H1N1 Vaccine: What The Pork?

I'm having a dilemma these days, one I'm not used to pondering. I'm uneasy about the H1N1 vaccine. Does it strike anyone else as strange how fast a vaccine was developed for this strain of influenza? I have personally known at least four individuals who have contracted H1N1 since Labor Day, three of them children, one of them with some serious complications. This flu has been moving in and out of the ranks of Americans (and no doubt around the world) like a stealth operator on a secret mission in a faraway land. I am starting to think that this vaccine may be too little, too late. However, Li'l G's school is administering this vaccine in mist form next week, and I'm starting to get cold feet about it.

To vaccine or not to vaccine? That is the question...

Let's establish one fact: I support vaccinations. I have made it a priority to keep my children up to date on all of their vaccinations since birth and plan on keeping it that way. All three of us got the flu vaccine just after Labor Day this year, and amazingly, the kids have been in pretty good health, even though I was laid out with a pretty nasty virus about 10 days after the vaccine. However, I believe that there is a good reason to vaccine our babies against polio, TB, MMR, and so on. I have known a man who has spent nearly his entire life, since childhood I believe, in a wheelchair ever since he contracted polio. There is a reason why our infant mortality rates and childhood mortality rates are some of the lowest in the world, folks. Vaccines are not the evils that some people think they are.

That being said, I know we need to be cautious about the ingredients in vaccines. Certain agents, such as thimerosal, have been linked to causing autism in children, and I know a family who believes this is what happened to their child. Vaccines are not perfect, but by-and-large, my personal belief is that they accomplish the goal set forth by the doctors and professionals who set out to develop them.

I just have an uneasy feeling about this, however; it's nagging at me, and I cannot simply ignore it. I talk to my friends who are Vietnam vets and they are only halfway joking as they mock the medics, "Agent Orange is safe. Your government wouldn't make you do something that's going to be harmful." And so on...

Even though I did not vote the current administration into office, I do not believe that Obama and the scientists at NIH and other governmental agencies sit around a bubbling, green beaker in a back-alley lab, stirring this foaming concoction with a rusty spoon like Doctor Jekyll, and when the spoon dissolves they toss back their heads and gargle out, "Yess, finally, the vaccine is complete! Mwaa haa haaaa...!"

So why, then, am I so distrusting of this vaccine? I don't really know. It just seems to have come out so fast. Has it even had a chance to be tested properly? I don't know. On the other hand, if it's possible to crank out this vaccine in such record time, why does it take others years, decades even, to reach the masses of dying, suffering people? Is it due to corruption? Needing to allow the scientific process to run its course? I don't know. I just have so many questions and little time in which to find answers to them.

The other thing I find disconcerting is accessibility. The government is in charge of distribution. My hospital told me last month not to come to them for the vaccine, that they would not be receiving any. The public schools are going to have them for students and teachers. Active duty military will get them. Active duty military dependents will have access to them through their healthcare on post, but what about people like me, military who have been pushed into the private sector? What about the millions of people with no direct link to government? The homeless and/or insuranceless? And these vaccines are being handed out for free?!? Am I the only one smelling a rat here?

I'm sure my hospital has gotten more information in recent days since vaccines will be coming out this week and weeks to come. Either way, it's a sign of the times to be sure. I don't want to risk my children's very lives by not vaccinating them; however, they are not petri dishes on legs, available for governmental research. So help me out here, guys: what do you plan to do?

Gluten-Free Wheat-Free Triple Chipper Cookies

Disclaimer: Just because I have substituted some ingredients here doesn't necessarily mean this recipe is proven to be absolutely GF. My dietary need is just to get rid of grain-based carbs. I do not suffer from Celiac Disease or have any medical reason to be eating GF. So, take these modifications with a grain of salt and do your research. Otherwise, enjoy!

As many of you know, I have started doing CrossFit over the last several weeks in a feeble bold attempt to get into shape. BTW, I have a separate blog just for my daily reflections on my workouts -- head over to Make It Burn to read about my daily sojourn towards "forging elite fitness".

Sorry for that shameless plug there. Where was I... oh yes... Part of being a CrossFitter is thinking about how we fuel our bodies. The program wants the students eating lots of lean meats, carbs in the form of fresh fruits and veggies, and laying off on whole grains, refined sugars, flours, and starches. So when I heard this, I thought to myself, Good-bye pizza, homemade bread, rolls, muffins, cookies, and so on. However! I did find a loophole!

