All you can do

My electronic information consumer habits have brought many messages my way these past few days. Most of it is the usual recalls, corporate America getting it wrong (think oil spill) and government not doing much better. The FDA has been pouring recall notices into my inbox, the usual e Coli-tainted beef (two companies this wee, 39,000 pounds so far) and spinach, as well as an interesting one where 61,000 pounds of Brazilian recalled beef contains the animal drug Ivermectin (an anti-parasitic, used for de-worming, in case you were wondering). The sheer volume and negativity is overwhelming; I find myself paralyzed in terms of what actions I can take to make a difference. One glimmer of hope comes all the way from Australia, where supermarkets are beginning to post the kilometers the food has travelled to give consumers a tad more information (however incomplete) to help them make better decisions.

But Australia is pretty far from here, and I don't see that I can make my personal choices make much more impact than they already do. To the blog I turn, wondering if there is anything I can say, any way to beat the drum that the message will reach one more soul.

And then word comes from a friend of a friend: fed up with the increasing amounts of steroids her doctor is prescribing for her daughter, and at her wits end from seeing her suffer from eczema, she announces that she is ready to plunge into the land of the elimination diet: no eggs, dairy, wheat and soy. Her resolve lasts until she tries to fix her first--vegetarian--meal. She's completely overwhelmed and paralyzed, unable to act. She doesn't know where to begin. I know how she feels.

But upbeat news bekons to me from my inbox: the chatty newsletter from the Redmond Saturday Market, which reads like the church bulletins of my youth, including cute plays on words ("Market Thymes") and pithy quotations. And there it is, at the bottom of the page, from none other than Henry David Thoreau: "One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something."

Ok, so I can't do everything. So, something it is. I grab my electronic pen and sketch out a week's worth of kid-enticing vegetarian meals for her, along with some hints on where to find key ingredients. You see, it's overwhelming to start, but I've had enough practice that it's second nature to me. And it turns out that helping one person past paralysis helps me, too.

Misbehaving

Our neighbor has his birthday today. He smiled and stated that he was 56 today. I told him he was lying, and he admitted he was. He's 44, but by adding a few years, he either gets compliments or honesty in the form of no challenge or someone like me calling him on it.

Just for kicks, I took one of those "what is your real age?" tests. Depending on how I fudge the answers, my "real age" is between 5-10 years less than my chronological age. I also learned that my media behavior makes me Gen-X (and nearly Gen-Y) even though my birth year technically makes me a Baby Boomer. One of my buddies even noted that my cell phone is for 20-somethings. But my old Bell telephone ring tone dates me.

My mother, on the other hand, is acting more than her age. Since the double-whammy of losing husband and pets in one year, compounded by not being able to keep up her walking (too much smoke from California's bad summer of fire), she has been feeling poorly. So, like any self-respecting medicare-card holder, she high-tailed it to the doctor.

Seems this young whippersnapper had the unmitigated gall to say that her cholesterol is high enough to warrant medication. Out comes the prescription pad, but bless my mother, the pills' side effects means she stops taking them. Instead, she says, she's loosing a little weight, and starting to walk again.

The cholesterol number. Doctors wield it mightily, as a magic predictor for our lives and deaths. But I want to know if this one-size-fits-all number means anything in the face of our great-grandmother's wisdom.

I jaunt over to the American Heart Association, where I am admonished to eat a heart-healthy diet no matter what my magic number. The "safe" level--used since the 70s--is that I should consume no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day--in other words, eat an egg, and I'm done for the day. But wait, I'm sensitive to eggs.

So, I dig deeper, to learn that this "safe" level was determined in a single meeting of food scientists back in 1968. Based on the assumption that serum cholesterol levels reflect the amount of dietary cholesterol, they quite arbitrarily guessed that 300mg should be safe.

But there's more bad news: not only is that number a best guess, it's based on a flawed assumption: serum cholesterol reflects the cholesterol you produce yourself, not what cholesterol you consume. Numerous studies have confirmed this, but the myth continues to be promoted, even by the Heart Association.

Which isn't to say that what you eat has no bearing on your cholesterol level. Indeed, if you eat a poor diet, rich in processed foods, and low in real food, it's a pretty safe bet your levels will go up.

What's more, my naturopath also explained that she sees dangerously high serum cholesterol levels in people who are eating relatively well, but who are eating foods to which they are sensitive or allergic. Metabolizing allergens (and living a stressful life) gets the liver producing cholesterol in the body: Eliminate the allergens, she notes, and levels drop drastically, without medication.

