Tag: Guest Blogger

Locavore is a phone app for finding Farmer’s Markets and local growers…

There’s nothing better than buying food from a market that is well within eyesight of the farm on which it was grown.

As we age, we tend to do what is easy. No children left at home, we sometimes grab what is convenient and call it a meal. I say, what can be more convenient than a juicy peach, a steaming pot of freshly husked sweet corn and a ripe, juicy tomato?

City living is hardly an excuse. Most cities now have farmers markets and co-ops.

There is something relaxing about getting out a few canning jars and making homemade jam. It’s really not that difficult, and when the metal lid is popped off in the middle of winter, revealing the luscious aroma and taste of the past summer season, any effort that was spent on the process melts away with the oozing jam on hot toast. It takes hardly any time or effort to blanch a dozen of so ears of corn and cut the kernels into freezer bags, and the difference it makes when served at a holiday meal is more than enough reward.

Sometimes we tend to forget how food is supposed to taste. While it’s a treat to be able to purchase watermelon in the Northeast in the middle of winter, it’s not the same as eating one in season. Out of season produce that has been trucked halfway across the country really doesn’t have the same flavor.

In an age where so much is available to us for little of no effort, getting local fresh foods is one thing that really does give huge paybacks in both taste and nutritional value. There is also something very grounding and almost therapeutic about getting in touch with where our food comes from and taking a hand in preserving a bit of it for later in the year.

“Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments- owes his existence to a 6 inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”

There are some things in our world that are so taken for granted we have no clue what life must have been like without them.

One evening two summers ago, while my dad and I were alone in his hospital room, our conversation turned to his grandfather. Grandpa was a tall, handsome man of Welch ancestry. I never knew much of him, save for the fact that his nickname was “Red”, because of his hair color, and that his first wife had died when my father was a small child. This evening, alone in that hospital room, Dad told me more of the story; my father, whose name is David, was named in honor of Grandpa, also David. At one point Grandpa and his family lived on a farm, but later moved to the city. They must have done well for themselves, judging from the photos taken when my grandma was a child, and from the few lovely antiques that have survived to be passed on. All that changed when Grandma was diagnosed with cancer. The medical bills resulted in my great grandparents losing their home and all of their hard earned savings. My grandma, who was caring for my toddler father, now had her parents move in so she could take care of her dying mother as well.  The Social Security Act had only been signed a few years prior, in 1935, and Medicare, an amendment to Social Security, wasn’t signed until July of 1965. Grandpa remarried in later years to a woman he met at the cemetery. He was visiting his late wife’s grave, and she was visiting her late husband. At the time, Grandpa was working as a stonecutter, carving people’s names in headstones. Dad was about 21 years old and stationed in Germany when he received the news that Grandpa had fallen over dead in the doctor’s office, and his death was attributed to the years of inhalation of stone dust. He had been working to rebuild all he had lost.

My father went on to work as a truck mechanic, sometimes putting in 80-hour workweeks. Even after Dad “retired”, he worked part time. His plan was to finally fully retire when he turned 80 years old. He made it to one month shy of his 78^th birthday. He was working the day before he fell ill. Until then he had never had surgery, a serious illness or a hospitalization. This time, he endured 3 months of hospitalization, which included a month in a coma in ICU, 4 major surgeries, and two months in rehab and nursing home care. After a 6-month break at home, where he needed VNA care, he went for more surgery, had two subsequent life threatening infections and more nursing home rehab. His care has been excellent and his recovery has been amazing. One more surgery, is on the schedule, after-which the nightmare should be over. He is anxious to get back to his projects around the house, tinkering in his garage and walking at the mall. Unlike Grandpa, he and my mother still have their home. Even though he was forced into retirement a few years shy of his goal of 80, his hard earned savings is still pretty much intact. He and Mom can still enjoy dinners at Bob Evans and they can pay someone to fix the furnace and do minor home repairs. They aren’t living extravagantly, but they are comfortable. For that, they can thank Harry S Truman, who in 1945 proposed healthcare for all Americans, planting the seed for what would later be known as Medicare and Medicaid. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act at the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, Missouri on July 30, 1965, and paid homage to the former President by allowing him to be the first recipient of that act.  My father, the younger of the Davids, remembers. He knows how different his life would be had this act never been signed.

