the greatest of these is love

Pardon me.  Have you seen the movie "Crash"?  Very much the way it starts by flashing around to seemingly unrelated stories, I am going to start with two apparently independent vignettes.  Just like the movie, it will all come together in the end.

*~*~*~*~*

A little while back, Christians worldwide celebrated their holiest holiday, the one that gives irrevocable substance to their beliefs - Easter and the holy days preceding it.  Long story short, the man bold enough to call himself the son of God breaks bread with his friends and then tells them that the next time he will eat with them will be "on the flip side."  After a night of ardent prayer in a garden in Jerusalem, one of his "friends" leads those who would arrest him to Jesus, beginning the end, so to speak.  The next 24 hours will find this supposed Messiah tried, beaten, and hung on a cross, crucified until dead.  The miracle, though, upon which Christians base their faith and find their salvation, is that after resting in a tomb from a Friday afternoon until a Sunday morning, Jesus rose, bringing veracity to all his claims and reconciling a broken relationship between humanity and a pure deity.

I have no idea who named all the holy days, but as Easter approached this year, my cousin's wife inquired if anyone knew what the word Maundy meant (as in Maundy Thursday, the night that Christians remember The Last Supper and take part in a sacrament begun on that night 2000ish years ago).  I'll admit, I referred to the expertise of the internet to help me answer her, but upon finding this article, I remembered things I learned in seminary.  "Maundy" is taken from "Mandate."  Let me explain further:

After humbling himself and washing his friends' feet in a symbolic act of what he was about to accomplish on a far larger and bloodier scale, and after instituting the sacrament of Communion by offering his friends his body/bread and blood/wine and asking them to remember him when they dined together, Jesus gave them one last mandate.  "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (Gospel of John, 13:34-35 ESV)

*~*~*~*~*

Do you know who Beth Hart is?

I've mentioned her before, but lately she's been taking up a lot of space in my brain and in my heart.  I believe I have come to decide that she is truly the greatest performer of my time for what she does.  There are two reasons for this:

1. She seems to have perfect pitch - she never misses a note!
2. She is so completely honest and raw... she pours every part of her heart into her music.  I saw an interview with her when she said that she wrote when she was sad and toured when she was not, more or less.

Having lost myself in hours of YouTube videos over the last several weeks, I've seen her live performances from all over the world, in all kinds of venues from stadiums to dive bars, and multiple versions of her more popular songs.  She is a consummate performer - she enjoys every moment of what she does (even in a bittersweet, maudlin kind of way) and recognizes at every opportunity how lucky she is that she gets to sing her heart for a living.  She is so real.

She is a storyteller and I love that.  Through her songs and the tales she uses to introduce them, I learn more about her and her life and her inspirations.  She has written the most sincere love song I've ever heard and the most painful plea for love, too.

Beth did not have the fame she deserved in the USA, so she does most of her touring overseas, throughout Europe.  She very clearly feeds off of the energy of her crowd, so she interacts with them frequently throughout the concert.  She loves it when her crowd sings along, they obviously love when she talks to them, and there is always this intense intimacy between her and those in attendance at her shows.  I hope to be so lucky one day.  

As I've been vicariously participating (via YouTube), I noticed a trend in her closing song.  It is not normally the same song, though they are almost always incredibly personal and sometimes heart-wrenchingly painful songs.  One can almost imagine Beth's fans leaving the concert in a contemplative way not unlike the worshippers at a Maundy Thursday service.    

After concluding her Wroclaw (Poland) concert with the song that made her [at least somewhat] famous, she sincerely thanks her fans for being "so nice to me."

Maybe I was in a particularly melancholy mood while watching this one night, but I thought to myself, "what kind of pain makes a person thank total strangers for being nice to her?"  It was enough to push tears into my eyes, thinking of all I knew she had been through from reading up on her and watching interviews with her.  Divorced parents, possible abuse, a heroin user by age 15, when she was 22ish her old sister, who she holds in high regard, died from AIDS, which she caught from a dirty needle.  It took Beth years to care enough about herself to clean up (and the love of a good man).  Her self-esteem is still just awful and my heart aches for her.

In her adult years, she reconciled the broken relationship she had with her father, who left when she was still young.  When she wrote one of her more recent albums, 37 Days, she asked him what his favorite song was.  He told her he didn't know why, but it was this one:

She told him she knew why - Because he is an addict, just like her.  Clean or not, it is a continuing struggle, laid bare in this song.  "God knows I can't change me; I've tried and tried... it's been a long time at the bottom.  Spent a lot of time way down there.  It's been a long time at the bottom - I don't know how I made it here."

*~*~*~*~*

So how do the two parts of this post "crash"?  Really, it's quite simple.

You don't know what another person is going through or has lived through.  You don't know their joys or the pain they carry unspoken.

Be kind.  Love one another.

kids today...

When I was a kid, there was a guy on TV that could probably be called a comedian.  His name was Rodney Dangerfield and in a trademark act, he would make his eyes all big and bulgy and indignantly utter, "I don't get no respect!"  That became a commonly reiterated phrase around our dinner table when my dear father didn't feel his daughters or wife were giving him the respect he deserved for whatever pearl of wisdom he had shared.

By the way, I know I haven't posted in nearly three months, but this post will have nothing to do with spinach.  Or Angst.  In fact, this will most likely relate to food minimally and second-hand, if at all.

Moving on...

