Introducing the Food Chronicles
One of the things that brings excitement to my life is food. It was always a big focus in my family growing up, with rituals like wine with Friday & Saturday suppers, favourite dishes, family get-togethers and meals for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. When I was away at university my grandma baked banana muffins and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and mailed them to me – just like a hug from home!
Eating has gotten much more complicated lately. I am trying to balance many things, several of them contradictory. I’m hoping that blogging about it will help me sort them out – remember them – and perhaps gain advice from you, my esteemed readers!
Here are the issues that I keep in mind for food, roughly in order of priority:
1. Allergen free (ie none of our allergens)! No eggs, fish or tree nuts.
2. Organic if possible. (still to come: the lists I have found of “most important to eat organic” and “things that don’t really matter if you eat organic or not).
3. Choices with some thought to foods that are supposed to be healthy for you – especially from the “Foods That Fight Cancer” and “Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer” books by Dr. Beliveau. Overall he advocates more fruit & vegetables, of course, but there are some interesting research nuggets in there. However, I feel that it’s important to keep a sense of perspective. Slavishly following these books doesn’t mean you’ll never get cancer. If you know someone who has had a cancer diagnosis, it isn’t their “fault” for not following these guidelines. I think there’s some great information here but I’d hate to have it transformed into a “blame the victim” situation.
4. Lower carb/more whole grains. DH and I followed the South Beach diet several years ago and it did wonders for DH’s blood lipid levels, and also for his weight loss. I lost some weight too but it was really surprising how well it worked for DH. There’s type II diabetes in my family so I think this is a good strategy for both of us.
5. Less meat, more vegetarian meals/dishes. As I grew up eating meat with every supper, this is a shift for me. (note how this is more difficult w/ the south beach diet, mentioned above!)
6. Eating 3 course meals a la “French Women Don’t Get Fat“ - this is a recent introduction to our food habits (for supper), and we are loving it! Some typical things might be a soup course, then a salad course, and then the “main” – all of them small, and meat usually just at the main course – or sometimes it’s all vegetarian. One recent meal was 1) soup 2) corn on the cob 3) a bit of beef stew, mashed potato, sauteed mushrooms & onion, and broccoli. By the time you get to course #3 you’re already partly full, plus I generally use smaller plates. It is a bit more work but I”m starting to get into the groove.
7. Environmentally friendly/locally grown – sometimes I am good at keeping this a priority – other times not so much. Last year we got most of our fruits & vegetables from a farm about 40 min away. It was a great experience but it was a commitment of money & time to drive there and back!
8. Not from BPA-lined cans. (a whole new level of obsessiveness for me)
9. Gluten-reduced (I haven’t really incorporated this much, but it’s something I’d like to aim for in the future)
10. Less dairy (Dairy is so easy, high protein, good flavour for us. But I think we are having too much of it).
So, you may be able to see some of the conflicts here! South Beach advocates a high protein breakfast, and highly recommends eggs – that goes against our allergy! It also emphasizes high protein to keep you feeling full – a bit harder to do when striving for more vegetarian emphasis. Then there’s the preventing cancer thing, where omega-3 fats from fish are fantastic! Unfortunately, we are allergic to that. Then there’s the overall cost of buying organic … argh. Of course a good variety of fresh veggies & fruit is an admirable goal, but you can’t get that much which is local in the wintertime in Ontario.
No wonder I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the (supposedly) simple task of eating!
A society with a place for the Childfree/Childless
One of the books I read this summer was Collapse, by Jared Diamond. It was a fascinating look at many different societies throughout history, and the choices they made that allowed the society to survive – or to collapse, sometimes with no survivors. (population being too big for food production to support is a very common theme in the collapses). It is a BIG book but I had a hard time putting it down. Examples range from modern-day Montana, to ancient Easter Island, Greenland, Iceland, the Maya civilization, Japan, Rwanda, Australia, China … so many different stories.
