The Reluctant Vegan

Ack ~ I've been struggling for weeks trying to figure out what's still bothering me. For years I've eliminated white wheat, meat and dairy from my diet because of colitis. Lots of fibre was an important element in anything I ate. Since spring I also had to stop having gluten. No biggy really, once I figured out what the problem was. I love brown rice pasta. I do miss bread though. A lot of gluten-free alternatives available where I shop have improved over the years, but not the bread. It's icky.

The family still eats meat, and to keep them healthy, I buy locally grown natural, organic and free-range meats and poultry. There's also an elk farm nearby and they love the spicey elk pepperettes for snacks. I also use ground elk in chili and spaghetti sauce. (Spaghetti sauce... I remember that.) Elk has a lot less fat than beef, so it helps keep that bad cholesterol down. I can also get bison burgers at a farm not too far away. They can have gluten, so it's whole grain bread, rolls and pastas for them. But Butterfly is also dairy-free because of Leaky-gut Syndrome. She can have goat milk cheese though ~ in moderation. And being of more adventurous nature than the ol' man, she'll try different foods, so she'll have vegetarian meals regularly, making her meal options more varied and quite healthy.

But for months I've been dairy, meat, gluten-free.... vegan, except for eggs. A good source of protein, I'd have egg salad on a brown rice cake for breakfast, and a hard boiled egg in the evening. This was a stinky, but yummy, 70 calory snack that got me through the night, but also, having protein at these two points in the day helps balance out that blood sugar. Coming from a diabetic lineage, I keep an eye on my blood sugar and eat accordingly. Colitis and Celiac disease is plenty, thanks... don't need to be diabetic too.

But, back to the beginning, something has still been bothering me and despite the fact that I didn't want to lose eggs, it seems my body just doesn't want them. *sigh* And so I go kicking and screaming into the world of the full-fledged vegan. For the past two mornings I had that brown rice cake spread generously with sunflower seed butter, and I put some crabapple jelly on top just because I can. (Yes, it's homemade.) Breakfast is still good (she says grudgingly).

My lunch won't change much. No more potato and egg salad, but I'm about to go roast a red pepper for my red pepper humus (recipe here somewhere... even though I can't spell). I think while I'm at it, and to help keep the house warm, I'll just roast up a bulb of garlic too. :) Then I'm going to cook about 3/4 cup of brown rice macaroni and make pasta salad with large black olives and home grown tomatoes to go with a plate of raw veggies and humus. Must go out and pick some fresh basil and sweet marjoram for the pasta salad too. Ok, there's a bunch of stuff I can't have, but I'm in no danger of starving.

So yeah, I go only reluctantly into the life of a vegan, but if I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself, I just think about those people in parts of the world where the principal food is... say... maize. And what if they can't have maize? What if they don't have agriculture nearby that grows other healthy foods? And what if they don't have a big store nearby with a health food section chock full of food alternatives? And what if they couldn't afford them even if there was?

Feh... gotta go roast that red pepper. And the garlic! Warm the house and have yum!

If you feel bad for me and want to make me feel better, click on one of these links and get involved:
https://www.shopunicef.ca/ec/Portal.aspx?LN=EN

http://plancanada.ca/

I feel better now. :)

True Human Beauty and Cliches

I was much younger and living in what seems now like another lifetime, when I learned the truth about human beauty. There are no pictures with this blog post, because I'm going to try to paint you a word picture, or two:

The students in the photographic college where I worked had been given an assignment to use their cameras to create an artistic nude. The resulting photos were used to construct a mid-term art show. I took the time to go see what the students had created.

Of course, there was photo after photo of pretty girls on the wall. There were some interesting poses, some partial nudes where the human body was made to look like some sort of landscape. Some of these were inspired and very artistic. Then, there amongst the pretty, young, mostly white women, was this older, very overweight, black woman, photographed in a frontal pose, sitting on the floor, leaning on one hand, her huge breasts hanging low like large sacks of dried peas. At first I was perplexed by the student's choice of model. She seemed incongruous amid all the pretty girls.

Then it clicked. Of course she was going to stand out ~ that was at least part of the idea. All the other photos could well have been of the same model for all I was aware. This photo was certainly going to get more attention than the others. It's the one that made me look again. And when I did, I saw something quite unexpected that I hadn't noticed at first glance ~ her eyes. This woman's eyes shone from the photo. They were so expressive, revealing her very life ~ her hardships and triumphs, her sorrows and joys, her hard work, her disappointments and heartbreaks, and the depth of love in her soul. It was all there in that photograph, and in that moment, I suddenly realized what human beauty was really all about. It had nothing to do with the pretty girls. True beauty is all about what is inside us. It was a lesson that certainly helped shape my view of life over the years.

This brings me to what I've learned about cliches. We hear them when we are young until we become quite bored with them. We yawn or wave a dismissive hand when someone speaks them. Calling something cliched is not intended as a compliment. When pondering this lesson about human beauty later, that cliche about beauty being only skin deep seemed limited and misguided forever after. Another about the eyes being windows to the soul took on fresh and profound meaning for me. I realized that many cliches became cliches to begin with because they contain a glimmer of truth, or at least something to make us think. It isn't enough to hear them. One must understand a few things about life before they have much meaning. If there was anything cliched in a bad way about that student art show, it was all the pretty girls. Regardless of the pose, the use of pretty models was merely predictable.

This happened 30 years ago, and now when I look at how our society has developed, I'm seeing this shallow rendition of skin-deep beauty take up more and more of our consciousness, with ads enticing us to hang on tenaciously to our youth by getting our breasts lifted or our kissers fixed, or "news" about what this beautiful person is doing, and which beautiful stars split up or got caught high/drunk/raving/cheating ~ all of this "news" taking the place of world events on our news channels. The world, far from becoming more beautiful, is becoming increasingly shallow, with the true beauty of humanity buried deeper and deeper in human tragedy, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and other hardships that scarcely interrupt news of who's been put in rehab lately. It makes me feel grateful, and privileged, for having even seen that photograph by an inspired young student. I never even thanked him or her for the lesson in beauty. So, if you're out there, thank you. When I got up this morning, I peeled off my jammy shirt, threw it into the laundry and walked into the bathroom naked. There in the mirror was an older woman, her breasts hanging low like sacks of dried peas.... but in her eyes, a life very much lived. I might have missed that and felt sorry myself, but for that photograph so long ago. Thanks again.