Food and Books

A little over a year ago I read the book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan. Seriously this is one of the best books I have read in terms of having an actual impact on my thinking and behavior. I read a lot. Well, before I had Miss I read a lot. Now I read a lot for someone who chases a toddler around all day 🙂 Most of the time, because I read so much, I finish a book and then purge all that I just read from my memory (I don’t do it intentionally, it just happens that way). This prevents too much crazy clutter in my brain, and also allows me to enjoy reading a book again a few years after reading it the first time, though I only do this with books I really loved.

Anyway, back to Michael Pollan. Since reading IDF, my husband and I have changed much of the ways that we eat. This is one of the books that I did not flush all the content of after finishing the last page. Pollan’s basic premise (in a very oversimplified nutshell) is encouraging people to eat real food, not processed junk. He encourages you to actually read the labels of your food. And when I started doing this, I was kind of grossed out by all the junk in some of the items I used to buy. Now when I go to the grocery store I mostly buy whole foods like fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and milk. I also buy other dairy products like cheeses, and some other prepared items, though I only buy these if I can pronounce and know what the ingredients are. I also buy primarily organic foods to avoid pesticides and other chemicals as well as help the environment as much as I can. I should note that I learned not to assume that “organic” meant that a food was free of all the crazy processed junk I am trying to avoid though. I bought a can of organic soup once in a hurry without reading the label. I have purchased various soups (Amy’s brand are fantastic!) that have pretty much only veggies and broth in them, and sometimes use these as a quick lunch for Miss. But the one time I grabbed a can of organic soup that sounded tasty and didn’t read the label, I got it home to find out that it was full of all the same junk as many non-organic soups. So, lesson learned. “Organic” does not always mean “better.”
Don’t get me wrong. I won’t refuse to eat something that isn’t organic. I have been known to pig out on Culver’s or pizza on occasion. I’d rather eat lots of different veggies and fruits, even if some of them are not available organically grown. I have yet to find organic asparagus or brussels sprouts in the produce section, but I don’t stop buying those. I buy what I can find organic, and the rest I get non-organic. I do try to avoid buying certain items unless they are organic. There is a list of “dirty dozen” fruits and veggies that tend to absorb or somehow hold onto pesticides more than other items (I have read of this in several places but do not know the original source for the study that tested this). These include spinach, celery, bell peppers, potatoes, apples, peaches, pears, strawberries, raspberries, imported grapes, cherries, and nectarines. Another source I like because it provides both sides of the “organic debate” can be checked out here. This site also recommends buying only organic green peas, green beans, scallions, and blackberries.
Another way that my shopping and eating has changed is that I make a point of trying to buy food that is grown and/or produced locally. I never used to pay attention to where my food came from. But this is another point that Pollan raises in his book. It makes sense to me for many reasons, so my hubby and I have been working on trying to eat more local foods for a while now. Starting this spring, we are really going to challenge ourselves to try to eat the great majority of our foods from local sources, within about 100 miles of our home, with some reasonable exceptions. I did a guest blog post about this for the Suburban Saving Mama blog that you can check out here if you want to read more about why and how we are planning to go local.
So I guess the point of this whole post is that I like thinking about and talking about food and books. And Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” is a great way to do both. It really is a great book. In fact, I think it’s about time for me to read it again. And he recently came out with a new book called “Food Rules.” I hinted very strongly to my hubby that I would like this book for my birthday. Well, okay I flat out asked him to get it for me but that’s how we roll in our house. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will soon be reading a copy of “Food Rules.” I’ll let you know how it is! Another book that was recently recommended to me by my father-in-law as discussing similar ideas to those put forth in IDF but also really getting into the science supporting these suggestions is “Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating” by Walter C. Willett, MD (sounds impressive doesn’t it??). I’ll tackle that one after “Food Rules.”

Go Green Locally!

