All fiction is somehow autobiographical

When I was a preschooler begging for “just one more story” my mum would often retell events that had actually happened to me but using the silly names of Blip and Blop for the characters who represented me and my mate Amy. The best story was about the day Blop fell off the slide. It went something like this.

One day Blip and Blop were playing in Blip’s backyard and Blop fell off the slide and lay motionless on the grass. Blip went running into the house calling out, “Mommy, Mommy! Blop fell off the slide!” And Blip’s mommy ran outside and picked up the limp body of Blop and carried her home to Blop’s mommy who probably shot Blip’s mommy a look that indicated she thought she was a neglectful mommy for letting Blop fall off the slide and letting Blip watch programs like The Jeffersons on television.

Ok, that last bit wasn’t how she told it—but that is no doubt what happened in real life. Well, here is a modern retelling for our time. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Frick and Frack had been married for nearly 19 years. Frick did most of the cooking and Frack happily gobbled up all her delicious vegan food. Frack said that Frick could make any vegetable taste good. Frick and Frack loved to eat roasted broccoli. One day Frick roasted up and big ole pan of broccoli with a drizzle of olive oil and a bit of fresh cracked pepper. When she pulled it out of the oven she carefully divided the broccoli spears into 2 equal parts. Frack was a gentleman and always let Frick serve herself first because she had worked so hard cooking. She put 6 spears of broccoli on her plate and left herself 5 more for when she came back for seconds.

 “These pieces of broccoli on the right are mine,” she said pointing to the roasting pan, “The ones on the left are yours.” Then she sat down and waited for Frack to fill his plate. When Frick got up to get her remaining pieces of broccoli –duh duh duh! They had disappeared!

 “Frack, did you eat my broccoli?” she demanded.

“Um, was that some of yours? You said all that was left was mine.” He whimpered.

“No, you numpty, I said the ones ON the left were yours!” she laughed. So after that every time she roasted broccoli he made a big production of  saying “Now all of this is mine, right?” and she made a big production of laughing but what she was actually thinking was: if he steals my broccoli again I’ll knock his block off.

The end

It’s a Mistake

My dad and I used to play this game when I was a child. It was called mistake. Basically the game involved me trying to make him say the word “mistake” and him using silly and clever wordplay to avoid saying it. The game went something like this:

Me: what do you call a woman who has never been married?

Dad: Ugly

Me: No!

Dad: taking her career seriously

Me: No!

Dad: lesbian

Me: No dad! It’s a Miss.

Dad: Oh I see.

Me: (sighing) What is your favourite kind of meat

Dad: I’m converting to vegetarian

Me: No you’re not!

Dad: hamburger

Me: No!

Dad: chicken

Me: No it’s not!

Dad: (patting me on the head)  duck, duck goose

Me: (exasperated) No, it’s steak!

Dad: What did you say?

Me: (collapsing into fit of giggles while he ticked me) Miss-steak!

I somehow lost every time. He always had enough words to keep me guessing (and laughing) and inevitably I would grow frustrated and would blurt out the answer and be tickled until I shrieked. It was great fun every time we played.

In the 1980s when the song It’s a Mistake by Men at Work would come on the radio we would laugh until we cried remembering the game.

My life with you was never a mistake. I miss you, but I carry on. I've never stopped laughing.

Love from your Chick-a-dee

Eleven years ago yesterday my beloved father left his body to travel the stars. He died in the arms of myself and my mother as we sang him out of suffering and into peace. We carved these words on his cemetery marker:

An Uncommon Spirit
A Man of Great Integrity

Gentleman and Scholar
Husband, Father, Teacher and Friend

They were true, every last word. He was the most influential man I ever had the grace and pleasure to know. I was blessed beyond measure for the 30 years we had together. I think of him often and wonder what he would make of my life. Am I following the directives he set forth for me? Is he proud? The three most important things he said to me my entire life—made me repeat them every day to him—were these simple truths:

1.      Know that I love you

2.      Check your facts

3.      Stand up for what you believe is right

GLT, out there swirling the Heavens, do you think of me as often as I think of you? Can you see the work I have done for God’s world? Do you know how much I still love you? I hope I have made you proud.

Love from your Chick-a-dee

All hail Kale

Anyone who knew me as a child must have laughed their head off when I first went vegetarian and later vegan. You kinda have to like vegetables if you plan to eat a plant based diet. As I child I was the quintessential picky eater. It is rumoured that I survived on a diet of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and Spaghetti-Os for several years because I would eat nothing else. This is not much of an exaggeration. I was once heard to say, “There’s something irritable in my salad!” which by my definition would have meant anything except lettuce and shredded carrots. You think with the amount of carrots I ate as a kid my eyesight would be better. Or I’d have grown up to be a rabbit.

