The Vegan Experience: Beach Weekend

I stuck to my guns and made it through the rest of the week with relative ease.  My downfall, of course, was the weekend.  Not to make excuses, but this wasn't just any weekend, it was a special beach weekend with dinners at Specchio, Buddakan, and McCormick & Schmick's.  Naturally, my vegan lifestyle fell by the way side as I scarfed down fish, meat, and dairy by the forkful.  Do I regret it?  Not even for a minute.  After all, how often do I get to eat at these terrific restaurants?  Today, I'm back on my game knowing full well that I am likely to make special allowances for certain special occasions, like vacations, holidays, or my upcoming 5-year wedding anniversary.  Week 1 taught me that with a little thought and preparation, the vegan lifestyle cannot only bring you better health and weight loss, it can be an enjoyable and satisfying lifestyle.  Maybe one day I will be able to commit 100%, but in the meantime I am going to follow the rules day-to-day and allow myself the freedom to make allowances for special circumstances.

The Vegan Experience: Days 2 & 3

I sit here, minutes before lunchtime on Day 4 of my vegan experience, pleasantly surprised at how easy - and enjoyable - this has been.  So far, I've found that there are vegan substitutes for EVERYTHING and they all taste REALLY good!  Even Dave has attested to the tastiness of the food and he's a tough critic when it comes to food.  The biggest bummer so far has been cutting out Wawa coffee but I think I've found something even better:  the chai soy latte from Starbucks...heavenly.  For a DIY option, buy chai concentrate and soy milk from the grocery store and mix them in a 1:1 ratio...delicious!  Now, I realize that part of the vegan experience is to completely purify your body and cutting out caffeine is part of that, however, I'm not a saint and for now the caffeine must stay.  One of the trickiest things about this challenge is picking the right food.  For example, I bought a butter substitute that's made out of olive oil, only to learn that it does contain a little bit of buttermilk (you have to read the nutrition labels super-carefully). So I botched up a little bit last night, but that's the great thing about calling this my "vegan experience" rather than my "vegan diet," it allows for imperfection and doesn't make me feel guilty when I mess up.  Plus, the word "diet" screams "restriction," which naturally just tempts you to cheat.  Surprisingly, I haven't felt the urge to cheat at all during my vegan experience.  My next big challenge will be surviving the weekend (that's when all my best resolutions seem to fly right out the window!)

The Vegan Experience: Day 1

I made it through Day 1 of my vegan lifestyle challenge with little difficulty. The hardest part was lunch. I bought vegan "lunchmeat" at the store and tried it on a sandwich (with vegan mayo, avocado spears, and sprouts). The veggies were good, but I didn't like the faux lunchmeat at all. For dinner, I made the Penne and Butternut Squash dish featured in Skinny Bitch - it was excellent. Luckily, I had enough left over for lunch today, so no more nasty sandwiches!

Skinny Bitch

I love when new journeys spawn out of existing journeys, like this past weekend. We took a short road trip of sorts - my husband, my sister, and me. With endless amounts of highway looming before us, and stop-and-go traffic for several hours, my sister encouraged me to read aloud from the book she'd been reading, Skinny Bitch. It's a book that promotes the vegan lifestyle and blows the lid off the meat and dairy industries, serving up scientific information with a side of sass. Let me interject here, up until this point in my life I had been a self-proclaimed meat-loving individual who never seriously considered such radical lifestyles. However, this book really resonated with me, opening my eyes to the havoc that meat and dairy can inflict on the human body. Despite my love of seafood, pasta, cheese, and many other foods, this book forced me to consider whether I could adopt this lifestyle. I've decided to dip my toe in the water this week and see how it goes. Last night, I chowed down my last hamburger for a while and this morning I woke up to a glass of o.j. and a bowl of soy yogurt, wheat germ, and strawberries. Don't worry...I won't pat myself on the back just yet; lunch and dinner are going to be the real challenges!

Praise Wawa!

Today when I walked into Wawa for my afternoon pick-me-up, I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks:  the coffee bar was surrounded by a priest and five nuns.  Clad in brown robes with crosses and rosary beads hanging from their hips, they were in all their glory as they peacefully stirred creamer and sugar into their cups.  I couldn't help but grin.  I guess even the holiest people need a mid-afternoon caffeine boost!

Dylan David Liodice

Well, he's finally here! Our nephew and godson, Dylan David Liodice, began his own little journey in the world on Wednesday, June 25th at 5:58PM. He weighed in at 7 lbs 8 oz and measured 19.5 inches in length. We all agreed that he is the most beautiful baby we've ever seen. Dave and I had a chance to hold him and it was amazing to feel his little newborn body in our arms. I couldn't help but look into his little eyes and wonder who he is going to grow into one day. For a tiny little baby, he's got a world of possibility within him. 