I'm gonna do it.  I'm going to say the phrase that probably every generation before mine has said, full of righteous indignation:  Kids today have no respect.


That's kind of broad, don't you think?  I remember the first time I caught myself making a "Kids today" comment and felt like my parents and their parents before them.  I'm sure my grandparents were appalled at the misbehavior and lack of respect their children (my parents) showed them.  I know my parents were mortified when my sister and I grew our own personalities and our awareness of the world extended to the knowledge that adults were not necessarily entitled to respect purely because they had lived longer than us.  It should not (and does not) then surprise me that I think "kids today" have no respect for the world around them.

Okay.  It does, actually.

I saw in my generation a "turning around," if you will.  It seems each generation has certain paradigm shifts and cultural revolutions to which they can lay claim, but it really felt like my generation was beginning a paradigm of giving back to the world and caring for those around us.  Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe I was just blessed to be surrounded by the kind of people who would do that in any generation and age.  See this post for more on that.

I'm gonna say something now that will probably make me unpopular.  I don't like hipsters.  Like the adherents of most "counter culture" cliques, hipsters think they're really deep and thoughtful and love to take a steadfast stand on every issue that sounds remotely controversial... while normally skipping out on any kind of meaningful engagement with that issue.  I realize this is not true of every person who identifies themselves with that vapid group of people, but can we all at least agree that it's ironic that a group full of such smart people consistently misuses the word "ironic?"

I had the unfortunate opportunity to remind myself today why I try to limit my interactions with "kids today."  A friend posted an article on Facebook about how the government is now conspiring to take away women's hard-earned rights by allowing doctors to calculate the approximate date of conception using the date of her last period.

Apparently this is something new.

Ha ha -  just kidding.  That's how it's always been done.  Unfortunately, a bunch of folks who wanted to make their stand for women's rights very clear took this article as justification for their beliefs that the only issue at stake when discussing feminism and gender equality is abortion.  Clearly, if a woman is deprived of the right to mindlessly evacuate a "clump of cells" that has inconsiderately attached itself to her uterine wall, obviously through no actions the woman did or did not take to prevent that from happening, soon women won't be allowed to vote or drive a car or go to work or be viewed as human beings.  Clearly, it all hinges on the "right" to make the tiny heart of the parasite inside her body stop beating.

It probably doesn't take too much imagination to figure out where I stand on abortion "rights."

Nevertheless, there are two points I want to make.  I actually started to ponder the first point back in December when I was struggling to figure out why my colleagues were trying to rain on my happy parade with their oft-spoken hatred for the Christmas music played in all the stores throughout holiday shopping season.  "Kids today" are living in a post-Christian world.  "Kids today" were probably not brought up in the Church, or if they were, may have abandoned it once they were out on their own and no one forced them to go.  "Kids today" do not, as a general rule, follow a set of ethics that value the sanctity of life and even resent "mindless religion" for forcing people to consider that group of cells which has formed itself into the shape of a human and has a heart beat after only 22 days and a gender at the 8th week a living being.  Well, Kids, sorry to rain on your parade, but I cannot see how you can deny that the thing that has taken up unwelcomed residence in some woman's privately-owned uterus is a life, or that that life has value purely for being alive.

But that's just me.

Several comments made by friends of my friend stated, sometimes in very ugly language, that it is better to kill the child before it is born so that it:
- does not interfere any further with the life of the DNA donors
- does not die of some degenerative disease outside the womb
- does not bounce around the child welfare system (which shows nothing more than complete ignorance of how the process of adoption - and even foster care - works)
- does not contribute to the overpopulation of a world that cannot sustain additional life

I have to admit, that last one is my favorite.  So that leads to my second point:

Effective immediately, I am against any research into cures for cancer, AIDS, or any other terminal disease.  


What?

The more time, effort, and funding we put into finding the cure for cancer (et cetera), the longer people will live when they would otherwise die of some dreadful disease.  I'm just trying to prevent overpopulation.  The world can't sustain all these people, so something must be done.  Just let them die - they've already lived long enough.

It's really no different.  Think about it for a minute.

There's really so much more that can be said about that, but that's a whole other post for another time.

There is a man named Bryan Kemper.  He used to run an organization called Rock For Life, which was a pro-life organization.  He left because he felt it was too focused on the abortion issue.  In a great speech my husband was fortunate enough to witness, Bryan explained that abortion is only one issue for someone who is truly pro-life.  To truly call yourself "pro-life," you must advocate for the end of all needless suffering and unnecessary death - that means no abortion, no death penalty, no war, no nothing that takes away life.

People like to focus on abortion because it is a polarizing issue and one about which almost everyone has a definite and vehement opinion.  The news media and gossip sites alike prefer to focus on how the government is trying to "turn back time" on women's rights by putting restrictions on when in a pregnancy a woman can get an abortion or if there are certain hoops she must jump through first (like the controversial proposed sonograph legislation).  Women's rights are far wider than whether or not we have the privilege to kill an inconveniently planted "clump of cells."  There continues to be inequality in the work place, there are still misogynistic beliefs about a woman's place and purpose that slip through lips too easily and with far too much chuckling acceptance.  I am not denying that we still need to fight to completely reverse the paradigm of our grandparents, and some of our parents, regarding "a woman's place," and what not.

All I'm saying is think first before letting a left-spun (and poorly researched and written) article get you all riled up about that one hot topic.  If you care to, I'll also ask you to spare some time to think about how you feel about life - when it begins, when it should end.  Then ask yourself why you think that - when and where did you learn it? Who or what taught you?

