Need To Rewrite That Last Post

Ch-ch-ch-chia pudding

So, I read over what I wrote the other day and I'm not happy with it.
I somehow never finished certain thoughts, and I didn't connect other thoughts together. It's a mess.
So I will be editing that last post.

Clearly, I was too tired to be writing.

I have amped up my physical activity, and increased how much raw food I eat.

Recently listened to an Our Hen House(episode 103), and they were interviewing a nutritionist, Gena Hamshaw, the creator of Choosing Raw. This blog focuses on raw vegan food, with recipes and tips. In the interview, Gena says that ideally, we'd be eating 60-70% raw.
Geez! I eat like...10% or 20% raw! Yikes!!
So I've taken Gena's raw food tip of starting with one meal and increasing.
Breakfast has been fruit smoothies and chia pudding.
Lunch, it's either all salad, or salad with some leftover supper.
Snacks has been carrots and snap peas with hummus, or celery sticks with peanut butter.
And supper is the usual, cooked dish. Last night we had Spring Vegetable Risotto from the The Vegan Table.
It's been yummy and I've been satisfied, and enjoying how I've been feeling.

For my physical activity, I usually take the dogs out, one at a time. Now I am running on the treadmill for 30  minutes as well.
Well, not running the entire time. 2 minutes of walking, 2-3 minutes of running.
I have found that on days that I run, I do end up needing a nap in the afternoon. Which is a bit disappointing, but not all that surprising. I don't sleep near the amount of sleep I needed, even a year ago. It's getting better.

How My Veganism Has Helped My Brain Injury

I know that there are people in my life that don't understand how I could possibly be getting enough nutrients to help my brain.
I am getting far more nutrients than most! But I'll leave that for another post.

What I'd like to write about is the act of becoming vegan. Or of transitioning away from consuming animals and their secretions, to consuming plants, and about my brain's rehabilitation.
For those that don't know, I never cooked prior to becoming vegan. Troy likes to say that I could burn water. He did all of the cooking.
After the car collision, and the coma, and tubes and such, I started my various therapies: physiotherapy, speech language therapy, exercise therapy, occupational therapy, and eventually recreational therapy. My occupational therapy, once I mastered the basics of sitting up and walking, consisted of following simple directions to accomplish a task. The tasks would gradually get more complicated and distractions were also added to see how I would do.
Some of the activities we did was: board games and card games, puzzles and tests, baking and cooking, following a recipe, and other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting.
I have to say that the baking and cooking didn't go great the first few times. Troy had to jump in to save me(or the dish I was making) more than once!
This was prior to becoming vegan. I still saw double, and I wasn't loving reading the way I had adored it before. I hadn't started reading the vegan books yet.

It didn't take long to realize that I had to learn to cook if I wanted to be vegan. I thought Troy would never learn to cook plants. And certainly not just plants.
He adores the taste and texture of any animal's flesh!
Please don't misunderstand. I didn't stop eating animals because I didn't care for the taste of them anymore. I stopped eating them because it's wrong!
I decided that I needed to learn to cook. Namely, to not burn water! (joke)

                                           I did just that.

I bought The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Simply because I appreciate her writing style. I was familiar with her stuff from using The Joy of Vegan Baking.
In her baking book, she even gets down to how to read a recipe! Her recipes are simple to understand. Crucial to me! On account of never cooking before, and this pesky brain injury. I love how the ingredients are somewhat familiar. Lots of plants that I've never eaten before, but are commonly-found in major grocery stores! The truly beautiful thing is that, currently, we can get all of the ingredients between 2 different grocery stores: Dad's Organic Market, and the Real Canadian Superstore!  Especially now that veganism is moving more into the mainstream. Very exciting!!


Because I seem to get distracted,<ahem> and forget ingredients and steps, I take steps to prevent this from happening. Or really, just set myself up for success.

1)No music.
2) Put all of the corresponding measuring tools and ingredients on the counter. I like to place the ingredients in order on the counter, as they're added to the dish, and putting the measuring device next to the ingredient. Or just pre-measure it.
3)Put the ingredients away as I use them. This way, if vanilla extract is still on the counter, I know that I didn't use it.

I'm so happy that I learned to nurture myself, my family and friends! Learning to cook has been fantastic cognitive therapy!
Following instructions, measuring ingredients, calculating cooking times, learning the cooking terminology and techniques, meal planning, trouble-shooting, and veganizing loved dishes!
All wonderful brain exercises! All of these tasks are either exactly the same, or very similar to the exercises I did, or tried at Wascana Rehabilitation Centre.
Yes, it could be argued that I didn't have to become a vegan to do any of this. Fair enough.
But before, I didn't care enough to even try to learn! 

