Satsuma Orange, Mango, and Pineapple Salad

Lunch time:

I took this picture outside because it doesn't look so good in the basement, which is where our kitchen is currently stationed. 

Talk about your fast food: 

Mango, satsuma (mandarin) oranges, and pineapple on a bed of Lolla Rosa and butter lettuce. Took all of 5 minutes to  make. The reason I threw these ingredients together is because of the food combining rules I mentioned awhile ago.

Oranges and pineapple are Acids and mangoes are Sub-Acids. They can play together. Lettuce cuts the sweet. This particular lettuce mixture is great with these fruits. You could also add celery to give it crunch.

Here's a pic of my Granola Girl eating it. If you look carefully, she ate all the satsuma oranges. These suckers are from Peru. (When you're in Newfoundland like we are, just about everything you buy on the rock is far away, so I don't want anyone wagging their fingers to me about carbon footprints. More on this later.) Now, who doesn't love mandarin oranges?

Don't forget to eat the colors of the rainbow.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Overconsumption of Animal Protein Leads to High Blood Pressure

"Researchers say the pace of weight gain was both dramatic and disturbing."


No kidding.

What this article does not say is that eating and drinking too much animal protein is the main cause of this. You can read all about why in The China Study.

Why We Eat Crap: The Luciferian Bling-Bling

I don't usually go to the grocery store but I happened to yesterday, and I am just in awe of all the non-food that tempts us on just about every aisle in the store. It is so easy to just walk up and grab anything off of the shelf that promises to give us enormous benefits if we eat them. You have spaghetti that is reinforced with Omega 3's, packaged, sugar-laden cereal that promises to have loads of fiber and Vitamin C, Kraft Peanut Butter that is not peanut butter at all, and too many other non-foods to mention. But that is what they are: non-foods. And they are very attractive. And we are throwing them into our grocery carts day after day, hour after hour. We are completely buying into the bluff.

But can we really be blamed? Of course not. We're only human after all. Who can resist a nice, cold Nestle Toll-House ice-cream sandwich on a hot day when offered? Not me...I love ice-cream, cookies, wine, beer. The list goes on and on. When tempted with the de-lish, it is so hard to resist. Especially when it is staring us in the face as we hungrily stroll up and down the aisles of a well-stocked grocery store. We are dazed, shocked, really, by all the "good" food we can eat. But it is not food at all. It is imitation, fake food. But it looks so good, so yummy for the tummy, we want to eat it anyway. We even (and this shows just how far gone we really are) want our kids to eat it, too. Not just that, but we think our kids should eat it. We think this food is actually good for them.

Let's call this phenomenon the Luciferian Bling-Bling, the art of razzling and dazzling your innocent subjects into dutiful submission as they blankly and thoughtlessly reach out for whatever it is that's being sold. It's not that we are stupid. We know deep down that buying Oreos and Pepsi for our kids might not be the best thing for them. Stocking up on chips, soda, and frozen, antibiotic-laden, dead red meat with nary a real food that awaits us in the produce section to be found in the cart--we know this isn't the best for us. So why do we do it? Because of The Luciferian Bling-Bling. We simply can't help it. Or can we?

We clearly aren't thinking. We are not conscious. We are forgetting that these food giants like Kraft and Del Monte really are jolly green giants, relative to us. They hold an exorbitant amount of power and wealth. And we buy into the shit they are selling. And though we know deep down the food they all but shove down our throats is killing us, we give them our money, every single day. Why not just cut the middle man out and pay them to kill us directly, scratch the food altogether.

But the Luciferian Bling-Bling goes even beyond the giant food companies. If you look closely (and most of us don't want to) you will see the L.B.B. is what threads the fabric of our modern civilization together, it is the lubrication that keeps the cogs, gears, and motors turning--in the name of progress. It goes all the way down to the meat and dairy boards, the F.D.A., the U.S.D.A., the history of North America, the history of big agriculture, Monsanto, global food shortages, big Pharma, jobs, jobs, jobs, wealth, wealth, wealth, power, power, power. And we are little peons getting crushed in their hands.

It's not a conspiracy. The knowledge is out there. Read The China Study to get a real good look at how consuming animal protein leads to disease and cancer. Read In Defense of Food. Read Fast Food Nation. Watch Forks Over Knives. Watch Earthlings. Watch Food Inc. and King Corn. The knowledge is out there. It's just that so many of us want to stick our heads in the sand and pray to God we don't get sick, though we know deep down the odds are becoming ever greater against us. It's that so many of us are razzled and dazzled by the Luciferian Bling-Bling. We have all but lost the trail back to Eden, a land rich with fruits and vegetables that had met all our needs. Now we have to be fed by Kraft. We feed our kids Kraft as well. We'll come up for air every once in awhile, reading the news headlines of how 1 out of 4 commercial meats are tainted or mad cow, or hog farm waste run-off. Three year-olds have high blood pressure now. We get briefly alarmed, but it isn't long before the Luciferian Bling-Bling takes a-hold of us, and we stick our heads back into the sand and eat crap. Thank god the crap we eat tastes so good or we'd be really screwed.

Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy

Breakfast: Orange and Grape Salad

Breakfast time, what to eat? I know the pineapple isn't ripe yet because I can't easily pick off any of the top leaves. I've got loads of oranges and I still have some grapes, so I threw this little fruit salad together:

Simple, easy, totally fiberific. No dressing, the juice of the oranges and grapes replace any need for a dressing. The greens cut the sweetness and vice/versa. And as I mentioned yesterday, oranges and grapes combine very well. 

