Job Hunt Failure and Container Garden Daydreaming

So, this week I almost joined a cult.

Sounds exciting right?! Let me explain. You know those direct marketing companies that hire anyone? Well, one responded to my resume on Indeed and told me they were looking for managers to join their team. They said I looked like a great fit and that they love people who have a wealth of education and experience.

They told me to wear corporate business attire to the interview and when I showed up I did an interview with a guy with a receding hairline wearing a spiffy suit in a relatively well-decorated office. He asked me all the typical  questions that you get asked at interviews and then asked me to come in the next day for a follow up and an observation day to see how things were done around there.

I was pretty excited. I bought a nice suit and the next day showed up at the observation. Then as youngish guy with no  sales experience (who used to be a carpenter, apparently) took me to Tim Horton's and tried to sell me the job. He told me about  the intense earning potential. He explained how he now made close to $4000/week and basically  could do whatever he pleased because working for  this company was like being self-employed. It was a great sales pitch... he used  my name many times (almost a creepy amount) and paid  for my coffee and then in the end offered me the job.

I felt uneasy.

I went home and researched the company and read hundreds of reviews from ex-employees who never got paid for the work they did, and found that they don't even offer benefits, let alone a base salary.

So I didn't end up taking the job. From the offer of a manager position (which actually turned out to be a complete load of crap) to the cultish regurgitation of the sales pitch given to every single applicant, regardless of education level or experience, the whole situation reeked of creepiness.

Being unemployed is difficult sometimes. While I am focusing on my thesis right now, I still  want to be bringing in a bit of an income and a job like the one offered to me would have been great, if it weren't completely disturbing. After doing my own research I found that direct marketing sales jobs like this are increasing in Canada as  companies outsource their marketing to similar firms; these firms offer little to no base salary, demand regular attendance of their "employees" at unpaid training and group bonding exercises and seldom offer any benefits to their workforce. They reel people in with a convincing sales pitch and "employ", primarily, undereducated youth and young adults with little to no sales experience or education - i.e. the underemployed - who are more easily drawn in by the creepy, aggressive sales  pitch offered by an almost pyramid-scheme type business model.

Part of me wishes I had the vulva to join the company, just to see how it operates and maybe write a shocking tell-all... but sadly, I just don't have the patience.



So, instead of having a job, I've been working on a paper for the ECPR conference at the end of the month and daydreaming about the amazing balcony garden I'm going to grow next year! Here are two of my favourite ideas I've found on the web:

I like how clean  and simple this first one is,  but at  the same time, I really want to grow as many veggies as possible in a tiny space...

Image borrowed from fitnesstreats.com 

...which is why this one is so amazing. We are moving to the apartment above us and will have a really small walk out porch (like...only a couple feet), so the hanging  bags and pots would be perfect!

http://newgardendesigning.blogspot.ca/2014/08/container-gardening-designs.html

This summer isn't nearly over and I'm already dreaming about next spring.


Well, that's it for me.

Happy Thursday!

-J

Monday Happies and OH MY STROGANOFF!

Happy  Monday everyone!

As Always, my weekend with VOMD was amazing. Have I mentioned that I love him and have the best boyfriend ever?

Here's a taste of one of VOMD's favourite meals recently. I had a huge craving for that stroganoff my ex-stepmom used to make when I was growing up, but I had no idea how to make it vegan friendly. I'm pretty sure her's was a lazy  version using canned mushroom soup, so I though, hey...mushrooms!


Johanna's Vegan Sort-of Stroganoff

Our cat friends like to supervise in the kitchen. Princess George was kind of annoyed that I didn't let her eat some. 

VOMD and I always try to buy as much of our food from the near-death racks at the grocery store - you know, the one's filled with over ripe bananas and weird bags full of mangoes, oranges, eddoes, and avacadoes thrown together as though you could some how make a meal with those four, completely random ingredients. About a month ago there were about fifty packages of slightly brown mushrooms  on there, so we bought about 10 of them and put them in the freezer for a rainy day. Well, last week not only did it rain, but we also ran out of food and so I was relieved to find we still had one package of these slightly brown mushrooms left in the freezer!

