Monday Review- "Matters of Faith" by Kristy Kiernan

This Monday Review is brought to you by author Kristy Kiernan, and her award-winning novel, Matters of Faith. The story revolves around the Tobias family. When 12-year-old Meghan has a medical crisis related to her peanut allergy, the entire family is forced to dig deep and deal with issues that have been bubbling below the surface.

"Genuine" is the word that came to mind as I read this book. I too have had people say, “if it’s organic peanut butter, than it’s safe, right?” We too removed carpets, curtains and stuffed animals from our home in an effort to control allergic symptoms. Kristy Kiernan really understands what it’s like to live with a food allergy in the household. I was certain that she must have a food allergy or be close to someone who does.

“Not so,” said Kristy when I recently interviewed her by phone. “This story really began when I read about 15-year-old Christina Desforges." (You may remember this Canadian teenager reportedly suffered a fatal allergic reaction after kissing her boyfriend, who had recently eaten a peanut butter snack.)

” I started thinking about how scary it must be for parents to raise a food allergic child. Then I started wondering what would happen if the parents didn’t believe in medical intervention for religious reasons, . My interest in faith and religion just kind of collided with this interest in food allergies," Kristy told me.

Kristy’s empathy shines through her writing as she expertly weaves the story. It will be tempting to peek at the end, but try to refrain and trust that Kristy will give closure and allow us a glimpse into the future of the lives of the characters we’ve come to care about.

I hope every parent, grandparent, relative, teacher, neighbor, anyone who knows someone with a food allergy, has an opportunity to read Matters of Faith. Kristy admits that she didn’t set out to write a book to educate others about food allergies.

Fortunately for us, it does just that, in a beautiful and compelling way.

Learn more about Kristy Kiernan at her blog.

For more food allergy information, go to the Food Allergy Assistant's website.

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White Park Brewery in Bedfordshire - Make a refreshing stop at this unique brewery on your next visit to England!

"A Bedfordshire based brewery with a passion for all things natural and wholesome. The brewery is sited in a farm courtyard barn and run by a team of enthusiastic brewers! The name of the brewery evolves from the owner's love of keeping rare breed animals, including White Park cattle, an ancient Britsh breed famed for its good eating - especially when fed spent malt from a brewery! Good eating of course goes hand in hand with a great pint..."

It is always interesting to find new web sites of other breeders of both polled British White and horned White Park cattle in the UK. Recently, Alan Kelly of the White Park Brewery in Bedfordshire very kindly contacted me to let me know of a quite unfortunate spelling error on one of my pages. I most appreciated his taking the time to do that!

Alan has quite an interesting operation, and one that I suspect is a quite natural fit. Follow the link in the title above to Alan's web site and your mouth will water for a taste of his various White Park ales and porters, as well as a taste of his rare White Park beef fed 'spent malt' -- no doubt that makes for some uniquely flavorful beef.

Should I be so fortunate as to make another trip to the UK in the coming years, I plan on adding a stop at the White Park Brewery to my itinerary. Certainly memorable from my prior visit was looking forward at each new stop to trying the local brew in a colorful pub. Having a pint and some good conversation seemed the most natural thing in the world there, and I swear I think English brew is actually healthy.

I encourage everyone to have a look at the White Park Brewery web site. They have a very nice herd of White Park cows, and it is well worth noting that in this herd the pedigree cattle have lyric shaped horns that are tipped in black, which is consistent with old descriptions of the original horned 'milch white' Park cattle of old.

You will also find photos of White Park 'cross' animals, and sometimes the black tipped horn comes through, and sometimes not. But, of the photos of crossbred calves I looked at, the White Park color pattern, excepting horn tip color, dominated on the cross. The photo above is a White Park 'cross' female that did retain classic Park markings, including black tipped lyric shaped horns. She's quite a nice looking girl.

The size of the Brewery's White Park cattle appear to be fairly moderate, nothing of an extreme nature struck my eye. And of course the Shetland cattle, which the Brewery has a small herd of as well, are very moderate to small framed cattle.

