Mirror, mirror

It may surprise some of you that mine has not joined the chorus of voices condemning BP.  The oil company has all the makings of a great villain – large corporation, terrible safety track record, environmental disaster.  The urge to paint an evil black moustache on the whole damned company is almost irresistible.

Yet, I have resisted.  Sure, I think BP fucked up.  And lord knows the oil spill is horrific.  I get why people are pissed at BP.

I just don’t think BP is the only culprit here.

While we’re at it, I know it’s fun to attack Obama from the left and the right, but that is futile at best and erroneous at worst.  Hell, I’m not even entirely sure we should be shaking our fists at George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and the “Drill, baby, drill” chorus.

Because we don’t get to blame other people until we examine our own deeds.

We have created an insatiable demand for oil.  We drive when we could walk.  We eschew public transportation because our cars are under our control and we really don’t want to have to wait for the bus.

We demand ripe blueberries in December.  Here’s a news flash: I live in New Jersey.  I don’t get to eat fresh blueberries in December.  That’s just the way it goes.  Any berries I might buy in the grocery store were flown in from another continent using a tank full of petroleum.

We think nothing of importing wine and food and goods and jet around.  Most of us aren’t complete numbskulls and don’t leave our SUVs idling for 45 minutes while picking up our kindergarteners, but I know at least one person who does.  I’m thinking of sending her a bill for her share in the oil spill.

We are to blame here.  Until I can say I live a life free of oil – and even Sara can’t do that – I don’t get to point fingers here.  You can if you want to, but I am treating this as a call to further reduce my dependence on oil.  The less oil I demand, the less need there is for drilling.  It’s that simple.

Now, since it is the summer, I’m going to go eat a fresh blueberry muffin.

Resistance is futile

My children’s friends come over and the first thing they ask me is, “Can I have a muffin?”  I’m thrilled they like my muffins, because my damned kids won’t eat them.  Zachary will only deign to eat them on the day they are baked, which leads me to wonder if just possibly I have spoiled him

On Sunday night, I mixed all the dry ingredients and all the wet ingredients so that Monday morning I could quickly throw it all together and have fresh muffins for Zach’s lunchbox.

I just can’t figure out how the kids got so spoiled.

On the drive home, I asked him if he had eaten his lunch.  “No,” he snapped.

“Why not?”

“It’s the muffins.”

“Was there something wrong with the muffin?” I asked.

“I wish you weren’t a cook!” he burst out.  “I wish you didn’t know how to cook!  Then I could have machine-made food!”

I’d offer up sage philosophical commentary on this little tirade, except I need to go measure out the flour for tomorrow’s bread.

Yes he is the muffin man

Having made yet another batch of muffins, only to have them rejected because there are drops of apricot preserves instead of raspberry, I was about ready to throw in the towel.  Not into the muffins, of course, although towels are about the only thing I have not yet tried to bake into muffins.

Zachary, you may recall, is a picky eater.  I use the term “picky” rather loosely, as it implies that he sometimes does pick something.  Most of the time, frankly, he seems to survive on air and carbohydrates.  Hence the muffins.  A clever mother can sneak a surprising amount of stuff into a muffin, disguised as yet another round of carbs.

This kid would give Dr. Atkins heart palpitations, assuming the good doctor’s steady diet of red meat and eggs hasn’t already done his ticker in.

The problem is that there’s something wrong with every muffin recipe I can find.  When muffins are the main source of one’s child’s caloric intake, one tries to make them as healthful as possible.  I want a recipe with no sugar, lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and low saturated fats.

Zachary can detect any grated fruits and veggies, which was his reason for rejecting last week’s muffins, so I puree them, but that throws off the consistency.  For years I have been finding recipes and then tinkering with them, never fully satisfied with the results.  And it grows more complicated as I try to steer away from canned goods, due to my reluctance to feed my kids Bisphenol-A.   (If there’s a Bisphenol-B, I’m pretty sure I want to avoid that one, too.)  Not that I can put canned pumpkin in the muffins anyway, given Lilah’s squash-induced hives, which also rule out zucchini.

It becomes a problem worthy of Socrates after awhile.

And then it occurred to me: I have been making a batch of muffins every week for four-and-a-half years.  I am a reasonably intelligent woman.  I’ll bet that, with some trial and error, I could design my own pureed vegetable, honey sweetened, BPA-free, squashless, olive-oil moistened, whole grain muffins.  With no nuts.  Or raisins.  Or apricot preserves.

Hell, I’ll bet with some practice I could figure out how to get protein in there while still adhering to the school’s no-nut policy.  Especially since my kid is one of the children that policy is designed to protect.  But it’ll have to be beans, since I am trying to cut back on our processed soy and meat intake.  And because beef would be kind of weird in carrot-bran muffins…

I will be posting from time to time, letting you know our progress.  It may be deadly dull, and for that I apologize, but it may also yield some lovely recipes.  Feel free to contribute with ideas and suggestions.

We’re going to be going through a lot of honey around here.  In glass containers, of course.

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Recipe one:

1 cup white flour

¼ cup whole wheat flour

1 cup oatmeal, run through food processor

tablespoon baking powder

teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

2 carrots, pureed

1 peach pureed, with skin

½ cup honey

½ cup olive oil

1 cup milk

2 egg

At the last minute, Zachary asked me to put dollops of raspberry jam in, whereupon I extracted a promise from him that he would actually EAT the muffins if I put jam in.  Usually, such fancy-pants tinkering renders them unacceptable.

The muffins were pretty good but too moist, which he doesn’t mind too much but dissatisfies me. I need to realign the wet/dry balance.  Next time, I think less milk, as the pureed peach is very moist.  And perhaps a teaspoon of baking soda so they aren’t so dense.

Damned if he didn’t say he couldn’t eat them because of the fucking jam.  Next time, no godforsaken jam.