My First Vegan Passover

Good Pesach to all who celebrate with us here and around the world. We are having our seder tomorrow night with charoset sweetened with agave nectar, matzoh balls made with Ener-G Egg Replacer in a vegetable broth, whole wheat matzohs, horseradish, and Blue Plate Specials from Whole Foods. Why the latter, you ask? Because I am vegan and my partner remains an omnivore. So he'll have chicken, a veggie side and kugel, and I'll have their Candle Cafe Tofu Balls rolled in Sesame Seeds, vegan cherry kugel, and a veggie side.

I feel a lot of gratitude for our many blessings at this special season. More secular than religious, I have chosen to mark the holiday with a few mitzvahs instead of strict adherence to ritual. Somehow it feels that Hashem would find this more worthy of blessing than my stumbling through the Haggadah trying to do all the right things in the right order and telling the story right without losing all the people around the table in my ineptitude.

This is the first year I feel in harmony with the planet and with the values I knew I ought to honor but couldn't seem to reach.

Remembering Mom

Mom died 4 years ago yesterday, and I forgot to light a candle, so this is her yahrtzeit.

God bless you, Mom. You taught me so much about compassion for all living things, and your years as a vegetarian inspired me. Life is okay now without you here, especially with your cares and health issues gone. I miss you terribly nearly every day. But l feel closer to you now in many ways, just a thought, an action, a word or a prayer away. I love you and I always will.

It's day 12 today for me as a real vegan, and I've been managing better than I thought I would. I even lost about a pound this past week. Last night we went to Red Robin and I had Red's Rice Bowl, sauteed zucchini, yellow squash, red pepper, snowpeas and mushrooms with a little teriyaki sauce atop rice with some Chinese noodles, and a side salad.

Breakfast today was my now-usual Big Bowl of high fiber cereals, with a sliced kiwi, cup of mixed fresh berries, some dried currants, sliced almonds and some pumpkin seeds, tablespoon of flax seed meal, and soy milk. For lunch out we went to our local pizza joint and my husband had a couple of plain slices while I had a veggie hero, no cheese, no mayo, and sprinkled with oil and vinegar. I added a small package of pistachios for protein, and it was a good meal.

Dinner tonight will be either a pasta with marinara and no cheese, or something else vegan from the Olive Garden that just opened near us this week. Their minestrone is vegan as far as I can tell, too. Tomorrow night I will make my first Vegan Alfredo Sauce, and I have all the stuff I need, (except vegan parmesan cheese, and not every recipe requires it): Mori-Nu silken tofu, nutritional yeast, soymilk and the appropriate herbs and spices. With some penne, that ought to be good.


And so, my vegan adventure continues, and I am finding it very do-able. More later.

Vegan Living: Today is Day Five!

I finally made the transition from lacto-ovo vegetarian to vegan! Now that I've done it, I can't believe how long I resisted doing it, thinking that giving up the cheese, butter, eggs and other dairy products, not to mention all foods that contain them in any quantity whatever, would be incredibly difficult. Not so.

Why?

First, my last physical showed my cholesterol was 263. I went off Lipitor back in 2007 when I was losing a lot of weight on a low-carb diet, and I was sure that because I had been abstaining from all meat, fish and poultry my number would be low now. Wrong! My doc wrote:

Your cholesterol was 263 and your LDL 167, so being a vegetarian doesn't help your lipid profile. You are going to need medication.

Well, I thought I'd just reduce the cheese, eggs and other dairy easily to correct this, but I haven't been able to do so. Then on the Today Show I saw Rip Esselstyn, author of The Engine 2 Diet (E-2) which I mentioned a few weeks back, and I got excited about his plan. However, I'd recently placed a couple of other on-line orders and felt I should wait to send for it, and gradually the idea faded. Then I saw a reference to an interesting cookbook, Terry Bryant's Vegan Soul Food Kitchen.

So I ordered both books, and I told myself I could eat cheese, eggs and other dairy until they came. That day was Tuesday, March 17, 2009, St. Patrick's Day. I opened the box eagerly. I scanned both books briefly, being at work at the time, and brought them home. The E-2 diet seemed daunting, with no added fats or cheese substitutes and no refined carbs. I didn't think I could do it. Bryant Terry's recipes looked awesome and easy to follow. So I told myself I could simply be honestly vegan, no exceptions, and see how it went. Every day I made vegan choices.

We ate in on Tuesday and Thursday, and on Wednesday we brought in Middle Eastern takeout, and I had Koshary, a delicious mix of chopped vegetables, lentils, garbanzos, rice, and rotini pasta, with some marinara sauce and fried onions on top. Last night we went out for Indian food and I asked the waiter which items didn't have any dairy, and it was easy because there were only two (everything else called "vegetarian" had cream or butter in it), so I enjoyed a spicy lentil dish with rice. Yummy, but in the middle of the night I felt I'd overdone the salt.

Yesterday before dinner I shopped at a local health food store and stocked up on many items Rip recommends. That included a loaf of Ezekiel bread, non-dairy yogurt, nutritional yeast, Smart Fiber cereal and some other stuff. Today I went to my local Mr. Z's market and found an even better selection of some items: Mori-Nu silken tofu used in many vegan recipes, organic frozen and fresh fruits, and ingredients for tomorrow's slow-cooker chili.

