Rebuild from Depression Blog

It was just five years ago that a large group of women and I made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. We had some help from our babies. I was one of 1,135 women breastfeeding simultaneously during World Breastfeeding Week in 2002.

It was a huge stretch for me to attend the event and that fact is what probably makes the memory so special. I was still sleep deprived and recovering from Frederick's newborn feeding problems. Some details of the feeding story are chronicled in the book.

I had a report due for work in about a week and decided "The client will not notice if the report is a couple of days late."

I was right about the client and made what I consider to be a great self-centered decision to attend the event planned by the Alameda Public Health Department. It was a four hour drive to Berkeley. My mom and I packed up Frederick and hit the road.

The drive itself is worthy of a story in itself with missed turns, emergency bathroom stops, and my first breastfeeding-in-public experience at what I call a "Cowboy Restaurant."

Food allergies can at least aggravate depression. I some people they can be the primary cause. Increasingly, people are finding out that they are sensitive to gluten, a component of wheat and some other related grains. In fact, I find that my body gets a bit puffy from wheat. I do not have serious gluten allergy symptoms, but the puffiness is a reminder that the gluten is probably not doing me any favors.

So how do you know if you are allergic? It's actually pretty simple. Cut the food out for a month and then take a day to binge on the food. If the month was going well, the binge day will tell you if the reason was the food you cut out. Here's an excerpt from my book about my experience with cutting out corn. I had never heard of a "corn allergy" before and thought my chiropractor was nuts for suggesting it.

