I know...I know...

I know this is how people probably feel after talking to me for any length of time. I even admit that my passion and conviction can seem extreme. Hell, I annoy myself half the time. But, once I know something (especially something that affects the world outside my little sphere of existence) I can't ignore it.

I have a tremendous amount of guilt for having lived much of my life in a sublime ignorance. I will probably look back 10, 15, 20 years from now and still think the same thing. However, I feel more comfortable in my own skin right now than I ever have. I feel like I know who I am and who I want to be.

It was a several years ago that I decided that I was going to make a conscience effort to analyze how my actions were affecting the planet and the it's inhabitants.  It can feel exhausting to always be looking for the systemic affect of your behavior. Again though, I couldn't ignore the information I taking in.

I began watching documentary after documentary about our food system. I began to understand that our food system accounts for a great deal of poverty, starvation, and environmental ruin. I started to understand that my shopping habits can promote a world of exploitation and slavery. These are hard pills to sallow. We like our convenience...I liked it. We like to not scrutinize and just buy...I know I did. We like think that we deserve more...and more...and more. It kind of tarnishes the sparkiliness of it all when we began to realize that children are working as slave laborers, or that migrant workers is being denied pay after a full days work, or that animals are being unimaginably tortured. All of this so that we are not inconvenienced.

This is one of the documentaries that I consider to be a life-changer for me. Warning: It is intense and not for young children.  http://www.earthlings.com/ 

I had already come to the conclusion that we live in a society where we do not have to be dependent on meat for survival. We aren't on the frozen plains with nothing to eat but bison. We have Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) programs that operate year round, we have small locally owned organic stores, we have the ability to plant our own gardens, we have science that tells us that you don't need meat to live a healthy life.  So, when I saw this documentary...it sealed the deal for me. I refused to be a part of a food system that would promote this kind of behavior.

Another eye opening documentary for me was Food, Inc.  This is an excellent documentary. I have made all of my children watch it and I would encourage you to do the same.

There will be a part two to this blog post. I have some more thoughts, but I have probably thrown enough out there for now....

Saving Moo-la...

So after about two weeks of being "big" grocery store free, we've really saved some money and our food has tasted better. We actually almost cut our grocery bill in half. Now, granted I have been cooking from scratch and it has been more time consuming. But, there really is no substitute for fresh made-from-scratch food. The reality is that when you are buying from the grocery store, you are mostly paying for packing and not the food itself. This is a great article on the "packaging" problem:

http://www.wisebread.com/paying-for-packaging-its-time-to-stop

We are a family of six and for the last 12 days, we've fed our family (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for a total of $20 a day...and that was with eating twice too. I fix all four of my kids their lunches for school, I make sure they have something nutritional for breakfast, and I cook a sit-down dinner in the evening.

We've had pizza...homemade crust, a jar of organic pasta sauce, fresh broccoli, onion, and a little tofu cream cheese on top.

We've had black bean soup...black beans cooked, fresh garlic, chicken-free chicken stock, salt, pepper, with a little almond cheese sprinkled on top.

We've had stir fry...lots of stir fry. Stir fry is a great way to use your vegetables before they go bad.

I've made about 4 loafs of bread. I've made granola. I've made the breakfast bread pudding. I've made two different kinds of lentil soup. Tonight we're having Pad Thai noodles with peanut curry coconut milk sauce.

Tomorrow is farmer's market day! I have to stock up again. We are running low on our fruits and vegetables.

Yesterday, I had to buy dog food because the dogs were down to about a fourth of a bag. I wanted to make sure that since we were making the switch to vegetarian dog food that we could do 50/50 for a little while to get them use to it. Also, the guinea pigs were out of their pellets and timothy hay. The shocker when leaving the pet store (locally owned) was that the pets' grocery bill was almost as much as our food bill. Thankfully, their food last for a month or more.

 feel good about switching the dogs to vegetarian food. It really has bothered me to still be that we've still been meat "consumers" even if we weren't the ones consuming the food. I felt like we were still contributing to the problem rather than being a part of the solution.

I know this is probably a controversial subject. I could have easily gotten into a back and forth with the young sales lady at the pet store that was selling me the food. She was telling me that dogs really shouldn't be on a vegetarian diet unless it is for health reasons because they are carnivores....all this while she was ringing me up at the cash register. I didn't rebuttal. BUT, domesticated dogs are actually omnivores not carnivores. I've done quite a bit of research on this subject and feel confident in our decision to make the switch. It is a moral issue for me and one that I think my pets will do fine with.