If you, having taken time to think, wish to leave a respectful and engaging comment, I invite the dialog.  If you are unable to be respectful, I will not hesitate to delete your comment.

grinchy mcscrooge

What is up with kids these days???

Yes, I've become one of those stodgy old geezers that says things like that.  Hear me out, though - in the "olden days," stodgy old geezers were called by a different name - Elders - and people showed them reverence and respect simply because they had managed to live long enough to get gray hairs.

I work with a bunch of people who are, on average, 10 years younger than me.  While this is usually something we don't notice, I can't help but wonder if it is a generational difference that allows me to love Christmas in all its trimmings - the music, the food, the scents, the decorations - and that causes them to adopt an attitude of apathy at best and downright mean-spirited, steal-your-sunshine hatred at worst.  I don't know when this happened since I was too busy to enjoy Christmas the last two years, but it seems that without exception, my colleagues display a total bah humbug attitude toward the holiday season: while I look forward to the isolated 4 weeks each year that I get to listen to Christmas music, they hate it and complain relentlessly about having to listen to it.

I've had it.

What happened to holiday cheer?  Where is the "most wonderful time of the year"?  Why doesn't anyone "buy into" that anymore?

I think most people are quick to blame the heinous over-commercialization of the holiday for all this Anti-Christmas sentiment.  I can understand how it must feel like Toys-R-Us opening at 9pm on Thanksgiving and the ads for holiday shopping season starting right after Halloween can take away the charm and sentimentality of Christmases past.

I think that's only part of a much bigger picture.  I've been thinking a lot about this because to me, Christmas is a joyful time of year - I love Christmas.  I look forward to it the way a child does, but not in anticipation of presents - rather, I linger on every sight and scent, I enjoy every single day.  I smile when I see the first snowflake decorations tied to the lampposts in Philadelphia and the sight of Headhouse Shambles and Rittenhouse Square all lit up for Christmas makes my heart swell.  I feel joy when I walk past a tree or window display of a storefront.  I actually love Christmas shopping because I know that I have all the excuses I need to "spoil" the people I love.  The only thing I really don't like about Christmas is the time that I have to wait between buying a gift and giving it because I love the joy a small token of love and friendship can bring to a person.

Why don't other people have that joy?

From looking around me and doing some serious thinking (who, me?), I think that a bigger part of this new "bah humbug" trend is the deterioration of relationships - relationships with your family, possibly your colleagues or friends, but yes, relationships.  Whether people admit it or not, I think that is why so many young people hate Christmas.  I know people who hate Christmas just because it means they have to see their family and deal with all the drama - when your family is built around dysfunctional relationships, it doesn't feel good to spend time together.  When we place all our worth on being in a romantic relationship, it "ruins" Christmas if that person dumps us before or around the holiday season.

Honestly, friends, what it comes down to is this: a lack of connection to, respect for, and relationship with the Savior whose birth Christmas celebrates removes any last vestige of holiday joy. [Before anyone reading feels the need to bring this up, I am very well aware that the Church strategically selected December 25th due to the celebration of a popular pagan holiday and that December 25th is not actually when Christ was born.  None of that changes the fact that this is the designated holiday to symbolically celebrate the miracle.]

This time of year you hear ads on the television and on the radio, reminding you to "keep Christ in Christmas" or remember the "Reason for the Season" and it's easy to roll your eyes and say it's hokey, but if we refocused the holiday and remembered why we celebrate it, we might find a joy that transcends holiday shopping madness (I freely admit to hating mall shopping during December, despite my love of buying gifts), gives us strength to put aside differences and hurt feelings and gather with our families at the table, and most importantly, gives us a worth that will never be matched by another human being's love.

So what's wrong with kids these days?  They were not raised in a Christian society, so Christmas has never been anything but a secular, universally celebrated, shopping holiday and another excuse for their family to make them miserable.  The songs that I love to listen to remind me of the incredible love God showed by allowing himself to be born as a human infant to poor, unwed parents so that he could live among us, as one of us, and ultimately give his life so that we would no longer be separated from him.  They remind me of the traditions my family has kept and the new ones I have adopted with the family I married into.  They evoke warmth and love and golden images of happy people being nice to each other.

The songs they hate have no meaning apart from reminding them how useless Christmas is now that they aren't children looking for something special under the tree.  As we [as a secular society] have successfully removed God from every facet of society that is not the cloistered halls of a church, we have lost our holiday traditions and the little things that can touch our hearts and make us remember that we have a lot of love to give.

I have a lot of love to give.  Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones from me and mine.

somethin' in the works

Yes.... I know I suck at posting recently.  I'm sorry.  But you're tired of hearing me apologize for sporadic posting anyway, aren't you?

I could babble about why I haven't been posting but it comes down to this: I don't find it interesting to post about recipes I've made multiple times and if I don't have anything interesting or entertaining to say, I don't want to post just for the sake of keeping up the blog.

Stick with me, folks.  Not giving away anything just yet, but stay tuned - something's coming.

Soon.

:)

While we're waiting, though, why don't you page through some of my older posts?  I used to put together some fairly entertaining posts when I was still figuring out this crazy cooking thing!  Pick a post you enjoyed, then click on one of the tags for other posts like it.  Or, just pick a random past month to check out.

