Mix and match your duplo

Cordless power drill

I've always known that lego (and now duplo, its larger cousin) was a fantastic toy.  With a few blocks and a little imagination you can create a stunning array of things, from pretend power drills to guitars with strings to pluck (granted, not with particularly good tones).  With the addition of a few specialized pieces picked up from the Legoville collections or Bob the Builder sets, you've got everything you need to create an extensive array of construction equipment.

Semi trailer with excavator like the ones we saw when they pulled down the house on the corner - using truck base from cement truck kit, wheel base from Lofty kit, caterpillar tracks from Muck kit, back hoe and cabin from Scoop kit, warning sign base from one of the Bob the Builder sets to provide the articulation between the truck and the trailer, generic pieces, and rubber bands to create the loading ramp.

My son loves tools, trucks, and tractors, so we have, in addition to a few basic sets of duplo blocks, a cement truck and Scoop (tractor), Lofty (crane), Sumsy (forklift), Muck (supposedly a grater), and Rolly (roller).  We haven't actually started watching Bob the Builder in our house, which is probably a blessing, but which also means we aren't compelled to create the characters.  The pictures show some of the things we've put together instead.

Guitar with rubber band strings

My only big gripes with duplo are the lack of hinges (you'll notice my makeshift hinge for the loading ramp on the semi-trailer) and pieces that click together in different planes, so you can build things at 45 and 90 degree angles.

Construction crane like the ones over the parking structure that is being built at the junction - using windows for the scaffold section, cabin from Bob the Builder sets, crane arm from Lofty set.  The ladder is made from fence pieces turned on end.

Our son is interested in creating lego versions of things he sees when he's out, and I like the fact that he can imagine the real object even though the lego version is rough, at best.  He has even created his own grinder, based on seeing one being used on the way to child care.

Wanted: waffle maker

In seven years of living Australia I have seen specialized electrical equipment designed for a single purpose, such as cooking pizza, cooking sausages, baking donuts (aren't donuts supposed to be fried), grilling sandwiches, boiling rice, grinding coffee, making coffee, or baking bread.

So why is it that I can't find a waffle maker in this country?

-------------------------------------------
[Updated 2 April, 2008]

I got the Breville for my birthday.  It arrived this week (a little late for the party, but who cares).  I usually consider waffles a breakfast food, but we couldn't resist making them for dessert the night it arrived.  It cooks well enough, and the non-stick plates are fantastic, but it's awfully small, making it sub-optimal for big groups.

On day two, my son wanted waffles for morning tea - I obliged, and then that night we ate the left overs for dessert with ice cream and chocolate sauce. Yum, yum!

Thanks again AB.  We'll have to have you and the family over for brunch.

Don't be tied down by your furniture

Whatever is produced in haste goes hastily to waste. -- Saadi (1184-1291)

A number of years ago, an old climbing buddy of mine graduated from college, got a job, and bought a couch.  At the time his best friend, who was more attuned to sleeping under the stars than on a sofa, berated him for purchasing something that would tie him down, force him to have a home base, and prevent him from picking up and moving on.  It was only the first step; it wasn't long before my friend had purchased a house that stuck him smack in the middle of settled.

My husband I lived in four different places in the five years before we moved to Australia.  We were anything but settled; we were living frugally (him more so than me) and most of our furniture was what we had scavenged from home or found at garage sales, that emblem of grad school economy.  Some of it was nice enough that it almost made the move to Australia (generally the stuff pilfered from my parent's house), but most of it was junk: old desks with rings from water glasses, shelves constructed from bricks and boards, and cheap pine furniture that we had constructed or stained ourselves.  It was never meant to be permanent, just to satisfy a need until we moved on.

When we relocated to Australia we sold virtually all of our furniture to other frugal grad students and co-workers and bought new things in our new country.  We were settling now, intending to stay here long enough to build our careers, buy a house, and have a few kids.  Following the bed, our first purchase was a couch.

Being unemployed at the time, I spent ages looking for the couch.  I went to every furniture store I could find, from the upscale Tailor Made sofa shop to the very pedestrian Sydney's package shop.  I ended up finding a suitable couch at a middle of the road shop, where I mulled over upholstery for ages before picking a virtually solid pattern in a pleasing color called basil.  Six weeks later, the new couch arrived at our rental.  It looked just fine with the tan carpeting and the brown curtains, and fit quite well in our rather compact living room.

Ten months later we moved into the first house we owned.  The couch was relocated to the middle of our new living room, where it also looked just fine with the tan carpeting and putty colored walls.  However, not long after the move, we decided to take advantage of our newly acquired home owner freedom to paint the walls of our abode a buttery yellow color.  Then we decided we needed more seating in the living room.

