Time to Say So Long...But Not Goodbye.

Hello everyone! Long time no blog, I know, I know. I'm ashamed.

Fact is, we're no longer vegan. No longer even vegetarian. That's the main reason I just let this blog die.

I could go into a long-winded explanation of why, but really I just don't want to dwell. I really do think veganism is the best way to go and will save the planet someday, but for now, based on our jobs, our personal issues and the pace of our individual lives it's just not workable at the moment.

I'm proud to say though that my teenage daughter is still a vegetarian. I still have quinoa in my cupboard and tofu in my freezer. We still eat vegan meals all the time....We just needed more flexibility in our choices for the time being.

At any rate, I am starting a new blog that has nothing to do with food or veganism; it's all about how comical life can be in small-town Canada with two teenagers close to leaving the nest.

If you want to check it out, it's located here:

http://sillyinthesuburbs.blogspot.com/

There may be some non-vegan chow that slips in there now and again, and I know some of you are sensitive to that, so be forewarned. Also be warned that the new blog will not be for the sensitive or easily offended, so note that also.

THIS here blog will be deleted within the month, so if there is any recipes you've been using, now is the time to print them out.

Peace!

~Tracy~

Baby, We Thought it Over....

OK, how many of youse guys are familiar with the infamous Baby Think it Over?  Seems like just yesterday that my daughter dragged home this screaming plastic waste of time. This year, it was my son's turn.

Now, for those of you who have been either under a rock or stranded on a desert island somewhere, the Baby Think it Over is a life sized plastic brat designed to simulate the experience of having to take care of a real baby for the weekend, intended, I suppose, to make the kid hate it so much that they immediately go out and buy a lifetime supply of propylactics.

Well, I can understand the Powers That Be wanting teenage girls to have to deal with it, because in my experience, they're the ones that think babies are as adorable as all get out, and want to have one so they can dress it up all cute and shit and stroll around with it.

BUT fifteen year old boys don't have that problem. They have no interest in having a baby. They just want to be left alone to play World of Warcraft and ride their bikes to the store. I know that my son wants a baby about as much as he wants to put on a dress and dance in the Santa Claus parade.

BUT, we had to put up with the baby anyway. Dan brought it home last Friday, and despite the fact that we actually have a cradle in the attic, he decided to have it sleep in the cat bed.

This baby screamed, cooed, cried and breathed just like a normal baby for the duration of the weekend, and it was my son's job to take care of it. All I can say is, I'm damn glad that the baby didn't come with a voice recorder, because the air was blue in his room most of the time. He cursed, swore, and berated that baby, signed, moaned, and muttered at it, and more or less told the baby how much he hated it at least once an hour. I had to talk him down at 3:30 in the morning, because he was getting ready to put the baby in a sack and lock it in the basement.

At one point, he even figured out how to make the baby feed itself while he played video games....

I wanted him to take the baby up on the roof and dangle him off like Michael Jackson did with his kid, but I guess it ultimately says something about his "parenting skills" that he wouldn't allow that.

That didn't stop us from pretending to set it on fire while he was in the shower....

We all sighed in relief when the baby went back in his bag and went back to school Monday morning. So, what did this experience teach my son?

Not a damn thing.

It will be years before my son has babies, (let alone baby making, on his radar.)  All that was achieved here was fucking up his weekend. I guess if the idea was to make him hate this baby with a white-hot rage that almost caused him to do it in, then HEY! I guess the Powers That Be were successful after all....

My Liver is Da Bomb

OK people. Lots of news to report, some of it marginally food related, so here goes.

I just want to let you all know that my cat was kind enough to help me do paperwork today. So damn thoughtful of him....

Little cat bastard. Look, animal lovers of the world, don't take this the wrong way, but some days I seriously want to take this cat and punt him right off the verandah and into the lilac bush on the other side of the driveway.

Having this 13 pound "kitten" has sure been an adventure. I mean, he's mellowing out some, but some days he can really try a gals patience. Like yesterday. This cat has some lovely, soft, long, billowly hair which is a joy to touch, kinda fun to brush, but A FUCKIN' PISS OFF TO GET CAT SHIT OUT OF!

