How they've grown!

You think human babies grow fast? Animals on the homestead change on a daily basis. I can hardly believe that these New Hampshire pullets are only five weeks old! To see what they looked like last month, click here.

They're still inside because they need the heat lamp, especially now that it's hovering around freezing at night. I haven't spotted any obvious cockerels yet, but there always seem to be a couple when you order pullets. We'll probably keep one or two roosters, but any more than that, and we'll be having fried chicken in December. New Hampshires are supposed to be excellent dual purpose birds (productive egg layers and hearty meat birds), so we'll probably hatch some eggs next spring to provide us with meat and a few young layers.

A happy ending

Someone told me that your eyes heal faster than any other part of your body, and I'm thinking she's right. The doctor today told me that my eye is about 80% healed, and my vision is already at 20/25 in that eye, which is much better than Wednesday when my left eye couldn't read any of the lines on the near vision chart with my reading glasses!

The doctor took the contact lens out of my eye, and when the numbing drops wore off about an hour later, it once again felt like I had something in it, but it wasn't anything like the pain I had on Wednesday. I have to remind myself that there is nothing in my eye, and rubbing it won't help.

The worst part was that the ER nurse was a little overzealous with the dilating drops she put in my eye before I went to the ophthalmologist office. My eye was still dilated today, which made light exposure painful. I spent all of yesterday in my bedroom with the shades down, and I put on sunglasses when I went into the dining room, because it's very bright in there.

As someone said in a comment on my last post, it's a good thing I didn't talk myself out of going to the ER. Even after they'd flushed my eye with an entire liter of fluid, they weren't content until they'd checked the pH of my eye to be sure it was back to normal -- in other words, they checked the pH to make sure there was no lye left in there. That's not something I could have done -- would have thought to do -- at home. And having the contact lens in my eye for the last two days made the whole thing a lot less painful. It really did work like a band-aid on my eyeball.

I'm glad that other soapmakers and future soapers have seen my last post. Hopefully, you'll remember it and will always use eye protection when you get anywhere near lye. Mike and I went out to the barn today where I was making soap when all of this happened, and we both had a whole new respect for the lye. As you can imagine, I left quite a mess out there, because I just dropped everything and ran when the lye got into my eye. But my vision is way more important than a few extra minutes of clean-up later.

Soapmaking accident

Earlier today (technically, yesterday, since it's after midnight) I broke two cardinal rules of soapmaking. I was distracted, and I wasn't wearing eye protection. I had to leave the house at 1:00, and it was 12:45. I had already mixed up all the oils before having lunch, so I only had to mix up the lye solution, add it to the oils, mix, and pour. That didn't sound like such a big challenge for 15 minutes, right?

Unfortunately, I chose a fragrance that tends to make the soap seize, meaning it turns the soap into mashed potatoes, and you're supposed to pour when it's the consistency of a runny pudding. And instead of pouring into my long, rectangular molds, I was pouring into Pringles cans, which meant I had a pretty small target. The soap was getting thicker by the second and coming out in clumps and plopping all over the edges of the cans, so I leaned over to see better, and PLOP! SPLASH! The mixture was in my left eye!

I screamed and ran straight to the sink and stuck my head under the faucet. I couldn't hold it there for very long, because it's just kind of weird to hold your eye under running water. I have a room out in the barn where I make soap, and I was alone, so I realized I needed to get help, which was in the house. Adrenaline is an amazing thing. I have never run so fast, and if I was winded, I didn't even notice. I got into the house and was screaming to my son Jonathan (the only person home) that I got lye in my eye. I tried to stick my eye under the kitchen sink, but it wasn't working as well. I got a syringe (no needle) and laid down on the guest room bed and tried to squirt water in my eye, but it was not easy. It was excruciating when I tried to pull my upper lid up and squirt water there. I went to my laptop, which was on the dining room table and googled, "soapmaking lye eyes," and immediately saw an article written by a woman whose toddler spilled 2/3 gallon of 40% lye solution over his entire body. I hadn't read much when I looked across the dining room table and out the window. My beautiful pond was blurry, and my distance vision has always been better than 20/20. That's when it clicked. I could be blind in that eye if I didn't get all the lye out, and I told Jonathan that we needed to go to the ER.

