that Bug and I hover over my seedling trays, chasing the patches of sunlight through the house over the course of the day, brewing up batches of chamomile tea for watering them, and doing endless head counts to update the census on how many sprouts have surfaced to date. So far, the Siberian tomatoes are living up to their reputation as early doers. It augers well. It means that I'm pressing the Hobbits outside to soak up the tentative sunshine, riding their scooters through the narrowing patches of snow that are shrinking from the yard. It means that we're drawing to the close of the lesson books we've chosen this year and putting the finishing touches on our test prep plans for April. Starting to make educational goals for next year. And this year, it means the milestone co-op order that is the largest we've ever handled to date. Yup. Changing the world one meal at a time.

With dim realization, it finally burst through upon me that the March Madness in Internet question is the playoffs. Duh. I admit to being absolutely sports-impaired. I even had to Google up to see what specific sport was encompassed by this flurry of playoffs. Basketball, it seems. Double duh. To compound my transgression, not only am I intransigent in my ignorance of sports, but I married someone who is similarly handicapped. It was no small asset in my eyes that Tool Guy is even further impaired in his interest in sports than myself. Let's see...non-smoker...loves to window shop...doesn't do sports. You may kiss the bride!

No, my March Madness is a restlessness. A discontent with the usual schedule of events. I look at my regular to-do list and can't rally anything like enthusiasm. Not even a remote sense of duty or responsibility to get it done. Good thing we're at the end of our canned curriculum, 'cause I'm the one who wants to play hooky. I wish I could even say that I'm distracted by the prospect of bursting out of doors and digging into the spring chores that will be waiting for me when the ground has thawed and dried sufficiently. Not even that. It's something that I can't yet define, but it's putting up its pale, thin shoots just as surely as the tiny specks of green that dot my seed trays. Dog is doing something similar...wandering the house aimlessly, having difficulty settling down into any activity for more than a few minutes. He's bored with his usual cadre of books and I'm giving him pointers on how to stretch his comfort zone into picking books that he might have overlooked before that still connect with his interests. Only Bug and Princess are still spinning through life like oblivious whirling dervishes, seemingly uneffected by all of this. I'm beginning to understand the reasoning for spring tonics like dandelion root, yellow dock, and nettles. They are just the ticket for invigorating and washing away the detritus of winter.

This is a good time of the year for sprouts of all kinds...the kind we mean to plant and the kind we mean to just eat. I've resumed sprouting fresh greens, feeling the craving for the crunch and crisp of new little leaves bursting with flavor and freshness. I'm also branching out into some new kinds of sprouting...grains. Janie Quinn, in her book Essential Eating, strongly encourages sprouting grains before using them. Her reasoning is that starches draw heavily on the pancreas' resources, probably more heavily than most bodies are capable of matching. But when grains are sprouted, most bodies recognize the grain, not as a starch but as a vegetable, making it much more readily digestible. Okay, I'm always up for a new project.

Sprouting grains does some very nice things to it. In the case of rice, it gives it a sweeter taste...sort of malted, if you will. It also makes it much easier to grind. I've found that rice is a very hard grain and some mills have trouble delivering anything better than a very grainy flour. When the rice is sprouted, the flour is much finer and softer. Sprouting rice for flour is very easy. It just takes some forward thinking and planning to use it on a regular basis and keep up with the typical demand of the average Hobbit appetite.

Grain Sprouts

2 cups rice or other grain
Appropriate sized sprouter lid or cheesecloth with rubber band
Wide mouth quart jar or larger

Add rice to jar and fill with water. Allow to soak overnight or 8 hours. Cover with sprouter lid or secure cheesecloth over the opening and drain, rinse until water is clear, then drain again. Leave jar inverted at an angle to allow water to completely drain. Rinse and drain 2-3 times a day. I find rice takes longer to sprout than some of the seeds I've sprouted in the past, but it will happen....usually in 4-6 days. It is only necessary to sprout until the tail is about 1/8" inch long or one third of the length of the grain. After the sprout has reached the appropriate length, drain thoroughly and spread out on a baking sheet. Dehydrate at 100* or so degrees for about 12-24 hours or until completely dry. They can then be cooked as whole grains or ground into flour.

I'm still experimenting on the baking with sprouted flour thing. Gluten free baking is twitchy and this seems to be no exception. My very first loaf of sprouted bread never made it to the cutting board. Apparently it is going to take more baking time than with unsprouted flour. When I pulled the loaf out of the oven and flipped it out of the pan, the lovely crust collapsed on the still mushy center. Ah, the joys of "cooking dangerously." Hopefully, the next loaf will see me much more contented.

To sprout or not to sprout...there is no question.

These Seeds of Change

Despite the fact that we got eight inches of snow last week, it is starting to feel like spring. Maybe it's because the sun is rising higher in the sky each day and setting later and later. There's just some internal clock that is telling me that it is almost time. Or maybe it's because I got my Seed Savers order in the mail and I'm itchy to get started on my starts. Yeah. That could be it.

In my opinion, the New Year is misplaced on our calendars. The dead of winter is not the time that we start thinking about starting over and new beginnings. I feel ever so much more motivated to begin new things, take on new projects, new goals, new aspirations when fledgling leaves are unfurling and the first spikes of grass are pushing up than when everything is still insulated under layers of snow and ice. Bright sunny days do more to infuse me with enthusiasm to accomplish. Under gray January skies, I just want to heat up another rice bag, crawl with it under the numerous voluminous blankets and read another Victorian murder mystery. With a bowl of Sin On a Spoon in my lap.

As the days grow longer and the sunshine feels brighter, I have no difficulty finding the enthusiasm to put new goals and tasks into motion. Forget January 1st resolutions of getting in shape and working out. March is the time I've started doing some fitness training and toning up. It's not hard at all. I keep reminding myself how useful it will be when it is time to hit the garden and the yard. No sore muscles then! Summer time is my Boston Marathon.

I'm pawing through my seed collection. A few packages with seeds from last year and some new one to try for this year. I used to wonder at people who were constantly changing what they planted from year to year when they were so happy with what they'd harvested the previous year. I'm beginning to understand the addiction: so many seeds...so little space. And a comparatively short growing season. I'm hedging my bets this year. Barbara Kingsolver, in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, referred to a type of tomato called Siberian, which is reputed to produce proliferately in, as you guessed, Siberia. My kind of 'mater! There will be a "what I did with my summer vacation" report on how Glastnost is producing.

The air is buzzing with discussion about what we're going to plant this year, what soil amendments we tried last year or plan on trying this year, what deer deterents are in place, and the best methods and places to compost. Sources of locally composted manure are secrets almost as guarded as where the best haunts for mushrooms can be found. Hey, some things are sacred, you know?

Gardeners can be as avid proselytizers as...say...foodie folk. We're always luring in the unsuspecting with suggestions that they "start small" and "read Square Foot Gardening...it's soooo easy." They're so charmingly innocent and have no suspicion of the inner gardening monster that lurks inside, waiting for the opportunity to come out and take over the world.

Yes, gentle Breatharian, I was one of those who "started small." Just a simple 5x5 square foot garden. Unh, huh. In a short three seasons, the garden has grown to a 290 square foot garden. With a greenhouse cover over it. The next door neighbor took one look at it and acerbically dubbed it the "Taj Mahal." Ya think?

The gardening seeds aren't the only seeds of change on my mind. Seeds of all stripe are also back on the menu for the Hobbits, which fires up another motivation...the one that sends me into the kitchen for some more "cooking dangerously." As I thumbed through The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook, I remember the feeling I had when I first opened it--the one that Alice must have had, tumbling down the rabbit hole. Little did I know. I came across this recipe after we'd gone gluten free and at the very beginnings of everything free. It feels like being visited by an old friend...like the return of spring.

Chili Seeds inspired by Marjorie Hurt-Jones

1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 T olive oil
1 T chili powder
1/8 t garlic powder
1/8 t cayenne pepper
1 T Real Salt
Enough water to cover seeds

In a glass bowl, measure out seeds, salt, and add enough water to cover. Stir to thoroughly dissolve salt. Let soak 8 hours or overnight. Drain seeds completely. Mix with oil and spices. Spread out on baking sheets at a very shallow depth. Dehydrate at 100-115* for 12-24 hours or until completely dry and crispy.

