My heartfelt thanks to all you kind people who sent good wishes to our little grandson, Phoenix. I was so very touched that people cared, and I can't tell you how much that meant to me. (Our daughter named her son after the Phoenix that rises from the ashes, because they knew when he was born that there was something very wrong.)
Anyway, Pheeny (as we call him) has been released from hospital and is home, but not in school yet. Yesterday he was lying on the living-room couch watching the Disney Channel and drinking soy milk. (He's lactose-intolerant but he likes flavoured soy milk.) His little brother calls this 'big boy coffee.'
So far, so good. But, with Pheeny, you never know. He's been in hospital more times in his seven years than any ten people in a lifetime. Our daughter says his medical records are the size of a phone book, and she's on first-name terms with all the staff in the Pediatrics Dept at our local hospital.
Now, this is off-topic, so I won't go on, but I did want to say that I appreciate the kind thoughts sent our way. Makes me feel some sort of psychic connection with the human race, I guess, because no matter how many thousands of miles separate people, we all share the same hopes, dreams, and concerns.
Solf, my brother spent a lot of time in the hospital when he was young. Before the age of 18, he'd had 24 surgeries to correct some deformities that he was born with. After the age of 18, he had two more surgeries, one to realign his jaw (which meant screwing it most of the way shut for 6 months and eating out of a straw) and one to undo on the cosmetic rebuild they did on his ear, drill a hole, and put in a magnetic for a prosthetic ear. He's one of the bravest and strongest kids I know (he's 27 now, not really a kid, but I'm the oldest). Phoenix sounds like a very fitting name for your grandson. It always amazes me how strong kids really are when they have to be.
"No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible." George Chakiris
“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase
OK - dondie asks about what vegetarians/vegans eat. We have four light meals a day, which suits us. We don't go hungry.
Today:
Breakfast - Porridge (oatmeal to you) with frozen blueberries and canned fruit of some sort, or a banana, with a sprinkling of flax seed. I don't eat processed sugar, but there would be no reason why a person couldn't put sugar on the porridge. I have a cup and a half of water to one cup of dry porridge, which is plenty.
If I don't feel like porridge, then there's always toast, cold cereal, or just a piece of fruit.
Mid-morning snack - A couple of almonds, maybe, or an apple, or perhaps a cup of tea and a piece of whole meal toast with humus or tahini.
Lunch - Today was stir-fried cabbage, celery, and onions, and basmati rice cooked with vegetable broth, and five-bean salad I made with chopped celery and pickles. The sauce is made with pickle juice and mustard and canola oil. I made carrot soup last week that we had for lunch for a couple of days. Another time we might have a green salad with avocados and chopped capsicum and shredded carrots with an oil and vinegar dressing.
But we can only do that if avocados are in season.
Supper - Leftovers, usually, or a sandwich of shredded carrots and sliced tomatoes, or perhaps some fruit. If there's applesauce, I'll have a cup of that. Or, perhaps an orange. It varies. Maybe coleslaw that we make ourselves.
Late Evening Snack - A few nuts and a cup of tea. My husband likes popcorn and a beer.
Now, tomorrow we might have something entirely different. Sometimes, we'll have steamed broccoli, or braised asparagus, we might make a pizza, or we might have pasta with spaghetti sauce. We have mashed potatoes, sometimes, or potato salad. It's all pretty much the same stuff 'regular people' eat, minus the meat. But a snack is almost always fruit and/or nuts.
Last week I made pumpkin pie. I bake cakes and cookies for our volunteer group's morning tea every Monday, and also for our Community Centre committee meetings every month. Everybody likes the stuff and I would defy anybody to be able to tell that I don't use dairy or eggs in the cakes and cookies.
I just don't see where eating vegan is all that different from the standard western diet.
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solf, positive thoughts and virtual hugs for you, grandson and family.
To the topic... free range chicken, dairy, and beef is a growing business here in SoCal... I'm an unapologetic omnivore but after I saw the conditions of a nearby dairy farm I switched to free-range/cage-free everything. We do pay a little more for that, consume less because this is so.
Very fortunate to live in SoCal... many fruits and veggies are available year round... from local farmers, purchased either at a weekly farmer's market within 3 blocks from my home or the local/organic section in most super markets.
We are all fortunate enough to live in the first world where we can worry about this. I'm fairly certain if I were a mother with mouths to feed in a less developed country, that I would care about the source of my food.
There is nothing nobel about poverty or living a live in survival mode. It doesn't leave any room for dreams, hopes for the future, or discussions with people from all over the world we may never meet face to face.
Tribalism, ethnocentricism, racism, nationalism, and FEAR is the Mind Killer... >:(
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Hey, the British influence is still going strong, especially with the oldies. We're all for Queen and country and all that and people still line the streets when she comes to town to open Parliament, although it's been awhile since that happened. But, then, she's getting on a bit in years.
Cars still have a bonnet and a boot, and we still drive on the 'wrong' side, according to the Americans. Ha.
The fire brigade is still the fire brigade, and the posties deliver the post (not the mail.) But there's not that much in the post boxes these days, since people have been going over to email in droves. When I talked to our postie the other day, she said that she finds she is delivering fewer letters but many more packages. Go figure.
Oh, and our number to call in an emergency is 111. So far, there's been no talk of changing it to 911, although I could see people getting confused, considering how very, very much American TV we get here.
OK - dondie asks about what vegetarians/vegans eat. We have four light meals a day, which suits us. We don't go hungry.
