10 posts from October 2008

October 30, 2008

That's what my dogs are. Ever since I fed them their first home-cooked dinner, Wolfie and Lexi have had nothing but food on their minds. With two intense German Shepherds following my every move day and night, I'm starting to feel like my Cro-Magnon ancestors when they heard the howling come closer, and saw pairs of glowing eyes staring at them just beyond the firelight.

I don't know how to interpret this new food fixation. Does it mean they adore my cooking (and it does smell good, if I say so myself), or are they truly hungry? Lexi's veterinary chiropractor/acupuncturist (one of Lexi's favorite people in the whole world; see doctorstephanie.com) did warn me that feeding a home-cooked diet would require a larger volume of food than feeding commercial kibble. But I wasn't prepared for how much larger.

In the good-old kibble days, Lexi would get two cups and Wolfie four cups of kibble every day, for a total of six cups. Bearing in mind Dr. Stephanie's advice, I increased the amount to eight cups a day for both dogs. I made up my first big vat of rice and chicken livers and sardines and kale and apportioned it neatly into seven freezer bags, each containing eight cups.

I laugh a bitter laugh at my naivete. Those bags are leaving the freezer at a much faster rate than one a day. For the moment, feeding TEN cups a day is barely sufficient to keep my toes from being chewed off. I've been told to watch my dogs' weight to judge how much to feed them. That's easier said than done. Day-to-day, my dogs look pretty much the same to me. That is how last winter Lexi somehow put on ten pounds, which we've been struggling ever since to get off her.

As I write, there's another, bigger vat of dog food cooking on the stove. I'm going out of town next week, and my husband is not into canine—or any kind—of cooking (I'll freeze some bags of human food for him as well). I'm also leaving some emergency kibble in the pantry (for the dogs).

But I'm into this cooking-of-dog-food for the long run, I hope, and I have to find a way to do it efficiently. Over the decades, I have mastered the art of producing a decent, nourishing dinner (though not one that would earn Michelin stars) for my husband and me in thirty minutes max (twenty is preferable). With that in mind, how big a deal should I make of my dogs' meals?

Is life too short to cook for dogs? Would the cooking time be better spent playing with Lexi and Wolfie? Keeping up with friends? Cooking for my husband? Doing yoga? Life on earth is a zero-sum game. What matters most?

What do you think?

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October 25, 2008

I've decided to start cooking for my dogs. This was not a major, life-altering decision. However, in my efforts, such as this one, to save the world by living more sustainably, locally, organically and simply, I often end up in a morass of alternatives, possibilities, unintended consequences, and their attendant feelings of dread and apprehension.

O.k., I told myself, cooking for the dogs is a good thing to do, and not a big deal. It is good because everybody, except for dog-food manufacturers and some conservative veterinarians, agrees that home-cooked food is better for dogs than even the best industrially produced food. It is good because the kibble I presently feed my dogs (it has the word “gold” in the name, and the price of gold on the label) costs more, pound per pound, than what my husband and I eat for dinner most nights. It is good because I can buy the meat and rice at the nearby grocery store—the veggies and eggs will come from our garden and chickens—thus avoiding a 25-minute trip to the pet store to purchase the gold food, which will save time and help to avert global warming.

And it's really not a big deal. I can buy the meat and rice in large quantities. And cooking for dogs is a snap (I've done it before): you just brown the meat in a big pot, bung in the rice and enough water to cook it. Then you add the roughly chopped veggies and anything else, like eggs, sardines, or powdered milk, that you feel inspired to include. When the rice is done you stir the whole mess, ladle it into containers that will hold a day's ration, and freeze.

On the other hand, I may be fooling myself. I'm going to be cooking for two German Shepherds, who together total roughly 180 lbs of dog. In the store, I'll have to hunt around for the cheapest source of protein available—ground beef, cottage cheese, canned fish or whatever. I'll be lucky if I can fit a single week's worth of dog dinners in my huge stock pot. And not only will I have to find a way to store these huge amounts of food in our freezer but, even more difficult, I'll have to remember every day to take out the next day's ration so it has a chance to defrost...and with our house temperature presently hovering around 60F, defrosting takes a while. In the face of all this, measuring out a couple of cups of kibble and pouring them into a dish seems like the soul of simplicity.

