One Family's Life in the Austin Area

Becoming a parent gives you a better appreciation for your own parents - especially your mom.

You always thought 24 hours of labor was a long time, but now that you have gone through it yourself (and then some), you really understand. Only, your mom was alone in the delivery room, because husbands weren't allowed to be with you at that time.

You are frustrated, because your child takes short naps, and your mom sighs. "Oh, yes. There was that period when you only took 20 minute naps." And you are suddenly grateful for the extra ten minutes your son stays asleep. Then she tells you that you gave up your morning nap at the age of one, and your afternoon nap at two. And you realize you don't have many little breaks left, and you should enjoy those thirty minute naps while you can. You also might want to rethink that whole homeschooling idea too...

You call her up to talk about teething and rashes and coughs. And you wonder how she survived your fevers, your accidents, your trips to the emergency room. Because your heart stops every time your own child has a bad fall or makes a strange sound. And you know that each bump and bruise won't be the last one, and you never stop being a mother. And you think, "Kudos, Mom."

You share the new words, the new teeth, the first steps, the first chuckles with her, and you wish your mom lived closer. Your son thinks Grandma lives inside the big box on the desk. He touches her pixelated face and hears her sing his favorite song with a slight delay. And you wonder why you moved so far away.

Because having a child makes you long for your family. You want your child to play with his cousins. You want your mom to see the rash in person, not just hear it described over the phone (or view it on a web cam). You want your parents to see his first teeth and his first steps. You want your dad to come over and help install the ceiling fan that is collecting dust in its box, because one of you is always watching the baby. You want your mom to babysit, so you can go out on a date and see a movie, because you can't remember what it's like to be a couple anymore. You want your entire family eating cake at your son's first birthday party.

But your family lives over 1800 miles away. And you don't want to live like this anymore, but it's a bad economy and not a good time to move. So you suck it up.

Then you remember that your own mom lived 760 miles away from her parents when you were a baby, back before cell phones and web cams and online photo albums. Back when you had to talk to an operator to make a long distance call. And your dad wasn't able to telecommute. He was working the night shift, sleeping all day, and your mom had to take care of you all by herself, and introduce you to your father on weekends when you were both awake at the same time. And she used cloth diapers with safety pins, sewed all your clothes, and made all your baby food in a blender.

And all you have to say then is "Kudos, Mom."

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It all began with a recipe in my vegetarian cookbook which called for pine nuts. I'd never had a pine nut before, but I had seen whole articles devoted to the food in Cooking Light Magazine, so I figured it would be worth a try.

I knew they had been available at my local HEB in the bulk foods section, so the next time I was grocery shopping, I looked for them, but pine nuts were not to be found in any of the large plastic canisters. I thought maybe they were out, which was a good sign: pine nuts are so good that they sell out faster than the Cajun party mix. Definitely a positive sign.

Every time I was out for groceries, I'd keep my eyes peeled for the elusive "nut," but the bin was always empty.

Then last week, I was excited to find them in stock, but less excited to see how much they cost. I scooped up about a cup (just to try them out) - a cup that cost me almost $5.00. But I knew they would be worth it. An entire article had been devoted to them after all.

And they were imported - it said so in nice neat type on the bin - from China. I assumed that was why they were so costly. That, and they were fancy-schmancy.

When I brought them home, Ronak asked, "What's this?" And I explained that they were for a special recipe I was excited about. He looked dubious. I put the seeds in the cupboard for later.

And while I was getting a snack of peanuts, I spied the bag of pine nuts and thought I'd sample a few.

They tasted like: pine. It was as if I were snacking on a Christmas tree. I like the scent of pine trees, but I wasn't sure I wanted that aroma in my mouth. I thought I might rethink that recipe. Well, maybe they'd be better cooked.

I forgot all about the pine nuts and went about my weekend, having fun with my family. I cooked up some pineapple fried rice with cashews for Sunday dinner. I was disappointed that it tasted off. I thought, maybe I should have put in more curry powder, maybe the serrano pepper wasn't very hot, maybe there were too many green onions. I apologized to Ronak. "I don't know what's wrong with it," I said.

I had a slice of raisin bread as a snack later that night, and I was appalled at how bitter it tasted. I worried that I had gotten a bad batch of bread and wasn't sure if I should eat any more of it. Maybe the cinnamon content was on the high side and the sugar was on the low side. Maybe it just tasted odd after a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Then this morning, I wanted to ask Ronak if he'd put any sugar in the tea. And the raisin bread seemed to taste worse than the night before. I asked Ronak to try some of the bread. He confirmed that it was a little bitter. "But it always tastes like that," he told me. I wondered what was going on.

I have a mind that won't let such questions rest. I remembered that I had seen something in a House episode where a patient had a bitter taste in their mouth. But which episode? What horrible disease did that character have, what terrible fate befell them?

I had to get to a computer.

Luckily I didn't do my search on House episodes or I might have scared myself into an ambulance (anxiety attack).

I searched for "symptom bitter taste," and I found to my surprise that pine nuts, expensive fancy recipe ingredient pine nuts, were the culprit.

As it says on Wikipedia:

"The eating of pine nuts can cause serious taste disturbances, developing 1-3 days after consumption and lasting for days or weeks. A bitter, metallic taste is described. In general, a minority of pine nuts on the market present this problem. Though very unpleasant, there does not seem to be a real health concern."

So, I have to ask, why don't pine nuts come with warnings?! Because eating has become fairly intolerable for me. Nothing like a bitter aftertaste following every bite of food with no way to clean the palate. (Even water is bitter. And air.)

