Vegan Ventures - What Would Prot Do?

I've a few reasons for going back to the vegan way of life. Before my life of smallholdings and never ending mountains of eggs I had flitted between vegetarianism and veganism since my mid teens. The way animals are treated in our industrialised farming system bothers me, it always has.

chickpea and mushroom burgers

My great aunt was a smallholder who worked for the milk marketing board with many friends in the farming community. I visited a lot of farms throughout my childhood, some were better than others. So my opinions are not born out of some cosseted, city born ignorance. 

The choice of eating meat/dairy free is made from a position of privilege. I get that I can afford to choose not to eat these things many cant. However, meat and dairy isn't particularly good for me and I'm trying to loose weight so bingo!  

curried tofu, spinach, pepper and pea scramble

My main reasons for choosing veganism are environmental. I don't know how anybody on earth can refuse to identify as an environmentalist when our lives depend on not totally knobing up our ability to survive on this planet. The meat and dairy industries are devastating the natural environment due to the absurd scale they are now conducted on to satisfy our overindulgence. From greenhouse gases produced by stock and the processing of them; to the inefficiency of using up natural resources required to feed animals that could have fed many more humans.

“If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million,” reports ecologist David Pimentel of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He adds that the seven billion livestock in the U.S. consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire U.S. Population.

The same goes for water use. If you give the slightest shit about people starving and thirsty in the world then this should be an issue

red onions, peas, peppers, harrisa cous cous with home baked dinner rolls

                               

I'm not in denial that we as a species are omnivores, of course we are and the eating of meat has been pivotal in our evolution. However, we are far from obligate carnivores and as long as you don't try to live off just bread and potatoes you can find everything you need in a vegan diet. Dark leafy greens are a better source of calcium than dairy and there is more protein per calorie in broccoli than there is in beef. Coupled with fortified soy milk and lobbing nutritional yeast in pretty much everything, nutrients sorted! Besides, when your diet has started to poison you it's probably time to evolve again. 

coconut yoghurt, banana and mixed berry smoothie bowl with chia seeds

                               

In my previous existence as a small holder our main sources of meat were what we had raised our selves and game that my partner caught. The welfare of the animals as always a paramount concern however something a friend said to me recently really got me in the feels, "You can't kill something humanely if it doesn't want to die."

                       

                                                  chicken-less chickpea nuggets

Am I going to cock it up on occasion? Yep! I went out the other night for a meal and ordered the veggie burger without the cheese and mayo, well done Kath.  I did however completely overlook the fact it was served in a brioche bun. Doh! Meh, next time I'll remember (hopefully).  

In a few weeks I've dropped a couple of dress sizes, which is probably a couple of stone but I find weighing too depressing so I'm not going there. 

What would Prot do?

Space Saver.

The parental units have gone on a jolly to Spain and Spike is with his Dad for the weekend.  I'm taking the opportunity to get on top of some organising of the kiddos stuff.  Even though my folks place is pretty roomy kids have a wonderful ability to fill every square inch with their stuff.

I got some great Curver storage baskets from Morrisons. Four fit perfectly side by side in the bottom of the Welsh dresser in the conservatory, the end of which had kind of been designated kids stuff space.

 My next job was to organise the stuff in and on the dresser to try create a less cluttered look and some room in the drawers for more kids stuff.

I've got a kid size table and chairs coming for the boys so I needed somewhere for the paper, pens, crayons and the various other materials needed for kid type crap art making.  

I then gave the whole dresser a good rub over with some wood polish/balm type stuff and started my paint pump dispenser type things.  I've been collecting hand soap bottles, washed them out, got the labels off (thanks Cath) and filled them up with paint yay!

Much less waste and mess, HOORAY!

Well, in theory.

Spud and I had a great day today, I had planned to take him swimming but the rain was so absurdly heavy I didn't even want to drive in it, let alone drag a child through a car park in it. 

Luckily Spud loves hanging out. 

I broke out the new blocks I got him from Morrisons the other day.  He had loads of fun with them, we built towers and did some counting.  He gets the concept of counting although every number is "Tee".  

We also sang nursery rhymes, hilariously he continues his approach to counting with singing.  So "Baa Baa Black Sheep" is "Baa Baa Baa Baa Baa Baa WOOOOOOL!"  And "Row Row Row The Boat" is "Row Row Row Row Row Row STEEEEEEAM, Row Row Row AHHHHH!"

And of course we did painting using our new paint pumps..

I save the really long lengths of paper that come in Amazon parcels for painting and colouring type activities.

Concentration.

