Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Blurry bike date on South Grand

What started as a not-so-fun, lingering item on my to-do list turned into a fun excuse for a date night last Friday.  My long-overdue yearly eye exam included having my eyes dilated.  Apparently I’ve been avoiding that part of the eye exam for a number of years, probably because not being able to drive (or bike) home afterward is quite inconvenient.  At any rate, I had no recollection of how limiting, or long-lasting, the effects of the dilation would be.

I scheduled the appointment for late in the afternoon on a Friday, a time when Matthew would be able to pick me up.  The plan was either that I would take the car, and he would bike to meet me and drive us both home in the car, or I would bike to my appointment, and he would get the car and provide taxi service for me.

My eye doctor is located smack in the middle of the restaurant goodness that is South Grand, so we decided to add dinner to the deal.

In the end, there was no car involved.  It was a lovely day, and I wanted to bike, and Matthew preferred to bike straight from his physical therapy appointment to meet me, instead of stopping home for the car.  We were gambling that, by the time we were finished with dinner, I would be fine to bike home.

The dilation did, indeed, do a number on my vision for quite awhile.  I thought the main issue would be extreme light sensitivity, but the limiting factor was blurry vision.  I could see several inches in front of my face fairly clearly, but, beyond that, the world was a big blur.  My vision was fine for walking speed — I safely navigated the sidewalks and a few street crossings on South Grand on foot while waiting for Matthew to join me for dinner — but I was in no shape to be operating any kind of vehicle, motorized or not.

Anyhow, I discovered a couple of fun shops in my hazy state, including Parsimonia, a vintage clothing store, where I bought a dress, and the very cool Upcycle Exchange, “a post-consumer art and craft supply store.”  If you want to visit, check out their Wish List first, to see if there’s anything you can donate.

The owners/employees at both shops were very kind, i.e., they didn’t kick me out or call the police despite my very odd behavior of having to hold anything I wanted to see six inches from my face.

By the time we were seated for dinner at Pho Grand, it was over an hour since the eye dilation drops, and I was beginning to fear that Matthew was going to have to bike home and get the car after all.  By the time we finished our meal, I was feeling a bit more confident of my vision.  We delayed just a bit more by sharing gelato, and that did the trick.

Three hours after having my eyes dilated, I was finally good to bike home.  We enjoyed a fairly low-key ride home.  It was the first time I’ve biked in the dark since getting a new front light for Christmas, and, of course, I forgot the new light, so I have yet to try it.  Next time!

Hair removal — a self-conscious nonconformist’s perspective

A couple of weeks ago, a friend posted a link to this article, which looks at the history of female hair removal.  The fact that women (in some cultures) have been conforming to this norm for hundreds of years, LONG before the body parts in question were visible in public, really made me question this practice.  We spend untold hours, and significant money, removing hair from certain parts of our body — for what???

In truth, I’ve been questioning female hair removal for over four years now.  Sometime not too long after I wrote this post, I gave up the razor.*  (You know what’s WAY more environmentally friendly than minimizing water use while you shave?  Not shaving at all!)

At that point, I’d been shaving my legs since sometime in middle school.  Specifically, I was allowed to start shaving my legs after I wrote an essay for my mom explaining why I should be allowed to shave my legs (oh, the joys of being an oldest child!).

I guess it was convincing, because next thing you know, my 13-year-old self was emerging from the shower, blood dripping from multiple razor nicks along my calves.  It seemed pointless to bandage all of the cuts, so instead I found a pair of old, knee-length socks and let those absorb the blood.

At some point thereafter, I expanded into other areas, shaving my under arms regularly and my bikini line as needed (i.e., if I was going to be wearing a swim suit).

While the leg shaving got better (i.e., I stopped emerging from the shower dripping blood), the under arm and bikini line shaving always led to painful, unsightly razor burn.  Ultimately, I switched to smelly chemical depilators (e.g., Nair) for these areas.  While these modern counterpoints to Renaissance-era hair removal may not contain arsenic, I doubt that the ingredients are particularly healthful.

