Being the daddy blogger who denounces artificial food dyes in food, I must admit it is quite convenient that my almost 5 year-old son has willingly chosen to use his Halloween candy for science experiments, as opposed to actually eating it.
This was completely your idea. It was the convenient timing of you rediscovering your Magic Science kit that Mommy and I got you’re a year ago for your 4th birthday.
Saturday morning, which was Halloween, you and I took a walk at the park and you found a green acorn; which you referred to as a coconut.
You announced to me: “Daddy, when we get home, I’m going to put this coconut in the water with peanut butter!”
That’s exactly what we did. (Featured in the collage below.)
I supervised as you randomly mixed the ingredients included in the kit, with the “coconut” as well as some peanut butter. Needless to say, you weren’t following the instructions included in the kit at all. Fortunately, no explosions occurred…
Even during dinner, as you ate the pizza Mommy made, you were constantly checking on the progress of your science experiments. (Not to mention, you had previously dunked some of the uncooked pizza dough into some chemicals as well; as part of its own experiment; as seen below.)
We then took about a 90 minute break to actually, you know… go trick-or-treating.
It meant so much to me to finally go trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood; since we moved in our new home back in January. When we lived in the townhouse community before, it just wasn’t the ideal environment like our neighborhood is now, for something like this.
Needless to say, after we got home from church on Sunday, you spent all of your time testing all types of the candy you earned the night before.
I think you favorite to dissolve were the Nerds. You explained to me:
“Daddy, the Nerds turn in to crystals!” You scooped them out from the bottom of the cup, using a plastic spoon; revealing the now colorless pieces of sugar.
It was also interesting to see Runts without their coloring as well. And the Laffy Taffy looked like a brain.
A dentist in our neighborhood is buying back Halloween candy; paying $1 per pound, then sending the candy overseas the U.S. troops.
You were planning on selling most of your candy so you could use the money to buy a toy.
Instead, it looks like you’d rather use the candy for scientist experiments; as opposed to selling it, or even crazier… actually eating it.
Mommy is now officially one week into in her 2nd trimester with you. I have noticed her nausea has seemed to have majorly subsided since crossing that line.
However, her hunger cravings are on still on full speed! And as for me, I’m along for the ride and enjoying it…
After all, it’s only right that I should “sympathize” with her hunger cravings. The best way for me to do so is to join Mommy on this!
She and your brother Jack made some vegan chocolate chip cookies this weekend. And yesterday, Mommy had me pick up some vegan cake from Whole Foods.
(And Halloween is coming up this weekend. I can only imagine the temptations Mommy will face!)
Until now, we’ve never kept fruit juice in the house, because truthfully, it’s just sugar water with vitamins. It’s a processed food so we stay away from it. Once the sugar is extracted from the fruit’s fiber, so much of the nutrition is gone and it just becomes a classier form of high calorie junk food; mostly empty calories.
But here lately, Mommy has been craving grape juice, so now we always keep some in the fridge.
It had been about 6 years since I had enjoyed a nice full glass of grape juice. Because I used to have eczema (dyshidrosis), I had to stop drinking juice because it always instantly flared up my rashes.
But now that I’ve been a vegan for 2 and a half years, I guess it somehow flushed out my body of the toxins causing my eczema to even go back into remission.
Therefore, I discovered that I can now get away with drinking grape juice again! It’s like candy to me!
I see it as a bad habit that I am enjoying a little too much right now. However, this is the time to live it up. (I’ll need to pull the plug on that once you are born, though.)
Your development inside of Mommy’s tummy is causing her to crave more of stuff she wouldn’t normally want. So I might as well enjoy a little bit of the fun along the way.
People often ask me what type of cravings I am having now that I am pregnant.
This used to be a funny question to me because when I was pregnant with Jack, I felt like I had virtually no cravings at all.
Actually, aside from the horrendous leg cramps that crept up in the middle of the night throughout the second trimester, I felt like I had very few “normal” pregnancy symptoms throughout the duration of it.
Well, I can tell you for a fact, I have cravings now!
