Veggie Tales

i was blogger stalking the other night and came across a blog about a mother who is raising her children vegan. you can link to her blog here.

whenever i think of vegan parenting i think of the baby who died because his vegan parents only feed him soy milk and apple juice. according to this news article they were recently convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. i'll be honest, i approached vegan mom's blog with some (ok enough to feed a small country) cynicism about how she feeds her family.


after reading a few of her posts i guess you could say i was eating (vegan) humble pie. this seems like a smart and competent woman. her kids look healthy (i.e. not ready for leading roles in a world vision commercial). i liked her blog a lot and found myself slightly (ok massively) jealous of her glowing skin and shinny hair. it seems like this lifestyle really works for vegan blog mom and her kids.

but....

as a way of life for MOST people, i think it is problematic. to feed your children (not to mention yourself) competently, it seems like you'd have to spend all your time either preparing food or reading about preparing food. now i don't know about you, but spending all of my time doing either of these two things would land me in a mental institution faster that you can say roast beef dinner. i have better stuff do to like watch little dorrit, play axis and allies, and stalk the blogs of people i don't even know!

even for people who like cooking, want to be vegan, and spend a lot of their time reading about it---raising healthy kids on a vegan diet seems like an uphill battle. at least that is the conclusion that i reached after reading a study about the effect of a vegan diet on infants. according to the study all of the infants who participated in the study showed evidence of protein-calorie malnutrition, iron, zinc and vitamin B deficiency anemia, rickets, and experienced multiple recurrent infections. doctors also noted developmenal delays in all of the children.

(let me know if you want they study--i have it downloaded for my school library as a pdf).

so i have decided that in mercedes land the kids are going to eat frozen pizza and microwaveable hamburgers....but reading vegan mom's blog did make me think that we could stand to have a few more vegetables and legumes in our diet. i could never be full on vegan. i am from alberta for heaven's sake. telling people you don't eat meat will get you kicked out of the province. don't believe me....ask K.D. Lang. so to ease my troubled mind i threw an extra can of garbanzo beans into the white chili we had for dinner.

and after eating it....i feel so healthy. in fact i think i am glowing.

honestly though this is kind of something i am interested in. is anyone aware of studies, in peer reviewed journals, that talk about the positive effect sof a vegan diet for children and/or adults? i'd be interested to learn more. I read the McDougal Way years ago and thought it was pretty interesting....

My rock stars aren't like your rock stars....

meet kate jones and martin rifkin. these lovely canadians are the inventors of gummy vitamins.

we picked up some up at costco. they are good. so good in fact that i might have what health care professionals refer to as a vitamin abuse problem. i don't care if i am an addict though because i am as healthy as a horse. i didn't even get a cold this winter (and i didn't have a flu shot either). i attribute my health to the obscene amount of gummy vites i consume on a daily (cough, hourly) basis.

and just in case you are curious, yes, we bought the kids version. why? because the kiddie kind taste better and we are the kind of people who care more about how stuff tastes than if it is good for us (a position we may come to regret when we are both so fat we need a crane to lift us out of the house). until then, taste wins every time.

Daddy Like

remember when I used to scamper around the city looking like this?


(contrary to popular belief I am not wearing a black wig--read on for more insight into this seriously misguided hair colour choice)

when i moved to NYC to start grad school i'd just finished a stint working for MAC makeup. working there was glorious: my boss was thebomb.com, i had coworkers who were actually worth talking to, and a sixty percent discount on product (which lead to a serious makeup abuse problem).

if you want to work for MAC you have to just accept a couple of things:

1. at some point you are going to have to dye your hair black

which i did. totally caved into the peer pressure. when my mom saw me she told me if i kept my hair THAT colour i would never get married. worried she'd never live to see a grandchild, she offered to pay for me to get it dyed back to blond. even though part of me i wanted to say no just to prove i wasn't desperate, i've never been one to say no to free colour.

i wish i had because the colour session didn't go as discussed and i came out with a serious case of zebra hair which lasted for like three years (also not a great colour choice if you are on the prowl).

