Meet The Myth. The Legend. The Eco-feminist Hellraiser.

So I'm guessing that if one blogs one should also kind of promote upcoming opportunities in which her vegan ass can be stalked. If you're in the market for such a rare bonanza, well, dust off your creepy shoes, rub some sticky gel in your thinning hair and iron your favorite pair of Dockers before you get thy ass to Navy Pier for Chicago's Green Festival, May 16 and 17. Seriously! There will be samples galore, nifty canvas bags, and awesome hemp jockstraps. (I don't know about that last part - actually, what is a jockstrap and do they still exist?)

Anyway, I'll be holding forth on Sunday at 1:00 with my partner in crime, Lisa Joy Rosing. We'll be talking about, oh, whatever, blah blah blah, dairy sucks, la de dah, veganism rules. Or something to that effect. It'll be entertaining, provocative and sassy, like a perfume from the 1970s. You have my word on that.

Bonus for any shy stalkers out there: if you identify yourself as having learned about the presentation via this here blog, I will reach into my personal stash of purloined fair trade chocolate samples or maybe conditioner or vitamins and gift you with one of my little treasures. 'Cause I'm generous like that.

So please come!

Shalom, everyone.

Mother's Day, 2009...

Motherhood can and will turn you inside-out. If you become a mother, your heart will always be a little on the outside though maybe not visibly so. It is infinitely more vulnerable, at the same time beating more fiercely than ever.

Motherhood has a way of taking every last character defect you have and serving them right back to you, slamming them at you like hard, angry little tennis balls. You have to duck to avoid getting hit by the things you don't like about yourself: your impatience, your unwillingness (inability?) to live in the moment, your insecurities. Every evening, slumped in the bathtub or brushing your teeth, you will vow to do better, to be brave and graceful and warm and gentle yet still somehow fun, and, an eternal optimist, you will believe it is possible if you just set your mind to it. But tomorrow morning you will step on a sharp-edged toy on your way down the steps, realize your son's backpack is not where it's supposed to be (it never is) and he will ask you in that tone that sounds like an accusation what is in his lunch box for the day. In a matter of minutes, you're back to that pathetic creature, slumped in the bathtub, making vows before your toothbrush.

Your hair is all over the place, you're cold and his nose is dirty, but then you notice his little hands, still somehow dimpled at the knuckles. This is reassuring. A little teakettle inside you starts to melt the ice as you wrap your hand around his, kissing his sweet little knuckles. He skips off to draw on the sidewalk, he runs back inside to fill his watering can, he eats a leaf of lemon balm, he looks up to the sky for spaceships. You watch him, still as mesmerized by this being as you were when he was all shiny and new in your arms, impossibly perfect and small, an amber jewel. He is almost seven now, or eighteen or thirty-two, but your child's still perfect and you're still mesmerized.

You remember the first time someone judged him as less than perfect. Maybe it was at his first checkup at the doctor's office and from his head to his chubby little feet, he was just in the twentieth percentile for height. Maybe it was your mother expressing disappointment that his newborn eyes didn't stay cobalt blue. Maybe it was a nagging voice inside you, one that noted in a clipped, unfriendly way that he spoke less than his peers, he didn't potty train as quickly, that you read at three, why couldn't he? You try to chase this voice out of you - find where it originates and silence it once and for all - but it remains hidden, jumping out when you least expect it, and you are subject to its whim at any moment. Just when you think that you are hopeless, though, that you were really foolish and arrogant to think that a flawed person such as yourself could pull this mothering thing off, a moment of grace occurs. His easy laughter, his startling insights, his wide eyes that, although not blue, take in the world at an incredible depth, helps to bring you back to the present, back to the person you want to be, back to loving this child as he is, as he's supposed to be. This shouldn't be hard. This is easy.

So you are a mother. You tell your child that no matter what, you will always love him. Despite the fact that there is not much you are certain of in the world, that things change and life spins us like skittering pool balls with little or no warning, this is something of which you are positive: you will always, always love him.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

Written by the same woman who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe, the Mother's Day Proclamation was a powerful plea for the abolishing of war. Originally conceived as Mother's Day for Peace, we are reminded how little has changed. There is still, sadly, so much violence in the world, and we as mothers and children of mothers need to raise our voices against it, no matter how it manifests. This year, in addition to the chocolates and flowers (or perhaps in the place of those things), maybe we can all aspire to find deeper meaning in Mother's Day: a commitment toward peace, love and justice, something any mother could stand behind.

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Newsflash: Liberals think vegans are a bunch of big meanies!

