Omnivore's Dilemma

This book is convincing me to do things I would not have considered or easily dismissed previously. Last night I dreamt of the grass fed egg the author so aptly described. Today, I'm looking up farms near us that support pasture feeding vs corn feeding. Here are my list of choices:
http://www.eatwild.com/products/massachusetts.html

The idea is that you join the 'buyer's club' and you get your meat from a local farm that raises their animals on grass without the use of any antibiotics or pesticides on the grass. You go to the farm on allotted days to pick up your share of the meat. The farm in the book had meat according to seasons, beef in fall and winter and chickens in spring and summer because of grazing patterns and pasture quality. Some of these farms are the same...some have only meat, others have cheese, vegetables, and honey sold in farm stores.

I'm totally getting hooked on this, the book describes such a perfect wholesome ecosystem and things happen when they happen and are not forced to happen because of consumer demand (growing things out of season using questionable means to do so). The cows feed on the grass for several days, the chickens act as the 'sanitation crew' and get their protein from eating the larvae from the cow patties, their waste is made into compost which is turned into fertilizer to assist in the natural growth of the grass. Obviously, people that farm this way can't produce enough to satisfy demand of supermarkets who now buy from feedlots who can keep up with the demand, but I'm learning from the book that you get what you pay for. If you want cheap, you're getting meat from cow's that have been corn fed and hence need antibiotics because their stomachs can not digest this so it introduces a host of problems for the cow. In addition, the author points out that perhaps many of the issues we have (obesity, heart disease, diabetes) comes from the fact that our meat was raised on corn and doesn't have much to do with the meat itself.

It's a lot to think about....

Weekend Docket

Not much is on the docket for this weekend...which is fine by me. I suggested attending the Faire on the Square with some of our friends but the weather is supposed to be awful so I think I've been vetoed. Oh this just in, it's apparently been cancelled all together.

It looks like it's a weekend of laundry and homework. Oh, and knitting. Tonight I will be able to finish panel A and bind off only to begin a lengthier and more involved panel B. Whatever, as long as the stitches are not the same...oh the tedium!

One more thing, Ominvore's Dilemma is partially validating my cynical view that organic food is a marketing scheme while at the same time opening my eyes to industrial farming practices (just cuz it's free range doesn't mean that the range is not virtually nonexistent with about 20,000 chickens all clamoring for space). The definiton of organic is broad, partially due to lobbyists for the organic industry who want a less than narrow definition so that major food corporations like General Mills can horn in on the term.

VT weekend

This past weekend, we journeyed to VT to have a wedding reception for M's side of the family. Since our wedding was very very small, we opted to do this with them afterward or it would have doubled our wedding size, literally. We had 17 guests at the wedding and there were 20 at the dinner on Saturday. My mother in law chose the place since it's easier for her to scope places out than for us. It was an Italian restaurant in the cute downtown area, the function room was really pretty with exposed brick walls and really high ceilings.

The food was good, which I always doubt will be the case when you have that many people ordering at the same time. We started with a puffed pastry appetizer that was actually pretty spicy, it had shrimp in it though so my father in law reluctantly had to push his plate aside or I would have to put my nursing skills into action :) Then there was a salad with goat cheese and walnuts, then the entree. The 3 choices were crabmeat stuffed chicken roulades (I chose this), a salmon dish, or beef tenderloin. By far the beef outweighed the chicken, but both were quite tasty.

Since M's father's 60th is fast approaching, we made it into a birthday party also, so a birthday cake was had for dessert. Incidentally, one of M's uncles surprised us all by announcing that he and his fiance had gotten married over the weekend and were just back from a honeymoon on the coast of Maine. It was a really nice night and it was very nice to see everyone. I was really impressed by the speech that M's father made...he's not much of a public speaking guy and is not really prone to give speeches so it was very thoughtful that he prepared something.

After the dinner, people lingered for awhile looking at family pics that one of M's aunts brought along and around 10pm people started leaving. We had a lovely 2 hour drive to look forward to because we were staying at M's parents house because there were no available rooms anywhere pretty much in NH or Vt because of an auto show that was happening.

We headed home after picking some fresh apples from the in laws trees and ridding their garden of some carrots and potatoes.

I mostly studied in the car but there's really only so long I can do this, especially when there is a podcast playing instead of music...harder to tune it out. I am proud to mention that I am only 2.5 repeats away from finishing panel A on the Burridge Lake Aran Blanket. Then on to panel B. I'll be so grateful to have a different combination of stitches to do!!