Oranges belong to the Acid family and grapes belong to the Sub-acid family, which can both be eaten with a lettuce mix. I could have thrown some avocado in this as well, but I decided not to this morning. This also adheres to Veggie Daddy Rule #1. I always try to eat at least one meal that is completely raw, and breakfast is a great way to do this. It's easy to get in the habit of eating a large fruit breakfast, because you're generally going to have a veggie-type salad with your lunch or dinner.

Eat (B)right,

Veggie Daddy

Oranges and Bananas Don't Mix

Well, our kitchen is completely gutted and we had to move our culinary operations down into our cold and foreboding basement. But now that things have settled down, I think I can start blogging again.

Here is what I just ate for lunch:

What you see there are red seedless grapes, mango, and banana resting quietly on a bed of Cost-Co's Spring Lettuce Mix. That's it. All raw. All vitally alive. And please note there is no salad dressing. With all of these fruits, you don't need any salad dressing. Not only that but the greens cut the sweetness of the fruit and the sweetness of the fruit cuts the bitterness of the greens. It's a perfect harmony--no fats or oils. Completely Fiberific. 

By the way, I only just learned how to properly cut a mango. I was making it way too difficult on myself and actually kept trying to peel the whole thing. How stupid of me! Here's how to cut a mango to learn for yourself. See how simple it is?

Lately I have been very interested in learning about food combining, which foods go best with what. This is especially important when you're eating more raw foods together in a meal. I have known about the concept of food combining for a long time because my grandparents use to have food combination place-mats, but I never took any of it to heart--until now. 

What happened was I juiced an orange, pineapple and mango, then blended it all with a banana. Big mistake. It didn't go down well at all. What's up with that, I thought? It's all fruit, nice and alive, why doesn't my stomach like it? Well, after quickly doing a little research I learned one of the first rules about food combining:

Acid fruits should not be eaten with Sweet fruits. In other words, oranges and bananas don't go together like a horse and carriage. Acid fruits should be eaten with other acid or sub-acid fruits and sweet should be eaten with other sweet. Sub-acid can be eaten with either acid or sweet. 

Let's think of them as three families. Two of the families are like the Montagues and the Capulets, always at war with each other. Then there's a third family in the middle that plays with both sides, but never allies with them; they stay neutral. This neutral family is comprised of the sub-acid fruits. But the Acids and Sweets are at war--when eaten together, they can make your stomach do loop-d-loops. Who knew food could be so violent! 

The concept of food combining might seem pretty strange to someone who's never heard of the idea before, but most of us don't eat too many raw foods together, so why would we need to pay attention? Well, if you're starting to introduce more raw food into your diet like I am, you'll quickly see why you might need to start learning some of the basic rules. You can get all crazy with it, like anything, but this main rule is a great one to follow if you're just starting out. I am just starting out myself, too!

So let's quickly analyze my lunch up there and see why I combined those particular foods.

Most grapes are sub-acid, and mango is considered sub-acid to sweet. Banana is sweet, so we have a fair food combination between the neutral Sub-acids and the Sweets. Then I ate them all together on a bed of lettuce because lettuce (and celery) go nicely with fruits as I mentioned above. But don't eat Fruits with Vegetables; they're enemies, too, apparently. (Tomatoes and cucumbers don't count.)

Finally, this meal is completely fiberific, the importance of which seems to be way understated in our Western culture. The importance of eating whole foods lies in the fact that you are eating the fiber that comes in a whole food. Fiber acts like Dran-o does for a clogged sink: it de-clogs all the crap inside of us, literally and figuratively. From the research I've done, we could avoid many diseases if we just increased our dietary fiber intake. And no, fiber supplements don't count! And processed food? Fugghedabouddit.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

We've Lost Our Connection to the Double Rainbow, "Oh, my god"

FOOD DIARY


So for lunch today, my wife was home once again and ate exactly the same sandwich that she ate yesterday, as did my other little granola girl. I ate the braised-cauliflower leftovers.

Here's a picture of my hunter gal-therer showing the snacks we (the girls and I) ate after school:

Let's diagnose this plate, shall we? Let's see, we have pistachios in their shells, dried mango at 9 o'clock, raisins at the top, and those are those home-made Tamari-roasted almonds I've mentioned before, which you can make right-quick at home. Three out of four of those came from a package, but I don't know how many people would say these are typical snack foods they'd give to their kids, not to mention this particular gal-therer could be arrested if she were caught threatening the denizens of her school with wild offerings, recklessly waving bunched handfuls of almonds and pistachios like a puerile pirate.

I don't know, when I look at this picture myself, there's something very, er, non-North American about it, as if my daughter has been spending the last two weeks on a walk-about with Marlo Morgan (see Mutant Message Down Under) or the Tanzanian Hadza Tribe.



Perhaps it's because we forgot what it used to be like out there in nomad land as we scoured the trees and bushes before we learned how to make a spear. I wonder what we ate before we learned how to shoot a buffalo between the eyes with a well-honed arrow-tip. Did we just scavenge around eating left-over "roadkill" like the vultures? What drove us to hunting, I wonder. Weren't we just satisfied eating nuts and berries? Hmmm...



Veggie Daddy Fun Fact:
It took 150,000 years to learn how to sharpen one side of a spear. It took another 150,000 years to learn that we could sharpen the other side. From what I understand (from Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines) this is because the more technologically advanced we become, the faster time goes. So before the Industrial Revolution, there was a huge 5,000 year gap of technological advancement. Before the Industrial Revolution, the British didn't live all that much better than those of early civilizations 5,000 years prior. It is the Industrial Revolution which threw us out of the Malthusian Trap. So after the I.R., the time between significant events began to shrink exponentially, and so now, for us, time seems to actually speed up. I-Pad 2, Nintendo  3DS--we are like a gargantuan snowball careening ever-faster downwards, absorbing everything in our (some would say "destructive") path. Or are we rolling upwards? Are we rolling off a cliff?

