Veganista Salad

I know fish isn't vegan but I'm going to call what I've been doing "vegan" because I can't stand the pretentious word "pescatarian," defined as someone who will eat fish but nothing else from an "animal."  Since the beginning of September I haven't had in my regular diet any sugar, dairy, eggs or meat of any kind, except for a few emergency tuna salad sandwiches with mayo while traveling in places where there was nothing else.  I did eat a few mini bite sized snickers bars at Halloween.  I do feel a lot better but I haven't lost any weight. I'm trying to eat as little bread/crackers/pasta as possible but it's hard not to use these as quick fixes when I'm busy and eating fish, fruit and veg means cooking almost everything myself.  I have been cooking a lot of Quinoa which is great and I highly recommend it.  It is a complete protein that works like rice or cous cous in a dish.

I've been doing the co-dependent freak show of cooking 3 meals every night, one for my husband, one for my kids, and my "veganista salad," as my family calls my veggie style dinner.  Some nights my husband and kids eat the same thing but it is rough going.  If you wonder how you could ever give up meat, dairy and eggs, it is hard if you don't really want to, and I do want to because I started totally skeeving all of it.  No idea why, maybe my body was telling me something, but heart disease and diabetes are all over my family and animal products don't always work well with those diseases, so let's see how long I keep skeeving and I'll go from there.  I'm not making a statement or being green.

If you look at a family photo of my dad's side of the family, many of us from all the generations have Asian-y almond-y shaped eyes.  My mother is convinced that when Marco Polo brought some Asian men back to Venice, they propagated in the area where my father's family is from and that's why we look like we do and many of us have problems with meat and dairy.  Don't get me started with alcohol.  Many Asians and Native Americans (originally from Asia) have bad physical reactions to alcohol and therefore don't drink much.  If they do drink it causes problems more readily.  I can't drink at all because it makes me totally sick the next day, a glass of wine does me in like drinking a bottle of tequila during an all night dead show bender.

I just finished reading Dr. Christiane Northrup's Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom, and Mother Daughter Wisdom.  I highly recommend both to women of all ages.  One thing she studied is that the further people are removed in generations from a hunter gatherer system of eating, the easier it is for them to eat mass produced and processed food and not gain a pound or have it effect their health as much as it would a person closer in generations to a hunt/gather way of life.  My great grandparents ate hunt/gather which makes me close to the source.  Many skinny waspy supermodels haven't had a family in the field in hundreds of years.  This isn't an exact science but her theory makes sense.

Michael Pollan also asserts that you shouldn't eat anything that your great grandmother would't recognize.  My next quest is to give up salt.  I already started to use Herbamare instead of sea salt to season food when I cook and I don't notice the difference.  The biggest challenges are when we order pizza, if I make a big crispy roast chicken, and of course, bacon.