If you want to laugh at someone being completely random and scatterbrained, check out December of any year and January of 2010.
If you want to think deeply, check out October 2009 or the tag Operation Gratitude Attitude (November through December 2009).
If you like faerietales, read the posts I wrote about PIFA, either by using the PIFA tag or by going to April 2011.
If you want to know more about the information that led to my decision to "go vegan," check out my multi-part review of Skinny Bitch between August and October of 2010.
If you need a suggestion, leave me a comment with what you want to read about/learn and I'll point you in the right direction.

No food pictures because you've seen them all before.  How about an Angst picture?

How about his Greatest Hits?

See you soon!

a [sur]prize in every box!

I had a revelation this morning as I was getting out of the shower.

Angst always sits in the bathroom to keep me company while I shower in the morning (or afternoon, on days off sometimes).  As I was stepping out of the shower, I asked him if it was bad that I was already actively anticipating the end of the work day I had not yet begun, purely because I have tomorrow off?  See, I just started my job a month ago and I am very happy there.  However, here is the discovery Angst and I made this morning:

No matter how much you enjoy your job, you still prefer your days off.


I could be wrong.  Some people find their jobs positively completing and I know there are folks the uninitiated refer to as "workaholics" who find their job so fulfilling (or inescapable) that they would be perfectly happy to just take a dinner break and keep working into the night.  I enjoy my job enough to work on things far into the night, but I prefer to do so in the comfort of my own home, until Mister tears me away from my computer and reminds me we have a bed, too.  Nevertheless, I was very happy to finish up this evening a little after 6 and once again, magically get home before the sun fully set.

I love how much time my new schedule/shorter commute allows Mister and I to spend lingering over dinner or hanging out before I even start heating a pot.  I love that even though we had a nice little conversation and then I talked to my sister for about 20 minutes while emptying the dishwasher and putting various other things where they belong, I could still take my time and make dinner at my pace - no need to rush.  After dinner, Mister made decaf coffee and we sat and talked about my sister's new boyfriend and people getting pregnant and trapping themselves in a situation that looks like "mandatory marriage" - and by the way, those two things are unrelated - Breathe, Mom!  Anyway, we just kind of babbled at each other about the obscure things we find interesting and when we excused ourselves, it wasn't even 10!

We had the last meal on the last menu, Warm Chickpea Ragout with Swiss Chard, Carrots and Harissa from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy.

We've had this several times before, but Mister had absolutely no recollection of it.  It did taste a little different - a little more savory, which added the benefit of controlling Harissa's heat.  The only thing I could think of that I did differently was that I used a half cup of the leftover garlic broth, which is pretty pungent.  I also added a generous amount of salt and I can't remember if I've done that in the past, since I usually only mess with things that have a specified quantity, rather than the disgruntling "to taste."

It was very tasty and I love how harissa allows me to eat spicy things without my entire face burning off in the process.

Anyway, completely by coincidence, my menu ran out the night before my day off (I wasn't originally supposed to be off tomorrow), so let me share a short menu with you - a mini-menu, if you will.  Full-sized version will be introduced over the weekend.  A recent comment reminded me just how well loved my Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook has been over the years - in fact, I'm pretty sure that was a primary guide for me as I learned how to cook.  Pages are dog-eared and stained, some stick together a little at the yellowing edges, and favorites have been marked along with "someday I have to try this" recipes.  I've been neglecting the book for years, so I decided to pull it out for this week's menu. I had thought that I'd been neglecting it because a lot of the recipes take a while to cook, but I discovered two other things that have probably been deterring me unconsciously.

First, the recipes are built for a restaurant, and are therefore, huge.  I don't need that much food and I don't feel like figuring out how to divide everything to only make enough for me and Mister and Leftover Lunch.  Second, and probably more importantly, there are very few vegan recipes and the tweaks required would probably strip away the charm of the original recipe.

"Hey! I veganized a recipe that someone converted from a meal full of meat into a vegetarian recipe."  Wow.  That's great.  That sounds like cousins who can legally marry, barely, to me.  So, with all that in mind, I chose the following three irresistible recipes, all from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

1. Vegetable Biryani - I have not had many moments in my culinary "career" as proud as the moment I made this the first time.  After years of spaghetti and veggie burgers, this was a gourmet achievement of the highest order.  It's actually really easy, but I haven't made it in a while because I have an even easier recipe with fewer steps (and fewer pots).

2. Pasta e Fagioli because hey, what's one more Pasta e Fagioli recipe when you're keeping a secret tally of how many Pasta e Fagioli recipes you have to how many Beans 'n' Rice recipes you have?

3. Harira, which is a huge pot of African soup which Muslims traditionally eat to break the fast of Ramadan.  We are neither African nor Muslim and if we were fasting, Mister would need a lot more than soup to break the fast, but this was one of the first soups I ever made that did not involve a can-opener, so you can consider this a little prideful trip down Memory Lane.

My fingers are cold.  I think it's time for a Cosmo.  See you tomorrow!

let's give 'em something to talk about (link party)

A friend of mine posted an article on facebook today about how useless a college education is, sparking a short but lively interaction between friends in the comment section.  The main point of the article is that institutions of higher education are outdated, obsolete.  They are expensive wastes-of-time and in the end, the bearer of a degree benefits little from that time and money spent.  I have my own mixed feelings toward this article.

On the one hand, I did go to college.  I even went to grad school and was 2/3 through my Masters degree before taking a leave of absence that turned into dropping out altogether.  I am still paying off my Bachelors degree but I haven't worked in "my field" since 2003.  I may still be paying off the degree I didn't get when I entered graduate education (can't differentiate that debt from leftover wedding debt with some travel/moving debt mixed in for good measure).  So, to sum it up, I am many thousands of dollars in debt for a degree and a half that I'm not using.