2. you are going to have to wear a truck load of makeup everyday.

i thought it was fun to get my creative juices going first thing in the morning. what to wear? blush or bronzer? gloss or lipstick? what type of coverage? why choose--i'd whore it up and wear them all--together--on a regular basis. usually it looked pretty good too.

when i got to NYC i kept up the makeup routine for several months. i liked wearing a truck load of makeup everyday--i thought i looked good and besides that, makeup was my artistic outlet (because i am a total artiste). eventually after being asked one too many times if i was a GOTH i decided i should maybe tone it down a little. i was 25! i was a grad student! people were supposed to take me seriously!

so i traded my beloved ruby woo and moxie lipsticks for oyster girl lip gloss, full coverage foundation for tinted moisturizer and eye shadow for eye cream (cause i am getting OLD). my application skills have deteriorated to a point where the other night when i went to put some eyeliner on (because we are going to a fancy party) i could barely draw a straight line.

anyhooo

while trolling the internet this afternoon i found this amazing website where they post makeup tutorials. the tutorials include application instructions and a list of all the products used. be forewarned, however, this isn't exactly the kind of stuff you'd find in instyle magazine. it is loud and out there, but also really fun and artistic so check it out.

here are some of my favorite looks:

(you can click on the pictures for closeups--the detail is amazing)



do you think there is such a thing as a makeup artist-anthropologist-librarian because all of a sudden i want to do makeup again.....

Summer Do

This morning I had strawberries in my cereal. Finally it feels like summer! While eating I started thinking about the things I want to do in the next few months. Here is my list:

(because writing it down and posting it keeps me accountable)

1. SEW a dress. I was thinking this one is cute-ish (i.e. doesn't look like something an Amish person would wear--which it one of my biggest hang ups about homemade clothes).

2. READ the following:

The reviews on this Susanna Clarke book all say that it's a hard read but amazing: Jane Austen meets mystery (with lots of footnotes, which I love. I also like books with LOOONG introductions).

Because it is the only Austen I haven't read....and there are only so many times you can read Pride and Prejudice (or watch it, which is why I took the advice of my friend Nikki Kelly and put a movie called "Little Dorrit" in my Netflix cue--watching it is also a summer do).

Reading Allan Bloom takes me back to Political Science 100. Professor Heidi Studer rocked my world that year. She introduced me to Allan Bloom and reading him makes me nostalgic for that first year of university (which is sort of odd because I have tried to suppress all memories of that time in my life. I was pretty much a big fat disaster! And I do mean FAT!). I don't agree with everything Bloom says--but that if half the fun of reading his work.

3. PLANT my own basil garden. This tutorial makes it look super easy....but I feel about plants the way I feel about babies....TERRIFIED I WILL KILL THEM. Time to conquer my fears. Noelle, Miriam you two know what you are doing--does this tutorial look about right?

4. YOGA at the Cambridge Baptiste Studio--because nothing beats a sweaty downward dog!

5. CRUISE around Cape Cod on one a bike (but only for an hour MAX because am I the only one whose hips feel like they are going to explode after sitting on a bike for about 15 minutes?).

6. LEARN about anthropological theory (ya sounds like a blast eh?)

7. RUN along the Charles

(ok maybe it will be more like a shuffle. We went hiking today and I was out of breath after about 30 seconds of climbing. Maybe yoga isn't quite the cardio workout I thought it was. )

8. BAKE some Lemon Bars

I have been craving them for like three months and Starbucks is always out. Curses.

9. Pratiquez mon FRANCAIS. I am taking a course. Friends and family who speak the french, be warned: I'm gonna be in touch a whole lot because I can barely remember how to conjugate avoir.

What is on your summer-to-do list?

Undocumented Missionaries

last week an undocumented lds missionary was arrested in the cincinnati airport while attempting to return home after completing his two years of service. he was detained, according to a church spokesperson, for “lacking necessary documentation to board his flight home.” you can read the news story here, which includes comments from church leaders.

the church allows undocumented immigrants to serve lds missions in the country in which they reside. although religious organizations are not liable for allowing undocumented immigrants to participate in church service, including missionary work, this arrest “certainly raises the stakes and complexity of such service."

i’ve spent the better part of the afternoon trying to sort out my thoughts regarding this issue.

on the one hand, members of the church have an obligation to obey, honour and sustain the law. even if allowing undocumented immigrants to participate in church service isn’t something the church is technically liable for, it is still illegal to be in a country without proper documentation. for some reason the church turning a blind eye to that sort of feels like….hypocrisy.

on the other hand, the “law” when it comes to how to deal with undocumented immigrants is sort of hazy. many police departments in US cities have a “don’t ask” policy. in these cities law enforcement are specifically instructed not to inquire about individuals citizenship status. Moreover, if they become aware of someone’s status, they are instructed not to report undocumented immigrants to uscis (unless of course that person is being charged with a crime). if law enforcement aren’t even required to turn in undocumented immigrants, coming down on the church for failing to do so seems like….hypocrisy.

immigration is an extremely complicated issue. i haven’t even scratched the surface of possible arguments for or against the church allowing undocumented immigrants to serve missions. what does everyone think?

all comments and perspectives appreciated.

