Celebrate World Vegan Day

Monday, November 1st is World Vegan Day. Initiated in 1994 by the President of the Vegan Society in the UK, it is now celebrated with festivities in multiple cities around the world.

Vegans are vegetarians who abstain from all animal products, including all meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy and honey. A vegan diet can be incredibly healthful if followed properly, but it requires a significant commitment to uphold and it isn't right for everyone. I certainly applaud the people who have made that commitment and are living as vegans (famous vegans include Alicia Silverstone, Ellen DeGeneres, Woody Harrelson, Jared Lito, Lea Michele, Natalie Portman, Bryan Adams, Alannis Morissette, Jason Mraz, Prince, and others), but there are some gentler forms of vegetarianism gaining momentum as well. Former President Bill Clinton recently became a vegetarian in an attempt to reverse his heart disease. Don't snicker though...there's actually a lot of evidence showing that a plant-based diet approach actually WORKS!

Not only that, but a vegetarian diet is far easier on the planet than a meat-based diet is. It takes a lot of natural resources to feed all the animals being raised for livestock!  

I was a vegetarian (not a vegan) for a number of years, but have been eating meat for the last 15 years or so. Lately, I've been eating less of it, having many meatless meals a week, a practice which would make me a "flexitarian". I love this idea, because it lets me reap many of the benefits of a healthy vegetarian diet, while still enjoying meat and dairy sometimes!

In honor of World Vegan Day, maybe you'd like to have a meatless meal on Monday. That doesn't mean you have to go buy tofu or seitan...there are endless options for how to put together a simple meatless meal. In fact, you probably already have many in your repertoire...especially if you allow for eggs and dairy!


I'll bet you already make or order some of these:

• Eggplant Parmigiana
• Spaghetti with Marinara Sauce
• Cheese Ravioli
• Manicotti
• Pasta in pesto sauce
• Veggie Pizza
• Vegetable Lo Mein
• Vegetable Soup
• Vegetable Pot Pie
• Black beans and rice
• Black bean burritos
• Cheese enchiladas
• Butternut Squash Soup
• Black Bean Soup
• Tomato Soup (+ grilled cheese = yum!)
• etc.

These are all a good starting point, and once you start to play with meatless meals, you can really dial  up the healthfulness of your choices, choosing whole grains like brown rice or quinoa or barley and adding beans and vegetables and seasonings while limiting the amount of cheese. It's much easier than it sounds, and absolutely delicious.


There are a number of great resources on vegetarian cooking. Here are a few cookbooks that I really like:

  

   















C'mon, give it a try...one meatless meal in honor of World Vegan Day...your body (and the planet) will thank you!

Pumpkin Biscuits

Boo! It's Halloween weekend, folks. Time to be barraged by candy or trick-or-treaters or both. I giggled out loud this week when I read a friend's Facebook post. "wondering how people will react on Halloween when they say 'Trick or Treat' and I throw a four-year-old in their bag....." (She has 4-year-old TRIPLETS!) 

At my house, the munchkins have been practicing wearing their costumes and looking for treats all week! We've already had dress-up days at both schools, a Father-Son Pumpkin Carve at preschool, a Mother-Daughter pumpkin carve at home, a trip to the pumpkin patch, a trip to a farm with - yes - more pumpkins, and a kindergarten costume parade! Still ahead? A haunted walk through the woods, a neighbor's Halloween bash (complete with a live band!), and, of course, trick-or-treating! Despite this embarrassment of Halloween riches, I'm going to squeeze in one more treat...these delightful Pumpkin Biscuits.

Light and flaky, these would make the perfect breakfast treat for a crisp weekend morning or a great complement to a steaming bowl of your favorite fall soup. Biscuits take hardly any time to make and you'll feel so accomplished by the time you gently cut them with an overturned glass (because, really, who has a biscuit cutter?). A little icing jack-o-lantern face would be adorable...


Pumpkin Biscuits 
adapted from Cooking Light, 2008

makes 14

2 c. flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp. salt
5 Tbsp. cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/3 c. lowfat buttermilk
3/4 c. canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling!)
3 Tbsp. honey


Directions:
1. Heat oven to 400.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, and salt in a bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or a large fork until mixture looks like coarse meal. Chill 10 minutes.
3. Whisk together buttermilk and honey; add canned pumpkin. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture and stir until just moist.
4. Dump dough onto a floured cutting board and knead lightly. Roll dough into a 9x5 rectangle (about 1/2" thick). Sprinkle top of dough with flour and fold dough into thirds. Reroll dough into a 9X5" rectangle (again, about 1/2" thick) and dust dough with flour. Fold dough into thirds again and pat it to 3/4" thickness. Cut dough with a 1 3/4" biscuit cutter (or an overturned glass measuring about that diameter). 
5. Place uncooked biscuits onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 400 for 14 minutes or until golden brown. 
6. Cool 2 minutes on wire racks and serve warm.

