Four Moms, Frugal Dates

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Welcome to yet another Thursday where four moms with passels of kids share the nitty gritty, the good, bad, ugly, fugly, and fun times of living live large with a big family- and usually a small budget. This week's topic is.... spending quality, even romantic, time with your husband admidst the hustle and bustle of daily life and not so daily life.

This can be harder for some of us than for others. Sometimes between the breastfeeding and the clingy toddlers, and the day to day acts of simple things like reading to four or five kids all jostling for the same lap, picking kids up and putting them in and out of car seats, shopping carts, bath tubs, high chairs, cribs, beds, and your hair, Mom is totally touched out. Every nerve on the end of your skin has received its maximum capacity for touch and once you put the kids down for the night you feel like your entire body is going to short circuit and pieces of your skin will be making snapping, crackling, and popping noises if so much as one centimeter of another person's human flesh touches yours, just to tap you on the shoulder or wipe a crumb off of your chin.

Take a bubble bath and get over it if at all possible.

Then there's the baby sitter question. In our household not only did we have the issue of no funds to pay a sitting, we had some other stuff as well. We moved every couple of years or so, so I seldom got to know anybody as well as I need to know them before I leave my children with them. My mom was a working mom and I had a baby sitter from the time I was six weeks old. Some of them were amazingly delightful (like Granny, whose husband drank from a tin can, and who would sterilize the cup/can and let me drink out of it, too, which was the height of joy at that time). Some... well, Granny Tea doesn't like to think about or talk about those ones, and so I will just say that if you look closely, I actually have a couple teeny, tiny scars on my face from that first baby sitter- and we aren't talking about an accident. Not pretty, girlfriends, not pretty at all. So I found myself pretty much psychologically/emotionally, whateverily unable to leave my darlings with a babysitter and relax. We did this a handful of times and I was a basket case of tightly wound nerves. My husband once asked "What's that noise?" while we were out on a 'date' and it was me, so tense and wound up tight that I was twanging in the breeze.

Not entirely a true story, I didn't actually twang, in case you're wondering. I do think I twitched a lot, however.

So... what did we do?

I am going to be up front here and tell you that I was not really as good at this as I wish I had been (and as my husband wishes). Just in case you hadn't figured that out already. But there are some things we did that worked for us.

My favorite? Grow your own babysitters. I did not feel comfortable going 'out-out' on a 'date-date' until our first child was fifteen years old and she could babysit the rest with help from her 13 year old sister. Even then, our first dozen 'real dates' (there's a reason for those scare quotes as you will see) were.... drum roll, please:
We dropped the kids off at the house Wednesday nights after church, and the big kids put the little kids to bed (kids were then 15, 13, 11- but that's the Cherub who is more like 2- 9, 8, 2, and an infant). We drove six blocks away to a Jack-in-the-box, got a Jamocha Almond Shake each. To go.
Yes. To go. Because then we drove back to the house and parked in the carport. I rolled my window an inch or two down. My 15 year old had been instructed to open the window to the room nearest the carport. And then my husband and I sipped our shakes and sometimes, well, acted like teen-agers, while I kept one ear alert to any indication my still breastfed infant might need me.
By acted like teen-agers, of course, I mean we giggled and listened to dumb music, of course. What did you think I meant?
I am totally not making this up- except for the part about what I meant by acting like teen-agers. This was our date-night for a while.

Laugh at us, or feel great sympathy for my long-suffering husband- but thing is, it worked for us. It worked for us because for us, the most important thing about time with your spouse is not how much it costs, where it is, what it looks like to other people, or when it is- the only thing that matters is that you have your spouse with you and you have a place to talk. Or um, yeah.

I know that it is not the cultural expection of North Americans that a married couple wouldn't hire a sitter and go out for dinner and a movie at least once a month, but you know what? Our culture's expectations do not impress me. In case you haven't noticed- there isn't any reason to believe that following those cultural expectations keeps that relationship glue holding any stronger than doing things differently.
What's important is not that you hire a sitter, dress up and put on the high heeled shoes that pinch your toes and go out somewhere. What is important is that the two of you have time together to talk, to reconnect, to maintain your bond, to build it further.

So... over the years, there are some other ways we dated- or rather, got in important one on one time with each other. First are some ideas for things to do when you do not have a sitter:

When we were very young and incredibly, shockingly poor (yeah, I'm the one who had only two eggs in the house and that was all the food we were going to have for over 24 hours, and I dropped one and broke it), our dates consisted of going to the laundromat together. We brought along a backgammon game or a game of Mastermind, and we did the laundry, then sat in the laundromat and played our games and talked.

When we had a new baby who nursed every 90 minutes for 30 minutes, we took walks together with the baby in the stroller. A sleeping baby in the stroller does not prevent important conversations.

Get up before the rest of the family and have a cup of coffee or tea together while talking about anything other than the kids. Or talk about the kids if that is what interests you both the most.

Put the kids to bed early one night a week- give them flashlights and a couple of fun but quiet things to do in bed, but train them not to get out of bed except for emergencies. This may take time, but diligence in child-training pays off richly.

Email each other or chat on Skype.

Pick a book to read together. You can either take turns reading it aloud to each other at the time that works for you- morning or bedtime- or you can read your chapters separately and discuss them together over dinner- a dinner where you served the kids supper an hour early, and now have them occupied with a game of their own, a book on tape, playing out in the backyard catching frogs, or wrapped up in duct tape and secured on the couch. Then you two eat your dinner alone together- one night a week? One night a month? You choose. If you have not read aloud the Song of Solomon in a quiet space with your beloved, well. Put the computer down and go start.=)

For a while we would rent a couple movies, or check them out from the library, one night each week, locked ourselves in our bedroom with snacks and goodies, and either played cards or watched a DVD on the laptop. The kids watched the other movie and had strict orders not to disturb us and to be in bed by- well, whatever time we assigned.

Work on projects together- be careful about this one. There are jobs that I cannot do with my husband. This will vary by couple. We have friends who were telling us this week that they will not paint a room together. He paints the room, and she takes the doors and fixtures to another part of the house and paints them. But find something you can work on together- a garden, visiting a nursing home, refinishing a piece of furniture, cleaning the kitchen- working together is a great date.

Learn a skill or take an online class together- there are free ones.

Let the kids put on a play, a recitation, or a talent show for you while you two cuddle up on the couch and watch.


If you have a sitter or your kids can stay alone:
Many libraries in larger cities like Chicago and Boston hold passes to museums and other educational attractions, and sign them out to local residents.

Go for a walk. Have a picnic. Hit a thrift shop together. Go look at romantic cards at a gift store and show each other the one you would buy if you were spending money.

If you live near a college, look in to their music and drama productions. Sometimes tickets are very inexpensive. Sometimes you can attend rehearsals for free.

Many museums and tourist attractions often have free days. Check out the one nearest you. Pack a picnic lunch- eat it in the car if you have to. Most of these places have cafeterias now where you can bring your own food in.

Look for a source for information on free or inexpensive things in the area- our electric company publishes a magazine which includes a monthly listing of all kinds of quirky things going on all over the state- home shows, popcorn festivals, parades, plays, art shows by unknown local artists.

Make yourselves a cup of delicious coffee at home and take it to the library. Most libraries now allow you to bring covered drinks in. Find a quiet corner and spend some time talking together, play a card game, or look at a book of art prints together. Look at a gardening book, or read a book of poetry together. What do you like?

Want more creative ideas and wisdom- go see my home gals:

Kim,
Connie
Kimberly-

And don't forget me- bookmark and us and y'all come back, here?

In October - oh boy, oh boy- do we have a line-up for you!