Nor is cooking dog food at home free of ethical complications. Since there is no way I can afford to feed my dogs locally-grown, grass-fed beef, I will end up buying meat transported from God-knows-where (thus canceling out my gas savings), from animals fed ecologically harmful grain diets and confined in feedlots and slaughtered in ways that...but I won't go there. The cottage cheese won't be organic either, again because of cost, so I'll be supporting industrial dairy farms where cows are pushed to the limits of their productivity and are spent and slaughtered by age four, and where week-old male calves are shipped off to...I won't go there either. As for the fish, with every canned sardine they swallow my dogs will be participating in the rapid depletion of the oceans.

Now can you see what I mean by dread and apprehension?

But I'm still going to do it, because: 1. it's good for the dogs; 2. they LOVE home-cooked food; and 3. I love it when somebody loves my cooking.

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October 21, 2008

In the house, I'm always stepping over one or the other of my dogs, for they love to position themselves in strategic places from which they can monitor the household activities. I am told that this is typical of German Shepherds, who are apt, on their own initiative, to take responsibility for all kinds of things.

I also spend time pondering the mysteries of their dog-to-dog relationship. Lexi is ten. She is a very girly bitch, too smart for her own good, and with an independent streak. She is also beset by age-related aches and stiffnesses. Wolfie, not quite two years old, big of head and black of fur, outweighs her by some 15 pounds, and loves her with all his heart.

Wolfie has learned most of what he knows from Lexi. He watches her constantly, sniffs where she sniffs, barks when she barks. When we are outside, and she ranges far afield, he positions himself between her and me, looking anxiously from one to the other, worrying that we'll get separated.

Most of the time, she pays him no mind, hardly looks at him, except to occasionally take a bone away from him (she, who hasn't chewed a bone since she was a pup). She will no more let him lie down close to her than she will let him lick her bowl.

Wolfie badgers her a lot, sometimes roughly, to play, but in their games he's the only one I've ever heard yelp. When she's had enough, she nips his leg, and that's the end of it. In every way, Lexi with her fine muzzle and her big eyes lords it over her galoot of a companion. Until recently I would have said that if they were to be separated, Lexi would hardly notice, whereas I would worry about Wolfie's sanity.

Lately, however, I've begun to wonder. I first noticed something odd when I took both dogs to the vet a few weeks ago. Since they were only going to get their bordetella immunizations, I took them into the examination room together. Now Lexi in her long life has had blood taken and thermometers stuck under her tail innumerable times, and as a result she is apprehensive about the vet's. She paces restlessly while we're waiting, and though she never growls, she does her best to elude the hands that are trying to give her a shot or take a blood sample. This time, with Wolfie in the room, it was different. There was no anxious pacing during the wait. There was no trying to get away when the immunization was administered.

But it was during nail-trimming that I realized that something was really going on. If there is one thing that Lexi hates even more than going to the vet's, it's having her nails trimmed. Not that I trim her nails. I file them. This is the unsatisfactory compromise that she and I have settled on since the day I nicked her toe ten years ago.

When it's nail-trimming time, I put her on a down/stay, give her a treat, grasp a paw and start filing. It takes forever. My own fingernails get messed up in the process, and Lexi, even with the aid of treats, does not cooperate. She wiggles, she pulls her paws away, she struggles, she whines. I alternately encourage, implore, command, center myself and breathe, administer more treats, and eventually give up and let her go.

Wolfie on the other hand gets his nails done with a regular dog nail clipper. When I tell him to, he plops down on his side, leans his head on my thigh, and heaves a great big sigh. I give him a treat, and in a couple of minutes the job is done.

I used to put Wolfie in his crate while I worked on Lexi's nails, worried that he would upset her by coming near her, go for the treats, or otherwise disrupt the precarious balance of the procedure. But we've put away the crate because Wolfie no longer needs it, so the last couple of times I decided to trust that he would stay out of the way while I filed Lexi's nails.

