Normal

Normal

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a friend about a party and we were talking about food when she said "Oh, I forgot....you eat all that weird stuff". I got instantly angry. Why the judgement? What business is it of anyone else what I eat, when I eat or why I eat what I eat? I have had comments like this ever since I started losing weight. When I became a vegan, however, people got very vocal about MY diet and by the time this friend made this comment I had had enough.

I understand that I write a blog about health and food and that I state my opinions pretty openly. I do not, however, ever place judgement on anybody else's choices. If you are overweight and want to eat french fries I think that is your choice. My choices are about wanting to enjoy the rest of my life as fully as I am able. If eating french fries is what does that for you then I say go for it. Believe me, I have been the fat guy that felt like every one was judging me for everything I put into my mouth and I don't place that on anyone else. You make the choices for your health and your life that allow you to enjoy it the most. I celebrate those decisions. All I ask is that you respect my choices without judgement.

I think the thing that upset me the most about my friend's comment was the word "weird". Just because my friend knows I'm a vegan she assumed that I was eating something that she didn't understand and so in her mind that was "weird". I eat fruit, vegetables, brown rice, whole grains, spices, beans, sugar, nuts.....and other "weird" things. That's about it. I am not particularly fond of eating a lot of processed vegan foods (fake cheese, fake meat, etc.) because they are usually packed with chemicals and/or high in sodium or other stuff I try to stay away from (once again, my choice). So I eat food. Weird, huh?

The topic of food tends to come up often when you are a vegan because it's a bit different than what people expect. When you go to a party people want you to try things and when you're a vegan you generally have to state at some point that you are a vegan just because people are curious why you aren't eating something. It's a great way to start a conversation about different diets and different ways of cooking and eating....but generally it usually ends up in the judgement pile. "Oh, you eat all that weird stuff".

I will admit that sometimes what I eat for dinner is not exactly "what Mom used to make." It's probably a lot more like "what Great Great Great Great Grandma used to make". That's just what I do. It's what I like to eat. It's what I eat that makes me feel good and I enjoy it. I am not trying to convince anyone that what I am doing is the best thing. I change the parameters of my own diet often based on what may or may not be agreeing with me at any particular point in time. I recently had to give up oats because my body was having an adverse reaction to them. Since I was conscious of the food I was feeding my body I was aware of what was causing the problem and was able to eliminate it. That is the great thing for me about eating the way I eat. It's simple and easy to figure out what feels like fuel and what feels like......junk.

Being a vegan has opened up my culinary world in ways that I could never have imagined. To be honest I wasn't a particular fan of vegetables before I became a vegan. Now that I know what to do with them I love them. Sometimes I miss meat....sometimes I eat it because I just want to. (now the vegans will think I'm weird). These are my choices. The less we judge everyone else and begin to focus on ourselves and making choices that make US happy the better off we will all be. Whether your the overweight woman getting shameful stares from her friends or the vegan being told your choices are "weird"......we all could do with a little less judgement and a little more love.

Red Cabbage Slaw

Red Cabbage Slaw

This one is so easy and it keeps for about a week in the fridge. I usually wrap a healthy scoop onto a whole wheat tortilla and eat it as a wrap at lunch.

1 Small Head Red Cabbage
3 Medium Carrots
1/4 to 1/3 Cup White Balsamic Vinegar

Shred the cabbage in a food processor, with a grater or thinly slice it with a knife. Grate carrots. Mix carrots with cabbage, add 1/4 Cup Vinegar and stir. Taste and add more vinegar if desired. The white balsamic vinegar is a bit sweeter than other vinegars and if I don't add too much the sweetness of the carrots keeps me from having to add any sugar to this. It gets more flavorful the longer it sits in the refrigerator!

Remembering Memories

You’ll find that the “narrative” about my experience over the past year is everything but linear. Part of that is intentional…..to make the blog more interesting and to keep you coming back to read more. The other part is purely a product of self-preservation….one over which I have very little control. The truth is that I still don’t remember a lot of what happened during those few months last summer. Memories come back slowly and carefully as I am ready for them. But I honestly don’t think I could sit down and tell you the whole story from start to finish even now. A lot of it is still buried in my memory.

