The Casual Vegan

+ today’s lunch + a good book

new to fava beans

Today was the first day that I’ve ever eaten a fava bean. We received a pound of them last week from our CSA share and I’ve just gotten around to preparing them. The first step of shelling the fava beans was straightforward: remove the beans from their “wooly husk.” Easy enough! But then I was confused. The directions that I had been given by our CSA said that the next shell around the bean itself, hugging it like a Speedo, er… wouldn’t need to be removed if the beans were young. Well, just how young were my beans??

the second shell

After attempting to wrangle one larger bean from this whitish shell and finding it too labor intensive and kind of messy, I decided to parboil the beans as they were. And I’m glad that I did, because after only 4 minutes of boiling, and a bit of cooling off, this inner shell slips right off the bean! It feels a lot like eating edamame, or soy beans out of their pods. But my CSA’s directions were also accurate: the smaller beans don’t require this extra shelling. Their inner shells are tender and easy to eat. Greg, being the eater that he is, even ate the larger beans’ white shells. I ate a few. They tasted fine, just required some extra chewing. I prefer the more mellow experience of the shelled bean.

If I had realized all this before I served myself this plate full of food, I would’ve kept the fava beans separate from the gravy, because shelling them with my fingers got a little messy!

But I give fava beans lots of thumbs up. They are smooth little beans — good cold or hot, plain or in salads or in soups, I imagine too. And they rounded out our meal of boiled potatoes, steamed yellow bell pepper, steamed Italian kale, and my beloved gravy. I feel like these beans are something that kids would really enjoy eating.

nutritional info on the fava

Fava beans are also known as broad beans. One cup of these ladies will provide your happy body with 13g of protein, 2.5mg of iron (14%), 177mcg of folate! (44%), 9g of fiber (37%), and a bunch of phosphorus, manganese, magnesium, and copper. Also, they provide 6% of your recommended calcium, which I think is significant to note! (nutritiondata.com)

Dax’s reaction to lunch

was very good! It might just be timing, but I feel like when I sit down and eat wildly nutritious things, Dax gets excited and starts poking around gently. When I eat not so nutritious things, he just stays asleep. Like, Wake me up when you get more of that kale.

On a side note, I purchased a month pass to pool as I do most months, but this one is special because it ends on my due date, and even if we go beyond that date, I won’t be purchasing another full month’s pass until after Dax is born! (And I get the okay to start exercising again.) Swimming + Pregnancy has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I cannot overstate this fact. I feel very very fortunate.

fava bean friends

Sarahfae over at Addicted to Veggies just announced that she will be doing amazing things with raw fava beans this week. So stay tuned to her blog and her twitter for updates!

I’m not a huge Michael Pollan fan. I mean, I feel like he stacks up the cards for being a vegetarian and then says, But I don’t wanna be, and then inspires a lot of people to continue eating meat. And not even the “good” meat he writes about. I know people who say, Well, I will just eat grass-fed organic beef and then I will be okay. But time goes by, and they stop paying for that expensive meat, and they’re back to the industrial beef you buy in most grocery stores, or at Costco.

But one thing I like about Pollan is that he does tell it like it is and he is totally savvy about the insanity and long-term health effects of eating from our agro-industrial system. I cannot understand for the life of me why anyone who reads his books, or an article like Power Steer, in which Pollan details the life of a steer that he purchased as it moves through the very normal life cycle of an American beef cow, why anyone would ever even consider eating beef afterward.

Pollan ends the article with a pithy quote: “We are what we eat, it is often said, but of course that’s only part of the story. We are what what we eat eats too.”

What does your food eat?

Oh, Gravy

Gravy was one of the things that I missed going vegan. With Greg’s help and a modified recipe from the internet, I’ve been perfecting my vegan gravy, and I have to confess that I’m kind of obsessed with it at the moment. Greg doesn’t seem to mind eating it, and even takes the time to make it for me, but he’s never really been into comfort foods like I am — I think it’s AWESOME. I’d be curious to know if anyone else finds it awesome too. It’s making it super easy for me to eat my greens. I highly recommend it for mashed potatoes & steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Yummmm.

special ingredient

I realized that a lot of the flavor I’ve been into with my soup and this gravy is a direct result of the veggie broth powder I’m using; it’s got quite a potent flavor, so I have to recommend it, not just in a scheme to get you to order things on the internet, but really — the friend I served my bean chard soup to the other day tried to make it at home and said it didn’t turn out as well. So for the record, I use Rapunzel Organic Vegetable Soup Broth. It’ll run you about $5 in the store per bottle, but it lasts for awhile. Believe me, I looked for bulk veggie broth/bouillon. No dice at our Co-op. (*edit* Okay, I was getting some chili mix in the bulk section and noticed that veggie broth powder was under “B” and not “V.” I’m better at finding books in libraries… but I’m going to give this stuff a shot later.) I suppose I have the option to either compile some spices together for my own mix, or to make some veggie broth with my veggie scraps that I started collecting in the fridge for this purpose (broccoli stalks, bok choy base, carrot ends…).