I mean, this cat cannot seem to take a shit without (apparently) squirming his hind end into the pile before he covers it up. I don't actually witness this, but I cannot for the life of me fathom how he manages it otherwise.I've had to wrestle him down and cut shit off his ass while naked and dripping from the shower. (We did laps inside that bathroom. There was shit and bubble bath everywhere.)

And just yesterday, I had no choice but to dig my fingernails on one hand into a wad of cat crap whilst slicing it out of his ass fur with the other. Then he proceded to celebrate by vomiting under the table. It had started to dry by the time I saw it and had to be pried off with a butter knife.

OK, you all know of course I love him anyway. But never let anyone tell you that cats are so easy to take care of. (PS: I got some clippers, and we're shaving down his nether parts tonight.)

IN OTHER NEWS: It seems that the Canadian Army Reserve thinks that if you're my age ( a ripe old forty years young, baby) you must have one foot on a banana peel. That is the only explanation I can think of why they now require us "old folks" to get a full medical in order to work at cadet camp this summer, (despite the fact that they gave me the Full Monty two years ago, including the piss-in-a-cup.)

So the taxpayers funded another full checkup which only confirmed what I already knew:

I am a Goddess. Rowr.

My doctor took my blood pressure, which was a sweet 118/80, naturally, despite the fact that me and salt are illicit friends. My liver is the Smexiest liver my doctor has palpated yet this year, (despite the fact that I think Jack Daniels really should have been knighted.) OK, I'm kinda paraphrasing about that but she was impressed. I saw it by the hunger in her eyes...

Not only that but my cholesterol is 158 (4.1 to you Canadian Metric geeks) with an HDL that's so high it's off the grid, and a disgustingly ideal 2.2 ratio. Take that, beef eating beeyotches...

Seriously though, I credit my near-vegan diet for my stoo-pendous numbers. I even photocopied the bloodtest cuz I figured they wouldn't believe me if I just wrote it down. (WHAT? A forty-year old without High Cholesterol and High Blood pressure? Gadzooks, lets get her on the table and let aliens probe her anally!)

Finally, this is a note to all my buds north of the border. Seems my article about the Nudist Colony I wrote for Saltscapes last summer has been bought, and condensed, and thoroughly masturbated to by none other than Reader's Digest! (OK, I'm guessing about the masturbation thing...) But it results in a few bucks that I had to do nothing for other than jump up and down and freak out a little. Please do me a favor if you're a Canuck and buy the mag on July 10th, and then write them a letter and tell them how Smexy my liver is.

I wish I was kidding about that.....

SmartFood, You're Fucking STOOPID!

So, I'm in Ye Olde Supermarket this morning, just minding my own business. Well, not really. I was there actually spying on the nuts and bolts of all the shiz they sell there. See, part of my "bizness" includes a tour of our local food emporiums, showing those folks that are "not-in-the-know" all the crazy business that goes on there, and all the ways The Man tries to trick us into buying stuff that is baaaaaad for us and otherwise manipulate our tired little minds.

Like this little trick. I took a moment to point out to a sweet elderly couple how the store tries to trick them into purchasing the store brand of, well, everything. We read from left to right, and when we look at something our eyes automatically drift to the right. Like when we look at a scrumptious box of cereal.

From the Cheerios, to the Cardboard-in-a-Box that is generic....

The Oldsters were intrigued, but then tried to distract me from my mission with questions about the benefits of Cornflakes vs: Shreddies. I mumbled something fibre related and escaped.
And then, it happened. I stumbled on what is likely the most awful, the most decpetive, the most cringe-worthy product I have seen on the shelves in a loooong while:

SMARTFOOD.

EGAD! It makes my pubic hair stand on end just thinking that some misguided parental type will believe that this is a "Smart Food" to give their chubby little progeny. Let's turn this box around and eyeball the specifics:

These little bags 'o crap are billed as "popcorn clusters, chocolate cookie caramel pecan", (naturally flavored, naturally.) The box sells for $3.49 for six individual bags of 28 grams apiece.

