The Vegan Experiment

I'm about 68% (according to my ereader) through this book called The China Study and am feeling really convicted (well, scared, actually) that Les and I need to cut as many egg and dairy products as we can out of our diet. I've had borderline high cholesterol for the past few years, despite being vegetarian, and although blood cholesterol and dietary cholesterol are different, it seems worthwhile to try to reduce the amount of dietary cholesterol anyway. I'm also thinking that cutting high-fat dairy products like cheese out of my diet will lead to natural weight-loss.

We're still in the "eating through the bad stuff in the pantry" stage of dietary change, but we have started eating mostly vegan breakfasts and dinners. Overall, I've found many of the "fake" cheeses and the soy milk products to be pretty good, though we are trying to move down the path of whole foods rather than weird processed creations which just happen to be vegan.

We tried something like this about 8 or 9 years ago for a couple of months and didn't feel like we lost weight or saw any health benefits. Mostly we just found it terribly inconvenient because we couldn't eat all the foods that we loved (pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, yogurt, ice cream, etc.). As you can see, a lot of those foods weren't really the kinds of foods that we should have been eating anyway, but at the time, it was more about what we couldn't eat and less about what we should be eating for good health.

Online web resources are so much more robust now than they were back when we did this before. My favorite online recipe resource so far has been www.vegweb.com. As a person who doesn't really like to cook and doesn't like trying new things, such a big dietary change is challenging, but so many of the recipes on vegweb sound so delicious and seem so easy to make that I feel like I will keep wanting to try new things and won't fall into the habits of making the same thing over and over again. Les is doing cartwheels of joy at this news. He loves new experiences, especially when it comes to food.

This week's vegan dinner menu is as follows:

Sunday: Baked nachos
Monday: Mock chicken salad sandwiches and soup
Tuesday: Rice and beans + salad
Wednesday: Chana Masala
Thursday: Pasta with peas and cream sauce
Friday: Mini veggie tacos
Saturday: Tofu coconut curry

I have to also give a special shout-out to East Nashville's local vegan restaurant, The Wild Cow, who showed me how good vegan eating can be and convinced me that just because it tastes complex doesn't mean that it's complicated to make.

Enjoying this challenge and having fun eating more healthfully!

Education, Life, and What You Want to Be When You Grow Up

My husband and I have reached "middle-age," though I'm not really sure what exactly is considered "middle" anymore. To be specific, he's almost 41 and I'm 37-3/4. For us, part of being this age and not having kids to distract us from existential crises means that we spend a lot of time talking about our future, specifically jobs and location.

We've been in the workplace in some form or another for 25 years apiece. Most of my work experience has been office-based (everything from envelope-stuffing and filing to project management) and most of Les's work experience has been retail-based, with specific focus on music retail. These are careers that we've fallen into accidentally, but careers that we're good at and definitely have a wealth of experience in by this point in our lives. But I think that we're both of the mindset that "easy" or "good" doesn't always equal "best" or "healthiest," so we're always thinking and exploring. Success doesn't mean that it's not fun or important to think about what-ifs, how-abouts, and perhapses as far as the future is concerned.

Because of this general belief that we're only at an approximate half-way point in life and not just working a seam that leads from "here" to a defined "there," I'm always interested to read articles (and specifically articles that don't spout the usual business or faith-based rhetoric and don't use the words "maximize" or "God-sized hole") that discuss "Why are you here?" themes. This article by Mark Edmundson, "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?" is an amazing read.

I posted it on Facebook along with my favorite quotes from the last two paragraphs, but since Facebook doesn't have a good way to search for content I've posted in the past, I thought I would also log it here so I can find it again later.

Oh, and for you, dear reader, to enjoy as well.

Read the article here.

Doing a Good Job...

A funny quote from one of our freelancers, which someone repeated in a meeting today:

"Doing a good job around here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit: No one notices, but it sure gives you a warm feeling."

That's not my own experience at my job, but it made me laugh!

Hot Pepper, The Plant Who Lived

This is the tale of a little hot pepper plant that I started from a seed in the Spring of 2010. The seed grew so nicely in my starter pot indoors. Two levels of leaves and a strong, strong stem.

When summer came, I happily put it right outside, having never heard of "hardening off" (yes, it sounds pervy). The newborn leaves got totally bleached in the sun. I thought this plant was a goner. It was completely yellow and the whole plant was dry like paper. Yet, there was still a little green at the base of the stem, so I kept watering it to see what would happen.

It never recovered last summer, but instead lost all of it's leaves and became mostly a partly-green stick. As winter approached, I brought the plant into the office because we keep our house so cold.

This Spring, we saw the first tiny leaf appear.

Now, several months later, it's looking fine: 12 leaves and a flower to boot! Since it seems so happy here at the office, and since Winter is not far away, I'm going to leave it on my desk and see what kind of growth occurs this winter. I might even get to put it in my garden next summer.

After hardening it off properly, of course.

My Other Blog

I have definitely not abandoned this blog, but I've started a new blog over on WordPress (because I'm just so NOT brand-loyal, or possibly because I don't like my life to be too uncomplicated) about things that happen in my yard. It's a very basic, focus blog that I created because I wanted to just document and not worry about being poignant or thought-provoking or funny or inspiring. Probably this new blog will end up having elements of those things, on the sly, but that's not my intention.

