Oh what a tangled web we weave…

...when first we practice to deceive.

I was having a discussion at work with some of the female staff. They were admiring my new boots and asking me the price and from whence they came. One person said, “At £16.99 you could tell your husband about them.” I was mega confused. “That’s a low enough price that you don’t have to lie,” she continued. LIE? Why would I need to lie to my husband? Clearly I am a bloke because it would never occur to me to lie about my purchases. Others were offering tips on how they deceive their spouses such as putting your most expensive purchase in the bag with the cheapest store name. Like putting your Louis Vuitton handbag in a TESCO carrier bag. WHY? He’s going to know it was expensive when he sees the bag, isn’t he? No, apparently not. Men don’t know anything about fashion I was told. Maybe I am not a bloke after all. I can recognise fashion I just want no part of it.  One person even told us how she showed her daughter how to forge receipts on the computer, print them and cut them to size. WHY? He’s going to find out when the bill comes.

Why all the lies? I cannot imagine being in a relationship where you had to lie so much. How could you keep it all straight? I stopped and said a silent prayer of thanks that I was married to a wonderful man and we were honest with each other. I had a friend in college who had to get her husband’s permission to do anything/buy anything. I remember she wanted to cut her long hair because it was too hard to deal with after the birth of their baby. He refused. She asked time and time again. One day she woke him up and asked and he answered half asleep and gave the answer she was looking for. She went right out that day and had it bobbed. He was livid. But she pointed out that he had said yes and her sister was the witness. He felt tricked--and rightly so. She deceived him. She felt justified--and rightly so. A person’s body is their own.  If people were just honest with each other, this wouldn’t happen. Deception is a kind of manipulation. What is the point?

I am not a Shoe Whore

I am not crazy about shopping. I am not mad for handbags. I wouldn’t recognise a pair of Jimmy Choos  if you took one off your dainty foot and clubbed me over the head with its spiky heel. I do not own enough pairs of shoes that I need a separate closet for them all. I do not own shoes in coordinating colours to my outfits. My house does not in any way resemble a shoe shop.  I’m clearly not a real woman. I can’t be if you believe the stereotype of “All women care about is shopping and shoes.” Therefore, by that definition, I must be a bloke.

My mum hails from the Imelda Marcos school of footwear. I take after my father. I own one pair of shoes for each season. I own a pair of wellies for rainy days. I have some sandals for hottest summer. I have a pair of black CROCS that can be worn with or without tights depending on the weather in spring. I have a pair of knee high faux fleece lined boots for coldest winter. And now I own a pair of ankle boots for autumn. It has been a bit cold and damp and my CROCS have not been warm enough, but it is too soon for the winter boots. So I reluctantly trudged over to our only shoe shop The Shoe Zone. Sure, clothing shops sell shoes, but they are more the fashionable but uncomfortable and not at all practical kind. So Shoe Zone it is.

There is also the issue with leather. I won’t wear it. I don’t want dead cow on my feet. The leather industry is a byproduct of the slaughterhouse industry and I don’t want to support them in any way. There are many vegan footwear shops online that sell non leather shoes, but they cost a packet. This is one thing that keeps the Amazing Spiderman from getting vegan shoes. It just hurts too much to by a pair of shoes for £75. But he does get vegan belts and wears them with a cool belt buckle shaped like a life size tarantula. Yes he does, but I digress. The Shoe Zone often has many “accidentally vegan” shoes for reasonable prices.

So I drag myself in and start to touch and smell the shoes. Not like sticking a shoe up my nose--I’m not a nutter--but as I lift it up to look for sizing I inhale slightly. Leather has that SMELL. It is a smell I used to find appealing, but now I do not. Then I find one that feels and smells right and I turn it over to read the sticker that shows the symbols and see if any bits are made from carcass. Sometimes they can trick you by hiding some leather trim on a wee bit of the shoe. Then comes the real trial. I have feet like an elf. I wear size 3  (size 5 in the US) but sometimes I can wear a 4. That’s when I feel like a giant. Most shoes seem to start in size 5. Once I actually find a pair in my elfin size then the last test begins--Is it comfortable? Will the shoe last? Is there a good sole? We are car free and I walk at least 2 miles every day--to work, to the shops and home again. Sometimes more. A shoe with a thin brittle sole will just crack or wear out and that means I’d have to go out and buy some more bloody shoes. 

