Posts tagged family
in the meantime...
Literary News and Reviews by a Latent English Scholar
Mori-Nu, Me Love You
I forgot about the joys of silken tofu. Usually I buy a bunch and leave it in the back of my fridge for months and months and months (which is heartless, but cool: the stuff has an incredibly long shelf-life.) Tonight I was grouchy with the munchkins and I felt the need to atone with brownies for the boys and brownie laced breastmilk for the girl. I think everyone went to bed lovin’ me again, because nummy brownies right all wrongs.
Silken tofu replaces eggs and fat and creates a loverly texture, so dense you will not miss the fat. And if you do, you are wrong. And I may fight you.
Healthy Low-Fat Suck-up Brownies
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cups brown rice flour (or sub. any wholegrain flour, just omit the guar gum)
- 1/4 tsp guar gum
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 generous tsp cinnamon
- 1 package Lite Silken Tofu (I use Mori-Nu)
- 1 cup cocoa
- 2 tbs flax seeds
- 1/2 cup apple sauce
- 1 cup (or more, to taste) natural dry sweetener
- 1 tsp vanilla (or other extract such as almond, coconut, orange or mint)
Method
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit and prep a 9”X13” baking pan with cooking spray.
- In a small bowl, stir together flour, guar gum, baking powder, and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a food processor, blend tofu until smooth. Add cocoa and process until blended. Add flax, apple sauce, sweetener and extract, pulsing to blend with each addition.
- Slowly add dry ingredients to food processor (in 2 or 3 batches) and blend until thoroughly mixed.
- Spoon into prepared pan and spread evenly (batter will be very thick).
- Bake for 20-25 minutes. Then give them to the people you were mean to. It’ll be ok, we all have our off days.
Look at this! 10 days ‘til Christmas and the bloody thing still doesn’t have a head! How can I be expected to blog when Mr. Snowman is without head?
Now, if someone had told me when I had the first kid that there were two more plotting conception up there, I definitely wouldn’t have spent three months hand-crafting him the sequined SantaKitty stocking of doom, because what I’ve done now is damned myself. If I don’t craft the other two rascals stockings of equal magnificence there will be ill feelings all around and they will probably start plotting against me and I don’t need the hassle.
What I do need is a little old lady who enjoys this shiz to come and hang out in my basement and get this done. If you have one to spare, please send her along post haste and if she could bring me some New York Seltzer while she’s at it, fantastic. I just can’t stop thinking about the stuff!
Never Mix, Never Worry.
I have been a barely present presence on the Interweb this past week and a half. Turns out being one with the living has its perks too, but I think I’m done now. My half broken computer calls me hence.
What have I been up to?
I feel bad that the focus of this blog has shifted from complaining about my family to concentrate on vegan and sustainable living, so I’m starting a new project for the productive junk which will really allow me to get back to the heart of the matter on this space: how terrible everyone I am related to is.
Case in point:
I guess it is Christmas soon or something because apparently the 7 year old is in dire need of a red scarf and top hat by next Tuesday’s Holiday Concert Extravaganza (which is at 1:45 in the afternoon because most parents are unemployed and need something to get them out of the house midday, right? Also, does anyone else find it somewhat unreasonable to ask every family of a male child to produce a felt top-hat in the year 2009? Where the freak does one find a top hat? I went downtown, but there was no one who even vaguely resembled this guy to steal one off of:
Perhaps I’ll hit the business district this afternoon. There’s got to be a tycoon somewhere who’s willing to share).
So we stop at the playground in the midst of our shoppery to let the 2 year old run off some steam and I notice he has to pee. So I ask him, “Hey buddy, do you have to pee?” but he assures me, in no uncertain terms, that he does not need to pee and I am a huge asshole for even implying such a preposterous suggestion. I spend the next 10 minutes watching him tug mercilessly at his crotch and run in increasingly tiny circles until he is kind of hop spinning in place and giving me the finger every time I gently remind him it is time to visit the potty. I finally convince him to push his own stroller to Starbucks for an apple juice, because what the kid clearly needs at this point is more liquid.
As soon as the juice hits the little bugger’s lips, it’s go time. Now he has to pee and I better produce a potty quick and how could I possibly leave it to the last minute, have I no compassion? So I leave the 7 year old to ensure my soy chai latte is indeed “easy foam” and venture into the handicap bathroom because I truly believe that balancing a squirmy, 30 pound, 2 year old boy over a filthy, heppatitus infected public toilet whilst wearing a squirmy, 21 pound, 10 month old girl in a sling across your belly, all the while trying not to get completely soaked in urine, is a HUGE handicap.
