i've got fat feet and i cannot lie

lolo and i were out on saturday, and she got the yen for shoes. i perhaps cruelly but with only good intentions talked her out of a pair of shoes that looked great on her but that she would not have been able to walk in or dance in or do anything but look great in.

and while i was there i was looking at all the leather and suede, and thinking that i eat a cruelty-free diet, and i'd really like to wear cruelty-free shoes.  but here's the problem: i have quite wide feet. have you gone to mooshoes or zappo's and searched for vegan + wide widths?

if not, go make the experiment and come back and laugh with me when the results are either zero, or two pairs of fuzzy house slippers.

and if you have, and you have a source for vegan shoes for someone who wears 9w, please let me know.

thankyouverymuch

thursday thoughts

jehara left a thought provoking comment on my first post on this blog, wondering if it's my refrigerator that prompted the backsliding.

just the backstory--we have a really cheap-ass refrigerator. every now and then it totally freezes up, and then everything in the refrigerator goes bad if i don't notice it in time; we have to take everything out of the freezer and refrigerator, take out the bottom level of the freezer, get the ice blocks melted and out of there, reassemble the freezer, put everything back in and replace what didn't get ruined.

so yeah, that's definitely been part of the problem.

another part of the problem is that my kitchen is just nasty.  we have some spots in the floor where the peel and stick linoleum came up because there's some rot in the floor underneath. so no matter how much or how often we mop, the floor is always gross. the cabinets in the kitchen are really cheap stuff, and the fronts are coming off all the drawers. we keep banging them back on, but they're off again in a week. we also don't have enough cabinet or counter space. it's a really small unpleasant little kitchen area.

so the kitchen problems combined with joe being out of town so much means i get lazier than i should. and sometimes i have trouble sleeping, which means i have trouble getting up in the morning. take today, for instance. i went to see a movie last night because i just needed to unwind (more on that in a sec), so i didn't get home until almost 10 p.m. that meant getting up this morning was really difficult, and made even more difficult because lolo was coming early because we had to drop her mom off at work and then try to get to the office by 7. i also had to lure the dogs back behind the doggie gate in the hall because some people were coming to replace our back door today.  in all the furor, i didn't have time to eat my raisin bran (hello einstein bros) and totally forgot to grab lunch out of the freezer (would have been bbq riblets & a bag of veggies for me & lolo to share).

we have a cafe at work. before we moved into the new building, we were told there would be a salad bar, and i was ecstatic. there's not. they have overpriced pre-made salads that are (a) made out of salad butts; (b) have tons of cheese in them; and (c) usually have meat in them. they have veggie burgers but they're not very good. they have overpriced little cups of fruit that don't usually have a lot of taste. they have the occasional banana or red delicious apple, which are red yucky apples. please.  and they have plenty of pizza (usually meat, and they sometimes have vegetarian pizza, which is still covered with cheese), cooked vegetables (dripping with butter and grease), a grill where they do burgers and fries and chicken and turkey burgers and grilled cheese, and a little sandwich bar where i have been known to get a mustard sandwich with lettuce and tomato and a few cucumber slices.  basically, if you're an omni or a lacto-ovo, you're fine. vegan, not so much.  i did talk to the cafe manager a few weeks ago about getting black bean burgers to replace the bland unappetizing veggie burgers, and she said she'd check into it.  and just yesterday they emailed a survey to everyone in the building, which i have filled out and requested more vegan options.

so there are a whole lot of factors contributing to my backsliding. what can i do about them? because i'm the only person who can stop it.

seeing as how i have to go for convenience foods, i have to keep my freezer stocked.  i usually have a box or two of riblets, some fake chicken, some amy's burritos, and lots of frozen veggies.  i realize all the processed stuff may not be all that great, but it beats the offerings in the cafe at work or in the fast food places.  and lolo and i will usually share a bag of frozen veggies at lunch, along with whatever else, and when i'm on top of my game i'll have another bag of frozen veggies with my dinner.

i got a stainless steel water bottle to keep at work, and i've got a little mug for when i want some cider or green tea. i can make a batch of iced green or herb tea to keep in my fridge, and i can grab a bottle of that to take with me in the mornings.

when i have a big bowl of raisin bran with rice milk in the mornings, then i don't snack during the day. that means i've got to start getting up a little earlier, which means i've got to start going to bed a little earlier.  and actually right now i don't snack at all. lolo and i are working on a special project at work, and we're putting in 10 hour days and we're lucky if we get 15-20 minutes to scarf down some lunch.

one of our neighbours has a friend who does a lot of custom construction stuff, and he came by a few weeks ago and talked to joe. he was a blessing from heaven!! they negotiated a price, and he got the paint sanded off the house, repainted, installed our back door, and made some repairs that sorely needed to be made on the outside of the house.  he and i talked today, and he's going to give us an estimate for the kitchen floor, the cabinets and counter-tops, the painting, and installing a doggie door.  we're going to end up spending another $4k or so to get everything done that needs to be done in the kitchen, so i don't know how long it will take--we'll have to get things done in dribbles and drabbles--but it's going to be really, really nice to get those things completed. the doggie door may be the very first thing, because i've got to be able to get a full night's sleep without scout waking me up with his impossible-to-ignore whimpers because he wants to go outside.  the floor will definitely be the next thing, though.