One of the best things I came across in my reading, that reassured me that it was ok to take an ethical stance for your pets, was a comment that someone had left at the end of an article. The person was just identified as J:

"I'm only speaking from my experience with my two dogs - no cats - but my dogs have done extremely well on a vegan diet. Every check up with the vet over the past four years has been successful. One might say that I am imposing my own ethical choices on my dogs but providing them with a vegan diet is not the only tangible way of doing that. Putting dogs in kennels, leaving them outside, giving them standard medicine that has proven to be fatal to other dogs, putting them on a leash, making them go through training, feeding them any form of pre-made food over letting them roam freely in a field to catch their own food, giving them baths, etc. All of these things, to me, are examples of how humans have domesticated animals and, thus, have imposed their own beliefs and judgments on their "pets." It is never just about their diet - every other decision we impose on them is an example of this as well."

Breakfast Bread Pudding,,,

We tried an experiment and it turned out pretty good. The two younger kids could have eaten the whole thing by themselves. Here's the recipe if you want to give it a go...

Breakfast Bread Pudding...

1 large ripe avocado peeled and smashed
1 1/2 cups of ripe smashed banana
1/2 cup of mango chopped
1/2 cup of strawberries chopped
1/2 cup of honey
1/2 cup of organic pure cane sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup of milk (we drink raw milk so I used that)
2 1/2 cups of whole wheat white flour
2 tsp. of baking powder
1/2 tsp. of salt
1 tsp. of vanilla extract

Mix thoroughly. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I cooked mine in a glass deep dish casserole bowl. Bake for about an hour...just watch it to be sure that the outer crust doesn't burn. It will rise and make a crust on the outside that looks like bread, but the inside will remain like a bread pudding texture. Let cool. I put mine in the refrigerator overnight and they ate it for breakfast. It sliced out like a thick bread pudding after being in the refrigerator overnight.

Good Smells...

Yesterday was spent in the kitchen. I made a loaf of bread, hamburger buns for supper, granola, and fresh squeezed orange juice.

The bread that I made came out kind of bland, but super healthy. I am being super conscience of cholesterol when I cook:

1 package of organic yeast
2 Tsp. of fresh honey
2 1/2 cups of whole wheat white flour
2 1/4 cups of stone ground whole wheat
1 Tsp. of salt
2 cups of really warm water
sprinkle corn meal on top
Olive oil for bowl

Put warm water and honey in a bowl (stir until honey is dissolved) and add yeast. Gradually add flour and salt. Stir till it pulls away from bowl.

Flour a surface and kneed for several minutes. Put bread dough in a greased clean bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rise for 1 1/2 hours.

 Kneed again and let rise 45 minutes. Punch dough down and form into a ball. Preheat oven at 450. Place in a loaf pan and bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. Top and sides should be lightly browned. Let cool before slicing.

Here is the VERY simple granola recipe too:

4 cups of 2 kinds of dry oats (I used a larger oat and a smaller oat)
1/2 cup of walnuts
1/4 to 1/2 cup of fresh honey
1 tsp. of salt

Mix all together until honey has coated all the oats. Spread on a cookie sheet. Preheat oven to 350. Cook at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until a nice golden brown. Let cool. Break apart clumps and store in an air tight container.

I have lots of walnuts, straight from the tree, that some friends were kind enough to share with us.
I really wished that my Grandma was here with me in California yesterday to help me shell these walnuts. I've never known a woman that could shell nuts or snap peas faster than her.

We finally squeezed the last of our oranges. Our tree put out so many oranges this year. We have really enjoyed them. We now have some frozen o.j. in the deep freezer to drink for  a while longer.

On to a more sustainable future....

This is my first post and I'm not quite sure where to even begin. My family is starting a new journey. We have been vegetarians going on two years now and have been fairly good about eating organic. We have four kids in our house and they are also vegetarians. We have two dogs that I think will soon be going "veggie" too.

This year, however, we've decided that we'd like to take on the challenge of giving up the grocery store. Now, when I say grocery store I mean any large grocery chain. There is a small local organic privately owned store, Kristiana's, that we will use to buy some of our bulk goods and meat substitutes. It has been years since we've shopped at mega stores like Warped-mart, but we want to attempt to give up large grocery stores too.

Our goal is to live a sustainable lifestyle that does no more harm than absolutely necessary and we feel like this is where we can begin. We want to reduce the waste (i.e. packaging) that we accumulate. By shopping in bulk and at the farmer's market we will be reducing our post consumer waste significantly. In the Spring we will also be planting a garden in order to grow much of our own produce.

I am not nieve to the fact that this is going to really be a challenge. I keep thinking of things that I buy at the grocery store without ever giving it any thought. Now, I am having to contemplate what I am going to replace it with or how I can buy it fresh locally.

We've already started this week by a trip to the farmer's market on Saturday (we have some great farmers markets around here), a phone call to the locally owned pet store about buying large bags of vegetarian dog food, making an appointment to have a solar panel evaluation done on our house, and convincing the kids that they can live on mom's homemade granola instead of store bought cereal. We're off to a good start....