Marvin Morley (1966-2009)

Marvin Morley a frequent caller to the Susan Powter blog talk radio show passed away this week from Kidney failure. I always enjoyed him calling into the show. We will miss you Marvin.

The Vegan Spinach Lasagna recipe has been updated. If it didn’t work out before it should be much better now.

Hey peeps, A message to those who are into Second Life (the virtual world, secondlife.com). I have just opened a SL avatar clothing shop called Adjunct. Right now I have mostly geek chic items like suspender pants, bow ties and dress shirts. More stuff coming soon. Also, only guy stuff, sorry ladies. But as things progress who knows, I might start doing girly clothes. Check out the website which has a teleport link that will take you in-world to my store.

I’m hoping that the SL clothing business will fund my future plans to build a virtual vegan “ride” in SL. This “ride” will take you on a journey and hopefully by the end of it turn those who might be considering becoming vegan into converts. Working title for this project is “The Brain Washer” tehee. So if you want this project to come into fruition, tell all your Second Life friends/fans to shop at Adjunct!

Josh

It’s a new year and a lot of you have started working on your new year’s resolutions. Some of you have decided you’re going vegan in 2009. Good for you and WELCOME. I’m so happy that you have made this decision. I want to advise my new vegans that going vegan can be a process. At least for me it was. I didn’t run into my kitchen one day and throw everything out that wasn’t vegan and BOOM I was vegan. Maybe you will, there are some people who can do that and have done that. What I don’t want you to do is set yourself up for failure by overwhelming yourself too quickly. For me it was a year long process. My last non-vegan vice was Snickers bars. That one was a hard one for me. I still love Snickers and on bad days I can start thinking about them again. I just know I can’t have them. Not if I want to be fit, lean and healthy.

Downing a bag of fun size snickers is not something I want to do anymore. Don’t get me wrong I had a lot of fun. lol Fun size snickers are fun. A party in your mouth for sure. That party soon turns into an extra 60 pounds of fat weighing you down. After you’ve eaten them you don’t feel much like exercising either because you’ve fueled your body with NOTHING. This isn’t a sustainable way of life. You keep eating a 20 lb bag of fun size snickers every week and you will not be having FUN for very much longer. Heart disease sound like fun? Being out of shape and over weight fun? Cancer fun? A fatty liver fun? Sitting in the doctors office while the doctor tells you you have to have a triple bipass FUN?

Back to my very important point. I don’t want you to be one of these all-or-nothing types. You know them, maybe you’re one. Monday they’re on the diet. They’re getting their stuff together. They starve themselves to death for 3 days and overdo it with the exercise. On Thursday, they’re binging on chocolate cake and feeling digusted. They swear on Monday they’re gonna straighten up and fly right. It’s better to start slow and change slowly then not at all. Start with something like the milk you put on your cereal. Replace it with rice milk. If rice milk isn’t your thing, try soy. Soy milk not doing it for you? Try almond milk. Just start, start with something and move on from there. Just give yourself time to get acclimated to your new vegan lifestyle. And when you accidently eat something with dairy in it, don’t punish yourself further by saying to hell with it until Monday. Because it’s going to happen. You will get cravings for things like Snickers. And you may not have found a healthy vegan alternative for something just as satifying and god knows so much better for you.