One of the things blocking my precious sensibilities from reaching the state of Zen serenity I so aspire to attain is surely the open disdain directed by the so-called progressive community at large toward vegans. I have been herbivorous since February 1, 1995, (though, admittedly, that first year was frequently one of self-deception , wherein I would occasionally order a muffin and say to myself, "Well, I don't know that it wasn't made with soy milk and egg replacer. It doesn't say that it wasn't...") and as such, I do not harbor many illusions about the fact that the general public views vegans as a bunch of prudish killjoys at the nonstop barbeque-flavored bacchanal of life. I get this and accept it, though I have many skeletons in my closet with numbers in their bony hands, waiting patiently to disprove my putative prudishness. (They're skeletons: what else do they have to do?) As vegans, our mere presence brings to form the elephant in the room, an unspoken - though, to be fair, at times vehemently spoken - disapproval, and a spotlight on what is intentionally glossed over with the consumption of neatly packaged meat: this is a dead animal. When a vegan is in the room, even a discreet, non-confrontational one, so is the elephant and as such, these illusions are stripped bare. I get this.

What I have a hard time with, though, is the vitriol I have encountered aimed at vegans from the otherwise progressive community. This can be witnessed in real life but especially online, where there is a reassuring anonymity one can safely retreat to and he can make longwinded, ill-constructed arguments without actually seeing the other eyes glaze over in boredom, roll in annoyance. You can let your inner-Id come out to play and insult your would-be antagonists with reckless, gleeful abandon without the constraints one would feel in real life, of maintaining decorum or personal safety. In other words, the internet is the perfect playground for letting unfiltered opinions loose like sputtering balloons zigzagging rapidly across the room.

Of course not just the vegan community is subject to this, nor is the vegan community innocent of immature behavior online. It's just that I have noticed a disproportionate and vituperative response from the larger progressive world with the mildest suggestion that maybe, just maybe, a vegan diet might reduce our carbon footprint and animal suffering. You can almost hear the organic, fair trade green tea sputter against Mac screens across the country in spit take after spit take (you know, the classic comic technique of taking a sip of something, hearing some shocking news, and spitting out your beverage out like Old Faithful?) of outraged disbelief. This is always bound to happen when the "liberal" world hears that they may want to reevaluate some of their most treasured privileges, and that perhaps a smiley-faced sun does not rise and set every day specifically because of them and their obvious awesomeness. Such suggestions cause the grass-fed beef manure to hit the solar-powered fan, apparently.

Take Kathy Freston's recent article on Alternet, for example, on the positive environmental implications of going vegetarian for just one day a week. Is that so damn scary or radical a notion? If so, this crowd would have had their biodynamic brains explode in a green gooey mess if they'd have heard just one of my angry rants circa 1997. This woman was on Oprah, and is hardly a radical vegan feminist. Putting aside quibbles on writing style and just focusing on the message itself, we find that Ms. Freston with her simple, bullet-point-y piece, has certainly struck a nerve with the NPR crowd that loves to have their shoulders rubbed while being reassured that they are above reproach, that they are never part of any problem, anywhere. It is a fact-and-statistic based article, no name-calling, no demonizing, yet the letters that follow would have you believe that Ms. Freston had simply wrote Meat Is Murder And Only Murderous Murderers Eat It! You Suk! in 72-point type.

At about the same time, over on Salon, Alternet's preening cousin with literary aspirations, an interview with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson drew a similar response. Masson, an author of extremely popular books about the emotional lives of non-human animals, such as Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep, had the audacity a few years back to explore the complex psychological worlds of so-called farm animals in The Pig Who Sang To The Moon. Now, in his more polemical The Face On Your Plate, Masson apparently (I say "apparently" as I have not read the book yet) draws a line in the sand, challenging the brigade of Conscientious Omnivores to consider the ethical and environmental implications of eating animal products, even those from their beloved pastoral farms. Predictably, this did not sit well with the Salon crowd, and, once again, the hissing sound of spit takes reverberated across the country. In the letters, if you listened hard enough, you could also hear the increasing rumble of thousands of entitled progressive Democrats having overgrown temper tantrums, ones in which they cried, Wahh! But Alice Waters eats meat! and Wahh! I watched An Inconvenient Truth thirty-two times and Al Gore never said being a meat-eater was bad! (True. We noticed that as well. Why don't you go give your compact fluorescent bulbs a hug? You'll feel better as the polar ice caps melt...)

So, given the fact that omnivores are thin-skinned when it comes to acknowledging the implications of meat-eating, and liberal omnivores are the thinnest of the thin-skinned - like, truly, this epidermis is razor thin - I thought I'd make relations between us a little less contentious by fostering some understanding. Because that's the sort of person I am. In the spirit of goodwill, I have drafted a series of stock composites who tend to respond to the vegan position's assault on one's feelings of general awesomeness. How is this bridging goodwill? Well, if such a document exists, perhaps omnivores who are so affronted by the idea that it may not be so nice to kill animals from the animal's perspective, maybe if they see that their widdew feewings are acknowledged, we can just hug it out and move on.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm writing this because it's fun! And as a smug, puritanical, denatured and uptight vegan, I reserve the right to have fun where I can.

