I love that feeling you get on the flip side of being sick. You know the one - your brain has stopped exploding, you can breathe without falling into a crumpled mess, and extra fluid (usually in the form of phlegm, but clearly not restricted to that, auugh) stops leaking from various orifices.
The world stops spinning and you actually begin to feel somewhat normal for a change.
I'm always shocked when I get sick, because it doesn't happen all that often. I'm usually the one wiping feverish brows or cleaning up vomit spills, not the one laid up on the couch watching bad, bad daytime television and wishing I was dead. Honestly, does anyone actually watch Dr Phil anymore? (Shudder).
So life is normalising, and for that I am overjoyed. But my energy level is DEAD IN THE WATER. I mean seriously, undeniably, dead. It-hurts-to-hang-out-the-laundry kind of exhausted. I was kind of expecting that, to a degree. After all, it's not all that often one gets pneumonia - and the doctor did warn me I would not be my usual peppy self for several weeks. But this puts a serious spanner in the household routines.
I pretty much avoided housework completely for two weeks. Which should tell you something about the state of things at the moment. And then we got a dog. Who poops and widdles and requires a garden trowel-toting yard patrol about twice a day (and I've never been more grateful for a small yard since the day we moved in). But my point is, dogs, especially new puppies, are a lot of work. The bulk of which has fallen on my shoulders. And between Charlie-dog and just maintaining the 'household equilibrium' so to speak, I'm beat. I keep looking around the house, wishing I had the muscle tone to lift the broom and get at those cobwebs in the corner of the family room (yeah, I've got cobwebs, don't judge me). And then I sigh and lay back down on the couch where I promptly fall asleep until Charlie licks my hand to tell me to get his dinner. Thankfully he is the only one of the mammals in this house who does that, otherwise I'd be getting some strange looks from the other mums in the shopping centre food court, that's for sure.
And does anyone else do this? I keep getting wild thoughts floating through my head, leading me 'down the rabbit hole'. I read a post (well okay, many over the last year or two) referencing the book Nourishing Traditions, so I went looking for it at my local library. Hoo-eee, that book is popular. I had to get on a queue and only just picked it up this week after booking my place before Christmas. I'm also restricted to a 2-week loan, since there are ten other people on the list after me. Okay, so this little 'rabbit trail' actually originated well before I got sick, but after I picked the book a few days ago I got it in my head to begin researching the NT method of eating.
First thing that sprung to mind? Like within the first chapter? Not for us. If my very conservatively-eating husband so much as let a sip of Kombucha or Kefir pass his lips I would pass out. However there are many principles that did make sense (the kidney and liver-eating parts? Not so much) so off I went, researching a more general 'whole foods' diet and what that would encompass. Apparently I am meant to be grinding my own wheat (which I'd actually love to try), baking bread (which I don't do), drinking only whole milk (that part's easy - it's the 'raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized' part that freaks me out, not to mention not having even a hint of a source for this), eating only butter (I checked the supermarket today - short of making my own, there's not even a butter that hasn't had something added to it), eating organic fruit and vegetables (sigh...I know its better for you, but it would double our produce budget in an instant) and chowing down on grass-fed-only beef and free-range organic eggs.
How do people manage all that when they don't have ready-access to farmers' markets, a Whole Foods store (apparently this is something I also need access to - pity there aren't any down here) or know someone who raises cattle on grass? And for that matter, Australia's in a drought! My lawn is yellow - where is all the grass these cows are meant to be eating!
Okay, I'm making light of the situation, and there are many points that truly are valid, such as the notion that foods that are as close to their natural state as possible would be the healthiest choice. But the practicalities of implementing all of that is phenomenal. I live in a suburban area, with access to two supermarkets within walking distance (I don't drive - ten points to Lizzie from a global warming standpoint, LOL) and a third a short bus ride away. I can get regular ol' beef, the grain-feed type and the supermarket does a good free-range egg, but organic vegetables are extremely expensive and we don't live close enough to a market to make a trip worthwhile. About the best I can hope for is a monthly (or so) trip to a stand-alone fruit and veg store with better prices than the supermarket. And I'm usually crazy-ecstatic about saving those few bucks. And don't even get me started on whole wheat berries - I'd have to mail order them. I can just see the look on Talented Hubby's face - who would promptly march down to the supermarket and buy me perfectly acceptable regular flour just to save everyone the hassle (and expense!)
