Monday, December 28, 2009

Merry Christmas 2009

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Bread and Milk and Blackberries for Supper

I haven't blogged in forever. I have thought about blogging at least every other day. Tonight the kids are in bed and Dan is watching a movie I don't care to watch, and it seems like a good time to just start.

You might remember bread, milk and blackberries from the story of Peter Rabbit. This is what the little bunnies had for a simple supper when Peter was sent to bed with chamomile tea. I am introducing Bread, Milk, and Blackberries for Supper as a new "foodie" feature of my blog. I have blogged about food before, and posted a recipe here and there. But recently food has become more of an interest for me.... specifically "real" food, like bread, and milk and blackberries. Let me tell you where I'm coming from.

For Mother's Day Dan got me some ducklings. When the starter feed ran out I went back to the farmer's supply store to get more and it was out of stock. I asked if my ducklings were old enough to switch to corn, and was told that they were. So I brought home a bag of cracked corn. I hadn't started giving them kitchen scraps yet, so all they had was corn and water. Being a very new farmer-person I thought that was good enough. Soon though, the ducklings started having seizures. It was so disturbing to watch that I didn't want to go out and see them. I went online to see what could be wrong with them and discovered that they had symptoms of vitamin deficiency. Especially the vitamin E found the green stuff they should have been eating. So that night I fixed them a big pan of spinach and scraps with vitamin E capsules drizzled on top. They loved it, and the seizures resolved right away once their poor little bird brains were sufficiently nourished. I started feeding them kitchen scraps with lots of green stuff and mixed rabbit pellets in with the corn, which they thrived on.

A few months later I came across a book called "Real food for mother and baby" by Nina Planck. It was eye-opening. Many books and articles and films later, I realized that I had been starving my own brain pretty much the same way I accidentally starved those little ducklings. I hadn't been eating real food. I had been eating whatever was at the store, which seems like food but is often so far removed from the actual thing, it is now something else entirely. And when you trace it all they way back to what most of this "food" is made from, you come back to......corn. The same thing my little ducks tried to live on but couldn't. I want to give my kids nourishing food. This family's brains can definitely use all the help we can get.

So stay tuned for more "Bread, Milk, and Blackberries for Supper". You can count on the bread being homemade, the milk being raw, and the blackberries being local. I will be serving up some recipes, ideas, and chronicling my new quest for real food, in between turns on the tire swing.