Sorry, folks, but I've got to stop fooling myself. This blog endeavor is about over. For awhile it was nice to get my thoughts together on certain things and the responses I received were for the most part heartening. I laughed and learned and enjoyed all the blogs I read. You are friends to me and I will always remember you in my heart.
But life is too full for me to be spending lots of time on the Internet. And to be a good blogger, you ought to do your homework and offer something of value to your readers (I felt). But too much of my study was becoming "how to save a lot of money so the disaster won't affect you." And in the end I decided this was not the focus I wanted. I didn't want my focus to be too much on money and on the imminent [insert pet apocalyptic fear here], and not on God and my kids and making the best quality of life for my family.
I don't know what the turning point was. But reading Bud Macfarlane's novel Pierced by a Sword (available free from Catholicity.com) was a watershed for me. Here it was, all my worst fears--played out in a Midwest setting peopled with thoroughly Catholic characters. I lived my worst fears through that book, and I survived. I learned that what matters when the stuffin' hits the fan is not how much money you saved or how much food you hoarded, but how much you loved your family, and how much you loved and served God. And death is not the worst thing that can happen to us.
I love writing, and people have told me that I'm a good writer...but I'm still discerning how this gift of mine is to be used. I gave it to God with this blog, but maybe He's telling me it's time to shut it down and use it for something else. (and I will be trying to stay off the Internet for everything except e-mail, and the occasional urgent inquiry, so comments may not be responded to).
Sometimes you have to shut out the world, as much as you can, and just listen. I have been quiet enough to hear some things that seemed like maybe God was trying to tell me something. I'll share them with you:
1. Take every opportunity to empty yourself.
2. Fear sin more than any intruder.
3. You need never fear to place yourself entirely in my hands. I will always give you what you need to accomplish my will.
There's more--a little mission, if you will. I don't believe God is "talking" to me, exactly, but occasionally I feel my eyes opened to some truth that seems spiritually profitable. Always I am guided by what I hear at Mass, by what I read as the constant teaching of the Church, and the virtues. If I am ever in doubt, I reject the thought as soon as I can, and content myself with just listening.
We all have jobs to do for God. Some may not be very glorious, or notable (by human standards), but they are just as important to Jesus. Even our suffering (especially our suffering) bears the most spiritual potential and deserves a far more extensive treatment than I've been able to offer here. So here's to it--and discernment of our destinies. Thanks everyone and I love you.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Coin of the Realm
One of the things that makes being in the Midwest with my husband's family a pleasure is the ability to attend family events, such as the wedding we went to yesterday of cousin Jenny, the daughter of the last man in the family to own the family farm ("Did they get all the manure out from behind my ears?" she was heard to ask. She looked lovely.)
We went to church again today...and as I was looking up at the incredibly uglified high altar and trying to have these "deep thoughts" (which I kinda think might be as close as I can get to actually speaking with the Lord), I got this insight:
Some days I think I have it bad, sweating and swearing through the bad moments and then offering a quick Hail Mary and hoping I can get to confession soon. But I've never had to watch my child die. I've never been incapacitated by some illness or injury or been unable to feed or take care of my kids. Looking on the suffering of others, comforting pablum runs through my head--offer it up, offer it up--but never out of my mouth. I feel I cannot speak unless I have suffered much. We all suffer in various ways, large and small. The point I want to make is, suffering is not just some pitiful useless experience we have to endure.
In Catholic mysticism, suffering is the "coin of the realm" in heaven. So many people simply cry and curse their way through it. But we have the capacity to offer it to God and ask Him to use it for His will. The keys are, we have to accept it, we need to thank God for it, and eventually we will learn to praise Him and feel joy about it. I knew all this, but I didn't know what it looked like.
Now I know. We have these friends who live an hour or so away. They don't make much money, and they are used to living on a shoestring. Well, the four children in this family are--thin. Pitifully so. The mom is well-meaning, but she is trying to raise these kids on a diet with very little fat and meat. We went over there for the 4th of July and there was nothing prepared for lunch. Some confusion followed. We didn't want to impose. Should we run to the store? The answer: no. Our hostess began to rummage around in the fridge (no woman wants to receive company and not have something to put on the table). One of the girls asked, "Mom, what about the chicken?" "Daddy was hoping to get several more meals out of that," was the reply. Shocked, I stood stockstill and looked at DH, who only shrugged.
She brought out a scant pint of leftover baked beans, a bag of salad, and two fistfuls of grapes. There were six hungry kids sitting around the table, not including the adults. I put some beans in two bowls for my kids, and I realized I was taking food out of the mouths of her kids, so I tried to make the portions small. I even put a spoonful back (surreptitiously). At that point the baby was fussing so I took him upstairs. Getting down on my knees I held my well-fed baby and cried. "Lord, just get them some food. I will suffer for them. I offer my suffering. Just please get them some food." The day went on like everything was OK, but I felt like I was in an alternate universe.
We can't avoid suffering. It's all around us. Dean's grandparents birthed eight children on that farm and were dedicated Catholics to the end. But somewhere along the way (I realized) Anne must have lost a child. Whether through miscarriage or illness, that particular suffering has always been "baked into the cake" of womanhood. Hasn't it? I mean, every generation of women (with the exception, perhaps, of the last few generations in industrialized societies), in the absense of birth control, would have experenced a succession of births--most of which resulted in live offspring, most of which survived to maturity. However, the lost children would have haunted the souls of these mothers in every generation (today, abortion produces a parallel form of pain, but it is of a different stripe). My God, how did they endure the pain? I wondered.
I'm sure you know people like our friends, or they have other problems, and you can't say anything, and they live too far away for you to help. Now with these pictures in my head, the whole offering-your-suffering thing is very real to me. Of course, our souls are more important than our bodies, but bodies are very hard to ignore. It's clear now to me that the path ahead of us may be rocky...but God wills for us to be instruments for His will--if we are willing to accept the treasure of our suffering, not only with endurance but with joy.
We went to church again today...and as I was looking up at the incredibly uglified high altar and trying to have these "deep thoughts" (which I kinda think might be as close as I can get to actually speaking with the Lord), I got this insight:
Some days I think I have it bad, sweating and swearing through the bad moments and then offering a quick Hail Mary and hoping I can get to confession soon. But I've never had to watch my child die. I've never been incapacitated by some illness or injury or been unable to feed or take care of my kids. Looking on the suffering of others, comforting pablum runs through my head--offer it up, offer it up--but never out of my mouth. I feel I cannot speak unless I have suffered much. We all suffer in various ways, large and small. The point I want to make is, suffering is not just some pitiful useless experience we have to endure.
In Catholic mysticism, suffering is the "coin of the realm" in heaven. So many people simply cry and curse their way through it. But we have the capacity to offer it to God and ask Him to use it for His will. The keys are, we have to accept it, we need to thank God for it, and eventually we will learn to praise Him and feel joy about it. I knew all this, but I didn't know what it looked like.
Now I know. We have these friends who live an hour or so away. They don't make much money, and they are used to living on a shoestring. Well, the four children in this family are--thin. Pitifully so. The mom is well-meaning, but she is trying to raise these kids on a diet with very little fat and meat. We went over there for the 4th of July and there was nothing prepared for lunch. Some confusion followed. We didn't want to impose. Should we run to the store? The answer: no. Our hostess began to rummage around in the fridge (no woman wants to receive company and not have something to put on the table). One of the girls asked, "Mom, what about the chicken?" "Daddy was hoping to get several more meals out of that," was the reply. Shocked, I stood stockstill and looked at DH, who only shrugged.
She brought out a scant pint of leftover baked beans, a bag of salad, and two fistfuls of grapes. There were six hungry kids sitting around the table, not including the adults. I put some beans in two bowls for my kids, and I realized I was taking food out of the mouths of her kids, so I tried to make the portions small. I even put a spoonful back (surreptitiously). At that point the baby was fussing so I took him upstairs. Getting down on my knees I held my well-fed baby and cried. "Lord, just get them some food. I will suffer for them. I offer my suffering. Just please get them some food." The day went on like everything was OK, but I felt like I was in an alternate universe.
We can't avoid suffering. It's all around us. Dean's grandparents birthed eight children on that farm and were dedicated Catholics to the end. But somewhere along the way (I realized) Anne must have lost a child. Whether through miscarriage or illness, that particular suffering has always been "baked into the cake" of womanhood. Hasn't it? I mean, every generation of women (with the exception, perhaps, of the last few generations in industrialized societies), in the absense of birth control, would have experenced a succession of births--most of which resulted in live offspring, most of which survived to maturity. However, the lost children would have haunted the souls of these mothers in every generation (today, abortion produces a parallel form of pain, but it is of a different stripe). My God, how did they endure the pain? I wondered.
I'm sure you know people like our friends, or they have other problems, and you can't say anything, and they live too far away for you to help. Now with these pictures in my head, the whole offering-your-suffering thing is very real to me. Of course, our souls are more important than our bodies, but bodies are very hard to ignore. It's clear now to me that the path ahead of us may be rocky...but God wills for us to be instruments for His will--if we are willing to accept the treasure of our suffering, not only with endurance but with joy.
Monday, June 30, 2008
In defense...part II
Nourishing Traditions is full of little gems. It is a big, thick book, rather like a telephone book in aspect, yet it is concisely (if not tersely) written. In an effort to save money, I went on the Weston A. Price Foundation web site and read the articles there, thinking that would be a substitute for buying the book. While some of the nutritional information is repeated, drawn from some very extensive articles which have been published on the web site and elsewhere, the web site is no substitute for the book. I actually went to a Barnes and Noble storefront and asked for this book so I could dive right in. Here are just a few fun facts you will learn:
1. Did you know that rats fed Puffed Wheat died in two weeks?
2. That mice who were fed corn flakes died sooner than mice who were offered only the box?
3. We drink skim milk in an attempt to lose weight, but farmers use skim milk to fatten hogs.
4. Children who are fed butter rather than margarine are smarter, better physically proportioned, and have fewer cavities.
5. "Vegetable oil"--the savior of western civilization--is rancid from the moment it is processed, and has to be steam-cleaned to get rid of the smell.
6. Did you know that, due to its highly unstable chemical composition, the fatty acid molecules in vegetable oil cause cascades of free radicals, which cause levels of cholesterol in the blood to rise?
7. And yet--rather than a destructive factor within the body, cholesterol is the white knight here--the true hero. It's like a tireless plugging and patching team that your body sends out in order to contain these free radicals. Cholesterol is an antioxidant!
8. Our body's cells are 50% saturated fat.
9. Saturated fat is the preferred food for the heart.
10. Unsoaked whole grains and unfermented soy products rob the body of minerals.
While the front matter in the book is pretty earth-shaking in terms of toppling most dietary shibboleths erected in recent years, the sidebar information as you go through the book is just as eye-opening. But let me deal with some objections I noted when reading Amazon reviews of this book. There are over 200 reviews, which says something about this book: it may not be on airport book racks, but people are reading it.
The NT way of eating is downright dangerous.
This is in the eye of the beholder. Most studies showing a decrease in heart disease deaths due to cholesterol-lowering drugs or diets show an increase in death rates from all causes. Which one are you going to take your chances with? Several well-done studies audited by independent researchers show no correlation between deaths related to heart disease or artheriosclerosis and the consumption of butter, eggs, and red meat. A few studies show that butter and saturated fats appear to have a protective effect.
What happens is that the government, the American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association, and others (the Diet Dictocrats), cherry pick the studies they will publicize and which aspects of these studies the public will learn about--which the MSM then dutifully report to John Q. Public. Studies whose results seem to defy the diet-heart hypothesis are silenced, starved of funds, and ultimately shuttered. Hence you have people like my father-in-law who says he's not supposed to eat organ meats because they are high in cholesterol. There is absolutely no relationship between the amount of cholesterol in a food and the likelihood of it contributing to artheriosclerosis. The one exception is a form of oxidized cholesterol (present in powdered milk and powdered eggs, and in liquid lowfat milk), which did produce artheriosclerosis in rats. These are the foods we are supposed to eat to lower our cholesterol, and they actually contribute to heart disease!
Sally Fallon et al. have a thing against vegetarians.