Gluten-free was my get-out-food-jail-free card. The problem with that list of no-no foods is that they all contain grains. High levels of sugar in our blood cause our bodies to secrete large amounts of insulin to break it down. I don't remember the rest of the biochemistry that goes behind elevated levels of insulin in our blood, but I do know that it causes us to put on weight and carry around unnecessary fat. Mine likes to hang around my joke of a belly button and flop over the top of my jeans, even on a skinny day, and make me feel like I've been driving trucks cross-country. At any rate, things that are gluten-free lack that carb component that puts your body into insulin overload I guess. Obviously I'm not terribly up-to-date on all the scientifics here, and there is a plethora (yes, I said plethora) of information online and elsewhere if you really want to research it.

Let me interject something at this point. I have always been the kind of person that believes in cooking healthy meals or goodies for my family, but if I'm going to sacrifice texture or flavor in the name of being low-fat or healthy or whatever, then you can just forget it. There are some sacrifices I don't make when it comes to my food. I consider food and culinary delights to be one of the most satisfying carnal pleasures this side of heaven, and I'm sure not gonna waste my time down here eating stuff that tastes like cardboard just so that I have one less dimple in my backside. I may look like my rear end has been pummelled with a bag full of nickels, but dangit, I'm going to be eating well and savoring every morsel.

All that being said, I vowed to do some solid kitchen testing on gluten-free stuff so that I could still cook "normal food" for my family and be able to eat it guilt-free with them. Part of being successful at CrossFit is using the proper fuel to help your body restore the energy it's using (and trust me -- you're using a LOT of energy), and if I'm going to invest the time and money to do this, I want to do it as best I can while not turning into one of those people who become annoying to be around because they only eat organic vegetables grown on mountainsides in the Andes or drink water that has run off the leaves of a rainforest fern or some kooky crap like that.

Now to my first experiment: cookies.


Every time I go through the checkout at the local grocery store, I see some charming little periodical that has yummy treats in it for fall. I am such a sucker for fall baking! After perusing its contents, I've marked off at least 15 recipes I want to try. I made the Nectarine-Plum Crostada last week, which tasted a lot like a peach cobbler -- I highly recommend it. However, I was wanting to make the Triple Chippers on p. 6 and wondered if I could do it in a guilt-free, gluten-free way. As I sit here typing this to you, I am eating one of these suckers, and boooyyy is it good! So, in short, the answer is "yes", and I'll tell you how I did it.


Here is the recipe:

1.5 c packed brown sugar
1 c granulated sugar
1 c butter or margarine, softened
1 c shortening
2 t vanilla
2 eggs
3.75 c all-purpose flour*
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1.5 c white vanilla baking chips
0.5 c butterscotch chips
1 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

*I substituted 3.75 c Pamela's Baking & Pancake Mix for the all-purpose flour. You do not need to add xanthum gum or anything like that to it -- it's already in the mix! Woo hoo!!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, mix sugars, butter, shortening, vanilla, and eggs with electric mixer on medium speed until creamy, or mix with spoon. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in white, butterscotch, and chocolate chips. Onto grease cookie sheet, drop by 0.25 cupsful about 3" apart. Bake 12-15 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool 4 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Yield: 26 cookies.

I thought that making cookies that big sounded crazy, so I used a Tbsp to scoop out dough. I have made 24 cookies that way, and they spread out pretty big. I still have enough dough left to make at least 30 more cookies or so using a Tbsp. This would be a great recipe to make big cookies with, spread out into a large cookie to decorate, or make a kajillion of them for some kind of school function where you'll be feeding a lot of people. I plan on putting the rest of my dough in the freezer for safe keeping until holiday baking is in full swing.

The gluten-free flour turned out to be a winner. In fact, the raw dough tasted so good that I ate a LOT of it before the cookies were made, and now I'm starting to feel a little bloated. Ick... This flour has natural almond meal in it, so it has a faintly nutty taste to it that is awesome in cookies. This flour also comes with recipes on it for making pancakes, muffins, crepes, waffles, breading for fried chicken (!!), and regular chocolate chip cookies.

