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The birds woke me up at 4.04am. Don’t get me wrong, I love the birdies, and the fact that summer is just around the corner, but I need all the beauty sleep I can get!!

This reminds me - I’ve rediscovered Twitter. I posted a few tweets before Christmas, but I got bored with it as none of my real friends were on it. However, it’s a good way of staying up to date in blog land when - horror of horrors - I’m away from my PC. It’s like a mini-blog, you wouldn’t use a proper blog post for a quick update, but Twitter is ideal for this. A great introduction to Twitter is Caroline Middlebrook’s Big Juicy Twitter Guide. Facebook has a Twitter application, but at time of writing, this isn’t working too well. Mybloglog links up with Twitter nicely though, and I have found this a great resource for finding new blogs and interesting people.

You can follow me on Twitter by clicking the link on the sidebar

I’ve been back at work, and in control of what I eat. I put on a pound last week, even though I wasn’t tucking into toffee lumpy bumpy at any given opportunity unlike my travelling companion.

Breakfasts - have been a variation on my usual theme ie smoothies, peanut butter on toast, museli. I have started buying cheap-o home brand museli and then adding little goodies such as pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and goji berries. Yum!

Snacks - I have been drinking lots of water as it has been warm, and snacking on dried fruits/nuts. Except for one day where I bought a packet of ready salted crisps from the refectory.

Lunches - I take my own lunch to work anyway, and the weather has been glorious this week so I have been taking it to the park to eat. Sandwich fillings have been a variation of hummous, salad and Sainsbury’s Tomato and Chilli relish. I usually have a piece of fruit and a soya yogurt.

Evening meals - Hmmm, I had veggie burger in a bun with salad on Tuesday. One night I made broccoli and pasta bake using this fake cheese sauce (which didn’t really taste like cheese but was OK), vegetable stir fry with rice noodles, and Redwood fishless fingers with baked potato and baked beans and side salad.

I don’t tend to use a lot of eggs and dairy in my cooking anyway, but I have become more aware that vegetarian cooking by non-veggies tends to be stacked full of eggs and cheese (hey, you’ve got to get your saturated fat from somewhere!).

Last night I did the weekly shop at ASDA for a change. I haven’t noticed much difference in food bills, but now there are huge swathes of the store I don’t visit. I call it the Royston Vasey effect ie “there’s nothing for you here”. One thing that is nice there is there selection of frozen fruit. I bought some frozen mango slices, since mango is a pain to prepare and then you have to scoff the whole thing before it goes off.

One negative thing I’ve noticed is that I had a dull headache for about three days. It’s gone now, but I wonder if it’s some sort of detoxification effect?

Check out other wordless wednesdays

Day 1 - We stopped off at a Pizza Hut for lunch. This was OK, because I checked their website and their Italian style pizza bases are vegan, as are many of their sides. So I had a vegetarian hot one pizza (no cheese), breaded mushrooms and a salad bowl. Easy. We didn’t have an evening meal as we were still full of pizza (HTB had a vanilla slice and a latte for an afternoon snack. I just had an espresso).

Day 2 - Breakfast - had bran flakes with orange juice on them and beans on toast with tomato and mushrooms on the side. Lunch - HTB wanted Fish and Chips since we were in Blackpool. So I just had chips and mushy peas. The chips weren’t that great, but I guess we have very high standards, being from Grimsby In the afternoon, HTB had an ice cream and I had a fruit lolly.

Day 3 - Breakfast - same as day 2. Today we headed up from Blackpool to the Lake District. We stopped at Lancaster which has a great Holland and Barrett store. I stocked up on soya desserts. For lunch I had vegetable soup and a roll. In the evening I had a black bean vegetable stir fry with rice, which was yummy. HTB had this really gross looking lamb. Normally, I don’t care about people eating meat around me, but watching him perform micro surgery to remove the fat made me feel a bit queasy.

Day 4 - Breakfast - as before, but with museli instead of bran flakes. Lunch - apple, dried fruit, almonds (we went on a walk which took most of the afternoon, so I took my emergency rations). Evening meal - minestrone soup, Mushroom pizza (no cheese), mixed salad. I have a nasty feeling that the salad dressing had honey in it, even though it didn’t say anything on the menu. I am not very good at sending things back, so I ate it anyway In future I will take care to quiz the staff about dressings.

Day 5 - Breakfast - as yesterday. Lunch was a roasted vegetable panini with no cheese. By evening we had got home, so I just had a hummous and salad sandwich. It was total bliss to be able to prepare my own food, and I thought eating out was meant to be a luxury!

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (who I believe to be vegan), is giving away downloads of their latest album “The Slip”.

The CD and vinyl version will be available in July.

Click this link to download the album

After much dabbling and acclimatising, I have decided that I will finally take the plunge. May will be my first full-on vegan month. I’ve been using soya milk instead of dairy for months now, and I would say that I eat vegan food about 90% of the time anyway. There will be challenges due to the fact that we have a holiday planned (therefore lots of eating-out opportunities). It’s weird that the most difficult thing isn’t not eating dairy or eggs, but having to go through the rigmarole of explaining to others what I eat and don’t eat. Not to mention how much detail I should go into if they ask why! Basically that’s the difference between being ovo-lacto veggie and vegan: these days most people have cottoned on to the concept of vegetarian, but vegan - well that’s still a bit “out there”. But what’s more important, doing what I consider to be the right thing, or the opinions of others?