Have your knives sharpened for FREE!

I've blogged before about the importance of having sharp cooking knives...and then keeping them sharp. So.....

I wanted to let my Cincinnati readers know that Cooks' Wares at Harpers Point is having a Knife Festival this Saturday October 30th from 10-3. In addition to big sales on knives, cutting boards, and sharpeners they also have a special deal:

They will professionally sharpen up to THREE of your knives for FREE while you wait! Additional knives can be sharpened for $2.50 a piece. Trust me, this is a steal...and you will LOVE your newly sharpened knives!

Here's a link to event information on the Cook's Wares website. Happy sharpening!

Be Gentle With Yourself

I didn't really mean to take a 2 week break from blogging. I was aware of it, but I can't say I meant to do it. I had a big project that got in my way. And then I couldn't think of anything I wanted to write about that seemed worthy of your attention. And then I started to beat myself up about how long it had been since I'd blogged. Today I decided that perhaps my non-blogging could be the subject of my post; it was time to stop beating myself up and to start being gentle with myself.


I'm not always good at being gentle with myself. I often feel like I'm not getting enough accomplished in any given day (or week, or month). I have so much I want to do and a lifetime of hyper-productivity to look back upon which has set a high personal bar! These days, I have such a full life with these three wonderful kiddos and my amazingly cool husband that sometimes things just don't get checked off my list the way they used to. It's easy to berate myself for this. It's far more difficult to be gentle.


I'm learning though. I've been taking a yoga class lately with two of my girlfriends. Yoga is new to me, and I'm thoroughly enjoying this class. The instructor hits just the right vibe for my taste and the 5:45 AM class (hot vinyasa flow) is challenging and fits into my crazy schedule. (The instructor has 5 children herself which inspires me!) Yesterday morning, she ended the class in a relaxation pose and played The Beatles' classic "Let it Be." It was all I could do not to cry. What a simple reminder that it's okay to let go of anxiety and self-criticism and just let it be.


So, today I'm back to blogging and feeling more okay than ever about the break.


How about you? Can you be gentle with yourself about something today? Can you widen your definition of what is good....and just let it be?

Are you connected?

At first blush, in a world with Facebook and Linked In, it may seem to be easier than ever before to connect with people. Yet, I think it's actually more difficult than ever.

Today when we want to call someone a friend, we need only click a few keys on the keyboard and - voila - friends! What could be easier than that?! Yet, all this clickable friendship has allowed us to hide from both the work and the pleasures of real intimacy, making them seem difficult by comparison. It's crippled our social capability. Amid our hundreds of online friends, how many real ones do we still have? Isn't it easier to send an email than to make a phone call? Or easier to call than to show up in person? Do we still have the time for real connection? Can we make the time?

The author Matthew Kelly uses the phrase "carefree timelessness" to describe the truest state of connection. It calls to mind images of being together without watching a clock or having an objective - just being. To experience carefree timelessness, you need to ditch the agenda and just while away some time with someone you love. Kids are great at this - they play. Teenagers hang out. What do we do as adults? We schedule. Or we click away at a keyboard.

The benefits of real connection are powerful but we just can't fully experience them over the internet. I'm as grateful as anyone for the quick and easy way Facebook has provided to stay up to date on the latest life events and some of the day-to-day minutae of a wide circle of my friends. But those interactions online pale in comparison to even one real conversation.

I was reminded of that this weekend when I had the pleasure of hosting a dear friend and her daughter for dinner and a visit. In ten years I've seen her only a handful of times, and this was the first in more than 3 years. What a joy it was to sit with her, to share a meal, to have a real conversation, to get to hug her and her precious little girl. Are we connected on Facebook? You bet. But is it the same? Not a chance.

To live our very best lives, to fulfill our potential, we need these real-life interactions, these connections. They feed our very souls, those long, meandering conversations with a friend, the exuberant playtime with a child, the unhurried meal with a parent, the two-way, agenda-free, honest, give-and-take with a spouse. They reveal our truest selves. And we must know our true selves to live with authenticity.