One part that really caught my attention was control of population growth. Diamond gave 2 examples (and others) of this occurring in an obvious way. China is an example of the legislated, top-down “one child per family” law. The other was a small island, I believe in the South Pacific. (the book has been returned to the library, overdue, and I didn’t make notes at the time). This island is small enough that you can walk the entire perimeter in about a day, maybe less. The consequences of too many mouths to feed are obvious to everyone on the island. There are a few strategies in place to make sure the population does not get beyond the food support: late stage abortions for families that have the accepted norm of children; groups of adolescents occasionally setting out into the ocean in canoes to go adventuring (sometimes to their deaths in this perilous venture, other times to emigrate or bring back new spouses to mix in with the gene pool); but also choosing to be childfree or “celibate.” In this context celibate does not mean refraining from marriage or sex, but it does mean being committed to not having children.
It just really made me think. In this society, those who choose to live childfree probably have a well accepted and celebrated place. They are making a sacrifice for the good of the entire society. That choice may be attractive because it possibly brings a more carefree life. I would imagine that those who do have children see them more as everyone’s children, to be loved and shared and adored by all. It makes me think of the whole “it takes a village to raise a child” idea, where the children in a sense are cared for by everyone – and the elders of the population are cared for by all as well, having had an important role evident to everyone, whether or not they have children. (please note these are my own thoughts – I’m extrapolating here.)
I can’t imagine what the freedom of choice or pressures to choose one way or another might be. It makes me wonder – if our society was different and truly embraced childfree as a choice – if it were a celebrated and honoured choice – how that would change the experience of living without children for those who arrive there by choice and also by infertility. The dynamics of our societies being so big in comparison to this island, and with such great land masses – it means we are disconnected from each other, from our food supply and how much growth we can support – and from how much we could need and love each other. (Mind you, there are distinct disadvantages of small societies where everyone knows your business too! I could be thinking of this in a light that is too romantic).
Once I get to the library and pay my (bleeping) fines, I will probably take this book out again to re-read it more slowly. It does make me wonder where our world is headed – if we can make the choices to improve our planet and our lives, instead of the choices that would lead to collapse. I hope we can!
Checking back in (I hope)
(NOTE: children mentioned)
It feels like ages since I’ve posted. Many virtual posts have been written in my mind, but this is the first time in weeks I’ve actually sat down to write!
As a quick update on us – still no job for DH. There is an interesting lead for a job he’d like – it would involve a cut in pay and in position, but if he’s interested I think it could be a good move. I don’t know yet if it would be lower stress, more flexible time, etc. I am looking at a shift in career, which involves upgrading of language skills (French) and possibly a couple of courses. I am not 100% sure this is the way we’ll go, but it is an exciting possibility.
DS (4 yo) started junior kindergarten – full day, every day. It has been exhausting working through his food allergy & asthma issues with the school, but I am so VERY happy with how they approach all of this. I don’t mind doing the extra work they ask me to do, if it will keep him safe. So far he adores his teacher and is absolutely loving his class. On the difficult side, there has been a surge in independence & testing the boundaries. This is entirely normal, and in fact healthy, but can still be very frustrating to deal with! Also we need to find a new rhythm or set of routines to help us cope, and we haven’t quite settled yet. On the medical front there seems to be something going on with DS’s stomach – it is hurting him at odd times, and started a month before school began, so I don’t think it’s stress. The doc isn’t quite sure either. It seems to have begun after a course of antibiotics so we are trying probiotics to see if that will help.
DD (2 yo) misses her brother very much – which is very sweet on the one hand. But then, she also is going through a stage of stubborn independence that is a challenge. (repeat the earlier sentence about this all being normal & healthy).
It’s been 8 months of unemployment (thankfully with a severence, but that was for 7 months) and the stress is getting to us a bit. I am so hoping & praying for something to come our way. Also DH’s doctor is insisting he come in since his blood lipids are “very elevated.” I googled it and of course – stress can raise the lipid levels in the blood. Thank goodness we have a vigilant & caring doctor. But I hope we/he can manage this without having to take medications. If he needs them, he needs them. I am nervous of statin drugs (bad side effects for my grandpa & dad) and dh is only 38. There’s no research that I know of the effects of taking these meds for 50+ years! Still, if he’s in high risk for stroke territory, better to take the drugs than not (I guess)?