Ingredients
1 package of frozen sliced mushrooms (I guess you could just cut up about a cup and a half of fresh mushrooms, but all I had was the frozen ones!)
1 Large onion, halved and sliced
2/3 can Romano beans, rinsed well (I saved the rest and added it to bean dip the next day)
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 cube of mushroom soup base (make sure its vegan! read the ingredients!)
2 tbsp whole wheat flour
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1) Sauté the onions on medium heat until they are translucent, then add the frozen mushrooms and cover with a lid or plate. You can add a little salt to get the juices flowing, but don't add too much because the soup base is probably super salty
2) In a bowl or measuring cup, dissolve soup base cube in warm water, then add flour and whisk away until its well combined
3) When the mushrooms are completely defrosted and getting darker brown, and the onions are golden, add the soup base mixture and stir it to combine. You might want to reduce your heat a bit to stop it from bubbling over or sticking to the bottom of your pan.
4) Add your romano beans and stir to combine. If it's too thick, add a little more water, if it's too  watery, sprinkle a tiny bit more flour over top and whisk it in to make sure you don't get clumps. Nobody liked clumpy gravy.
5) Add pepper to taste.  You probably don't need salt, you know, because of the super salty soup base.
6) Serve over the noodles of your choice. We didn't have ribbon noodles so I used some spinach rice spaghetti noddles we had on hand.


VOMD had two servings and we both licked out plates clean. No leftovers with this one!

Happy Monday!

-J

Friday Foodies! Lazy Rosé and PASTAÄLGAR!

*Before I get started,I just wanted to let you know I've put my recipes all in one place, and will try to continue to do so as I add more. Keep in mind, this is obviously not a food blog... at all, so photos will probably be shitty, recipes unprofessional, and you will have to wade through some personal drama to get to the actual food in each post. See them here or just visit the tab above that says "FOOD!"*

This is not meant to be an advertisement for Ikea or anything,  but how damn cute is this pasta?! VOMD and I went to Ikea last weekend and bought a new set of dishes, and we could not resist this adorable elf shaped pasta! We have a real problem with resistance, I know. Get some self control, us! At least it's organic.

This week has been very emotional, coming to terms with the fact that lots of vegans don't like me, but I have been so lucky to have VOMD here with me to buy me vegan double chocolate oatmeal cookies from Democracy and bring me soy lattes to cheer me up! If I ever doubt that the world is a  good place, then I just have to look into his eyes and I am reminded.

Here is something amazing and simple we ate this week. I know I'm supposed to be switching to whole food, but its a slow process, and so far I'm doing pretty good with breakfasts and lunches, but white pasta at dinner time is a pretty hard habit to kick.

We didn't have much in the fridge or cupboards this week. You know how it goes...you plan to buy groceries but you go to Niagara on the Lake and buy nutcracker figurines from the Christmas store instead.

I might have an addiction to nutcracker Christmas ornaments... VOMD found me the one that looks like a Mounty! 

So, for dinner a couple nights ago it was slim pickings. So here's my Pasta with Lazy Rosé and Mushroom Sauce!

Ingredients
1 big ol' can of diced tomatoes (we use the reduced salt kind)
2 large onions, halved and sliced
2 cups (ish) white mushrooms
1 heaping tbsp Vegenaise (trust me, this is going to make it awesome!)
1 big tbsp herb and garlic vegan cream cheese (I had Daiya on hand)
A couple dashes of organic dried basil (it just tastes better!)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1) Sauté the onions and mushrooms until they get all juicy and golden brown, adding a tiny bit of salt to get the juices flowing
2) Slightly strain the canned tomatoes so that they are not all liquidy
3) Add tomatoes to mushrooms and onions and stir to combine.
4) Turn down to low and add Vegenaise and vegan cream cheese, stirring to combine,  but not letting it bubble too much (it might separate and get kind of weird if it boils)
5) Add basil and salt and pepper to taste
6) Serve over Adorable elk shaped pasta! (Or you know, any pasta... or rice...or just eat it on its own.  It's really good.)