Soaking neutralizes the anti-nutrients that are in seeds, making them more nutritious and more digestible--a very important feature for those with digestive difficulties. While Tool Guy and Dog are enthralled with the crunchy zest of this recipe, Bug and Princess prefer their seeds prepared this way, only plain. It's such an easy recipe that it's no trouble to accommodate all of the palates.

Meanwhile, I'm watching the sun and counting the days until Gardening Begins. It isn't hard to get to the point of becoming a gardening monster. Les Brown said it best, "Everything is a cinch when you do it inch by inch."

Staying By the Stuff

Is everyone campaigned out yet? I know I am...stuff still manages to leak through despite the fact that I've been on a media blackout since Hurricane Katrina. That experience certainly jaded me about news coverage. It was the one time that I had intimate background knowledge of a hot media topic. And for all of the finger pointing, no one was pointing in the right direction. It made me wonder. If they missed so very much stuff on this, on what other stories are they skimming over details and cherry-picking facts? All of them? Most of them? I decided that it wasn't necessary to hear all of the issues or even current events debated and discussed into the most infinite minutae in order to make my decisions and sort of hunkered down into a kind of bunker attitude. Abandoning my six-hour-a-day talk radio habit, I turned my attention toward smaller matters: my own patch of blue.

It was gratifying to recently discover someone whose work I so respect voicing a similar train of thought. Chris Rice explores the idea that our greater center of power is not with our vote, but in the lives that we touch on a daily basis. Which is a rather exciting thought when we really dig into what that means. Our votes are each a single one in so many millions. So easy to get lost, overwhelmed in the slippery shifts of public opinion. We drop our bottle into the ocean and hope it gets found. And when there isn't much to pick from, then what is that vote really worth anyway? Don't get me wrong...I'm still voting! I know that each vote counts. How much louder our voice speaks, though, on an intimate level. When we're face-to-face and eye-to-eye, our words have more weight and make a surer difference.

Clearly, there is power on a global level and there are people who are called to serve there. Clearly, I'm not one of those. But there's comfort in knowing that being the keeper of the small and insignificant things has just as much value as being a mover and a shaker. "But as his part is who goes down to the battle, so shall his part be who stays by the stuff; they shall share alike."* Chris is right...our power is in the lives that we brush up against--and connect with--every minute between the four year voting cycle.

It's always exciting when connecting in a conversation with someone inspires a train of thought that ends up in a new dish that all of the Hobbits enjoy. Another homeschooling mom and I were recently discussing the satisfactions of good sourdough when she happened to mention offhandedly about using her sourdough to make Pig in a Blanket. That was a dish I'd not heard mentioned in many years and I stood there basking in the glow of the light bulb turning on over my head. I could see the Hobbits cheering over this one...what kid doesn't love Pig in a Blanket? That's got to be worth some serious Most Delicious Mommy points, right?

While gluten free bread dough isn't workable to the degree that wheat flour is, an approximation of Pig in a Blanket is indeed possible. So I played with it and came up with this combination, which is more of a stuffed bread than a wrapped hot dog. But there it is. I even renamed it, since all pork and beef hot dog sausage products at our fingertips have corn in them.

Buffalo in a Blanket

Gluten free bread dough sufficient for one loaf of bread
4 hot dogs or sausages

Line two bread pans with parchment. The dough will be evenly split between the pans. Spread a layer in the bottom of each pan, about an inch or so, using about 1/4 of the total dough for each pan. Lay two hot dogs or sausages side by side in each pan. Using the remaining dough, cover the hot dogs/sausages. Allow to rise the normal amount of time and bake at 350* for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Allow to cool enough to touch, slice, and serve.

This was, as expected, a tremendous hit with the Hobbits...a quintessential comfort food. Turns out I did get extra Most Delicious Mommy points for this. Score, me!

Outside of the voting booth, I plow my energies and focus into making a difference on a molecular level: scraped knees, hornworm caterpillar collections and princess scepters. Laundry lines, vegetable rows, and jars of food lined up in the basement...day by day...staying by the stuff.

*_{I Sam. 30:24}

Take Your Medicine

And still more milestones. In my ten year tenure as a mother, this is my first encounter with the dreaded ear infection. We were driving down the road into town to run errands when Princess announced that she needed her ears squirted out when we got home. She elaborated that there was a gnat inside her ear that was causing her ear to "boom." I got cold shivers when I heard that because it so aptly described what I remember ear infections being like when I was her age. And when I was her age, I got them all the time. I was one of those of that generation who got tubes in their ears...one doctor described what lurked in my inner ear as "airplane glue." Nice, huh?

I know that antibiotics are the normal course of events in most protocols for dealing with ear infections, despite the fact that the cure rate for sitting it out is almost identical to the cure rate for prescribing. Well, put me in the wait-it-out school of fish then. The more I read about antibiotics, the more I want to save it for things like tuberculosis and bubonic plague and not on frivolity like keeping cattle being fed a biologically inappropriate diet alive long enough to slaughter. Stephen Harrod Buhner talks about the overuse of antibiotics in his book, Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria, pp. 8-9. Particularly riveting was his description of how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. "As incredible as (their) capacity for literally engineering responses to antibiotics and passing it on to their offspring is, bacteria do something else that makes them even more amazing and dangerous. They communicate intelligently with each other." He goes on to explain how bacteria position themselves alongside each other and pass DNA back and forth, the resistant bacterium sharing its immunity with the naive one. As if this wasn't alarming enough, the resistant bacteria exudes pheromones that attract non-resistant bacteria to them in order to share this resistance. And exposure to only one kind of antibiotic lays in motion the chain that teaches the bacteria to be resistant to all antibiotics. It is believed that by these mechanisms, eventually all bacteria will be antibiotic resistant. To all antibiotics.

So it becomes clear why avoiding the use of antibiotics seems like a good idea, particularly in such ambiguous situations as a 50/50 chance of improving by not doing anything. And Buhner gives some pretty good suggestions about herbal alternatives that can be applied without risk of increasing bacteria resistance. While we wait and see how things with Princess' ears will progress, I dose her with garlic, licorice, ginger, and echinacea. While I was running errands, I picked up some mullein and garlic oil drops to put inside her ears and dose with that.

And, of course, there is the old traditional standby...chicken soup. Tool Guy tells me that before we got married, he hated chicken soup. Dunno what he'd been eating before, but when I whipped up my first batch of the homemade variety, he was hooked. He is an admitted chicken soup addict. Actually, all of the Hobbits are. With cold weather settled in outside and bronchitis settled in at least one set of lungs inside, we're swizzling the chicken soup. And now Princess' ear infection. Well. Nothing for it, then. Time to take your medicine.

Chicken Soup
(Or as Bug calls it "Chicken Noodle Doodle Soup")

2 whole chickens, quartered
4-5 carrots, bias sliced
1 lb. sliced mushrooms...anyone who has read Tolkien knows that Hobbits adore mushrooms, right?
1 bunch green onions, bias sliced
4-5 stalks celery, bias sliced
1 tsp. sweet basil
1/2 tsp. sage
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/4 tsp. rosemary
2 bay leaves
Black pepper to taste
2 tsp. Real Salt
1 gallon of water

In the largest stock pot you can manhandle on your stove, set the water and chicken to boil. (If you're in a hurry, this process can be shortened to 20 minutes or so in a pressure cooker.) Bundle herbs into a coffee filter and staple closed. Add this herbal sachet, salt, and pepper to the chicken while it boils. After the chicken is cooked, remove pieces into a bowl and allow to become cool to the touch in order to debone. Meanwhile, strain the broth through a cheesecloth and return to a clean stock pot. Place all of the vegetables into the broth and return to a boil, cooking until just tender. Debone the meat and return to broth. (Be sure to save the bones to make bone broth later!) Serve over hot pasta and enjoy!

For This We Give Thanks

The holiday season is upon us, despite the commercial attempts to skip both Halloween (no great loss there) and Thanksgiving this year. The garden has been put to bed and I've pulled absolutely as many leaves out of the yard as I ever intend to this year. Poke me with a fork. Of course, Thanksgiving brings up the remembrances of colonists and the profound gratitude for simple survival, which has bequeathed to us the traditional foods that represent this holiday to most Americans. These days, nothing in history is being taken for granted, but is being re-examined, rewritten, and restructured. Whatever the actual facts of the first Thanksgiving may or may not be, it is certainly appropriate to designate a time to acknowledge what we have received and be grateful for it.

