Bleach wars

{My apologies for the dark pictures, taken on a dark rainy day...}

I think we all know by now that if one thing drives me insane it's the thought that somewhere, somehow, a molecule of mustiness has gotten past me.

Brag: A Tasty Lunch

I wanted to show you all what a good-looking lunch I sent with my husband to work the other day.

For dinner we had London Broil (marinated, then grilled on my cast iron grill pan on top of the stove), Roasted asparagus, and Mafalda pasta (a pasta shape I recently discovered. Have you ever heard of it? I get embarrassingly excited about new pasta shapes) with a sauce made from tomatoes, cream, roasted garlic, and spinach. Oh, and beer bread. Yum.

(side note: do you know about beer bread? It's quick, hearty, ridiculously easy, and delicious. A great recipe to have in reserve for when you forget - or aren't able - to start a yeast bread in time for dinner)

He always takes leftovers to work, and when I popped a serving into the plastic container, I snapped a quick picture:

(not pictured: beer bread with butter.)

Doesn't that look like the kind of lunch a really classy Marine would take to work? A classy Marine with a wife who loves him?

Dear Auntie Leila: what's up with soy?

Dear Alice writes,

Dear Auntie Leila,

My mind turns to your frequent comments on the dangers of soy, particularly for women's reproductive/hormonal systems. I'm trying to avoid developing some genetic problems later in life and have been avoiding soy, but wondered what you had read about it in specific.

Love,
Alice

Dear Alice {who has heard me rant about soy -- and high fructose corn syrup -- in contexts other than this blog, although I have ranted a bit here as well.},

The soy thing is hard to sift through, because the people who assure you up and down that soy is perfectly safe get their information from those who have a vested interest in marketing it.

If every farmer you meet in the Midwest is growing corn or soy or both (at the behest of the government), it stands to reason they need a big stable market for both products with the research to keep it that way.

The other people who make claims for soy are vegetarians who can't get along without it. It's interesting to me that vegetarianism poses as a counter-cultural movement, yet relies on the establishment for confirmation.

But, then, those against soy have issues as well. At best it's hard to tell where they come from. Some seem to have a vested interest in selling supplements and pulling people into their lifestyle, although it seems to me that you can't make as much money selling books as selling soy.

So I try to go by "what's the most likely" and "what's common sense" -- and it doesn't seem like common sense to have every food you eat have the same additive, and it doesn't seem likely that the food industry would admit that something's not right, when they have invested so much in producing an additive that works for just about every processed food. And by the way, according to what I've read, this is interpreting the word "processed" quite liberally to mean changed in any way. Even raw vegetables might have been sprayed with MSG.

Now, information like the article I just linked you to is like a lot of information that can mostly be traced to one group. I don't know what to do about that, since, as I said, the opposition seems tainted as well.

The bottom line is that there is soy in many forms -- MSG, hydrolyzed soy protein, soy, "natural flavors" (yes, that phrase conceals the presence of MSG) -- in many foods we eat on a regular basis.

So the argument that something, even if harmful in large quantities, is unlikely to have any effect if taken in small doses, simply doesn't apply to soy.

You can have a tuna sandwich with chips, cookies, and a soda for lunch and every single part of it -- tuna, mayo, bread, chips, dessert, and drink -- will have some form of soy in it!!! Not right.

And what are the possible effects of MSG?

Depression for one. Headaches, including migraines, nausea, increased asthma, neurological disorders...

Soy itself is an estrogen mimicker, which has implications for hormonal balance, especially for the young. Soy flour is a cheap way to get protein, but I think it's harmful in the quantities we are getting today from mainstream processed foods.

So I try to read labels, stay away from anything that might contain soy (which means getting out the list of soy synonyms. Look at this 60 Minutes video from 1991 (go to 5:50 and watch for a minute if you don't want to see the whole thing). It's a little frightening, isn't it -- how many ingredients conceal MSG?

At 12:05 in the video, the then newly appointed deputy commissioner for policy for the FDA states that the FDA will change the rules to require companies to say that hydrolyzed protein contains MSG. In 2009 that is still not the case: it is not so labeled.

