A Greener Biener

Not that there’s anything wrong with the stuff.  In fact, a brief perusal of the internet uncovered signs that whiskey is loaded with antioxidants.  I just don’t enjoy fire cascading down my throat, so trust me when I say that whiskey and I ended our affair before it ever began.

I tell you this in the interest of setting the record straight.  Seems I’ve gone and acquired a bit of reputation.

And for that I blame my kids.  Oh those munchkins and the things they say golly gee if it doesn’t make me want to roll them in oats and shove them in the fridge for a day or four.

You know, to temporarily cool their chattering jets.

I’ve heard that kids say the darndest thing.  I just didn’t know that she’d say them to her teacher and a room full of 9 year old punks.

Seems the third grade is all a twitter about mountain men (I take it they are something like cowboys, only less sexy.)  The teacher told her class tales of the wild old days.

My darling explained,

‘The mountain men drank lots of whiskey and they gambled.  Sometimes they even lost their wives in card games.’

‘That’s why I thought of you, Mom.’

Fair enough. My name has long been synonymous with liquor-swilling and Texas Holdem.

She continued,

‘We were talking about whiskey so I told that story, you know, your story. The one with you, in the mountains, with the whiskey.’

My story? I have a whiskey story?  My apologies to the dead horse, but really, I don’t even like the stuff.

And my darling child continued some more,

‘My teacher called on me, so I told the class about that time you drank too much whiskey and then went to lie down and sleep in the street.’

Of course.  Right.  What self-respecting mother doesn’t regale her kids with her sleep-off-the-bender-in-the-road story as she tucks them in at night?

By the way, I thought I’d finally include a picture of my no good, rootin’-tootin’ road-sleeping, saloon-frequenting self.  You know, to go with my new reputation.

I did it. I one upped my Grandma.

It’s not a nice thing to say, I’ll give you that.  But it’s true.  I made Grandma’s cake, and mine came out better.

Huh, it sounds kind of obnoxious when I write it out loud like that.

Still, if she were here today I know she would be proud.  She would take one look at this beauty…

and kiss me and tell me that not only am I beautiful and talented but I am also the smartest girl in the whole wide world.

Grandmas are good like that, and yet here I am spouting off about making a better cake.  I am truly a rotten creature.

Though in my defense I did publicly admit that my sweet old granny, were she alive today, would be the odds-on-favorite to beat me at arm wrestling.  Probably she had her reasons for making the cake her way, which was a bit heftier and came in sets of two.

Which brings me to the initial reason for reworking the recipe – the mathematical fact of the situation is this:  I make 2 cakes, I eat 2 cakes.  Never mind that I don’t have a house of people clamoring for dessert.  I will eat them alone and I will eat them fast and I will eat them all and then, even though chocolate is my very best friend and would never punch me in the face like some vegetables I know, I still might end up with a touch of a tummy ache.

So no, two cakes are not a feasible option for me and my pathetic lack of self restraint.  But one cake? One cake is gooood.  Really really gooood.

Warning: I push cakes like thugs sell drugs.  If you feel vulnerable you should step away now.

Because Grandma’s cake (gloriously updated) is delightful. It’s light, it’s fluffy, and it’s low enough in sugar that it’s (heads up, pun ahead) a piece of cake to convince yourself that 4 helpings a day is reasonable. (That’ a small piece after lunch, a nice piece for after school snack with the kids, a piece for dessert after dinner, and one nice slice with a glass of wine after the kids go to bed.)

I’m not going to tell you that you’ve got to make and eat this cake.  No, scratch that, I will tell you exactly that:  Make this cake. You won’t be sorry.

Trust me.  I’ve spent the last few years researching the healthy way to eat.  I know vegetables are good.  But sometimes veggies turn on us, and we need another choice.  And that choice, my friends, is cake.

Still not convinced?  Here are the indisputable facts:

1. Nuts are packed with protein
2. Dark chocolate is full of antioxidants
3. Eating cake makes us better human beings*

*this is true but let’s not demean the research but disclosing something mundane like supporting facts.

