Resistance

Regular readers will know that I subscribe to the FDA Twitterfeed: with a seemingly endless supply of recalls, they never have to dig deep for content. There were a few drug-related, and "undeclared allergen" recalls this past week, and one voluntary recall each for salad with listeria and ground beef with E. coli. Nothing exceptional. I'm not sure there's much more to say about it, other than the regularity of so many alarms being raised is in itself dangerous, as we become inured and lax about it. After all, what can we do about it?

There is a Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin has the hiccups. He asks his tiger buddy to scare them away, so Hobbes mentions the hole in the ozone and nuclear waste piling up. It doesn’t cure the hiccups, but it does drive home just how frightening this is--and how cynical we have become.

I was reminded of this strip when I opened up my virtual papers this morning, and read the headlines from across the pond. The UK press has a frightening tale to tell, of published studies of common bacteria that "have developed near total resistance to all forms of antibiotics." The words "total" and "all" frighten me. A gene in some bacteria has been identified that confers antibiotic resistance to the bacteria. And if that's not scary enough, there are three more bits of information we all need to be aware of:

1. It has been found in two very common bacteria, E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Yup, the same E. coli you read about in all those FDA recalls.
2. It can spread to other bacteria.
3. It has been found in at least eight countries, including the UK, India and the United States. The study's conclusion? "The potential of NDM-1 to become endemic worldwide is "clear and frightening" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10925411).

I had the opportunity yesterday to listen to an interview with a friend's mother, who was witness to the murders at Kent State. It was both horrifying and inspiring. A war protester in the 60s, this grandmother is still struggling with understanding why we as a country have settled into complacency over so many things the corruption and lack of political will of both government and industry does. How can we incite to change?

There is no one solution to this, and it is unlikely that any individual will make enough difference on their own, but we simply cannot desist from trying. So the next time you are faced with a skinned knee, don't reach for the antibiotic cream. If you must use anything against germs, walk past the sanitzer dispenser and try soap and water. The next time you decide to buy meat, support a producer who avoids routine anitbiotics by practicing responsible animal husbandry. And, if you are so inclined, write that letter to your representative or the FDA and ask them to clamp down on antibiotic use.

Resist.

Quality time

A large cardboard box of tomatoes from the market is hefted up the stairs with a small bag of basil wrapped around a pinkie finger. Darling Husband gets to work bathing the red beauties. Children filter downstairs, peering into the box.

I place a pot of simmering water on the stove,  and get out two forks and two paring knifes. Even the teenager is interested, and does not resist the chore of peeling, but cannot refrain from complaining about the burnt finger. He would be wise not to complain too loudly, since he is usually the happiest one on spaghetti night in our household.

Little One is drawn to the small fragrant bag and begins the process of picking leaves from stems, making a neat pile. I give him three big cloves of freshly-pulled garlic to peel as well.

An intense hour ensues, with the big man ferrying bowls of now-naked fruit between the two peelers and corers; the food processor makes short order of the batches, and the big stainless pots fill quickly. The compost bucket is nearly overflowing, but these many hands have made truly light work, and it feels very special to all be doing meaningful work together.

The pots go onto the stove to simmer, and while my two big men wipe things down, I help Little One use the food processor to whiz together his labors. He gets the fun of spooning the pesto into an ice cube tray, and the kitchen is starting to smell summer-wonderful.

I dig out the jars and the canning kettle, the rings and the lids. Soon I am ladling the hot summer sun into neat packages for our winter pleasure. Little One stands on a stool to watch them lowered into the bubbling pot. And we all rejoice at the happy 'pling' of sealing jars through the evening.

Righteously content, we have all earned a reward. Some oil in a small pot, a scoop of sugar and a big scoop of popcorn, and we settle down to a good movie with a big bowl of fresh, hot kettle corn.

Stepping back

When I was in sixth grade, oh-so-many years ago, our Teutonic red-haired teacher transfixed us with a cautionary tale: it seems a man had a magic machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide. He carried it everywhere with him, and any time he needed to do any arithmetic, his magic machine did it for him. One night, as he slept, machine on his nightstand, a fire broke out in his house. He escaped just in time to save his life--but not his precious machine. He found himself bereft of the ability to perform even the most basic mathematical functions that we need in everyday life. Obviously, we were the last generation to not have calculators in the classroom, but I doubt we were the last to question why we had to learn this stuff.

So here we are a generation later, where art classes give way to "calculator skills" and our Swiss-army cell phones take the care of any mental math (calculate the tip? There's an app for that!) that we may encounter. But we know computers aren't perfect--they are programmed by people, after all. If your phone-cum-adding machine told you 2+2=5, only a person with some real math under their belt would know something was wrong.