When I left meat (and later dairy and eggs) behind a whole world of food was opened up to me. I started to discover there were foods I had dismissed as yucky as a child had to do with texture or smell or being cooked to death by the school dinner ladies. I am supposed to have come home a very indignant first grader and proclaimed, “You know what they served today? Cooked grass!”  Thus making the connection between lawnmower day and mustard greens.

Over the years I have discovered the joy of raw, fresh tomatoes. But only if the goop is scooped out. Yeah, I know, “the goop is the best part”--whatever. It is all slimy and I can’t cope with the texture but I love tomatoes diced in tabbouli, a childhood dish I steered well away from until a few years ago. In November I discovered purple sprouting broccoli and tenderstem broccoli. Both taste amazing stir fried, but are heavenly good roasted in a hot oven until crispy.

Roasted Broccoli courtesy of several recipes I found on Google.

Preheat oven to 220C/425F

Cut your broccoli as thin as you can--split any large florets. Drizzle with 1-2 tsp oil (garlic infused oil is extra yum and keeps vampires away) making sure the florets are coated (rub ’em, around a bit in any oil that is at the bottom of the pan) and twist on some cracked black pepper then bake for 10 minutes. They come all  crunchy and crispy and yummy.

Now that fresh broccoli is in season I am trying it with regular broccoli. It is not quite as good, but because I can get it locally grown without plastic then that is how it will be for the time being.

My new favourite love is Kale. This green packs a powerhouse of nutrients. Kale is a source of Omega 3 fatty acids and its Omega 6 ratio is fantastic--right up there with flaxseeds. Kale is also high in absorbable calcium. One cup of raw kale has 90mg, about 10% of  your recommended daily allowance. It shrinks down a lot when cooking so it is easy to eat 3-4 cups in one sitting. (Source: Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s cookbook Appetite for Reduction) 

To prepare it you have to pull it away from its tough stem but the only kind I can get is in a bag where someone has kindly done that for you. My bag of curly kale is just that--curly leaves of kale. My favourite way is to sauté it in a smidge of olive oil and a Tablespoon of water until it turns bright green and wilts slightly--less than 5 minutes. Then squeeze on a bit of lemon juice and a drizzle with toasted sesame oil and greedily eat the whole pan. Spiderman does not have a similar liking for kale yet. But I hope he will be so taken by my enjoyment that he will jump on the kale bandwagon. But if not, more for me. I was just telling him that I was blogging about kale and wanted to tell him all the nutritional info that I had discovered and he replied, “I have to read the blog, I don’t need the audio version as well.” He always claims that I portray him as the pantomime villain, but no where have I said he was dressed in drag as an ugly step sister or urged people to boo him. So there.

Another way to prepare kale is to roast it in the oven to make kale chips. This too is good, but makes the air have a suspicious farty cabbage-y smell. The one time I tried this Spiderman  accused me of making the farty smell myself (and to be fair normally he would be correct in his assumptions) so I don’t make the kale chips too much anymore. But if you don’t mind a small farty aroma but want crispy kale chips then here is the recipe courtesy of Lauren Ulm’s cookbook Vegan Yum Yum. 

 

Crispy Sesame Kale

Preheat oven to 375F/ 190C

Tear kale into bite size pieces then spread them evenly on a cookie sheet covered in foil. Drizzle 1 TB dark toasted sesame oil on top then scrunch the greens to get to oil distributed. Sprinkle on 1 TB sesame seeds and a pinch (or 1/8 tsp) salt. Bake for 10 minutes until the leaves are crispy but still dark green.

The only veg I still haven’t conquered my childhood dislike of is green beans. Maybe someday, but I doubt it.

That Dreaded Villain Limescale…mwah ha ha ha ha ha

There are so many things that I love about living in the UK that I could not even begin to count them. But there is one thing that really gets me down. Hard water. And hard water = limescale. The stuff is everywhere, leaving spots on all my glasses and my stainless steel sink never shines. It makes scrubbing the toilet a Herculean effort and the tub gets soap scum the moment you run a bath. It makes your clothes all grey and stiff (especially if you don’t have a tumble drier and hang them to dry like we do.) It clogs the pipes like Big Macs clog your arteries and leaves its telltale chalky white flaky residue in your electric kettle.

There are ways to fight it, but never defeat it. Sigh… it is a losing battle. For the wash it really does help to use a water softener and a lavender scented vinegar rinse. Do you remember those Calgon adverts from the 70s? Not the “Calgon take me away” bath ones but the bloke who ran the Chinese laundry and the female customer asks how he gets his clothes so clean and he replies “Ancient Chinese secret.” Then his wife goes in the back of the shop and tells the camera that he actually uses Calgon water softener. It begins with the words “My husband, some hotshot” and ends with “Honey we need more Calgon!” to which the customer replies in a sarky voice, “Ancient Chinese secret, huh?” and the Chinese dude murders his meddling wife because the woman  stops coming there to get her clothes washed and just saves her money by buying a box of Calgon. Okay, that last bit didn’t happen--but it should have.  Anyway, back to the point, Calgon is full of some potential nasty chemicals and fillers but you can use Washing Soda Crystals (a.k.a sodium carbonate) to get the same effect. It is a cousin to baking soda (a.k.a. sodium bicarbonate) . I can get Washing Soda Crystals cheap here (£1.14 for a 1kg bag) and so have made an effort to use them in the wash and have seen a difference.