This criticism was the most prevalent among the reviews. The reviewers were very emotional in their comments...but that should not be construed as reflecting an emotionalism (can I say that?) in the book. The book is unemotional. However, vegetarianism is the most deeply established alternate diet we have--many people are invested in it body, heart, and soul. I won't debate here whether vegetarianism is a good diet or not, but I will say that there are several points in the book where it's pointed out that pure vegetarian (vegan) diets are likely to contribute to a deficiency in fat-soluble vitamins (which come from animal products, primarily), some B vitamins and, if the grains/beans/legumes are unsoaked and unfermented, to the loss of minerals. Children in particular are profoundly affected by the lack of animal fat in the diet, and this is very sad to see.
On the other hand, a form of "vegetarianism" is followed in some cultures (more out of necessity than choice) which includes animal products in the form of eggs, raw and cultured dairy products, seafood, shrimp and fish eggs, and insects. These high-vitamin foods are sought-after commodities in these cultures, since they contain the all-important fat-soluble activators necessary for strength, long life, and healthy reproduction. The book notes that these more vegetarian cultures tend to suffer more from dental caries (as noted by Dr. Price) than others, but there are no diatribes against vegetarianism here.
The book is not well referenced.
I do not get this one at all. There are 63 footnoted pages of text explaining traditional foods, the role of certain substances in the diet (with an emphasis on fats), and the shortcomings of modern food processing and what can be done about it. There are 188 references listed in a separate section; most of these are research periodicals.
Sally Fallon is down on working moms.
"No one in modern America deserves more sympathy than the working parent on a limited budget....While it is not necessary to spend long hours in the kitchen in order to eat properly, it is necessary to spend some time in the kitchen. Simple, wholesome menus require careful planning rather than long hours of preparation...nutritious meals can be prepared very quickly when one lays the groundwork ahead of time. If your present schedule allows no time at all for food preparation, you would be wise to re-examine your priorities." There are two pages of simple hints and advice that anybody could follow.
Sally Fallon is down on moms who don't breastfeed.
"If, in spite of these measures, your milk supply is inadequate, don't feel guilty. Lack of adequate milk supply sometimes does occur, especially as baby grows and his appetite increases. You have done the best you could and your baby can still grow up healthy, strong and smart on a homemade, whole-food baby formula."
Soaked baked goods don't turn out.
There may be some credence to this criticism. I don't know all the recipes (there aren't many bread/baked goods recipes in the book). The one recipe I made produced some very decent sourdough bread. It turned out just as the book said--it was different, and boy was it sour! The good news is, you don't have to be a purist. Although refined flour is bad for the body, you don't have to eat it by the truckload. Making your own bread (even if it breaks the NT rules) is still better than buying stuff from the store; it's fresher, tastes better, and you can buy a bag of top-quality flour for the same price you'll pay for a loaf of the good stuff. If you do that, you will rely less on pre-made bread products for the foundation of your diet--lowering your overall intake of refined carbohydrates. Without all the flour-based products from the store, and with a few home-made loaves and a batch of cornbread or muffins now and then, your protective fats will take care of you.
Sally Fallon and Mary Enig reference their own works.
This is to be expected, after one has written a number of extended/scholarly works (which Mary Enig has done) and is now contributing to a book intended for a general audience.
The recommended foods/supplements are too expensive.
After reading The Maker's Diet, I had the same thought: how is everybody supposed to get a hold of raw milk and grass-fed meat? We don't all live in California and have Silicon Valley-sized incomes, bub. Don't even get me started on the supplements. This is not the case with NT. While it's true that if you want the ultimate cod-liver oil, it can get kinda spendy, the emphasis here is on putting the highest quality of food you can afford on the table. A philosophical shift might be helpful here. You will become convinced, reading this book, that the epidemic in degenerative disease afflicting Americans is due to our long-distance, highly processed mode of food production. A dollar spent today on high-quality food may save thousands in medical bills down the road. It is an investment, and you get to choose where you need to spend and where you can pull back. There are many, many simple ideas and techniques in the book that you can incorporate right now in your kitchen, lots of basic recipes and just a few key ingredients you can stock right away. Like lard.
The recipes/cooking methods take too much time.
This also would seem to be a criticism that sticks. But here again, we need to examine priorities. Do we really need to watch 3 hours of television a night? Do the kids really need to be trucking here and there to a different activity every afternoon/evening? Why can't Mom get some help in the kitchen? Perhaps the family needs to spend more time together, planting a square foot garden. Then everybody can get excited about eating food that tastes good and is good for you. And if all that Pollyannish stuff doesn't work out, Mom can just get sneaky. Pull out the margarine and substitute butter. Put liver in the tacos. Use brown rice pasta and less of it. More rice and potatoes and less bread. No more bottled salad dressing. Soak everything.
Personally, I used to stress about every meal when I first started using this book. Then I realized that if I just took 5 minutes every night to think through the next day's meals, everything went so much more smoothly. I could soak the oatmeal or the beans, get some stock going to simmer through the night, pull out meat from the freezer, or if all else fails, make a shopping list and figure out how I can procure the stuff I need. Sometimes it can be difficult to locate a crucial ingredient. NT has a Sources page that is invaluable, especially if you want to try making something exotic, like kombucha. The Internet, of course, offers a lot of different packaged goods. And then again, different areas of the country have access to different foodstuffs. I could go to Trader Joe's and Wild Oats in Washington but they don't have that here. On the other hand, I can buy meat and milk directly from a farm. And lard from local hogs.
***
This is long, and sometimes I wonder why I stay up to write about such things. Is a review of Nourishing Traditions really that important? I think it is, and I'll tell you why. Because when you read about Dr. Price and what he learned about the impact of nutrition on the body (not just the teeth), you will realize that being in the home, cooking fresh high-quality food for your family, is the most important thing you can do. All the things modernity has brought us, all the activities (for better or for worse) have tempted us away from the table and pushed us toward the TV tray. Fast, flash-frozen, microwaved meals and reheated pizza--no wonder we are all fat and exhausted. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke--they wait at the end of our lives for us and what can we do to protect ourselves? More immediately, when a child is born and the birth is difficult, or the child has physical problems, it is absolutely searing for the parents. When that child grows up and has allergies, learning disabilities, childhood diseases or cancer, everyone suffers. Poor nutrition in the parents is a death sentence for the next generation.
The health care crisis in this country has a lot of factors involved in it--but one of the most preventable causes, one over which we have the most control, is what we put on our table and what we put in our mouths. We have the power to heal ourselves and it is worth making it a priority. And, as housewives, we literally hold our family's health and well-being in our hands.
1. Did you know that rats fed Puffed Wheat died in two weeks?
2. That mice who were fed corn flakes died sooner than mice who were offered only the box?
3. We drink skim milk in an attempt to lose weight, but farmers use skim milk to fatten hogs.
4. Children who are fed butter rather than margarine are smarter, better physically proportioned, and have fewer cavities.
5. "Vegetable oil"--the savior of western civilization--is rancid from the moment it is processed, and has to be steam-cleaned to get rid of the smell.
6. Did you know that, due to its highly unstable chemical composition, the fatty acid molecules in vegetable oil cause cascades of free radicals, which cause levels of cholesterol in the blood to rise?
7. And yet--rather than a destructive factor within the body, cholesterol is the white knight here--the true hero. It's like a tireless plugging and patching team that your body sends out in order to contain these free radicals. Cholesterol is an antioxidant!
8. Our body's cells are 50% saturated fat.
9. Saturated fat is the preferred food for the heart.
10. Unsoaked whole grains and unfermented soy products rob the body of minerals.
While the front matter in the book is pretty earth-shaking in terms of toppling most dietary shibboleths erected in recent years, the sidebar information as you go through the book is just as eye-opening. But let me deal with some objections I noted when reading Amazon reviews of this book. There are over 200 reviews, which says something about this book: it may not be on airport book racks, but people are reading it.
The NT way of eating is downright dangerous.
This is in the eye of the beholder. Most studies showing a decrease in heart disease deaths due to cholesterol-lowering drugs or diets show an increase in death rates from all causes. Which one are you going to take your chances with? Several well-done studies audited by independent researchers show no correlation between deaths related to heart disease or artheriosclerosis and the consumption of butter, eggs, and red meat. A few studies show that butter and saturated fats appear to have a protective effect.
What happens is that the government, the American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association, and others (the Diet Dictocrats), cherry pick the studies they will publicize and which aspects of these studies the public will learn about--which the MSM then dutifully report to John Q. Public. Studies whose results seem to defy the diet-heart hypothesis are silenced, starved of funds, and ultimately shuttered. Hence you have people like my father-in-law who says he's not supposed to eat organ meats because they are high in cholesterol. There is absolutely no relationship between the amount of cholesterol in a food and the likelihood of it contributing to artheriosclerosis. The one exception is a form of oxidized cholesterol (present in powdered milk and powdered eggs, and in liquid lowfat milk), which did produce artheriosclerosis in rats. These are the foods we are supposed to eat to lower our cholesterol, and they actually contribute to heart disease!
Sally Fallon et al. have a thing against vegetarians.
This criticism was the most prevalent among the reviews. The reviewers were very emotional in their comments...but that should not be construed as reflecting an emotionalism (can I say that?) in the book. The book is unemotional. However, vegetarianism is the most deeply established alternate diet we have--many people are invested in it body, heart, and soul. I won't debate here whether vegetarianism is a good diet or not, but I will say that there are several points in the book where it's pointed out that pure vegetarian (vegan) diets are likely to contribute to a deficiency in fat-soluble vitamins (which come from animal products, primarily), some B vitamins and, if the grains/beans/legumes are unsoaked and unfermented, to the loss of minerals. Children in particular are profoundly affected by the lack of animal fat in the diet, and this is very sad to see.
On the other hand, a form of "vegetarianism" is followed in some cultures (more out of necessity than choice) which includes animal products in the form of eggs, raw and cultured dairy products, seafood, shrimp and fish eggs, and insects. These high-vitamin foods are sought-after commodities in these cultures, since they contain the all-important fat-soluble activators necessary for strength, long life, and healthy reproduction. The book notes that these more vegetarian cultures tend to suffer more from dental caries (as noted by Dr. Price) than others, but there are no diatribes against vegetarianism here.
The book is not well referenced.
I do not get this one at all. There are 63 footnoted pages of text explaining traditional foods, the role of certain substances in the diet (with an emphasis on fats), and the shortcomings of modern food processing and what can be done about it. There are 188 references listed in a separate section; most of these are research periodicals.
Sally Fallon is down on working moms.
"No one in modern America deserves more sympathy than the working parent on a limited budget....While it is not necessary to spend long hours in the kitchen in order to eat properly, it is necessary to spend some time in the kitchen. Simple, wholesome menus require careful planning rather than long hours of preparation...nutritious meals can be prepared very quickly when one lays the groundwork ahead of time. If your present schedule allows no time at all for food preparation, you would be wise to re-examine your priorities." There are two pages of simple hints and advice that anybody could follow.
Sally Fallon is down on moms who don't breastfeed.
"If, in spite of these measures, your milk supply is inadequate, don't feel guilty. Lack of adequate milk supply sometimes does occur, especially as baby grows and his appetite increases. You have done the best you could and your baby can still grow up healthy, strong and smart on a homemade, whole-food baby formula."
Soaked baked goods don't turn out.
There may be some credence to this criticism. I don't know all the recipes (there aren't many bread/baked goods recipes in the book). The one recipe I made produced some very decent sourdough bread. It turned out just as the book said--it was different, and boy was it sour! The good news is, you don't have to be a purist. Although refined flour is bad for the body, you don't have to eat it by the truckload. Making your own bread (even if it breaks the NT rules) is still better than buying stuff from the store; it's fresher, tastes better, and you can buy a bag of top-quality flour for the same price you'll pay for a loaf of the good stuff. If you do that, you will rely less on pre-made bread products for the foundation of your diet--lowering your overall intake of refined carbohydrates. Without all the flour-based products from the store, and with a few home-made loaves and a batch of cornbread or muffins now and then, your protective fats will take care of you.
Sally Fallon and Mary Enig reference their own works.
This is to be expected, after one has written a number of extended/scholarly works (which Mary Enig has done) and is now contributing to a book intended for a general audience.
The recommended foods/supplements are too expensive.
After reading The Maker's Diet, I had the same thought: how is everybody supposed to get a hold of raw milk and grass-fed meat? We don't all live in California and have Silicon Valley-sized incomes, bub. Don't even get me started on the supplements. This is not the case with NT. While it's true that if you want the ultimate cod-liver oil, it can get kinda spendy, the emphasis here is on putting the highest quality of food you can afford on the table. A philosophical shift might be helpful here. You will become convinced, reading this book, that the epidemic in degenerative disease afflicting Americans is due to our long-distance, highly processed mode of food production. A dollar spent today on high-quality food may save thousands in medical bills down the road. It is an investment, and you get to choose where you need to spend and where you can pull back. There are many, many simple ideas and techniques in the book that you can incorporate right now in your kitchen, lots of basic recipes and just a few key ingredients you can stock right away. Like lard.
