Why Can't Anything Be Simple?

In the words of my two-year-old nephew: "Oh, man!"

Today my brother left a comment here with a link to this article about The Dark Side of Soy.

I'm so bummed! Just when I thought I'd found a clear cut answer to eating more responsibly and healthfully.

-sigh-

Grilling in the 21st Century & Moving In

I bought a hibachi on July 4th this year. A cheap little $3 one. The bag of charcoal actually cost more than the grill itself! But I had a hankering for a cookout on the Fourth of July and figured, just because we're 3000 miles away from family doesn't mean we can't have our own little cookout for the holiday.

It took D and I about ten tries to get the charcoal lit. And we grilled up our own little feast that day, in the driveway of our little apartment. :)

Tonight I'm giving it another try and am pleased to say it only took me three tries to get the coals going strong. And now, here I sit, waiting for them to get good and hot--with my laptop on my knees, blogging. Yep. That's grilling in the 21st century for ya. :)

I've kept a nearly vegan diet since July 8. That's only four days, but it's something. Tonight I'll be grilling chicken for the guys. And I'll be having tofu sausages or something of the sort. Grocery shopping yesterday was a challenge as I tried to come up with veggie alternatives that wouldn't mean cooking several different dinners each night. We shall see how this goes.

The big celebration for today, however, was taking over my first loads of books to my new office! I don't know what we'll do in an apartment that isn't crammed with books. But how I love filling those shelves in the office. How immediately the walls spring to life with the things I love. Like filling the office with old friends right at the beginning. It's a beautiful thing.

If I keep up a good pace tomorrow, I should be able to bring over the rest of the books. Little by little, step by step I'm moving into this new life. Amazing.

Going Veg?

On the evening of July 7, I watched the Live Earth concert coverage with my family. I appreciated the concert, even given the self-contradictions it seemed to embody. (My brother offered some apt critiques here.) I think I appreciated the extent to which the concerts must have served to raise awareness, especially among young people. I think to whatever extent we can get the concepts of global warming and environmental responsibility to be familiar concepts, then change will happen more broadly and effectively. When Gore was interviewed on the night of the concert, he talked about Live Earth being only a beginning, a launch event for a global movement. The excitement generated by the concerts may raise hope and motivation for that movement. And if that's the case, then I'm grateful for it.

Near the end of the evening, I logged onto the Live Earth website and spent a good bit of time clicking through their lists of suggestions. (You can find them listed in the box titled "even more suggestions" on this page.) Their suggestion No. 31 is "Eat your Veggies" and includes this startling paragraph:

"The gases coming from cow's rears are even worse, greenhouse-warming-wise, than ol' CO2. Enteric fermentation--the ruminants' digestive process--produces flatulence, a.k.a. methane, while manure releases nitrous oxide. Even more emissions come from collateral effects: deforestation for pasture, fertilizers for feed crops, and energy to run meatpacking plants."

This made me more curious, so I visited the PETA-sponsored website www.goveg.com (linked from the Live Earth site). I eventually viewed this video. WARNING: This video contains graphic images of animals being abused and slaughtered. Not suitable for children. And may be more than you can stomach.

Watch more videos at PETA.org

I've flirted with vegetarianism a few times in my life. The only time I made a strong commitment to it was the semester I lived in Oregon, almost twenty years ago now. (My gosh, is that true?!) At the time, I had a problem keeping weight on. And there were fewer alternatives available for vegetarians. So once I returned to the East Coast, my commitment eventually waned.

I think I've always thought of vegetarianism as a matter of personal preference. But I'm beginning to think of it differently now: as a matter of justice, a way of right-living, a commitment to walking lightly on the earth. It seems, in fact, that becoming vegetarian can be one of the single-most effective ways to make a tangible, positive difference on this planet. Such opportunities are so rare that I feel as though I ought to pay attention to it.

The struggle, for me, would be how to live this out while being the food-preparer for my family. I don't feel right making this decision for my partner and my son: it seems like a choice they would have to come to for themselves. D is --as always-- very supportive of whatever decision I make with this. So I guess together we would need to figure it out.

I'll keep you posted.

How to Tell the Semester is Over

I'm Cooking Again
After not cooking a single meal--lunch or dinner--for about a month, (including, to my great shame, not cooking a single meal for my dear brother when he was visiting last week!), yesterday I grocery shopped and then prepared 21 meals!

I got the menus, recipes, instructions, and assembly guidelines for the meals from the website Saving Dinner. Some time ago, I blogged about this great place not far from us called The Full Plate--a place where you can go to prepare 7-12 meals with fresh ingredients that then get frozen. (You don't cook the meals ahead of time, so that everything would end up tasting like leftovers. You simply assemble the fresh ingredients, place the prepared meal in a ziploc freezer bag and put it in your freezer until you're ready to defrost and cook it.) The cost of preparing 8 meals is about $150 through the Full Plate (as I recall). That averages to a little over $6 per person, per meal.

Well, these dinner kits I prepared yesterday are the same exact idea except that you do it all yourself--shop the ingredients, prep them, then assemble the meals. It was a huge project--I probably spent a good eight or nine hours between grocery shopping and making the meals. But now my freezer is full of a month's worth of weekday meals! The cost of preparing these meals was probably about $250. That comes to about $4 per person, per meal. Astounding.


