The Balloon Grich

I didn’t blog yesterday; I was too busy brooding over how horrible my life was. Living with allergies can be particularly trying, from everyday annoyances to Big Deals.

I am extremely sensitive to latex. I can’t say I’m allergic, because I don’t fall over on the ground, gasping for breath when exposed. But I do experience relatively minor reactions, such as uticaria on my finger joints, a metallic taste in my mouth, and some difficulty breathing. Most importantly, every exposure sets me up for the next one to be worse.

Obviously, I have to work to keep latex out of my life as much as possible: gone are condoms and the diaphragm (replaced by two kids), my medical charts have day-glo pink stickers on them, our Band-Aids are special purchases (though the wrappers still have latex in them?!), and I’m the mean Mommy who says, “no, thank you” when someone offers my kid a balloon.

Yesterday, however, things spiraled out of control. Our contractor, a normally really smart guy, textured the new wall between the boys’ room with some nasty stuff and slapped on a coat of extra-stinky primer. When I came home, the solvent smell wasn’t great, but I thought it would be okay. We did pull the boys out of their rooms, with the living room and hallway resembling flophouses. By morning, my nose hurt badly, and I could feel my nose constricting. My plan for putting a coat of low VOC paint on the walls completely evaporated when I realized that I couldn’t even go in the room.

I ended up placing a panicked call to the contractor, asking him to come do the painting for me—ASAP, and throwing all the doors and windows wide open so I could breathe in my own home. That wouldn’t have been too horrible, but the kids were home for yet another snow day, which meant A) it was really cold outside, and B) the kids were unhappy, since not only wasn’t there enough snow to really play in, but the house was so cold they had to wear their hats indoors. No to mention Mommy's grumpy mood. I lit a fire, but 53 degrees is cold.

By evening, things had improved considerably: my hero at the paint store not only had low-VOC paint to sell me, he custom tinted it on the spot (one usually must pre-order such things). My heart lighter, I set to work making my first-ever homemade Dal Makhani. (It’s not too bad, though I have to admit it’s better today.) By 4:30, the paint was on, so I could close the doors and windows and let the crackling fire and the bubbling Dal warm things up quickly.

*****

When I read this morning’s headlines of tornadoes and suicide bombers, I realize my problems don’t amount to a hill of beans; when I talked to my Dear Friend this morning, I realized that I may have had one bad day, but she’s had a couple of rough weeks. I’ll pick up Stand Partner and bring her home today. No, I can’t go in the freshly painted room quite yet, but I did put in the new light switch on the unpainted side, and I’ll pick up the carpet this afternoon.

The downside of bounty

Portion control is in the news again this morning, as the New York City Board of Health ramps up to require restaurateurs to disclose the caloric content of dishes. The chat boards and blogosphere light up with discussions ranging from nanny state disparagers to people giving hints about dealing with oversized restaurant portions.

Like many boomers, I am a child of parents who grew up during the depression, and lived through the lean times of World War II. Dear Husband’s parents literally starved, as they were in Europe, where food rationing was a reality. When our parents used their hard-earned money to put something on our plates, they made sure we ate it: I can recall sitting at the table for hours until I had cleaned my plate (invariably lima beans) and could be excused. And in a restaurant—reserved for special occasions only—we had doggie bags, so we didn’t have to throw food away. Waste not, want not, they would say.

As lean years gave way to prosperity, larger portion sizes—especially in restaurants—became the rule. Then came the Reagan years: it’s OK, do whatever makes you feel better—you’re the “me” generation, and you're worth it. (And yesterday’s Times tells me that this generation is even more about “me” than mine!) The modest doggie bag that fit in a ladies' handbag gave way to huge clamshells, and we walk away balancing a stack of them. And we eat out more, on average four times a week.

When I was a kid, after supper we used to bicycle over to houses that were being built and scrounge any wood scraps that were lying around. We used them to build forts and stuff. Now as adults, entitled and affluent, we can go to the home center anytime and buy whole sheets of plywood, power tools, and even gas-guzzling trucks to haul them around in (I’m guilty as charged here). And societal mores no longer tells us that this is selfish, though it is.