Classifications of Omnivores Observed In The Virtual And Temporal Worlds

There are many types of omnivores, from the junk food eating variety to the rarified foodie, from your neighbor Ed to your favorite newspaper columnist, but it seems that the liberal world breeds some stocks that are unique to it. Of course, there are many more to be observed online and in the field, as well as a good many more subcategories, but in the ever-shifting environment in which emergent genetic types develop and then crossbreed, it is virtually impossible to maintain a static status quo. Be that as it may, these classifications are surprisingly and reassuringly predictable.

The Naturals

First off, there are those who we will identify as The Naturals. The Naturals are offended by the merest suggestion that a vegan diet might be worth considering because they are the natural ones, gosh darn it. They are natural because they acknowledge the life-and-death cycle that is inevitable in the world and they really, really want to participate in the death part of it. Do not begrudge them this birthright or they may react violently or, at least, vituperatively. They idolize Alice Waters, Michael Pollan and raw milk. In reality, they are the liberal, highbrow equivalent of Ted Nugent, sharing a good deal of their genetic code with the Republican crossbow hunting Motor City Madman, though this remains largely unacknowledged. They make arguments about us having canine teeth, despite the fact that herbivorous animals like cows also have some sharper teeth for chewing, and they argue the In The Wild, their favorite place for a cerebral sojourn, lions kill innocent gazelles. In general, The Naturals like to pick-and-choose their ethical justifications as if they were going through the line at an all-you-can-eat buffet. They also stop for a little powwow at the Native American section while they are there, and they will say, "Well, like the Native Americans, I give thanks for the animals that gave their lives for my meal." The fact that they do not base all their ethical decisions on their interpretation of WWSFLKD (What Would Simba From Lion King Do?) and that they do not sleep outdoors year-round, bow hunt, starve when food is not available and go without indoor plumbing or hot water does not deter The Naturals from wanting to emulate native peoples in the specific case of meat-eating and whatever else might serve them, such as sweat lodges with their buddies. This is the most common classification with the most subsets. Some speculate that The Naturals are most offended by vegan point-of-view because it threatens to knock them off their pedestal of superiority. The Naturals were too busy placing advance orders of Michael Pollan's next seven books to address or even contemplate this. They see vegans as naive, urbanized, uninformed and, most of all, UnNatural.

The I Grew Up On Farm-ers

A subset of The Naturals, The I Grew Up On A Farm-ers believe that they have both the authority and authentic voice that make them an especially admired population within the larger classification. The Farm-ers use their backgrounds to justify reinforcing the meat-eating status quo and their ability to try to end a debate with six simple words ("I grew up on a farm,") is especially noteworthy. The Farm-ers believe that vegans are confused, denatured, recklessly uninformed and pitiable.

The Anti-Soy Zealots

Another subset of The Naturals, the genetic emergence of The A-SZs can be traced to the early 2000s, around the time that Dr. Robert Atkins passed the torch by having his diet roundly discredited and then, finally, by dying. As with the Atkins Diet, The A-SZs characterize the herbivorous diet as nutritionally unsound and those who follow it as mentally unsound. The A-SZs believe that vegans consume a continuous and voluminous stream of processed soy products, which they regard as Lucifer's bean. According to an A-SZ, soy will cause males to grow mini-teats where he once had testicles, and cause halitosis, vagina dentata, schizophrenia and, ultimately, an early death and unattractive corpse. Especially pernicious because of how easily they are camouflaged within natural parenting circles, a A-SZ can be detected by keen observation: she can be observed feeding her baby raw liver, and she carries a well-worn copy of the A-SZ bible Nourishing Traditions with her everywhere she goes for quick reference. The A-SZs regard vegans as nutritionally deficient, irresponsible, unknowledgeable ticking time bombs, ready to explode at any moment in a virulent torrent of edamame, tofu burgers and soy milk.

The Sensualists

Yet another subset of The Naturalists, Sensualists view vegans as sexually repressed, dysfunctional and puritanical based on their lifestyle. To a Sensualist, anyone who has objections to eating anything at any moment is pushing a monastic, inhibiting agenda that is devoid of frivolity or enjoyment. Sensualists worship their leaders, usually celebrities in the food world, such as Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson, and they like to see themselves in this same crafted image: culinarily unapologetic, sexually provocative. To a Sensualist, one's status as a vegan implies a host of sexual and psychological dysfunctionalities, and they believe that only omnivores are satisfied as epicureans and as sexual human beings. Sensualists see vegans as hopelessly repressed, buttoned up, dysfunctional and confused.

