Smug never pays

Remember yesterday, when I was all smug about solving my dog problem? Yeah, about that.

I knew there was something wrong the way that my husband wasn't getting out of the car. And then when he finally did get out of the car, he just paced around the driveway, still on the phone. And then I heard his mom's voice. My initial thought was that Rocco had been hit by a car, because my in-laws live on a fairly busy street and they had voiced that concern several times. But it turned out to be cancer. Apparently the poor dog is riddled with it. Something burst and they didn't expect him to make it through the night. My mother in law was apologizing to us, for some reason. They've had the dog for three weeks.

He did manage to make it through the night, and even was in full-body-wag mode when it was time to go home. The good news is that the SEVEN THOUSAND dollar surgery will not save him, and there is no expensive chemo option for us to politely and ashamedly decline. He's just going to be an old dog with cancer, until suddenly he's not anymore. My in-laws have graciously promised to provide hospice care for as long as it lasts.

Anyway, weird that I finally posted about this just yesterday as it was all going down. I went through a lot of emotions last night, mostly ones that can probably be blamed on being overly hormonal at the moment, worrying about the dog dying in cold metal veterinary cage wondering why I had abandoned him. But by the light of day, and considering that he is by all accounts acting like nothing happened, I am back to feeling like this is the best possible situation for everybody. Except I guess for my in-laws, who have to deal with the reality of my ticking time bomb cancer dog dying on them at any moment.

Stirrin' up the troubs

I'm wondering if some of the people who think they have a gluten sensitivity actually have a sensitivity to all the crap that goes into processed foods like pasta and factory bread. Maybe once those sources are removed from the diet, the "gluten" reactions from other, more natural sources are actually psychosomatic?


This "theory" is really just wishful thinking. But I wonder if it has been examined? I was too lazy to look it up before I started typing this blog post. Besides, I think it's best to put all inflammatory ideas straight on to the internet without thinking about it first.

Speaking of inflammatory, you know who's crazy? Paleo diet people. No legumes but go ahead and eat a rasher of bacon at every meal. Because you know, Paleolithic man was awesome at charcuterie. And don't get me started on the unsustainability of the entire human race eating eight ounces of grass fed beef three times a day.

Actually, you know what, I bet not ALL Paleo diet people are crazy. I bet there are those of them who quietly refrain from eating grains and dairy and are just as put off as I am by the idea of having steak and six eggs for breakfast every morning. It's unfortunate when a few bloggers ruin it for everybody else. At any rate, those crazy bloggers introduced me to the wonders of pastured butter. And for that I am eternally grateful.

I promise I don't waste *that* much

You know what makes me feel like a repressed 50's housewife? The fact that I wait until my husband is at work to sneak the vegetables we're never going to eat into the compost bin. Well, that and pre-treating the ring around the collar on his dress shirts. I die a little bit inside every time I do that.

But back to the food wasting. It's not like he would be angry with me. It's not like I don't have carte blanche to do whatever the eff I want around here. It's just that if the hubs sees me trying to throw away some turnips that have already languished in the crisper for a month, he tells me not to throw them away, he'll eat them. He will then proceed to attempt some nastiness like scrambled eggs and turnips, and I end up throwing out the remaining (majority) liquified turnips two weeks later. It's better my way, starving children in China or no.

Part of the problem is, no matter how much I actually enjoy eating kale or swiss chard, they are not exactly my "go-to" vegetables. Like any other good American, my staples are frozen peas and corn. Maybe green beans. MAYBE. Spinach? Even that is getting a little fancy. I grew up with frozen spinach served mostly in a hollowed out sourdough loaf as spinach dip. Oh and salad. We also had a lot of salad. And we have a lot of salad now in my Family, v. 2.0.

We also have about ten thousand apples in the fridge, because nobody really wants pears or persimmons or whatever else the CSA tries to pass off as acceptable fruits. So I always default to apples, but never actually eat them. Any time I do, I think "my, what a lovely little snack an apple makes," but then the next time I'm hungry I go right back to the M&Ms. Old habits. You know.

