Vegan update and some cuteness

I haven't left the house today.  Moments ago I went to change into my night-night clothes (can't....turn off...Mommy...talk) to find that I was still in them.  It'd be easy to criticize myself and fill my brain with words of incriminating laziness, and I'm not going to.  My day was perfect.  I got to coddle my clingy, needy and flippantly emotional baby (ahem: nearly two-year old).  As a person who is highly concerned with the day that my baby won't want me to snuggle her and hold her close, I relish the opportunity to do so.  Molars breaking through puffy gums has it's upsides (yes, I've officially decided that she's not getting sick- sorry I've been avoiding you all).

It's been nearly a month since we went herbivore.  It's not as hard as I anticipated.  It's actually pretty simple, unless we want to eat out.  Nothing will jerk you into the reality of the western diet like not eating a western diet.  Meat, eggs, milk, cheese- it's on/in EVERYTHING.  It's really no wonder that the biggest killers (heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes) can be directly linked back to diet and animal foods.  I've learned a lot of really interesting information.  Not the kind of vague, unrelatable information that people spew out when trying to get you to agree with their wild notions of life- but the kind of stuff that makes sense.  Chunks of solid observations that I could have made on my own, had I not been moving through life without the awareness to question what I was eating.  If you were thinking that this would just be a phase for us, thinking that maybe in a few weeks we could hang out again and we wouldn't be weirdos anymore...you're just going to have to embrace our new path.  It's here to stay folks.

My favorite vegan chocolate chip cookies so far:

I feel like I have to address the ever present comment that endlessly comes up and  goes something like, "I love meat too much to do that" or, "I couldn't live with out cheese".  I'm not terribly interested in defending mine and my husband's choice to eat this way, and this one irks me.  Just because I gave it up, doesn't mean I don't love cheese and chicken and all it's glorious applications.  I do.  For the record I just wanna say, "Yum".  Our choice doesn't come from the place of, "that tastes gross".  It comes from knowing what the ramifications are on our bodies, the incredible cruelty of the industry and the destruction it is causing the planet.  In this moment our response is the only one we know how to take on: don't support it.  Boom.  That said, I am not against being in conversations about our choice, bring it on!

On another note, why does my kid have to be so big?  How can I, me, have a nearly two year old??  AYE! The past few days, when I change her into her night-night clothes and she is laying on the changing table, practically nude, she puts her fingers on her chest and says, "Like Mommas".  I have given up my quest for her to accept that she has a chest and does not have anything "like Mommas".  She won't give on this point.  I suppose I should just be thankful that she isn't saying she has boobs anymore.  That was traumatizing.

Her most favorite thing of late is to help me cook.  She is obsessed with it.  Our kitchen is the most tiny kitchen ever, so it's not really conducive to sharing the sliver of available counter space.  We make it work though.  Her main duties are stirring and scooping.  Not cutting with mommy's knife (this week we had a bandaided finger) but with Ro's knife (a plastic, toddler friendly version), which is waaaaay less cool because, well, it doesn't cut.

Lastly, I had said I would keep y'all informed of my edible vegan-recipe findings.  I have found some goodies!  The cookie recipe above is one of four that I've tried and is by far the best.  I don't use carob chips because Ghirardelli's chips are vegan!!!  Woo-hoo!!  A suggestion: if you are using a cooking stone (I always do) then heat that sucker up in the oven while it's preheating, the cookies will come out way better.  I have found a decent mac&cheese recipe that everyone here ate up in a hurry (for that recipe I'd do less mustard, it was a bit too....mustardy).  I think the key to these recipes is to acknowledge that they are not going to be the same.  Because they aren't the same.  I go into it with the mentality that, "this is a new dish that I haven't tried before" and therefore don't get caught up in the "this isn't like the blue-box mac&cheese". They are really good and they are their own dishes.  If you give it a go and are on the search for nutritional yeast, it's in the bulk foods section.  It's flaky stuff and it took me a few trips to the stores to figure out what the heck it was (is it a solid? liquid? powder? what is it?!?!?!?). 

Have fun!