Nothing Much

Ok...so suddenly I'm really busy! I have just finished week 3 of class, the breast exam. My poor husband is such a sport, enduring my physical exams each work when I learn something new. We just finished the HEENT and breast exam. He tells me I'm very thorough, more thorough than his MD. We'll see if my professor agrees. Our first test is coming up this week and we have a note due (18 y/o with 3 day hx of sore throat and right ear pain....go!)

In knitting news, I'm finally nearing the end of panel A of the Burridge Blanket. I have about 150 rows left....it's probably doable by the end of this weekend with all of the time we are spending in the car. Yes, you guessed it. We're heading to VT again. This time it's for our belated wedding reception for our family in VT. It was kind of a logistical nightmare trying to plan where we are staying, the reception is in the Western part of the state near Burlington and his parents live about 2 hours West of that. We initially planned on staying in a hotel but there were absolutely none to be found. There was one smoking room left at the Econolodge for $179 pretax...this is a one star hotel folks! We refused, so we are now driving two hours back to M's parenst house after the reception, wake up on Sunday, and drive 4 hours home. So for anyone besides me that's counting, that's 4.5 +2 +4=10.5 hours of driving in about 24 hours.

In other news, my friend R from Paris is in the States but will not be able to make it to Boston. They are visiting her family and thought it would be too hard to come to Boston with little J and all his accoutrements .....so hopefully next time. They are hoping we can get there soon, I think this is unlikely until at least after school..but you can never say never.

Brisque Weather

I'll never forget....I was in 5th grade, possibly 6th (ok well that part I apparently forgot) and I was taking a spelling test. The word was brisk, but I spelled it the French way for some reason (I'll credit my grandmother for that influence) and got it marked wrong, even though it is an alternate spelling. I should have gotten extra credit for being 9 or 10 and even knowing an alternate spelling.

Anyway, today is delightfully brisk, sunny skies and a nice cool breeze. So far, I have successfully resisted the urge to wear a scarf or a sweater. Didn't you hear...Fall is the new Spring?

An Extra Guest for the Party

Well, friends, M and I do not relish the task of entertaining. We're both worriers...will the party goers all mix and like each other? Will there be enough food? Will there be lulls in the conversation? What if people don't like the food? What if we invite a bunch of people and no one shows? And the list goes on. We decided to brave our fears and throw a little BBQ. We have about 14-15 people coming today, and a late comer....Hurricane Hannah. Yes, that's right. I can pretty much find anything to worry about, but I had not considered we might be having a Hurricane, or at least the fall out from one. It's dreary and gray now, with rain and sprinkles this afternoon and torrential downpours and 30 mile an hour winds slated for this evening. Needless to say, we're preparing now to have these people inside but we're going to have to play musical chairs because we have about 5 seats!

In school related news, my first class was Tuesday night and it's going to be intense but I think it will be the most helpful of all of the classes I've taken yet. Also, the gods are smiling on me because there is not one paper or group project or oral presentation! There are several quizzes on aspects of the physical exam, there is one exam that you pull out of hat and do on your partner, and then you have to do a complete physical exam (this is the final in this class) which includes hitting all 110 aspects of the exam. In addition to that, there are two SOAP notes we have to write (subjective, objective, assessment, plan) and include pertinent positives and negatives. This is the stuff I had hoped to learn in undergrad but it wasn't that in depth....exciting!

School

Well, here we are again. The beginning of yet another semester. This time around, I'll be taking Health Assessment where I'll learn how to do an entire physical exam as well as determine what any abnormalities mean. I'm looking forward to this because we learned this as undergrads but you learn the exams appropriate for whatever area you end up working in and kind of forget everything else. Also, as an RN you are not really responsible for interpreting the findings, you report them off to someone else who basically confirms the findings and orders labs and what not to find out what's going on. In this class, I'll learn how to interpret the findings and figure out what to with them, how to know which lab tests to order. We also learn how to do an extensive patient interview. My first class is tonight, in subsquent weeks my class is followed by a lab where we actually practice the physical exam techniques. Word is that this course is intense and if the letter that was sent to me is any indication, I would say it will be. The letter said that we have to take a test on the first night of class to make sure that we know enough going into the class to benefit from it. There is a written exam tonight, if we don't pass we get one more shot and then you have to postpone for an additional semester. In addition to that, we received an email saying that there were 8 chapters to read by tonight. So I'm guessing you know what I did with my week off from the other class.

I did find some time to knit though...I am obviously still working on the blanket for M's parents but to break up the tedium of that, I also started a smaller project; the Snowflake Socks . I'm using some scrap yarn from my Herringbone Mittens (Cascade 220 in green and blue). I'll post a pic of my progress when I'm learning how to test deep tendon reflexes.