love

I've just started reading "all about love: New Visions" by bell hooks. It's my first time reading anything by her, and I'm very much enjoying it.

Her first task in the book is to find a good working definition of love. She rejects the notion, popular among many authors, that love is indefinable. Instead, she finds a satisfactory definition in M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, where he defines love as the will to extend one's self for the purpose nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Boy does that up the ante on this thing called love.

It strikes me that this definition of love really fits with unschooling. When you reject an authoritarian, coercive style of parenting (mostly, in theory anyways, when not caught in your own knee-jerk responses), what you have left is a bunch of people living together with different and sometimes conflicting needs. So you just have to solve the problem of ensuring everyone's needs, including personal or spiritual growth, are met.

It also strikes me, in reflecting on other relationships in my life, that they don't meet the standard bell hooks proposes. I think it takes a big, whole self to be able to extend oneself in the way that hooks and Peck call for, and so many of us are too wounded to do it.

Imagine if everyone were healed enough to love properly, though. I've been to a few Resilience Festival events this week, put on by Transition Guelph, and I've just this moment realized that that may be the very thing they're working towards. Huh.

public service announcement: banana cake with chocolate ganache icing

Oops! I just discovered this in my draft posts… we made this cake again last night for Eldest's birthday party today. When I went to link to the recipe, I couldn't find it… anyways, here it is. The recipe is so well-loved by us that the book, which was pretty much pristine when I bought it, has come apart at the seams at just this recipe.




This post is way, way overdue. Last May, a few days before Youngest's birthday, I didn't know what kind of cake to make him. He had all kinds of requests, not all of them coherent or applicable to most cakes I knew about. So I was a bit stumped. My usual standby is carrot cake with cream cheese icing, but we can't tolerate cream cheese anymore.



Then in a usual spin around my favourite thrift store, I discovered The Cake Bible, a few days before his birthday. I decided to try the Cordon Rose Banana Cake with the recommended Sour Cream Ganache. I was a bit skeptical about a banana cake with lemon zest AND vanilla, but it was amazing, and worked great with gluten-free flour. And the icing… it is now my favourite icing. To me it seems so decadent and rich and fancy, but it only has two ingredients: melted bittersweet chocolate (lots of it) and sour cream. I cannot recommend this recipe enough.

It so happens that my husband baked this for me on my Boxing Day birthday this year, and it was such a treat. So here is the recipe.


(This picture is from Nana's birthday last September… we made it for her too.)
Cordon Rose Banana Cake
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups sifted cake flour (we just use our own all-purpose, gluten-free mix)
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons softened, unsalted butter

1 9x2 inch cake pan or 9-inch springform pan, greased, bottom lined with parchment, and then greased again and floured

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the banana and sou cream until smooth. Add the eggs, lemon zest, vanilla and mix briefly just to blend. (The book says to use a food processor but I just use our mixer.)

In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend. Add the butter and half the banana mixture. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed (high speed if using a hand mixer) and beat for 1.5 minutes to aerate and strengthen the cake's structure. Scrape down the sides. Gradually add the remaining banana mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and develop the structure. Scrape down the sides.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface with a spatula. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until a wire cake tester inserted in the centre, comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the centre. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from the oven.

Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Loosen the sides with a small metal spatula and unsold or remove the sides of the springform pan. Allow the cake to cool completely before wrapping airtight.

Sour Cream Ganache
12 ounces of bittersweet chocolate
1 2/3 cups of sour cream

In a double boiler set over hot water or in a microwave on high power, stirring every 10 seconds, melt the chocolate. Remove from the heat and add the sour cream. Stir with a rubber spatula until uniform in colour. Use at once or store, and when ready to use soften by placing the bowl in a water bath or a microwave for a few seconds, stirring gently.



(The first time we made this cake for Youngest… we also made the blueberry sauce in the book, because he wanted the cake to have blue on it.)

Home Grown

I thoroughly enjoyed Ben Hewitt's latest book, Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World. It's a meandering kind of book, at times almost magical. Each chapter is followed by a different sort of piece, a meditation I guess? They're like a reflection or experience that crystallizes the rightness of all Hewitt's decisions that got him to the place (literally and figuratively) where he is today.

For a while it seemed to me that the book wasn't really very much about his kids' education. It was at least as much about Ben's own education and ideas and experience. But about a third of the way in, I realized, that IS unschooling. It's a whole family living, in the place and time they're in, with parents reflecting critically on their own experiences and using that reflection to support their kids' lives and interests.

Much has been made about the external facts of his kids' education. How they're out in nature so much, developing survival skills like hunting and trapping and tanning and basket-weaving; and Hewitt himself puts a lot of emphasis on the impact of their place in Vermont on his family. But a lot of the story seems familiar to me, if you remove the details of what specifically the kids are engaged in. When parents pay attention to their kids' interests and give them the time to go deep in them, the kids go deep. And in so doing, the parents' assumptions or beliefs are challenged in a serious way. For Ben and Penny, it was how much their young children wanted to kill wild animals, whether by bow or by trap, and their use of knives and guns.

From some of the comments I've seen online about the book and his related Outside piece, I think a lot of people (non-unschoolers?) who have read about the Hewitt family are conflating unschooling with the particulars of his family (which are beautiful). But in other families and in other environments, unschooling can look quite different. That said, I think unschooling always involves a critical view of the status quo of most or all of our society's institutions. Once you start questioning the value of school, it spreads to everything else. Or, once you start questioning another societal institution (for me it was industrial food and conventional medicine), it can easily spread to school.

All in all, I heartily recommend Home Grown to anyone interested in alternative education or kids in nature, or for that matter any kind of DIY stuff. It's just a great book. Here are a few of my favourite quotes from the book:

p 25 "They are big and graceful trees, overseers of decades and generations, and I cannot help thinking of all the cows that have loafed in their shade. […] And every year, they give their sap. Am I honouring or exploiting them by accepting this gift? Strange how it can sometimes seem as if there's not much difference between the two."

p 73 "Penny and I believe in presence, not praise. We are here to support and facilitate, but not to cajole and manipulate, through either threat or incentive. The boys' unhampered curiosity is incentive enough. The learning is its own reward.

"Can the same be said of schooled learning? Of course it can. Loving to learn and being compelled to learn from a prescribed curriculum are not mutually exclusive. But there is little question that the overwhelming majority of institutionalized learning occurs in isolation from the tangible realities of place and form, of how the world feels and looks, tastes and smells and sounds. I believe it is crucial for children to learn in ways that are not held in isolation, that involve the body as well as the mind, and that result in something real and tangible. Even better, something of service: a shelter where once there was none; food in a freezer that was previously empty; or even just a piece of clothing mended by their own hands. Interestingly, this is precisely the sort of learning that is rapidly disappearing from public education in the wake of diminishing budgets and immersion in the abstraction of technology."

p 104 "It has always bothered me to see how some parents chase their children away from productive jobs. I have seen it many times, and while I understand the impulse, I have little empathy for the shortsightedness of it, because the truth is that long before they are capable of truly helping, kids desperately want to contribute.