I will most definitely start using this in lieu of regular flour. This is a subsitution that you can make in your baking and non-dieting types of people will probably never know you switched something on them, and if anything, ask what you added to the food to make it taste better. My next experiment will be for dinner tomorrow night when I use gluten-free pasta for spaghetti night. I think I've filled up on cookies and milk (and dough) for dinner tonight!

"Stepping Into The Ring" With Nicole Johnson

Oh.my.word.

Speechless. Awestruck. You must watch this.



My beautiful friend, Jenster, writes and speaks for the cause of breast cancer and those who have had to parent children through the ordeal. You can find her postings here and here. Also, for more support and insights, click on the "Mothers With Cancer" icon on my right sidebar to take you straight to that amazing blog.

Accountability Post #1 & 2

Le pant, le puff, le pant, le puff...

OK, I totally meant to find a picture of Pepe Le Pew's "Leettle Peegion" who is constantly exhausted from sprinting, but this was as good as I could come up with. Either way, I just came back from my second multi-mile bike ride, and my legs are tight! And not the in the hip-hop sort of way, either. I mean, old lady, your-thirties-are-the-first-step-toward-the-nursing-home sort of way. Why, oh WHY do we take advantage of our nubile, hott selves in our 20s, when all we care about is boys, careers, and eating things that no human should get away with eating without direct consequences to the hips, gut, and heart?!?

At any rate, I've decided to post each time I get out on the road for a "real" bike ride. I am officially training for my first bike race. It's on 4 OCT in Lufkin, Texas. It's called the Pineywoods Purgatory. I chose this race for a couple of reasons. First of all, hello, it's in the Piney Woods region of Texas. It's the closest I can come to being in Washington state as possible. I lived in Lufkin for a brief time as a very little kiddo, so I've always been a little partial. It's also five weeks away, so I'm trying to maximize my training time. I am entering the basic race, the 25 mile course. I really want to do the 52 mile course because I think it would be so beautiful to see the scenery, but that's too ambitious for a first race. My goal is to simply finish the race. Period. I think it's achieveable, too, but then again, I've only gotten on the road two times now.

In addition to training for a race, the kids and I have been biking Lil' G to school, and it's been a great success. We even saw one other mom riding with her kids to school, too. As far as I know, we are the only two families in the school doing it, but that's fine with me. We're saving 20 miles a week on our gas consumption! Hooah!

So, here's Report #1: 25 AUG 08. Rode a total of five miles for the day, two of which were actual "training miles." It took us 12:26, and we were going through a neighborhood route that was pretty hilly. Averaged 6.13 min./mi. I was pulling Bud and the trail-a-bike, which totals around 55 lbs. of extra weight! I was pleased with this as a first ride, but surprised at the difference in perspective about how steep the hills turned out to be. Hills don't feel near as steep in a big SUV. :)

Report #2: 27 AUG 08. Training miles: 3.5 Took exactly 19:00. Averaged 5.43 min./mi. I was so proud of myself -- I made it all the way up the steepest hill up to street level without stopping this time!! I was even pulling Bud on the trail-a-bike for this ride, too!! After drop off/pick up from school, will log a total of 6.5 miles.

I will have the ability to ride longer amounts of time and not have to pull Bud and his bike soon, as he starts school next Wednesday. I have decided not to train on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as that is when I have Pilates, which I luuuuurrrrve!!! I am too crapped out and tired to get a good workout at Pilates if I have done weights or extensive bike riding, and I enjoy it too much to give it up. So, I'm training three mornings a week. I don't have a lot of other time to devote to it when it's not blue-blazes hot outside, or I've got Lil' G on her bike along with me, so I've got to make each effort count.

I want to give a serious shout-out to mah peeps, HisGirl, for taking the biking challenge as well! I don't know that she's training for anything, but she's been making regular efforts to get out and go biking, so kudos to her! I have to say, girl, you're looking happier and healthier these days than I think I've ever seen you!! (And you've always been a lovely lady, chica.) Kick some butt, girl!

So if any of you would like to join me in the challenge just to get out there and get active, that would be great. It could be any activity you want, indoors or outdoors, but you've got to post for accountability!! And if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go pick on HisGirl and beg for a cool button now...