Onto the vegan gravy recipe!

vegan gravy recipe

This recipe serves two hungry people. Doubling this recipe is hard logistically, as gravy is a delicate process of heating and cooling. So here are the basics.

Add these ingredients to a nice sauce pan or a wider cast iron pan:

1 or 2 tablespoons of Rapunzel Organic Vegetable Soup Broth, or veggie bouillon of your choice, cubes or powder
2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon of onion powder
A few generous dashes of soy sauce
A couple globs of yellow mustard

(The ingredients above are not exact. They can be modified to taste. I like a lot of veggie bouillon and sometimes put in 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast because it’s yummy and is fortified with B12.)

Add 1 cup of water to the pot and mix ingredients well before turning on the heat. I advise using your largest burner so that the gravy will heat evenly.

Once the mixture is bubbling, slowly add 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour. I mean, really slowly. A tablespoon at a time. Kinda shake it on in there and then quickly whisk constantly to make smooth. After you add a bit of flour, add a bit of water and whisk, and repeat this process until you’ve added the whole 1/2 cup of flour and 2 cups of cold water.

Greg likes to use corn starch, and the principle is the same except you use much less corn starch, only 2 tablespoons.

exact science

The idea with gravy is that you stir A LOT, and you keep a good balance between simmering for a second while you add the flour/corn starch, and then adding that cool water bit by bit, heating it up again and cooling it down. And in the end, it should magically be thick and fairly smooth.

Today I met Eddie, the farmer who is growing my vegetables from late spring, through the summer, and into the fall. His farm called Deep Seeded Farm is an Arcata CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) a quarter mile from my house on the first leg of my daily jogging route. I was very excited as I road to Eddie’s farm with some reusable bags on my bike and a check in my hip pocket to pick up our first week’s share.

When we first signed up for a CSA share we were nervous because we weren’t sure if we’d get enough vegetables for the both of us. But, we chose a pickup day on Tuesday, which allows us to visit the Farmer’s market on Saturday should we need more veggies. Also, Arcata has an amazing grocery store and an awesome farmer’s market. Initially we had trouble choosing a farm because Arcata even has several successful CSA farms. However, Deep Seeded Farm has been producing amazing vegetables at the farmer’s market when all the other booths are still pretty drab.

As for the cost?

It’s about $25 dollars a week, or about the same as a cell phone bill. We get a lot more use and enjoyment out of food than we do our cell phone, and we have to buy food. Eddie has an informative page about the cost of a CSA share. Kristen and I can spend $25 dollars at a coffee shop across the street, so we are happy spending our money to support a local farm. For the first time in my life. I know where our food comes from. Eddie even blogs about buying his seeds. I had great reverence for finding living things in my food. It’s so refreshing to know that my food isn’t so poisonous that nothing can live on it. Although, I suspect I’m slightly crazy when it comes to my enthusiasm for releasing tiny baby slugs into my backyard.

the food is amazingly tasty!

The best part of my first day as a CSA member is the taste of the food! I have never had a carrot that tasted like this before. You really must come to the farmer’s market on Saturday to try one of these carrots.  Not too sweet, almost zesty, no bitter after taste. You haven’t eaten good food until you’ve had vegetables fresh from the garden. I even enjoyed the turnips. The vegetables are so good, I’ll be eating most of them raw straight from the fridge.