But what of other "old-fashioned" skills? Europeans are finding it increasing challenging to find stonemasons capable of restoring Gothic cathedrals, and even here in the New World, it can be difficult to find someone to float plaster over cracked walls, or make pendulum clocks tick again, or handily use a light meter and a film cameras (to say nothing of finding someone to develop said film). The basics of washing dishes by hand seem lost past my generation (am I really that old?). A year without a dryer--unthinkable in this country--forced everyone in our family to learn how to hang (and how not to hang) laundry. Thank heavens we old folks were around to help out the young'uns learn that clothespins have a use other than craft projects.

But the biggie these days is the age-old craft of cooking. As the machines and services have made our lives "easier," we have become more and more removed from our physical world. We all should know by now that the supermarkets have erased all semblance of seasonality from our food supply, but it is truly appalling to see how many people simply don't use their kitchens for more than microwaving and refrigeration, taking their Styrofoam clamshells into the living room to watch the Iron Chef.

I put to you that reheating a burrito is not the same as making one. Takeout teriyaki is cheating. Delivered pizza pales in comparison to the real thing. Rolling a feast of sushi takes less time--and is certainly cheaper--than driving to get it. Even confirmed bachelors and Cosmo girls deserve a home-cooked meal, and deserve the satisfaction of knowing they can care well for themselves. Like basic arithmetic, it is not rocket science. You get better at it the more you do it. And the veil of the commercialized, commoditized substitute is brushed aside, revealing that the emporer is in fact, naked.

Let us relegate convenience food, drive-ins, and restaurants to the celebratory, the exception. Let us return to our kitchens and entrust paring knives to our children's hands, model good habits for their lives, and put good food in their bellies. For our future.

Bounty hunter

The running joke around these parts is that summer doesn’t begin in earnest until after July 4. Many natives firmly believe that grey skies, in addition to providing an interesting background to fireworks, are preferable to the high fire danger other communities around the nation have to contend with. But when the sun finally emerges on July 5, we joyfully join in the summer dance, digging deep into our closets for shorts, rummaging in the glovebox for sunglasses, and foraging in the back of the medecine cabinet for sunscreen. Sure, we complain when the mercury climbs above 80 degrees, but it's never more than a few days (and sleepless nights, since no one has air conditioning).

But not this year. On July 5, the skies remained stubbornly grey and we were still zipped into our polar fleece. The plants we had dared set out in the garden (with wall-o-waters to keep them warm) were still the same size as when we planted them two weeks prior. Green shoots were everywhere, but that turning point, when vitality takes over and a bountiful harvest seems inevitable, hadn’t happened. The Seattle Times reported that our governor had applied for federal disaster relief for 29 counties, where rain, wind, frost and too-cool weather have conspired to seriously damage crops and discourage pollinators.

And here were are, preparing to turn the calendar page tomorrow, into a month that should be full of overripe tomatoes and stealth zuchinni giveaways. But our tomato plants have yet to set a single fruit. Each squash plant has had exactly one blossom, and it’s too early to tell whether fruit will set. Our CSA farmer has fared a little better, with peas and dark leafy greens still the only part of our share that hint at excess. And we are still wearing sweaters and socks.

When will the season turn? Well, two weeks ago, after two days of temperatures barely over 80 degrees, the first tomatoes appeared in our share; a disappointingly scant pint basket for each member. They were, without question, delicious, but my visions of rows of jars of summer-red sauce for pasta throughout the winter will never be realized at this rate.

It feels frankly odd to not be canning and jamming my way through a summer: last year I was not home, but rasperries and stawberries came our way in enough volume that more than a few jars were made (and given away before we moved). This year, berries can be found at the co-op, to be sure, but most are still coming from far south, and carry price tags to discourage the would-be bounty hunter. The federal assistance has not come through, and I can only hope the bees aren't too discouraged by the still unseasonably cool temperatures.

Little One finished up his week of day camp in the foothills, where we traditionally fill baskets of blackberries and blueberries on the drive home, But there are no blackberries to be had--yet. I remain hopeful on this account. The blueberry farm did put up their sign on Friday, so there is a glimmer of hope on that horizon. But it remains to be see how easy or slim the pickings are.

They say that eating seasonally means learning grace. Grace to wait patiently for fruits to set and ripen, grace to put things up for the leaner months. I tell myself there is still time, and indeed, there is plenty of green fruit on the plum and apple trees. We will scour the farmers' markets this coming week, and pray for warmth to ripen the bounty yet to come. We will pray for grace.

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.

