A longtime reader has continuously encouraged either Sarah, or I, to write a cookbook. I'd suck at it since I never measure anything and I forget important verbs (like bake) in favor of over-used enthusiastic adjectives such as the word mongo.
I do know though that women my age, perplexed by various food choices, concerned with cancer alarm scares, and bamboozled by flat-out liars, such as those behind the HFCS snafu - well, we're routinely fed ignorantly alarming information via the media or advertising executives twisting the truth, resulting in an epidemic of obesity and too many avoidable health problems.
It just pisses me off.
A bunch of saggy, baggy old ladies like us? We deserve decent sources of information, we're no threat to any interest or focus group, except to those trying to profit from our grocery dollars giving us crap for our bucks.
Sarah'd sent me a link to a lecture that I'd not found time to watch until yesterday, even though she'd told me that her yoga teacher training class had literally applauded this doctor. I deeply value her opinion.
I carved out an hour yesterday and settled in to watch him, well I carried around the phone in which I used, so I could work and listen.
Oh my.
Oh flat out my. Are you freaking kidding me? After all the tomes I've devoured for 40 years on nutrition, after what I wrongly thought had been a fairly conservative vegetarian diet since I was a teen, technically longer, since meat had never had a starring role in our meals my entire life, I was taught by my mama to crave fresh fruits and vegetables, especially home grown - the dairy I'd long ingested has been silently contributing to dietary issues.
Where'd I go wrong? Dairy. Cow secretions.
Seriously moms, take the time to click this link, and at least listen via your phone, or sit and watch it, as his stage presence is impressive.
Life is full of problems and challenges, I'd just as soon check out now and head for Heaven, but it's not my time yet. I want to remain strong, vital, energetic, and healthy so I can continue to help my children and my grandchildren...and any of y'all that wanna listen.
I can't begin to relate the trauma I felt inside helplessly watching my sister suffer horribly until she died of breast cancer almost 17 years ago. Or my father, as the Pulmonary Fibrosis robbed him of his very full life. I'm not saying that a vegan diet would've saved either of them, but their quality of life would've been better and way longer. I am saying that a vegan diet might have prevented my sister from dying. I am saying that.
The 15 leading causes of death all have an undeniable corollary connection to one's crappy diet, and one can throw up one's chubby hands and holler, "Everything gives us cancer," and keep on gobbling crap, only to find themselves flabby, tired, taking pills, feeling weak and sluggish, or one can wake up and smell the roasted cauliflower adorned with Heavenly spices and herbs and make some vital changes.
My reader, Fatcat AKA PaulAnne, if I remember correctly, simply wants to know what we eat each day.
Both Sarah and I have the easy benefit of having almost always eaten well, so the changes we had to make were very few. In the late 1970s she went vegetarian simply to be like me, in 2012 I went vegan to be like her. All I gave up was cheese really. When she went officially vegetarian it was also no big deal, as that's all I fed her anyway - she just had announced to her dad that he needed to step up to the plate on his weekends, which he did.
So yesterday I had a breakfast of oats (not the one minute kind) with almond milk, flax seeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, molasses, cinnamon and raisins. Stick to your ribs, fill you up until lunchtime and inordinately delicious. A very big bowl.
At lunch I ate another big bowl of black beans and garlic loaded brown rice doused with my garden salsa, an entire avocado, and Fire Hot Pepper Sauce (a big bowl) and I had it again for supper while my kids had used those leftover beans and rice to make mega nachos. I had four pears throughout the day for snacks and a very big bowl of hot air popped popcorn later. I ate a couple of bananas during the day too, and drank a lot of my delicious well water.
I've virtually eliminated oils from my diet, and dairy is totally kicked out the door, I wouldn't eat meat no matter what. Plant-based food. Period.
I'm slowly changing the kids over too, most of them now prefer Rice, Almond, Soy, or Coconut milk, I've greatly lessened their cheese intake, and they've not really noticed.
All those seeds are expensive, y'all might holler. Have you priced a hospitalization? Or Chemo? Or Jenny Craig? Or Steaks?
Ladies, y'all's families need you too, your families desperately need you to be strong and healthy.
"I have a family, I can't change the way we eat," y'all might say. Um, I have a family too, and I sure as heck feed them the right way. They grow up and rebel by eating at fast food places, they gain weight, they feel crappy, they turn themselves around, because I taught them how to do so. I made vegetarianism look easy, because it is. I was never brainwashed by the meat industry, I was swayed by the dairy industry and I'm mad at myself about it.