On the other hand, I think there is a great deal more learning that goes on in higher education than what is summarized on that nifty piece of paper you get when you wear a black robe under a hot May sun for a few hours.  Do I regret that I haven't worked in "my field" in over 8 years?  Somewhat.  Do I regret what I eventually got my degree in?  Sometimes, and more frequently lately.  Do I feel I would have gotten as far as I've gotten professionally without a degree?  No.  No, I do not.

Every time I've engaged in a job search over the last 10 years, any job I had any interest in pursuing was quite clear on the necessity of a college degree.  Some have been content with a 2-year degree, others have stated that a 4-year degree is "preferred."  Besides just having a degree to have a degree, I think I learned a lot more during my time in the classroom.

I learned how to think.
I learned how to ask questions.
I learned how to communicate to various levels of understanding.
I learned how to expand my vocabulary; I learned how to "dumb it down" for accessibility.
I learned how to juggle work, school, and social life.
I learned about a big world I didn't know existed - I was extraordinarily fortunate to go to two schools who placed a heavy emphasis on multi-culturalism and learning from "the other."
I learned how to play nice with people who weren't like me.
I learned how to reach deep inside myself and find something I held in common with "the other."
I learned how to see the world, or just my little city, through the eyes of someone completely unlike me.

I learned how to cooperate.  I learned how to love.  I learned.

So, regardless of my current profession being as far from "my field" as possible, I have always been and continue to be ineffably grateful for the 9 years I spent in institutions of higher learning.  I learned a lot from the books, but I learned a lot from the people and the experience as well.

My college and grad school were very focused on social justice, equality, and leaving the world a better place than it was when you entered.  The world around us is making it very difficult to carry out the last one, but I have no doubt that my classmates are continuing to strive toward that goal as much as I am.  By being part of that culture, surrounded by that ethos for nearly a decade of my life, my mind is irreversibly changed.  I was privileged, sheltered, and myopic as an adolescent.  Being a part of that new world helped to shape me into a pensive, globally-conscious, action-oriented adult.

My decision to give up meat had very little to do with the suffering of animals, but rather, it was focused on the degradation of our world - environmentally, nutritionally, and socially - which can be traced to the meat industry.  My husband became a vegetarian first and I thought he was crazy - life without meat, cheese, milk, etc, was absolutely foreign to me and I was not comfortable with it at all.  I asked him why he chose that route and his long, thoughtful answer appealed completely to the part of me that mourns for the exploitation rampant in poorer areas of the world, poorer areas of our own country, state, 25-mile radius.  It was the slow realization that I was contributing to the poverty and hunger of other human beings by indulging in luxuries like filet mignon on a pretty regular basis that led me to declare "Never again," as two-thirds of a perfectly good piece of meat slid off of my plate and into the waiting garbage can.

The USDA (in all their hallowed, pure-intentioned, unconflicted-interest glory) released the new My Plate, to replace the food pyramid as the new guide for how Americans should eat.  This has led to a number of editorials, blogs, and tweeted musings about the influences that shaped the Plate and whether it accomplished any good whatsoever.

Mama Pea stirred up quite a discussion with her post - I encourage you to read not only the post but also the comments.  Her readers are an insightful and generally well-educated bunch.  Someone who was interested in doing so could learn a whole lot of good information from these comments.  I know I did.

Nutrition and healthy eating are nearly constantly on my mind.  I work for one of the top three weight loss programs in the nation as one of the people who train incoming new hires as well as "uptraining" the present corps of employees on new policies, guidelines, or other relevant information.  This can be, on limited occasion, extremely rewarding.  Most of the time, it is heart-rendingly frustrating.  Because I have put so much time into understanding my own relationship with food and the way that it fuels my body and propels my life, I take for granted that other people also think of these things.  I am guilty of crawling back into my own little world and neglecting the evidence of the much larger world out there.  It is astonishing how little people know about food, nutrition, and how to not kill themselves.

A few times, I have thought it would be humorous to devote an entire post or two to some of the bizarre things my new hires or present employees say to me in trainings.  While these things are kind of funny in retrospect, as a "I can't wait to tell Mister about this one" kind of thing, they are horrifying when they actually occur because they remind me how much I take for granted in my own life.  Here are some highlights:

There was the employee who was truly surprised that chicken would not be included on our vegetarian program. [click here for the full story]

There was the hot dog vendor who was personally offended by my tofu pups.

There was the woman who explained that vegetarians have to eat a lot of food that's been enriched with protein to help them "fight the cravings."  I was too busy being horror-stricken to ask her what vegetarians were craving that they needed protein in large quantities to ward off.

That same employee, only minutes later also explained that vegetarians don't get enough nutrients, which is why "they all have that weird skin color."  Mister and I had a field day with this one.  That weird skin color?  We weren't sure whether she meant that healthy glow that comes from eating foods that are good for you or the absence of red-flushed cheeks/face that indicate hypertension.

Another new hire nearly laughed himself into a coma trying to figure out why we would even need a vegetarian weight loss program since "those people" don't eat anything.  On the one hand, I'm glad he was able to recognize that eating animals contributes to the obesity rampant in our nation.  On the other hand, I explained to him that there are a great many things that are vegetarian-safe but will make you fat: potato chips, cake, french fries (not from McDonalds), most candy; I finished by pointing out that Alec Baldwin is a vegetarian.  I didn't need to say the rest.

