Monday, July 26, 2010

Boy meets girl.

Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy and girl watch fireworks and then carry on interesting conversation, interesting enough that girl wouldn’t mind if boy wants her phone number. He does. Girl awaits his call with actual anticipation.

Boy calls girl. Girl answers. Boy and girl talk endlessly about everything (including girl's new health regimen and all that that entails), and girl believes they were meant to talk to each other forever. Boy calls again. And again. Girl answers every time. Girl even calls boy and he answers. Boy asks girl out. Girl accepts. Boy is going to look up all the vegetarian, vegan, and veggie-friendly restaurants in the area to take girl somewhere where she can comfortably eat the food.

Boy picks girl up. Girl . . . lets him pick her up? (Can't think of anything better.) Anyways, boy is thirty minutes late, but girl looks mighty fine in her new Plato’s Closet short-sleeve sweater dress and doesn't mind at all. Boy sees her and says, “Oh, you’re wearing sandals . . .” Girl says, “Uh-huh. What do you mean? What are we doing?” Boy says, “We’re going up in the canyon.” Girl says, “I don’t have a jacket.” Boy says, “Oh. Yeah." Then boy continues, "And we’re doing a BBQ and bonfire up there, so do you have any food at your place you can eat?” Girl says, “No, you idiot, but if you’d told me even half an hour ago I could’ve though.” Okay, girl really didn’t say that, but she did communicate that with her body language, tone, attitude, and eye contact. Just not her words. Instead she said, “Well, why don't you take me back home, and I’ll change my clothes. I don’t have anything at my house to grill because I’m vegan and you know that and we’ve talked hours about how hard it is to find food I can eat when it’s a date or social event, but I guess we can see what I can find at the grocery store.” Okay, she didn’t say all that either, but basically. Perfect beginning to a first (and last) date.

Boy grills steak. Girl grills salmon. (Good thing girl's a seafood-eating vegan.) The food is delicious enough to at least cloud girl’s memory of how the first hour of the date went down. Then girl's chair topples down the hill with her still in it, and she remembers. Half way through the night girl's RA starts to flare up hard core in her left shoulder, and boy comes to the rescue with a shoulder massage, although unfortunately pointing out that girl's deltoid is almost nonexistent. 

Boy hasn’t called girl since. Girl hasn’t called boy since, although she needs to because boy still has her camping chair and salt shaker. And they lived happily ever after. The End.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

How do you get enough protein if you're not eating meat or dairy?

One of the main questions I get from people is, "How do you get enough protein if you're not eating meat or dairy?" Maybe some of you have been thinking the same thing and didn't dare ask. Well, first of all, the typical American diet actually provides us with an overabundance of protein. So the amount of protein I was used to eating was actually more than I needed.

So how do you know how much protein your body needs? I found a health calculator created by the University of Maryland Medical System that asks your age, height, gender, and frame size, and how active you are. It looks like this:
My results show that I need 67 grams of protein a day. If you're body isn't as healthy as it should be, it's good to get a little bit more protein than average, so I aim for about 75 grams of protein a day. Click here to calculate your protein.

So are you wondering what I could possibly eat to get that much protein without eating one bit of animal protein? Well here are some of the protein-rich foods I incorporate into my diet and how many grams of protein they contain per serving:

almonds (raw), 30g
black beans, 15g
brown rice, 5g
garbonzo beans (aka: chickpeas), 16g
kidney beans, 13g
lentils, 18g
lima beans (raw), 11g
millet (raw), 22g
peanut butter, 8g
peas (raw), 8g
quinoa (raw), 24g
soy beans (aka: edamame), 29g
spinach, 5g
sunflower seeds, 6g
sweet potatoes, 4g
tempeh, 41g
tofu, 9g

The numbers I gave you above greatly depend on the amount of food and how you prepare your food. For example, one ounce raw ground almonds is 6g protein, but one cup raw whole almonds is 30g protein. It all depends what you set the amount to be. Because of this I say, click here and do your own calculating. This site allows you to plug in foods from Arby's to Coldstone to dear old Mother Earth, and asks for details about the way you prepare your food. The nutrients (including protein) depend greatly on the food's preparation—is it raw or cooked? It's amazing how much nutrients food lose when they're cooked. Check out the comparisons and decide how you should be eating your food for optimum nutrients.

And these other fruits and veggies also contain protein but in smaller amounts. Feel free to look up the exact amounts yourself (because I gotta get back to work!), but now you know how easy it is to get enough protein just from eating stuff that grows out of the ground.

avocado
bananas
Brussels sprouts
cabbage
cantaloupe
grapes
grapefruit
honeydew
kale
mushrooms
onions
parsley
pineapple
raisins
strawberries
tangerines
zucchini

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Experimenting with Green Smoothies

I tried something a little different yesterday for my green smoothie, I purchased dino kale, green chard, and papaya for the first time. I like to mix it up now and then and add some variety. I usually put in frozen fruit but this time everything was fresh and made for a very yummy smoothie!

Greens:
Dino Kale
Purple Kale
Green Chard

Fruits:
Papaya (seeds and skin included)
Raspberries
Peaches
Strawberries
Banana

*I also threw in some sunflower seeds I sprouted.