So while time was uber-slow, molasses-dripping slow, and nothing significant ever happened, I have to ask the question, what did we eat during the 300,000 years it took us to learn how to carve a spearhead? Anyone? I imagine the meal must have looked something like the food on my daughter's plate, which looks...ancient. Like I can't identify with it, but seems somehow to make all the sense in the world if I think about it hard enough.

I must admit, eating kissed-by-the-sun dried mangoes (I'm lying, we bought them at Cost-Co--don't tell anyone!), pistachios, almonds, kissed-by-the-sun grapes (nope--Sunmaid!), choosing to consume such primitive nibbles as these does not come naturally to me. I have to actually make the conscious decision to go to the cupboard and eat these strange little pods that seem to have descended down from another planet. And why? We just aren't brought up that way, not the majority of us. And certainly, especially in today's world of blue dinosaurs bleeding their gelatinous insides into their instant-and-distant, runny oatmeal, neither are our kids.

Perhaps we've lost touch with our roots. Not all of us, though. There is now a small, very small, minority of us out there who are highly conscious of the fact that in our fast-paced, high-tech world, we have lost something big, something important, something like a connection to our ancient, ancient past, before the time that we hunted game with crude weaponry. We seemed to have lost the connection to the fact that we use to eat actual food, bright and vivid as a double rainbow, oh my god, and when we see something so colorful, we can only zone out on the literal acid trip we have riddled our bodies with when we eat non-food, processed food, food that has lost so much vitality that we must shoot them in their arms with chemicals and colors and pretend it is food that is alive, but is actually dead. And we do the same to livestock.

Veggie Daddy Fun (NOT FUN AT ALL!!!) Fact: 70% of antibiotics are given to our healthy livestock. 
I have actually heard it is more. Chilling...and so we're illing.

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: Modeling, Modeling, Modeling

No, I'm not talking about walking down a runway pretending you're Pamela Anderson. If we want our kids to find this lost connection, we must model eating such real foods ourselves. We must let our kids see us enjoying the "fruits of our labor," and they too will follow. They, too, will begin to see, as they stroll through aisle after aisle of dead food on the shelves of the grocery store, that there is a true double rainbow of good food waiting for them, that there is a true difference between alive food that is bright and vivid as opposed to dead food that they have to throw thirty different additives to it so it actually tastes good, but mostly just tastes like sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

Veggie Daddy Rule #4: We must model eating b(right) food, and our kids will too. The kids actually want to.

Pick up an almond or a peach as consciously as you would go for a walk around the block or do a push-up because you know you have to exercise. It's not about eating right. It's about making the conscious decision to eat real food, pesticide-riddled or not. It is better than eating dead food.

Let's model eating food that has the real colors of the rainbow that nature naturally provided us while we were lying around in the sun wondering how to carve the other side of that spear, before we learned to hunt. EAT REAL FOOD the way nature intended and we can help our kids and ourselves discover our own (double) rainbow connection. Oh my god.

This rich, orange-colored butternut squash...

...became this butternut squash pasta bake spiced with chipotle pepper. It was quite good and can be found in the uber-cool cookbook, The Complete Guide to Vegan Substitutions.

The dish was good, but I would like to call attention to the colors of the squash when it was raw and when it was cooked. Notice anything different? Yep, the color is gone. Many of the best nutrients in raw food take a trip to Neverland once you cook them. The evidence is as plain as the taste of the glowing Kraft Dinner in your child's bowl. Even if you eat nothing raw all day, throwing in a salad, and there are so many kinds, with your dinner is a perfect way to get back to your roots.

If you would like advice on how to get your children to eat more real food, here is a little tip. And don't forget to model! Work it, baby, work it!

Why are there so many songs about rainbows

And what's on the other side?

Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,

And rainbows have nothing to hide.

So we've been told and some choose to believe it

I know they're wrong, wait and see.

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,

The lovers, the dreamers and me.

--Paul Williams

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

My Granola Girl

Yep, this little chickie of mine LOVES granola. She just turned three. In that bowl there, we have oats, oat bran, sunflower seeds, almonds, maple syrup, canola oil, and soy protein powder. Sprinkle some hemp seeds over it, and you have a protein power-house, though protein has really become way over-emphasized these days. More on that later. This granola recipe is from one of the Mollie Katzen Moosewood cookbooks, of which there are many. I also threw some raisins in there to sweeten it up.

She used to eat it with yogurt for months, and then on a dime, she switched. She never asks for yogurt anymore, and we're not sure why. Now she likes it with the Almond Breeze almond milk, which we can buy in bulk at Cost-Co, so it's a big money-saver for us.

The other big money saver is making granola at home from scratch. It's easy and extremely cheap when you compare it to the store-bought granola. Try it sometime!

For breakfast, I had another big-ass glass of orange, lemon, and carrot juice. I peel the carrots because I find the outside layer can give the juice a bit of a dirty taste, so peeling them takes care of that right quick. And no, we don't buy organic too much. It's just too expensive here on the rock. I'll go into this more later.

The juice was uber-delish but when I opened the fridge, I realized I should have juiced some ginger in there as well. Ginger goes great with carrots, lemons, and oranges, so it'd be great in the juice, too.

That's all for now, gotta busy morning ahead of us; we have to move our kitchen into our basement because we are getting our kitchen re-done, which I also plan on blogging about.

