Such majestic, wonderful animal. And the most evil of creations; humans take advantage and mistreat. This documentary is moving and sad and informative. I never knew. Let them be!
Apparently Russia has captured 2 wild Orcas to be displayed during the Olympics…
Hi ya! How are you? I’m well. Aiden is sleeping and I’m tired. But not tired enough to waste this precious time to get things done when he’s sleeping. He’s started waking up a bit more again during the nights, which is tough but manageable. I think it might be because he’s in a development phase. The other day he figured out how to pull himself forward (first maneuvers toward crawling?). And he’s turning himself in bed quite a lot as well, finding it hard to fall asleep.
My old friend is coming to visit this weekend so I think we’ll deal with A’s sleep after that.
What else has happened? I bought a Philips food processor for my new food lifestyle. I got a voucher, 30% off a purchase so I went for it.
Also, last night I went out with 3 other moms I know. It was a lot of fun, and weird being out by myself.
Oh well, I’m going to do some important stuff now before the little guy wakes up. There’s been loads of stuff I’ve been wanting to blog about lately, but time has been my enemy. And when I sit down, like now, the topics are all gone or I don’t “feel” it that much anymore.
I’m done with my all-veggie-diet soon by the way! It’s gone so quick. I did “cheat” yesterday though. There was no vegetarian option on the menu (!!!), so certainly no vegan one. For that reason and financial reasons I got a pre course as a main; chanterelle soup with croutons. So there was cream and white bread. But what can you do. It came with this weird dry bacon looking thing (one of my friends thought it was dried parma, but it looked more like bacon – I know, it’s basically the same thing but you know what I mean it was thick. Not nice looking like parma) I asked if any of my friends wanted it and they were like; “Have you not tried it? You have to at least try it!” and so on. Eventually when I didn’t give in, someone went; “What, are you vegetarian or something?”
I don’t call myself vegetarian or vegan. It feels ridiculous when I ate meat 3 weeks ago. But the toughest with this diet so far has been socially.
Had this really nice aubergine curry tonight. Mm. It was delish! Deep fried aubergine, courgettes, garlic, red curry paste, coconut milk. Something like that.
Been reading up on oils today. If you buy organic rape seed oil for example – does that mean it’s not been refined with chemicals and stuff? Anybody know?
Feeding the baby is still an adventure and will be for a while I suspect. Sometimes he’s very interested and sometimes he’s angry. We’re trying different variations and this time he had some buckwheat porridge with pear pure. Most ended up outside of his mouth though. As it should.
Hello! Another week coming to an end. Is been a good week. I’m still doing my diet and it’s going really, really well. I’ve started working out again. Aiden is sleeping which means so am I.
I hope next week will be equally good. I’ve planned the food for the week with an extra post – Aiden ‘s column. I’ve started freezing his stuff in small non-plastic containers to make it easier. It’s so much fun planning and feeding this little one.
I’ve become such a hippie. I made my own tooth paste the other day.
I should go to bed now. Good night!
One of the best things with this diet is lunch. I try to eat only one cooked meal a day, for dinner. So for lunch I usually have some sort of salad. And what I like about it is that I can just look in the fridge and pick out whatever I feel like and just throw it together. Regardless of where this “Plant-based diet challenge” takes me, I will certainly do this a lot more!
Today wasn’t completely raw as I fried some carrots in olive oil with garlic and pecans. Then I had mixed leaves, baby spinach, avocado, leek and some lemon juice. Oh and fennel, because I could. Some beans would have been good for the balance sake. But not today.
Yesterday I got a text from a friend, asking if we wanted to come over for some food at their place tonight. First I got really excited for the invitation then my heart sank and I looked at Jon; “Oh-no, the vegan-thing”.