The Hypocrisy Police

Badge-wearing members of the Hypocrisy Police are ever-vigilant for any indication of a defect in character, or, short of this, any sign that the scrutinized is inconsistent. The Hypocrisy Police Force will ask suspects if his shoes are leather, if she is in favor of reproductive rights, and create hypothetical situations to see how a vegan will respond to such scenarios, for example, how one would respond to living on a deserted island with only a few potentially life-sustaining chickens as company. Regardless of how one answers a Hypocrisy Police interrogation, the scrutiny will continue unabated until the suspect collapses in exhaustion or the officer runs out of topics. If the suspect answers in such a fashion as to deflect all suspicion of hypocrisy, most frequently she is then accused of either dishonesty or self-righteousness. The outcome is a foregone conclusion: vegans are guilty of something. Vegans are viewed by the Hypocrisy Police as untrustworthy, morally disingenuous, slippery, dishonest and, at best, naive.

The Whiners

It is a well-known fact that everyone loves a good whine once in a while, and liberals love whining most. It is as natural and comfortable as breathing to many; there are those, though, who elevate the act to a new level. Most Whiners have perfected the art of circular breathing, wherein the breathing and whining are achieved in one continuous loop. The Whiners love to whine about a litany of whiney subjects to vegans. For example, many have been observed claiming that they "triiiiied" (this is how it's pronounced) to be vegan, but it was too hard. Their teeth fell out, their tongues turned green, the phytoestrogens turned them gay, they slept 76 hours a day, their skin peeled right off like tree bark but once they ate meat again, they grew new teeth, their tongues returned to a pinkish hue, they turned hetero again, and so forth. Some reported seeing the clouds split as well as hearing a harpsichord with a chorus of angels upon returning to carrion. But they triiiiiied (again, their pronunciation). Or they will whine about how it costs too much, it takes too much effort, it is too socially difficult, and it's too darn hard, or, haaaaaard. Or they have special conditions that require protein consumption every fifteen minutes, they grew up in a meat-eating home (as opposed to the rest of the general non-Hindu/non-hippie-commune population), or they just like the taste of it. They perceive vegans as a bunch of big meanies if they do anything less than pat Whiners on the back and say in a very solemn tone, "I know you tried, Whiner. I know you tried." The Whiner tends to think of vegans as either mean-spirited bullies or intensely disciplined and ascetic mountain-dwelling monks. No amount of hand-holding or reassurance will divert a Whiner from this initial assessment.

The Proletariots

The Proletariots fancy themselves as voices of the common people, regardless of their circumstances, and, as such, they are offended by the elitism they feel emanates from those who have certain standards of what they will and will not allow into their bodies. To a Proletariot, the mere idea of a vegan is personally offensive and deeply aggravating, even if no actual personal interaction has ever occurred. Despite the fact that the least expensive food in the world is, in fact, vegan, and the most exploitative industry is animal agriculture, true Proletariots will remain unswayed from their conviction that vegans are snobbish, entitled, bourgeois and over-educated spoiled brats who hate "regular" people.

The New Agers (a.k.a., The "I'll Try Any Argument That Springs Into My Head"ers)

The New Agers are characterized by their dogged determination to keep any discussion on an esoteric or spiritual plane. When confronted by the presence of a vegan, they will gently but firmly try to steer the conversation away from anything concrete and measurable (for example, the effect of animal agriculture on water quality) and toward what can loosely be called more obscure arguments, such as whether plants feel pain or what their totem animal urges them to consume. New Agers will also argue that animals wanted to give up their lives to be eaten and, like The Naturals, have been known to delve into Native American culture with an insistence that they give thanks for the dead animals they consume, though no such declarations or rituals of gratitude have ever been publicly witnessed. Every argument in favor of meat-eating is filtered through the New Agers primary valve: that of his preferences. This is true of all of the classifications, though the New Agers are more overt and unashamed about this fact. New Agers frequently will taut their status as former vegetarians in order to bolster their arguments, but, upon further investigation, it is usually revealed that they were never actually vegetarians. New Agers cannot be tied down with factual matters, though, and if they sense they are losing an argument, they will suggest just dropping the subject, regardless of who brought it up. New Agers view vegans as spiritually adrift, chakra imbalanced and overly analytic.

So there we have it. Please feel free to add any categories you have observed in the field or online so we can keep the most thorough record of the classifications rampant within the world of liberal distaste toward veganism.

Shalom, everyone.

Through the lens of a cleanse...