After a few days of rain, I decided to get out into the sun and spend some time at the local wastewater management facility. In fact, I wasn’t alone — Arcata denizens of all kinds enjoy getting outside and spending time at the local sewage facility. No joke! Let me illustrate this a little bit better for you:

This is our local sewer facility! Located at the southern edge of town on the coast of the Humboldt Bay, the Arcata Marsh serves as a wastewater management facility, a bird and wildlife sanctuary, and a recreational spot for tourists and locals. Friends of the Arcata Marsh, aka FOAM, describes the facility in a tidy paragraph:

The wastewater treatment plant handles all sewage for the City of Arcata. Raw sewage enters the headworks, where the sludge is separated from the effluent. The sludge is digested, dried, and composted for use on city grounds. The clarified wastewater is sent to the 49 acres of oxidation ponds where time, aquatic plants, and microorganisms purify it. Arcata’s wastewater then circulates through a six-marsh system, filled with plants and animals that feed on the nutrients that are left. The water that is finally discharged into Humboldt Bay has gone through “enhanced” secondary treatment, thanks to the marsh system, and is completely potable.

Someone on Wikipedia added, “Despite being effectively a sewer, the series of open-air lakes do not smell…” And with the normal strong ocean breeze coming off the bay, it’s true. The marsh rarely smells. The water in the marshes, like FOAM says, is water that has been separated from the most potent smells, and what’s left, at worst, on an unusually still and warm day, is an earthy tone to the air, much like any marsh, that is worlds less offensive in my opinion than the car pollution I have to breathe everyday!

There is a lot of local history to be talked about here at the marsh: the tragedy of the local Wiyot population, the site of one of the earliest railroads in the state (which is no longer in use), the ruins of the Arcata Wharf, the former site to lumber mills and a landfill, and the more recent development of the restoration of marshland (once natural, now artificially restored). It’s a place with ghosts of massacres and fires and Chinese immigrant labor and a much more bustling bay than exists today. But less poignantly, it’s now a great place for a walk or a run, for picking blackberries in late summer, and a wonderfully ecologically-sound way to treat our sewage water. Hats off to its founders!

Click continue reading for more photos: Continue Reading

I didn’t take many photos at our local bike rally yesterday, and I was really kicking myself for not getting a portrait of this darling elderly woman with her gorgeous orange-umber road bike, really an elegant lady and elegant bike. But — it was a small rally on our plaza, and everyone who ventured out into the glorious warm and sunny day on their bikes with their helmets got some snacks, a free pin, and a raffle ticket. Everyone won the raffle! Greg chose a much-needed tail light for his bike, and I chose this awesome Allen wrench tool that comes equipped with screwdrivers as well — an essential bike tool!

When we got home from the rally, we chided our friend for not showing up, only to learn that an hour before the rally he had received a ticket for failing to stop completely at a stop sign on his bike. The cop had followed him through three stop signs. Our friend had stopped to the officer’s satisfaction at the first two signs, but failed to stop at the third. His ticket? $211!!

sharing the road according to the nature of the vehicle

Now, the organization we had just rallied with is all about following the laws of the road, sharing the road with cars and not being controversial. So, not much sympathy there. But our friend, Greg, and myself find this ticket to be outrageous for a couple of reasons.

• The ticket is the same fee as a car-driver would be ticketed were they to fail to stop at a stop sign. Can we really equate a bicyclist with a car? I’ve seen bicyclists blow through stop signs at very fast speeds, and I don’t condone this kind of road behavior, but if a bicyclist slows to a roll, a “California roll,” and proceeds through the intersection with caution, how can the law dictate that this is the same as a two-ton vehicle failing to stop? As the cop told our friend, the reason for the ticket was that he was “endangering himself.” But if a bicyclist is certain he or she is not endangering him or herself, and they certainly aren’t endangering anyone else, then what is the point of the ticket? Should we also give tickets to pedestrians at stop signs?
• Sometimes it is more practical for a bicycle to yield at a stop sign than to stop. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve approached a four-way stop sign, only to meet up with a car at my left that has just made the stop and is proceeding to cross the intersection. As I slow down to evaluate the intersection, my speed and the car’s are in tune. We can both clear the intersection safely at the same time. Also, we live in a small town. It is not uncommon for me to approach a four-way stop sign that is totally deserted and will continue to be deserted for the next 5 or 10 minutes.
• Yielding at a stop sign as opposed to stopping completely is especially practical in a hilly area. I can think of several stop signs in our small town that are situated in such a way that were I to stop completely, I would have to get my momentum going from a stand-still. I am human-powered– this is hard! And it also puts me in the middle of the intersection going about Zero miles per hour when other cars approach.

alternative bicycle laws

Greg did some research and found that Idaho has adapted their laws to treat bicyclists just a little bit differently than cars, while still expecting them to obey traffic laws.

