The Blessed Unrest

The majority of this post is going to be completely unrelated to food. You've been warned.

On Thursdays, my 9 to 11 class doesn't meet, which is awesome. I come home from early morning ROTC stuff, take off my uniform, and do homework, watch the tele, and relax for a bit. Yesterday, I decided to clean. And, boy did I ever. I turned on Pandora, cranked it loud, and went to town. I cleaned the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, and managed four loads of laundry. Oddly, I enjoy cleaning when it's on my own terms. I get mildly irritated when someone tells me to clean up after myself. I'm a grown adult, I know how to clean. After a good hour and a half of cleaning and organizing, I put my uniform back on and head to class.

Now, you have to understand... the tension in my apartment is at a terrible, yet hilarious level. It's at that point where nothing is a surprise, you laugh, and move on. I had organized all of the DVDs on one shelf of our tele stand- There was a clear separation between one roommate's discs and the other's, but they were right next to each other. Well, apparently, that was too close. One roommate had separated hers, and put the others on the complete opposite side of the stand. I saw that, and was floored. Like, I dropped the f-bomb, and may have moved the rest of her stuff to "her side." Why not, right? If our discs weren't good enough for hers, I'll just put everything of hers next to her discs (cleaning supplies, and other household things). I don't know why that irritated me so much, but it did. I just kept thinking, "sorry our DVDs aren't up to your standard and can't be next to yours." Pissed. I sat on the floor, reminding myself that it was petty, didn't matter, and I just needed to move on. BUT WHY DID IT MATTER THAT OUR DVDs WERE NEXT TO HERS? It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter, and I think that's what irritated me.

I felt the anger bubbling inside of me. I talked myself into calming down and just paced around the living room for a little. Side story, a four months ago, I was in the ER. The bills totaled over $2,000 and I was in a panic about how I was going to pay for that, school, and my living means. I sent in a request for financial aid a few weeks ago, and received the reply letters from Harborview yesterday. I decided to open those after the DVD snafu. The first was a bill, but it had my previous balance on it. My stomach dropped, thinking that they didn't award me any aid. I opened the second letter, which was addressed very kindly, and continued to say that I was awarded 100% financial scholarship. I can't even express how grateful I am for that.

What is the blessed unrest, besides the newest (amazing) Sara Bareilles album? It's actually an amazing poem that, I think, plays well into this. "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

I guess the roundabout purpose for this post was a quarter ranting and three-quarter gratitude and humility. I need to stop being so easily irritated by ridiculous things like reorganized DVDs or a shoe rack (that's a whole other roommate story. I'll spare you.) I don't believe everything happens for a reason, but I do think there's a reason everything happens. Being granted that 100% coverage was a huge burden off my shoulders, and challenged me to rethink what I stressed about, and what I let affect my relationship with those in my life. I am the only 'me' there will ever be on this earth. I don't want that energy, my expressions, to be negative. I love the line "You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you." I don't want to be negatively motivated by little things, but positively motivated to do good for others and for myself. Whoever chose to give me 100% financial coverage, thank you. You allowed me to reevaluate and continually challenge how I choose to channel my energy- it is the blessed unrest of our daily lives that allows us the opportunity to continually makes those changes that motivate us to be more, be better for others and ourselves, than we were before. 

And, you better believe, the next place I live, I'm going solo. And I'm leaving my shoes in a pile at the front door. Suck it.

This is what Cait and I made for dinner last night- quinoa "fried rice" with veggies and pineapple :) Of course, I ate it in my favorite little bowl that I bought in Vietnam!

Banana Potato... NA NA NAAAAAAH

Just the greatest thing ever....

I remember watching this movie for the first time when we were still in Vietnam- we walked into the theater with our big 3-D glasses, five minutes late, and enjoyed subtitles :) The minions will forever hold a place in my heart. (This song is actually my ringtone... don't judge.)