All would have been fine if it was summer and he was sporting his requisite uniform of elastic waist shorts and dirty tank top. But, no, it’s winter, so he’s wearing like 16 t-shirts and his jeans with the fastener that looks like a regular button, but is actually this weird hook thing, but looks so much like a regular button that I fight with it at every bathroom visit because I have the memory of a goldfish these days. And his brand new winter coat: his puffy, fluffy winter coat with the cowboy pockets and super handy detachable hood.
Needless to say it is hard to get a grip on his pants anyway because at this point he has to pee so bad that being still is no longer an option. I am squatting on the aids-in-a-petri-dish floor, wrestling wads of used toilet paper out of the baby girl’s mouth while trying to tug the boy’s pants down without undoing them, all the while wondering if my friendly and eager-to-please 7 year old is being recruited into some sort of Starbucks based prostitution ring (don’t look so smug, they have those in the States too, you know!), but it is all for naught anyway because as soon as his little trouser snake sees the light of day, it is all over.
I hop back on my heels to protect the baby from the backsplash while still holding on to the boy’s hands, leaning him forward like my husband taught me (cuz I don’t have a wang, so I don’t know these tricks) to save his pants and shoes as much as possible.
But it just keeps coming and coming and I have to let go of his hands and take another step back or risk drowning my daughter and I in his steamy wake. “I have ax-nit on floor,” he whimpers, still unleashing a vicious stream at maximum velocity. There is so much pee that I don’t have time to marvel at how cute it is that he says “ax-nit” instead of “accident” and aren’t 2 year olds just darling? It is time to build a dam or risk seepage into Starbucks proper and that will never do. I begin throwing handfuls of paper towel at the puddle and, conscientious little planet saver that he is, the 2 year old immediately bends down, still peeing, mind you, and picks up a soggy mass and offers it to me. “Here Mommy. You drop.”
I swallow a scream, because the last thing I need is a helpful barista in the mix. “No, no touch! Yuck!” I hiss, sounding more evil than I intended, which scares him and he begins lurching towards me with a quivering lip, pants around his ankles, arms out in search of a comforting hug. He’s finally emptied out, so I coax him out of the puddle, try to keep his piss soaked mitts off his sister and begin the daunting task of pulling up the jeans from hell.
But it’s wicked slippery on that there floor.
I feel I need to make a slight digression here. I HATE PUBLIC WASHROOMS. Before having children, I would avoid them at all costs, holding my water for inordinate periods of time, becoming Queen of the Hover. I have nightmares about public washrooms, in which I have to pee so, so, so bad, but every stall door I open reveals a scene more horrifying than the last: pubies, poopies, icky-lady business as far as the eye can see. And we all know that H1N1 actually originated on a McDonald’s bathroom floor in Iowa. So you can understand why what happened next will haunt me until my dying day.
I am yanking up the boy’s jeans with my arms out as far as they’ll extend because I don’t want to germify the girl, but the pants still aren’t undone so it’s a tight squeeze and I don’t have a fantastic grip and his shoes are slippery with his own waste and the next thing I know the boy goes pitching forward and belly flops smack dab in the middle of the yellow pool of his own creation.
I freeze but for a second before the adrenaline kicks in and I have him by the back of his coat, like a hideous parody of a lifeguard frantically pulling my kin to safety. But his shoes keep slipping and I lose my hold—he’s falling again! With lightening fast reflexes I grasp his hood and then the unthinkable happens: one by one I hear the snaps that hold the stupid thing in place releasing and then he is gone, falling to his doom, doing the syphallus front crawl on the bathroom floor and all I have left of my beautiful son is his eerily hollow, unoccupied hood.
Sufficed to say, we did make it out of that bathroom, sans coat, sans dignity. The 7 year old was still there and if he joined some sort of cult in our absence, he’s not telling. Ironically, the first thing the 2 year old did upon emerging from the devastated bathroom was drop his apple juice all over the Starbucks floor. As the friendly barista promptly mopped up the innocuous yellow puddle while ordering my boy another drink, on the house, of course, she assured me that she mops up similar puddles at least 2-3 times a day. And, as I guided my harried clan out of her establishment, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of calm, knowing I ensured her yellow puddle quota would most definitely be met that day.