The recipes/cooking methods take too much time.
This also would seem to be a criticism that sticks. But here again, we need to examine priorities. Do we really need to watch 3 hours of television a night? Do the kids really need to be trucking here and there to a different activity every afternoon/evening? Why can't Mom get some help in the kitchen? Perhaps the family needs to spend more time together, planting a square foot garden. Then everybody can get excited about eating food that tastes good and is good for you. And if all that Pollyannish stuff doesn't work out, Mom can just get sneaky. Pull out the margarine and substitute butter. Put liver in the tacos. Use brown rice pasta and less of it. More rice and potatoes and less bread. No more bottled salad dressing. Soak everything.
Personally, I used to stress about every meal when I first started using this book. Then I realized that if I just took 5 minutes every night to think through the next day's meals, everything went so much more smoothly. I could soak the oatmeal or the beans, get some stock going to simmer through the night, pull out meat from the freezer, or if all else fails, make a shopping list and figure out how I can procure the stuff I need. Sometimes it can be difficult to locate a crucial ingredient. NT has a Sources page that is invaluable, especially if you want to try making something exotic, like kombucha. The Internet, of course, offers a lot of different packaged goods. And then again, different areas of the country have access to different foodstuffs. I could go to Trader Joe's and Wild Oats in Washington but they don't have that here. On the other hand, I can buy meat and milk directly from a farm. And lard from local hogs.
***
This is long, and sometimes I wonder why I stay up to write about such things. Is a review of Nourishing Traditions really that important? I think it is, and I'll tell you why. Because when you read about Dr. Price and what he learned about the impact of nutrition on the body (not just the teeth), you will realize that being in the home, cooking fresh high-quality food for your family, is the most important thing you can do. All the things modernity has brought us, all the activities (for better or for worse) have tempted us away from the table and pushed us toward the TV tray. Fast, flash-frozen, microwaved meals and reheated pizza--no wonder we are all fat and exhausted. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke--they wait at the end of our lives for us and what can we do to protect ourselves? More immediately, when a child is born and the birth is difficult, or the child has physical problems, it is absolutely searing for the parents. When that child grows up and has allergies, learning disabilities, childhood diseases or cancer, everyone suffers. Poor nutrition in the parents is a death sentence for the next generation.
The health care crisis in this country has a lot of factors involved in it--but one of the most preventable causes, one over which we have the most control, is what we put on our table and what we put in our mouths. We have the power to heal ourselves and it is worth making it a priority. And, as housewives, we literally hold our family's health and well-being in our hands.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
In defense of lard
I was the Marion farmers' market this morning (which is about the size of two garages put together), and among the offerings, there was this lady selling antibiotic-free pork out of the back of a truck. While talking with her about the meat, I noticed she had a sign taped to her table. It said "LARD--$1.50 per pound--a natural, traditional fat". When I asked about it she said that somebody had once given her some red-and-white pamphlets and suggested that she sell the lard (which they were just throwing away). "I can't remember the group that it was for," she said. "The Weston Price Foundation," I supplied, being recently boned up on the subject. "Yeah, I think that was it," she said. Upon checking the cooler, she informed me that her son had left the lard at home. "Darn," I said. "It's like the Swiss Army Fat of the kitchen--I'll be back next week."
Lard keeps at room temperature, darn near indefinitely. It's cheap, it's chemically stable, won't rot your veins or your brain, you can fry anything in it and also use it in baked goods. And the taste is divine.
"But," you say. "It's LARD!"
Yes, this pantry staple of traditional kitchens has become something of a culinary curiosity in recent decades. Only your Aunt Patty and those Mexican people use lard anymore. A couple of grocery stores in our area (and there aren't many stores) don't even stock it. The version I eventually found includes hydrogenated lard, although it doesn't say how much. That kinda turned me off until I started cooking with it. I was so pleased that I moved the butter container over and placed it right on the counter. Still, I'd like to find a version from hormone-free hogs that didn't have that hydrogenated stuff in it. So I'll be going back.
Lard, butter, beef tallow, coconut oil, palm oil...these fair fats are so much fun to cook with, that if you get nothing else out of Nourishing Traditions, at least you will not believe those who attempt to demonize these fats. Cooking requires fat, OK? It doesn't matter what kind of diet you follow, but if you cook anything at home, you probably have some kind of fat on your shelves, whether it be Crisco, Imperial margarine, or "vegetable oil" (soybean oil). And--get this--our cells require fat. Yep. A dim memory surfaces...oh yeah...high school chemistry class in 1993, Nirvana all over the airwaves (and the clothes in the stores really sucked). The teacher was explaining how our cell walls are composed of "phospholipids" and only fat-soluble vitamins can get across that barrier. Hmmm...so our cells are 50% saturated fat, says Mrs. Fallon and Ms. Enig. So the one thing we are not supposed to eat is--saturated fat! OK...but we're supposed to eat a lot of vitamins! Especially synthetic ones. Oh, and eat lots and lots of vegetables...for the vitamins! But don't eat very much fat. Not.Much.At.All. OK. What's the downside here? Well, for one thing, people don't eat vegetables like that. It gives us gas (did you sit behind us in chemistry class??). But here's the kicker: YOU CAN'T ASSIMILATE THE VITAMINS WITHOUT ADEQUATE AMOUNTS OF SATURATED FATS!
To be continued...
Lard keeps at room temperature, darn near indefinitely. It's cheap, it's chemically stable, won't rot your veins or your brain, you can fry anything in it and also use it in baked goods. And the taste is divine.
"But," you say. "It's LARD!"
Yes, this pantry staple of traditional kitchens has become something of a culinary curiosity in recent decades. Only your Aunt Patty and those Mexican people use lard anymore. A couple of grocery stores in our area (and there aren't many stores) don't even stock it. The version I eventually found includes hydrogenated lard, although it doesn't say how much. That kinda turned me off until I started cooking with it. I was so pleased that I moved the butter container over and placed it right on the counter. Still, I'd like to find a version from hormone-free hogs that didn't have that hydrogenated stuff in it. So I'll be going back.
Lard, butter, beef tallow, coconut oil, palm oil...these fair fats are so much fun to cook with, that if you get nothing else out of Nourishing Traditions, at least you will not believe those who attempt to demonize these fats. Cooking requires fat, OK? It doesn't matter what kind of diet you follow, but if you cook anything at home, you probably have some kind of fat on your shelves, whether it be Crisco, Imperial margarine, or "vegetable oil" (soybean oil). And--get this--our cells require fat. Yep. A dim memory surfaces...oh yeah...high school chemistry class in 1993, Nirvana all over the airwaves (and the clothes in the stores really sucked). The teacher was explaining how our cell walls are composed of "phospholipids" and only fat-soluble vitamins can get across that barrier. Hmmm...so our cells are 50% saturated fat, says Mrs. Fallon and Ms. Enig. So the one thing we are not supposed to eat is--saturated fat! OK...but we're supposed to eat a lot of vitamins! Especially synthetic ones. Oh, and eat lots and lots of vegetables...for the vitamins! But don't eat very much fat. Not.Much.At.All. OK. What's the downside here? Well, for one thing, people don't eat vegetables like that. It gives us gas (did you sit behind us in chemistry class??). But here's the kicker: YOU CAN'T ASSIMILATE THE VITAMINS WITHOUT ADEQUATE AMOUNTS OF SATURATED FATS!
To be continued...
Monday, June 16, 2008
If you're going to panic...Part II
I love that line. That's what Mish says when he talks about the economic deflation we are all going to experience, like it or not. Whatever your flavor of paranoia (be it economic, religious, or political) now is the time to panic--lay in your supplies and order your self-sufficiency manuals. Because by the time everybody else panics, it will almost certainly be too late.
That sounds like hyberbole, but after the month I've had, the very air seems to drip with drama. And yet the very ordinary tasks of a household grind on. Nursing, diapers, fixing food, doing dishes, dressing little limbs and wiping little faces and hands--while trying to keep a grip on my own psyche--has become almost a tunnel of claustrophobic proportions. Back in Vancouver, it was OK. I had a full pantry. I had all the supplies. I had my routine, and I had my friends and neighbors to help. Here, I don't know anybody. I know few places to get things. Now the downtown and city services of our nearest sizeable civilization are paralyzed. My phone doesn't work. And if it wasn't for the Internet, I would be mad mad mad.
Wall-to-wall news coverage on the flood has ceased, for the most part. We can use our water freely again, at least here in Marion. I had to keep telling Carl to turn off "The Bachelorette" during dinner, just because he's used to having the TV on all day now. "That's garbage television," I kept telling him. "Aw, come on ducky," is his rejoinder, cribbed from the old version of 101 Dalmations. Since I can't think of an age-appropriate way to explain that people tongue-kissing in a hot tub is not good viewing material for prime time, I just told him that the emergency was over. Not true. In a very real sense, the emergency is just beginning.
How to explain? As if the recession/oil crisis wasn't bad enough (leaving religious theories of the end times completely out...at least for the moment), I believe the next major crises to play out in America will be the declining health of our population--punctuated by hurricanes, fires, flooding, increasing violence and the occasional bridge collapse.
The health angle is one people are used to hearing about...usually in the context of the health care system. "The health care system is too expensive," say the pundits. "Too many people lack access to affordable health care insurance." Various theories are proposed to explain why this is so, from ballooning malpractice lawsuits and insurance costs, skyrocketing disease stats, and the explosion in the use of prescriptions drugs (not to mention that the largest demographic group in the history of the world--the Baby Boomers--are about to retire into a not-so-golden gloaming of economic uncertainty and mounting degenerative disease). What they fail to put their finger on is that people are sick.
The next big crisis, or "long emergency", is the lack of health. Not "health care", or access to health care "insurance," but just plain being able to get up in the morning, gather your thoughts, get out the door, work a job and live a life. You can't do that when you're sick. And people are getting sick in more ways and in greater numbers than ever before.
Imagine you are at a brand-spanking new Super Wal-Mart, and you're in the back receiving your first load of inventory. Five trucks are waiting before you. The first truck contains all the candy and sugary confections a child could dream of--everything from molasses to Peeps. The second truck looks familiar as well...it contains refined white flour in all its forms, from Roman Meal Butter-Top Bread to Little Debbie Snack cakes to hundreds of boxes of cold cereal. The third truck is full of glistening gallons of pasteurized and homogenized lowfat white milk, and all the products created from it, tubs and tubs of cottage cheese, yogurt, sour cream, bricks of cheese. The fourth truck is entirely full of butter substitutes. The fifth truck is full of vegetable oil. That's it, just vegetable oil.
According to this book I've been reading, Nourishing Traditions, it's this food--this fake, "ersatz," steam-cleaned, extruded, rancid, processed-to-death food--that is killing us. Granted, we are slowly poisoning the earth. We are breathing chemicals, and eating chemicals. We are stripping our soil and loading it up with toxins. But nothing affects us as directly as what we put in our mouths. And while this might sound like a lot of other harum-skarum muckraking stuff you read, Sally Fallon and Mary Enig and their compatriots at the Weston A. Price Foundation seem to put it all together in an intelligible, not-overbearing and common-sense way.
I mean, Nourishing Traditions isn't a tell-all whistleblowing sensationalist barnburner. It's a cookbook. It shows you how to make soaked porridge and ketchup the old-fashioned way. It would never have been published without charitable contributions from family and friends. And Mary Enig herself, the scientist half of the equation, has grown old fighting the margarine conglomerates and food cartels, the government officials and American Heart Associations of the world to get the word out that not only are trans fats bad, they are in EVERYTHING, and people are eating a whole lot more of them than they think. This is finally getting out, as food manufacturers are forced to admit concessions (although they do this in as inconsistent and opaque a way as humanly possible). Sally Fallon, a former housewife, has taken up the crusade and does the bulk of the PR work, or so it seems.
Their message: Saturated fat is good for you! People have been eating animals for eons, but man has only recently discovered how to get "oil" from soybeans, and then "hydrogenate" it. When people ate 18 pounds of butter per person per year, we had a very low incidence of coronary heart disease, and zero myocardial infarctions. Now our consumption of vegetable fats has increased 400% and butter consumption has fallen to 4 pounds per person. Coronary heart disease now leads the list of causes of death in America, followed by cancer.
