Woodpeckers are such total losers

daphne on April 27, 2009

Ok, maybe not all woodpeckers are losers.  But the one that’s been pounding on our gutters at the break of dawn for two weeks most certainly is.

Our loser is a northern flicker, described as having a black or red mustache extending from the beak to below the eyes.  If I were him, I’d blame the mustache for his failure to attract a female from this side of 1970, but what do I know?  Maybe he’s never seen himself.  Besides, my sole attempt at matchmaking in nature has been centered on the sex lives of squash.  Maybe our mustacheo-ed friend is more complex than your average gourd, dating-wise, that is.

Running on no sleep, fueled by a caffeine+sudafed buzz, I hit the internet.  Turns out that this particular ‘pecker was “drumming.” Drumming is a territorial act. It serves to warn other woodpeckers and also to attract a mate.  Because nothing says sex like the drum of a jackhammer at dawn…

Well, it wasn’t working.  No ladies appeared to convince Romeo to stop with the pounding and get to the pounding, if you know what I mean.   And since Romeo’s lack of success was causing severe distress amongst those of us on the receiving end of the metal clanging, action was required.

I found this nugget online–

Federal law protects woodpeckers, so killing them can be a difficult option.

Um, call me a pacifist, but shouldn’t killing always be a difficult option? The site continued:

…the US Fish & Wildlife Service can grant a permit for $25 for you to use lethal methods.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but aren’t all killing options lethal?  Perhaps they meant legal, but I don’t know. The idea of killing a guy just because he’s striking out with the ladies didn’t sit well with me.  There had to be a better way.

And there was: mirrors.  A mirror, I read, would challenge the territory of our feathered Romeo, and send him packing.  Either that, or it would afford him a nice long look at that mustache and convince him to make the necessary changes to become luckier at love.

And so it came to pass that Dave climbed to the roof and prepared for battle, armed with nothing more than a ball of twine and an old vanity mirror:

I write the happy conclusion of this little vignette fresh from 8 hours of sleep.  We are the champions, my friends.  With nothing more than smoke and mirrors, we triumphed over that little pecker.

And we all slept happily ever after.

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger..once a week?

daphne on April 19, 2009

It appears that I have gotten myself into a bit of a spot.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled when something I write reverberates with a reader.  It’s just that this time, some of my readers have taken a suggestion I made a little too seriously.

Make that one reader in particular: my husband.

Seems he’s gone whole hog (pun intended) on this concept of dragging our family onto the meat-free bandwagon.  Damn.  Talk about your selective reading.  What happened? Did he miss the part about the climate change chocolate bars? Ten years of marriage and he still can’t sort through my pretty-sounding rhetoric to get at the solid (dark, chocolate) core of my argument?

Perhaps he’s forgotten about the youngest in our household?  Our little bacon-loving fiend will not take lightly to his proposed plan. Which, by the way, I think he’s calling Let Them Eat Tofu.

Ironically, I’m pondering his plan as I type away here at the kitchen table, draped in the aroma of Asian BBQ ribs that is wafting out from our crock-pot.  I don’t care what you say — no matter how long I steep the broccoli, it will never smell this good.

But I know, it’s bigger than that.   It’s one thing to have a quiet little tug-o-war with my conscience over doing right by my body.  But when it’s out here in the open, and the balance of our planet is at stake? Well, that makes it a little harder to garner support for the id side of my rope. (That’s the side that’s whining over the prospect of missing a tasty burger, not to mention the overwhelming challenge of coming up with week after week of meat-free dinners when I’m already maxed-out over what to feed my group every single day.)

That’s it, actually.  I despise the never-ending ritual of figuring out what to eat for dinner.  Taking the meat out of the meals makes that task all the more daunting. It’s intimidating….intimidating, yes, but wait a minute.  Surely this is not impossible for a multi-tasking, masters-degree wielding mama like myself.  What if I were to just tackle that bull broccoli by the horns right here, right now?  It only follows that my food-figuring fears will be put to rest.

Here it is then.  A sample week in the life of the Let Them Eat Tofu meal plan:

  1. Day One:  Spinach Lasagna.  So far so good. I love spinach lasagna. This is going to be a snap.
  2. Day Two: Eggplant Parmesan.  Tastes like chicken, right?
  3. Day Three: Pancakes. Meat-free recipe. No additional trip to the store. Everyone’s a winner.
  4. Day Four: Um. Hmm… Cake! Cake for dinner. Cake contains exactly no meat.
  5. Day Five:  Let them eat cake! Again! This is not bad at all. What was I worried about?
  6. Day Six:  Pass the syrup, pancake night is here again.
  7. Day Seven:  On the seventh day, I rest. Someone please order take-out.

Truth be told I didn’t review this menu with Dave before I posted it.  Just in case he finds fault with my weekly plan, maybe I can get him on board with meat as an occasional treat, presuming we go for the good stuff, locally raised, grass fed meat. It is a bit more pricey, but since we’ll only be eating it during the harvest moon and on alternative leap years, it’s well worth the splurge. Locally raised means a smaller carbon hoof-print for the earth, and grass fed beef is loads healthier for us people too.  It’s lower in fat and higher in omega 3, among other benefits.  Let’s see what Mr. No-need-for-chocolate-if-we-skip-the-meat has to say about that.

Speaking of chocolate, I’m still waiting for my climate change bars to come in.  Which means I’m back to figuring out what on earth to make for dinner tonight.

I think you know where I stand.  Let them eat cake.

It’s diet time

daphne on April 12, 2009

It’s time for the Bieners to get leaner.  Don’t get me wrong. We’re not doing anything crazy like cutting down on ice cream sundaes or our regular chocolatey indulgences. No, I’m talking about a different kind of slimming down. I’m talking carbon diet.

