Thoughts on Thanksgiving Food Donations

I have a very vivid memory of a grocery shopping trip I took during grad school. I was in the aisle of the Winn Dixie, and I watched a mother and her three-year-old daughter picking out cereal. The mother asked her little girl what kind of cereal she wanted, giving her a choice between two or three different boxes. And then, after her daughter had decided, she asked her which kind of cereal they should buy to give to "a little girl who doesn't have cereal of her own." I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but I did make a point of running in to the two of them at a couple of different places in the grocery store. And as they did their own grocery shopping, this mother actively engaged her daughter in picking out food that they would be donating to the local food pantry.

So now, I warp out of the memory zone, and recall Thanksgiving is coming! And as I am prepping for a plane trip and a visit to see my family, I've been more aware of my food allergies than ever -- I've had a lot of communication with my mother about what I can and cannot eat, what I might bring with me, and what I'd like for her to get for me so that I can have a happy Thanksgiving with some of the trimmings, too.

And then I put two and two together... Food allergies don't discriminate economically. And I know that since I was diagnosed, my food shopping habits have changed dramatically. I've been doing the most of my shopping at Whole Foods, and I've been buying a lot more food that's organic and/or specialty in some way. There are certain products that I need now that are more expensive than what I bought before. And what would I do if I didn't have the good fortune of the jobs and circumstances I've got? What with the economy being especially shaky this year, my guess is that more families than ever will be reaching out for a little bit of help.

A little skit that was put on at my church last weekend reminded us about upcoming food bank collections. And as the family in the skit planned out the Thanksgiving luau that they would have this year since their food pantry was able to provide them with, among other things, ham and canned pineapple, my thoughts immediately jumped to those families who deal with food allergies. Could a family who needed it get, say, gluten free items at a food pantry? When you don't have as many options, is it still possible to eat, say, peanut or corn syrup free and have a healthy, balanced diet?

In college, different service organizations would come around to the dorms and collect food for the local food bank. And honestly, I think most of us viewed this as a chance to get rid of those couple of cans of condensed soup that our moms sent back with us at fall break. But I'm no longer a college student. And since I'm able (and since it's really on my radar right now), this year I think I'll be giving a grocery gift card as well as a bag full of specialty allergy conscious items.

I've been scouring websites for food pantries all across the area, and a few things on their "suggested donations" lists have jumped out at me as things I might not have thought about giving but that really make sense. In addition to specialty items for allergies or other special diets (diabetic, low sodium, heart healthy, etc), several places have mentioned that it's often hard to get donations for certain ethnic foods. Some places have mentioned wanting seasonings or salt and pepper. Basic items that are mentioned across the board are cereal, canned meats (tuna, chicken), non-condensed soups (like the Progresso or Chunky brands), rice, pasta, pasta sauces... The lists go on and on, and the best way to tell what's needed in your community is to get the info straight from your local food pantry. In some places a cash donation goes the farthest because food pantries are typically able to buy food at reduced prices. Google, call, etc... my research has been pretty frenetic, so don't depend on my ideas!

But I guess I would just encourage people to think a little bit outside of the box on this one. Really... I am finally starting to feel healthier due in large part to being able to follow my allergen-free diet. It makes me really sad to think that finances alone might prevent someone from being able to take the steps that I have.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To stop the coughing... treat your feet???

Last night I had a horrible dry hacking cough. It was keeping me up, and nothing was helping it. So in desperation, I went online looking for some home remedy to help me get to sleep. I found a suggestion to put Vicks Vapo-Rub on the bottoms of my feet. I thought, yeah, right. But I googled on "Vicks feet" and found that tons of people have tried it. And while I didn't spend tons of time looking, in my cursory searches I didn't find a single person who tried it who said it didn't work (I found many skeptics who said that there was no way -- but no one who had been disappointed in the result). So in my desperation, I tried it.

It worked.