Information on lye safety always says to flush the eye for 15 or 20 minutes and get medical attention. I never quite understood why you did both. Well, now I know. Both are necessary! As we were driving to the hospital, I was doing the math ... 12.75 ounces of lye + 26 ounces of goat milk + 88 ounces of oil = 1% lye. That's not so bad. I probably don't need to go to the hospital. (My husband corrected my math this evening -- that's 10% lye!) Well, as Jonathan drove, it started to feel like there was something in my eye, so while one side of my brain said 1% lye wasn't a big deal, the other side disagreed, and luckily I didn't tell Jonathan to turn around and go home.

When we got to the hospital, another patient was at the triage window, but I piped up and said, "Excuse me, I have lye in my eye - L - Y - E - lye." Someone immediately said, "Through here," and took me straight to a room. Within a couple minutes, a nurse had asked me about drug allergies and put a drop of something in my eye to numb it. She then placed a giant contact-lens-looking thing in my eye, tucked under the upper and lower lids. There was a tube attached to the middle of it, and the other end of the tube was connected to a liter of fluid. The nurse informed me that they would need to flush the entire liter through my eye. If this sounds painful, well, it was. I was wrapping my ankles around each other, squeezing my hands together, pressing my shoulders in the bed, and telling myself to relax. I knew I was hyperventilating, because my hands were tingly, and I was dizzy. The numbing drops would only last for about 200-300 ccs, and then I'd need more numbing medication, so we had to remove the lens thingy, add another stingy drop, and put the lens thingy back in and start over again. I told the nurse, "The last time I had this much fun, I got a cute baby at the end."

She laughed and said, "This time you're just getting a bill." She was very nice. She kept telling me I was doing a great job and was really tough. She even looked at Jonathan and said, "Your mom is really tough." Yeah, I thought, she probably tells that to all her patients, but it sounded good to me at the time.

The doctor came in after the eye was flushed and asked me what happened. When I explained to him that the lye was already mixed up and I was pouring it, he said, "So, really it's just like you got soap in your eye."

"No." I took a deep breath. "Let me explain to you how soapmaking works." Then I proceeded to explain the whole process and said at the end, so it's probably about 1% lye -- which he did NOT correct! He just said, "Well, it's still a pretty caustic substance."

I can't even begin to tell you all the things they did to me after the eye was flushed. I lost count of the different drops they put in it for all the different examinations, but the vision in my left eye was not good. At the end of the exam, the doctor said that there was "significant damage" and he wanted to call an ophthalmologist.

I went from the ER to the ophthalmologist's office, which was half an hour away. I laid down the car seat and put on sunglasses, which didn't help, so I put a towel over my head. They had dilated my eye, so light increased my agony. Jonathan asked if it was okay to drive 75, and I said, "No. I'm not dieing. It doesn't really matter how fast you get there."

At the ophthalmologist's office, they repeated a few of the exams. The doctor dictated a lot of incomprehensible non-English words to his assistant, which sounded really bad. I asked, "So, I have a chemical burn on my cornea?"

"Yes." He told me about a couple different options and said the best one was to put a contact lens in my eye to protect it from my eyelid. I have to laugh because my mother always said, "Never say never!" Well, I really figured it would be safe for me to say that I'll never wear contact lenses, but apparently not. I am sitting here with a contact lens in my left eye. He was right -- it feels weird, but it feels much better than my eyelid scratching my eyeball every time I blink. That was horribly painful.

I have antibiotic drops for my eye, as well as drops that he described as "like ibuprofen drops," which are for pain and swelling. I'm also taking extra-strength Tylenol, which I'm surprised seems to help. I know when it wears off after about six hours. It also helps with the headache that's probably just a result of stress.

So, I learned some really valuable lessons today! After six years of soapmaking, I had become much too relaxed about the fact that I am working with a caustic substance that can do serious damage. I get splatters on my skin every now and then, and it's not a big deal. It burns, I rinse the skin, put vinegar on it, which neutralizes any lye that didn't get rinsed off, and that's the end of it. Getting it in your eyes is a very big deal. (Of course, spilling a lot of it on your skin would be a very big deal too.) The doctor said my eye will probably heal, but we'll know more when I go in on Friday to have the contact lens removed.