So we are still living in the hotel room at Stress Central – though at least we have interesting diversions like the Canadian election (ok, not so interesting) and the election of our neighbour to the south, the USA (much more interesting election!)
Childless by religious conviction ?
Thank goodness DH is a computer genius … we’ve had some major issues getting my computer to work properly lately. I need to find all of my RSS feeds etc. again, and I will incommunicado next week – so please forgive me if I fall off the planet a bit until September.
This morning I heard a radio documentary that has been with me the rest of the day. It is the story of how a bit of civil law and religious law interact in Canada, told through the story of Stephanie. Stephanie and her husband divorced through civil law, but in Jewish law her husband had to offer her a release from the barrier of remarrying (and thus having children in the faith). It was explained that the husband offers this release – called a “Get” – and the wife accepts it, in order to free both parties to move on. If the wife refuses to accept or the husband refuses to give the Get, then they are not free. I believe the Rabbinical court is involved in working it all out. (I don’t have a background in Judaism, so I hope I’m getting the details right here).
Back in medieval times this (apparently) worked pretty well. It gave the woman some power in the decision. If the Rabbinical court found that the woman was religiously and morally in the right, and the husband refused to give the Get, there were ways they could persuade him to voluntarily offer it – since religion had more direct power & influence over a person’s life in the past than it does now, generally speaking.
So when Stephanie and her ex divorced, there was an agreement that he would offer her the Get – which he did not do. That did not happen until the civil law was re-written in Canada to apply the kind of pressure for resolution that religion & society used to do. It took 15 years for this to be worked out.
Meanwhile, Stephanie was a “chained wife.” She could not marry again in the faith, or have children in the faith. The magnitude of this struggle is not really detailed but that is what really stands out to me. Let’s say she was 25 at the time of the split-up – 15 years later, she would be 40. Those are years where she could not be married and building a life with a partner, nor could she have children (or try to).
Obviously her faith was important enough to her that she wanted to do things the “right” way. It was important to her to marry someone of her own religion, and to have children that the community would recognize. It just speaks to me – the fundamental conflict between what you believe in your heart to be true, to be the right path for you to follow – and the yearning to have children, to be married …
Now, I don’t know if she met the love of her life and waited for 10 years hoping to get married. I don’t know how strong her urge to have children might be/might have been. Perhaps it was “sure, if kids came along I’d like that” as opposed to “I really want to have kids.” But just imagining that the ex has this power to block your access to the rest of what you want in life, because your faith and beliefs are so strongly rooted in that way … it just seems to me that the ex has done incalculable damage here.
While Stephanie cannot gain back the lost years, the civil law in Canada was changed such that this should not be able to happen. The gist of the wording is that no person may place barriers to a religious re-marriage for an ex if it is in the power of the individual person to remove them. So Stephanie eventually got her Get.
She did sue the ex for damages. As I recall it was $2 500 for each year that she was not able to remarry, and $10 000 for not being able to have children. (not that money can replace it, but I guess it was the principle). That last figure really stuck in my head. It’s about the cost of an IVF, isn’t it.
If you are interested in hearing the documentary, I believe you can access it here: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200808/20080820.html
you’ll need to go part 2.
A Happy Anniversary
Life has been so busy lately – but I think we are finally calming down a bit. Between taking a little holiday, hosting a party at our house (involving drastic tidy up, clean up, and relocating furniture into the night right beforehand, with rain in the weather forecast), catching colds, doctor appointments, etc. – well, my blogging & reading has suffered.
However, I did want to say what a lovely time DH & I had for our anniversary the other night! We spent the actual day at home (though we are going out for a romantic dinner on the weekend). DH planned out a wonderful evening. I was busy finishing up a few things upstairs until he was ready for me to come down. Here are some of the things that made it so special.
- a card with a letter that brought tears to my eyes and a huge smile on my face. DH often finds it easier to express emotional things in writing. I will treasure this card always. (I thought it was taking him such a long time to drop off dry-cleaning. I bet he was in the coffee shop writing in this card instead!)
