I don't want to turn this into an activism blog, but...

I am a lifelong vegetarian. My parents were total hippies when I was born - my 23 year old midwife aunt delivered me at my parents house! Though I was vegetarian, I never had a particularly great diet. I ate a lot of junk, but since I maintained a vegetarian lifestyle for reasons other than health, I didn't really pay much attention to it. As I got older, I started to investigate a little bit more about what I was eating. Finding out that things I thought were vegetarian weren't necessarily so - cheese, sugar, etc. I got increasingly irritated by the fact that on a day-to-day basis, I really had no idea what I was putting in my mouth and body, and I came around to the idea that the easiest way to know for sure what I was eating was to make it myself form whole ingredients. Hence the switch to veganism. My diet is better now than it ever has been in my entire life, except maybe as a child when I wasn't responsible for feeding myself.

I should insert the caveat that I don't think the whole world needs to be vegan. I wholeheartedly support small farms and knowing your local farmer. If you are a member of a meat/dairy co-op or CSA and have visited the farm and know how they treat the animals and such, I applaud you and fully support your dietary habits. Veganism was the right choice for me and for my family and it takes a lot of work (compared to today's fast food culture). It's obviously not feasible for everyone, and I know most people are doing the best they can with what they've got.

The plain fact of the matter is that we can live this vegan/organic/mostly-whole-foods lifestyle because we are upper middle class. We have disposable income and much of it is spent on food. Food is our single biggest budgetary item behind our mortgage. I'm not kidding. I could write a dissertation on how food is a social justice issue. How for the first time in history, rich people are skinny and poor people are fat. How our food culture is killing us and our planet. And not as slowly as we think. I feel very strongly that we need more food activism, that we need a mechanism for social change regarding the way we think about food and the way we treat people who have limited access to food and proper nutrition. Fortunately, there are many people who are smarter and more experienced than me who have already started to speak up on these issues. Jamie Oliver is probably the most well known, since he had a reality show about it. His work is just the beginning, though. Another is Ann Cooper, who was (is?) the director of nutrition for school lunches for the Berkley Unified School District. Her talk at the TED conference was absolutely brilliant and eye opening. My absolute favorite line: "We are feeding our kids to death."



All this is leading up to an amazing video I watched today. It's the beginning of a documentary project on GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and how unregulated they are in our food supply. How large corporations like Monsanto and Dow (Dupont) are slowly and silently gaining control of the world's food supply, and how that is a very dangerous thing. Last year, in fact, there was a supreme court decision that said that if Monsanto suspects that your crop has been cross-contaminated with their GMO seeds, they can come destroy your entire crop with herbicide. And what's worse, they bear no responsibility for controlling the cross-contamination. If a Monsanto seed truck drives past your field and accidentally has seed fall off and cross pollinate with your crop? Too bad. Your crop is toast with no required compensation from Monsanto. It's frightening and it's happening.


GMO Film Project Sizzler from Compeller Pictures on Vimeo.

So, while this blog isn't a food activism blog, this obliquely relates to parenting in general. There are so many aspects of being a good parent, and what and how you feed your kids has to be one of them.

And here I thought I was going low-sodium...

Sodium. Delicious, delicious sodium. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

Here at Chez Parker, we consider ourselves on the lower end of the sodium consumption totem pole. I mean, I love salt as much (maybe more) than the next person, but being vegans, we eat very little processed or pre-packaged food. I'd say that easily 80-90% of our diet starts from whole fruits, vegetables and grains. Not bad, so I was surprised to find during a few days of recording every single thing I ate that I was still going over my recommended daily amount of salt. So I started to look around for alternatives and ways to cut down on salt.

I drink a ton of water every day. I've increased my daily intake to almost a gallon of straight water, in addition to other beverages, to combat ongoing kidney issues, among other things. As I've become better hydrated, I've become less concerned about having a bit of extra salt in my diet. I kind of feel like it all gets washed away in the end (you really don't want to know how many times I have to pee during the day. It's freaking ridiculous.), and having the smidge extra probably helps maintain an electrolyte balance or something. *hand-wavey pseudo science* But since heart disease runs on both sides of our family, and Allen has moderately high blood pressure anyway (though way down since he adopted a vegan diet), I thought cutting a few more corners couldn't hurt.