Jon: “So? just tell them you don’t eat meat. Many people have diet restrictions”
Me: “Yeah but it’s not just that! It’s vegan.“
All the advice I would have given anyone else in my situation was gone and I just felt strongly that I did not want to inconvenience anyone and almost didn’t want to go just because of that. A challenge indeed! Anyway, we accepted the invitation & it was taco night so I never mentioned beforehand I wasn’t going to eat of the meat, hoping I’ll just get away with eating veggies. I’m there for the company not to eat. It went very well though! And it wasn’t a big deal. Phew…
I never thought I’d rethink my meat-eating. I really didn’t. But I am and it started with my sister-in-law saying she has started following a vegan diet when we met at my in-laws a few weeks ago. My mother in law and her husband are vegetarians and have been for a few years. So it was already mainly a meat free diet being served (although my mother in law had kindly cooked us some chicken tikka masala, I must mention)
Back to the vegan thing. So my sister-in-law was instantly attacked with loads of stereotypical jokes from us 3 meat eaters, when explaining the reasons for her new eating habits. As I’m throwing out these jokes on a regular interval, however, I realise it must be something that happen to vegans/vegetarians all the time – being made fun of, questioned and asked to justify their position and any seemingly inconsistencies in their argument. Why is that? I don’t constantly have to explain why I eat meat.
Anyway, I had a revelation should I say about my own reasoning and justifications when it comes to eating meat,very surprisingly actually. I haven’t considered challenging myself on this point before because I’ve been convinced meat serves an important purpose for us. And as you’ve noticed here on the blog I’ve had a keen interest in high protein diets, which is can be perceived as a contradiction to a no-animal diet. There are some convincing arguments for a high protein diet being the way forward, but having read up a bit more I’ve come across arguments equally convincing saying the opposite. Arguments covering several aspects of life (health, environment, treatment of animals, weight) not just maintaining a certain weight. As we say in Sweden; “Man är inte sämre än att man kan ändra sig” (“I’m not worse than I can change my mind”)
The more I’ve thought about it I’ve realised that my justifications for eating meat is kind of poor and doesn’t really cover the kind of meat I tend to eat – cheap, mass-produced and also processed meat. The means to get it cheap and easily accessible to me, is worrying both from a moral and health perspective. Hence the reasoning; “I don’t think it’s wrong or bad for my health to eat grass feed beef from a local butcher, but because it’s not available to me price or location wise – it’s equal to substitute it with cheap store-bought meat.”
It’s not that someone else has challenged me on it (although my sister-in-law shared some blog & books after I showed an interest), but the seed was sown at some point and it has now lead me to this conclusion: I can’t really defend eating meat the way I do. If I’m going to continue I will have to accept the fact that I can’t defend it and have no good excuse and hats off for those who don’t. I haven’t made a definite decision where this revelation should take me, so maybe it’s a bit premature blogging about it. It is a very personal thing and my choices has to be right for me and I don’t have to stick to anyone else’s rules.
Some who read this will probably feel like I’ve done a one-eighty. And I have, as regards to the meat, I suppose. But all the other stuff is basically the same.
Jon just sighs; “Gosh, you always have to think of ways to make your diet more complicated.”
Either way, exploring new recipes and rethinking old ones is always fun, so I’ve decided to set myself a challenge – a vegan diet challenge. I have already started and I’m on day 6 of 30. I say vegan but actually it only partly describes the changes I’m making. And also, important to point out now; I’m only talking about a vegan diet at this point. So that no vegan lifestyle activist get offended and call me a fake. I’m not looking for a title to live up to in any way. Any change is a good change.
I did not realise (silly me) the environmental aspect of eating meat, not fully anyway. I read yesterday that you can do more for the environment by cutting out meat one day a week, than eating local produce seven days a week. So any change is really a good change and I’m doing something.
Besides eating a vegan based diet I’m also continue to cut out gluten, sugar, starchy and processed food and opt for organic produce as much as possible. It’s about making healthy choices.
After the 30 days I will evaluate and see how I want to move forward. Here’s some stuff I’ve eaten this week:
Why is it called “maternity leave”,it should be called maternitywork.I know, I know – you’re on leave from your work to be a mother. It’s just the word gives the signals you’re somehow not doing anything. But in fact it’s probably the hardest job there is, and you have to do it sleep deprived.
Things are going better now though. I know part of dealing with this baby period is your attitude towards it. But when the stress & lack of sleep gets to you it’s hard to see that it’s a short period of time and that you’re there for your baby now. But usually you pick yourself up after a day of negativity and you’re back on track trying to puzzle and juggle to get the jobs done.
To mix it all up and give the family some nice, relax time we decided to bock baby swim for Aiden. I’m glad we did! He really seemed to enjoy it and was splashing water like a mad man. He slept nicely afterwards as well. The leader was swimming around meeting all the babies and when she came to Aiden she said; “Here’s someone who likes to swim! He’s not still for a second!”