Success! I find a pair of non leather ankle boots with a thick rubber sole in brown for £16.99. I would have preferred black, but hey ho. I got shoes. I like them so much after payday I will go buy a second pair to stash away for when these wear out in a couple of years. I’ve got an identical pair of winter boots lurking in my wardrobe for this exact purpose. This way I may not have to shop for shoes again for another 3 years or so. God, I really am a bloke.

Mirror Mirror On The Wall…

I love lotions and potions. That’s a fact. Somedays our kitchen is more like a chemist shop. I love nice smelling stuff, but what I don’t love is Petroleum. Or funky hormone disrupting chemicals. I try to subscribe to the theory that you shouldn’t put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t put in your mouth. After all your skin is your largest organ. I think I manage this with everything but shampoo. But even the shampoo we use doesn’t use Sodium Lauryl Sulfate which is very strong surfactant (making things all bubbly) and is used as an industrial degreaser. It is also extremely irritating causing us for years to think Spiderman had dandruff when it was just eczema. It also doesn’t include Propylene Glycol who is a cousin to antifreeze. No thanks. Our shampoo hardly lathers but really cleans. And I never use hormone disrupting Paraben preservatives. Several studies have found traces of parabens in women with breast cancer. They are not sure there’s a link, but I’m taking no chances.

But anything I put on my face or body I want to be edible. Enter coconut butter. This stuff is amazing. It is solid at room temperature, but melts on contact with your skin. You only need a dab to make your skin feel all silky smooth. In the hottest summer days (which admittedly were not many this year) I kept in the fridge. You can scent it with some essential oils like lavender. I order mine from http://aromantic.co.uk/   and I get 1kg for £7.95. It lasts for ages. I just store some in the bathroom in an empty salsa jar. I also make deodorant with it. Did I mention that it is antibacterial as well?

And it is food grade so you can cook with it. Here is a recipe for raw brownies from one of my favourite blogs. This recipe will feature in Dreena Burton’s new cookbook that will be out in about a year. I can hardly wait. http://viveleveganrecipes.blogspot.com/2010/09/dreenas-frosted-b-raw-nies.html .

As for my face I wash with a mixture of olive oil and sunflower oil. Ewwww I hear you cry. I’ve got oily skin I don’t want to put oil on it. Actually you might. I have combination skin and the oily bits used to be in a vicious cycle of clean with overdrying cleanser, follow up with sea breeze (remember that stuff that felt like it was burning your skin off with its alcoholic peppermint stink???) and having dry tight patches that need moisturising. Then when you put a dab of oil free lotion--PRESTO! Zits. Or spots as they are called here. Whatever you call them, nobody wants them so you wash your face ever more vigorously and the whole cycle starts all over again. Not so with oil. Oil actually attracts oil and dirt and rubs them away without over drying. Then follow up with rosewater. Not alcohol which dries the skin and forces it to produce more oil to compensate for the protective oil you stripped away. Then a few drops Vitamin E on my face and neck to counteract the signs of aging. I am 40 and it is slightly beginning to show. That’s it. I have been told over and over how good my skin looks. How clear. Some of that is a healthy diet and exercise, but most of it is down to washing with stuff you can eat.

You are what you eat.

Stick to your ribz

When I was a girl in the deep south the phrase “Stick to your ribs” was generally used to describe heavy, stodgy, meaty comfort food. Those days have (thankfully) passed for me. But sometimes I get a craving for that down home goodness, but without all the yuck that goes with it. Enter tempeh sausage. It is not actually sausage or even a fake meat but rather just good ole fermented tempeh with lots of spices that give it a savoury feel. The recipe is courtesy of the people from the Post Punk Kitchen (PPK to those in the secret society of vegans) and their wonderful cookbook Veganomicon.