And here is the strange thing. Wolfie did not stay away. Instead he plopped himself down right next to Lexi, almost touching her, and put his nose down on his paws. I was steeling myself for major snaps and growls from Lexi when I realized that, instead, she was lying placidly on her back, her paw limp in my hand as I filed away, a look of utter relaxation on her face. Well, I thought, this will all change when I start to file her hind paws (always the more problematic), or when Wolfie gets antsy and starts moving around.

But nothing changed. Lexi let me work on her hind paws and Wolfie kept his nose millimeters from her fur, his body pressed against my leg. He was so relaxed that he could have been asleep, except that his eyes were open and alert. If I hadn't been afraid of interrupting the moment's magic, I would have hugged him, for seeing a job that needed doing, and stepping up to the plate.

Large dogs age quickly, and the day will eventually come when we will have to do Lexi the mercy of euthanasia. I have often wondered how I will plan it so that she will not feel stress or anxiety, for even more than about losing her, I am appalled by the thought that she might be afraid at the end. Now I know that, when that day comes, Wolfie will be there to ease the moment for his old friend, as well as for me.

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October 18, 2008

When I first heard of “voluntary simplicity” several years ago, the movement comprised  well-meaning, well-off people who were feeling burdened by their affluence. Their McMansions overflowed with toys, clothing, and appliances. SUVs, station wagons, motor homes, racing bikes and riding mowers spilled out of three-car garages. Every new object brought with it a responsibility (if only to find a place in which to store it) and between work and family duties, these people were too exhausted to enjoy the fruits of their toil. “We don't need all this stuff!” was the battle cry of the time. Occasionally a small voice could be heard murmuring, “and we're hurting the Earth by the way we live.”

That, less than a decade ago, was voluntary simplicity. Apparently we didn't do a good enough job of it, because here we are now, white- and blue-collar, democrat and republican, urban and rural dwellers, cringingly wading into the chilly waters of the new, involuntary simplicity. Foisted upon us by the economic catastrophe, simplicity, willy-nilly, is our future.

Thoreau must be delighted.

Already, signs of change are everywhere. Highway traffic is decreasing, and so are accident rates. The hardware stores around here are sold-out of outdoor clothes lines. My friends and I car-pool to book group and to art openings, and we're all talking about lowered thermostats for the coming winter. Laying hens are in short supply.

Granted, in Vermont these practices don't seem too exotic. Everyone grows a vegetable garden in summer, and in the fall we all play the north-country game of “the first one to fire up the furnace is a chicken.” But this year promises to be different, and battening down the hatches takes on real meaning even in our land-locked state.

I have noticed, however, that for those of us who are not in immediate danger of eviction or hunger, the challenges of the present situation are not without a certain exhilaration. It's hard not to feel excited by the sense of invulnerability that even a small measure of self-sufficiency affords. People are making extra large woodpiles in their yards. I grew winter squashes for the first time, for the chickens to eat when the real cold hits. A friend is experimenting with fermented foods, pickling cucumbers and cabbage to preserve them without need of electricity.

Involuntary simplicity is not without its delights. Witness my simple Saturday. I got up early and went to a nearby village's fabled fall rummage sale, where I bought, for less than two dollars apiece, a number of large wool sweaters that I plan to wear over my regular indoor winter clothes. This, I hope, will enable me to feel comfortable with the thermostat set at 65F, which is our plan for the next six months.

Then my husband and I went down our front field to the wild apple tree that has been loaded with fruit since summer. The apples are small, hard and sour, and we figured that they would make great chicken food. We didn't have to reach up for a single fruit: the ground under the tree was carpeted with apples. In just a few minutes we filled our tub with about sixty pounds of apples, and lugged them to the house.

I put a handful in a pan, covered them in water, and boiled them for a few minutes. They quickly turned soft, and smelled divine. I drained them and carried them to the chicken coop, where they were received quite favorably. I plan to boil the rest of the windfall, bit by bit, and store it in small bags in the freezer, then pop them in the microwave and serve them warm to the chickens on frigid January mornings. I wonder if the dogs too would like them?

At dusk, I picked the last of the broccoli—there was a hard freeze forecast for that night. I steamed it, then sauteed it for supper along with scrambled eggs and some grated cheddar. Soon I will pull up the broccoli plants and take them to the chickens, who will eat every leaf. The kale and chard will continue producing for a while. Then it will be trips to the basement freezer every night before supper.

