Hotdog. It's what's for dinner.

Okay, so don’t even get me started on hotdogs.  Mmm…hotdogs.  Images of summer barbeques.  Perfectly grilled dogs in the middle of toasted rolls just smothered with your favorite primary color condiments.  Or how about wrapped in a Pillsbury crescent roll surrounded with cheese.  Ultimate hot dog decadence.  And what trip to Coney Island would be complete without a trip on the cyclone – subsequent chiropractor appointment not included, watching fathers and sons trap crabs off the pier using coolers of raw chicken as bait and enjoying a famous dog at Nathan’s.  Nothing like standing over their outdoor counter bar while underfoot sprawls a mélange of ketchup and pigeon crap.

It’s hard to say exactly how hot dogs came into being or who coined the term.  It seems to be an Americanized version of sausage.  I completely understand and condone our resourceful forbearers who wasted nothing.  By all means, if you’re going to kill a cow, use every part of it you can.  Boil the bones, make a broth and take all the itty-bitty pieces of ‘waste’ meat and stuff it into a casing before you cook it.  Voila, a hot dog.  One that was produced from a happy roaming grass eating, therefore not antibiotic injected, animal.  One that didn’t need a shelf life of a couple of years therefore didn’t need the addition of nitrates, nitrites, or other preservatives along with artificial color and flavor.  I don’t care if it’s Kosher or has a natural casing.  The inside of today’s wiener is made up of a product most appetizingly called ‘meat slurry’ or ‘meat emulsion’ which is leftover muscle and accessory parts mechanically scoured off the cow bones.  It is used for two purposes only:  animal feed and. …hotdogs. 

Hotdogs consumed in high enough numbers are carcinogenic mostly manifesting in childhood leukemia.  Yet, this ‘food’ lurks on every NY street corner and children’s menu from restaurants to schools.  Now, I understand why this is on one level.  It’s cheap, easy, long shelf life and most of all, there’s an undying demand for them.  Kids love ‘em and so do their parents.  I own a picky 4 year old and one of the 5 foods he’ll eat is hotdog.  But what I learned early on is that there are alternatives and I’m not talking about the truly tasteless vegetarian versions that my child wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.  Once only found in natural grocers, packages of uncured, nitrate/nitrite free organic beef hotdogs are now nestled between the plethora of regular dogs in mainstream grocery stores.  Buy them if you or your children eat them.  Of course they’re still made from some form of ‘meat slurry’ and are high in sodium and fat.  But at least no one will get cancer from them and at least we can stop supporting the companies that make the gross ones.  They smell the same.  They taste almost the same.  They are a little denser in consistency and are a darker color.  And they cost about a dollar more per package, which is about twenty cents more per dog.  No big deal.  Yet no one I’ve ever talked to has heard that there is a choice out there.  And most people know that hot dogs aren’t good for you, but don’t really know why.

Read the labels carefully.  There are uncured, preservative free, natural, organic, nitrate/nitrite free, grass fed, grass finished hotdogs.  You want the label to say all of these.  Splurge.  After all, it’s a hotdog not caviar. Trader Joe’s makes a decent product.  So does Applegate Farms which also has a good article on their web-site about all this.  It can be found at:

http://www.applegatefarms.com/uploadedFiles/Resources/News/nytImes_070506.pdf

I am not a purist.  I will eat the ‘bad’ kind of hot dog again in my lifetime, as will my children.  But not often and never in my own home.  I do the best I can in our imperfect world as do we all.  But I encourage all of us to take all the teeny steps we can to eat real food especially when it’s as easy as sifting through packages of hot dogs at the store and asking the manager to carry them if we don’t see them.  The same goes for lunchmeat and bacon by the way.  

Enough is Enough

I fear I'm heading in the direction of a blogger flunkie based on the number of blogs I manage to spit out into the www. I'm writing constantly in my head where thoughts and stories whirl around each other like square dancers on speed. Maybe I should cut down on the java. Anyhow, Sam and I had an interesting discussion this morning on the way to preschool. It was about jail. Fascinating.

Sam asked me if I remembered to lock the front door. He wanted to be sure no one would enter our house because it's OUR house. I think he's been watching too much CSI after we all go to bed at night. I assured him that I had to which he replied in his usual round about fashion, " It's a good thing, mama, 'cause 'cause they'd not be- our house inside - it's OUR house - and if they got in - that'd be very naughty and they'd have to go to a BIG time out."

"Yes, they would." I responded.
"Where would time out be?" he asked.
"Well, Sam, there's a special place where grownups go for time out when they do things like go into houses that don't belong to them. It's called...well, it's called jail."