- candles all over in our kitchen/family room area of the house. I love candles!
- an order-in dinner with sentimental value … on our 2nd anniversary we had just gotten possession of our first house, so we picked up Chinese food and had our anniversary dinner sitting on the floor – with a bottle of wine saved from our wedding – and a bit of the top cake layer which had been frozen. We don’t have Chinese food often so it has a connection for me.
- music which also has significance to us. Johnny Clegg & Savuka “Cruel Crazy Beautiful World” – from our courting days. Steven Curtis Chapman “Greatest Hits” – our wedding song is on this album. Vivaldi “The Four Seasons,” played by Nigel Kennedy. He is an amazing violinist that DH discovered before we were married, and that’s the music we played for our wedding meal.
- dancing to our wedding song “I Will be Here for You” by Steven Curtis Chapman
- a lovely gift which makes me feel beautiful & special
- a massage by candle light. Years ago DH & I took a massage class together – something I would highly recommend! We both enjoy the relaxation a massage can bring. While professionals are great I actually prefer DH – probably because I’m just more relaxed with him anyway. We even invested in an adjustable massage table since I am short & DH is tall, and we don’t want one person getting injured while massaging the other. Another benefit of massage is it can lead to pure relaxation and sleep, or it can go in other directions 
- watching the Olympics (too) late into the night, snuggled up on the couch. Although Canada hasn’t won any medals yet … I enjoy watching these amazing athletes. Michael Phelps is something else, and gymnastics is always a favourite. Unfortunately it’s adding up to some sleep deprivation!
In other news, we are still waiting for good news on the job front (DH’s fortune cookie just said something about “relax and be happy” while mine said “success is heading your way.” Hmmm). I am still confident that something will come our way – I just hope it will be soon.
Turtling
(some religious content)
I’ve been hiding from the world a bit lately. I can understand doing so in real life, but it is odd that the same thing would happen on-line.
It’s not that anything really bad is going on – for which I am grateful. Perhaps it’s feeling a bit stuck in a rut. DH got all the way to the end with another job, but they gave it to the other candidate. DH (IMO) is an amazingly great guy and worker, and I think what must be happening is that he impresses them at interviews etc. so he progresses forward, even when the job isn’t exactly what he has done before. All this time & energy goes into the process, and at the end they decide on someone who has more directly relevant experience. It’s happened 3 times! Then, he had an interview for a job he really wanted, but he just wasn’t on his game and “bombed the interview” (his words). I don’t know whether to file that in “bad things happen to good people” “$&it happens” or “God has other plans.” The cycle of hope, anticipation, and then crashing is not fun. (sounds a bit like a TTC cycle doesn’t it? I asked DH what was harder for him, and he said probably the job search cycle, since it is something one *ought* to have more control over).
Anyway we are hanging in. I go through spurts of having the house tidy-ish, laundry pretty much caught up, good food (lots of veggies) and me eating well (not too many carbs, only 1 cup of coffee, etc). Then we go through times when it all falls apart and we are ordering pizza and frantically trying to match socks. Ugh. I much prefer the more organized living but sometimes it is hard to climb back up there – at least for me. It makes me wonder if other people really go through this, or if I’m just lazy, caught up in inertia, not domestic, etc etc.
Yesterday was a pretty rainy, grey day until late afternoon. I was sitting at the computer, looking out the window and thinking how I really should get outside while the sun is shining. I thought about all the benefits of fresh air, a little walk, hearing the birds sing, etc. But it wasn’t enough to move my butt from the chair. At last I said a little prayer along the lines of “God, please help me to get outside. I’m not strong enough to do this on my own.” (I know, pretty sad that I can’t manage to get outside isn’t it?)
5 minutes later the doorbell rang – a friend of mine who was going for a walk happened to stop by just in case I was home, to invite me out for a walk. It’s a bit unusual for one of us to just drop in on the other – usually we call first – so this was unexepected. I got myself into fit-to-be-seen clothes and outside we went. It then occured to me, you could say she’s the answer to a prayer Isn’t that funny? It could be pure coincidence. It could be energy vibes or a disturbance in the space-time continuum. Or it could be that an angel gave her a nudge. I don’t know.