So while you won't find "food religion" here at LMLD, I do try to keep out the soy (and the HFCS).

All of this explains why here you will find us trying to make things from scratch, especially breads, broths, soups, gravies, sauces, and snacks. I do my best to read labels and avoid as many processed foods as I can, including ones I could buy with a coupon. It's just not worth it when you can't identify what you are buying!

Love,
Auntie Leila

Five things that are worse than being in debt.

When I got married, I had never heard of saving money, being frugal (although I did know about finding old furniture and fixing it up), or in any way living within one's means.

Or if I had, I certainly wasn't paying attention. And I married someone who basically couldn't say no to his little spoiled brat of a wife, and anyway, I'm not all that sure he knew anything either.

So it's not surprising that we got into debt.

For many years we struggled. I won't say it's over. Along the way I learned some lessons the tough way -- like, you are in so deep it's no longer about a budget, it's about not having any money at all to buy anything. Sometimes it wasn't too bad, but sometimes it was bad, like eighteen months of no steady job starting the day after baby #6 was born...

So yes, I've regretted every dumb meal out (not the fun ones though), every shopping spree, every stupid purchase we've ever made. I've wept over some big choices too, even though at the time they might have seemed like good ideas.

I've read a lot of books, articles, and blog posts about getting out of debt, and they have been very helpful. Sometimes, though, they veer into a strange land, theologically.

They start to make it sound something like this: You'll never be happy if you are in debt; you aren't doing God's will if you are in debt; even, and not in so many words, mind you -- your salvation can be gauged by whether you are solvent.

But I have to say there are worse things than being in debt. Here are a few:

1. Worse than being in debt is losing your peace.

Now, some might say that you lose your peace because you are in debt, and the good Lord knows I have been there. But today, this very moment, the situation I'm in is God's will for me when I'm doing my best and sorry for my bad choices, as the mommies at the park say.

Everyone experiences adversity. It's called being human. For some people that adversity takes the form of being in debt. The main thing is to keep your peace, to know that God is taking care of each of us, and to remember to trust Him to provide.

Do you use being in debt as an excuse not to trust God? That would be worse even than being in debt!


2. Worse than being in debt is not realizing how much good comes out of a real struggle.

We all know that St. Paul said, "My strength is made perfect in weakness" -- but we don't like to think that it will work if the weakness is of our own making, or, for that matter, whatever the present challenge is.

If God sees fit to try us by the adversity of being in debt, we can't wriggle out of meeting the test by thinking that it's our own fault we're in the fight at all. Whatever. Whatever the fight is, external, internal, our own making, a bolt from heaven, we should see all the good things that come from it.

What real benefits do you have from not having enough money? I bet if you really thought about it you would see many, including, possibly, learning patience with ourselves for being idiots.

3. Worse than being in debt is not having a baby because you think you don't have enough money.

See #1, and trust in God.

There might be reasons for not getting pregnant -- I think I used to think there are more than I now do.

But not having money is not one of them. If you are reading this, you have enough money.

There is only a limited amount of time in which you can have a child, no matter what you might think now that you are in the midst of it. Thirty years from now you won't be thinking about the bills you had to pay.

Do you know what the Bible calls riches?

Children.

In thirty years you will be telling yourself that you should have been willing to live in a tent and eat roots and berries to have had more children.

Using debt as an excuse to postpone a baby would be what the world calls prudent and what I would say is a lack of confidence.

I know, this makes me very bossy. But really, you can get money later, but maybe not kids.




4. Worse than being in debt is getting a job to make ends meet.

Let's be real. Let's take all the quid pro quos as read, okay?

If you can do a few heart surgeries and rescue your family from bankruptcy, do it. If your husband is bedridden or one semester away from a doctorate in money-making, I get it. If you are so used to working and keeping house (and your mother and maiden aunt live with you, contributing their own retirement funds to your show) that no one really notices when you are not there, go for it.

But the rest of us are needed at home with our heads in our game.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can contribute more by leaving for work -- or, if you have more than one napping baby, even working at home. The chaos, confusion, stress, childcare, carpools, and taxes are not worth it.