I expect mywholedeal.com to launch in the coming weeks, so check back often. In the meantime, I will be creating some guest posts for the amazing Vegansaurus and probably cleaning up a lot more pee.
BEST VEGAN RECIPE EVER!
I love my veggie-babies!About Face...And Butt..and Thighs...
A friend posted a link to this site on Facebook today and I’ve been exploring while the monkeys are in their cages.
Aside from the bump in the highway that made me revert back to my “maiden” name, I’ve always considered myself to be more humanist than feminist. This is especially true now that I am raising two small manfriends. Peoples is peoples, my idealist little heart sings, and if gender isn’t an issue for me, why is it such a big deal to everyone else?
Lately though, I realize that I have been desensitized to a lot of crap due to the company I keep. And now that I have daughter, said crap is starting to stink again.
About-face.org focuses on the negative depiction of women in the media. The “offenders” they choose to dissect put out messages that are often overtly demeaning or just plain wrong, but still these ads make their way into our magazines, onto our TVs and computers and most days we fail to give them a second look. But the messages are there, marinating our subconscious so that we know thinner is better and that it’s hilarious for men to be rollicking misogynists.
Case in point:
This ad appeared in Maxim earlier this year. Talk about catering to your target audience, but come on! Nobody thought the term “skank” was a bit much? What about the poor soul in the fish nets? How’s she going to spray away the gonorrhea and spritz on some self-respect? Is there an ad for that in Cosmo?
It’s supposed to be funny. I get it.
If it is, as so many things are, “all in good fun”, is it really no big deal? I have learned to laugh off everything from off-the-cuff remarks to full-on, Talledega Nights style, outright sexist ambushes from friends, family and complete strangers. I smile, I chuckle where I am supposed to or I look appropriately distressed for just the right amount of time to trick my conscience into thinking I am doing the right thing and then I nervously laugh alongside the rest of the normal, everyday people. But do I really want my kids to do this too?
There is something to be said for having a sense of humour and not being the uptight downer all of the time, but why does having a sense of humour have to entail enduring the propagation of norms that shouldn’t be norms?
I don’t want my sons to be misogynistic, heavy drinking, jerks who value women only as non-entities, their sole purpose in life only to fulfill the needs of men. I don’t want my sons to think those qualities are amusing or even the slightest bit okay. I come back to my eloquent statement at the start of this tirade: peoples is peoples. That’s what I want all my children to remember: everybody feels, hurts, elates and loves.
But what does any of this have to do with VeganMoFo, you ask?
Check out this little gem:
About-face.org contributor Sabrina Sierra cites
the most disturbing part of the commercial is when the off-screen narrator announces that the teriyaki burger is “more than just a piece of meat”—implying that Audrina, a woman, is just a piece of meat
But couldn’t he just as easily be drawing a correlation between Madame Bikini and the burger, implying that Audrina, complex woman that she is, is also more than “just a piece of meat”? I mean, she eats crap and cares about her body-so many layers, so many complicated, complicated layers.
I know, I know. Not likely and not good enough.
To me, the most disturbing part of the ad is when she states
“To look this hot in a bikini, I got to give up, like, everything.”
So many issues! Where to begin?
On the one hand, it’s pretty damn honest. You can’t go around stuffing your face with the greasy flesh of tortured dead animals and other processed “foods” and expect not to eventually look like a character straight out of Wall-E. So we’re supposed to believe that she gives up the lion’s share of junk, but sneaks in this one, er, treat. Everything in moderation, right?
And while we’re still on this hand, let’s look at the woman. She really isn’t AS emaciated as some of the role models we are supposed to aspire to. She’s got curves, no bones are protruding anywhere. I believe this girl fuels her party machine on a regular basis, though I seriously doubt it’s at Carl’s Jr. I am sure she is at the bottom end of the spectrum of what is considered to be a healthy weight. So, is telling people they can still be healthy and enjoy and occasional indulgence really so wrong?
Here comes that other hand.
“More than just a piece of meat.” Whereas, by a huge leap of the imagination that I am sure only I will take, I can almost skew this statement enough to make in empowering to women (look past my gold bikini and into my thoughts and travails), when it come to animals, there is no way to make it anything more than what it is: an accurate summation of how this society views other species. Animals are exploited their entire lives until finally all that is left are some valueless pieces of flesh.
