Topic 195: The Monotony of Being Good

Carol:

  Shooting the Breeze

Our pack of dogs and their walkers met this morning for our usual Friday coffee chat at Marilyn and Lou’s house up the road.  When it’s warm, we sit outside while the dogs roam around the almost two acres of fenced land.  We spend the hour of sipping and socializing before heading off to work or chores or whatever--relaxed, enjoying both the gentle breeze and the meandering conversation.  Still, all are keeping an eye on the whereabouts of their various animals.
 

Koda, who lives here, rarely leaves the patio.  She appears to be bored with anything that doesn’t lead directly to food. She doesn’t play with the other dogs, she doesn’t poke around. She does sit beside the person most likely to drop a crumb or give in to her sad eyes by pulling out a dog treat, which is usually me. She is so quiet most of the time that we forget she is there. Good doggie.
 

Milo takes off in full throttle and covers  the whole yard, jumping over walls and poking under bushes. Sometimes we see the tip of his tail whiz by or track his direction by the scatter of birds.  Eventually he works his way back to the patio and sits at full attention if there is food on the table, hoping for a reward for his good posture and self-control.  He would never lunge at the plate of cookies, he would never leap up to grab food out of someone’s hand. He does, however, poke his nose into a pocket if he smells crumbs from a doggie treat. His behavior would be monotonous if it weren’t for those infrequent times when quiet presages trouble. Like the day he tipped over Koda’s food container and ate enough kibble for a week. Good doggie (mostly).
 

Bella is also predictable, not by the monotony of her behavior but by her absolute lack of predictability.  So far, she has been tentative about exploring the open spaces of Marilyn’s yard. Sometimes she will watch for evidence of Milo, a quick view of his tail through a bush or a flash of striped coat flying by in the distance. Sometimes, she will stop, frozen into a pose that betrays her German Shorthair DNA.   This morning she completely ignores the large dog bowl of water, instead jumping up to hook her paws over the cement lip of the bird bath to drink from the deeper pool of water.  She eventually settles down under the patio table, still licking the crumbs from the cookie she grabbed off the table.   We are using “off” and “no” a lot these days with Bella. Bad puppy (mostly).
 

Today we are joined by another neighbor and an extra dog is added to the mix,  Spirit, a 10-year old with beautiful long pristine white fur. He is quite patient as Bella takes a playful lunge and even indulges her with a few enthusiastic laps around the patio. He doesn’t beg, doesn’t bark, doesn’t lunge, well, isn’t he just about perfect. The kind of monotonous good behavior that parents of young pets and young people are grateful for.  Good doggie.
 

The hour is up, chairs are pushed back, cups retrieved, leashes snapped on collars. Bella, come. Milo, come. Where’s Spirit? The monotonously good, the beautifully white, long haired majestic animal is in the flower bed behind a bush, behind the flowing water sprinkler, barely visible behind the flying dirt from the hole he is digging with muddy black paws.
 

So much for the monotony of being good.

  

Megan:

The Monotony of (Writing About) Being Good

Yesterday I took my grandmother to Walmart, and while she was shopping, I wandered around the store. I hadn’t eaten lunch and I stood in the snack aisle for  a long time trying to convince myself that Cheeze-its were vegan because the cheese was probably all chemicals anyway. I didn’t actually read the label, I just stared at the front of the box. I put some Wheat Thins in my cart, and took them out again.  Then I picked up a small container of fresh fruit from the produce section and ate that while I waited for Grandma to finish.

Eating healthy is only a problem if I get hungry while running errands. After I dropped my grandma off at her house, I went to my favorite coffee shop because I had time to kill before I picked up my mother (I’m the family chauffer). I was so proud for not eating the crackers that I rewarded myself with an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. It was probably not a vegan cookie, but I didn’t beat myself up over it because one cookie is better than (or at least not as bad as) an entire box of crackers.

I just reread those two paragraphs and nearly died of boredom. At least I’m on topic. I didn’t intend to be one of those bloggers – who writes about weight loss and diets and the silly things dogs do (which reminds me: on this morning’s walk, Bella tried to eat 2 birds, 1 mouse, and 1 rabbit leg – all dead before she got to them). And it’s not that I have a problem with people who write about those topics; most of the blogs I read cover the same issues. I just didn’t want that for myself, because it’s not particularly interesting (except for cataloging Bella’s dead animal collection).

The most exciting anecdotes and stories often involve dangerous excess, errors in judgment and unfamiliar environments. I have plenty of those stories in my past. As I get older though, it’s harder for me to remember why I thought that was fun. Young people take stupid risks with themselves without considering consequences. I never got in any trouble, but that was luck. Not all of my friends escaped their youth unscathed. We had some great times, but right now I think I would rather have a good life than an exciting life. And perhaps that means I will have to seek inspiration for my stories from my imagination rather than my good but boring life.