Today I had an E-2 breakfast ("Rip's Big Bowl") with lots of high fiber cereal, dried fruit, nuts flax seed meal, and soy milk. It was delicious. For lunch we went to a little place my husband loves. "Sweet Creams" features lunch and ice cream. I had a green salad with balsamic vinaigrette on the side and a PBR sandwich--peanut butter, raisins, dark chocolate chips and cinnamon on a dense whole grain bread. It was all good. Later this afternoon, I made Vegan Brownies that are amazing. So, it can be done.

Gist of my experience: it's easier to abstain completely from cheese (Rip calls it addictive and explains why) than to have a little. Kind of like alcoholism. It's easier to stop our drinking altogether than to try to moderate it.

The AA Big Book (on page xxx in "The Doctor's Opinion) says,

The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence.

And so I am abstaining entirely, and one day at a time, it's working. I'll keep checking in. Here's a great pyramid to guide my path. Maybe yours, too.

Daisy, Daisy . . .

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Here in the mountains of Northeastern PA the snow is almost gone and it's supposed to be 65 today, about 20 degrees over normal for now. But we'll take it! Also, here's a Naughty Kitten update: our Daisy has mellowed to the point where we can handle her.



This is Daisy today.

You all [friends at Daily Kos] were so helpful a few weeks ago when my husband had reached the end of his rope with her. We made some suggested accommodations, but the biggest positive influence came, I believe, from our psychic friend who asked spirit guides to speak with her and explain that jumping on the mantel wasn't cool. Dasiy remained quiet and subdued for over an hour, unusual for a 7-month old kitten, and she has never jumped up there again. Made a believer out of me! When I saw our friend and told her, she said, "It was a spirit already in your home," either one of our cats who has passed on (there were 4, 2 who have been in this house) or one of our beloved parents, or...?

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated - Mahatma Gandhi

Spring Will Soon Be Here!

Springtime is a season of joy for all creatures. We await her arrival with open arms. The squirrels in the back yard scrounging around my bird feeders, the black crows on the spine of the house, and walking like men with hands clasped behind their backs on the winter-faded grass, and we humans and our cat Daisy all look toward spring at this time of winter discontent in the world.

Our young Daisy enjoys a beam of sunlight and an airborne faux-furry mouse toy.

Here in the mountains of Northern Pennsylvania, the sun is shining, the snow is almost gone, except for a few little patches here and there, and the air is 52 degrees. A far cry from the 10-below temperatures we braved a month or so ago.

Living in an eco-friendly, vegetarian way, aspiring toward the vegan, at ease in my own skin today, I welcome this season of greater light and freedom. On Sunday we'll turn the clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time, and the mornings will be darker and the evenings brighter.

Another winter will soon end as the equinox passes in just two weeks, and hope of warmth will cheer us again. Meanwhile, it's another day today to live in harmony with the Earth.

The Engine 2 Diet

This morning on the "Today Show" I saw a segment featuring Rip Esselstyn, a hunky and totally fit firefighter from Engine 2 Company in Austin, Texas whose firehouse has gone totally vegan after several guys had colossal total cholesterol scores. Rip has a book out, The Engine 2 Diet, with a website where you can learn more and order it via links to all the usual online vendors, or get it through Amazon.

My omnivore husband announced, as we watched this piece, that he's decided to swear off red meat, including pork. This is a big change and one that gives me great hope! Just last night he was telling me what an inconvenience my veggie lifestyle is for him, because he wanted to stir fry my tofu and veggies in the same pan where he'd sauteed his Kung Po shrimp without cleaning it out. I deferred, grateful for his wanting to make it for me, and telling myself that any faint vestiges of his shrimp don't change my commitment to my own vegetarian ways.

Wearing Your Ethics

The longer I enjoy meatless eating, the more sensitive I'm becoming to the needs of the planet and our animal co-inhabitants. As moved as I am to tears and disgust by cruelty in factory farming, I still need to know it exists and fight it. I have watched the videos and read the articles and I tell others what I believe and why. The easiest way to get the point across is fashion without confrontation, at least that's how it seems. The Peta Store has some awesome t-shirt choices. Paul McCartney wore the "Eat No (cow)" t-shirt on an album cover. I have it in the "Eat No (fish)" version, too. Order a few. Wear your convictions!

I went to the hairdresser recently. One of the working women there comes from Eastern Europe and had raised her own meat and poultry. Because diet seems to be a constant topic among us when I'm there, my vegetarian lifestyle came up (again). I explained that as much as I had enjoyed meat as a food, at least sometimes, it was exposure to factory farming cruelty that turned me from it, never to return to eating animal flesh again. The European woman said that she and her husband slaughtered their animals themselves and assured us that chickens and lambs "have no adrenaline" and therefore can't feel fear. I think that's preposterous. I told her that anything that dies in a state of distress is suffused with the chemical influence of that disstress and this is bad for the person eating it. Maybe lions on the Savannah are innured to those influences, but we who have many healthier alternatives, and the molars to grind grains and veggies, are not.