Seeds

One of my favorite books growing up was a slim tome called The Carrot Seed. In it, a young man named Harold plants a seed, and despite his family’s dire predictions, it sprouts and grows into a root vegetable so massive that the poor child needs a wagon to haul it off. (There is no word of his mother’s reaction when he brings it into the kitchen, or the ensuing mono diet of carrots every day for a month.) I somehow identified with the child, not because my vegetable-growing efforts ever amounted to much of anything, but because I understood the hope of sticking a seed in the ground, and the joy of seeing them sprout and thrive. (And perhaps because my father smoked a pipe, just like Harold’s father.) And as an adult, while I can usually get things to germinate just fine, the local climate (temperate rain forest), flora (towering cedar trees that I love dearly) and fauna (slugs the size of small dogs) conspire to deprive me of the bountiful harvest I dream of while perusing seed catalogs in the dead of winter.
This year is particularly challenging, as I am coming off a rare success. A small one to be sure: our snug little house in Ireland had some empty pots, so last year, I made my way to the local garden centre to pick up some flowers for said pots. I must have my flowers, even if they don’t usually amount to much, just some spindly petunias. And of course, I couldn’t resist seed packets for lettuce and sweet peas. I tucked them in with the petunias and daisies and promptly ignored them. We even went away for three weeks without making any provisions for their care. And when I came back, I was rewarded with tender green lettuce and fragrant sweet peas. For the first time in my life, I felt like little Harold. And the flowers were spectacular.

Clearly still giddy, I headed out this year with gusto, buying all sorts of seeds, checking the lunar calendar, filling strawberry pots and deck planters, and working garden beds. Furrows were dug, minerals and compost spread, seeds tucked in (no need to water yet, sigh). And they sprouted, and I was happy. And then the sun came out, and I was even happier. And then the slugs came out, and mowed paths through my garden, even munching onions down to bare earth. And then the remaining three spinach plants bolted, in spite of torrential rains. And the slugs ate the rhubarb, and even started in on one potato (Hey, aren’t those leaves toxic? Why aren’t the slugs dead?). They left me one of two pumpkin plants—sofar. The beans are sprouting, and I am harvesting slugs, big slugs even by northwest standards, but I am not optomistic that I will win this battle.

And so it was that yesterday kicked off our CSA’s summer session. The clouds parted long enough to warm our heads as we enjoyed a few stawberries in the u-pick field, and I happily tucked tender young lettuce and bok choy into my crate. And I realize that I am so incredibly thankful to have a professional farmer tilting at the elements—and winning. I will keep picking slugs from my garden in the hope that I may enjoy a harvest, however meagre, from my own backyard, but I can rest easy knowing that someone else is doing the heavy lifting.

Dodged bullet

I am traveling right now to attend a series of intense meetings that require me to be in top form. I try to "live clean" in the days leading up to my departure, to be able to concentrate on agenda items rather than a sinus headache. No matter how you slice it, airline food simply cannot qualify as healthy fare. I used to be the only one who boarded with her lunch in hand, so I'm pleased that everyone else is bringing food on board. It makes me a bit less of an oddity.

Though I am still quite odd. There seem to be plenty of takers for the airlines paid offerings, probably because of price: $6 oatmeal seems cheap when you compare it to the $10 version in the terminal (though Pizza Hut seems to be doing brisk business). On my flight, there were no takers for the oatmeal at 10:00 am, though bagels were a popular item. I had breakfasted at home, and waited until closer to the end of the trip to pull out my bag of lettuce and huge avocado that was destined to be my lunch. My seat partner stopped snickering when he smelled that delightful little tangerine, a perfect cap to a refreshing meal on a stuffy airplane. I saved the carrot chips and nuts for the second leg snack, and arrived feeling well and not overly thirsty from heavily salted fare that is typical of prepackaged snacks.

But it could have turned out very differently. Indeed, in the days leading up to the trip, I was racing around, trying to get things done. One evening before dinner, I ducked out to go to the store for a liter of rice milk I needed for dinner, and a bag of lettuce for the trip: While I much prefer real lettuce, I had only a half hour, so rationalized that this would do. As luck would have it, the store of choice was festooned with hundreds of red and white balloons, effectively barring me from entering (maddening latex allergy).  What to do? The Kroger market down the road has a decent organics section, even though it's not my first choice. So off I went. I plucked a brick of milk from the shelf, and headed over to the produce section, to the wall o' bags. And there I stood, paralyzed. I knew only that I wanted something fresh and crisp, organic and darkish green (no iceberg, please!). And the more I looked, the less I liked what I saw. When the morbidly obese clerk passed by and asked if I was finding everything I wanted, I realized I hadn't and put back the bag. The bag was Romaine lettuce, the subject of yet another E. coli recall--the very next day.

I am more thankful than usual for my personal farmer, who placed a head of tender local red leaf lettuce--the first of the season!--in my box this week, the eve of my departure. And while I do not feel vindicated, I certainly am more motivated to follow my instincts. So the next time you stand in front of the display (it is so much more than just a shelf) in indecision, ask yourself if you found what you are looking for. You may be surprised at your answer.