One of the rabbits we’re fostering from our local House Rabbit Society chapter to keep Vlad company took laziness to a whole new level.
Turning Veganese
I think I'm turning veganese, I really think so.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Sunday Bunday!
Listen up, people; this is important. Easter is coming up and it’s when most bunnies are bought on impulse and then abandoned when they stop being cute or some hapless pet owner ends up with 30 bunnies from their original two that have to be surrendered to a shelter. Fun facts about bunnies:
1. They can give birth and get pregnant in the same HOUR!
2. They can have up to 10 babies every 28 days; that can be up to 130 bunnies a YEAR!
3. Rabbits are the third most frequently abandoned animals, according to shelters.
This particular post is to ask you to spread the word about rabbits so that people don’t thoughtlessly buy rabbits for their small children as an Easter surprise.
This is Christie, Brent and the bunnies, signing off!
Epic Breakfast Burritos!
Brent and I have extra time to spend together on the weekends and watch our bunnies bounce around while we eat delicious breakfast food. This particular weekend we decided to make breakfast burritos instead of our usual tofu scramble and tempeh.
I did make our usual tofu scramble with some porcini mushrooms added for flare and sauteed some tempeh. I also chopped up some tomato and tomatillo which we layered on top of spring mix, scrambled tofu, tempeh and then covered with some ranchero sauce we bought.
We wrapped those babies up and stuffed them into our faces for a delicious messy breakfast that was full of fiber and protein and nutrients to give us energy to go and enjoy the rest of our day. What’s your weekend routine? Do you take extra time for awesome vegan breakfast?
This is Christie, signing off!
Sunday Bunday!
Our bunnies got some of the best presents from Melissa for the holidays: willow! Here are their happy faces chomping through an awesome treat. THANK YOU, MELISSA!
Oh yes…
A few hours later the willow cube was no more.
A friendly reminder, please spay and neuter your pets. My older sister *really* wants a German shepherd and didn’t know that there are German shepherd rescues dedicated to purebred animals. Check online for your local purebred rescue if you want a corgi or daschund or Hamalayan cat. They’ll be spayed or neutered, potty trained and you’ll know in advance if they’re good with kids, cats, dogs, noise or anything that might be relevant to your home.
This is Christie, Brent and the impossible cuteness, signing off!
Vegan 30
People often ask me (and I know every other vegan out their is nodding their head when I say this), “No meat, no dairy and no eggs… what do you eat?” I usually answer, “Everything else”. Sometimes I’ll list off a handful of things starting with wine, olives and chocolate. Any veteran vegan knows that in a year of being vegan you eat more different kinds of food than you ever ate as an omnivore.
I was looking around the internet and discovered a few lists like this. I realized that this is an exercise everyone should try. Here’s my list of 25 vegan foods that every carnist should try and in no particular order.
1. Porcini mushrooms, picked fresh and sauteed in vegan butter and garlic
2. Fiddleheads
3. Ramps
4, Fresh lychee, rambutan and longan (possibly in a martini)
5. Cashew cheese (home-made,Punk Rawk Labs or Pure Market Express)
6. Raw, vegan macaroons
7. Vegan channa masala from a good Indian restaurant
8. Vegan pad see ew from a good Thai restaurant
9. Vegan sushi with avocado, sun dried tomato and/or sweet potato tempura.
10. A vegan burrito with all the fixings: soy or lentil chorizo, beans, plantains, cilantro, etc.
11. Vegan lasagna, raw or not with lots of tofu or cashew ricotta
12. Monster fruit
13. Vegan hot chocolate made with soy or almond milk and high quality vegan chocolate and succanat.
13. Zucchini bread from Babycakes NYC
14. Chocolate mousse from Vegan Divas (NYC)
15. Fresh picked cherry tomato and basil leaves… just put one of each in your mouth at once.
16. Vegan sweet potato gnocchi with creamy vegan mushroom sauce
17. Vegan risotto with mushrooms (morels for an extra treat), edamame (or peas if you’ve got soy allergies) and asparagus tips or button mushrooms and butternut squash
18. Fresh baked vegan museli bread (vegan French toast when it gets stale)
19. Guacamole and corn chips
20. A sandwich with spinach, hummus, kalamata olives and sliced cucumber
21. Tempeh or eggplant bacon
22. Marionberries, right off the bush
25. Roasted potatoes with vegan aoili sauce
26. Avocado drizzled with high quality balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with garlic salt.
27. Home made almond milk and cashew cream
28.Vegan cheesecake from the Chicago Diner in Chicago IL or Sublime in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
29. A hot home-made vegan quesadilla with bell pepper, tomato, onion and lots of Daiya
30. A wrap with Pure Market Express gouda, mustard, gala apple, tempeh bacon and spinach.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
This is Christie, singing off!