My first exposure to this inability to remember memories happened pretty early and it made me aware very clearly what was happening and why it was happening. Two months after Brennis got home we were cleaning the house. We were slowly getting our life back to normal and putting all of the furniture back to where it belonged (we no longer needed a bed in the living room, for instance) and Brennis was able to do a lot of things now that he wasn’t able to do even a week before. While he was busy in the den I was straightening up the kitchen and happened on a stack of papers. I turned them over and realized that it was the folder that the hospital gave Brennis when he was discharged. It was the “So You’re Going Home With A Hole In Your Chest” brochure, outlining what to expect, what to be cautious of, etc., etc., etc.

When I saw that folder, it literally knocked me off my feet. I sat on a chair at the kitchen table and cried like I had not cried in years. It was as though I had forgotten what had happened to Brennis….to both of us…..and this brochure brought it all back into focus. I can’t really explain it any other way. My brain had allowed me to “forget” the whole experience temporarily so I could slowly get back to my “real” life. It’s the ultimate deinal and my brain was willing to allow it to happen so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed and I was grateful.

Even now, almost a year later, I occasionally have random memories sneak back into my brain and I am able to process them slowly into my recollection of the entire experience. With the year anniversary coming up shortly I think they are coming faster than normal these days. The other day I got a rash on my wrist and I remembered that I had the same rash on my wrist last year when Brennis was in the hospital but I kept hiding it from the nurses, afraid that they would ask me to leave his hospital room. It’s obviously something that blooms in May or June that I’m allergic to but I had totally forgotten about this little detail until just this week.

Part of this process of remembering memories is wonderful. Some of these memories are just too horrible or hurtful or sad to have in your memory every day. It would be overwhelming. But the somewhat random return of these memories can be like punches to the gut if you aren’t ready for them (and you almost never are).

It makes me wonder sometimes why we make ourselves remember bad things about our past at all. All of us make mistakes. All of us have done things we are ashamed of, are embarrassed by or that we regret. We have all hurt people we love and made bad decisions. We learn our lessons and move on….hopefully learning enough not to make the same mistake again. Sometimes we are successful and sometimes we aren’t. Many of us, however, are so entrenched in the failures of our past that we are unable to move forward.

I could very well dwell on these memories as they come back into my consciousness but I have chosen not to. I allow them to come to me and I let them be. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I just stop what I’m doing and consider the memory as it enters. There is, however, no need to dwell on it. It is a part of my history that I have back and it is something that I choose to keep but it is also my choice whether or not I am going to let it define me.

I posted a line of Facebook a few days after Brennis was released from the hospital: “I don’t think it’s true that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle….he just doesn’t let you know you can’t handle it until it’s over”. I am certainly in no position to hazard a guess about what role God played in what happened last year…but I do know that I made it through to this point and really that’s all I need to know.

Unwrapping The Present

When I was sixteen I had a dream. I dreamt that I was reading the most beautiful poem I had ever seen. It was several pages long and I knew as I was reading it that it was a miraculous poem….the best poem anyone had ever written. When I woke up I tried to remember the dream and remember as much of the poem as I could but every line of the poem evaporated from my memory as soon as I awoke. Everything was left behind in the dream.

I was so excited. I had found what God wanted me to do. He gave me a sign and I was going to spend the rest of my life being a writer. I knew that because I had dreamt this “perfect” poem…somewhere inside of my brain was the “perfect” poem and I was meant to share that with the rest of the world.

So I started writing anything I could: sonnets, free verse, prose, scripts….anything and everything. I was consumed with writing and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with my new “calling”. I never did figure it out.

I tried majoring in English in college but didn’t really find it interesting. I wrote lots of great poetry that I only let a few people read because I was insecure. I wrote a novel when I was 29 because I had always said I wanted to write a novel before I was 30 but never bothered to have it published. I lived most of my life believing that I had been duped by my dream….my “calling”. Obviously, it was just a dream.

I have spent the last ten years running an art gallery with Brennis. One of the most rewarding parts about the gallery is being able to help people make their dreams come true. An artist works for hours, weeks, months on a canvas and the dream of being able to see it hanging in a gallery for others to see is a huge dream for any artist. I get to play a small part in that process and I always find it a powerful and rewarding feeling. So I had resigned myself to the idea that maybe that was what I get in this life: I get to do that for people….which is great, really but why did I feel so empty and, quite honestly, so guilty?