"Like all of us, children just want to be needed. It's our job to make sure they actually are."

p106 "Sometimes the greatest blessings come disguised as inconveniences."

p137 "In hindsight, I see now that our boys had done precisely what children will do: they'd surprised us, an din full candour, we struggled for a time with not being disappointed by this surprise. Where had their passion for hunting and trapping come from? Not from Penny and me. Not from their grandparents, or the parents of friends. We knew people who hunted and trapped, but most of these people were on the periphery of our lives. They were not part of our immediate culture, and we were fine with that. From birth, we'd immersed them in nature, expecting this immersion to install in them our particular idea of reverence for the natural world. It was a version of reverence that did not include bows and bullets and pack baskets loaded with traps."

p138 "Still, none of this prepared us for the reality of our children on the land, traps and weapons in hand. None of it prepared us for the possibility of examining our own feelings about such practices. Once again, our children were forcing us to learn and unlearn, to reach outside our comfort zone."

p140 "The role of mentors in our culture seems to have been reduced to programs intended for youth "in need," those unfortunate children whose parents are not fully able to embody healthy, stable role modelling. But of course all children are in need to a certain extent. As present, attentive, and well meaning as Penny and I are, Fin and Rye were in need of someone to guide them through the skills and ethics of trapping. They needed someone to validate their interests and instincts, someone whose words carried the authority of experience and respect. Because let's face it: children don't always consider their parents to be fonts of wisdom, and it was not long before the phrase "Nate says" became a common refrain in our home.
"Mentors are disappearing across the landscape of contemporary childhood learning and development. And how could it be otherwise? Because how many adults even have time to mentor anymore? Furthermore, after school and after-school activities, and after homework, television, and texting, how many children even have time to be mentored?"

p147 "We do not allow our children to learn at home simply so we can learn from them. Such a thing would be selfish. But in allowing them the freedom to learn as they grow, an unanticipated and beautiful thing has happened: We have allowed ourselves the same freedom."

This!

"Put simply, the freedom to self-determine how to pass so much of their time has cultivated a certain sense of entitlement in my sons. […] Fin and Rye are enormously particular about how they pass their time. In the absence of school's daily schedule and demands that they must adhere to it, they have come to believe that their time belongs to them, and they are not always eager to deviate from whatever task they've set their minds upon.

[…]

"Often, Fin and Rye do what is asked of them willingly, but often they do not, and my anecdotal observations suggest to me that they are uncooperative somewhat more frequently than many of their peers. Some of this, I think, is simply the result of temperament. My sons are fiercely passionate creatures, afflicted by a degree of willfulness that can fray my patience until only a single, slender strand holds it together. In these moments, my patience hanging int he abyss, I find it helpful to remind myself that this did not just happen. Our boys did not just decide to be opinionated and occasionally obstinate. Oh, no. They learned it from us."

Ben Hewitt, Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World

outdoor stories

Eldest has now spent three weeks over the summer at the Guelph Outdoor School, and each week got even better than the last. He told me yesterday that last week may have been the best week of his whole life. He lit fires and tended them endlessly. He shot arrow after arrow, and even hit a bull's-eye. He played games and watched and listened. He identified plants and helped forage for food. One night a week or so ago, I came into his room to tuck him in and he said, "I have my eyes closed and I'm just listening to my surroundings. I can hear a cricket outside my window." I don't know that I've ever known him to just listen before.

It feels to me like it's been a transformational experience for him. He seems to have grown up and found some kind of new confidence. And I've become hooked on the smell of woodsmoke in his hair.

With last weekend being so cold and damp, we cuddled up indoors and started looking through the books I've been collecting from thrift stores. With his new passion for archery, Robin Hood was one of the first to come to mind, and we had a version of that from the vintage Dandelion Library series. He was rapt. We went to read Peter Pan, but I was disappointed to discover that the Dandelion version was abridged. I wanted to read him the original. So that will have to wait. With his interest in castles and medieval history, The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White is also on the list, although I don't have a copy yet.

I feel like his newfound skills also give rise to a whole genre of stories of boys surviving in the woods. (He's already a big fan of the Swallows and Amazons series, and although we've only read two of them so far, I recommend them highly.) Yesterday, I happened upon this post about reading aloud, which also lists all kinds of titles. I made notes last night, including a number of titles I'd never heard of before, like My Side of the Mountain. I'd figure I'd look for them at thrift stores or the library over time. Today I went to a thrift store and in a lovely spot of synchronicity, there it was. When we read the description, he was keen so we started reading it that night. It is such a lovely book! Very well written, great for reading aloud, and so perfect for Eldest at this moment in time as he integrates all the new skills and knowledge he gained at the outdoor school. We're only about a third of the way through it, but we're all enjoying it so much, I know it's worth recommending.

Radical Acceptance

It had been ages since I had last visited a thrift store when we went last Thursday. I didn't end up getting much, but one book pretty much jumped off the shelf at me.

About a month ago, we went and looked at a couple of potential homesteads in a part of the province we would consider moving to. It was a little bit dire, what's available in our price range. The whole experience caused my to question the whole concept, and I came back to town with a renewed appreciation for all the wonderful people and things in Guelph. I began to wonder, how much energy should I put into engineering my life to be a certain way and how much should I put into living the life I have, right now? I suspect better results may come from leaning towards the latter.

Anyways, this is the Big Question I've been pondering for the last few weeks. And that book's title, Radical Acceptance, really spoke to me, especially in the low moment that brought me to the thrift store. So I bought it. And it's good. 100 pages in, here are some of the passages I want to remember and ponder.

"The rest of the world is merely a backdrop as we struggle to get somewhere, to be a better person, to accomplish, to avoid making mistakes. As in a dream, we take our stories to be the truth -- a compelling reality -- and they consume most of our attention. While we eat lunch or drive home from work, while we talk to our partners or read to our chidden at night, we continue to replay our worries and plans. Inherent in the trance is the belief that no matter how hard we try, we are always, in some way, falling short." p.6

"Our imperfect parents had imperfect parents of their own. Fears, insecurities and desires get passed along for generations. Parents want to see t heir offspring make it in ways that are important to them. Or they want their children to be special, which in our competitive culture means more intelligent, accomplished and attractive than other people. They see their children through filters of fear (they might not get into a good college and be successful) and filters of desire (will they reflect well on us?)." p.14

"…creating an enemy imparts a sense of control -- we feel superior, we feel right, we believe we are doing something about the problem. Directing anger at an enemy temporarily reduces our feelings of fear and vulnerability." p.18

The author tells the story of Mohini, a tiger who was kept in a small, concrete-floored enclosure of a zoo for many years. All she did was pace back and forth on a 12-foot-long path. Eventually, her keepers created a proper habitat, with acres of grass, trees and a pond. But when they let her into it, she just found a dark corner and paced a 12-foot-path back and forth, until the area was worn free of grass.

"Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction. […] we grow incapable of accessing the freedom and peace that are our birthright. We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small. Even if we were to win millions of dollars in the lottery or marry the perfect person, as long as we feel not good enough, we won't be able to enjoy the possibilities before us." p.25

"As happens in any addiction, the behaviours we use to keep us from pain only fuel our suffering. Not only do our escape strategies amplify the feeling that something is wrong with us, they stop us from attending to the very parts of ourselves that most need our attention to heal." p.57

She also includes some really great quotes. "Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt -- marvellous error! -- that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures" ~ Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." 
Carl Rogers (who, incidentally, wrote a book called Freedom to Learn in 1969. I haven't read it yet, but my husband did, and I think Rogers influenced proponents of unschooling like John Holt and Peter Gray. My husband definitely recommends it.

This one really struck me. Hard.
"Poet Rainer Maria Rilke expresses a deep understanding of the dragons all of us face: 'How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races -- the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beautify and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.'"

some moments

I missed another Friday, but I've been enjoying so many wonderful moments lately, I don't know how I would have chosen anyways. So here is a selection. Life is pretty great, although busy and often overwhelming. With the gorgeous weather we've been enjoying (imho it doesn't get better than sunny and 25C with no humidity), I've been able to step back from the overwhelm and savour these days.
This year I have finally figured out that May is my absolute favourite month of the year. And with no rain for days, the fallen blossoms from our crabapples lasted so long.
(Our kitchen is currently under construction, so I got to barbecue pancakes, one at a time, last Sunday morning while snatching bits of Eleanor and Park - most enjoyable.)

gifts from the universe

I know this is slightly crazy, but finding treasures at thrift stores often feels like getting gifts from the universe. One of my favourite things to find at thrift stores right now is vintage children's picture books. I don't know what it is but I swear they don't illustrate children's books like they used to. Once home, some books have such appeal to the kids that we read them immediately; others can sit for a long time before we actually get to reading them.

One in the latter category was A Prairie Boy's Summer by William Kuralek. I picked it up at least a year ago when we were reading the Little House series, a decision based solely on the cover. It just looked like something Eldest would eat up. But it languished on the shelf until just last week. What a revelation when we finally read it!

