Thursday, Friday pizza, Saturday, and Bob's Red Mill

Saturday Shopping List

canteloupe!
1 lb. baby lima beans
5 tomatoes
3 yellow peaches
3 white peaches
1 pint blueberries
6 onions
10 carrots
3 ears of corn
1 pint shiitake mushrooms
12-oz jar of strawberry jam
and a 16-oz iced coffee

total: $28


Thursday Shopping List

1 bunch curly kale
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 quart green beans
1 pint raspberries
1 pint blackberries
4 heirloom tomatoes
1 spaghetti squash
6 ears of corn
1 loaf country white bread

total: $36

Mark has made a soup with rice, red beans, corn, onion, carrots, and cayenne pepper. Overall, it has a sweet taste, from the corn, carrots, and cayenne, and of course a hot taste.

Ordered Papa John's last night, with onions, mushrooms and black olives. I tried putting Diaya's mozzerella cheese on it, but the cheese had been in the fridge and was too cold, so it didn't really work with the pizza, which wasn't quite hot enough. I only tried that on one slice. We got that cheese for a pasta last week, and it was amazing. They have it at Fu-Wah. Daiya cheese is not a soy product. The ingredients are: Filtered water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and /or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil, pea protein, salt, vegan natural flavours, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, xanthan gum, citric acid (for flavor).

I forgot to stop at the Slow Rise Bakery table today for more granola. I usually only stop there if I want sweets, so today I skipped it, completely forgetting that last week I bought a lb. of delicious maple granola there and meant to get more. May have to visit the store for some granola or cereal. On the topic of cereal, I have to recommend Bob's Red Mill products (grain products). Not only because they are good, but because the owner earlier this year transferred ownership of the company to the employees. I will vote for that company with my dollars every chance I get. The people who do the work should reap the rewards.

Fruity Thursday

There is so much fruit in my house right now.

Thursday Shopping List

1 pint blueberries

1 pint blackberries

1 pint raspberries

6 peaches

6 green apples

1 lb. baby spinach

1 bunch curly kale

1 bunch mustard greens

1 quart green beans

3 ears bi-color sweet corn

6 tomatoes

Total: about $30 (berries are pricey but worth it)

The apples are perfect. I don't remember seeing these last year. They're smallish and green. They are very crisp, both in texture and taste. They have a tartness but are not at all sour and with a sweetness to balance it out. They seem like they would be great for pies. Now I just need to try actually baking a pie. I got them from Fahnestock Fruit Farm, the same people I get the peaches and tomatoes from.

I got the mustard greens specifically to try roasting them, as I usually do with kale. I made a bunch of roasted kale and mustard greens when I got home, and there wasn't much difference between the two, except the mustard greens had more of a bite to them. I think this makes them slightly superior for roasting. Again, here's how you roast greens: coat them with olive oil, sprinkle liberally with sea salt, place in a cast iron pan and into an oven preheated to 350, for 30-35 minutes. Greens should be browned (actually, I like to blacken them a little bit) and super-crisp and dry, like very thin, green, misshapen potato chips.

Incidentally they're great for a hangover.

Thursday boost

Summertime. I can go shopping at the park on a Thursday afternoon. Nothing better to do. Nice.

Thursday Shopping List

6 peaches
1 quart blueberries
1 quart peas-in-the-pod
bunch of green onions
giant head of purple leaf lettuce
I feel like there was something else, but I don't remember what.

total: maybe around $12

And then at Milk & Honey, we found sweet corn ($2/lb.) and bought 6 ears of that. Haven't seen that at the market at all yet and have been waiting eagerly. Today was the first time there were peaches.

I have eaten a lot of fruit and raw vegetables this past week. I love this time of year because a.) the fruit is here and b.) all the veggies that are good to eat raw are out. Raw green beans were the prize from Saturday. Those peas in the pod are amazing raw. They're big. Every pod has about 9 or 10 peas in it and they are plump and sweet and juicy. They're not the ones I was getting in the quart boxes, that are already shelled. Those are good too but always go bad by Monday when I get them on Saturday. I don't know if it's my fridge or if they just don't keep. The ones in the shell are much less finicky.

Snacks: apricots, cherries, blueberries, green peas

Apricot, cherries (chopped) and blueberries, ready to go onto granola

Apricot, cherries and blueberries on granola with rice milk

"We're not telling you what to eat. We're telling you what you're eating."

I can't think of a better way to begin this blog than with a post about this brilliant article by Ari Soloman. There is only one sentence in it that I wouldn't have said myself if I had thought of it. That sentence is "Veganism is a philosophy." It might be. I don't know or care if it is. As described a few sentences later, here's what veganism is for me: "In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." There you go. Simple. No need to strain the brain, just don't eat the animals.

I appreciate this article for paragraphs like this one:

There is a video making rounds on YouTube that shows a lone cow shaking in terror as she contemplates walking down the kill chute. She walks forward, then back. Animals can hear and smell the violence and death that awaits them. Their last moments are ones of abject horror and suffering. If you wouldn't condemn your dog or cat to such a fate, how can you pay for others do it to these poor animals?

There were several pages of comments to this article, but no one answered that question.

But I think the main point of the article comes next:

So. When a vegan is talking to a meat-eater about these issues, he or she is not "preaching", "trying to convert", or any such thing. We're not telling you what to eat. We're telling you what you're eating.

Since animals can't speak a language humans can understand (though I think the screams and terrified moans that fill slaughterhouses should be pretty much universal -- all living beings want to live) it's up to us to tell their stories and inform people of the suffering that goes on conveniently out of the public eye.

If, as a meat-eater, being exposed to this reality bothers you, it is not the fault of the vegan.

There it is. And I can't really add to it. It's perfect.

Hang around, because here at Campfire 30, Saturday is shopping day. That's day after tomorrow. We shop at the Clark Park Farmer's Market in West Philadelphia. It is held Saturdays 10am-3pm and Thursdays 3-7pm. We always shop for the week on Saturday and sometimes supplement with a few items picked up on Thursday. (The hours might change for winter, but the market is open year-round.) Each week, I'm going to post our shopping list complete with prices and often pictures. I will also be providing some recipes - I make them up, some are good, some are not-so-much good. Most will be illustrated.

I've only been eating a vegan diet since May of 2008. Back when I was eating animals, I couldn't imagine what vegans ate. I remember offering a girl a marshmellow at a bonfire at the WV Writer's Conference at Cedar Lakes a decade ago, and she said, "Ooooh, not on my stick." I asked her why and she explained something about gelatin and how she didn't eat anything derived from animals. Marshmellows were out? Somehow, at nineteen or twenty, that put the idea into my head that not eating animals is complicated. Now, understand: It wasn't that young writer's fault that I didn't go vegan sooner. Not at all. I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of not eating these marshmellows? I couldn't think of what people ate if they didn't eat marshmellows? (By the way, there are vegan marshmellows.) Who knows what I was thinking. I was nineteen or twenty years old. The point is, there is food besides marshmellows. Honest. And, so....

While I love the quote I used for the title of this post, it isn't really what this blog will be about. I'm not telling you what to eat. I will try to help meat-eaters see what they're eating. But mostly, I'm going to tell you what I eat.

Maybe that will help.

Cheers.