Feeding The Spiders

Day 4 went extremely well. I ordered my first vegan pizza from Papa John’s. I half expected Hugo to be all “WTF?” but he tucked in and we polished off the pizza together. Large 3 topping (tomatoes, green peppers, mushrooms) with no cheese, regular sauce, square cut with thin crust. I ordered him a normal garden fresh veggie (which is all that plus black olives, cheese, and regular crust) and he had 1 piece of it. I’m glad he’s being supportive so maybe next time we can skip the cheesed pizza altogether. Our cholesterol levels are probably life threatening so anything we can *both* do is a plus. I need to break out the recipes on Saturday morning and hit the grocery because we are out of anything I can eat…except for a can of beans and a can of red sauce.

I want to go to a farm stand (any of them will do, it doesn’t have to be the farmer’s market) tomorrow and go to the co-op and probably (sigh) earthfare. i’m still sort of conflicted on this issue. Do I drive myself all over knoxville looking for the foods I want/need or do I order them online in bulk and pay shipping OR do I do my fuckin homework, support a local small business, and order things ahead of time from Apple Tree? I know what the best choice is but I’m busy AND sort of disorganized when it comes to this sort of thing. Obviously, now would be a good time for me to get my shit together.

I’ve got this list of stuff I’m going to fax Apple Tree to see if they can get and approximate prices and go from there. I’ve been in love with Ecover for a while, but last time i needed dishwasher powders, Earthfare was out of the Ecover brand and I had to get something else. You know what? This brand kicked Ecover’s ass and lasted a whoooooole lot longer. Vegan. Made in the USA. Concentrated (use less, use it longer). Biodegradable and Environmentally friendly. 100% recyclable packaging. Score for the green team. Biokleen is the brand and hopefully they can get it. Fingers crossed.

hello allergy

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. revelation time.

3 days w/o cheese and i have some (i’m a jerk, hi) and 15 minutes later my chest hurts and i’m totally congested. not only did it make me sick, but it felt like my mouth was full of….body fluids. unpleasant. something i can definitely live without. so day 4 continues but the counter of veganism resets.

so there is day 3. blergh. day 4, come and get meeeeee!

i’m ready to be done with The Project so I can have a decent schedule. One that involves sleep before 2:30am. Ahhhh.

Typically Day 2 would have been posted on day 2, but day 2 was a busy one. After we got done up at The Project in Pigeon Forge I was barely able to keep my eyes open due to a migraine that had been circling above my head since about 10:30am. I chowed down on 2 depakote (probably not vegan) and tried not to throw up on the way home. Got home and promptly passed out.

You are not here to read about my stupid headache though! This is a series about going VEGAN and how happy I am to be on this journey. Yesterday I skipped breakfast because I am an idiot. I had brown rice veggie rolls for lunch. For dinner I had…umm…I can’t even remember. This is probably why the depakote made me so sick; I keep forgetting to eat.

Since it’s day 3 as of this writing I will be getting up to have some oatmeal shortly and then I am going to price a small breadmaker while I research vegan bread machine recipes. I might also have to squeeze in some coding/design time because we gotta pay the bills.

I’m truly glad we didn’t jump into a garden this year. The weather has been an absolute butthole and I don’t think anything would have survived. I could really go for a rain storm and some lentil soup right about now.

October 1st. It’s feeling like fall outside, our bradfords are starting to turn, and it’s been one month since my 25th birthday. Yesterday was Hugo’s birthday. 15 minutes ago I became an aunt to my first biological nephew.

Right now I am embarking on an adventure. I know by the start of the new year (october 31st) I will be thriving and I will keep going, but just in case something goes wrong…I am calling this the October Vegan Challenge. I am NOT under the supervision of a licensed medical practitioner so who knows if my cholesterol goes down or if my blood pressure goes down. I’m going to gauge it on how I feel and right now I’m feeling optimistic. Maybe I’ll save some lives and maybe one of them will be my own.