This approach would work if you suspect a food or two. Do it one food at a time.

~~~Excerpt from Chapter 5, "Corn allergies"

Three-week-old chicks have very little meat and their hearts are about the size of a dime. I learned that today when I dressed out poultry for the first time ever to teach my son an important life lesson about being an "ethical" omnivore.

You may have read my rule here on the blog before, back when my son was playing with a frog. I want to discourage "over-playing" with animals. Boys with lots of energy are prone to that sort of thing. But to say "we don't kill animals" would be a bit disingenuous since we eat them fairly regularly. Thus, the household rule "if you kill it, you eat it."

I always saw it as a bluff.

Dinner tonight took a little longer to prepare than usual and it was dinner for one. It's still waiting to be consumed.

I really don't know if it's good news or bad news. Well, the global loss of bee hives is obviously bad news. But a bee hive vacating your wall voluntarily is usually good news.

We had an intricate plan of "moving" the hive from one of the walls in the Little House to some more appropriate residence. Sometime this winter was to be the date. The plan included a stronger hive, smoke, and lots of local honey and bee larvae. Brit even suggested in the comments of the "Bee Balooza" post that we watch a Winney the Pooh movie to kick-off the bee move. The whole crazy event even inspired the quote of the year to date (to remain anonymous):

"I'd rather get my foreskin caught in a zipper than mess with those bees."

Part of me was looking forward to the madness. It's all part of my therapy. :)

The plan is postponed indefinitely.

It appears that the bees are gone. Within the next week, we will be removing the wall to see what we've got going on. For all of the effort, I am hoping for some "Little House Honey" that I can consume in the Eat Local Challenge next month. I'm foraging all of my food myself, so honey from the wall would fit the bill.

A summer staple, mom describes in the video what she adds and why, down to why she cuts basil into ribbons. Enjoy the detail of the video or go straight to the recipe below.

I'm learning that travel is a very bad idea. I went to the La Leche League International conference in late July and am still recovering from it. I was worn out going into the trip which is never a good sign, I caught a bug on the plane (which is what happens when you are worn out), and to add insult to injury, there was a norovirus incident at the conference. I got that too. Apparently norovirus can be fairly serious but the main implication for me was that I had some very bad work days and reduced calorie consumption. :)

I grew up in Delano, California, home of the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez but also of one of the largest original Philippine immigrant populations in the country. In the 1920s, men traveled from the Philippines to work in agriculture and many settled in the Delano area. They could not bring women in those early days so many of these men waited decades to marry, once the rules changed. I went to high school with the daughter of one of these men -- her father was eighty years old when I was in high school. He just recently passed away at over the century mark.

One of the perks of growing up in Delano is that I got to sample real food regularly. The fresh-Mex and Asian restaurants across the country are no substitute for the real thing. One of my favorite restaurant memories in Delano was of a little Philippine restaurant that operated for few years in the old A & W Rootbeer building. They made a great balamiki chicken -- a kind of sweet chicken shishkabob. When the place closed down my mom was determined to recreate the dish at home. This is her recipe for all of the flavors of the Bamboo Hut's balamiki chicken without cutting the chicken into strips. She uses the whole breast.

I am what Sandor Katz in Wild Fermentation calls a post-vegetarian. I was a vegetarian or near vegetarian for many years primarily for health reasons. I am an omnivore now for the same reasons. Apparently, my favorite vegetarian chef, Mollie Katzen, eats meat on occasion.

I eat meat now for the nutrient content, not just because it is an easy meal or because I cannot pass up a hamburger (though I do find it hard to pass up a hamburger). My depression was aggravated by nutrients that were lean in those old vegetarian days - vitamin B-12, vitamin B-6, zinc, and Omega-3 fatty acids. Iron is another deficiency that can plague anyone, but one which vegetarians are more likely to struggle.

But with a focus on meat nutrients it is easy to forget the benefits of the plant world.

Our now infamous household rule "If you kill it, you eat it," was enforced by me last week. In just a quick update with pictures, I thought that everyone would be interested to know that the chick has been consumed by the five year old who helped it meet its demise.

It's Just Dinner
To entice Frederick to eat the chick and to reduce the trauma of the day, I gave a speech about how "At the end of the day, it's chicken and maybe a little bit more tender than you are used to. Just eat it. It's dinner."

Two boys in the mountains.

In depression studies of mice, researchers literally throw them into a water tank and observe them swimming. Healthy mice meet the challenge and swim. Depressed mice may swim at first but they will soon wear out and the only movements they will make in that tank of water are the minimal movements necessary to keep their heads above water.

A 2004 study of the magnesium-depression link used the swim test to test the effect of magnesium depletion on depression and anxiety. They fed one group of mice a magnesium-depleted diet for a few weeks and fed control mice a regular diet. At the end of the study period, the poor magnesium deficient mice were prone to anxiety and to depression.

Oregano plants do very well in our landscape. They are drought resistant once they are established, they reseed fairly well, they are fragrant, and they put on nice flowers. The fragrances, flowers, and flavors vary with the plant variety.

We recently harvested a lot of oregano from our yard to dry for use in cooking and in dry flower arrangements. We were so inspired by their beauty that my mom made a video about oregano.

Oregano will add great flavor to your dishes (most notably Italian sauces) and, as a member of the mint family, this herb is also an antioxidant. As it cooks with meat, it will help reduce the carcinogens in that dish. You can't ask for more than flavor and a health benefit.

Every day it seems that there is new evidence that Omega 3 fatty acids can alleviate depression, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and improve overall health. The Omega 3 supplement industry has soared.

Clinical trials on depression use high doses of Omega 3 fatty acids and find that people struggling with depression get some relief. Omega 3s are important in brain function generally and the western diet has been rather deficient in the fat for the last century.

What your best strategy is to improve your Omega 3 fatty acid status is to take an Omega 3 supplement and to add foods to your diet high in Omega 3 and low in Omega 6. (I will be writing more about these issues soon and depending on when you read this post, you might find them linked at the bottom of the post as track backs.)

Breaking news this week is that Aurora's Platteville facility was put on a health recovery plan. To remain an organic dairy, the USDA is requiring a bit of health remediation. In the meantime, Aurora agreed to operate its facility in Woodward as a conventional dairy.

Unlike the Vander Eyk Dairy, then, it did not actually lose its certification. But the organic dairy facility, in fact, no longer exists. The Bessys are still milking but the dairy managers have probably placed a large order for regular feed corn to replace their certified organic feed.