What about you all? What are some of your favorite ways to spend quality time with your hubby without spending money you may not be able to spare? Or, if you are like me, without giving your self a nervous break-down over leaving the children with somebody else?

LInked at Finer Things Friday

Fall Crafts and Decorations

I don't have the stuff or the eye to reproduce anything nearly as pretty as this blogger's stacking trays, but I do like the way she basically created a 3 tiered serving dish to decorate by using platters and ice-cream or parfait glasses.  She turned the ice-cream glasses upside down and stacked a platter on top, then more ice-cream glasses and another platter.(her blog is 'Buckets of Ideas for Fall, how intriguing is that?)

Okay, fellow book-lovers- brace yourselves, swallow hard, and keep scrolling here.  It will be okay, I promise.  I know, I know.  It's so cute, and yet, to book people like me, so horrifying- but I promise it gets easier (and less 'zero at the bone' for book people)- it doesn't matter if this is the best possible use to which to put a Harlequin romance novel, when I see crafts like this I am simultaneously struck with admiration by the crafter's ingenuity and creativity while I also have the exact same sensation I get in that ice in the veins moment between when I hear a shattering crash in my house and I hear a reassuring voice saying something like, "It's okay, it was only a box of legos."  Only that reassuring voice never comes, yes, somebody really cut up a book into a pumpkin shape, stained the pages with tea, and made a clever  fall decoration of it.
Oh, but wait- there is reassurance- YOU don't have to cut up a book to do this.  She also gives you directions for doing this with plain white paper in a smaller version- a cute, cute version you could do with a child.  And there's an apple, and no books or book people's sensitivities need be harmed by those last two really cute crafts.
Check back at Craftberry to see other goodies.

Have a cheese dome and a candle holder or pedestal bowl?  You can make this.  It's apparently called a cloche, which, what do I know, I thought was a hat.  It's a pretty stand, and you can put pretty fall decorations in it-decorations you can arrange once and never have to dust or restore to their original beauty after small sticky fingers 'help' you out by exploring and rearranging.

I thought these black designs stenciled on white pumpkins were striking. I wonder if you have some vinyl clings laying around if they'd work, too?

This adorable pumpkin decoration has to be seen to be believed- it's a toilet paper roll and fabric with a couple of extras.  A child can make it- and best of all, after fall, you can take it apart and you still have a roll of toilet paper for the bathroom and your unmarked fabric for some other project!



Ohhh, this imperfect fall decorating post really hits the spot.  I LIKE this.  I can DO this!  You can, too.  So much warmth and charm!

Honestly, I will never make these, but the felted acorns made with 160 inch strings of real wool yarn are totally adorable.

A Further Ode to Cookbooks

When my husband and I married I was already a fairly competent, and confidant, cook. My mother married without knowing how to cook at all, and it turned out she didn't much like cooking, so she made sure I knew how.  She made sure I enjoyed it, too (I never made anything she didn't praise to the hills). I poached my first egg at six while standing on a kitchen chair in front of the stove. At 13 or 14 I was 'catering' some of my mother's political meetings (she served on a school board recall committee that met regularly in our home).

As far as I remember, when I married I only owned two or three cookbooks of my own- one was a requested gift from my parents when I was about ten or so, and the other was from a Sunday School teacher who was dying, and gave her cookbook collection to her 'girls.' My mother had a couple of others. I was given one as a gift shortly after my marriage, and all through high school I had browsed magazines for recipes fairly often, and I had the beginnings of a recipe box. 

I knew how to cook.  But I didn't know how to cook to please my husband (not that he was picky, but all of us have our preferences).  I learned that through trial, error, and lots of questions.  I learned I didn't season the food nearly enough (my dad had hypertension, so we never added salt to our meals at home) when my husband practically devoured a recipe into which I'd accidentally spilled the red pepper.  I learned I needed more variety when... well, let me go on with my story.

Every single time I made a meal for my shiny new husband, I would ask him if he liked it, and if everything was okay. He only ever had two criticisms- there was never enough cheese, and we had 'just had this.' I kept stretching my meals further apart, and he kept saying the same thing- there was never enough cheese and 'this is good, but it's too soon after the last time we had it.' Note, please, that he did not *volunteer* this criticism. He only offered it when I asked him to be honest with me and tell me what he really thought, and also note that he was no cook, and really had no idea what was involved in budgeting, shopping, and preparing meals.

I could not fix the 'not enough cheese' complaint, as we could not afford enough cheese to make happy a man who thought it was normal to take a one pound block of cheese and just bite huge chunks off of it for a snack- making it a 1/2 pound block of cheese in two bites. I spread the variations of beans, rice, and potatoes out further and further apart, and still, he would say (when asked), "We just had this..."

Finally one night I asked him to define specifically what, exactly, was 'too often.' Could he eat, say, Soldier's Soup or stir fried vegetables over home-made egg noodles twice in a week? No, that was too frequently. Once each week? No, he thought, that was still too often. Every other week? Hmmm, he pondered, but no, too often.
Define too often, I foolishly demanded.

He thought it over carefully, rolling his tongue as he imagined the flavors that could be washing over his jaded tastebuds.

"I think," he said, "more than once a month is too often."

Well. Did I mention we were newlyweds? Because, Gentle Readers, I did it.

It wasn't easy on a beans and rice budget. We had legumes boiled, broiled, baked, fried, and mashed. We had them with rice, noodles, or potatoes, in tortillas and on top of bread and broiled beneath the oven flame. We had them simmered with beef bones and simmered with collard greens and we had them fricasseed, creamed, pureed, diced, chopped, mashed, and tossed in salads. I seasoned them with variations of onion, garlic, leftover grease from other cooking, salt, chili peppers, and chives grown in a pot on my windowsill.We had black beans, white beans, red beans, and pinto beans. We had red beans and rice, black beans with rice, and brown beans with rice.  We had red and black beans with rice.  We had split pea soup and split pea sandwich spread.    And all of this was fine with my husband as long as it seemed a little different.  In fact, over the years, he grew to appreciate having the same meal more than once in a month, and I, brought up on about a seven day cycle of meals (Sunday potroast, Thursday burritoes; Friday fish sticks...) learned to love variety far more than he did.

It helped when as a perk from one of his two jobs, he brought home dozens and dozens of women's magazines full of recipes. I cut them out and put them in a photo album- even recipes I could not yet afford to make, because I knew we would not always be on a beans and rice budget, and also because I already knew that I loved reading recipes. And I started collecting cookbooks.  Twice when we moved I copied down my favorite recipes and got rid of all but four or five cookbooks, but every time this happened, the cookbooks came back.  I would find old friends and discover new treasures- until now that I am no longer moving I have over 300 cookbooks, and several folders of recipes.

All cookbooks, you see, are not alike. Furthermore, I do not just use my cookbooks for mere recipes. They are sources of inspiration, history, science, and comfort. I read them for ideas about what to make (I do not often follow a recipe). I read them just for fun. I even read recipes I never intend to make because they interest me- sometimes for the science in them, sometimes the geography, sometimes the history- and sometimes just for the vicarious pleasure of reading about ingredients I cannot afford and preparation methods I am never going to take the time to learn.

Here are five random cookbooks, and one not so random,  pulled from the shelf to illustrate just how different cookbooks can be.  I've picked three vegetables to look at in each cookbook- asparagus, beets, and parsnips.  I chose those three precisely because they might be seen as less commonly used vegetables (especially the parsnips, which I love diced, simmered, then fried in a bit of butter and finished off with by thickening up with some cream):

1. Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, no date found, but probably the sixties. Red and white checked three ring binder, indexed with tabbed dividers, inside cover has information like oven chart translation of older terms such as 'hot oven' or 'slow oven,' as well as thermometer readings for meat, candy temperatures, substitutions, measurement equivalents, can sizes, how many crackers it takes to make a cup of fine crumbs, how much dry macaroni makes 2 1/4 cups cooked macaroni, and so forth.
Color photographs and information for beginning cooks throughout (how to choose vegetables or cuts of meat, how to clean them, etc). There are directions for canning and freezing as well as preparing for ready to serve meals.