I have this very, shall we say, well-loved, book (okay, it's seriously bedraggled: dog-eared, pages are coming out of the binding, food stained) I bought many years ago, ten or eleven, after I just happened to push my grocery cart down an aisle and wound up by the vitamins and cookbooks. Something about the cover, with it's fresh herbs and tall glass of juice, leaped out at me. Intrigued, I picked it up. The book is a day-to-day guidebook to doing a twenty-one-day cleanse. I leafed through it there, and, me being impulsive, within minutes started grocery shopping on the spot for the three week cleanse I took the executive privilege of deciding that John and I would embark upon the next morning. Into the cart went apple cider vinegar and fenugreek, aloe vera juice and daikon radishes. I came home later that day with adorable carrot tops and beet greens peeking out of our canvas bags, the stitching on them threatening to rip from the weight of it all, and as we unpacked, John tried to extract more information about what this new endeavor.

"So, what are we supposed to do?"

"We're supposed to do what the book says."

"But what does the book say?" He grunted, struggling to close the produce drawer.

"Oh, whatever. It'll be fun."

It turns out, the book says colonics, which we came to learn was pretty much the opposite of what John considers fun. (How was I to know?) It also says a bunch of days on a raw foods diet, culminating an a two day juice fast, and then two more days raw. John also did not consider this remotely fun. Also not fun: the apple cider vinegar-water mixture before lunch, the two hour waiting period after meals for a drink, liver cleansing juices for five days, which was pretty much like drinking not-particularly good, room temperature salad dressing, and the raw soups with blended alfalfa sprouts in the starring role. John being a small-town-turned-big-city boy, though, he is always up for new experiences and as with so many of my capricious little flights of fancy, he was happy to indulge me just to see where it went. He did the cleanse with me that year, occasionally calling during the day for advice ("Is it okay if I put ice in my wa- no? Sigh. Okay...") and to give me updates ("I drank the juice but I'm totally not doing the wheatgrass shot - I don't care what the book says - that stuff is disgusting.") and he generally kept a positive attitude except for when colonic irrigation day arrived and the hose took with it one the last remaining aspect of John's virginity. At the end of the cleanse, though, he felt light and healthy, as did I. Still, he said to me with a sunny smile and bright eyes but in no uncertain terms, "Just so you know, I am never, ever doing that cleanse again."

So on my own I have been lo these last ten or so years of cleanses, which I tend to do every spring. In April, like clockwork, when I come home lugging grocery bags heavy as if they were carrying bowling balls, filled to the top with burdock root (every bit as enticing as it sounds), hijiki and more lemons than Minute Maid's most productive grove, he says in his low-key way, "So it's cleanse time again?" I nod gravely. "Yep."

The first few years, John saw fit to reiterate that while he would continue to love and support me, there was no way he'd submit to such torture again; now he trusts that I won't ask. His reluctance is understandable: it is a bear to get through. Frankly, it works better now that we have a child to have one parent who is not competing in a sort of dietary triathlon. When my friends hear of my cleanse, inevitably they are concerned: "You have to juice fast for two days?"; "Broth for dinner? I don't care how long it lasts, that's like being prisoner in a gulag,"; "What kind of sadist wrote this book? What are her credentials? Is she a dominatrix or something?"; " You're excited that you don't have to drink an oily juice this morning? You have Stockholm's Syndrome, girl, and the tyrant is you." Oh, actually that last thought was one of my own.

So, whatever, it may be cruel and unusual, but it works. I come out the other side really revived and refreshed, my metabolism revved up and everything fine-tuned. You know that expression, working on all four cylinders? That's how I feel when the cleanse is finished, everything humming along optimally. Getting there, though, can be dicey, and it's a little bit like going through the different stages of labor. You think you can't make it - you cry, you beg, you swear you'll die - but if you white knuckle it, you'll make it through to the other side. Along the way, though, there are plenty of dark moments.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the liver is the seat of anger. If so, it would stand to reason that cleansing the liver might also release stored anger. When one is cleansing in general, emotional aspects come up all the time, and I often begin to feel like Sybil-meets-Dharma-meets-Regan from The Exorcist, which basically combines into a Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme-like character, who, I'm sure, is a delightful housemate. John is now accustomed to the vagaries of my shifting moods as we ride the emotional cleanse roller coaster, though, and he's pretty thick-skinned about being reamed like one of those many lemons for "sneezing too loud" or "folding the newspaper wrong." Now that I'm entering my final week of the cleanse - one in which I can eat cooked food and do not have to drink salad dressing for breakfast - I can say that I feel very strong and wonderful. The cleanse works. And there are things I learned from it that I never would have known if I had never done an extended cleanse. For example:

* Hearing someone crunch on pita chips while you consume your "mineralizing" soupe du jour of blended alfalfa sprouts for the third night in a row can inspire violent thoughts.