Cheers to Alan Kelly and the White Park Brewery!

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BeefTalk: There Is No Profit From Calves That Cost $2.80 Per Pound?

Source: Kris Ringwall, Beef Specialist, North Dakota State Ag Extension

I found this article of great interest. There is NO mention of the breed of bull chosen to cover these 26 heifers. However, great care was given to selection in terms of documented EPD's, and this bull's numbers fell in the sought after top percentile for key EPD's.

Despite this, the Dickinson Center had a miserable ~30% dead or difficult calving percentage. That costs money, not just the $2.80 a pound ceasarian births, but the assists, and the deaths, as well. Such calving results are virtually unheard of in any British White herd of cattle. And we certainly don't have to worry about 'ornery' heifers that want to hurt us -- another potentially costly event.

In today's economic environment cattle producers should start thinking more about the costs of these 2000 pound plus high pedigree, drowning in EPD's bulls. The cost of their potentially big calves born, or not born, successfully to heifers, is not a cost any small producer can bear.

The British White breed is small in numbers, we do not have sophisticated EPD's for use in choosing sires and dams -- but do we really need them to add value to our breed? I don't think so. The British White breed naturally puts low birth weight calves on the ground that grow off with vigor, fatten well on grain or grass, and grade 80% plus choice and better under traditional feedlot production.

EXCERPTS OF THIS ARTICLE:

"The Dickinson Research Extension Center started calving with mixed results. The weather has not been horrendous and the first-calf heifers are up close. the first calf born, however, was dead. The feeling of seeing the desire and efforts of a cow that wants to be a mother and is licking and nudging her dead calf is not good.

The second heifer was calving and having difficulty, so life moves on. The birth was assisted, but she ended up with a 96-pound calf. However, the heifer was belligerent and ornery. Her intent on inflicting damage to us or the calf was obvious, so out of the pen she went. She will spend her remaining days with us in the feedlot, but with us out of her reach.

Fortunately, heifer 7037 was still looking for a calf and adopted the calf with no questions asked. Sometimes things actually do work out.

The center has tried to keep birth weights low and calving ease high when selecting bulls for heifers. This year's sire of the calves was listed in the top 15 percent of the breed for calving ease and the top 45 percent of the breed for birth weight (the smaller birth weight expected progeny differences (EPD), the better).

The bull was a high-growth bull that is in the upper 15 percent of the breed for weaning weight, upper 10 percent for yearling weight and has very good carcass EPD values. The bull is a good bull, but is he a heifer bull?

In this case, the four calves that had difficult pulls or cesarean sections have averaged 84.5 pounds. Out of 26 heifers, we have lost three calves and assisted five births (one light assist). of the dead calves, two were born dead and the third was a cesarean section. Of the four difficult assisted births (other than the cesarean section), they are doing fine, but had big calves.

The four calves that needed assistance averaged 98 pounds and ranged from 92

to118 pounds. Of the 21 heifers that had no birthing problems, their calves averaged 82 pounds at birth and are doing fine.

Although hard to document, when a set of calving heifers are slow to recoup after calving and the calves are cumbersome at best, you should know you are pushing the envelope. We pushed the limits and created a manageable, but difficult situation.

Is the return for the added performance of the calves worthwhile? We will wait and see, but I can tell you it costs $2.80 a pound to produce a calf through cesarean section. There is no profit from calves that cost $2.80 per pound and have no heartbeat."

Your comments are always welcome at http://www.BeefTalk.com.

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Flip Video - A Great No-Brainer Tool for Cattle Promotion

A few months back, Morris Halliburton, of Halliburton Farms in Bells, Texas, told me about about a neat little camcorder that was easy to use. I checked it out and knew I'd really like to have one. Well I got lucky, and Santa Claus brought me one for Christmas! I've only lately started putting it to use, and it has been fun and really easy to work with.