Suddenly our existing couch became a liability; the dusty green color didn't match anything, the living room was more suited to two smaller couches, and the style was no longer available.  Three things saved it from a garage sale: 1) it was the most comfortable couch we could find;  2) we are too parsimonious to replace it; and 3) garage sales are a pain.

In actual fact, one more thing saved the couch from a garage sale: people in the inner east suburbs of Melbourne don't go to garage sales (do they even have them here?); they go to Ikea.  I've never found any furniture from Ikea that I find terribly appealing; it seems to be made either of cheap materials or with cheap design (which is pretty much their mantra, though I'm sure they prefer the word inexpensive). The surprising thing is that it is not poor grad students who shop there.  It is parents of young children, some of them not so young, and not terribly poor.  And the things they sell are deceptively expensive, as if they make the stuff look cheap so you think you're getting a deal.

The philosophy behind shopping at Ikea, as one friend explained to me, was that they needed something now, but didn't want to spend money on something they'd want to get rid of in the future.  Buying something that quickly falls apart releases you from any obligation to keep it when you want to update the decor.  But it also shackles you to a piece of junk until that time arrives.

To be fair, it's not just about the decor.  For almost two and a half years my son slept in the same crib that I slept in 30 years earlier and that my father slept in nearly 30 years before that.  In the crib's 68 year history, it has been in storage for roughly 55 years.  The mattress height cannot be adjusted, the side that lowers squeaks, and it doesn't satisfy the latest Australian safety standards, but it looks nice, and is sturdy and safe (in my opinion).  The crib, which was made by my great-grandfather, was shipped to Australia at great expense.  In fact, for the price of the shipping (which did include a few other small items) we could have bought a crib at Ikea that does have an adjustable mattress height, does not have a squeaky side, and would be so worn out after two kids that it could go straight to the junk yard.  And when I consider that, I get a little bit envious of the people who did not have a 68 year old crib that was built to last.

If we had spent half as much on the couch we might have just given it to the Salvos, but I suspect that we would have kept it anyway, since as long as we can still sit on it why should we write it off? Part of me wishes that we had gone the Ikea path so we could replace our furniture when it no longer suited the decor, but I know that regardless of what furniture we chose we would still be stuck with
it, so it may as well have been a quality design made with quality materials.

Beware the Australian Trolley

The classic American shopping cart has two wheels at the back that are fixed in a forward facing position and two wheels at the front that turn in the direction that they are pushed.  For some reason, one of the four wheels always seems to have something stuck in it so that it doesn't turn well, or it swivels from side to side incessantly as you push the cart around the store.  In contrast, the standard Australian trolley (as shopping carts are known to Australians) has four wheels that swivel and rarely seem to insist on a particular direction.

I give the Australian's credit for designing wheels that obviously rotate more smoothly, but every time I use an Australian trolley I curse the person who decided that four swiveling wheels would be a good idea, and every person after him who failed to see the wisdom of using swiveling wheels on the front of the trolley and fixing the rear two wheels in the same way it is done on everything from strollers to cars.  Granted, the trolleys do have a very tight turning radius, but they are very difficult to control on anything but a perfectly horizontal surface.

For all the stress about child safety in cars (proposed legislation by the Australian National Transport Commission would require children to be in approved child seats until the age of 7), why is no one concerned about the kids who ride in these trolleys.  The "seat-belt" that is provided in the trolley was clearly intended to prevent the child from climbing out of the seat, flipping over the trolley, falling from the highest point of the trolley, or pulling things off the store shelves.  There are no security provisions to prevent a trolley containing a child from rolling down the parking lot or to protect the child when the trolley hits the curb side-on and tips over from the combination of the momentum it gains as it rolls sideways down a hill and its high center of gravity.

This hasn't even touched on the physical challenge of maneuvering a loaded trolley from the store to the car, up and down curbs, and through a parking lot on a hillside, or preventing your trolley from escaping as you load the groceries into the car.  Unless the driving surface is completely horizontal, as you thankfully find inside the grocery store (but not, I might add, inside our local fresh food market), the trolley always rolls downhill.  Rather than pushing on the handle to redirect the front of the trolley in the desired direction, you must walk to the side of the trolley to prevent it from going sideways, drive the trolley cockeyed, or pull on the handle and swing the trolley back into the desired direction.  These techniques must be repeated until you reach either a perfectly horizontal surface or your car.