All that happens is that you are so frustrated with home that the center is lost -- sometimes forever. In other words, you start frustrated about money and end up feeling like no one values family life as you once envisioned it because you can't find your way to pulling it together.

It can seem like medium-aged children can be fine with this state of chaos, and for a while they will be.

But older children need very much to have order at home. By the time the need is felt, it can be too late. The habit of home making is gone, and it's often too hard to recover while coping with the demands of older children. Their locus then becomes their peer group, with all that entails.

Don't make the mistake of putting getting out of debt in a higher category than keeping home.

Don't make the mistake of having a vague idea that things will run themselves without you -- that's rating yourself too low, my friend.

5. Worse than being in debt is having your husband think he's not a good provider.

Sometimes he's the one saying you should get a job. I'm telling you that in the end, he will feel like he's not doing a good job protecting his family, which is the very worst thing a man can feel -- much worse than being in debt -- and leading to worse problems than money.

Tell him that you will do your part to be frugal and save money (and there is so much you can do!), and that you know he will figure out a way. Tell him you know he is working as hard as he can, that you admire him for it, and that you will back him up no matter what.

Tell him you don't mind being in debt for longer if it seems there is no alternative. It's not the worst thing in the world to be in debt. Now go wash some plastic bags.

Vintage ironing board moves off WIP list!

First, how's this for cuteness? She's doing very well, although has some trouble with the idea that people can be in different rooms. They really shouldn't try, especially Bridget. She should stay put, where Roxie can be with her.



Okay, stop being distracted!

Wedding flowers for a rainy day

It's a chilly, rainy, fall day here in Virginia - perfect weather for reminiscing about a summer wedding, don't you think?

Several of you have asked for post about my wedding flowers, and I'll tell you: it all started with the lavender.


I don't remember when I mentioned to Habou my idea of using lots of lavender in my (theoretical, at that point) wedding, but she took it to heart and immediately began preparing me a floral hope chest. I have emails from her from as early as four years ago (no boy in sight!), giving me lavender status updates. They often looked something like this:

From: Habou
To: Rosie
9/11/05
I've been gardening almost non-stop and the lavender is doing better than I though it would. Have totally (or have started) revamping the slope with the idea of putting more lavender in next spring. Haven't been able to garden near the house because of the roofers but that is nearly done now.

At times, she worried that the lavender might not be ready for me:

From: Habou
To: Rosie
5/1/06
Still too early to tell about last year's lavender which always a cause of anxiety for me.

Luckily for me, the timing worked out great: Habou and the lavender came through with flying colors.


From: Habou
To: Rosie
5/17/09
Hi Rosie, Just ready to pop into bed - must get beauty sleep. I'm sure the lavender will be in full bloom by wedding time. Love, Habou

(and then, a few days later):

5/19/09 I keep looking at the Lavender and chanting to it; "Hold back until the last week in June."

(Isn't she the cutest?)


In the weeks before the wedding, she would come in every day with several bundles of the beautiful, fragrant flowers, tie them up, and leave them to dry. When the time came to put it all together, we had much more than I needed!

From the start, I planned on doing the flowers myself (which is to say, with the help of my mother, grandmother, and sisters). Based on my minimal experience as an wedding florist (I put together bouquets for my now-sister-in-law Annie's bridesmaids and flower girls when she was pressed for time the day before the wedding), I knew I would love doing it, and I also knew that I could get much more bang for my floral buck that way.

As soon as they arrive, remove the leaves and trim the stems so they can rehydrate!

After much research, I ordered flowers in bulk online (it seemed like a huge leap of faith - especially after I heard how my friend received a shipment of dead flowers just a day before her wedding. ack!), and the flowers arrived as promised on the Thursday before the big day.

Question: are the boxes big enough to fit a bridesmaid inside?

(answer: yes)


I originally was thinking just in terms of white, purple, and green (you know - lavender colors), but the truth is that I love bright colors, I especially love orange, and I absolutely love bi-color yellow and red roses.