And the bitterness seems to be getting stronger and stronger. I only ate 3 seeds! How long is this going to last? I'm not sure I could bear weeks (although it might be helpful in losing some of the remaining baby weight).

So, why is this considered a tasty addition to recipes? I don't think any one meal is worth weeks and weeks of terrible tasting foods and beverages.

And again, why no warning?! Although, reading on into the Wikipedia article, I found that the "imported from China" might have been a warning if I weren't a pine nut newbie. An experienced pine nut chef would know that: "This phenomenon was first described in a scientific paper in 2001...Some of the pine nuts involved were imported from China."

China, huh? Suddenly I am thinking about lead paint on toys and melamine in dog food. And my heart is racing again.

Luckily I continue reading and see that: "No contamination with pesticide residues or heavy metals was found."

That's a relief, but doesn't help me eat, drink, or breathe without gagging.

I don't think I'm going to subject us to that "special recipe" now. Maybe pine nuts are okay if they are cooked. Maybe they are okay if they aren't imported from China. But who wants to risk that lasting bitter taste?

Not me. (Ugh. I just inhaled again.)

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We're buying mostly Earth's Best organic baby food for our little guy. It tastes better than a lot of other brands and it doesn't have pesticides.

I made a few attempts at making my own organic baby food with mixed results. He was a big fan of my carrots with applesauce and my butternut squash-apple blend, but I was stuck with tupperwares full of carrots-zucchini and a few other veggie mixes, and that was discouraging.

(Even the carrots-applesauce was only a hit because I ate it with him. A finger-full for me, a finger-full for him.)

More discouraging was the time I was in the middle of steaming up a batch of carrots-apples when I was distracted by various and sundry baby emergencies: teething pain, snotty nose, missing Daddy pain, poopy diaper, more snot. By the time I got back to my pot, the water had completely evaporated, and everything had that lovely burnt sugar smell from the scorched apple juice that had dripped into the bottom of the pan. I tasted the carrots myself, hoping they were still edible, but the burnt sugar flavor had permeated everything in the pot. And I didn't think my son wanted three days of that flavor. (You know, to check for allergies to carrot flambe.)

That was the last time I tried making my own baby food. Since then, I have satisfied my culinary urges by mixing a little cinnamon in his Apples, apple juice in his Prune Oatmeal, and Carrots in his Apple Apricot.

There isn't too much point in exploring the art of baby food making at this point, when he's ten months old with five teeth, and starting to eat off our dinner plates.

So, in the meantime, to round out his meals, we buy Earth's Best. At first, we bought them at HEB and Whole Foods, but at 99 cents a bottle, that was expensive. Babies R Us charges about the same amount. We discovered that Target has them 14-20 cents cheaper, depending on the flavor, but they don't sell some of the blends like Prune Oatmeal.

Our little fellow also likes Gerber's organic Apple Sweet Potato, but sadly, it's one of the only ones we can buy from Gerber, because they pack most of their organic baby foods in #7 plastic tubs. (I don't understand why they go to the trouble of putting pesticide-free food in plastic that leaches chemicals. For more about harmful plastics.)

Anyway, that leaves us with mainly Earth's Best at the moment - until Nish has tried each and every Indian spice individually for three days, so he can eat what we are eating without any concern of allergies. ;-) Let's see... cumin, coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, fennel, aesofoetida, ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, garam masala... Yeah, that shouldn't take long.

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In 2007, we moved to Austin, Texas. It wasn't an easy transition, and this blog chronicled our painfully slow adaptation to Texas life: finding our favorite foods at the grocery store, combating homesickness, figuring out the road system, trying out new restaurants, enjoying festivals and wildflowers and bats.

Then in 2008, we had a baby, and that changed our view of life, including our view of Austin. So the blog had to change too.

Now, we will write about this area from the perspective of new parents: where we buy organic baby food, what parks are fun for babies, which exterminator is taking care of our scorpion problem.

You know, the usual parental concerns.

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Today the bugman was back again. Tis the season. Spring, when the flowers bloom, the birds sing, and the spiders and scorpions come crawling in. And when we call our bug people.

Yes, we have people. They come every other month and spray some nontoxic barrier around the foundation of our house - usually on a rainy day (although they swear that doesn't make a difference).

The barrier is supposed to keep out the critters. It's also supposed to be composed of the most nontoxic stuff ever. Whenever the bugman comes to spray the inside of the house, he assures me it's safe, it's used in daycares, it's used in his own home and he has kids (with three eyes mind you, but other than that I'm sure they are perfectly healthy), it's like baking soda (well, I've never heard of anyone dying from too much baking soda and it might have the added benefit of eliminating pesky household odors), it's toxic to the critters but not too humans (ohhhhh, like kryptonite for bugs), it's tasty on waffles when you are out of baking soda (okay, maybe he didn't actually say that).

But seriously, how can the stuff kill, murder, extinguish the life from a bad old poisonous scorpion and not be even the teeniest, weeniest harmful to humans? Are scorpions really from the planet Krypton? Or maybe they are more closely related to vampires? Baking soda, garlic. Both kitchen staples. Something to think about.

Regardless, we had to call the bugman because we were starting to see spiders, and of course, then spider bites on me (because I attract everything with a mandible).

And then, we found a small, harmless bug on the baby. But harmless or not, it shouldn't be there. We have a service, a kryptonite shield, a bug-toxic baking soda boundary. A six-legged shadow shouldn't fall upon our baby, never mind an actual insect. That's what we pay for.

So the call was made, the bugman cometh, and the baby and I tooketh a walk until the completely nontoxic spray dissipateth.

Call me crazy, but if I can smell something funky in the air, I don't want to breathe it in - or use it in my waffles.

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