Tricotomania and more

I have been reading a bit of Barbara Kingsolver lately. I had read her fiction several years ago but only recently discovered her non-fiction. I finished her most recent book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been mulling over a post inspired by that book for a while but for various reasons haven’t got around to it. Becky posted some interesting thoughts on it yesterday that have motivated me to find the time (and the words). Go read her post, too, as it connects with a previous post of hers on scientific knowledge and the woeful lack thereof. Mother Crone has also posted about it and how it has inspired her to organize their household food differently.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, the book chronicles a year of feeding her family with local food. Barring a couple of exceptions, like coffee, they either grew what they ate or bought it from local producers, preferably ones that they knew. Unlike some other books (like one reviewed by Liz here), Kingsolver takes a very practical approach to feeding her family in a more sustainable way. Her goal is to reduce her impact on the environment, reconnect with the source of food, and gain a better perspective on a whole range of related issues. There is no hard and fast set of rules here (like "everything must come from within 100 miles") but rather a set of principles that guide their decisions. Her husband, Stephen Hopp, provides some scientific detail in each chapter and her daughter, Camille, adds the perspective of a young adult as well as some recipes.

Kingsolver writes beautifully and is worth reading for the quality of the writing alone. But as I have read her essays and then this book length work, I have also found many things that resonate with my own values. She is a working mother, albeit one who can work from home with a fairly flexible schedule. And she does a pretty good job of speaking to an audience of busy people who want to change things but may be put off by some of the more radical versions of a sustainable lifestyle. She doesn’t come across as someone who would chastise you for not doing enough. They decided to go the whole hog, but then they had a piece of agricultural land, experience of vegetable gardening on a reasonable scale, experience of keeping chickens, and those aforementioned flexible jobs.

In fact, the book uses this experiment more as a narrative spine on which to hang a set of reflections on food politics, health, and so on than as a manifesto for a radical political experiment. Even if you don’t change anything about how you eat or buy food, you will learn a lot about the food you eat from this book and why it is the way it is. As such, it would be a useful book for those concerned about food additives, as SamDuck is (see her post on trying to go additive-free).

Among the interesting points, is the extent to which various food related health problems, from obesity to e-coli scares, are related to changes in food production techniques. There are plenty of ways to take action on some of the political issues raised by this book (and others). Changing your own eating habits is only one of them. For folks living in the US, activism around the Farm Bill would also be worthwhile. But changing your food habits is probably a good idea, for several reasons.

Most people will think of their health. And there are significant health benefits related to all those issues about additives, hormones, chemical residues, disease resistant bugs, and acid-tolerant e-coli. In addition, if you are eating locally grown, home cooked food, I’m willing to bet that a lot of high-calorie, low nutrition food is just going to disappear from your diet with tangible benefits for your weight, and general level of health.

Others would make a strong argument for taste and I would be one of them. Food that has to travel a long way is bred to enable it to withstand those conditions and taste often gets a lower priority. Also, many foods lose their flavour over time. The taste of peas and corn picked fresh from your garden is far superior to anything that has waited longer to get to your table. In fact, I know of some recipe books that recommend that you buy a good brand of frozen peas or corn over supermarket ones precisely because they will have been frozen sooner after picking, before too many of the sugars have turned to starch.

Becky has discussed the relationship between food habits and scientific knowledge relating Kingsolver’s discussion to her own experience of raising (and homeschooling) kids on a farm. Knowing where your food comes from means knowing something about biology and the relationship between cause and effect and so on.

We shouldn’t underestimate how far many people are from the knowledge of where food comes from. I recall a student of mine (when I was in the UK) telling me about the time that she and her daugher picked blackberries from the bushes along their fence. They had lots and took a bowl of them to the neighbour in whose garden the bushes actually grow. On being offered the berries, the neighbour looked horrified, threw the berries away and admonished her daughter not to eat them "because they are poisonous". The same neighbour had refused fresh potatoes from her allotment garden because they were dirty. I won’t even tell you what I think of carnivores who don’t want the meat they are eating to look anything like the animal it came from nor hear about it being killed. I have an even lower opinion of people who shun the eating of only certain animals on the grounds that they are "cute".