* Licking one's fingers after eating a vegan ice cream sandwich will make you fantasize of putting the finger licker's precious fingers in your Champion Juicer.

* If the CIA is looking for new torture techniques, have the prisoner sit in a restaurant while the others at his table eat French fries and he has to nurse a room temperature carrot-beet-cucumber juice.

* When you are really, really looking forward to your evening broth because it is ambrosia-like compared to your daily regiment of foul liquids it helps to reinforce the accuracy of that otherwise annoying expression, "it's all relative."

* You think about food almost constantly when you aren't eating any. Your thought pattern is like this: I need to call back Jane. She might be making dinner. I wonder what she's making tonight? Hey, I wonder what I'm making tonight. John can make dinner. Is it really so hard? They can have pasta and garlic bread. Garlic bread. I wonder when I can have garlic bread again. Oh, god, I have to drink that spinach juice for dinner tonight. Somebody shoot me. Shudder. A spinach lasagna would be amazing right now. I would so devour it. I'm filing for divorce if John asks me what day of the cleanse I'm on...

* If you have a six-year-old, he will say things like, "I wish you weren't on a cleanse so you could try this pizza. It's soooo good!" or "Wow, this is the best pad Thai I've ever had." You won't be sure if he's being passive-aggressive or just effusive, but did he always exalt about food this much?

* Even though you're not cooking, you create as many dirty dishes as you do when you are because of the endless array of fluids you have to prepare.

* Going downtown, when it entails lugging your water, tea, juice and broth for the day, can feel like a slow death for your shoulder. It would lobby to be emancipated from you but it's too damn tired.

* Your friends will tempt your resolve by saying things like, "You know, you don't have to do this," like you were under the impression that a black-masked bandit with a gun growled at you, "Go on a cleanse, NOW." You weren't actually laboring under that impression.

*Foods that normally don't excite you take on new qualities of deliciousness in your fantasies. The anticipation of steamed vegetables in a few days rivals what a child would feel about Santa Claus visiting, brown rice with a little drizzle of sesame oil sounds like a decadent Epicurean feast of the highest order. Again, "it's all relative" ricochets through your mind.

So, yay, I'm nearly done, and yippee, my skin looks great, and woo hoo, no liver cleansing juices for another year and hey, does anyone want to meet me at the Chicago Diner as soon as Sunday? I will most assuredly not be ordering a salad.

Shalom, everyone.

Rage Against The Machines...

One of the great pluses of my relationship with my husband is that we're very much alike in key ways: we have similar tastes, we have similar strengths. It can pretty much be guaranteed that if I'm into a new interest or project, my husband will be right there alongside me, proofreading, brainstorming, running off to get supplies, cutting and gluing and creating a mess to help me make this idea take shape. We are very compatible in this: we are both people who are perfectly content in a creative environment, and we both get all angst-y when we are between projects. I think a lot of our self-worth as individuals comes from our creative output, whether this is a healthy attitude or not.

The downside of being so well-matched in terms of strengths is that we're equally similar when it comes to our weaknesses. Neither of us is very practical, for example, though John is more than I am (his inner-Protestant Minnesotan is to blame), and we are not particularly adroit at the day-to-day business of playing bills on time, making sure our son gets enough sleep, finding our respective glasses, getting the clean laundry folded and put away in a timely manner. Sadly, a lot of this sounds like the stereotypical artist's refrain - how do I still thrive in this world of schedules and deadlines and responsibilities? - (and I am well aware of how pretentious and annoying that sounds, as it's hard not to call to mind the clichéd English lit snob writing an epic hand-wringing prose poem in a smoky café) but it accurately reflects the nature of the challenges we face. Not that every day offers insurmountable hurdles or that we are so tightly cloistered in our precious ivory tower of creativity, but just that the daily obligations one assumes in adulthood seem to be a lot easier for other people to accept, you know?

It wouldn't be so hard if machines didn't hate the two of us.

If it has a motor, wheels, gears, is mechanized to any degree, has buttons one must push, must be programmed, has hard little metal and plastic parts made in a factory somewhere, it has invariably been implanted with a computer chip with the directive to foil the two of us whenever possible. Currently, my oven has blown a fuse and does not work, the pilot light went out in our gas tank (April flowers bring cold showers here), our garage door is dysfunctional and must be manually opened, and, last, the car. Oh, the car.