How does one change their mindset from 'good generally healthy foods (not organic) at cheap to moderate prices' to 'this is going to cost me an absolute BOMB but I can tick the eco-friendly box now'?
Charlie needs to pee. More on this subject later...(isn't that just the most awesome subject-ender ever? LOL)
7 comments:
Cobwebs? You too? *happy sigh*-I'm not alone.
Whole wheat berries??? What exactly are whole wheat berries? Wheat is a grain and berries are fruit, right? Unless someone somewhere changed the rules and didn't tell me?
One way to go organic is to grow your own, but you'd have to wait for the drought to end, unless you went extremely small scale i.e. carrots in a pot, parsley edging the flower beds, etc.
Can you let me know the author of the Nourishing Traditions book? I'd like to have a look at it. I quite like liver and kidneys occasionally. VERY occasionally, like everytime I get too anaemic and the doc says eat some meat!! Huh...
The author of Nourishing Traditions is Sally Fallon, but if you're thinking you'd like to have a squizz, beware - the whole point (and the subtitle of the book, more or less) is to 'challenge the diet dictocrats' so a LOT of traditional 'healthy food pyramid' and 'eating healthy' principles go out the window in favour of a 'whole foods' approach and NOTHING low fat. In addition to advocating raw milk, organics and grass-fed beef, the author is keen on fermented foods. You make your own funny-sounding beverages (apparently kombucha tastes tea-like?) and a lot of the recipes in the book (it's a tome) use 'building block' recipes (also given) like piima milk, kefir, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I haven't had a chance to look through the entire recipe section but the opening few chapters, spouting the evils of modern day food processing and why grass fed beef/raw milk/'old time diets' are great, is quite intense. Definitely check it out, but be prepared to be challenged quite extensively.
I have actually thought - on many occasions - of starting a vegie patch but never seem to get around to it. It might end up being the only source for cheap organic food though, so its still an option.
And as far as wheat berries go (and this should tell you just how ignorant I am in such matters, LOL) I am assuming them to be the original, whole, grains of wheat before they're stripped or ground for flour. There's like a whole sub-culture of 'wheat grinders' in Bloggityville with their own electric grain mills. Love the idea, just very unlikely I will convince DH to spend several hundred dollars on a mill to 'fiddle with'. You've got to be hard-core to do your own wheat, unless of course you know someone else with a mill which you can have the use of. In all honesty, if I had a spare few hundred, I'd go for a sewing machine or even TiVo, LOL...
But yeah, give NT a read - I'd love to get your thoughts on it. It's 'big' in Bloggityville, especially amongst the American homemaking bloggers. I'm yet to make a final judgement.
Thanks for that. Next time I'm at the library I'll get them to find me a copy and I'll have a look through. Now that you've said it's mostly about whole foods though it may not be my type of thing. I get that whole foods are nutritionally better for you, but to make it worthwhile, like you said, you'd have to be into it 24/7 and pay out for the grinders and food dryers and other machinery. I have a little electric coffee/spice grinder which I use to grind linseeds, sesame seeds, to add to my morning porridge. Sometimes I'll grind the rolled oats to make oatmeal and make oatmeal porridge instead. I've grown my own vegetables sporadically over the years, never enough to be totally self-sufficient as I'd like to be, mostly due to lack of space and money, now with the water restrictions, I've had to give up altogether. I pulled up the last of my carrots last Sunday and we ate them for dinner. Multi-coloured carrots from a packet of heirloom seed, we ate orange, yellow, white and purple carrots. Funnily enough the purple ones weren't purple inside.Some were yellow, some were orange. None had grown more than a couple of inches long because of a lack of water, but they still tasted good, quite strongly carrot flavoured. Anyway, I'll still take a look at the book, maybe I'll get an idea or recipe from it.
Yeah, I've heard that carrots can be quite thirsty.