You are driven to eat well.  You have pledged to unearth healthy foods in your quest to do right by yourself and your family.  You will eat more vegetables.

You, my dear, haven’t thought enough about all those involved.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe the chard would rather not be consumed thank you very much?

Or that maybe the broccoli doesn’t particularly want to hang out on the business end of a fork?

You didn’t think, did you?

Well, neither did I.  After all, I thought my focus on eating healthy and providing my family with vitamin-rich foods was an unambiguously positive one.  Little did I know that notching my belt with one antioxidant-wielding super food after another was antagonizing some very powerful enemies.

Lesson learned.

Now I know better.

Veggies are people too.

I guess.

Before I became so enlightened, I callously tore cabbage from a list of ‘what we should eat.’  Thoughtlessly I sliced through the deep purple flesh, and though my hand began to tingle I continued the massacre, dicing and chopping until I had a bowl full of the beautiful bi-colored vegetable.

I added carrot slices, and admired the vividly contrasting hues.  I ignored the itching in my throat while I congratulated myself on discovering a super-veggie that the whole family enthusiastically consumed.

Yippee said I, and happily served up the leftovers to myself and my family the following night as well.

I shouldn’t have been so cavalier.

That cabbage kicked my butt, leaving me with a swollen eye worthy of a heavy weight boxing ring, a face full of hives and a nice pink-all-over kind of rash.  I was dizzy.  I was blotchy and swollen and itchy and boy oh boy was I longing for the days when a nice bowl of chocolate ice cream said dinnertime.

‘Take that,’ said the cabbage.   Man was he mean.

‘There, there,’ soothed the chocolate.

Chocolate is so nice.

Chocolate doesn’t make me look all puffy.

Chocolate is my friend.

By issues, I’m referring, of course, to food.

And by you, I mean of course, me.

Wow, I’m feeling better already just airing out that confession.  Earlier in the week I felt differently.  Earlier in the week I sat smugly way on the other side of a phone call from food issues.

I was talking to my sister, a new mom who is juggling all the complexities that come with feeding a baby.  You know the stream of self-questioning that ensues with all things child-related–

How much is too much how much is too little how do I measure how do I know why is this so hard  I should probably have another cookie or two to help me think straight…

I gave her what advice I could, given that my babies never ate, and then the conversation turned to the challenging task of raising children with normal relationships to food in a world where eating-related issues practically grow on trees.

We talked of modeling healthy relationships with food. We talked about not making a big deal out of food.  We talked about meal times as time to eat, and other times as time for other.  We sounded really smart and rational.

I crossed my self-congratulatory arms across my chest and declared that now that my kids are older I NEVER fall prey to whimpers for nighttime snacking.

Reality always waits until one is not looking to smack one upside her stupid head.

My six year-old was snug in her bed.  Blankets had been tucked just so and band-aids had been applied to every microscopic scrape, imagined or otherwise.  And then she pulled out the big guns…

BUT MOMMY I’M HUNGRY.

I knew my role.  I knew the right thing to say, and I said it:

No honey, you already ate and now it’s bedtime.

But she didn’t stop there.

MOMMY I’M SO HUNGRY THAT IT HURTS DEEP INSIDE MY TUMMY.

And with that I promptly escorted the tough bitch to the door and waved bye-bye to the callous advocate of sending healthy, strong, normal children to bed hungry.  I gave a kick in the pants to lesson teaching and good habits and all such nonsense.

My baby? Hungry?  Get out of my way.  Last I checked feeding my child perched at the very top of my job description.

But maybe she’s not really hungry.  Maybe she is a manipulative little twit who pulls no punches in her pursuit of attention.

Yes, perhaps you have a point, you mean, heartless, cold version of myself.  But know what?  I can’t pop attention into the microwave and serve it up hot as I wipe her tears away.

But I can feed my baby.  And I will feed my babies.

Besides, we’ve had a little chat and now we’re all on the same page.  Eating will be done at the dinner table at dinner time.  And there will be no two ways about it.