Each spread contains one full-page painting and one page of text. Each page of text talks about a different aspect of William's youth growing up on a prairie farm. At first I found William a bit negative, as most of the things in the stories are about things he didn't particularly like. But midway through the second reading, he's starting to grow on me, with his balanced memories.



So we read through the book once and I thought the vignettes were cute (and also informative about the way people farmed in that time and place) and the paintings were quite beautiful, and then we read the back cover (I don't know how I didn't so much as glance at it before) and discovered that Kuralek was a renowned Canadian painter who died at age 50 in 1977.

 

He also wrote A Prairie Boy's Winter, Lumberjack and A Northern Nativity, all of which I'm keen to get my hands on.

 

Tonight, after Eldest asked to start the second reading, I googled him to see how I might find his other books (although I'm really hoping the thrift stores will bestow them on me), and I discovered that he suffered deep depressions for which he was hospitalized for years in London. Of course, he still produced great work while he was in hospital, but still. And apparently his father abused him. So I guess that explains that rather negative tone in the store.

I love how these little gifts from thrift stores cause me to discover artists I'd have had no knowledge of otherwise. If you come across this book, I definitely recommend it. I also found out that a lot of his work is at the Niagara Falls Gallery so I'm thinking a trip there may be in order this spring or summer.

housekeeping for the messy?

For some time now, I've been trying to figure out the secret of tidy houses. Now, I don't mean soulless, bare places; I mean just pleasantly orderly but very much lived-in, with enough detritus to show who lives there. I get so overwhelmed in my house because so much stuff doesn't have a home. I don't seem to know how to set up systems so that everything has a place, and I also don't have the habits to put things away (the few that have homes) on a regular basis.

I don't much about permaculture, but I know it's about creating systems that are self-sustaining. I think something like that could help me keep my home more comfortable. If there are systems that work in our homes for managing our stuff, maintaining the space to be calm and peaceful could be easier.

Recently, I've come to the conclusion that there is some fundamental gap -- in skills, knowledge, experience, or maybe something else -- between me and people who can keep their homes relatively tidy. It's not that I have no interest in it; I do, tremendous interest. The mess in my house, in every single room, stresses us all out. Although I only notice this by its absence, when we get a corner tidy and it feels like a big sigh of relief. It's just so nice to be in those spaces.

Anyways, the gap: it's something that tidy people take for granted; they aren't even aware of it. So when they write books or try to help people organize their homes or keep them cleaner, they miss it entirely. I'm sure it's something I can learn, but I need to discover what it is first, so I can learn it consciously. Is there a book about permaculture in the home (vs on the land)?

The other day, I was reading Dr. Gabor Mate's Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. I picked it up because I enjoy his books and his take on the world, not with anyone in mind. But I quickly found that his descriptions of adults with ADD sound alarmingly familiar. Of course, he also notes that all the characteristics of ADD also appear in average people, although with differing intensities. He sees ADD as primarily an impairment, and whatever characteristics I share with people with ADD, they haven't impaired my life overly much.  

His description of a typical person with ADD attempting to tidy a messy room resonated so strongly. (It was along the lines of picking up a book to put it on the shelf, noticing that two related books are far apart from one another, in moving one, you become engrossed in a detail that causes you to seek a reference book, the dryer alarm goes off so you go to change the laundry, notice something along the way that takes you away from the laundry before you get there, remember to take the ground beef out of the freezer to thaw, find the cup of tea you poured half an hour ago on the way to the freezer… something like that.) 

He goes on to explain: 

"Completely lacking in the ADD mind is a template for order, a mental model of how order comes about. You may be able to visualize what a tidy and organized room would look like, but the mind-set to do the job is missing. To begin with, there is a profound reluctance to discard anything -- who knows when you might need that copy of The New Yorker that has gathered dust for three years without ever being looked at? There is little space for anything. You never feel you can master the confused mess of books, papers, magazines, pieces of clothing, compact disks, letters to be answered and sundry other objects -- you only shift portions of the chaos from one place to another. Should you nevertheless succeed now and then, you know full well that the order is temporary."

Maybe that's the gap I've been struggling to identify: a mental model of how order comes about. Immediately I think about how people with Asperger's or high-functioning autism can consciously learn the unspoken expectations of them in social situations and they can consciously learn to meet them to some extent, assuming they're interested in doing that. But of course, the challenge is finding a mentor who can uncover the stuff that most people take for granted.

I've developed a bit of an obsession with SouleMama's archives, and although I know she averts her camera from the messy bits of her house, I'm pretty sure her space is relatively tidy and at least comfortable and relaxing. This afternoon, I had a sudden epiphany about another thing that SouleMama has that I don't: a basement.

So help me out: How have you developed the systems in your house for managing stuff? (And I don't mean regular cycles of purging… I want to keep most of my stuff, I just want it organized and accessible.) Did any books help you? Other resources?

dreams and stuff

I've been reading Callings: Finding and Following and Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy, for the third time. Because even after reading it twice, I still haven't sorted my life out. (I realize this is never a complete task, but I feel like I've been on the cusp of major life changes since the first time I read it in 2010 that are still unfolding). I'm going very slowly, mixing it with other books, sometimes just a paragraph or two at a time. I ponder these paragraphs, I sleep on them, and sometimes I dream about them.

Last week, I got to a section about dreamwork. It talks about how our unconscious mind is always a couple steps ahead of our conscious mind, and dreams can be a bridge between the two. Levoy says that sometimes the bridge is obvious, and he goes on to list a bunch of scenarios of waking life challenges and dreams that offer a pretty obvious response. I can't remember them all, except one: You're contemplating an impossible situation, and you dream that you can breathe underwater.

That night, I dreamed that we were at my parents' cottage by the lake. We were chatting with various people and the kids were playing and Youngest kept getting ever closer to the lake. We figured we'd just see what transpired, especially because if we run after him, he tends to run towards the very thing we want him to avoid. So we watched and he jumped in the link and immediately sank. I ran to the water and dove in. In the moment between my feet leaving the dock and my hands entering the water, I was aware that my shoes were still on and I worried they'd weigh me down. But I wasn't about to take the time to remove them.

I swam underwater and saw Youngest slowly sinking. I kept nearly reaching him but he kept sinking and getting further away from me. My breath was running out but there was no way I was going to take the time to get to the surface; he'd been under much longer than me already and I wasn't going to take any more time. And just at the most hopeless moment, I discovered I could breathe underwater.

"Aha!" I thought. "This is just like in the book." I woke up without having actually saved Youngest but with the knowledge that it was possible.

That was a few weeks ago and I haven't picked up the book since. I've been sinking into hibernation, escaping into tv shows after the kids go to bed or books or, for most recently, SouleMama's archive,  and avoiding walking to or from work. Ever since New Year's Eve, when my husband and I agreed to work towards moving to a farm, I've kind of shrunk from that vision. With the deep cold, I've started imagining the discomforts of living on a farm in this kind of cold. With the chickens here now, it doesn't take much imagination, as we're constantly changing their water and checking for eggs to catch them before they freeze. Anyways… I've been doubting. And hiding.

The other night I dreamed about the book again. Youngest has been waking a lot through the nights recently and nursing lots. The other night was another restless night when I had lots of disjointed and jumbled dreams. But one bit stays with me. I discovered the book, Callings, in a dirty puddle of I don't know what, pretty much completely destroyed. And I felt terrible for forgetting it and letting it be destroyed by my neglect.

In my waking life, I feel a bit stuck and adrift. I feel powerless to change anything and like I'm not moving forward. But after the second dream I remember that we are moving forward. We're about to start a kitchen reno to repair all the brokenness of our kitchen so that when we're ready we can sell the house more easily. And in the spring and summer, we'll start to explore farm properties to figure out what we can afford and more clearly what part of the province we want to be in. This is all progress. Not as fast as I would like but patience has never been my strong suit. As Anya said on Buffy, "I tried being patient but it took too long!"