There is also a section on table settings formal and informal, with photographs, directions for folding napkins, menus for entertaining, and a page or two on stain removal.

Asparagus: Wash; scrub gently with vegetable brush. If sandy, scrape off the scales. Break stalks- they will snap where tender part starts. Cut up, cook covered in a  small amount of boiling salted water 8-10 minutes.

Serving suggestions:
with Hollandaise or Bearnaise Sauce; garnish with hard cooked egg slices. Toss with toasted almonds or croutons. Heat Italian dressing and pour over. Stir fry.

Recipes: a casserole with butter, flour, milk, seasoning, cracker crumbs, hard boiled eggs;

Parsnips: Wash thoroughly; pare or scrape. Slice crosswise or lengthwise, as desired. Cook covered in a small amount of boiling salted water, 15--20 minutes.
Serving suggestions: Add butter or cream to cooked 1 inch cubes, season to taste. Cut in half lengthwise; cook and drain. Brown lightly in butter; season. Sprinkle with a little sugar if desired.

Beets: Cut off all but 1 inch of stems and root. Wash and scrub thoroughly. Do not pare. Cook covered in boiling salted water 35-60 minutes, peel when done.
OR pare and slice or cube,cook covered in small amount of boiling salted water. 15-20 minutes.
Or pare and shred. Cook ten minutes in small amount of boiling salted water.

Serving suggestions: Harvard beets (cornstarch, salt, vinegar, butter, cook until sauce is thickened); Orange glazed beets, (heat with butter, orange marmalade and a tablespoon of orange juice); Beets in cream (sour cream, green onions, sugar, salt, cayenne, vinegar, heat slowly); cranberry beets,(cornstarch, sugar, slat, cranberry juice cocktail, orange peel). Short recipes are included with each of these with more specific measurements and directions. There are several other recipes as well, including beets with pineapple, pickled beets, and a beet salad.

2. Leftovers, by Coralie Castle- a Cook's Guide with Recipes for Getting the Most Out of Your Money. Paperback, published in 1983
Assumes more knowledge by the reader than Better Homes does. Includes guides to steaming, using the microwave, freezing and dehydrating, as well as a guide to ingredients, a glossary of terms, and an index. Recipes are divided not just by category (salads, spreads, soups, etc) but also by 'top of the stove' or oven dishes.

Illustrated with black and white drawings that are there more for atmosphere and charm than because they give you an idea about the finished product. Sprinkled throughout the book are other tips and suggestions for saving and using leftovers.

Asparagus:

Select asparagus spears that are straight, round, firm, and with closely formed tips that show no sign of flowering. The spears should be evenly green almost to the end, and the cut stem should have a moist appearance. Asparagus should be eaten the same day they are purchased, but if this isn't possible, wrap the stem ends in a dampened terry towel before slipping the spears into a plastic bag for refrigeration....

(more detailed information follows for several paragraphs).

Ideas for asparagus: arrange cooked asparagus spears on a bed of lettuce. Dress with Lemon Mayonnaise thinned with a little sour cream. Garnish with pimiento strips and chopped hard-cooked eggs.
Toss cooked asparagus tips, sliced raw mushrooms rubbed with fresh lemon juice and low-fat cottage cheese into a green salad.
Make a quiche with diagonally sliced cooked asparagus and julienned cooked veal sprinkled with fresh lemon juice, seasonings as desired and grated Gouda cheese. ...
Saute minced shallots in butter until soft. Toss in cooked asparagus tips, freshly grated Parmesan cheese and minced fresh parsley. Use as a filling for omelets. Top with sour cream.

In addition to the index in back, this useful cookbook also has mini indexes within the pages- so in the asparagus section there is a list of 9 other recipes in the book which could use asparagus and the page numbers where they are found.

There is no mention of parsnips.=(

Beets:

"Do not be attracted to the large beets at the market, for they can be quite woody. Select the smallest beets possible with fresh-looking, evenly colored greens, if they are sold with the tops intact. The beet root itself should be firm and without wrinkles. Store in the refrigerator in a plastic bag up to seven days. It is important never to cut into the flesh of the beet until it is cooked, for the beet will bleed as it is boiled and lose much of its distinctive coloring and flavor."

...
Ideas for beets:
Hollow out tiny cooked beets, fill with any sandwich salad spread and serve as an hors d'oeuvre or as a salad accompaniment.
Dice cooked beets and add to grain soups
Shred cooked beets, combine with shredded onion and apple and heat together gently
Julienne or slice cooked beets and use as a salad garnish

Recipes include one for a mixed vegetable salad, additions to potato salad, and a vegetable salad suggestion



3. More With Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre- an indispensable cookbook. I am on my second copy. Mine is a spiral bound paperback, but the newer ones have a nicer binding so they last longer. 328 pages, including two indices- one to recipes and one to the front matter of each chapter (food additives; Canadian Council on Nutrition; Carper, Eva; celebration; quantity buying; Minderals; Packaging, etc). No illustrations. There are some 'useful tables,' some of which are duplicated in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but many are not (complementary proteins, comparative costs of proteins, RDA for energy and protein). There is an introductory section with a very well written (though I disagree with much of it because eating meat in America does not hurt Africans in the Congo, or anybody else anywhere else, for that matter) discussion of issues of world poverty, hunger, nutrition, and diet from a Mennonite Missionary's perspective. Each chapter has a couple of pages of similar material- I am more likely to agree with that. For instance, in the main dishes and casseroles section, we read:

"Contemporary casserole recipes all seem to call for a can of soup. Will future cooks be born, live, and die without knowing how to stir up a smooth white sauce? Will there finally be only three flavors identified at a carry-in-dinner? cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, and cream of celery?
Buy a wire whisk and break the mushroom soup cycle. Save money and cans by returning to the basic five-minute white sauce..."

At the end of each section there is a wonderful page or two called "Gathering the fragments," and it is about ways to use leftovers from that chapter. These do not duplicate the ideas in the Leftovers cookbook, however. More with Less is more down to earth, practical, every day cooking. Leftovers, in spite of its title, relies on ingredients like gruyere cheese, sherry, roquefert or gorgonzola cheese, watercress, sorrel, and so forth. Even when I cannot cook with those ingredients, I enjoy reading about them.

The recipes in More With Less were submitted by Mennonite cooks all over the world, and each recipe includes the name of the submitter and where she lives. Sometimes there are also editorial comments - for a recipe for bacalaitos (which appear to be codfish croquettes) for instance, we read,

"Maria serves these to in-and-out guests on Christmas evening. In Puerto Rico bacalaitos are sold at small food stands along the beach and at baseball games."

I dote on chatty cookbooks.  The chattier the better.

Asparagus- there is only one recipe for asparagus, it's for a fresh asparagus soup which looks delicious, uses simple ingredients, and would appear to be done in 20 minutes or less.

parsnips, sadly, do not get a mention at all.

Beets: two recipes. One for sweet-sour beets and one for a beet-apple salad:
Serves 6

Mix together:
2 c. cooked beets, sliced
2 c. raw apple, diced
2 hard boiled eggs, diced.