Beyond health, taste and knowledge, there are important political and economic issues to consider. The more of our food production that is in the hands of large multi-national corporations, the less control we have over it. Already the US has very weak labelling regulations that make it extremely difficult for consumers to exercise what power they might have in a free market. (I’m equally disturbed by the fact that the relevant government department in Canada is called Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.) Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett were rather prescient in making Famine (one of the 4 horsemen of the apocolypse) the CEO of a fast food chain in their novel Good Omens.

Lots of folks have some sort of nostalgia for the family farm, but if you eat vegetables out of season and mostly buy your food from large chain supermarkets, your are much more likely to be supporting some big corporate farming organization with the wherewithal to produce vegetables all year round in sufficient quantity to supply that demand. Folks like Audrey rely on folks like you coming out to pick your own strawberries from her relatively small farm (in the years when the weather doesn’t decimate her crop). There still are small farmers out there. It may take a bit more work to find them and you might have to give up the convenience of one stop shopping (not to mention tomatoes in December) but the impact on your local economy might be significant. It isn’t only in the third world that all the profits go whizzing out of the local economy to inflate the coffers of a few rich people somewhere else.

In sum, I would highly recommend reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and reflecting on what you learn there.  You don’t need to treat it as  you would any number of diets with catchy names that you might try for a while and give up on. But you might give serious consideration to how you might begin to incorporate some of these principles into your own life in ways that might be sustainable. I would also recommend Liz’s One Local Summer. Even though she has closed registrations to keep the project under control, you could take her advice without the need to blog about it. And reading the blogs of those who have signed up could be very inspiring.

The beauty of OLS is that it is about starting somewhere. One of the Stephen Hopp authored boxes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle gives good statistical evidence supporting the value of even small steps (Mother Crone talks about this here). Instead of being overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, and consequently doing nothing, it is worth taking that first small step and seeing where it takes you.

Sometimes it is worth focusing on the goal and seeing how close we are getting, but sometimes it is worth just starting down a better road and keeping going, even if the destination is so far away we have trouble imagining ever getting there. Because even when we can see the destination it is sometimes hard to tell if it is a small thing or a big thing seen from a great distance. Only by approaching it will we work this out. And then we need the stamina to keep moving. Don’t start by sprinting. If it turns out to be further than you think, you’ll run out of energy before you get there. Set a pace you can sustain for a while if you need to. It might take longer, but you’ll get there eventually.

I have kept up with the breadmaking, though I destroyed my sourdough by not finding a babysitter for it when we went to BC in April (black mold, very interesting). Personally, I find breadmaking a bit like knitting in that it is nice to have a pattern/recipe but when you get the hang of the basics, you can basically wing it.

I thought some folks might be interested in one recipe I seem to have developed that my family are pretty keen on. I’ll give amounts for 1 loaf though I often double it and make 2 at a time. I make bread by hand, using a wooden spoon and then my hands. I have no idea how bread makers work so if you use one you’ll have to make your own adjustments.

Also, I’m not convinced that bread making is an exact science. Amounts are approximate. I kind of go with how it feels. In particular I don’t add all the flour at once. I add enough to make it difficult to stir with a wooden spoon, and then add the rest as I knead until it feels right. My rough guideline is that you need about 5 cups of flour total to make a loaf of bread. I count oats as flour.

Oatmeal Molasses Bread

2 teaspoons dried yeast

a tablespoon of molasses (what I do is a big gloop but I suspect it is about a tablespoon)

1 1/3 cups of hot tap water

1 tsp (or large pinch) salt

1 cup steel cut oats

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 cups (maybe, see note about kneading the last bit in) white bread flour

2 tablespoons (again with the large gloop) oil (I use olive oil but use what you have)

Put the yeast, molasses, salt and water in a large mixing bowl. Stir to dissolve molasses. Add the steel cut oats. This will be very liquid. Leave to stand until it is all foamy. (I put the oats in now so they soften up a bit. As long as it is liquid, the yeast is happy to do its thing.)

Mix in the oil, the whole wheat flour and then maybe 1 cup of the white flour. It should hold together at this point and you can tip it out of the bowl onto your clean countertop. Knead, incorporating extra flour until it doesn’t stick to the counter. (If you have forgotten the oil, as I often do, you can incorporate that at this stage, too. Make a little well, pour in some oil, fold the dough over it and knead.) I try to err on the side of not enough flour. It still feels sticky on my hands though it isn’t pulling the dough apart. Keep kneading. You will feel the texture of the dough change. In most recipes the thing you are aiming for is described as silky but I’ve never worked out what they mean. I knead until I get sick of kneading, more or less. It does get less sticky.

