Woke up with a couple hours sleep yet to fit in, not uncommon for me. Thinking about an upcoming devotional meeting, where the first part is devoted to God, and the second part is devoted to waffles. Fine and good, but people often make scrambled eggs and sausage, yogurt and so on. So my plan is to bring alternative comestibles to share. Still, giving in to the desire to eat those other death-dealing foods was my downfall in the past. I have to remember that just because kind souls provided them, no sausages ever actually leaped into my mouth unaided.
Although my newfound belief in and commitment to saving my eyesight, my hearing, my mind, and my organs and limbs, let alone my life, has given me a new sense of life, and a charge every time I make a choice for life and not death in my food choices, it's easy to lose focus. It's easy for my resolve to become eroded by constant exposure to animal sourced foods. I'm sure eventually it will become second nature to make these choices, as long as I never give in. But it's a white-knuckle experience.
So I was thinking about "getting through" the next few socialization opportunities and retaining this focus, and remembered the 23rd Psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
My enemies being certain foods, of course, not people! And I promise not to dump oil on my head at the table. And I'm still looking for Shirley, Goodness and Mercy. Sometimes they get lost.
I also ran across this quotation from Shoghi Effendi posted on Facebook, which has to do with teaching the Baha'i Faith, not to do with changing my eating style. Nevertheless, with all due respect to the beloved Guardian, these words seemed most appropriate to my journey:
There is no time to lose. There is no room left for vacillation. Myriads hunger for the bread of life. . . . To try, to persevere, is to ensure ultimate and complete victory.
I hope to do a following post soon to outline why changing away from animal-sourced foods is so crucial to the survival of humankind and to the planet, and why it is so urgent.
Hurrah, thank you and all to my brave friend Rachel who is currently choosing life by doing a juice fast, coincidentally with my choice to turn towards a plant based eating style.
Showing posts with label Vegan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vegan. Show all posts
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
In Which I Have Fun in Public
Our Director of Nursing at "Mountain View" is leaving for a post closer to her home, so several of us staff members met at Applebees for dinner to say goodbye. She has such wonderful qualities, honesty, a quirky sense of humor, rarely found in DNS's, and she'll be hard to replace. I will miss her.
When the dinner was planned, I had just committed to the plant based whole foods eating style, so I stopped by Applebees to scout out the menu then. I had steamed vegetables with a house salad, and learned Rule Number One: Always ask questions. The house salad had cheese and bacon on it, and they very kindly made me another one without. So I had found an edible entree and figured I was set for tonight. Honestly, this was the only plant-based entree in the entire menu.
So tonight when the group of us were seated, I scanned the menu through and through and didn't see this entree. Oh, dear. Fortunately I asked the waiter, and he said they still make that entree but it just isn't listed on the menu any more. Not popular enough. So all was well. Along with a salad with greens, cucumber and plum tomatoes, the steamed vegetables included cauliflower, broccoli, baby carrots, zucchini, and potatoes. Delicious and ample. So I was able to talk about my change to a whole food plant based diet with the friends at my table and impart a lot of information. For example, that casein contains an opiate-like substance, and some other foods such as chocolate that also affect our brains and keep us "hooked." [See Breaking the Food Seduction by Neal Barnard, MD.]
I'm sure followers will recall that in 2009 I also made this switch, eventually defeated by my occasional, then constant, "cheating." This time I wasn't planning on discussing this in my blog, but I'm feeling so good about it, and feeling so much better, and getting such a charge out of taking control of what I choose to eat, it's hard not to talk about it. So I am. Anyway, I invented and learned so many recipes last time that I was much better prepared to make the change this time.
We had so much fun, meeting in regular clothes instead of scrubs, away from the stress of work, talking about where we were from [Cairo, Ghana, the Philippines for my tablemates], children, marriages, school, languages, travel, cruises, childbirth, surgeries, so on and so forth. I discovered other people at work like me a lot better than I imagined. We had a blast, and decided we should go out more often.
I made rye bread today from the simplest of the recipes I found on the internet. I used a lot of cornmeal, as I had seen in some other recipes, and it turned out hard on the outside, sweet and a little dense, soft and crumbly on the inside. Maybe difficult for sandwich bread, but tasty and filling anyway.
Experimented with kale the other day, plugging it into my formula for pea soup: sauteed onions, vegetables, a star vegetable such as cabbage or beets, and dry yellow peas, plus 8 cups of water, ten minutes in pressure cooker and slow pressure release. It failed miserably. Neither the kale nor the peas cooked thoroughly, so I cooked it longer, then finally pureed the entire mess. If all else fails, puree. So it was rich and satisfying in pureed form, but I doubt I'll try again. I'll just have to learn other recipes for kale. I'm not defeated that easily. Kale is just so full of wonderful nutrients.
When the dinner was planned, I had just committed to the plant based whole foods eating style, so I stopped by Applebees to scout out the menu then. I had steamed vegetables with a house salad, and learned Rule Number One: Always ask questions. The house salad had cheese and bacon on it, and they very kindly made me another one without. So I had found an edible entree and figured I was set for tonight. Honestly, this was the only plant-based entree in the entire menu.