The website touts the benefits of this product as including the following stellar atributes:

"TransFat Free!" (Who cares? It still has 3.5 grams of fat that's still going to go straight to your thighs.)

"Porcine Free!" (WTF??? Why would I expect my popcorn to contain swine by-products anyway??)

"Onion Free!" (Again, what are you people smoking? Not only is onion allergy not exactly a growing problem, to me, this is akin to advertising Tomato Soup as being Free of Chocolate.)

"Excellent Source of Calcium!" (Excuse me? Unless I am mental, the Nutrition Facts list this item as having ZERO PERCENT of your daily calcium. Explain, please?? Especially since the ingredients, that I will helpfully list here, contain the following:

"Brown Rice Syrup, (sugar) Inulin (fake added fibre), popcorn, chocolate cookie, (enriched wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa powder, modified corn starch, molasses, salt, natural flavour) sugar, pecans, soy lecithin, natural flavours, salt."

I don't see much on this list that makes me scream "High Source of calcium!" Maybe I'm wrong. Do you??

I DO see four different sugars and some oil though. Smart of them to put that much sugar in there to soak up the grease, eh?

The box itself only really promotes the "High Fibre" angle, five whole grams per greasy little bag! Let's compare, for shits and giggles, the stats for this product compared to plain old air popped popcorn, (28 grams of which would likely cost you, oh, 5 cents maybe?)

1 pack Smart Food has 130 calories.

28 gm popcorn has 110 calories (bit is also over 3 cups of food compared to a tiny palmful of this stuff)

1 pack Smart Food has 3.5 grams of fat, .5 of which is saturated.

Air popped corn has 1.3 grams.

1 pack Smart Food has 8 grams of sugar.

Three cups of popcorn has 0.2

1 pack Smart Food has 5 grams of fibre.

Three cups of popcorn has 4.1, plus you can eat ever so much more of it because it's cheap as dirt.

1 pack Smart Food has 80 mg of sodium.

The popcorn has like, TWO.

SmartFood (and your satanic manufacturer Frito Lay), hereby win my weekly prize for the ShitHole Company of the week for attempting to convince decent, if uninformed, hard working folks that your overprocessed crap is actually healthy for them. No goddamn wonder kids are porky these days. Shame on you....

Bowel Massaging Food! And Free Shipping! And Cats!

OK, let me just start off with this shot of my cat Stanley, getting all alien-like in the front seat of a car....

A buddy of my son's dropped by for a visit and left his car window open. I glance out and what do I see....just made me snort a little. That is all....

In other news, let's talk about food a little for a change. As my biz-ness is launching a week from today (GASP!) I have running around like crazy trying to get everything done. I took delivery on Friday of all kinds of shweet bling with my name on it, including pens, notepads, flyers, rubber stamps, etc. with my handle emblazoned all over. Made me feel all puffed and important with myself, I must say! I went and cleaned the littlerbox immediately after so I could bring myself down to earth.

ANYWAY, when you spend all your waking hours immersed in healthy shiz, you start to look at your plate and think, Goddammit, I can do better than this! So I'm doing it.

Personally, of all the diets I have read about, tried, discarded, praised, mocked, succeeded on, etc, the one I would say is the absolute best is "Eat for Life" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. If you haven't read it, get your fat booty down to the bookstore and buy it. NOW!

I myself have owned said book for quite some time, and have never really followed the plan, not because I don't believe in it, but because, well., sometimes I iz weak, and this plan does require some get-up-and-go to get up and get at it. But, motivation recently sprang in the form of a challenge from my Darling Daughter. She picked up the book from the counter the other day (she has read it also) and bet me that she could follow the plan for at least week and that I couldn't. In fact, she predicted I would crumble on Day Two.

OK, Beeyotch, You. Are. On!