We have a lot of things to be thankful for this year. The Hobbits continue to grow and thrive, to challenge and thrill us with their burgeoning personalities, skills, and reach, to amaze us with demonstrations of what they are capable of. Physical blessings and provisions above and beyond what we could have ever dreamed of asking for. A bountiful garden. Generous friends and family who love us unconditionally and forgive the hurts that closeness occasions. Deeper walks and deeper relationships. Expanding experiences and expanding borders. "He makes all things new."*

Recently, I received a phone call from a close friend. Since the inception of our multitudinous food allergies--which coincided with the unanticipated pregnancy with Princess--I've drawn in upon myself and pulled into a safe circle where I could figure out the huge confusion of what was happening to us and create a place for the Hobbits that wasn't rife with landmines. No eating out, no traveling, no socializing that involved the presence of food--too much risk of cross-contamination with my contact canaries who cop reactions from just touching the stuff. I called this period of time my "gestational hibernation." Which was pretty accurate while I was pregnant and Princess was a baby, except that now Princess is creeping up on five years old. The phone call from my friend was a wake-up call that it was time to take some baby steps out of my den. A fellowship lunch was coming up. We usually duck out before the food is served, despite Dog's protests that he'd like to stay "this once." Gently, this friend prodded me to reconsider cooking something safe for us to eat and coming along to join in the fellowship. Given our strides forward and her winsome reasoning, I relented. Unbeknownst to me, she ran interference for me with the kitchen coordinators to isolate our food to a corner of the kitchen to prevent cross-contamination on the site. We just had to show up with our food, eat, and enjoy. Blessings of the day: no later food reactions to cause regrets and a good time was had by all.

At the meal, this friend brought a ratatouille, which I'd never tried before. Since I'm impervious to contamination reactions, I taste tested the recipe and decided this was one to add to our repertoire. So in celebration of the many things that we are thankful for, it's part of this year's celebration...remembering to give thanks for friends who care enough to prod us to expand our comfort zone. Along with the Autumnal Beef Stew, per Bug's request.

Ratatouille, tweaked from Diana Rattray's about.com recipe

Olive oil, sufficient to coat vegetables
2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
1 onion, quartered and thinly sliced
1 eggplant, cubed
4 large tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 teaspoon dried leaf basil
1 teaspoon dried leaf oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried leaf thyme

In a 4-quart Dutch oven or saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and onions and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 6 to 7 minutes. Add eggplant; stir until coated with oil. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep vegetables from sticking. Add tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs; mix well. Cover and cook over low heat about 15 minutes, or until eggplant is tender but not too soft.

During the course of the year, the Hobbits and I have discussed the various and sundry holidays and their significance. We discuss the various theories about the origins of each holiday. Some holidays are rooted in things that we don't embrace, but we still choose to celebrate that day anyway because its original meaning has been lost and it has acquired a meaning that is significant for us. So whether the story of the first settlers is apocryphal or not, we have begun molding and shaping a holiday tradition that makes it uniquely ours. Each year, as we have begun adding foods back into our originally sparse and spartan menu, it has become our practice to include those foods newly re-introduced from the past year in our Thanksgiving dinner and the next new food that we intend to trial. So you can see that our Thanksgiving dinner doesn't look anything like what most folks here are eating, but it gets to the heart of what we have to be thankful for.

This year the Hobbits are singing the praises of Fage Greek Yogurt. We're trialling dairy. Cross your fingers, folks...

_{*Rev. 5:21}

That Which Makes Me Stronger

I'm not a student of Nietchze nor am I an Existentialist. But while I was in college, I heard the late Francis Schaeffer say, "All truth is God's truth." And whatever else he erred over in all of his philosophical wanderings, in this respect Nietchze was right: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

Dog is getting older. Our first born. You know the old wag, "The first one is an experiment..." Well, we're feeling our way gingerly into the pre-teen years. It makes me nervous. He asks some very hard questions. Like "why us?" Being different is starting to bother him. I knew it would happen at some point. I just didn't expect "some point" to be now. But it is. "Why do we have to be the ones who have to eat differently than everyone else?" This is tough to answer without resorting to the hackneyed (and intrinsically insensitive) chestnut about how "I used to complain that I had no shoes until I met the man with no feet." Ugh. But we did discuss how everyone who is hit with something unexpected, unpleasant, and difficult to deal with wants to know why. There are lots of possibilities of "why." Most are too long and complicated to get into when someone is having a Big Feelings moment and many don't even really matter. Many times, knowing the "why" of something doesn't make it any easier to bear.

In this case, for me, there is at least one "why" and the knowing of it makes it easier. This stuff we're going through--this journey we're on--it does make us stronger. There are so many ways that I've grown through all of this...many of which I'm only dimly beginning to sense and am awkwardly groping for ways in which to articulate them. Some I'll probably only discover in later years down the road. I'm finding that one of the ways I'm stronger is that I've become free. I'm liberated from the absolute craving for approval from others. I don't need others to agree with the decisions we've made and how we're moving through life. I'm also realizing that just enduring doesn't accomplish the same thing as embracing. I've watched people enduring the overwhelming floods of what they face and I've watched others embracing. No doubt about it. Those who embrace move through it, carrying more away with them than those who just endure or rage against it all. Since I have to go through this, I don't want to waste a drop of strength that I can possibly glean from the experience. If I'm going to have to pay the toll of walking down this road to which I've been drafted, I want as much for my money as I can acquire. I don't want to squander it on anger.

Embracing the challenges we face reminds me of a cookbook I picked up from the library recently, Grandma's Wartime Kitchen by Joanne Lamb Hayes. It's filled with recipes from a time when things were in short supply and life was about "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

Cottage Pudding with Toffee Sauce adapted from Grandma's Wartime Kitchen by Joanne Lamb Hayes

4 (3 inch) squares or wedges day old unfrosted vanilla, spice or pound cake or pear butter muffins
1/3 cup coconut or other alternative milk cream
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp ghee or other oil
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350*. Arrange cake on a wire rack that fits on top of a 9-inch square baking pan. Place the pan in the oven; fill with boiling water to within 1 inch of the top of the pan. Place rack full of cake on top of pan. Cover with oiled aluminum foil or an inverted bowl. Heat cake until sauce is prepared--no longer than 10 minutes.

Combine alternative milk, maple syrup, and ghee/oil. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

To serve, place cake on individual dessert plates; divide sauce over cake pieces and serve immediately. Don't worry. It'll disappear in less time than it took to make.

While Dog and I talked, it all distilled down to the fact that our genes aren't going to change. We'll always have to eat, to some degree, out of the mainstream and we can either embrace it or rebel. Rebelling has too many thorns...more than embracing. I'm expecting that Dog may have to spend some time when he is older exploring those thorns, but that's going to be his journey.

Corntamination

Okay, I have to get this off my chest. Again. It bears repeating, so I'm repeating it: Corn is evil. Some people believe that gluten is evil, but they are mistaken. Nope. Corn is evil. Don't believe me? Read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I'm not talking about the juicy cob, bursting with yellow goodness that gets roasted or boiled and served up on a platter. I'm talking about the agricultural monster commodity. And since there are countless tons of corn annually that need to be used for something, it is getting dumped into the food supply and beyond in distorted and frankencorned ways, but never completely forgetting its "corn-ness." Like the corn-based packing peanuts. I'm sure that the person who invented these probably was heralded as an ecologically brilliant thinker, since they dissolve in water and are biodegradeable. But it does make the experience of opening up that package in the mail very much like opening up a pipe bomb. You never know what is inside...it might be shredded magazines or it might be corn. Tag. You're it. It's almost worth investing in a hazmat suit.

What really fashes me is how hard some manufacturers work to avoid frankly telling the consumer that there's corn in their product. So it's rather refreshing to see some actually advertising this information on their package. Again, from an earth-friendly standpoint, biodegradeable bags make sense. Still, I can't help but think that it would be more ecological and earth-friendly to break the addiction to mono-cropping that we have trapped ourselves into and not grow more corn than is physically impossible for us to consume, thereby forcing us to resort to finding ways to unload the obscene surplus of one vegetable that isn't even a vegetable anymore. Like carpeting. Carpeting...I ask you!

