Monthly Archives: April 2006

What do you eat?

“Oh, you’re a vegan? Well, then, what do you eat?”

Please, please if you consume sentient beings or by-products of sentient beings without their permission, never – I repeat, never – ask this question of someone who chooses not to.

What do you eat? Are you sure you’re getting enough protein in your diet? (Are you sure you aren’t getting too much?) Do you know if you are getting the right amount of B12 in your diet? Do you think I have a harder time finding sources of nutrients than a six-ton elephant has? Are edible plant foods very hard to come by? Am I underweight? Overweight? Sickly? Do you know how many years it’s been since I’ve considered putting something that wasn’t grown from the earth in my stomach?

Oh, yes – and my dogs are vegans too. And for the past year, I have actually noticed that they are healtier than they used to be. Especially Puck – my special-needs boxer with allergies to things I probably haven’t heard of. Happy, lucky, vegan boys.

cleaning, dehydrating, yum!

My house smells like lavender! I pulverized some lavender flowers in my food processor, added some baking soda, and sprinkled it all over the carpet. I haven’t vacuumed it up yet, but the house already smells so much better than it did before. I am working on migrating away from cleaning products that contain ammonia, bleach, and other chemicals. Nigel has had really bad goopy eyes recently, and I think it may be partly because of cleaning agents. A few weeks ago, I made some laundry detergent out of homemade soap, so hopefully using that along with chemical-free cleaners will help out his eyes.

My parents got me a food dehydrator for my birthday last week! It’s super neat – nine trays and temperature-controlled dehydrating. Chris and I made buckwheat pizza crust and flax crackers, which are currently dehydrating. Chris gave me a Raw Food (Un)Cookbook, which is where we got the recipes from. The two will go very nicely together, and I’m excited for this summer when we will have lots of vegetables to experiment with.