You know? Carbon diet.  As in — does this road trip make my footprint look fat?

Thing is, we’ve decided to take a big old road trip this summer.  Wagons east, loading up the car, stuffing it full of luggage, kids and gasoline.  The kids and the suitcases I can manage; it’s all that fossil fuel that’s making me feel guilty.

We make this trip each year, but there’s something about standing and pumping that gasoline every 6 hours or so for days on end that makes it feel like more of a carbon splurge than the jet fuel we usually consume on this bit of travel.  I’m feeling the need to assuage some of my guilt before we hit the road.

So I hit the internet.  There are loads of dietary options floating around on the internet.

We could go meat-free for a couple of months.   Studies reveal that one kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

Speaking of lights, we could take a cue from Earth Hour and sit around in the dark a little more often. Or, once summer hits we could forgo turning on the air conditioning, and just rely on that old fashioned evening breeze.  I could cut down my 36 weekly trips to get groceries to just one car ride a week to the store.  That sounds delightful. In fact, I’m pledging right here, right now to make that one a reality.  So what if my family eats pancakes for dinner every now and then?  At least I finally learned to make them the right way.

So many worthy ideas, and yet all options paled in comparison once I happened upon the perfect solution to our proposed carbon diet: chocolate!  As in climate change chocolate. Each bar comes with an offset of 133 carbon dioxide reductions, which is roughly the size of the average American daily footprint.  Also, the recycled wrappers are coated in clever tips to help us tread more lightly upon our planet.

All I need is a moment to crunch the numbers. Let’s see:

  • 4 people in our happy little family
  • 1600 miles to go
  • One 1999 Subaru getting approximately 26 miles/gallon

Ok then. Assuming my calculations are correct, and adjusting for varying wind velocity, I’ll need to eat about 5,893 candy bars to make peace with the world.

It’s a small price to pay.  I think this diet and I are going to be great friends.

What’s the big deal about HFCS?

daphne on April 1, 2009

It goes something like this:

It’s a beautiful day. An attractive couple is enjoying a romantic picnic in the park.  It’s the perfect setting for a dollop of propaganda.  Have you seen these commercials by the corn syrup lobby?  She’s licking a popsicle and offering him a taste.  “Oh no,” shuns he, “it’s got high fructose corn syrup.”  She tosses her honey-hued hair and bats an eyelash. “So? What’s wrong with corn syrup? It’s practically a vegetable.”

He caves.  I think it’s the seductive giggles more than the strength of her argument, but that may just be my skewed interpretation of what happens where men and women and popsicles intersect.

“Corn syrup is fine.  Moderation,” she touts, “is key.”

Ok princess, that one I’ll give you.  Moderation is key. Moderation allows me to indulge in a sweet snack every day without beating myself up about it.

But her argument leaks. How exactly does one moderate when the sneaky substance lurks in every nook and cranny of the supermarket? It’s not as though we seek out corn syrup, insisting on seconds or thirds of those tantalizing ice pops.  It sneaks it to our diets by way of soft drinks, cereals, and condiments.  Crackers, bread and peanut butter.  And just about anything else that we buy in a box.

It’s everywhere.  That Snarky Spy of Safeway.  That Trojan horse of Target.

So what? Who cares?  Sugar by any other name, as the saying more or less goes, right?  Is it really that big of a deal if my sweetness takes the form of honey or brown sugar or highly processed high fructose corn syrup?

Yes. It is a big deal.  Recent studies have found that food items loaded with HFCS have unacceptably high levels of mercury.  Mercury is linked to problems in brain development.  HFCS is also blamed for the recent and drastic increase in diabetes in our country.  That super-sized soda sits on the side of the meal pretending to be a harmless drink; our body devours it like a bag of Halloween candy.

Not that I’m picking a fight with Halloween.  Let’s just call a spade, a spade, shall we?

Which is in fact my big hang-up with HCFS:  Awareness.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I sit down and eat my way through the kids’ bags of Halloween candy.  A bad idea, sure.  But I am fully aware that I have just consumed my share of sweets for the millennium, and presumably, I would make up for that indulgence with a nice healthy lunch.

You know, a healthy lunch, like a salad, a yogurt and a glass of chocolate milk?  But chances are that the salad dressing, the yogurt and the milk are all packed with high fructose corn syrup.  Which means in my deluded quest for health I have just consumed the equivalent of another jumbo-sized bag of m+ms.  I’ve been fooled.

It’s not fair.  I want full credit when I eat my greens.  I do not want my veggie intake tallied in the dessert column down there in internal accounting.  And I don’t want to unwittingly spoon this over-processed, mercury-laden, spy of a pseudo-food into my kids, like I did yesterday when I poured out their Rice Krispies.

It feels lousy to be fooled.

********

Want more information about this stuff?  Read Michael Pollan’s book, Omnivore’s Dilemma.  It’s one of my favorites.  Also add the documentary King Corn to your Netflix list.  Two crazy college grads try to grow some corn, and get themselves educated in the process.

Daphne’s Tips at the Store:

  1. If the item says HONEY in the title (ie, Honey Wheat Bread,) it usually DOES NOT include HFCS.  This is not always true, but a good quick rule of thumb.
  2. The aisles on the inside harbor the most hiding places for HFCS.  Shop the outside perimeter.
  3. If it comes in a box, a bag, or a jar, take a quick glance at the ingredients.
  4. Nothing we eat should have 546 ingredients in it.
  5. If you want that Popsicle, eat the Popsicle.  And enjoy it in full awareness.