Add:
1/2 c. cooked salad dressing or mayonnaise
1/4 c. nuts

Toss lightly. Serve on lettuce and garnish with chopped nuts and parsley

The front of the vegetable section includes some thoughtful suggestions from two missionaries in Zambia, health information (vegetables are best steamed or stir-fried), and this delightful tidbit:

"sometimes I forget other details of the meal because it's so much fun to get right into assembling the stir-fry dish. Then my frantic alarm cries out to the rest of the family to finish setting the table because I can't leave the stove. but it's only the last five minutes that are hectic. The rewards are great."

4. FAST VEGETARIAN FEASTS: DELICIOUS, HEALTHY MEALS YOU CAN MAKE IN 45 MINUTES OR LESS, 300 pages, an index, no illlustrations to speak of. Table of Contents includes:
Keeping Protein up and fats down
cooking for the heart
useful equipment and related maxims
menus and shopping by the week
recipes for the Sunday cook

Chapters introduced by a list of recipes in that chapter and commentary such as:

"The dishes in this chapter are those which, to me, comprise the stuff of vegetarian cuisine. Grains, legumes, tofu, and vegetables are the basis for my own diet, and in fact are the foods that feed most of the world. It's through learning how to work with them that you will reap the most important benefits of vegetarian cuisine. ... grains have lent themselves to use by almost all of the world's cuisines, adn classic dishes based on them have been prepared in teh same way for centuries..."

Recipes are introduced with biographical notes, or notes on preparation, or other commentary. All recipes include metric conversions.

Asparagi Alla Parmigiana (asparagus with Parmesan)
serves 4
...

"I once went to one of the fanciest restaurants in Florence twice in one day just to eat this dish. I was alone and felt less strange about eating so little when I noticed the man at the next table. He ate first a bowl full of peas, with little specks of ham, then a large plate of cherries. Like me, he knew what he wanted."

2 pounds asparagus, trimmed.
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 to 2 Tablespoons butter
Steam the asparagus just until bright green, about 3 minutes. Refresh under cold water.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Butter a 2 quart baking dish. Layer the asparagus side by side, overlapping in rows with teh tops covering the ends to that the tips are all exposed. Sprinkle each row with parmesan and dot with butter. Bake on teh upper rack of the oven until a light crust begins to form and the mixture is bubbling. Remove from the oven, allow to stand a moment, then serve, as a side dish.
Other asparagus recipes include in an omelette, over poached eggs, and in a timbale. There is no asparagus soup recipe.

There is no mention of parsnips, and when it comes to beets, there is a recipe for beets and beet greens, steamed, one for pressure cooked or baked beets, and a middle eastern beet salad.

But there is this:

"People can be quite emphatic in their antipathy for beets. I didn't much care for them as a child, probably because I only knew canned beets, but somewhere along the line I got over my dislike, and as an adult I've always liked them. I liketheir sweet, earthy taste and crunchy texture and always feel as if I'm eating one of the healthiest vegetables around. I eat them simply steamed, with their greens. They are one of the longer-cooking vegetables, and I suggest that, unless you use a pressure cooker, you quarter them. Scrub the skins and remove them only after the beets are cooked. For pressure cooking, beets should be left whole.

Beets can also be baked. It takes some time, but this is unsupervised. The flavor of baked beets is even more intense.

I prefer beet greens to other greens, like mustard and collards, which are quite tough and metallic tasting. Beet greens are fairly mild and simliar in taste to spinach, though a bit more metallic. They are quite high in iron and vitamins and should not be overlooked...."

This makes it a fun cookbook to read, and a source for useful ideas for meals, even though I probably wouldn't follow the recipes word for word.

5. The Joy of Cooking, by Irma Rombauer, published in 1975 (my copy). This one should need little explanation, as apparently most people have already heard of it. I hadn't. I lived and cooked without it for decades- only adding it to my collection when a friend expressed shock that I didn't have it (my 12 year old son was probably about two at the time, and my oldest child would have been 15 or 16). To be honest- it's far from my favorite. I really do not see what makes this one so special. It bothers me much that the Rombauer's didn't even test many of the recipes before putting them in their book. Some of the directions are ridiculously time consuming and fiddly, and unnecessarily so. But my daughters love it, and I can see that I probably would have appreciated it more if had been my first cookbook rather than one fifteen years into marriage.

For asparagus there is a recipe for aspic with celery (does anybody eat aspics anymore?), capes, directions for canning them, creamed eggs cockaigne, salads, a ham and asparagus sandwich, two soups, garnished spears, and a timbale. The soup recipes are disappointing. One is more trouble than the More with Less version, and looks like the fresh asparagus flavor would be smothered by other ingredients and a longer cooking time, and the recipe for 'quick' cream of asparagus soup' requires store-bought canned soup!

There are about a dozen recipes for beets, including canning, pickled, casseroled, cjellied consomme, in an anchovy dressing, in borsch, salads, and Harvard beets.

For Parsnips, we have:

To bring out the best flavor of parsnips, store them for several weeks at temperatures just above 32 degrees. Parsnips discolor easily. To avoid this see Salsify, 326.
Preheat oven to 375.
Pare, then cut into halves, discarding cores if woody;
4 medium-sized parsnips: 1 lb
Place them in a buttered ovenproof dish.

Brush with:
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
sprinkle with
1/2 teaspoon salt
Add:
3/4 cup stock or water

Cover the dish and bake until the parsnips are tender about 30 to 45 minutes. Serve with:
Chopped parsley and butter or Lemon Butter (350).
Pressure cook parsnips 7 minutes at 15 pounds.

French parsnips
Prepare as for Carrots Vichy- they give the page number for this recipe, which is essentially 2 cups thinly sliced and scraped carrots or, in this case, parsnips, 1/2 cup boiling water, 2 T. butter, 1 T sugar, 1/4 t. salt; 1 t. lemon juice.

Cover the pan closely. Form a glaze with the butter and sugar by simmering until the water is absorbed. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley).

6. Lastly, there is this cookbook, which actually prompted my idea to compare cookbooks just for fun. A charming and generous friend added it to my cookbook collection this past weekend. It was a marvel of serindipity, because shortly after picking her up at the airport I lamented, "Oh, I meant to ask you to bring a long your copy of Food That Really Schmecks just so I could browse through it a bit." She grinned at me and said, "I brought you a present!" And yes, she brought me my own copy!

Edna Staebler lived and wrote in Mennonite communities in Canada, and she collected recipes and stories to go with them.  This isn't just a cookbook. It is folklore, stories, and a conversation.

While flipping through it, I found this entry on asparagus, and I practically hugged my new cookbook:

"You probably know more about preparing asparagus than I do.  I boil mine in salted water and I like it so well simply with butter melted over it that I never try anything fancy except a cream or mild cheese sauce.  But i do want to tell you; never throw away the water your asparagus was cooked in.  Keep it in your fridge to use in soups or with a bouillon cube melted in it and served hot in a mug or mix it with tomato juice or V8 for a cold or hot drink.  It's full of vitamins and flavour."

She had me at "You probably know more about preparing asparagus than I do."  Isn't that charming?

Here's the parsnip entry:

"This sweet-tasting, inexpensive vegetable is delicious with sausage or pork.  Bevvy says she peels hers, cuts it in slices adn cooks it wtih a ham bone or in ham broth.
Soemtimes she'll boil it in salted water adn serve it with a cream sauce and buttered crumbs.
I like mine browned in the oven.  I cut the parsnips into long slivers, boil them till they're almost tender; then I melt beef dripping or butter in a pan, stir the parsnips around in it and put them into the oven till they're nicely browned, turning them occasionally.  They come out slightly chewy and people who have never liked parsnips ask me how it was done."