A lot of you new to veganisim will try to eat too much protein from tofu and avoid carbs, thinking carbs are bad. But that’s a myth. You don’t have to worry about getting enough protein. Trust me when I tell you that you will get enough protein in the plants you will be eating. To steal some information from Dr. McDougal’s website, “There is enough protein in plants to grow an elephant, horse, or hippopotamus. Certainly there is enough protein to grow relatively small people. Furthermore, all plants contain all of the amino acids in proper balance for ideal human growth.” So many people still believe the myth that a vegetarian or vegan diet is inferior and lacking in protein. It’s not true, in fact the opposite is true. There is a wonderful chart in Colin T. Campbell’s book “The China Study” that compares a plant based meal to an animal based meal. The chart is breathtaking to look at for the first time. Cholestrol for the animal based meal is 137 mg’s. The plant based meal has 0. Let me spell that out because I love the word — Z-E-R-O. Isn’t that amazing? You think there might be a connection betwen heart disease and what we eat? Hmm I wonder if cholesterol causes a fatty liver? YOU THINK!? Back to the protein issue. Protein for the animal based meal was 34 mg’s. The plant based meal was 33 mg’s. So just about the same. If you haven’t read The China Study, you want to check this book out. In fact, go over to Google books and do a search for it. Parts of it are online. The chart I speak of is in there too. So you don’t even have to buy the book to check that out. Prepare to be shocked and amazed.

Well, I’ve had a month off and I’m ready for 2009 to begin. I have new vegan recipes coming down the pipeline. I just perfected an amazing faux chicken pot pie recipe that’s soy free and low fat. I promise this is going to become a favorite for a long time. Prepare yourself for the delicious vegan avalanche that is coming your way.

Excuse me while I take a break from blogging about vegan recipes and talk about Second Life…

I’m hoping to be back with another recipe in a few days. I’ve been busy the past 2 weeks with Halloween parties and work. I’ve also just recently discovered Second Life. I’m completely fascinated by it and have immersed myself in the whole SL culture the past few days. I’m finding it difficult to pull myself out of it long enough to focus on vegan recipes. I have an addictive personality and when I find something I love I become obsessed. I really can’t afford to let my first life go, so I’m hoping I can snap out of it soon. lol One thing that I was curious about was vegans in Second Life. There are 2 vegan groups with a little over 100 people in them. But I was disappointed to find there were no real landmarks in SL for vegans to meet up. Our presence there is pretty small. I want to create some sort of attraction in SL on the grid for vegans. What that will look like or be is still in the works. I have several ideas running around in my head. A couple ideas… A vegan diner. Something like “My Vegan Diner”. Also have a cake and sweets shop where you can buy virtual vegan cakes to gift to your In-World friends. The virtual cake would come with an actual recipe you can make in RL (real life), as would the virtual food in the diner. A virtual farmer’s market. A virtual vegan 101 cooking school for newbie vegans. A My Vegan Cookbook souvenir shop. We could do some things to draw attention to our favorite causes like animal rights, health and the environment. Anyone have some other ideas? I’d love to hear them. I think for this to work we are going to need the help of other vegan websites to get the word out. If you have a vegan website and want to have your presence there contact me (myvegancookbook@gmail.com) to discuss your ideas. Are any of you there? Please friend me. Be you 1 or 100, geek or prep, black or white, gay or straight, christian, jew or godless…just be vegan or vegan curious, you get the idea. My username in SL is “myvegancookbook Bolissima”. And I look like this… a cross between what I look like in RL and what I WISH I look like. lol If only I had that hairline.

The problems I’m finding with Second Life is that it’s difficult to connect with others. I’m socially awkward and it makes sense that I would be the same way in SL as I am in RL. So I take offense to those who say SL is for people who are socially awkward in RL. There is a real discrimination when it comes to “newbies”. That in itself makes things even harder when you first arrive. Which I really don’t understand. Maybe as I stick around longer I’ll feel the same way. But everyone has to start. I’m also finding that there is a steep learning curve. No surprise that only 1 out of 10 people who join SL stick around. After you’ve run around to all of the major hot spots there, peeked into a few houses and tried to connect with some cool peeps (just as in RL, there aren’t any lol), excitement can wan. In all honesty, right now, SL is a really cool — adult dollhouse. Which hey, I admit it, I like to play with dolls. : ) But I see great potential in this new world. SL is fairly new. New things are always intimidating and scary. But I’m excited by the new and I can’t wait to see how vegans make their mark on this new land.

Speaking of new. I’m excited to see who our new president will be! Happy voting day to my US readers!