Saturated fat causes heart disease? The scientific evidence just is not there. The proof? The entities responsible for pushing the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease still have to put qualifiers on their messages: "A lowfat diet rich in whole grains and low in saturated fat and cholesterol may help reduce the risk of heart disease." Translation: there's a risk of heart disease but nobody knows what that is. The risk can be reduced, but nobody knows by how much. Adopting a spartan diet devoid of butter, animal products, nuts, natural oils, and meats may drive you insane with cravings but it "may help" reduce the nebulous "risk" that is out there. That one single statement has four qualifiers in it!
"Here she goes, she's on her bandwagon again!!" go the people who know me best. I know, I know, I must be depressed. All this diaper-changin' and news-watchin' has addled my brain. OK, OK, if you really don't want to hear this, punch the snooze button. Think Polly-annish thoughts and go on consuming this stuff. I do, mostly because it's impossible to avoid all of it. But people who come here deserve to hear something different from the MSM, don't they? That's why we have blogs and YouTube and stuff, right? I mostly became interested in this angle because of my poor allergic little guy, Tom. I really do think people make much ado about diet. But after my urgent care episode, I'm really concerned that I don't get sick again. So I continue to search for that ultimate reference, the unified field theory of food, if you will, that will explain so many perplexing questions.
Oh, I promised to get back to religion. "I really think Obama could be the Antichrist," my dad said when I called him last Sunday.
Heh. You thought I was paranoid.
That sounds like hyberbole, but after the month I've had, the very air seems to drip with drama. And yet the very ordinary tasks of a household grind on. Nursing, diapers, fixing food, doing dishes, dressing little limbs and wiping little faces and hands--while trying to keep a grip on my own psyche--has become almost a tunnel of claustrophobic proportions. Back in Vancouver, it was OK. I had a full pantry. I had all the supplies. I had my routine, and I had my friends and neighbors to help. Here, I don't know anybody. I know few places to get things. Now the downtown and city services of our nearest sizeable civilization are paralyzed. My phone doesn't work. And if it wasn't for the Internet, I would be mad mad mad.
Wall-to-wall news coverage on the flood has ceased, for the most part. We can use our water freely again, at least here in Marion. I had to keep telling Carl to turn off "The Bachelorette" during dinner, just because he's used to having the TV on all day now. "That's garbage television," I kept telling him. "Aw, come on ducky," is his rejoinder, cribbed from the old version of 101 Dalmations. Since I can't think of an age-appropriate way to explain that people tongue-kissing in a hot tub is not good viewing material for prime time, I just told him that the emergency was over. Not true. In a very real sense, the emergency is just beginning.
How to explain? As if the recession/oil crisis wasn't bad enough (leaving religious theories of the end times completely out...at least for the moment), I believe the next major crises to play out in America will be the declining health of our population--punctuated by hurricanes, fires, flooding, increasing violence and the occasional bridge collapse.
The health angle is one people are used to hearing about...usually in the context of the health care system. "The health care system is too expensive," say the pundits. "Too many people lack access to affordable health care insurance." Various theories are proposed to explain why this is so, from ballooning malpractice lawsuits and insurance costs, skyrocketing disease stats, and the explosion in the use of prescriptions drugs (not to mention that the largest demographic group in the history of the world--the Baby Boomers--are about to retire into a not-so-golden gloaming of economic uncertainty and mounting degenerative disease). What they fail to put their finger on is that people are sick.
The next big crisis, or "long emergency", is the lack of health. Not "health care", or access to health care "insurance," but just plain being able to get up in the morning, gather your thoughts, get out the door, work a job and live a life. You can't do that when you're sick. And people are getting sick in more ways and in greater numbers than ever before.
Imagine you are at a brand-spanking new Super Wal-Mart, and you're in the back receiving your first load of inventory. Five trucks are waiting before you. The first truck contains all the candy and sugary confections a child could dream of--everything from molasses to Peeps. The second truck looks familiar as well...it contains refined white flour in all its forms, from Roman Meal Butter-Top Bread to Little Debbie Snack cakes to hundreds of boxes of cold cereal. The third truck is full of glistening gallons of pasteurized and homogenized lowfat white milk, and all the products created from it, tubs and tubs of cottage cheese, yogurt, sour cream, bricks of cheese. The fourth truck is entirely full of butter substitutes. The fifth truck is full of vegetable oil. That's it, just vegetable oil.
According to this book I've been reading, Nourishing Traditions, it's this food--this fake, "ersatz," steam-cleaned, extruded, rancid, processed-to-death food--that is killing us. Granted, we are slowly poisoning the earth. We are breathing chemicals, and eating chemicals. We are stripping our soil and loading it up with toxins. But nothing affects us as directly as what we put in our mouths. And while this might sound like a lot of other harum-skarum muckraking stuff you read, Sally Fallon and Mary Enig and their compatriots at the Weston A. Price Foundation seem to put it all together in an intelligible, not-overbearing and common-sense way.
I mean, Nourishing Traditions isn't a tell-all whistleblowing sensationalist barnburner. It's a cookbook. It shows you how to make soaked porridge and ketchup the old-fashioned way. It would never have been published without charitable contributions from family and friends. And Mary Enig herself, the scientist half of the equation, has grown old fighting the margarine conglomerates and food cartels, the government officials and American Heart Associations of the world to get the word out that not only are trans fats bad, they are in EVERYTHING, and people are eating a whole lot more of them than they think. This is finally getting out, as food manufacturers are forced to admit concessions (although they do this in as inconsistent and opaque a way as humanly possible). Sally Fallon, a former housewife, has taken up the crusade and does the bulk of the PR work, or so it seems.
Their message: Saturated fat is good for you! People have been eating animals for eons, but man has only recently discovered how to get "oil" from soybeans, and then "hydrogenate" it. When people ate 18 pounds of butter per person per year, we had a very low incidence of coronary heart disease, and zero myocardial infarctions. Now our consumption of vegetable fats has increased 400% and butter consumption has fallen to 4 pounds per person. Coronary heart disease now leads the list of causes of death in America, followed by cancer.
Saturated fat causes heart disease? The scientific evidence just is not there. The proof? The entities responsible for pushing the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease still have to put qualifiers on their messages: "A lowfat diet rich in whole grains and low in saturated fat and cholesterol may help reduce the risk of heart disease." Translation: there's a risk of heart disease but nobody knows what that is. The risk can be reduced, but nobody knows by how much. Adopting a spartan diet devoid of butter, animal products, nuts, natural oils, and meats may drive you insane with cravings but it "may help" reduce the nebulous "risk" that is out there. That one single statement has four qualifiers in it!
"Here she goes, she's on her bandwagon again!!" go the people who know me best. I know, I know, I must be depressed. All this diaper-changin' and news-watchin' has addled my brain. OK, OK, if you really don't want to hear this, punch the snooze button. Think Polly-annish thoughts and go on consuming this stuff. I do, mostly because it's impossible to avoid all of it. But people who come here deserve to hear something different from the MSM, don't they? That's why we have blogs and YouTube and stuff, right? I mostly became interested in this angle because of my poor allergic little guy, Tom. I really do think people make much ado about diet. But after my urgent care episode, I'm really concerned that I don't get sick again. So I continue to search for that ultimate reference, the unified field theory of food, if you will, that will explain so many perplexing questions.
Oh, I promised to get back to religion. "I really think Obama could be the Antichrist," my dad said when I called him last Sunday.
Heh. You thought I was paranoid.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
If you're going to panic, panic before everyone else does
Whew...it's been quite a month. On May 14, we were still in our house in Vancouver, Washington, preparing for a cross-country move to the Cedar Rapids area. We left the evening of the 18th. The neighbors threw us a barbeque and even gave us a card, signed by all the families we knew. I didn't find the card and read it until we were in Iowa, surrounded by the chaos of half-unpacked boxes and family and friends coming and going. I wanted to cry, but after a four-day trip across country, I had no emotions left.
Then the tornadoes hit. Our new house (which I love, by the way) was surrounded by crashing lightning, booming thunder, and wailing sirens. There was a couple of nights where we could hardly sleep for the noise and light. It looked like a strobe light was going off outside our house. Then we discovered two cracks in our basement (which turned out to be very minor, thank God--but it was still unnerving to move into a house and discover any need for immediate repairs). Dean rushed out and bought a weather radio so we could keep informed while huddling in our cold, unfinished basement. "Welcome to the Midwest," our friends joked. The damage reports from the tornadoes, while they did not hit our immediate area, were of course not funny.
Then that spate of storms passed, and everything seemed OK again. We continued to unpack, and took a couple of day trips to visit Dean's parents and old friends. I was hitting all the garage sales I could, seeking replacements for all the items we had had to leave behind (thank you Joe and Angie for putting up with that!). We made arrangements to repair the basement and were busy getting digital phone services hooked up. The day after the basement was fixed, rain poured down again. There was a flash flood warning for Cedar Rapids.
Then everything kind of went quiet. The rain came down. The thunder boomed and the lightning flashed. No sirens. I flipped on the TV halfway through that Thursday looking for weather updates, and I didn't see anything but ordinary TV. We don't live in CR, by the way. We live in Marion, a small town to the NE of Cedar Rapids, with its own history and its own services, and its own life.
We had seen some sandbagging going on downtown on Tuesday. We swung through the area to file for our Homestead exemption and to pick up a bundle of meat from Polehna's Meat Market, in the Czech village, a block-long string of shops capped off by the Czech and Slovak Heritage Museum. We drove back across the bridge and took a wrong turn, upsetting some people who were assisting a sandbagging effort in a neighborhood close to the river. We must have looked like utter cads, with our maps and sunglasses, carelessly barrelling around an area that people were very concerned about.
But by the evening it was obvious that things were going south real fast. The water was rising, and it didn't stop until--and this shocked me the most--the island upon which our government buildings sit, the building in which we filed our exemption, the little meat market, and that unfortunate neighborhood was completely covered with water.
More to come...
Then the tornadoes hit. Our new house (which I love, by the way) was surrounded by crashing lightning, booming thunder, and wailing sirens. There was a couple of nights where we could hardly sleep for the noise and light. It looked like a strobe light was going off outside our house. Then we discovered two cracks in our basement (which turned out to be very minor, thank God--but it was still unnerving to move into a house and discover any need for immediate repairs). Dean rushed out and bought a weather radio so we could keep informed while huddling in our cold, unfinished basement. "Welcome to the Midwest," our friends joked. The damage reports from the tornadoes, while they did not hit our immediate area, were of course not funny.
Then that spate of storms passed, and everything seemed OK again. We continued to unpack, and took a couple of day trips to visit Dean's parents and old friends. I was hitting all the garage sales I could, seeking replacements for all the items we had had to leave behind (thank you Joe and Angie for putting up with that!). We made arrangements to repair the basement and were busy getting digital phone services hooked up. The day after the basement was fixed, rain poured down again. There was a flash flood warning for Cedar Rapids.
Then everything kind of went quiet. The rain came down. The thunder boomed and the lightning flashed. No sirens. I flipped on the TV halfway through that Thursday looking for weather updates, and I didn't see anything but ordinary TV. We don't live in CR, by the way. We live in Marion, a small town to the NE of Cedar Rapids, with its own history and its own services, and its own life.
We had seen some sandbagging going on downtown on Tuesday. We swung through the area to file for our Homestead exemption and to pick up a bundle of meat from Polehna's Meat Market, in the Czech village, a block-long string of shops capped off by the Czech and Slovak Heritage Museum. We drove back across the bridge and took a wrong turn, upsetting some people who were assisting a sandbagging effort in a neighborhood close to the river. We must have looked like utter cads, with our maps and sunglasses, carelessly barrelling around an area that people were very concerned about.
But by the evening it was obvious that things were going south real fast. The water was rising, and it didn't stop until--and this shocked me the most--the island upon which our government buildings sit, the building in which we filed our exemption, the little meat market, and that unfortunate neighborhood was completely covered with water.
More to come...
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Much Ado about Diet
[I think I'll dispense with the original title of this post, which was "Wacky Way to Save Money #7: Eating Cat Food" (Betcha thought I'd have abandoned this whole wacky way thing back in November...nope...I'm way too stodgy and Germanic for that...I've also had my sense of humor surgically removed without my knowledge, says my husband. Oh, no, it was bred out, says I...long about the time the Reformation hit).
