Living Without Meat

Protein will forever be a hot topic between meat eaters and veg*ns. When I first started Living Without Meat one year ago, in May 2007, I talked for a good number of days on the nutritional subject. I brought it up in my very first post - on May 17, 2007 - as I counted the most frequently asked questions that vegetarians encouter.

I then researched and wrote a two-part article all about proteins: What are They?, and How Much Do I Need? Still, I had even more to say. After analyzing my diet for two days (day one; day two), I finally pointed out that there is more to a healthy meal than just protein.

But out of all of these articles, I never once came up with the hilarity Vegan Soapbox did earlier this week in 10 Responses to “Where Do You Get Your Protein?” The list included the perfect mix of sarcastic and educated comebacks.

My favorites were: “The grocery store,” and “The same place you do. I get my protein from food.”

Now, go read the rest of the list oer at Vegan Soapbox!

Blech! I am more and more disgusted with big business foodstuffs with every label I read. For instance, I could find but one brand of bread this weekend at ACME that didn’t feature high fructose corn syrup. Every whole wheat, multi-grain, or plain loaf had this nasty, falsified sugar in its first few ingredients.

Another place that high fructose corn syrup runs rampant? Sparkling waters. So why not make your own?

Jeffrey Morgenthaler - a wine and spirits, bartending writer - provided a doable step-by-step of “How to Make Your Own Tonic Water.”

As for bread, sprouted loaves were the only one that I found to be sugary chemical free. But don’t be wimp - try making your own bread, too. My friend Kelly has started making it regularly, and she’s got three kids under 6 and co-runs her own law firm. So if she can find the time …

Ceres was the Roman goddess of growing plants and motherly love (see the theme, Mother’s Day?); daughter of Saturn and Ops; and wife and sister of Jupiter(guess that kind of thing was okay back then).

She is often depicted holding grain (shown here in a statue from the Louvre), wearing a wreath of wheat and barley grains, and carrying baskets of fresh fruit and cut flowers.

As an agricultural god, Ceres is linked in a trinity with her husband Liber and his other wife and their daughter Libera (okay, marrying relatives was definitely cool with Roman gods).

Ceres was a lucky lady - she had 12 minor gods whose job it was to help her with the farming: Vervactor turned the land; Reparator prepared it; Imporcitor plowed the land; Insitor sowed; Obarator plowed the surface; Occator harrowed; Sarritor weeded; Subruncinator thinned out the crops; Messor harvested; Conuector carried the goods; Conditor stored them; and Promitor distributed the crops to everyone. … Ceres had herself a nice little co-op going on!

To honor her work with grains and farming, the word “cereals” was derived from her name.

I bet she would be honored; however, I cannot see her appreciating that the dwarf planet Ceres was named for her, and thus the chemical element cerium. I see her more as an organic farmer than one who would use chemicals …

(So can I give my mom cereal for Mother’s Day?)