Easter....eggs...oh, no

It's safe to say that I am hyper-aware of the things I want my child to remember.  As if I have a choice, ha!  I treasure and fondly reminisce on yearly traditions I had as a wee-one.  I am certain most of the memories weren't choreographed by my parents either, which takes my hovering to a new silliness-level.

So consider me: mom who wants to create smiley memories at every turn, and add into the mix Easter (a holiday traditionally marked by egg coloring)  along with new-found veganism.

My tradition-o-meter was flashing and honking and steaming and raising a ruckus that had my blood pressure rising and tears forming in my eyes as I considered that egg dying my not be in my child's future.  I spend a good few minutes freaking out about this.  Then, all hail the internet, I checked in with my vegan brethren and found my new traditions!

As my wise old Uncle Joe told me (nearly 6 years ago- so don't quote me verbatim): we are making a new family, with new traditions and new habits- you are a new unit, the old one is still there, but this one is for you to take and make your own.

My Uncle Joe married us, but before he would he wanted to meet with us and chat some.  Good move, Uncle.  I remember that ALL the time.  I cherish it.  It gives me permission to be a new family, unbounded by the old one and free to make new choices, if that is what we want to do.

Our new tradition looks like this: cover a small balloon with tissue paper painted over with a flour/water mixture, let it dry and pop the balloon to get it out.  Fill the "egg" with goodies (this year will be stickers, Annie's gummy bunnies, and something else) and then hide the eggs Saturday after the wee-one falls asleep.

OH MY GOSH I CANNOT WAIT!

I love, love, LOVE watching my kid explore new experiences.  It's like crack for me- I get so amped up to see what she'll do, how she'll problem solve, her excitement at figuring things out.  What a rush!  I guess vegan Easter won't be ruined after all.

On a related note: stay tuned for an unlikely Easter bunny story, coming soon to this blog near you.....

Banana-rama

I doubt she'll remember when she was two and her Momma made her pancakes, but I if I do it often enough then (hopefully) her happy receptors will fire when she smells pancakes cooking in her older years.

I've made these suckers twice and twice they've been a hit.  Plus, they're vegan *ding*ding*ding*ding*ding!!  Winner!  They are Ginger Cream Cheese-Glazed Banana Pancakes.  They are a special occasion breakfast, and this morning's special-ness was simply the fact that we were together and it was drizzling outside.  Instant inspiration.

Bonus?  They come together pretty quick.  The only vegan-y stuff (meaning the stuff that was in my fridge and likely isn't in yours) is the tofutti cream cheese and vegan butter.  If you wanna make this (and you do) then I don't see why you can't just make it in your own style.

I started E on one (he didn't remember how he loved them last time) and he promptly made the yummy sounds that mean, "I'll be wanting more".  Ro chowed.  I was a proud Momma.  

The recipe can be found here from The Family Kitchen.  My twist on their preparation would be: add another banana (they call for 2) and prep the glaze in increments in the microwave instead of having another pot on the stove top.  

Lastly, marvel at your beautiful creation and chow that grub down!

Vegans are annoying

I hate labeling myself.  I don't want to fit into a category.  I cringe when someone says that I am this one thing or that.  As if simply the word associated to my person will now give you a context in which to communicate with me.  I'd really rather you just spoke to me the way you intended to, before I acquired all sorts of labels.

Some of my (least) favorites: stay-at-home-mom (SAHM).  This is one I wear with pride.  I adore staying at home with my truest love.  There is a stigma, however.  When someone I barely know finds this out about me, they look at me through SAHM glasses.  This goes one of two ways.

1-"oh, you are so lucky!"  Let's be clear here.  I am NOT lucky.  I did my homework.  I married a guy who thought the same thing I did: having a Momma at home with the babies is super important.  We make sacrifices to have it this way.  Scratch that.  We make choices to have it this way.  I don't feel like my life is lacking.  We bought a house when both of us had income.  Continuing to pay a mortgage, property taxes, credit card debt, utilities, gasoline, blah, blah, blah, wasn't an option on one income.  We filed for bankruptcy.  Our pride was kind of a whiny little b*tch during this time, but we got over it.  It's just "stuff".  Now we live in a place that is one third the size, we all sleep in one bedroom and our back yard is shared.  We got rid of so much "stuff" that I cannot really describe to you the volume.  We are goldfish.  We chose it this way.