The post in a nutshell was going to say, go read the ingredients in your pet's food bag, realize that those are actually the cheapest and healthiest things in the market, and stock your pantry with those. Well, I was wrong, so let's move on (Whew! Dodged that one!).
So--on with the actual post!]
Our cat is fat.
So fat, in fact, that every person to visit our house in the last year, be they friend or family member, has remarked, almost without variation in diction, "That is one fat cat." My response is usually something like, "Oh, we've tried to put her on a diet..." to which one friend of the family deadpanned, "Too late." Well...what is she eating?
I checked the bag: Chicken, chicken by-product meal (yum), corn meal, corn grits, chicken meal, dried beet pulp, dried egg product, natural chicken flavor, sodium bisulfate, potassium chloride, fish oil, DL-Methionine, brewer's dried yeast, choline chloride, calcium carbonate, vitamins [list of vitamins]. Yeah, that's the reaction I had. Not much of an article. Then the whole idea got shelved for awhile, 'cuz life got busy (as it always does). But there's nothing like chronic pain to get your attention.
I thought it was just the typical late-winter cold. Heck, I might even have had the flu. I certainly wouldn't have noticed the difference. I just felt old. Stiff, sore, creaky, cranky, perpetually fatigued, with sore places in my teeth, back, and knees. Now granted I wasn't doing anything to help my health. I was staying up late on the Internet, eating all the calories I could get my hands on (to feed the baby), and just trying to get my work done around the house. And while I'm not overweight, I sure felt bloated, even after a BM. Constipation had become my constant companion, and with the onset of seasonal allergies, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Then one day the chest pain hit. Oh, crap, I thought. What the heck is this pain?
It bothered me so much, I parked the kids with sweet Rachel (who is surely some angel sent from God, in the form of a friend), and went to urgent care. They took blood, did a chest x-ray and EKG. Everything turned out normal. We discussed gall bladder disease (since my husband had had that, and the pain didn't start until I ate a loaded-with-hydrogenated-fat turnover from the store), which tends to hit women after they've had a few kids.. But I can't say I was convinced. Perhaps this was some kind of stealth angina. It surely wasn't in my head. I felt like I had a box on my chest, and the feeling didn't go away in a few hours or a few days.
The one person I hadn't talked with yet was my midwife (the one who says I gave Tom the milk allergy. Why's she always telling me things I don't want to hear? Like..."Push!"). She said my labs had always been normal, and poo-poohed the idea of gallbladder disease. "With all the allergies in your family, you might have a wheat allergy," she said. What? She then went on to describe how she and her epileptic husband had felt soooo much better on a wheat-free diet and he had even stopped seizing. Yeah, right, I thought. We had a good conversation, but I didn't give any credence to the wheat idea until the next time I sat at my computer and Googled "gall bladder disease." I read for about an hour but nothing clicked. The next day, I thought about how Mary had been right about the whole allergy thing and felt like a heel for doubting her. So I googled "wheat allergy," and then narrowed it to "food intolerance". What I found blasted my socks off, but as usual if I post all my newfangled ideas in one breath, as it were, I might phrase it the wrong way, or sound too credulous. So I'll think about it a bit more while I brew up my findings.
***
So now I've had time to think and, while I would prefer to get my thoughts down in a traditional, organized, scholarly fashion, I do most things on the fly nowadays, so here goes...
Food is important. I think everybody agrees on that. I mean, people in third world countries are starving because rice (and wheat) is so expensive now. And I think it safe to say that we rely on grains more than any other food source. After all, it doesn't take much space to plant a bountiful vegetable garden (at least, a square foot garden). And we would all benefit from having a fruit or nut tree in our yards. But who can grow wheat by themselves? I mean, don't we need wheat (and corn, rice, dairy cows, and soybeans) to live? Well, it's an open question.
Alert readers may have noticed me touting a three-to-six month emergency food pantry to economize on grocery bills. And while this all seemed like common sense to me, I didn't take into account varied diets and the importance to health of a variety of fresh food. I really don't want the lawsuits of people who've followed my advice and lived on shelf-stable canned food and flour that was at least three month old. There's more to this issue than saving money--however that might go against the (tightwad) grain.
After I had my pain episode described above, I found a particular diet on the Internet that helped me. And while I don't want to tout the benefits of one diet guru or philosophy over another, I found a high likelihood that food allergies were causing problems for more people in our family than just my son Tom. This particular diet requires the consumption of more fresh, whole foods, as do others that endorse whole foods, raw foods, sprouting/fermentation along with the shunning of all processed (read: shelf-stable) food that you buy at the grocery store. Which presents us with a problem.
What do you stock your pantry with, if you're dependent on whole/fresh/raw/otherwise perishable foods? My aim here is not only to minimize cost, but to maximize nutrition, as well as to provide a measure of security in tough times. Can any of these foods be stored? For how long?(This is just brainstorming here, so if you have experience in this area, please give me your suggestions):
1. Dried fruits, vegetables, and meat: Many whole natural foods can be successfully preserved by dehydration. Consider buying a dehydrator if you have abundant garden produce or a fruit tree.
2. Pickled or canned preserves and vegetable relishes (home canned, store-bought if necessary): Look for low/no sugar and no preservatives. Includes sauerkraut or other pickled greens. Organic would be great.
3. Whole grains: brown rice, wheat berries, whole oats, barley, lentils, and beans may be stored in a cool, dark, dry place, such as a root cellar. Soak overnight in warm water, then cook gently.
4. Frozen meats and stocks: Assuming you have an extra freezer, you can preserve many kinds of food, including raw nuts and seeds, extra loaves of bread, or specialty flours.
5. Certain fresh vegetables of the winter/root variety can be stored in the ground or in a cool, dark cellar: Such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, squash. I read somewhere that you can pack them in sand as well (A root cellar can be a waterproof garbage can half-buried in the ground and covered with leaves).
6. Specialty products: Such as powdered goat/cow milk, soy/rice milks in shelf-stable containers, baking mixes, spices and seasonings, chocolate, sweeteners, tea and coffee, etc.
Whew! That's a longer list than I expected. It seems that building a food pantry makes sense no matter what diet you're on.
One more thought about the higher cost of "healthy" food. Nobody wants to pay less for their food than me, I assure you. I've spent four years creating the ultimate tightwad-from-scratch kitchen. But are potential health problems worth it in the long haul? Were my food policies harming my family? Perhaps. By buying only what was on sale, clearance, or markdown, I was always buying the oldest of the old. I thought it couldn't be unhealthy because I was always cooking from scratch (or because I grew up on processed cheese and canned tomato soup). But since then I've widened my view...it makes more sense to pay a little more now for the highest quality food you can find, rather than risk ill health, reduced quality of life, and higher medical bills later.
The post in a nutshell was going to say, go read the ingredients in your pet's food bag, realize that those are actually the cheapest and healthiest things in the market, and stock your pantry with those. Well, I was wrong, so let's move on (Whew! Dodged that one!).
So--on with the actual post!]
Our cat is fat.
So fat, in fact, that every person to visit our house in the last year, be they friend or family member, has remarked, almost without variation in diction, "That is one fat cat." My response is usually something like, "Oh, we've tried to put her on a diet..." to which one friend of the family deadpanned, "Too late." Well...what is she eating?
I checked the bag: Chicken, chicken by-product meal (yum), corn meal, corn grits, chicken meal, dried beet pulp, dried egg product, natural chicken flavor, sodium bisulfate, potassium chloride, fish oil, DL-Methionine, brewer's dried yeast, choline chloride, calcium carbonate, vitamins [list of vitamins]. Yeah, that's the reaction I had. Not much of an article. Then the whole idea got shelved for awhile, 'cuz life got busy (as it always does). But there's nothing like chronic pain to get your attention.
I thought it was just the typical late-winter cold. Heck, I might even have had the flu. I certainly wouldn't have noticed the difference. I just felt old. Stiff, sore, creaky, cranky, perpetually fatigued, with sore places in my teeth, back, and knees. Now granted I wasn't doing anything to help my health. I was staying up late on the Internet, eating all the calories I could get my hands on (to feed the baby), and just trying to get my work done around the house. And while I'm not overweight, I sure felt bloated, even after a BM. Constipation had become my constant companion, and with the onset of seasonal allergies, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Then one day the chest pain hit. Oh, crap, I thought. What the heck is this pain?
It bothered me so much, I parked the kids with sweet Rachel (who is surely some angel sent from God, in the form of a friend), and went to urgent care. They took blood, did a chest x-ray and EKG. Everything turned out normal. We discussed gall bladder disease (since my husband had had that, and the pain didn't start until I ate a loaded-with-hydrogenated-fat turnover from the store), which tends to hit women after they've had a few kids.. But I can't say I was convinced. Perhaps this was some kind of stealth angina. It surely wasn't in my head. I felt like I had a box on my chest, and the feeling didn't go away in a few hours or a few days.
The one person I hadn't talked with yet was my midwife (the one who says I gave Tom the milk allergy. Why's she always telling me things I don't want to hear? Like..."Push!"). She said my labs had always been normal, and poo-poohed the idea of gallbladder disease. "With all the allergies in your family, you might have a wheat allergy," she said. What? She then went on to describe how she and her epileptic husband had felt soooo much better on a wheat-free diet and he had even stopped seizing. Yeah, right, I thought. We had a good conversation, but I didn't give any credence to the wheat idea until the next time I sat at my computer and Googled "gall bladder disease." I read for about an hour but nothing clicked. The next day, I thought about how Mary had been right about the whole allergy thing and felt like a heel for doubting her. So I googled "wheat allergy," and then narrowed it to "food intolerance". What I found blasted my socks off, but as usual if I post all my newfangled ideas in one breath, as it were, I might phrase it the wrong way, or sound too credulous. So I'll think about it a bit more while I brew up my findings.
***
So now I've had time to think and, while I would prefer to get my thoughts down in a traditional, organized, scholarly fashion, I do most things on the fly nowadays, so here goes...
Food is important. I think everybody agrees on that. I mean, people in third world countries are starving because rice (and wheat) is so expensive now. And I think it safe to say that we rely on grains more than any other food source. After all, it doesn't take much space to plant a bountiful vegetable garden (at least, a square foot garden). And we would all benefit from having a fruit or nut tree in our yards. But who can grow wheat by themselves? I mean, don't we need wheat (and corn, rice, dairy cows, and soybeans) to live? Well, it's an open question.
Alert readers may have noticed me touting a three-to-six month emergency food pantry to economize on grocery bills. And while this all seemed like common sense to me, I didn't take into account varied diets and the importance to health of a variety of fresh food. I really don't want the lawsuits of people who've followed my advice and lived on shelf-stable canned food and flour that was at least three month old. There's more to this issue than saving money--however that might go against the (tightwad) grain.
After I had my pain episode described above, I found a particular diet on the Internet that helped me. And while I don't want to tout the benefits of one diet guru or philosophy over another, I found a high likelihood that food allergies were causing problems for more people in our family than just my son Tom. This particular diet requires the consumption of more fresh, whole foods, as do others that endorse whole foods, raw foods, sprouting/fermentation along with the shunning of all processed (read: shelf-stable) food that you buy at the grocery store. Which presents us with a problem.
What do you stock your pantry with, if you're dependent on whole/fresh/raw/otherwise perishable foods? My aim here is not only to minimize cost, but to maximize nutrition, as well as to provide a measure of security in tough times. Can any of these foods be stored? For how long?(This is just brainstorming here, so if you have experience in this area, please give me your suggestions):
1. Dried fruits, vegetables, and meat: Many whole natural foods can be successfully preserved by dehydration. Consider buying a dehydrator if you have abundant garden produce or a fruit tree.
2. Pickled or canned preserves and vegetable relishes (home canned, store-bought if necessary): Look for low/no sugar and no preservatives. Includes sauerkraut or other pickled greens. Organic would be great.
3. Whole grains: brown rice, wheat berries, whole oats, barley, lentils, and beans may be stored in a cool, dark, dry place, such as a root cellar. Soak overnight in warm water, then cook gently.
4. Frozen meats and stocks: Assuming you have an extra freezer, you can preserve many kinds of food, including raw nuts and seeds, extra loaves of bread, or specialty flours.
5. Certain fresh vegetables of the winter/root variety can be stored in the ground or in a cool, dark cellar: Such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, squash. I read somewhere that you can pack them in sand as well (A root cellar can be a waterproof garbage can half-buried in the ground and covered with leaves).