I find a childish pleasure in all this. It's not unlike going camping and making do with what you have at hand. It's not unlike playing under the table as a kid, saying, “pretend this is our house, and this potato is a loaf of bread....” There are infinite sources of entertainment within the confines of our own yards, if we look closely. The trick to sanity and happiness in this new world is learning to want what we have. If we can manage that, we'll be richer than ever before.

October 12, 2008

Through no fault of my own (well, almost), I have ended up with several versions of my name, to the point that people who have known me for years get confused when they get an e-mail from me, look at my website, or read my blog. To clear some of this confusion I will detail here, as briefly as possible, the tortured history of my many names. After that, feel free to choose whichever one you like. I answer to all of them.

1. I am born and christened Maria Eulalia Teresita Magina Francina Benejam Boque. My main name, Eulalia, places me under the protection of Saint Eulalia, the patron saint of Barcelona, my birthplace. Teresita designates Saint Theresa of Lisieux, who starved herself to death for Jesus. Magina and Francina are the relatively baggage-free names of my maternal grandmother and my mother. Like everybody else in Spain, I have two last names: Benejam, my father's name, and Boque, my mother's maiden name.

2. I come to the U.S. as a high-school freshman, and start shedding names. Boque is the first to go. Maria goes next, since Americans understandably take the easy way out and call me Mary, which I feel isn't my “real” name. Teresita, Francina and Magina also go, and I become just plain Eulalia Benejam. This leads to much pain and angst through my high school and college years, as nobody can say my name and I grow utterly weary of teaching people how to pronounce it (eh-oo-lah-lee-ah) and explaining how I got it.

3. I meet my husband-to-be who, magically, on the first date, learns to pronounce my name perfectly, thus proving that incentive has a lot to do with linguistic performance. I notice that he comes equipped with an attractively problem-free last name: Cobb.





4. I become Eulalia Benejam Cobb and use this name during my academic and freelance writing years. It's still a mouthful, but in situations that require quick action I delete all but Cobb. Eventually my husband persuades me to give up the Spanish pronunciation of Eulalia in favor of the English-speaker-friendly yu-lah-lee-ah. My friends breathe a sigh of relief.





5. For complicated reasons, I take a decade-long detour through the visual arts. I take my paintings and sculptures to stores, shows and art fairs, and realize that Eulalia Benejam Cobb is a business liability. Reasoning that people should be able to say the name of the person whose art they are thinking of buying, I declare that my name shall, henceforth and forever, be simply Lali—no last name.





6. Though my friends and family are confused, Lali works pretty well. Some people, however, spell it “Lolly,” which makes me grit my teeth.





7. I buy a nice laptop computer and return to writing. It dawns on me that no publication that accepted my work before will know who Lali is...so I embrace my writing name again, Eulalia Benejam Cobb.

To my old friends who struggled through two versions of Eulalia only to have it changed to Lali, I apologize for changing my mind again. To my newer friends who know me only as Lali, and to those of you whom I am meeting through this blog, I'm sorry to present you with this complicated name. But you can call me anything you like, and I'll answer every time.

October 8, 2008 

There is a Zen master living in our chicken house, and her name is Buffy. She is big and butter-colored, and as close to spherical in shape as a chicken ever gets. If Zen masters held competitions I would enter Buffy, for she is a champion sitter—or, in poultry parlance, “setter.” When she feels the call to sit (or set), she makes a beeline for the nearest nest, fluffs out her skirts, and turns to stone.

There don't even have to be any eggs in the nest for Buffy to sit, and if there are, they don't have to be fertile. Before the rooster Charlemagne joined our ten hens, Buffy would regularly “go broody” (a term of art meaning “the urge to incubate”) and sit on her celibate sisters' eggs. The fact that for three years not a single egg hatched did not dissuade her. Buffy is into process, and does not attach to outcomes.

Then Charlemagne arrived, and for a while the temptations of the flesh distracted Buffy from her practice. But one night when I went to collect eggs I found Buffy sitting on a nest like a golden Buddha, broody again.