Every person operating a vehicle propelled by human power or riding a bicycle shall have all of the rights and all of the duties applicable to the driver of any other vehicle … except as otherwise provided in this chapter and except as to those provisions which by their nature can have no application.

They delineate the expectations of a bicyclist at a stop sign as such:

A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a stop sign shall slow down and, if required for safety, stop before entering the intersection. After slowing to a reasonable speed or stopping, the person shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle in the intersection or approaching on another highway so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard during the time the person is moving across or within the intersection or junction of highways, except that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection without stopping.

A full list of Idaho’s bicycle laws can be found here, and an interesting article discussing this issue can be found at bicyclelaw.com.

Yesterday was a nice comfort food day in the kitchen. Easy recipes and lots of warm flavor. While making my banana walnut bread, I soaked some black-eyed peas for an hour and then cooked up some really low-prep soup. Dry black-eyed peas soak fast and cook fast, so they are an ideal bean to have around. Black-eyed peas are creamier than your average bean and green chard is milder than your average dark green, making this soup a very effective comfort soup!

black-eyed pea soup with green chard

This recipe’s quantities are dictated by need. This is the quantity that I made for Greg and myself — we had two bowls each, served a friend who stopped by a bowl, and have enough for another bowl each leftover in the fridge (though the chard in the pot has mostly been consumed).

Soak 1.5 cups of black-eyed peas for an hour
Drain, rinse and put into large stock pot
Rinse 1/2 cup of brown rice (I used brown jasmine in mine) (and I always rinse my rice, just because I have no idea if rice is treated with talc) and add rice to the stock pot
Fill the stock pot with water a couple of inches above beans and rice and bring to a boil
Cook on high for 20 minutes

Meanwhile, chop 1 onion, 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, and remove leaves from the thick stalks of 1 bunch of green chard (no chopping of chard is necessary as it cooks down so much, but if you want it more evenly distributed throughout your soup, go for it.)

Add onion, garlic, green chard and 1 or 1.5 tablespoons of veggie bouillon to pot and cook for another 20 minutes, or until rice is done.

And that’s it. The quality of your veggie bouillon will affect the final flavor of your soup, so you could also add some more spices to adjust to your liking — I use Rapunzel Vegetable Broth powder, and I have to say that this might be a key ingredient to making this soup awesome. I recommend salting this soup only after cooking, if at all. Salting a dish while it’s cooking masks the flavor of the salt and you end up using way more. Plus, your veggie bouillon probably has more salt than you realize, unless you have low sodium bouillon. When you salt right in your bowl, you can more effectively control your salt-intake and the flavor of the salt is much more prominent.

After having had a piece of banana bread at a coffee shop the other day from a local bakery that makes understated vegan breads, I decided I wanted to make some of my own for a fraction of the price with a fraction of the sugar. I adapted a recipe out of John Robbin’s awesome book, May All Be Fed. Nearly half of this book is hearty, vegan recipes by Jia Patton, along with other friends and family of Robbins. So I stocked up on a few things in the bulk department of our Co-op — baking soda, baking powder, whole wheat pastry flour, and blackstrap molasses. The bulk section was a great way to get these items, because I didn’t need to get any more than I was planning on using and the prices by pound were lower than were I to buy them pre-packaged. For instance, I only needed 1 teaspoon of baking powder for my bread– and since I’m not planning on doing much baking in the near future, I just got a small amount (which will probably end up being enough to make several more loaves of bread anyway).

molasses

The recipe in Robbin’s book had actually called for maple syrup, but I wanted to incorporate molasses instead, making the bread more dense nutritionally. It was kind of awesome getting molasses out of the bulk section. It was housed in this big wooden box and I slow-poured it into a plastic tub, mesmerized by its smell and texture. Molasses is not something that I’ve ever really incorporated into my diet, and before looking it up just now, I could only answer with half-certainty when asked what molasses is that it’s the by-product of making white sugar. I also knew that it was loaded with iron. Well, both of those things are true. While the calories in molasses are primarily sugar, it’s also a significant source of calcium, potassium, and magnesium.

Banana Walnut Bread with Molasses

Preheat oven to 350
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons whole ground flax
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix wet ingredients in a blender, or well by hand:

1/4 cup soy milk
5 medium bananas
3 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and mix with spatula while folding in 1 cup of chopped walnuts. Doesn’t need to be mixed well, but just enough to make everything wet.