(You know, unless she gets really hungry.)

For some, the holidays are a time of peace.  A time to reflect on special stuff, family stuff.   A time to recall the little things that made Grandma so sweet.

This year the holidays gave me a wallop by way of a sudden and tremendous recognition that my Grandma, all four feet ten inches of her, was an ass-kicking strong man in disguise.  She was strong, not as in, wow, she overcame so much when she moved to this country with nothing more than the snow in which she’d walk both ways up hill to her destinations.

No, I’m talking strong as in, this is an actual un-retouched picture of my Grandmother, taken long ago in the old days–

(Anyone know what happens when you call up the spirit of Jack Lalanne twice in four months? I’m guessing it means I can skip the gym today, right?)

Anyway, Grandma was strong.  I base this retrospective assessment on a recent attempt to recreate a recipe from our ancestry for my daughter’s class assignment.

Recipe?  Said I.  Oh no, we can do better — we’ve got the actual cookie press from my little old cookie-making Grandmother.

Note: The 2000 in the name refers to number of humans on the earth at the time this was manufactured.

My grandma made cookies with this gem, which is basically a caulking gun for the kitchen.  The dough goes in one end and, with the ease that one would birth a thirteen-pound baby, out pops the cookies.

PUSH!

Breathe.

PUSH!

Breathe.

My children, not yet being of cookie-bearing age, left the toiling to me, though they did step in to add a teaspoon or twelve of sugar to the globs that I managed to produce.

In the end all I got for my efforts, for those hours of shoulder-twisting wrist-jarring pain, was a lousy batch of sugar cookies.  That’s like going through 3 days of back labor to birth a dart frog.  Cute, yes.  Sweet, sure.  Just not exactly what I had in mind going in.

Things were tough in the old days.

Maybe sugar cookies were all that they knew.

Maybe Grandma didn’t have easy access to chocolate.

But I do.

Chocolate is the best.

And it never makes me work this hard.

Nah, despite my reputation to the contrary, I’m not going to cry.  I may be shaking my head back and forth in disbelief that I am old enough to have a nine year old, but there won’t be any tears.  Not when I am the proud mama of an attitude-copping, eye-rolling, delicious delightful beautiful nine year-old.

Ok, so maybe I will shed a tear or two, but that’s only because I am so overwhelmingly lucky in claiming this motley crew as my own –

Note, re: the helmets in this shot — we were sledding, okay?  My petition for above offspring to wear helmets plus full-body protective-wear 24/7 continues to be denied.

Turns out I’m not alone in thinking that nine is pretty darn old.  At her birthday dinner Kira pointed out the sad facts, there in black and white on the kids menu:

Kids’ meals are for children, 8 years and under.

Of course I marched right into the kitchen to have a word with the joker responsible for deciding that 9 years on this earth qualifies one to be an adult.  Well, I didn’t actually march in there, but I considered it.   Truth is I was pretty hungry and besides, what better gift to give than the gift of narrowly avoided mortifying embarrassment?

Child or no, a birthday girl is entitled to a day of  activities of her choosing.  And so it was that we set out for the Breckenridge bone-jarring sledding hill. Being nine, Kira marched herself to the top of the hill without pause and launched herself down the mountain at rocket speed before I could let loose with an over-protective blood curdling shriek of “NO WAY ARE YOU GOING OVER THOSE NECK-TWISTING, SPINE-SNAPPING JUMPS!” or maybe just a “HEY IS THAT HELMET TIGHT ENOUGH?”

Once she got the jumping part out of her system, everyone wanted to take a ride with the birthday girl.  Here she is with Good-sport Grandpa–

And with her very own wild and crazy mom –

And post-hill posing with her punky sister (helmet removed only for the picture, trust me.)

Happy Birthday to my Incredible Nine Year Old.  I love you, and I love being your mom.

I haven’t written at all; I have nothing to say.  There are no words.  On Saturday my dear friend lost her baby boy, and there are no words.  No words of comfort.  No words to undo the pain.

