school daze

If you're gonna go back to school, you gotta go in style!

computer case

available in my etsy shop

for the lover of flowers:

for the lover of green:

for the lover of rainbows:

for the lover of baby:

for jen and sarah

for carolyn

glaucoma--wink, wink

winter soldier

from Democracy Now:

Winter Soldier: Hundreds of Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Gather to Testify in Echo of 1971 Vietnam Hearings

Hundreds of veterans and active-duty soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are gathering today for the Winter Soldier hearings. The soldiers plan to give eyewitness accounts of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the gathering is modeled after the 1971 Winter Solider hearings organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

listen to Democracy Now

or listen on KPFA's live streaming of the event.

yay!

a note to those i'm making things for:

I know, I know...

I said it would surely be done by now, but it's not.

I've had other things on my mind, but find that crafting while uninspired makes for lots of mistakes and irregularities.

I want you to have the highest quality [free] stuff, so be patient.

Thank you.

Here's some update photos to appease you.

mary rocks!

My birthday's coming early this year! They should be here sometime this week. I kinda was just tired of seeing Oprah at the top of the page. I am really excited though. So excited, here's another picture!
They are Novacas brand, which is vegan owned and operated. They are 100% vegan, and totally the cutest ever!By the by, I hear that Natalie Portman has a line of vegan shoes out as well. Just thought I'd mention it.

eat like an ape

Dr. Oz was on a rerun of Oprah the other day, and I am still thinking about one part of the show: Eating Like an Ape. Basically, a group of volunteers lived in a zoo and ate like apes for twelve days. (This meant eating eleven pounds of raw fruits, veggies, and nuts per day.)The results? Average cholesterol drop: 25%. Average blood pressure drop: 10%. Average weight loss: 10 pounds. Average inches around the waist lost: 2.5. Amazing, yes?

Here's what makes me wonder about this experiment: why did they have to do the experiment in a zoo? My guess is that this is, to most people, such a crazy, outlandish concept, that it could only be acted out in a confined environment or something. I suppose that, for most people on Western diets, it would be the only way to keep a person from splurging.

Now, I'm not saying that a raw vegan diet like was used in the show is super easy or something, but, how easy is open heart surgery? Seriously. I think that, given the choice, most people would rather be on medication for the rest of their lives to get a small drop in cholesterol or blood pressure than change their diets. I just wonder about it. What would I do? I dunno. I do think it would be kinda fun to live in a zoo, though.

wishes and dreams

As I cook more and more, I'm wishing I had better utensils. For example, the 2 qt pot that I use has no handle, as it broke off a while back. So I was wish-listing things on amazon and found these:Oh so perdy. If you know me much at all, you know I have a thing for pink. They are enamel inside, which would be a new thing to me. Anyone have experience with enameled cookware?

what i ate today

If you're curious what exactly I do eat, here's a day worth of what I ate:

breakfast:
soy yogurt, granola, and ground flax
2 kiwi fruit
coffee w/ soymilk

snack:
whole grain bread w/ chocolate peanut butter

lunch:
ginger marinated seitan with pearl barley
1 orange
raspberry Emergen-C

dinner:

great northern beans with spinach and rice vinegar
chocolate soy milk

snacks:
hummus with carrot sticks

1 banana and/or cookies

I could see it being boring, but I've always been a simplistic eater. I like how foods taste by themselves. So. There it is. Here's the goals of what I ought to eat versus what I actually ate:
recommended: this day:
grains 6-11 -- 4
veggies 3-5 -- 2 1/2
fruit 2-3 -- 4
legumes 2-3 -- 3
calcium-rich 2-3 -- 2

So I didn't eat enough. Ha! Okay, so the cookie coulda been a better choice, but whatever. What did you eat today?

oh yeah

Yes, I eat things other than sweets. I know y'all are curious what I do eat, so I'll take pictures of everything and post them tomorrow. So look for it. Here's a preview:

guess what came in the mail?

I have a few foods that I'm a little sad to give up, and Nutella is one of them. So I looked to see if there was something similar out there and I found this. It's peanut butter with dark chocolate. Yum. It's magic on bananas.

bestest cookies EVER!

They are basically chocolate cookies with peanut butter cup filling. Delish!

Here's the recipe:
chocolate part:
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 c cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 smart balance stix
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/4 c creamy peanut butter
1 egg worth of egg replacer
1 T soy milk
1 tsp vanilla

stir together flour, cocoa and soda; set aside. cream together sugars and butters. add egg replacer, soy milk, and vanilla. slowly mix in flour mixture. shape into walnut-sized balls.

peanut butter part:
3/4 c powdered sugar
1/2 c creamy peanut butter
cream pb and pwd sugar together. shape into however many chocolate balls you have.

flatten a chocolate ball in your hand. place PB ball inside. shape chocolate dough around the PB ball. place on cookie sheet and flatten with a cup dipped in sugar. repeat. bake at 350* for about ten minutes. eat. make about 3 dozen.

(thanks www.bakeorbreak.com for the inspiration!)

some thoughts. alright, it's a rant.

Know that I'm not trying to "convert" any of you to veganism; it's a choice that I am making for myself. It is something that feels like home to me. If I post a bunch about it, it's not me trying to change you, it's me sharing things that are interesting to me. If you're not interested in it, don't read it.


I do understand that most of you are happy eating meat, etc., but I have pretty much always felt different about eating meat than everyone I knew and have known. To me, it's gross. I don't understand it.

Here's some other things I don't understand:

I don't understand the line between animal abuse and animal production. Why is it that Mitt Romney got bad press for driving with his dog on the roof of his car, but it is okay for animals to be driven on long trips in open-air trucks? (c'mon, you've all seen those trucks!)

I don't see why people are grossed out when a dog eats feces, but most livestock is fed chicken feces and rendered animals of all sorts, and that's okay.

I don't understand why it's cruel to euthanize stray cats and dogs, but it's okay to eat meat from animals that only lived a short portion of their natural life span. (Cows live something like 20 years naturally; dairy cattle are slaughtered for beef when they stop "producing", somewhere around five years of age.)

I don't understand why we respect the lives of some animals, but not others. Why do we cremate our pets when they die, but barbeque cows when they are dead?

I don't understand why "conscious meat eating" is okay. So what if someone whispered sweet nothings in the cow's ear, or gave it a massage once in a while, or played music while it roamed open fields. Did that steak die of natural causes? Probably not. It was was still killed ahead of it time.

I don't understand why people drink milk. Milk is made by mammals to feed babies. It's made to grow things, and grow them big. Cow's don't just magically give milk, just like how I don't just naturally lactate. I've never had a baby, so I don't lactate. Cows have to have babies so that they produce milk. What happens to the babies? Ever heard of veal?


I don't understand these things. They just don't make sense.


So I looked for another option and found it. Being vegan is a way that I can live in a way that makes sense to me. I understand it. It doesn't hurt me emotionally to eat this way.

If you don't feel like I do, then go ahead and eat that meat. Please just understand that this is what I feel is best for myself and for the animals. And, heck, if I help the planet to boot, that's just awesome.

me too