One big step I took was not salting during cooking. I've stopped adding salt to soups and stir-fries and whatever else during the cooking process and I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of finishing salts. It's a great way to control the amount of salt, and really let the salt flavor shine through with a lot less. I found that I had to add so much salt to notice any flavor change during cooking, but only a fraction if I add it right before eating.

My biggest victory, or so I thought, was Bragg's Liquid Aminos. Normally, we use tamari, which is identical to soy sauce except that it also has wheat in it. I've seen Bragg's all over the place - in vegetarian recipe magazines, on vegan blogs, in all sorts of hippy places. It seemed like a good time to try it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "Bragg's is so awesome! It's like soy sauce but without all the sodium!" I was skeptical. I mean, the reason soy sauce is tasty is because of the sodium. But a recipe I am making for dinner tonight used it as a flavor boost ("without all the sodium!"), so I decided now was the time to try it.

It tastes so delicious. I couldn't believe it! Tastes just like soy sauce but without all the sodium! I immediately proclaimed to Allen, "I'm never using soy sauce or tamari again!" The primary ingredient is the same - vegetable protein from soy, with "naturally occurring sodium - no table salt added". Sure enough, if you look at the nutritional information, Bragg's has only 160 mgs of sodium per serving, while our "low-sodium" tamari has 700 mgs. But...

But.

You knew it was coming, right? The "but". The serving size for tamari is 1 Tbsp. The serving size for Bragg's? 1/2 tsp. Which puts the sodium content at a whopping 960 mgs for the same serving size as low-sodium tamari. "The same taste without all the sodium"?! Are they kidding?! This kind of praying on consumer ignorance really pisses me off. Here you have a product billing itself as a healthy alternative, which is absolutely, demonstrably not. I want to email the writer of the blog that sings the praises of Bragg's and warn her! Read the serving size! It's the same sodium! Wait, no! It's MORE sodium!

Now, as a final caveat, I do not have soy sauce in my fridge for comparison. I only have low-sodium tamari. But if you are looking for a way to lower your sodium intake, I'd suggest switching to low-sodium soy sauce or tamari long before I'd suggest switching to Bragg's Liquid Aminos.

This blog post was really a long-winded way to get to complain about Bragg's Liquid Aminos and rail against so-called "health conscious" companies praying on consumer ignorance. Mission accomplished, I think.

Still alive...

We're still here, just nothing to report. I am starting to research baby stuff a bit more, though, so expect to see some posts on adorable baby accessories in the near future.

Google stats counter is a harsh mistress.

On the management page of my blog, I can see stats for how many people visit the blog each day. Normally it's not a ton, but occasionally, I'll get a spike of, say, 50 people visiting in a single day. I always wonder at those days. Who are these people? How did they find the blog? Did they enjoy the read, or find it boring because I post no pictures?

The biggest problem with having a sudden (temporary) boost in readership is that I feel pressure to write something witty and engaging... Yeah. It's not that kind of blog. ;-)

So, we had a great weekend in Asheville. Allen and I got to spend a lot of time together - something we've been missing lately because of the hectic, break-neck pace of our lives. (Don't mistake "busy" for "interesting", though...) We got to sample all manner of vegan delights. It's always miraculous to me when I visit a place that has more than one (or zero) vegan/vegetarian restaurants from which to choose. Asheville also has a chippery. A little restaurant that makes and serves fresh potato chips. If you are ever there, I highly recommend the salt and three vinegar. So delicious, I'm daydreaming about them right now.

We also got to spend some time with our sweet friends before they make their way across country to a new adventure. We'll miss having them so close, but I'm so excited for this new chapter in their lives. It seems like almost all of my friends are starting new adventures recently - parenting, new jobs, cross-country moves, back to school in a foreign country, the Peace Corp... So many exciting new changes on the horizon. For a while I was feeling stagnant - like Allen and I were being left behind while everyone else moved forward - but now, even though we're still waiting on Barker and those damn CPS clearances, I feel like we're on the cusp of something new and wonderful. It won't be long now... (At least, it better not be long now!)

Are we there yet?

No news from Barker - I like to get that out of the way first so you can skip the rest of my rambling post if you are so inclined. :-)

Instead of hanging at the house this weekend, we are house-swapping with a friend in Asheville, NC. He's coming up here for work and so staying at our house (and very helpfully feeding our kitties) while we go down to Asheville to stay at his place. My oldest friend is moving to Southern California in a few short weeks, so we're heading down to Asheville to see her and her husband one last time before they go off on their new adventures.