so i think i'll end this post here. it's been good to ruminate on the situation and try to come up with solutions. and i'm going to take my night-time meds and go into the kitchen and get some green tea made up and into the fridge.

jehara, thanks for giving me an opportunity to stop and think.

victory!

during my first abortive attempt at going vegetarian, my husband really had a hard time with it. for some reason it just bugged him.  that's not why i returned to eating meat, but it did have an effect on me.

so this time, when i decided not only to go vegetarian but vegan, he started in again with the same arguments. he was as supportive as he could be, but just didn't get it.

he's out of town right now, and called me just as i was sitting down for dinner. i remarked that i was eating peas and fake chicken. he just about keeled over in horror because he heard the chicken part, but not the fake part. he said he loves his vegan wife, and he'd be very disappointed if i'd returned to eating meat.

woot!

black bean salsa

oops! forgot  i promised you the recipe.  all the quantities are pretty much up to your discretion. i'm not one for measuring.

1 large can or two small cans black beans, rinsed & drained
chopped up jicama
2 ears of corn, kernels cut from the cob
2 or 3 purple shallots, finely minced
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
a handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
a little crushed red pepper
some cumin
some organic apple cider vinegar
the juice of one clementine, squeezed
a squirt or two of agave nectar
a little canola or olive oil

mix everything up and cover, allowing the flavours some time to blend. you can store it in the refrigerator for a day or two, but allow it to come to room temperature before eating. have it with tortilla chips, or tortillas, or rice, or by the spoonful.

monday thoughts

i've been having killer tongue pain lately. probably from drinking too much soda. so i went cold tofu, and made it through the day with plenty of water and no soda. i was worried it might be a vitamin b related thing, but saw that my daily vitamins--that i'm good at taking--have b12 in them.

it really seriously needs to stop raining for a while.  my side yard is flooded, and my back yard is flooded, and the dogs are so not wanting to go outside to do their business. and, in all fairness, i can't say that i blame them. i wouldn't be wanting to go outside in this muck to do my business, either. if the rain will stop and my yard will dry out, i'll feel more like getting into the kitchen and doing something.

lolo and i went to spiral diner for lunch on saturday. i've made some of the recipes for her--she seriously loves the spiral chili--but it was her first time to go to the restaurant. she got a crazy huge salad with spicy ranch dressing, and i feasted on a vlt. that was some kind of good. makes me wish they were open on mondays, because i'd probably have gone there tonight. but the amy's tamale verde that i had for dinner was really good with a few multigrain tortilla chips and some rice milk.

nothing earth-shattering to say tonight, other than it feels good to be getting the crap back out of my diet.

meet your meat

to people who would say that vegetarians get their knickers in a knot over nothing, i say, "watch this."

to people who say they only eat white meat, or they only eat lean meat, or they only eat organic, free-range meat, i say, "watch this."

to people who say they aren't doing any harm by eating eggs and/or dairy products, i say, "watch this."

to anyone who wants to know some of my many reasons for becoming  vegan i say, "watch this."

now it's your turn. watch this.

Meet Your Meat

after all. . .

tomorrow is another day.





i was at b&n last week looking at journals. they have beautiful journals, hand-crafted with thick luscious paper that make you not want to spoil them with your scrawls. and they have journals that are bound in leather.





wait. what?





leather.

(image obtained from FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

no wonder she looks so pissed off. we kill her babies, take her milk, stuff her full of food she was never intended to eat, and pierce her ears with those ugly tags! and then we kill her and eat her years before her natural lifespan because we've worn her out. and then we wear her in the form of leather shoes, leather boots, leather pants. and we sit on her. ever heard of leather furniture? and we write in those beautiful leather bound journals i was talking about earlier.

when i looked at those gorgeous journals, and took the word leather out of the equation and replaced it with cow skin, it didn't seem so appealing.

being vegetarian/vegan is about so much more than not eating meat. it's about treating God's creatures as sentient beings with as much right to walk this earth as we do.

i was vegan for about 5 months this year, and then backslid into a vegetarian/mostly vegan routine. i allowed myself to get lazy. the cheese that i ate clogged up my throat and made me feel really gross. i cannot see even an advertisement for a chicken sandwich without thinking of the videos i've seen of tiny chicks being debeaked. but i allowed myself to justify eating a little cheese because it didn't involve the animal being killed.

so i will ignore the fact that by eating cheese i'm supporting the veal industry. i will ignore the fact that by eating cheese i am supporting the slaughterhouses. i will ignore the fact that--well, the fact is, i could go on and on here.

i will tell you that i am ignoring it no longer. i don't want to eat food that once had a face or would become a face if allowed to live. i don't want to eat the horror and panic animals feel at what we do to them.

so my ambition is to return to being vegan in the truest sense of the word. wanna come along? i'll give you the recipe for my famous black bean salsa/salad. tune in tomorrow for the recipe.