Free to Learn

Peter Gray is a psychology researcher and blogger on Psychology Today. In 2013, he published a book called Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I even found it a bit mind-bending, which is surprising, since in many ways he's preaching to the converted. We've already pulled Eldest from school and are pursuing an unschooling life for our family. But one keen insight I had while reading the book is that while my definition and use of the word 'work' has expanded far beyond the notion of paid work, I still use it as a way to show value. I have described Eldest's activities, more than once, as his work, to show that I place value on it and take it seriously as an endeavour of his. I still see 'play' as something that is optional and not particularly valuable. In Free to Learn, Gray shows that play is truly essential to children's development.

He looks at how our expectations of children and approaches to parenting reflect the wider culture. His main tenet is that our bodies and brains evolved in a hunter-gather context and so we can learn about child development from hunter-gatherer cultures, where children are given a lot of freedom to play with other children, handle dangerous tools to learn how to use them and to observe adults.

Given my interest in agriculture, I found this passage more than a little chilling:

"Agriculture offered many improvements to people's lives. It provided a steadier food supply and thereby reduced, at least initially, the threat of starvation. It eliminated the need to keep moving in search of food and allowed people to settle down and build sturdy houses to protect themselves from predators and storms. But agriculture also came with a big price tag, which could not have been foreseen by those who took the first, irreversible steps away from hunting and gathering. It altered the conditions of human life in ways that led to the decline of freedom, equality, sharing, and play. When we bit the apple of agriculture, as it were, we left the Garden of Eden and entered a world in which we had to do the gardening ourselves, in which toil, not play, was king.

"The hunter-gatherer way of life was knowledge-intensive and skill-intensive, but not labor-intensive. " 

He opens the book with some startling figures on the mental health of young people today. He shows how on a number of scales, young people's stress, anxiety and depression have skyrocketed over the last fifty-plus years. About "85 percent of young people today have scores [for anxiety and depression] than the average for the same age group in the 1950's. Looked at in another way, five to eight times as many young people today have scores above the cutoff for likely diagnosis of a clinically significant anxiety disorder or major depression than fifty or more years ago." Since 1950, the US suicide rate for children under age fifteen has quadrupled, and that for people age fifty to twenty-four has more than doubled. Gray correlates the rising anxiety, depression and suicide in young people to the reduction of independence and free play, and the rising pressures of school work.

I have been pondering why adolescence is so painful. I don't believe that it is inevitable; I believe some people have come through adolescence without pain, although I don't personally know any of them. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that teenagers generally don't get to be part of the adult world until their twenties. I had absolutely know idea what the professional adult working world was like until I started working as a temp. Teenagers don't get much real responsibility; they don't get to contribute in any real way. After reading Gray's book, I'm even more convinced that a lot of adolescent pain is related to age segregation in schools and the segregation of children from adults. Of course, I have no way of proving or disproving my theory. But I have to hope that there is some way for my kids to come through their adolescence unscathed.

My favourite part of Gray's book had to be his descriptions of the Sudbury Valley School, which I'd heard of but not in any detail. Not only are its students free to spend their time however they choose while at school, they can explore the campus and even go off-campus whenever they want. And all students have a vote in the hiring and firing of the adult staff members, who are not referred to as teachers, since their roles are more responsive and supportive than the average teacher. Truth be told, I think this would be a better environment for Eldest than the way we're currently homeschooling. But the nearest democratic school is in Toronto, one of the most expensive places to live in Canada, so it doesn't feel very possible. That said, I'm committed to finding ways for Eldest to get more free play time with other children and to relax our hovering.

on money and stuff

I've been reading Ben Hewitt's blog for a while, ever since Shannon Hayes (author of Radical Homemakers, which kicked me off on the activities I try to document here) linked to it, probably late last spring. He has two unschooling boys, and I'm fascinated by his accounts of their life, which in many ways looks like my fantasy life -- except they have the actual skills to carry it off.

A couple of months ago, I finally asked my library to buy a copy of his latest book, Saved: How I Quit Worrying about Money and Became the Richest Guy in the World. In a lot of ways, it's exactly the kind of book I enjoy. Some parts memoir or personal anecdote, some parts historical examination and some parts inspiration. The most memorable part of the book, for me, was his examination of how money is made. I've been able to avoid debts other than our mortgage since 2008 and I remain committed to doing everything I can to avoid it going forward. I was already aware that money has no intrinsic value; you can't eat it or burn it to keep you warm (oh sure, you could burn paper money but it would take a lot to cook a whole meal). Its value comes solely from everyone agreeing that it has value. But did you know that money is essentially debt itself? When money is created, it's created by borrowing. 

The other part of the book I really enjoyed was how he and and his protagonist, Eric, acknowledge their privilege. I've been increasingly aware of how much privilege is involved in farming, especially if you can do it without debt. (Eric is not a farmer but he has tremendous skills for foraging and building things and clearly for making friends and building community -- all skills I am aware that I am decidedly lacking in right now.) I enjoyed Forrest Pritchard's book, Gaining Ground, as a fun sort of read, but I continually struggled with his unawareness of his privilege. He tells his story like a pulling up by the bootstraps kind of story, where he's pulling up his whole family with his hard work. I have no doubt he worked very hard and went without spending money for a long time. But he inherited a 300-acre farm full of old machinery and a beef herd already in place. The farm also had an unused home he lived in so he didn't need to leave with his parents. And when his grandfather's 50-year-old livestock trailer proved un-roadworthy, his dad bought him a new, albeit smaller one. Of course that doesn't take away from his commitment to pasture-based foods, the truth of his arguments for farmers' markets or the depth of his struggles and hard work. But as someone for whom the main barrier to pursuing a farming life is access to affordable land, it was at times hard to swallow.

So Hewitt's awareness of and gratitude for his privilege is refreshing. He owns his 40 acres and 2000 square-foot home without debt and he and his wife have huge skills (they built their house and their farm's infrastructure themselves) to produce most of their food themselves. Eric, who at the start of the book lives in a 96 square-foot cabin he built himself, earns $10,000 a year and regularly dumpster dives for food and other goods, is the first to count his privilege: he has the same ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation as most of the people in power and could easily find waged work if and when he needs to. He has tremendous skill for finding food, building relationships and making things. So many of us are blind to these privileges.

The funny thing about my response to the book is that it's actually helped me make peace with money. Before I read the book, I dreamed about a day when my family could live without any need for money. I wasn't sure I'd personally be able to make it reality, but I thought it was possible. But the fact that Hewitt and his wife produce so much of their own food (his kids are also avid hunters and forages) and he still earns about $35,000 a year, makes me realize that there's probably no point in trying to avoid money entirely. As he points out, money itself isn't the problem. "The problem is intent; the problem is how we use money, and what we expect of it." The problem is that our idea of money as security is only an illusion, and our focus on accumulating it serves to make us poorer in true wealth.

"Over the past century or so, perhaps longer, we have been taught that to rely on others is to be weak and incapable. The notion that we should depend on one another is almost antithetical to contemporary American expectations of autonomy and independence. But in truth it is that autonomy that exploits, and, irony of ironies, turns us all into dependents of the very arrangements that profess to offer independence. It exploits our resource base, because it depends on each of us owning the raw materials that enable us to shun one another. But even more profoundly, it exploits us, because it deprives us of the opportunity to experience the richness of interconnectedness and the meaningful relationships it gives rise to. By striving to achieve the American ideal of personal independence, we wind up not just independent but isolated." (p. 151)

Hewitt distinguishes between the unconscious and conscious economies as a way to point to true wealth. "I call our society's way of life the 'unconscious economy' and the way of life life I'm striving for the 'conscious economy' because I fervently believe that the only sane way forward -- indeed the only possible way forward -- is to become conscious of both our actions and our intent, and to understand the ramifications of each."

He quotes from Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics, which I think I must read: "To give and receive, to owe and be owed, to depend on others and be depended upon -- this is being fully alive. To neither give nor receive, but to pay for everything; to never depend on any one, but to be financially independent; to not be bound to a community or place, but to be mobile … such is the illusory paradise of the discrete and separate self."

