Gothic Granola

Cast iron pans: sign of a true DIY-er, in this day and age of convenience food and non-stick cookware.  Or a sign of someone who grew up in the Southern or Western United States.  Or the sign of a "foodie" poseur.

Running with scissors is fun until you fall.   via GIPHY So is corporate wellness: it sounds like a tonne of fun, with stretch breaks on the clock, healthy snacks in the break room, employer-sponsored massages, health coaching, exercise classes...

I have been making the same carb-a-licious muffins  lately, so how about something different? Another exercise playlist , perhaps? Yes!   I miss my squirrel "training partners" (and I did bribe them with peanuts) and my outdoor exercise space sometimes.  

It's time for another round of Into It/Over It , the High Altitude Edition.  The point of this type of post is to point out a negative and replace it with a positive (and sometimes just point out positives).  What does a picture of this awesome-yet-undisclosed location have to do with Gothic anything?  If you have ever read any Gothic literature ( Frankenstein ,  The Castle of Otranto ,  Carmilla ,  Dracula , et cetera), they can be read as travel journals, with significant chunks of text devoted to describing landscapes and characters' travels.  I re-read  Carmilla  on a weekend's camping trip, and the descriptions of Styria (region in modern-day Austria and Slovenia) reminded me of the critical angle of Gothic literature as travel journals.

If you have ever read any Buddhist sutras translated to English, you will recognize the title structure:  "Thus I have heard..."

Tiny Carrot! All the kale is gone from the garden; it got eaten by bugs. And now the apartment is filled with ladybugs--where were you a few weeks ago? I also pulled up some tiny beets; clearly the root veggies need more time underground.

OMG! It's a hippie lentil loaf! Miriam at Mouthwatering Vegan created this Epic Veggie Loaf . I have nothing to add other than my substitutions:

Not much is new around here. Last weekend we hiked at my husband's stepfather's family property and we just returned from camping at said property this weekend. Pants and Pomely had fun!

Vegans go to some extreme lengths to make food that resembles animal products. Just challenge someone to go vegan or give up alcohol and you will see the deep emotional bonds humans form with certain food preparations (goat cheese! applewood-smoked bacon! craft beer! mom's apple pie!).    This is some kind of chicken? Or sausage? According to my family, it was tasty...for dead flesh. /vegansnark

  Here's an article I saw this week about the dearth of Omega-3's and overabundance of Omega-6's in the American diet. Hence, we have more than double the linoleic acid in our body fat as do our parents' generation, and fatty acid turnover in adipose tissue can take years. So you may feel the health effects of your diet from the past year or two, even if you switch to a healthier diet. Besides the importance of supplementing with Omega-3's ( preferably eating Omega-3 rich foods before turning to supplements), the point about the "delay" in your healthier habits taking hold reinforces the idea that you just have to give things time. The body doesn't repair itself overnight. Major health changes through behaviour change are not easy, and the rewards don't come quickly, but they will pay off with consistent effort over time. How about some Omega-3 Powerhouse Muffins?

Because we are Gothic Granola, we go to concerts for Goth, Industrial, Synthpop, Alternative, Electronic, and more, as the entertainment budget allows. That's a royal "we." On Tuesday we went to see Covenant at Casselman's in Denver, hosted by Club Sanctuary . We rode on sportbike to Denver, and having seen few practical posts for wearing makeup under a full-face helmet, I decided to experiment. As I said in this post , I don't wear makeup often and I don't think it adds anything to my appearance. Most message boards I read for female riders focused on the hair, and I happen to like helmet hair (I also have short hair and a low-maintenance deathhawk, so there's not much to "ruin"). 

This is going to be one of those self-absorbed posts wherein I talk about what I did and not about what I've made. Week before last, TC's mentor asked him to come to DC to work on his house, and TC insisted that I accompany him. We both worked, a lot. While I pulled days in the office with significant overtime, TC put his mentor's house back together (not a small exaggeration there).   Before we left, we saw these two kitties in a dusty window on Main Street.  

  This town has become progressively buried under snow. Despite it being Colorado, high elevation, blah blah blah, northwestern New Jersey still has more snow and colder temperatures. "I like winter/ I like snow/ I like icy winds that blow." NAME THAT CHILDREN'S BOOK!*

What you put in your body is important, no doubt. From avoiding foods treated with pesticides to minimizing added sugars , and instead cooking whole grains and leafy greens, we can choose to fuel our bodies with foods that will prolong our lives.   Generalities aside, the motivation behind this post is two-fold: one, cosmetics for cosmetic purposes, and two, cosmetics for compassionate purposes. When I became vegan in 2010, I wore makeup: eyeliner, eyeshadow, nail polish, sunscreen, and lipstick.  

My gifts to others were a gift to myself this year for Solstice/Chanukkah/Christmas. I turned my writing time into beading time for the last two weeks in December. Focusing on beading let my mind wander and work out plot issues with my writings and meditate on other matters.  

This is probably a sentiment that will alienate me from abolitionist vegans at large. But here it is.

I spent a good part of 2013 and early 2014 proofreading a novella for a former co-worker, and he self-published it a few months ago. Read it! White Plastic Butterfly Barette  by Erin Willis.   There's some part of WPBB on the ground in this photo, amongst all my other books (mostly religion books) from August 2013.

Going gluten-free is not a magic bullet to health, contrary to this article from Paleo Magazine . If you have, in fact, experienced real intestinal damage at the hands of bread, pizza, cake, and beer, then your health is going to take a nosedive even after becoming gluten-free. Why? The body doesn't heal overnight.   Mmm, cake... Eww, beer...

By "bad" webinars, I mean, "poor quality," for the following reasons. These reasons are presented in a list format, like many webinars giving health and wellness tips; some representative titles: "Top 5 Must-Do's for Small Business Wellness," "Top 5 Cost Neutral Wellness Program Strategies," and "14 Wellness Predictions for 2014." I've listened to a lot of webinars since entering the world of health and wellness in December 2012, listening to those first live calls with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition .   Grab some stove-popped popcorn and read on. 

I was right about a rant brewing, but my prescient vision was off by a week. Yes, I finally finished reading Frank Herbert's  Dune .