So, beyond the friend requests that now fill your inbox and mine, our intention must remain the same - to seek out and cherish those real connections within our mostly clickable lives.

Acorn Squash with Apple Walnut Topping

I am so excited to be dusting off my cool-weather recipes now that the temperature is finally dipping into the 60s around here. I have some perennial favorites that I simply won't make until there's a chill in the air, colored leaves visible from the kitchen window, and a football game playing on the TV in the next room. One of those is this acorn squash. 

For those of you not familiar with all of the squash varieties, an acorn squash is the smallish green one shaped like, well, an acorn!  They are super-easy to cook and are absolutely delicious. This particular recipe uses the microwave so it's quick enough to make even for a weeknight meal - I love that!

While the squash is good prepared simply and topped with just a little butter and salt or grated parmesan, this version is sweet enough to stand in for dessert! Pair it with a roasted pork tenderloin or crispy baked chicken for a satisfying way to celebrate these first chilly fall days.

Acorn Squash with Apple Walnut Topping

serves 2

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced

1 Macintosh apple, peeled and diced

1 Tbsp. butter

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp. brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 acorn squash

3 Tbsp. chopped toasted walnuts

Directions:

1. Place apples and butter in a nonstick skillet and saute until tender. Add  brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla and stir until sugar dissolves.

2. While apple is cooking, place whole acorn squash in microwave on HIGH for 4 minutes. Turn over and microwave 4 more minutes. Carefully remove squash from microwave and cut in half (from stem to tip) with a sharp knife. With a spoon, scoop out seeds and discard.

3. Fill each half of the squash with half of the cooked apple mixture and sprinkle with toasted walnuts. Serve immediately.

Have you seen your family lately?

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of Family Day - a Day to Eat Dinner With Your Children. This "holiday" (or movement, perhaps?) was created by CASA, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, because its studies show that the more often children eat with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or use drugs. Family dinners also have a direct impact on positive self-image, higher grades and parent-child communication. So CASA created a holiday to encourage people to eat family dinners.  Did you celebrate it by sitting down to dinner with your family?

It makes me sad that we need a holiday for this. Sad that we need need an annual reminder to sit down at the table together and share a meal and talk about our day. But since we apparently do need that reminder, I'm grateful that CASA has stepped up to provide it and that other companies who believe in the power of a family dinner have joined them to sponsor and publicize it.

As one example, Stouffer's has partnered with Todd Parr, a children's author who has penned a new book called "Let's Fix Dinner"  in celebration of this day. It's available for a limited time through the link I included here. (I just ordered mine!) Incidentally, Todd Parr also wrote "This is My Hair," one of my daughter's most favorite books when she was a toddler...love love love that silly book.)

I am a big believer in the importance of family dinners. My own family sat down to a meal together every night growing up, as did my husband's family. Our growing family eats together every night now unless my husband is traveling for work. Sometimes that means we eat early or late to accommodate our schedules...but we do it.  We all look forward to that symbolic point in our day when we come together from our disparate activities - work, preschool, tumbling, kindergarten, errands, exercise, whatever - and reconnect in one place, at one time, around one table as a family.  I'm frankly a little anxious about how our ritual may need to adjust as our children grow older and begin to participate in activities that cut into the family dinner hour. My hope is that we'll be so attached to this family tradition that we'll do whatever we can to preserve it, as often as we possibly can.

Since I love to cook, these family dinners provide an opportunity to put home-cooked food on the table, but the data from CASA suggests that it's not so much the food that matters. It's the ritual. The connection. The conversation that unfolds. So please don't pressure yourself to prepare a homemade feast if you can't see your way there. Simply put food on the table and eat. Pick up takeout if that's what works. Just eat. Together. You'll be glad you did.

If you're already having family meals, will you write a comment below this post and share why they're important to you or how you make them fit into your schedule? And if you're not having them as often as you'd like, can you try to have one family meal a week and let that be your ritual? It could be Sunday breakfast or Friday dinner or whatever works for your family. Just do what you can; you'll create an opportunity for your children to open up and share about their day and for you to make memories you'll always cherish. If the toddler runs laps around the table while everyone eats, so be it. If your teenager doesn't talk at all, so be it. Do it anyhow. Routinely. And let the ritual do its work.

Perhaps if we all commit to eating as families as often as we can, we won't need an annual holiday to remind us of why these dinners matter. We'll be celebrating them all year.