Confined Feeding

Chile can make us do things we've been putting aside for too long.



Her Quit Now challenge asks participants to think about their everyday choices and what they will mean in a peak oil world.

Last month I officially signed up for the challenge of not using the clothes dryer. With one small exception, my family made it through the month with, um, flying colors (or at least waving-in-the-breeze dingy-whites).

I also managed to make the switch from shampoo in bottles to shampoo bars, and from disposable kitchen sponges to hand-knit washrags.

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This month I pledged not to buy bread but to make it myself all the time, using grain we grind ourselves. I love making bread but often don't get it done for any time other than Shabbat.

(Well, we already blew it once. Last night we bought pita to go with our its-too-hot-to-cook hummus and tabbouleh picnic....)

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I made another pledge, one that I've been struggling with intellectually for some time and only sometimes trying to live up to:

I will not eat CAFO (confined or concentrated animal feeding operations) or factory farmed animal products this month.

In the next few weeks, I'll write more about why I chose this action and what my issues with this decision are. But for now, a little history:

I was a most-of-the-time vegetarian for many years.

"Most of the time," you ask? I've always eaten whatever my mother and grandmother put in front of me. And I've always eaten foods culturally important to the people and cultures we visited on trips. (That meant eel in Quebec, pork barbeque in South Carolina, tako poke in Hawaii.)

While I was pregnant, I craved meat and eventually decided to honor that craving and eat all the liver I wanted. For years after my son's birth, I continued to be vegetarian except on the first day of my menstrual period when I ate beef.

We kept a vegetarian house, partly to make it easy for our kitchen to remain kosher. I ate meat out at restaurants during my monthly exceptions.

Then Peter Singer and Erik Marcus entered my life. When I read about how dairy cows and laying poultry worked into the industrial agricultural system, I began to feel that eating no meat but continuing to support the system nonetheless by purchasing milk and eggs was something I could not do. We began to buy soy milk and artificial egg powder, as well as TVP and more tofu and tempeh than we had been eating before in our dairy-and-egg days.

Then, Son had significant reactions to the soy he was eating. We cut out the soy for a brief experiment--and his weight and height both soared instantly. He had been a tiny child--and now I believe it is because his body could not absorb nutrients well because of his food sensitivities. (He is now very average size-wise and doesn't have significant food issues of any type.) I'm not saying that children cannot be fed well on a heavy soy diet--just that this particular child could not due to the reactions of his gut.

After a lot of soul searching, long conversations into the night, and reading in the philosophy section, David and I decided to buy both meat, eggs, and dairy from a nearby farm. I have been extremely pleased with this decision.

I swapped utterly, from keeping to a vegetarian diet at home but eating meat out, to keeping an omnivore's kitchen but eating vegetarian out. Or at least that was my plan. David kept to his word far more than I did.

We never said we'd be vegans when we were out--but a lot of my hair-pulling was from the fact that I truly believe a factory farm is a factory farm. Whether the animal is killed for meat or just de-beaked and de-tailed and crowded beyond belief in a dark warehouse full of its own shit really does not make much difference to me.

Ordering the cheese omelette instead of the burger really doesn't make me feel better about my ability to be a moral person.

The funny thing is that my belief that a factory farm is a factory farm pushes me away from not only animal products produced industrially but PLANT products produced industrially--and that means almost all soybeans and other meat analogs. I'll write more about this in coming posts, but for now...

...I am going to keep my meat eating and my dairy and egg consumption to our own kitchen, where, yes, we will cook animal foods, all from animals living on a farm we have visited, raised by a farmer we know.

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I've already blown it. July 1st at knitting group, I decided to order eggplant fries. I did not ask if they were vegan. Even though I realized they might have some kind of egg dip, I decided they probably did not given that they do not have a thick-batter coating.

What a wimp I am. I'm going to have to learn how to ask again.

Then when I was chatting about it later, I realized they were sprinkled with parmesan cheese. What an auspicious start.

Heading to the Bar

I've been trying over the last little while to stop using some of the corporate products I have come to rely upon. Sometimes I am trying to avoid the big companies. Other times I am trying to opt for healthier alternatives for my body. And often, I am trying to learn to cut down on the waste stream I produce (including all the things I throw in the recycling bucket).