Veganomicon Tempeh Sausage Crumbles

8 oz package tempeh
1 tablespoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried margoram or oregano
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Slice up your tempeh into bits and then boil for 10 minutes in a beefy type stock—I use a glug of tamari soy sauce and a tsp marmite. This helps remove any bitterness and gives it a nice flavour. Then drain and fry in a skillet with the above ingredients. Easy peasy. I serve with potatoes and veg. In this case steamed broccoli.

But there must be gravy. “Sausage” and potatoes require gravy. And so God said “Let there be gravy” and He invented cashew gravy and saw that it was good.

Cashew Gravy adapted from VegWeb

    2 cups hot water, divided
    1/2 cup cashews
    2 tablespoon tamari soy sauce
    1 tablespoon cornstarch or arrowroot
    2 teaspoon onion powder
     1 TB nutritional  yeast
     
Set aside 1 cup of hot water. Put everything else in a blender and blend very well. My vitamix does it in about 1 minute. But others with a blender without a 2 horsepower motor may need to soak the cashews to soften and blend longer. . Add 2nd cup of water. Pour into a pan and heat until thickened.

That’s it! Down home cookin’  without sufferin’. Genius.

All About My Nose

I blow my nose. A lot. This probably sounds like too much information, but I assure you it is not. I have umpteen allergies  from hay fever to furry animals--not such an easy job to avoid when you have to work closely with children and they are covered in pet hair. So I use one of these. A NETI POT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_irrigation This is the best thing since sliced bread and has kept my nose clear and my head from exploding on more than one occasion I can tell you. Basically it looks like Aladdin’s lamp and you use it to pour warm, salty water through your nose until it comes out the other nostril. Grossed out yet? Don’t be. This thing rocks. It washes away dirt, pollen, pet hair and GERMS. I have not had a sinus infection since 2002. Hand on heart, that’s true. And anyone who knows me knows I used to get them many times a year. Once I had one that lasted  6 months when I was teaching in a classroom riddled with damp. So that’s the first thing about my nose--or your nose for that matter. If you have sinus issues, get a NETI POT.

As I said I blow a lot. When I have a cold I use disposable tissues for hygiene sake, but on a normal every day pollen/pet hair issue, I use a cotton hankie to save some trees. My dear ole dad was big on hankies. That is one of  my most consistent childhood memories--me having some sort of allergic reaction and him quietly, calmly pulling out his white hankie and letting me blow, then folding it back over to a clean spot and re-pocketing it for my next sneeze. He was always easy to buy for at Christmas--he genuinely liked new socks and handkerchiefs. When he died I kept a few as a memento. I have bought some white hankies like the ones he used to carry and I keep one in my apron pocket. But I’m not as good at keeping them sparkling white as we don’t really have any white clothes as neither of us can keep white clean and I refuse to use bleach as it is really toxic. So my hankies have been washed in with the dark clothes for a while are a sad slightly grey shade. So what to do? I thought about getting some RIT dye and tie-dying them but then I read the packet and the warning labels for toxicity and decided that I didn’t want to blow my nose on chemicals. Or wipe with chemicals for that matter. I am so crunchy I use cloth toilet paper (just for wee--don’t go all mad and start freaking out here) made from an old flannel sheet  which has also faded a bit so I was planning to dye them with the hankies for a bit o’ colour. But clearly the big red poison symbol with the big X on it put me off. So they will stay as they are. But the hankies! A solution presented itself yesterday.