Think about this. Of the things you ate today or yesterday, how many of them do you know really where or how they were grown or produced? A great way to “go green” is to obtain more of the food you consume from local sources. In the past year, my husband and I have started trying to find more of our food locally. We joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm and found a local source for meat. I made a point of buying local brands at the grocery store if possible. Things like cheese (we do live in Wisconsin!), honey, maple syrup, and many other items, could be found from local producers right in the grocery store once I made a point to look.

Then I heard the phrase “100-mile challenge” from my mom. I had not heard of this specific idea of challenging oneself to eat only things grown or produced within a 100-mile radius of one’s own home. I had no idea until very recently (yesterday) that there had actually been a television show called “The 100-Mile Challenge” on the Planet Green channel. But after hearing the term from my mom I started to really think about it. My husband and I discussed it. “Could we really do it?” we wondered. Not knowing about the television show or about many of the different “challenges” out there where people try to eat locally for a week or a month or some other specified time period, we were thinking of making this more of a lifestyle change. Here are a few reasons why we wanted to really try to eat locally:

  1. Locally grown food typically tastes better. It doesn’t have to travel for days so it can stay on the tree/vine/plant or whatever until it is riper, which means it will taste better. This seems to apply to fruit especially. I’m pretty sure bananas are the only fruit that actually improve in taste (get sweeter) after they are picked from the tree. Every other fruit may “ripen” in texture or color, but the flavor remains the same as the day it was picked, so the longer it can stay “on,” the sweeter it will be.
  2. I like the idea of knowing where my food comes from and how it is produced. Period.
  3. Buying local in general helps support the local economy, and buying local food helps support local, often smaller-scale, farmers.
  4. Buying local helps the environment by saving tons of gas needed to transport food halfway around the world.

There are lots of other reasons, but these were the big ones for us. So we started doing some research. I found some amazing resources on the web. Here are a few:

http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/

http://100milediet.org/get-started/map

http://Locavores.com/

Yes, there is a term for the people who try to follow the movement to eat locally – Locavores. Who knew?? Anyway, I also hit the jackpot by typing in to a Google search “eat local Wisconsin.” There are tons of websites with information on farmers markets, CSAs, and all sorts of other sources for local food. So, yes, the information is out there. One thing that was slightly discouraging is that I went to the website of the show “The 100-Mile Challenge” and saw all the places where they had people participating in the challenge. Not one was in the Midwest. They were all coastal and/or southern. That gave me a brief pause, but I decided that living where we live would just make us have to be more creative, and somewhat more flexible in our efforts to eat locally.

So, here’s where we stand now. I first needed to determine our “100-mile” area. I went to the second link above to find it. I ended up adjusting it slightly to avoid having half of our eastern area in Lake Michigan, and utilized three of the four state borders to make it easier. So we have our area. Next we needed some guidelines, or “rules.” I found a great heuristic on the Eat Local Challenge website:

If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic.


If not ORGANIC, then Family farm.

If not FAMILY FARM, then Local business.

If not a LOCAL BUSINESS, then Fair Trade.

Apparently this is the Locavore Pledge. I like this way of thinking about eating locally, because it allows for some wiggle room. As I said, my husband and I wanted to make a lifestyle change, not just challenge ourselves to something really hard and potentially restricting for a month or so. We wanted to be realistic, and there are some things that we just didn’t feel we could give up, coffee and olive oil being two examples. But the above rule of thumb allows for some things outside our “100 miles” while at the same time ensuring that we still pay attention to where these things come from and how they are produced.