I don't share these stories to make fun of the "stars," rather, to show what I believe is a relatively common ignorance about healthy eating.  It's so much more convenient to eat whatever McDonald's tells you is healthy or pick the lowest calorie treat in Starbucks' pastry case than it is to think of balance.  Pizza and drive-thru burgers are so much easier than working all day and then cooking a meal from scratch.  I totally get that and there are times I feel the same way.

So, although I feel the USDA is hopelessly corrupt and has been bought out by Big Meat/Dairy, I do think the Plate is a babystep in the right direction - at least it shows that half the plate should be taken up by fresh whole foods like fruit and vegetables.  Even though protein represented by meat and dairy are considered an essential part of your daily meals, at least the protein portion is smaller than the rest.  People don't know enough, generally, about nutrition or the corruption of those who feed us (so to speak) to make an educated decision, so if this will give them a little tap in the right direction (portion control, anyone?), I'm all for it.  Paradigms are not shifted overnight and the veg movement is definitely gaining ground.  We'll get there.

In the meantime, may I suggest two in-depth articles for your reading pleasure?

On the Huffington Post, Nil Zacharias explores The Inconvenience of Being Vegan.  He provides a lot of really good information in a completely accessible and readable format.  He incorporates humor but knows when to turn more serious to make his point.  He also includes a ton of links so interested readers can get more information.

At ZenHabits, the writer explores the myth that soy is bad for you in some way.  I was fortunate to find this post immediately after one of my new hires expressed concerns his son had raised to him about soy, resulting in the young man's refusal to eat anything with soy.  When I say "anything," I mean this young man is reading labels as closely as a vegan looking for casein.  This is a well-written and comprehensive answer to him buying into the anti-soy propaganda circulated, not surprisingly, by Big Meat and Big Dairy....

I meant to tell you how much I enjoyed the Rice Island Casserole from Vegan on the Cheap tonight, but I think too much.

faux fare and photos - time to weigh in

So, the veg-world is all atwitter (literally, in some cases) about a recent expose´ on quarrygirl.com about VegNews magazine using stock photos in their publication.  Anyone who is not "in the know" is probably wondering what is so bad about using stock photos - well, it just so happens these stock photos contained animals and not when they're all cute and fuzzy.

Feel free to check out the post, but I encourage you to also read the comments and maybe head over to a few other sources of information about this whole debacle.  There are really two battles being fought here and I feel like I've spent enough time reading compassionate, though possibly misguided defenses and venomous, movement-demeaning attacks to share my own thoughts now.  I absolutely invite dialogue via the comments section, but having seen how fired up people are getting about this, I do request that anyone who wants to share their thoughts does so in a respectful manner.

So, like I said, there are really two issues going on here and as far as I can tell, most people are picking one and ignoring the other, whichever is better suited to their own passion.  To be completely honest, I am feeling vaguely ambiguous about this whole thing - I have not yet had a defined, strong feeling push me one way or the other, though this has certainly been a brainbug for me the past few days.

I have slightly less to say about the first part, so we'll do this first: People are tweaked because the magazine used stock photos that included actual meat and/or dairy products to represent recipes or products.  Okay, I get that - the major public outcry is that this demonstrates a severe lack of integrity.  Integrity is very important to me, so I can go along with this one.  Is it deceitful and underhanded of a magazine that actively promotes not just a vegetarian diet but rather a vegan lifestyle to use pictures of dead animals?  Absolutely.  Do I think they were wrong?  Absolutely.  Then, just in case there was any hope for the staff of VegNews to reclaim their lost integrity, they made damn sure no one thought they were apologizing.  The "letter" they published on the website was very well written and can easily be read in a placating tone.  A person could almost accept their apology...if one had actually been offered.  Instead, VegNews's mea culpa sounds more defensive than it does regretful - as though the only thing they're actually sorry about is being caught.  At no point do the authors of the letter actually say "I'm sorry," when those two little words would have saved them a lot of grief in the long run.  Instead, they dug their hole a little deeper, and it will take even longer for them to find their way out.

As I was eating my dinner tonight (alone, since Mister fell asleep early), I decided to glance through my new issue of VegNews, which arrived on the date all this controversy began, coincidentally.  As I turned the pages, each time my eyes fell upon a picture, I caught myself wondering if it was also a stock photo and if I should be trying to decipher some digital manipulation, or if it really was a photo of a vegan culinary delight.  To be truthful, that led to the collection of thoughts that chased me over to my computer, determined to get out the words that keep repeating themselves inside my head.

You can't (really) fake a picture of a carrot.  Short of chopping up and bleaching beef fat, you aren't likely to have animal products in a picture of hash browns.  I can't think of a single part of an animal that looks like broccoli.  If you can, please do not share :)

Some people are saying that VegNews is making vegans look bad to omnivores; they say it looks like we're all starving for what we've chosen not to eat.  Well.... why are we looking for ways to veganize BBQ ribs, then?

What keeps going through my head is faux fare.  Think for a moment, folks.  We have Daiya and a bunch of other vegan "cheeses."  For heaven's sake, there is a whole cookbook devoted to making vegan cheese.  We have Gardein and Boca Chicken patties and Tofurky sausages, not to mention "deli meat" slices by LightLife, Tofurky, and Yves.  I'll excuse the original Tofurky roast since it was intended to help veganize a holiday that reeks of death to those of us who don't want to rip the flesh off of a dead bird with our teeth, but even that fits the paradigm.