There are parts of the book and Hewitt's style that I find myself reacting to. As a plain language champion, I can't ignore that his sentences are often unnecessarily complex and long, getting in the way of his message. And his old-timey style is occasionally intrusive and distracting. And as someone for whom social media is often my only connection to people, I reacted to his dismissal of it and other new technology that I use as something we've been duped into. As much as I'd like it to be otherwise, for a number of reasons, at the moment I just don't have the time or energy resources to be reaching out to my neighbours and local friends.

But overall, it's definitely worth the read. I recommend it. And I also recommend Hewitt's blog. 

The Vegetarian Myth

I recently read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. I'm not sure what to say about it, but I definitely think it's worth discussing. Written by a former vegan of 20 years, at times it's probably pretty alienating for current vegetarians and vegans (if they can get past the title of course. I found the title slightly embarrassing. Some of my closest friends are vegetarians and I did actually hide the book when they came over. And although it was so well-written that I wanted to read it all the time, I felt very uncomfortable pulling it out in waiting rooms or other public places.)

When I'm reading a book, I often earmark pages I want to come back to for a second look, maybe to quote in a blog post, or to research or ponder something further. This book was so compelling and well-written I think I earmarked every second page. I struggled a bit with her tone, because she did sound patronizing to vegetarians. But her point was that vegetarians already care deeply for their health and the earth; the decision to become vegetarian or vegan more often than not comes from concern for the wider world. But in her view, and she's pretty convincing as far as I'm concerned, that decision is wrong. Vegetarianism will not save the planet and feed its hungry people. Keith also goes into the nutritional side of things, although on this front I was already well convinced. (There's nothing quite like having a malnourished infant to teach you good nutrition.)

She gives evidence of how the human body has evolved for eating more meat than plant matter. And how even if you yourself don't eat dead animal flesh, your soil needs it to grow vegetables. And she also talks about the massive surplus of males that come from dairy and egg production. (An episode of River Cottage touched on how with the veal industry pretty much destroyed by ethical concerns, often male calves are killed within a day or two because modern dairy breeds don't make good beef. This seems like a terrible waste of a life. In that episode, Hugh visited an ethical veal farmer who gives the calves a decent, slightly longer life at least, and I came away feeling like I'm going to consume dairy products, it's only fair to also consume ethically raised veal. Although I haven't yet found a source. I think the same goes for male chicks from modern laying hen breeds. Heritage livestock breeds were often bred to make good meat and dairy or eggs and, depending on the animal, to do field work too, so there was no waste. But modern breeds have been overbred.)

Factory farming animals is wrong in so many horrible ways, but there is another option. Raising animals humanely on pasture improves the soil and converts grasses -- which are inedible to humans -- into human food. Forgive me if I've already linked to this but it seriously blew my mind: raising pastured livestock reverses global warming and desertification. Watch the video about livestock in sub-Saharan Africa. And raising annual monocrops like wheat, soybeans and corn is pretty devastating to the environment. Keith basically blames the last 10,000 years of agriculture and the aggressive and sexist civilization it gave rise to for the dire state of our planet. I found her discussion in this line absolutely fascinating and I couldn't wait to see what she proposed as a solution.

I was disappointed. Perhaps you saw that coming. She didn't really have much of a solution except to eat what grows where you live and to grow at least some of your own food. I think this is sound advice. But she lost me when she talked about the massive die-off of humans that needs to happen to come back to sustainability. I read The Hunger Games at the same time as I started Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America, which was a pretty freaky combination. But I would rather do my damnedest to improve things before I or, worse, my kids have to live The Hunger Games.

All that said, The Vegetarian Myth is worth the read. I just wish it offered a better solution and more hopeful prospects.

tooth decay

Poor Youngest did NOT enjoy his trip to the dentist this morning. I'd been thinking about taking him for a while, but since my husband lost his job a week and a half ago and we have only a few days' more coverage for health benefits, it was time. I very much want to try curing his tooth decay with diet before trying conventional dental treatment. But I wanted to know from the dentist just how bad the decay was. I didn't get a solid answer this morning, but we've been referred to a pediatric specialist. With the appointment not until July, I figure we've got two months to do our best to improve his teeth.

I mentioned Cure Tooth Decay earlier. It's pretty compelling, and I figure it's worth a try before putting my not-even-two-year-old under general anesthesia and drilling bigger holes in his teeth. The main thrust of the book is that the explanation for tooth decay dentists are currently working with is wrong. It is sugar that primarily causes tooth decay, but not because it feeds the bacteria in mouth, which produce acid that harms your teeth, as is currently believed. Rather, it's the spikes in blood sugar that mess with your ratio of calcium to phosphorus in your blood, which in turn weakens your teeth. Also, the lectins and phytates in grains prevents you from absorbing the minerals necessary to repair teeth. And get this: whole grains are worse for your teeth than refined grains, which have less phytic acid. White rice and white flour apparently cause fewer problems than whole grains. Which has me thinking. Pretty much all gluten-free grains are whole grains.

A number of dentists worked in the early part of the 20th century on exploring the nutritional causes of tooth decay and curing it through diet. One of them, Dr. Weston Price was able to cure children's tooth decay with just one super-nutritious meal per day. He also travelled the world looking for traditional cultures with the best dental, reproductive and general health and exploring their diets. Although the cultures he explored ate a wide variety of foods, what they had in common were generous quantities of fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K.

So, based on the recommendations in Cure Tooth Decay and our wariness of eliminating any more foods from our diet, here is what we're going to try to do:

• eat eggs in the morning instead of oatmeal
• eat soups and stews with homemade bone broth, meat and vegetables for lunch instead of eggs
• eat stuff we normally eat for dinner (mostly meat and vegetables, sometimes rice and vegetables)
• supplement with fermented cod liver oil and royal butter blend (once we can find a Green Pastures distributor in Canada) instead of Halibut Liver Oil with synthetic Vitamin A and D-Drops, which we're currently giving him; this will provide vitamins A, D and K
• as much as possible, eat only soaked and/or soured grains
• eat more mineral and vitamin C-rich vegetables like leafy greens and cruciferous veggies
• eat more fermented foods (my sauerkraut is coming along nicely but isn't quite ready yet)
• as much as possible, only serve fruits or other sweets with fat and protein to slow the blood sugar spike
• use more honey and maple syrup than refined sugar for sweetening

So that's the plan. I hope we're able to implement it without too much difficulty, especially given that there will likely be big changes for us coming up soon.

not all dairy is created equal, or things I wish I had known

I first went off dairy in December 2011 at the advice of our (long-gone) paediatrician. She said Youngest's problems were likely a sudden, mild dairy intolerance. She didn't actually recommend I eliminate dairy because it was such a mild intolerance but I could see my baby wasn't doing well, so I gave it a try. It didn't make a whole lot of difference to Youngest, although his skin got a little better, but I noticed, after the first week of feeling like hell, that *I* felt MUCH better.

The following February, I connected with a naturopath, because it was clear that Youngest still wasn't doing well, and I wasn't sure what else to try eliminating. She guided me in eliminating pretty much everything. His symptoms all cleared up, and so we carefully tested a bunch of foods that had been eliminated. I was really looking forward to the dairy challenge and I planned a big dairy-stravaganza. I had oatmeal cooked with milk for breakfast and a yogurt-blueberry smoothie for a snack. Then homemade (gluten-free) macaroni and cheese for lunch and the plan was to have it for dinner too. But by the time dinner came around, I was feeling so horribly ill, I couldn't face any more dairy. Youngest also reacted to the dairy.

In the summer, when Youngest still wasn't thriving despite having eliminated all the seeming culprits, the naturopath suggested we try him on cheese and yogurt separately to try to get some more calorie-rich foods into him. We found he could tolerate yogurt but not cheese. Strangely, she didn't suggest giving him butter.

