Gardening 101

Yesterday I planted my first garden in about 25 years. It's also my first as a vegan. Our little community has set up an amazing fenced raised bed community garden. I signed up for a 4X4 plot and yesterday planted 2 Burpee Big Boy tomato plants, 2 rainbow Swiss chard plants, two zucchini plants, 5 pole bean plants, and 2 cubanelle sweet pepper plants.

Today I plan to buy stakes, basil and marigold plants. We didn't have any space for a garden before, so this community garden is awesome! The management absolutely scored with me big-time with the raised beds, fencing, watering set up. organic topsoil, gravel paths and more. All who use it must agree to avoid non-organic herbicides and pesticides. I am totally thrilled.


Here are some of the foods in my fridge and pantry.

The vegan way is an awesome path to follow, and I'm still learning what works best for me. I utilize a lot of vegan substitutes for the foods I used to love: vegan sour cream, Vegennaise, Earth Balance Buttery Spread, Rice Vegan cheese, Gardein "chicken" and "beef" products, veggie burgers, soy or almond milk, soy or coconut yogurt (no milk-derived cultures), soy of vegan ice creams (my fave is Purely Decadent of any flavor), Daiya vegan cheese, soy-based hotdogs, deli meats and sausages, and probably many more things I'm forgetting right now.

All this being said, I think I need to cut down on these and get more into the natural fruits and veggies and get more protein from beans and whole grains. Here's where the garden comes in! Veggies galore, I hope. Until the harvesting fun begins, I'll be visiting my local garden stand and farmers market.

This blog will take a decidedly garden turn from here on. until garden season ends in the fall up here in the mountains.

Namaste!

Springing Along as a Vegan in year 2

Last month I passed the one-year mark as a vegan. How am I doing? Awesome! I've lost 15 pounds. My cholesterol has been lowered without medication. I'm eating well and feeling great. At the end of last summer I rejoined the gym and get there about three times a week. Here are some regular people, places and things in my life after a year:

VegNews Magazine: I love this so much I won't throw old issues away, and after reading it for a year, starting while I was still a vegetarian, I re-upped for two years, and got a cool eco-grocery tote bag as a gift. The recipes are great, but so are the product reviews and even advertisements for vegan products. Just this week I bought a bottle of vegan calcium after seeing it in VegNews. I give away old issues when I've totally wrung every treasure out.

Baking and Cooking: I have the most awesome cookbooks now (see previous posts) and regularly make cupcakes, cookies, and other treats. I've learned to make my own seitan and started with chicken fried steak and now make veggie meatballs with it.

SparkPeople: I joined SparkPeople, a social networking site focused on diet, nutrition, fitness, and related health topics, with teams for every imaginable interest from birding, to 12-Step Recovery, to Tarot cards. I use the awesome Nutrition Tracker to log in my foods every day. That's right, every day! This is how I am able to eat bread and "butter" (Earth Balance) and dessert practically every day and still lose some of the weight I gained after giving up the high-protein, low-carb and terribly unhealthy diet I'd been following until 2008. The site offers recipes that can be searched by dietary category such as vegan, and you can add your own recipes in, getting an exact calculation of calories and nutrients, and the portion of any SparkRecipe can be added into your day's entries in their Nutrition Tracker. I've "met" some really great people through the various teams I've joined and learned about foods, fitness routines, books, activities and more. I've given and received support for problems shared. Of all the social networks out there, this one seems to have just what I need.

It's better if you make it yourself: Foods I prepare are usually healthier than any convenience foods I buy, even thought they are usually organic and always vegan and I'm lucky enough to shop regularly at Whole Foods and several other excellent grocery stores who stock robust natural foods sections on shelves and freezer cases. I've made homemade Peanut Butter Cups, thanks to Alicia Silverstone's book The Kind Diet. I've made gorgeous cookies and cupcakes no one would guess weren't loaded with butter and eggs, and yet they're not. The wreath at the start of this post is one I made myself after a trip to a crafts store. We went in to buy a ready-made wreath and came out with a bare grapevine wreath and the makings for a gorgeous spring statement for our front door. It felt so amazing to hang it and feats our eyes on it every time we come home.

Live and Let Live: I have adopted a dramatically different way of eating and living and this sets me apart from the vast majority of friends and family members in my life. Rather than try to convince or convert others to seeing things my way, I just stick to my values and try not to flaunt it. Okay, being vegan is a huge attitude commitment for health, compassion for the animal world and the environment, but that commitment is totally personal. So I may say "I'm vegan" when I order in a restaurant or check out at the grocery store, but it's an explanation and not a proselytizing statement. Leading by example is often our best strategy.

Half-way Through

Here we are about half-way through Vegetarian Awareness Month and my intention to blog daily for the month has been thwarted by work, weather surprises, and life. That's okay, because life happens and we adjust accordingly, right? Aside from staying vegan this week (natch) by choosing good healthy meal options, I can't say I have contributed much to the promotion of the vegan way of life.