I just didn't do it here because I felt like it would take this blog in a very set direction and I prefer to have a place to dump all of my random thoughts.

If you'd like to read it, check it out here.

Tools for Bible Study

I work in the Bible, Reference, and Study Resources department of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Just a few weeks ago I heard this helpful breakdown of the types of reference products available for Bible Study.

If the title of the product uses the word:

• Handbook: it's an overview of each book of the Bible, in canonical order (the order the books are in in your Bible).
• Dictionary: it's word-focused and in alphabetical order.
• Encyclopedia: it's topic- and phrase-focused and also in alphabetical order.

Other types of Bible reference books include:

• Topical Bible: organized alphabetically by topic, a list of all the scriptures that apply to popular study topics.
• Commentary: A book-by-book and sometimes even verse-by-verse explanation of the meanings behind Bible texts.
• Concordance: A complete list of every word in the Bible, as well as where and how it's used (the popular Strong's concordance also shows the Greek and Hebrew words behind the English translation).
• Manners and Customs or Life and Times: Understand how Bible people lived and discover the smallest details of life in Bible times (like what they wore and ate, how they worshipped, and what types of homes, job, transportation, plants, and animals existed in Bible times).

Hope this is helpful! Since I'd never heard this kind of breakdown before, even as close as I am to the production of these products, it felt like a "best kept secret" of the Bible scholar world. I wanted to share it with all of you so you'd be in the know! Happy studying!

Rediscovering the Old Ways

We moved into our first house at the end of August and have ever since been looking for various things temporarily lost in the pile of boxes in our spare bedroom. Today's quest was for my family recipe book; the holiday season is upon us and there are just certain things that MUST be cooked, to honor family traditions as well as fulfill the anticipations of much awaited gastric delights.

Thanks to a wonderful computer program called Delicious Library, we knew it was probably in Book Box 18 with our other recipe books, so all we had to do is find said Book Box 18 among the 40 other boxes in the room. This wasn't as difficult as you might imagine thanks to some semblance of order in the way we had put the boxes in the room during an earlier organizing moment. Success was nearly immediate, and therein lay the problem. Mentally I had set aside, oh, an hour, to find the family recipe book. Success 10 minutes into the project meant that I was left with the feeling that I still had at least 50 minutes to "play" amongst the boxes.

This is a slippery slope, of course. First you just think that you'll peek into "Mystery Box of Crap from Howell" (yes, this is how I labeled some re-discovered boxes that never got unpacked after our move to TN 4.5 years ago), and then you start digging to see what's in the depths of the box, and the next thing you know, you've found random "treasures" and you're moving furniture around in the other rooms of the house to find places for your new treasures. And then your Sunday afternoon is completely gone and your house is a mess and you wonder how you got to this place when all you'd been doing was looking for one cookbook.

One of the treasures I just had to claim from the depths of the mystery box was an old wooden container of letters and visiting cards. I think I got this box from Les's Grandma Rollins' estate after she died, but I don't think I've ever really looked through it. Today was the day (but of course!). I lifted out each visiting card, most only containing a person's name written in lovely script, though a few had crazy tasseled borders or were tucked within a decorative, four-color paper card. There were a number of baby announcements, wedding invitations, and graduation invites, most very simple and all (surprisingly) confirming that we really haven't made any progress in invitation/announcement design in the past 100 years. I discovered a few Easter or Valentine's Day cards, though nothing was written on them, as if they were purchased to send and then never mailed.

My favorite piece in the box, however, is a dance invitation, simply because it provides a lovely snap-shot of life in 1907. I don't have my scanner hooked up, but it's quite a simple design, so I'll just type it up "as is" to give you an idea of what you might have gotten up to on a Monday night over 100 years ago.

Seventh Grand Dancing Party

will be given at Niedermeier's Hall, Newport, Michigan, on

Monday evening, February eleventh

nineteen seven

The presence of yourself and friends will add to

the pleasures of the occasion

Music by Finzel's Orchestra of Detroit

Music begins at eight thirty o'clock

Niedermeier Brothers

Admission 75 cents

Oyster Supper 25 cents

Special car leaves Newport for Rockwood at 12:30 and for Monroe at 1:00 o'clock

Imagine being out until 1 a.m. on a Monday night in February! Don't let anyone tell you they weren't living large back in aught-seven!

A Quote

I was reading Ode Magazine during lunch and stumbled upon this quote. I think it's too long for a 140-character Tweet, so into the blog it goes!

"I have tried, too, in my time, to be a philosopher, but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in." -- Oliver Edwards, quoted (with lots of commas!) in James Boswell's Life of Johnson.

I resonate with this quote because it describes the life philosophy I keep coming back to. There are many moments when I think I need to be more discerning, more critical, more thought-provoked, more responsive, more involved, more aware, or more serious overall about life and all that's going on in the world. But that's just not me. It feels like work for me to live that way -- unnatural, un-fun, and stressful.

So, at the end of the day, I just keep defaulting to trying to have a cheerful disposition within each day and to help people see the fun and positive in their story as well.

Next step: Laughter therapy?