Review: Remember Veggie Daddy Rule #1? Try to always eat with this rule in mind.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Whoever Likes Vegan Cheese-Whiz, Raise Your Hand

FOOD DIARY

That picture up there, that was my wife's lunch:

Clearly that's a sandwich there, but inside there is a walnut-chickpea spread w/ cucumbers, tomatoes, butter lettuce, and banana peppers. She also had left-over beet salad. (She's rarely home for lunch so that was a nice treat.)

I just had leftover pizza and beet salad. Big-ass glass of water, and I was full.

My youngest, she also ate the walnut-chickpea sandwich. You know, little bites, nothing crazy-like.

At Snack, I had the last peanut-butter and chocolate muffin and I had a piece of the carrot cake I was too full to eat from the night before. The cake my wife made which she wasn't supposed to make because mothers shouldn't cook anything on Mother's Day, am I right? Right. Yet, she still sneaked that cake in there without me knowing.

I also had a pear, to keep with my eating-real-food-that-is-alive principle. I eat raw for breakfast and in between lunch and dinner. So, yeah, a pear worked great after eating a muffin and cake, all home-made, of course.

While I have you on the phone, I just wanted to do a little math. The big-ass glass of carrot, orange, and lemon juice I had for breakfast this morning would probably cost $4-5, perhaps more depending on where you're buying it. So let's take the conservative end of the spectrum and say it's $4. Now let's say you buy one of these every morning on your way to work or at lunch or wherever. Fresh squeezed juice of any kind is very expensive unless you make it at home.

So, fresh-squeezed juice every day for 30 days= $120. Nope, I wouldn't recommend it. That's just a little less than what we spend on all of our groceries every single week, which is about $175. We just weren't meant to buy fresh juice every day. So we make it at home.

Get an awesome juicer and juicing becomes a breeze. You can see a picture of our Omega juicer in my previous post.

We used to buy the Tropicana Orange Juice in the big-ass carton which they have now slimmed down to give it a nice sleek-but-we're-actually-screwing-you-over kind of look. It was $6.20 last time I checked, it could be more now. Go through one in a week with your family and you're spending $24/mo. on not-really-fresh, already nutrient-deficient orange juice. The longer it sits, the less nutrients it has, of course. So you're spending even more for juice of an inferior quality. It will never taste as good as fresh-squeezed juice seconds after you juice it. Never. And the more preservatives it has to "keep it fresh", the deader it becomes. And processed food? Dead as all get-out. Yet the companies sell it as juice. Save yourself the trouble and the money. Don't buy juice and keep it in the fridge unless you plan to use it in recipes or something. Or give to your kids for their lunches.

Here's what we had for dinner.

That's a Philly-cheese style slider with grilled peppers and onions. (From Vegan Diner.) Salad lightly dusted with hemp seeds. Power food! I ate two sliders, and I am stuffed--to 80% of my capacity, of course, following on with Veggie Daddy Rule #2.

"What the hell, is that vegan cheese-whiz?" you might be asking. Or "Is that some kind of crazy-ass vegan cheese?" you might also wonder.

Yes, it is, and it's something I don't think I ever would've eaten a year ago. It's made with cashews and it is truly awesome. It is incredible what you can do with cashews. Short of having sex with them, you can do almost anything!

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

To Eat Living Food or Dead Food, That Is The Question

Breakfast time!

Here's a picture of a typical Veggie Daddy Breakfast:

I juice the carrots, the lemon, two oranges and voila!

I drink it up! YUM. (No animals were inhumanely slaughtered or treated in the making of this breakfast.) Took all of of 5 minutes to make. Meanwhile, my girls nibbled on grapes, cucumber slices, orange pieces, watermelon, and they each split a home-made, vegan peanut-butter and chocolate muffin.

Now I have to make the school lunch. Here it is:

My girl's lunch. The braised-cauliflower and Basmati rice pilaf from last night, carrots, cucumbers, and grapes, and a juice box, not that she needs it, but you pick your battles. I would prefer her to just drink water, but I'm not an extremist (shrug.)

Veggie Daddy Food for Thought:

They say you are what you eat, so you have two choices: 1) Eat food that is alive, which has color, vibrancy, and essential nutrients; 2) Eat food that is dead.

Let's not forget what we know from the first law of thermodynamics: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed from one state to another.

So it stands to reason that eating food that is alive with energy will keep us vital and healthy. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that CAFO-related dead cows and chickens don't move too much. Perhaps it's because they lack vital energy.

Rudolf Steiner says some very interesting things about what happens when we consume dead flesh. He was pretty much what we know today as a vegetarian. That guy was way ahead of his time. But there were good reasons he didn't eat any meat. Hindus and Buddhists neither. Look it up sometime!

But even if you do eat meat as I did for most of my life, the more raw food you eat the better. Try to find a balance if you can. If it's only 10% right now, try to bump it up to 20% raw a day. As you can see above, I eat raw for breakfast and in between lunch and dinner. And the last time I ate meat was this past X-mas, so I know how good meat tastes. But we really should go easier on it, best to take it out altogether, which I'll discuss all the reasons for some other time. And remember, when you start to introduce more of the REAL FOOD into your lifestyle, you will notice incredible changes in what your body wants to eat. Trust me.

Finally, here's the picture of what I ate an hour ago. That's my girl reaching into the bag:

We ate Tamari-roasted almonds and pistachios. My little one ate the pistachios and honey pitted dates. YUM!

One last tip: I try to eat only raw food until lunch time. Raw food has the most vital (alive) energy of any food. When we eat it, that energy gets transferred to us. If the food is dead, then there's no vital energy there. Not a good match for us, I don't think.