One of the things that used to fill up our recycling container was all those plastic shampoo containers. In my effort to break the shampoo-bottle addiction, I tried out a number of alternatives, starting with a couple of choices easily available in many mainstream stores.


1. Burt's Bees used to be a tiny company in Maine. Then it was a small company in North Carolina. Well, now it is part of Clorox. Nevertheless, I still love some of their products so I first tried their Rosemary Mint Shampoo Bar.
After using it for a couple of days, I almost gave up on the idea of using a shampoo bar at all. My hair felt sticky and I looked like there were sticks coming straight out of my head. My comb got covered in white waxy mess.

I had heard that the transition from commercial liquid shampoos to bars might take a little while--so after things had gotten better with other products, I went back to this bar. It was still awful.

What a shame. It is certainly pleasant smelling.


2. I thought my very fine and relatively dry long hair might have hated the Rosemary Mint because it was drying, so I tried their baby shampoo. The scent is subtle and extremely appealing--just a bit of apricot for a smooth scent with a fresh kick.
My hair responded much better to this bar, although it left a sticky residue that even a vinegar rinse did not remove. Although the residue was dulling, it did give my bone-straight hair a bit more body...

David's experience with the bar has been much better. His short curly hair looks great these days--and he is on his second baby shampoo bar now.

I was a little disconcerted to discover that the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database did not give it a great score, mostly because of the product's use of tocopheryl acetate, panthenol, and unidentified fragrance. There are certainly more dangerous chemicals in a lot of American cosmetics--but given that I think of Burt's Bees as a "natural" company, and that this particular product is designed for babies, I was quite surprised.

3. After hearing more and more about the potential dangers of various products commonly used in the beauty industry, I decided to start reading my labels more carefully. While picking up a prescription in a mainstream pharmacy, I ran across Skin Free Extra Moisturizing Soap, which advertises that it makes a great shampoo. Its Skin Deep rating is much better: a perfect zero.

I love this bar. It is clear and scent-free, lathers beautifully, and feels great in the hand with its ever-s0-slight bevel shape. But if I use it for several shampoos in a row, my hair takes on the quality of hay. Not particularly pleasing. So I alternate using this bar with other options.

4. My absolute favorite shampoo bar so far: J. R. Liggett!

This bar, a much squarer bar than the others, lasts a long time, doesn't leave much residue in my hair, is almost scentless, and makes my scalp feel more honestly clean than any of the other bars have. This one is a keeper.

5. I have another favorite: baking soda and vinegar. I put a tablespoon or two of baking soda into a bottle, fill it with a cup or two of water from the shower, and shake until it is clear. I pour it over my hair and rub it in. There is really no real lather and it takes a while to get used to this feeling--but my hair feels deep-down clean after a BS wash.

For conditioner, pour a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar into cool water and rinse your hair with it. Then rinse again with clear water. The first time I tried it, I was utterly amazed at the softness that resulted. Whether you use baking soda, a shampoo bar, or even traditional shampoo, this is a great find!

6. The other thing I do? I now wash my hair every other day, or every third day. Although it took a little while for my hair to adjust, it is pretty happy with this routine now. I never would have believed that I could make this transition!

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What have you found that works for you?

Washing Dishes

aAlthough we have used cloth napkins and kitchen towels instead of disposable paper products for years, we've had an enormously difficult time getting past our addiction to disposable scrubby-sponges for washing dishes.

We now have some answers:



The blue thing is the plastic netting our seed potatoes came in this spring. We've been using it now for a couple of months and it is in great shape. While it is ultimately disposable, it was saved from the trashcan where it could have gone immediately after planting the potatoes. It provides absolutely superior scraping of cast iron pans, etc. and has lasted extremely well. Because it is so easy to wash out well, we don't worry about the germs that can grow so easily in disposable sponges. We have another one waiting in the wings when this one finally wears out.

The two green squares are a knitted cotton washcloth that David made and a woven potholder square that Son made. Both are absolutely fantastic--with a lot more traction and absorbing ability than the cloths we had been trying to use before.

Addiction number one broken!