Yup, it’s me; all cool-like and laid-back

daphne on June 1, 2009

Ok so I’m starting to lose it.  School days are done and summer is upon us and I’ve got three weeks of swim team and jump practice to coordinate before packing up the car and turning our (station) wagon west east not to mention figuring out hotel stops and food and oh yeah, I’m losing it.

Have no fear. I’m working on a new me.  You can tell I’m all new by the mellow look in my eye and the way I saunter to and fro with nary a care in the world.  I’m laid back.  I’m cool.  I don’t need a petty calendar to tell me where I’m supposed to be and who I’m supposed to be picking up when.  If I forget a kid I’m sure she’ll call (note to old self — write cell number inside kids’ shirts.)

With such a blase attitude towards juggling life and kids, you can imagine that the disorder of my garden isn’t ruffling any of my feathers.  Oh no.  I am hip and if the squash wants to wind itself around the tomatoes and the potatoes are fraternizing with the cucumbers, I don’t mind.  Who am I to enforce something as dull as tidy rows of planned vegetables?

Sure I spent hours toiling away beneath a punishing sun, lining up seedlings and painstakingly pulling weeds, but all that’s behind me now.  After all, the roly polies have settled into the neatly groomed spots vacated by the vegetables-to-be and they seem quite happy.  And you know what they say–when a gal’s got happy bugs…well, I imagine they have something to say about that.

Ok. Ok. You got me. I like my garden in rows.  And I like my days planned.  But I’m facing a mutiny in the garden and a couple of weeks before setting out on the open road and so I am embracing a new attitude.  I’m throwing caution to the wind and trying out days without a plan.  (If my hands are shaking and I seem a little hyper-ventalatey that probably just means I need more coffee, right?)

I can do this.  After all, I learned my lesson last summer and I am more than ready to toss out the crazy and embrace the lazy in these my dog days of summer.  So here I go.

I’m putting down the calendar.

I’m breathing in.

I’m breathing out.

Look at me! I’m so totally relaxing.

(Ok, can I have my calendar back now?)

Not so great expectations

daphne on May 25, 2009

So it looks like I planted the spinach a little too late.   And the lettuce.  And the cucumbers were perhaps to fragile as tiny sprouts to withstand my man-handling of them into the garden.  Either way, as far as veggies go so far, looks like I missed the boat.

The boat I was trying to catch runs on an extremely complex tide table.  Here’s the thing– I want a couple of productive harvests this summer.  The first should come in right about  June 10th, and then I’d like another healthy haul near the middle of August.   All I’m asking is that the sprouts take a nice siesta for the six weeks that we will be gallivanting about the country, cruising up and down the coast and then soaking in sunny Des Moines while our Jr. Olympian breaks all sorts of jump-roping records.

Too much to ask?  Maybe for the leafy greens, but the raspberries and rhubarb seem game.  Ditto the strawberries, which are producing fruit in a frenzy.

The potatoes, a first attempt for us, are also good with our game-plan.  The plants are sturdy and beautiful, and from what I hear they are content to hide out underground through the hideous heat of July.

In the vegetable’s favor, I did fall in the tomato patch, and that spill seems to be paying off.  There is a sprinkling of healthy looking sprouts of unknown origin coming up in a haphazard sneeze.  Cucumbers from a spilled seed packet? Squash from un-composted seeds?  Only time (or a more seasoned gardener than I) will tell…

I’ve come around to the fact that we most likely will not get to eat any home-grown greens before we hit the road. I’m really ok with it, especially since all the ingredients for summer desserts (cobblers, pies, crumbles) are returning on their own in spades.

My garden may not bend to any artificially imposed time table, but at least it shares my main philosophy:  Life is Short.  Eat/grow dessert (plants) first.

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And the fun with bugs continues.  Here’s a gratuitous picture:

Girls And Their Roly-Polies

Your Rockin’ Rhubarb Resource

daphne on May 18, 2009

Despite a decidedly rocky start with rhubarb, I have made a remarkable comeback. Even though I was deceived as a child into believing that my beloved frozen strawberries were in fact rhubarb (and therefore off limits,) I have now gotten to a point where things with scary names aren’t intimidating.  Well, except kohlabi.  Anyone in their right mind would be terrified of kohlrabi.   Any-whoo, back to my personal growth.  I am so totally mature.  I not only grow rhubarb, but I harvest and eat the stuff too.  I’ve even been crowned Her Majesty the Rhubarb Poobah (note: position is self-appointed.)

Yes, I am the proud tender of a healthy crop of rhubarb, the successful propagator of little rhubarbarinos, and the baker of some award-winning rhubarb recipe (note: no awards have actually been awarded.)  Acadia and I pulled the first harvest last week–

She is standing in front of the strawberry patch, which has somehow doubled since last year, and behind that you can see the raspberries and the row of rhubarb.  Funny how my spinach is struggling, my cucumbers are wilting, but the pie-friendly plants are chugging right along.  Even my garden knows dessert comes first.

Do you have questions about when and how to harvest rhubarb?  Click here for a refresher on the facts.  You don’t eat the leaves, just the reddish-green stalks seen here–

You can get an idea of their size in comparison to Acadia’s kindergarten-sized hands–

As long as a few leaves remain on the plant, you will continue to get new growth for a couple of months.  This was our second harvest, only a few days after the first.