I started looking seriously into this whole vegie growing business last year but missed the boat, planting wise. I ended up buying a really good book on backyard self-sufficiency - called, funnily enough "Backyard Self Sufficiency" - by Jackie French. It's an older book, published in 1992, but I found it still quite relevant. She approaches things from a pretty 'all in' perspective (planting thirty lettuces etc) but there's lots of valuable advice in there, not just about vegetables, but fruit, chickens, medicinal herbs, storing the surplus (preserving, drying), a planting and harvesting calendar based on where you are in Australia etc. A book that still packs a punch, and geared toward an Aussie crowd too. Your library will probably have Jackie French's books and this is one of her flagship books (still in print in 2005) so it shouldn't be too hard to find.
As for the expense, I hear you. I wanted to do it 'properly' (LOL) and border off actual beds with sleepers and whatnot but couldn't justify the expense. Building no-dig beds doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive though (mounds of dirt on the ground will work) and doing my own compost will help to keep the costs down. Weigh that up against the cost of, say, broccoli right now and it will pay for itself within the first growing season. I've also thought about doing pots but keep drifting to these larger no-dig beds.
Water is a bit of a concern, isn't it? You can't use grey water because you'll be eating the food, and I don't know what it is like where you are but here in Adelaide we have one three hour window of trigger-hose watering per week (you can split that over two allocated days, which is what we do). We CAN use watering cans at any time though, so I'd have to keep that in mind when considering how large(or small) scale to go - as I'd be out there every day hand watering.
Now that summer's end is drawing nearer, it might be a good time to get going on bed-building now, get the compost pile going, ready for planting in spring.
See what you've done? You've given me the bug again, LOL.
Yep, I'm in Adelaide too, hate that three hour watering window. most of our water goes on the lawns, because the lease says the lawns must be maintained.I'm sure the landlord would understand with the drought and all, but hubby can't be convinced. I'm in the Eastern suburbs, Maylands, you're further south I believe?
I know about Jackie French's books, I borrowed Backyard Self-Sufficiency several times from the Semaphore library when I live there in 2002, and I now have folders full of notes that I made from it, just in case I ever have enough land to be able to plant in such a manner. Lucky Jackie has wombats and possums to help her eat the amount of food she grows. I did similar folders of notes on books about permaculture, a growing method I'd really like to get into. Unfortunately my backyard is not much bigger than my living room and it's lawn which must be maintained yada yada. I have a small driveway, there I have several fruit trees in large pots, all grouped together under a shadecloth structure hubby knocked up. A six inch strip along the length of the lawn grows beans and parsley and a passionfruit vine. The vine is mostly to shield us from the units over the back fence, we don't eat passionfruit.....
I am currently into my third week of feeling bleugh. The doctor has put me on killer anti-biotics as he doesn't "want you getting pneumonia now do we?" (I thought instantly of you, even though I don't "know" you!!)
As for energy levels and cobwebs - I suffer from M.E so I never have any energy levels and a lot of cobwebs!!
As for healthy eating - I am the last person to comment as the closest I get to eating healthy is remembering to take my vitamin tablet each day - yikes!
Oh you poor thing :( I think I'm running at about 75-80% right now which is a darn sight better than the 25-30% I was mananaging a week and a half ago. So I say I'm 'over the hump' but know I won't feel 'healthy' for weeks. We had a relative call in the other day who has had something similar and he said he was still feeling the effects of pneumonia 6mo later. I nearly died. Those antibiotics aren't fun though - they, uh, 'messed with the excretory process' somewhat!
I've had to laugh (now that I can without going blue in the face from lack of oxygen, LOL) at my situation though - I'm a blood donor, and was due to go last October for my fourth visit (I started at Easter last year). My kids got chicken pox which meant I had to cancel that appointment (as even though I have had it, I could still be a carrier, so I had to wait a few weeks to make sure the illness had passed through the house completely). Then in November when I was due to return there was an issue (I won't go into details) which meant we had to cancel that appointment. In January when they rang to reschedule I made the appointment for last week - which I also had to cancel because of having taken antibiotics, LOL. It's a conspiracy! I'm due to go in three weeks, HOPEFULLY, but it has been a bit disappointing because I LOVE donating and had all these plans to do it every three weeks (plasma donations can occur more frequently because your blood is returned to your body during the procedure). Darn it, things have not turned out that way. I fully expect to break a leg within the next two weeks, or you know, get measles or something. It's just how I roll....LOL.
Post a Comment