Pee-Soaked Cloth

No, this isn't a VeganMoFo entry. Ewwww. You're gross for even thinking it could be. Or maybe that's me. Either way, eww.

I just threw our first batch of cloth diapers in the wash. We've been doing disposable diapers for Anna for over two years now (since she was born) and we've decided that, for our second kid, we're going to go with cloth diapers.

We've been practicing on Anna with the one-size-fits-all Bum Genius diapers (they fit kids from infant to 30-some pounds ... though honestly they seem a bit snug on Anna and she's not quite 30 pounds).

She runs around naked a lot, since she's potty training, so we don't go through a lot of diapers nowadays. So I just put three day's worth of cloth diapers in the wash and - phew! - they're stinky.

It has been about 25 years since last I smelled pee-soaked cloth (if you don't count those few times in college when ... um ... on second thought, never mind). My parents diapered all six of their kids in cloth and now, thanks to the urine of my daughter, I distinctly remember the smell of my little brother's diaper pail.

Eww.

Vegan MoFo Day 3 - Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

We subscribe to Foxtail Farm, a Community Supported Agriculture farm. We get an amazing variety of seasonal veggies (and a little fruit sometimes) every week and it's awesomely amazing. I actually feel quite guilty for never mentioning it on the blog before.

We've been getting red peppers for the last few weeks. I've never roasted them before, but I did a few days ago with amazing results (though I should have left them in the broiler a bit longer ... I'm scared of char, I guess).

So I made roasted red pepper hummus on Wednesday night.





Sea salted pita chips are definitely my favorite hummus vehicle.

I used this recipe. Except I didn't add the basil. I did, on the other hand, add some cayanne pepper (I don't know ... 1/4 teaspoon maybe?) and about 1/4 cup of water, since we here in the Piggy household like our hummus a little creamier.

It's gone already, by the way. I just finished it of with the last of the pita chips.

VeganMoFo Day 2: Obvious Kitchen Tip #1

This Little Piggy Had Tofu's Obvious Kitchen Tip #1:

Always make sure you close the bag of frozen blueberries before you put it back in the freezer.


Either I spilled a bunch of blueberries on the floor, or someone is playing a large-scale game of Go and black is kicking ass.

Now whenever I give Anna frozen blueberries (quite possibly her favorite thing to eat at the moment) she always says, "Daddy spilled blueberries one time. Daddy say, 'Oh man!'"

She's right. I did say, "Oh man!" when it happened. I'm really glad I didn't say what I wanted to say, seeing as how she repeats it every day. Though I have to admit, the thought of Anna saying, "Daddy say, 'fu**ing sh*t goddamn motherfu**ing son of a bitch!'" every day does make me chuckle a bit.

p.s. I forgot to mention yestertime where you can find links to all of the two hundredish bloggers who are participating in VeganMoFo. That's right, hundreds of bloggers all writing about vegan food for the whole month of October. What could be better?

Here's a page with links to each blog.

And here's VeganMoFo's bloglines page where you can read all of the participating blogs in one handy place.

VeganMoFo Day 1: I've Given Up Nothing Not Worth Giving Up!

I love food.

I've always loved food. Growing up, I fondly remember my mom's meatloaf (though not the salmon loaf). I remember her cabbage rolls, which I would always have without the cabbage. I remember the rare treat of lasagna (the noodles cost more and my mom was/is frugal ... a trait of hers I wish I had more of).

And mashed potatoes. Holy shit. I loved mash potatoes.

So now I'm almost 30 years old. I'm a stay-at-home dad, so I spend most of my days thinking about food, cooking food, eating food and reading about the animals and animal products that I no longer consider food.

All of the old favorites are still there for me, but now they're vegan.

I always have ingredients for vegan meatloaf when I use Jennifer McCann's Magical Loaf Studio for the recipe. Here's one of the many loaves I've made (note: I double the recipe and cook it in a single bread pan).