Somehow actually declaring oneself vegan means making a statement, one that may make others feel uncomfortable. I consider myself to be a tolerant person, I don’t want to lecture folks about their dietary habits or start going on about slaughterhouses while they tuck in to their steak. However, I have to be true to myself and maintain my principals without being a total pain to others. I don’t want to be that sanctimonious vegan bore at the dinner party.

I think this month will be a learning curve socially more than the actual preparation of vegan food itself. I’m up for the challenge, anyway.

As I assess my current wardrobe, I am choosing to phase out animal fibres. So when I replace shoes, I’m opting for fabric or synthetic materials, choosing fake silk since the thought of the real thing squicks me. Then I came to the question of wool. I like knitting, so I’m quite aware of the lovely fibres available, including animal fibres. Wool (especially alpaca wool) is beautifully warm and soft to the touch. 

However, if I am to follow through with the vegan ideal of avoiding animal products, then surely I should avoid wearing wool? Hmm. What’s wrong with wool? It’s just a sheep getting a haircut, right?

So, knowing I probably wouldn’t like the answers, I set out to find out…

1. In the UK, approximately 1/3 of the wool produced is from dead sheep, so it is a slaughterhouse product. By buying wool, I would be supporting the meat industry by buying one of their by-products.

2.  Sheep aren’t naturally that woolly. As with most farmed animals, they have been selectively bred to produce heavy fleeces and therefore be more profitable. In the wild, they wouldn’t need shearing, kind of obvious really. They have to get all hot and bothered under their fleece just so we can have woolly jumpers.

3. As a result of their heavy fleece, sheep encounter all sorts of problems with hygiene. In Australia, Merino sheep are subjected to a process called mulesing, which is basically the removal of most of the skin around the rump, without anaesthetic. The reason for this is to try and reduce the incidences of “Fly Strike” where flies lay eggs in wrinkly skin and fleece around the sheep’s backside. The incidence of such an affliction which is caused by people breeding an animal who has an unnatural amount of fleece, and in a part of the world that is not naturally sheep country (although 30% of the world’s wool comes from Australian sheep).

4. One of the central reasons for being vegan is the refusal to participate in any exploitation of animals, and the belief that animals are not merely wandering the earth in order to be used by humans in some way. 

Click here to see the PETA video about mulesing (grim viewing).

I did come across an article from the Australian Wool Industry, justifying mulesing. None of their arguments hold any water though, when you look at the huge pyramid of exploitation surrounding the industry. Basic hygeine measures are available, but these are time and resource consuming, and as we all know, time is money. Check out a Farmer’s view of Mulesing, more nasty pictures, I’m afraid

There are many synthetic fibres, not to mention plant fibres (especially hemp, cotton and bamboo), which are just as stylish as wool, without the cruelty. I’ll be looking for alternatives when it comes to buying a coat this winter. It’s weird, every time I find out the truth of something like this, I feel saddened, but liberated as I will no longer be blindly colluding with such outrageous treatment of living beings. Ignorance is not bliss.

Today we celebrate 41 years of legal abortion in the UK. I had a good long think about whether the use of “celebrate” is appropriate in that sentence and I stand by it. That doesn’t mean I celebrate abortions; the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a sad and difficult one. However, if the anniversary of the end of the era of botched backstreet abortions and women bleeding to death after a misadventure with a knitting needle or drinking bottles of gin and throwing themselves down the stairs to end their pregnancies, then celebrate is the right word.

It is interesting, then, that these rights are being threatened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. Members of Parliament have a free vote on this, as it is (quite rightly) regarded as a matter of conscience, separate from political agenda. One of the items up for the vote is whether to reduce the legal limit for abortion from the current 24 week limit. I really don’t think this is necessary, and just gives credence to those folks who are anti-choice (we are all pro-life by virtue of the fact we keep breathing, so that is a meaningless term IMO).

From the Abortion Rights website:

Less than 2% of abortions take place after 20 weeks. They are needed by women facing difficult, unforseeable and always individual circumstances, most commonly women using contraception or nearing the menopause whose pregnancy was diagnosed late, or women with a previously wanted pregnancy who face life crises such as domestic violence.

I can’t imagine that anyone would request a late abortion unless they had a desperate need for it, as you have to be induced and go through labour to give birth to a stillborn half-developed baby, which must be horrendous. Surely women in that situation need compassion, not judgement? After all, it’s the easiest thing in the world to say “I would never…” but until you are in that situation you will never really know.

When I cook a meal for HTB, I can’t help but think of it as Guerilla Cooking - veggie food by the back door. I finally used the Mock Duck last night, in a vegetable stir fry with some black bean sauce. Served with rice noodles. Rather yummy, but the mock duck did freak me out a little when I got it out of the tin, it just looked too “real”. There’s something very during the war about all these mock foods!

HTB tucks in to a fine feast.