There are no words to explain how someone that pulled together and somehow made it through the tragic loss four years ago of her firstborn son is now forced to endure the loss of another beautiful newborn.

A parent’s nightmare? I don’t know.  Nightmares are limited to things I can imagine, and never in a million years could I imagine that such a tragedy would strike, not once, but twice.

The words in my head are childish.  I don’t believe it.  I won’t believe it.  It’s not fair.  It’s not real.

How can this be so painfully and terribly and inconceivably real?

I have no words, I have only the heaviest heart full of sympathy and love for my beloved friend and her precious family.

It gets kind of heavy

This burden I shoulder

I must lighten up . . .

And yet I grow bolder

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Bolder because it makes me so mad

To think that the chicken for dinner we had

Packed a punch of hormones, a dabble of drugs

I’m a tree-lovin’ hippy; I just want more hugs

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

More hugs for my children

And food that is healthy

I don’t like thinking of food

As sneaky and stealthy

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Though it is a necessary chore

I find listing prohibitions to be such a bore

Despite the recent blast o’ information

I’m taking myself on a splurge-vacation

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Oh the cakes I will bake

And the cookies I’ll eat

The latkes that shimmer

In oily heat

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

I love sugar! I do! I most definitely do!

From the tips of my hair to the soles of my shoe!

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Yes, they say moderation is key

Sadly, that doesn’t quite cut it for me

For if even one crumb of a sweet does remain

It lures me; it taunts me; it calls me by name

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

I am weak-kneed before the goddess temptation

She’s simply superior to that wimp moderation

And yet I suppose I should balance the two

Come 2010, I promise, that’s just what I’ll do

If I could hang out with this crowd all the time my style would be all that and a bowl of keys–

I know.  We look hot.  Sadly, other than an occasional 70s themed murder mystery party, my style, sweet though it may be, is grossly misunderstood.

I have a distinctive day-to-day look that’s been cultivated over the past 20 years (think: clueless 1980’s casual meets Eddie Bauer chic.) I’ll never understand how that TV show where they dole out fashion advice and five grand passed on the chance to re-design me.

I don’t get it.  Do these amber vision glasses make my roller skates look fat?

Never mind.  The public has spoken, and so I will put away my tapered-leg jeans and scruncies.  I’m content to stick to what I know: the damage being done by the stuff we’re putting into our bodies.  Someone else will have to manage the fashion police.

Speaking of experts, the food gurus have compiled a great list.  If we’ve got TV to thank for flagging the fashion potholes, then consider this list like airport runway through chemical-infested waters.

We need to get out of that water.  After all, I need to keep these hip babes healthy if I want any shot of passing on my style torch.

Most of the time we guzzle away, innocent and unaware of the hazardous chemicals we’re inviting into our bodies.  I was shocked to learn that even canned tomatoes, a mainstay for our family once our paltry summer supply runs dry, are chock full of some pretty scary stuff.

It’s overwhelming, I know, this ever-expanding world of What’s Killing Us Now.  But stick to it.  I can’t think of anything more worth-while.  To help out, here’s a list that we are following.  It’s like a cheat sheet of what to avoid and a brief explanation.  For more detailed information you should definitely read the full reasons behind the list.

1. Canned Tomatoes — the tin in the cans are loaded with synthetic estrogen
   
2. Corn-Fed Beef — Cows evolved to eat grass. When they don’t, they get sick.
   
3. Microwave Popcorn –  chemicals (linked to infertility and some cancers) in the bag leach into the popcorn
   
4. Non-organic Potatoes — you can’t wash them enough to get out the layers of pesticides and chemicals
   
5. Farmed Salmon– high in cancer-causing contaminants like brominated flame retardants. Mmm, who can pass on flame retardant?
6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones — this stuff is banned in most industrialized nations for its link to cancers.
   
7. Conventional Apples — winner of the “fruit most laden with chemicals” position.  High exposure to pesticides has been linked, most recently, to Parkinson’s disease.