I gotta tell you guys: I am falling in love with Asheville. It's laid back vegan hippie paradise. We spent a weekend down there a few months ago helping said friend move and we spent some time exploring downtown. I know the city has much more to offer, as does the region in general, but it was still pretty great. Bookstores, awesome little organic clothing stores, amazing bars with amazing beers, fabulous food and vegan options almost everywhere you go. Plus, it's not a huge metropolis. It's not tiny, but it's still got that small town feel. Like you could easily run in to friends in the grocery store. I think Wikipedia puts the population at somewhere around 80,000 people? Give or take? A good size, but not overwhelming.

I always assumed that when/if we move out of the DC Metro area, we'd either head back to Gainesville, FL to be closer to family, or we'd head up to western Massachusetts. We have family in Mass., too, but the main draw is that I went to college there and absolutely love the little towns. But now that we've spent some time in Asheville, it's getting higher and higher on the list...

Looking forward to a fun weekend of exploring and eating and good times with old friends.

Choices.

There's a lot going around the Interwebs lately about how much choice you should have when adopting. (Well, it's going around the sites I frequent, anyway...) One side of the argument says that you should just take what you can get when adopting, and the other side says that bio parents get to "choose" the race of their child, so why shouldn't adoptive parents. This is a fraught issue, so I'm going to try to be delicate. (But I will likely end up being ham fisted.)

How can I put this? To the people who think you should just take what you can get: your best is an idiot. I get a little bit pissy with this attitude because it indicates, at best, that these people have never had to deal with infertility on any level. And, really? Brava for them, but that isn't my world. That kind of attitude seems to indicate that they think infertility is somehow the fault of the infertile, and that we should just shut up and accept whatever baby we can find, regardless of whether we are fit to parent that child, deal with their special needs, deal with the issues surrounding their personal situation, etc., etc., ad nauseum. This really comes back to the issue of adoption as charity. Adoption can NOT be a charity case - in lieu of donating to Japan earthquake relief, I'll just adopt a kid! (sarcasm definitely intended) Parenting is a challenge during the best of times, and it's for life. You can't give the kid back, whether adopted or biological, so you have to make absolutely, 100% sure that you are equipped to deal with that specific child's needs and that the child is going to fit in well with your family. Super racist in-laws? A black/latino/multiracial child might not be a good fit. (Or maybe it would be good to bring your in-laws into the 21st century...) Limited financial resources? A child requiring long-term medical care might not be a good fit. I'm being a bit flippant in my examples, but the premise remains sound.

A child you bring into your life has to fit there forever, so if you don't take the "right" one, that child will be worse off in the long run. With bio children, you know what race you'll get, but sometimes you have curve-balls thrown at you like Down's Syndrome or pre-term birth or any number of other complications. And I'd like to think that most people rise to the challenges beautifully. But they've also had 9 months to bond with that baby and prepare for having that baby in their lives, even if they didn't know about the extra challenges. Adoptive parents, similarly, have had a long time to think about what they are prepared to deal with, and so make their selections accordingly, and hope for the best like everyone else.

The other extreme is thinking that bio parents choose the race of their child by choosing the race of their mate. This is going too far down the other path, I think. I didn't choose Allen because he's white and I wanted white babies. I chose Allen because he is kind and generous and loving and honest and my perfect balance. So, though we would have had white babies if I got pregnant, having white babies was not, in any way, part of my choosing him as a partner in life. I guess some might make the argument that subconsciously, I chose him because our potential offspring would be more viable, but again, even if that were the case, I fail to see how race affects offspring viability.

Adoption is an emotional minefield. It is fraught with stress and tears and waiting and boredom and waiting and punctuated by brief periods of frenetic activity and joy. And hopefully, it has a happy ending. How any couple or family comes to find "their" child is not for anyone else to judge. What matters is that child has a loving family and that family has filled an empty, child-sized hole in their lives.

The things people will tell the world...

One of the great things about reading blogs is the voyeuristic aspect. You get to anonymously peek in on someone else's life and compare it to your own, all from the privacy of your computer. I love reading the blogs that put up salacious gossip about people I don't know. Not even celebrities, mind you - just regular ol' people who put up all the details of their cheating husbands or gory birth stories or what-have-you.

