Yea! It’s World Vegetarian Day!

Sending virtual hugs to my fellow veg-heads: David, XUP, Rachel, Beth and Chris (Am I missing anyone?)

Love a vegetarian today!

So, why vegan?

Also known by the alternate title: OMG, how can you live without a cheeseburger?

Honestly, this is not meant to be a “do as I do” kind of post because 1) your life is your business and 2) who the heck am I to tell anybody anything? I am not an authority and I have no desire to change your eating habits. Well, unless you regularly feast on deep-fried sticks of butter wrapped in bacon with a nice lard dipping sauce or something, yes, I may have to speak up but then again, you wouldn’t live long enough to care what I think anyway.

But I have had a lot of questions about the whole “why are you going vegan?” thing lately so I thought it best to just address it and then let it be. Well, to let it be except that as I move into veganism, you better believe, you are SO going with me. I’m going to need to talk about it once in a while and each and every one of you WILL be asked to scout out all the online avenues for vegan food stuffs so I can satisfy any craving that may arise. Don’t worry, I already found an organic, free trade, vegan chocolate supplier’s web site that I WILL be making use of in the coming months. And really, if you can buy vegan chocolate, are there any excuses left? (I will offer up myself as the guinea pig and try them first. If they are any good, I’ll give you the link.)

So why, after 10 months of vegetarianism, an I ready to move towards veganism? The reason I started this was simply because I felt better when my diet consisted of primarily veggies, fruit and whole grains. Truth be told, I didn’t eat much meat, especially not red meat, prior to becoming a vegetarian. I loved the taste of meat, I won’t lie — especially salmon and chicken — but I always felt better if I found my protein in other sources.

I’ve also been studying Buddhism (I know, where did that come from, right?) and I believe the teachings, just as in the Bible and other religious doctrines, are showing us the way to a more fulfilling life, if we only take them to heart. One of the Buddhist precepts is To avoid killing or harming any living being. Yeah, pretty straight forward. This is why I carry spiders outside instead of squashing them and slow down to avoid hitting the kamikaze squirrels that run through our neighborhood. And eat a baked potato instead of a steak. It just feels right.

But it is also because of articles like the one below. I’m not a scientist, nutritionist, or physician but I am an avid reader. And though I have no real means of validating all these statistics, without turning again to the Internet, I do know that these same arguments are found in various research studies being conducted all over the place, in and outside the U.S. Regardless of how you feel about it, some of these things are difficult to ignore. For instance, I could link to the article I found over the weekend that discussed the pain and mutilation milk-producing cows go through but I won’t make you live with those images in your head. (I’m having enough trouble letting go of it for the both of us.) Besides, you have a computer. If you’re interested, you can find these things yourselves.

The article below the break pretty much sums up the things I’m learning as I continue to read and study. The numbers speak to me. These are the things going through my head these days. There is definitely a lot to think about.

The ecojustice challenge

As we all know, today is Earth Day, the day intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. If you’re like me, you often contemplate what you can do to reduce your impact on the planet. You may even get a little excited thinking about the even more significant difference that could be made if all your friends were doing those same things too.

Well, Emily has come up with a perfect challenge for us! It is called the Ecojustice 2008 Challenge and is really simple yet potentially powerful.

The following is an excerpt taken directly from her blog but please go check out the entire post here to read everything she has to say about the subject.

So, here is how this challenge will work. The first step is for anyone who wants to participate to pass the link onto at least five other people (or even if you don’t plan to participate, if you like the idea, please pass it on). If you have a blog of your own, this can easily be accomplished merely by linking to this site in a post on your own blog. Below is a list of things you can choose to do. Once every quarter between now and April 21, 2009, I will add to this list. Your challenge is to choose something from this list, to experiment with it, and to post about it here. Or, if you’d rather not post, that’s fine. You can just choose what you want and leave comments on this blog. You can choose to implement as many or as few from the list as you would like. You can choose to stick with one (or more) for an entire quarter, or you can mix and match (one — or more — this month, a different one next month, etc.). My hope is that by the end of the year, at least one item from the whole list will have become a way of life for you and your family. And if you’re already doing some or all of these things, come up with others you want to do, share them with us, and post on them instead.