6. Specialty products: Such as powdered goat/cow milk, soy/rice milks in shelf-stable containers, baking mixes, spices and seasonings, chocolate, sweeteners, tea and coffee, etc.
Whew! That's a longer list than I expected. It seems that building a food pantry makes sense no matter what diet you're on.
One more thought about the higher cost of "healthy" food. Nobody wants to pay less for their food than me, I assure you. I've spent four years creating the ultimate tightwad-from-scratch kitchen. But are potential health problems worth it in the long haul? Were my food policies harming my family? Perhaps. By buying only what was on sale, clearance, or markdown, I was always buying the oldest of the old. I thought it couldn't be unhealthy because I was always cooking from scratch (or because I grew up on processed cheese and canned tomato soup). But since then I've widened my view...it makes more sense to pay a little more now for the highest quality food you can find, rather than risk ill health, reduced quality of life, and higher medical bills later.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Wacky Way to Save Money #6: In the Mattress
It is a fact that banks fail.
In fact, banks are failing all over the place--Bear Stearns is just the one currently in the news. So why is the Fed (in the form of a $2-a-share JP Morgan buyout) bailing out Bear? Why is this such a big deal?
[Granted, this is a complex subject. Technical analysts, hedge fund honchos--try not to laugh at me. My job is to simply give the best "housewife" analysis I can, to try to cut through the crud and tell you how it's gonna affect your family's bottom line. The stupendously detailed analysis is going to have to give way to a quick-and-dirty this time. You can thank me in the combox;)]
The deal is, our whole banking system is shot. You think you have money in the bank. Your statement comes in the mail or you call and the bank tells you you have thus-and-so. You go to the ATM and pull out $20 or $40 at a time. You go buy groceries and swipe your card. Your employer sends your "paycheck" over the wires--and it's supposed to land (chink-chink-chink) in your bank "account". Theoretically you could go and ask for the whole balance and they'd have to hand you a stack of cash. Right?
Uh-oh.
If people started doing that tomorrow, the scene down at your local branch would resemble a mill strike more than It's a Wonderful Life. Fact is, the money's not there. How can a bank that is billions in debt hand you your measly thousands? Maybe they could do it for the first couple dozen people. But the vaults would quickly empty out. What then?
That's basically what happened to Bear. Its creditors (other banks and private investors) saw the blood in the water...they called and tried to get their money out. As word got out, the tide kept going out faster and faster...until on Friday Bear Stearns suspended its redemptions, which can only mean it's going broke--it's "vault" was practically empty. Now it's Sunday night, which should be a dead zone for financial news, and the wires are lit up with news of this Fed buyout/bailout. What does it mean for you?
Banks have been allowed, since the 1990's (thank you Mr. Clinton), to sweep out deposits on a nightly basis and lend them out for profit--and in at least 241 cases, rampant speculation. They don't have to keep any of the money on hand that you supposedly have access to. That's the big swindle--"fractional reserve lending." That's why you have $300 daily withdrawal limits at the ATM. You may think you have X amount in the bank but the truth is, what would you do if your debit card no longer worked and the ATM's were down?
What about FDIC? Mish thinks deposit insurance is a moral hazard. It makes every bank seem equally safe, and people just pick the ones that offer the highest returns. Trouble is, a bank that chases yield often makes pretty risky bets. If the Fed isn't big enough to bail out Wall Street, is the FDIC big enough to bail out Main Street? If bank failures increase from a trickle to a flood...the short answer is no.
You should consider hiding a wad of cash somewhere just for emergency running money (maybe not in the mattress). Just stuff it somewhere and forget it. One of the last real deals in "banking" is to get free withdrawals ("cashback") when you buy something. Discipline yourself to pull $20 extra when you go to the store ('cuz of your tightwad ways you have a little extra, right??) and stuff it in an empty can in the pantry. Or tape it to the underside of your bedframe. Or put it in a fireproof safe in your crawlspace. Point is, don't trust your family's daily/weekly operational budget to a bunch of hacks who couldn't care less.
There is only one pharmacy in town that can mix the drug that my son, Tom, needs to keep from throwing up. I went there to pick it up and the gal behind the counter launched into an apologetic speech about how their debit card reader was down...until I pulled out cash. "Oh, you are an angel," she said. No, I'm just a mom who wants to make darn sure my kid gets his medicine.
Not to be paranoid here, but all anybody needs to do if they really want to mess up the world is to create a virus that disables debit card readers. Our vulnerabilities are really frightening, if you stop and think about it.
***
Your money is only as good as your currency. A country's currency is kind of like its "stock." If the country's in good shape, balance sheet's in the black, factories are humming, and people are investing...it shows. Its currency will rise on the world market, and pay more interest to those who invest in it. The downside is, it costs more to borrow a strong currency, and the exports of a strong-currency country are more expensive in weaker currency countries.
If you've heard the dollar is losing value, you've really had your ear to the ground. But it's more likely that you've only just felt it...like looking out on a sunny day, but it feels cloudy. Everybody says they want the dollar to be strong. But you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread...and instead of 1.39, it's 1.79. Milk and cheese cost more. Braces cost more. There's sticker shock at the gas pump almost every day. Wages continue to dwindle, while everything that matters--meat, medicine, gas, heat--goes through the roof. Yeah, you can still get a cheap gadget at Wal-Mart...but for how much longer?
Some economists call it "stagflation". Some just call it deflation. What it means is that you're poorer than ever...while things cost more than ever. And it's all coming down so fast--what happened? We had a strong currency in the late 90's. The strongest we've seen in this country since Nixon took us off the gold standard (the mongrelized gold standard). Then, in order to head off what seemed like a serious recession following the tech boom...the Fed cut interest rates--i.e. they cheapened the dollar--and encouraged banks to lend money like crazy to keep people spending and head off a recession. Well, guess what? They did. They bought houses and cars and big-screen TV's and every stupid thing you can imagine. And the dollar went down...and kept going down. It's hard to measure, but according to some estimates I've read, you could have bought 30% more with a 2001 dollar than with a 2008 dollar. Cheap imports from China disguised the loss in value...but $110/barrel oil and $1000/ounce gold tell the story.
So what do you do? If you've been diligently cutting your expenses and paying off your debts, you might have a nice start on your 6-month emergency account. Take the trouble to protect it from a fall in the currency. It took some quick action on pur part last fall to avoid the 10% haircut we've taken in the dollar in the past six months. Only 1/3 of our emergency account is left in the bank. One third is in gold and silver. The rest is in foreign currency.
You can pick a "safe" money market (like Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund--supposedly "bulletproof", according to Money magazine). You can seek out a good, solvent bank that offers at least a 4% interest rate on deposits or CD's (good luck). You can buy silver dollars at the junk shop. My advice is to just spread it around...dig around and look for things that will keep pace with or exceed the inflation rate, which is around 4%. I feel pretty stupid for keeping so much money parked at WaMu for a measly .24%. But I can't really get around the fact that I need to have some money in a place where I can go and make a wire transfer or write and deposit checks. That's basically what banks are good at--moving money around. Too bad they're butterfingers when it comes to lending and "investing" it.
One caveat...do your homework. Don't put money where you're not confident you can preserve it. If in doubt, just keep it in the bank--but don't go over the FDIC limit. While you're at it, gather all your valuables and important documents and just get a little dinky safe from Wal-Mart and keep all that stuff in there. Fireproof is best, but secure and portable has its advantages. I personally don't want it to look like I have Fort Knox in my basement.
***
Realize that currency isn't money. "The long-term value of all fiat currencies is zero," says Bill Bonner, the very Catholic editor of The Daily Reckoning. And whatever I may think of his religious leanings, he's been proven right by history. When Jesus walked the earth in Judea, the Roman empire was being rocked by currency devaluation. It always causes social unrest and economic hardship. It's always the refuge of a panicked, insolvent empire on the verge of collapse.
"There's a war on the middle class," you might hear--on Fox News or elsewhere. What does that mean? When your wages are stagnant or falling, and your taxes and expenses keep going up while your savings, stocks, and real estate are going down, you're being bled. Someone is getting the money...but it isn't you. Somehow you find enough to live on, but it seems like less every year. That's because it is. The numbers all seem right, but it doesn't add up. That's the curse of inflation. Everything's just fine, say the government, banks, and advertisers. Go ahead and buy...no interest, same as cash. Lowest mortgage rates in years. They say that because they're the first to benefit from a devalued currency. But there's a trickle-down effect. By the time inflation trickles down to the little guy, his income might have risen a little bit...but his expenses have risen more than his wage. The stock market seems alright, but when you price it in gold, it's going straight into the toilet.
A paper currency is only an IOU. It's at the mercy of a central bank that can raise or lower interest rates at will, strengthening or weakening the currency as they deem the situation requires. You are better off with a weaker dollar, they say, than with a recession. Your wages may be smaller, but at least you still have a job. You may, as a taxpayer, have to bail out Bear Stearns...but that's better than enduring the financial winter that may set in if all the big banks fall like dominoes.
Gold and silver have always been the only real money. Up until the 60's, in this country, our coins were 90% silver and a dollar bill said "silver certificate" instead of Federal Reserve Note. Once upon a time we had American gold coins, that clinked and chinked in people's pockets along with their peace dollars and Indian head nickels. A sound monetary system--that's what our prosperity was built on. Not fixed interest rates and Federal Reserve notes. We had real prosperity because gold was a demanding mistress--she demanded we balance our budgets and pay our debts. And she threw us out on our ear when we didn't. People decided this last part was just a bit too painful. But I wonder what they would say now.
There are many ways to own precious metals, depending on what you're comfortable with. This isn't a technical guide so much as a philosophy (for details and further research, you can check out American Gold Exchange). It isn't too late to own gold. But plunking down $1000 for an ounce is a bit intimidating at this stage in the market. I wouldn't recommend that. First, I would just say, learn a little bit about money and the history of money. Bill Bonner, Mish, and Michael Hodges know a little about it. Do your darnedest to save and cut expenses. The more cheaply you can live, the better you will fare if things really get bad (how many people will drive an hour to work at a $10 an hour job if gas hits $5 a gallon? $6?).
Consider investing in a few silver dollars here and there (they may seem expensive, but you're spending "play money" and getting real money). You can find them at pawn and junk shops. There are places on the Net that sell "junk silver," old coins from the '20's, '30's, '40's, and '50's. If you have a chunk of change you need to park somewhere, consider Everbank and their MarketSafe CD's. They've been offering 5-year CD's tied to the price of gold and silver, that are FDIC insured. If you're into stocks, the gold ETF (GLD) has been doing very well. Mining stocks are still undervalued, if you're after bigger gains. But these are more speculative. I think, for the housewife who's just trying to take care of her family, the three-to-six month food pantry is an excellent investment on its own. After all, you can't eat gold and silver coins. These are just things you can do if all your other bases are covered.
Even as we contemplate all the places we can store wealth, let us remember to have a spirit of poverty. That wealth is ostensibly there for your family's security, not to buy new furniture or take vacations in retirement. The more money we have, I hope the more we would give. The more secure we feel, I hope the more joy and generosity will shine out. If we sleep soundly at night, I hope it is in the peace we find after praying the Rosary, not thinking about the Ben Franklins taped to the bed. My focus is practicality, but my only peace lies in prayer. A blessed Palm Sunday to all.
In fact, banks are failing all over the place--Bear Stearns is just the one currently in the news. So why is the Fed (in the form of a $2-a-share JP Morgan buyout) bailing out Bear? Why is this such a big deal?
[Granted, this is a complex subject. Technical analysts, hedge fund honchos--try not to laugh at me. My job is to simply give the best "housewife" analysis I can, to try to cut through the crud and tell you how it's gonna affect your family's bottom line. The stupendously detailed analysis is going to have to give way to a quick-and-dirty this time. You can thank me in the combox;)]
The deal is, our whole banking system is shot. You think you have money in the bank. Your statement comes in the mail or you call and the bank tells you you have thus-and-so. You go to the ATM and pull out $20 or $40 at a time. You go buy groceries and swipe your card. Your employer sends your "paycheck" over the wires--and it's supposed to land (chink-chink-chink) in your bank "account". Theoretically you could go and ask for the whole balance and they'd have to hand you a stack of cash. Right?
Uh-oh.
If people started doing that tomorrow, the scene down at your local branch would resemble a mill strike more than It's a Wonderful Life. Fact is, the money's not there. How can a bank that is billions in debt hand you your measly thousands? Maybe they could do it for the first couple dozen people. But the vaults would quickly empty out. What then?
