Six things that are bringing me joy in small ways and in big ways
on this beautiful Monday morning:
cozy, stripey socks
a cart piled full of fresh fruits and veggies
a new book group and new acquaintances (literary and human)
winter blooms and morning light
having squeezed every last drop of goodness out of a holiday
and most importantly, the joy of new life, the strength of a woman,
and the beauty of them both
We recently made our first foray into making jelly from flowers, and the results were tasty. We used a natural unbleached sugar for the first batch, and I had wondered ahead of time if it might affect the final color of the jelly. We ended up with a reddish product instead of the bright violet shown in the recipe. I resolved to find more violets, buy some white sugar, and test out my hypothesis.
I knew I needed a better source of blossoms and thought of a friend who had complained that his back yard is overrun with them. I know these friends don't use chemical fertilizers, weed killers, or pesticides, so I took a peek - oh my, violet lushness! I asked permission, then picked and picked and picked to my heart's delight. Four-plus cups of flowers later their yard was still glorious with spring color and I had enough violets to make not just jelly, but also maybe try out some natural egg dying.
After steeping, sugaring, boiling, and canning, here's the final color comparison:
The first batch, with a more reddish color, is on the right. The two jars on the left are the new batch. Does sugar affect your final color? Absolutely!
So now the question is: how important to health is the use of natural, unbleached sugar? Which jelly would you rather eat, the brighter one, or the one made using a less refined sweetener?
Reese: why are there chickens in there?
Me: they're roasting so people can bring cooked chickens home to eat.
Reese: and they cut off their legs?
Me: no, their legs are still on, see? Those are the legs.
Reese: they cut off their heads?
Me: yes, they did.
Reese: why did they cut off their heads?
Me: because people don't want to eat the chicken heads. They take off the parts people don't want to eat, like the feathers and heads and feet.
"That is just wrong, they're such liars!" Griff exclaimed, a note of indignation in his voice.
I was on my tiptoes, digging through yogurts above my head, and barely registered what he was saying, except for the word liars, which seemed out of place for grocery shopping. "Hmm?" I half-asked, stacking Chobani in the cart.
"They're saying that it's healthy food. 'Fuel for school?', 'get an A+ on breakfast?' It's not true!"
"What are they trying to sell, Griff?" He reached around the schoolhouse-themed display, which held its wares out at his eye level, and retrieved a package of cookies. "Fudge and graham crackers?" he cried, "That's not a healthy breakfast!"
"You're showing that you're a very savvy consumer when it comes to healthy food choices, Griff. You're right, fudge cookies aren't a good source of fuel. They sound like a yummy treat, though." I felt both pride in his awareness of marketing manipulation and awareness of the moral dogmatism of the seven-year-old. We moved on. (I should note: he did not ask for the cookies. Side benefits of moral indignation rock.) He did seven-year-old things: surfed on the edge of the cart, fought his brother over coffee grinding rights, drummed on everything in sight (percussion lessons are on the calendar).
Later that night, he approached me with two requests: would I proofread an email from him to an adult friend, asking for her thoughts on healthy breakfasts, and would I write a letter to that company to tell them that they should stop making unhealthy food?
I explained that I'd like to see if those cookies were intended to be on the display. Perhaps Martin's had used the display in a way unintended by the manufacturer? Maybe it was supposed to hold healthy snack options? After a bit of digging around the Kellogg's site, I did discover that the cookies in question are listed as a "snack that keeps you going" - right along with a sugary quasi-yogurt treat and marshmallow cereal treats that qualify more as desserts than as a snacks (which I would loosely define as foods that provide a healthy balance of carbohydrates and protein without sugaring you up). So, ok, yeah, junk food is being advertised as healthy food. Unsurprising, sure, but misleading and ethically askew nontheless.
Defensive aside: Griff and I both adore our junk food. But we're clear on what's a treat and what's healthy fuel. We talk about what fiber does for our bodies, why our bodies need protein, how different kinds of sugar are different, how blood sugar crashes work, how to think about food groups and select a variety of healthy whole foods to eat...and we talk about the treats we love best, we bake cookies, we go out for milkshakes, we visit the local chocolate shop. Candy is awesome. But it's not food. We're not humorless, we just like to call things what they are.