I have to use a micro fibre cloth in the tub every few days and then really scrub it down on the weekend with baking soda and lavender scented vinegar and or lemons if I have them on hand. If you use lots of fresh lemons save the rinds and use them to scrub greasy dishes or rub over soap scum or polish your taps or if you have a disposal put it down there to freshen the blades. But we compost all our food scraps so we don’t do the last one.

Lastly the kettle. This has been the bane of my existence. The most natural thing I could find for ages was vinegar. You mix up water and white vinegar in your kettle and boil it then let it sit overnight. Then in the morning your kettle stinks and all the limescale flakes are floating around and when you try to pour them out they cling tenaciously to the sides of the kettle. Then you have to rinse and boil, rinse and boil--repeat until the kettle no longer pongs like the Chippy which can take bloody ages. But if you don’t descale the kettle the water tastes all funky when you make your tea and if you do descale with vinegar then it still tastes funky. I was nearly ready to cry.

I went to my old mate Google and discovered that Citric Acid was good for descaling kettles (as well as washing machines) and I knew just where to find some. Our local hardware store carries stuff like cheap boxes of baking soda and borax  washing soda crystals and I was sure I had seen citric acid the last time I was there. I picked up a box today for £1.50 with enough in it for 4-5 descaling adventures. The instructions said to half fill the kettle, boil and some citric acid (I used 1/3 cup) and let it sit for 15 minutes then rinse. I did and the stuff fizzed like mad--like Alka-Seltzer--Plop, plop, fizz, fizz/Oh what a relief it is--God, I would so be the ruler of the free world if my brain were not filled with crap telly adverts from the 70s.   Well by the end of the 15 minutes it was dissolved and so was the limescale. Gone. Not floating around waiting to stick to the sides when you pour it out. The bottom of the kettle where the heating element is was so shiny I could see my face. I swear it like a mirror. And it smelled all lemony.

 Hooray! Natural products rule!

Vegans in the news

Why is it when vegans are in the news it is something horrible? Why are there never any articles about normal vegan going about their lives, making a difference in the world? Why is it always weirdo vegans? Weirdo vegans make the world think that all vegans are freaks.

Case in point: Couple in France who were vegan and their 11 month old baby died. Most of the articles I read started with the fact that the baby was—gasp! still being breastfed. However, many health organizations recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, including:

• The American Academy of Pediatrics
• The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
• The American Academy of Family Physicians
• The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine
• The World Health Organization
• The United Nations Children’s Fund

In fact, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends breastfeeding continue for at least 12 months, continuing as long as mother and baby wish, while the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or longer.

They were claiming that the baby was vitamin deficient so therefore the mother’s milk was deficient therefore the vegan diet must be suspect. Yes, a person who doesn’t eat well can be low on nutrients. You could be a vegan and live on fries and coke. But most of the vegans I know (including us) eat a well balanced diet with more fruit and veg and wholegrains than any omnivore we know. Our cholesterol is normal, we don’t have a myriad of heath problems due to inadequate diet. We are bursting with vitality and energy. Yes, I do take a B-12 supplement. What of it? 99% of my vitamins and minerals come from beautiful, colourful, healthy food.
This where regular and weirdo vegans get mixed up. If I had a cold I would probably take echinacea and zinc and drink orange juice and breathe steam and rest. Nothing wrong with that. If the cold turned into a sinus infection or bronchitis I would see a doctor who would give me antibiotics. No problem there. But this couple only believed in homeopathic meds. When their baby got a respiratory infection, instead of taking the baby to hospital the couple tried to treat her with cabbage and clay poultices and massages with camphor and garlic oil. Again, freaking weirdo vegans making us regular vegans look like nutjobs when in reality we are just people who care  passionately about food and the planet and the welfare of all God’s creatures.

Why are there never any articles about that?

Out of the mouths of babes

At school this week year 3 has been learning about the Easter story in Religious Education. They had read some books about Jesus and watched a film and the assignment was to draw a picture and write a sentence about one part of the Easter story they remembered. My friend had this conversation with a little boy:

Boy: I think I can do this.
Teacher: of course you can. Why do you think that you couldn't?
Boy: Well I wasn't around when Jesus was alive, but I've seen all of his films.

That just cracked us up.