And remember, when you eat fruits and veggies, it's a general fact that the darker (or more colorful) the berry, the sweeter the juice, but it's also the most nutritious. Beets, carrots, oranges, sweet potato--packed to the gills with nutrients.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

The More Real Food You Eat, The Less Food You Will Eat

FOOD DIARY

Dinner time! I made this dish here, an Indian-style braised-cauliflower with a Basmati rice pilaf and toasted slivered almonds on the side. It was soooo good, all four of us ate it, and I had two helpings.

So right now, I am so sated by all the nutrient-dense foods I've had today that I don't even have room for the carrot cake that my wife somehow dropped out of her ass when I wasn't looking. I don't even know when she made it, I didn't see her do it. She's quick and sneaky like that. And she's not even supposed to make anything on Mother's Day, but there you go (shrug.)

Here's the cake which I am too full to eat right now:

And now for another Veggie Daddy Fun Fact:

The more nutrient-dense foods you eat, the more sated, full, you will actually feel, so much so, that you can't even eat a piece of carrot cake even though you only had a few pieces of apple and peanut butter for lunch, as in my case today. (I also had another peanut-butter and chocolate muffin on the way to Cost-co. Yes, we shop at Cost-Co. The horror, I know.)

But it's the truth. When your body gets the nutrients it needs, as opposed to many of the empty calories I used to eat with all of the processed non-foods that I see so many people throw in their grocery carts, that I used to throw in our grocery cart for years, your body will send a signal to your brain that you are done, finito. And you will eat LESS.

Tonight, I enjoyed the dinner so much that I think I ate to 90-95% of my capacity, most likely because I skipped lunch and thought it'd be fine to eat a bit more for dinner. Though, when it comes to eating, I know I shouldn't listen to my brain on an intellectual level but on a physical one. Nevertheless, eat more I did, and now I'm done. Totally sated. So stuffed I can't eat home-made carrot cake. Even though I hardly ate any lunch. Which leads me to my...

Veggie Daddy Conclusion:

If you want to lose weight, eat more real food, and thus you will automatically eat less.

This is true for me anyway because I have been (mostly) a vegetarian for the past ten years and ate loads of processed food for all those years. I couldn't gain any weight, no matter how many cookies I ate, but I also never seemed to feel full. I was always hungry, constantly. And now I know why: I was eating empty calories, my body wasn't getting what it needed, just what it thought it wanted, er, craved.

I craved cookies, ice-cream, butter, cheese, I ate eggs, drank milk with my cookies, and I always complained to my wife how the vegetarian dinners never seemed to be substantial enough for a growing boy like me. (I weigh 140 lbs. and I'm 6 feet tall.) I was always hungry. And whenever we went to the grocery store, I'd throw in lots of shit in the cart, and our grocery bills were always more when I went shopping with her. Lots more. That's rarely the case now. On both counts. I eat way less and we spend way less, and I feel more sated than I ever have in my whole life.

This is why I am writing this blog, to just share what I have/am discovering. I think it is amazing and I would like to pass it on.

So, the more real food you eat, the less of it you will eat, and so you have no choice but to lose weight. You don't even have a choice on the matter because your body, once sated, will not let you go past the mark. Perhaps this is what Buddhists mean by enlightenment. Once we become conscious/enlightened to the essential Buddha-nature that surrounds us everywhere, it becomes almost impossible not to see what lies down in the murky depths, what has always laid down under the murky depths of what we call reality, which is really just The Matrix, you know. I digress...

At Cost-Co, here is what we bought:

Canola Oil

Soy Sauce

Dempster's Ancient Grains Bread (processed)

Carrots

Red Grapes

Fry's Cocoa (processed)

Larabars (processed)

Gala Apples

Raisins

Dried Mangoes (processed)

Pistachios (the label of which says allergy warning: contains pistachio nuts)

Butter Lettuce (not to be confused with butterface)

Pineapple (Grill 'em and top with ginger ice-cream)

Avocados

Bagels (processed)

Dried bluberries (processed)

Bill total: $130

We also went to Dominion, bill total: $81.

So we're spending $210 this week on food. We have spent an average of $700 on food for the past three months for a family of four. This average also includes anything else you care to buy at Dominion that is non food-related, like cleaning supplies, toiletries and the like. (We don't every buy cleaning supplies, though, highly toxic and a big waste of moulah.)

So, $700 a month for a family of four, shopping at Dominion, Cost-Co, and sometimes Sobey's.

The only reason I mention this is because I want to dispel any myths right now about how it costs so much to eat real food. As you can see, this is clearly not the case. By the way, do you know how much you're paying for food each month? If not, I strongly encourage you to try it out. It was pretty revealing for me.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Veggie Daddy Rule# 3: Eat a Variety of Foods

Oh, great, it's lunch. The kids have come back from Church, and they're hungry. Once again, I have to figure out what to feed them. Does lunch ever seem like a battle with your kids? All they want is macaroni & cheese, the locals here always seem to call it Kraft Dinner, though we have never bought it; we always get the PC kind which doesn't glow in the dark or where you have to wear sunglasses because it's so bright, yellow # fill-in-the-blank, or what have you. But we hear from lots of folks, it's Kraft Dinner, that's all the kids want for lunch, dinner, etc. For vegetarian kids, it's usually the Franken-food veggie dogs or "chicken" nuggets.

Veggie Daddy Rule# 3: Eat a variety of foods. Meats are complete proteins, but plant proteins are scattered all over the place, so vary the foods you eat so you get a smattering of everything. But don't go all Nazi about it. A little of this, a little of that, be conscious of it, and you'll be fine. What are you doing right now? Are you daydreaming or are you conscious? Conscious? Good! Feels good, doesn't it? (The reason I mention this is because I used to eat very un-consciously. I'd eat a bag of cookies, load up on the ice-cream, sugar, sugar, sugar. Couldn't get enough of it! Not so, now...I'll explain later.)