It's smaller than a pack of cigarettes; it's so small you might even lose track of it in your purse! So I highly recommend a good case for it. I'm using a hard leather cell phone case for mine; and the clip comes in handy to keep it safely handy in one spot in your purse, your pocket, or your belt.

You can also make still photos from it, and oftentimes they are better photos than I can take with a standard still camera -- at least better posed ??????The video quality is not perfect? The really really nice HD video camera I have takes awesome quality video in comparsion -- but, that doesn't much matter if the software is too much of a pain to work with to get it from the camera to the computer and then to the web!

For a video of my handsome herd bull, JWest's Elvis, follow this link to it's location on Youtube captured from my Flip Video camera

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Food Allergy Articles on Suite101

I've recently become a contributing writer for Suite 101.com. I can write on a variety of topics and recently posted two articles directly related to food allergies.

You can read:
"Traveling by Plane with Food Allergies"
"Food Allergy Hidden Dangers".

There are many other articles about food allergies on Suite 101. Take a look.

For more food allergy info, check out the Food Allergy Assistant's website.

Sneak peek: Monday's Review on March 9, 2009 is a book review. You won't want to miss this novel featuring a family and food allergies and a crisis of faith and police and a crazy grandma. Any guesses? Tune in Monday for the reveal.

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Allergy Meds Dangerous for Those with Food Allergies

ELL (Eat Learn, Live) has put out a notice about milk ingredients in several popular allergy medications. For those with a dairy allergy, watch out for these medications containing dairy:

Zyrtec and Zyrtec-D Adult 10 mg tablets
Zyrtec Children’s Chewables (5mg & 10mg)

The Allergy/Asthma Information Association (AAIA) lists other allergy and asthma medications that contain milk:

· Singulair 4 mg granules & 10 mg tablets (not in the 4 mg or 5 mg tablets)
· Reactine, Aerius, Claritin tablets (not liquid form).
· Benadryl 50 mg pink/white capsule (not caplet, chewable tablets or liquid form)
· Prednisone tablets

These asthma medications also contain milk:
Advair
Flovent
Foradil aerolizer capsules
Oxeze turbuhaler
Spiriva capsules
Symbicort turbuhaler
Ventolin diskhaler, diskus, rotacaps

The bottom line is to read every label and question your doctor and/or pharmacist about ingredients in medicines.

I will be sending letters to the manufacturers of Zyrtec, Singulair, Claritin and Benadryl asking them to clearly state that the product contains milk and is dangerous to those with a milk allergy.

For additional food allergy information, visit the Food Allergy Assistant.

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Monday Review- Simply Boulder Sauces

This Monday Review is brought to you by Simply Boulder Sauces. Seth Mendelsohn's idea was to produce the finest culinary sauces using nutritious ingredients. He created five flavors including Lemon Pesto, Truly Teriyaki and Zesty Pineapple that will enhance any recipe.

You'll love the ingredients in the sauces. Instead of corn syrup, they are sweetened with agave nectar. There are no long chemicals listed on the label- just ingredients we're all familiar with, like pure olive oil, molasses and fruit juices.

According to Seth, "We try our hardest to limit allergens in products. One of the ways we do this is by using olive oil. Unlike many sauces, we never use soybean oil. We also use a wheat-free organic tamari in the Teriyaki and Coconut Peanut sauces. Some of our sauces do contain allergens such as soy or peanuts. We use good manufacturing processes to make sure that there is no cross contamination."

I had the opportunity to sample Simply Boulder Sauces. They are so flavorful and versatile. I love the Lemon Pesto on chicken and the Truly Teriyaki makes a great marinade. Try any of them as a dressing for salads or sandwiches. Use them for grilling or baking on chicken, beef or sea-food.

Check out Seth's "Sauce Talk" blog which is chock-full of information and recipes.

Go to Simply Boulder's site for products, ingredients (and country of origin), and how to buy the sauces.

See the Food Allergy Assistant's site for more food allergy information.

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