Griff sat there, asking me to write a letter to Kellogg's, and I asked him what we really wanted Kellogg's to do, and we decided, it's not so much that we don't want them to make unhealthy/treat food at all, as that we don't want them to lie about it. We want them to be honest that treat food is treat food, and stop telling us that it's healthy (in related news, unbeknownst to Griff, the Froot Loops commercials on Hulu lately have been driving me bonkers. Added fiber doesn't make it a healthy breakfast! Arrrgh!). Griff talked about apples and candy, and how both can be bad for you in certain ways, and why the apple was a healthier choice for fuel for your body. I sat there, floored. He's not just regurgitating what he hears the adults say. He gets it. He really understands it. Talking about food choices really does sink in, from reading boxes together to talking about why Dora is on this box and whether or not we really want to eat that food, or if we just like Dora, to thinking about our power as consumers.
Griff wasn't done. He told me that he thinks we should stop buying Kellogg's products until they do what we expect. He doesn't even know the word boycott, but he gets the concept.
"We need to put pressure on them," he said, "When your king is in check, you have to move it."
Come again? The kid just used a chess metaphor for the power of consumer spending decisions. Holy shit. He went on to talk about how we can pressure companies to make better decisions, and if they want to survive (a la the king in check), they will have to change what they do. I'm sure some of this came from hearing his dad and I talk about our spending decisions with regards to personal ethics, but again, this wasn't just rehashed mom & dad here. He lit up with passion. My child was feeling inspired, driven, full of righteous indignation and his own sense of agency.
I was stunned. And proud, fiercely proud. And I realized what it's like to be Dan and look at me when I'm seized by an ethically-driven call to action. There's no way I can do anything but support this. I know with certainty that we will be writing that letter together, and we will be boycotting Kelloggs (oh, do I even dare look at the list of products yet?), or at the very least, we'll have some serious discussions about how important Kashi is to us and how we feel about giving it up.
Oh, I hope for all children that they are gifted with the ability to see through the nefarious marketing ploys of people who don't have enough incentive to keep their customers' best interests at heart. I hope for all children that they have the sense of self that it requires to stand up for what feels ethically right in their souls. I hope for their parents that we can have the patience and fortitude to support them when their passion strikes.
And Kellogg's? I hope you're listening, because this is the voice of the next generation.
Every family needs a place.
A fun place with a special thing you don't do anywhere else.
An inspiring place that strikes you in ways you can't explain, even to yourself.
A comfort food place where everybody gets just what they want.
A nostalgic place where you can look back and forward at the same time.
This is our place. What is yours?
Well, that explains a lot, now doesn't it?
Currants & apricots, our latest fruits.
When I was young we visited friends of my parents who lived in San Francisco. I remember three things about this visit. First, that they had chosen not to have children, and we had been cautioned not to touch anything, not even the walls. This seemed very difficult to me and I felt like the woman was watching my every move, and maybe she was. Second, we drove down Lombard Street to get to their house, and I can still see the steep hill, the curvy switchbacks, the flowers (geraniums?) planted along the narrow road. Third, I was offered an apricot by the woman. I had never seen one before, never tasted one. I didn't feel adventurous in the slightest, and I turned it down. It was many years before I tasted a dried apricot, and then many more before my first taste of fresh apricot, which happened just a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what I expected, but I was surprised to like it, and enchanted by its small peach-plumminess.
Yesterday I bought a package of them and gave them to the kids. They all liked it, but just as with so many other first tastes of things, they didn't want second bites.
The currants were another story. I think I've tried them before, and I know I've had them dried in baked goods, yet they still hold some sort of curious, exotic Englishness about them. Odd? Put it down to being a silly American. I couldn't resist a beautiful, nearly-transparent bunch of them and brought them home. Griff said they were tart. I liked the flavor but not the seeds. Dan declared that they were inconsistent from berry to berry, and that "more often than not, they taste like dirt." Hardly a ringing endorsement, but still, they're so pretty, and I'm sure I'll find some use for them.
When it comes to wine, I know virtually nothing about making selections, and I'm a complete sucker for cute labels. I know what I like while I'm drinking it, but once I'm shopping again, I can almost never remember the names of wines or what I thought of them. So when deciding which pinot noir to purchase, I'm left with this: which label is the cutest?
This one came from Target. There's something a tad embarassing about buying wine from a huge retail box store, isn't there? And perhaps even more shameful that I bought it almost entirely for the little chickie on the label. These whimsical purchases have abuot a 50% success rate, and this time, I was on the winning side. The malbec was quite good. Sometimes being a fool has its benefits, no?
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks. - Francois De La Rochefoucauld
