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Tuesday
Tues 14 Aug 2007 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070814.html |
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Today is the birthday of one of my coworkers. Yep, I brought in my vegan Magic Chocolate Cake and everyone was happy. They always tell me how yummy my cake is. And in the beginning they couldn't believe it was vegan; how could it be so moist? Well, I don't know. I just follow the directions and it comes out perfect every time. :) One of the ladies asked for the recipe. So here I am, printing it up as I'm typing about it! The recipe is buried in the Compassionate Cooks website. Try it out, it really is the easiest baking that you will ever do! |
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Sunday Bread
Sun 10 June 2007 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070610.html |
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I've got it down to a fine art. I've got the ingredients memorized and it takes me about 25 minutes, which includes clean up. I always wash the measuring cups and spoons I use, by hand rather than putting them in the dish washer, because I might want to use them again that day for something else. (Lately, I've been making cookie bars!) I know that using the dish washer is more environmental, but washing by hand, I catch the grey water and give it to my poor garden. The soapy water discourages bugs and the plants need extra water, so it works out environmentally, anyway! It's been a long time since I've eaten store bread. At the beginning, I wasn't always faithful about making loaves. It only happened a couple times, tho. You get used to homemade bread. And then you can actually taste the chemicals they put in store bread. And, trust me, it's gross. Yuck! The bread machine takes 3h 18mins to do it's thing, and then I've got a beautiful hot loaf of wheat bread! I dump it out of the machine and let it cool down. Then I cut it in half and put each half into a ziplock bag. Both halves go into the freezer. When we're ready for new bread, I pull out a half-loaf. I've found that it's much easier to cut the bread into slices when it's still frozen. It's a little too soft at room temperature. I cut eight slices, not including the two heel pieces which sometimes get a little thin. So, we can have four sandwiches out of the half-loaf. Which lasts two days, between SO and I. At that rate, I occasionally have to make two loaves of bread in a weekend. Which is a little bit tedious, even tho it's less than 30 minutes of work. eh. It's okay because making bread makes me feel self-sufficient and healthy and vegan.
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Vegan Food Cost
Wed 11 Apr 2007 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070411.html |
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Two hundred dollars is just insane. I am just one person. and I am vegan. Vegetables do not cost this much! Granted, I buy some things for "the house", that my boyfriend will eat as well. Like bulk almonds and Morning Star crumbles and Clif bars and flour and sugar. (He buys things for "the house" as well, so I would think it would average out, in the end.) And also granted that I've been on a stocking up craze. It just makes me happy to see the cupboard full. But the 220 was a wake up call. I decided I would live off the cupboard, and not buy anything in April. uh huh. I ran out of yeast. And since I make bread every weekend, I really need yeast. So, today's grocery run was 75$. Hopefully, I'm done with the grocery for the month. The Farmers Market just opened, tho, so I'm sure I'll be buying more food before the month is done. sighs.
My wakeup call is telling me I need to re-evaluate some of my convenience foods again. Specifically, I'd like to modify the lunches that I make to eat at work. Right now, standard work food includes:
So, I want to think about replacing my morning granola bar, and my sandwich stuffing. I don't eat a lot of fruit, but I could eat an apple at morning break. The apples I bought today (by weight) turned out to be 72¢ per apple. They were not organic, but they did come from the next state up so they are more local than regular apples from China. That's important. And my mom provided me with a good granola bar recipe. I just need to figure out a way to "package" them for work since they tend to crumble randomly. Maybe wrap them up in foil, which I would obviously reuse. (um, it is obvious that I'm an environmentalist, isn't it?!) (jeez, I hope so!) (ha.) For my sandwiches, I've decided to bake my own tofu. It was on sale today for a dollar a package, so I got several. It's usually $1.80, and would last a week, making it 36¢ per sandwich (the sale price is 20¢ per sandwich!). Much better than the 60¢ Veggie Slices, and a lot more robust. I'll be baking the tofu in some Newmans Own salad dressing, which will add to the cost, but much more healthy than the Veggie Slices. There's always peanut butter, of course. Peanut butter sandwiches used to be my favorite, but apparently I've burned myself out on them. heh. It's been a while since I've done homemade hummus, too. I don't have exact prices, guessing it would be $3 total for a can of chickpeas and a can of black olives... that batch lasts two weeks, so a sandwich of hummus would be a bit over 30¢ (other ingredients include small amounts of tahini and lemon juice). Cheap and yummy.
