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One of the odd things about my job is the conversations I am privy to as I visit each table with their flight of wines. Sometimes I hear funny things that make me laugh. Other times I hear something which resonates with me. The other day there were three or four gentlemen tasting wine together and as I stepped up to pour for them, one said to the other, "Ever since the kids have gone off to college, she says she's not motivated to cook anymore. She heats up frozen meals in the evenings."
Of course he said this with a sad, resigned air, which I kind of get, but on the other hand, if it's bothering you, dude, step up and grab the apron. Man can cook, after all.
But I do have a lot of sympathy for the wife in question. It's taken me a long time to get out of the habit for buying enough food to feed an army on its feet, which is what our family was for the longest time. It's almost a grieving process you go through, once there is no longer a full family to cook for. You spend years learning recipes that will keep kids full and will re-heat well, since kids are so busy you're often feeding in shifts. It's all about big casseroles and other one-dish meal wonders.
When they leave home, all that changes. Immediately.
So one of my greatest challenges has been re-learning how to cook -- for two adults, not five people of various sizes ranging in age from 10 - 40. Harder still was learning to BUY for two and not five.
Ifyou're single, I would imagine it's even harder to get up the motivation to cook for yourself than it is for couples, when you could just graze out of the fridge instead. Not that there's anything wrong with grazing. But it still should probably not replace meals 100 percent of the time.
But I also saw a study recently that many older adults who live alone are eating more and more processed food (both frozen and take-out), because they don't want to cook for one, and that is creating health challenges in the form of high blood pressure from high sodium levels, and diabetes from high sugar levels.
So what's to be done about the home cooking conundrum for singles and couples?
I think we need a revolution in small-portion cooking. I think there ought to be cooking TV shows that feature small dishes and limited portions, cookbooks and online resources that offer the same. With the Boomer and even Gen X'ers aging out, this becomes even more important.
You can add a homesteading angle to it as well. How do you grow for just one or two people? How much do you preserve, freeze and put by? Having just gone through this with a whole bunch of canned tomatoes I put up in 2013 and need to use NOW, I really could have used some tips on knowing how much to grow when my kids left home. In 2013 (the year after they left) I grew waaaaay too much, bought waaaaay too many groceries, and didn't eat enough of any of it.
And I have the expired food in the bottom of my trash can to prove it. That shouldn't be the learning process.
It's all well and good to be able to feed the small army that a houseful of kids is, but if you're an army of two or even one, it's no less important. It's something I plan on spending some time exploring in life and here as well, in the hopes of finding a new way of cooking, growing and eating.
Because there's more to growing old than throwing a "Lean Cuisine" meal in the oven (or even an Amy's Organic Kitchen meal) and calling it healthy eating.
It's not. But I'm convinced that there is a better way out there, and that it can not only be delicious, but also be easy and save money in the long rung. Not to mention stop you from filling your trash can or composter with expired foods.
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Our dog Sputnik recently took a spill off Big Ag's lap onto the hardwood floor and developed a limp earlier this week. Since I spent some time working in a vet's office as an assistant in the past, I knew how to examine the leg and his joints to make sure nothing was broken or his hip dislocated. But the question always comes up when you own either livestock or pets: When do you call in the services of the vet?
One thing I can tell you about vets today that was probably not widely true 100 years ago is that "growing your practice" is a huge goal among many new veterinarians. There are constant advertisements and junk mail which arrive at your friendly neighborhood vet's office encouraging them in this. Breakout sessions like "how to increase your profit margins," "how to effectively have your existing clients increase your bottom line," and "how more testing = more profits and better care" is not uncommon to see. It's all quite out in the open. Some vets buy into it, some do not, and for us pet owners the trick can be telling the difference before our checkbook becomes drained.