I know that George Washington Carver pioneered industrial applications for agricultural crops and there are a host of reasons for admiring the man. He's a fantastic role model. But some days, I feel like I've got this love/hate thing for him. Indirectly, I have him to thank for all of the corn "gotcha's" from envelope adhesive to water bottles. Corn even lurks in such seemingly benign and "natural" places as honey, since many beekeepers are addicted to high fructose corn syrup as supplemental food for their bees. And do we really need to have corn in our laundry detergent?

Okay, there are some bio-friendly detergents out there. Alas, I am not one of those altruists who impale their budgets on the spike of alternative green products for their own sakes. Nuh-unh. Gotta be cheap for me. As a side note, I am working on re-indoctrinating myself with the principle that it isn't that alternative products are so expensive, though they do seem so. It is that they do not carry the government subsidy that corn-based products enjoy and so have a harder time competing against that financial offset.

Still, cheap is good. Dirt cheap is even better. Which is why I was doing the Snoopy Dance when I came across a recipe for home made laundry soap. Crystal is my kind of woman. Those pictures of her farm capture what I want my acreage to look like someday.

Laundry Soap by Crystal Miller

1/3 bar Fels Naptha or Zote
½ cup washing soda (not baking soda)
½ cup borax powder

You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

I've been following Crystal's recipe for six months now and I'm still on the original boxes of powder. That puts my investment so far at less than $10 for laundry for at least six months. This is washing clothes for five people--well, six if you factor in Tool Guy changing clothes between going from his day job to his tool job, plus a Princess still in night time cloth diapers.

I recently had a chuckle over a conversation I had with a telemarketer about laundry detergent. Despite the fact that we're on the No Call List, Boyfriend called me up to sell me some whizz-bang laundry detergent that would rock my world. Did you know that there are telemarketers out there who still ask to speak to "the lady of the house?" At any rate, I informed him that I make my own. Silent pause. I guess that answer wasn't on his "if/then" flow chart of Q&A's, since he then launched into a non-sequitur riposte of what a great savings it would be for me. Huh. I informed him that a penny a load was the price to beat and if he couldn't sell it to me that cheap, we had nothing more to say to each other. Haven't heard from him since.

I'm bummed. Can you tell?

Pick Two

I adore interpreting. I used to be a workshop junkie. Workshop? I'm there. First there and on the front row. Conventions? Oh. My. Workshop heaven. While I was an active interpreter, I never missed a convention. If I couldn't afford to go as an attendee, I worked the convention. I got to listen and get paid. What's not to love? And I've benefited from the knowledge of some of the best in the profession. One workshop that stands out in my mind where Anna Witter-Merithew talked about the price of quality. The price of excellence. She recounted her experience getting her car repaired. The mechanic had a memorable sign posted on his wall: "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick Two." She applied this to the discipline of becoming a good interpreter. There's a price to pay and you have to pick your priorities.

This principle came back to me after a conversation I had with another mom this past week. She was asking my opinion about her teenager and some food issues. I shared my opinion of the cause of the issue and what my experience showed me would work. As I was speaking, she stood there shaking her head. "Isn't there an easier way?" she despaired. I suggested a particular supplement that people have reported as helping, but tagged on the caveat that it was $60-$100 a month. "Isn't there a cheaper way?" I responded that I do things the way that worked for us....I know no other way.

After spending the week thinking about this conversation, my workshop experience came back to me. The same principle applies to dealing with this food problem thing: "Good. Easy. Cheap. Pick two." There are supplements out there that are helpful. Probiotic packed pills. They cost. Gluten free convenience foods cost. The bottom line is that the most effective therapies take time and discipline. They can be cheap, if you're willing to do the hard work over a period of time. It comes down to the prosaic point that this "everything free" diet stuff is like all other diet stuff. It's work, it's discipline, it's more about lifestyle changes than "diet" and there aren't any silver bullets. Each person has to decide if the cost of discipline is worth the return.

The evidence is mounting, beyond just the dismissed and minimized experiences of such parents as I, that doing this kind of work pays off. A study, hot off the press, has some validating things to say about eating effecting our brain function, particularly in autistic children:

"The bacteria produce propionic acid, a short chain fatty acid, which in addition to existing in the gut, is commonly found in bread and dairy products, MacFabe said." Fascinatingly, the study scientists were able to use this bacteria to replicate autistic behaviors in rats, as well as effecting the same kinds of physical changes that are exposed in autopsies of autistic patients. "Now we're learning that the brain and body can influence each other," she said.

This sent me back to thinking about "easy, good, and cheap." And discipline. Some of the best foods that feed brain function are foods high in Omega 3 fatty acids. Like fish. Grandma wasn't being poetical when she said that fish is "brain food." It literally is. That covers "good." And the price of wild-caught sardines qualify as "cheap." But for someone who doesn't really care for fish so much, the "easy" option becomes dicey...gotta pick two. Fortunately, thanks to my Gardening Mentor, sardines can be easy to fix, if requiring some discipline to eat.

Quick Sardine Supper

1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium tomato, choppped or a handful of cherry tomatoes cut in half
olive oil
1 can of sardines
fresh basil (a few leaves) or a pinch of dried basil
salt and pepper, to taste
crushed red pepper, if desired

Heat oil in medium skillet. Add onions and saute until softened. Add garlic and cook lightly. Stir in tomatoes, then sardines. Remove from heat, season to taste. Serve over pasta, crackers, or rice.

The CBC report continues to say:

"'Treating a child's health should be the first step in addressing autism...Behaviour therapy is certainly important. But the child's health controls the bandwidth that the child has for being able to benefit from behavioural therapy. If a child is sick, they won't be able to focus."

Parents should watch their children closely to determine what foods trigger reactions and to consider removing those triggers, she said. Herbert strongly advocates a balanced diet, consisting of all food groups, not just 'bread and cheese.' 'If you have foods that (a) child is sensitive to in their immune system, that can set up processes that can impact brain function, and it can do so in a negative way. And if you remove those foods, that negative impact can stop.'"

Incredibly validating to hear The Powers That Be saying it, too.

Easy, cheap, good. Pick two.

I'm the Mayonnaise in This Sandwich

Sibling rivalry. It bites. Big time. I always said that we had Bug for Dog's benefit--he was too entrenched in the benefits of being an only child--and God sent us Princess for Bug's benefit. For the past few years, ever since she became mobile, Princess and Bug have been best buddies and do everything together. This tendency is still there, but perhaps it is an age/stage thing, but now this "attached at the hip-ness" is accompanied by continual squabbling. I don't get it. I really don't. When someone works my last nerve, the place I most wanna be is the furthermost from their presence. Not these two. Everything must be done with the company of the other, even if it means that they are going to bicker over their use of space to the smallest centimeter.

Somehow, despite my best intentions, I always manage to get sucked into this. I've tried to take the strategy of letting them resolve their differences between them. I mean, they have to learn how to get along and I don't want to always be the referee. At some point in time, however, the decibel level begins to approach aircraft velocity and a mother must needs step in. I usually "ground" them from each other. They can go about their day and do what they want, but they have to do it separately from each other. Any communications have to go through me. Yep. I'm the mayonnaise in this sandwich.

Speaking of which, I scored a major coup at the grocery store today thanks to my gardening mentor's discovery: Hormel Natural Choice deli meats. Shelly at Hormel assures me that while "natural flavorings" is proprietary information--doesn't that just fash you?--it doesn't contain any soy, dairy, or corn, nor anything that was such in a previous incarnation. Looks like sandwiches are back on the menu! Another bugaboo of ours is what to put on the sandwich. I've sussed out a safe deli meat line, a safe mustard, a safe and delicious bread...now for the mayonnaise.

Every new mayo recipe I've seen tags a raw egg/salmonella disclaimer to it, so I suppose I should lemming along with the rest and preface this recipe with one. To be honest, though, given the descriptions given by Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin on the conditions the chickens producing these battery eggs, I don't think I'd venture using them for mayonnaise either. Fortunately, we get what I call "yard eggs" which is a step beyond the murky term "free range" which often is a way of saying, "Our cages are slightly larger or have slightly fewer chickens than the Industrial Guys." Ours comes from a friend whose chooks run loose through his yard and his children Easter Egg hunt every single day.