What paradigm?  Glad you asked - the one that says we need to have something "equal" to the meat eaters' entree choices in order to "keep up" or be fulfilled and satisfied.  Think for a moment on the inordinate amount of time we spend scouting out, preparing, reviewing, and scrounging for meat substitutes?  The most coveted honor in vegan cooking?  From what I have seen, it appears to be the perfection of a vegan mac 'n' cheese recipe.  I see this quest represented in almost every cookbook I own, on almost every blog I've ever read.

Please don't think I don't count myself amidst the guilty, friends.  There have been times I have embarrassed myself with the amount of "fake meat" and/or "fake dairy" in my grocery basket, times that I have cringed as I placed my items on the conveyor belt at Whole Foods and wondered if the cashier thought ill of me.  I regularly buy Tofurky deli slices for Mister (it's my way of making up for not buying him cheese anymore), I probably buy Tofurky sausages as frequently as I buy tofu, and it is a rare shopping trip I don't leave without a carton of soymilk.  Other culprits?  Soy yogurt, soy/rice cheese, daiya shreds, Yves ground "meat," Gardein "chicken," veggie burgers, non-dairy ice cream, vegan hot dogs, vegan meatballs.  I could probably go on, but you get the point.  I am not immune.

I am, however, self-aware.  If we are afraid that omnis will see this debacle and think vegans are a bunch of crazy people who really just want what we "can't" have, we need to recognize that this is an indictment of ourselves, not a magazine that is trying to give us what we want.  Do you want a review of the top 5 veggie hot dogs as we all prepare to fire up the grills for the first time this spring?  Well, please don't be surprised when a magazine uses a stock photo rather than taking some crappy picture of one of the dogs only to have the manufacturers of the other 4 calling and emailing to find out why they didn't photograph their dogs.  And don't be scandalized when it's a stock photo of a "real" hot dog.  First of all, there is nothing "real" in hot dogs - just lips and a**holes, folks.  Second, aside from being a psycho-stalker and checking every photo they print against a database of stock photos, can you really tell the difference between artificially pink "beef/pork" and artificially pink soy?  I can't.

If all the people who are spending their time railing against VegNews and using inappropriate forums to make their point would use their energy to examine their own diet and consumer behavior for a moment, they might understand why [lack of integrity notwithstanding] this really isn't a good reason to tear down a magazine that is trying to do some good in a world full of abuse and hatred.  Did the staff of VegNews deceive us?  Yes.  Did they apologize?  Not yet, that I'm aware of, and I still really think that would be their most appropriate next move if they have any hope of salvaging their really good publication.  Regardless of this whole situation, for the last 11 years, this magazine has been on the forefront of a movement to draw the good things of veganism into the mainstream.  Having won a prominent place on newsstands everywhere, I'd say they have been instrumental in spreading "the good word."  Using deceptive photos does not discount the fact that every single recipe is unapologetically vegan, every product they promote is vegan, and the overall focus of the magazine is highlighting vegans and helping lower-profile folks become better, more thoughtful, more educated people. 

VegNews was a large contributing factor in my decision to go vegan.  I didn't flip through a magazine or two and say "wow, those pictures of fake mac 'n' cheese look so good!  I guess I can be vegan now."  I carefully read the features, examined their advertisements, sifted through their "favorite" products.  After garnering as much information as I could, I decided to give it a go because their words, their promoted products, and their recipes (with or without pictures) gave me hope that I could give up the things that hurt the world without losing out on things I love (like chocolate).

I had intended to review our dinner at Horizons (last night) and maybe poke some fun at how miserably I eat when I don't cook for Mister and I, rather than writing a manifesto on looking in the mirror before casting that stone.  All of that needed to come out, though, so thank you for reading it.  Like I said, I welcome your thoughts on the matter as well, but please state them respectfully.  As a reward for making it this far, I'll let you see how uncivilized I can be when Mister sleeps through dinner - it's especially ironic, given the point of this post, that dinner tonight was leftover "meatloaf."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some tasty vegan coffee cake to attend to.  I do plan to put it on a plate.

weebles wobble but they don't fall down

Favorite recipes, however?  Well, sometimes, they can teeter a bit on their throne, but it takes a powerful punch to knock them off altogether.

Meet the contenders:

Clara's Pasta e Fagioli from The Urban Vegan

The Reigning Champ

VS

Pasta e Fagioli from Veganomicon

The Challenger

I've made both of these recipes a few times now.  There is a special place in my heart for the Champion, because the introduction Dynise wrote for this recipe was so heart-warming, I think it actually influenced the flavor of the meal.  The recipe appears in the Soup section of her cookbook, but despite the multiple times I've made it, it has yet to even vaguely resemble soup.

That's actually a point in its favor, folks.  If you haven't been paying attention, Mister does not love Soup, Mister Loves Pasta.

I was actually a little intimidated by Pasta e Fagioli until I found Dynise's recipe, which she adapted from her mother-in-law.  It just seemed so simple and I knew Mister would appreciate it since he does order it whenever we go to Pietro's with his dad.  I discovered that making a big pot of nutritious yet simple pasta causes me to think deeply about the state of things, and when I made the Pasta e Fagioli from Vegan on the Cheap, I wrote another treatise on good food and how we shouldn't take it for granted.  Pasta brings out the philosopher and sociologist in me, I guess.