We'll see how it goes. I know that eating more homemade food is very good for me, but I also know that I get annoyed at the time it takes to make stuff. I am not a cook and I don't enjoy spending time in the kitchen. But this is important to me, so I will figure out how to do these things in the most efficient way I can! |
An Inconvenient Truth
Sat 17 Feb 2007 | |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070217.html | |
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I've not written anything here in my online journal, mostly because it's all very disturbing to me. And overwhelming.
But anyway. After a few scoffs at the "moral imperative" at the beginning of the movie, I did get into the spirit of the documentary. I enjoyed it and fully recommend it. A thing that Gore mentioned in the movie that caught my attention... People learn about global warming and they skip over "what can I do to help" and go straight to despair. And then he shows a graph where a bunch of little things add up and put us at pre-70s CO2 emissions. *nods* Little things!
And today, I found an article on the BBC about the dead zone off the coast of my state, Oregon. Yep, it was caused by climate change... Wind shifts devastate ocean life In the meantime, they say, we must change our approach to managing and using these ecosystems, particularly for fish stocks.Um, yeah... "thinking" is NOT a course of action. Putting a halt on fishing, fish farming, trawling, and eating sea creatures is a course of action. Fishing Hurts, it's a PETA site, but the information is accurate. If you eat sea animals, you are supporting the most environmentally destructive of all meat industries.
My meat-eating Significant Other said that watching Howard Lyman, The Mad Cowboy on Out There TV made an impact on him. This truly encourages me and makes my life worth living. *laughs* |
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Rethinking Donations
Mon 5 Feb 2007 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070205.html |
I have been reading up on the Welfare vs Rights conflict... "Welfare" being "we can use animals but only if we are nice to them." "Rights" being "animals have their own interests and we should not use them for anything." Animal Rights people wonder if we should support animal welfare. Some say "yes" in order to help the animals that are being used today. Some say "no" because we are wasting our time/money on something we think is wrong in the first place. An example: Organizations gather money to help pass laws that ban pig gestation crates. These "crates" are so small that momma pig literally cannot move around. Do animal rights people support the passing of such laws? "Yes," to make breeding/food animals more comfortable during their life or "No," because the pigs shouldn't be used for breeding/food. I am animal rights, but I supported animal welfare... (The HSUS is a welfare organization with a few rights programs and PETA is overtly a rights organization but it's welfare programs are increasingly hard to ignore.) While I think it's wrong to use animals for food, I think that the individual life of each farmed animal is important and we should do everything we can to make their life better. Like the HSUS, my thinking is a mixing of "rights" and "welfare". Reading Gary Francione's blog posts at Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach got me wondering. Specifically, Veganism: The Fundamental Principle of the Abolitionist Movement and the follow-up Animals as Property and the Rape Analogy: A Postscript The individual life is important. But there are many people who support welfare... both the HSUS and PETA are multi-million dollar orgs. Most people morally support welfare. So maybe I need to set my sights a little higher! I am no longer going to support welfare programs. I think it's wrong that we torture and kill animals... And I think it's still wrong that we not-torture-quite-as-much-before-we-kill animals. So, who am I going to support? There's a farm sanctuary in my state. They directly help animals. My local humane society is no-kill (altho our city is not). It's a start. |
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Midweek Munchies
Tues 6 Feb 2007 | ||||||
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070206.html | ||||||
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Get the Midweek Munchies
code! PURPOSE of Midweek Munchies: Put
together by a small group of Veg Women, we hope to spread the word
about healthy vegetarianism while obtaining idea starters for meals,
recipes, learn about new products, and meet other female veg*n
bloggers. Visiting and commenting on other participants lists are
encouraged but not required. | ||||||
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Wonderful Things
Sat 3 Feb 2007 | |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070203 | |
Silvery full moon, lighting up a huge halo of thin clouds, and shining through the winter-bare oak tree branches.
