NON SEQUITUR

Cell phone rings at 12:49 p.m....it's an 800 number. I know exactly who it is, and I usually don't answer, but I wanted to try a new approach.

Me: "Hello."

Recording: "The factory warranty on your vehicle is expired. For more information on extending your warranty press 1, to be removed from this list press 9."

** I have been pressing "9" on this particular call for the last 8 months, so this time I pressed "1" **


Beep, boop, beep...pick up:

Operator: "Hello, something-something Center."

Me: "Hi, how do I get removed from this calling list?"

Operator: "Oh so you're interested in extending your vehicle's
warranty?"

Me: "No, no...I'd like the calls to stop."

Operator: "Oh, you've purchased the warranty already?"

Me: (foolishly) "No, no, I haven't purchased the warranty, I just don't want any more ca.."

Operator: (interrupting) "Okay, we'll give you a call back, then. Have a nice day." (click)

I did my best to call him a "fucking prick" before he hung up...and, well, I'm just going to go on believing that he heard it. I admit, I was laughing while I said it...I didn't expect him to end the call like he did. I certainly appreciated his delivery and timing.

Since it appears that this weekly call is going to be more difficult to prevent than the progression of Will Ferrell's puzzlingly lengthy career, I might as well make the best of it. I'm gonna' get myself a little digital audio recorder, put all future calls on speakerphone, and have some fun...and, of course, you will be presented with the results. That's all for now, stay tuned.

NEW 'SODE: Breakfast Burrito

It's been a while, I know...check the title of the blog...

Break-Fast

The fast has been broken. Well, it didn’t end today actually, it was yesterday to be honest…yup, Tuesday night about 8:00 p.m. In the end, I consumed nothing but fresh vegetable and fruit juices for 48 straight hours.

While that doesn’t seem like a long time in comparison to other fasts I’ve read about, it sure seemed long…long enough to form an opinion, anyway.

After reading up on it, participating in it, and considering the opinions of ALL of my loyal readers, here’s what I think – in no particular order:

1. Most veggie juice is absolutely delicious, and I will be working a lot more of it into my regular diet. Certain green combos are bitter, but if you balance it out with some tastier things, you’ll be in good shape. I will certainly share any especially tasty combos that I come up with.

2. Wheatgrass: Had a two-ounce shot of it at a juice bar. During the thirty seconds that it was dancing around my taste buds, it went from tasty, to not tasty, to “what the fuck?” and back again about ten times. Interesting stuff.

3. There are two types of juicers: Masticating and Centrifugal…I have centrifugal…you should get masticating. It took three minutes to prep my veggies for juicing, one minute to juice them, and seventeen minutes to clean the juicer. Apparently the masticating versions are quieter, more efficient, preserve nutrients better, and are way easier to clean. Here’s a comparison.

4. While on such a fast, weird shit happens…literally.

5. I certainly feel good, but not a whole lot better than usual. Midway through Tuesday, I was very tired (and hungry, naturally), and didn’t do much…happens every time I quit smoking, the body detoxing, I believe. Sitting here on a Thursday night, I’m definitely in the “danger zone.” About now I’d be picking up a bottle of wine and a pack of you know what, but I’m not really feeling the urg…umm…lets change the subject....yeah…let’s do that.

My Final Thoughts:

Considering my experience and what I’ve read, I think I won’t do this, or anything like it again. As I said in my initial post about this, I’ve always been skeptical of these fasts and detoxes, which is why it’s taken me so long to try…they always seemed unnatural to me. Here, purging nicotine from my system was the spark for this whole thing, and I don't know what effect it has had. If it did nothing more than get me used to juicing regularly, I think it was a success, and the rest will work itself out.

I believe (as Kay and Dracenea commented below) our bodies are designed to clean themselves, naturally. However, if you are someone who consumes a lot of unnatural things like pesticide-laden, hormone-injected, refined, processed foods, and animal products, then maybe a rush of raw veggies and juices might do you some good – give you a jump start to make a change. But if you’re eating the things that humans are designed to eat (as I have done for over 2 ½ years), this type of thing I do not believe is necessary.