Maybe there’s an upside to this recession we’ve been in. I don’t mean there’s an upside for the people who lost their homes and healthcare. I’m mean for those of us who basically had to cut back and tighten our budgets. I just read an article that said the percentage of people who are paying down debt is on the rise. The negative to that is that they are spending less, thus slowing down the general economic recovery. Maybe slow recovery has its advantages.

Cutting back can be a good thing. Watch an episode of Hoarders. Most of us don’t accumulate to that extent, but we probably all have much more stuff than we really need. How many times do you think about getting to that basement/garage/attic/spare bedroom so you can weed out the stuff you don’t need? Imagine if you hadn’t bought it in the first place. Take a drive by a landfill; it’s staggering.

My big lesson is hanging in my closet. At the time I didn’t think twice about the price, which was the equivalent of the cost of over a month’s worth of groceries. The next year my husband was laid off. We had another wedding to attend, but the season was different from the one in which I had worn the expensive dress. I found a dress on sale that fit perfectly and was comfortable. I’ve worn it since, and will most likely wear it again. I’ve had someone ask to borrow it. Miraculously it is machine washable, which will save even more on dry cleaning costs.  It was 1/8 the cost of the dress that resides in the zippered garment bag at the back of my closet. When I look at that garment bag and the inexpensive dress hanging next to it, I don’t feel deprived, I feel smarter.

Nowadays we use words like “repurpose”, “up-cycle”, “recycle” and “going green”.  Really, they are the same concepts that our grandparents used. They all involve using what you have and not being wasteful. Lessons learned from The Great Depression. Perhaps these economic downtimes happen when we become too wasteful and consume too much; they may be our reality check.

Not one to skip on my wellness checkups, I headed out on Monday morning for The Verdict. For the past several years life has been chaotic, to say the least. Like many women, I tend to put my own wellbeing on the back burner while caring for others. At my last check-up, my numbers were starting to show that neglect. Still not in the red zone, they were nonetheless creeping into dangerous territory. Mid life is the time when we can no longer take things for granted; those fries and tuna boats hurriedly eaten at the end of a long, stressful day start to come back to haunt us.

It’s hard for women in middle age to exercise. We have issues. How can you manage to walk for an hour when you have to pee every five minutes? Working up a sweat is something that we regularly do while sleeping. Thankfully, I am blessed with a back yard pool. My friends and I can swim in peace, without having to deal with public swimsuit anxiety and the fear of spontaneously bursting into flames. We don’t even have to shave our legs if we don’t want to! I began to swim laps and to eat more healthily. My husband was feeling a bit insulted about my new habit of leaving the dinner table early to put my plate into the dishwasher, then heading off to another room. He’s fine now that I’ve explained it is my way of avoiding seconds. I was almost militant in my resolve to reclaim by health and well-being.

Monday was D-Day. Blood work done, I waited to hear the benefits of all that hard work. Blood Pressure? Down from “let’s keep an eye on this and if it stays this high you’re looking at meds” to “Great!”. Total Cholesterol? Not that bad before, but now? Excellent! LDL? lower. HDL? Up THIRTY points! I was beginning to feel giddy with excitement. And then the hammer fell. Hard. Weight? I GAINED ten pounds! I felt like someone had just punched me really hard in my increasingly doughy stomach. Both my doctor and one of my friends told me that in order to lose weight and keep it off, they have to commit to an hour of working out, at least five days a week. ARE. YOU. KIDDING?! Maybe I hadn’t heard them right, what with all that pool water still stuffing up my ears. I gave up tuna boats with melted provolone for 5 oz. grilled salmon portions and this is what I get? I’m not going to lie; I didn’t take this news well at all. In fact, I ran sobbing to my favorite spouse, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby. Once my tantrum ended, I grudgingly went back to my healthier habits, thankful that I look healthier on paper than I do in the mirror.

Now that I’ve (somewhat) regained my composure, I have done some thinking. My grandmothers were chubby. Both lived to be well into their eighties. My aunt is a vivacious ninety years old and is most likely meeting her new seventy nine year old boyfriend for lunch as I write this post. She has always had to struggle with a few extra pounds. My great aunt, she of the dreaded apple shape, is one hundred and one years old, and still goes out to dinner at least weekly. Maybe I should be thankful for the longevity in my genes and not focus so much on the extra jiggle in my jeans.