It’s not the old fashioned “pickles with ice cream in the middle of the night” cravings; it’s the “you name it, I want it” type of cravings. For example, I was talking to a co-worker one day (who also happens to be preggers, too) and she mentioned how she stopped at Panera to grab a breakfast sandwich on the way to work.
Now, I am vegetarian not a vegan (because I don’t have the will power to say no to ice cream and things of that nature at all times), but because Nick is vegan, I often eat more of the vegan fare, which means we stay away from foods with animal products (no beef, no chicken, no fish, no dairy and definitely, no eggs).
Just a few months ago, I think I had even convinced myself that I was allergic to eggs. But wouldn’t you know, as soon as my friend began talking about that breakfast sandwich, the brain in my stomach started churning and demanding some eggs.
When I got home that night, nothing sounded good to me, but an egg and cheese sandwich, and I barely ate my dinner. Hours later as I laid myself down to sleep, I made my plan to get up just a few minutes early to make it into the Panera closest to work.
When my alarm rang, I got up without even so much as a hitch in my step and was out the door 10 minutes sooner than I had been in weeks. I was second in line in Panera and couldn’t wait to get my hands on that egg and cheese sandwich. And, even though my mouth suffered a few burns from eating it so quickly, it was just as every bit of delicious that I had needed it to be.
Please do not ask me how many times I have been back to Panera to get this same sandwich . . . it’s a little embarrassing just how much this little baby wonder in me is causing me to crave things I wouldn’t normally care about.
And, don’t even get me started on meat (blackened salmon and steak have never sounded so tempting) . . .
When I first started out as a vegan, back in April 2013, I definitely wasn’t that cool. I was overzealous and a bit of a loaded cannon.
But I learned from my mistakes and matured from the process; which is what should happen for those of us (like you reading this) who are indeed the emotionally intelligent human beings we think we are.
I polished up my craft over the years. These days, I can very efficiently explain my unconventional lifestyle when people approach me on the subject; even when people subconsciously try to stump me.
It is my policy to never announce my vegan lifestyle in a conversation; the other person has to be curious about what I am eating and ask me. (But that happens a lot, actually.)
The obvious question is always, “Where do you get your protein?”
I explain: “I have 6 food groups; all of which contain the proper protein and nutrients I need: veggies, fruits, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds.”
Sometimes the person will follow up with, “How could body builders they be that big if they were vegans?”
I respond that being a big, buff body builder doesn’t necessarily mean that person is actually healthy. I believe many of them are actually unhealthy.
In my mind, it’s simply unnatural that a person must spend so much time working out and taking supplements; some of which are questionable.
Being abnormally strong does not automatically mean a person is actually healthy; especially for the long term.
Personally, I prefer a more natural approach to being physically fit. I take no less than 2 ten minutes walks a day, plus I ride my mountain bike and run throughout the week as well.
From there, the next question I often get is this: “How do you know you’re healthy?”
I explain that just 6 months ago, I had an appointment with Dr. Thomas M. John of Vanderbilt, in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Without even knowing I was a vegan, he confirmed that for my age and height, I am in the ideal weight range and that I am healthier than most 34 year-old men he sees.
I should point out too that my wife and I are expected our 2nd child to be born in April 2016. Even without meat, eggs, and dairy, I am indeed healthy enough to help conceive a child. Being a vegan definitely did not prevent that from happening.
My doctor specifically noted that my cholesterol levels are great.
That leads to this question:
“Where do you get your fats from?”
Out of the 6 vegan food groups I mentioned earlier (veggies, fruits, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds), it’s the last two, nuts and seeds, which contain the most fat.
On a daily basis, I consume non-GMO, organic peanut butter in my homemade “vegan protein smoothie.” I also have raw, unsalted sunflower seeds in my salad every night for dinner.
Plus, many the dinners my wife makes contain cashews or avocados in them.
By default, vegans consume 0% of their daily cholesterol allowance. Even plants that are high in fat, like avocados and cashews, still contain less than 1% of the daily cholesterol recommendation.
Try finding a vegan food that ever registers having 1% or higher of the daily cholesterol level on the label. It’s impossible. That doesn’t exist.