Since then, I have learned a few things about the potential allergens in dairy products, and they are not all created equal. People seem very quick to jump on the elimination bandwagon, but I'm not convinced it's the safest course of action. I know for myself, I tried eliminating everything before I'd given even a moment's thought to how I might replace those nutrients in my diet. I suspect, in as gentle and non-blaming a way as I can, that eliminating all those foods so suddenly contributed to Youngest's malnourishment. It certainly wreaked havoc with my milk supply. So I guess I'm saying I think it's worth considering adding in as much non-allergenic, protein-rich foods into your diet before you start taking away gluten and dairy.

Anyways... here is what I wish I had known when I first started eliminating dairy. I suspect I have a lactose intolerance. Lactose is the sugar in milk. Our family doctor keeps talking about it being a fat, but it is not. I've also heard people talk about how their babies were lactose-intolerant and so they too had to cut out dairy, but that is highly unlikely, as breastmilk is full of lactose. Most babies react to the protein in cow's milk, of which there are two: casein and whey. Most babies who can't tolerate cow's milk, also can't tolerate sheep or goat's milk, but that is not something I have actually tested myself (yet).

Butter is the least allergenic dairy product. It has very little lactose in it and almost no protein. It does have some milk solids in it, which may contain traces of lactose and protein in it that can cause reactions in some people but not usually many. If you can't tolerate butter, unless you have an anaphylactic allergy, you will definitely be able to tolerate ghee or clarified butter (so says my dietician who has a PhD so I trust her on these matters). As I learned recently in Jennifer McLagan's book Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes, (a wonderful book that I highly recommend) clarified butter is not the same thing as ghee. I haven't actually made either (yet) as butter has been fine on its own for both me and Youngest.

And while I'm on the subject of butter, in case you didn't know, it is an amazing health food. Vegetable oils are devoid of vitamin and the oxidize easily, making dangerous free radicals that can hurt your cells. But butter is rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, especially if it's made from the milk of grass-fed cows. I have found a local source of butter and I believe the cows are grazed during the months of green grass. I buy Nutri-Springs butter from the Stone Store here in town, but one day I plan to go out to the farm to pick up more of their offerings. Here is an article from the Weston Price Foundation with more of butter's health benefits. The 'science' that generated the Lipid Hypothesis (the idea that animal fats are the cause of heart disease) was completely wrong. You can google it if you want and read until the cows come home.

Yogurt is probably the next least allergenic dairy product, but not all yogurts are created equal. Because it's fermented, both the lactose and the casein are much more digestible. Watch the ingredients though. Many times, especially in low-fat yogurts, milk solids are added back in after fermentation, which means you're getting a whack of lactose and casein without the benefit of fermentation. Low-fat yogurts also have a host of other ingredients, so I always go full-fat. My favourite yogurt, which is also relatively local and available at the Stone Store, is Saugeen Country yogurt. They use whole milk, unhomogenized but pasteurized, so you get little bits of cream that float to the top. Their website is really well-written and informative to boot, so they get bonus points from me.

All cheese has casein in it, I'm pretty sure. I admit I haven't done a ton of research in this area, but harder cheeses have very lactose in them, thanks to the fermentation. Unfortunately, my dear chevre has lots of lactose in it. I spoke to a goat farmer at our market recently, who himself is lactose-intolerant, and he can't tolerate his own chevre either. How sad! I also discovered this from personal experience. But he assured me his older, harder cheeses are tolerable. Which makes me think that all those jokes on Big Bang Theory about poor Leonard's lactose-intolerance are inaccurate. But what do I know? Everyone's different. I'm pretty sure cottage cheese is terrible for lactose but I haven't actually tested it myself or done much research, since I don't particularly miss it.

If I had to do it over again, I would have just eliminated milk and cheese to start, and left yogurt and butter in, since they are good sources of probiotics and vitamins, respectively. I think eliminating whole food groups from your diet should be done with great care and foresight. The dietician suspects that Youngest's intolerances are really secondary; his damaged gut is the primary problem, and gluten, soy and dairy proteins are the hardest for any gut to break down, especially once it's damaged. I think that gut problems are widespread, and perhaps that is the first thing to address, before eliminating foods wholesale. But that's just me.

I've heard a number of people say things like, "It's not rocket science," when talking about nutrition. Having a severely malnourished child, possibly due, at least in part, to my own lack of nourishment before and during pregnancy, gives me a different perspective. I think nutrition IS kind of rocket science. Especially since so much bad science, coupled with heavy lobbying from industry interests and strong marketing and advertising tactics, has pretty much destroyed any food culture we had. In my own family, I would have to go back to my great-grandmother's recipes, at least, to find real food.

So... I hope if you're considering eliminating dairy, or if you already have, this gives you some extra things to think about and some new ideas to try. I definitely think it's a good thing to try to figure out exactly what element of dairy causes you problems, so perhaps you can invite some other dairy products back into your life. I myself am in much happier with yogurt and butter back in my life.

surfacing from sourdough

I am no longer suffocating in sourdough! (AND 19 of my celeriac germinated!) On Easter weekend we went to my parents' place and I put the sourdough starter in the fridge and hoped for the best. It was just fine when I got home, so I left it in the fridge and I'm only feeding it about every three days or so. Which is much less expensive and also gives me more freedom in the kitchen, or elsewhere. Truth be told, I didn't really like any of the gluten-free sourdough breads I made. And I had to make so many sourdough buckwheat pancakes and sourdough muffins to keep up with the starter, that I had no room to eat the sourdough bread. I think I will keep the starter, but maybe I just don't need a lot of bread in my life at the moment. The sourdough pancakes are totally here to stay.

One of the things I like about the sourdough way is that it splits the labour. You spend a few minutes before bed mixing some starter, flour and water for pancakes the next morning, leave it in the oven with the light on overnight and then add fat, eggs, sweetener, salt and some baking soda in the morning before cooking. You mix some starter with oats and flour and just enough water to make dampen it all after breakfast, and then during naptime that afternoon or after dinner, you add other stuff to make muffins. There's a pleasant, slow rhythm about it all. I adapted my favourite banana bread recipe first to be gluten-free then to be sourdough and they're ok. Pretty nice I guess. Moist with a nice texture, although slightly cakier than I would prefer.

Baking has a reputation for requiring absolute precision but I have found that is not true if you loosen your expectations a little. If all you expect is something that is mostly like a muffin and kind of sweet, it's very easy to meet it, and you can take a fair amount of liberty. The last batch of muffins I made I measured the oats, sourdough starter and flour, butter, brown sugar (approximately) and eggs - oh and the baking powder and baking soda (the sourdough probably does add leavening but not enough to fly solo. I just sub the starter for a cup of the flour and half a cup of the water in the recipe). But I didn't measure the pumpkin (probably a cup and a half) or vanilla extract (probably a tablespoon - I made the extract myself last year and it's pretty weak) and I added a whole grated carrot just because. And they came out fine. I did warn a guest that they were a bit odd, but that was more because of the sourdough thing.

I've been exploring the sourdough thing because I'm thinking about only eating soaked or soured grains. My youngest has two extra teeth crowded on top and late last fall we noticed a few dark spots on the most crowded. It must be tooth decay. And one of his teeth is chipped and just today I noticed there is less tooth than yesterday or the day before. Given his nutritionally-deficient past and foods we are avoiding, it just makes sense to me that there is a dietary cause and potential cure. My googling led me quickly to Cure Tooth Decay, but I was skeptical. Then Owlet mentioned it and the diet they adopted. Last week a mother in the homeschool group mentioned that she loved the book and was two months into its most extreme program and she had already noticed a big difference. She lent me the book and I'm nearing the end. I hope to write more about it when I'm done. In the meantime I will say that it's VERY compelling. And as much as I shy away from 'extreme' diets that seek to cut out whole groups of foods, I think I shy away a lot more from dental surgery on my young toddler. One of the things I like about the book and its suggestions is that it is not dogmatic. It encourages you at every turn to do what feels right to you, and the website has testimonials from people who didn't go whole hog but still saw major improvements.

