Brain Injury =Vegan

I'm tempted to make the joke that I'm vegan because I have a serious head injury.            Bada Bah!
Get it??? <grin>

That wouldn't exactly be inaccurate...but I didn't wake from the coma and decide, then and there, to stop eating animals and their secretions.
My vegan path began with reading Skinny Bitch. (More details here.)
I started for selfish reasons. I wanted to lose weight and get healthy. I mean, good reasons, but all about me.
I stay vegan for ethics. Because it's the right thing to do.
Because taste doesn't trump ethics.

I hear rape is a pleasurable and satisfying activity for many people too . . .

My brain was slowly recovering from the injury as I began researching more and more.
It literally felt like the lights turned on in my brain. Like I'd been living in a dark cave for the first 28 years of my life and someone had somehow let the sun in.
I've heard this same truth from other vegans and I doubt that many of these vegans have brains that were also damaged.
As I obsessively researched, I discovered that a vegan diet can be very healthy. Provided I'm eating real, whole food, like fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds, and not just eating junk like Sweet Chili Heat Doritos, Oreos, and Coke.

I discovered that a vegan diet benefits my health, it's really good for the nonhuman animals, and it's great for the planet.
                             Kind of a no-brainer.

Oops! Missed Blogging Yesterday...

I do apologize.
Totally spaced and didn't blog at all yesterday!

This is why I didn't blog:

Wednesday nights, Troy and I alternate hosting supper with another couple we are friends with, Katie & Riley. It was on Thursday nights, but our schedules had to be shuffled around.
We've been doing this since September 2011. It's been working great! Of course, it's always a vegan dish! And it's always been delicious!

Okay, not totally true.
There was a lasagna that really didn't work out, so we got takeout from 13th Ave Coffee House. But everything else=amazing!
This week, it was Katie & Riley's turn to host. We had Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Pasta Primavera with Fresh Veggies and Herbs, a salad(we do win friends with salad!), and a fruit salad. Super good!

Katie's Cupcake-style Cake

Katie was trying to make a cake for her boss's birthday, she had already tried twice. She makes these really cool, cupcake-style cakes using this cake pan that is poorly designed. Like the one she made for my 30th birthday!
The problem is that there are two 'cake' parts to the single pan, but they're different from each other in shape and size, so it doesn't bake evenly. One cake gets super cooked, and the other cake is liquid inside.
She also has to contend with an oven that doesn't work well.

I invited them back to our place to try baking the cake again, using our 3 year-old stove/oven. Plus we have a dishwasher, and they would have to do dishes again, by hand at home.
So Riley & Katie came over to bake the cake, while Troy went to his parents to fix the hood of our car(it broke in the cold!). We got it mostly baked out, and Troy came home with his brother, Tyler and his girlfriend, Andrea in tow. Then Troy's cousin, Jay came over too.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but people exhaust me. I also have a hard-time paying any attention(making me more tired) when I can hear another conversation, while trying to maintain the conversation I am in.
Wednesday night was exhausting for me.
Katie, Riley and I were baking in the kitchen and everyone else was in the dining room, visiting. It got really loud, and distracting. And exhausting.
Don't get me wrong. I had a good time, it was fun, and awesome hanging out with everyone, but I paid for it later.

***The cake didn't work again. <wah wah> Clearly, we need to alter the cake pan and make it awesome!***
Luckily, Troy is a machinist, and he works with metal and such all the time!

On Thursday, I didn't do anything. Nothing.
Friday, we got some fresh produce in the morning. In the afternoon, we tried cooking the couple of appetizers for another dinner date we have next week.
Andrea(another Andrea), is trying vegan for the month of January for a nutrition class she's taking. She has to write a paper(I think...?), and wanted to pick my brain over dinner.
Of course, I said yes, love talking vegan!

She can't eat soy or nuts, so I wanted an appy that she could eat. We are making Curried Chickpea Cakes from Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook: Crazy Delicious Recipes That Are Good to the Earth and Great for Your Bod by Kim Barnouin and Pineapple Mango Chutney from Color Me Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.
OMG! Had these dishes last night(with steamed broccoli, snap peas and vegan garlic toast) and amazing.

A Vegan Living With A Non-Vegan

I read Skinny Bitch in the spring of 2010.
Once I read that book, I knew my life would be forever changed. I began reading aloud to Troy, the parts that I thought would interest him. I was blown away by a lot of the information, and I figured Troy would be too. It introduced some nutrition and health ideas that we had never heard or even considered before.
How can milk be bad for you?!?

I can't recall exactly how Troy reacted to my announcement that I was becoming vegan. Actually, I can't recall even telling him. It just seemed like the natural next step as I learned more about the food industries.
Well, of course I'm becoming vegan!

He simply asked if I understood that I would have to learn to cook. I said that did occur to me, but I really wanted to try this vegan stuff. He said he was fine as long as he wasn't required to go vegan too.
He wasn't. And isn't.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Troy didn't typically cook or eat a lot of plants. Pasta and bread, sure! But his experiences in the kitchen has primarily been preparing parts of dead animals and their secretions, or baking with their secretions.
We learned a megaton that first few months.
I read Troy Skinny Bastard, Eating Animals, The China Study, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows,  and The 30-Day Vegan Challenge over the last year and a bit. Reading aloud has been very helpful in practicing my speech.
If I'm not good at something: practice, practice, practice.
It's good to read books too because it expands your vocabulary. In fact, I credit my fairly large vocabulary(well, it was definitely large before my brain injury)to my learned need to read. Which makes my, sometimes, inaccessible vocab all the more disheartening. There's a lot of words I don't normally say in my regular speech, but it's great practicing how to form sounds together.