Which leaves us with people who genuinely have no idea what portion size is. We mock the portion sizes on the packaging of the food and have pressured the FDA to change them: one box of mac & cheese for four people, don’t be silly, we say. But the reason that the box is that size is because it was designed back in the 60’s to feed the nuclear family—and not just as a side dish: that box was the main dish!

Like many Americans, I have had a lifelong struggle with my weight. But after years of buying bigger and baggier clothes, I turned it around. I lost over 45 pounds and have kept it off. I did not change what I eat. I did not follow a fad diet. I did not start exercising (much to my doctor’s chagrin). I started eating one portion. That’s all. One portion.

I had to keep it simple, and there are basic rules to help me stay on track:

1. Weigh every day. It encourages me if I’m going in the right direction, and lets me know if I'm not.
2. Learn what a portion size is. I read every package, don’t assume I know. I’ve learned the rules of thumb: a portion of meat is a deck of cards, a portion of starch (pasta, rice, etc.) is the size of my fist, a portion of cheese is 1” x 1”.
3. Eat the same meals every day. Eat breakfast, but keep it small (this is my morning cup of cocoa). Eat lunch: one portion of something (I try to keep it between 100 and 200 calories—really!). Eat an afternoon snack: one portion! This is my biggest challenge, and I find that pre-measuring one portion of trail mix (that’s ¼ cup, folks) helps immensely. Eat dinner: one portion (no seconds!), though I let myself splurge with as many vegetables and as much salad as I like. Have dessert on occasion (see #1): Do dish the ice cream out into a bowl, or I will eat the whole quart. A quart of Ben & Jerry's has four servings in it, which means it should last me at least a week, not a day.
4. Eat really good food, and make really good meals. My grocery bills have not gone up, because I’m eating less. I don’t cringe when I spend $3 on a bar of incredibly good chocolate, because I know I’m not going to eat it in one sitting.

That’s it, really. Simple, but not easy. It does take incredible discipline to create good habits, and I do fall off the wagon often. But there’s a huge difference between a 200-calorie lunch from home (half a tuna sandwich and a small orange, two squares of Belgian chocolate) and a 2,000-calorie lunch in a restaurant.

32 seconds

As hard as it may be for today’s youth to grasp, the microwave oven has been a standard appliance for less than a generation. Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had to pop my popcorn in an air popper (it had a butter melting tray on top), which was de rigueur for anyone planning to have a slumber party or go to college. Leftover pizza was eaten cold (with coffee and cigarettes by a short-lived boyfriend).

When I was a senior in high school, my mother needed surgery that would involve a lengthy recuperation. She wasn’t going to be able to do any major cooking for a while, and we were going to have to fill in the gaps. Her cousin urged her to get a microwave: they were new and different, yes, but they saved oodles of time.

So, part of the preparation for surgery involved shopping for a microwave at—another relic unheard of today—the appliance store. What’s more, when you bought the appliance, you got cooking lessons to go with it! My mother and I dutifully showed up, notebooks in hand, to learn how to cook the new-fangled way. We were dazzled by zapping a whole head of cauliflower, then melting Velveeta over it; we learned the formula for adapting a cake (mix) to the microwave, and even nuked pork chops. Looking back, we laugh at how they tried to teach us the things that really don’t work well; it seems to me they could have concentrated on dishes more prone to success, like veggies and fish.

We went home and showed off: my brother was transfixed by the undulating cake (there was only one very wimpy fan to push the waves around, so uneven cooking was the rule). And we demonstrated the cauliflower trick (using real cheddar—no processed cheese food in our house). My father, the engineer, absorbed this all in contemplative silence. The next day, as he made his standard deli meat and cheese on sourdough sandwich, he placed it on a plate (not the gold-rimmed ones, we had already learned that lesson the hard way), and punched in 23 seconds. He ate his not-quite-melted-cheese sandwich in silence. The next day, he tried 38 seconds. The cheese ran out on the plate, and he had to resort to a spoon to scoop the gooey mess onto his sandwich. And so it went, until the end of the week, when I went to put my own sandwich in the microwave, and he said, “32 seconds for a sandwich.” It was perfect, melted but not runny, bread warm but not overly chewy.