So that’s it, if you’ve got any other questions or comments about this or something I may have missed, I’d love to hear ‘em.

Damn, That's Some Fast Juice!

Alright, so, I made the switch from omni to vegan a little over 2 ½ years ago. Up ‘till then I had a lot of bad habits. Gorging on terrible foods, drinking A LOT of alcohol, watching too much T.V., and getting less physical activity than Captain Pike did in “The Menagerie.” Yeah, I know.

Anyway, since then, I have eradicated all of these detrimental deeds…except for one. One that I have kept hidden from view since the dawn of The Sexy Vegan, nearly two years ago. I am, and for the past 9 years, have been addicted to nicotine. The Sexy Vegan smokes! (The show was initially called “The Smoking Vegan” because, at the time, I thought that it would be funny, but I settled on “Sexy” since I decided that more people would click on it if it had “sex” in the title, and I really wanted it to be about health…and I didn’t plan on smoking forever).

Over the past couple of years I have made tremendous strides in this fight, reducing cigarette consumption from nearly a-pack-a-day, to just one pack over the course of a weekend, which is where I have been for quite a while now. That is, however, the most idiotic smoking schedule I’ve ever heard of. The first three days of nicotine withdrawal are always the worst, and since I essentially quit smoking every Monday, I go through the worst part of quitting every single week. I could probably handle a couple days of water boarding at this point.

The fact is, my life has changed in so many fantastic ways since becoming vegan (I used to look like that), but this is the one thing that’s been holding me back from being the complete vegan sex symbol…and I’m ready to be done with it.

So I’ve started a juice fast.

In wanting to avoid replacements like “the patch” and “the gum”, I searched for some natural helpers. It’s all about detoxifying, according to this here internet. Get all of that nicotine out of my system, so I no longer crave it. There are much more detailed explanations out there about the workings of the addiction (dopamine release and such), but I’m gonna’ keep it simple. There are also 17,000,000 different herbal combinations, cleansing/detoxing kits, and programs for detoxifying the body and quitting smoking, but I’m going to keep that simple too. They also recommend enemas…and, well, that just won’t be happening.

I’m simply going to consume nothing but juice for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time, and see what happens. Fresh juice, that I juice myself. I have read up on this, and it seems like a viable method to heal one’s body, and has been successful in aiding nicotine cessation. It, apparently, gives the digestive system a rest, and lets the body focus on repairs and cleansing. You’re not even supposed to chew gum while doing this, since the act of chewing triggers the digestive system into action.

I started yesterday, and want to go at least three days. Although I’ve read that the body doesn’t even start detoxing until about four or five days in. I’ve read so many differing articles on this, that there’s only one way to be sure how it all works…and I’m starting my second day of that investigation. I’ll go a week if I can.

So far, I’ve made two different juice combinations:

A. 1 beet + it’s greens, 2 apples, 2 carrots, small slice of ginger
B. 1 tomato, 2 carrots, 3 celery stalks, ¼ of an English cucumber, 1 clove garlic

These make between eight and twelve ounces of juice. You’re supposed to dilute it with an equal amount of water to make you feel fuller, but that tastes shitty. I’m simply drinking the water right after or before I drink the juice…same effect.

In fact, I’m drinking combo B right now with some Swiss chard added. Whew, one clove of garlic is definitely enough. Both combos are absolutely delicious, actually. There will be much more to come on this topic in the coming days. Keep in mind that I’m no expert, and I’m not a doctor (anymore) but I would like to make this a resource for anyone who might try such a thing…so stay tuned...and pray I don’t start eating my appendages, I’m starting to get a little hungry.

NEW 'SODE: Pancakes II: Addendum

HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Pesto Manifesto

Hear-ye, hear –ye! I do, on this day, publicly proclaim that we are no longer shackled to basil-centric pesto sauces! We are free to incorporate an infinite arrangement of ingredients in order to incite culinary inspiration! We are no longer fettered to the…huh? What's that? Oh, you already knew this? You say you saw it in my Pumpkin Soup episode, where I topped my soup off with a bit of non-basil pesto? O.K. well, here’s a variation, smart ass.