So it's lunch and my oldest wants a PB&J. This might surprise you or it may not. Remember the old-fashioned PB&J which seemed to serve as the death sentence for so many of us kids in school as we got it for lunch every single day (I seemed to, anyway) is now absolutely, strictly banned from most schools today because of the most evil ingredient on earth: the terrible, killer peanut, Satan in a shell.

So, yes, my girl wants a PB&J as we do not torture her with such horrors during the week, and she seems to prefer getting tortured with such bland mundanities on the weekends. Luckily, this special daughter of mine has no inkling of the horrid memories that I have had to deal with (I also mostly ate PB&J for three straight months for lunch in NYC because I was so poor and pretty much jobless back in '98--I couldn't afford the heavenly-smelling gyros around the corner) and so who am I to oppose her? But I have a problem with something, mostly based on a lot of the research I have done. I don't really want her to eat too much store-bought bread; we get Dempster's.)

Veggie Daddy Fun Fact: Refined grains aren't all that good for you.

I'll probably go into it later as to why, but just take my word for it, for now. Refined grains, flour and such, should be seen as a sometime food. Keep off the bleached and enriched flours especially. But it's true, our bodies don't do all that well on processed, refined grains. But again, we're not extremists, so all things in moderation, right? Right.

So back to the PB&J. I don't want her to eat two pieces of highly processed bread with even more processed jam. What to do? I also want her to vary her foods. Like me, I know she hasn't had any fruit today, but store-bought jam is NOT fruit. So I gave her suggestions and she could pick. Here were her options:

• Apple
• Our home-made granola (so simple to make!)
• PB & J

Guess what? She said she wanted an apple! Right on. Then I put some peanut butter on it and made a sandwich. Apple slices with peanut butter. No bread, no jam. Fruit, legumes. Here's the picture:

We use Mara Natha peanut-butter, no stir. Uber-delish! Both girls loved the apple sandwiches.

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: KISS--Keep it simple, stupid. Offer choices then let them choose.

And me? I'm still full from brunch, but I snatched some apple and peanut butter myself, so I am getting the same variety of nutrients. Still hungry? Big-ass glass of water. Yep, it topped me right up. Now it's time to go hit Rocket Bakery, that new bakery I've heard so much about.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: Finicky, Picky Kids? Help Them Adapt.

Happy Mother's Day!

Big Fat Greek Scramble w/ Lemon-Pepper Roasted Potatoes

I can't say I'm a newbie cook, but let's just say I have a limited arsenal under my belt (which is rather skinny.) But since it's Mother's Day, I couldn't very well expect the mother in the house (who does most of the cooking) to cook for us on Mother's Day, could I? Hell, nooooooo. So I need to come up with something quick. Luckily, we have a well-stocked pantry, so with coffee in hand, I go to the cookbooks. (I usually treat myself to coffee on weekend mornings.) What in God's name am I going to make?

The mother (not to be confused with the other mother) in the house doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, unlike me, where I could eat sugar all day. (My daughter called me a sugar daddy once--once. It's not so much the case now that I'm mostly veganific, which I'll discuss later.) So, rather than making your typical fare with pancakes or waffles, I decide to go for something savory. Something like a Greek omelet with mushrooms, onions, olives, red peppers, you get the idea. Tofu replaces the eggs. So I grab Vegan Diner again and there it is: the big fat tofu scramble. It requires baby spinach which we don't have, but it will still work without it, I think, so I go ahead.

And potatoes! Gotta have potatoes. Let's try the lemon-pepper roasted ones, which can be found in the oh-so-awesome Vegan Brunch, highly recommended. Our oldest daughter loved them.

It all took about 30-35 minutes to do. You can see the result at the top of this post, of course. It was uber-delish, and both kids ate it, though it took some encouragement on our part for our oldest to try the scramble. She already likes tofu, so it wasn't that hard. Our youngest ate two helpings! You go, girl!

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: The more often you put strange things on your kids' plates, the less strange they become to your kids.

Think of how you learned to like beer, wine, or coffee, which, if you were anything like me, you probably didn't like when you were a kid. (I was one freakin' picky kid, just ask my folks.) These things are acquired tastes. (My dad gently encouraged me to try the malted beer with the big elephant on the bottle, which is bitter as all get-out. Thanks, Dad, you're the reason I enjoy beers with rich, complex flavors, now. Did you know they have Tiger Beer at the Liquor Store because of the beer fest? Go get some, quick!) Which simply means we have to practice, to work our taste-buds out, and they inevitably adapt. Well, not only do our taste-buds need to adapt, but our eyes do as well, especially the eyes of our kids. What they first see as all these unusual, strange, run-the-hell-away-as-fast-as-you-can kind of foods, can later be seen as shy, weird, but not-too-imposing strangers: you don't want them to hang out with you, and where you'd normally shove them away, now you just ignore them. They're there, but you're not kicking them in the ass or running away in terror. This is progress for us parents, mos def.