After I pull the stalks and cut away the leaves, I rinse and dice the rhubarb.  The inside color varies from light pinkish-white to light green.  The more green it is, the more tart it will taste.

I freeze the chopped pieces flat on a tray before storing them in ziplocs in the freezer.  This makes it easy to add to recipes, which I do as is, in it’s frozen state.  Here’s my favorite thing to do with rhubarb. It’s a super easy recipe and it goes beautifully with vanilla ice cream.

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Notes from the roly-poly front:  The girls are starting to scare me with their mandatory round-up of these guys. The forced participation of all roly-polies born in our yard in the fun and games over at the newly opened roly-poly pavilion just seems excessive.

Here they are, not looking nearly as awful as they do in real life, going for a ride in the tuperware to see Kira’s teacher. Kira wants to know why the parents seem indifferent to the babies, crawling willy-nilly all over them without any special regard for the youngsters.  She didn’t like my answer (um, self-preservation in the face of abusive conditions?) and thinks she’ll get further with her teacher.  Apparently second-grade teachers don’t scream or use sarcasm when asked a simple question about the child-rearing habits of a billion creepy bugs.

Roly-poly pavilion now open!

daphne on May 13, 2009

On Saturday morning, while I was busy disengaging the wild raspberries from the strawberry patch and moving weeds to make room for rainbow chard seeds, my daughters had more pressing matters at hand.  The pine needle roof of the fairy home, constructed specifically to allow for shade and breezes, had blown over. At least now we had our answer as to what was keeping the winged nymphs from moving in.

The girls set right to work…but you know contractors.  No sooner had they promised to address the structural issues that had befallen the fairies then another job demanded their attention:  the roly-polies had arrived, and they needed a pavilion. Stat.

Ahhh the roly-poly, characterized by an ability to roll into a ball when disturbed.  Not that I am criticizing.  After all, I’ve got access to happy hour.  Who’s to say that without that half-priced vodka tonic I wouldn’t be curled up in a ball myself?

The girls whiled away the afternoon, attending to the myriad needs of the bugs of our backyard.  Girls will be girls, you know.  And for my girls, even the smallest moth deserves healthcare with respect. Which explains Kira’s rage at her father, who, as she reported to me during my absence, “refused to call an entomologist,” despite her beloved moth’s “near-death state.”

I know. I can hardly believe I’m married to such a cold-hearted snake.  Refused his children the right to see an entomologist?  What kind of monster indeed?

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s my fault for setting the bar too high when I phoned in for back-up from the Humane Society to help out with that baby bird last year.

Or maybe Daddies just don’t understand the special bond between a girl and her moth.

My house smells like dirt (in a good way)

daphne on May 8, 2009

Coming back home after eight days away I am hit by one particular fact: my living room smells like dirt.  No, I can’t blame my husband for letting things fall to pot. The kids are in one piece and the house is still standing.  The house smells like dirt in a good way.  Forest path in the rain dirt, not dust bunnies beneath the bed dirt.  It smells like dirt in here because a few weeks ago I started some seeds inside, but then life got in the way and I high-tailed it to Boston and I just haven’t gotten around to the moving them out into the garden part of the plan yet.

But as they say to Marvin K. Mooney, the time has come. The time is NOW.  And I’m looking at a weekend of planting in a garden that is more than ready to go.  I think we’ve had some success with the sage. It’s coming back, and that bodes well for a summer full of my favorite pasta with sage leaves.

It also seems that taking that rhubarb risk is paying off in a big way.  All is going well with our original plant and her little rhubarbarinos.

The leaves are lush and green, but I can’t touch them without breaking out in hives. For some reason, the toxic leaves don’t bother the kids at all.  The stalks are ruby red and thick, harvest-able very soon, which means that days rich in rhubarb crisp can’t be far away.

As Dr. Seuss famously told Marvin K. Mooney, the time has come to GO GO GO.  I’m all about frenetic activity, and can’t wait to break out the shovels this weekend.

Which may work fine for me, but sweet Acadia sails on a different tack.  She’s slowing it down, making some time to stop and smell the tulips.

And pretty babes all in a row

daphne on May 1, 2009

According to the gardening gurus it’s time to plant potatoes, but all I’m doing is eating a whole lot of doughnuts.  Ahhh, the anti-healthy all-terrible non-nutritional terrific-tasting doughnut.  Nothing takes the sting out of stress like a deep friend treat dipped in chocolate.  And I’ve been a bit stressed lately, what with my eight year-old almost losing an eye and my newborn nephew pulling an extended stint in the hospital. So yes, I’ve been eating some doughnuts.

I did have bigger plans.  Plans of planting potatoes and nurturing newborns but then Kira caught the business end of a boomerang with her face and then it snowed, again, covering the garden and then there were stitches to be removed and airplanes to catch and a new nephew to be hovered over and so much for plans.  You can see how there was really little time for anything other than a doughnut.

So here I am in Boston where it is springtime in spades.  With everything so lush and bursting from the ground it’s impossible to believe that this gorgeous guy has to hang out and wait for his lungs to mature. I guess he spent his time in the womb working on his fancy hair-do.

Sure, plans of planting potatoes morphed into pacing in front of digital read-outs of oxygen levels, but that’s alright. I really don’t care. The numbers look terrific. And so does little Miles.

Anyways, plans are silly. Who needs them?  The potatoes can wait.  And so can I.

Especially when it comes to snuggly newborns.

And chocolate-covered doughnuts.

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.

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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.