It safely ferried my newborn home from the hospital, it has shuttled us to all manner of exciting and ordinary destinations, it hosts a number of identity-pronouncing bumper stickers (including my all-time favorite, a scratched-to-the-point-of-illegibility gem from Lawrence, Kansas: Bush + Dick = Screwed) but now the ol' wagon is ailing. Car-eating buzzards are circling overhead. The military band is rehearsing Taps in our garage (they had to open the door by hand, of course). The obituary has already been written for Car and Driver Magazine and it's ready to run at a moment's notice. (Beloved Ford Focus wagon, gunmetal grey, vehicle to John, Marla, their child and several hairy beasts, passed away from complications related to age and negligence on Tuesday...)

The Car Talk guys on NPR would egg each other on and laugh and laugh at our sad situation. The transmission is wonky - it gets stuck between gears or something like that - and, lately, the starter has not been, well, starting. We can get somewhere but when we try to leave, it won't start again. And it's unpredictable. Sometimes it takes twenty minutes or so to restart, other times, a couple of hours. Yesterday, we left abandoned the car in the grocery store parking lot and waited for the bus in the cold rain with all our shopping bags to get to my mother's place so I could cook on her stove as ours is currently unusable, as you read two paragraphs up. I am a fan of public transit so that is not an issue, but it can feel a little silly sometimes to be taking the bus to your mother's place so you can cook dinner and bathe (remember the pilot light?). You know, if you're not nineteen or so.

When I have some perspective, I can clearly see that machines do not hate us, at least not all of them. I am writing this right now on a computer that dutifully records every letter typed, and a space heater is warming my legs. Our toaster oven seems to have mastered the job of toasting without complaint. The blender and juicer shouted out from the kitchen that they are humming along just fine.

When the technology around us shorts out, malfunctions or just plain quits, it's hard not to feel like the entire machine world is in on some master plan bent on disrupting our lives. It can take some deep breathing before it sets in that these things are not us, that in our old age, we won't remember the starter problem with the car, but we'll remember the road-trip to Pennsylvania to see friends, the animal sanctuary in Michigan, the adventures with friends and family that the car helped to facilitate.

Maybe in my attempts to make peace with technology, the lesson is that I need to make peace with myself. These are inconvenient bumps in the road, but the real stuff of life is rich, abundant and expansive. Machines can never replace that.

Shalom, everyone.

I'm mental for lentil soup...

By the way, do you remember back to the not-so-halcyon days of junior high when you referred to the stupid boys and your weird uncle and the girl who tried to copy from you as being "mental?" I never quite understood that. Isn't describing someone as mental along the same lines as calling someone cerebral, and, thus, the opposite of stupid? Was I overthinking this? Most likely "mental" is shorthand for mentally retarded in junior high parlance, right? In any case, calling someone - namely, my husband - mental, has become one of my most favorite put-downs, like, "Would you please stop getting all mental about the freezer door being left open? Jeez!" When in doubt, regress. I think The Art Of War has a whole chapter on using the skills you acquired in sixth grade against adversaries. They are lethal.

So, along the same lines of asking general questions of unsuspecting visitors to my little playpen, I have another one: do you ever forget that whole categories of food exist? Like one day, for example, you wake up and say, "Hmm. I'm feeling like making a casserole tonight. It's been a while since I had one," and you flip through your internal Rolodex of recent meals and you realize with growing incredulity that it's been forever, or at least a long, long time, since you had a casserole of any sort, and then the one you make is so delicious and so hits the spot that you get on this huge casserole-making kick until your family tells you in a loving but honest way that it wouldn't be so awful to have a non-casserole-y meal? Of course this has happened to you. Anyway, the point of this whole post is my recently renewed love affair with soup, the bowl of belly-warming, nourishing goodness that has been waiting ever so patiently to be rediscovered. Oh, and also to share a recipe I think you'll like.

I wonder why I forgot about soup? I wonder why it's only before winter has begum loosing it's icy grip from around my shoulders that I finally remembered? No matter. People probably forget about soup all the time: it's like that rather boring friend who is so steadfastly loyal, so there for you, that you kind of neglect her. This is more about you and your screwed up values than it is about your friend. Admit it. In your more aware moments, you realize that this friend is not boring, actually, she's very cool in her serene, non-showy kind of way, the exact sort of person you should seek out more. Soup is like that, too. Unlike your friend, though, who may have moved on to more appreciative company (and who could blame her?), soup remains steadfastly dedicated to you.

Soup is just a notion, hanging out in the farmer's market and cabinet, waiting to take form in a soup pot and then a bowl. From there, it will curve gracefully to the bowl's contours and that of your spoon, and you will think to yourself, "How on earth could I have gone without you for so long?" Soup holds no ill will: that is not the Way of Soup. It was made to do a job: to warm your throat, then a light a gentle path to your belly, with soupy goodness. If it can caress bread or provide a nice canvas for oyster crackers or scallions along the way, that's all the better, but never forget that soup was created to serve number one: You. Call it co-dependent, call it devoid of self-identity (and, thus, ego, and as such, a manifestation of the Buddha) but still, you know, call it.