Yesterday after working a short day (a blessing of self-employment, at least until the checks come rolling in) I went to the gym and put in 25 minutes on the recumbent bike on Level 5 (except for the last few cool-down minutes).

My vegan-ness emerged again at the Fairway Market in Red Hook where I was intoxicated with the selections. There's a whole annex of whole food stuff, like a wall of Bob's Red Mill products where I found the Golden Flaxseed Meal I heap on my cereal every morning. I was able to get a box of Nugo Organic Dark Chocolate Pomegranate protein bars, a staple of my busy working life and good to have in one's purse or briefcase in case of sudden hunger and nothing to eat but junk! Then from a huge selection of international olive oils, I found the Ligurian olive oil recommended for a VegNews pesto recipe in the Sept/Oct issue.

After a hot lunch of vegan peas and rice, samosas, and sauteed broccoli rabe, we set out again through the rest of the store where I found Galaxy's Vegan Cheddar slices and Gardein Chick'n Santa Fe vegan chicken cutlets stuffed with black beans and corn and in a marinara sauce, nicely heated in the oven for lunch today. Wow! It's a good chicken substitute, might even fool some folks. A pass through the frozen section bagged me some Morningstar Farms Meal Starter Chick'n Strips, great to have on hand to add to my weekly Mexican (Vegan) Caesar Salad.



So that's this weeks wrap-up, and I am still living the vegan way.

Courage to Change the Things I Can

These Chinese characters mean "the courage to change". This calligraphy painting is an artwork created by Beijing, China artist Xie Tian Hai and is available here.

Going vegan was a huge change for me, just as going vegetarian had been. Managing my nutritional intake as a vegan imposed a kind of discipline on my eating that meant setting limits and sticking with them, lovingly as I would keep a child from eating only candy to her peril or stop her from running into a busy street. I log everything I eat into a web program for guidance.

Now that I have established the habit of healthy eating, one meal at a time, one day at a time, I have changed and feel freed me and liberated my intent and energy to try new things. To change.

Yesterday I had my already short hair cut shorter, and with the cut, away went 90 percent of my artificial hair color, leaving me salt and pepper gray, lighter in front and darker in back. I had planned on waiting until I was 60 to make this change, but living a more natural life one day at a time has allowed me to do it now. So far so good! The overall impression isn't much different, and the short cut is au courant as far as I can tell. My family gave me the seal of approval, and that's a huge endorsement to me. Change can be awesome!

After the hair appointment, we went shopping for winter clothing and a few things for our kitchen. I shopped for new jeans and was so gratified to find I fit well in a smaller size. But my common sense tells me that slow change is best for weight loss in general, and not focusing obsessively on numbers is best for me.

At lunchtime we tried a new place in the neighborhood, Sonic drive in. I had gone online to check out the menu and knew there wouldn't be much I as a vegan could eat. So I ordered a large order of fries, a large diet limeade, and a banana. The fries were hot, tasty and unsalted, my favorite way to have them, and I used a little ketchup. The banana was still a bit green, so I brought it home and will have it with breakfast another day. The limeade was surprisingly delicious and had two wedges of lime in it. The cup was Styrofoam, one negative point. But I was interested to see that an order of fries and a diet drink held me until dinner many hours later, and the calories were high but manageable. I had homemade seitan for dinner with 31 grams of protein, so I ended up doing fine with the nutritional breakdown.

That homemade seitan has worked out very well. I made cutlets of seitan coated with panko breadcrumbs two weeks ago for vegan chicken fried steak (see Vegan with a Vengeance for the recipe) and froze most of them. I've taken half of one and cut it into strips to add to a dinner salad on a work night. Yesterday I took one and placed it on a bed of linguine, topped it with a slice of Tofutti mozzarella and a half cup of marinara sauce mixed with a small can of sliced mushrooms. This was an awesome meal! I added a salad and some crusty bread and Earth Balance, and had spent my target calories for the day, so I stood pat and decided not to have sorbet or even fruit as my customary evening snack. I learned that choice is not deprivation. That's a big change!

So, change comes slowly, sometimes quickly. It's a process, and our usual tendency is to resist change until the pain of staying the same overcomes our fear of changing. I went gray because my discomfort paying big money regularly to have toxic chemicals put on my hair, not to mention my distaste for the constantly emerging roots, overcame my fear of changing and risking looking older. I've been coloring my hair for decades. I feel liberated already! For today I embrace change.

More HFCS Madness

Welcome to Day 6 of Vegetarian Awareness Week!


Would you believe that today, just a day after posting on the wily machinations of the high fructose corn syrup producers and their promoters, a good friend sent me an email with this link: What Doctors Don't Want You to Know




Here's a taste for you:

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a sweetener that has revolutionized the processed food and drink industry - but a new study has found that it may be a
bigger source of mercury than fish. There's been a quiet revolution taking place in the food-manufacturing industry since the 1980s, and it's one that could be damaging our health and making us overweight. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that it may even be responsible for the learning and behavioural problems so often seen in our children nowadays. . . .