If you're a soaper or if you ever want to make soap in the future, PLEASE wear eye protection! I feel unbelievably stupid. As the ER doctor said, no one expects to get in a car accident, but we wear our seat belt just in case. Like I tell my children, they're called "accidents" because we don't do them on purpose!

Both doctors said that I averted a lot of damage by flushing my eye immediately. So, if you do get lye or a lye solution in your eye, irrigate it as much as you possibly can, then head straight to the ER! But if you're wearing your eye protection, the odds of getting lye in your eyes is pretty slim. My entire ordeal could have been avoided if only I had been wearing goggles.

And the really weird twist to the story is that I was supposed to teach a soapmaking class last night at a local community college. Obviously, the class was canceled. I'll certainly have a lot more emphasis on safety when that class is rescheduled!

Bread for busy people

I found this recipe when visiting the King Arthur website a month ago. I love their flours, especially the unbleached bread flour and the white whole wheat flour. (It's made from white wheat instead of red wheat.) If you want to learn to bake bread, the KA website is the place to go. They have some great recipes, and they have helpful people to answer your questions when things don't go well. In fact, I enjoy reading the Q&A as much as the basic recipes, because it helps me to avoid problems.

I played with refrigerator dough a lot this summer, and this recipe pretty much removes any objection to "I don't have time to bake bread." You mix up several loaves at once and store the dough in the frig for up to a week. The KA recipe credits Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day for their inspiration, but I originally found a refrigerator dough recipe in one of my old cookbooks, so this is not a new concept.

When I make this bread, I use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the dough hook, and I keep adding flour until the dough is not sticky. In the book, the dough is very sticky, and they say the dough is less sticky after you refrigerate it, but I don't have the patience to refrigerate dough before using it, so I need it to be workable within a couple hours of mixing it up. I've continued using it for five or six days, and it still worked fine.

This concept is so great because you can make fresh bread anytime you want it. My husband and I were home alone one day, so I pulled off just enough dough for two rolls and baked them for our lunch. We've also used this for pizza dough. After two or three days, it takes on a delicious sourdough flavor, which is nice, because you don't have to deal with a sourdough starter, but you still get that great sour taste naturally.

I've seen bread recipes in the past that had no sugar or fat, but I never had the courage to try them, assuming they would be bland and dry. After seeing the French bread recipe in French Women Don't Get Fat, I decided to give it a try, and I loved it. It's my new favorite bread! It's hard to believe that only four ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast) can yield such delicious results, but it's true.

For more posts on food, check out Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday.

Love them cows!

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my cows? I go out to the pasture, call their names, and they come running. It's actually a little scary, so I make sure there is always a fence between us, just in case they have trouble putting on the brakes at the last minute. They love their alfalfa treats, but they also love scratches under their chins, on their necks, and on their backs. As Irish dexters, they are about as tall as they'll get, which means their back is level with my waist.




Can you believe how long Molly's tongue is? She's wrapping it around the alfalfa cube in my hand. Their tongues are really rough, like giant cat tongues or sandpaper.






Isn't Molly a pretty girl! She'll be a year old in December. Unlike Bridget, she is polled, which means she'll never grow horns. I'm planning to get a polled bull, so most of our calves will also be polled.

Molly is still a little more shy than Bridget. It's incredibly hard for me to get a good picture of Bridget because she is in my face constantly when I'm in the pasture with them. I had to snap this photo really fast, before she got too close again and I got another blurry photo. Bridget will be a year old in November. They can calve anytime after they turn two, and they're pregnant for nine months, so over the winter I'll begin the search for a boyfriend. After they have their calves, we'll begin milking them, so we can start making butter, sour cream, and some cow milk cheeses.