Once again, I am thankful for having an antique cookbook on my shelf. Those were the days! I dip into the riches of The American Woman's Cookbook by Ruth Berolzheimer published in 1938, pg 448, tweaked our way. For this, I used rice bran oil and a touch of maple syrup. Tool Guy deemed it as good as Miracle Whip. I'd call that satisfaction.

Mayonnaise

2 uncooked egg yolks
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T lemon juice
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. paprika
1 T maple syrup
1 cup rice bran oil

To yolks, add dry seasonings, blend thoroughly, add vinegar or lemon juice and beat again. Add oil gradually while blending. The mixture should be thick and creamy. Should mayonnaise curdle, begin with a third egg yolk, add a small quantity of oil to the egg, and then by very small quantities, add the curdled dressing. At time a dressing may be quite firm when left, only to be found curdled and disappointing when the time comes to use it. This third egg process will, however, usually restore it.

Bug and Princess will--I am told and I'm taking on faith--one day reach a level of equanimity in their relationship. Today, however, isn't that day. I have hope. After an afternoon of being excluded from each other, Bug creeps up and penitently says, "I'm ready to tell Princess I'm sorry." Peace reigns.

For the next five minutes.

Back in the Saddle Again

Nope. Not ready. Not even close. It's too soon for the leaves to start turning and definitely too soon for the school year to be starting. Even after having left the South for quite a few years now, I still gauge Time For Fall by the heat quotient. It isn't time for fall until we've sweated out so many days that we can't drag ourselves through another hot and sticky morass without screaming. Even though we've been in New England for almost six years, I still find myself reaching for my inner yard stick of measuring out the summer. It doesn't feel like it's time for fall yet.

The garden is starting to play out. Tomato production has peaked and while quite a few still hang on the vines, there are more surrounding me in baskets full to the brim than are out there, dodging the predations of hornworms. I'm still mowing the lawn, the decrepit mower having finally gotten back from the shop (the first day back, I had to splint up the limp ignition cable...I told Tool Guy he owes me for repairs. Heh.) but now the grass is sprinkled with the first falling leaves of autumn and the squirrels are attacking the "pig nut" trees with fervor...a sure sign of impending change.

And homeschooling co-op begins. I'm so not ready. I'd planned on a few more splashes in the river, a few more outside adventures, a couple hundred pounds more out of my garden. Ah, well...

Over the summer, Tool Guy and I painted the dining room. He told me when he came home with the paint that it was the gray I'd asked for. With some squinting, the color blots on the lids did look a liiitle bit gray. On the walls, though, it is definitely on the blue side...unless you're examining the color at night, in which case, it looks closer to sea green. However, cleanly painted walls mean a blank slate to be filled up with all of the art projects and newest creations of the year. Last year's works have been archived into portfolios in storage and the first offerings of the new year adorn the places of honor. Okay, we're sorta ready.

Of course, the Hobbits look forward to fall reunions, old friends coming back, and getting back into the routine. It's a little unsettling at first, because every year is a little different than the previous one and we always show up with last year imprinted on our minds. There's always some disequilibrium and discontent until we get used to the new schedule, new rules, new faces and the lack of some of the old. It's like breaking in new shoes...a little stiff and awkward at first, but quickly becoming the favorites.

Then there's the annual "What's For Snack?" discussion. Unlike the meal menu selection, I want everything standardized for snacks. Thursday morning prep is too wild and woolly to try to handle it all times three. This year, we've settled on the perennial shoestring fries and chocolate chip cookies. In my opinion, Julie Andrews was unforgivably remiss when chocolate didn't make her list of Favorite Things, but it sure is at the top of ours. In our soy-free days, even soy lecithin was a problem and that ruled out just about all chocolate, soy being the emulsifier of choice in candy and chocolate chips. Enjoy Life chocolate chips became one of our Favorite Things. Still is.

Almost Everything Free Chocolate Chip Cookies adapted from Sandra J. Leonard and The Gluten Free Baker Newsletter

10 T Purity Farms Ghee
1 t salt
2 t vanilla
1/2 cup maple sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cup sorghum flour
1 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 cup potato starch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 package Enjoy Life chocolate chips

Beat ghee until soft and fluffy. Add salt, vanilla, and both sugars. Beat until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until well combined.

Combine flours and baking soda in a mixing bowl. Add half the flour to the butter mixture and beat on low. Scrape down bowl with a rubber spatula and add remaining flour.

Fold in chocolate chips. Chill mixture for two hours. (I make a huge batch of this and make cookies off of it for weeks from the fridge.)

Separate out balls of dough, approximately tablespoon-sized, and lay out on cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Flatten to about 1/2 inch thickness and bake for 10-12 minutes at 375*

Let cool on wire rack.

There's a big bowl of cookie dough in the refrigerator, I've got my ASL lesson plan prepped out, and we're tackling Singapore Math one page at a time. Yep. We're back in the saddle again. Princess' eyes sparkle as she bites into one of these cookies and she exuberantly informs me that I'm "the most delicious mommy!" Aw, shuuucks....

Over the River and Through the Woods

You'd think that winter time would be the "busy" time for my oven...lots of breads, casseroles, cookies, muffins, soups, and such keeping the kitchen toasty and warm. Nope. This is the busy time of year. I did a quick check on my propane tanks--yes, I did say "tanks" as in plural...the propane company had to come out on three emergency refills before being convinced that my consumption habits don't conform with customary trends--and they are each half full. I take this as a measuring stick of all of the work that has gone into laying food by.

In addition to the usual cooking and baking, the seasonal prepping and canning, I'm also dehydrating herbs in preparation for the coming winter. Cough and cold medicines are largely off the menu for the Hobbits. We have a wonderful compounding pharmacist who understands our needs and works with us. The palm-based vegetable glycerin from Azure Standard makes a terrific suspension/sweetener for necessary medicines for little ones. In using glycerin to make medicine for our specific needs, he became so impressed with the efficacy and quality of its properties that he's taken to using it for all of his compounded prescriptions, not just ours.

As wonderful as it is to have things like acetaminophen, ibuprophen, and dextromethorphan compounded for us for times when one needs "big guns," it is infinitely more satisfying...and less expensive!...to have "first responder" remedies laid by. A few years ago, an herbalist friend introduced me to elecampagne as a remedy for the bronchitis that had visited me the first couple of winters after relocating to New England. As a native of Louisiana, I'm used to damp. However, I wasn't used to damp and cold and my lungs showed it. Elecampagne did amazing things and I've never had a problem since. Before moving on, she shared plants with a few of us, the off-shoots of which keep me supplied with roots. Potato vodkas like Luksoswana or Teton Glacier provide a wonderful extractive media for herbals for the corn sensitive. Luckily potatoes haven't been a problem for us, but I have also meditated on the possibility of tequila, since it is made from fermented agave nectar from agave cacti. In the fall, after the second hard frost, I go and collect elecampagne roots, run them through the food processor for a second or two, and submerge in vodka for a couple of weeks. I've found that the suction from a Food Saver vacuum sealer can improve this process even further. Then I strain off the roots and bottle up the tincture for the winter's use.

Elderberry has become a winter time favorite for us. It's even possible to buy the concentrate that has nothing added. Since I also doctor colds with garlic extract, the Hobbits view elderberry concentrate as an excellent chaser to the shot of garlic juice. Use your imagination to envision the delicate shudders. I know, I know....but, it works at killing colds. Spoonful of sugar and all that.

This year, I'm branching out and drying mullein leaves. The possibilities for applications look quite promising. One site even suggested that mullein poultices are good for bad backs. This should come as good news to Tool Guy's ears...and back. Mullein is reported to be good for coughs, digestive upsets, respiratory difficulties of all shapes and sizes. I'll have to report back about what I did with my winter vacation on this one. Previously I've only tangentially noticed the poles of yellow flowers punctuating the sunny spaces in the woods and fields around, but now that I'm looking for them, they seem everywhere. While I was out foraging, I also topped off some of the seed pods and brought them back to scatter clouds of the tiny seeds into my own sunny patch on the back forty, hoping that the ground will be receptive and the deer unobservant. Maybe next year, there will be fuzzy baby mullein peeking out through the growth.