So, let’s empower women by empowering animals. Human-beings are not supposed to eat the processed, horrible garbage that poor Audrina has to deprive herself of anyway. If people primarily ate the wonderful whole foods that occur naturally in, you guessed it, NATURE, we would all be the shape we are naturally supposed to be, and I bet it would look closer to Audrina than Kirstie Alley (I’m sorry, Kirstie. Now put down the popcorn chicken).
I love my daughter with every cell in my being and I don’t want her to starve herself so she can look like some impossible ideal. Nor do I want her to compromise her health by embracing the flip-side of that coin and eating whatever chemically over-processed crap might satisfy her flavour-hole because “why should she be deprived of anything”? It absolutely KILLS me when I see obese parents rearing obese kids and insisting that they are happy with how they are, big is beautiful and how dare we judge? Those parents aren’t even giving their kids a chance!
Our bodies need wholegrains, fresh veggies, lean protein. Our brains need healthy, natural oils. Our bodies do not need petroleum products, sugary soft drinks, the hormone and antibiotic soaked flesh of other living creatures. Is it really so hard to offer an apple in place of chocolate chip granola bar? Fruit juice in place of Kool-Aid? Grown-ups are in charge of buying the groceries: a kid will never have to give up “like everything” if they are never exposed to garbage like Carl’s Jr. in the first place. None of my children have ever eaten fast food. Do they miss it? NO BECAUSE THEY’VE NEVER HAD IT! Fast food isn’t real food. My kids eat real food and they like real food. I am sure they would love the taste of some salty, beef tallow fries, too, but until they can make an educated decision for themselves, until they can weigh the pros and cons of ingesting that poison and make a real choice, I won’t put their bodies through that. I will feed my babies real people food, not mad-scientist, capitalist tripe.
whew.
So, I guess what I want to say is that I am giving my children the gift of a healthy start. Our humane diet leaves little chance that my baby girl (or either of my strapping lads, if they so choose) won’t look smoking hot in a gold bikini. But she will also have a strong heart, a complex mind and a kind soul to fill out that healthy rack.
(Special thanks to dirtyolive.net for the fodder!)
A Happy Thanksgiving?
Made this with the 7 year old this afternoon while the little’uns were napping. He insisted that adding a ‘?’ and the word “A” would made it infinitely more clever and I have to agree. Cuz a turkey would question the happiness of a day dedicated to its own decapitation, no? Luckily this turkey didn’t have to worry: we eat neither poultry nor paper in this house.
The kid was all about turkey and hilarity today.
Husband was still chained to his desk, but I did something I never do and thought ahead rather than get stressed out, so what could have been a hellish day went off without a hitch.
We played. We ate breakfast. The baby napped. The boys helped me bake and prep the make ahead stuff for dinner. We blew bubbles. Then I piled the beasties into the van and me and the wee people went to Goldstream and threw rocks in the river all afternoon. When the 7 year old wouldn’t follow another boy into a creepy hollowed out tree, he was called a chicken, to which he promptly replied, “Don’t you think you better call me a turkey today?” (see, turkey hilarity!) I love my non-confrontational cutie.
Then the babies napped and I got to craft and watch Clue with the 7 year old (and it was still good, unlike most of the stuff I liked when I was little. I mean, really. Back to the Future 2? Hover boards or no hover boards, that is a sad, sad sequel.)
Everyone got up in time for supper and it was tasty and flavourful and happy and good (even if the 2 year old ate mostly whipped “cream” and the baby pooped at the table). sigh. Cheezy-ness aside, I truly am thankful for my perfect little family.
And the food?
I give Yves Turkey Dinners a quailfied thumbs up. The gravy was a little salty and the stuffing, though tasty and multigrain, couldn’t compare to my lentil-stuffed butternut squash.
The “turkey breasts” have WAY better taste and texture than Tofurky and they cook much faster too. All in all though, I made way too much other delicious, homemade stuff, so they were kind of an unnecessary, pre-fab space hog on the plate.
I guess if you just wanted something quick and no-fuss, a TV dinner kind of thing, Yves would be the way to go. These dinners retail regularly at $9.99 per package, which includes stuffing (that you need your own broth for), gravy mix and two “turkey breasts”. I bought two kits, but only made the stuffing and gravy from one pack. It would be better if the turkey things were just sold separately, because I don’t see myself spending $20 in the future just so my husband can have a little simulated protein on the plate. There are other, less expensive, pseudo-meats for that.
So you’re not back in my good book yet, Yves. Keep at’er, though.