Flu attacks!!!
Brent and I have been out with the flu for the past week. Just pat yourself on the back and know that vegans don’t contribute as much to genesis of new virulent flu strains because they don’t encourage animal husbandry. That’s important because “swine flu” and “bird flu” aren’t coincidental names for strains of influenza. Chickens and pigs are known hosts for flu virus and common mixing grounds for the virus when one [underpaid and marginalized] worker at a pig farm also moonlights at a chicken farm, particularly when the animals are kept in crowded unsanitary conditions. Avian flu vaccines, common on factory farms to protect inventory (as if animals are little more than a commodity), have also been cited as possible sources for novel virulent strains of flu.
Now, Brent and I will continue to lounge in our malaise of alternating night sweats and cold spells, hacking phlegm and sniffling (or more likely snorting), with our sore throats, prickly skin, headaches, gastrointestinal discomfort and my one clogged ear.
This is Christie and Brent… sniffling off.
Sunday Bunday!
Our bunnies are moderately awesome. I know most people feel that way about friends – human animals or otherwise. It may be a tired notion that we’ve got the best friends ever but it’s a feeling we can all relate to, I hope.
Love comes in all shapes and sizes in our house.
This is Brent and Christie, signing off!
Sunday Bunday!
Do you know what’s great about adopting a pet instead of buying one? Litter box training!
I have no idea how to litter train a rabbit (or a dog or a cat). Fortunately, I don’t have to. There are places where they’ll do it for you and all for the price of spaying/neutering and maybe some vaccinations.
Anyways… these two are always up to impossible cuteness.
This is Brent and Christie, signing off!
The other Lazy Vegans: TV dinner…
There’s always something off-putting about the concept of a TV dinner: a pre-packaged tray of unrecognizable goo that you take out of the freezer and pop into the microwave before being distracted from what’s in it by the latest episode of Mad Men. This post is about that style of meal.
Amy’s tamale with roasted vegetables caught my attention as I looked for Amy’s vegan gluten-free burritos (a perennial favorite snack food for that man I love). I love Mexican food and found the picture on the package appealing. It also has the rest of the key words that lure consumers like myself in; it announces that the product contains organic ingredients and is dairy-free, gluten-free, egg-free, nut-free and soy-free.
Taking this baby out of the package brought up some deeply repressed childhood memories. I also realized it might vaguely resemble the picture on the front once warmed and plopped onto a plate.
One of the reasons that I like Amy’s burritos is that there’s not a lot of packaging for the amount of food. This had a lot of packaging for the amount of food. I rationalized that I would be sating some water by eating it right out of the dish in which it was frozen.It wasn’t an unpleasant experience but the food did little more for me than sit quietly in the microwave safe plate. I added some fresh cilantro, powdered cumin, garlic salt and some Tapatio’s hot sauce and that definitely gave the meal some personality.
It was filling, contained unobjectionable ingredients and had some decent nutrition information. I’d probably buy it again but know I’d make something better myself at home. That isn’t the point though; this is a quick easy meal with good ingredients and nutritional details for something that comes from the frozen food section. Amy’s makes a lot of great gluten-free and vegan products (and their website has some great tools for figuring it out without condemning you to the tedium of reading every box)
What’s your favorite frozen dinner? I’d love to hear more and better options.
This is Christie, signing off!
Healthy Desserts
I don’t worry much about Brent and I getting enough nutrients but I rarely skip and opportunity to make sure we’re getting enough iron and B vitamins. I learned about this product from a friend who had cervical cancer. When chemo destroyed her red blood cell count, she relied on FloraDix (or the gluten-free version, FloraVital) to improve her blood stats.
It did and in a hurry. Within 2 weeks she was considered healthy enough to continue her treatments and today (7 years later) she’s alive and well with no recurrences in sight. While this is merely anecdote, it’s good to know that an iron and vitamin B supplement can be gentle enough for someone who routinely suffers from nausea and effective.
So what does this have to do with Turning Veganese? Smoothies! I put a little something extra into every smoothie we drink and by ‘a little extra’ I mean anything from protein powder (from peas, of course), maca powder, carob powder, spirulina or just about anything to give it that nutrient and antioxidant kick. This is one of those nutrient and andioxidant kicks. I don’t like the idea of hiding vegetables and fortunately this doesn’t need to be hidden. It tastes fine all by itself!
Today I’m putting it into a blackberry raspberry banana orange smoothie. I know you want some. You won’t know the difference except the B vitamins make me feel like I was shot out of a cannon (in a good way).
This is Christie, signing off!
Turning Veganese 