That's basically what happened to Bear. Its creditors (other banks and private investors) saw the blood in the water...they called and tried to get their money out. As word got out, the tide kept going out faster and faster...until on Friday Bear Stearns suspended its redemptions, which can only mean it's going broke--it's "vault" was practically empty. Now it's Sunday night, which should be a dead zone for financial news, and the wires are lit up with news of this Fed buyout/bailout. What does it mean for you?
Banks have been allowed, since the 1990's (thank you Mr. Clinton), to sweep out deposits on a nightly basis and lend them out for profit--and in at least 241 cases, rampant speculation. They don't have to keep any of the money on hand that you supposedly have access to. That's the big swindle--"fractional reserve lending." That's why you have $300 daily withdrawal limits at the ATM. You may think you have X amount in the bank but the truth is, what would you do if your debit card no longer worked and the ATM's were down?
What about FDIC? Mish thinks deposit insurance is a moral hazard. It makes every bank seem equally safe, and people just pick the ones that offer the highest returns. Trouble is, a bank that chases yield often makes pretty risky bets. If the Fed isn't big enough to bail out Wall Street, is the FDIC big enough to bail out Main Street? If bank failures increase from a trickle to a flood...the short answer is no.
You should consider hiding a wad of cash somewhere just for emergency running money (maybe not in the mattress). Just stuff it somewhere and forget it. One of the last real deals in "banking" is to get free withdrawals ("cashback") when you buy something. Discipline yourself to pull $20 extra when you go to the store ('cuz of your tightwad ways you have a little extra, right??) and stuff it in an empty can in the pantry. Or tape it to the underside of your bedframe. Or put it in a fireproof safe in your crawlspace. Point is, don't trust your family's daily/weekly operational budget to a bunch of hacks who couldn't care less.
There is only one pharmacy in town that can mix the drug that my son, Tom, needs to keep from throwing up. I went there to pick it up and the gal behind the counter launched into an apologetic speech about how their debit card reader was down...until I pulled out cash. "Oh, you are an angel," she said. No, I'm just a mom who wants to make darn sure my kid gets his medicine.
Not to be paranoid here, but all anybody needs to do if they really want to mess up the world is to create a virus that disables debit card readers. Our vulnerabilities are really frightening, if you stop and think about it.
***
Your money is only as good as your currency. A country's currency is kind of like its "stock." If the country's in good shape, balance sheet's in the black, factories are humming, and people are investing...it shows. Its currency will rise on the world market, and pay more interest to those who invest in it. The downside is, it costs more to borrow a strong currency, and the exports of a strong-currency country are more expensive in weaker currency countries.
If you've heard the dollar is losing value, you've really had your ear to the ground. But it's more likely that you've only just felt it...like looking out on a sunny day, but it feels cloudy. Everybody says they want the dollar to be strong. But you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread...and instead of 1.39, it's 1.79. Milk and cheese cost more. Braces cost more. There's sticker shock at the gas pump almost every day. Wages continue to dwindle, while everything that matters--meat, medicine, gas, heat--goes through the roof. Yeah, you can still get a cheap gadget at Wal-Mart...but for how much longer?
Some economists call it "stagflation". Some just call it deflation. What it means is that you're poorer than ever...while things cost more than ever. And it's all coming down so fast--what happened? We had a strong currency in the late 90's. The strongest we've seen in this country since Nixon took us off the gold standard (the mongrelized gold standard). Then, in order to head off what seemed like a serious recession following the tech boom...the Fed cut interest rates--i.e. they cheapened the dollar--and encouraged banks to lend money like crazy to keep people spending and head off a recession. Well, guess what? They did. They bought houses and cars and big-screen TV's and every stupid thing you can imagine. And the dollar went down...and kept going down. It's hard to measure, but according to some estimates I've read, you could have bought 30% more with a 2001 dollar than with a 2008 dollar. Cheap imports from China disguised the loss in value...but $110/barrel oil and $1000/ounce gold tell the story.
So what do you do? If you've been diligently cutting your expenses and paying off your debts, you might have a nice start on your 6-month emergency account. Take the trouble to protect it from a fall in the currency. It took some quick action on pur part last fall to avoid the 10% haircut we've taken in the dollar in the past six months. Only 1/3 of our emergency account is left in the bank. One third is in gold and silver. The rest is in foreign currency.
You can pick a "safe" money market (like Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund--supposedly "bulletproof", according to Money magazine). You can seek out a good, solvent bank that offers at least a 4% interest rate on deposits or CD's (good luck). You can buy silver dollars at the junk shop. My advice is to just spread it around...dig around and look for things that will keep pace with or exceed the inflation rate, which is around 4%. I feel pretty stupid for keeping so much money parked at WaMu for a measly .24%. But I can't really get around the fact that I need to have some money in a place where I can go and make a wire transfer or write and deposit checks. That's basically what banks are good at--moving money around. Too bad they're butterfingers when it comes to lending and "investing" it.
One caveat...do your homework. Don't put money where you're not confident you can preserve it. If in doubt, just keep it in the bank--but don't go over the FDIC limit. While you're at it, gather all your valuables and important documents and just get a little dinky safe from Wal-Mart and keep all that stuff in there. Fireproof is best, but secure and portable has its advantages. I personally don't want it to look like I have Fort Knox in my basement.
***
Realize that currency isn't money. "The long-term value of all fiat currencies is zero," says Bill Bonner, the very Catholic editor of The Daily Reckoning. And whatever I may think of his religious leanings, he's been proven right by history. When Jesus walked the earth in Judea, the Roman empire was being rocked by currency devaluation. It always causes social unrest and economic hardship. It's always the refuge of a panicked, insolvent empire on the verge of collapse.
"There's a war on the middle class," you might hear--on Fox News or elsewhere. What does that mean? When your wages are stagnant or falling, and your taxes and expenses keep going up while your savings, stocks, and real estate are going down, you're being bled. Someone is getting the money...but it isn't you. Somehow you find enough to live on, but it seems like less every year. That's because it is. The numbers all seem right, but it doesn't add up. That's the curse of inflation. Everything's just fine, say the government, banks, and advertisers. Go ahead and buy...no interest, same as cash. Lowest mortgage rates in years. They say that because they're the first to benefit from a devalued currency. But there's a trickle-down effect. By the time inflation trickles down to the little guy, his income might have risen a little bit...but his expenses have risen more than his wage. The stock market seems alright, but when you price it in gold, it's going straight into the toilet.
A paper currency is only an IOU. It's at the mercy of a central bank that can raise or lower interest rates at will, strengthening or weakening the currency as they deem the situation requires. You are better off with a weaker dollar, they say, than with a recession. Your wages may be smaller, but at least you still have a job. You may, as a taxpayer, have to bail out Bear Stearns...but that's better than enduring the financial winter that may set in if all the big banks fall like dominoes.
Gold and silver have always been the only real money. Up until the 60's, in this country, our coins were 90% silver and a dollar bill said "silver certificate" instead of Federal Reserve Note. Once upon a time we had American gold coins, that clinked and chinked in people's pockets along with their peace dollars and Indian head nickels. A sound monetary system--that's what our prosperity was built on. Not fixed interest rates and Federal Reserve notes. We had real prosperity because gold was a demanding mistress--she demanded we balance our budgets and pay our debts. And she threw us out on our ear when we didn't. People decided this last part was just a bit too painful. But I wonder what they would say now.
There are many ways to own precious metals, depending on what you're comfortable with. This isn't a technical guide so much as a philosophy (for details and further research, you can check out American Gold Exchange). It isn't too late to own gold. But plunking down $1000 for an ounce is a bit intimidating at this stage in the market. I wouldn't recommend that. First, I would just say, learn a little bit about money and the history of money. Bill Bonner, Mish, and Michael Hodges know a little about it. Do your darnedest to save and cut expenses. The more cheaply you can live, the better you will fare if things really get bad (how many people will drive an hour to work at a $10 an hour job if gas hits $5 a gallon? $6?).
Consider investing in a few silver dollars here and there (they may seem expensive, but you're spending "play money" and getting real money). You can find them at pawn and junk shops. There are places on the Net that sell "junk silver," old coins from the '20's, '30's, '40's, and '50's. If you have a chunk of change you need to park somewhere, consider Everbank and their MarketSafe CD's. They've been offering 5-year CD's tied to the price of gold and silver, that are FDIC insured. If you're into stocks, the gold ETF (GLD) has been doing very well. Mining stocks are still undervalued, if you're after bigger gains. But these are more speculative. I think, for the housewife who's just trying to take care of her family, the three-to-six month food pantry is an excellent investment on its own. After all, you can't eat gold and silver coins. These are just things you can do if all your other bases are covered.
Even as we contemplate all the places we can store wealth, let us remember to have a spirit of poverty. That wealth is ostensibly there for your family's security, not to buy new furniture or take vacations in retirement. The more money we have, I hope the more we would give. The more secure we feel, I hope the more joy and generosity will shine out. If we sleep soundly at night, I hope it is in the peace we find after praying the Rosary, not thinking about the Ben Franklins taped to the bed. My focus is practicality, but my only peace lies in prayer. A blessed Palm Sunday to all.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
California=Bizarro World
Over yonder, at JimmyAkin.org, Tim Jones has a post up on California's week-old homeschooling crisis. One hour after we discovered this post, we found a phone message from my sister urging us to go to this web site to sign a petition to de-publish the ruling. Done and done.
Assuming you don't know anything about this story, the Jimmy Akin post is a good place to start, because several commenters have left links, relevant Church documents, and clarifications.
Story in a nutshell:
"In a stunning decision affecting thousands of families in California, the California Court of Appeal has issued an opinion finding no legal right to home school. "Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey whose opinion was joined by the other two members of the appellate panel. The opinion was issued February 28, 2008, in a case titled In re Rachel L., which reversed a Superior Court Judge, Stephen Marpet, who found that "parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home."
"The parents of Rachel L. enrolled her in Sunland Christian School, a private home schooling program. In his opinion, Croskey, 75, described what he called the "ruse of enrolling [children] in a private school and then letting them stay home and be taught by a non-credentialed parent."
California Homeschool Network has a synopsis of the situation as well as several informative links.
Here is the comment I left on Jimmy's web site:
"Spent an hour reading up on this last night.
Since posting the above, I came across some more info that clarifies the family's situation. They are NOT child-abusing wackos, they just spanked their kids, is all (which is a prosecutable offense in California, apparently). They have eight kids, and father Philip declares he will not have them in public schools being taught gay propaganda and what-not.
Also Sunland Christian School is an accredited homeschool-type curriculum, which is considered a charter school under the laws of California, but operates much the same as any pre-packaged homeschool curriculum. So Mom is OK with teaching the kids.
Moreover, the genius judges who decided this case did not invite any testimony from the school or any home schooling advocates. By referring to this homeschooling situation as a "ruse," the 75-year old senior judge on the panel is accusing homeschooling parents of fraud-- betraying either his complete ignorance of how homeschooling is supposed to work, or the fact that he knows about it and is dead-set against it.
I wish it didn't look this bad, but the more I read, the worse it looked.
Relevant links may be found by Googling "California homeschool news".
I am no lawyer, but I sure hope this gets thrown out by the CA State Supreme Court, and I think it will--but it will take a long time and keep a lot of parents in trepidation.
My advice for Californians who want to have any say in what happens to their kids at this point is...walk. Vote with your feet. Maybe when California is left with only immigrants and welfare recipients will they finally get a clue."
Diligent archive divers may have already discovered that I think this situation is a Blaine shame.
Other than that, the only thing I have to add (in financial parlance) is SELL CALIFORNIA. Sell your property, sell your bonds, get the heck out of there and don't look back:
*property has nowhere to go but down
*unemployment has nowhere to go but up
*cost of living's going up
*taxes are going up
*gas is going up
*wacky rulings like this
*spanking is prosecutable
*teaching gay stuff to your kids is mandatory
*whatever disaster's next in this bizarre state
I predict Church persecution is next, but who the heck am I? Oh yeah, I'm a person who's leaving the coast for the midwest.
Assuming you don't know anything about this story, the Jimmy Akin post is a good place to start, because several commenters have left links, relevant Church documents, and clarifications.
