friends and food - antidote to the blues...

it's always a pleasure to spend time with friends steph and pete - and saturday evening was no exception... dinner at my place was the order of the day so it was up early to do shopping so i could get back and start cooking - my vegan fare is always appreciated by these two - and there's nothing like deliciously tasty, fresh food, good conversation, music and much vino to push depression to the background - ohh, the beautiful bunch of flame red flowers they brought me was a lovely treat too...

we started with dips, olives, crusty garlic bread and rice-stuffed vine leaves marinated in lemon juice, followed by ratatouille stuffed zucchinis with rosemary baked garlic cloves and potatoes - yummmmm - a garden salad topped it all off while steph bought a delicious broccoli and garlic dish she'd made which complemented the meal perfectly... beautiful, juicy organic strawberries and rum balls were the perfect end to a veritable feast...

laughter is something that's never missing from an evening with these interesting and stimulating friends - nor is deeply political conversation (we have similar views about a lot of issues) - as they are also work colleagues and union delegates the conversation always involves some workplace 'anecdotes'... once we get together the conversation just flows, but i did have to start pushing them out the door around 2 am ('start pushing' being the operative words - it can then take 30 or so minutes for the final goobye!!!)...

so, after a late night, sunday was just going to be a lazy day with the temperature forecast to be 40 degrees - after checking in with the mother to make sure she was coping alright with the heat and didn't need anything i curled up on the couch and read most of the day, while allie slept in front of the fan (yes, amazingly my old girl has survived one more year and is now into her 19th - that's 133 in human years) and shadow stretched out on the coffee table until the heat of the day dissipated...

i watched a fascinating documentary in the evening - spitfire women - about the female pilots of the air transport auxilliary who ferried british warplanes from factories and repair bases to airfields all over britain during ww2 - considering they weren't allowed to take part in combat it was one of the most high-risk activities of the war with the death rate being higher than in the raf fighter command - one in six were killed...

i first read about these amazing womyn in marge piercy's novel "gone to soldiers" many years ago... and, if you're interested, i came across this article from 2007 in the daily mail - silk stocking and spitfires: the dark reality of the girls who flew dangerous wartime missions by glenys roberts...

a screenplay has apparently been commissioned based on the books “spitfire women of world war II” by giles whitell and “spreading my wings”, the autobiography of ata pilot diana barnato walker - spitfire girls is to be a co-production between the united kingdom and new zealand... unfortunately i've just checked our catalogue and 'my' library doesn't hold either of these book titles - you can find books about the 'daring-do' of the 'fly boys' in our collection - but the 'ata-girls', now that's a different matter - surely anything about feisty womyn  pushing the boundaries of male dominance in their quest for equality is something we should have on our shelves - ahhh, luckily we have access to inter-library loans...

political and pleasurable...

i had a work colleague around for dinner last night - she's vegan, around my age and an animal lover (which definitely went down well with Allie and Shadow - they loved being caressed by her!!!)... what an enjoyable evening - ideals, beliefs and experiences shared with someone with similar politics - not having to explain or justify ourselves, as vegans and vegetarians so often have to, because there was understanding... refreshing...

I love a good, positive political conversation - and a really deep conversation with someone who shares your views is always rewarding - an expansion and validation of your beliefs - really encouraging - and all too rare... it does the mind a wealth of good... you feel less like a "stranger in a strange land"... yes, it was a good night!!!!

i made a delicious ratatouille with rosemary baked potatoes and garlic - Den brought crusty rolls to sop up the yummy juices, and we shared a delightful organic semillon sauvignon blanc... she also brought a lovely bunch of daffodils and irises that complimented everything... very thoughtful - and the colours look great with the maroon venetians as their backdrop!!!


mind you, finding wine that vegetarians and vegans can drink can be a tiresome process... reading all of those labels - so many wines are 'fined' with non-vegetarian/vegan friendly substances - blood, egg whites, egg albumin, casein (milk protein), gelatin (derived from bones), isinglass (derived from fish), chitin/chitosan (derived from the shells of crabs or lobsters) and I must have read 20-odd labels yesterday before I found a suitable organic one.

like me, Den doesn't go out often these days - yeah, our age has something to do with that - but so does the still limited vegetarian restaurant choice - let alone vegetarian dish choices in 'standard' restuarants - and then there are the odors of rancid decaying cooking flesh that can be overpowering, nausea-causing even - and let's face it, once something dies it starts to decay immediately!!!

there's also the constant having to explain your vegetarianism to people who can't quite grasp the concept, and the graphic descriptions they give you of their carnivorous habits - 'we' really don't want to hear your favourite dead animal recipe or where you get the best cut of dead animal from!!!

from the blog "Provoked... by the way we use animals"

and then there's the wearing of 'leather' products - some vegetarians and vegans find this a hard thing to do away with - but how do they justify it to themselves - how is dead animal as food source different to dead animal as clothing source - the animals suffer and then die - it's all part and parcel of the same industry - the death industry... and then there's the other abusive, inhumane practices - the feed lots, the battery farms, the farms that provide no shelter or water (and there are so many - just take a drive in the country!!!), the transportation, the abattoirs, the pain, the suffering - and that's not even touching on animal experimentation - the list goes on...

there seems to be an inability to understand that 'our' vegetarianism is an integral element of us - who we are - our morality - our belief in the complementarity of nature - our respect and compassion for other species - our non-belief in human superiority!!!

it's a hard choice to make - to live on the outside of what's considered 'normal' takes determination and strength - always having to 'qualify and quantify' your beliefs can wear you out - so can the jokes and jibes about vegetarians - and the disrespect to animals - it also takes time, energy, and lots of research - you have to read everything - time-consuming and frustrating - it's a way of life...

so, like a lot of vegos, i find myself thinking - "what hope for animals, when humans don't even respect or have compassion for their own species"??!!

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. ~ Paul McCartney

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

We all love animals. Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?" ~ k.d. lang

Think of me tonite
For that which you savor
Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
~ Wayne K. Tolson, from "Food Forethought"


quotes from Quotegarden