Click here for the RSS feed for My Vegan Challenge!

day 1 recap

Today was great. It was insanely easy since I had done a lot of preparation ahead of time. Tried to make fresh veg and rice for dinner but something was really wrong with my produce. Zucchini and squash are typically not supposed to taste like ass. Also made a spice-related decision: i don’t like sage. Thats the problem with spice though, you’ve got to buy some to try some and now I have a bottle of organic sage I have to figure out what to do with.

I’ve got to get back to the store this week after I pay my credit card off. i will probably also stock up on bulk items we need like dog food and beans. mmmm. beans. speaking of which, i had no idea beano wears off after a few hours. i thought it would make its way all through the process, but nein! i was ok until about…..9:30 and i had to excuse myself and go outside for a moment. i have since been fine. Fabulously exhausted, these 16 hour days are whipping my ass.

dogs

I feel bad thinking this, but as time goes on I realize how much easier/nicer my life would be without the dogs in it. It would be a hell of a lot cleaner at the very least. This week I have:

Cleaned the carpet twice
Lost a mop head (dub chewed it up)
Lost a doggie bed (coco chewed it up)
Cleaned up 2 Blount Todays that were strewn all over the yard (coco chewed up ours and a neighbors)
Bathed the dogs
Cleaned up puke out of Coco’s crate
Vacuumed about a bazillion times
Said “OMG NO!” about 5 million times
Mopped twice
Swept the floor twice a day, each day
Broken up 3 fights

This is all just to maintain my sanity and not drown in dog related filth. This is not including things that still need to be done like…scrub Coco’s blood off of my bedroom wall (don’t ask), hose out the garage (really, you don’t want to know), scoop the yard (my life is AWESOME), buy heart worm pills (god i hate our vet), and do flea treatments. I need a nap just thinking about it.

Then one of them will do something so precious and sweet it makes me gag. I will gladly continue to sweat and slave around my house just to have them do that a few more times.

work

work is, literally, kicking my ass. I was so tired the other night, I tripped over a curb that I KNEW was there and went straight down on both knees/shins on the edge of the curb/pavement. I was so tired I didn’t even try to stop myself other than putting my hands out to keep my face from hitting the deck. I’ve been taking glucosamine sulfate to help with my joint pains and they’re getting better but I really wish I could get motivated to work out a little more regularly. After we get this current project done, things will be way better. 16 hour days are a little rough.

veg

I’ve been experimenting with vegan lunches. So far, hummus and really sturdy crackers are the leader with walnuts and dried fruits at a close second for my favorites. I haven’t been able to even have a full vegan day yet, but I’m making the effort. Its becoming more and more challenging because Hugo is not interested in helping at all. The only animal proteins he eats is chicken and turkey and he doesn’t mind not eating them…they’re not essential, but apparently being vegan is impossible.

So I put on my “I’ll show them all!” hat and march around the house thinking of all the things I need to get straight before I start this. I bought a Muscle & Fitness: Hers yesterday to try and pump up my motivation and put me in the right headspace. The Sept/Oct issue has a lot of really excellent training regimens and cardio programs in them and I was stoked to see there was also a meal plan. I bought the mag, got home and read the meal plan. 6oz sirloin. Eggs. Turkey deli slices. Ground Beef. Whey protein powder. Tuna. Turkey breast.

They’re all rather decent portions and I am trying to figure out how in the world I am going to eat all the food that I need to keep going without being uncomfortably full all the time. Lots of people on the boards are all saying just eat any and everything that isn’t an animal and that doesn’t come out of an animal and stop when you’re full.

Like a lot of Americans, I don’t know how to eat without animal products. Its in a shitload of processed foods (which we shouldn’t be eating anyway, but we’re all pretty busy) and unless you want to eat salads and vitamins all day, every day, you’re going to have to learn how to cook food and cook it well enough that you don’t choke on your own fare. I also found it heartening that I was being wise to want to know everything I could know before I dove in…after listening to this podcast, I’m convinced that I’m going about this the right way. i would highly recommend vegans, vegetarians, and non veggies listen to this episode because it was simply frightening to me. Young man eats well, a whole foods plant based diet, develops diabetes and has high cholesterol anyway. How in the hell do you have high cholesterol if you don’t eat any!? You should listen to find out.

So I continue to study and study and study and study and study.