Slideshow from Milford Citizen Newsroom Reunion 1.13.2007

Nine minutes of movies and memories. Hope to create the same kind of video for 2012 reunion. Please share photos, audio, video, memories, etc.!

Updates about my quest to be vegan for a week fizzled, as did my all-vegan diet. I made it four days. Then, on the fifth day, I woke up to a dream of a young David Cassidy singing to me:

Will there come a time
we can find the time
to reach out for one another?

I’ll meet you halfway, that’s better than no way
I’ll meet you halfway, that’s better than no way

 … And if there’s some way, I know some day
We just might work it out forever.

When I opened my eyes, The Partridges were gone. But I knew that Keith, with his brown feathered hair and bell-bottom dungarees, was sending me a message: I didn’t have to be a vegan anymore. I’d made it more than halfway through my Vegan Challenge, so if I wanted to eat a roast beef sandwich for lunch, I should.

So I did. And it was delicious. And honestly, I didn’t feel guilty one bit. In fact, if I was home instead of at a deli booth, I probably would have started singing “I Think I Love You,” with my soda straw as a mic, after the first bite.

Some people are meant to be vegans. I am not. I admire those who are. My guess is that for those truly committed, food shopping each week involves more than hitting their favorite produce kiosks and Stop & Shop’s natural foods aisles. Real vegans also tend to have more compelling (and honorable) reasons for adopting the lifestyle than wanting to give it a whirl.

Maybe I didn’t put enough time into the planning. But ultimately, for me, it was an experiment that didn’t work. I didn’t feel as great as I’d expected (In fact, I spent way too much time in the bathroom.), and I missed being able to enjoy, and talk about, dinner with my family. It was no fun to watch them eat my husband’s most delicious meatloaf and homemade mac and cheese, while I ate a tofu enchilada.

As much as a curse as it may be for my hips, I love eating … the preparations, rituals and flavors; the sharing, discussing and savoring. And like an inpatient child, I woke up on Day 5 wanting it back. Right then. Without waiting three full more days. Call me weak, spoiled and self-indulgent. Sometimes, I am all of those things.

“Don’t tell anyone you didn’t finish the full week, Ma,” my 16-year-old said. “You’ll look like you have no willpower.”

Eh, maybe that’s true. However, I prefer to spin it like this: I thought I had a great idea, gave it a try, and then decided it was better to admit I was wrong (and stop) rather than continue (and be unhappy).

Onto a new and more thoughtfully contemplated personal challenge, TBA.

An adoptive mom in California is asking her school board to enact a policy that will ban family tree and genealogy assignments until all adoptees in the state of California are allowed access to their original birth certificates, just as the non-adoptees are.

Letters of support are needed to reinforce the fact that sealing birth records is discriminatory and disenfranchising.  

If you feel so inclined, it would really help the cause.  The snail mail address for the school board is:

Northern Humboldt Union High School District School Board
2755 McKinleyville Avenue
McKinleyville, CA 95519-3400

Thanks Mirah Riben at http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/ for passing on.

I learned three important things today about vegan eating:

1. Non-dairy does not mean dairy-free.

2. Chreese, pronounced like “trees,” is an organic, plant-based cheese alternative that does not taste cheesy.

3. Artichoke and kalamata hummus is delicious! I had it as an afternoon snack with Triscuits and carrots and was surprisingly satisfied.

Of course, I learned the non-dairy lesson after I drank my cup of coffee with CoffeeMate, which I giddily put in my shopping carriage yesterday after seeing “non-dairy” exclaimed on the front. Apparently, using CoffeeMate is a common mistake made by many wishful-thinking vegan newbies. Logic blurred by my desire to taste something so close to cream, I failed to listen to my 16-year-old Teddy, who studies culinary arts and kept telling me, “Uh, I think sodium caseinate is a milk extract.”

So the French vanilla CoffeeMate now belongs to Teddy, who will use it to make himself homemade Coolatas. Tomorrow morning, I’ll try coffee with rice milk or green tea. And I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The Kashi oatmeal and Indian somosa wrap I had for breakfast and lunch today were both surprisingly excellent, as was the peach soy yogurt I thought for sure was going to be chalky and gross.

Also, not once was I hungry  – which actually is almost a miracle. Most days, I am hungry at least a half-hour before mealtimes, which is when I begin to snack.

Maybe my fullness was caused by all the water I drank; or from my determination to make Day 1 a success. There could be physiological/nutritional reasons—such as the amount and type of fiber I consumed at breakfast and lunch—though I haven’t checked. Too early to tell whether food or fluke led to a good, filling day. But either way, I’m happy … though I’d kill for a vegan Fudgesicle right now.

Me and Doubting Steven, who doesn't believe I can stick to a vegan diet for one week.

I’m going to become a vegan for a week, starting tomorrow.

It’s not an original idea. Oprah and 378 Harpo staffers did it earlier this year, as did the thousands of Oprah viewers who took her week-long “Go Vegan” challenge. Some who participated said they lost so much weight and felt so much better that they decided to extend their vegan eating several more weeks. Perhaps by now, many have even changed over to a totally vegan lifestyle.

I’ll be shocked if I go that far. In fact, I’ll be pretty impressed if I make the full week. I love steak. And cheese. And half-and-half in my coffee. And if I’m having a bad day, a chocolate chip cookie or dish of ice cream definitely help.

But I’m willing to give it a try. I’ve let myself gain several pounds over the fall and winter, and I don’t like what I see or feel. I also want to prove to myself that I have willpower and am not totally self-indulgent (which I generally I am). How hard can it be to not eat meat, chicken, fish, pork, eggs, milk, butter or any other animal products for seven days? You can deal with almost any change for seven days, right?

“There’s no way you can do it, Mom,” my son Steven, 12, said today as he watched me unpack rice milk, penne brown rice pasta and low-fat, vegan split-pea soup from the Stop & Shop bags. “You like to eat eggs. You like to eat baaaa-baaaa-laaaaambs. You drink three cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee a day—and they only have cream from cows in the drive-thru. You won’t last two days.”

He may be right about me having coffee problems. Both times I was pregnant, I gave up drinking coffee all together, rather than switch to decaf. I’m a coffee snob and want it my way or no way. I may feel differently tomorrow. I’ll brew my own in the morning and try it with rice milk—or CoffeeMate if that turns out to be vegan. I also bought a box of green tea, which I may substitute for at least one of those cups. But out of everything, this is what I’m most worried about.

The rest of tomorrow’s menu is less worrisome and seems more than tolerable: Kashi Honey Puffs with strawberries and rice milk for breakfast; salad and an Indian somosa wrap with tofu for lunch; and organic, dairy-free, cheddar-style shells and “chreese” with veggies for dinner. I’m a bit leery about the chreese; not sure what exactly that is. But I also have peach soy yogurt that looks pretty good, as well as a crisper full of fruit and a container of artichoke hummus to choose from.

I’d like to say altruism played some kind of role in my decision to go vegan; that I wanted to save one more cow from the slaughterhouse or help reduce farm factory pollution. But at least today, the decision is a purely selfish one. I’m using the next seven days to detox my system and reboot my tastebuds.

After that, who knows what will happen. But I’m hoping to fast-track back to a healthier way of life. An update on the chreese tomorrow.