Mendolonium

With two and half weeks of microbiology under my belt I can speak in some detail about the features of prokaryotic cells as compared to eukaryotic cells and what factors contribute to the pathogenicity of bacteria.  But you probably don’t read this blog to hear about them.  (Although does anyone want to hear about endospores?  They really are fascinating.)

I am having an unexpected amount of fun with school.  It feels so refreshing to turn my mind to something completely new and unrelated to either my current work or my family.  I appreciate the opportunity to go to school so much more than I did as an undergraduate or in graduate school.  I am truly fortunate to have a very affordable, top-rated community college within two miles of my house.

Despite my enjoyment of class I had been feeling a lot of doubts over my age and the idea of how many pre-requisites and how many years of school I might have ahead of me.  I am clearly one of the oldest people in the class and it is not up for argument that I would have had more time for school before children.  Jeff said something yesterday though that I think just might carry me through. He told me that it was my turn.  He pointed out that my job had enabled us to buy a house and have children while he was in graduate school and early in his career.  Now that Jeff has a stable job that he enjoys, it is my turn to pursue my dreams.  In truth, I wasn’t convinced of what my professional dreams were when I was 22.  My dreams in my twenties all centered around having children.  Now that those dreams have been realized (and, of course, I will get to enjoy those children for many years to come) I can take on school with a focus that I could not have mustered five or ten years ago.

As over the moon as I am for my children, I am ready for something beyond them.  For many people that is their work, but I do not and never will feel that way about my current career.  This week I realized that for the low, low price of $200 for the class, $150 for books, and $64 for a semester parking permit I am getting 16 weeks, 8 hours a week of work-free, child-free time.  It’s been over six years since I have had that kind of time to myself and it is a nice respite.  It is probably slightly insane to consider going back to school a respite, but as I told a friend recently I am happiest when my life is FULL.  The idea of having nothing to do doesn’t seem relaxing, it seems boring and depressing.

I certainly don’t have that problem right now:  parenting three children, working 20 hours a week, commuting another 9 hours a week, running Jam and Bread, school 8 hours a week, and studying my life is full to the brim.  And oddly enough I am actually sleeping a bit more, not because Anna is sleeping any better (if anything, she has reached a new level of challenge) but because I am prioritizing sleeping knowing that I cannot sit in lecture and study effectively if I am falling asleep.  And with that I shall close the computer and put myself to bed.

Way back in January 2011 when I only had two children and still worked in Pasadena (and thus had a minimal commute) I resolved to take a college class that year.  Over the past two years I’ve tried to register for a class at our local community college nearly every semester.  Due to budget cuts, demand for classes far exceeds supply.  As a prospective student enrolling at the school for the first time I am the lowest on the totem pole of registration times.  Every semester, by the time my registration appointment came, every remotely desirable class was full.  I expect much the same to happen this spring semester but when I looked a week before my allotted time to register there were, finally, open seats available in a class that I wanted.  At exactly the appointed hour I nervously went online and registered for the class and got in!  I was, perhaps excessive, excited.  One week from today I start a lecture/lab class in microbiology.

I’ll be going to class two nights a week; unfortunately on the same days that I work which will mean that I will have very little time with my kids on those days.  It’s going to be hard on all of us but there isn’t any way for me to go back to school, work, and be a parent and expect things to stay the same.  Last night Jeff and I stayed up late and hammered out a convoluted schedule involving multiple school drop-0ffs and picks, carpools, early wake-ups, and late nights that results in us at least getting to all eat dinner together as a family every night of the week.  I somehow feel that as long as we can all gather together every day over food we’ll be alright.  I don’t promise that the food will be my most creative offerings; I think I might stretch the limits of how often grilled cheese should be fed to a child.  I did spend nearly every day of my vacation the past week filling our freezer with soups, pastas, breads, and muffins in preparation for the coming time crunch.  Our freezer hasn’t been this full since the week before Annie was born.

In truth, I feel more nervous about going to back to school than I did having a third child.  It’s been eight and a half years since I’ve been in school.  Looking back at college, difficult as it was, it now seems that without a job or three children and a house to take care of I must have had incredible freedom to manage my time.  I wonder how I am going to find the time to study and do homework?  I don’t want to be cocky, I expect this class to be a challenge.  I’m excited though; this could be the start of something great.  At the very least, I’ll know some microbiology.

If this blog remains silent from January 8 though May 5 you’ll know why.

What do you read about when you get to choose?

A lifetime ago I used to read about astronomy and space exploration.  Not too long after I was married,  I began to dream of having children and I started to read about parenting.  Then I found these newfangled “web logs” and was riveted by the tales of pregnancy, childbirth, and babyhood that I found there.  And somewhere along the way my fascination with all things baby morphed into an actual academic interest in pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.  Now I have whole google news feeds devoted to the topics of childbirth and breastfeeding.  Our dinnertime conversation regularly includes my relating the results of a recent study such as this paper showing an inverse relationship between breastfeeding duration and the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.  Jeff is now well used to my indignant monologues regarding non-evidence based practices in childbirth or discrimination against breastfeeding mothers.