Things I learned (from the mother) on this particular Veggie Daddy Mother's Day Adventure:

• Want crispy potatoes? Put the baking sheet in the oven first while it preheats; the potatoes get way crispier.
• Don't cut potatoes and leave them lying around all cut up--they'll oxidize faster, like apples or bananas or avocadoes, getting all brown and yucky. You can also put them in a bowl of water, but not a great idea if you're about to roast them.
• Timing is everything. How do you get the potatoes to come out of the oven just when your Greek scramble is done, too? Not easy, but it is easier to judge if you've got all your prep work done, like cutting up the peppers, onions, olives, garlic, etc. And have all your spices at the ready. This simplifies the process greatly.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Oh yeah, vegans, vegetarians, we get a bad wrap for eating so much tofu. The jury is out on whether tofu is going to kill you. I've done lots of research on it, and my mind is at ease. As long as it's not GMO tofu, I think it's pretty safe. Certainly safer than eating salmonella-laced egg embryos, anyway. And watch the movie Earthlings. Those poor little chickens!

Food Diary: Deluxe Pizza, Beet Salad, Chocolate "Tofutti" Ice Cream

FOOD DIARY

6:28 P.M. Dinner time! We always have pizza on Saturdays.

Deluxe Pizza:

Pepperoni Alternative (TVP)

Hot Banana Peppers (to make it spicier)

Olives

Mozarella Cheese (the only time I really eat cheese--My wife uses Daiya, but I don't like it)

Homemade pizza sauce

Just finished up with the pizza dough (water, olive oil, flour, salt, sugar, yeast) and we're going to have a jazzed-up version of a typical deluxe pizza sans pepperoni. Instead of pepperoni, which is pretty gross if you care to do the research, we are using a TVP mixture with loads of spices such as anise and liquid smoke to simulate the pepperoni-like flavor.

"What the hell is TVP?" you ask. That's a good question. Textured Vegetable Protein. Even Bulk Barn has it.

Salad:

Green Cabbage, Beets, Carrots, Broccoli Stems, Raisins

Dressing with shallots, brown rice syrup, flax oil/olive oil, lemon juice

Sprinkle Hemp seeds over the top

Would you believe my youngest girl, Age 3, ate her entire salad? I couldn't believe it either. Our oldest girl, Age 8, did not want to try it, but she ate her pizza.

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: Always put strange/bizarre/yucky-looking food on your kids' dishes, even if you know they won't eat it or touch it. Don't ever force them. Don't bribe them. Put a small, tiny bit because you're gonna either have to throw it out or eat it yourself. If they do eat it, smile big and clap, as if they scored a touch-down. They love that.

Don't forget the glass of wine! (We don't buy our wine, we make it--much cheaper.)

No, that's not a pile of crap, but good guess. It's actually Chocolate-Tofu ice cream for dessert. It's like Tofutti without the brand name attached. And, no, we don't use GMO tofu. We use the Sunrise brand. It's excellent!

Total # of artificial additives, artificial colors, flavors: ZERO (mostly...nothing was processed, anyway.) We are not extremists, you know.

So that was a full, uber-delish meal. I'm sated, mos def. But not stuffed. I ate three big pieces and two generous helpings of salad, one serving of the ice cream, couple glasses of wine. I'm ready to go!

Don't forget Veggie Daddy Rule #2: Eat to 80% of your capacity. That means you got 20% emptiness left in your stomach to move around without feeling bloated.

Veggie Daddy Recap!

Here's all I ate today, (all thanks goes to my lovely wife who makes this amazing food!) :

Big-ass glass of orange/lemon juice.

Pumpkin and Oatmeal cookies

BBQ-Seitan Sandwich w/ crispy potato wedges and ketchup

Peanut-Butter and Chocolate muffin

Deluxe Pizza

Beet and Cabbage Salad

Chocolate Tofu Ice Cream

Wine

Maybe a snack before bed? We'll see...

Whoah, I am way SATED.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Kids Want to Eat Real Food

FOOD DIARY

4:17 P.M.

I got hungry since I ate the muffin so I had a small slice of watermelon and a pear. This adheres to Food Rule #1, Eat nutritionally dense foods. Also to Food Rule #2, Eat to 80% of your capacity. I feel very sated right now.

Just learned that my daughter gets asked at school all the time, "What are you eating? That looks good," from the other kids. Only she and another boy who we know are the only kids in the class who bring home-made foods from home and not from a package. And they wish their parents did this for them as well, they apparently say to them.

Well, there's a good reason for this. These kids in Grade 2 seem to inherently understand Food Rule #1: Eat food dense in nutrients. Real food. These kids are probably eating a lot of packaged non-foods, and the kids are hip to it. They know deep inside they're not getting what they need. Chances are if it comes from a package, it's just a bunch of empty carbs. Nothing for little boys and girls to grow big and strong from.

Ah, but they drink milk and they eat meat, don't forget that. I think I see a red herring swimming up at me...

For dinner tonight? Pizza!

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Peanuts are Not Nuts? You Must Be Nuts.

Veggie Daddy Fact: Peanuts are not nuts, they are legumes.

"What the hell are legumes?" you might be asking. That's a good question. Is that one of the four food groups? Let's see...If I remember way back in 3rd grade, I believe, I remember being told with a slide presentation at Hermosa View Middle School in Hermosa Beach, California that there are four basic food groups: Meat, Dairy, Bread, and...gosh, I can't remember the fourth one. I'm pretty sure it wasn't legumes, though. Oh yeah, fruits and vegetables. (How could I forget that? Now I feel silly...)

I just learned that peanuts are not nuts yesterday, so I thought I'd share it with you, too. Chances are high this is new info for you as well. And schools clearly exaggerate the dangers of peanut allergies, somehow jumping from peanuts to all tree nuts. If you're a vegetarian, this clearly presents a problem when you're trying to find something to bring in your kid's lunch. You want to feed your child, but the nut police are waiting there to grab you.