Once you reach your car, you cannot rely on pointing the trolley into the back bumper to keep it there while you load the groceries into the boot (aka trunk).  In the US, the shopping cart has no where to go, but in Australia there's no such limitation.  If the car is parked in the aforementioned sloped parking lot, then the trolley simply pivots to the side and starts its decent down the hill.  Keeping the trolley in place, while using both hands to lift the well loaded cloth bags, requires hooking a foot around one wheel of the trolley in order to prevent it from escaping.  Moving a toddler from the seat in the trolley to the car without causing collateral damage is an even greater challenge.

I once saw an Australian trolley with fixed rear wheels and was excited that it might be a sign of things to come.  Surely, I thought, as soon as people see how much easier it is to control one of these trolleys everyone would be demanding them.  But people must be awfully stuck in their ways, because that trolley disappeared, and when my local grocery store (the largest national chain) recently replaced their entire collection of trolleys I was disappointed to see the same old wheel configuration.

My new sewing machine

I grew up around sewing machines.  My first sewing machine, which I still have and use, was a 1976 Singer.  It is built like a rock (and weighs about as much as one), and 31 years later still compares favorably against most modern home sewing machines.  I've since added a serger (a.k.a. over-locker) to my toolkit, and have been fantasizing about a cover stitcher.  But yesterday, when I went with my mother to help her pick out a new sewing machine, I was utterly charmed by a little chain stitcher.

The sewing machine shop, located in the heart of San José, Costa Rica, was the largest I've ever seen.  It eclipsed the home sewing machine shops around the suburbs of Melbourne, where I live, as well as the one in Boulder, where I used to live.  It even made the industrial sewing machine shop I once visited in Detroit  look twinky.  This place was big, and it was filled with table after table of new and used sewing machines, over-lockers, cover stitchers, and display cases filled with specialized feet and feeders for the various machines.  The entrance was dominated by industrial sewing machines (Costa Rica has a healthy textile industry) and the interior was overwhelmed by domestic machines, some of which came with tables fitted with working foot pedals for people living with limited access to power (when was the last time you saw one of those for sale in the US - did it belong to your grandmother, or was it during the  preparations for Y2K?).  Upstairs, where you could go if you were escorted by one of the sales people, were two more racks filled with used sewing machines.

Only minutes after entering the store we noticed a virtual duplicate of my 1976 Singer sewing machine in a locked case along one wall, sitting next to a variety of other machines of similar vintage.  It turns out the machine hasn't worked for a long time, but the shop agreed to fix it up and sell it to us for the very agreeable price of about $80.  We never even looked at the new machines.

What really caught my eye, though, were the rows of small black hand cranked, cast iron chain stitchers.  These machines were obviously sold by the store for ornamental purposes, but they were built like tanks, and I suspect they may be for general consumption in China, where they were probably built.  The first man we spoke to in the shop said they couldn't sew.  Though this was definitely true of some of the little machines, I wasn't convinced we couldn't make one of them work.

Not one of them was threaded, so I guessed where the thread would sit and how to get it to the needle.  I also struggled with how the bobbin worked, until I looked closely at the mechanism under the plate and realized that the machine would do a chain stitch with only one thread.  I was enchanted by the simplicity of it and determined to get one working.  With the help of one of the shop assistants, one of the mechanics, and a new needle, we got the second machine we tried to sew.  So now I am the proud owner of a little hand crank chain stitcher.  It will probably sit on display in the living room, but when the year 2028 bug hits, I'll be ready.

Elimination diet: the end

The long awaited end to our elimination and challenge diet has arrived.  After three and a half months of monitoring everything my son and I ate, we can now go to a party without bringing our own food!  During this period we challenged salicylates (twice), amines, and glutamates, and my son also challenged bread preservative.  My son finished his second salicylate challenge a few days ago, and he'll be off the diet tomorrow (I finished a little over a week ago).  I'm disappointed to report that the only thing I've learned about my son's skin condition from all of this is that my son does not have a severe reaction to any of these things.

That's not to say he didn't react, just that it wasn't obviously caused by the challenge food.  The value of this knowledge is not to be dismissed, however his reaction to each challenge was difficult to interpret.  As I've mentioned in previous posts on the topic, his skin never completely cleared.  Even with periodic use of cortisone ointment, the eczema would inevitably appear after a few days on the elimination diet without drugs.  The big question was whether the severity had reduced.  At this point I've concluded that he is not unusually sensitive to any of the chemicals we challenged.