I find I ordinarily write when there is something that my brain cannot process with rational thought and I have to try to piece it together in poetry or prose until it starts to make sense to me. It happend on September 11th and it happened while Brennis was in the hospital. I didn’t understand what was happening, why it was happening, what it meant, what I was suppossed to learn from it. All I could do was write about it for myself as though I was translating my own life into a language I could understand. So I started during those dark nights in the hospital with Brennis to write these thoughts in my head, making a promise to myself that if I was able when it was all over I would put them down on paper.

The truth of the matter is that I love to write. I love being able to say things like nobody else can and I love the process of making sense out of the world using this thing called language. It’s pretty incredible to be able to do that. I always marvel at those who do it well and sometimes I get close to that mark and anyway…I like to try.

I have begun to realize that not writing and not sharing my writing with others was an act of selfishness. I had been given a gift and I wasn’t using it. Even worse than that I resented having the gift. I hated the expectations of it. THAT is selfishness.

For me now it’s not important whether people like my writing or not. I understand now that that’s not the important part. The important part is that I use this gift and use it with care. I don’t know why I have it and I don’t really know what to do with it but I know it’s what I’m supposed to do.

I had a dream the other night that I lived in a room that was four stories tall and on the walls of that room were shelves of books stacked from floor to ceiling. Each book represented something that I was thankful for and I was reading each book and feeling the gratitude of each passage all over again. It was really a wonderful feeling to be able to conjure those feelings from simple words on paper. Being able to do that myself is something I’ll always be grateful for…..that, and the ability to dream.

Choices

Choices

So often when we eat we do it without even thinking about it. There is a bowl of chips on the table and we grab a handful. We're in line at a fast food restaurant and we make a quick decision because they are busy and you are starving. As a compulsive over eater I was guilty of this a LOT. I never thought about most of what I put into my body other than that it sounded good at the moment. I usually opted either for salty, highly processed foods or sugary and/or chocolaty confections. Often when I started with one I had to balance it out with the other creating a full-fledged binging cycle.

Understanding our choices and learning to make better ones is essential for losing weight and for maintaining your goal weight. Every time you put food in your mouth you are making a choice. Before you eat it (or drink it), think about it.

There is probably no more simple example of this than the labels on your food at the grocery store. I'll be honest, two years ago I had no idea what three-quarters of that information meant. I had no idea what I was supposed to eat and how all of those tiny little numbers affected my health. When you go to the grocery store you are faced with hundreds (thousands) of choices. We're all always in a hurry so we ordinarily don't take the time either to learn what our bodies need or to look at the labels on our food to see what we are putting into our bodies. If you are going to start feeling better it's time to start.


Ideally most of what you put in your body won't have a label because it's a fresh fruit or vegetable. About three-quarters of the food that I eat is fresh. I look at the labels for everything else.

What am I looking for? Well....for me I consider a few things. I am primarily concerned with sodium when I look at labels. I would also look at fat and calorie content but I generally don't buy pre-packaged things that are high in calories and fat. I buy lots of canned beans and canned vegetables and it is amazing the difference in sodium content in different brands of canned vegetables and beans. Read your labels. If your doctor has told you to be cautious about fat/calories/sodium/potassium.....whatever....LOOK for it. That's why that information is there. You don't have to sit down with a calculator and figure out your daily allowance....just make the best choice.

When Brennis was first released from the hospital and I had started cooking for him I thought I was making good choices.....I wasn't always correct. For instance I started buying Turkey Kielbasa instead of the regular beef or pork Kielbasa I had bought for years since turkey is lower in fat. Since I didn't read the label I had no idea that turkey kielbasa is generally much higher in sodium (they have to do SOMETHING to the turkey to get it not to taste like turkey!). I wasn't really helping Brennis at all. I was just trading one bad thing for another. The same is true of a lot of "low fat", "no fat", "healthy" foods out there. Many of them trade fat for sodium or are so packed with unidentifiable chemicals that the have negated all of their supposed "benefits".....not to mention that they often taste just awful.

Once you realize that everything you eat....every piece of food you put into your mouth is an important choice the easier it will be for you to start making good choices. Feeding your body is no different than fueling your car. Your car won't work well if you put inferior gasoline in the tank. The same is true of our bodies. Making intelligent, informed choices is how you start to take charge of fueling your body and make the most of the food you eat. It begins right now and every time you make that motion of bringing your hand to your mouth with another bite. Ask yourself...is this the best choice right now? You know the answer. Listen. But first you have to ask the question.