Oh my. One of my favorite poems is called Silver by Walter de la Mare. And I realized I need more poetry in my life. I mean: My Gods! How can we Live without Poetry!
The Friday night date with my Significant Other was a wonderful trip to a vegetarian pizza joint called the Pizza Research Institute. It was just awesome. I had picked out this place because I had seen it several times on the top of "Best Pizza in town" lists... and I thought it was great that a vegetarian restaurant beat out all the other pizzas! It's a tiny little hole in the wall. But the nice lady showed us the elevator seating in the back... Yes, we sat in an elevator, and it was nice and away from the insanity of millions of people coming in to get Friday night, best ever, pizza. I got the standard vegan pizza: New York crust, just-spicy tomato sauce, mushrooms, spinach, tomato slices, no onions, and their fantastic creamy white sauce. Wow. And I'm looking across at my boyfriend. Normally when we go out to eat, he would have a huge plate of dead animals, which is difficult to ignore and makes me incredibly sad but I try not to say anything about it. But this time he was eating a cheese Greek pizza. No meat, just the cheese. And it was a lot easier to think I live with this guy, I spend time with this guy. Even if it's just one dinner, a vegetarian boyfriend is much easier to live with.
And speaking of beautiful veg*n things... Gary at AnimalWritings.com wrote a great post the other day. Petting Every Animal in the World ... So there are countless animals that we confine to horrid situations and short lives, and it is pervasive, and un-ending, and yet right in front of us is this one animal -- loved, precious, beautiful. Unique. An ambassador, perhaps, for all animals. One lucky individual, free from all the various institutions that treat animals as expendable commodities, as disposable inventory, as things. As an ethical vegan, I do think about the millions of farmed animals who are killed every day. The billions, every year. It's a heavy weight on the soul. And Gary puts it just perfectly. I share my home with Tegan the guinea pig. I do my best for her. But there's still the billions. I wish I could save them all.
And, I've just discovered
Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach a blog written by
Gary Francione, the author of
Introduction to Animal Rights.
Great book, and the couple posts that I've read at the blog are
great too, I can't wait to wade all the way through the web site!
A local vegan chocolate company, Chocolate Decadence, has been getting some attention. A write up in the newspaper, Sweet surprise and a post over at my favorite vegan news blog, SuperVegan: Chocolate Decadence Celebrates Tenth Anniversary.
And I still haven't eaten any of this chocolate?!
Okay, so if you haven't figured it out yet: Vegan == Wonderful. Hm, vegan poetry about the silvery moon? Well, de la Mare's poem is animal-friendly, at least. After the Fact Note: Um. Hm. That's not animal friendly. The dog should not be sleeping in a kennel, s/he should be sleeping in the house with their people. And the doves' "shadowy cote"... I thought that was the name of the place where doves live... but it might be the place where stupid humans keep them. bleh. My poem falls from grace. |
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MwM
Wed 10 Jan 2007 | ||||||
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/archive2007/070110.html | ||||||
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Get the Midweek Munchies
code! PURPOSE of Midweek Munchies: Put
together by a small group of Veg Women, we hope to spread the word
about healthy vegetarianism while obtaining idea starters for meals,
recipes, learn about new products, and meet other female veg*n
bloggers. Visiting and commenting on other participants lists are
encouraged but not required. | ||||||
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You Are Here: |
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Vegan/organic chocolate granola bar. Very expensive at 85¢
per bar. If I need more calories, I will eat a Clif bar instead,
which is $1 to $1.50 per bar, depending on where it came from.