Topic 191: The Pleasures of Eating

Carol:

Hold the Butter, Please

I know what Megan is going to write about for today’s topic.  She has been taking pictures with her cell phone all weekend of the dishes she has prepared while she and Marc are taking a nutrition class that encourages a plant-based diet.  I am reaping the health benefits of what they are learning in the class. I had almond milk in my multi-grain cereal yesterday and 5 different veggies on my vegan pizza. There is no real cheese in the fridge, no yogurt, no meat. I miss the cheese.

My dictum is that I will follow their vegan routine at home and slip in the dairy, chicken and fish when we go out to eat. I had shrimp tempura at the Japanese restaurant the other day, and I bought a vegetarian green chili tamale at the Prescott Farmer’s market because the vegan black bean tamale Megan bought had cilantro in it. I think she does resent it when I “doctor” some of the vegan dishes, especially when I tell her how delicious something is while I’m doing the doctoring. Minor tinkering I call it.  A friend brought me a deli container of olives with a little mozzarella mixed in, so I sliced just a tad of the mozzarella and the olives onto the pizza. Megan hates olives. I hate cilantro. We make our accommodations.

The current food plan also eliminates most fats. I cut way back on the oil and haven’t put butter on anything for a while. Although… we have two ears of corn waiting for dinner tonight, and I just can’t imagine corn on the cob without a slice of butter on it. Corn and butter, they just go together. Hot, fresh cornbread with butter, or corn tortillas, or…hot buttered popcorn.

I have even adjusted my palate regarding popcorn, which is probably in the top 5 list of foods I could eat every day along with shrimp, asparagus, and onion soup. Not a bad combination for a semi-balanced non-vegan menu. In college when the dorm dining-room was closed on Sunday evenings, my roommate and I often would have chicken noodle soup, apples and popcorn for dinner. Great combo.  Since then I have owned a whole variety of popcorn poppers, including one that fit inside the microwave oven and didn’t require oil. Now, I’m lazy and just buy the bags.

Last Friday morning was a popcorn challenge. We went to the 9:30 am showing of the final Harry Potter movie.  My brain argued that 9:30 am is too early for popcorn (who makes those rules?).  However, Harry Potter movies are meant to be viewed with a big bag of popcorn, so my mouth overtook my brain and I bought a bag. But… I bought a medium instead of a large without butter. I was absolutely determined to make that bag last the whole movie, so I resorted to one of the great pleasures of my youth, rationing the popcorn by eating one at a time. Also, by nibbling off the small parts that stick out from the main body of the kernel.  Popcorn connoisseurs call those kernels “butterflies” and the less tender round kernels “mushrooms.” I also timed myself by not eating during quiet moments. Who likes the rustling of the popcorn bag or the crunch of a half-popped kernel during the sad scenes?

There you have it. I was able to enjoy one of my greatest eating pleasures at the wrong time of the day, without butter, and it lasted until the final 10 minutes of a very long movie. Okay, so I miss the butter.

Megan:

The Pleasures of Eating Well

Note the symmetrical arrangement of the fruit. I did that for you.

I’ve been planning for this topic all weekend by taking pictures of everything I ate.  But, before I get to that, I want to mention one thing. In 2004, when I was studying in England for the second time, my parents and brother came over for Christmas and together we went to Spain. It was a really great trip, except for one thing which maybe only I remember. I flat-out refused to eat in any restaurants that had menus with pictures of the food hanging in the windows.  Because the sun-faded photos made the food look gross.

There are some cooking blogs that do a good job with lighting and presentation that can make a plate of food look attractive and delicious. I have a friend who regularly posts pictures of her cooking on Facebook, but she’s got a nice camera and has had some training. I do not have a nice camera; I have a nice cell phone. So, I’m just warning you that I’m going to put up all these pictures, but the food may not look particularly appetizing.

Ok, then. Since I started this plant-based nutrition/vegan way of eating, people have been mostly supportive. The same friends who saw my teen-age vegetarianism as weird and rebellious now commend me for trying to make healthy choices. But the question I keep getting is, "But what do you eat? Salad? Broccoli?" And the answer is, yes. And lots of other things too.

On Saturday, I made hash browns for breakfast. Without using any oil, I combined frozen Ore-Ida Southern Style Hash Browns, onions and orange bell-peppers.  I also added some cajun seasoning for flavor. Despite the lack of oil, the potatoes still managed to crisp up nicely, and it was a tasty, filling meal.

When I make this again, I'll probably add some green and red peppers as well because I really like peppers and it will look more colorful and interesting. I've learned in my class that (naturally) colorful food has more nutrients.