Put a bit of oil in the bottom of your mixing bowl (or a clean one if you prefer), plunk your dough in there, turn it over to coat in oil, put a clean tea towel over the bowl (dampen it if you like especially if you are prone to forgetting that you have bread rising; this will keep the top from drying out) and leave it for a couple of hours. It’ll double in size.

Punch down your dough. Plunk it on the countertop and knead it a bit more. (If you are making multiple loaves, split into however many you are making now.) Shape into loaves and put in loaf pans. Cover with that tea towel and leave to rise (until it rises above the edge the way a loaf is supposed to look).

Heat the oven to 375F (despite the fact that Canada went metric years ago, our ovens are still in Fahrenheit). Put the loaves in and bake for 35 minutes. They should sound hollow when you knock on them. Let cool out of the pans.

Of course you don’t have to make loaf shaped loaves. I’ve also shaped it into a ball and stuck it on a cookie sheet. Or you could make dinner rolls or something.

You could use a different sweetener than molasses though molasses gives the bread a nice brown colour and a flavour that I like with the oats (or maybe just generally). You can leave the sugar out altogether, probably, especially as the oats will give the yeast enough starch (if it needs any).

If you are new to breadmaking, you might find that the bread turns out not quite as you like it. You might need to experiment a bit to work out how to get the texture that you like. Altitude will make a difference. It is also pretty easy to find information on how to make crustier loaves (humidity and higher temperature for at least part of the time are involved) if that’s how you like ‘em. You aren’t a professional baker, so your bread doesn’t have to turn out exactly the same each time. I’m usually aiming for edible and tasty.

My friend’s partner’s family has obviously realized that excluding her from the hospital room while S. was dying was wrong. They mentioned her as a long time friend (sorry, I don’t have the exact wording) in the obituary. They have asked her to be part of the receiving line at the funeral tomorrow. They have invited her to the private (family) interment at the cemetery on Thursday.

Some of her other friends still think it is too late and what they did last week was unforgivable. I’m not very good at this church thing but it seems to me that forgiveness is one of the most important things Jesus preached. Also one of the most difficult to do. So I’m thinking that it is best to see this in a positive light.

My friend is very sad. She started to cry before church today and then apologized saying she thought she’d finished with the tears. I figure 30 years gets a lot more than a week of tears. I’m going to try to get over to see her and bring fresh lettuce from the garden and some homebaked bread. We all need to eat. And it is the hardest thing to organize in grief.

Go have a look at the 7th Country Fair. There are a bunch of great posts in there on the theme of diversity.

One of my church friends has lost her partner of 30 years. They are older lesbians and have never lived together (not being open about their relationship for many of those years) and never married. Her partner has been ill and in a local palliative care hospital. My friend was not at her side when she died at 9:30 this morning. Her partner’s sister has kicked her out of the hospital room a couple of days ago. I’m not sure if she tried to get the hospital staff to allow her in anyway, or what. Perhaps she was not in an emotional place where she wanted to fight.

M. found out by checking the messages on her phone just before the service started this morning. At least someone called. The minister prayed with her at communion. And friends in the church comforted her after the service. As she noted, at least she was in church when she found out.

This is what relationship recognition means. Recognizing M.’s grief as real and legitimate. And her love and support for her dying partner as real and legitimate. We’re on our way to this. But we still have a way to go.

I’ve been reading Melvyn Bragg’s 12 Books that Changed the World. It is very interesting and I highly recommend it. In the chapter on Faraday, there was a great line that resonates with Becky’s discussion of The Dangerous Book for Boys and discussions that come up from time to time about university.