Today:
Breakfast - Porridge (oatmeal to you) with frozen blueberries and canned fruit of some sort, or a banana, with a sprinkling of flax seed. I don't eat processed sugar, but there would be no reason why a person couldn't put sugar on the porridge. I have a cup and a half of water to one cup of dry porridge, which is plenty.
If I don't feel like porridge, then there's always toast, cold cereal, or just a piece of fruit.
Mid-morning snack - A couple of almonds, maybe, or an apple, or perhaps a cup of tea and a piece of whole meal toast with humus or tahini.
Lunch - Today was stir-fried cabbage, celery, and onions, and basmati rice cooked with vegetable broth, and five-bean salad I made with chopped celery and pickles. The sauce is made with pickle juice and mustard and canola oil. I made carrot soup last week that we had for lunch for a couple of days. Another time we might have a green salad with avocados and chopped capsicum and shredded carrots with an oil and vinegar dressing.
But we can only do that if avocados are in season.
Supper - Leftovers, usually, or a sandwich of shredded carrots and sliced tomatoes, or perhaps some fruit. If there's applesauce, I'll have a cup of that. Or, perhaps an orange. It varies. Maybe coleslaw that we make ourselves.
Late Evening Snack - A few nuts and a cup of tea. My husband likes popcorn and a beer.
Now, tomorrow we might have something entirely different. Sometimes, we'll have steamed broccoli, or braised asparagus, we might make a pizza, or we might have pasta with spaghetti sauce. We have mashed potatoes, sometimes, or potato salad. It's all pretty much the same stuff 'regular people' eat, minus the meat. But a snack is almost always fruit and/or nuts.
Last week I made pumpkin pie. I bake cakes and cookies for our volunteer group's morning tea every Monday, and also for our Community Centre committee meetings every month. Everybody likes the stuff and I would defy anybody to be able to tell that I don't use dairy or eggs in the cakes and cookies.
I just don't see where eating vegan is all that different from the standard western diet.
I reread your posts, and you do bring up some good points. I could not imagine what it must be like for those poor children in Africa, because I've never been there, but I can understand what you mean when you talk about nurition for these children, and how they can't possibly be getting a proper diet in their circumstances. If dried milk and peanut butter - or meat, if it came to it - can help the kids, then I'm all for it. I wouldn't be so rigid in my beliefs as to deny a starving child a meal.
It must be frustrating for those kind people who try to do something for these kids that the resources are so very limited, and it's amazing that they accomplish as much as they can.
And yes, I do take your point that the children's immediate worries are just getting through the next day and the next week rather than surviving the next sixty or seventy years. And the sad thing is that most of them probably won't make it past childhood.
But this doesn't mean that we who are so fortunate to live in the industrialised Western world can't try to live on a diet that excludes meat and/or dairy. You mentioned that you'd been a vegetarian for a time and then gave it up. This was my experience, too, as a matter of fact. I was veggie for ten or twelve years, then got married to a meat-eater and started eating meat again.
Another ten years went by, my husband got interested in vegetarianism after our then-teen-aged daughter asked about it, and shortly after that we were all vegetarians. But we did a lot of reading up on the whole thing, and we knew what we were doing. When we decided to go vegan, we did more research, and we knew we'd need B12 tablets. We even talked to a dietician about it. She thought we were doing it right, so no problems.
However, you are right to point out that we are very lucky to live in a society in which we can get blueberries, canned peaches, various vegetables, all sorts of nuts at reasonable prices, etc., etc. to give us a varied diet.
My point, of course, is that, if you can do it, why not? I have to add that veganism has been good to us. We're healthier than we've ever been, and we feel great. Both my husband and I have regular check-ups and blood tests each year to make sure everything is OK, and I get mammograms and bone density tests at regular intervals, too.
And, we have the energy to live our very busy lives.
Everything is good, so why mess with success?
I just think that, if ordinary people like us can do it, maybe others can, too.
My heartfelt thanks to all you kind people who sent good wishes to our little grandson. I was so very touched that people cared, and I can't tell you how much that meant to me.
Anyway, Pheeny (as we call him) has been released from hospital and is home, but not in school yet. Yesterday he was lying on the living-room couch watching the Disney Channel and drinking soy milk. (He's lactose-intolerant but he likes flavoured soy milk.) His little brother calls this 'big boy coffee.'
So far, so good. But, with Pheeny, you never know. He's been in hospital more times in his seven years than any ten people in a lifetime. Our daughter says his medical records are the size of a phone book, and she's on first-name terms with all the staff in the Pediatrics Dept at our local hospital.
Now, this is off-topic, so I won't go on, but I did want to say that I appreciate the kind thoughts sent our way. Makes me feel some sort of psychic connection with the human race, I guess, because no matter how many thousands of miles separate people, we all share the same hopes, dreams, and concerns.
It all boils down to the fact that everyone dies at one time or another no matter what their diet is. With that in mind, how can you say what you eat is healthy when even healthy people die?
That's the kind of attitude I found amongst certain Christians when I lived in Japan. When the Japanese went to pray for good health at Shinto shrines, the Christians responsed that they themselves weren't concerned about their health, but the salvation of their eternal souls. Of course, there is something to be said about the quality of one's life before he or she dies, regardless of whether he or she believes in some kind of existence or consciousness beyond the grave.
I think some Christians feel that way, but I don't personally know any. I tend to believe that my health is hugely important and I watch it, but I also recognize that no matter how healthy I am, if God decides it's my time to go he'll take me. So, while I watch what I eat and I exercise, I don't deprive myself of the good things, even if they're unhealthy, and I believe in moderation in all things.
"No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible." George Chakiris
“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase
Ha.