Bottom line: We have already started trying to eat more locally, as noted above. We will begin our true conversion to almost exclusively local foods in June. We have signed up for our CSA again, from which we get a huge box of produce from a nearby farm each week from June through October (the start of our switch will coincide with the first box). We also will get honey from the CSA. We will plant a backyard garden for items we do not get from the CSA. So far we’re planning to plant asparagus, shallots, bell peppers, raspberries, sweet potatoes, spinach and many herbs, though we may add more. We have found a local source of meat, including beef, pork, chicken (and eggs), and turkey. We will continue to get our chicken, pork, and occasionally turkey from them. We typically eat venison instead of beef, but if our supply of venison from last hunting season runs out, we will get beef from them as well. I have found some sources online for local fish, such a trout. We are still looking for walleye and hopefully some salmon from the Great Lakes. We will frequent farmers markets for any items we don’t get enough of in our CSA boxes or from our own garden. We will also seek out and visit local strawberry patches, apple orchards, bakeries for locally made breads, etc. I haven’t had a chance to delve completely into all the places around where we can get all the things we need, but the information is there and we will find it!

Miss loves plants. I’m excited to let her help in our garden this summer!

A few things we certainly cannot get locally, but will still buy include coffee, olives and olive oil, bananas, and citrus fruits, limes in particular (I love to cook with lime). I have started working on finding good sources for these items. I buy coffee that isn’t grown but is roasted in nearby Door County or I buy organic fair trade coffee. I get organic bananas and citrus fruit when they are available. Olives are a bit trickier, but I do buy organic olive oil. Though we are not giving up everything we can’t get locally, we will be conscientious of our sources and buy these things a bit more sparingly.

This plan is intended to last us through the summer and much of the fall. However, being in Wisconsin, our local food sources diminish significantly come November, particularly for produce. I am planning to can and/or freeze as much as I can this summer to last much of the winter. However, I just can’t commit to give up fresh (relatively speaking of course!) produce altogether for the long winter we have here. So we will apply our rules of thumb above to allow for some purchase of produce through the winter months as well. Primarily this will mean buying organic produce from the local grocery. Most other items should still be available locally (meats, cheese, eggs, breads, etc.). So that’s it in a really long nutshell!

If you’re thinking about trying to eat more locally, there are many things you can do. So many websites have great information, like the ones I have listed above, or can help find local sources. Some things to search include “CSA your town,” or “eat local your town or state.” Or just pay more attention when you’re in the grocery store to the labels on food. You can often find a local producer for items you had no idea were produced locally. The heuristic above is a good way to think of the process. Whether you want to try it for a week, a month, or a lifestyle change, or even just to start trying to find a few more items locally, I’ll bet you’ll find it easier than you think it will!

Amy is a stay-at-home-mom to her 13-month-old daughter and is expecting another baby in August. She occasionally works outside the home consulting as a forensic psychologist. She loves being a mom and trying to do the most healthy things possible for her family and the environment. She writes the blog Motherhood and Miscellany.

Miss’s One-Year Photos

I was able to purchase a CD with all of Miss’s One-year photos (and the copyrights), so I thought I’d share a few of them with you. They turned out great. It took her a minute to warm up to the photographer (as you can see by her “stink eye” look in the first photo) but once she did she hammed it up in true Miss-style. It was fun and she had the photographer and I rolling with laughter.










“Miss”-cellany and More

Miss is 13 months old today! It amazes me how quickly she is changing and learning new things. I have already told you a lot about what she’s up to these days. She’s walking everywhere, climbing the stairs like it’s the most fun new game, etc. She is ornery and silly and does the funniest things that keep me laughing all day. But she is also very thoughtful and loves to sit and study new things that she sees. She loves to read her books. She’s very good at entertaining herself, but also loves to play and be silly with her Momma and Daddy.




Love those lashes!
She can say “Mama,” “Dada,” “Dog,” “‘Uppy” (puppy), “Duck,” “Bear, and “Hi!” Yes, she already has two words for our dogs. She loves our dogs. They get kisses all the time. My husband and I are lucky to get a kiss once in a great while. She thinks it’s funny to turn her head and/or duck away when we try to get a kiss from her! She loves to point to her tummy, belly button, nose, hair, and sometimes her mouth and ear. She makes animal noises (lion, cow, duck) and I know I already blogged about this, but it cracks me up that she waves her hand in front of her nose when I say “Whiff-a-hootie!!” (which in our family means, “Ew, that stinks!”)
Trying to kiss one of our dogs

Tummy!!