And then I stopped.  Kind-of.  I want to be 100% comfortable in my unshaven body, to not feel self-conscious when summer roles around, but it’s not that easy.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t shaved my legs since the fall of 2009.  While I’m sometimes self-conscious about the hair on my legs, I’m largely able to ignore it.

The underarm hair is another story entirely.  Leaving it unshaven makes me feel extremely self-conscious when wearing something sleeveless in public (i.e., I’m standing there with my arms firmly glued to my sides, shoulders hunched, lest anyone catch a glimpse).  Sometimes, I just can’t take it, that pressure to conform, and I cave and grab a razor (I discovered last summer that Matthew’s electric razor is a bit kinder, razor burn-wise, than a standard razor).

I want to be able to not shave and confidently, unashamedly raise my arms over my head, but, no.  I want to NOT be tempted to spend hundreds of dollars on laser hair removal to permanently get rid of the “problem,” but I think about it sometimes.

Why are women expected to have smooth, hairless legs and arm pits, while men are not?

For awhile, my kind-of, sort-of justification for this double standard was that it is acceptable for women to wear clothing that leaves shoulders, and thus arm pits, as well as [some-of] the leg bare in many settings where men are expected to wear pants and shirts with sleeves (in fact, speaking of double standards, it is almost always unacceptable for men to wear sleeveless shirts, except perhaps in a gym setting, but I digress).  Maybe, I thought, expectations for female hair removal were a cost of being “allowed” to wear certain styles of clothing that bared those body parts.  But the article on the history of female hair removal, revealing that women who exclusively wore floor-length, long-sleeved were also worried about body hair, nicely turned that reasoning on its head.

So, I’m back to the why?  Why do we stay chained to our razors (or Nair, or wax)?  Why is there an entire AISLE at Target dedicated to female hair removal?

I suppose, in some ways, the latter question answers the former.  Female hair removal is big business!  As estimated here, an “average” woman (in the U.S., I’m assuming?) spends $10k on “shaving related products” over her lifetime.  If we all tossed our razors tomorrow, somebody stands to lose a lot of money!

Big business aside, I’m guessing this started with Victorian (or other societal) ideals of cleanliness and femininity, wanting to remove something that is seen as primitive, dark, and/or unclean.

While there’s been some recent backlash against the trend of removing [almost all] pubic hair (see here and here), it doesn’t seem to be carrying over to hair removal for other body parts.  Since we’re fighting hundreds of years of “tradition,” some very well-entrenched social norms, AND big business, I’m not sure it ever will.

Which means that I’ll continue to be a hesitant, sometimes self-conscious, non-conformist, who sometimes caves.  Or, this blog post could go viral, reaching millions of women, and we could embrace our bodies, hair and all, and stick it to the hair-removal industry!  One can always dream.

*In the interest of full disclosure, [mostly] giving up the razor was a lot easier to do from the comfort of a stable, long-term relationship, with a guy who pretty fully supports my hairy decision.  I wish I could say I would have been brave enough and bold enough to do this as a single gal, but we’re back to those social norms and pressures . . . .

St. Pat’s pancakes

When I saw this recipe for green pancakes over at A Veggie Venture last week, I immediately added it to my weekend to-do list.   Sure, St. Patrick’s day is today, but weekday mornings and making special breakfasts don’t mix too well.

Instead, I did the prep Saturday afternoon (mixed the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients), and we cooked them on Sunday morning, with plenty of leftovers for today.

I used frozen spinach instead of fresh (a loosely packed cup), reduced the yogurt by 1/3 cup, and used 2 eggs plus 2 T. vegetable oil (original recipe is 1 c. yogurt, 1 egg, and no oil).

These bring back fun memories of St. Patrick’s Day dinners with my Grandma Joan, where everything that could be green, was: the water, the butter, the schaum tortes . . . she really went all-out!

These days, I prefer to avoid artificial food colorings, and, while it wouldn’t work for everything (e.g., spinach probably isn’t a great way to make green vanilla pudding — or is it???), spinach worked like a charm for the pancakes!

They came out nice and green, and didn’t taste spinach-y at all.  If you’re not into corned beef and cabbage, whip up a batch of these for dinner tonight, along with some spinach-green eggs!  Or make them this coming weekend, to celebrate spring.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Toy bicycle preview

Shhhhhh . . . don’t tell Pookie, but the toy bicycles I ordered for him arrived.