Note: I added a few sliced of Tofurkey, all chopped up to this, because we happened to have a few leftover sliced from VOMD's lunches last week, but I'd imagine it would be just as good without it because the mushrooms kind of overpower the Tofurkey's mild flavour.

I promise, adding Vegenaise won't make it weird.  VOMD puts Vegenaise in Vegan Mac and Cheese and it just makes it super creamy and awesome!

Happy Friday!

-J

I Heart Michael Greger; also, Sweet Tea Recipe!

After my post earlier this week that had very little to do with honey, but became all about honey some how, I have really been thinking hard about why I define myself as a vegan. The majority of self-proclaimed vegans will certainly say that I am not truly vegan. While I respect their views, I have decided that while honey is something that I could certainly live without and will probably give up altogether in the future, I can still happily and proudly call myself a vegan even though I sometimes use it. Veganism is not about personal purity. It is about the animals. For example, I sometimes choose honey to sweeten Sweet Tea (super simple recipe at the bottom!) rather than white sugar, which we NEVER have in the house. White sugar, while not always processed using bone char, is still hell for the planet and the animals - and bugs - that live on it. Honey, produced locally and as ethically as possible, is a far more planet and bug friendly choice, and right now I do not feel guilty for making that choice (hear that haters? you can stop spamming my Facebook inbox now!)

Here's one of the best quotes I have ever read that really gets to the point of why I don't think vegans have to be perfect:

I'm afraid that our public avoidance of honey is hurting us as a movement. A certain number of bees are undeniably killed by honey production, but far more insects are killed, for example, in sugar production. And if we really cared about bugs we would never again eat anything either at home or in a restaurant that wasn't strictly organically grown—after all, killing bugs is what pesticides do best. And organic production uses pesticides too (albeit "natural"). Researchers measure up to approximately 10,000 bugs per square foot of soil—that’s over 400 million per acre, 250 trillion per square mile. Even "veganically" grown produce involves the deaths of countless bugs in lost habitat, tilling, harvesting and transportation. We probably kill more bugs driving to the grocery store to get some honey-sweetened product than are killed in the product’s production. 

Our position on honey therefore just doesn't make any sense, and I think the general population knows this on an intuitive level. Veganism for them, then, becomes more about some quasi-religious personal purity, rather than about stopping animal abuse. No wonder veganism can seem nonsensical to the average person. We have this kind of magical thinking; we feel good about ourselves as if we’re actually helping the animals obsessing about where some trace ingredient comes from, when in fact it may have the opposite effect. We may be hurting animals by making veganism seem more like petty dogmatic self-flagellation. 

In my eyes, if we choose to avoid honey, fine. Let’s just not make a huge production of it and force everybody to do the same if they want to join the club. 

You can read his whole essay here.


That's all I'm going to say about honey for now.

Sweet Tea:
Ingredients
2 FULL tea bags (you know, the ones you can buy at David's Tea that you can fill yourself, but make them really full!) of your favourite Black or Rooibos tea
    If you don't have fillable tea bags, you can use regular tea bags,  but use 3 or 4
1.5 Litres of water
1/4 cup maple syrup, or GASP honey (I actually use maple syrup more often than honey, because it is easier to come by)
1/2 lemon

Directions
Put your water in a pot (or kettle, I guess...but then the rest of the instructions won't make any sense) and bring to a boil. Turn on low and add your tea bags. Let it bubble a little, then turn it off and cover it to let it steep. I usually let it sit for about an hour before taking out the bags... or even longer  because sometimes I forget I was making tea and take a nap. Then, add your sweetener of choice and stir. While it cools down squeeze half the lemon in there (or don't if you don't like lemon). Once its cool enough, pour it into a pitcher and put it in the fridge, covered, to finish cooling. Pour over ice, and serve over ice with a fresh slice of lemon and then sit in the sun and think about all the cool things you would do if you won a cool million.

