I can’t stand it. After 27 days of writing poetry, I want to write about nutrition!
Aside from the fact that tomatoes are out of season and that I didn’t preserve any local ones, and aside from the fact that I’d once all but banned even gluten-free pasta from our house as a processed food but now it (slathered in coconut oil, butter, and beef fat) makes up the bulk of my toddler daughter’s dinner (and leftover lunch) once every week or two, I went looking for decent tomato sauce today for pasta marinara.
Really, I wasn’t looking for decent so much as not incredibly expensive. I was in Whole Foods and reached for their 365 organic brand, which was only $2.69 (I think, or maybe $2.99, but the only organic one under $3). The plain one’s ingredients looked decent, but both the Tomato Basil and the Italian Herb contained soybean oil. This grosses me out mostly because I know how raunchy soy was for my health, that is how it contributed to my fertility woes, digestive problems, and possibly to my thyroid issues. But also, it’s just not a food our bodies were meant to eat. You can squeeze an olive and get oil, but Expeller is not the name of some friendly giant who pinches a soybean and turns it into oil.
Whole Foods Tomato Basil organic pasta sauce
Whole Foods plain organic pasta sauce
Whole Foods Italian Herb organic pasta sauce
No, I’m not an expert — not a health coach or a dietician or a medical professional. But I know that there is no need for soybean oil in one jar of tomato sauce and not the other. It’s just filler, right? Why is it there?
This is not the stuff of poetry, I know. But what I eat is so directly connected to how I feel that it’s impossible for me not to care. And when I look at my kids and try to figure out what pushes their buttons, what makes their attitudes go awry or their poop look funny, I have to think about food. Maybe I could think about it a little less than I do, but I already let a lot of things go. If I could outsource some of whatever else keeps me busy, I would never serve prepared rice pasta. I would figure out how to make it out of soaked rice or rice cooked with broth, and even then, that would only be for special occasions. I would ferment everything myself, including homemade coconut milk. I’d make custard from pastured eggs. We’d eat in season except for what we’d preserved when it was locally harvested.
I would do these things because they would make us feel good and because doing them would just make more sense in terms of sustainability. I am not guilting myself about not doing them, but I do hope to keep climbing the learning curve and figuring out how to do more and more things for ourselves so that by the time my kids are at the age of grab and go, they have seen and lived enough of the other side to know there are options. If they shun homemade for a period of years, at least they will have a healthy foundation underneath them. They’ll come back when they listen to their bodies. This, I have to believe.
Nourishment
When my children ask me,
after they’ve outgrown clothes
and maybe this house,
how I spent the hours
of their childhood,
I will first recount the baby days
of nursing on the couch,
in the bed, at the computer,
in the sling, in the rocking chair.
Three years for him, almost two for her,
whole chunks of time
pouring my life into theirs.
And then I will recall standing in the kitchen,
between sink and stove
like the sides of an inner tube
holding on and spinning
to create that which would
later become all of our bodies
————
After casting aside my poetry hat for far too long, my NaBloPoMo plan is to write a poem — and to take and post a photo — every day in November, spending less than half an hour on both. The hope is to drill down, to focus, to look for and create beauty.
Previous Posts:
Day 1: Eleven One
Day 2: Shoreline
Day 3: Damage
Day 4: On Parenting and Sunrises
Day 5: When will we?
Day 6: Voting Line
Day 7: What I want my children to learn from me
Day 8: Haiku
Day 9: Reminders
Day 10: Routine
Day 11: Lux Esto, in moderation
Day 12: Family Photo Shoot at (nearly) 4o
Day 13: Siblings
Day 14: Point of View
Day 15: Background
Day 15: Greener Grass
Day 16: Journey
Day 17: From two to twelve
Day 18: Baggage
Day 19: Mothering, now and later
Day 20: Expectations
Day 21: Blank canvas
Day 22: Closing in on December
Day 23: Everything we need to know we forget before kindergarten
Day 24: Nothing but the moon
Day 25: Balance
The worst thing about being gone most of August this past year was missing the bulk of tomato season. Luckily, I was still able to put away about 75 pounds of tomatoes (frozen – no time for canning this year!). It’s the one food I really miss if I don’t have it in winter – and I’m already fretting I didn’t put away enough. I take a million other shortcuts, as you know! I wonder if you’d have luck with the Toigo orchard sauce. I suppose it’s probably not organic, but I think it’s got a short list of ingredients and is homemade at least.
Hi Jessica, Jack Moore introduced us through email and I’m just now getting a chance to read through some of your posts. I really like your inclusion of poetry in your posts. I used to write poetry a long time ago in high school and a little bit in college, and then I stopped. You’ve inspired me to attempt putting together a poem or two this week – thank you! I also can totally identify with you re: the soy thing and eating seasonally – It’s really annoying that corn and soy are literally in almost every packaged food with more than a couple of ingredients (and that’s why I now avoid most packaged stuff like the plague), but then, it’s also a learning curve to start canning and preserving foods myself. It’s definitely a goal, but life is insanely busy so sometimes we have to make compromises. Btw, I like the tomato sauce and paste (esp. paste) from Bionaturae – really clean ingredients and tastes great too. Kinda pricey though. I buy the little jars from Vitacost. Anyway, would love to connect offline sometime to get to know you and learn about your food journey! I think we’d have a lot to chat about :) Have a great weekend!