Although the hash browns were very good, they take more time and effort than I'm willing to expend early in the morning. After walking 3 miles with the dogs, I'm usually pretty hungry when we get home, so I like to make a smoothie. It's quick and still very filling.

Smoothies been a breakfast favorite for as long as I can remember, and it was very easy to amend the recipe to exclude animal products. Up the left you can see the ingredients I used this morning -- frozen strawberries, a banana and a cup of no-sugar-added apple juice. I usually use orange juice, but we ran out. 

This recipe used to include a cup of yogurt (or, if my father was making it, a scoop of ice cream) but tastes just as good without the dairy. I prefer to use frozen fruit (except for the banana) because because it gives the drink a frosty, daiquiri-esque texture that is very refreshing as the day starts to heat up.

This morning, I added a piece of whole wheat toast with fresh almond butter for protein and some additional fiber. 

We usually get our fruits and vegetables from Bountiful Baskets -- which is a food co-op that purchases the produce whole sale. I order the basket on Monday, and collect it the following Saturday from a local park. For $15 dollars, we get a large laundry basket full of fresh produce. The entire project is run by volunteers, and we've been quite pleased with the result. The pears and plums in the top picture are what's left of last week's basket (pears and plums being our least favorite of the selection). 

I didn't order one for this weekend because my father is out of town, and Mom and I decided to try out the local farmer's market. For a small city, I was pretty pleased with the selection but we spent  almost $10 for two zucchini and three potatoes, so we'll be sticking with the baskets. Aside from the costly produce, the market did yield some great (also expensive) finds, including fresh pasta and home-made tamales. I got some vegan black bean tamales, and I paired them with three-bean brown rice dish I made up, with corn, kale, peppers and tofutti sour cream. This was definitely the best meal of the weekend.

Last night I made a curry I'd seen in a video I watched in the class. The recipe called for basmati rice, which used to be my favorite, but despite following the directions exactly, I totally overcooked it. The curry itself is made up of cauliflower, zucchini, potatoes, garbanzo beans, onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger. I put in about twice as many vegetables as were mentioned in the video, but did not increase the curry seasoning so it was not as spicy as it could have been. There's enough left over to feed an army, and I'll probably eat it with brown rice the rest of the week. I'm going to use the leftover basmati to make a pudding. 

I added Daiya "cheese", made from tapioca. It melts like real cheese.

So, all those meals look good (well, they don't look good, but they taste good), but what happens when I get a craving for one of the old favorites? Pizza is what I crave most often and what I knew I would miss the most once I changed my eating habits. Since moving back to Prescott, I've discovered Papa Murphy's -- a "take & bake" place where they make the pizza in front of you, and then you cook it at home. All the ingredients are fresh, and the crust is thin which is how my mom prefers it, and we used to get one almost every week. So, imagine my surprise when in class, the instructor passed out 50% off coupons to Papa Murphy's. Apparently she knows the owners and was telling them about the class and they offered to start making vegan pizzas, and gave her the coupons to advertise in class. Prescott is not Portland -- there isn't a lot of choice for vegetarians in this town, let alone vegans, so this is pretty cool. As soon as I got the coupon, I headed right over.

So, there you have it. A sampling of a weekend's worth of vegan meals. I've been doing this for 3 weeks now and have lost 12 pounds (despite having M&M's twice at the movies). I think the reason I've been able to stick to it so far is because, although trying new foods is interesting, I have been able to "veganize" food I already loved -- like tamales and pizza. And ice cream.

Although, just because it's vegan doesn't make it healthy.

Topic 186: On Deceiving Oneself

Carol:

What’s Up, Doc?   

I haven’t pulled a topic out of the daily theme basket lately that really excited or challenged me.  Megan thinks it’s because we are getting down to the end of the basket where the topics we rejected over the last nine months are starting to pile up. I think it’s because the topics are starting to overlap in my mind, and I feel like “been there, done that.” Frankly, I’m deceiving myself here with excuses. I’m often not enthusiastic because I have given in to one of my demon qualities, procrastination. And, when I rush to finish an essay instead of letting ideas percolate, my efforts become mediocre.
 

Trickster Coyote

Today, I procrastinated on getting my materials ready for the OLLI class I am co-facilitating on “Mythology and the Human Experience.” My job was to prep the introduction  for a segment on Native-American Trickster myths (raven, coyote, spider and hare). Trickster figures are “self-deceivers.” They often think they have the cunning and imagination to outsmart everyone else. They flaunt the tribal rules, go against the natural order of things, and end up oftentimes getting smacked for it in different ways.  In their elaborate efforts to deceive others, they deceive themselves into thinking this next time, this next trick…they will prevail. They DO prevail often enough to keep trying. I guess you might say they are “sophomoric,” the incarnation of the wise fool.
 

