The best meal ideas ever!

Sander, Sawyer and a friend. Sander didn't like the friend. Can you tell?

Published July 21, 2009

You know, every time I think I’m getting the hang of cooking, I’m knocked on my ass.

This article from The New York Times, which is just a bunch of salad ideas, knocked me out.

Why, oh why, aren’t I eating like this every day?

Why have I ever eaten beans and rice when I can have this:

“Cereal for grown-ups: Start with puffed brown rice; toss with chopped tomatoes, scallions, a minced chili, cooked or canned chickpeas and toasted unsweetened coconut. Dress with coconut milk and lime juice.”

I had bean soup for dinner last night. Why didn’t I do this:

“Cook short-grain white rice in watered-down coconut milk (be careful that it doesn’t burn) and a few cardamom pods. While warm, toss with peas (they can be raw if they’re fresh and tender), chopped cashews or pistachios, a pinch of chili flakes and chopped raw spinach.”

Or this:

“Sear tuna until rare (for that matter, you could leave it raw) and cut it into small cubes. Toss with shredded jicama or radish and shredded Napa cabbage; season with mirin, soy sauce and cilantro. Avocado and/or wasabi paste are great with this, too.”

I thought I was fancy and uber-urban with my walnut-dried-cranberry-feta salad.

Apparently, that’s SO last century.

This is the salad of today:

“Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.”

Yeah. That’s the New York Times talking.

I’m off to go buy me some modern vegetables.

I had a meatloaf defrosting. Silly, silly me.

Perhaps I’ll buy some arugula. Or maybe some raw spinach.

My kids can eat the meatloaf.

The article, because I know you’ll be wanting to read it and eat it, is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?pagewanted=1&em

Is biomedical intervention proven?

Originally published March 29, 2009

A lady I know who has a son who’s fighting autism has recently compiled tons and tons of information about whether biomedical interventions in autism is scientifically proven.

 Honestly, this is hard. It’s hard to explain what it is, and why it works, and why your doctor doesn’t know anything about it. So I’m glad she took the time to figure all this out -- I’ve been very lax about keeping records about what I read or where I find information.

 So, here’s what she’s found:

There are over 500 researched white papers published by PhDs and MDs on biomedical intervention. One reason they’re hard to find is because they’re not all listed in one place, and many are protected from distributing because they are in journals which require paid subscriptions.  PubMed is probably the best for finding many of them, but you need a subscription to that as well.

Some great authors have compiled hundreds of research articles and summaries of white papers in their books.  Here is my friend’s list which she hands to all "doubting" family members, friends and professionals. 

Drs. Edelson and Rimland, Recovering Autistic Children, contains 100+ references

Dr. McCandless, Children with Starving Brains, contains 57 references

Dr. Kenneth Bock, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics (Autism, ADHD, Asthma and Allergies), contains 100+ references

Dr. Bryan Jepson, Changing the Course of Autism, contains 500+ references

David Kirby, Evidence of Harm, contains 436 references

Rev. Lisa Sykes, Sacred Spark, contains 100+ references

One of the biggest problems in treating autism is that some children respond to certain treatments and others don’t. That’s why there are so many people who question the treatment. One new theory is that not all children on the spectrum have methylation pathway defects, and therefore not all respond to biomedical intervention therapies targeted toward the repairing the immune system.  However, there is a test that measures the markers in the pathway.   

If you’re interested in autism, and in why this treatment works, here are the websites where you can read the papers that explain everything. This is Lisa’s list, but it’s pretty similar to where I started while researching all of this:

http://www.autism.com/medical/research/index.htm

http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/publications.htm

http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/supporting_research.htm

http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science_ news/index. php?WT.svl= Top_Nav

http://www.autismcenter.org/research_ publications. aspx

http://www.lymeinducedautism.com/presentations.html

http://www.autism. org/    (search engine for research articles)

http://www.safeminds.org/research/

http://www.autismone.org/download2008.cfm

http://www.generationrescue.org/autism/

And I love my friend’s tagline, and wish I thought of it first:

May you be well equipped to answer questions, and remain confident and steadfast in your quest to recover your children! 

My mid-term exam

Originally published Friday, March 13, 2009

Garden day. At one point, we had 16 helpers!

In the grand world of parenting, they say, there are no grade sheets and no final exam.

Hogwash, says I. I just aced my mid-term, and I’m feeling pretty good about it.

In the past two weeks, I have:

1. Been on a college tour of Berkeley, where I helped a teenager craft a plan to visit Europe this summer. Told her why traveling alone would be good for her. Had long heart-to-heart about her love life.

2. Talked to another teenager, one year older. Told him why traveling would be bad for him. He needs to stay put. Had long heart-to-heart about his love life.

3. Visited a gay bar. First the tame one recommended by concierge. Then the very scary one where all men were shirtless and had the crack of their ass showing above jeans. Left quickly.

4. Toured Berkeley in pouring rain for an hour and a half. Then got on a plane soaking wet.

5. Placed a $1,500 co-op order for seven homeschooling moms, ordered everything, figured out who got what, met the truck, co-ordinated time and meeting places for all moms, figured out who owed what, and divided up food. Filled my pantry.

6. Bought half a cow, found three other moms who wanted to divide the meat, organized the beef lady and all of the moms, got the meat here, met all the moms and delivered meat. Filled my freezer. For $3 a pound for hormone-free, no-antibiotic, pasture-raised Angus!

7. Had steak for dinner.

8. Organized and rounded up 16 people to put in my garden. Traded food and garden plots for work -- although I actually paid Dylan to help. Dylan was amazing -- coordinated and cracked the whip and within one day, I had 38 garden beds, six feet long by three feet wide.