Beets- there are six recipes, and this chatty paragraph:

If you are lucky enough to have little beets fresh from a garden, boil them quickly till they are tender, skin them and drop them into hot melted butter, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and be happy.  
To prepare beets, cut off the leaves (cook them like spinach if they are fresh) leaving a 1 inch stem and the tail root to preserve the color.  Young beets will cook in ``1 hour, old, larger beets from 3 to 4 hours unless you use a pressure cooker.  When beets are tender, drain off the water, blanch them cold water but don't let them stand it, slip the skins from the beets before they are cold.  Old beets are best when finely chopped, sprinkled with sugar, salt, pepper and plenty of butter."

 So you see, each of these cookbooks are unique, special, and not remotely interchangable.  I think this is as true for all my 300 cookbooks as it is for different works of fiction in the same genre.  They will have similarities, but the details vary, and the details matter.

Now you'll have to excuse me, because now I am hungry.

Linked At Things I Love Thursdays

News and Views

Hundreds feared dead in landslide in Mexico

North Korea today heralded a "crucial" announcement as its biggest political gathering for three decades began with the clearest signal yet that Kim Jong-il has picked his youngest son as his heir.

The state news agency, KCNA, reported last night that Kim Jong-un had been appointed a four-star general...

Mumbai style terrorist attacks in Great Britain and Europe stymied?

China warns Norway that the Nobel Peace Prize had better not be awarded to a Chinese Dissident.

FBI investigating Stern of the SEIU for serious corruption charges.

New EPA rules may cost nearly a million jobs.

You, too can write as a science journalist. Try it- just follow this template.



Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey is saving his state money by dropping taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.

ACORN Affiliate caught facilitating "rampant voter fraud."




Chrysler autoworkers at a Detroit plant caught on tape boozing it up and getting high during their work break. Yes, that Chrysler, the one taxpayers were forced to bail out instead of letting the market handle it.

management and supervision at this plant seems to have been completely unaware that these workers are building cars while intoxicated or at the least under the influence of alcohol and marijuana.  Perhaps that could explain the decisionmaking that led Chrysler into bankruptcy in the first place, and why betting on their recovery with billions in taxpayer dollars wasn’t such a hot idea after all.

Here is a chart for your perusal, and there is more of Maetenlock's's colorful commentary.  This is but an appetizer:
You can see that from the late 60's up until 2000 federal spending was pretty much a straight line relative to the median household income. Then jumps to a new higher growth rate around 2002 (most likely due to 9/11). But look at what happened in 2007 when the Democrats took over the House.
[...]
Not only did federal spending shoot up but median income actually fell.

A Tea Party candidate beat out an establishment, career politician annointed by himself and the Republican Party in Delaware.  Castle, the career politician, refused to give support to the O'Donnell, the candidate who won, and is mulling over a write in attempt to keep the seat he feels is his by entitlement.
IN Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, granted title to the hereditary seat by her Daddy when he was elected governor, lost her bid to a people's choice candidate rather than an establishment pick from within the political nobility.  She is also seeking to maintain the seat she feels is hers by heredity via a write-in campaign.
Well, that kind of thing, that arrogant sense of entitlement, that smug attitude demanding due deference and a tugging of the forelock from the commoners, along with, at best, resentment over being expected to represent the people who vote for them, has been going on a long time. It's why I quit calling myself Republican a long time ago.  But it looks like the peasants are staging a revolt.

Unbelievable.  I watched this video twice just because it's that appalling- Democrat Linda Sanchez is running against Van Tran,  a Republican who is Viet Namese.  This uppity behaviour bugs her, apparently, because she actually says that "the Viet Namese and the Rebublicans" are trying "with an intensity" to take away this seat from 'us.' 

One of the DoJ lawyers has decided to disregard orders to ignore subpoenas from the Civil Rights Commission:

When the Civil Rights Commission attempted to discover why the Department of Justice dropped a voter-intimidation case they had already won, the Obama administration told the attorneys in the Civil Rights division to ignore subpoenas from the panel.  At the time they complied, but one of the key potential witnesses to the decision has decided to break his silence.

His testimony is explosive. 
 The Justice Department which is supposed to protect the voting rights of all Americans is flatly refusing to do so.  He was forbidden to ask potential applicants if they would enforce the law in a race neutral way.  Eight states have refused to purge their voter roles of dead people, people who have moved away, and felons, and it's supposed to be his job to enforce that.  He was forbidden to do that.  Just guess which states they are (click on the link to see).  They have more registered voters on the roles than have adults of voting age in the state.  This is really a serious, serious problem, and it essentially renders null and void many of our votes  It's a denial of the basic franchise to all Americans by cheapening it and making it worthless.

One argument against government involvement in education is that it's inherently an ideological conflict of interest pitting the might and power of the State and its interests against that of the individual, and the most vulnerable of individuals at that.  The left has long seen that as a feature, not a flaw:

Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, pledged to turn America’s school children into good enviro zombies at an appearance at a Virginia high school earlier in the month and he intends to use federal funds to do it.
CNSNews reports:
“Right now, in the second decade of the 21st century, preparing our children to be good environmental citizens is some of the most important work any of us can do. It’s work that will serve future generations–and quite literally sustain our world,” Duncan said at the Education Department’s “Sustainability Education Summit: Citizenship and Pathways for a Green Economy.”
“This week’s sustainability summit represents the first time that the Department is taking a taking a leadership role in the work of educating the next generation of green citizens and preparing them to contribute to the workforce through green jobs,” said Duncan.

This re-education must begin as early as kindergarten.  Considering how scared kids are about global warming now, imagine what it will be like if Duncan succeeds?

Man in DeKalb County Georgia sued by local government for growing too many vegetables on his two acres.  He gives most of it away to fellow citizens, and the government really hates it when private philanthropists interfere with dependency.

Obama-Care:

Results from a report released a month after the health care vote were troubling. The report released by Medicare and Medicaid actuaries showed that medical costs will skyrocket rising $389 billion 10 years. 14 million will lose their employer-based coverage. Millions of Americans will be left without insurance. And, millions more may be dumped into the already overwhelmed Medicaid system. 4 million American families will be hit with tax penalties under this new law.
Of course, these were ALL things that President Obama and Democratic leaders assured us would not happen.

Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement.calling it a 'corrupt social phenomenon' and an imaginary creation of the first world middle class

CPSIA- February 10, 2011, is the date when the testing stay is set to expire.

At midnight Friday, the last incandescent light bulb plant in America closed — a victim of government rules outlawing the traditional light bulb by 2012.

Hmmmm:

Pip's Cream of Tomato Soup

Pip adapted this recipe from one in The Joy of Cooking

Here's her version:

2 cans diced tomatoes (the cans were around 14 ounces each)
3 T. vegetable broth powder

Mix tomatoes and broth powder with 1 cup hot water. Simmer for about 15 minutes- or as long as takes you to make the white sauce.

Meanwhile:

Make about 2-3 cups of thick white sauce

Melt 2 T butter
Stir in 2 T. flour until you have a smooth paste
Gradually stir in two cups of milk, stir frequently while sauce thickens.

To make thicker, add small bits of butter kneaded into flour until the right consistency is reached- the right consistency is approximately the same as a can of condensed cream soup.

Take the tomato mixture off the stove and blend until smooth- use an immersion blender right in the pan, or pour mixture into your blender or food processor.

Whisk into the white sauce, heat gently while seasoning to taste with:
salt
freshly ground pepper
Optional seasonings:
onion powder
celery salt
garlic

Serve with grilled cheese sandwiches or sprinkle with oyster crackers or parmesan cheese.  Some people prefer to POUR their oyster crackers into their bowls so they have soppy, tomato flavored oyster crackers.

Linked at Foodie Friday 

Vaccines, sidenote (part ?)