This connects to food, believe it or not! For breakfast this morning, I had one of the BEST smoothies I have ever had. I blended coconut milk with avocado, spinach, watermelon, and frozen BANANAAAAAAH. I don't know if I'll ever be able to replicate it, but it'll be a good day if I can. I tend to not follow recipes (like... ever.) so the odds of something working twice in a row is rare, so I've learned to have a greater appreciation for things the first time around.

After a long, tiresome day of classes, I was craving something warm and delicious. Soup sounded just "meh," and I wasn't in the mood for a sandwich. A bag of potatoes peaked itself from the top of the fridge and I thought about what I could make with those. Mashed potatoes, potato salad, potato soup... SCALLOPED potatoes. And boy did I scallop the hell out of those things. Oh my gosh. Using Veganaise, nutritional yeast, turmeric powder, Daiya cheese, and sautéed onions and garlic, I put that sauce on the potatoes under the broiler for five minutes. Heaven. Even my roommates liked them! That made me happy.

For some reason, when people hear vegetarian, vegan, or gluten free, people think taste is compromised. Okay, sometimes texture can get a little funky and flavor might seem like it's missing something, but I feel like for the most part, I've had only good experiences with alternatives. My next mission is mac and cheese! I'm sure if the scalloped potatoes were good than I have a good base recipe for the cheese sauce. Now, just to recreate the Panera Bread Bowl...

Until next time, my lovelies.

XO

thoughts, thoughts, FOOD!

It's been a crazy few days! This weekend, we were on SPRINT (Seattle Pacific Reachout International) retreat. For those of you who don't know what SPRINT is it's a group at my university that sends teams across the world on short-term mission trips. So, a few weekends ago, our core team had selected around thirty students to participate on different teams, and this weekend was the first time they got together to start team bonding and learning about how to approach preparing for their trip. It was a very emotional weekend for me; I can't believe it was a year ago that I first met my team that I went to Vietnam with. I had such a life-changing experience there, and I am so excited for the girls who are going this summer. I can't wait to go back and reunite with the fantastic people I've built relationships with there.

Food this week has been pretty decent. For some reason, my body is still adjusting to whatever it is I'm eating. There's always some kind of gurgle noise coming from my stomach- it'll be great when that stops. ;)

Food at retreat this weekend was actually really decent! They had good salad bar options, and for breakfast, they had oatmeal and frozen blueberries. I pretty much cleared the bowl of those... twice. Ha.
For lunch on the second day, I think I made my first unintentional mistake... I think. It was wild rice, so I asked the employee if there was any dairy in it, and she claimed that it didn't. However, the taste was a little like butter. I don't know if it did have butter, but after two or three bites, I stopped eating it. I filled up on salad instead :)

Today, dinner was a struggle. I tried to make something from Pinterest, and it didn't turn out all that great. It was dry fried tofu with barbecue sauce. I mean, it was still tasty, just not as visually pleasing as the pin made it seem.

This is what it was supposed to look like:

 <---------

And it looked like this:

    --------------->

Luckily, I had green beans to pair it with. I sprinkled it with Daiya cheese and a little garlic salt. YUM!

Mid day today, I was so tired- I could hardly keep my eyes open. So, I went to a local bakery, Flying Apron, that specializes in all vegan and gluten free food. I bought a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, and enjoyed it with an Americano. So tasty!














My original plan to only do this for a month is out the window- I'm pretty sure I'll stay vegan for the long haul! Still adjusting, but I'll get used to it. Yay! :)

Oh the places you'll go

When I started this challenge a few weeks ago, I was nearly 93% sure I was only going to do it for a month. Now, more than halfway through this journey, I'm not even 7% sure I could go back to eating meat or dairy.

Research is a bittersweet thing. It's awesome to learn new things and expand what you thought were your limits of knowledge and understanding. But, on the flip side, you also learn the dirty, undesirable, and sometimes painful truth.