Due to an inordinate amount of heavy duty stress and heart-slamming fear, my wobbly heart has been in danger for years, bathed daily in cortisol and adrenaline, that's not good for you. I had to give up my monthly (if that) Krispy Kreme splurge, I've ditched my PMS chips (Salt and Vinegar) since I'm past that monthly curse anyway, and the only splurge I plan to allow anymore might be a homemade slice of Sarah or Miss Lisa's cakes. Good-bye cheesecake, it's been fun.
I wish I could tell you that I'm good about exercise but I truly suck at it.
Watch Forks Over Knives, or Vegucated, or Food Inc or Fresh, or at least this one pivotal lecture. Do it for your darling grandbabies' benefit. They need their grandmas.
Do you have hypertension, water retention, IBS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, etc.? Over-weight? Diabetic?
Please, please, please watch these videos.
Everyone wants to lose a few pounds, you'll lose a veritable boat load by kicking carcass-eating to the curb.
Too graphic? That's what it is, dead flesh that once had a face and could've looked deep into your eyes beseechingly. Cows are sweet animals, pigs are as intelligent as three year olds, hens are companionable. You wouldn't eat a horse or a dog, why is it OK to eat Flossie the cow?
Because I eat everything in sight, and a ton of it, big bowls, big plates, heck I'm a piglet my own self. I don't, and won't, count calories because my body is still healing from the Hell I'd put it through trying to parent challenging children, but at 5' 6 1/2", I weigh a whopping 132 pounds. I eat a ton every day. This video explains why I can eat like that and not weigh 232, why wouldn't you want to do this?
Ladies, I deeply care about y'all, many of you I've gotten to know very well via email, you all telling me your scarily similar-to-mine adoption stories.
Please listen to this video. I'm flat out begging y'all to help yourselves be strong and healthy. Please?
Posts
13 comments:
Oh, we're talking about what we ate yesterday. I wanna play, too. Yesterday was my super-busy, run-all-over-town, drop-kids-here-and-there, go-to-client's-offices day, so I had to eat vegan "fast food."
Breakfast: Toasted ciabatta bread topped with Earth Balance spread (eaten in the car)
Lunch: Whole-wheat tortilla smeared with a lot of hummus and filled with salad greens, carrots and radishes, and then rolled up (we call it a hummus wrap - also eaten in the dang car, between meetings)
Dinner: Spicy Broccoli over whole-wheat pasta (my version of fast Chinese food: broccoli is steamed, pasta is cooked, a sauce is made of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, crushed red pepper, and water-sauteed bell peppers; and then the whole thing is tossed together) and vegetable spring rolls (purchased from the freezer section of the grocery store)
Evening Snack: popcorn popped in olive oil (I need to get away from the olive oil, but I am cheap and haven't bought a hot-air popper yet)
Thank you for a wonderful post
Okay, here's my input/questions/concerns and they are kind of random, because my whole personality is kind of random, so I apologize for that in advance.
First off, I am kind of toying with the idea of going off dairy. I kind of think I may agree that dairy is bad, but i think I need to do it gradually. I did go off dairy last week for several days, but I did not feel significantly better or worse.
I think we all have a lot to learn about nutrition.
If I personally ate what you guys ate yesterday, I would not be able to get out of bed today at all, because I'm gluten intolerant and oat intolerant. I would not have been able to walk because of joint pain. I think our current grains are so genetically modified as to be unhealthy now. Do you grow your own ancient grains or get them somewhere?
I don't think soybeans were meant to be drank as soy milk. I think they probably have to do all kinds of unnatural things to convert that to a milk like drink.
My main interest in your food is how you feed your kids healthily. A friend of mine posted on facebook yesterday for lunch ideas, saying that she had been feeding the kids mac and cheese and Ramen noodles for lunch everyday. I cringed.
So I'll let you off the hook for writing a whole cookbook, but I would like see even 1 or 2 recipes for a whole family meal. I have a morbid curiosity about the QUANTITIES. :-P Don't worry about the verbs.
For example: Peel 25 potatoes? Soak 3 bags of beans? Etc. Do you peel potatoes because I just boil them with their peels on and eat them peels and all.
What an interesting & yet disturbing video. I thought I had a lot of nutrition information, but this certainly has got me thinking. Thank you for posting this.