Though I'm eager to expand our vegetable intake, we won't go back to our previous eating patterns immediately.  I expect to introduce certain foods with caution.  For instance, our diet previously relied on high intake of tomato, which is high in salicylates, amines, and natural glutamates, and often associated with eczema.  One thing I will introduce immediately is flaxseed oil, as I feel that the elimination diet is distressingly low in essential fatty acids (since everything we ate had to comply with the diet, even supplementation was restricted).  He will have flaxseed oil instead of butter on his toast (I've discovered that when drizzled over toast with a little salt it is a totally suitable substitute for butter), and whenever he would have had butter or oil that is not cooked.  We will also introduce a number of vegetables and fruits that are only moderately high in salicylates, and cut way back on meat, chicken, and sugar intake, which always felt too high to me.

Lessons learned
We didn't need to spend so long to learn what we did from this experience.  We had to repeat challenges to correct early mistakes in execution. Even now, there are things I should do to make up for mistakes made in the beginning, but I've lost the enthusiasm to continue.  If I ever have to go through this again, I will do a number of things differently.

What do I consider essential to success while minimizing the pain and duration of the diet?   This is written in regards to my experience with eczema, but most of it applies regardless of the condition you are trying to treat.

Do the allergy tests first.  You will have more success with the diet if you avoid all foods and other irritants to which you have a positive allergy test.  If your doctor suggests it, you can challenge those foods and then reintroduce them into your diet if you do not have a reaction.

Get your hands on one or both of the cookbooks for this diet (Friendly Food and The Failsafe Cookbook).  I use them nearly every day.  The recipes are fantastic, even if you don't end up doing the diet, and Friendly Food, in particular, is a very good source for people who need to avoid eggs, gluten or wheat, nuts, dairy, or soy.

Stock your larder, experiment with recipes, and make some of the staples (like pear jam) before you start in earnest.  Make a few things you can put in the freezer.  It will be a lot easier to stick to the diet if you already know how to make a few meals that comply with it and know where to buy the ingredients.  You will not have the option to make a last minute dash to get take away on this diet.

Rearrange your kitchen so that the food you will not be allowed to eat is separate from the food you are allowed to eat.  For instance, put all forbidden food into a cabinet separate from everything else so you do not get confused or tempted.  If you keep snacks in your bag or your car, make sure they comply with the diet as well (we used plain rice cakes and rye cruskits for this).  In the refrigerator, designate the least visible shelf for the forbidden food (things that won't go bad during the three or so months you're on the diet, like ketchup and jam, and anything your family members insist on having).

As much as possible get your entire family to follow the diet when eating in the presence of the people on the elimination diet. You may find it handy if you allow the consumption of forbidden foods out of sight of family members who are following the diet, especially right after challenges, when you will probably have left-overs that you can no longer consume but you don't want to waste (for instance, we had cherries and carrots left after our salicylate challenge, so I sent them to work in my husband's lunch).  They can also be used to slowly rid the freezer of forbidden foods.

If you have the flexibility, do the diet in the winter.  Many of the allowed vegetables are not available or of poor quality in the summer and you won't be taunted by all the beautiful summer fruits.

If you have the flexibility, don't start before the holidays or lots of birthdays.  Sticking to the diet is far more pleasant when you don't have to eat out frequently.

Take detailed notes.  Keep a description of symptoms in your food diary rather than trying to rate their severity as a number.  This will be much less subjective.  Even better: get a person who does not know whether you are doing a challenge or in the elimination phase to evaluate the symptoms; it is very easy to let your own wishes interfere with your judgment.

Prior to starting the diet, find out how the skin responds after two weeks without cortisone.  While eating your normal diet, treat the skin until it is clear, then take notes on the symptoms for two weeks.

Use the cortisone the way the doctor specifies (i.e. don't try to go
without).  Use it as directed for the first week of the diet, when withdrawal symptoms are most likely to occur and to prepare the skin for a two week elimination challenge (see next point).

After starting the elimination diet, but prior to starting challenges, find out how the skin responds to two weeks on the diet without cortisone.  A week after you start the elimination diet, do a two week elimination challenge where you do not use cortisone to determine if the elimination diet has resulted in an improvement.  If not, consider what else you might need to eliminate or consider stopping the diet altogether.

Label everything you put in the freezer with 1) the contents, 2) whether or not it follows the diet, and 3) the date it was made.  If you are avoiding amines, this will help you avoid eating meat that is too old.  It will also ensure you don't accidentally eat the zucchini risotto you made for the salicylate challenge during your amine challenge.

Conclusion
Since eczema runs in families (I have it, my dad has it, my son has it), there's a pretty good chance any other kids I have will get eczema, and I may find myself going through this again.  If it happens when they are only a month old, I will do the elimination diet immediately to see if it has any positive effect.  I will also continue to look for other solutions to the problem.  If nothing else, I've learned how to do this better the next time.