9. Put up a fence around the entire garden, by myself. More than 100 feet long and 25 feet wide. Plus eight feet tall. Then put in a gate, too. I feel like the little red hen -- no one wants to help with the fence, but they’ll all want to eat the tomatoes!

10. Made enough food to give to all of the people who came and helped with the garden.

11. Went to my aunt’s birthday party in Houston, three hours away. Talked to many interesting “ladies who lunch.” Spent a nice evening with my aunt and uncle at their house.

12. Taught a cooking class to four young people with autism. Designed for teenagers, but two adults showed up. Turns out one of them had a penchant for kitchen appliances. He turned on every mixer, fryer, oven and fan we had in the kitchen, and really wanted to take the mixer paddles home. It went well, but suffice it to say I think there’s nothing heartwarming or sweet about people with autism. I think the whole thing just sucks all the way through. It’s such a tragedy. 

13. Adopted three guinea pigs. Original names were Cinnamon, Sugar and Pig-Pig. They are now Snowball, Messy and Pistol. The boys are in heaven.

14. Disassembled and then reassembled the entire damned guinea pig cage. One stupid one-foot-square piece at a time. Times 80.

15. Planted the entire garden, with plants I’ve grown mostly from seeds: tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, squash, herbs, pumpkins, watermelon, squash, strawberries, blackberries and fennel. And cardoon. What’s cardoon, you say? It’s an Italian vegetable I ate in a a salad at Chez Panisse. It looks like celery and tastes like artichoke. I was fascinated by it, and then when I came home I found some at the garden center and planted it. Only then did I look it up and realize it grows to six feet tall!

16. Kept my children alive, well-fed and happy. Taught the difference between obtuse and acute angles, dealt with two colds and coughs and two visits to the doctors.

17. Transported to Boy Scouts, gymnastics, vision therapy, violin, birthday parties, theater class and friend’s houses. Bought and wrapped birthday presents, found gym clothes and Scout uniform, kept up with violin practice, vision exercises and theater script.

18. Rented the back kitchen. Met almost every day with renters, went over rules and expectations, figured out finances and kept the kitchen clean and organized.

19. Played the role of big sister while my sister looks for a car and a job with a steady income. 

20. Kept my husband happy while he had a very stressful couple of weeks at work.

21. Kept alive three guinea pigs, two tadpoles, four chickens, two cats and a dog. I must admit they were on the far back burner, though. I’m not sure I would have noticed if a few of them dropped dead.

I have not:  

1. Lost weight

2. Stopped drinking coke when I’m stressed out

3. Learned to be frugal, despite my best efforts

4. organized my closet

5. done any laundry

6. been very nice to my husband, who deserves more attention

7. started running or exercising

8. come to terms with the fact that I’m turning 40 in three weeks

Frankly, I can live with that.

And who knows, the next section of parenting might kill me off, and you never know when there’s going to be a pop quiz.

But I’m pretty happy with my mid-term grade.

My latest obsession

Originally published February 11, 2009

I do actually have two children. It’s just that Sander’s the one who’s always demanding to be photographed...

He’s hiding here in a post hole, playing “Prairie dog,” in an ugly, barren stretch of clay and rock that I am determined to turn into a garden.

Three years ago, when we first moved in, I planted a garden. Then the deer ate it. So I planted another one, put up a better fence. Deer ate that one, too. Last year, same thing.

So this year I’m getting serious.

I have offered on Craig’s List one month’s worth of dinners to anyone who would come and put up a deer-proof fence.

I warned that the ground was solid rock, and that you’d need a jackhammer to dig a post hole, and that I really will suffer a nervous breakdown if I have one more tomato plant nibbled to the ground the night before the tomatoes are ripe.

Enter Sam. He’s young, good-looking, digs fence post holes for a living, and he’s hungry. He works all day and has no clue how to cook. He goes home exhausted and falls asleep hungry because he’s too tired to fix anything.

A month’s worth of free dinners sounds just about right.

So last week he showed up with a HUGE truck that hammered right into the soil, drilled four feet down into the solid rock, and there you have it. A real post hole, ready for a real fence.

Also via Craig’s List, I have a farmer named David coming on Sunday to till the entire area with his tractor. Same deal -- he’ll get month’s worth of dinners, too.  Sam will come back and put up the fence once the tilling is done, and I will have a real, honest-to-God, garden, not a half-assed patch of dirt with a hose.

I have seeds starting inside for tomatoes, tomatillos and beans. I have lots more to plant once I can put them right into the ground.

I am WAY too excited about this. I’m sending the husband off to get a trailer full of compost tomorrow, and I can’t wait for the compost to get here. Who knew I’d be excited about compost?

I’m really excited about the fantasy garden in my head, though -- the one where I can go out and pick what’s for dinner every night by what’s in season and what’s ripe, full of berry bushes and tomatoes and squash and beans. 

In reality, I don’t really eat squash, and weeding a garden this big is going to be a huge pain in the butt.

No matter. I’ll be satisfied if anything grows that I can eat before Bambi does.

I no longer think deer are cute.

Dinner tonight

This is Sander being silly tonight; he said he was going swimming in a snowstorm!

Published February 12, 2009

Dinner tonight was corn chowder. Quick, easy, boring. It was pretty good, but I got lazy and didn’t make any bread, because it’s a pain in the ass to make bread. So we just had a bowl of soup.

It’s a very easy dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan meal, though, and it only takes a couple of minutes.

Saute an onion, add frozen corn (organic, please -- corn’s almost always genetically modified if it’s not organic,), some chicken or veggie broth, lots of herbs -- I had oregano, rosemary and herbs de Provence -- and bring to boil. Reduce heat, add a can of coconut milk, and blend with stick blender or real blender.

Done.

In each bowl, put a little salsa in the middle to spice it up. If you can eat bacon without feeling guilty on six or eight levels, add crumbled bacon, too.