. In case you aren't "in the know", this diet requires that you aim for a full pound of raw non-starchy veg a day, a pound of cooked veg, a small handful of raw nuts, a cup of legumes, and a cup of whole grains or starchy veg. Oh, and a wee bit of ground flax. That is all. No Diet Pepsi, no peanut butter toast, no veggie burgers, no cookies. For me, the toast with PB is the tough one. For my daughter, it will be fruit juice and pasta. We'll see who the better woman is!

So, here is my report for the morning of Day Three:

I have peed non-stop the last two days. Literally every hour on the hour. And that's a good thing, as it means I was bloated before, likely due to the fact that we are huge fans of salt. I've slept great, except for the constant up-and-down to the toilet. I may have to invest in Depends.

Last night I dreamed of water, no word of a lie. Swimming pools, diving boards, oceans, rain. All water, all night long. Weirded me out.

Next observation: Although I have eaten nothing that isn't Fuhrman-approved, I also have not managed to chew my way through the massive amount of produce that is required. I would literally have to eat all day long. Last night at supper, my jaw got tired during the green beans. I had to prop up my chin and shove it up and down manually.

We are eating a wide variety of delightful greenery....just yesterday, I ate at least a small amount of the following foodstuffs:

Tomatoes, onions, garlic, corn, bell peppers, spinach, romaine lettuce, iceburg lettuce, arugula, leaf lettuce, carrots, rutabaga, cucumber, red cabbage, carrots, green beans and mushroom, (not to mention the lentils and kidney beans. ) And I have not yet, (ahem) visited the powder room with in two days. I think my intestines are down there puzzled as fuck about what I've been up to. I'm sure when the time comes, though, it's gonna be a doozy. I have magazines all stacked up and ready next to the TP holder.

As of yet, I have not been tempted to stray, likely beause I simply don't have time to think about toast when I'm working my way through this much salad. I have to say, though, I feel  just heavenly and I know it's because every mouthful of food is chock-full of nutritional deliciousness. Not that I don't think we ate well before, but...well....this is eating well to the 100th degree!

I give my daughter one more day until she caves.

In other news: Until May 1st Lulu.com is offering Free Shipping in the USA if you order a hardcopy of my book! That's pretty cool. Just visit mah cookbook here:

MAH COOKBOOK!!!

And when checking out, use coupon code: FREEMAIL305 to get Free Shipping (or $3.99 off the cost if you are outside the USA.)  It's an unpretentious little book but I've heard good feedback on it. Makes me think I might work on a new one this summer.....:0)

I'll check back in with y'all in a few days and let you know if The Daughter throws in the towell or if we are both speeding toward Eat to Live glory. Until then...someone eat some toast for me, OK?

Peace!

Sorry for My Disgusting Absence...but I've been Undercover!

Good Lord, I should be shot with a ball of my own shit for going this long without blogging. I really don't have any excuse, but I'm going to try and come up with one anyway. (It's not a lie if YOU believe it, right??)

Anyway, for three weeks in March I got the chance to "go undercover" and work a plebian job at a new business supply store setting up shop in the area. I don't want to really tell you who it is exactly, for fear of a punishing lawsuit,  so we'll just call it "Graples."

I actually was chosen to help set up the new store, for the grand sum of $8.75 an hour. I found the whole experience interesting and eye-opening for several reasons, all of which I plan to share here, so go top up your coffee, OK?

Alright, I have to confess to not having worked retail since the days when I was busy re-bagging expired deli meat at a supermarket at the age of 16. So this was almost new to me. I also don't remember the last time I worked for that little money. But I was bored and needed some excitement, so whatevs.

When I arrived I was instantly puzzled by the insanely diverse range of humanity that had been signed on for this little gig. We had everything from a heavily tattooed chap with ADHD to a man who just did two tours of duty in Afghanistan, a girl who was so stupid and lisped so bad I only understood every third sentence, and an older gentleman with severe hernias who played with swords amd was suspicious of everyone and everything. And then, there was me.

Now, if there is one thing I hate more than anything, it's people who treat me like I'm stupid. The folks in charge of this little wing-ding got off on the wrong foot with me right from the start by treating me like a drooling moron. (Too be fair though, they treated everyone that way.) I resented the assumption that just cuz we were stocking shelves for minimum wage, our parents must have been cousins. Take a lesson, Graples: Not always so.