Happy Thursday!

-J

Dealing with haters and embracing my "kumbaya vegan"

So, yesterday I wrote a post about 5 things vegans do that annoy me. I could not have possibly predicted the immense hatred that came as responses to that post and while I don't regret posting it, I will say that I am glad my comments section is moderated, because almost all the comments I got were swearing at me, calling me a liar and an idiot, and worse. Needless to say, only those comments that aren't full of cussing and hate will be tolerated on this blog...which sadly means that very few comments get through.

That said, I don't mind it when people disagree with me. I knew that the honey issue was going to get people all crazy, because, lets face it, vegans are passionate folks and I can't blame them for seeing some hypocrisy in my stance on local "ethical" honey.

I shared  that post, just  for fun, on the "Vegan World" Facebook page. I thought it would give some a laugh, and give others something to think about. Sadly, I am embarrassed to say that I took it down an hour later because of the onslaught of anger that it instigated, one of the least hurtful of which read:

"What a whinefest. How about "necrovore?" Literally, "eaters of death." I prefer that. What's not to be negative about, while billions are living in abject suffering and being slaughtered in the most unimaginable ways? Kumbaya vegans...making friends and being popular. What about the animals, you say?

Well...irk away on the fact that she eats honey, and believes that there is such a thing as "cruelty-free" silk and wool. For anyone out there that doesn't know any better, that is not a vegan. She's a liar, and the reason why people are so very confused about what the word means. She's not even a DIETARY vegan lol". 

I also got a couple: "You're the reason nobody takes vegans seriously"s and more than a  couple "You're not even vegan"s.

(I share these, only because they  get the point across that I'm a moron without swearing at me or calling me names.)

I'm okay with this. So, maybe according to this woman I am a liar, and perhaps I am not really a vegan. But I love the planet. I love the animals on it, and that includes humans. I refuse to be the type of person who puts shit out into the world and expects it to turn to gold. The animals don't need a bunch of angry, mean, and hateful people on their side. They need kind people who are  willing to listen and teach and even learn from others.

The perfect example of this that I can think of are the people who run Piebird Vegan Farmstay. I met Yan and Sherry a few years ago, when I was a new vegan working for the Nipissing University Peace Research Initiative and I had the joy of filming an interview with them. They take in farm animals - chickens, a turkey, and lots of happy goats (and recently built some homes for some bees to live in peace!) - and invite their guests to interact with and help care for the animals. They spoke about peace, about being in nature, about how we can learn so much from the animals about love, friendship and joy. Yes, they are activists and they fight for animals. Yes, they completely disagree with animal suffering in any form.  But they offer a place where people can come and learn about veganism in a safe and peaceful environment, free from hate and judgement.

I would love it if we could take a page from their book and continue to love other humans as  much as we love animals.

If this makes me a "kumbaya vegan", and if being a "kumbaya vegan" makes me some  how less worthy of respect than other "perfect vegans", then I think I'm okay with that.

Actually, I'm thinking of retiring the word vegan from my vocabulary and just calling myself a good damn person. (I'm just kidding. I'm vegan, haters!)


Happy Wednesday!


-J

5 things vegans do that irk me

EDIT: First, I don't think there is any such thing as ethical silk or ethical wool, so please actually read the blog if you're going to send me hate messages referencing it. Second, I maintain that it is wrong to criticise and berate people who choose to live ethically, even if they maintain minor caveats (i.e. they use "ethical silk" or "ethical wool".

I tend to like crappy vegan people even more than I like super nice non-vegans. This is a bad habit and I am working on extending my love outward a little bit and becoming more understanding of people's shortcomings.

Nonetheless, there are still a few things that lots of vegans do that really irk me (yes, I'm guilty of some of these as well). Lately I have shared a lot about the things that non-vegans say and do that get me down, but vegans aren't perfect either.