She loves to try to help with chores like laundry and dishes. Often this means throwing the clean clothes out of the laundry basket, taking off with an article of clothing she finds to be particularly fun (usually an undergarment of some sort!), putting shoes into a laundry basket, or unloading the clean spoons from the dishwasher onto the floor. But she does follow simple directions pretty well so sometimes she is actually helpful. She loves to play in closets with clothes and shoes (wonder where she gets that??) and I love watching her take clothing and try to put it on over her head. Sometimes she’s even somewhat successful!
Um, yeah, that’s one of my bras.
Success! Sort of.

She loves shoes!! (that’s my girl 🙂

Bottom line is that 13 months is crazy fun. Miss has the most amazing little personality! I’m loving it.
In other news, I’m 18 weeks along in my pregnancy. Baby is growing, and so am I! It seems like lots of things are happening earlier with this pregnancy. I felt Baby moving a few weeks earlier than I did with Miss. I started getting acid reflux earlier too. And my belly button already popped out (several weeks ago actually)! Admittedly, I barely have an “Innie” belly button when I’m not pregnant. In fact, I’d probably call it more of a “Flattie.” But it still seems really early for my belly button to have popped to an Outie. Oh well. I’ll sport my Outie proudly for the next 22 weeks or so. And a bonus is that Miss thinks it’s pretty funny, so we’re rolling with it.

We are nearly to the point of starting the two-week countdown until we can find out Baby’s gender. April 5th is the big day, and I am so excited!

A very happy St. Patty’s Day

Miss and I had a wonderful St. Patty’s Day. We started out by getting all decked out in our festive green clothing. Her shirt said “Sham Rocker”. We went to meet some friends for lunch at an Irish restaurant, where we donned even more St. Patty’s Day flair, like funny headbands, huge gem rings, bead necklaces, buttons, etc. We had a blast and our food was delicious.



When we got home we went to play outside. We’ve been taking walks in the stroller a lot lately since the weather has been so nice, but Miss hasn’t really been out to run around in the yard yet this spring, so we just took some time to play in the front yard. She loved walking on the driveway and looking at all the interesting things to see. It took her a while to get used to the feel of the asphalt and the grass. The first few times she fell on her butt she didn’t want to touch the asphalt to stand back up. She also had to take some time to decide whether she liked the grass or not. She ultimately decided that both were okay, and she got good and dirty pulling out grass, digging a little dirt, picking up as many sticks as she could carry, and trying to catch ants. We took two walks and spent the entire afternoon outside until it was time to come in for dinner. The we had a bath and she conked out. It was such a wonderful day.











Just some photos

I went a little crazy with my camera today so I thought I’d just share some of the fun things I caught on film.
In yesterday’s post I mentioned Miss’s newfound love for carrying around her small stuffed animals, in particular her beanie kitty and beanie bear.
Here she is with the beanie bear and a substitute for Kitty, Elmo.

Now she found Kitty!! (p.s. I love the sleepy jammies and bedhead look!)

She really wanted to stop and pick up this ratty old dog toy (yes, it has had all the stuffing torn out and it’s nearly been decapitated, but my dog once loved it and now Miss enjoys toting it around from time to time; she fishes it out of the dog’s toy basket). But she refrained this time.

Miss loves to talk on the phone. Rather, she loves to pretend to talk on the phone. When I put the phone up to her ear with another person really on the line, like my mom, she gets all wide-eyed and clams up! But when there’s no one on the other end, she loves to have pretend phone conversations, whether it’s with the real phone, one of her toy phones, or something that sort of resembles a phone, like the alarm clock in our guest bedroom. Don’t be alarmed (sorry, couldn’t resist!), it’s unplugged.

She talks.

She listens.

“Say what?!?”

And later, she found her way back to that grody dog toy.