She was sitting on twelve eggs. I calculated that, with any luck, that should yield six cockerels and six pullets. The pullets would reach puberty in the middle of winter—right when the older hens would be taking a break from laying. The cockerels (this is the part I didn't like to think about) would be slaughtered at ten weeks, and we would have tender, home-grown chicken to eat (this is the part I liked to think about).

Quietly I transferred Buffy and the eggs to a nest in an isolated corner of the coop. She was in such a deep trance she hardly noticed the move. I gave her her own little dishes of food and water and left her alone.

But she, and the chicks growing under her, were constantly on my mind, and I went often to check on her. She was always the same--fluffed out, immobile, her eyes open but wearing a fiercely inward, focused look. I never once saw her get up to eat or drink or take a break.

About halfway through Buffy's retreat, I started smelling something awful coming from her corner. I picked her up and saw that there were six broken eggs in the nest. The stench was unspeakable. I ran to the house and coated my upper lip with Vick's (as I'd seen detectives do on TV when they had to deal with a decomposing corpse), put on plastic gloves, and tried my best to clean up the mess without upsetting Buffy or letting the intact eggs get chilled.

Six eggs, I thought, is not too bad. With any luck three of them will be pullets...But days later there was the smell again, and I repeated the Vick's and gloves operation, thinking that surely this time Buffy would give up and walk away. But she persevered, even though there was just one egg left.

Still, I said to myself, an only-child chick will be adorable, and with any luck it will be a girl...

Day 21, hatching day, came and went. On Day 22 Buffy still sat, focusing on her breath. I picked her up and there on the straw was the broken, chick-less egg. I hustled Buffy off the nest, cleaned up the final mess, and went into the house to nurse my disappointment.

That evening, Buffy was back in the corner where her old nest had been, sitting as if nothing had happened.

It occurred to me that I, who had planned and connived and counted chickens before they hatched, was suffering from disappointment, frustration and self-pity, whereas Buffy was utterly contented and at peace. Why? Because, unlike me, she did not attach to outcomes. Was this chicken is trying to teach me something?

One of these mornings, at my usual meditation time, I'm going to take my mat into the chicken house and sit with Buffy, and be enlightened.

P.S. If you are a visitor, I would love it if you would post a comment!  It will require a bit of clicking and typing to join vox, but it will help make this blog into a conversation, as opposed to just me blathering on....

September 13, 2008

It's late summer, and the garden is in its manic phase again. Everything is happening at once: the tomatoes are (finally!) ripening; and must be made into sauce. The eggplants are getting bigger by the minute, and if I don't pick them at their peak, they will lose their sweetness. Meanwhile, the cool weather crops, which in Vermont endure through the summer, continue to need harvesting, or go to waste.

But the most dramatic onslaught comes from the beans. One day there are only flowers on the bushes. The next, fully adult beans are hanging from the stems. Quick! I must get them while they're tender. I spend hours picking, snapping, blanching, cooling, packing. The next day, strolling through the garden looking for some chard, I part a couple of bean plants out of idle curiosity and lo! pounds more beans have ripened overnight.

All day long, basket in hand, I run from garden to kitchen and down the basement steps to the humming freezer, exclaiming that this is ridiculous, how can these plants produce so much from plain dirt, I haven't time to deal with all this, when will it end? I bemoan my compulsion to not let a single smidgeon go to waste. Those overgrown zucchini should go to the chickens. I could boil up some of that extra chard and kale and mix it with the dogs' food—it's good for them and it would save some of the outrageously expensive kibble I feed them. A saner person would turn her back on the late summer garden and say enough! But I am not that person.

In reality, I am never happier than when I am “putting food by.” Every summer I grow pounds and pounds of produce in my little garden, give it away to my children and to the local food bank. The rest I dry or freeze for my husband and me and for the dogs and chickens (who like nothing more than a handful of steamed veggies on a cold winter day). It gives me an atavistic feeling of security. Who needs stocks and bonds when there are jars of dried tomatoes on the kitchen counter and strings of hot peppers hanging at the kitchen window?

