The Joyful Housewife

And now for a small respite from baby talk – or at least from birth talk.

Food has been on my mind in a big way lately. I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but if I were to adopt some kind of goal for this year, one main goal, it would be to pay more attention to the food issues I care about. I really believe that food matters (as Mark Bittman says), I’ve just been lost in our insular world of adapting to each place we’ve moved to for the past four years and then getting pregnant and starting a family. But, finally, I’ve been able to poke my head out a little bit (mostly while nursing in the middle of the night) and pay attention to some of those things that I care about in life. After all that is why we moved to this small town. So we can live a better quality of life that focuses on what’s important to us – and that includes things like growing our own food, choosing locally produced foods, and eating foods that are minimally processed, etc.

Ironically, we had a gigantic garden in Denver, but won’t be able to have one here for at least a year, when we finally buy a house.

My little sis trying to water the back edge of our giant city garden.

We are part of a CSA (community supported agriculture) here though, and we pick up a box of veggies every week.

The geodesic dome at the farm where we get our CSA.

Tim usually has fun figuring out creative ways to use up the celery roots, greens, and more squash and potatoes than I can count. That is, until the baby was born. Now we’re lucky if we can even pick up our weekly share. We’ve been eating a lot of take-out.

But what renewed my interest in food lately, was an article I stumbled upon, via Twitter, while breastfeeding in the middle of the night last week: New Organic Milk Contains Synthetic Hormone Additive. It’s about how Horizon Organic (owned by dairy giant Dean Foods – a fact which I didn’t even know before reading this article) is adding an illegal synthetic additive to its “organic” milk. They now include “organic” and “vegetarian” DHA, produced from “microalgae species that have never previously been part of the human diet, and that are fermented in a medium including corn syrup that is likely genetically engineered….”

Maybe it doesn’t seem like all that big of a deal, except for all the other stuff surrounding it, all this Dean Foods and Martek stuff, and putting this DHA stuff into baby formula(!).

In addition to Dean Foods, a few other food processors and several infant formula manufacturers have included the synthetic additive, manufactured by Martek Biosciences Corporation, in organic products, despite their lack of approval. (Emphasis mine.)

It’s disturbing that big food corporations can get around the organics label – which essentially makes it meaningless. And its disturbing that they put this stuff in baby formula. And according to some studies sited in the article, its been giving babies diarrhea and other allergic reactions. And so here I was in the middle of the night all upset, that, (a) Horizon organic half and half is exactly what I put in my coffee, (b) I really haven’t been paying attention to food issues.

I’ve been mostly vegetarian since I was thirteen years old. I don’t eat beef, chicken, or pork, and I think drinking cows milk is disgusting and wrong. If I do eat cereal, I use soy or rice milk. But I’m not strict and still eat ice cream, yogurt, cheese, and put cream in my coffee. I do always try to buy organic dairy with happy cows and good business practices and all that, though.

And so I’m starting to question some of my lassitude now. (Whew, big word! I guess I’m not all “mommy brain” yet.)

Luckily the instant coffee I’ve been drinking – because it’s the only thing I can manage to fix for myself with one hand while slinging my baby on the other hip – has been tearing up my stomach, causing me to  switch to tea – so I don’t have to make the decision of what else to put in my coffee just yet. But I feel that I need to keep myself more informed about where my food comes from now that we are hopefully settling down for good.

All right, that’s deep enough for one night! I’ve got to get some shut-eye before the baby wakes up again.

We recently harvested our first garden peas.

I had never had fresh peas before. Tim cooked them with finely chopped white onion, something I don’t think I would have thought of, and they were very good. Pulling them from the pods was fun, but took a long time. It’s hard for me to imagine making as much stuff from scratch as I would like to. Does it get easier and faster? And I’m watching TV while I do it! What in the world did people do before that? I want to support the Slow Food movement, but I feel like such a lazy wimp when it comes to spending time on my own food. I hope I someday feel more pleasure in my sense of responsibility.

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable.
Today, we have over 100,000 members in 132 countries.

Growing up in Southern California in a single parent family, we did not have the time or the space to garden. My mom always kept our yard and house spruced with pretty potted flowers, but apart from the ubiquitous fruit trees, growing food was unheard of.

Several weeks ago, thanks to my husband’s adventurous fortitude, we planted some seeds and they continue to grow, some at lightning speeds, and some seemingly much slower than last year.

As my husband is the one working the long hours outside the home, watering all the little growing things has fallen to me. I hate being out in the plain view of my neighbors, who might yell at me for not picking up dog poop in our shared front yard fast enough, but I’m enjoying the garden time in spite of myself. I even find myself pulling weeds.

Heck, the Green Zebra, Purple Cherokees, and all number of others veggies aren’t the only things growing right now. I’m growing too!

I’ve always joked that my inertia is at rest. I’m certainly not much of a doer.

If it weren’t for my husband, who knows how long it would take to discover my love of growing fruits and veggies?

He’s been asking me daily where I think we should put the fennel, or the radicchio, or the Japanese eggplants, and Armenian cucumbers, not to mention all the tomatoes – six varieties! And every day, I answer, “I don’t know, babe.”

Because until today, when I found myself enjoying the watering and the weeding, Ididn’t realize how much gardening space we’ve lost to the path our neighbor is putting in.

But, now I look forward to getting out there with Tim and squeezing all these little guys in our limited space. Some will have to go in pots, I think.

I count myself lucky that I married such a patient and encouraging man. He doesn’t nag at me, but he gently urges me to help out with the gardening, and slowly, I become less afraid to do things I’ve never done before. I cannot wait until the fresh veggies are coming out our ears.

And, as I often do, I’ll quote the little girl on the Shake’N Bake commercial, “And I helped!”