Within 10 minutes of rubbing it on and putting on socks, my coughing was quieted, and it didn't return in any way that woke me up. I slept straight through the rest of the night. I don't think it was solely the vapors because A) on my feet it just wasn't that strong smelling, and B) the vapors are meant to relieve congestion, and congestion was not my issue.

Any thoughts? I, myself, am stumped... but no longer coughing.

Good Idea / Bad Idea

I believe that environmentally cleaning products are a good idea. Yes, they can cost a little more, and yes they can be a little harder to find, but I'm at a place where I think it's worth it. I love Seventh Generation products, and Trader Joe's carries some great soaps, too. That said, I frequently use plain old vinegar to clean things -- cheap and effective. Did you know that it makes a great fabric softener! (Check out http://www.vinegartips.com/cleaning/). So there's the good idea.

Bad idea? It actually started off as a good idea. I've been under the weather, and I've been running a humidifier 24-7 in my home. When I refilled it last night, I put in a cup of vinegar to clean it out. I'd intended to let it run like that for maybe 30 minutes. But being sick and all, I've got a rather ineffective sniffer right now. This morning I woke up feeling significantly better... but smelling something like pickles... and ketchup... and salad dressing... Crap. Vinegar. Vinegar. Vinegar. And it ran through my humidifier all night long. Not being able to smell it, I'd forgotten to change out the water.

I just came home from visiting friends, hoping that the smell had dissipated some. Sadly, no. Maybe another 12 hours or so. Till then, I guess I should be glad that my nose is still pretty sniffly.

Vegan Chocolate Almond Ice Cream!

It's been a few weeks of allergy-conscious eating, and I'm starting to feel a little better. That's wonderful! But in going dairy-free, I am finding I totally miss ice cream. This weekend I came into possession of a used ice cream maker, and I tried my hand at some allergen-free ice cream. It was fantastic. I made up the recipe based on a few I found online. Here it is!

• 1 can coconut milk (I used light because that's what I happened to have in the pantry)
  
• soy creamer, enough to bring the total liquid volume up to 3c (I used Silk Creamer, french vanilla)
  
• 1/4 c + 3 T cocoa powder
  
• 1/2 c Turbinado sugar
  
• 1 tsp almond extract
  
• 1/2 c slivered almonds
  

Mix all ingredients in the blender. Then, freeze in the ice cream maker according to machine instructions.

The Strange (Brave?) New World of Food Allergies

I've been missing! It's good to finally have some time and energy to come back to my blog. There's been a lot going on for me, let me tell you.

A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with food allergies. I'd known previously about a shellfish allergy and an egg intolerance. But the new list that I was given is a little overwhelming. I was diagnosed with intolerance to lactobumin (a protein in all dairy products), peanuts, brown rice, cola, all sugars derived from corn, and a couple of food preservatives.

Thankfully, none of these new allergies carry a risk of anaphylaxis (my shellfish allergy does). But they may be responsible for some of the horrible fatigue, soreness, and other symptoms that I've been experiencing of the last few years. I'm glad to have an answer and something concrete to do to fix things, but I've been asking the same question that everyone's been asking me... "What's left that I can eat?"

Yes, I need to eliminate all of the allergens for at least six months (at that point I may be able to do some challenge tests and maybe bring a few things back). But truth is, I can still eat a lot of things -- all fruits and vegetables, non-processed meats, wheats, oatmeal, cane sugar, soy... a lot of things. But having grown up in Wisconsin, dairy has always been a big part of my diet. So going dairy-free is... well... an adventure. The good news is that even though it's been hard, and I've had to adjust to doing pretty much all of my shopping at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and My Organic Market, and even though I've had to discover a number of new products, I'm adapting, and I'm definitely starting to feel some more energy. I may be on the right track to eliminating my fatigue. I'm so incredibly grateful to my fantastic doctor for helping me to get so many things sorted out.