2- "I could never do that".  Well...you could.  You'd have to make the choice to.  Please let's not act like I have a super power here.  I think my job is super important and rewarding.  So much that I choose to do it instead of doing something I'd get paid for.  It sucks for me when Moms say they couldn't stay at home.  It usually boils down to either they think their family couldn't survive without her income or that they believe they couldn't be with their kids for so many hours.  They think they'd go crazy.  Or some such nonsense.  Then they have short lived, snippets of time on the cusps of waking and going back to sleep to spend time with their babies.  This is their complaint, not one I made up for them.

Are your toes stepped on?  Are you feeling defensive?  I love you anyways.

Another one: vegan.  EEK!  Maybe it's because I am so new at it that I feel like my ammo is lacking.  Notice I went with the word, "ammo".  That's right, I feel attacked pretty often.  I see that it's my interpretation, when people give me a "look" and I see, "you're kinda weird".  A month and a half ago I was no such weirdo.  Today the bartender at our lunch venue did the full eye roll, said: "oh god, I can't even talk to you" and walked away.  In an attempt to be.....funny?  Ugh.  I don't even wanna talk about it with anyone, because it becomes a thing.  I wanna eat my food and you can eat yours.  Why is the conversation always about how you (you are the other person in this imaginary conversation) could never give up **insert favorite animal-derived food here** and therefore could never be vegan?  GOOD FOR YOU.  Somehow, just by being a person who has made a food choice, I am now an outsider who is strange.  If you wanna give up junk food or wheat- you're noble.  But I'm a crazy person.
My conclusion here is that vegan people get really passionately into veganism.  I get it.  What's not to be passionate about?  It's so awesome that I want the world to choose it too.  But it seems that this passion comes off as annoying or pushy, so there is a preconceived annoyingness that the receiver of such conversation is armed for.  And thus, I am now annoying.

I want to have preferences and passions without carrying their labels.  I'm not a stay-at-home-mom.  I am a mother whose full time job it is to raise my child.  I am not a vegan.  I am a woman who eats only plant-based foods.  How does that land?  They are less weighty, right?  Less connotations associated with them? The media and who-ever hasn't spoiled their inherent loveliness.

It's my goal to be this non-judgmental person who enters into communication with another person and speaks to that person...not that person's labels.  Won't you join me?

February 10: Something you're proud of in the past few days

Being proud of myself isn't my default mode.  I'm pretty humble, I avoid acknowledging myself for a job well done.  So let me just stew on this idea for a moment, this idea of being proud of myself for something.  Toot my own horn, you could say.

Ok.  I got it.

In the past few days I had the courage to invite people over to our home and cook a vegan meal.  I debated cooking something "normal" for them, so as not be be filed under "people whose house we don't want to eat at".  I am proud to report that I let go of needing them to like it.  Of course, I hoped they did, but I decided to detach myself from frantically making sure...which would look like: apologizing, cooking up something new, making it "right" somehow.  My mantra was, "they are grown ups and my friends, if they want something new they can ask".  And then I exhaled.  Phew!  It was tough, and I did it.

Also, I am quite proud of our kid.  She knows all her ABC's, she can count to 20, she sings 5+ songs on her own.  She says, "please" and "thank you".  She speaks her wants and needs more than she whines about them. Her joyful little self spreads happiness like wildfire through a crowd.  Yesterday she was singing "You are my sunshine" and "Twinkle, Twinkle" unabashedly in the store.  Grins worked their way across all the patrons faces.  It was awesome.  I can't take all the credit, and I'll take a chunk.  We've been conscientious of how we speak to her, how we interact with her, we follow up with our requests of her.  It's WORK.  It's working out beautifully.

What about?

So there is a lot of concern about our choice to go herbivore.  Concerns that it's not good for us, that we'll be deficient, weak and puny.  So let's address the prevailing questions because in all honesty, they are the questions I had too.  I'm just going to spew forth info that I am working from and if you wanna find sources and such, well you're already online...

