Berkeley Bowl, Trader Joe's and being happily imperfect

After living in places other than the San Francisco Bay Area, I have all new appreciation for the food choices here.  Feel super lucky to be able to get to a Trader Joe's and to Berkeley Bowl in about 15 minutes from home.

By the time I was wrapping up all my shopping, I was SO hangreh!  So I grabbed something relatively healthy, quick, totally vegan and super tasty - the Eggplant Wrap from Trader Joe's.  I took it easy on the tahini dressing, since that's the fat bomb on this - basically only used a third of it.  Still was delicious.

I'm sure raw broccoli for lunch would have been better, BUT still a vast improvement on my old routine, which was to drive through Burger King and get fries and a brownie sundae (yes, after buying kale at the market, of course!)  I am reminding of Doug Lisle's excellent insights on not trying to be perfect all the time in his "Continuum of Evil" DVD.

"Vegan Barbie" wrote up a nice recap of that DVD here: http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/2011/02/douglas-lisle-dvd.html

Wabi sabi simple lunch for vegan telecommuter girls

So maybe it's cliche that as an over-educated artsy person, instead of just saying,"Hey, I burnt the toast", I instead claim it's all wabi-sabi, but HEY, I'm going to try to get away with it!  Just try and stop me!

I'm working from home today and SO glad it's an option, since they just closed a major bridge for the next 5 days so all the other roads are just parking lots.  I could have spent some time cooking up a complex lunch but I instead opted to take my adorable dogs out for a walk in the sun.  So for lunch today, we have this nice simple, delicious sourdough roll (burnt then scraped, ahem, wabi-sabi style), topped with avocado with fresh ground pepper and garlic salt, cherry tomatoes and a Granny Smith apple.  Yum!


The bread is probably not the best for my quest to reverse NAFL disease, but the rest of this is whole plant food awesomeness!  And it's all a far cry from onion rings and milkshakes.

Hey! Vegan MOFO!

Hey, am I calling you a surly, impudent plant eater?  Why no!  I'm just alerting you that September is the Vegan MOnth of FOod!  I just signed myself up to write a blog post a day for this project and hope I can share some fun and/or insight into eating vegan AND being healthy about it.

I can safely call myself the poster child for the chapter in Dr. John McDougall's latest book, "The Starch Solution", titled "The Fat Vegan."  Ouch, but true.  Although it's been lovely knowing that the way I'm eating wasn't harming most animals, it certainly was harming this one animal named moi.  (As Miss Piggy might say.)

I'm keenly interested in reversing some upsetting health issues of mine (the most embarrassing of which is a fatty liver - yech, just the effin' sound of it is gnarly) and so have been getting more diligent about making my vegan diet a healthier one.  Have any of you been on this journey? What helped you?

I'm so grateful that there's plenty of delicious vegan food to celebrate along the road to health!

I'll keep you guys updated on my progress and share about what I'm finding helpful and not so helpful.  Please feel free to comment!

the weirdness of selfishness

I was fortunate to sit in on a fascinating discussion on the topic of selfishness and how it doesn't serve us well.  For me, it was rich food for thought.

Every time I steer things selfishly, and usually this is the lazy path-of-least-resistance variety of selfishness, things don't turn out well for anyone, including (and especially) for me.

So selfishness starts looking a lot like a hoax.  Sort of a self-delusion, or a vision guided by flawed logic and self-centered fear.  I have a hard time thinking of an occasion where acting selfishly got me something that made me happier.

For example, when I decide I can't muster up the energy to show up to your thing (whatever it is) but need to sulk at home and watch TV, it just keeps me in the pits.  If I get that moment of reflection to consider this as selfish behavior and decide (big sigh) to put my big girl pants on and risk people viewing me in clothes that aren't perfect over a body that isn't perfect and show up, it almost ALWAYS brings me into greater connection and gives my peaceful, happy self a better chance of blowing off those fearful thoughts and feelings.

I love the part of the Third Step prayer (see Alcoholics Anonymous if that's not familiar) that says "free me from the bondage of self that I may better do thy will."

Selfishness is just a nutty lie to myself.

hello funky world

Last week on Saturday Night Live, Zach Galifinakis joked that he liked to order the beet salad whenever he saw it on a menu, simply so that he could say the following when the server brought it to him:

"Thanks for laying down the funky beets."

Seemed like a perfect name for this blog - just want to give attribution and thanks to the funnyman.