One such trickster is the Rabbit.  Like all tricksters, Rabbit boasts that he can do anything anybody else can...and better. He deceives himself into thinking that cunning will surpass his true nature so that he can fly like a bird or swim like an otter. In a Cherokee tale, even though he can’t swim, Rabbit shows off to Otter by “proving” that he eats ducks just like Otter.  He fashions a noose and rope, then dives from a bank into the water to catch a meal of duck just like Otter does. After several sputtering efforts, he reaches a duck and throws a noose over its head. The bird flies up from the water with Rabbit still hanging onto the noose. Rabbit cannot hold on and lets go of the rope, falling into a large tree stump: “and there he stayed until he was so hungry that he had to eat his own fur, as the rabbit does when he is starving.” (source; Mooney 40).
 

Rabbit eventually finds a way out of the tree using his cunning. Like the Energizer Bunny, the Trickster always keeps on going despite starving, drowning, incinerating and other near-death experiences. 
 

Trickster Br'er Rabbit

The trickster Rabbit appears in other cultures besides the folklore of the Cherokee, such as western, central and southern African stories. They are the basis of the southern stories of Bre’r Rabbit and the Uncle Remus stories, which Joel Chandler Harris wrote and published from oral forms. Looney Tunes brought us Bugs Bunny, who has many Trickster qualities except that his trickery usually leave him on top in his confrontations with Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, etc. Imagine the voice of Bugs Bunny as he speaks the words of his creator Bob Clampett:  “I always treat the contest with my pursuers as 'fun and games.' When momentarily I appear to be cornered or in dire danger and I scream, don't be consoined[sic] – it's actually a big put-on” (source: “Bugs Bunny”).
 

I see that my morning has disappeared, and I need to finish up. I hear in my head the words of another famous rabbit “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date…”


Source:
“Bugs Bunny.” Wikipedia.

Mooney, James.  Myths of the Cherokee.  P. 40

Megan:

On Deceiving Oneself

In a different mood, I might have a different response to this topic. I might think of all the times I’ve said things like “I let myself believe…” or “I fooled myself…” or “I was lying to myself…” We claim an ability to “trick” ourselves, when in reality we are belatedly trying to justify an action that we knew was wrong. I don't believe it is possible to deceive your own self.

Examples of other kinds of deception abound. Commercial advertising, for example, often deceives consumers by pairing a product with a desirable or aspirational image (ie shampoo with a supermodel), which suggests that the former produced the latter, and can do the same for you!  By inundating the public (and especially girls and young women) with unnatural and unattainable standards of beauty, these companies ensure a continuous demand for their products. But this is common knowledge, right? Everyone knows that stick thin models are bad examples for insecure teenage girls. Yet new ads come out all the time, for diet plans and prepackaged “healthy snacks” all following the same template -- because it works, because people still buy the products, because people still want to believe.

In the nutrition class I am taking, we recently watched a video lecture about how to respond to people who will criticize or naysay the benefits of a vegan diet. The lecturer was a psychologist named Doug Lisle, author of The Pleasure Trap (from where his lecture was drawn). He pointed out that the challenges will come from two separate groups – from those who are nutritionally ignorant (“Where do you get your protein?”) and from those who know the benefits, but for whatever reason choose not to follow the diet themselves. And, he warned us,  it is from this second group that the criticisms will be more emotional and manipulative. Alcoholics in recovery often lose their drinking friends, who perceive abstinence to be an indictment of their own behavior. Dr. Lisle warns that people who “know the truth” but are unable to apply it in their own life, will feel threatened and judged by one who can.  But it is Ego, rather than self-deception, that provokes this reaction.

I use these two examples on purpose, and I want to acknowledge the “hypocrisy.” I’m very vocal about my resentment of the advertising industry, and not because I am able to rise above and see it for what it is. I resent it because I have fallen for it. I buy the department store makeup, the hair dye, and the shoes that are supposed to make my ass look great. I’ve resisted dieting in the past (with one dangerous exception*) because I didn’t want to be one of those women – obsessed with calorie counting and scales and “a moment on the lips, forever on the hips.” I told myself being overweight was a way to rebel against the superficial.

I don’t consider veganism a “diet.” For myself, this is a bit of an experiment. What I’m learning in class makes sense to me, and I’m seeing results. I don’t just mean weight loss. It’s easier for me to get up in the morning, and I have more energy. I don’t feel tired after I eat. So, I’m going to stick with it for a while and see how it goes, even if it does seem that by trying to lose weight I’m allowing myself to be deceived by a superficial and artificial ideal.

* I tried the Cambridge Diet a few years ago when a lot of my colleagues were also doing it. I lost a lot of weight very quickly, but my hair started falling out and my gums began to recede. I am more concerned about keeping my teeth and hair than I am about losing weight – probably because toothless, bald women are not considered attractive in our society.