All of the growing, canning, foraging, and dehydrating come down to really one thing: independence. Whatever knowledge and ability and effort I cobble together means that I'm not dependent on someone else for it. Some else to feed me. Someone else to doctor me. Since the advent of the "everything free" years, there have been precious few professionals to guide us on our journey. Our family doctor and I walked away from each other...each baffled and frustrated with the other and I never went back. There's no getting Chinese food from a McDonald's menu and you can't teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and annoys the pig. Yep, that was one irascible swine.

So now, if there's a scrape or scratch that needs more than a kiss, there's plantain salve from my yard. Great for bee stings, too. There's neem oil spray with a hint of patchoulli to keep the ticks and chiggers off. My knowledge base creeps forward and my remedy cabinet reflects it. Another inch of independence. This winter I'm foraging the library for more books on herbs and next spring, I'll be swinging my poke sack over my shoulder and taking to the river and woods, foraging in search of another inch of independence.

The Kitchen Is Closed

A few months ago before Dog's tenth birthday, he and I were standing toe to toe over some now-forgotten issue that he was waxing mouthy about. I snapped back at him that I'd tolerate no teenage lip while he was still in single digits. Heh. I was expecting to have a few more years of "kid" stuff before we got into the "teen" stuff, but Dog has always been old for his years, so I shouldn't be surprised.

One of the more memorable discussions we've had of late is over, not surprisingly, menu options. I expect that food choice is going to become a much-debated topic in the coming years. This discussion wasn't what one would necessarily expect, though.

As a bit of background, when we first started with our "free" lifestyle, I made some conscious decisions about how we would structure this. Since things are so very limited, I wanted to offer the Hobbits as much choice and control as possible within the very tight framework of our operational limits. To that end, I came up with ways to provide three choices of meals that could be prepared quickly and gave each of them the opportunity to choose for themselves from those three options at each meal. My version of convenience food...kind of a Once A Month Everything Free Cooking...except my major food prep ala OAMC is more frequently than that. This might mean that I might make up three (or four, counting dinner meals) different dishes for the same meal, but at least they would have some control over what they were eating.

We've gone on this course for about four years now and it's worked rather well. Not much fighting over food nor complaints about not liking what was for dinner. Still and all, some days it can be rather tiresome. There are days when I just want to do one thing and be done. This was one of those days. I just made food for the meal, set it on the table and called the Hobbits to come and eat. Dog sulked at me that he hadn't been consulted on his menu option and was prepared to be disagreeable about it. I pointed out to him that the number of children in the known universe who were at liberty to choose what they wanted to eat at every meal, every day probably totaled three. That was, of course, before I'd read the UCLA dinner study....I was stuck in my Baby Boomer childhood memories. Still, I'll entertain an "amen" chorus of comments to anyone who cares to leave any...any ammunition would naturally be shared with Dog. Hey, coming up on this pre-teen thing, I need all of the help I can get!

I decided that it was way past time for him to understand the amount of work that goes into making one meal, let alone coordinating three, however quickly they could be assembled. I'd meant this as a "taste of his own medicine" kind of natural consequence to his petulance, but he was actually rather excited about the idea. I'd settled on a quick and beginner-friendly recipe inspired by one shared by my gardening mentor. It's especially nice for those who are sensitive to tomatoes--not that this is us, for a change--because it relies only on herbs and spices for flavoring and color, not tomatoes. The lost-to-posterity cookbook called it "Real Deal Chili" (let me know if anyone knows the attribution for this recipe!) but I call it the

No-mato Everything Free Chili.

4 lbs ground meat
1 onion or 1 T onion powder
3 garlic cloves or 1 T garlic powder
4 T paprika
4 T chili powder
1 T cumin
1 T oregano
2 t pepper
1 t kelp (only because I'm always looking for a vector to sneak in sea vegetables)
1/2 lb. sliced mushrooms
2 t salt if not using bone broth
1 quart bone broth or water
2-3 T arrowroot or tapioca starch (optional for thickening)

While slicing mushrooms, brown ground meat in dutch oven and drain. Pour broth, mushrooms, and seasonings into dutch oven and boil until mushrooms are soft. If using starch flour for thickening, dissolve starch in small amount of water and add to boiling mixture. When the opaque liquid becomes translucent again, return ground meat to the oven and mix thoroughly until heated through. Allow to simmer to reduce if desired. The Hobbits like it served with rice snaps.

Dog took eagerly to chopping up the mushrooms--he's been one of my prep chefs for a while now--and measuring out all of the ingredients. He'll be able to lift me someday, but right now he still needs some help handling a hot cast iron dutch oven. The rest of it he does very well by himself. These days he considers this recipe his specialty and would be mightily offended if I were to presume to usurp his prerogative. Gotta smile. Just don't let him see it. We're always sure to have chili in the refrigerator, whatever the weather. So whenever Dog complains about what's on the menu, I direct him to the refrigerator where he can find his very own bowl of chili. I cooked one dish, hung up my apron and the kitchen is closed.

Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh, My!

Tool Guy was called away on business for two weeks. All three of the Hobbits and I looked at each other and wondered what we would do with ourselves while he was gone. Still lots of tomatoes to can and, to their everlasting joy, we have begun our homeschooling year. Needless to say, I could have suggested instead that we watch paint dry--and in this very damp summer, a task that wouldn't happen with any rapidity--and they would have responded with something like alacrity. Party Planner and I conferenced and decided that we needed to plan some fun things to do during the interminable Absence.

The play date was lots of fun. PP brought her Grandson over to play. He's also an age mate in Princess and Bug's group in our homeschooling co-op. All of the Hobbits were orbital over having him over for fun. It's funny. There's a three years' age spread between each of the Hobbits, but each of them considers this little lad to be their own particular friend. Each of them planned what they wanted to do while he was visiting. Mostly, they wandered Christopher Robin fashion through The Bog and The Woods, poking around and releasing a captured frog back into the wild. PP and I sat on the back deck and relaxed with cups of cinnamon tea.

The next grand plan was an outing to a relatively nearby wild animal park...an entrepreneur's version of a zoo. PP and Grandson are old veterans to this place and, from their descriptions, the Hobbits were beside themselves to go. Unfortunately for everyone in general and PP in particular, she suffered a toe injury that seemed to present as broken. Walking was out. Though they were crest-fallen, the Hobbits rallied well and we promised that the next week would bring the expedition, the toe turning out only to be strained. Dog organized his compass, binoculars, notebook and pencil. He takes this Stanley Livingstone thing rather seriously. Bug was jazzed about the idea of using his new Buzz Lightyear back pack. Princess was dreaming of all of the animals. As an aside, Princess loves animals. In theory, that is. In real life she's too afraid to touch them...it's an interesting ambivalence to watch.

On the appointed day...it rained. Amid the sounds of much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the foray was postponed again, crossing our fingers that the following day would be improved. Nothing could solace them but a trip to the library that netted two bags of books and a whole series of Marvel Comic graphic novels. Whew. For a minute there, I thought I was gonna have to break out some candy. Luckily for me, they're easy.

The following day was mizzly and chilly, but we decided "Sydney or the Bush" and pressed on. Private animal preserves can be either brilliantly choreographed or depressingly seedy and neglected. Fortunately, this concern was the former. For a small place, the collection was quite varied, well-tended, and comfortable. The schedule of events was spaced so as to be able to comfortably roam the park between the punctuations of programming. The first activity we plunged into was the Lorry Parakeet feeding. I hesitated a moment because replacement food for animals can be problematic food for some people. That would be us. When I observed that the workers passed out apples to the crowd, we joined the line into the habitat where everyone spread their arms out, apples in hand, to lure a bird to come feed. I've never seen any zoo that was so relaxed. Each of the Hobbits had an opportunity to feed one and I even had a couple crawling on my head to reach the apple I held. Princess was fascinated to watch but declined the honors.

We raced around, avoiding puddles and the occasional stroller, and didn't leave until we'd seen and done all of the enclosures and the activities, consulting an exotic animal fact notebook the whole time. (Well, I did have to veto the petting farm...all of the feed was a corn and gluten landmine.) All the Hobbits love a zoo. Princess was a bit disenchanted with the smell, though, Animal Planet having the obvious advantage of being odorless. The rest of the Hobbits were game for holding up carrots for the sticky embrace of a giraffe's prehensile tongue. The only thing that could have topped this for them was actually getting to pet the gibbon that entertained us for a long while with her calls and gymnastics. Bug felt a burning wish to be able to be a gibbon. Dog plans on perfecting his brachiation technique. I expect to see lots of workout on the playscape when the weather clears...

