<<     October 2008     >>

In the sticks

This very serious bird paid a lengthy visit to our back deck recently, a few weeks ago actually; before the leaves went all yellow and orange. Spectacular. Unfortunately, with this sad little camera and our smudgy glass door between him and us, the evidence of his coming is less-so.

She is the icing - and the cake...

Who'd have guessed it would ever be so easy to just be happy?

Nou has started chattering, or is it babbling? What to call this beautiful music she makes - leaving my heart in a puddle...

She laughed out loud last night for the first time - a brilliant peal of pure joy. It truly was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. Of course now my mission in life is to get her to do it again.

Right brain, left brain

I've been after Hamid for ages to start blogging his brilliance - and finally, to my very smug satisfaction, he has. If you'd like to read what the logical half of the two of us has to say, check it out; it's over at the Codehead domain and is naturally, all about Hamid's adventures (and inventions) in programming. Enjoy!

The very best of anything that ever was...

Grateful for...

-Terra's Sweets and Beets chips - who'd have guessed you could make chips out of all these root veggies! Their Sweets (as in sweet potatoes) and Carrots are yummy too. Buying these bags of earthy chips feels like I'm doing something very important for my health - although the checkers sometimes wonder over the contents. Like, "Are you really going to eat those?"

-The new season and the air it brings. Crisp, cold, and windy. Wind - rain or shine - is my very favorite weather. Autumn invites walking outside, turtleneck sweaters, scarves (around the neck, NOT atop the head a la my visit to Iran), and hot cups of tea. Plus the cooler weather makes babywearing all the more cozy.

-Reds overtaking our garden. The yellow is just now starting to creep in. Orange will too, eventually.

- Friends having healthy babies! Welcome to sweetest Myles in Texas (congratulations Alana for going au naturale!!) and little Atila in Liverpool, England to Pragna and Reza.

Family Bed

I am so tired (long day), but I can't sleep (this is actually the latest I've been up for weeks!)... in the meantime I'm staring at your little peaceful face. I don't want to disturb your rest, so I sit half-propped, twisted up a bit, and type with one hand - as is always the case now. Enjoying a rare glass of wine once I've calculated how much I can have before you might wake up hungry; taking no chances. Your little body is my temple.

You sprawl across me, full-body, as usual; I wouldn't have it any other way. This king size bed was the best investment Hamid and I ever made and I can't imagine a family bed subsisting on anything less. The designer moses basket I spent hours choosing fabrics for sits ridiculously unused against the wall of another room. I seem to recall chasing the dog out of it early on - that's really the most action it'll ever see. Sleeping with you isn't nearly as difficult nor hardly as dangerous as 'they' make it out to be. I sleep longer, better, and happier with your 22 inches snuggled up against me or flat across me as you are now - and I'd hedge a bet you do too.

Simmering is not a spectator sport

Boy, talk about bad math...

In my new-found enthusiasm over cooking (destined to the notoriously short life span of all my forays into domesticity), brought on by one wildly successful batch of crazy-simple split pea soup, I thought to myself - if I ate six cups in three days, how about I make enough for a week?!

Into the pot went an entire bag of split peas and about a thousand liters of water. Sea salt. An onion.
I boiled and boiled and simmered and such, eventually forgetting my peas-porridge altogether. And you know, it turned out so icky!! Way too thick to eat and kind of gloppy. Much more edible green goo than I've ever seen in my life; so much so that it's all at once no longer edible at all.

No, I did not try to salvage the stuff. I do not own the number of pots it would take to parse out and add water to, to liquify this mass of would-be soup. And I do not own the number of storage containers it would take to keep it. I did donate some to the dog's cause... he very effectively begs with eyes that insist I've never fed him at all.

Lesson learned - smaller portions next time!

What the hell is BHT and why is it in my food?

When we found out we were pregnant I started thinking more about what I was eating, but now that Nou is here and nursing exclusively I've cut out just about anything that comes in a box. A few weeks ago I noticed she had a strange rash on her otherwise perfectly flawless baby face - it was dry and would become red when she slept, like a heat rash. I couldn't figure out what could have caused it so I did some reading and learned that many babies, even breastfed babies, are allergic to corn, wheat, eggs, nuts, chocolate, soy, etc. and that the reaction can manifest as a skin rash, among other things. With my vegetarian-bordering-on-vegan lifestyle and a sheer lack of time to prepare much of anything I'd started eating lots of cereal, and peanut butter on whole wheat toast.

I immediately cut out the corn and wheat based cereals and breads and went in search of other options. I started whipping up brown rice bowls with sauteed mushrooms and zucchini because it was fast and I could make a ton of it at once. I also made a delectable split pea soup that consisted only of split peas, a chopped onion, water, and a dash of sea salt. But I'm no Betty Crocker and I truly hate cooking most of the time. I don't like chopping vegetables and I like doing dishes even less so I had also selected a number of commercial rice cereals, for convenience - the usual stuff, Rice Krispies, Rice Chex, blah blah blah. It was a pretty bland palate but I wanted to clear out the possible allergens.

Well Nou's skin cleared up almost immediately but I've since become even more obsessed with labels and have started dissecting the ingredients in every single thing that goes into or on my body.

Tonight, after I finished off the last of the homemade split pea I reached for a bowl of Rice Chex. I poured on the organic vanilla rice milk and decided to double check the label on the cereal - a habit I've gotten into after Rice Dream 'ice cream' proved to have not only soy but wheat in the list of ingredients. There were only a few things included, rice namely... but at the end there were three little letters I hadn't noticed before: BHT. For freshness. A preservative. Another cereal box listed the same three letters under 'Ingredients' with the caveat that it was used in the packaging to preserve freshness.

As soon as I mentioned it to Hamid he was on the hunt for information and discovered that BHT is in fact a preservative but it was banned for use in foods in Japan, Sweden and a handful of other countries as early as 1958. It is also banned for use in the States in baby foods but the thing is, I AM baby food.

This discovery spawned a rummage through our pantry during which I removed and read every single package. 80% of the foods in our cupboards are off the shelves and in the trash because they either contain one of the allergens or some godforsaken acronym for cancer. Turns out, BHT is also used to make jet fuel, embalming fluid, and rubber. Yummy.

Looks like I'm going to be getting really friendly with my rice steamer...

You are what you eat.

Reason to smile, even at 5:45 a.m.