1. Calling non-vegans carnivores: This is just silly, and totally plays into the completely manufactured scientific argument that non-vegans make for continuing their murderous ways. A carnivore is an organism that subsists entirely on flesh/meat. Humans are not carnivores, though we have become omnivorous - meaning that we derive energy from both  flesh and plants.  Stop calling meat-eating humans carnivores. 
2. Focusing on the people who suck, rather than the people that don't: This isn't really a vegan problem, per se. I find that we live in a  time  of immense egotism and self importance. We think that we are smarter than everyone else. We think that everyone else is a moron. Everyone else is the reason that the world is the way that it is. When we become vegan, it becomes all too easy to place all of the blame for all the world's ills on non-vegans. And just like when you hear a song for the first time, and then you notice it everywhere, so too do you start to notice all the crappy stuff that people do after you become vegan. This is incredibly unhealthy and can lead to defeatism - the militant vegan's worst nightmare! 
3. Only making friends with other vegans: We are obviously going to be attracted to like-minded people, in the same way that surfers hang around with other surfers, and foodies make friends with foodies, so too is is natural for vegans to make vegan friends. But because of #2, we sometimes find ourselves rejecting our non-vegan friends...and this isn't cool. How do you hope to have an influence on others if you fence yourself off from regular people? 
4. Criticising other vegans: Now, I am just as guilty of this as many others, but we really have to stop criticising our vegan brethren. We can't all agree on everything. For example, I eat local honey, and I know some vegans who will wear "cruelty free silk" (Ahimsa Silk), and "cruelty free wool" (Non-Mulesed) from time to time. On the other hand, there are lots of vegans  who do not think that we should use anything that comes from living creatures, including manure from companion animals, or the naturally shed feathers of companion birds. All of these are perfectly valid ways of being vegan. We all believe in living compassionately, not killing, not torturing, and not taking advantage of any species. Even though I do not agree with people using silk, no matter how it's cultivated, nor wool that is produced on farms for profit (I'm in the air about wool that is harvested from companion animals) I know that my fellow vegans are doing their best and I must try not to criticise them. For one thing, this opens me up to criticism as well, and for another, there is a very fine line between criticism and disparagement. Disparagement is the enemy of intelligent conversation and personal growth. Intelligent debate is fine, but don't be a dick.
5. Hating everything: This is  linked closely with #2 and like #2, we all  do it, not just vegans (bahahahaha...the eight year old in me just cracked up a little). I do find that lots of the vegans I have met, though, are Negative Nancies, especially those who I met in the North, where vegans are fewer and farther between than in the big city. I get it. When you're the only vegan you know, its hard to not get down on the world. They don't think that there is hope for the planet. They are kind of hermits. They have bad attitudes. They bitch all the time. They never talk about beautiful sunsets and they never tell funny stories. Everything sucks. I dated a guy like this briefly, and while it was nice to be with a vegan, it was really difficult to remain positive and joyful with that negativity around you all the time. I firmly believe that you get back what you put out into the world. If you're a grumpy jerk, then the world will be a dark place; if you're positive, then the world will be bright. 

Simple.

Also, look! I made a new friend!

Happy Tuesday!

-J

Monday Happies!

Today is the Civic Holiday, so instead of waking up alone in a sweltering hot room like I do most Mondays, I got to wake up with VOMD and eat breakfast (Toasted Tomato Sandwiches!) while watching Community. Oh gosh, I forgot how funny the D&D episode was!

This weekend, like most of our weekends, has been full of good food and awesome adventures. We went for a walk on Friday evening and ended up in a graveyard... that's not weird, is it?

It was very romantic, in a totally strange way. So many stones marking the resting places of people born hundreds of years ago. I can't imagine how many stories are buried  with them...

On Saturday VOMD and I went to Democracy and had Nachos and Pizza - amazing! Please go there right now and eat them... right now.

Yesterday we went to Ikea and had fun laying on fluffy beds and getting lost in the insane maze that is that ridiculous store.

And today...today we are going to nap a lot and relax and go for a nice long walk.

Happy Monday!

-J