But it was good to get outside for a bit, and helped me to feel better. See, I’m even blogging again
Catherine
I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with life a bit lately. DH got right to the final stage with a job, but the other candidate was chosen in the end (background tallied more closely with the company). Sooner or later it will have to be our turn! There are some other opportunities on the go that are of great interest to DH, so we’ll see. Meanwhile I feel like a compass spinning and spinning. I hope we will settle soon and start to move on in a direction. The stress is getting to me – not only is my blog writing far behind, but my eating habits are a disaster! I can’t have saltine crackers in the house or I will eat an entire sleeve with butter & jam. I’ve been drinking waaaay too much Tim Horton’s coffee. My new strategy is to buy lots of veggies instead, though somehow I don’t crave them the same way.
Other news that has been taking up alot of my emotional space – if you have prayers, positive vibes, or love you can send out to a 5-year old girl named Catherine, it would be so appreciated. Through my circle of friends I became acquainted with Catherine’s mom, and our paths have crossed quite a few times. Catherine was diagnosed with cancer and will be undergoing 5 more rounds of chemo, etc. to fight the tumours. Any details I know have come fourth hand, but I heard it was neuroblastoma – which is not a good one. The prognosis is not sounding good. Catherine is a fiesty, energetic little girl and the last person I’d have thought would get sick. As you can imagine it is terribly hard for the whole family, including the little brother (maybe 2 years old?) who is currently living with a family member.
Please think of them in this terrible time, and send them healing, supportive thoughts, prayers or whatever you may have to send.
Thank you!
Dead Sexy?
Don’t you love it when the thrill of hmm – lust, desire, interest? takes you by surprise?
I enjoy folding laundry and watching TV – it’s almost the only time I do watch TV. Sometimes I go for a Rachael Ray cooking show, or an episode of Nova (the Megavolcano episode was great!) Recently I’m hooked on “The Naked Archaeologist” – he explores stories from the Bible by delving into archaeological sites, interviews w/ archaeologists, historians or scientists that are expert in that age or area. It’s all interspersed with movie and TV clips and told with a great sense of humour.
While I find him very interesting and knowledgeable and I admire the work he does, that little flare of “oooo!” didn’t really come up – until the episode I watched yesterday. In it he ends up going back to the original Hebrew of the particular story we’re exploring, and he reads it. WELL! I always thought he had rather a nice voice/accent … but listening to him read the Hebrew was a delightful jolt, completely unexpected.
I’ll admit I have a thing for men and foreign languages. (DH can speak at least 2 languages that I don’t understand ) And the things I find sexy about men aren’t usually the obvious things. One of first the “thrills” that came my way for DH was when we were driving somewhere and I happened to look at his hands on the steering wheel. For some reason that sent a flame through me. This isn’t to say I can’t appreciate more obvious characteristics, but the subtle ones tend to thrill me more, perhaps because they are unexpected.
Now I will be watching this show with renewed interest, hoping that once again Simcha Jacobovici will read Hebrew 
(incidentally, his work is not without controversy – I don’t mean that I agree with everything he says. But I can still enjoy the voice he says it with!)
I’d love to know if others can relate to this, and to hear what takes them by surprise to give that shot of bliss …
“So that others won’t have to”
(other people’s children mentioned)
A while ago I went to the dentist for my hygenist appointment, and got into conversation with her. It turns out that her son has a kind of disorder I’d never heard of – something about not being able to make oils, so his skin is extremely dry & prone to eczema. He needs to be slathered in a perscription lotion, have baths infrequently, and make regular visits to the children’s hospital about an hour away. It sounds pretty miserable all in all.
My hygenist mentioned that when her son questions why he ended up with this disorder – and the other things that affect him – she tells him “you go through this so that others won’t have to.”
Now, let me make the disclaimer that I know we are all different; we all find different ways of making sense of the world and our own situations. The above explanation appears to work for my hygenist and her family, and I don’t want to minimize that. I want to say, however, that it really doesn’t work *at all* for me.