Rainy afternoon food network musings

Not that you asked, but I have absolutely no desire to be Giada De Laurentiis's friend. Any time I've ever seen her do a show about having a party it looks super uncomfortable to me. Maybe it has something to do about how she's always getting in everybody's face demanding that they agree with her about how delicious her food is. It's very needy. Also, the awkward thing I just saw with her taking a turn in the DJ booth was very hard to watch. I can't imagine having to see it in person and pretend I was okay with it.

I figured out my Curtis Stone thing from awhile back. He looks like Ryan Gosling in drag. THAT is what it is.

Speaking of (TV) chefs, let's talk about this whole Meatless Monday thing for a minute. Do leftovers count? I don't think they do. I think if you are eating meat leftovers on Monday, you have not broken the sacrament. But then I'm a firm believer in the spirit over the letter.

Ketchup: the breakfast of champions

I decided to forgo the green smoothie this morning in favor of leftover fatty omelet and potatoes from Sunday morning. I did this under the rationale that I didn't want the (relatively) expensive restaurant food go to waste; in reality, I did it because fatty omelet > spinach and banana smoothie. By, oh, say a million and a half.

I ate the leftovers despite the fact that they contain both meat AND cheese, which are the two things most wrong with the world according to this report released yesterday by the Environmental Working Group. Yesterday I was all depressed about it, how I had to face facts and quit eating the cheese, even if cheese IS the most delicious thing ever invented by man. Obviously my fleeting pleasure over a plate of nachos is not worth the lives of thousands of cute little polar bear cubs, right? But then I remembered that this guy exists, and he is a fantastic example of American Can-Do Ingenuity, and he is going to save cheese for us. He is to be exalted on high, if you ask me.

Remind me to learn how to make cheese

I just ate an entirely unreasonably sized portion of spaghetti and meat sauce with cheese on top. It is justified, I reckon,  because Marlo is now in constant motion (physics!) and still dependent on me for 90% of her calories. I can't keep my pants up anymore.

All false humility aside,  my binge reminded me of a few points I want to make on that whole vegan thing I brought up the other day. Number one: I have nothing against veganism. Something against some vegans, yes, the condescending PETA-joiner kind, but that's beside the point. I think if you want to subsist on plants and plants alone, good for you. I couldn't do it. Nor do I want to.

I could probably be a vegetarian. I think that if I were forced with the choice to either go veg or raise and, um, harvest? my own meat, I would be unable to do it. I'm creeped out by eating plants I grow myself. (Fun fact: I'm kind of scared of plants. They creep me out that they are alive and breathing and whatever but completely silent. The way that they will move toward you and those vines that will grab you if you're not careful - yikes! But anyway.) Yes, I'm kind of sicked out by eating my own plants, so you can imagine how I would feel about eating livestock. That I actually saw, you know, alive.

But eggs, cheese? Not a problem for me. In fact I could never give up cheese, it is far to dear to me. So if everything goes to shit and we have to start raising all our own food, you can bet on me to be your friendly neighborhood cheese maker. I will probably barter you some for a steak, you heartless murderer.

Number two point: I get that the Veganist lady was trying to ease that family into it, what with the seven hundred dollars worth of fake meat. But I still think that is stupid. It is not going to solve any of our increasingly urgent problems to get America to "ease into" a diet that would be good for the planet via a diet based mainly on soybeans and corn. Oh wait. Ha ha. Based directly on soybeans and corn. I mean, I guess it cuts out the middle man of the cow, but we'll still die a slow painful death as the synthetic fertilizers deplete all the oxygen in our water systems and Earth turns in to Mars.

Have a nice day!

Suddenly, an intense craving for cheeseburgers

Funny that a theme in my little blogiverse this week seems to be the insufferability of preachy lifestyle people, because I just saw a particularly insufferable lady on Oprah. And it wasn't even Oprah! The preachy lady, aka The Veganist, cannot tell an animal his right to a dignified life is less important than her appetite.

Of course, the underlying message in this statement I have just paraphrased for you is that you are an asshole because you think your love of bacon is more important than Miss Piggy's right to frolic.