But it's a little more complex than that too, because the ones who do buy into it -- who have taken the workshops and seminars -- actually have a good justification for doing so. After all, spending more on each animal that comes through the door is not only good for business, it's good for the animal. Tale this example scenario:
You bring your dog into the vet with what seems to be a bladder infection. An old school vet will send your dog home with an antibiotic or sulfa drug and tell you if it's not better within a few days to come back in. Hopefully that will fix things -- most of the time it will -- but not all the time.
A new school vet will insist on running a blood panel to check for infection and kidney function, while also strongly encouraging you to allow them to do a bladder ultrasound, in order to rule out cysts or tumors.
The visit to the old school vet will cost you about $60 bucks (office visit plus meds). The visit to the new school vet will set you back about $400 that or more, if you agree to their diagnostic protocol. But there's no question that all those tests improve the chances of diagnosing your dog's issue correctly. The question is, do you want to spend that much, or take your chances on the pills and see what happens?
We're now in the position where we can provide first-world health care to our pets, if we so choose. If your dog has a tumor, you can now see that he gets chemotherapy. But is that kind of care in the pet's best interest? That's a highly personal question for the owner, and delves into a moral area that's as grey as a foggy day at the beach. I'm not sure I could put my pet through chemotherapy, because I'm not even sure I'd want to do it myself, if I had a serious case of cancer.
Of course if you're raising livestock, you also have to draw the line on what does and does not warrant a large-animal vet call. We would not call the vet out for a chicken, for example, but would for a sheep or goat. We would not do expensive MRIs or ultrasounds on any outside animal, and only on our inside pets if it would lead to a simple and damn-near guaranteed successful treatment protocol.
We euthanize when necessary, whether it is a dog, chicken, or horse that is suffering and not expected to survive. But if the animal could survive, then we will do what we can, within certain financial limits. We've spent good money treating colicky horses because it's an easily treated condition with complete recovery and many more years of life possible afterward. But when faced with end-stage incurable Equine Cushings disease (this after many months of providing hugely expensive imported prescription meds to try and treat the lesser symptoms of it) we chose to have the vet come and euthanize our horse, rather than allow her to suffer.
So you do what you can and try and trust your instincts. Regarding the most recently injured animal here, my own instincts were thankfully correct; after giving Sputnik half a baby aspirin and making him rest for a few days, his strained leg appears to be healing rapidly. But in this day and age, it's very difficult to know how much its appropriate to spend on a sick animal, whether it's the sheep out in your field or the cat on your lap.
But I think the motto of not wanting our animal charges to suffer unnecessarily is always a good yardstick.
One of the things homesteaders ( a self-sufficient and independent lot) cannot do is their own DIY healthcare -- at least not for everything. Sure, we can mend cuts with superglue and drink echinacea-laced tea when we are getting a head cold. But between rising health insurance rates and the not-inexpensive cost of government-sponsored health care, higher-level care something we all worry about.
The fact is, I can take care of most things at home, but I can't give myself a blood analysis, a steroid shot, or prescribe myself antibiotics and a tetanus shot when I scrape my foot on a rusty nail.
So the question becomes what to do about medical-level health care? If you feel like a helpless victim strolling through the prepackaged food sections of your supermarket, try sitting in a doctor's office with 15 coughing, hacking people ahead of you, where you know you're going to get relatively impersonal, immediate-need medical advice, while the clock ticks and your doctor struggles to meet his daily quota of patients.
In light of all that, I recently elected to sign up with a "concierge" physician's practice. It's small, it's personal, and it doesn't have to follow the rules of giant healthcare corporations. It's different than any health care I've seen before. I can't really give a good review yet, but from what I've experienced so far, I'm impressed.
In case you're not familiar with concierge physicians, they charge a specific dollar amount per year for you to join their patient list (in my case it was $1800, and it took a great leap of faith for me to write out that check, believe me), with the aim being to have a small practice with patient-centered care. Insurance companies do not enter the mix. Government does not enter the mix. Just you and your doctor.