At any rate, they eventually figured out that my brain did more than occupy skull space, and I ended up the store darling, called upon for my anal-retentive merchandising genius, along with my ability to count well.

I did, however, totally fail at putting sticky black lines straight up and down on the shelves. I was told that 75% of my lines were in fact crooked, (much like myself, I might add.)

The whole experience taught me that not only can I wield a box-cutter like a homicidal psychopath, I also have a future in shelf-stocking should I ever give up my day job. The only really bad part was my poor widdle hands: My cuticles ended up like raw meat, and my nails are only now beginning to grow out.

ANYWAY, moving on to something margianlly food related:

I am offcially launching my nutrition consulting business on May 3rd!

Clicking on the link above will take you to my brand new website, designed for yours truly by a local twelth-grader, (so keep that in mind, OK? Me too poor to hire professionals...)

Although I don't overtly bill myself as a vegetarian consultant, my evil plan is to ultimately lead just about everyone I can down that path, because I truly believe, after much study and personal experience, that it is the healthiest diet on the planet.

That being said, I also started a new blog, which will enable me to add content to my site without having to screw with the much more complicated programming of the site itself. It's located here:

http://www.yourbestlifenutrition.blogspot.com/

It's just getting started, and will address issues that non-vegetarians are facing when it comes to food choices, so please be aware of that before you send me angry emails asking why I'm talking about eggs and shit. Gotta speak to everyone out there or I risk having this venture tank badly.

LASTLY, I now have my every own FACEBOOK GROUP! YeeHaw!

You can find it by looking up Your Best Life! Nutrition and Lifestyle Coaching in Facebook. I would now most humbly ask that all of you fine folks who don't hate me and wish me to succeed in my plan of vegan world-domination to please join my group. It does not matter that you live in Timbuktu, I want you anyway! When the business launches in two weeks, I would love for new clients to see my bulging Fan List and think, "Holy Shit! This chick must be on to something if people in Timbuktu are lovin' it!"

Anyway, I promise to update more in the future. I've been thinking lately about such diverse subjects as finance, drivers over sixty-five and yeast infections, so tune in for that.

Until then, peace and puppies to you all...:0)

OK, I Don't CARE What You Are Doing, Watch These NOW!!!

Ok, for this one time only I am NOT going to make excuses for the sick ass sense of humor I seem to have inherited. (Actually, I don't know if I ever did try to do that. Suck it up, bitches.) My body may say that it's forty, but my brain keeps thinking it's seventeen.

This has nothing to do with food, except for the occasional oblique reference related to something sexual. Foodbuzz, I am officially sorry that I am super failing in the food blogging department, but at this moment in my life I just would rather look at NSFW videos on the internet than whip up a vegan souffle. (Sue me, if you can find me. Speaking of sueing me,where the hell are those SEO blog people? I want someone to pay me again to basically ream them out publically on the net.

Anyway, I implore you to watch the following videos. If you are insanely religious, or dislike Justin Timberlake, have issues with your sexuality or are just simply a Super Douche, don't bother. You won't get it. But if you are a freewheelin' child of the 80's (I'm thinking of you, Carrie!) you should sooooo get these. Enjoy!

And the follow up......

@ Yahoo! Video

And this reasonably unrelated gem....

If, after watching all of these you think I need to be committed, I won't argue. But I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time, and I hope that if my husband happens to drop dead Andy Samberg will consider me as his Cougar. Nuff Said. Night all....

An Open Letter to My Cat....

Hello, Cat.

First, don't even TRY to claim that you can't read this letter, because I know better.

I know that you aren't really a creature of the feline persuasion, but instead, a cleverly disguised space alien sent here by a culture more intelligent that ours with the express purpose of making my life difficult.

Sure, you were cute at first, an average sized, reasonably attractive, somewhat eccentric little puffpall.