Okay, I just read what I wrote, and I sound like a RIDICULOUS NERD!
"It's great practicing how to form..."<mocking tone>
Ugh. <sigh> Seriously though, I know it gets so frustrating when something isn't working. I am guilty of getting entirely too frustrated for many things. I get worked up, and Troy has to tell me to stop shouting while looking for a juicer at Home Outfitters, and it turns into this whole "thing"!
<smirk>
No, it doesn't get that bad, but that is a real example. Usually once Troy's told me to chill out, or to stop shouting, it's alright. I do tend to get more worked up at stores...there's a lot of people...and stuff...
Sorry!
Off topic!      Focus Alyx!!


Troy was very patient with me in his kitchen(let's be honest here, it was his kitchen for the first 4 or 5 years we were married). For the first few months I was learning, he had to cook with me because I would get distracted and completely forget that that burner had been on high for entirely too long, or I forgot to cook the rice, whatever, the point is that I would usually forget something.
It was actually a bit of a safety concern.
Luckily, I am able to focus a bit better, so I can cook and bake and Troy can be at work, and not worry about me burning our house to the ground. Yay Brain!

Troy has been so incredibly patient with me and my brain injury and me being vegan. That's the best word to describe Troy. Patient. 
I'm sure he would disagree with that assessment, but . . . he would be wrong.
He's patient.
He understood when I told him we wouldn't be buying animals or products made from animal parts. It took about 6 months of me being vegan for me to finally persuade him to give his parents our frozen cow carcass pieces.

I tell him everything I know.
Okay not everything, because sometimes I can't convince him to take the time to listen to a podcast, or watch a documentary. I don't feel confident in my ability to express some of  these ideas, and certainly not as beautifully or poignantly as these podcast hosts or documentarians(it's a word now).
But most things he'll give a chance. He watches most documentaries with me, if I'm willing to wait for him to be ready. (Or sometimes, I can't wait, so I watch without him. Then I just watch again with him later-doesn't matter to me, it's good to see what I missed.) Sometimes he'll want to watch the moment I suggest it, but other times it takes longer. That's fine. Took me over a year to watch Earthlings.

For reading, Troy doesn't like it much. He does read comic books, excuse me, graphic novels. 
Personally, I LOVE reading!! I am more than pleased to read my vegan library aloud to him as he's drawing(he's a really good drawer!).

It's been established that no non-vegan food in the house. Food at home is vegan. Troy also takes vegan lunches to work. When we go out, Troy does eat animals.
He regularly goes a month or two not eating them, then when we're in a family/social situation, he eats animals. He feels like poop for 2 days afterward, so he definitely sees the absolute health benefits.
Give him time. He'll wake up.

Coma then Skinny Bitch

My husband, Troy, and I were in a car collision December 5, 2009. We were struck by a speeding, stolen vehicle driven by a guy without his driver's license. The driver and his fellows ran. (He was caught later that day.) We were removed from my 2004 Toyota Echo Hatchback using the jaws of life. I was in a coma for 8 days. I had a tracheotomy because I wasn't breathing on my own. Once I was conscious and able, I started my therapies. Physiotherapy, speech language therapy and eventually occupational therapy and exercise therapy. I had to relearn everything. Walk, talk, print, simple math. I seriously appreciate each of these so much now!
Five months after the coma , April 2010, I was browsing through hair magazines at Chapters for my sister's vow renewal. I had also just stopped seeing double from my severe brain injury(!), so I was reveling in being able to visually focus on print! Not happy with the hairstyles I found, I walked over to the books displayed on a table. Skinny Bitch was one of the many.
I bought it.

Awake, with 'coma hair',  no trach or feeding tube

I had lost a lot of weight in my 8-day coma, and it took me about a month to start eating solid food again. Over Christmas, our families would mush up my food and hide the decadent chocolate treats for fear I would choke. More weight came off. Once back to eating solid food like an adult, I ate whatever was offered to me(what's another piece of pie?! She almost died!). I gained it all back, plus some!
So, I picked up Skinny Bitch. I just want to say, I had no idea it was all about being vegan!
Seriously. No idea.
I began to read, and I thought it was such a funny, and well-written book, that I ordered a copy for my mom and my sister and 4 of my close friends. Then I got to the animal stuff in the book.
Boy Howdy, was my face red?!
But, once I read, I knew in that moment, that my life was changed forever!
Back in high school, I was a vegetarian. Actually, I was vegetarian till sometime in my second year of university. I met Troy(now husband) and I went back to eating animals because it was easier. Seemed simpler, and I was drunk, and I wanted that beef jerky. (Where were you, Tofurky jerky, when I needed you?!)

In high school, when I began learning about being vegetarian, I truly thought being vegan was too extreme! I never bothered learning about milk and eggs, and if I was told, I probably blocked it out. The brain is a very powerful thing!