I made cabbage rolls with a friend of mine last fall using Gimmie Lean "sausage". And my mom will be thrilled to know that I actually ate the cabbage too!

Lasagna was one of the first entrees I made when I went vegan six kick-ass years ago.

Mashed potatoes are still a favorite.

I have given up nothing worth keeping when it comes to food. I've gained everything. I've gained an appreciation for vegetables. I used to LOATHE vegetables.

My dad has a couple small fields he calls gardens at home and I never appreciated them until I went vegan. Now when I go home in the summer I'm in heaven. Strawberries and raspberries for the picking by the handful. Asparagus! Peas off the vine (actually, peas are the one thing out of the garden that I liked growing up). Cucumbers! Tomatoes! Pumpkins! Onions! Corn! Way more stuff!

What the hell was I thinking? How could I have not liked this stuff as a kid and teenager and even as a young adult? I was missing out on a world of food while chowing down on my microwavable spicy beef and bean burritos (seriously, I had one for breakfast every morning for a year in college), frozen pizza whose texture could only be accurately described as cardboard topped with slime, and Taco Bell's Grade J beef. Where was my head?

I was lazy, for one. I didn't want to cook. But the main reason I ate shit (quite literally, in the cases in the above paragraph) is that I had no reason to think about where my food was coming from. I didn't think about what happened to my food before it hit my plate. A meal wasn't a meal unless 75% of it was meat and/or cheese. I had a tall glass of cow's milk with every meal, even at restaurants.

Six years ago that all changed when I met a guy named Alex at my work. He told me he was vegan and I was intrigued. I wanted to know more. I never said, "Don't tell me. I'd rather not know."

On the contrary, I kept asking him for more and more information, eventually asking to look at a Why Vegan? pamphlet he had. By the time I finished reading it I had made the decision to go vegan. It didn't take me long before I was eating Fantastic brand vegan sloppy joes and chili and microwaving an Amy's black bean burrito every day for breakfast.

A month or so later I showed my girlfriend Meet Your Meat and a few seconds after that she was vegan as well. A couple years later that girlfriend became my wife. Then a year or so after that we had a daughter, Anna. She's the one at the top of this page (though she's a year older than that photo now).

And in January we'll have another. A boy. Liam.

Anna eats like a champ. Her current favorites are frozen peas and frozen blueberries, smoothies and peanut butter sandwiches. And today she chowed down an Aloo Gobi-type dish I made last night. Sweet.

Vegan Mo Fo

Starting tomorrow...


I'm going to try to do one food-related blog per week day (and possibly weekend day ... or maybe that's just when I'll catch up).

Wish me luck!

Stuff I Found In My Backyard #2

Happy Birthday, Over and Over...

Anna's new favorite song is Happy Birthday. Yesterday morning (most mornings actually) she asked me to sing it while she ate breakfast.

"Sing Happy Birthday Anna, Daddy," she politely demanded.

I usually try to think of whose birthday it was recently or whose it will be soon. Our good friend Kris Kerzman (Kerz, as we call him) turns 30 today, so we sang it to him.

And then we shot a ridiculous video.

Please excuse my dancing and try to focus on the little kid instead of the big one.



The song is "Devil A-Go-Go" by Blitzen Trapper, in case you're curious. I realized later that I should have played Birthday Song by the Beatles. Oh well.

These Thy Gifts...

I'm atheist, so I don't think my family would ever ask me to say grace before a meal. But if they did...

(click to view larger size)

Comic from Abtruse Goose.

(hat tip to Vegan.com)

Yestertime

A quick google search showed that a word I thought Anna made up this morning is actually quite common on the world wide web of everything we call the internet.

Yestertime.

She just said it out of the blue during breakfast (in between an open-faced peanut butter sandwich and frozen blueberries).

It's in the Urban Dictionary, which I guess must mean people in urban areas use it all the time. She's such a urbanite, that two year old daughter of mine.

Stuff I Found In My Backyard #1