As usual, it’s stuff I have in my fridge that I need to use up, and all measurements are approximate:

½ cup baby spinach (packed tight)
½ cup arugula (packed tight)
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup cashews
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp fake parmesan
some cherry tomatoes (halved)
your pasta of chioce
salt/pepper to taste

Super easy, this one. While the pasta’s cooking (I used rice spaghetti), add everything except the oil and tomatoes to your food processor/blender. Pulse it a couple times to start blending it together. Begin to slowly add the oil and ramp it up to full puree mode. When you have that pesto-ish consistency, stop adding the oil (you may not need it all, or you may need more…”half-assed recipe,” remember?).

When the pasta’s done cooking, drain it, give it a shake, and put it right into a mixing bowl while it’s still hot. Toss in a couple spoonfuls of the pesto, some cashew pieces and the fresh tomatoes. Combine it all, gently, and serve it up.

Oh, and the fake parmesan: just blend equal parts nutritional yeast, and almonds, and some salt to taste in the food processor. I usually do a cup of each and keep it on hand at all times. Got that one from this guy. His videos are in German, but he has an English section on his site. Seems like a cool dude.

Anyway, what you should learn here is that there are endless combos of greens, herbs, seeds, and nuts that you can use for your pesto sauce. Here are the general rules, in an easy to remember poem format:

"Something green,
Something olive oil,
Something garlic,
And something nut,
Makes you something very…oh and fake parmesan too…
you can’t forget…um…thut."

yeah.

HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Veggie Raid

Being that my weekly farmers’ market trip takes place on Mondays, I desperately raid the fridge all weekend trying to use up whatever produce I have failed to consume. Here’s what I found this week:

1 Stalk of broccoli
½ red bell pepper
¼ head of red cabbage
½ English cucumber
4 shitake mushrooms
1 tomato
some mixed greens


Using these ingredients, I made a sandwich and a salad. But first I made a dressing/marinade that I used for both dishes:

¼ cup of Shoyu (or Tamari, soy sauce, Braggs, etc.)
½ cup of sesame oil
1 teaspoon of agave nectar
1 healthy squirt of Siracha chili sauce
Ground black pepper to taste

I whisked all of it together and separated it equally between two bowls.

On to the sandwich:

I Carefully pulled off the stems of the shitakes, discarded them, and dunked the caps in one of the marinade bowls. I Placed them brown side down in a hot pan with a little vegetable oil, and let them sear. I thinly sliced the cucumber, dropping about 8 of the slices in the same bowl where I marinated the shrooms, and stirred them to coat.

After 2-3 minutes, the shitakes were nice and browned, so I gave them a flip, and cooked ‘em for another minute. As they were off to the side cooling, I thinly sliced my tomato and toasted up a couple slices of whole grain bread. I assembled the ‘wich in the following order: Cucumbers, shrooms, mixed greens, tomato. The cucumber dressing seeped down into the bottom slice of bread, doing that awesome bread + dressing thing. Now that I think about it, I could have brushed both slices of bread with the dressing. Ahh, just another of many oversights chalked up to the haste of a hungry fat guy.

...and the salad:

The only cooking involved with the salad was blanching (drop in boiling water for 15 seconds, then cool immediately in a bowl of ice water), and draining the broccoli that I cut into bite size pieces. I thinly sliced the bell pepper, shredded the cabbage and tossed it all in a bowl with the remaining dressing and cucumbers, then garnished with sesame seeds. Now that I think about it, I could have stretched this salad out, and tossed it with some cold noodles...but I, of course failed at awesoming yet another dish.

FYI: I’m a little under the weather, so I typed this entire post from my bed. No, I don’t have a laptop, I have, well…



Yeah, it's a little computer cart with wheels that I pull up to the edge of my bed. Useful in soooo many ways. Just, my neck’s all fucked up, now, from laying on my side...a banner day, really.