I found it charming, back in those golden days, when you would climb up on the computer desk and keep me company. I served Your Majesty diligently and without complaint, serving up the choicest Kibble and cleaning the disgusting litter box without complaint, (even when you would misjudge your stance and shit on the floor instead of the box.) I was just that smitten.

But I just want you to know that things have changed. My feelings for you have, shall we say, soured considerably.

I guess it all started on that fateful morning in January, when I tiptoed into my daughter's room in the dark early morning to wake her. Little did I know that you had kindly deposited a fetid puddle of liquid cat vomit smack-dab in the middle of her hard wood floor, causing me to skid, (barefoot, mind you) across the floor and almost do a header into the television set.  There's nothing quite like the feeling of cold liquid cat effluent between your toes when you haven't even had your first cup of coffee yet. My mood did not improve when I quickly discovered that this puddle was merely the soupy finale to two other piles, in various degrees of chunkiness, scattered throughout my dining room.

Listen, that wasn't the last time we've had this discussion. If you really need to toss your kibble, at least have the decency to do it somewhere more convenient for clean-up, and not places like under the bed and in the middle of the dining room table. But that's not the worst of it.

Maybe you didn't get the memo, but cats are supposed to be delicate creatures. They nibble daintily at their meal, unlike you, who seems to want to bury your whole head in the food bowl like a pig at the trough. The area around your food dishes look like Nagasaki 24-7. Maybe, just maybe, if you didn't try to inhale your meals like you're at the Indianapolis 500 you wouldn't barf so much. Or, while we're on the subject. GROW SO BIG.

Yes, yes, I hear you. I know you're a Maine Coon and you're supposed to be big. And I also get that my darling husband wanted you specifically because of your potential monstrous proportions. but Dear God! I never would have pictured the chaos and destruction that was going to result from having a twelve-pound KITTEN careening around the house!

I forgave you when you broke my glass candleholder. What was I thinking, to leave something so delicate ON TOP OF THE TABLE? And I confess at first that I thought you intelligent when you figured out how to turn the lights on and off in my bedroom. But I started to get irritated when you were caught on the kitchen counter licking the peanut butter off my sandwich. And it's starting to drive me slightly off my rocker that I straighten my kitchen mats a minimum of seventeen times a day, only to find them just like this five minutes later:

Please, please, can you just leave the mats alone for a day or two? It's only a matter of time before I trip on them in the dark and go flying face-first into the countertop.

Look, I understand you're trying, and I confess that I'm not perfect either, but at least I have the decency to leave your food alone. That's why I wasn't impressed when I caught you yesterday pulling my toast out of the toaster with your teeth before I had a chance to get to it. I understand that you like to lay by the toaster, and I've learned to tolerate cat hair in the jam, but stealing my breakfast is over the line, buddy.

That's why I've come to the conclusion that in order for us to be housemates, we need to put some rules in place. I pay the mortgage here, you little shithead, not you, so you either follow these rules or you can hit the road, Jack!

One, keep your ass out of my bowl of snacks. I know you wanted to eat a ladybug lurking around the lightbulb, but I just can't tolerate Doritos once they've been near your hindquarters.

Two, stay out of places that you don't belong. This would include my wine rack (see below) my bathtub while I'm in it, my kitchen island while cookies are cooling on it, the table while we're eating on it (actually, all the time would be better) and the woodbox. (I'm tired of brushing sawdust out of your fur.)

And third, how about not destroying anything else that doesn't belong to you? This would include (but is not limited to) chewing the strings off my bamboo blinds, tearing my paper towels into a million peices, shoving my blender off the counter onto the floor, using my luggage as a scratching post, and choosing to nap on top of all my dark-colored sweaters. (Yes, I know that fur doesn't technically ruin the sweaters, but it sure is a bitch to de-lint them!)

If you can make the concious decision to follow all the above rules, I guess you can stay. After all, you're kinda cute, and the fact that you're going to be the size of a small pony is going to be interesting. But the next time you decide that having a boiling case of diarrhea requires you to roll in it after the fact, all bets are off.

Signed, The Management.