To join the blog as a posting member, please send an email to: ecojustice08 AT gmail DOT com with your user name and the email address you’d like to use for the purposes of this blog. I will add you to the list of users. Also, please post on your own blog, if you have one. That’s it. And now, here are your choices for this quarter:

1. Choose one day a week in which you will not use your car at all (barring a major emergency, like having to drive your spouse/child to the hospital for stitches). Before you immediately dismiss this one, because you have to drive to and from work every day, please think about it. Is there no one with whom you could carpool two days a week? If so, the day you’re not driving would be the perfect day not to use your car at all.

2. Choose one “black out night” per week. All lights and all electrical appliances are off by 7:30 p.m. and don’t go on again until the next morning. What will you do without lights, television, your computer? Well, the weather’s getting nice where many of us live. Sit out on the porch/deck and tell stories. Read by candle light. Write letters by candle light. Play games by candle light. You know, people did this sort of thing for thousands of years. My guess is that if you have kids, this will be an exciting and fun challenge for them.

3. Choose two days a week in which you are only going to eat organic and/or locally-grown food. Do you know that inorganic farming is one of the best examples of evolution that we’ve got going these days? All the pesticides that have been used to grow our food have helped to create “super bugs” who are becoming more and more resistant to our chemicals. We’re definitely losing this battle in more ways than one. Talk to the people at your local farmer’s markets. Many of them are growing their food organically anyway; they just aren’t certified, because it’s a difficult and expensive process to be so. Buying locally, of course, cuts down on the oil used to transport food long distances.

4. If you need to go anywhere that’s within a 2-mile round trip radius of your home, walk or bike. Where might this be? The first place that springs to mind for me is your children’s school bus stop. Perhaps the post office is close to your home. The library? For me, it’s both the post office and the bank. If you’re super lucky, maybe you have a farmer’s market that’s close by. Or maybe you don’t live close enough to anything, but you do work close by to that deli, say, where you always drive to pick up lunch.

5. Read that challenging book about the environment that you’ve been putting off reading, you know the one you don’t want to read, because it might make you a little uncomfortable (e.g. The World without Us, Diet for a Small Planet, Affluenza). Read it. Post about it. Maybe implement an idea or two based on what you’ve read.

6. Buy only those things sold in recyclable packaging and make sure you recycle that packaging.

And that’s that. Pretty simple, huh? She is going to come up with some great ideas that we may or may not already have thought of…and all we have to do is try one or more of them and blog about it. For this quarter, I’m going to try #1 and #2…and possibly #5.

What will you do?
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And thank you, Charlotte, for pointing me to Emily’s challenge!

Gotta let it go

There are many words to describe me. Some nice, some not so nice.

smart
funny
moody
caring
dorky
fair
open-minded
klutzy
introverted

There is one word that would never make that list: Cheap.

I believe that you should pay the bills, save for the future, have some fun, and then give as much as you can of what’s left to the less fortunate. If you and I go to lunch, nine times out of ten, I’m going to pick up the check. (Or at least try to.) Even if I don’t pay for you, I’m going to tip the wait staff really well. I believe in karma and sharing and The Golden Rule and what goes around, comes around.

That is not to say that I throw money around. I know the value of a dollar and work dang hard for the ones I have. You better have a pretty good reason for needing my money and laziness, greed and ineptitude aren’t going to cut it.

Which is why today’s lunch is still bugging me. I went out with three old friends with whom I used to work. It was kind of a catch-up/what’ve you been up to thing. And that was great. We reminisced about good old times, talked about other co-workers we haven’t seen in ages, and had a lot of big laughs.

But the restaurant we went to, like most in this area, really doesn’t cater to the stray vegetarian that wanders in. Like me. So I had a choice between a portobello sandwich (which eww, not a big fan of the fungus) or a baked potato with my choice of toppings.

I chose the baked potato with cheese and broccoli. It was okay. It was just a normal-sized white potato and the cheese sauce tasted like it was from a jar, but the broccoli was fresh and really good.

But it wasn’t worth $7.75! It was a freaking baked potato! Aren’t those on the dollar menu at Wendy’s? Or if not, I’m dang sure they aren’t anywhere close to $7.75!

Do you know how much it bugs me that this bugs me? I can afford a $10 lunch. I could have bought lunch for everybody in the place and not been inconvenienced. But it’s the principle of the thing.

To top it off, I received probably the best compliment ever in regards to my work today. But rather than enjoy it, I’m too busy pondering this:

Do you know how many freaking POUNDS of potatoes I could buy for $7.75?

I guess I should add insane and obsessive to the list above.