The last time I visited my dad, he could barely shuffle to the kitchen to make his lunch, but he did. The new microwave did a sandwich in 27 seconds, he told me. And his microwave repertoire had expanded to include a half a can of his favorite chili. He preferred heating it on the stove, but it was too dangerous to use a gas stove with his oxygen mask. I served chili, made from scratch on the stove, to friends after his funeral.

I’d like to think I learned something about patience from the old man. I know I learned a lot about human nature and the power of habits, both good and bad.

I think we’ll have chili for supper tonight.

Wayne, Greg and Dan

If, for any reason, you choose to avoid milk—and by this I mean cow’s milk—you face a daunting choice. Allergies, political or health choices may have you seeking a tasty and nutritious milk substitute: soy, rice, almond, hazelnut and oat milks are all readily available in the ubiquitous aseptic brick. But while many bear that nifty USDA organic label, it’s incredibly difficult to work on the local aspect.

I suppose the most local answer would be to grow your own beans and brew your own milk, but for many of us, the constraints of geography preclude growing them, and the pesky 24-hours-in-a-day limitation means we’re not going to add to our bursting to do lists.

Purchased it is, then. In my neck of the woods, there are too many to count. We originally started out with Trader Joe’s brand, since we started drinking it long before USDA organic certification, and TJ’s was the only one who promised not to use GMO soybeans. And it was tasty, too. Little one still douses his granola with this one. For me, the baseline test is cocoa, since that’s my daily habit. I prefer fresh to aseptic, but was alternating between Silk and Organic Valley (as well as almond milk, read more here).

But this weekend, I made the mistake of leaving Dear Husband at the mercy of the Costco marketers. Soymilk wasn’t on the shopping list, but the Sample Lady made him cocoa. He came home with a case of Costco brand organic soymilk. Now, I know that Costco isn’t in the business of making soymilk any more than Microsoft writes all its software, so I got online and dug a bit. Sure enough, it’s really Silk, repackaged for the mega-marketer.

Which brings me back to my original problem: It’s extremely difficult to know just how these beans wend their way from field to my larder (or fridge). Nothing on the label tells me more than the address of the distributor, who I know has often repackaged another company’s product.

Enter Organic Valley, who not only makes their own soymilk, but also offer me a chance to find out where my beans came from. There’s a URL on the back of the carton, and it tells me that if I type in the expiration date, it’ll generate a list of the farmers who grew my beans. (As an aside, I’m impressed that it’s done by date, not by lot number: if this were an immense industrial operation, they’d have to use lot numbers to identify the factory, à la Peter Pan Peanut Butter.)

All the beans in my carton came from Iowa: Flying W Farms in Decorah (Wayne Wangsness, the model on the carton is in my carton!), Greg Franzenburg in Keystone, and Parizek Farms Tama, IA. A click through lets me read more about the farm. I learn that Wayne’s farm will be handed down to his son, and that the variety of soybean grown is WFP 8205, planted May 27, 2004.

Wayne

There’s no picture or description of Greg (yet), but Dan Parizek’s bio reads like a poster child for the struggling small farmer: He holds down a job in manufacturing and comes home to farm in the afternoons; his dad and three brothers had cancer, and his dad and one brother died from the disease. He’s also planning to hand down the farm to his son, and is growing a soybean variety with the fetching name of WFP 8C285, planted on June 7, 2004.

As far as I can tell without more research, the variety refers to a number assigned by the United Nations World Food Programme. The WFP has been at the center of the maelstrom on GMO importation, as many countries have refused shipments of food aid from the US because they contain genetically modified product. (That people would rather go without than eat GMOs is the subject of another musing.)

As I drink this morning’s cocoa, containing soymilk made with beans from Wayne, Greg and Dan, I feel a little more reassured in my choice. Is the whole meet-your-farmer website a marketing gimmick? Maybe, but it’s also the kind of transparency we need to reconnect us with our food.

(Fool Disclosure: DH and I own stock in Organic Valley, mainly because we feel it’s a healthy combination of doing the right thing and a sound business model.)