Bodies Are Cool

I have learned a lot about human milk in the last 6 months. For example: there is a bacteria in human milk that is not found anywhere else in the world. Milk composition changes as the baby ages; what the body makes for a 2 month old is not what the body makes for a 4 month old. If you think that's specialized, well, get this: Foremilk (the milk that comes out first in one instance of nursing) is different than hindmilk. Amazing, eh?
   All of that was new, but new only to me. Last week I found something new to all. It looks like milk may be sex specific. This report in Scientific American online summarizes a study showing that milk composition is different for boys than girls!

Moosic Tooter

So, running my own business is one of the things that my widow-life has handed me. It is a lot of work and an accomplishment.
   Here is the latest stats. I have 13 students. 10 are "mine", 3 are "contracted". 3 are harp, 6 are piano, 4 are violin. 8 are sibling pairs. 3 are adults. 2 are online students, 11 are in-studio. 6 are every other week, 7 are weekly. 4 are hour lessons, 9 are half-hour. 8 I have taught for over a year.
   Broadly speaking, I have the most fun with the sibling pairs, harp students, and adults. One of my sibling pairs has begun doing duets (one piano, four hands). I love that.
   It is a job that won't sit still. I am always switching something, or something is always being switched on me. I have decided not to shut down my online teaching. Instead I have raised my online rates. (I couldn't do this with my contracted students until recently.) I am considering dropping violin: I'd continue with current students but not take any new. I am fitting my students into 2 days (T/W) instead of 3 (T/W/Th). I am not seeking new students nor am I turning them away. Speaking of turning, I might be turning a profit soon. Fingers crossed!

Our Sweet Doggy

We started a six-day, weekly training course on Monday. It went well! We all three of us did a great job. There were stressful moments, but nothing so stressful as living forever with a half-trained dog. The trainer gravitated toward Euclid and used him to model almost all of the commands. This despite that he was cowed by pronouncing Euclid's name. It's not just him. Most humans are made cows by Euclid's name. I am astonished at how everyone thinks it so odd a name!
   I am astonished too by how many people exclaim, repeatedly, how cute he is. I mean, I think he's sure cute. But he's mine.
   My students adore him. Two of my students ask their mom every week "when can we get a dog like him?" And she says "BOYS. We have two dogs already." Our dog is better. He's their favorite dog. "He's so soft", the younger one says. Euclid does have a coat lovely in softness.

His food is now all raw. He likes vegetables. Only some vegetables — cruciferous. And only certain — the crunchiest — parts of them. No leafy bits! He won't eat them. Brussels sprouts bottoms, broccoli stems cauliflower leaves, the thickest bits of the cabbage leaves. One (or two) person's(') compost is one dog's veggie. Often he will take one of the vegetable bits out of the bowl and play with it: he will nudge it with his snout or bat at it with his paw until it moves in a way that seems almost as if it had a life of its own, then he will pounce on it and repeat. Eventually he defeats it, takes it to a rug, and gnaws on it.
   He likes meat more than vegetables. He doesn't play with his meat.

Made from scratch?

I am making kasha out of sprouted buckwheat! I have never before prepared buckwheat in my life. Two days ago I set buckwheat to sprout. I had never sprouted anything besides lentils (and really, lentils just sprout themselves). I succeeded. Now that I know how to do it, I'd say "it's easy".
   (Note if you are astonished that I am eating grains: when I was pregnant, my doctor suggested I eat sweet potatoes and some [sprouted] grains. Even though I'm not pregnant any more I continue to eat them twice-ish a week.)

In other cooking ventures, I present my last three meals. (One reader stated high interest in hearing regularly what I eat. One reader counts for a lot around these parts. I am potentially pleasing a large percent of my readership when I post about what I eat.)

Meal 1

• 3 oz salmon (including skin and bones, mmmmm the round "spine" bones are my favorite! I could eat a bowlful.)
• 1/2 sweet potato, fried up in plentiful bacon drippings (the sweet potato itself had, the night before, been cut into large dice and roasted in the oven)
• 1/4 c green cabbage smothered in EVOO

Meal 2

• roast beast (rubbed with salt and pepper and then cooked for 25 min. at 425F then 6 hrs at 225F)
• frizzled leeks (frying oil: coconut oil)
• Brainless House Salad (one head of lettuce, red leaf; two handfuls of sunflower seeds; a handful of raisins, EVOO, salt, and pinot grigio vinegar)

Meal 3

• hash: 3 large, frozen tomatoes put first into the saute pan and left to sauce up; Penzey's Fines Herbes, let to stew in the tomatoes, then ground lamb; 
• nearly-naked slaw: lots and lots of green cabbage smothered in EVOO

It is a fluke (but not a salmon fluke) that in the first meal I knew what the sizing portions were. Normally I pay no heed to such things. Grams and calories? Not sticky information. What I do notice is relative portions, like 'more-of-this or less-of-that next time'. For example, in meal 2 I noticed that we both could have eaten two times the scrumydiddly frizzled leeks!
   The Brainless House salad is the simplest salad, the default that I lately make. No time to think? Must put food on table? That's what the salad looks like.
   I notice I am not consistent in noting when I put salt in things. Of course I put salt in the fried sweet potatoes. It just seems to go without saying. It is also always Himalayan salt, what En calls "the pink stuff".

Am I cooking from scratch? Regard meal 3. When I went to college, I discovered the abomination of "pre-made" "spaghetti sauces" in jars. Such stuff hardly ranked as food, much less food from scratch. I considered a sauce made from scratch to be one where you add seasoning to plain tomato sauce (even if that seasoning was "Italian seasoning", yet pre-mixed seasoning has something in common with pre-made sauce, no?). I really saw a world of difference between these things. Today I wouldn't count sauce+seasoning as sauce from scratch. I might not even count meal 3 as made from scratch. I used whole tomatoes. But I didn't dry, chop, or mix my own spices. Moreover, I didn't grind my own meat.
   Does it count? What is scratch?
   (Note: I am satisfied with the scratch level of my cooking, unestablished though it may be; my inquiry is driven by curiosity, not a concern over failing to align with some shifting baseline of orthodoxy.)

Crystalline

It snowed! I woke up to a winter wonderland. I did some yoga. I walked to the co-op with Bjorn. He looked over the produce for breakfast. I talked to one of the managers (all the staff are managers) about the provenance of some new bacon.
   After breakfast, I walked Bjorn to church and then back. (All in all, 4 miles of walking today. I still want to work up to average 5 miles a day.) I knocked snow off of laden bamboo branches.
   We bathed Euclid.
   We watched this — the most enjoyable TED talk I've seen in a while!
   And then FamDin. At Em and En's house this week. This is my favorite ritual of the week. All of us. Together. Eating. The food is delicious: Is this hand-shucked? We talk, we hug. We go home to bed.