Hitchin is full of charity shops. Lots of good second hand bargains to be found. I popped  into the Save the Children Shop on my way home from school and there, for 20p each, were beautiful, coloured antique hankies. Like your granny would have used. Lovely pastel colours, some with a bit of flower embroidery others with a bit of faggoting. Stop sniggering --this is faggoting http://www.victorian-embroidery-and-crafts.com/faggoting.html  and I picked up 5 for the princely sum of one quid. Ewwww, you say, I don’t want to blow my nose on someone else’s hankies no matter how purdy they are. Well you don’t have to.  I washed them. I had to. Someone else had washed and pressed them but they REEKED like a detergent whorehouse. Why do people think that some artificial chemical smell that could knock you unconscious equals clean? Which brings me to my third thing about my nose.

I hate the way conventional detergents smell and make us break out in rashes. So we use these. Soapnuts.  http://www.eco-essentials.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=54 They grow on a tree and you can wash with them--how cool is that? And after 3 washes you can compost them. Even cooler. And the Amazing Spiderman has no more eczema  and I don’t get an asthma attack from inhaling weird artificial scent. Bonus. The clothes come out smelling clean. A bit like rain. But not chemically in the least.

So wash your nose with a Neti Pot, blow your nose on a cotton hankie to save trees and trust your nose to know that artificial smell does not always equal clean. This is my advice. The nose knows.

Ode to an ear of corn

I purchased some corn on the cob the other day from the market and it got me thinking.

How do others cook their corn? Do you eat it raw? Do you boil it? Or do you roast it like we do? I got this idea from the nice lady over at Fat Free Vegan where you roast it in the oven in the husk for 30 minutes then shuck and eat. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/05/oven-roasted-corn-on-cob.html Delicious. It probably takes as long as boiling the water but it feels faster as you can leave it and get on to doing something else. When boiling up a gigantically pot of water you are constantly checking it out and swearing at it and shouting “Where are the bubbles? Why can‘t I see any little bubbles forming on the bottom of the pot?” and doing lots of sighing and huffing. At least that is how it goes in my house.

How do you eat your corn? Do you go all the way down the row left to right  and then go back to the left and start all over? This is my preferred method. I actually like to pretend I’m a typewriter and go DING! At the end of each row. This annoys the Amazing Spiderman to no end, which is probably why I like to do it.

Do you eat in a circular way starting on the left and eating all around the cob and then moving over a bite at a time until you reach the end? This is how the Amazing Spiderman does it. I think it is more fun to pretend you’re a typewriter, although these days who knows what a typewriter even is?

Do you use those little novelty doo-dahs to hold your corn? This a favourite thing from my childhood. We had little plastic spiky doo-dahs shaped like (wait for it) ears of corn that you put in to either end of the ear to give you handles to hold on to. My mum found some just like my childhood set and posted them to me. Thanks Mum!  I ALWAYS use them. They are so much fun and make the corn feel even more festive like a party or a picnic. Spiderman NEVER uses them despite the fact that I have a set of 6. He says nothing can make food more fun. Which I totally disagree with. Vegetables cut into shapes taste better. FACT.

            So how do you do it then? I’d be interested to hear. Does anyone eat from right to left? Maybe like reading Hebrew or Arabic? Just curious.

            Just to end with a joke since we’re being corny here.

Q: What did the ear of corn call his Dad?

A: Pop Corn

Boom Boom!

Lick the Dish

We live in a market town and have a lovely market of fresh fruit and veg at rock bottom prices right on our doorstep every Tuesday and Saturday. We also have a deli that buys up over abundance of locally grown fruit and veg as well as a green grocer. It’s a vegan’s dream to be surrounded by healthy food, much of it locally grown. I love it here. You get everything loose (it’s BYOB--Bring Your-Own Bag) and no plastic. Good times.

Allow me to acquaint you with some of my favourite market buys.

Fennel. I love this stuff with its feathery green fronds and aniseed-y taste. But buying it at the supermarket can be mega expensive. I think it is £4.75 per pound or some other exorbitant figure that puts it out of my reach. Except at the market. There you can get big ole fennel 2 for £1.50. That’s 75p each. But you have to go early as they sell out quickly. And it’s not by size or weight--it’s per fennel. Did you notice that? So I can 2 good sized heavy ones for £1.50. Yes please.