So I ended up ordering them along with my white roses, and white and orange spray roses for the bouquets. I also ordered green hypericum (St. John's Wort) as a green/filler, and of course I had my lavender.

These are the large roses, which were shipped very compactly, as you can see. I think they packed 3 dozen roses in each of these bundles!

I was so happy with it all. The roses were perfect, and I was so happy I'd gotten the spray roses and hypericum - they added texture to the arrangements that otherwise wouldn't have been there. I also loved the way the orange popped (especially against my sisters' bridesmaid dresses (which we snagged at TJMaxx and the clearance rack at Anthropologie, by the way!)). I put together all the bouquets Thursday night, leaving the orange out of mine.


This sweet little beaded purse was sent to me by my cousin Mary Ellen (actually, my grandmother's cousin, I believe) before the wedding. It belonged to my great-grandmother (Nana), who was given it for her wedding by her mother. After Nana's death, my grandmother gave it to Mary Ellen, who passed it on to me! I tied it into my bouquet to honor my grandmother and the other Collins ladies. Between that and my veil, I had my "something old" covered! (ps - Jen, your silver sixpence was in the purse, not my shoe. Is that cheating?)



The bridesmaids bouquets and the flower girl's basket were mostly orange, with white, lavender, and green. Deirdre made some beautiful wrist corsages for the mothers and Habou and boutonnieres for the men.

Our procession attracted some attention as we crossed through the town center!

Everything was perfect, right down to the "spirit sticks" Deirdre and Mom made out of fabric flower weeks before (not knowing what the real flowers would look like) when they decided on the plan to have everyone - bride, groom, guests - walk together from the church to the reception, a few blocks away across the town green. (They got the idea from the wedding scene in Sense and Sensibility, with all the kids running around and waving pretty things... do you remember this? I don't think Marianne and Colonel Brandon would have called them Spirit Sticks, but somehow it just seemed right to us!)


For centerpieces, we filled Mason jars with roses, hypericum, lavender, and various other herbs my mother brought in from the garden (mint, chive blossoms, and I don't remember what else), and tied each jar with purple ribbon.

The prototype, in progress. Team Bridesmaid, headed up by the über-competent Sukie, and assisted by the lovely Lawler Family Stalker, put the rest together on-site the day before the wedding.

Flowers go well with uniforms, don't you think?

And that's it!

Works In Progress

Laundry is always a work in progress, so we'll start with that.
This picture is actually from last week, as any true lurker would be able to figure out by tracking down which day this puzzle came from.

But usually when I'm folding laundry this is how my table looks.

I used to fold while either watching a favorite program on TV at night with the kids or doing their French or some such thing with them. But now it's more of an alone task.

On to more interesting projects:

How fabulous is this fabric?


I have to have hand-work to fill my weekly 5 1/2 hours of Waiting For Bridget (dance lessons, orchestra practice...who can just sit and talk? Must. Be. Making.) If I can get this top together in time to take it along to hand-quilt, I'll be on my way to starting to tick off the babies on my quilting list, possibly before they are forced to take a wee cowboy quilt to college.

(Yes, I'm still working on Rosie's quilt, but it will be beyond the take-along stage very shortly. Have to be prepared! And yes, I used to do this even with babies around, although not as quickly. A little planning, a bag all packed with your supplies -- knitting is easy to pick up at a moment's notice, I think -- and you are good to go, even for 20 minutes while the baby naps. You will be so proud of yourself if you have something to work on -- eventually, it will get done!)

This weekend my helpers gave me a leg up on some painting projects. These bookshelves came from Grandma's apartment. Let's see if they will work in the spot I have planned for them...

I forgot to take a true "before" picture -- what else is new -- with the 50s yellow checked cover and all. Therese gave me this little ironing board. It comes from back in... Indiana? ...and really, would be ever so perfect in the house she has now, and I tried to tell her that, but too bad, it's mine now!

Wait until you see how my pantry/sewing room looks with this cutie in it!

Apple Crisp the Save-a-Step Way.

You will find the actual recipe at the bottom of the post, after my musings.

What if my child is the one who doesn't fit the system?