The Summer of Transition

Sausage Party

The summer of 2010 was spent acquiring my new food habits, getting rid of the terrible food and becoming familiar with what my brain was capable of, at that time.
We had a lot of animal meat and secretions in our home. We had the remaining bits of half a cow we bought from Troy's uncles.
"Half a cow" sounds horrifying to me now!
Plus lots of sausages and hot dogs, and even some moose! We ate up(or rather, Troy did) most of the meat that was in our freezer. The rest we gave to Troy's parents to use. I wanted to use our freezer space for frozen veggies or fruit or baking, etc.
Troy and I decided to have a sausage party with friends to use the sausages in the freezer! We used all of our eggs, butter, milk, yogurt, and ice cream. We  made the moose's ground meat into burgers using ground flax seed, rather than egg. We had already used all our eggs up, and like hell, I was ever buying them again! I will say that moose's meat is probably the best animal meat I've ever had! In the fall of 2010, I was okay with hunting. My thought was: the animals are free, then the hunters kill them. And that's that. I had a bigger problem with factory farming. At least the moose aren't in factory farms! I never considered animals 'walking' away with injuries. I just assumed, once hit, the animal dies. Often, that is not the case! Left to languish for days, till they die, or somebody else(another human or non-human) kills them. Either way, not a pleasant experience!
I have since changed my stance on hunting. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau helped me see things differently. On her podcast, Vegetarian Food For Thought, in a specific episode, How To Talk To Hunters(or anyone with whom you disagree), she talks about those hunted animals and their families. I never thought about non-human animals having families in the wild...but why wouldn't they have families?! I always just thought of wild animals as loners. Even if they live in large groups. I don't know why I thought these things...social conditioning? Maybe it's something I had to believe to deal with friends and family hunting every weekend?
Now, when I look into the wilderness, I can't help but think of those hunted animals and their families!
That summer was also my sister's vow renewal(July 23), and I remember(!!) at the end of the night, Troy and I, along with our camping/hiking/canoeing/snowboarding-trip adventure friends, Shannon and Scott took a meat and cheese platter back to our house and we all ate it.
I think that was the last time I ate processed animal's meat. Which, has turned out to be a really smart and good thing! The American Institute for Cancer Research and The World Cancer Research Fund say that bacon and other processed meats clearly cause colorectal cancer. They should never be eaten and never given to children.
I see people approaching diets and dieting kind of wrong. They don't replace what they once ate, with something better.
Eggs was surprisingly easy. Fortunately there are numerous ways to replace eggs when baking. The Joy of Vegan Baking gets into how replace eggs, milk, buttermilk and butter with plant food! But there are many websites that give you information on this. Just Google 'vegan baking replacing eggs'. It's pretty easy.
Troy never cared for eating chicken's eggs. I did. I liked egg salad, eggs scrambled, in omelets, sunnyside-up, hard-boiled. I wasn't fussy! Thankfully, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau does have recipes for 'egg' salad and scrambled 'eggs', both in The Vegan Table and in The 30-Day Vegan Challenge!
My favourite was taking an egg(sunnyside-up) and putting it on buttered toast, eating all around the yolk, then stuffing the entire yolk, with the little piece of toast left, in my mouth! It was messy, and tasted good. I haven't found a vegan version, but I've also not looked because I haven't had a craving for it.
I did have a vegan omelet when my friend, Holly and I flew to Edmonton to see Ani Difranco(we love her!) in the summer of 2011! Holly was is so gracious and nice! We went to restaurants we knew were vegan-friendly(thank you iPhone!), and it was so good! We went to Padmanadi Vegetarian Restaurant, all vegan, so good! I'll save that trip for another post!
Milk was a simple solution. There are a lot of plant milks out there! Soy, almond, rice, coconut, hazelnut, hemp, peanut, oat, cashew, etc. I know there's more! We really like almond milk. Rice milk is also good, but not ideal for baking(little too watery), and coconut milk is perfect for making thick fruit smoothies or curries. Those are the milks I have tried. They also differ brand to brand.
Non-dairy ice creams are fantastic! We make a lot of our own almond milk ice cream, using our KitchenAid!
Store-bought, non-dairy ice creams(especially made with coconut milk!) are a ridiculously rich and delicious treat!

Vegetarian Food For Thought

I started to listen to Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Vegetarian Food For Thought in the late fall of 2010. Not too long after my first official day of being vegan(September 12, 2010). I knew she had a podcast, and it got rave reviews! 

Just so we're clear: I had no idea what a podcast even was! 