Incredibly interesting. This has given me so much to think about.
Amen! I'm a mom of 7, all raised vegetarian as I've been one for almost 20 years. We recently transitioned myself and my 5 younger kids to vegan (I do give my younger kids organic eggs a few times a week until they start eating more substantial vegan foods)...my 2 oldest are adults and make their own food choices. I have found that they do experiment with unhealthy foods, and just as you said, they feel like crap and go back to healthy stuff again. We love green smoothies, oatmeal, and all the weird foods vegans eat, like tofu and seeds. We are so much healthier without the dairy! We've made it through flu season with no illnesses (no flu shots for us) so far. Thanks for sharing the truth.
FatCat,
Hi there. Mom is notoriously bad about not responding to comments, so I'll handle this one (in random order as well).
Go off dairy for a few weeks, and I guarantee you'll feel better. It will take a couple weeks to eliminate the mucus in your body - that is why a few days wasn't long enough for you to notice a difference. Also, organic dairy isn't really all that better than conventional. Cows raised for organic milk are NEVER given antibiotics, even when they desperately need them. Cows with mastitis suffer greatly (I've had mastitis and it sucks) and their milk is still sold to consumers (with all the accompanying pus). Ick.
Neither I nor my mother are gluten-intolerant, so the modern grain does not seem to have an effect on us, though I understand it has a negative effect on many, many people, including one of my best girlfriends who bloats up like she's pregnant every time she eats a sandwich. If you are gluten-intolerant, I recommend brown rice pasta and quinoa pasta (both available at Publix and Kroger), corn tortillas in place of whole-wheat tortillas, and grits. You'll just have to live without bread, unless you're willing to pay about
$15/loaf and buy it from a baker in CA who uses ancient grains.
Soy milk concerns me as well, so I often use homemade almond milk. It is super easy to make, creamier than soy milk, not at all processed, and there is a recipe on my blog.
As for quantities, yes, my mother soaks six pounds (or so) of beans at a time. It is amusing. And, sure, 25 pounds of potatoes would be normal amount. If the potatoes are organic, you do not need to peel them. I only eat potatoes that I buy either organic from the supermarket, or that I obtain through my CSA. I never peel those.
When I make my black bean chili recipe for mom's house, I multiply the recipe by six. It is entertaining and ridiculous - that's what makes it fun.
Sarah just about covered it. I mentioned soy milk as a possibility, but I don't drink it. The other night I soaked six pounds of black beans, cooked them the next day for two hours, then cooked 4 pounds of brown rice which takes longer than white rice. I save a little of the black bean water when I mix everything up.
If I grow the potatoes I barely brush the dirt off, they are so wonderfully delicious, I try and have organic potatoes as sarah said, because the potato farmers use tons of spray which is ridiculous as I've NEVER had bugs bother my potatoes.
9inthe sunshine - you are music to my ears.
Anonymous - thank you!
Bottom line? I just wish folks would make small changes, a meatless Monday tradition, or eliminate dairy - anything to make you healthier. I know I'm radical but I need to be.
Thank you all, for your replies. I do find the quantities fascinating, why? I have no idea. :-)
I am going to try dairy free for a few weeks and see how it goes, but I'll need to plan it well or I'll backslide. When I went gluten free, I felt better almost immediately, so I was looking for a quick change.
I've been gluten free for 3 years now and recently, due to other issues have had to give up canned/processed tomatoes, tea and coffee. :-(
I have pretty much given up on bread unless I bake it myself and have found that adding pureed pumpkin to gluten free bread makes it have that elusive quality of flavor, but I don't bake much unless my college boy is home to help me eat it. I do get brown rice pasta occasionally, but pasta is not a large part of my life either.
Thanks for this discussion, I've enjoyed it and it has given me some food for thought. :-)
Ok now I want Sarah's recipe for almond milk
Kandy, here you go: http://postmodernfeeding.blogspot.com/2012/01/homemade-almond-milk.html
Ten years ago, for ten years we were vegan, then we slackened. for the last two we have been grain free with dabbles with the Paleo diet. I'm tired of meat, and I'm tired of the spare tire around my waist. So I'd love you to share a recipe or two to get my memory kick started as to how I used to cook.
Erin - for me it was really only a matter of eliminating cheese and eggs. Thank God I love beans
Post a Comment