Compared to the preserving habits of our great-grandmothers, my squirrel techniques border on the primitive. I don't dry meats, or can vegetables, or preserve eggs in lard, or make those gorgeous jars of jams and jellies and pickles. I just freeze a bunch of stuff, and dry tomatoes and peppers. But even as I manipulate stove, dryer, and freezer I am echoing the activities of the animals in the woods behind the house: the bear fattening on berries (lucky beast, he carries his food-stores under his skin); the field mice carting off bits of laying mash that the chickens spill; and the squirrels, maniacally storing nuts. Are they anxious, I wonder? Do they dread the coming snows and bitter winds? But I see the perky motions of the squirrels, the way they hold up their fluffy tails, their air of busy self-importance, and I know that for them, too, this is a happy time of year.

September 12, 2008 “The Last Time...”

The last time one of my daughters sat on my lap. The last time my father gave me a violin lesson. The last time I ran five miles. I think about these occasions but cannot remember them, because I didn't know when the child jumped off my lap (for my sins, I may have even asked her to get up) that she would never climb on again. I didn't know when I wiped the rosin off my bow that I would never again hear my father interrupt my playing with “that's very nice. However...”--something that never failed to annoy me when he said it. And I didn't know, as I panted and stretched my sore legs, that I was experiencing my final runner's high.

Now, as the years gently coax me to give up one thing here, another there (no more planting trees single-handedly, no more partying until dawn), I wonder about these milestones too, as well as the ones to come. When will I hear my 90-year-old mother tell me on the phone for the last time that she's just brought 25 flower pots indoors (all by herself!) to save them from the coming frost? When will I fix my husband dinner (something that, after 40 years, has lost some of its luster) for the last time? When will my ten-year-old arthritic dog Lexi go for her last walk? Will I look back and regret that I was annoyed during the walk because it was drizzling, distracted during the cooking because I wanted to read a book instead, impatient with my mother because I wanted to get supper going?

Thinking about these things can, I admit, be depressing. But this kind of reflection also lends my days a bitter-sweet flavor, and allows me to approach activities that seem burdensome in a gentler frame of mind. I'm developing a kind of nostalgia for the present, simultaneously tasting its sweetness and its fleetingness. I try to walk the fine line between enjoyment of the moment and despair at its impermanence. I do the best I can.

September 9, 2008 “Music for the Queen”

When Pau Casals was a child prodigy, he played the cello for Queen Victoria. When he was an old man, and considered by many to be the finest musical interpreter of the century, he played for Golda Meir. Now, he plays for me.

He plays the Bach Cello Suites that he rescued from oblivion and practiced for years before performing publicly. He plays the Bach Gamba Sonatas, where the long sustained notes are among the purest sounds ever heard in the universe.

When Bach was a young man he walked 25 miles to hear the great organist Buxtehude play. But with the touch of a finger—in the car, the kitchen, the shower even—I can hear the best music ever written, music that for centuries only a tiny minority of human beings had access to. I'm not Frederick the Great, but I can listen to Mozart any time I want.

Music is all around us, and we don't hesitate to hum along with it, or ignore it. Music has become universally available only recently, just as brightly-colored man-made objects have a relatively short history. For millenia people lived with only the muted colors produced by natural dyes. Now bright, eye-popping color is everywhere, and many of us have grown almost blind to it. The blindness may be a defensive gesture, as today color often assaults our senses—think of the plastic toys defacing people's backyards, or the expanses of gaudy merchandise in many stores.

We are assaulted by music as well, in elevators, from passing cars, from computers. Handel is supposed to have fainted from sheer emotion when he heard the voice of a famous castrato. What would happen to him if he walked into a typical American house and heard his own Hallelujah Chorus issuing from the kitchen radio, advertising jingles coming out of the TV, and hip hop from the kid's bedroom? He would surely faint again, as would Fra Angelico if he walked into Toys R Us.

Sometimes I feel that I might faint too, if I can't get away from all the music. There has to be silence at certain times in order to really hear at other times. It is ironic that humankind has spent so much energy and effort making music universal, and now people like me spend energy and effort trying to get away from it.

Still, on the whole, I'd rather have it this way: Casals playing Bach, Alicia de Larocha playing Mozart, and Winton Marsalis playing anything, all at my fingertips. Where music is concerned, technology has made me an absolute monarch, and I don't even have to worry about hungry peasants threatening revolt.