I took it upon myself to do more research into the dairy industry. I nearly cried, threw up, or wanted to pass out with every website, article, and documentary I watched. Hundreds of images, thousands of words, a pain we can't comprehend, simply for food that we'll taste for five minutes. A life lost for a meal. It just doesn't seem fair, and it angers me. I'm at that stage of being a vegan that I understand this isn't just a fad diet; it's a lifestyle of compassion, honesty, and love. No animal deserves to be forcefully impregnated so she can produce milk that she can't even give her calf because the babe is being taken away from her the second it's born to be taken to a slaughterhouse, and she goes to have her milk sucked out to be bottled for you to pour on cereal. After years of generating offspring that she never gets to mother, the spent cow is sent to be turned into cheap meat or pet food. I can't even fathom this... How did it get to be this disgusting industry?

I can hardly buy anything at the grocery store because everything has milk or cheese in it. Shelves and displays are packed with hundreds of dead and/or abused animals. You might not think that's a lot, but let's put it into perspective; you have a local grocery store. Within a 10 mile radius (assuming you live in a normal sized city) you have another 10-15 store options. Expand that to the whole US, and there you have it... Our meat and dairy industry. It's not even farming anymore! It's manipulation, lies, and DISGUSTING.

You can eat local and organically, but no animal ever wants to die. They say "you are what you eat." Well, I'm choosing to not eat fear. I'm choosing to not eat captivity. I'm choosing to give some animal, somewhere, freedom from a life it had no choice in having.

I'll write more later... My heart is just so heavy thinking about it...

Love is in the Air

Halfway through the month! It’s crazy how fast time is going by, and how smooth this is going. I’ve been busy with school and work, so I haven’t been too frequently updating my blog, so I’m sorry about that; I’ll try to be better about it!

I came to the realization a few days ago that, on Tuesday, I register for my final quarter of college! And, since I’ve already met my major requirements (besides one class), in order to keep my ‘full-time’ student status with 12 credits, I’m taking some fairly easy classes. The one class I have to take is a torturous one. It’s every day, from 8:30-9:20. EVERY stinkin’ DAY. Who does that?! Arg. That took away my ability to take a dance class, which I wasn’t too happy about, but I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.

Currently, it’s 1pm on Sunday… The wind is blowing and the rain is falling, and I’m sitting in a coffee shop drinking a latte. Norah Jones, via KPLU, is making my mind wander all sorts of directions. I started thinking about this weekend thus far, and my recap of Valentines Day…

Props to Paig Horton for putting up with me. Since her boyfriend is stuck in Japan waiting to fly back to America, we decided to get together and make food and have a girl’s night in. We had pulled up my vegan Pinterest board and we were ready to do some baking and cooking. After a quick trip to the store, we get back to her house and start prepping everything. We planned to make braided spaghetti bread, jalapeno poppers, BBQ cauliflower, and peanut butter chocolate bars. Well, that didn’t all happen. I started on the bread while Paig prepped for the jalapenos. As she was adding the ingredients, I caught the label of the breadcrumbs- it said “Italian” style. Of course, I check the ingredients, and it has cheese. Okay, so those were out. While the spaghetti was boiling, she starts mixing the goods for the peanut butter bars. They called for graham cracker crust- long story short, milk fat. Now, she’s just annoyed (bless her heart) as I keep apologizing for ruining everything. We ended up with a huge role of awesome spaghetti bread and an improvised recipe for the peanut butter bars. Both turned out delicious! I really did feel bad putting such a constraint on our cooking adventures. The thought crossed my mind to just let her add the ingredients, but I had made it half of the month, and I wasn’t about to just throw in the towel.

My latte is nearly gone, now. The coconut syrup is more apparent at the bottom- I like that.

You know what else I like? Being vegan. I really think this is something I’m going to stick with for a while. I feel good (besides being bloated from Aunt Flo), and in my continuous research, I feel more, I don’t know the word…Grateful? Loving? Humane? about my decision to not eat or use animal products.  It’s caused me to be more cautious (maybe that’s the word?) about knowing what’s in my food.