. . . Even so, there's no such thing as 'safe mercury' in any form, and high doses can cause damage to the heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system. Furthermore, this unsuspected additional mercury load from snacks and soft drinks might also be a contributory factor to the alarming rise we've seen in recent years of cases of attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD), autism and behavioural problems among our youngsters.

Yeow! Now that's food for thought, isn't it? If you read the rest of the article, you'll learn that corn syrup is naturally high in glucose and contains absolutely no fructose. That's right, no fructose occurs in corn syrup naturally. The fructose gets there via a chemical process that in many cases involves substances we should not ingest or inhale such as chlorine or mercury. Check it out!






Natural is better.

The High Fructose Corn Syrup Pushback

Your vegan blogger is dead serious today, on Day 5 of Vegetarian Awareness Month. I'm always dead serious, but usually have a twinkle in my eye, but aside from the silly corn graphic, not so much right now.

I've been reading pro-high-fructose corn syrup propaganda today on a site I use and generally respect and have no patience for it. Now, corn is vegan. That's awesome, and I love an ear of fresh picked corn steamed and slathered with Earth Balance and sprinkled with pepper as much as anyone. But when you fool around with the chemistry in a natural food to make a cheap sweetener that extends shelf-life and can be found in everything from corn flakes to tortilla chips, and practically everything else, I'm not thrilled. The Mayo Clinic gives a good explanation of the issue here.

See that commercial saying the government wants to tax your juice drinks and soda and to urge you to fight it?

How about the one showing a guy picking out the guy in an ear-of-corn suit when asked to pick which sweetener (HFCS, table sugar or honey) leads to the greatest weight gain in a line-up?

Just thought you ought to know that the Corn Refiners Association (with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland-ADM its most well-known members) is behind this major pushback against HFCS criticism. The corn producers have really been hard at work to create the illusion of real science validating their product as healthful and "natural". The CRA weblink above features the annual report extolling their "multimedia campaign to correct the record on high fructose corn syrup and serves as a commemorative review of this extraordinary effort." They've got some of the best in the business in their defense of their lucrative product.

The line-up ad where the dufus consumer dude with apparently unjustified disdain for HFCS picks out the ear of corn and ignores the sugar cube and honey bear is brought to us by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a non-profit front run by Rick Berman a scandal-plagued lobbyist famous for supporting big tobacco, the booze industry, the safety of mercury in fish, and now high-fructose corn syrup. Here's a taste of his rhetoric from an article posted on the Convenience Store Decisions website:

"People have been spoon-fed misinformation about high fructose corn syrup," said Center for Consumer Freedom Executive Director Rick Berman. "We thought it was time someone explained, in no uncertain terms, that high fructose corn syrup has the exact same number of calories as table sugar and is handled the same way by the body. Any non-agenda driven nutrition expert will tell you the same."

The corn folks bring us SweetSurprise.com, where the "myths" of HFCS's obesity links are "exposed."

The CCF brings you such gems as these:

MercuryFacts.org
ObesityMyths.com
PetaKillsAnimals.com
PhysicianScam.com
SweetScam.com
Trans-FatFacts.com

Judge for yourself. This health-conscious consumer is diligently working to make sure what goes in my body is good for me. Knowledge is power.

Flexibility and Commitment

Today is Day 4 of Vegetarian Awareness Month!

Today as I was reading about vegan nutritional requirements on Vegan Health, a site I recommend, I was directed via a link to Vegan Outreach here. Please read what it says about being vegan. It makes sense as I begin to be more aware of non-vegan sources of Vitamins A and D and calcium in many supplements.

Under the heading "Busting the Vegan Police" I read the following (emphasis mine):

It is imperative for us to realize that if our veganism is a statement for animal liberation, veganism cannot be an exclusive, ego-boosting club. Rather, we must become the mainstream. Fostering the impression that “it’s so hard to be vegan – animal products are in everything,” and emphasizing animal products where the connection to animal suffering is tenuous, works against this by allowing most to ignore us and causing others to give up the whole process out of frustration.

The way veganism is presented to a potential vegan is of major importance. The attractive idea behind being a “vegan” is reducing one’s contribution to animal exploitation. Buying meat, eggs, and/or dairy creates animal suffering – animals will be raised and slaughtered specifically for these products. But if the by-products are not sold, they will be thrown out or given away. As more people stop eating animals, the by-products will naturally fade, so there is no real reason to force other people to worry about them in order to call themselves “vegan" . . . We want a vegan world, not a vegan club.

We need to be clear what we hope to accomplish. I want better personal health, but being vegan isn't necessarily the best or only way to accomplish that. If I use that argument in explaining my rationale for eschewing all animal products and byproducts, others will find holes in the logic easily. I feel that I, as a vegan, am perceived as a fanatic by some who enthusiastically eat meat, cheese, eggs, and all the rest. Fair enough, given my parade of evolving food strictures over my adult life thus far, not that different from my evolving spiritual values that have gone from mainstream to nonexistent to oddball to their present state. I guess I have been a seeker for a long time.

So be it.