Having said that, however, I am sometimes (frequently) horrified by what people will post up on the Internet for all the world to see. Not even anonymously. People who have identifying information up on their blogs. I try very hard not to get TMI on this blog, and I'm sure it makes for a less interesting read, but I'm okay with that. On top of that, it's just not a blog that lends itself to TMI moments, really.

A few of the blogs I love don't lend themselves to TMI either, but occasionally, something will pop up that makes me do a double take. Generally it has to do with the author's sex life, and just strikes me as out of place and a little shocking. Maybe that makes me a prude? I know I'm not the first person to struggle with the concept of privacy in the digital age, and if you want your bidness out and about for all the world to see, well, hey. Go for it. I not only won't stop you, I'll likely encourage you by reading your blog. But just FYI to anyone who was wondering, this will never be that kind of blog. Sorry, folks. :-)

I refuse.

My (maternal) grandmother is 76 years old and has a full head of chestnut brown hair. My mother didn't get her first gray hair until she was in her forties.

I just found a second gray hair in my bangs.

I refuse.

Prepping, part 2.

The delay in our CPS clearances notwithstanding, it's rapidly becoming reality around Chez Parker that we'll be housing another body fairly soon. As you know, we've been doing some preliminary nesting in the form of cleaning and clearing out clutter, rearranging furniture and the like. We still have a long way to go in that regard (rearranging bedrooms and repainting, anyone?), but we're definitely making some great strides forward in simplifying our house and our lives.

The second part of prepping for our newest addition is somewhat more difficult: accessories.

By accessories, I mean all of the trappings that come along with a baby: crib, changing table, baby clothes (squee!), stroller (?), car seat, diaper bag... The list goes on and on. I haven't even begun to research any of these things, and I just know that's going to come back and bite me in the ass. On the one hand, I don't want to prep a nursery and have it sit empty for a year or more, which is a distinct possibility with adoption. That would just be an open wound. But I also don't want to spend a bunch of money on a last minute purchase because we got a midnight phone call to pick up our new baby tomorrow and we didn't do any research yet. I have some idea of what I want/need because of friends who have babies, but brands, safety ratings, materials sourcing? I feel like I should be an informed consumer rather than just buying what everyone else has. (Though what everyone else has is probably the best one to have...)

I'm also torn on the stroller issue. I understand that they are useful and convenient, but I feel a certain responsibility to have as small a footprint as possible in an urban environment. We take public transportation very frequently, and a huge SUV stroller just feels rude and, frankly, unwieldy. Plus, I absolutely love Baby Bjorn carriers. I have the feeling that once our baby finally comes home, I'm never going to want to put them down, anyway.

In the coming months, I'll start looking into some of the more pressing accoutrements of having a baby, and posting thoughts here. (Alex: you can skip those posts...) If anyone has thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. The sheer volume of information and available accessories is a bit overwhelming, and I'll take any advice I can get.

A Capital 4th.

Even though we've lived here for going on four years, now, this was our first "official" 4th of July in DC. In years past, we've either been out of town, or just hung out at home. Large crowds and explosives aren't my favorite things, so we generally lay low for the 4th. This year, however, we have been lucky enough to befriend an amazing group of couples, who all just happen to live on Capitol Hill.

We braved the metro into the city yesterday for a potluck cookout with our great group of friends, and then made our way to the rooftop terrace of an apartment building overlooking the Capitol Dome. We had a beautiful view for the fireworks display, without having to fight our way onto the Mall. (Which would have been nearly impossible anyway. The Smithsonian metro stop was closed down for "crowd control" and the Mall was so packed that they stopped letting people in at 8pm. Yikes.) I didn't realize it until last night, but if you love fireworks and the 4th of July, Washington, D.C. is the place to be. Not only do you get the huge fireworks display on the National Mall, but literally the entire city is alight with fireworks. You can see them blossoming over buildings in every neighborhood as far as the eye can see. It's amazing and beautiful to see the National Monuments alight with the rainbow glow of fireworks.

As we made our way home last night, Allen commented at how funny and somewhat miraculous it is that we made friends with this group of people. We all became friends and then, boom! Baby, baby, baby, baby! The first couple adopted their daughter in March, the second had their son in April, the third is due in January, and we will, presumably, have a baby in there somewhere. The women in the group have been an amazing support system for me, and their husbands are all fantastic, too. Connecting with these couples has been one of the best things about our time in the city.

Still no news from Barker yet. CPS clearances take a while apparently. ::sigh::