What I’m still trying to figure out is balance- how to not eat only cabrs one day, and only veggies the next. I’m am learning, though, that this isn’t an overnight process. It takes 28 days to break a habit, they say, so I’m being patient with myself.  I haven’t, knowingly, eaten dairy, meat, eggs, or anything of the sort in 16 days, and I feel ready and eager to go many more! J

A supernova grew up to be stardust

Sara's always in my head. This is what I'm listening to :)

Yesterday, I got a good chuckle out of my meals. I started off the day with toast and peanut butter with a banana, but maaaaaaaaaaaan was I craving Nutella. I have been using the white chocolate peanut butter (yes, it's vegan!) and it's sufficed, but I'm still on the hunt for an alternative Nutella. I have found a few recipes on Pinterest that I need to try still!

So, last night has been a very anticipated evening for a while: Imagine Dragons were in town, and I had tickets 8 rows from the stage! Ah, but of course I had a math midterm the next morning. My luck. Before the concert, I had picked my friend up at the airport and we went to a seafood restaurant for dinner. I chose not to say anything about being vegan because I figured there'd be a few options on the menu for me without having to eat only a bowl of lettuce. I did, however, end up with a salad, but it was delicious! It had a very mild vinaigrette with cranberries and walnuts. I paired it with a side of broccolini- it made for a nice light dinner before the concert. The show itself was amazing! I couldn't hear for a while afterwards, but it was a great performance. I love going to concerts where the band actually interacts with the crowd and they showcase their music ability without being too "showy." Nevertheless, it was definitely worth staying up for! (well, I might retract that statement when I get my math exam back...)



When I woke up this morning, I knew I needed something to get me through the majority of the morning since I had class and an eye appointment that would keep me out of the house until noon. I enjoyed some delicious granola along with the blueberry coconut yogurt. For a little sweetness, I threw on some dehydrated cranberries from Trader Joe's! :) If you haven't check out Nature Box before, I would highly recommend them. They have a variety of vegan and gluten-free options to choose from, and they don't tease you with sample sizes- the portions are great! I get one box a month and it comes with five bags of goodies, ranging from Citrus Chipotle Chickpeas, Granola, Fortune Cookies, or Trail Mix. Go check them out!

My pride and joy of the eating world today was the soy "chicken-less" tenders I bought the other day. HOLY (not) COW. They were so delicious. I've been trying this whole 'portion control' nonsense, so I only had three, but I could have eaten that whole freakin' bag. I dipped them in a tasty barbecue sauce and they were scrumptious! I'll definitely be purchasing more of those.

In the meantime, my poor body is still trying to figure out what I'm doing to it, at the same time I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing to it. One of the surprisingly difficult things with this transition is a proper balance in daily meals- making sure I'm not carb heavy one day and all veggies the next, and fruit sugars the next. My tum has been quite gurgley, but from what I've read, the amount of fiber I'm consuming is probably a lot more than usual so my body just has to get used to it. In time it will, but until then... Well, I'll just go buy more candles for the apartment. Sorry. ;)

Rain and yogurt. Two things I didn't used to love...

I've lived in Washington my whole life. Besides random three month stays in other states and countries, the Puget Sound has always been home. This means I've never had four season; I've had rain, rain, rain, a little bit of sun, and more rain. I used to hate it, but as I've gotten older, there's something about the rain that is calming and comforting. I've grown to love it. :)

I used to hate yogurt, mainly because I associated it with pain. Finally during my senior year of high school, I went to the doctor, and found out I'm lactose intolerant. Makes sense. Occasionally, I'd sneak in a piece of pizza, some mac and cheese, or a bowl of ice cream. Being vegan has been nice because I'm not tempted to eat those things that hurt my stomach. But, while browsing through Trader Joe's, I found a gem; coconut yogurt!

When I was last in Tennessee, my aunt had this in the fridge, and I don't know why it's taken so long for me to try. IT'S DELICIOUS.

I must say, it's been fun finding things that taste better vegan. Yogurt, hot chocolate, sorbet, cereal... Don't get me wrong, I'm missing pizza... ;)

<3