Packable foods can be somewhat of a challenge when most things that we consider convenience foods are off the menu. Being the special occasion this was, I'd planned way ahead of time and splurged, using up my store of beef in the freezer that I'd been saving for just such a purpose....beef jerky. Back when soy was off the menu (and it is currently enjoying only a probationary return) I felt frustrated by the fact that almost all jerky recipes called for soy sauce or tamari sauce. While twiddling with a recipe that called for a wine-based sauce--and not being able to get reliable confirmation that any wines are actually corn-free--I rolled the dice and used kombucha tea as the base instead and it yielded a dish that was a delight. This inspired me to use k-tea to make jerky.

Kombucha Tea is a fermented tea, aged with the assistance of an inoculation of some "starter" tea and a rubbery pancake of a fungal organism called a SCOBY. Tool Guy, of course, has his more graphic descriptors. The flavor of this beverage ranges from tangy to sour, depending on the amount of aging. There are lots of sources for this on the internet beginning with free-for-shipping sharing all the way up to some very pricey "kits." One suggestion that I've never tried myself is to buy some commercial raw k-tea bottled for drinking, open bottle and pour into glass jar, allowing brew to continue aging. Some people have reported that in continuing to age, raw tea will develop a new SCOBY, all of which can then be used in making more tea per the tea-making directions.

Kombucha Tea

The base of this tea is simple green or black tea--and amazingly there have been flame wars over to caf or to decaf--sugar, and water. The rule of thumb I use is four tea bags and one cup of sugar, the type of which is also subject to flame wars (I use white, but I have used honey...eew), per gallon of water. Boil water, add tea bags and sugar, and leave to brew until completely cool. Never add hot tea to starter and SCOBY or risk killing the whole thing. Brew needs to be room temperature. Using approximately 1/3 starter to tea ratios, pour aged tea starter saved from previous batch of k-tea to fresh tea and plop SCOBY into gallon glass* jar. I use one SCOBY per gallon jar. Cover jar mouth with coffee filter or cheese cloth and rubber band, place in cool location away from airborne dust and oils (ie, the kitchen isn't the optimal location) and allow to age 7-14 days. The brew grows more sour as it ages, so keep personal preferences in mind when planning this. When decanting, simply remove filter, fish out SCOBY (a new layer of "baby" SCOBY will have formed on the surface) and pour out. Save a couple of cups of tea as starter for the next batch.

^{*never use plastic or metal, as the acidity in the tea leaches constituent properties out of non-glass containers}

Kombucha Tea Jerky

2-3 whole roasts of beef/buffalo/venison, sliced into strips
2 gallons of k-tea, aged two weeks
2-4 whole onions
2-4 T minced garlic
2-4 knobs raw ginger
2-4 T Real Salt
1-2 sheets dried kombu
1-2 t red pepper

When purchasing the beef, I generally buy roasts and section them into proportions that, when frozen, will make convenient sized strips. Thick cut steaks will do just as well. After freezing the meat, I allow it to thaw just enough to push through the single slicing blade of a mandolin...especially using a carpenter glove for this. Muscling semi-frozen meat through a slicer takes a bit of force and protection is a Good Thing.

Peeling and sectioning the onions, I toss them and all of the spices/seasonings into a food processor and reduce to a slurry. Using the same glass jars I used for making the tea, I leave 1/2 gallon of tea in each, pour in the half of the seasoning, and add meat strips until the jar is full, keeping enough tea added for the meat to have contact with liquid on all sides. Repeat with second jar. Allow this to marinade overnight. It can be stored in the refrigerator or in cooler weather, I have left it out. The acidic nature of the tea is a great inhibitor for bacterial growth.

The next day, I dump the jars into a colander, draining off the tea. I don't take particular care to remove seasoning bits...if they dry on the meat, so much the better. Carefully separating the strips, I lay them out singly on drying racks and stack in the oven, having lined the bottom with foil for easy clean up of drips. My dehydrating sources encourage 170* for safe meat handling practices. Meat this thin generally dries at this temperature in 6-8 hours, possibly more, depending on stacking and air circulation. If racks are stacked vertically, there may need to be some rotation of the trays to allow for even drying.

Though this treat generally doesn't survive beyond the first day--Hobbits can disappear an amazing amount of meat this way--I store any left overs in the fridge or freezer. Since there are no nitrites or preservatives added, I find that the flavors tend to go stale and flat if left out.

Home from the zoo, the Hobbits are each enjoying the fruits of their trip to the gift shop. Dog is target practicing with his toy bow and arrow set, Bug unearthed the pteradactyl from his Dinosaur Dig egg, and Princess is repeatedly going through labor and delivery, birthing her new plush puppy. It's quite...um...interesting to listen to. Bug is her birthing partner.

Even though it is misty and damp, it is still summer and the great outdoors call. Pack up the jerky and head out. Sydney or the Bush!

That Was Then, This is Now

Yes, Breatharian, brace yourself for more gardening drivel. I know. I'm intolerable on the subject. Just a little this time, I promise! It's the time of the year when all of the preparation and planning and waiting comes to fruition. I'm swimming in tomatoes. After scoring a stock pot from a yard sale....it was a "make me a deal" deal and the seller accepted my dollar....I'm reaching back through my recipe files for my favorite tomato sauce recipe. This has become a seasonal event in our house. The smells of baking bread and bubbling sauce tantalize the neighborhood....or at least the Hobbits. Everyone walks around with their noses in the air, sniffing. I don't think there's anything that evokes more of the feelings of "home" and "nurturing" than such good food wafting through the windows.

I've been spending such spare time as I have browsing through the archives of lists that chronicle our first furtive scrambles to figure out what was causing our problems and how to fix them. The medical community is singularly unhelpful in this area and almost all of what informed us came from those people who were fumbling and groping as we were. The Complementary Alternative Medicine community takes a lot of flack for giving little relief for the money that they collect, but I don't find the mainstream medical community to have a better track record. Somehow my searches for solutions always comes back to food.

Particularly the posts during our grain-free years stand out to me. Having a few years distance from that stage of our struggle, I'm reading my old posts with fresh eyes. What stands out to me most is how light-hearted they sound compared to how I felt. It certainly didn't feel light-hearted to me then. Some days, I felt like I was drowning. It was during that time that I developed such a strong feeling for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After reading the books, I was never able to watch Peter Jackson's interpretation without having a stack of kleenex next to me, especially during Sam Gamgee's monologue about his favorite stories...the stories that really mattered.^* I could strongly identify with the sense of profound weariness driven forward by desperation. It sounds melodramatic, perhaps, but watching the progression of my posts where more foods disappeared and the list of intolerances grew longer, I remember that this was how it felt at that time. Some days, I wished I had a Sam to carry me up the mountain.

The sense of unknown was an overwhelming burden. The not knowing why things were going wrong. Not knowing how to fix them. I saw a lot of guessing and groping in my posts. I'm not sure that I shared with other posters just how fearful I was. Afraid of not finding the answers. Afraid of things getting worse and not learning how to make it stop. And things did get frighteningly worse before they got better. One memorable post expressed the trap I found myself in, struggling to nourish children who couldn't tolerate the nourishment they need to be able to tolerate the food they need to nourish them.

I'm finding that dealing with personal disequilibrium is very much easier than dealing with it in your children, especially small children who have only a fuzzy grasp of why they eat differently from everyone else. It's easier to accept that I can't have that slice of pizza sitting on the table than it is for a four year old. And these Hobbits were absolute troopers. I can't sing their praises enough. I've never had a moment's concern about them sneaking food or not cooperating. Which is one of the reasons that I feel so highly motivated to find ways to get them the tastes that they so desire in a safe form. In the middle of our grain-free years, Bug sighed wistfully that he missed pizza. I asked him what was it he missed about pizza: the sauce or the crust? The sauce. Since fruit leather has always been one of his favorite snacks, I decided to use this platform to jump from the sweet to the savory.