Penny Lane, the Midwife and blogger at Living Life with the Lanes, read an interesting article by Dr. Ari Brown on the vaccination controversy. She summarized some of the points, and I found her summary very interesting. The full article is here (a pdf file). We've been talking about this for a while, and this is the last observation I have to make. It's short, and not directly related to the vaccine question. It's about the relationship between professionals and parents.

Dr. Brown says the toxins in vaccines are trace amounts and none of them have been proven harmful to humans in these amounts. Therefore, parents should do the responsible thing and vaccinate fully and without question.

Merely as an aside, this is contrary to the Precautionary Principle because this means none of them have been proven safe, either. Now if you've been reading here very long, you know I think the Precautionary Principle is nonsense anyway. But the interesting thought to me is the contrast here. The precautionary Principle was the rationale behind the CPSIA, which resulted in the banning of all reselling of pre-1985 children's books, and many other useful items. Basically, Congress (and the Naderite special interest groups) told parents, "None of these things have been proven safe to humans. Therefore, parents should do the responsible thing and get rid of books, toys, clothes, and anything else intended for kids under 12 that is more than a couple years old, and do so without question." And none of them have been proven harmful, either.

I have no idea what Dr. Brown thinks (or even knows) about the CPSIA, but it's just fascinating that in some cases the powers-that-be apply the precautionary principle to limiting parental decisions and choices (and judging them) and in others, the powers-that-be ignore the Precautionary Principle while seeking to constrict the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit.

I realize that we are talking about different sets of powers-that-be, but the thing I notice here is that whoever and however it is? We parents get hit coming and going.

The message is 'We are the professionals. You're the idiots. Do what you're told.'

Links to this series of posts:

Part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
post-script

Refinished chair

Take one ugly but serviceable, comfortable yard sale chair with good lines:

Add one comely and talented seamstress:

 Who takes too much pride in her work to merely follow your request and wrap the old seat cushion with a bit of fabric, so she actually removes the cushion:

 Removes the old fabric and discovers the chair is older than you imagined:

Kapok?  Moss?  Tow?  Genuine leather?  How old is this chair?  What would be your guess?  I have no idea.

But the fastidious seamstress cannot stand the old, tatty leather cover and Kapok (we guess) filling, so she removes all that, and presents this:

And it's a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  Some day we might strip the wood and restain it- I prefer a real wood finish when it is a good wood like this one.  But this is lovely for now, and incredibly comfortable, too.

Linked at Coastal Charm 
Debbie Doos Before and After Party
Metamorphisis Monday
Linked at Trinkets and Treasures 

LInked at It's So Very Cheri

Nutrition Program Update

If you're interested in the text and course for  "FINALLY! A Nutrition text that gets it RIGHT," offered by the blogger at Food Renegades, here's some further information you might find useful.

The first class won't begin until Friday, October 1st, and for you procrastinators out there, she's extended enrollment right up until then.
If you wanted a hard copy of the book instead of the downloadable text, she says that for the first 2-3 weeks of class She will post all the reading materials in a downloadable format so that you can keep up while you wait for the book.

Whether you take the course or not, you should watch this part of the lesson she'll be covering on fats and foods available here.  This video is what convinced me to go ahead and share information about the class on my blog and to become an affiliate since I was going to be passing on the information anyway.


If you want to become an affiliate and you sell at least 5 slots, you can enroll in the course for free. If you sell at least 1 slot you get $30 off the course (let her know if you want to take advantage of that).  And, when I looked, signing up as an affiliate meant you got to download the etext for free- so if you don't want to take the course, but you do want to look at the book, that's one way to go about it.

I blogged about it here with a little more information.

Understand that it's not a 'perfect' curriculum- there's is no such thing.
I don't agree with everything she says, and you probably won't, either, but I do agree with enough of what she says that I think going through this course with my 12 and 14 year old is worth our time.
It's radical.  I like that.  You may not.

There are some chapters in the book where I would have provided a little more background information.  I know that background information because I've read or watched Pollan, Salatin, Fast Food Nation, Food, Inc,  and more, but my kids haven't covered all that ground. It's possible that the book she has planned for the 6 to 11 year old children will cover that ground, but that doesn't come out until November, and anyway, the subject matter is of interest to me, and in some cases I have some unique resources (a 1930 government recommended diet for children, a 1900s era advertisement for corn syrup, an economics magazine advocating for the purity of corn syrup around 1920 or so) that illustrate some of the history in what is, to me, a fascinating way- some of the stuff I have also covers ground that Michael Pollan, for some reason, completely missed.

From time to time I'll provide some of that background information here- it's not a substitute for her course, it won't be a duplication, it will be supplemental.  My intention is that what I share will be complementary, but essentially, both what I share here and the class can stand alone. Here's a post that illustrates what I mean.

Spiritual Progress

Date: 1946
Cartoonist: Orr
Caption: 300 Years Later

What you're looking at: Footprints in the snow labeled 'America's Material Progress.' Small pilgrim child is sobbing as he trudges through the snow alone.
Ghostly John and Priscilla Alden in the background. John is pointing off to the big city saying, "What Giant Strides our Sons Have Made, Priscilla!" Priscilla is wringing her hands and saying "But Jonathan, look! The Little One! Have they gone off and left him behind?!"
That little pilgrim is labeled 'Spiritual Progress.'

The History of Nutrition Science

The following post is not only  some background information I'd cover before chapter one of the FINALLY! A Nutrition text that gets it RIGHT, it's also interesting (at least to me), in its own right.

Optional sources: A small bit of the history of nutritional science, specifically the discovery of vitamines.  I used The History of Medicine by John Hudson Tiner, chapter 16, about Beri-Beri, because I had it on hand and I like the way it's written.
You can also use the information on this website.
If you prefer bullet points, this timeline of the study of nutrition science would be right up your alley. Your kids should also understand some basics about how the scientific method works.


Or you could just explain the following to your kids:

For ages and ages, human beings understood that there was a strong connection between food and health.

As long ago as 1450 B.C., if you believe (as I do) that Moses wrote the book of Genesis, or somewhere between 900 and 500 years before 'The Common Era,' during the Babylonian Exile if you hold to a more secular belief on OT dating, the book of Genesis was penned with these instructions about food:

 In Genesis 1:29 we read: God said, "I have given you every plant with seeds on the face of the earth and every tree that has fruit with seeds. This will be your food."
In Genesis 9:3 God says to Noah,  "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things."

And, of course, if you believe that Moses was an inspired writer, you believe those instructions were originally given at the dawn of time, and after a worldwide flood.

During the reign of David, the Psalmist wrote:
He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth. Psalm 104:14 

Hippocrotes, the father of medicine and source of the Hippocratic Oath, writing  in 400 B.C. said "Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food".

People knew that foods made them healthy, and the wrong foods made them sick.  However, for centuries, little was known about why foods were associated with health. In the mid 1700s Dr. James Lind, a physician in the British Navy, realized that eating limes prevented British sailors from contracting Scurvy, although two hundred years before Richard Hawkins had also noted that 'sower fruits' made good medicine for scurvy. Nobody would realize this was because of vitamin C until vitamins were discovered- in the 1900s. In 1912 the first vitamin was discovered and named- Vitamin A. For the next few decades scientists in the field of nutrition focused on discovering vitamins and what magic they performed for health.

This was important, especially since the previous century scientists had discovered proteins and carbohydrates and thought that was all there was to eating scientifically, which meant green leafy vegetables were almost entirely ignored. So learning about vitamins did restore some balance to the American diet. 