But here's why I am willing to pay that amount, up front, for a year's worth of care: All my blood work was included in the price (a huge panel of tests, measuring everything from red blood counts to Vitamin D levels -- a comprehensive analysis I've not had done in many years, if ever) as well as a hearing test, and any other in-office tests that are necessary throughout the year. It's all covered. The blood panel alone costs about $1,000 if done through insurance, and I paid nothing. The hearing test, another couple of hundred. So far, it seems a good value.
And of course office visits are now free of charge for a year -- as many times as I need or want to come in. With regular docs' office visit fees now running about $100 a pop (or more), it's easy to see how this won't actually cost me any more than it did before, and will encourage me to seek better health care, since I no longer have to worry about the office-visit cost, the time spent in the waiting room (fewer patients means almost NO wait time, plus same-day appointments whenever I need them) or my doctor not having time to listen to me and rushing in and out of the exam room in pursuit of the next 10 patients lined up behind me.
The $1800 fee also allows me to occasionally send in my children and husband in if needed and he will charge only a minimal office visit charge (about $40), further stretching that $1800. I have his cell phone, his email, and if I contact him he will get back to me within the same day. He can renew prescriptions or recommend home treatments on the phone if he wishes, because he doesn't have answer to anyone's insurance company. How many of us can say that about our doctors anymore? When is the last time your doctor emailed or called you at home?
This is a leap of faith to be sure, but with an $8,000 deductible for Big Ag's current Aetna health care plan, I figure we don't have much to lose. The other option is the one I've been practicing for the last three years, which is not going to the doctor unless absolutely necessary. But preventative care can save you a lot of heartache and physical trouble, and for this year, anyway, I will get plenty of it.
Besides, I'm getting tired of super-gluing those cuts that actually need stitches, begging leftover antibiotics from friends and relatives, and attempting to diagnose aches and pains through internet research. Our grandparents paid for most of their medical care through family doctors, so I see this as a natural turning back to a simpler time.
I know my body better than anyone, but sometimes it takes more than that to make you well.
So on New Year's Eve, I started feeling puny about 10 pm or so., while driving home from a party we'd gone to at a coworker's house. Thinking it was something I ate, I went to bed and suffered from an upset stomach all night, which left me tossing and turning until morning, at which point I felt even worse than before.
So needless to say, New Year's Day was not fun for me. And realizing that, I took to my bed -- first from 11 am until about 1 pm that day, and then again at 7 :30 pm until 8:30 am the following day. For those of you keeping track, that means I slept approximately 15 hours within a 24 hour period. And, not surprisingly, I awoke yesterday feeling like the walking wounded -- still not 100 percent, but leagues better than I had been the day before. I was even able to go into work, and found my energy had returned to about 100 percent of normal by noon.
In our modern society, where we are always going, going, going, we lament illnesses not so much as alarming physical symptoms that mean the wonderful machine known as our body is fighting off some kind of microscopic invader, but rather as inconveniences, impediments from going to work, from accomplishing, and from doing ever more.
And because of that, we miss out on nature's most powerful restorative, that of sleep. Sleep, where the body quiets and our immune system can fight, unhindered by stress. Sleep, where damaged cells are rejuvenated, and where the body lies still enough to heal.
We don't like sleep much in our society, in fact, get a group of hard workers together and it often turns into a brag-fest about how little sleep each one thinks they need each night. But, ultimately, I think lack of sleep results in nothing but illness, both short and long-term. And especially when we're ill, I think the worst thing we can do is take some kind of pill to enable ourselves to keep going when our body is telling us, in clear and simple language, that we just need to STOP.
So my advice to my homesteading friends who are going to suffer from colds or flu this year is this: Get your farm chores done (or better yet, have someone do them for you), go inside the house, tuck yourself into bed and sleep. Just sleep. Let your body manage your healing the way it best knows how to do.
Because somewhere deep down inside you, as you snuggle under the covers and fall into the exhausted sleep we only get when we're truly ill, your body will fight the good fight and you will awake, weak but healing, slightly drained but on the path to restoration.
Sleep is the best medicine, and is truly the first homeopathic remedy, used for as long as mankind has been mankind.