Getting lazy with glutamates

Well, in what feels like a never ending quest to determine what food sensitivities by son has, we challenged glutamates last week. The challenge required eating a whopping 80 ml of soy sauce (4 Australian tablespoons, or 5 ¹/₃ US tablespoons) each day for three days.  We were also encouraged to use Parmesan liberally.  Technically, those were the only two items in the challenge, but we also indulged in a few other foods that contain glutamates (and amines, which we are no longer avoiding) but no other forbidden chemicals.  We also continued to indulge in small amounts of glutamates during the three day elimination period that follows each challenge.

The most famous glutamate is Mono Sodium Glutamate, also known as MSG. It is widely associated with Chinese restaurants, but it, and a few other glutamates are often used as flavoring in packaged food.  As it turns out, glutamate also occurs naturally in a range of foods, including aged cheese, soy sauce, tomatoes, peas, mushrooms, broccoli, and grapes and their products.

After about 50ml of soy sauce on the first day I couldn't take it anymore;  I do not believe that one person could consume enough food in a day to disguise that much soy sauce.  And after a night of anxious sleeplessness and a headache, I was content to finish the challenge right then.  Was it the glutamate?  I don't know - I also had a lot to do and a son who was no keener than I to eat that much of the challenge food, but it sounds like classic Chinese restaurant syndrome.  Regardless, given that most of the foods where glutamates are found in high concentration are also high in fat I'll probably try to limit my intake anyway.

On day two of the glutamate challenge I phoned the dietitian because my two year old son had decided not to complete the challenge (he wouldn't eat anything that tasted like soy, and I can't blame him).  The dietitian recommended substituting Parmesan, so we had pizza for dinner.  That worked.  I also cheated by indulging in a little Cambazola cheese, and we both cheated by having peas, both foods that contain glutamates and no other forbidden substances that are not part of the challenge.  In the end, after eating lots of Parmesan, my son did not appear to react to the glutamates.

The day after the official end to the challenge, we went backpacking.  I do not recommend camping while on this elimination diet, nor do I recommend backpacking with a two year old child, but that's another story.  It was very difficult to find suitable foods.  All pre-packaged camping foods were out of the question.  Dried fruit was out (except for bananas, but we couldn't find those because of the recent banana shortage anyway).  Most of the vegetables that we usually take were out.  GORP was definitely out.  No pepperoni or smoked fish either (we camp in style).  We ended up taking lots of bread, chocolate and Colby cheese (which has amines, but we are eating those now), homemade cookies, oatmeal and powdered milk for breakfasts, and couscous, lentils, rice, and chickpeas for dinner.  We cheated by bringing Parmesan and freeze dried peas and adding those to the meals (technically we should have been avoiding glutamates by then).  To get vegetables we took fresh vegetables!  Leek, potato, swede (which never got eaten), and green beans.  Fortunately, we were hiking with someone who agreed to carry the food.

In theory, our three day elimination period that follows the glutamate challenge fell during our camping trip, but we cheated by eating peas and Parmesan.  The reason for the elimination period is two fold - to distinguish a delayed reaction to the glutamate challenge from a reaction to the next food challenge, and because a reaction to one food can inhibit a reaction to another food if the second food is eaten too soon after the first, thereby masking the reaction to the second food.  However, since my son requires cortisone after 10 days without, which must be followed by a further three day elimination period, it didn't seem necessary to remain strict about avoiding the challenge substance (glutamate) in this case.

On the way home from the camping trip we stopped at a pub.  It was our first restaurant meal in over three months.  I was surprised at how well they were able to cater for my son's curious eating restrictions.  He had grilled chicken, boiled potato, and steamed peas and cabbage.  As for me, I had my first non-diet meal.  Now, a pub is probably not the first place you think of to break a fast, but that is where I found myself.  So I had peppercorn steak with chips and salad.  All three were disappointing and surprisingly bland.  Fortunately, the Pavlova was better.

I'm eager to put this diet behind me because, despite my efforts to eat healthfully and provide healthful food to my family, I am uncomfortable with how limited our choice of vegetables has been and how much we've relied on meat and refined sugar.  In an attempt to counteract the limitations of our diet over the past three months, I've started eating flaxseed oil on my salads, and I am keen to replace the canola oil we've been using in our cooking with olive oil.  In less than a week my son will be finished with the last challenge he will do, then we will try to return to our previous, more healthful diet.  However, after three and a half months on the this diet, I still feel compelled to write down everything I eat and I can't shake the feeling that I'm cheating every time I put a piece of fruit in my mouth.