Pour batter into a bread pan pre-oiled with some canola oil to prevent sticking/burning. Baking times will vary depending on depth of your pan. I used a standard 9″ x 5″ loaf pan and baked for 60 minutes uncovered. Sticking a toothpick or sharp knife into the center of the bread and extracting it to find it clean will reveal if your bread is cooked all the way through. Let it cool for awhile, maybe 30 minutes, then eat it while it’s still warm, or let it cool for awhile before putting it in the fridge, and eat it cold.

I think this is kind of a sophisticated take on banana bread. It’s sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s whole wheat, which is great, and the bananas, while definitely playing a big role in its flavor, don’t steal the show. I was worried as it baked that the molasses would throw it all off, because the smell is strong, but that wasn’t the case at all. Good stuff!

As you may have heard, it’s Bike-to-Work Week, and May in general is National Bike Month. For some of you, it may be impossible to bike to work this week, so People for Bikes is also calling this week Bike-to-Anywhere Week. According to Tim Blumenthal, executive director of People for Bikes, nearly 50 percent of the trips Americans make each day are three miles or less. Maybe there’s a way for you to incorporate bicycling into your errands.

bicycling with your family

As someone who’s starting a family very soon, I’m enjoying daydreaming about the ways in which Greg and I can keep bike-riding as our main source of transportation. We have been without a car now for about a year and a half, and have relied on our bikes, our feet, and public transportation for the bulk of our transportation. When necessary, we borrow or rent a car for a car trip. How cool would it be to have a family bike on which to do our shopping and transporting around town? Maybe a “mamachari,” a style of bicycle popular in Japan among domestic people that looks a little like this:

Or a less extreme model:

Mamachari bicycles have either front or rear child seats (or both) and racks and baskets for the bicyclist to use for carrying items as well. They are primarily “step-through” frames to allow for easy mounting, and apparently are sold very inexpensively in Japan as they’re so widely-used.

An American version of this mamachari is a bike modified with an Xtracycle. I look to my sister as a source of inspiration with this bike, because she often uses hers like a station wagon, transporting both of her children, ages 4 and 7, at the same time (the 4 year old in the bucket seat and the 7 year old sitting snugly on the wide, long board of the Xtracycle), or an abundance of material goods:

getting rid of your car altogether

I’m not going to be saccharine about this: not having a car does change your life and it does limit you. BUT, in most ways, the changes are positive. Numero Uno Positive Change of Not Having a Car: COST. A really nice bicycle might be an investment, but does it really compare to a vehicle that you pay off every month (along with gasoline, repairs, registration, city stickers, parking tickets, parking fees, moving violations, et cetera)? Of course not. Do I need to mention that bicycles have very very low recurring costs? Compare fixing a bike tire with changing your car tire. You get the idea.

Also, I find that I eat better when I’m not driving to the store or restaurant for my every whim (especially good since I’m pregnant). I don’t buy nearly as much stuff that I don’t need. And I don’t have to plan as much for exercise, because exercise is a natural extension of my existence. I mean, I’m not saying that bicycling to the store is super hard work, because it’s only a mile away, and a fairly flat mile at that — but it gets me moving when I’d otherwise be idle or passively pushing a gas pedal. Because as everyone knows, when you have a car, you use the car.

pregnant biking

I’m 33 weeks pregnant as of today, and I’ve sort of been waiting for the day when I can’t bicycle any longer, but it hasn’t arrived yet, and doesn’t look to be arriving anytime soon. Because I’ve been bicycling the whole time, I guess, my “center of gravity” has remained steady on my bike, so I never feel like I’m going to fall over. I play it safe though — I have a mountain bike with efficient but safe tires, wear a helmet, have safety lights, take extra time and care when mounting and dismounting, and lately, I’ve been riding a lot slower, just taking my time, not really thinking about how much further I have, but about how each rotation of the pedals is smooth and feels good, which it does.

Bicycling is an amazing exercise for pregnancy, along with walking and swimming. I feel like when I am bicycling a good amount (not too much, not too little, don’t want to overdo it), I have less back pain, I sleep better, and I have more energy each day. It is a wonderful way to manage the extra 22 lbs hanging on my body. And when you are seated well on your bike with a comfortable seat, it’s way more comfortable than a car ride!

back to bike-to-work week

So! With a few of these ideas, what will you do to participate in National Bike Month? If nothing else, be courteous and share the road with bicyclists! We are out there to make our lives better, our air (and your air) cleaner, our roads safer, and to just have a nice day smelling the roses (not just an expression for me right now, I really smell this huge rose bush every time I go into town) and stretching our legs!

