Life returns to normal

I went to replenish all the groceries we lost from the freezer and refrigerator yesterday.  I shoulda stayed home.  The shelves were almost bare.  I was reminded of photos of stores in Russia (or was it one store and only in Moscow) that we were shown photos of in the '50's.  They were always bare and folks were queued up waiting for a moldy potato.  Or something.   Hey, I was under ten years old.

Anypotato, I ventured out for the first time since Isaac visited and at least I tried.  Frozen veggies had been there since before the power went out and then just allowed to refreeze when the power returned.  Meat and dairy shelves were empty.  As a vegan, I eat nothing from those shelves, but it still looked strange.  Fresh veggies were scarce and very possibly were 5 days old.  I did pick up a few that were not soft or mushy.

I did find out that when store supplies are lean, I don't spend much money.  I sure do miss all of our garden frozen freshness.

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Milk!

I am a vegan. That means I eat no flesh, nor do I eat/drink any dairy products. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it?  Well, it isn't.  The no flesh part is easy.  If it had parents, I don't eat it. Yes, that includes fish.  So many people think that fish are not flesh.  Oh well.  Meat is not sneaked into other products that much either, so avoiding flesh is easy. Meat can be used in hundreds of ways, so using it as a filler in other foods is too expensive.

Milk is another story.  Milk is everywhere.  If you see the letters lac in an ingredient, it means there is milk in it.  Casein is another milk word. Means milk protein.  You will find some form of milk in most commercially made bread, most all prepared, frozen foods, even the ones that say vegetarian on the label.  Our government subsidizes milk farmers, so companies use it as much as they can as a filler. 

The worst offenders are pharmaceutical manufacturers.  Lactose or milk sugar, is in 99% of all pills or tablets.   It's a cheap filler. If you can't have milk, then  you must have your medication made by a special pharmacist called a compounder.  Wanna talk about how much that costs?  And of course,  insurance does not cover it.  If you do ever find a medication without lactose in it, it will invariably be in a gelatin capsule.  What's gelatin?  Well, a meat product, of course.

Vegans just can't win. Good thing we are healthier in most ways because we are vegans and don't need to wade through the morass of modern medicine.

A Mixed Bag

I made polenta this morning. In the oven. That way it doesn't bubble and splatter like Mount St Helens all over the stove while you are furiously stirring it.  I wonder what marketer came up with calling corn meal mush polenta.  Same thing.  My parents ate corn meal mush, boiled, fried and any other way my grandmothers could figure out how to cook it.  Now we eat polenta. Nice name. I guess corn meal mush was not elegant enough for today's 'ladies who lunch'. I use slices of it for mini pizza crusts topped with tomatoes, mushrooms and whatever else I have in the house that I might like.

I am a vegan. I know, a dirty word for most of you, but I have been vegan since 1976 and don't see myself eating dead flesh or dairy anytime soon. So vegan I am and vegan I shall remain.  It sure is cheaper at the grocery store and my garden feeds me most of the year.

Speaking of gardens, and we were, weren't we?  The flower garden yielded pleasure this morning.
The walking iris is Marching toward Praetoria (Look it up.)

It should be totally open by tomorrow.

Don't ever discount the common flowers. These are petunias Use lots of them for great splashes of color.

And with dew falling off the calla lily, who could resist taking a picture of it.

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Thanks for your visit today.