So tonight when the group of us were seated, I scanned the menu through and through and didn't see this entree. Oh, dear. Fortunately I asked the waiter, and he said they still make that entree but it just isn't listed on the menu any more. Not popular enough. So all was well. Along with a salad with greens, cucumber and plum tomatoes, the steamed vegetables included cauliflower, broccoli, baby carrots, zucchini, and potatoes. Delicious and ample. So I was able to talk about my change to a whole food plant based diet with the friends at my table and impart a lot of information. For example, that casein contains an opiate-like substance, and some other foods such as chocolate that also affect our brains and keep us "hooked." [See Breaking the Food Seduction by Neal Barnard, MD.]
I'm sure followers will recall that in 2009 I also made this switch, eventually defeated by my occasional, then constant, "cheating." This time I wasn't planning on discussing this in my blog, but I'm feeling so good about it, and feeling so much better, and getting such a charge out of taking control of what I choose to eat, it's hard not to talk about it. So I am. Anyway, I invented and learned so many recipes last time that I was much better prepared to make the change this time.
We had so much fun, meeting in regular clothes instead of scrubs, away from the stress of work, talking about where we were from [Cairo, Ghana, the Philippines for my tablemates], children, marriages, school, languages, travel, cruises, childbirth, surgeries, so on and so forth. I discovered other people at work like me a lot better than I imagined. We had a blast, and decided we should go out more often.
I made rye bread today from the simplest of the recipes I found on the internet. I used a lot of cornmeal, as I had seen in some other recipes, and it turned out hard on the outside, sweet and a little dense, soft and crumbly on the inside. Maybe difficult for sandwich bread, but tasty and filling anyway.
Experimented with kale the other day, plugging it into my formula for pea soup: sauteed onions, vegetables, a star vegetable such as cabbage or beets, and dry yellow peas, plus 8 cups of water, ten minutes in pressure cooker and slow pressure release. It failed miserably. Neither the kale nor the peas cooked thoroughly, so I cooked it longer, then finally pureed the entire mess. If all else fails, puree. So it was rich and satisfying in pureed form, but I doubt I'll try again. I'll just have to learn other recipes for kale. I'm not defeated that easily. Kale is just so full of wonderful nutrients.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Meat and Potatoes Vegan
I used to be a real meat-and-potatoes person. Now I'm just potatoes.
When I launched myself into a plant-based, whole foods diet in April, it felt like jumping off a cliff, abandoning my friendly staple foods, fearful because I needed to learn a whole new way of eating. Like a toddler in a non-childproof house, all my psyche heard for weeks was "No. No. No. No! Get off that! Don't touch that! Get out of there." I entered upon what was for me a very steep learning curve.
I used to be an excellent cook for things like chicken and dumplings. Your basic meat and potatoes fare. So I started checking out vegan cookbooks in the library: The Asian Vegan, The Vegan Mediterranean Diet, Vegans Go to School, that sort of thing. My library fines have gone way up as I stare at the lists of ingredients in bafflement. There are literally hundreds of cooking ingredients I have never heard of, new staples in each type of cuisine that I really have no idea where to obtain.
My husband is a lifelong vegetarian and his favorite food is rice and lentils. I haven't even seen that in a cookbook. It's too easy.
I just mainly shop at Fred Meyer. About five hundred square feet in the corner of Fred Meyers is devoted to health foods, right next to the produce section, where I buy ninety percent of the foods I eat. I can get whole wheat bread without that horrible caramel coloring or raisin juice that is often used to give bread a uniform fake brown color and unpleasant flavor. I can get all you can eat nuts, seeds, dried fruits, quinoa, oats, and so forth from the bins. I can get freshly ground peanut butter and Mori-Nu tofu and Silk plain soy milk in aseptic packaging.
But I don't know where to get all these weird foods. I guess I'll learn, like I've learned everything else, step by step. In the meantime, there's always rice and lentils. And potatoes.
When I launched myself into a plant-based, whole foods diet in April, it felt like jumping off a cliff, abandoning my friendly staple foods, fearful because I needed to learn a whole new way of eating. Like a toddler in a non-childproof house, all my psyche heard for weeks was "No. No. No. No! Get off that! Don't touch that! Get out of there." I entered upon what was for me a very steep learning curve.
I used to be an excellent cook for things like chicken and dumplings. Your basic meat and potatoes fare. So I started checking out vegan cookbooks in the library: The Asian Vegan, The Vegan Mediterranean Diet, Vegans Go to School, that sort of thing. My library fines have gone way up as I stare at the lists of ingredients in bafflement. There are literally hundreds of cooking ingredients I have never heard of, new staples in each type of cuisine that I really have no idea where to obtain.
My husband is a lifelong vegetarian and his favorite food is rice and lentils. I haven't even seen that in a cookbook. It's too easy.
I just mainly shop at Fred Meyer. About five hundred square feet in the corner of Fred Meyers is devoted to health foods, right next to the produce section, where I buy ninety percent of the foods I eat. I can get whole wheat bread without that horrible caramel coloring or raisin juice that is often used to give bread a uniform fake brown color and unpleasant flavor. I can get all you can eat nuts, seeds, dried fruits, quinoa, oats, and so forth from the bins. I can get freshly ground peanut butter and Mori-Nu tofu and Silk plain soy milk in aseptic packaging.
But I don't know where to get all these weird foods. I guess I'll learn, like I've learned everything else, step by step. In the meantime, there's always rice and lentils. And potatoes.
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