This actually happened, you know. Last year, one of my girls had a Cliff Bar on her person at lunch time. The woman on duty instantly snatched her lunch away from her and threw it in some peanut-infested food incinerator they probably keep there in the basement of the school. Needless to say, my girl went hungry. Yet most of the research I've found out there says peanuts aren't that dangerous. Not only that, they're not even nuts!

The kicker of this story is that the Cliff Bar she had didn't have any nuts in them. But the label said the product (yes, it's processed, I realize that--more on that later) MAY contain nuts. This clearly establishes that the nut police are out full-force. I think it's called ZERO TOLERANCE. That's like getting fined because you might be driving over the speed limit. Yikes, you wouldn't want to do that!

FOOD DIARY

2:30 P.M.

Snack: one home-made vegan chocolate peanut-butter muffin (the horror!), 1 big glass of water

(everything I eat is vegan unless I specify otherwise)

No, my daughter can't eat this crap at school, just as well, though; she might kill some poor kid sitting next to her who might accidentally be caught licking the crumbs off the floor, even though they know just what happens to them if they eat something infested with nuts, er, legumes because of their peanut allergy.

Almonds? Nope. Pistachios? Nope. Cashews? Nope. Brazil Nuts? For Godsakes, no!

Eat Bright,

Veggie Daddy

P.S. Still hungry after your meal? Try drinking a big glass of water. The way you feel might surprise you. It sure did me.

And yes, the muffin was oh-so-delicious! I can feel the plant proteins vibrating through my entire being.

Food Rule#2: Eat to 80% of Your Capacity

12:50 PM

I am back from City Hall which took over 4 hours. Since I only had a glass of juice for breakfast, by 10 A.M. I was pretty hungry, and so popped a couple of homemade pumpkin-oatmeal cookies into my mouth. I didn't have any other food with me, but I managed to last until lunch time. Though I couldn't help but notice several people next to me who had Cokes, Diet Cokes (which is way worse than regular Coke) and Cheetos for their snacks, neither of which I would call food; Michael Pollan says "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants," the byline on the title of his remarkable book In Defense of Food.

Pollan's rule of eating food corresponds with my Food Rule #1: Eat foods that are dense in nutrients. It should go without saying that if you eat actual food, as opposed to processed food like Coke and Cheetos, then you are most likely getting some quality nutrients in your system. Doing otherwise is like putting the wrong kind of gas in your car, but you would never do that, would you? After all, you don't want your car to break down. And yet for many of us, it seems okay to go ahead and break down our bodies/minds by eating non-food daily. How did this happen? Ignorance is bliss...and tasty!

FOOD DIARY

For lunch I ate:

Meal:

a bbq-seitan sandwich with banana peppers on a toasted Kaiser roll.

crispy potato wedges with ketchup

water

"What the hell is seitan?" you might be asking. That's a good question. You can buy it at the store, or make your own. My wife made a seitan-loaf yesterday from the cookbook, Vegan Diner. Comfort food, basically.

And no, I am not a vegan. But I don't eat CAFO meat, either. And after seeing the movie, Earthlings, I don't think I could ever eat it again. Seeing this movie is like taking the red pill in The Matrix. You just don't want to know... After about ten minutes in, I was so horrified I had to turn it off. I still have chills of the images.

I was thinking after the lunch I would eat some of the peanut butter and chocolate muffins sitting there on top of the fridge, but my body/mind is really telling me the bbq-sandwich was quite enough, thank you.

Which brings me to Food Rule #2: Eat to 80% of your capacity. This rule is suggested in The Three Pillars of Zen. Also mentioned from this book is that Zen Buddhists are basically vegans. They've been eating this way for a long, long time.

Eat Bright,

Veggie Daddy

Food Rule #1: Eat Foods That Are Nutritionally Dense

FOOD DIARY

Breakfast, 8:10 A.M. NL Time:

3 Oranges, 1 Lemon, all juiced in a tall glass. And I am stuffed.

Food Rule #1: Eat foods that are dense in nutrients. You're body and mind will be sated.

I'm off to go register my kids down at City Hall, so I really had to eat and run. And now I'm off!

Try this drink in the morning instead of your typical coffee. See how you feel. And by the way, the oranges here are terrible, all dried out and yucky. That's why you have to juice them. And who on earth would drink lemon juice on its own? But put 'em together, and voila!

Eat Bright,

Veggie Daddy

Welcome to Vegg On the Rock

Welcome to the first ever (that I know of) vegetarian diary/blog here in St. John's.

For those of you who have no idea who the hell I am, I am Veggie Daddy, vegging out here on the rock of Newfoundland. The reason for this blog? You can't buy tempeh anywhere in this entire city of St. John's.

"What the hell is tempeh? I have never heard of such a thing!" you might say. That's a good question.

"Why the hell would I want to eat tempeh?" Another great question.

Hence this blog. I am a thirty-something unemployed skinny ("Chicken-Legs" I used to be called) dad and I want my tempeh! And I am shocked, not really, that the world is going forward, at least the people in it are (some of the people anyway) that with all the info out there, the Dominion here in St. John's tells me that there is not enough demand here for tempeh. Let's get this under-rated/valued commodity here on the rock.

So that's mainly what this blog is for. It will also be a food diary about what I am eating each day, and what goes on in that crazy head of mine when I make a choice about what to eat and why I choose to eat it. Most of this info is already out there, of course. But for some strange reason, no one here on the rock wants tempeh. I am determined to get to the bottom of this, even if it's my last bite on earth. Huh?

More posts to come, hopefully of the educational/informative kind. Feel free to vent/comment.

Question of the day: Why the hell don't you want to buy any tempeh?

Eat Bright,

Veggie Daddy