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.

To hell with rice

Remember Sally, Charlie Brown's little sister, when she says she's mad at the whole world, especially stupid jump ropes? I'm fed up too. Especially with stupid weathermen. The weatherman said, and I quote, "no new snow" and "sunshine" and "highs in the mid thirties." It's been snowing and under 30 degrees for the last five hours. Needless to say, the sun is nowhere in sight. I'm so cold, and I'm so tired of practical wool socks and long underwear. I want to wear the slinky things my husband bought for Christmas, but I need flannel pajamas. Our heating system is struggling to keep up: and it's not keeping up because it was designed for the temperate Pacific Northwest, not the arctic.

Clearly, the cold makes me grumpy. My husband is none too pleased about the flannel either.

All this means I was not in a good frame of mind when it came to deciding what to make for supper tonight (it's a rice night). The curry rut was hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles, the leftover curry--three separate containers--vying for supper of leftovers status. All I have to do is put the rice cooker on, and I know I'm headed down the path of evil. I resist. I am not going to make rice. But I have to make something, it's just too cold not to eat. Thank heavens one Pyrex dish's contents were fuzzy enough to deliver me (us) from this damning temptation.

The accumulating snow means the crisper is getting empty-ish. I'm down to one head of lettuce, one head of purple cabbage, six Brussels sprouts, a handful of carrots and about six green onions. I pull it all out (except for the cabbage), along with the classic yellow Pyrex dish containing leftover roast chicken. This is starting to look like soup, but I need to resist rice. Digging in the larder, I strike gold: a bag of barley from the Buttercup Kindergarten teacher. With a huge sigh of relief, I throw it all into the pot, along with some chicken broth. The lettuce and green onion become salad with a tangy sesame vinaigrette, but the main event is soup. Without rice.

Fish on Friday & the Rhythm Method

Our exchange student must think we're pretty weird. There's a little chart on the fridge (with a cute cartoon of Sandra Boynton's hungry monsters rubbing their tummies) that says what we eat each day. He's getting a trial by fire into the rotation diet.

There are a couple of reasons we rotate our diet, the first being that the doctor told us to. My dear husband would be perfectly content with a brie sandwich washed down with a glass of milk for every meal, every day. Indeed, he did this during the several months that visa expirations separated us, and Costco made it possible to continue this habit on a grand scale. Lo and behold, when his cholesterol reached dangerous proportions, doctors were alarmed. The MD offered him the option of prescription medications for life; the naturopath tested him for allergies and proposed the radical option of rotating his diet. I won't lie and say it was easy; it was anything but. But his cholesterol plummeted from dangerous levels to absolutely picture-perfect. (We also noted other minor health benefits.)

However, after two years of trying to fit a four-day rotation into a seven-day week, I backed off. It was no fun always having to consult the chart on the fridge to determine dinner. Figuring out what next Tuesday's dinner was meant counting on my fingers (Thanksgiving only falls on a wheat day once every four years!). And planning evenings out or trips was a nightmare.
When our eldest started going to school, there were parent evenings where this incredibly impractical woman would give us parenting tips--an interesting notion, since she had none of her own. However, this wisp of a young woman said something that stuck: small children don't have the wherewithal to make choices. Tell, don't ask, she said. Bombarding them from the minute they get up with questions about what they're going to eat, wear, do first, etc., is too much for everyone. Better to establish Monday as oatmeal day, Tuesday scrambled eggs, etc. Indeed, their weekly rhythm at school was well-established, and we soon picked up the lingo: "today is soup day, remember to take a vegetable for the pot!" "Oh, goody, Wednesday is watercolor day!"

When our slacker dietary habits caught up to us in the form of higher cholesterol and blood pressure, our new doctor suggested we restart the rotation. But that kindergarten teacher had given me the key: make it a seven-day rotation. And so there we have it: Monday is potato/almond milk; Tuesday, rice/soy; Wednesday, spelt/goat (or sheep); Thursday, rice/soy; Friday, potato/almond; Saturday rice/soy and Sunday is indulgently normal: wheat and dairy (think bread and cheese, cake and whipped cream).

In the end, it does make things easier. If the omnivore's dilemma is having too many choices, then setting up some sort of rhythm already makes some of the decisions for you. In this day of information overload, the knowledge that I'm making spaghetti (spelt, with sheep's milk Romano cheese) on Wednesday is a comfort. Our family finds comfort, stability and joy in getting one of our favorite meals on a regular basis. And yes, blood pressure, cholesterol and weight are in wonderfully normal ranges.

I recall a theatre teacher telling us that art without discipline was chaos. I find that this 'discipline' creates a framework that actually increases my creativity. I once saw a BBC cooking show where they give a chef a bag of seemingly disparate ingredients, and the chef had to create a dish that used all of them. The rigid rules made the chefs dig deeply into their creativity--which we all know can mean some real doozies, both good and bad.

I also must note that establishing a routine or rhythm for meals is not an entirely new-age-y practice. Think of the Saturday night prime rib dinner at the local diner (and how it always seems to turn up as leftovers in the next morning's special), or the priest urging parishioners to eat fish on Fridays. A friend has a mom who was a Home Ec teacher: they had the same meals weekly (predictably, roast beef on Sunday and fish on Friday). We all readily accept the notion of three meals a day--our language even accommodates this convention.

It turns out oatmeal is not our exchange student's thing. He gave it the old college try, but he's discovered the joys of granola, even on Monday.