"Look Spud you did an awesome tree!"
"Nuh, quack quack!"

"righto"

Both of the boys are over their Dad's house tomorrow.  Don't know what I'm going to do with myself, how strange.  I've got about a thousand sewing projects started that need finishing, might have a bash at getting on top of some of those.

xoxo

Crimblemas times and other festive tidings.

Christmas this year held a mixture of emotions for me.  On one hand it was the first year that Spike had a real sense of the build up to it and got excited, what with being in nursery and taking part in the nativity.  Spike really is so lucky to be in such a fantastic Nursery now.  They really do all that they can to make everyday as special as they can for the children.  I think childhood should be as full of as much magic and wonder as possible and this year he was really tapping into it all.  However, This was also a time of changes for us.  First Christmas not living in Llangybi, first Christmas Spike getting picked up by his Dad to go and stay with him for a few days and also the longest time I've ever been separated from Spike.  He, however has had a whale of a time and THAT is what is important.

Spike met Father Christmas in nursery and also Mrs Christmas came in and made Gingerbread men with them. One day they had to clean up reindeer poo in nursery as Santa's Reindeer had made a terrible mess and also they had a fab end of term Christmas party.  This year I also got to go to Spike's first nativity play.  I was the mum filming the entire thing whilst also singing along to all the songs and doing all the actions.  Spikey was SO GOOD! No melt downs, or freezing and thankfully no planking.  He sang and danced and clapped his way through the entire thing. I was busting with pride.

                                       

This was Spike's costume for the Christmas Nativity. He was one of the 3 Kings/wise men.  Spike however was adamant that he was a Knight. Infact the only was I could get him to agree to wear the costume and attend the Nativity full stop was if he could be a Knight. So I crocheted him a Knight helmet rather than a crown and prayed the teachers wouldn't mind.  No one said anything so I think I got away with it.  I made the costume itself out of a pillow case and some scrap fabric that my Grandmother gave me.

Sam here is helping me write the Christmas cards.  A friend sent me a link of advice for people spending their first Christmas as a single parent.  One of the items that really struck a chord with me was establishing some new traditions.  I suppose it gives you something to focus on and work towards and also a new sense of identity.  I wanted our traditions to incorporate our extended family as much as possible so it was kind of perfect for us that in the week running up to Christmas we had the cousins Tomski and Umska to hang out with us EVERYDAY!

                   

  

Here they all are doing Christmas Crafts! Tomski made a star to go on the top of our tree as we didn't have a topper and people generally seemed a little displeased with me unceremoniously plonking a toy dalek on top.  We did salt dough ornaments, glitter stars, reindeer's and robins.  We sang Christmas songs and had a new Film to watch and goodies to eat on Christmas eve in our new pyjamas.  A Christmas eve box is definitely a little tradition that I will continue.

This year I made the boys a stocking each. They can hold about half a dozen small toys plus some chocolates and an obligatory Clementine in the toe.  Despite sharing a selection box between two of these stockings for the boys I am befuddled to tell you that neither one of them touched any chocolate over Christmas.  If Spud didn't look so much like me and Spike wasn't so weird (like me) I would be seriously wondering whether they had both somehow been switched at birth.  Anyway, back to the stockings.  I love them, they're so traditional looking and I'm thinking that each year I can add  bit to them, like the Boy's names, some snowflakes etc another little tradition to add to our festive season.

We trimmed the tree all together.  We never had a tree in Llangybi as our living room was quite an odd shape which made festive feng shui far more bother then it was worth. Especially considering we spent the actual main part of Christmas over my parents anyway. Last year I did feel a bit glum about no decorations so I crocheted some sparkly snowflakes to hang in the windows and from the beams.

Christmas Morning! Thanks to our wonderfully generous family and friends the boys (as usual) had lots of lovely presents to open. We have been on pretty meagre rations toy wise since leaving Llangybi so it's been nice to be able to reclaim play time some what.  As usual the kids tore into the presents quicker than I could note down which present came from which relative but they've all been a massive hit!

Spud with the train that his lying Aunty Hannah said didn't come apart.... it actually comes apart into approximately 10,000 pieces. Luckily those pieces are then building blocks that can be made into a tower and so forth. *shakes fist at Aunty Hannah*

This was their main present from me. Trains + Dinosaurs = two happy boys.

My beautiful sister with Spud on Christmas morning. We all hung out and exchanged pressies in the morning and nicked bits of bacon off the turkey as it rested in the kitchen.  Then Ruth went home to have dinner with her family and after dinner Mikey went over his Dad's.  It was all different and strange but still very good.

Hope you all had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year!

xoxo