Your food and your lifestyle

Eating out has a lot to do with your lifestyle, and we rarely say, "Hey, let's eat out tonight." For one thing, we're 15 minutes from the nearest restaurant, and it's not that great. Unfortunately, the small-town restaurants serve mostly frozen food that they've thrown in the fryer or canned stuff that's been merely reheated. I don't buy that stuff to fix at home, so why should I pay three or four times as much to have it served to me in a restaurant?

An unexpected benefit of moving to the country is that it caused us to really think about eating out. When we first moved out here, there were times when we would decide that we were too tired to cook, and we would all pile into the car and go out to eat. After a few disappointing meals at the nearest town, we even drove 45 minutes to the little cities to eat at better restaurants. It didn't take us long to realize that it was ridiculous to spend 90 minutes driving to and from a restaurant for dinner.

A few decades ago, eating out was something that people did for special occasions. It was something that they pondered. It wasn't just dinner. It was special. That's the way I view eating out today -- and I grew up eating out at least five times a week. Yesterday, I talked about eating fast food, which is what I do at mealtime when I'm in the little city 45 minutes away shopping or taking care of other errands. And yes, we eat out when we travel, which we do more often than one would think. A week ago, we delivered goats to Tennessee, and I'm delivering goats to Missouri soon.

On our way home from Tennessee last week, we stopped at FlatTop Grill in Champaign, IL, for dinner. It's a chain of restaurants in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin that serves stir-fried veggies, meats, and tofu. You walk through a buffet line where you put your favorite vegetables and rice or noodles in a bowl, then add a sauce or two (there are a couple dozen from which to choose), decide which type of protein you want (beef, chicken, tofu, etc.), and then you hand it to the cook, who stir fries it while you relax at your table. It's a little challenging to find out exactly what's in the various sauces, (although they do have allergy info available) but you basically have a wide variety of fresh, real food available, and aside from the sauces, you know exactly what you're eating. I was also impressed during our visit to the Champaign restaurant that they've added a couple of organic wines to the menu, including a very nice Reisling that I really enjoyed.

Other than traveling, the only reason I really like to eat out today is to experience a food that I can't fix at home or to discover a new way to prepare foods at home. We sometimes eat out to celebrate a special occasion, like a birthday or an anniversary, but we only eat at restaurants where we really love the food. My favorite restaurant in Bloomington, IL, is Destihl's, which is locally owned and has a "Down to Earth" philosophy, which includes buying products from local farmers, using LED lighting and paper straws, and sending the spent grains from beer making to a local dairy farm to be fed to the cows, whose cheese they use in the restaurant. Their food is delicious. Yes, their food is more expensive than most restaurants, but I don't mind because I love their food, I can't duplicate it at home, and I'm happy to support a business with their philosophy. And we only eat there three or four times a year.

No doubt it's harder for some people to break the fast-food addiction or the urge to eat out often, because it's terribly convenient if you live in a city. It's terribly convenient. But when I lived in the suburbs, no one ever suggested that maybe we shouldn't eat out so much. In fact, when we talked about eating out only once a month to save money, one of my friends was shocked that we would attempt such a feat. So, I'm here to tell you that it can be done, and there are a lot of benefits to eating at home more often.

You're bound to eat healthier if you're cooking for yourself, because you know what's in the food. When I found a muffin recipe last winter, there was no way I was going to use the amount of butter suggested. But if I had eaten a muffin from that recipe in a restaurant, I would have had no idea that it was so unhealthy. And even though I altered the recipe to make it less of a cardiology nightmare, I don't make those muffins more than a few times a year.

You'll save a lot of money if you eat at home. I can't believe some people don't get this. I complained about the KFC $10 meal challenge a couple months ago, but I could fix a lot of different meals that would cost less than $10 for four people, including a salad, soup, entrée, and even a dessert. At least five of the menus on this page would cost less than $10 to prepare. The pork roast and turkey breast would cost more, but it's really healthier to eat meat only once or twice a week, and there are less expensive cuts if you aren't growing your own meat. The first year we moved out here and were still eating a vegetarian diet, our food bill went from $10,000 a year to $6,000, and most of that drop was a result of eating at home more often.

If you have a job that requires you to eat out often with clients, you're on your own. You'll have to do your own research, figure out what are your healthiest options at the restaurants you frequent, and exercise some self control when it comes to ordering the less healthy options. It might also mean that you'll have to find a couple restaurants with healthier options.

