Vegan MoFo 21: A Bit Rambly

I very suddenly got calls to do a lot of work over very few days, but I think I've done well by MoFo. I tried to line up MoFo posts, and keep them a bit simple too. I'm out of material that I can preload, so this is a little disjointed. I'll come back next week though with all kinds of great foods that I ate over the weekend!

One thing I mentioned the other day was Rutabaga Fries, which my sister turned me onto a few years back. I've never had them any other way though, now that I think about it. Anyway, I sliced them up and tossed them with olive oil, nutritional yeast, and salmon seasoning. Then I baked them for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees. I would like to work on getting them crispier, to be better stand-ins for French fries. I don't know if they're better for you than French fries, but I'm going to go with yes.

These are really great, if a little unusual tasting. I ate them with left over collards for one breakfast, and felt very full.

In other attempts at easy, I stumbled upon what is now one of my favorite meals ever. I had some leftover chickpeas and roasted sweet potatoes. I cooked up some barley, and added it to those two. I topped with coconut oil, powdered garlic, nutritional yeast, and hot sauce. I'm not kidding, this is a top 10 dish right here.

I had no plans to mention this post-work snack here, so I took the picture after I'd already started eating.

One other byproduct of the crazy work week was some excellent staging. I am no stranger to multiple job sites and functions in one day, so I'm good at planning and packing, but one day this week was a 14 hour one between three sites. So i had to come up with and pack a day's worth of food one evening. Granted, for most of the day I was working near One World Cafe, which has awesome vegan options, but I'm trying to save money. Besides, I had supplies from the farmer's market, either in raw or leftover form.

So this is what I came up with: rutabaga fries and collards for breakfast, green smoothie for snack one, Sweet Potato, Roasted Red Pepper, and Corn Bisque with corn bread for lunch, Brazil nuts with dried figs for snack two, and a dragon bowl for dinner. Naturally, I packed it all into my Ask Me Why I'm Vegan bag so that I could grab it and go in the morning.

I'm really quite good at packing lunches. I do recognize that this is pure boasting, but marathon I thought I'd be completing turned into a train-wreck and all of my staging was for naught, so give me this one at least.

Helping Haiti and Trepidation

For me, one of the hardest parts about activism is that I often feel helpless. It's easy enough when organizations are creating media, materials, and events to support. It's easy, and there's nothing wrong with that. Handing out fliers, sharing movies, engaging individuals, protesting, and going to events that support your ideals are all important pieces of the puzzle.

One project I'm supporting is 100 Shows For Haiti. This grassroots movement is to "raise $100,000 for direct action humanitarian aid for the people of Haiti."

I want to show my support by going to this show.

But today, as I sat here wishing for a show in Baltimore, it occurred to me that I'm not doing enough. I am a professional entertainer, though part time. I work with other entertainers. My friends are all dancers and musicians, and some of them have great connections to venues. Hell, I have great connections to venues.

So why did I fail to put something together? I could make a dozen excuses about being busy, but the fact is that I didn't look carefully enough at my resources and I was not confident in my ability to effect change.

This is our greatest enemy. Figure out what you can do, and then do it. Never be afraid to put something together. Sometimes, the best you can do is hand out an organization's literature, and that is a tremendous and powerful course of action. But if you have the resources at your disposal, tackle something big.

You don't have to do it alone. If I would have asked my friends, they'd have helped me.

In the end, it's my own doubt that was my downfall. I want to be an agent of change, but until I believe that I am an agent of change, I'll keep missing opportunities like this one.

10. This Isn't Even My Soup

In exciting news, I got my awesome new, purple vegan T shirt from Sparrow Media. I can't wait for those Ask Me Why I'm Vegan totes to be back in stock.

Today's food comes from the west coast where my sister cooks macro-biotic meals and has her pick of all-vegan restaurants. (Stay tuned for a quest post on how to work with mochi from her, because I still haven't figured it out).

First up, we have a lovely French Onion Soup, from The Self Healing Cookbook : A Macrobiotic Primer for Healing Body, Mind and Moods With Whole, Natural Foods (which I just bought for $0.01 plus shipping). Between the parsley sprig and the sparkle effect created by the flash, this soup looks like magic!



This second picture leaves me envious. Delivered from Cruzer's Pizza, it is 100% animal product free, just like the rest of their pizzas. In DC, I'm pretty excited about places like Busboys & Poets, Z Pizza, and Pete's which provide vegan options. I would do a happy dance to find a place that was all vegan though.



Hopefully my dear sister will weigh in and tell us exactly what toppings grace its surface.

This post marks the 1/3 mark of Vegan MoFo posts! How are the rest of you holding up?