However,  by the time vitamins were discovered it was too late from some Americans.  Many people would never recover from the bad nutritional advice they'd received.  This faulty nutritional understanding came at a time when Americans had become predisposed to trust experts over traditional knowledge.  So in 1897 when Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844–1907) developed a method of understanding and tallying calory intake that we still use today, Americans listened.  He was a scientist, after all.  An expert.  Unfortunately, Atwater considered green vegetable matter to be a 'luxury' for the upper classes and he stressed the importance of a high carbohydrate diet, especially for the working classes.  We'll talk more about this later.

 So the discovery that green leafy vegetables had some nutritional value (!) was a great boon to those had listened carefully to the nutrition scientists of the previous twenty or thirty years.

Once scientists found out about vitamins, they had other questions- having lots of questions is one of the things that makes a good scientist.  They wanted to find out what vitamins did, exactly, which foods had which vitamins,  if there was a way scientists could make vitamins (and other healthy ingredients from food) in their labs, and other questions.  They tried to figure out the answers to these and other questions by using the scientific method.  So scientists were trying to isolate or single out  the specific, individual nutrients from food-  the single scientifically extractable items in food that are nutritious, or good for us.

But we don't eat food that way. When we eat brown rice (which is high in thiamine and was discovered in 1897 to be the cure for a disease called beri-beri) , we aren't just eating thiamine. We are eating at least ten other vitamins and as many minerals too, all mixed up together, as well as important nutrients like fiber and protein. We don't really know that much about how these different nutrients work together, and that might make a huge difference to our health. And that's just what we know about.


We don't know if there are other vitamins and minerals we haven't discovered yet.

We don't know much at all about how all those vitamins and minerals work together.

We don't know how much healthier it might be to eat that brown rice along with other foods. For instance, vitamin C helps people absorb iron better than just eating an iron rich food alone. Eating olive oil on your tomatoes (or in your tomato sauce) is healthier than just olive oil or just tomatoes, or even olive oils at one meal, and tomatoes a day later. Eating them together is healthier than eating each of them separately.


The history of nutrition science is full of exciting discoveries, and huge mistakes. One of those mistakes was forgetting what ancient peoples knew- that real food, not mere nutrients, is what we need for health.

Printable Paper Dolls

These are from the 1925 World Book we've written about before. Aren't they cute? Click on the picture to enlarge. Right click and select 'save picture as' to save a copy to your files. From there you could use whatever program you use to play with pictures to resize, color, and otherwise adjust to suit you and then print them out for use. They could be fun rainy day activities, gift tags, or stocking stuffers. You could put them in an envelope to mail to a distant young friend, or in a get well card for a convalescing young friend.

Menus for This Week of Fall

The weather here has definitely taken a turn for cool, crisp, fall weather- my favorite season. Here is a menu to celebrate that!

Breakfasts:
Sausage gravy over biscuits (we'lll make our own home-made biscuit mix, using whole wheat flour and healthy fats and it will be much cheaper than commercial boxed mixes)
eggs sunnyside up, shirred, and omeletted

Lunches:

Home-made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches- Pip made this last week and it was the best tomato soup I have ever had- very frugal, too.
Asian Broccoli Noodles
Kale and Currants with baked potatoes for some of us. I'll pass on the carbs.
Smackin Mac and rainbow salad (leeks, celery, red onion, thinly sliced oranges, mmm)- I'll have the rainbow salad with walnuts or almonds
Leftovers


Dinners
Home-made hamburger helper with organic frozen broccoli and cauliflower on the side and a green salad

Pork loin cooked in the crockpot all day and smothered with home-made barb-b-que sauce, with home-made buns, turnip slaw and greens on the side.

Crockpot Tuna mac, leafy green salad and sprouts (home-grown sprouts)

Florentine beef pinwheel (this is a pretty meatloaf- you flatten the meat mixture, spread it with a spinach filling, then roll it like a jelly roll and bake it) with a leafy green salad (we're growing leafy greens in pots in a sunny window) and carrots

Gypsy Soup with buckwheat bread and butter

Crockpot polish sausage with cabbage, with Sliced apples and orange wedges on the side

Baked herb fish fillets with home-made cornbread (we grind the cornmeal from organic popping corn), organic frozen broccoli and cauliflower, and artichoke hearts on the side.

Extras:
It's time for Russian Tea! (we mostly make the Hillbilly Housewife's version now)
Carrot orange cookies (recipe to be posted later)
Coconut Cream Pie
Popcorn (why microwave popcorn doesn't save that much time and really isn't worth the cost)- although the little boys' mother sends over bags of microwave popcorn, I prefer regular popcorn popped in a pan on top of the stove.

Linked at Organizing Junkie's Meal Plan Monday

Vaccinations, part six

Penny Lane, the Midwife and blogger at Living Life with the Lanes, read an interesting article by Dr. Ari Brown on the vaccination controversy. She summarized some of the points, and I found her summary very interesting. The full article is here (a pdf file). I've been blogging about my concerns with some of the reasoning here for a week now, and am amost finished.  There are things Dr. Brown said with which I agree, or that were good food for thought, but I would be bored blogging about those, so in this series I focused only on issues where I question the logical basis of her argument, and in a couple of cases, I question her facts.

Saturday I promised that today I'd explain why I really disagree with Dr. Brown's appeal to authority" objection to  parents deviating from the CDC's vaccination schedule.  She says that's okay, she guesses, so long as they seriously get to work and get those kids all vaccinated soon, but sticking the original CDC designed and recommended schedule is the best route because, well, the CDC said so and they must know what they are talking about. Smart people work there and stuff.

I think most of us recognize that's a lame argument no matter what bureaucratic entity we might substitute for the CDC. But it's a specifically wrong headed, uninformed, and dangerous argument to use with the CDC in particular, as I will explain. I've dropped hints about this in the comments along the way (hints subtle as cast iron anvils).

This has to do with the shameful history of the Hep B vaccine, which is not given to infants for their own benefit at all. I think that single vaccine is the one that makes me most cynical on the health care industry and vaccine safety, and it very likely tipped the balance of the scales for me when I realized I not only did not have to vaccinate just because the doctor said so, I had an obligation to investigate as much as possible and make an informed decision.  What I learned about Hep B informed me that the CDC isn't putting my childrens' interests, or any babies first, for that matter.

In 1990, the very vaccine friendly Mayo Clinic Family Health Book explained clearly that the populations most at risk for *HepB* are:

illicit drug users who inject with needles, sexually active homosexual men, sexual partners of those with HepB, people who undergo hemodialysisis for kidney failure, male prison inmates, and dental and medical health professionals who come into these populations. Up until 1990, those were the populations recommended for the vaccine, not infants (unless their mothers were infected.) In fact, doctors, the CDC, and the Mayo Clinic Family Health book specifically recommended against a Heb B vaccine for infants- unless you checked their mothers first and discovered the mothers were infected.

Note also that daycares were NOT listed as common sources for Hep B.

Look at the list of populations who are at risk again.   Consider the reasons those populations are most at risk- health care workers are obviously at risk because of the likelyhood that they will come into contact with the blood of the other high-risk groups. I am not sure about the mechanism of infection for hemodialysis, but with the exception of health care workers, people in hemodialysis, and the children of infected mothers (this last a tiny minority)- the main groups at risk are teens and adults choosing high risk behavior (or partners of those choosing high risk behavior).   Think hard about that, and think about why, if those are the populations most at risk, the CDC recommends vaccinating infants before they even leave the hospital.  Hold that thought.

Understand me here- I am not saying "They chose it, so they deserve the consequences." I am saying that infants do not, cannot, choose these behaviors, so it makes no sense to immunize them against such a disease. Medical professionals also recognized that reality, which is why up until 1990 the Hep B vaccine was NOT recommended for infants with non-infected mothers.