I really don't think it's a problem to eat healthier. It can be a challenge, but it's not insurmountable. Like Thoreau, we are not hermits. (He visited local taverns and towns regularly while living on Walden Pond.) We go into town and even travel to cities on a regular basis. And we're not perfect. We do our best to plan and do a little research so we can make good choices, but sometimes we wind up with a less-than-perfect meal. We eat, we move on, and we try to plan better next time.

For more posts on food, check our Real Food Wednesday.

Yes, I eat fast food

Once people get to know a little bit about me, they invariably ask, "Do you eat at McDonald's?" If you've been reading my blog for a while, you probably know the answer to that question is, "No," even though I've never mentioned the fast food chain before today. Not eating at McDonald's is just as astonishing to some people as the fact that I milk my own goats.

There was a time when I ate salads and french fries at McDonald's, but they proved to be less-than-ethical in the 1990s when they said that they no longer used lard in their french fries, so vegetarians could eat them. A few years later, it came out that tallow was an ingredient. So, they traded pig fat for beef fat. While some vegetarians decided to sue the fast food chain, it made me realize that we are responsible for what we put in our mouths -- and whom we trust to feed us. In the end, it was one of the experiences that led us to Antiquity Oaks.

After learning that we don't eat at McDonald's, there is usually a quick list of questions: "Do you eat at X, Y, or Z?" and "Do you eat out at all?" and ultimately, "Where do you eat out?"

First of all, you have to realize that although I'm no longer a vegetarian, I only meat whose history I know, which means that I don't eat meat from restaurants. When I eat out, I'm basically shopping like a vegetarian and looking for places with good vegetarian options.

My first choice is Chipotle. In fact, I visit their website when I travel to see if there will be any Chipotle restaurants on my trip. Why do I like them so much? Because I think every restaurant should follow their model. They buy sustainably-farmed meat and rBGH-free dairy products. Rather than looking for the cheapest way to do business (they have the highest cost in the fast-food industry), they look for the best -- best food ingredients and even the best wages for people who pick the tomatoes for their restaurants. They use romaine lettuce instead of iceberg, and 100% of the pork and chicken used in their restaurants is drug-free and humanely raised. So far 50% of their restaurants serve beef that has been sustainably raised, and they're working to find enough suppliers to make that 100%. No, I don't eat the meat at their restaurants. Their vegetarian black beans are great in all of their entrée choices, and I just don't feel a need to eat meat very often. The food in their restaurants is also fresh, not greasy, and delicious. Seriously, they serve freshly made guacamole!

If a Chipotle is not available, I will eat at Panera, but they are a distant second to Chipotle. There is a good variety of soups and salads, and it is one of the healthiest options out there in the fast food category. Unfortunately, they use a variety of ingredients that you don't find in a real kitchen, such as dough conditioners and artificial flavors. I find it annoying that they advertise making their breads from scratch. My definition of "made from scratch" is that every ingredient can be found in a real kitchen, yet I've never seen a jars of mono- and diglycerides or polysorbate 80 in the grocery store. And they're definitely not using fresh ingredients in their soups when the potatoes include sodium acid pyrophosphate as an ingredient. Yes, they are better than the fast-burger joints, but you can still do better in your own kitchen.

But what if there is no Panera or Chipotle to be found? I will settle for Subway, which is available as readily as a McDonald's or Burger King. We all have our challenges in life, and low blood sugar is one of mine. If I don't eat every five or six hours, I will get the shakes and start to feel really crappy. A couple decades ago, I managed to make myself pretty sick by refusing to eat when nothing suitable was available, so I've come to the conclusion that eating at Subway is better than nausea, dizziness, shaking hands, and a headache, especially when I'm driving. That's not a very good endorsement, but it's the best I'm going to give a restaurant that has one of the longest lists of nasty ingredients I've seen on bread. This is what you're getting in their Italian white bread:

Enriched flour (wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, sugar, contains less than 2% of the following: soybean oil, fermented wheat flour, yeast, salt, wheat protein isolate, wheat gluten, dough conditioners (acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, amylase [enzymes]), sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, lactic acid, sulfites, mineral oil.