I thought that perhaps my passion for understanding and advocating for healthy pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and infant development might abate as I moved on from the baby producing stage of my own life.  In fact, one of the reasons I have been sad about this phase of my life coming to a close is that I no longer have an obvious reason to care about pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and infants.  Instead, I have found that I care even more.  I have seen how the impact of these events on my own life and the life of my children.  I have seen friends, fellow mothers, who are deeply, and long-lastingly affected by their own experiences in pregnancy, birth, and early parenting.  Now having a daughter I look at her and think how much I want her future experience of being a woman to be a positive one, as mine has been.  I have realized that my interests are not a passing phase but a fundamental shift in my life’s direction.  To that end, I recently began volunteering on the steering committee for the  Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles (Breastfeed LA); an organization devoted to “improving the health and well being of infants and families through education, outreach, and advocacy to promote and support breastfeeding”.  While at a Breastfeed LA event I chatted with the director of the organization, an accomplished nurse and lactation consultant, herself a mother, whose children are now grown.  I realized speaking to her how much I admired her life.  Her children might have been grown but she had not left the world of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and infants behind.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time might have already noticed a shift in topics.  I will still talk about cooking, and food security, but despite how much I care about building a more sustainable future such topics were usually not the first ones I choose to read about (although they are high on my reading lists).  And, of course, I enjoy talking about my family – they are my heart and soul – but they do not quench my academic thirst for knowledge, debate, and avocacy.  So expect more discussion of breasts and babies.  I am looking forward to seeing where this passion takes me.

Doe, a deer, a female deer.

Re, a drop of golden sun.

Mi, a name, I call myself.

Fa, a long, long way to run.

So, a needle pulling thread.

La, a note to follow so.

Ti, a drink with jam and bread…

For a long time I have wanted to take my passion for food preservation and baking and do something more with it; more than inundating my little family with desserts.  As delicious as homemade preserves are there is only so much pickle relish and raspberry jam a family of five can eat.  Last spring we were singing one of our endless rounds of “Do Re Mi” and the line about “jam and bread” kept running through my head.  And so Jam and Bread was born.

In uncharacteristic fashion, I didn’t start Jam and Bread with every detail well thought out, I didn’t have a business plan.  I simply had a passion and a simple maxim that the jam and bread that I sold needed to be profitable and pay me at least minimum wage for my time.  In my very limited “free” time over the past few months I have managed to do just that.  I’ve sold a couple of hundred jars of preserves, dozens of loaves of bread, and even started to get orders for made-to-order special occasion baked goods.    Now I am ready to expand.  I have visions of a “bread CSA” wherein customers would sign up to pay a fixed amount for a weekly delivery of seasonally based breads.  I have had two retail outlets express interest in carrying my jams and there is the possibility of selling at a weekly farmers market as well.  But such expansion depends on the passage of a new California law,AB1616, The California Homemade Food Act.  You see, right now, I am selling my jam and bread on the black market.  In California all food for sale must, by law, be produced in a commercial kitchen.  Even school and church bake sales are illegal!  AB1616 aims to change that; permitting limited sales of home produced canned and baked goods.  AB1616 should land on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk late this month.  Below is the letter that I sent Governor Brown today to urge him to sign AB1616.

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Governor Brown,

I am writing to urge you to sign AB1616, The California Homemade Food Act.  I currently own and operate a small home-based business, “Jam and Bread”, selling organic preserves and baked goods.  Because California currently lacks a “cottage food law” such as AB1616 I am forced to operate the business outside of a legal framework.

In order to operate as a licensed business, paying taxes and hiring employees, I would need to produce all of my food products in a commercial kitchen; an option that is simply cost-probative for a very small, part-time business.  Not only does the lack of a cottage food law such as AB1616 force me to operate on the black market, but its absence has significantly hindered the expansion of my business.  Over the past six months a number of my customers who own local retail outlets, have asked if they might be able to sell Jam and Bread’s preserves at their stores.  In addition, a local farmers market has offered a space for Jam and Bread to sell my preserves and baked goods.  While I would love to accommodate their requests, such sales would currently be illegal, and thus I cannot expand my business – even with willing customers.

The passage of AB1616 benefits not only the small entrepreneurs of California, but also California farmers – from whom we source raw ingredients, our neighbors – who gain access to local, healthy affordable food, and indeed all California citizens – through the generation of jobs and tax revenues.  AB1616 is patterned after “cottage food laws” enacted in other states.  AB1616 would only permit the sale of low-risk foods (such as jams and baked goods).  Similar laws enacted in more than 30 states have not resulted in a single case of food-borne illness.

In today’s climate of economic insecurity small food based businesses can help to keep a family afloat and keep a community food secure.  On behalf of the 400 members of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers and the thousands of home bakers across California, I strongly urge you to sign AB1616, The California Homemade Food Act.  And if you’re ever in Pasadena I would be happy to present you with a legally produced loaf of organic bread and jar of jam.

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And if any of you lovely blog readers would like to support Jam and Bread please consider sending Governor Brown a letter yourself.  I’ll owe you a cupcake!