Hey guys! This holiday season, I wish you optimal health and plentiful love…

and plentiful green monsters, shakes, smoothies and what-have-yous to keep you strong and healthy.

So…the boyf and I left Solvang early since he wasn’t feeling well (major sad face), but we did manage to squeeze in the r&r and quality time together that was our highest priority. Here are some pictures of the garden outside our door for Lori:

On the 3+ hour car ride home (mucho traffic), I finished reading Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet and did some major thinking. I don’t know about you guys, but I make a lot of big decisions on long car rides. Car rides are underrated as cathartic moments to feature in films and stories (so I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed from Drew Barry Moore’s Riding In Cars with Boys flick for my title!).  So, anyway, I was doing some major thinking in the womb-of-a-car, feeling like I could transform and renew myself with good decision making.

Here’s the thing — being vegetarian has been a cinch. I haven’t missed meat. at all. And it has felt like a natural extension of my beliefs to abstain from eating it, primarily for health reasons. But what I have missed, from my life in general, is a feeling of balance. Sure, my life is crazier than a Lady Gaga getup and nothing can force balance into that, but I’d feel more in-tune with myself if I abstained from consuming any animal-derived products, as much as possible. Here’s the conundrum — I don’t want to put a label on myself. I think “vegan” is a loaded word that gets thrown around a lot in heated debates about ethics, food, environmentalism and scantily-clad PETA models. I’m really not interested in “going” vegan to prove a point, to set an example or to make any sort of public statement. I’m going to test out this whole no-animal-derived-products thing and take you guys along for the ride. One of my main goals in eating vegan is really to have more control. Any therapist will tell you that a desire to control one’s surroundings (and especially her eating habits) is a manifestation of a deeper issue, so I’ll save you the google search of “control freaks” (my image does come up…) and just tell you — I want to control what goes into my body as much as possible. I truly believe most of my life has been spent severing body and mind (see letter to my body here) and eating vegan seems to unify my food choices with my beliefs in a more meaningful manner than vegetarianism has. Veganism is one extra step in my quest to eat less and less processed foods, cook more and more of my own meals, rely on seasonal fruits and vegetables as staples (not just pita, hummus and coffee which have been my recent staples) and to really empower myself to be accountable for what I consume and how that affects me outside of myself. I know I’m being a bit evasive, but we all have our reasons for our lifestyles and I honestly don’t believe in “one-size-fits-all” approaches to health, lifestyle or anything else for that matter. So, hopefully you will enjoy watching me trip and make a fool of myself learning what it means to live vegan (for an example of previous foolishness, see here) and we’ll see if this is something that is as meaninful as I’m hoping (and even practical enough for the long-term).

My family and I celebrate Christmas, so tomorrow I am going to create the following vegan feast to bring along to my brother and sister-in-law’s house for dinner:

• Thai stir-friend tofu from Vegetarian Times (Jan 2010 issue)
• Thai citrus salad from Vegetarian Times (Jan 2010 issue)
• Rice pilaf from The Kind Diet
• The Heart Healthiest Cookies in the World

Is it funny that I bring my own feast to other people’s houses?

Ok, off I go to start a batch of cookies for my twin! What is your favorite holiday dish to cook? To eat? Thoughts on veganism? To all my vegan pals out there, any words of advice?

<3,

The Cranky One

Tags: holiday foods, the Kind Diet, veganism