Mineral oil? Seriously? It's a petroleum product! I wouldn't put it on my babies' bottoms 20 years ago, and I certainly don't want to eat it. I didn't even know it was legal to put mineral oil in food. I get the 9-grain wheat bread, although it's only slightly better. (At least there's no mineral oil in it.) I find this rather interesting since the most delicious bread I make at home has only four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt. The fresh vegetables are, at least, fresh, and the provolone cheese is real cheese, so you can get a fairly nutritious meal. I just don't understand why they have to put so much crap in their bread when it's supposed to be baked fresh daily. I'm sure my bread even costs less to make.

I'd like to think that there are more healthy options out there for us when we're away from home. What are some of the places you've found?

This is Part I of a two-day post on eating out. Tune in tomorrow for sit-down restaurants and how to break the addiction to eating out.

For more posts of food, check out Real Food Wednesday.

Goat fun

I had this brilliant idea to take pictures of the two bottle babies wearing my bichon's T-shirts. One says "Spoiled" and the other "High Maintenance," which is absolutely accurate when talking about Joy the bichon and the bottle-baby kids. Unfortunately, you can't read what the shirts say, but you can see how crazy the little doelings are about their bottle. They each started with their own bottle, but Hester drinks faster than her sister, so when her bottle was empty, she decided she just had to have some of Pearl's milk!



"Hey, I want that! You got more milk than me!"

"No, I didn't! You're just a piggy! You drank yours too fast! This is my milk!"
















"Maaaaaaaa! Maaaaaa! She got my milk!"

Update on everything

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. Jonathan and I just returned (yes, about an hour ago) from a road trip to Tennessee. We delivered eight goats to a family from South Carolina that is starting a herd. They seem like a very nice family, which I am much more sensitive about since discovering that a couple of my goats most likely wound up in someone's freezer a couple months ago.

Speaking of those kids -- nope, never did receive a response from the buyer letting me know that my kids are happily living on someone else's farm. I'm trying not to seem like a crazy-neurotic as I sell kids now. I am really stressing the, "CALL ME if you have ANY problems, questions, thoughts, whatever. I really don't mind!"

The pigs are still happily munching on acorns that are picked up daily. We have five 50-pound feed bags full of acorns in storage, and we've only harvested from one tree. We really should have been weighing them. They say that a mature tree can produce a ton of acorns -- yes, literally 2,000 pounds -- and I'm starting to believe them.

I never did hear back from the people who carded and spun my wool, so at this point, I guess I'll never know the contents or origins of some of this yarn, which is sad, because I love knowing the entire history of my yarn. I'd at least like to know if the skeins contain 100% llama, Shetland wool, or a blend of the two. They could have at least said, "Gee, we're sorry. We really screwed up." But no, the only response I received when I sent them the detailed list of yarn was this -- they said that I was charged for 19 pounds of spinning, and if I received more than 19 pounds of yarn, I should send them $15 for each additional pound of yarn that I received. I was more than a little annoyed that they obviously didn't read my email very carefully and that their main concern was that they might have under-charged me for spinning yarn that wasn't even mine.

Since the weather has recently turned cold and rainy, I still haven't planted my garlic. I went out a couple weeks ago to plant it, but Mike was using the good shovel for fence work, and since we hadn't had any rain in about three weeks at that point, I couldn't break the dirt with my little hand spade. Then it rained . . . and rained again . . . and rained again . . . and it's supposed to rain all day Tuesday. If I don't get this garlic into the ground in the next couple weeks, it might be better if I just wait until spring, although they say the cloves won't grow as big if they're planted in spring.

I am happy to say that I am still victorious over the chickens! Woo hoo! Yes! They are still ignoring the flower beds at the gate. Now if we could just get up a couple of fences to keep them out of the front yard, I would be a happy flower gardener. They completely killed, pulverized, and decimated the mums I planted in the front yard.