The hardest part about my new food regimen has to do with my history with an eating disorder. During high school and parts of college I suffered with anorexia. I had a relapse only a few years ago (into EDNOS). Since then I've worked very hard at recovery, and with the help of a number of professionals I've been trying to legalize all foods for myself and learn to eat intuitively. So it's been hard to have all of these recent restrictions thrown at me. Even though I know that this new eating plan is for a very good reason, I'm still doing battle in my mind, and there have been days when this all seems like a cruel, cruel trick. But I've got a lot of people on my side, a terrific support network, and a lot of reasons to work hard at keeping myself from sliding back into relapse. I'll make it. I just have to swim a little harder right now... these waters are murky.

So that's where I've been lately. Now, I'm off to make a little dinner. I'm going to try this recipe for Zucchini "Pasta". There's definitely a learning curve to being more adventurous and confident in the kitchen. Maybe it'll eventually be fun. For now, I'm just going to try and stay "brave" in this new allergen-free world.

Make a Weekly Schedule

I'm always looking for this link. It's the best one of the sort that I've found -- a blank weekly planner -- so I thought I'd post it here: http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/school/time/print_weekly_planner.html

For customized, printable calendars, I really like Calendars Quick. There are some free things offered there, but the best stuff comes with a subscription. It's $10 a year, and I definitely get my money's worth printing studio calendars and the like.

I'm looking for calendars as a last-minute effort at getting organized. My fall semester for my piano studio starts today! I'm always excited to start the fall semester. The kids are typically ready to go after having had a summer of vacations and camps and often haphazard lesson scheduling. Wish me luck!

Now... if I could just get out of the house on time...

Ear Training Fun!

It's been quite the Labor Day weekend. I've interviewed new students, done a ton of errands, finished painting a room, seen Les Miserables, and hmmm... well... that's an awful lot! I've spent the larger part of this afternoon relaxing in front of some CSI while typing up some charts and things for my piano students whose new semester begins on Tuesday. Thought I'd post some of my ear training fun here and maybe someone out in web-land will be able to help me fill in my chart!

Being able to identify intervals by ear is an incredibly useful skill. It helps a musician to be able to transcribe what she's hearing... or hearing in her head. It's useful in composition. And it's useful in sight reading -- if you can look at an interval and know what it's supposed to sound like, you'll be able to sing it correctly or know if it's been played correctly. Plus, usefulness arguments aside, it's a skill that is often required of musicians, especially when they get to the college level.

I was taught to identify intervals by ear using familiar songs. For example, the first two notes of "Amazing Grace" are a Perfect Fourth. I use the song as a reference for either identifying intervals I've heard or for looking at a piece of music and figuring out what it's supposed to sound like. I have a hodgepodge of tunes that I've used for years to assist me with intervals, and I spent some time this afternoon poking around the web looking for other people's suggestions. My goal is to create a chart that I can stick in my students' binders so that they can reference it when we do ear training exercises.

But, I haven't been able to fill in all the blanks. My oldest students are in middle school, and my youngest are entering the first grade. I've got a young group, and they just aren't going to know something like Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man." Even if I were to play the song for them, it's not something that they've got tucked away in their memory for automatic recall, so it's not a particularly useful example for identifying a descending Minor Seventh. So I'm trying to stick with folk songs, Christmas carols, and things that most of them will know well. A couple of my examples are shaky -- I mean, thanks to my grandfather, I knew the theme from "Love Story" as a child, but I'm not sure how many of my students do. And there are a few that I can't come up with at all. However, the ones that I've got? I feel pretty good about them.

Interval	Ascending	Descending
Unison	Happy Birthday
Major Second	Do A Deer / Frère Jacques	Mary Had A Little Lamb
Minor Second	Jaws	Joy To The World / Für Elise
Major Third	When the Saints Go Marching In / Kumbayah	Summertime
Minor Third	Greensleeves (What Child Is This?) / So Long, Farewell	Frosty the Snowman / Hey Jude / Star Spangled Banner
Perfect Fourth	Here Comes the Bride / Oh Christmas Tree	Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Tritone	The Simpsons / Maria
Perfect Fifth	Twinkle Twinkle Little Star	The Flintstones
Major Sixth	My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean	Music of the Night / Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen
Minor Sixth		Love Story
Major Seventh
Minor Seventh	Somewhere (West Side Story)
Octave	Somewhere Over the Rainbow / Let It Snow

Any thoughts on filling in my blanks with possibly kid-familiar songs?

