Pancakes

My friend Mollie has been urging me to share some of my reflections on cooking for my two geese. She has been such a great friend in supporting me through this very stressful culinary and lifestyle adventure. She has also been helping me keep my center and remember who I am (besides, or in addition to, a mom!). She has already posted my pancake essay on her blog. Now I am following suit. I hope it provides support, companionship, information, or interest, to some.

Pancakes

Every morning, I make a double batch of our family staple, the buckwheat-amaranth pancake. Both my sons breastfeed, but they are getting older. More and more they come to rely on the buckwheat-amaranth pancakes.

Like nursing, pancakes seem to nurture their hearts and souls as well as nourish their bodies. My two and a half year old can feed himself, but he always wants me to feed him the pancakes. We sit on the couch together. He asks me, “Come enjoin my party on the couch, mama!” “Enjoin” must be a combination of “enjoy” and “join.” Now my 10 month old eats pancakes, too. I’m really excited he’s eating! He hasn’t wanted to eat any solid food until a few weeks ago. Now he eats “nahnah” (pancakes) a couple of times a day.

The pancake batter I make is very thin. (It’s my recipe and I’ve decided I like it that way!) I also have to make the pancakes fairly small so the pancakes will cook through before the outsides are black, because they take forever to cook. Since they are small, I make about 50 a day, give or take.

I was once a feminist. And now I make pancakes. Pancakes. I spend a significant portion of my day making pancakes… ¾ cup of buckwheat flour… ¼ cup of amaranth flour…I used to preach every Sunday in three rural churches. I did a funeral for a mother of three the day after September 11th. I was a spiritual leader for hundreds of people. And now I make pancakes… ¼ teaspoon sea salt… ¼ teaspoon nutmeg….

What will my two geese think of me when they are older? Am I a feminist now? I measure safflower oil (2 Tbsp.), organic this time, bought with money we don’t have. Money I don’t bring into the family. And agave nectar (1 Tbsp). And water…lots of water. 1 1/3 cups of water. I bathe the dry ingredients in water. I baptize each batch praying it will give my family a rebirth. When my two sons were baptized, I truly believed God’s grace would enfold them their whole lives. As I pour the water into the batter, I wonder how God will care for them. Over time, God might make them whole. Their spirits are strong! Their bodies are becoming stronger… Like taking daily communion, each meal we eat brings us closer to wholeness.

What will my sons say about me when they are older? Will they think they had a hopelessly backward mother who dropped her degrees and dreams for a 50-gallon drum of homemade batter? What will history say? Sometimes I imagine making it into a history book. Will I be described as a warmed-over version of the stereotypical 1950s housewife? Or will I be a pioneer in the movement to feed our children truly healthy food?

What feminist spends her time making 50 pancakes a day for a family of four? I don’t know. I have never met her. And yet, I think I am her.

They say the personal is the political. Every pancake I make means two cents less to agribusiness, two cents more for justice. Two cents more for love. I make 50 pancakes a day for my children. Making pancakes is my gift of love. It is personal, political, and faithful. It is my maternal response to my sons and my political statement to a fast-food culture. It is my faithful response in a world longing for more love, more care, and more creativity. I am a mom, a feminist mom. And I want to make pancakes for my sons.

King Corn Challenge!

So far on my blog, I haven't gone into details about our food allergies. (My family lives far away, and I don't want them to worry.)
We seem to have gotten a handle on the culinary aspect of our lives, so I'm going to start blogging about it...a little. Conveniently, I have something great to report today. The guys who made "King Corn" have presented a challenge to avoid corn for the month of November. We have been doing this since August with great success! Finally, my oldest son's allergy symptoms have receded, almost disappeared. They probably would disappear if it were actually possible to avoid all corn! Anyway, it hasn't been easy, so I'm glad to see public recognition of the difficulty in avoiding corn.

Click on the "King Corn Challenge" link for more information!

Missed you!

I've missed writing to all of you! We're back online (onblog? I'm sure there is a technical word for that)! I'm planning to charge ahead in prose. I know you want pictures, but given my computer's deficits, it's words or nothing. Seriously, I will post pictures occasionally, but the drive that my camera hooks up to is dead. (It's a ton of work to do it another way.)

We've been on a hike, of sorts, lately. We've been blazing a path through the forest of food allergies/insensitivities/intolerances. Others have made their own inroads through these woods, but we have discovered that no two children follow the same allergic trail (nor do they leave the same signs for subsequent hikers). We have had a ton of help from other moms online,but the mysterious nature of this hike has left us baffled. I have been using all my free time to track down the culinary offenders. Our own two boys, Blake and Will, do not even use the same color paint for their trails, so it has been difficult to follow their lead when figuring out what foods to avoid.

However long this journey may be (and it's far from over), there is good news! We have made it to a meadow on the top of a ridge. We can see beautiful mountains from here, the sun is shining, and we are ready to set up camp! We have found this resting place by eliminating dairy products and gluten. Ok, so we have eliminated a ton of other things, too, but some of these we will be able to add back in when we are ready to pick up camp and keep hiking. The time for adding foods back into our diet will come after we are all healthy. We hope that will be soon.

We've appreciated all of your support. Stay tuned for updates!