23 December 2007

Meat Free Holiday!

Boss man decided to close on xmas day, so I get to spend it at home with Steve. Of course, if there's any New York City or Jersey vegans who want to come over for some cooking and eating (and light drinking), let me know in a comment, and we'll set something up. I can't have /too/ many people, because the space in the house is limited, but no matter! It'll be fun even if it's just me and Steve. He's not too thrilled with going all the way to Chicago, only to have his sensibilities ignored for the sake of a corpse on the table, so I figure if we can get some vegans out to our place, we can have a family dinner by a family that we create ourselves, right!?

Of course, I'll be making my special lentil soup that everyone loves. We might do some frying, depending on how much oil I can trace. Chances are good that we'll do some deep frying, just because it goes so well with everything. The bodega down the street sells excellent vegan French bread, so I'll probably grab a few loaves of that on the day before, if I remember. I may ask Steve to run down to the store before he gets home tomorrow, and snag a bit of produce. If anyone wants my famous kale with cocoanut milk, bring on the cocoanut milk and kale, and we'll make it happen. Either way, the possibilities are endless, right?

Steve and I tend to give each other gifts all year long (and immediately, as soon as we find said gift), so we're not going to be exchanging any for each other, but I know he wouldn't be averse to a few nice things (like a good solid 3/4 or full length winter coat, some nice button down shirts [we take a medium] for work, or a good pair of trousers in size 32 without wool). I'm big on hats and cute bracelets. :-D

While I'm here, let me remind you to check out my fellow vegan's podcast, The Angry Hippie Podcast Check out his blog as well for some of his neat poetry. Think Dr. Seuss meets Emily Dickinson. In particular, check out the Vegan Helliday Special.

I've found that it's becoming harder and harder to cope with other peoples' carnism in my face, because of the extent of the vegan bubble I've found myself in. I go to sleep every night with my vegan husband in our vegan home, to my vegan place of work, where I work with other vegans. I don't have to ask what's in the soup, because I know of every ingredient in the restaurant, and the owner's commitment to cruelty free (actual, not just labelled) everything. I still read the ingredients so that I never get out of the habit, but I don't /have/ to. On top of all that, when Cliff (owner of Sacred Chow) says the word "sustainable, healthy (for the earth, the animals and people), tasty, comforting food," I know he's actually being serious about it, instead of having it be a marketing concept. And my coworkers aren't rabidly corporate-loving.

So when I leave that protective, nurturing nest, it freaks me out a lot more than it used to.

I am making new friends every day, and my Spanish is getting more and more fluid, fluent, and rapid. I don't search as hard for commonly used words anymore, and I can more or less get across what I need to with Alonzo (he's one of my coworkers; doesn't speak English yet). It's promising, because it means that I don't have to stop at Spanish, and that I can finally start working on my ABYSMAL French and German. So far, I can only struggle through the written forms, and even then, I can only pick out the /gist/ of what it's trying to say. Eventually, I'm hoping to get the Spanish up to the level of (at least) the Tamil, if not at the level of the English.

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