wonder(ing)land

One of my favorite writers, Terry Pratchett, often points out that books are dangerous and that people who think otherwise are naive. In Anhk-Morpork, his fictional city, they are under a strict watch of the Librarian of the Unseen University. The most dangerous ones are locked in chains lest they should escape. These seem to have freed themselves, running straight into my unsuspecting hands:

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. This one, coupled with his Omnivore’s Dilemma, creates a new kind of food consciousness. It promotes “opting out” of the industrial food trap in favor of real food. One of the advices he gives the readers is “Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”  My other favorite is “Avoid products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronouncable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup.”

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. Planck is a former vegetarian, now advocating eating meat, albeit only grass-fed, free range, sustainably farmed kind. She points out that only in recent years sustainable meat eating got accepted as a viable part of the (modern) organic/green movement, which from its conception in the 70s was a vegetarian/vegan realm. My favorite part of her philosophy is her raw milk advocacy. This milk is from grass-fed cows from poly-cultured farms where contamination or disease are naturally contained.

Raising Baby Green: The Earth Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care by Alan Greene and others.
Sarah Lentz pointed me to this one. I had read a few others but I think this is my favorite so far. Dr Greene was aware the connection between some of his patients illnesses and environmental factors, and then he participated in a cord blood study conducted by Environmental Working Group. The findings blew his mind. There is “a total of 287 different industrial chemicals circulating through the body of newborns.” Some cause cancer in humans or animals, some are toxic to brain and nervous system, some cause birth defects and some do two or more of the above. I like this book because it’s gentle on the reader, doesn’t advocate or expect sudden and huge shifts but slow, gradual awareness that leads to permanent changes that are better for baby and the environment.

The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff is an anthropological study of lives of natives in the South American jungle, conducted in the seventies. The cover of my copy classifies this book among Child Development Classics and it’s on my midwife’s list of recommended readings. Basically, her findings are that babies need constant touch with mom or another person for the first 6 to 8 months of life. (People call this “babywearing”). This constant touch instils a sense of security in the child and stimulates his brain development. Furthermore, it allows the kid to be where the action is, close mom’s face from where he learns basic human interaction. Once crawling and walking, the children sort of move to the perifery of mother’s life to live and explore the world on their own. Mothers continue to meet the kids’ needs but they are far from brain-deadening vigilat supervision, rather, they go about their daily tasks communing with other adults.

Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene by Ingrid Bauer. This is another one from my midwife’s list of readings. I had promised Chris not to talk about this one because IT’S COMPLETELY INSANE, but I can’t resist the temptation. The idea is that if you know the signals your baby gives when he needs to eat, you can also get to know those he exhibits when he needs to pee. Moreover, you two can learn to communicate so the elimination can be initiated by either party. How about that? Now, this sorta contradicts what we know about baby development, namely, that baby’s sphincters aren’t strong enough to hold things until the age 3 or so. But Bauer doesn’t even ask we do that. The idea here is voluntary elimination and not forced retention. Babies in all kinds of non-western cultures seem to have developed sphincters age 3. The people in those cultures are probably just backwards and need to be educated by our esteemed doctors. Don’t they know they are ruining their children?

On Friday before Labor Day, a sporadically rainy day, mom and I drove on Pennsylvania’s route 28, about 40+ miles north to a dairy farm in search of raw milk. The farm, found on realmilk.com, would only sell us milk for few hours in the morning and few in the evening.  Route 28 goes upstream Allegheny river with  many beautiful sights I completely ignored in anticipation of acquiring what I thought was impossible when I first came to the United States some 15 years ago: real unadulterated milk. From cows that graze grass. Not even in vicinity of vitamins A and D. Honest milk.

When we showed up at the farm, I half expected one of those quaint but still artificial farm stores that would also sell country home memorabilia, preserves and baked goodies. But we found nothing like it. We drove up to the barn, past three beautiful grazers, confused what to do next. There was a small shack next to the barn with screen door from where we could hear voices. A collie dog ran out of her hiding and promptly sniffed me. Beauty. Mom stayed outside smoking her cigarette while I walked into the shack. The small space was mostly filled with a huge stainless steel milk-holding container and a big sink hooked to a lot of tubing that at the moment ran clear loud water. Lara, the farmer, said hi and non-ceremoniously filled my 2-gallon cooler by grabbing a metal bucket and reaching into the stainless steel contraption where milk whirled around. I had my loot.