Cranberry Nut Bread

Cranberry Nut Bread

I am always trying to make some of my favorite packaged foods at home without the added sugar, salt and preservatives. Last week I tried to dry cranberries so I didn't have to have all of the added sugar. It didn't work. So....I used them for this recipe.

I took an 8 ounce package of cranberries, placed them in a pot of boiling water, turned the heat off and stirred the cranberries until the skins had all broken (about two minutes). I went the extra step of trying to "dry" the cranberries in the oven overnight but it just didn't work....so I just popped them in the fridge until I figured out what to do with them and then...VOILA! Cranberry Nut Bread. You can blanch the cranberries in boiling water like I did or you can just chop whole cranberries and use them that way. I must say that breaking the cranberries down a bit it made a lovely pink batter which I really like and the cranberry taste is spread throughout the bread....but do what you want....you will anyway.

1 1/2 Cup Unbleached Four
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
3/4 Cups Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 Cup Cranberries (see above)
1 Egg
1/2 Cup Chopped Walnuts
2 Tbsp Apple Sauce
3/4 Cup Orange Juice
1Tbsp Orange Zest

Combine Flours, Sugar, Baking Powder, Baking Soda. Add Cranberries, Egg, Applesauce & Orange Juice and mix until you have a moist batter. Fold in Walnuts and Orange Zest at the end.

Bake at 350 in a 4' x 8" loaf pan for about 50 to 55 minutes.

Cool for ten minutes before removing from pan!
Eat!

A Matter Of Degree

The third day that Brennis was in the hospital, two hours after we found out that he was going to need open heart surgery, I had gone down to the hospital McDonalds to get a cup of coffee (yes, the hospital had a McDonalds…more on that later). I was the third person in line and though I was in a state of shock and tears were threatening to come pouring out of my eyes at any moment I was transfixed by the activity behind the counter. This McDonalds had become my source of nourishment (I hadn’t yet discovered the hospital’s wonderful cafeteria stocked with healthy food) and I had come to be familiar with the restaurant’s staff. This day, the manager, a wirey woman with long hair gathered in a frantic bun beneath her burgandy manager’s cap, was running back and forth in an effort to fix the malfunctioning shake machine. In another state of mind this display would have annoyed me. If it had been two hours earlier, I might have found the whole thing to be too much and left. For some reason, however, at this moment I found the manager’s frenzied activity profound. Suddenly, the area behind the counter of this McDonalds became an operating room in the hospital and the energentic manager had become a surgeon. In that instant I had a strange sense of respect for the woman racing around with various pieces of plastic tubing and a stern, worried look on her face. This was important to her. This was her job. People would soon be wanting shakes and she didn’t want to disappoint them. I stood there, smiling…knowing that I had somehow been let in on one of Life’s little secrets. I had allowed myself to be open to the lesson and I learned it.

What did I learn? I learned what I believe to be one of the two core values of life: Be Kind To Others. I had often watched the people behind the counter at this McDonald’s and wondered how different their perspective was to people who worked at other fast food restaurants having to be in conact every day with people dealing with huge, sad, complicated medical decisions and death. I was surprised that for the most part the employees at this McDonald’s were similar to those at any other McDonald’s. They were calm and friendly but not overly connected with either their customers or the job that they were doing. They were, like most of us, going through the motions of working or, more accurately, going through the motions of living. The fact that the rest of us were possibly dealing with life and death decisions was really inconsequential to them. As I considered this I realized that at any given point in any day we all come across people that we know nothing about who may be going through a monumental life crisis and more often than not we will never know.

I understand that Be Kind To Others seems like a pretty basic concept….but as you become conscious of your dealings with people during the day try to be conscious of your interactions with people as it relates to being kind. Are you always kind to others or are you kind only to those who are kind to you? Do you, like many of us, wait to see how the other person will act before you decide how you are going to relate to them? Why not be kind first?

The other day I was in a bad mood and had to walk to the drug store. I encountered a “street person” (one who I had encountered before) who asked me for a cigarette. Because I was in a bad mood and just didn’t want to deal with him I ignored him and just kept walking. Two days later I read about a woman who had interviewed homeless people and she had asked them what the worst thing about being homeless was. The most common response was that people treated them like they were invisible.

I had a choice that day. I could have been kind but wasn’t. Being kind wouldn’t have been any more difficult than ignoring him and even though I wasn’t able to give him what he asked me for I might have been able to give him something he desired. Today I choose to be kinder than that. I owe it to him and to everyone else, including myself.