Story in a nutshell:
"In a stunning decision affecting thousands of families in California, the California Court of Appeal has issued an opinion finding no legal right to home school. "Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey whose opinion was joined by the other two members of the appellate panel. The opinion was issued February 28, 2008, in a case titled In re Rachel L., which reversed a Superior Court Judge, Stephen Marpet, who found that "parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home."
"The parents of Rachel L. enrolled her in Sunland Christian School, a private home schooling program. In his opinion, Croskey, 75, described what he called the "ruse of enrolling [children] in a private school and then letting them stay home and be taught by a non-credentialed parent."
California Homeschool Network has a synopsis of the situation as well as several informative links.
Here is the comment I left on Jimmy's web site:
"Spent an hour reading up on this last night.
Since posting the above, I came across some more info that clarifies the family's situation. They are NOT child-abusing wackos, they just spanked their kids, is all (which is a prosecutable offense in California, apparently). They have eight kids, and father Philip declares he will not have them in public schools being taught gay propaganda and what-not.
Also Sunland Christian School is an accredited homeschool-type curriculum, which is considered a charter school under the laws of California, but operates much the same as any pre-packaged homeschool curriculum. So Mom is OK with teaching the kids.
Moreover, the genius judges who decided this case did not invite any testimony from the school or any home schooling advocates. By referring to this homeschooling situation as a "ruse," the 75-year old senior judge on the panel is accusing homeschooling parents of fraud-- betraying either his complete ignorance of how homeschooling is supposed to work, or the fact that he knows about it and is dead-set against it.
I wish it didn't look this bad, but the more I read, the worse it looked.
Relevant links may be found by Googling "California homeschool news".
I am no lawyer, but I sure hope this gets thrown out by the CA State Supreme Court, and I think it will--but it will take a long time and keep a lot of parents in trepidation.
My advice for Californians who want to have any say in what happens to their kids at this point is...walk. Vote with your feet. Maybe when California is left with only immigrants and welfare recipients will they finally get a clue."
Diligent archive divers may have already discovered that I think this situation is a Blaine shame.
Other than that, the only thing I have to add (in financial parlance) is SELL CALIFORNIA. Sell your property, sell your bonds, get the heck out of there and don't look back:
*property has nowhere to go but down
*unemployment has nowhere to go but up
*cost of living's going up
*taxes are going up
*gas is going up
*wacky rulings like this
*spanking is prosecutable
*teaching gay stuff to your kids is mandatory
*whatever disaster's next in this bizarre state
I predict Church persecution is next, but who the heck am I? Oh yeah, I'm a person who's leaving the coast for the midwest.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The future of food Inflation...and what to do about it
This just in from my investment newsletter source (s):
"Food prices will rise 3-4% in 2008, predicted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief economist Joseph Glauber yesterday. Should his prediction come true, that would spell a whopping 8% inflation rate for food since January 2007.
"While the ethanol boom can be expected to bring higher incomes to farmers and reduce government outlays for farm programs," Glauber suggested at the USDA annual outlook conference, “it will also contribute to higher crop and livestock prices… Overall retail food prices for 2008-2010 are expected to rise faster than the general inflation rate."
"There's going to be real food inflation in this country," added C. Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods. "I think we need to tell the American consumer that things are going up. We're seeing cost increases that we've never seen in our business."
Chris Mayer, one of my investment guru guys, wrote:
"Grain consumption is at record levels, as I’ve written to you before. We’ll need record harvests to stop draining the world’s declining inventories. And as that margin grows thinner, we risk having actual shortages. So far, we’ve seen large prices for many grains. But what we could see beyond spikes in price are actual shortages.
"Yesterday, the CEO of Nestle gave a similar bleak outlook on finding scarce food-related commodities. Peter Brabeck said that the food industry would have to fight the biofuel industry over access to arable land. “We will not find sufficient water to produce all the crops… there will be a fierce fight for arable land.”
"Another telling move is what’s happening to import duties. Normally, import duties on food protect homegrown producers from outside competition and make the local consumers foot the bill. But governments around the world are suddenly slashing tariffs and import duties on wheat, rice and cooking oil."
You can believe these guys, or not. As I figure it, I'm up 10% on the value of my three-month non-perishable food pantry stash (about half of which we've eaten). In fact, it's saved me so many trips to the store, I think with the added cost of gas and time, I'm up over 15% in three months--that's a better return than the S&P 500 or the Dow has returned so far this decade, especially when priced in gold:
What do you do after your pantry is packed? Try growing your own.
"Food prices will rise 3-4% in 2008, predicted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief economist Joseph Glauber yesterday. Should his prediction come true, that would spell a whopping 8% inflation rate for food since January 2007.
"While the ethanol boom can be expected to bring higher incomes to farmers and reduce government outlays for farm programs," Glauber suggested at the USDA annual outlook conference, “it will also contribute to higher crop and livestock prices… Overall retail food prices for 2008-2010 are expected to rise faster than the general inflation rate."
"There's going to be real food inflation in this country," added C. Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods. "I think we need to tell the American consumer that things are going up. We're seeing cost increases that we've never seen in our business."
Chris Mayer, one of my investment guru guys, wrote:
"Grain consumption is at record levels, as I’ve written to you before. We’ll need record harvests to stop draining the world’s declining inventories. And as that margin grows thinner, we risk having actual shortages. So far, we’ve seen large prices for many grains. But what we could see beyond spikes in price are actual shortages.
"Yesterday, the CEO of Nestle gave a similar bleak outlook on finding scarce food-related commodities. Peter Brabeck said that the food industry would have to fight the biofuel industry over access to arable land. “We will not find sufficient water to produce all the crops… there will be a fierce fight for arable land.”
"Another telling move is what’s happening to import duties. Normally, import duties on food protect homegrown producers from outside competition and make the local consumers foot the bill. But governments around the world are suddenly slashing tariffs and import duties on wheat, rice and cooking oil."
You can believe these guys, or not. As I figure it, I'm up 10% on the value of my three-month non-perishable food pantry stash (about half of which we've eaten). In fact, it's saved me so many trips to the store, I think with the added cost of gas and time, I'm up over 15% in three months--that's a better return than the S&P 500 or the Dow has returned so far this decade, especially when priced in gold:
What do you do after your pantry is packed? Try growing your own.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Feminine Future
"She'd done well to make commander so soon even with the Fleet's steady growth in the face of the Havenite threat, for the life-extending prolong process made for long careers....She'd known and accepted from the start that those with less competence but more exalted bloodlines would race past her. Well, they had, but she'd made it at last. A cruiser command, the dream of every officer worth her salt!"
I'm trying not to hate this book. With all due respect for my husband, who eats up these kinds of novels like little leftover Halloween candy bars--Honor Harrington: On Basilisk Station seems like the kind of book that will give me enough of a rash to sit and write a ten-page critique on it, and then inflict it on my few readers in the form of a blog post. Since I'm short on time and long on sympathy, I'll try and compress my main beef with this genre in a quick rant.
My problem with science fiction that attempts to place women on par with men in a tech-oriented far-flung future is that these characters aren't really women--they're men with boobs and vaginas (and guns). The author stumbles all over himself (or herself, as was the case with Cordelia's Honor) to appear forward-thinking by extrapolating current social and technological trends into the future. The problem with this approach in writing an imagined future history is that trends are just that--flashes in the pan that don't last and are mostly written off to the dustbin of history.
The things about men and women and society that last--for example, the fact that societies not based on the family as basic social unit ultimately fail--seem to be lost on these writers.
This kind of future is far from a feminist one; in fact, it is masculinist in the extreme. There is no place for the feminine in this future. No one nurtures (except the Nanny State). No one is soft. No one makes curtains and cans tomatoes. No one cleans the smudges from a child's face and puts band-aids on boo-boos. What's left is a simply horrifying vision of what happens when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics meets Brave New World run amok. No wonder the people in these books are always fighting wars and struggling under totalitarian governments. No wonder that whiz-bang technology serves as the replacement for the soft tissues that formerly supported new life. No wonder everyone sees a military career as the apogee of female achievement. Barrenness reigns supreme: and a queen is the overseer of all!
Adding to the absurdity of this form of long-rage extrapolation from what is essentially history's latest fad (feminism), is the fact that you can see from the quote above that the author includes a classist and ageist bias to his future society. Also, no one believes in God (apparently), but everyone uses blasphemies in their everyday speech. These are supposed to add a gritty, realistic tone that today's reader can relate to. On the other hand, gender bias--which has been with us as long as the earth revolves around the sun and is one of the things that EVERYONE can relate to--has been magically resolved.
Ugh. I can't go any further with this. And don't bother to argue about equal rights for women in the combox, because I'm not against that (look to Ladies Against Feminism for a thoroughgoing critique of the failed platform of feminism). I was just starting to think that I was some kind of cave-dwelling fuddy-duddy for preferring Jane Austen movies and homemaking blogs. Dwelling in the past, I thought--and not even a realistic one. But compared with the futures of Honor Harrington, and Cordelia, et al., I far prefer my lavender-scented cave.
This is what I want: stories that don't have an agenda to throw at me about politics, religion, or social issues. I want stories with a fully-fleshed woman character who is strong AND feminine (or at least, doesn't treat her femininity as a weakness or a weapon). I want a future that is positive for women and children. I want a world that offers options for all. True, such a world offers danger and conflict. Our characters must find their way through it. But it has to be more tasty than just a literary can of SPAM.
"It's pulp!" yells my husband in exasperation. "Just live with it!"
*sigh* I know. I'm so hard to please.
(John C. Wright has more meaty discussions of this nature on his LiveJournal.)
I'm trying not to hate this book. With all due respect for my husband, who eats up these kinds of novels like little leftover Halloween candy bars--Honor Harrington: On Basilisk Station seems like the kind of book that will give me enough of a rash to sit and write a ten-page critique on it, and then inflict it on my few readers in the form of a blog post. Since I'm short on time and long on sympathy, I'll try and compress my main beef with this genre in a quick rant.
My problem with science fiction that attempts to place women on par with men in a tech-oriented far-flung future is that these characters aren't really women--they're men with boobs and vaginas (and guns). The author stumbles all over himself (or herself, as was the case with Cordelia's Honor) to appear forward-thinking by extrapolating current social and technological trends into the future. The problem with this approach in writing an imagined future history is that trends are just that--flashes in the pan that don't last and are mostly written off to the dustbin of history.
The things about men and women and society that last--for example, the fact that societies not based on the family as basic social unit ultimately fail--seem to be lost on these writers.
This kind of future is far from a feminist one; in fact, it is masculinist in the extreme. There is no place for the feminine in this future. No one nurtures (except the Nanny State). No one is soft. No one makes curtains and cans tomatoes. No one cleans the smudges from a child's face and puts band-aids on boo-boos. What's left is a simply horrifying vision of what happens when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics meets Brave New World run amok. No wonder the people in these books are always fighting wars and struggling under totalitarian governments. No wonder that whiz-bang technology serves as the replacement for the soft tissues that formerly supported new life. No wonder everyone sees a military career as the apogee of female achievement. Barrenness reigns supreme: and a queen is the overseer of all!
Adding to the absurdity of this form of long-rage extrapolation from what is essentially history's latest fad (feminism), is the fact that you can see from the quote above that the author includes a classist and ageist bias to his future society. Also, no one believes in God (apparently), but everyone uses blasphemies in their everyday speech. These are supposed to add a gritty, realistic tone that today's reader can relate to. On the other hand, gender bias--which has been with us as long as the earth revolves around the sun and is one of the things that EVERYONE can relate to--has been magically resolved.
Ugh. I can't go any further with this. And don't bother to argue about equal rights for women in the combox, because I'm not against that (look to Ladies Against Feminism for a thoroughgoing critique of the failed platform of feminism). I was just starting to think that I was some kind of cave-dwelling fuddy-duddy for preferring Jane Austen movies and homemaking blogs. Dwelling in the past, I thought--and not even a realistic one. But compared with the futures of Honor Harrington, and Cordelia, et al., I far prefer my lavender-scented cave.
This is what I want: stories that don't have an agenda to throw at me about politics, religion, or social issues. I want stories with a fully-fleshed woman character who is strong AND feminine (or at least, doesn't treat her femininity as a weakness or a weapon). I want a future that is positive for women and children. I want a world that offers options for all. True, such a world offers danger and conflict. Our characters must find their way through it. But it has to be more tasty than just a literary can of SPAM.
"It's pulp!" yells my husband in exasperation. "Just live with it!"
*sigh* I know. I'm so hard to please.
(John C. Wright has more meaty discussions of this nature on his LiveJournal.)
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