Back at my parents’ new abode in North Side, mom and I poured the milk into 4 large bowls (but not before I filled a glass and drank it. It was delicious!) Since there was no way to drink all of that milk, we were going for cheese. Yogurt and cheese really. After three days of milk bowls sitting losely covered on top of the kitchen cabinets, we peaked at them. To be honest, it all looked a little suspect, you know, spoiled. But mom was not discouraged.  As soon as we drained the whey, the milk turned into beautiful farmer’s cheese (if you’ve never had it, it has the consistency of ricotta with sourness of cottage cheese). If I were to be dramatic at this point, I would say that after tasting the cheese I was moved and transported into the most precious childhood moments. It was authentic, real, true sir.

Cows in Lancaster County

I’m hungry. All. The. Time.

Well-meaning friends will say “Great! Eat! You can have anything you want.” But we live in the age of super-information with its blessings and curses and I know too much to just eat anything I want.

I know my mother didn’t worry about half the stuff I worry about today. But, for the most part, she ate vegetables from local farms and gardens, meats from cows/sheep/goats that ate grass and she was never really into sweets (such is the beauty of being born in the “developing” country).

New Stanton Farmers Market

I, on the other hand, am on the lookout for produce sprayed with pesticides, animal cruelty, and sugar content of just about any processed food out there. And I don’t even want to address fish and its mercurial blessings.

Raw milk cheese stand

It’s easy for me to get discouraged in this pursuit of real, clean food; from it being hard to find (on, say, interstates) to possible social consequences (if you enjoy perfunctory teasing for being a vegetarian, you’ll love going 100 % organic. I just can’t wait to start breastfeeding…). But, I stand on the shoulders of giants, people who fought and are still fighting with corporations, the government, and cancer so that the rest of us can be picky eaters. So what’s a little ridicule compared to those real battles? So what if I appear as either a snob or a cracked up, over-protective female mammal? I’m safely tucked in the folds of others who know better. And I get positively giddy when driving through Pennsylvania where I am now, I see cows grazing and find random farmers selling their goods. Chris and I will on the lookout for dairy farms selling raw milk, something I thought impossible in this freedom loving United States. Did I say I was giddy?

I want to plan better for road trips. On the way to Pittsburgh, we stopped at Pizza Hut. I was truly desperate for food, so, yes, buffet.

I loaded my plate with breadsticks, slivers of deep dish pizza, tomato sauce, iceberg lettuce and random vegetables (picked and non-pickled) and prefab italian dressing. Then gulped it all down.

Meantime, in the belly, workers are complaining to the foreman.

- I thought we’d been getting good raw materials. What I am supposed to do with this? I have to dig to find protein. — Looks at a slab of dressing rolling past. — Is this  corn syrup??? I thought we would be getting no more of that stuff. How am I supposed to work with that?
- I know, I was just getting a message from upstairs, we’re on the road, there aren’t many choices on PA Turnpike.
- I don’t give a damn, I’m stuck with all this sugar now and we were supposed to put some more work on bones today.  Eyes team is also complaining since the hemoglobin team is delayed.
- Listen, at least there a couple of vitamins coming down. In the meantime, convert that sugar to energy, I think the kiddo will want to spread his arms a bit today. It’s time we start making our presence known anyways. Any leftovers, let’s just do the standard procedure: convert to fat and stick it anywhere on her. We don’t have a choice, do we?

I’ve been cursed by one Michael Pollan (’people’ who pushed him on me are now in hiding — wait ’till I get to you, sir). With my ‘blessed’ new condition, the curse is turning me upside down, figuratively. You see, Mr. Pollan showed me that I’m basically corn-fed, but not in good, wholesome, mid-western way. I’ve been eating genetically engineered processed processed (not a typo) industrial corn. This is not good for many reasons. Here, read this http://www.ecoliteracy.org/publications/rsl/michael-pollan.html

The thing is, once you start paying attention and not eating foodlike things that contain corn syrup and such, you’ll more and more often find yourself at specialty food markets or, if shopping at a ‘normal’ grocery store, shunning anything packaged containing more than 4-5 recognizable ingredients. This is not necessarily upsetting (if you don’t consider the increased amounts of money you’re suddenly spending on food). What this does is make you a little one-dimensional (kind of the way pregnancy does). For example, should anyone ask me what I think about, oh say, politics, I would go like this

- Someone needs to do something about the Farm Bill [mind you, I know next to 0 about this]. It’s inhumane that farmers have to plant corn then soy year after year. It’s not good for their land and I think it makes them go nuts, I mean, I would go nuts. Speaking of which, I found an amazing ice cream on the corner on Prince and Green. It’s all organic, no corn whatsoever — they use cane sugar and real milk. It’s not ultra sweet but full of flavor. Today I had pistachio, beautiful off-white color, nutty, creamy.

You see? I can only talk about food. Or, well, my belly, it’s button, the twitter inside, stretchability of woman’s body, midwives, births, growing babies…. [SCENE FADES as I keep on enumerating]