While I’m excited for him to begin playing with them (and thus address his utter lack of toy bicycles), the kid doesn’t have any shortage of toys in general, and Easter isn’t that far away.  I think I can hold out for a few weeks.

I actually had to distract him when the packages arrived; he wanted to open them immediately.  I waited until he wasn’t around, which was just as well, because I opened the package to find this.

IMG_3682

Some assembly required, apparently.  It all just snapped together, no tools required.  I did have to refer to the pictures a couple of times since it did not include directions for assembly, but in just a few minutes, we were ready to ride.

IMG_3683

I assembled this set, which did not include Playmobil people first.  I was hoping the bicycles would work with his Lego Duplo people (pictured in the trailer) and some other little wooden people we have (pictured riding the bike), but they don’t really fit on the bicycles.

I was feeling a little bummed, until I looked at the other set I ordered.  It conveniently came with three Playmobil people . . .

IMG_3684

. . . for a total of 3 bikes and 3 people between the two sets.  It actually could not have worked out more perfectly:  there is one adult for the one “adult-sized” bike and two kid for the two kid-sized bikes.

Gabriel is right at the age where he’s getting more creative with his play, and starting to incorporate some story lines.  I look forward to people on bikes being part of that play!

Note: These are marked as age 3+, and, since they come apart, there are definitely small parts involved.  I would really have been fine giving these to Gabriel at age 2, with supervision, especially because he’s never really been the sort to put [non-food] stuff in his mouth.

Raising a foodie toddler

In response to yesterday’s meal post, a friend asked, “Does your son eat all of these recipes?”  It was a great question, and I want to share (and elaborate on) my reply.

As a note, I conducted childhood obesity research in grad school, so I’m fairly familiar with (and perhaps take for granted) a lot of the basic tips for helping kids learn healthy eating habits.

[Sir] eats almost everything, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  Some nights he looks at his plate and announces, “Need mo’ food,” which translates to, “I want different food.”  We always encourage him to try what’s on his plate, and we rarely offer alternatives.

Finishing the meal with some frozen blueberries
Finishing the meal with some frozen blueberries

When he’s less enthusiastic about something, I’ve found that simple things, like letting him serve himself, or making a slight modification to the dish (e.g., adding some chopped peanuts), can really help.

While we don’t force-feed him, or make him eat everything on his plate, we do sometimes help feed him the first few bites of something he’s uncertain about. If he takes to it, great, if not, that’s okay, too.

Nature or nurture?
All-in-all, he’s a pretty adventurous eater for a toddler. I don’t know how much of this is nature, and how much is nurture, which would include our use of the Baby Led Weaning approach.

We’ve basically offered him the same food he sees us eating, right from the start.  While there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with offering some pureed food, I dislike the new trend of the “squeeze pouches.”  It’s one thing to use one every once in awhile, for a snack on the go, but using them at the table, as a substitute for eating real meals, is a slippery slope.

As pointed out in this post on getting kids to eat vegetables, constantly offering alternatives at mealtime is also a slippery slope.  If given a choice, most kids (Gabriel included, I imagine), would choose grilled cheese or pasta over a quinoa dish.  Offering alternatives is tempting, to make meal time “easier” in the short term, but it can quickly become a cycle that creates the so-called “picky” eater that most parents hope to avoid.

Finally, involving Sir in as many aspects of “food to table” as possible seems to really help.  During the growing season, he spends almost every Saturday at the garden with Daddy and Baba, getting a hands-on lesson in where his food comes from, harvesting and nibbling fresh green beans, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes.  You don’t have to have 3000 square feet of garden to get your kids involved.  A small raised bed is a great place to start!

He loves to help me get his oatmeal ready every morning, and I involve him in other meal prep and kitchen work, time (and my sanity) permitting.  Recently, he’s enjoyed helping tear arugula for salads, though he was eating about as much as he was prepping — just raw arugula, no salad dressing required!  While I’m careful about not snacking close to meal times, I’m always happy when he wants to nibble on the vegetables I’m chopping.