I will say that if we do adopt (more) major changes to our diet (now that we've mostly normalized the last year's changes), I will develop a strategy and add in new foods before removing any. If I had to go back to last spring and do it all over again, I don't know if I would jump on the elimination diet and identifying intolerances. Our dietician suspects that Youngest's intolerances are really secondary, because his gut was so poorly it just couldn't digest gluten, soy and casein - the hardest proteins to digest. We're back on corn now -- I think that was a nonstarter all along, but tomatoes seem slightly iffy. It's also possible that eliminating those foods so suddenly, without getting comfortable with their replacements could have made his deficiencies worse.

Anyways... I don't think I will eliminate grains totally but I may prepare them all better to make them more digestible. And I may try to eliminate refined sugar but I think I very much want to keep honey and maple syrup in my life. But first it's time to add lots more vegetables.

* * *

Here is my favourite banana bread recipe. If you make muffins instead of a loaf reduce the baking time by at least half and possibly more depending on your muffin holder thingie (I don't want to say tin since there are so many other materials).

Banana Oat Loaf 

1/2 c butter or marg
3/4 c brown sugar
1 c rolled oats
1/2 c hot water
1 c mashed bananas (3-4, the riper the better, I never measure)
3/4 c chopped nuts(optional)
2 eggs beaten
2 c flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (I usually reduce this a bit)
I add chocolate chips as well (3/4 c-1 c? I just eyeball it)

Place soft butter, sugar, oats, hot water, mashed bananas and nuts in large bowl. Stir until well blended. Add beaten eggs. Beat until well blended. Sift together flour, baking powder, soda and salt; add to first mixture all at once and stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in chocolate chips.(if desired) Spoon evenly into greased loaf pan. (9 x 5 x 3 inch) Bake at 350 degrees about 65 minutes or until done. Remove from loaf pan, cool on rack. Let stand for a few hours before slicing (If you can wait that long).

I've also used grated zucchini, carrot, often with some applesauce, grated raw beet, grated apple, pumpkin puree and squash puree in place of the bananas.

* * *

I haven't forgotten about my giveaway. I was hoping to have more than one person enter, and that's kind of why I didn't give a deadline. Feel free to enter now if you're interested. Oh -- and the only entrant so far wanted to know what a schmeck is. Schmeck is actually a verb. It means to taste really, really good.

more sourdough, two Edna's and a giveaway

It's been more than a week, and my sourdough starter is still alive! On Thursday, it was looking really sad. Almost no bubbles and a whole lot of hooch (alcohol sitting on top, which I have since learned is usually a sign that your starter needs more to eat). So that night, I took some out for sourdough pancakes the next morning, and fed the starter more like a cup and a half of flour instead of the regular cup, and the next morning it was all fluffy and happy again. The sourdough pancakes were not great, but I had suspicions about the recipe so I had another recipe to try next time (Next time was actually this morning, and the second recipe was WAY better. I will definitely make it again.)

I made a different loaf of sourdough bread on Saturday, this one with chickpea flour. It's a bit softer than the first one and not gummy at all, but I don't think the chickpea flavour is doing it for me.

In the meantime, this starter continues to eat and grow and I have to keep finding ways to use it. I *could* just throw some out, but I am stubborn and cheap and that seems a terrible waste. Of course, I don't seem to have a problem with throwing away lousy, gluten-free sourdough bread. Actually, I do. I know I will finish off the chickpea bread toasted and covered in almond butter and jam, and it will be edible.

And the first sourdough loaf I made into gluten-free, dairy-free bread pudding. There's still a teensy bit left in my fridge, if you can get here before I finish it. Bread pudding is one of the top five things I have really missed with our diet restrictions. Maybe even THE top thing. But this bread pudding is even a hit with the gluten-eaters in my house.

* * *

In The Marriage of the Sun and Moon, Dr. Andrew Weil recounts the social context in which coca usage occurs in a South American indigenous culture. They use it if they have to go on a long hike, if they have a lot of work to do, and for celebrations. Weil proposes that a strict social context prevents addiction, and that the problem with drugs in North America is not so much the drugs themselves as it is the lack of social context for their usage.

One of the first vintage of cookbooks I found was The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis. Although I haven't actually cooked much from it, it's really my favourite. Because it's not just a book of recipes. It's organized by season and occasion. She starts with a menu, writes about the context of the food and meal, and then gives you the recipes. This, to me, seems like how cookbooks should really be done, especially in North America where we've become so divorced not just from seasonality but from the cultural context of eating.

My second-favourite cookbook is probably Food That Really Schmecks for reasons I've already gone into (although, again, I haven't actually cooked a lot from it. The time will come, I am sure). I love that the recipes are all local, and also that my Grandma Ruth owned a copy.

So to make my bread pudding I used Edna Lewis's method but Edna Staebler's ingredients (with substitutions, obviously).

Bread Pudding
1 1/2 cups (almond) milk
1/4 cup melted butter
2 cups diced bread cubes (I didn't measure them, just used all I had)
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, beaten
a handful or two of raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla
sprinkling of cinnamon

I beat the eggs, add in the sugar, mix well. Pour in the milk, stirring as you pour. Add the butter and vanilla. Mix in the bread and let sit. Stir in some raisins if you want. Pour it into a buttered 8x8 baking dish and sprinkle with cinnamon. I let it sit in the fridge overnight before baking it in a roasting pan with some hot water for 40-50 minutes at 300F. I think mine took more like an hour and 20 minutes but I was worried about the pyrex dish breaking so it would have taken a long time for the water to heat up.

Here is what Edna Lewis has to say about bread pudding:

"Bread pudding and other custard dishes were popular in the early spring because of new calves and new green grass producing extra pails of milk, and a good way to use some of the stale bread was to make bread pudding. I can still remember entering the kitchen, which was detached from the main house, and there, cooling on a table near the door, would be a big pan of delicious-looking bread pudding, filling the air with the rich smell of butter and nutmeg rising from the layers of bread that were submerged in a custard of rich milk, fresh country eggs, and plump raisins."

* * *
So I have this problem with thrift stores. I love going to them, at least weekly. One of my problems is a strange sense of loyalty. If I see a plate or a bowl in the same pattern as one I already own, I just can't leave them behind, even if I have no need for more. I feel like I'm reuniting family. And when I saw a copy of Food That Really Schmecks and then More Food That Really Schmecks, well, I had to take them home too. I had an idea to host a giveaway on my blog, because I see those a lot, although they're usually sponsored by the people who sell the thing being given away. So I thought it would be neat to do kind of an anti-giveaway.

I just had one problem: no readers. So I figured I'd wait until I developed a bit of an audience. But someone else had a similar idea, and I just won that awesome book. So now I'm all inspired to just go ahead with the giveaway. Surely someone will drop in by accident and want to play?

Ok. So if you want either Food That Really Schmecks or More Food That Really Schmecks, tell me something about yourself and why you want them. Let me know whether you want one or both. These books are probably best for omnivores, although there are lots of baking recipes and vegetable recipes so maybe I'm just being negative. So who's going to play?

project-based homeschooling

Once the idea of homeschooling got into our minds, we did a lot of reflecting our own learning experiences. I have a three-year Bachelor of Arts in English that took me five years. My husband studied at university for three years before dropping out and eventually, many years later, getting a college diploma. But for both of us, the vast majority of our learning in our professional fields came after our formal education. I really believe I've learned more and had it stick better, in the 12 years since I finished school than I did in the 18 years of school I did.

I have also mostly taught myself photography, and I include seeking mentors as a very important part of the idea of self-teaching. When I think about what, when and how I've learned, I realize that learning only really happens when the subject is meaningful and relevant to me in that moment.

Formal education is often centred around learning information and skills in a particular sequence, like you can't run until you can walk. But I'm not convinced that is the case very often. There were times when I felt like I should learn flash, and I made a few attempts here and there. But nothing stuck until I was unhappy with the available light. That's when I was motivated enough to get past that awful, destabilizing feeling of total suckage and cluelessness that I think is normal when you're doing something you're doing something for the first time.