It’s too close to sentiments like “God only gives you what you can handle. He knows your strength better than you do.” In my view, God doesn’t dish out the pain, misery and tragedy in the world. I think most of that is evidence that evil is at work in our world – sometimes in an individual, often because of the overall sum of how humankind works. For example, I think alot of infertility could be traced back to pollution issues, pesticides, etc. I do think that sheer random back luck happens. I suppose God sometimes does send us trials, but I just can’t imagine a loving God planning and sending the most terrible experiences that some of us undergo.
Much of my thinking for this comes from the book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” That book was critical in the search for my own faith. If I accepted the view that God is loving – which is what I felt to be true – how could I understand all the terrible things that happen in this world? This battle with evil, affecting all of us, was part of my answer. As I studied science, it was also important to me that these answers made sense with what I knew of the world tried by experiment. Thus came the idea that God created the universe, and set the laws of physics etc. in motion, and put the power of self-determination in our hands. The theory of evolution makes sense to me; I really have a hard time seeing why people find science & faith to be opposite sides of the divide. The more I study science, the more it seems to me I see God’s signature in everything. Watching cells under a microscope still takes my breath away.
But God isn’t going to contravene the laws of physics to make miracles happen just because we pray for them. That’s not to say I don’t believe miracles ever happen, but just to say that I don’t think God is like a gumball machine. Enter the correct number of prayers, out rolls the desired answer. It isn’t that simple. We are in the world as it is, as it has come to us from countless ancestors, and future generations will inherit the results of our decisions. We are caught in that current. I can’t stop myself from praying for miracles for those I love, and for myself too, but I also put faith in the decisions made by others that will bring light, love and hope into this world. I sure pray for the scientists working on ways to help those with infertility, asthma, allergies, and many other things. Perhaps the Spirit will give them a flash of inspiration that will lead to a great discovery – within the laws of the universe. (and I do think prayer is very important, but more because it develops our relationship with God, than for deal-making. Of course, I can’t deny I’ve tried making deals at times too.)
I also believe that no matter how grim the situation we are in, if we can offer it to God and come to Him(Her), it can be made better. We can get through it more easily with His support – we can find peace. He is with us in all of the most terrible times. I believe He sheds tears with us, holds us when we are sobbing, and guides us towards the peace, hope and strength to go on.
If someone seriously told me that the struggles that we have are ours so that others wouldn’t have to deal with them – well, I’m afraid I’d return a pretty uncharitable response. I did not choose to have these struggles. It is not fair that we have them – it is not fair that others struggle with their health issues, watch their children starve, or suffer war crimes. Instead of bringing me comfort, this kind of statment makes me angry and resentful. How do you react to this explanation for the question of WHY? Do you have a different answer?
What is my answer? I suppose, part of it is the wide-spread and often random effects of evil, and the randomness in nature too. Maybe exposure to pollution, mass food production, and very different challenges to the immune system than what we used to have. I guess we all have to find our own answers. And anyway, I think the really important question is how do we move on, how do we cope? For me, prayer and asking for help in the struggle is part of the answer. Others perhaps find their way in advocacy, fund-raising, supporting other people. All of these are life-giving ways to take a personal tragedy and help others and ourselves.
I volunteered for about a year with a shelter for street youth. Some of them were refugees from other countries, some were home-grown Canadians. Many of their stories would break your heart. One boy in particular had been forced to be a child soldier, and faced all the horrors of war, his family & hometown and everything torn apart. He had escaped to build a better life here. His determination, courage and perhaps even desperation really struck me. I think about him sometimes and hope he has found his way.
But I would never have told him that he went through those experiences so that I, or anyone else, would be spared from them.
Bowing out of NCLM …
Hmmm – so much for NCLM … I have bottomed out! With 2 short-notice trips, including one this past weekend, I am hopelessly behind and just conceeding defeat. However it is wonderful to have met some great people that I hope to keep up with, and if Mel keeps the list up perhpas I will get to visit everyone in a month or so. It is amazing how the internet can help us get to know one another.
