Three

Last time I was in a yarn shop I couldn’t resist buying a beautiful ball of Crystal Palace Taos wool in a brown/turquoise (cacao menta) color combination for myself. I browsed Raverly on several occasions trying to find the right project for my single ball of yarn and finally settled on making myself the Foliage Hat, a free pattern from Knitty.com. The hat was simple to make and I like the leaf pattern even if this variegated yarn doesn’t do it justice.

I put the hat on once finished and I knew immediately that I would never wear it. It fits too snugly and looks like a swim cap on me. I left it lying about the house provocatively hoping Snowden would decide that she wanted to wear it. My subtle approach to giving her something I made worked this time! Wrap a gift up in paper (see birthday apron) and she doesn’t like it, won’t wear it, wrinkles her nose at the sight of it. Giver her a regect piece of knitting by leaving it on the floor for her to discover and all of the sudden “mama knit you hat!” (every time she say’s “you” right now, it mean’s “me”, a grammatical quirk I just love). I’m so happy she likes it and it looks amazing on her.

A friend of ours offered Snowden part of a honey and almond butter sandwich at the park today and Snowden happily accepted a good sized portion. Anything this friend offers my daughter I know will be high quality, more than likely local, purchased with health in mind and made with love.

Since it’s the beginning of the month and, as a family, we just did our big grocery trip for bulk flours, cereals and other mostly pure cooking ingredients, the cost of sweeteners was on my mind. “Hey, do you have a good source for maple syrup?” I ask. Maple syrup has been on my grocery list for a many weeks now but I cannot bring myself to pay the steep price. Still, maple syrup for a devotee of Deborah Madison and Cynthia Lair cookbooks, can easily be classified as an essential. We have been using small amounts of maple syrup and honey to replace refined sugars in most baked goods and our occasional batch of granola.

“Trader Joe’s” is my friends response to the maple syrup query. “Oh yeah! I forgot about Trader Joes, and I like their honey -it’s a good price as well.” But then the conversation veers sharply to food safety as my friend informs me of a PI investigation into imported, tainted honey flooding the market recently . .  but is not on Custom’s priority list of concerns (according to an unidentified Customs Supervisor). Bottom line: once again, buy local! Know your vendor! Avoid packaged foods! (the honey in my daughter’s sandwich bite was purchased from the Ballard Outdoor Market) I’m going to ask the well informed bulk foods department at my local grocery store if the bulk honey marked “Northwest Blackberry Honey” can be traced back to it’s local origin. If not, it’s back to the farmers marked where good choices abound from small producers you can talk to directly.

Apparently the purity of maple syrup can also be questionable even though the product is most likely to be produced in the US or Canada under strict guidelines. In a few cases, water or sugar has been detected in what was labeled “Pure Vermont Maple Syrup” according to a spokesperson in a food and agriculture agency in Vermont in this USA Today article I found. At least, after my quick online research I’ve found numerous US family vendors selling maple syrup online and out of their quaint red-roofed syrup houses. It may remain a luxury item on my grocery list, but I feel better informed and less incredulous about the price.

The USA Today article also mentions olive oil which reminds me of the New Yorker’s expose of the shady import practice of the oil.  Transshipping, relabeling, mis-representing origin, this sounds strikingly like the honey scams. Sean, an avid consumer of olive oil, the darker and more rustic the grade the better, took this article to heart way back in 2007. Since, we’ve typically purchased Spanish olive oil or California olive oil. We prefer a heavier, more herbaceous oil than the typical EVOO recommended for cooking but there seems to be no sure way of knowing the percentage of purity in the product. Trader Joe’s sells an Australian brand which we have purchased thinking naively “surely Australian products will be as pure as domestic products; it’s like California there, warm climate, grape vines and olive trees!” After reading in the PI how the Australian importer gets caught for relabeling the honey . . . maybe not.

What sticks out to me as just bizarre in this whole issue is the reality of those container ships circling the globe, powering across the oceans to get a forged label, a new flag, a tariff-free stamp on a piece of paper, before dumping barrels of what we call food and ingredients into our ports, into our grocery stores. This is the stuff of a fictional drama and yet, it’s real, expensive, and dangerous.

One of the highlights of this weekend was skate skiing on a dry, warm day at the pass. Warm skiing is in the 30’s: you don’t have to wear a jacket, you use lightweight gloves, you can ski farther it seems because you warm up sooner, you can take a break and play with your 2 year old on the trail.

Last year Snowden was very happy to ride in the sled, she usually fell asleep after the first 20 minutes or so. This year, she’s still excited to get in her cozy ride but she talks and chirps and exclaims behind Sean and eventually wants to get out and move around. The first time we went up this year, she got out at the end of our fairly short ski and watched Sean cruise down a small bunny hill near the parking lot. She walked onto the slope, stood in the fall line in her blue baby boots and yelled “weeeee” and waited to swoop down the hill with the same ease as her Dad, no skis on.

This weekend, half way through our outing we got out and took turns skating back and forth on the flat trail with her in our arms. Typical of her age, she wants to ski by herself. We’re going to be trolling the local used sporting goods stores for some baby strap-on skis this week. I can’t wait to see her reaction to the experience. At least she’s going in with a positive attitude and can always retreat to her sled if the challenge of gliding (more likely trudging) along with sticks underfoot proves to be too much.