Too Many Adjectives!

I just finished listening to the unabridged audio book version of The Memory Keeper's daughter by Kim Edwards. And I didn't like it. The book's official website gives the following summary:

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

And the storyline was just fine. It was interesting, even. After all, I was engaged enough to listen to the entire book. But one thing drove me absolutely nuts about it. Edwards uses too many adjectives. Too many!

At this point, I hesitate to think what my seventh grade English teacher would say about my assessment of the novel. One of my most vivid memories is of her jumping up and down in front of the class telling us to, "Describe! Describe! Describe!" Now, I don't have a paper copy of the book, so I can't cite any actual examples. But as I was listening, it struck me that the words "cool" and "warm," especially, were completely over-used. There was constant talk of cool skin, cool weather, cool milk, cool sheets... warm body, warm breeze, warm water. It got so very tedious, and I found myself wishing that I could have been left to infer some of these things.

Adjectives are not inherently bad. They're just a part of speech. But I think that too many adjectives can clutter writing. Sometimes they're necessary. Sometimes a writer wants to paint a particular picture, and that's fine. But let's just look at a fabricated example.

As I held the baby, I felt her warm face with its tiny beads of sweat pressed up against mine.

I would offer that the word "warm" is unnecessary in that sentence. One can infer that the baby's face is warm from the fact that it is also sweating -- most of the time, these go hand in hand. And perhaps with just one sentence, the point isn't adequately illustrated. But The Memory Keeper's Daughter is chock full of sentences like these. I found myself wanting to ask the author, "Do you really think all of these words are necessary? Why do you have to tell me every single detail?"

I try and avoid over-adjective-syndrome in my songwriting. Working with Karl Straub in songwriting lessons, he would constantly say, "Show! Don't tell!" I have a feeing that he wouldn't have liked The Memory Keeper's Daughter, either. He hammered into my head the idea that a songwriter's audience doesn't want to hear, "She felt sad." Instead, they'd rather hear that her house was empty and her dog was dead and her husband was gone and from all of that, they'd just know that she was sad because they would be sad in that situation, too.

One thing I wonder, though, is if I'd have noticed all of the adjectives if I had been reading the book, rather than having it read to me. I really enjoy my audio books, but there really is a difference, I think. That difference is one of the reasons I actually came to listening to audio books. The first book I purchased from Audible was Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I chose it not because I didn't know the story -- I'd read it no fewer than a dozen times before -- but because I felt it would be a particularly lovely book to have read to me. It turned it that it was. So maybe, conversely, I'd have liked The Memory Keeper's Daughter better in written format.

Regardless, I am curious to see how yet another media format handles Edwards's novel. My TiVo tells me that the TV-movie version is coming up sometime in the next two weeks, and I'm all set to record it. Like I said above, the story itself is actually quite touching. I'm just hoping that the next audio book I pick out goes light on the adjectives, please.

I've been recommended!

Check out the lovely review of my song "Heroes" over at Cammy Recommends! Thanks, Cammy!

I had a great weekend in Chicago and a fantastic time performing with Carey Farrell. Check it out -- Carey's husband Neal joined us on fiddle for a rendition of "Gentle Arms of Eden."

Dinner for a night when you don't want to cook but still have to eat...

Chicken-apple sausage (bake 10 minutes in the toaster oven at 350), and steamed cabbage (1 head chopped while on the phone, steamed in a covered skillet with about 1c water for about 10 minutes, add a little butter and salt before eating).

Best part? Leftovers for tomorrow, so I won't have to cook again till Tuesday!