Drugstore Do

i told michael if he wants to be a contributor on this blog he better pony up.....but since he has another month of school left and is supposed to be "focusing" i decided to give him a get out of jail free card until june. before he joins us, i am going to do everything in my power to shoot the intellectual integrity of this blog straight to......seventeen magazine.

when i was growing up one of my favorite weekend activities was going with my sister to the drugstore. the drugstore was our mecca, a promised land of products that would make us beautiful, radiant and hopefully (at least in my case) less dorky.

of course you have to know what to buy, so for advice we'd turn to the teenage girl bible: seventeen magazine. at the drugstore we'd thumb through magazines (we had no intention of buying--because we are thrifty like that) looking for the cheap product recommendations.

anywho not much as changed in the last ten years. i still love going to the drug store and i still love a good product recommendation list. since seventeen magazine wasn't interested in my "expert" opinion, i'm going to make myself feel relevant by posting my product recommendation list here:

(some cheap....some not so cheap).

best body moisturizer:
nivea sun kissed firming moisturizer, $7

before going to hawaii i went with a friend to get a spray tan. the prospect of hitting the beach sporting florescent light skin didn't really appeal. the lady at the salon warned us that since we were both "so" pale we might get a little orange. my hands resembled tangerines for like two weeks.

since coming home i discovered this much gentler alternative, a body moisturizer with a gradual self tanner in it. it really works! no orange. no streaks. it also has firming agents in it (which probably do nothing) but it is the thought that counts.

best mascara:
maybelline colossal volum' express mascara, $8

i only bought it because it was on sale two for one. my lashes look freaking full when i wear it and it goes on like butter. enough said.

best anti aging product:
kiehl's powerful line reducing concentrate, $75

ok so it isn’t cheap AND it stinks big time but i am willing to overlook these faults because when i use it my skin is amazing (and i don’t have great skin to begin with). the product is a serum of vitamin c which helps to reduce fine lines. i think it even helped reduce some of my acne scaring. clear skin and reduces lines: this stuff is killer. start using it now to save yourself money in the long run (i.e. you won't need (as much) botox).

best lip gloss:
mac viva glam v lip glass, $14

a little bit pink. a little bit peach. ALL the proceeds of this product go to support aids charities. as one enthusiastic sales person told me: "one lip gloss can feed a child with aids in africa for like three weeks!!" trust me it will look great on you, but seeing is believing so next time you are walking by the mac counter do yourself (and the kids in africa) a favour and go try this gloss on.

ok this post is getting a little onerous. so even though i have about 8 other products i'd like to run off the mouth about, i'll do us all a favour and shut up. and any of you who did make it to the end of the this...i need a new eye cream. anyone have a favorite?

Commonsense Cooking

I’d been fantasizing about cupcakes for like three weeks. Hinting to the capable cooks in my life that I needed a cupcake delivery didn’t pan out….so I broke down and made a batch myself.


What a waste of flour.

I forgot the baking powder so the cupcakes turned out like hockey pucks. Talk about ruining a craving. Actually this little disaster is probably for the best because had they turned out even remotely well, I very likely would have eaten the entire batch myself.

Michael flagged this article on googlereader from some blah blah great chef about how people only need common sense and an understanding of ratios to cook well. The article is good, but whenever people say cooking is just common sense and math I start getting sensitive about my culinary prospects (so sensitive in fact that I missed the point of the article).

I like math. I’m just not very good at it. I like cooking, but according to chef blah blah I’ll just never be very good at it because I’m a Neanderthal who doesn’t know a ratio from a radical. Whatever happened to the “if you can read, you can cook” school of thought? At least in that paradigm I had a chance!

I consol myself with assurances of my ample common sense (I have it right? Right? RIGHT?) and the fact that I can cook one thing really well. If I were a pony, this would be my one trick.

Here it is:

In a pan heat a drizzle of oil and about six cloves of minced garlic and sauté on medium.To the garlic and oil add chopped basil (fresh if you have it, if not dried works well too).



Add some coarsely chopped roma tomatoes. (a good rule of thumb is to use three roma tomatoes per person eating)


Simmer about 20 minutes until some (but not all) of the liquid reduces.

Before serving add a large handful (or two, who can get enough of this stuff?) of feta cheese and let it melt just a bit.

Serve hot over pasta.

I suppose you could add mushrooms or asparagus or zucchini to this sauce. Regardless of what you do to it, it turns out. So there you have it, your very version of own old faithful. Try it sometime, it will make you feel full of good old-fashioned common sense!