1 pear, 2 bananas, 8 small strawberries, 2 heaping tablespoons of flax, 1 cup blueberries

This is a relatively recent development as fruit has gotten less expensive over the last month. California strawberries, finally! I have been considering the ecological implications of us eating so many bananas and then these pears, which are from South America, of course. They’re organic and the bananas are “fair trade,” but what a journey they have to go on! And the oil that we use to get them here based on our demand. It’s problematic. Pears will eventually be grown locally when our orchards mature, but bananas? Yeah, they don’t grow in Northern California.

Anyway, oatmeal. I use 1 cup of thick rolled oats for two very hungry people (Greg and I eat heaping bowls of oatmeal), add a dash of vanilla extract and cinnamon in the water, add the bananas for a few minutes while it’s cooking to sweeten the pot, add the frozen blueberries for a few less minutes just to get them hot, turn off the heat and add the strawberries, pear, and flax. Putting flax in your oats is a really great way to get your omega-3 fatty acids for the day, along with fiber, folate, and minerals.

Honestly, this kind of breakfast makes me feel like a very fortunate person. It reminds me of a quote I found on the internet from a book called The World Peace Diet that stuck with me:

“What is so simple as eating an apple? And yet, what could be more sacred or profound?”

In lieu of a real post (though I’ve got one in the works regarding iron intake and pregnancy), these are my personal all-time favorite books that I’ve been thinking about rereading or reading more thoroughly over the summer — I want to post personal reviews that will convince you how important these books are too!

This is the first time that Greg and I have ever started going to the farmers market so early in the year. In years past, we loved going, but went sporadically, only remembering to go mid-summer, when more crops were already going strong, usually coming home with more vegetables than we were ever going to eat. This year will be a learning experience. I look forward to seeing the market change week by week as the season moves forward.

Right now the market is not as exciting as late summer, of course, but there’s still a lot of good stuff to get. Here’s an awkward photograph of Greg happily stuffing a huge head of lettuce ($2) into a bag:

seasonal buys

Aside from various types of lettuce, at our market right now you mainly find leeks, Italian kale, chard, spinach, bok choy, carrots, herbs (especially cilantro), and A LOT of starter plants for kitchen gardeners.

Addicted to Veggies

Over at one of our favorite blogs, Addicted to Veggies, Sarahfaé is doing a weekly project highlighting one vegetable each week and showing off her amazing recipes that use each vegetable. For her first week, she chose leeks, which is a great seasonal choice! Find her here, or on her twitter where she posts her “daily fix” of her weekly veggie.

I’m thinking I should’ve picked up some potatoes at market today too. Our CSA’s booth had a basket of them. I could really go for some potato leek soup tonight (but add some of the kale we got today into the blend)!

I’ll leave you with this thought today, straight from the heart of Arcata, California, on the base of our lovely statue of President McKinley (whose thumb was once stolen):

Running for an hour was hard work. But, recovering this week was exceptionally brutal. My running streak was broken, but not before I got in one last mile run hobble on Monday night. I expected my recovery to be harder than average, because my right leg is an inch and a half shorter than my left. I have Cerebral Palsy. I’ve had it all my life. In fact, doctors once told my parents that they shouldn’t let me run or play outside with friends because I might injure myself. I still want to punch that doctor in the face. Who tells a kid not to play? What that doctor should have told my parents was to sign me up for weight lifting and track and field.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a physical disability caused at birth that affects 800,000 people in the United States. Cerebral Palsy is a broad term applied to anyone with a wide swath of motor skill problems. Some people with CP have difficulty speaking, which makes communication difficult. Many mentally impaired people also have Cerebral Palsy, but most people with CP are not mentally impaired. Even in 2010, Wikipedia has difficulty keeping the two straight giving the impression that people with CP are intellectually challenged.

Defying Stereotypes

This post will serve as a “sneeze page” or table of contents for inspiring people with Cerebral Palsy. Those of us lucky enough to have a mild impairment often go unnoticed, and can accomplish some pretty amazing things. As I write more about each of these people I will fill out this list with stories that I hope will hope inspire the abled as well as the disabled.