Red peppers. I am pepper mad. I love the shiny red pepper and its crunchy sweet taste with all that vitamin C. More than an orange I think I read somewhere. But in the supermarket you get 3 in a plastic bag for £1.50 and one of them is green. I don’t like green. They have a funky bitter taste to me. Or you could go to the posh shop Marks and Spencer (M&S to those of us in the know) and get 3 for £1.60 but with no green. But it still comes in a plastic bag. What is the solution when you need peppers but don’t need plastic? Try the market first. Yesterday I got 6 fist sized glossy red peppers for £1. Yup, you heard me. One pound. And no plastic. One had a slightly wrinkled side so it was eaten up last night, but the rest will last the week. When the market has no peppers I will resort to the M&S bag to escape the dreaded green one. But most of the time I can snap some market ones up into my little cloth bag.

Friends have asked me “How can two people possibly eat 6 peppers in a week?” The answer is easy. Tonight we’re having a mixed bean and veg salad with roasted corn on the cob. One pepper goes in there. Tomorrow we’ll have Barley Risotto from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook with roasted fennel, red onions and peppers. That’s 2 more peppers gone. See, we’re half way there already. Then I’ll roast (I see a theme here with all this roasting veg, don’t you?) sweet potatoes, tart bramley apples, carrots, 2 more peppers and red onions in the oven and then add stock and make a soup. I’ll puree it in my beloved Vita-Mix (I could write a whole post about this--and will wax lyrical about it at a future date) and have lovely sweet tangy soup. That just leaves one pepper to go which will probably be put in a salad somewhere along the line at lunch.

Now I’m very hungry so I’m off to make lunch. Probably involving a red pepper in some way. Yeah.

P.S.

Oh something I meant to add. You see how the thought of fresh food makes me go all gaga and forgetful? When I was coming home from the market yesterday in my dress apron and new mob cap (mob caps are cool) heavily laden with produce I was shouted at my several men who had clearly been imbibing alcohol. Now I have a slosh of brandy or frangelico in my chocolate oat milk from time to time, but I don’t sit around in front of a Medieval church drinking Triple XXX Lager at 10:30 in the morning. Ya dig? So one of them shouts, “Nice hat!” and I smile my friendliest smile and say, “Thanks,” and try to carry on but another ones gets up and stands in front of me. I stand up straighter giving my most confident and radiant smile and the man in my way shouted, “Piss off you lot.” Okay. So the other men amble away and the man starts to talk with me. Here is a replay of our conversation.

“What’s that all about then? Them clothes?” He gestures spilling a slosh of lager on the pavement.

“I’m a Quaker. It’s the church I go to. Most Quakers don’t dress like this but I do.”

“Oh Quakers. Yeah, they’ve got some Quaker stuff on the outside of the library.”

“Oh yeah, that's right. There is that mural on the library that shows Quakers in Hitchin.”

“Why do you wear them clothes if no one else is?”

“Well I don’t want to buy clothes that are made in sweatshops by poor children.”

“Aw yeah. I saw a show about that on telly. Them little foreign kids working 18 hours a day for pennies. That’s a real shame. So where do you get your clothes then?”

“I sew them myself.”

His eyes start to shine and he becomes really animated.

“Aw my sister she has a sewing machine and she makes all her clothes and her kids clothes, too. She has this old machine with a treadle where you have to pump it with both feet to make it sew.” He demonstrates sewing technique and spills a bit more lager.

“I’ve always wanted one of those old fashioned ones. I just have an electric sewing machine.”

“That is cool. Yeah, really cool. Good talking to you. Nice to see someone keeping the faith.” And he waved and toddled off.

So yeah. Being plain can have its advantages. I have spoken to a man and shown him kindness. He may (or may not depending on the amount of lager he drinks) remember it. But I will.