I can never resist a butt-shot of this adorable beaded diaper cover (yay for Nifty Nappy Woolie Wraps!!)

And this photo is just too cute.

She had a blast with a box from some kitchen items that were delivered today.

And finally, one of my favorites of the day.

Progress

Today was both a lazy and productive day. It was more productive than lazy I suppose, but we did have some family down-time during the ACC Championship basketball game. Duke (our team) played Georgia Tech for the championship. It was a pretty ugly game, but Duke was victorious and we were happy. We had fun all sitting on the floor playing with Miss and her newly discovered and loved stuffed animals. She has previously been fairly oblivious to her stuffed animals, once in a while maybe jumping on one with a bear hug, but for the most part ignoring them. Lately she has been playing a lot with her stuffies. In particular, she loves to carry several of them around with her. She will carry and/or drag any of them that are small enough to be carried, but she especially loves her beanie kitty and beanie bear. These are just the right size for her to carry one in each hand. Today she especially seemed to enjoy snuggling with her stuffies and sitting in her “Daddy chair” where she reclined in the crook of my husband’s armpit as he lounged on the floor with her. I wish I had taken a picture, but I was just soaking in the family time and, honestly being too lazy to get up and get my camera!
But, there was lots of productivity today too! A few posts ago I mentioned the projects I wanted to get finished before finding out Baby’s gender and getting to work on his or her room. One of the first things I wanted to do was to finally finish Miss’s room. Now you may wonder why in the world her room is just getting finished when she’s nearly 13 months old. Well, let me explain. When she was born we were living in a rental house while we were searching for the perfect house to buy. We did have a completed nursery for her in that house, that I had put together in my nesting phase before she was born. Miss was about 3 months old when we moved to our current house. I got her room set up nicely, but we didn’t really have it finished or get anything put up on the walls because the walls were green and we needed to wait until we could get her room painted. We finally did that this past fall. Since then I don’t really have a great reason that her room didn’t get done. But in the past several months I have put up a few things on her walls, found a bookcase and gotten Hubby to put it together, and finally made a decision about whether to change the furniture arrangement in the room or not (the decision was to change it). So, here we have the before and after photos. The room still needs a few touches. I need a couple more items to put up on the walls, though I haven’t found what I want yet. I also need to put up the growth chart when that gets done. That will go next to the new bookshelf, which you can see below. So see what you think!
This is view from the door into Miss’s room
Before
Kind of blah. No good focal point (except the adorable baby of course!).

After
Much better! In case you missed this in my earlier post, my mom made that quilt for Miss.
The wall across from the window.
Before

After
Not too much different, but the addition of the shelf with the pegs to hang Miss’s tiny crocheted sweater and antique baby spoon from my mom, plus her initial letters on the shelf (they’re hard to see in this photo, but they’re there) add a lot to this part of the room.
This is the wall adjacent to the door into the room.
Before

After
So much better with the bookcase! The growth chart will go between the bookcase and the door.
And speaking of the growth chart, here’s the first stage of work on it. I got the gesso on the canvas today and the dowels have been painted. Now I just have to cut it to the size I need, get crafty with my paints, attach the dowels at the top and bottom and put the ribbon on to hang it.
As for the other project, my big sewing effort for the master bedroom, I have been ordering and comparing fabric swatches. I think I’ve decided on the fabric for the duvet, but the swatch I got was so small I had to order a yard of fabric to see if the colors and pattern are really what I want. So, I’m making some progress there too. The fabric should be here tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest. I can’t wait!

Patent Leather Sunshine

Blah.
(notice how little snow is left though!!)

Hello Sunshine!

I couldn’t get over how cute Miss looked in her ruffle socks and patent Mary Janes yesterday, so I decided these did not need to be special occasion footwear and she wore them to the store this afternoon. So. Cute.

She’s still a little unsteady walking in shoes.

But she concentrated very hard and did pretty well.

So focused. And then. . .

Peekaboo!!