When we were three and learning our alphabet, it was there to encourage us, an orange-y broth lesson book with floating letters, and when we are toothless and ancient, soup will fill us with nourishment and warm memories. In between it will be there for us when we're at our worst, no questions asked: sick and snotty, heartbroken, tired, impoverished. Soup loves you -- never doubt that.

Public service announcement over, but, first, some random quick points about soup:

1. If you make a big ol' pot of soup every Sunday, or whatever works for you, you will be so rewarded all week. I don't care how busy you are, naysayer: we're all busy! Don't you think I'm busy what with trying to foment the feminist vegan revolution? This is all the more reason why making a big pot of soup is so beneficial. It actually cuts down on time and expense to do this.

A. I have found if I have a container of soup at the ready in my refrigerator, it cuts down on unnecessary snacking. This makes it not only economical but good for those watching their weight.

2. Do what our grandmothers did: keep a freezer bag of leftover vegetable trimmings for making a kick-ass broth or soup. Again, this is economical and elegant in its frugality. You will also feel so rewarded when you obviate the need for a bouillon cube. Would grandma use a bouillon cube? Pish. And isn't frugality and resourcefulness all the rage these days? Create a buzz around yourself with your superlative soup-making skillz. You'll be all like the Joad family in The Grapes Of Wrath but less, you know, desperate and Okie-ish.

3. I'm getting hungry for soup now, maybe something with asparagus and petite peas. Or black beans, chipotle peppers and corn? Soup is the ultimate blank canvas upon which you make something pitch-perfect for your mood: light, spicy, smoky, subtle, tangy, rich, silky. How are you feeling? Soup is here to help match your ever-elusive moods, and, thus, create union with you. I ask you, can a casserole do that? A pizza? Like grandma said above, hands folding down in the ultimate Jewish grandma representation of dismissal, pish.

A. Experimenting with flavors and textures in your soup creating will make you a better cook. It's all about alchemy, and soup is the ideal vehicle for such experimentation.

4. There's so much to say here, about how adaptive soup is to the seasons, how it is comfortable with both peasants or royalty slurping on it, what a spectrum of colors it can come in, and on and on. I'm getting all verklempt.

5. Oh, last, perhaps my final point is soup is perhaps my clichéd Proust's Madeleine as my beloved Grandmother (do you seem how many times grandmother has been invoked here?), who was a very good cook, had a special way with it. I can still see her (totally non-vegetarian, but still, a warm memory as is everything associated with her) matzo ball soup with the round yellow fat puddles on the surface. My grandfather, a man whose mother died in his childhood and who came to this country by himself as a teenager, would hum to himself as he ate it. I wonder how much my Grandmother's soup helped to instill a sense of security, of gratitude, in her husband? Grandma was a wise, generous woman. I can say, my grandfather ate a lot of soup - pretty much at every meal - and he was a very content man. I'm not saying this will work for you but it's worth a try, right?

But enough with the talky-talk. Get out your soup pot and let's get started.

Mental for Lentil Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over a medium-high flame. Add the onions and garlic; sauté until the onion is golden, about six minutes or so.

1 large carrot, sliced
1 large stalk of celery, chopped

Add this to the onions in the pot and stir together for three minutes or so.

2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons coriander
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Salt and pepper to taste (lemon pepper would be good here if you have it)

Add to the pot and sauté for a minute or so. If the vegetables become overly dry, add a tablespoon or so of water.

2 cups red lentils*
6 cups veggie broth or water
1 tablespoon tomato paste

Cook over medium-high heat until boiling. Then lower the heat to medium-low, cover the pot and wait for about twenty minutes or so. The lentils should have smooshed by now as they don't hold their shape like other lentils. Blend this with an immersion blender (an indispensable tool for the soup fanatic) or standard blender until smooth. Return to the pot if necessary.

1 lemon

Add the juice of one-half to one whole lemon, depending on your preference. I like lots of lemon in lentil soup. You can juice one half and put a wedge on the side as well.

Season until it's just right and enjoy, preferably with basmati rice.

A last note: this is more of a dal than a brown lentil hippie soup (not that I'm casting aspersions) and as such can be emphasized more as such. Add kidney beans after it's been blended, step up the curry. I have to keep things fairly tame for the developing palate in our home. Add water as you reheat.

Shalom, everyone.

*Why red, as these are little babies are undeniably, gorgeously, proudly orange? Is this along the same lines with why people with orange hair are referred to as redheads? It must be. If so, why the orange phobia? It can be a lovely color, it's the color of your second chakra, and is nothing to fear. Is the word more recent and all things with that hue were referred to as red? Very curious.