Calcium- the calcium of a western diet (ours) is primarily from dairy.  Cow's milk was made for baby cows, goats milk for baby goats, etc.  There is no arguing that.  Milk from any mammal was made just for that mammal's baby.  We are the ONLY animal that harvests another animals breast milk to drink for ourselves (and people get freaked out about breastfeeding infants- go figure).  Consider that we aren't meant to suckle from a cow and that our natural food sources (plants) are already perfectly prepared to give us all that we need to survive.  Not only that, but it's in a form that is readily usable, unlike dairy.  I think it's important to notice who is promoting milk as THE source of calcium.  There is a great marketing push from the dairy industry that endlessly plants seeds in our brains that not only do we need lots of calcium but we need to get it from milk.  It's just not true.  Follow the money.

Some sources of plant calcium are:
Collard greens, kale, soy beans, okra, bok choy, tahini, almonds, broccoli and of course any fortified drinks (orange juice, soy milk) and tofu.

Protein- there is also enough protein from plant sources to support a human body's needs.  Our body's make up (intestine length for one) is that of an herbivore.  High cholesterol, heart disease, obesity and the like are not possible unless you are a meat eater.  Animals in nature (not us!) that eat meat have innards that are designed to move the dead carcass through faster than our bodies do.  Meat doesn't sit around in their gut, getting all the "bad" stuff absorbed into their bodies.  Meat eaters in nature will never die of heart disease, high cholesterol or obesity because they can't.  Our bodies weren't designed to have dead muscle sitting around in our insides for so long (our innards are long).

Some sources of plant protein are:
Soy beans, lentils, black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, pinto beans, black eyed peas, lima beans, peas, peanut butter, almonds, cashews, brown rice, broccoli, spinach and potatoes.

There is SO much more to talk about here.  Like the fact that countries that don't drink/eat dairy like we do suffer rarely from osteoporosis (which seems impossible if we need calcium for our bones, right?).  Or how insanely cruel the food-animal industry is (including the fact that standards that are put into place are written to give the 'farmer' permission to do as he pleases).

If there's interest, I'll go into it more.  I don't intend for this to become a soap box for my choices, and I'm willing to share where I'm coming from.  There are two places that have some potent info, I'd recommend watching both of them at some point, just as a place to think from.  "Forks Over Knives" is a documentary that is available on netflix.  The other is a guy who goes around the country giving lectures for free, someone video taped him at one of the lectures at a college and you can watch it on youtube here.

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!

To vege or not to vege

Happiest New Year- and on that note, does it annoy anyone else that people think this is going to be "better!", "more fulfilling!", "my year!" for no other reason than another day has passed that we humans dub a "new year"?  Word to the wise (this is for me too, no doubt): every single moment is an opportunity to make this life "better", "more fulfilling", etc. and if you weren't going to do it last year...well there is nothing about the fact that the date is 1/1/12 that is going to magically make things happen for you.

I do like the idea of stepping back and reflecting on the possibilities of my future.  Making lists of things to accomplish, chores to do, purchases to save for (see: car) and then making a game plan to execute it all.  One thing that Ethan and I decided to shift on our life is our eating habits.  This came about not as a new year's resolution but as a commitment to being healthy and attractive to each other as well as to be the most energetic, happy, healthy people/examples for our daughter.  Our game plan: eliminate animal food.

I hear you: "Ah!  Why so extreme?!", "Where will you get your protein?", "That's not healthy!".

Rest assured friends, your concerns are unfounded.

Both of us also acknowledged that this would be a difficult task in today's environment.  How often do you see a plate that doesn't feature meat and/or cheese?  Rare.  We also want to be successful in our lifestyle change.  So our game plan looks like: home life is vegan (we can control this), outside the home we do what we can to make vegan choices and won't fret if that isn't a possibility.  In other words, we aren't going hard-core.

Turns out, I feel great when I don't eat animal stuff.  I feel lighter on my feet and (TMI?) going to the bathroom is no problem.  My greatest vice is sugar.  Oh, man is it ever!  This is where my greatest struggle will be.  It's also where my body will benefit the most.  Prepping vegan meals doesn't include adding sugar or eating cookies, candy, sweets in general.  I'm excited for the possibility of being free from my addiction.  I feel like crappola after I indulge and  yet I do- over and over again.

I hope you're looking forward to hearing about this vegan (sorta) adventure.  I intend to share successful (read: delicious) recipes as well as divulge ramifications.  I see a new body shape in my future...

Plus, we've got this gorgeous creature to take care of and giving her the best is a commitment we don't take lightly.

Don't worry, I won't be evangelically pushing veganism onto you.  It's an adventure we're on and I'm just excited about sharing the possibilities with you.