The baby chicks -- New Hampshire reds -- are doing very well. We've had zero mortality, which is exciting. Speaking of poultry, the Thanksgiving turkeys are also doing well, although after all the eggs and poults hatched, we have only 10 in the home stretch. Final tally on losses was about 60 eggs that didn't hatch and 40 poults that died from a variety of causes (from predators to poison) within the first week of life.

The reason you haven't seen any pictures lately is because Katherine left the camera under the oak tree when she was picking up acorns a week ago, and it's had a few problems since then. Mostly it's been refusing to take more than one picture without being turned off and on again. We are hoping for a full recovery, but you know electronics can be persnickety.

I've had some requests for posts on soap making and bread making, which I will write soon, although I'm not saying exactly when, because that never seems to work out. Speaking of food, though, Katherine welcomed us home with homemade truffles and snickerdoodles. Now I have to get to bed, so I can get up bright and early Tuesday morning and grade papers before teaching.

Food, oh, food, where have you gone?

I just received an email requesting donations for a local food drive. The problem is that they are not asking for food. They are asking for the stuff that Michael Pollan describes as "edible food-like substances." Here's the list of requested donations:

Mac & Cheese
Cereal
Instant Potatoes
Jell-O
Hamburger Helper
Tuna Helper
Cake or Brownie Mix
Stuffing Mix
Pasta Mix
Soup Mix

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you can hear me squealing, gasping for air, fanning my face, and reminding myself aloud to breathe! Where do I even start? Do I start with the fact that everything on the list is void of fiber, Vit. A, protein, Vit. C, etc? Do I start with all the sugar (or artificial sweeteners) and artificial colors that can cause problems for children trying to concentrate and sit in their seats at school? Do I even bother to mention the fact that almost nothing on the list will even fill up a hungry belly? Seriously, they want soup mix?

This is such a huge issue that I don't know if a single blog post can do it justice, but I'm going to give it a go. I'll start by saying that I am not an ogre who thinks that poor people should just starve. But we are not doing them any favors by giving them junk to eat. First, it's bad for them. (I personally do not consume a single item on the list.) Second, every item on that list is overpriced, because you could make a similar dish from scratch for about 1/4 to 1/2 the cost, which I do. Third, when the recipients do have more money, they'll waste it to buy more edible food-like substances (EFLS) because they think it's good for them. As someone just said to me yesterday -- I kid you not -- "They wouldn't give it to us if it was bad for us."

It should not surprise you that I disagree with Big Ag's assertion that world hunger can be solved by GM crops. Hunger can be eradicated by better distribution and education. Several "experts" have said that we already have enough food to feed everyone, but there is a problem with distribution. If you have ever worked at a grocery store (or talked to someone who did), you know how much fresh food gets thrown out on a regular basis. You'll hear a similar story from people who work at restaurants. Servings are obesity-sized, and many people don't take home left-overs.

When I went to the composting seminar in February, a man with a professional vermicomposting business said he picks up trashed produce from the supermarkets regularly to feed his worms. He said he quickly learned that there was a big difference between something that was not salable and something that was not edible. A store gave him an entire shipment of apples one time because they weren't shiny enough. The produce manager said people wouldn't buy apples that weren't shiny. (You know they're only shiny if they're waxed, right?)

In the documentary, Food, Inc., they follow a lower-class family through the drive-through of a fast food restaurant as they buy dinner for their children -- and then later at the grocery store when they tell the youngest that she can't have a pear because it's too expensive. The family in the KFC $10 meal challenge has the same problem with understanding the value of food. And this is where education comes into play. People need to be educated about food, cooking, and even gardening. This is not a new idea.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Instead of giving people EFLSs, why don't we volunteer a couple hours to teach a cooking class at a homeless shelter? Or a class on making menus and budgeting for food? Until our church started talking about selling its current building, I was thinking that it would be a great service to have a community garden, where people from shelters could learn how to garden and get fresh produce at no cost. When I lived in the Chicago suburbs, I remember a garden at one of the jails. It was a coveted position for inmates to be allowed to work in the garden, and one woman was quoted saying that she was planning to start a garden when she was released. There have to be better ideas out there than giving people boxes of empty calories. What do you think?

To see more blogs about real food, check out Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.