Bragg recounts that Faraday apprenticed to a bookbinder and did much of his learning by reading the books being bound and then started doing experiments in the small furnace in the basement of the business in the evenings. Then he says this:

It is notable how many who have made significant, even crucial, contributions to our country [Great Britain] and to the world began young and without benefit of university education. Shakespeare left school at sixteen and sidestepped the university experience so prized by many of his contemporaries. Nelson, not only a hero in war but a brilliant strategist, joined the navy when he was twelve, as did so many who went on to form the most formidable navy the world has seen. For a twelve-year-old to join the navy would be thought a scandal today, just as Faraday’s employers would be sent to court for allowing the young boy to do experiments in a furnace. Yet that early training may have made him. The experimental standards he set and the heights to which he rose through their pursuit inspired generations of young people to conduct their own juvenile experiments and, like Faraday, acquire the taste, the practice, when young. Not any more. Health and safety regulations applied with little concern for thought have driven the exciting parts of chemistry and physics out of the laboratories and out of the curriculum, and many of the best pupils have switched to other subjects as a result. Faraday and Nelson are just two examples of what seems to be a common thread — look at Newton, at Darwin, at Mary Wollstonecraft — that the  best way to travel far, farther than before, is to start in early adolescence.

And he might have added (though it would be apparent if you were reading the whole book) that most of those people were self-taught. They were enthusiasts who pursued a subject that fascinated them diligently over several years, often outside of the formal structures of education.

On the principle that we should study topics that we know have good quality non-fiction at an appropriate level written about them, we are learning about the Dust Bowl. Starting with the recommendation in the Zarnowski book, we are reading one fictional account — Out of the Dust — and addressing head-on the difference between historical fiction and non-fiction.

[photo not transferred from typepad]As suggested by Zarnowski, we are making a chart to sort out what we know is fact, what we know is fiction, and what we aren’t sure about. I decided to use a sheet of 11″ x 16″ paper divided in thirds so we had lots of room for those notes. (You can make the picture bigger by clicking but I’m not sure you’ll be able to read more than the headings.)

Today we started reading Children of the Dust Bowl (which Zarnowski recommends as a non-fiction pairing) and we have Michael L. Cooper’s Dust to Eat. Both of these are well written and have lots of photographs to illustrate them.

Of course, there are lots of photographs of this period available, thanks to one of the New Deal programs to employ artists. Se we also have a book about Dorothea Lange. And a CD of Woody Guthrie songs of the period.

To extend our study into science somewhat, we have a book about Soil, which includes a case study of the Dust Bowl, and one about Wheat.

I found all this on our library catalogue, btw. One of my strategies is to click on the subjects listed for a book I know I want and see what else is there. In the process, I also found this book about the 2002 drought in the Canadian West. It looks pretty densely written and I’m not sure if we will get to it or not.

We’re approaching this in a kind of flexible way. Lots of reading aloud. We’ll do some things that focus on the nature of the writing. We’ll talk about some of the ecological and socio-economic issues. We’ll talk about the art. I’m finding it easier to have half a plan and go with the flow a bit, than to spend lots of time planning out all the activities we can do and then be frustrated when Tigger isn’t interested.

I don’t know much about the Dust Bowl myself, so we are learning about this together. And that is part of the fun of it.

How unlike me to actually try this on a Tuesday. But we did. And it
went really well. I had 5 kids (Tigger and 4 friends that we often get
together with for learning adventures) and it was hard to get them to
stop reading poetry. I ended up telling them they could save some for
next time.

"There will be a next time?"

You bet.

(Those strawberries were picked out of my garden this afternoon. First of the season. Hurray! the dishes were my grandmothers.)

I started spinning this silk (from Treenway Silks) so long ago I’ve forgotten. Was it 2 years? But the other day I got it out again and got going on it and have spun up all but that little bit of fluff you see in the photo.

I spun it fine on the spindle and navajo plied it to maintain the distinct colours. I have about 160 yards varying somewhat in both thickness and twist. The original weight of fibre was 25 g/1 oz. It is still pretty fine even though a 3-ply yarn.

I have had a lacy scarf in mind from the first little skein off the spindle. Yesterday I leafed through my Harmony Guides and found a stitch pattern I liked and just cast on. The first needle choice wasn’t right, so I ripped and started again. I’m using 3.5mm needles, the Butterfly pattern, and a tubular cast-on as described in a scarf I’ve knit a couple of times from a summer issue of Vogue Knitting (2005?). It will be a skinny lacy non-reversible scarf, possibly with beaded fringe. One of the colours matches a pair of linen trousers I have almost perfectly so it’ll dress up some things I already have quite nicely.

I have quite enjoyed spinning this. And the knitting is going quickly. Another shot of just the scarf:

There is a great post up at Life Without School. I really like Tammy’s ideas and I think they connect to things I’ve said in the past about career planning.