Happy Thankgiving, everybody. I’m going to burst through my own stomach lining and sneak one more bite of fat free pumpkin pie. Joey was right, maternity wear is the way to go during the holidays.
I Want This Tradition Too!
I LOVE this idea. From now on we are going to take the money we would have spent on “holiday meat” and donate it to our local BCSPCA.
Thanks for the inspiration!
(And thanks to www.eben.com for the neato turkey illustration)
Grandpa Mac, Woofer and Dad, circa 1979
I Miss My Grandpa
And I always will.
It has been six years today since we lost my Grandpa Mac to evil, evil cancer. If I had to lay bets, I would have guessed that he’d be the last of my grandparents to go, but life is one crazy mixed up mother-so-and-so.
To me, Grandpa Mac was incredible. He’d arrive in the summer with fishing and canning and berries and jam in his wake. He made root beer. He competed in the BC Summer games and let me and my cousin make bullets in his creepy laundry room. He took me bowling and on long hikes and let me pick stuff from his garden. He introduced me to the wonder that is beets. He taught me how to play crib and Scrabble and crokinole. He offered porridge, but always made me pancakes.
He taught me how to Nordic ski, tried in vain to teach me downhill and let me drive his truck when I shouldn’t have. He had the sweetest orange snowmobile and I loved to watch him tow my Dad behind it. He showed me mica and skat and how to be easy-going when everyone around you is just the opposite (not that I’ve mastered that skill, by any means).
He made me feel athletic when everyone else around me made me feel fat. He made me feel listened to when I really just thought I was a nuisance.
He made me feel better about losing my cat. He taught my oldest son how to walk. He never thought he’d see a great-grandchild and he held two.
He is the only person in my entire existence that I ever spent an extended amount of time with and NEVER had a disagreement with. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it speaks volumes for him.
I love my Grandpa Mac. No one in the world is perfect, but I am thankful I’ve been allowed to idolize him as such.
Cheers, Grandpa Mac. You are thought of everyday.
New “Cribs” Not so “Fresh”
We did the big bed shuffle this weekend. Out with the old baby, in with the new. To say it is going well would be bold faced lie.
Problem A: Toddler pee is a lot harder to get out of a cushy bunk-bed mattress than it is to hose off of the vinyl crib mattress.
Problem B: The baby doesn’t seem to grasp that the beautiful pink oasis I’ve crafted for her is for SLEEPING! Sleeping, I say!
sigh. I love my kids. Even when they’re being a little jerky. I’m just saying! At least the Catman is just as even keeled as ever. Or plotting against me silently, whatev.
Tomorrow, ye be another day. Yar.
AND: check out my latest fall recipes on suite101. I dare you.
Good Friends Make it All Better
What a week!
Just got home from meeting the most beautiful baby that didn’t come out of me. Did I ever need to be surrounded by the relaxed, unconditional love that is the Core.
The Core is five of us lovely ladies that have been best friends since elementary school. We call ourselves “the Core” because we are all very different and we’ve all branched off and made friends with similar interests at various times, but when it comes right down to it, the five of us are at the Core of it all. We will always be friends and always come back to each other. And even though we’ve spread ourselves across the globe—one of us now calls the Cayman Islands home—and chosen markedly different paths in life, it is so comforting to know that when we do get together, everything is just as it’s always been.
Four of us have kids of our own now, the latest addition to the Baby Core having the courteousy to be born on one of her surrogate aunties’ birthdays yesterday. I am so excited to watch our babies grow up together and so thankful to have such kind and funny people in my life that can pull me out of any funk I stumble into.
And that is the key right there: we have been through some intense and stupid stuff in our 20+ years of friendship, but we always, always, always know when to let stuff go and smile and laugh again. I love my girls like family, even though I don’t talk to them every day or even every month. There are no secret grudges or imaginary plots (well, maybe some, but we drink those puppies away). We understand that life is busy and it often gets in the way of communication, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be there in an instant when we’re really needed.
The Core makes all the bull-shit seem even more bull-shittier, but also funnier and less consequential in the long run. I have the love of an amazing man who is my family, my life. I have three super-incredible babies who make every second of my day make sense. I have caring and supportive parents who will never judge me no matter how clueless I can be at times. And I have friends: plenty of fabulous, amazing, gorgeous friends who are marrying and procreating at an alarming rate and will keep my heart busy and happy for the rest of my life.
Things are good. I can breathe again now.