• John Quinn just retired from the Navy having kept his Cerebral Palsy a secret for more than 20 years. His biography is going to be an exciting read.
• Chris Broyles runs a 6 minute mile on his high school team. Can you do that?
• Connor Chadwick is an 18 year old cross country runner with an 8 minute mile
• Marcus Boyer made news for picking up cross country running in the 7th grade
• Nicole Lang competes well on her track team in the shot put event
• Katy Fetters enjoys hiking, charity push up contests, and writes a wonderful blog called Teen Cerebral Palsy
• Tina Matsunaga is an accomplished freelance writer with an English degree who keeps a blog on Living with Cerebral Palsy

Over the next week, I’ll be writing about each of these inspiring people as well as sharing exercise tips that took me from couch potato at 24 to athlete at 30.

My father always says there’s “no such thing as can’t.” So, why can’t you run a marathon? The next time you’re feeling too lazy to take advantage of the marvelous gift and ability you have, remember to cherish your gifts and look forward to the rewards provided by vigorous exercise.  Don’t let your body go to waste.

Make a Difference

If you find this inspiring, and want to make a difference, take a minute to link to me or, share this post with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. If someone had told me when I was 8 that I could be running in a marathon at 30, it would have changed my life.

I’ve been really into tofu lately. My pregnant body needs a lot of iron, and since soybeans are the beans highest in iron content, tofu is a great way to add iron into my diet. Tofu is also rich in calcium, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, and of course, protein. (If you are feeling a little iffy about soy in general because of all the conflicting things you’ve read about it, I suggest you read this article about soy written by John Robbins.)

Thinking of new ways to eat soy at home, I wanted to experiment with some tofu noodle comfort soup. I started out boiling enough water for my intended allotment of rice noodles and tofu with a shredded carrot, 2 low-sodium veggie bouillon cubes, a bit of onion powder, a pinch of nutritional yeast, a large dash of soy sauce, a tablespoon of white vinegar, maybe 1 tablespoon of sesame oil (though it could’ve stood more), and a very small pinch of salt (tasted it all to make sure it was working – as I was just digging through the cabinets to find things on-hand) — then I added the rice noodles and a couple of minutes later a generous helping of baby spinach and an entire container of tofu. I let that cook for only a few minutes more until the rice noodles were done (which only take like 4-5 minutes total) and voila. Yum. I served myself a bunch of noodles so the broth is barely visible, but it was so tasty. Total comfort soup.

I woke up last night thinking about a few things that bothered me about yesterday’s post. I know that I have been living in a special place with special opportunities for food. It wasn’t too long ago that Greg and I were living in Chicago, and for as large as Chicago is, it doesn’t even have a place like the Co-op here, I’m assuming because larger corporations like Whole Foods make it impossible in some ways. There are smaller stores that have this and that great thing, and I did see small start-up organic grocers pop up in different neighborhoods, but I always found myself doing the shopping at four different locations to even *find* what I was looking for, let alone save money on items. In another small town, or a strange town, or a town that is so small that it’s actually just a census-designated area, ahem, you get the idea, options will obviously be much fewer and farther between.

So I’ve added two more ideas to the saving money on organic food list:

speak up

- Ask your grocery store to supply certain products (like bulk organic beans) and get your friends to too. – Grocery stores sell what their customers want, and at a certain point, they’ll have to listen. When we were in Chicago, we frequented a very non-organic friendly grocer for our produce. Don’t get me wrong, the place had good produce, and lots of variety too. They still had the best looking peppers and tomatillos I’ve yet to see. As the neighborhood economy changed over the years that we were living there, the grocery started to change too. They restocked their shelves with more and more organic selections. I would find good deals on bags of organic apples or a huge box of organic spinach.

But write to your grocer about non-produce items especially, because these products get overlooked. Maybe your bulk section doesn’t have a single organic item in it! Maybe you’d love to eat tofu or soy milk, but you can only find non-organic brands that are loaded up with weirdness. Maybe you’d really love to replace the oatmeal you eat every single morning with organic oats and your grocer is going to miss out on your patronage because you might take the next thing I write seriously.

use the internet to your advantage

- Order online. I really hate this advice. I do. It’s not a green way to go, of course. There’s a lot of shipping waste and petroleum involved in this process. But if you are in the middle of nowhere and you demand organic flaxseed meal, you might find yourself doing this. You’d be surprised at how much food is sold directly through Amazon, so if you’re a member of their Prime thingy, you can even get free shipping. I’m not really sure how much this will help my Canadian friends, but it’s worth a look if you’re really itching to get going on eating organic food.