I'm just going to throw this post out there about John Gatto's piece, Against School, because I have some fun painting and cooking stuff to show you, and I will never get to them if I spend all my time trying to express what I think about education in compressed yet scintillating form.

Here's the thing: the piece isn't so much about school and how bad it is, even on a day with the story about the little boy sentenced to forty five days in reform school for bringing in a cub scout cutlery set. He's 6. Forty. Five. Days.

No no no no no. That's not the point.

{Nor is it that I think you should homeschool. I think you should educate yourself about education and then apply what you've learned to your family, in school or out.}

The point of Gatto's essay (and note well that he is really talking about secondary school here) is that there is an immense system that claims that each child should be educated in a certain way, to a certain point in his life.

And we all want our children not only to be educated, but to be well rounded, fulfilled, expressive, and creative. And we want them to excel. And we want all that NOW.

I would encourage you to read at least this chapter online of his book, Underground History of American Education, because his recounting of his childhood is an important slice of American life, evocative of a time and place that should not be forgotten.


You might even buy or borrow from the library the whole thing. But at least read that section and ask yourself how you much texture your own children have in their lives. How much freedom?





Because, sometime this week I can guarantee that I will have a conversation with someone in which she will tell me that she is so frustrated with a particular child of hers...

...and she will tell me that although she and her husband have sent this child to the very best school with the nicest teachers and the most clever books -- or, contrariwise, they have put together the most well crafted curriculum that a home school has ever known -- that this child is just NOT GETTING IT.

She will ask me,

"What should I do if he just drags in math?"

"What about writing! I just can't get her to write!"

"He stares at the wall!"

"She won't sit still!"

You have to understand something.

School as we know it was made by people who specialize in putting things into boxes and selling them. (And home school is becoming more like school.)

And this is what Gatto is trying to say.

Oh, here and there you find an amazing teacher. He was one himself, and won awards doing a great job. Don't get me wrong. I love an amazing teacher.

And many children do fairly well -- fairly-- with what they have to deal with.

I would say that just like everything else, 80% of the children are going to be okay.

{And that accounts for the fact that the school, which is intent on producing a product, isn't simply scrapped, and why most curricula you buy will be more or less fine for most of your kids. And why you yourself probably did okay in school, although I bet if we really talked about it you would agree that you wasted a lot of time, or maybe didn't get to study what you wanted to, or maybe see that you learned a lot from people who had nothing to do with your school.}

I would say that this 80% is mostly comprised of kids who are using a lot of energy to get through a system that doesn't really suit them, but once they are done with it they can go on either to do what they really want to do or to acquiesce in the true purpose of the school which is to help them take their place in the culture of getting along.

But of the remaining 20% of the children, 10% -- and I haven't done a study, but I'm just saying -- will be frustrated to the point of a certain amount of self-destruction because they get it already and their time is being wasted, and 10% will be truly ground into the dust because they learn in a completely different way from the other 90% and anyway, don't want to learn what you want them to learn because they have something else they simply must do.

And why shouldn't your child be one of these less compliant ones?

The reason I tell parents -- like you -- to read Gatto isn't because I'm railing against public schools. I've been there and done that, and to me it's so obvious that the good people who run them are made to bow down to what amounts to a propaganda machine as well as an inefficient way to spend money that I can't believe we are still talking about it. It doesn't matter. Pretty soon people are just going to do the darn cost-benefit analysis and realize they are on the wrong end of things.

I'm trying to get you to see, or to get in touch with the part of you that does see, that people grow up needing a rich experience of life on many levels without being hampered by an excessively strong educational system, and I think Gatto expresses that very well.

Children need the freedom that learning the Trivium brings (as Dorothy Sayers explains in her essay).

And they need the freedom to pursue their passion. Starting when they are really quite young, actually...

In essence, I like reading Gatto because he reminds me to be humble before this process that we quite underestimate; and having underestimated it, then expend vast amounts of money, energy, and other resources trying to otherwise repackage it so that we can feel in control. If we had the guts, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble.

Educational moonshine

Just a bitty bit of background.