Health & Hurricanes

  After watching the documentary Vegucated and re-learning how terrible animals are treated and how quickly they are killed (poor "useless" baby boy chicks, not being able to lay eggs), I am testing out the vegan waters again. I say that I am re-learning this because I know that a bunch of us watched Food Inc. at the beginning of Full Sail (for fun, not during class) and I remember being effected by it then. But I guess not for very long because I don't remember having a "vegan phase" during that time. Sadly last year, I remember that the reason I switched back to eating meat in September was because I was visiting my Grandma in Naples and got very hungry and needed a quick snack, so I went to the Publix deli and ordered turkey slices to go with my crackers. I'm sorry, turkey. This could end up being another 12-day phase, but as of right now, I don't think so. Trying and preparing new foods has been pretty fun, although time consuming while I get to decorated just right for the pictures.

  To be honest I do get nervous to try foods that are so different, and part of that is just because I don't like wasting money on food I don't like, but I do like trying new things! I was pleasantly surprised that I really liked the kale and veggie burgers that I bought. I tried butternut squash (the yellow stuff in the picture) which doesn't really taste like anything and is kind of crunchy like carrots. "It provides significant amounts of potassium, important for bone health, and vitamin B6, essential for the proper functioning of both the nervous and immune systems." I got meatless bacon today and when I ate it "raw" it tasted pretty good like salami, but when I cooked it -as instructed- it got dry and sort of tasted and smelled like dog food. I remember a long time ago Sharanya had Mia and I try tofu. To me it tasted like wet cat food, so I probably won't try that again. 
  Side note: V8 has way too many grams of sugar (12) for being vegetable juice.. Here are some other beautiful pictures I have taken of food I have eaten lately:

   I got very excited pushing around my cart of fresh fruits and veggies! I felt so healthy already. Another thing I started doing is bringing a cloth bag with me to put my groceries in so we don't waste so many plastic bags. Today when I shopped and only got four items, I told the cashier that I didn't even need a bag and simply carried my items out. =)

 Sasha likes to help with my breakfast photo shoots. I really like when she follows me around.

  This spaghetti was very good and I will have to make more soon, after I buy another jar of sauce. I used spinach noodles and added more of the spaghetti squash spirals as a filler rather than eating twice as much spaghetti. This morning I whipped up some vegan pancakes that are made from bananas and flour. They were okay. Better than the fake bacon, but I might not make them again. I mixed two recipes and left out a couple ingredients from the main recipe.

   The first pancake didn't brown as much since the pan wasn't as hot. I actually liked the ones that were burnt a little more. It added taste. Also, if you make these, don't use Pam in the pan. The batter is slippery enough (probably because of the coconut oil) that they flip easily and don't stick. I did spray Pam in at the beginning and the very first pancake, which I didn't take a picture of, got so messy and wouldn't stay together when I tried to flip it.

   Dog tested and approved! (She only licked a strawberry. I didn't let her eat any of it.)
Recipe:
     1 & 1/2 bananas, mashed
     1 & 1/4 cup of flour
     1 cup of almond milk
     2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
I also added an unmeasured amount of oats (probably at least one cup?), salt, vanilla extract, cinnamon, brown sugar, and chia seeds.

   This post will end up being pretty long since I'm less than half done, but I also want to post some pretty walk and flower photos. The first photo below is from yesterday when I walked to the nearest library- the second closest was still closed due to the power being out from the hurricane. I had my distance tracking app on during the walk home and I have to admit I was a tad disappointed that the walk was not as long as I thought it was. The total roundtrip was 3.4 miles and I thought I would go at least 4. But that's still pretty good since most walks are closer to two miles!

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   Florida was hit by another hurricane recently. We are very lucky and chose a great place to live considering we did not have any house, window, or fence damage. A lot of our neighbors did though (to their fences). Michael and I stayed up streaming the various weather and news channels on his iPad. He stayed up until about 11pm that night and Orlando was scheduled to get the worst of it starting around 2am. I was a little bit scared as I snuggled in bed with Sasha, pulling the covers over us each time a huge gust of wind made the tree branches hit the walls and roof. Michael got up a couple times to look outside and take videos to send to his parents later. We had one branch that kept scraping against the dining room window, but that was about it. There was a lot of yard work to be done (we still aren't finished yet) and it made me miss living in an apartment. In the morning everyone was walking around looking at the mess and see which trees fell where.  It was really nice to see people working together, especially since we all seem to own different tools.

 I took the pictures around our neighborhood on the Canon using the zoom lens.

 One thing that I liked about the fences being down was that we could finally see what some of our neighbors' back yards looked like.  I guess the hurricane brought these brown ducks from another area because before we've only had white ducks.

 I picked up a few nests around our yard. They were all empty.

   I thought we had lucked out again without having to worry about our power going out, but Monday morning at 9:20am, it went out and stayed out until 10am Tuesday morning. An alternate title to this hurricane half of the post is "Amish is Better".  Not spending so much time on our phones (because we can't charge them) and not watching TV is better. Doing plain things that don't require electricity, like making scrapbook cards, is better. Taking shorter showers because the water is cold is better. Talking to each other is better.

  Sasha was able to get her cone taken off after the hurricane. She has been good about not scratching her neck in the area where the papilloma was removed. I would not have minded the power staying off longer knowing that we had ice to keep the milk cold. I could have kept eating peanut butter and jelly crackers with grapes, but instead we were excited that it came back on and proceeded to spend the next hour on our phones texting everyone about it. Why? Why was that so necessary? Next Lent has to be about me not using my phone. It is a serious time waster.