It was fun to see Michael Pollan sit next to this lady and try not to roll his eyes. I mean, seriously.  I struggle with the ethics of consuming meat and other animal products. We buy everything all organic and free-range and whatnot - although I have not yet bought one of those ridiculous $20 heritage chickens. The Veganist's argument is that not all Americans can afford to buy food responsibly like I can - so therefore they should go vegan.

Cut to the Veganist loading a Harpo staffer's Whole Foods cart full of probably $700 worth of Tofurkey products. Shouldn't someone who calls herself the Veganist have a better plan than highly processed meat substitutes? Is it really better for the environment to produce and consume fake meat? Is it really more cost effective? Am I just being insufferably obtuse and defensive of my elitist meat eating lifestyle?

I would have written a snappy conclusion, but the baby's screaming

I've got a rock in my craw. Or whatever the appropriate colloquialism is for "I'm feeling pretty frustrated."

This whole BPA thing. I'm having trouble deciding where the line is between "sensible concern" and "paranoid hyper-paranoia." Like, okay, I get it. BPA leaches out of plastic and into food, and that's probably bad for us. So we all threw out our $24.99 BPA-laden water bottles and got new, shiny $24.99 BPA-free bottles. Hooray! Problem solved, right? No. Because we are not supposed to eat things out of cans, because cans (turns out) are lined with plastic that leaches BPA into the food. Oh. Right.

Okay, so up until the time I get really good at canning without growing botulism spores and spend all of August putting up all of the tomato product we could possibly go through in the year, what am I supposed to do? Not use canned tomato product? That eliminates about 75% of the meals that I regularly prepare for my family. And what about beans? Am I really supposed to go all 19th century and have a bean pot a-boilin' on the stove at all times? Or wait, isn't it Mondays that are for sheets and bean cooking? I can't remember. All I know is I'm trying to break my habit of rinsing the bean can out over the beans in the colander, a process I have recently dubbed "getting all the BPA goodness."

It's just frustrating. It's like it wasn't bad enough when Martha Stewart was telling you you weren't doing it pretty enough, now it's like you're not doing it not killing your family enough. Here I am, buying somewhere around 85% organic, unprocessed foods, making nearly everything that we eat, yet I'm still doing it wrong. I call shenanigans.

An old lover has returned

I know, I know. You're here for the brownie report. While I'm slaving away, baking in the name of science, please go ahead and read this post and let me know your position on the local/slow/hippie food movement. Brownies tomorrow, I super swear.

I received an email the other day with the subject line "time for a new beginning." Apparently, Full Circle Farm found out about my new and passionate affair with Amazon Fresh, and they want me back.

Full Circle Farm is a Seattle area CSA program that we participated in for well over a year. I decided to suspend my subscription early in my pregnancy, when the idea of trying to figure out what to do with a box full of produce every week was way too overwhelming for me to handle (this would be the chicken fingers era). Plus, it seemed like a good way to shave $30 off my weekly food bill. The variety was nice - but when I could get by on a basic produce selection from the store, without having to figure out what to do with dandelion greens for the third week in a row, it seemed like the right choice.

Since leaving FCF, I have regained some (but not all) of my kitchen enthusiasm. But I stick to the basic salad and side veggies that we usually eat without venturing out. I order them from Amazon Fresh, and they come with the rest of my groceries. They may or may not be grown 45 minutes from my house, but they ARE organic and reasonably priced.

Unfortunately, all the 'food morality' stuff out there has really gotten to me. Long gone are the carefree days of the past where I could buy whatever was cheap and tasty with a total lack of regard for where it came from. Now I have to think about it, and shop according to my conscience. And what my conscience tells me is that I should be spending my food dollar as locally and as small as possible - meaning I SHOULD be buying my food from the little farm co-op down the road, not the corporate goliath. It's strange that it's taken me as long as it has to come to this conclusion. My parents spent half their lives building up their own business; so how could it not occur to me to support other people in similar endeavors?

So according to my own values, I should be buying my produce from the CSA program, my dairy from the milkman, and my meat from a butcher. I should be willing to spend a little extra money to support small business and local food. I should quit telling myself that Amazon Fresh counts because it is a local company, technically.

But will I? Only time will tell. Full Circle Farm does not deliver ice cream OR oreos. That's a big dealbreaker in my book.