I loved her writing in the The Joy of Vegan Baking and The Vegan Table, and I wanted compassionate responses to some common questions regarding veganism. The reason I waited so long to start listening, was because I couldn't just listen, I felt like I needed to be doing something else. I started to listen to the podcast on walks. 

Which was tricky to start. My balance was not stellar at that point, and even my walking was a bit clumsy. 

But, if I've learned anything from having a brain injury, it's that practice makes everything easier! I practiced just holding up my torso, and that's gotten much easier. I've practiced printing and math, and those have gotten better. I've practiced speaking, and that's almost 100% now(I still miss words, and forget how to pronounce them, or use the wrong word, but it's better! I swear!). 

So I listened to her podcast over and over, trying to memorize her words. That was also tricky because my brain still wasn't remembering. I had many lists and notes! It was rather ridiculous actually. Now, I'm able to recall much more! Not near the number of notes required for me to function!
She's taught me to be a joyful vegan. Truly. I don't know if I would've been so steadfast in my veganism without her leadership and encouragement! 

She has a masters in English, so she really gets our language, and talks about it a lot. The way violence towards non-human animals in our language perpetuates violence in action. She encourages everyone to think of compassionate alternatives to our usual violent non-human animal idioms. 

I've recently started using 'put all of my apples in a row', rather than ducks. She has lots of examples in Vegan's Daily Companion. I've started using 'non-human animals' when talking about other species. This way of talking throws people off a bit. I appreciate how it can get people thinking.

I also started using her, 'I can eat it, if I want it, but I don't' mentality. It's helped in many a situation, and again, encourages people to think that they do have choices, whether they know it or not!

Troy will listen to her podcast on drives out to the farm, or when we're driving anywhere out of the city. He really likes her stuff.
I subscribe to her free podcast on iTunes and even got her Vegetarian Food For Thought app for my iPhone!

I know she's been crazy busy this past year and a half, but I am itchy for more podcasts!

Don't get me wrong! I love and adore all of her books!  Her books taught me to bake and cook! That's huge! Teaching people how to nurture their bodies is vital! The Joy of Vegan Baking, The Vegan Table, Color Me Vegan, Vegan's Daily Companion and The 30-Day Vegan Challenge were all fantastic, the BEST, in fact! But it isn't quite the same as a soundbite.

My start to plant-based meals

I ordered Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's The Vegan Table in August 2010. I never really thought I used this book often, but I recently lent it to a friend, and I miss having it. There's at least 20 recipes I've fit into our regular rotation of meals. 

For a long time, our goal was to try a new dish each week. It's been exciting, and so amazingly delicious! 

I also love the way she winds compassionate-thinking through the recipes. Lots of cooking tips, which is invaluable to me! Remember, I never cooked anything besides Kraft dinner or toast! Troy did all of the cooking. We ate: meat, cheese, bread, carrots, potatoes, corn, and green beans.
I kept a list for the first eight months of being vegan and I added 42 different foods to my life.
Don't get me wrong, I  ate other vegetables before, Troy just didn't. Troy has helped me, but I knew I had to learn to cook. That's what I did. With my severe brain injury!

I also got Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet. I loved her book, and the recipes were unusual, but great! Her Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are The Best! Better than Reese's. Yeh! I said it! And I mean it!
The first half of the book is spent on explaining why being vegan is where it's at. (And it is-btw!)
I appreciated the way she set up 'flirts', 'vegans', and 'superheroes'. I spent about 4 months transitioning, or 'flirting'.
My first official vegan-day was September 12, 2010.

Please also know, that being vegan is not synonymous with perfection. I made a ton of mistakes! Some, I was not aware of till later, and some I knew. I still make mistakes. I have learnt a great deal!

So, I went to the nutritionist at my doctor's office with The Kind Diet in tow. She got me set up with an organization that helps people with cooking. They're called HELP, or Home Economics for Living Project.  I had a private vegan cooking class! I learned to make pizza, black bean soup, and bean dip. It was awesome!
Unfortunately, there are no vegetarian or vegan cooking classes offered in Regina, Saskatchewan. So that was it!

In September 2010, I got Simple Little Vegan Slowcooker by Michelle Rivera. More soups and stews that I can leave to fill the house with that mouthwatering aroma. It's seriously so good that I am salivating thinking about it! Fiesta Soup and Vegetable Stock I use often. The author recommends making your soup stock and freezing it in ice cube trays for later use. Pretty clever, I must say!!
I measure the stock as a cup of soup stock is 8 cubes. It's pretty simple. Course, I have a severe brain injury, so I have it marked on the freezer bag of soup stock cubes I keep. It's pretty straight-forward for half-measures and quarter-measures and such. Plus the house smells delicious and I use up vegetables! Win-win-win!!!