I Want to Start an Art Project
When my brother was in town, we all went to the astonishing Maker Faire. This is truly an eschatological event to me. When I go to the Maker Faire I cannot help but celebrate the creativity of the human spirit. So many of the folks who have booths at the Faire are able to imagine things different from the way they already are. And not only are they able to imagine it, they know how to make different things happen. There is also a great joy about the faire and the people there. Many of the projects are full of whimsy--something that seems too often missing from a lot of adult lives. For instance, one of my favorite displays was a guy who had designed a system, called botanicalls, where you put a sensor in the soil of a houseplant. When the plant's soil gets dry, the sensor sends a signal to your phone. The plant telephones you to tell you it needs water! Then when it senses the moisture in the soil, it phones again to thank you for your loving and kind attention!

While we were at the Maker Faire, we saw a booth with folks from the website Etsy. I visited the site for the first time the other night and totally fell in love with it. Etsy provides a webspace for artists and craftspeople to display and sell their work. Most of what I looked at was at truly reasonable prices. And, like the Maker Faire, fills me with hope that the creative spirit in North Americans has not been ultimately destroyed by the forces of mass production and consumerism. There is hope yet! Do visit the site and see what kinds of things are there. And if you are an artist or craftsperson, why not sign up to display and sell your stuff, too! Let me know in the comments what you think of the site!

I sent my brother a link to a triptych painting I liked a lot. He wrote back and told me he thought I could try and make a similar series of paintings myself. I've never painted anything, but I'm thinking today we may walk down to Blick's Art Supplies and maybe give it a try. Why not? It truly must be the end of the school year.

Oh, one last thing: If you like to make stuff or craft stuff, I highly recommend the magazine's my brother subscribes to--and the mags behind the Maker Faire: Make and Craft. Believe me, they're not your usual DIY.

South Beach Diet...(for Cats)

Still slogging away at my exams. Finished one more last Friday. One written, timed exam to go. My heart is on taking it this Friday, too. Though waiting 'til Monday may be the more realistic option. I just soooo want to have my weekend finally free. Keeping my head in the books, but in the meantime, life delights in unexpected ways. Here's one.

My cat Felix. There's never been another one like him. This summer I discovered, for instance, that he goes bonkers for corn husks. There was a husk hanging out of the bottom crisper drawer one day and Felix started gnawing on it with obvious delight. After that I tried to keep fresh corn around, and each day would peel off a leaf of the husk and let him go at it. He would rapturously consume it every time.

A couple days ago I decided to pick up the South Beach diet again--wanting to shed a few pounds that seem to have wandered back over the past year or so. Well, turns out Felix loves just about everything I'm eating these days. Now whenever I sit down to eat my snack (usually string cheese or Laughing Cow cheese on celery) he's right beside me, meowing, yowling, and nudging my plate and hands until I give something up. I've also felt compelled to share some salmon and tuna with him, too. He gobbled the tuna down with such obvious joy. (Certainly more than I could muster as I dragged myself through that particular salad!)

What a dear companion he is. :) I dunno, maybe he's trying to lose a few pounds, too. Here's an especially undignified photo of him squashed up beside me on the sofa.

Bing!

Many years ago, shortly after D and I were married, I used to get furious, inconsolable even, if I screwed up dinner in some irreparable way. Too much work would go into it for me to take it well if something went terribly wrong. Or if it came out horrible for some unknown reason. But my anger about messing up always made the rest of the evening much worse than it needed to be.

At the time, Taco Bell had these advertisements where they would just ring a bell--bing! We ended up making this our escape plan--if dinner ever went so wrong that it seemed unrecoverable, there was no need to get upset at all. I could simply declare 'bing!' and the meal would be tossed, forgotten, and we'd head out to Taco Bell guilt free.

Having the escape plan was brilliant. Since I always knew it was an option, I never ended up worrying about messing up anymore. And, in fact, I think in about thirteen years I've only had to resort to the escape plan twice. One of them right now...

D is off picking up a pizza (we still say 'bing!' but we don't go to Taco Bell anymore). The plan was salmon for dinner tonight, a spinach casserole, and mushroom risotto. Well, the spinach casserole turned out looking gross. (I'll eat it happily for lunch over the next couple days, but I knew it would be asking way too much of my boys here.) I completely forgot about cooking the risotto. And when I took the salmon out of the fridge it smelled nasty.

Funny thing is, E and I had walked over to pick out some fantastic desserts from a local gourmet market. I thought that would pair beautifully with the lovely meal I'd planned. :) So now we're indulging on all fronts! The best pizza in town, and the following three desserts: E will have cheesecake, D will have chocolate mousse torte, and I will be having a chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake. Everything's coming up roses. :)

I still want to write about today's worship--especially now that it's happened. Plus this afternoon the three of us led the worship service at the chapel of the nearby retirement home. That was a great experience. I had E (who's about to enter third grade) read the scripture that I'd preached on a few weeks ago. He did an amazing job. The residents actually applauded him after he finished reading. How sweet is that?

Finally, I'll share this fun little tidbit from E. I was lamenting that as we stood in line at the gourmet market, a man reached through the line and took the last smoked mozzarella I'd planned to take as soon as I reached that point in the line. E said to me, "Mom, you should be grateful for what God gives you."

"You're right, E. Thank you. It's good to be reminded of that."

"Then take your revenge on the one who God gives what you wanted."

My boy.

PS How do get the smell of fish off your hands????