The Phone Call

Getting a phone call in the middle of the night is typically associated with bad news, however, the one we got in the wee hours of the morning was anything but. The call we've all been waiting for finally came around 4am this morning. Our newphew, Dylan, is on his way!

The Art of Relaxation

"Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are." - Chinese Proverb

Going down to the shore to visit my dad on his boat is one of our favorite things to do during the summer.  I don't know whether it's the fresh ocean air or the lapping water, but the deeply relaxed state we enter when we're there is comparable to a week in the Caribbean.  We drove down to Brielle on Saturday morning and by the time we reached the marina parking lot, all of our cares and concerns had vanished. We spent the day Saturday cruising around the harbor, admiring the multi-million dollar summer homes (see below), and picnicking on the Metedeconk River.  Sunday, despite the grim weather forecast, Dave and I plopped down on the beach in Point Pleasant and closed our eyes as the sunshine warmed our skin and the sound of the waves whisked us in and out of sleep all day. This weekend was a great reminder of the importance of relaxation. We all get so busy in our day-to-day lives that sometimes it's hard to find the time to relax.  Sometimes relaxing in itself can be stressful, especially if you're trying to organize a trip out of town.  But I've found that even simple things, like sitting outside on the porch for ten minutes or taking a walk around the block, can help you find your inner calm amidst the most hectic of days.  

As always, it was hard to see such a wonderful weekend come to an end, but Monday mornings always bring daydreams about what the next weekend might have in store.

(P.S. - Apparently the guy who owns this incredible manse is my age!  Maybe I need to spend less time relaxing and more time inventing something!)

We could all learn a thing or two from Tim Russert

Tim Russert gave the commencement address at my graduation from Lehigh University in 2003 and though I never watched Meet the Press, I was deeply saddened by his sudden death a few days ago. After learning of his passing, I proceeded to search the Internet for his name and was stunned by his list of professional accomplishments, which only magnified my sense of loss. Here was an accomplished man of a relatively young age who had just returned from a family vacation in Italy where they celebrated his son's graduation from Boston College. Things were good in Tim Russert's life and I'm sure he never thought that last Friday would be his last day. If he had, how would he have spent it? And what would he have thought of the mark he was leaving on the world? 

The next day, I woke up and wondered...is today my last day? And if it is, am I happy with the things I've accomplished and the general direction of my life? The answer is yes and no. Yes because I've achieved 3 things that are deeply important to me: 1) find true love, 2) travel the world, and 3) live creatively (I could certainly improve on this one, but I do the best I can with the time I've got).  On the other hand, I look at someone like Tim Russert, who has accomplished so much greatness that it makes my life seem so small and trivial. There is still so much accomplish! How does one accomplish so much greatness in life? How do we each leave our own special mark on the world? One answer that immediately springs to mind is...fill your life with the things you're passionate about and eliminate, if you can, the extraneous things that drain you of your energy and rob you of your passion. Of course, to do this we need to closely examine our lives and be willing to make some painful changes.  For some people, it might mean ending a bad relationship and for others it might mean changing jobs. Whatever it is, it doesn't make sense to spend our remaining days here doing anything other than the things we feel passionate about. After all, even if today is isn't our last day, we're one day closer.

A Lesson in Patience

After our European backpacking adventures of 2002, camping disappeared from our lives for a while and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe living out of a backpack and tent for five weeks gave us our fill? Maybe we failed to make the time? Whatever the reason, last year we finally started to dip our collective toe in the exciting world of camping again, after five years of being away from it. We've taken it slow thus far, camping at "safe" places with bathrooms and easy access to Wal-Mart for forgotten marshmallows and chocolate bars.  This past weekend marked our first camping trip of the 2008 season and while it was great fun, it was also a lesson in patience. Typically, we camp in May because we enjoy the cooler climates and sparsely populated campgrounds. Camping in the middle of June, however, brought with it some interesting surprises, like intense heat that forces you out your tent at 6:30 a.m. and summer thunder storms that force you to seek shelter under a very rickety, and difficult to assemble, canopy (courtesy of Wal-Mart). Luckily, we were with our friends, Chris and Bri, who know how to fun no matter what the situation, so a night of Texas Hold 'em ensued despite buckets of rain pouring down all around us. Overall, we had a great time camping, although there was one part of our trip that was borderline intolerable:  the wild insects that look like they could be part of the cast of Transformers 2. Poor Chris found an insect that can only be described as a flesh-eating, giant-winged half-caterpillar, half scorpion on his leg as he was tucking in for the night. Believe me, Chris's screams cut through the night air like a knife!