The base of pizza leather is the tomato sauce. Since the flavor concentrates when dehydrated, it is necessary to add something that will dilute the taste without altering it. My first solution was to use zucchini or squash. This was a wonderful way of disposing of the excess from the garden that I thought I wanted to can, until I discovered what canned squash tastes like. Um. Won't do that again. Another solution--Bug's preference--is to dilute with apple puree, since he prefers a sweeter taste. Hey, I don't eat it, I just make it. Besides, this is a thrifty way of disposing with all of those odds and ends of apple slices that never seem to get eaten up. I have a bag in the freezer that I toss them into and bring out when it is time to make leather of one kind or another.

Foods that are low in pectin will crumble and separate when dehydrated. This is one of the reasons that apples are in all commercial fruit leathers. Another way to enhance the texture is to use pectin. Pomona makes a terrific product that is derived from citrus and is corn-free. Adding pectin, either through apples or canning pectin gives the pizza leather cohesive smoothness and chew.

Leathers are elastic in quite a few ways, both texturally and ingredient-wise. I confess that I don't have a hard and fast recipe for this, since I tend to just dump in what's on hand, using up the leftovers, bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam in the fridge and freezer. It's all good.

Pizza Leather

2 quarts pizza sauce
1 quart squash or fruit puree
2-4 T fruit pectin

Run the sauce and fruit through the food processor until incorporated, adding the pectin slowly through the cap. When thoroughly blended, spread at approximately 1/4 inch thick evenly onto sheets of parchment or silicone baking sheets over dehydrating racks. Set temperature to 100-120 degrees and let dehydrate for about 6-12 hours. Some people swear by portable dehydrators, but I've never found one that I liked better than my own stove. It may happen that the edges will dehydrate faster than the center. In that case, I trim the dried parts away from what is still tacky. When it is completely dry and while the sheet is still warm from the stove, cut into strips with scissors.

Store in a dry container. I'd like to tell you how long it will stay edible in the cupboard, but I've yet to discover the end of the shelf life of leather...it doesn't stay around long enough to find out.

The last couple of years has seen the happy return of a few of our off-menu foods--grains not the least--but some of the things we relied on back then are still staples in the house. With the smell of tomato sauce curling through the house, appetites for pizza have been sharpened. Given the demands of canning this time of year, pizza isn't something I'm finding time to readily throw together. It's nice to be able to point to the pantry and say, "If you're really hungry for a taste of pizza, nibble on some pizza leather" and promise the real thing later.


While I still long for that future day when I can gleefully snoopy dance with the rest of the joyful "just" glutenfree-ers, it helps to remember that I'm still in the middle of the story and have yet to read the final chapter.


_{* "It's all wrong...by rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were and sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you...that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But, I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now."}

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Let no one say they weren't warned. I said that I'd wax extensive about gardening and, dear Breatharian, it's gardening season. Lots of stuff flowing in and I'm weighing, charting, and journaling what is doing what in order to plan for next year. So far the Celebrity plants are out-performing the heirlooms. I'd planned on saving the heirloom seeds until I realized just how busy the bees have been in the garden. Doubtless the heirlooms have been cross-pollinated with the hybrids. Oh, well. Scratch that idea. I'm enjoying the fruits of this year's labor nonetheless.

Even though it doesn't outweigh the cucumbers or tomatoes, one of the most satisfying crops that I'm harvesting this year is the daikon radish. I've tried unsuccessfully for three years with seeds whose "get up and go" got up and went. Lots of green stuff but absolutely no root. I used a different company for this year's daikon and the results have been highly gratifying. As I pull in these saber-sized roots, I remember a couple of summers ago when a friend of mine graciously tutored me in the art of making kimchi. Looking back, I can't think of a better way to spend a crisp, sunny autumn day with the kids playing outside than to be inside making kimchi.

We started out with HUGE mixing bowls that looked like they could hold five gallons. I had no idea that they came in that size! My friend had jump-started our project by quartering napa cabbage and soaking it overnight. She'd soaked about a dozen heads in about 3-6 pounds of rock salt dissolved in one of these monster bowls. She told me that when the leaf is limp enough to bend without snapping, the consistency is right. Then rinse the cabbage two to three times before continuing.

Off to the side, she had pureed up about 3 heads of garlic, a finger of ginger, and coarsely chopped scallions, about 10 bunches. Then we took about 5 pounds or so of daikon radishes and shredded them on a mandolin style shredder. After shredding these (and these days I use a carpenter glove), we dumped in the ginger, garlic, and onions with approximately 1/2 cup of brine shrimp and 1 cup of very mild pepper. I tasted the pepper and it had a very slight bite to it that took a while for even that to kick in.

After mixing all of these together--wearing rubber gloves the whole time--she then picked up one of the quarters of napa, grabbed up a handful of the spicy "stuffing" and rubbed the napa all over until it was covered in red juices. Then from the bottom of the quarter, she started folding back the layers of cabbage and spreading small amounts of the spiced and shredded radish between the leaves. Spread radish, fold down leaves, spread radish, fold down leaves, until the entire quarter was "stuffed. She then folded the quarter in half and crammed it in the bottom of a 1/2 gallon glass jar....ironically with a commercial kimchi label. Lather, rinse, repeat until the jars are full and all of the product is gone.

All of this filled up 7 or 8 jars. She said that she puts half in the refrigerator immediately and half out on the porch for two days. The porch batch then comes in and they start eating that batch, which lasts them approximately a month. When that kimchi is gone, then they start on the half that lived in the refrigerator.

Re-creating the recipe for a smaller kimchi appetite was a bit challenging. I had to catalog approximate measurements, as she doesn't measure anything and does all of this intuitively. With a little trial and error, I came up with a kimchi for my size appetite and my heat tolerance. I prefer a larger ratio of radish to cabbage and this recipe reflects it. I've made radish kimchi, but it lacks something, as well as possessing a certain--what's the word Tool Guy used?--I'll call it "pungent" instead. Yeah, radish kimchi is more pungent. So I throw in radishes to cabbage in a 2:1 ratio. There's even a hint that radish was the original vegetable in kimchi.

Kimchi is one of those dishes that the Western palate considers too...um...exotic to consider with relish, but there are a lot of good reasons for learning to love it. According to the World Clock, digestive diseases are the #4 leading killer among non-communicable diseases and takes a bare second to AIDS in number of lives lost.

Recently, with SARS and Bird Flu making such a sensation in the headlines, kimchi has enjoyed renewed popularity. It seems that a concentrate of kimchi actually cured Bird Flu among birds that were positive for the illness. Of course, officials were very cautious about any claims and were very low-key about the study results, but at the time, kimchi was a sell-out item on Korean restaurant menus. The story even caused an upswing in sauerkraut sales on US shelves. Unfortunately, I suspect that the beneficial variable in kimchi and possibly sauerkraut is the live probiotic value that is cooked out in the canning process. The study didn't go far enough to pin down the variables, but it's nice to know that we can protect ourselves from something without the help of big government or big pharmaceuticals. Imagine. Flu vaccine. In your own kitchen.

Downsized Kimchi

3-6 T salt in a gallon of water for soaking
1 head napa cabbage, quartered
4 lbs. daikon radishes
5 green onions
1-2 T or to taste of Korean/Chungok red pepper
1 clove crushed garlic
1 small piece of ginger or 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1-2 T of Real Salt
gallon sized glass jar

Soak cabbage in salt water overnight or until the leaf bends without snapping. Chop onions, garlic, and shred radishes. Wearing gloves, mix the spices, onion, and garlic with the shredded radish. Since I use more radish than cabbage, I line the bottom of the jar with cabbage leaves and pile in hefty layers of radish, interchanged with cabbage leaves until all of the product is used up. Let sit overnight or 2-3 days and move to refrigerator.

And before you say anything, yes, I know my kimchi looks....pale. In my defense, I'm trying to svengali the Hobbits into eating this probiotic powerhouse. Bug is inhaling the garden pickles, but I'm trying to use the Asian panache to lure in Dog, who loves stir-fry. I even had him shred up some of the radishes with me. Cross your fingers!

While my mentor and we students were busy shredding, chopping, and prepping, it was enjoyable to discuss the process and learn things that aren't in recipe books. Nothing can substitute for one generation of hands teaching another. As we sat on the floor and were finishing the project, she looked around at all of these jars and laughingly said, "When I see all of this kimchi around me, I feel rich!"