The first time I made Isa's Pasta e Fagioli, I managed to refrain from waxing poet on the sad state of affairs and how this one pasta dish will solve all the world's problems.  I did so only by focusing completely on how surprisingly good it was.  With that in mind, I made it again tonight:

I used penne because I missed the "-ette" attached to it in the recipe.  Nevertheless, this Pasta e Fagioli is killer, even with noodles a little too big for the dish.  Mister happily plowed through three bowls, barely coming up for air while I savored each bite of my first serving (yes, I did have seconds).  

From the first bite, I knew...

...we have a new Champion.

in the mouths of babes

My brother(-in-law) is getting married in 7 weeks.

That's actually a little mind-blowing because no one ever thought he would get married, but he is, in fact, getting married.  Not only is he getting married, but he will instantly become a step-father to 4 children, in addition to already being the father of his beautiful daughter, my little angel baby.

When my SIL-to-be posted something on Facebook about how awesome their cake is going to be, I had this Lightbulb Moment when I thought, "oh dear, I hope they'll remember we don't eat animals..." regarding reception food.  Honestly, I don't have much of a problem with salad and side dishes, but Mister gets supercranky when he doesn't get to eat "real food" (more in a minute) so since social occasions can be a stretch anyway, I really don't want him to be hungry, too.

Upon further reflection, I remembered that one of the children is a vegetarian and took comfort, since surely, that means they will remember to consider a real vegetarian entree.  Then I started to reflect on the strength of a 14-year-old to make such a decision and wondered how she came to that point in her life and started thinking of my 8-year-old nephew, who has also decided not to eat animals.  This is truly perplexing to the rest of the family, especially my parents-in-law, who cannot understand why he doesn't want to eat chicken fingers.  Fortunately, his mother is supportive of his decision, and of course, his aunt and uncle love that he is a broccoli addict, but I couldn't stop thinking there...no, my mind is a restless creature.

When so many children are making such a substantial decision, to eschew the eating of animals, I can't help but wonder what they are seeing or what they understand that eludes the general population.  I hear about children, mainly between the ages of 5 and 10, choosing a meat-free diet more and more frequently and I want to know why.  What information are these children exposed to that is helping them make this decision?  In their innocence, are they able to better understand the nature of "meat" better than adults?

It has been said, and I have observed, that children have a natural sense of evil - by that I mean some children have an uncanny sense of a person who might harm them or a situation that is dangerous.  I have seen children [who were not abused] shy away from the embrace of someone who was later found to be a pedophile.  I have seen unerring compassion from children towards animals and other children, even adults.  You hear amazing stories of children starting charities to give other children pets, or farm animals for sustenance, or raising money for cancer research.  You are acquainted with the stereotype of stray animals following children who then plead with their parents to bring the new fuzzball into their home.  When they aren't whining, children can be extraordinary creatures.

This is how my mind works.  I think way too much.

The only segue to dinner I can think of is this: SusanV, the author of tonight's dinner recipe, has a daughter she refers to on her blog only by her first initial, E.  According to Susan, E loves pasta.  Funny - my husband also loves pasta!  Smells like a segue to me....

Having been quite productive today, between food shopping, teaching, and cleaning up the kitchen, I actually had very little energy left to make dinner.  A shame, really, as I had intended to make a strange (in a good way) and time-consuming recipe that Isa just posted yesterday on thePPK.com.  Nevertheless, I knew Sicilian Market Pasta from the Fat Free Kitchen blog would be much better accompanied by my Montepulciano than the bizarro wheatberry dish, so I started a pot of water to boil.

I deviated slightly from the recipe mainly because it seems like she's just making things more difficult for herself by sauteing each individual component separately and also because I prefer my cherry tomatoes to be at least lightly sauteed.  As the name of the blog might suggest, Susan is at least a little bit focused on cutting fat and calories in her recipes.  She includes the Weight Watchers exchange for all of her recipes.

I have nothing [big] against Weight Watchers, but what follows will probably reveal that WW is not the weight loss company I work for... Mister and I were unanimous in our reaction to this dish: too many years of dieting appear to have robbed Susan of her tastebuds.  This recipe had so very much potential....with some tweaking, this could be a recipe to reckon with, although I think Martha has already perfected it.  There was way too much pasta for the "sauce."  It's possible she meant to use 1 lb of fresh pasta, but 1 lbs of dry pasta was WAY too much.  There was also more basil than anything else, which is fine, except that it doesn't melt into a sauce.

Also, chickpeas and spaghetti just don't mix.  It is profoundly difficult to eat them together.  It was an attractive, but very bland dish.  Since we didn't eat much, there is a whole dinner's worth of leftovers, so I may try to craft a real sauce and serve the leftovers with that one day when time is tight and/or I don't feel like cooking, but really, Susan...this was the Guaranteed Not To Suck dish...now I'm more than just a little concerned about the other two recipes I have on my menu.

Because I don't want to leave you on a bad note, I will share the most amazing link.  I don't even know how I found this - it was one of those amazing finds that comes as the result of multiple "click-throughs" from one website to another.  Some woman discovered some Weight Watchers recipes cards from the 1970s and was so repulsed (and with good reason!) she devoted a blog to sharing them with others.  I laughed so hard I couldn't breath - although I don't want to rob you of your breath, I do hope you laugh as hard as I did, because everyone needs a little ridiculousness in their lives.

Click here.  You won't be sorry.