Sometimes, people are just sincerely confused on what constitutes as a plant. I have been asked these following questions by several people over the past couple years:
“Can you eat bread?”
The answer is sometimes; as long as it’s not made with eggs, milk, butter, or cheese.
“Can you eat eggs?”
No, they come from an animal; and typically just one egg (!) contains at least 58% of your daily cholesterol. Therefore, eggs are very non-vegan.
“Can you eat fish?”
No, fish is an animal; not a plant. But I can eat potatoes, because they are a plant. (People often ask me that when they ask me about fish; I’m not sure why.)
“I heard vegans can’t eat honey; is that true?”
Yes, it’s true: Vegans technically can’t eat honey. I’m not trying to be funny or gross, but the best way to explain it is this:
One of the final frequently asked questions I get is this:
“Do you ever just wish you could go back?”
My answer is a firm and quick no.
I suffered for 2 decades with constant sinus pressure, sinusitis, pet allergies, eczema (dyshidrosis), headaches, and acne. (Not to mention, I was about 30 pounds heavier in those days.)
Now that’s all gone. I’m not interested in having those health problems again.
The last question I get is this:
“Sometimes, don’t you just wish you could have a big, juicy burger?”
No, I don’t miss beef at all. What I actually miss tends to gross most people out as soon as I say it:
Captain D’s.
Yes, greasy ole fish. That’s what I psychologically miss sometimes. But still, there is no true temptation to go back because then I’ll simply adopt all those health problems again.
If I ever were to open the door to fish, I would give in and start eating meat again. I know myself too well.
Being a vegan isn’t that weird. It actually makes a lot of sense once you understand how it works. It’s just uncommon compared to mainstream society.
As a self-proclaimed “cool vegan,” I make it my goal to make myself easily accessible to answer people’s questions without sounding judgmental on my end.
Instead, my goal is to encourage people to be healthier by nixing the animal products they think they need to be healthy; but again, only when they ask me first. I’m not a door-to-do evangelist. You have to come to my tent.
And in case you need a reminder, look at me.
I don’t need milk, yogurt, eggs, fish, or meat to be this healthy. I just need veggies, fruit, grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. Feel free to leave a comment and ask me a frequently wondered question of your own.
(Take a moment to process that fact if you didn’t already know. That just happened this week.)
But before I could make it to the laptop, my wife informed me that we had received a package from Annie’s Homegrown!
It’s funny because before I even opened the box, I sensed what was inside, and I was indeed correct.
No one from Annie’s had ever told me they were working on “vegan mac and cheese” but I had a feeling they were; as they are keen to cater to organic, plant-based demographics like my family.
When I opened the box, there was a potato and a pumpkin with special messages for me.
Then I saw the brand-new product:
A box of Annie’s “Organic Vegan Shells & Creamy Sauce”, as well as their “Organic Vegan Elbows & Creamy Sauce”, which is made from rice.
Both options are made with pumpkin and sweet potato.
Here’s a reminder about vegan food: It contains no cholesterol. It may contain fat, but when you look at the cholesterol percentage, you’ll never see more than 0% on the label.
Some other things that make Annie’s vegan organic pasta dinners special compared to the average “mac and cheese” dinners is that these contain no artificial flavors, synthetic colors or preservatives.
I’m the vegan of our family (my wife and son are vegetarians) and I must say it sure was nice being able to eat mac and cheese for both dinner Thursday night and lunch on Friday.
Consider this: I’ve been a vegan for exactly 2 and a half years as of this week. That means no mac-and-cheese for that whole time for me… until now.
My wife was very delighted to see Annie’s had also sent a very nice vegan cookbook; as my wife is by default, a vegan chef. After all, she’s now exclusively been making vegan meals every day for our family for the past 2 and a half years.
It just so happens we are planning to launch a spin-off of Family Friendly Daddy Blog, which will feature my wife’s journey of “baby #2”, who is currently 12 weeks old inside the womb. My wife plans to also focus on cooking vegan meals as well.
Our son Jack was happy because he took it upon himself to decorate the pumpkin that Annie’s sent us.
So there, you heard it first from me: Annie’s now carries “vegan mac and cheese.”
Family Friendly Daddy Blog 