That led to a discussion on laws and how they differed from rules and that children don't ever go to jail, just grown ups. I decided to pass on letting him in on juvenille detention centers for now. That can wait until he's at least 5. He then wanted to know who would take care of a little boy or girl if their grown up went to live in jail. I assured him that his daddy and I would never go to jail because we don't break the laws. He was visibly relieved, but then joyfully said, " Just Grandma Rose and Papa Bob." These are Bob's parents. Hmmm....I would love to have known what was going on in Sam's mind to cast his grandparents as criminals. "No, honey. Grandma Rose and Papa Bob don't break the laws. So they won't go to jail either." "Oh," he answered nonchalantly and changed the subject. I gave his teacher a head's up about the jail thing in case the school thought someone in our family had been arrested by the end of the day. The look on the teacher's face told me that talking about jail with a 4 year old was probably inappropriate.

So, I then went on to Target with Lucas and Skyler to buy a cartload of organic baby food and formula because it was on sale and I had some coupons. Later that day while everyone was napping I looked up, in my earthy crunchy baby book, when I should start feeding them more than thin watery fruits and vegetables. I came away seeing the look on the author's face if she could see my shelves stocked with jars, boxes and cans. And I reply weakly, "But it's organic! Well, some of it is!" And the author shakes her head and reminds me how easy and quick it is to make my own homemade cereals and freeze my pureed vegetables in enormous batches of ice cubes for convenience. And why would anyone in their right mind buy a jar of bananas when you can mash your own organic banana in the comfort of your own home. And I say, but what if it's not ripe or it's too ripe and I'm were too busy scraping the poop off of the cloth diapers I insist on using and hanging out to dry on the line for natural bleaching and to reduce your carbon footprint and it's sort of nice to bathe the children once in a while and it would be a good idea to actually empty the dishwasher instead of taking out the clean dishes as we need them because the dirty ones are piling up precariously and I like to eat and sleep and I'm working too and the kitchen floor looks like a science experiment gone bad so mash your own damn banana lady! I bought mine on clearance at Target in a JAR!!! And I slam the book shut before I read the bit about if you must use jars make sure to clean them before you open them to avoid....damn - I couldn't help myself - I read it. But then I did shut it and put it back on the shelf.

So when is enough enough? Sam and I had a year of bonding as I nursed him and he fell asleep peacefully in my arms. These babies are lucky when I stick bottles in their mouths and keep them in by propping them up on towels. Whichever one I'm not holding is usually looking pissed off or crying. Sam is constantly scaring them until they cry. And now they've been relegated to sleep in the basement because they cry too much at night and we're trying to space out their feedings so we shut the door and set an alarm for the next feeding. In the interim, what goes on downstairs stays downstairs. I don't need to know about it.

So I don't wear them, nurse them or cook for them. Will they be okay? Sam lives mostly in time out, still only eats about 4 different foods and we have discussions about jail. Will HE be okay? Since the babies were born, we've stopped composting, started using occasional paper plates, eat more frozen food, consume more coffee and the Board of Health would shut down our house if they visited unannounced. Will WE be okay? What IS okay? And what is enough?

My uterus as a playground

1/9/09

Sam has been talking about the babies more lately. Today, he seemed very put out upon learning that they do not have to wear clothes even though he does. And recently, a very concerned Sam asked me if the babies in my belly had any toys to play with. I answered no and Sam, disturbed by this news, said that we needed to get some to them. Every so often since then, I ask him what he thinks the babies are doing. Sometimes he thinks they’re sleeping, but mostly he thinks they are playing. So, I’m trying to envision what he thinks it looks like inside my uterus. I think he sees it as a sort of playground or maybe like his day care with a couple of cribs for them to nap in when they are tired. It’s like the first time I walked up all those stairs in the Statue of Liberty. I was certain after the claustrophobic ascent, there would be a little coffee shop or something at the top where we could stop and rest. Instead we only had a few minutes at the top to look out the observation windows at the top of the crown before being ushered back down the stairs of the narrow chamber. Once we got to the ground, I looked back up at Lady Liberty’s head while shaking my own. How exactly did I think a refreshment stand with tables and chairs was going to fit in there? So, I can understand the warped perception of what’s going on in my abdomen. However, I also think there may be some truth to it.

It seems like my bladder has been turned into a makeshift trampoline making me feel the need to pee whether or not it’s full. My intestines are being used as a ropes course based on the bouts of flatulence and constipation that even a half a bag of prunes a day can’t seem to remedy. And from the amount of back and hip pain I’m experiencing, I’m quite certain that the boys are looking for handholds and footholds in my pelvis and spine to begin their budding rock climbing careers. My first guess would be to say they’re learning to boulder, but technically they are always tied in by their respective umbilical cords. During certain excruciating moments, I wonder if they’ve also dislodged a kidney in order to play dodge ball.

So, yes Sam, the babies do have toys. They’re called viscera. I’ll be a little happier when we can hand them those puppets that you used to love so much and some teething toys.