Imagine that. Eat well for who you are. Grandmother knew all along.

Rank amateur

During my quest for knowledge about wedding cakes, I discovered that my bookshelf was sorely lacking: somehow I had entirely missed the Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I have since remedied this but continue to scour the library bookshelves to make sure I haven’t somehow overlooked any other painfully obvious title. And last week, there it was: One of the 10 indispensable works for serious cooks: The Professional Chef, brought to us by none other than the Culinary Institute of America. A hefty copper-colored tome, the 8^th edition is weightier than my Larousse de Cuisine (both English and French editions) and has more detailed illustrations than Julia and Simone’s Mastering the Art (Volumes I and II). I dove in with great anticipation.

And yet, I must admit some disappointment. Yes, it really does tell me how to slice carrots a gazillion different ways, but this is overshadowed by a couple of items I just cannot ignore.

On the way home from the library, Darling Husband, riding shotgun, opens the book to European cuisines, and finds the section on Southern Germany, his personal Vaterland. He reads out loud, “The states of Bavaria, Baden, and Alsace-Lorraine comprise Southern Germany.” What?! My husband looks in disbelief and continues, “The cuisine of Bavaria, which is located in southeast Germany, is influenced by its proximity to Austria and the cuisine of Alsace-Lorraine, which is located in southwest Germany has been influenced by its proximity to France.” The last time we were there (a few weeks ago), Alsace was in France. And my young self once made the mistake of referring to Alsace-Lorraine as one region. I was quickly corrected by my Nancy-born French prof: They are two distinct regions, and referring to them in the same breath is us as offensive to natives as saying there’s no difference between someone from Los Angeles and Seattle—they’re both on the West Coast, right? Puzzled, we delve into their encapsulated history of Southern Germany, and read their summation: “Germany reacquired Alsace and Lorraine after defeating France on the Battlefield in 1871. Wilhelm I, who had been King of Prussia, was installed as the first German Kaiser, which effectively united Germany under one rule.”

Which explains everything: this part of this 2006 book hasn’t been updated since Germany had a king, and doesn’t reflect the fact that Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France after World War I. It also has other geographical issues, like Baden (a city in Switzerland) is not a state, as is Baden-Wurttemberg. It turns out that the entire section on Germany is in dire need of editing: “Major cities in central Germany include Frankfurt, Dresden and Westphalia.” (Westphalia is a region, not a city.) Further reading introduces us to such great misnomers as Spaztel for Spätzle and schwartzwalder kirschtorte for Schwarzwälderkirschtorte. Mysteriously, only the German entries seem to suffer this affliction of ignorance; the rest of Europe has kept up.

Interested to see if I can learn anything that might be of interest for our upcoming annual couscous feast, I flip through the world cuisines section, only to find there is no entry whatsoever for Africa: the closest I can find is Middle Eastern, with Persian and Iranian selected as representative.

I scan the section on Chinese cuisine, and am taken aback by a sidebar on MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) that informs me that the substance was first isolated in 1908, by a Japanese scientist who dubbed it as having its own flavor, namely, umami. There is, unfortunately, no recognition of the fact that it is an ingredient that many avoid for various reasons, not the least of which is their health. Indeed, none of the Culinary Institute’s ample prose deals with the issue of allergens at all, including avoiding allergen cross-contamination.

This volume is well-known for its photos: lots and lots of color pictures, illustrating all the techniques discussed. But I am alarmed by the number of fingers and hands that are covered in obviously latex gloves. Conventional wisdom in our post-AIDS society dictates that food must be handled with single-use gloves, but no illustration, nor text covering food safety, mentions that using latex gloves can pose a hidden and life-threatening hazard to some restaurant patrons. With latex intolerance affecting 1-6 percent of the population, and the fact that for some, exposure can be fatal, it seems to this reader that the leading culinary training body in the country would set an example. It is falling to states to begin legislating against the use of latex gloves in food preparation. And vinyl isn’t much better, as they contain known carcinogens and hormone disrupters—the same ingredients that led to the ban of their use for baby toys destined for mouthing. And in truth, our food is no safer than before gloves came into widespread use, as it appears that workers often don’t change gloves at all during their shift, operating cash registers and wiping their nose in the interim. And so we come full circle: some health experts are now saying that regular hand washing would be more effective than glove use.

Which all means that I don’t see The Professional Chef as essential for my shelf. I’ll retain my amateur status, even if it does mean handling food with my bare – but washed – hands.

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.