That was 1990. However, just one year later, administering it to infants suddenly became standard practice when the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) an adjunct of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), decided that the Hep B vaccine should be required for newborns, even though the CDC's own fact sheet on Hep B at that time did not include babies among the at risk population.

Why the change? Was there a sudden outbreak of drug taking infants? A huge leap in sexually active babies? A crime spree among newborns resulting in a swelling population of newborns in the male prison inmate population? Of course not.

There was a problem, however. It seems that the adult populations most at risk for this disease weren't choosing to immunize themselves.   It takes a series of vaccines and drug users weren't coming back for the boosters.  Members of the gay community insisted it was some way to target gays and possibly kill them (seriously).  Teens couldn't be bothered.  Health care workers really didn't like the Heb B vaccine because of the known risks and side effects.  This recalcitrant attitude toward choosing immunication against Hep B worried the CDC and other professions.  Their worry, however, was not for the babies, but for the adults, particularly for the health care workers who might come into contact with infected adults in the line of duty.

Understand that while the vaccine had already been available for nearly ten years, the form now being given to infants had only been licensed for two years- (and during the ten years the vaccine was available, adults simply were not availing themselves of it):

The first hepatitis B vaccine became commercially available in the United States in 1982. In 1986, a hepatitis B vaccine produced by recombinant DNA technology was licensed, and a second recombinant-type hepatitis B vaccine was licensed in 1989.

Vaccines are expensive to create. The population at risk for Hep B is much smaller than the population of 'all newborns.  That already small population was not responding to campaigns trying to get them to take the vaccine.  YOu can't store vaccines indefinitely.  So an expensive product with a limited shelf life was sitting around with no place to go.  Campaigns (that were also expensive) trying to get adults to choose to vaccinate were not working.   Hmmmmm.  What might manufacturers want to do to get their money back from this expensive product?  I'm just asking.

For whatever reason, in 1991 vaccinating all newborns against disease contracted by exchange of dirty needles, contaminated blood, and sexual contact became official CDC policy because the at risk populations didn't want it themselves.

Aw, did I say 'for whatever reason?'  I fudged.  The CDC told us their reason.  Here's what the CDC said in their own literature about this change (I find this a shocking admission):

“In the United States, most infections occur among adults and adolescents ... The recommended strategy for preventing these infections has been the selective vaccination of persons with identified risk factors ... However, this strategy has not lowered the incidence of hepatitis B, primarily because vaccinating persons engaged in high-risk behaviors, life-styles, or occupations before they become infected generally has not been feasible ... Efforts to vaccinate persons in the major risk groups have had limited success. For example, programs directed at injecting drug users failed to motivate them to receive three doses of vaccine ... In the
United States it has become evident that HBV transmission cannot be prevented through vaccinating only the groups at high risk of infection
... In the long term, universal infant vaccination would eliminate the
need for vaccinating adolescents and high-risk adults ... Hepatitis B vaccination is recommended for all infants, regardless of the HBsAg status of the mother ... The first dose can be administered during the newborn period, preferably before the infant is discharged from the hospital, but no later than when the infant is 2 months of age ...”

And that is why all infants are immunized for a sexually transmitted disease.  Not because it's good for them.  But because it's easier for the drug companies.  There's also the off chance that they might grow up to be in one of the above high risk groups, and they might still choose not to follow through with their own immunizations to protect their own health.

I think this is a terrible reason to vaccinate a newborn for a sexually transmitted disease for which he is not at risk. I think it also demonstrates that parents who worry that the vaccine schedule is not motivated primarily by concern for the well-being of infants are not idiots. There is a reason to be mistrustful of CDC advice. There is a very good reason to question their advice in regard to other vaccinations.

This change to the vaccination schedule had NOTHING to do with the health, safety, and well being of your baby or mine. In fact, this decision was made with a total disregard for the health and well being of our children. As it turns out, this decision is even worse than a cynic like me could have imagined.

The Compleat Mother has Michael Belkin's 1999 testimony before Congress on the Heb B vaccine. It's very sad reading, because it killed his child. That's the source of the above quote with all the ellipses. And Belkin shoots from the hip as he explains just how much the CDC has abused their position and lost all moral authority and claims to our trust:

Perhaps any attempt at prevention would be a good bet if the vaccine were harmless, but it's not. Today there are more reports of adverse reactions from the vaccine than there are reported cases of the disease in children. Data created by the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in 1996 confirm 872 serious adverse events in children under 14 years of age who had been injected with Hepatitis B vaccine. These kids were either taken to an emergency room, had life-threatening health problems, were hospitalized, or were disabled following the vaccination. 214 had the Hepatitis B vaccine alone, and the rest received it in combination with other vaccines. 48 kids died after being injected with Hepatitis B vaccine in 1996, and 13 of them had received the Hepatitis B vaccine alone just before they died. In contrast, in 1996 only 279 cases of Hepatitis B disease were reported in children under age 14.

We need to realize, too, that a significant number of those 279 cases of kids under 14 who had Hep B may not have included any infants at all. The CDC recommended a vaccine for a disease infants do not get (unless their mothers have it), and subsequently there were more infants suffering adverse effects from the vaccine than there were members from the entire population 14 and under who got the disease, and yet the CDC continues to recommend it. I have even heard of people who found their infants had been vaccinated in the hospital for Heb B and without their consent.

So, no, 'because the CDC said so' is not a good reason to me. If it was an infant's well being the CDC was concerned about, they never would have recommended the Hep B for infants, or, once they found more adverse reactions than actual cases of Hep B, they would have revised their vaccine schedule.

They haven't. If they could do something as heinous as this, why would I trust them to make decisions for my child's safety?

Requiring the Heb B vaccine is an abuse of their position- an ongoing abuse.

Doctors will now give you a whole list of reasons why infants should be given the Hep B vaccine before they leave the hospital. Understand that every one of those reasons was created after the fact, it's scare mongering, boogey man creating- arguments made up in response to backlash against the CDC's original clearly stated reason that adding the Hep B vaccine to the newborn schedule would " eliminate the need for vaccinating adolescents and high-risk adults."  Your doctor may well be utterly sincere when he tells you that babies can get Hep B and makes it sound like it's fairly common.  That's because doctors are not immune to peer pressure and conditioning any more than any other adult.  You will find more doctors who respect a decision not to give the Hep B vaccine than any other, but you won't find many even in those groups who will realize the implications of the CDC's behavior in adding the Hep B vaccine to the schedule.

  There was not a rash of outbreaks in daycare centers, hospitals, or homes. There was a problem with unvaccinated at risk adults refusing to vaccinate, so the CDC took it to newborns who couldn't fight back, and used scare tactics that make parents afraid to stand up to these 'experts,' and ignored the fact that more newborns have an adverse reaction than have the disease- and this will always be the case because infants are not in a high risk category for Hep B.

To make matters even worse- the vaccine given to infants may not even confer life long immunity. So by the time they might actually choose to become part of the high risk population, their immunity may well have worn off.

Nobody cares about your baby like you do. The CDC certainly doesn't.

You may read all this and decide you still want to follow the full vaccination schedule.  That is entirely your right.  I don't think you're an idiot or a scaredy cat if you vaccinate.  I just want people to understand the other side- those who don't vaccinate have their reasons, too, and they aren't idiots, either.  The medical community and other herd immunity proponents also prefer to focus vaccination discussions on the idea that people who don't vaccinate all don't do so because they imagine there is an autism connection.  That is not the only reason for parents to choose an alternative schedule or to skip vaccinations altogether.

Parents have the right to make the best decisions they can for their children based on the best information they can find, not on the basis of "Because the CDC said so, that's why."  The Hep B decision the CDC made canceled that card.


Links to this series of posts:

Part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
post-script