It just makes sense to us that it could be the same for children, that being allowed to pursue their own interests makes for better learning than a whole bunch of mandatory studies.

I can't remember when I first encountered Project-Based Homeschooling, but I quickly became a big fan. The idea behind project-based homeschooling is that an attentive caregiver helps the kid follow his own interests deeper than he might on his own. But it's a delicate walk, because as soon as you make suggestions, the kid loses that opportunity to figure out on their own the next steps they want to take. So the trick is to mostly observe, document and ask questions. Do I need to point out that this kind of thing is really not my forte? But if you can sit back, the kid will, in the process of following their own interests, develop their skills and learn how to learn much more effectively than they ever could with mandatory, assigned work from someone else.

Truth be told, I haven't actually finished reading the book yet. Nor have I really implemented many of her ideas. But I'm working on it. We developed a Fun Zone, as Eldest quickly named it, which has a small kids' table and chairs, some art supplies and toys and books. It also has a loveseat for cuddles while reading. But it's still not quite what I want it to be. I want more art materials visible and more inspiration. Eldest needs a workspace that Youngest can't reach and destroy his stuff (or choke on wee lego bits), so he tends to build his lego and other stuff behind a closed door.

(While I'm on the topic, does anyone have any tips for dealing with a toddler who keeps climbing onto the dining table? It doesn't seem to matter how many times we tell him no and remove him, he gets right back up with the most devilish grin ever. The kid is persistent.)

Anyways, even with the Fun Zone, we've been struggling a bit. Eldest has been crabby and seemed restless. I was frustrated with how little progress we've made working towards project-based homeschooling. We needed to do something.

Eldest has been nursing an obsession with horses for the last couple of months. He's started taking riding lessons in exchange for me mucking out stalls on Sundays (yay for bartering! My first real barter), so he gets the double learning bonus of helping out as well on Sundays. Every time we go to the library he only wants books on horses and if I get books on other topics, we never get around to reading them. So the topic to support Eldest developing into project work was clear. But how? My own mind was stuck on writing and drawing activities, perhaps categorizing the breeds he's been learning about or something. I knew if I suggested that it would go over like a lead balloon, in addition to not really being in the spirit of project-based homeschooling.

So I decided to ask Eldest. Yesterday morning, I told him that when I'm learning new stuff, I like to make notes in my notebook to help cement my learning. And is there anything he might like to do to develop his learning about horses? He immediately mentioned that he needs a barn for his toy horses. He has a Playmobil vet clinic and truck and horse trailer he got for his birthday, but he really needs a barn. I asked if maybe he could make one, because I know he loves constructing things with cardboard. So we went to the liquor store to get more boxes and he started to work as soon as we got home. He's been working on it off and on ever since. It has a hay loft, stalls and an indoor riding arena. I think for the moment he's finished, and of course it doesn't match up with my own vision of what a cardboard horse barn could be, but I'm pretty happy with the way that all went down.

The author of Project-Based Homeschooling, Lori Pickert, also hosts a blog and a forum to support parents in their efforts towards project-based homeschooling. She also recently started a series of blog posts to help grown-ups pursue their own projects. I recommend it all. And despite the title, it's not just for homeschoolers. I think every parent could benefit from her ideas and insight.

on pickles and sauerkraut

I started reading about wellness and using food for healing more than a decade ago with the books of Dr. Andrew Weil. Lots of what he said made sense to me, although I wasn't a big fan of all his supplement pushing (especially since he sells supplements with his name on them). And one thing really, really didn't sit right with me. He said you should avoid pickles of all kinds. He said they're devoid of nutrients and I think he said they contain a carcinogen.

I am a big pickle fan. A sandwich just isn't a sandwich without sliced pickles in it. When I was pregnant with youngest, all I wanted to eat for the first several months were turkey sandwiches with cheese and pickles. Of course, this made for lots of jokes, and my coworkers even gave me a jar of Vlasic pickles (which I heartily enjoyed). It converted me from my former Bick's loyalty to Vlasic. Although I have a new brand now, Bubbies.

I've always been of the mind that when a body is reasonably well, it knows what it needs. I usually trust my cravings. Sometimes I crave chocolate or chicken and sometimes I crave salad, or Brussels sprouts or coleslaw. If other animals can successfully choose their own food, then surely we can too. (Of course, having a severely malnourished toddler has somewhat disillusioned me. But I still think it's a sound concept.)

So when Dr. Weil said to avoid pickles, he lost me. Don't get me wrong. I still think there's lots of good advice in his books and they're readable as hell, but I likes me some pickles. And I just really felt that they couldn't be so bad as to recommend eliminating them completely. Surely there had to be something good in pickles. Maybe it just hadn't been discovered yet.

Last fall I finally got my hands on a copy of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. While I do think this book is a great reference book and I do plan to buy it, I did struggle with some of what Sally Fallon says in it. I think that if you're going to challenge conventional ideas on any topic by criticizing the studies that led to those ideas, you need to be very precise in your criticisms and really break it down. You can't just say a study was wrong by trotting out two other studies without going into what differed between all the studies. It may be that I was reading too fast and missed important details; maybe her criticism is actually complete. But I didn't see it. The book remains valuable, however, and I have since found the detailed criticisms I needed online.

Back to pickles. Pickles are traditionally just vegetables mixed with salt and fermented. They didn't used to be made with vinegar the way they are most commonly now. The fermentation not only supplies friendly bacteria to your gut, but is also creates enzymes that make many of the vegetable's nutrients more digestible. Apparently Captain Cook brought 60 barrels of sauerkraut on his trip around the world, and his whole crew avoided scurvy for something like 17 months at sea. Aha! I knew there was a reason pickles are good!

Around the time that I was reading Nourishing Traditions, my friend started experimenting with homemade sauerkraut. I couldn't believe the flavour - so delicious and surprisingly complex. And when he offered me half his crock for a big batch of the stuff, I jumped at the chance. I was way too scared to try it myself so it was great to have my friend pick the recipe and do the measuring. I just contributed a few cabbages and got to watch. And I have been happily munching on sauerkraut ever since. I don't have it every day, but I have it often, and I feel good eating it. Maybe this summer I can try fermenting some beets and dill pickles.

baking powder

A couple of weeks ago, I was flipping through one of my vintage cookbooks (In Pursuit of Flavour by Edna Lewis), and I noticed a recipe for baking powder. What? You can make that at home?

So I checked out the ingredients, and yes you can. In fact, it's very, very simple. This knowledge came at a perfect time because my store-bought baking powder was nearly gone, and sure enough, one naptime I wanted to bake something and (re)discovered at the last minute that I didn't have enough baking powder. (My favourite banana bread recipe, which I make once or twice a week, uses 3 teaspoons of the stuff.)

Anyways, I followed the recipe for baking powder, replacing corn starch with tapioca starch. I used my kitchen scale to measure out the weights but I think next time I might not do that. I suspect my 4-pound scale just isn't accurate enough to do 1 or 2 ounces, because while I was measuring, I touched the scale and it suddenly sprang up past the mark I was going for. I decided to pretend I hadn't seen that and just poured it all together.

I've used it several times now, and everything I make seems to rise just fine. I couldn't help but wonder if cream of tartar is some nasty toxin so I looked it up. In case you didn't already know, it is not a toxin. It's the powder left in wine barrels, which comes from tartaric acid. It provides the acid that reacts with the basic baking soda.

So here's the recipe:

Baking Powder
2 ounces (1/4 cup) cream of tartar
1 ounce (2 tablespoons) baking soda
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) starch (corn, potato or tapioca would all work)

Ms. Lewis recommends weighing the ingredients and cautions that if you do use measuring cups and spoons, "use a light hand and do not pack them down." She goes on, "Also, it just isn't true that when you use single-acting baking powder you have to mix up the dry and liquid ingredients quickly and bake them right away or else the batter will die. I make spoon bread batter the night before and it rises just fine the next day."

So that's good to know too.