Sunday Song Day: "For The Beauty of the Earth" & Things I've Learned From Opa Pt 2
As I’ve been stumbling through this life learning from mistake, success, and research, there’s no soul who’s been by my side longer than my father. If you’ve met him (and his arc is wide because he’s an internationally recognized language scholar whose circle of friends spans continents), you know well his humor, his keen whip-smart mind, his powerful public speaking prowess, and his staggering generosity.
I cannot think of a single soul with a larger scope of giving than my father. He's humbled us more times than I can count, but he’s most generous with his time. When I was a kid he was always bring me along with him to visit strangers in nursing homes, he’s helped an endless array of collegiate souls by offering mentorship and guidance, he’s been an active pillar at church in any area we lived; he’s even been there to help us move down to NYC, back up to South O, and then down the road to this permanent address.
He’s shown me that time and care with others is the most priceless thing one can offer.
Through Opa, I’ve also learned that growing forward is necessary. We’re all born and raised with a certain set of thoughts, but as we learn more about the world around us, we should be opening our minds and stepping forward through life. Years ago, my father’s homilies were skilled and artful explorations of life and scripture, but now they also touch upon social injustice and a call to kind action. Pushback be darned, he knows these issues are important enough to broadcast despite closed-minds.
As such, there are overlapping pillars we should all agree on: we must protect this precious earth (not destroy it, especially when so many species and souls depend on its sustainability), we should approach life with compassion (not cruelty), and when we work together we are our most powerful.
It’s the application of those pillars that gets muddied as we stumble backward toward taste and close our minds to the harm in our wake. I get it, because I was once there, and then I woke up.
My father has also taught me that you should keep speaking truth and illumination, even when folks want to shutter their ears and minds. I have all the incentive in the world to keep howling despite that bloackage: my son’s future is on the line as is the life of every species and soul on this planet. If I sat back in comfortable silence and let y’all ignorantly ruin this earth, I couldn’t live with myself (<—there is too much at stake for complacent silence); and ignoring me doesn’t make it any less true.
If you care about species and souls beyond yourself, if you care about the future of your children, if you care about the sanctity of that temple of flesh that is carrying you through this short life: you need to start stepping toward plant-based whole-foods.
Again, if you heard “plant-based” and find yourself with preconceived notions and/or throwing your hands up to dismiss me, this is not at all my simple-minded “opinion”. This came from years of research and walking away from foods I once LOVED (<—foods my Lalande brethren loved and still love). Here are a few important realms urging you toward plant-based foods for best body-health and planetary-health: American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, Harvard School of Health, National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Yale, the United Nations, our Leading Doctors, ETC.
And again (because sometimes repeating slips through those closed ears/eyes/minds), the best part about shifting plant-based, is that there is a shocking array of delicious offerings, it’s the cheapest diet, it’s the healthiest diet, there are myriad examples of folks (<—including Olympians, Professional Athletes, Ultra-Marathon Runners, and every member of this immediate Cappello family) who have bettered their whole lives after moving plant-based, millions of species could be saved, and we’d move toward planetary healing.
It’s a win-win all-around positive-path-for-all and we’d be touching upon those pillars we should all be in agreement on. You just gotta start taking some steps forward and admit that the foods our culture craves are often terrible for us and the earth. The alternatives are so much better though! Better in taste, better in health, lesser in impact, and vastly more compassionate.
If you know my father, you undoubtedly are aware of his love of food. You should know I inherited that food-zeal in crystallized form because my mother loved food just as much him. If this former junkfood/meat-munching/dairy-delighting Hobbit can shift plant-based ANYONE CAN.
Continue for: Sunday Song Day (“For the Beauty of the Earth”); scripture and resources Opa sends me re: Plant-Based diets; the glory of choirs; and four whole days of examples of what this family is eating while we are thriving on a plant-based diet (<—cheapest, kindest, healthiest diet there is).
Live Kindly, Feast Kindly, Grow Forward!
Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: first ever “fluffernutter” sandwich. Whole-grain/Sprouted Bread, banana, peanut butter, and cashew cream.
Plant-Based Lunch
j - refried black bean tostadas, queso, corn, romaine, green onions, and hot sauce.
Q - romaine, peanut sauce, a dollop of black beans, corn, and queso.
One of the many things I love about my dad? Now that he knows we’re on this plant-based path, he’ll let me know when he’s eating a plant-based meal (either to tell me about new options I was unaware of, or purely to brighten my day), and he’s always sending me references: whether they be cartoons (like below), articles in the newspaper about new restaurants, health-focused links, websites showing athletes who went plant-based (Oh Hey, if you know anything about my dad you also know that he LOVES tennis, and the #1 male tennis player in the world is also plant-based :-D ), and he even pointed me in the direction of this story in the Book of Daniel that promotes plant-based living as well. :-)
“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
‘Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink. T en let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.’
So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat. Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat, and the wine that they should drink; and gave them pulse.
As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the end of the days that the king had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king.
And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.”
You do not need animal products to live. Like you, I once thought I did, but is categorically, medically FALSE, and ignoring these facts is the apex of selfishness because now we have been made glaringly aware that our zeal for animal products is ruining this earth and our own bodies (if the compassionate purposes weren’t enough). The fact of the matter is that you actually THRIVE and have less diseases when you switch to plant-based whole-foods.
Remain in standstill at risk of harming yourself, your kin, and this entire precious earth.
Grow forward and you have planetary healing, compassion, and reduced chance of disease.
Plant-Based Dessert: “crust bars” (take the crust part of the cashew cream cake recipe, double it, and add a little nut butter of choice), cashew cream, mango, and fresh berry sauce.
(Summer) Homeschooling a sci-fi enthusiast.
Q Art: “It’s an Audrey 2 meeting another Audrey 2.”
Wednesday afternoon, Q and I walked down to our local pond and were enveloped in a stench of cow manure so foul (from all the surrounding farms) that there was no amount of breeze to keep it at bay, and we could only stay for a brief spell before heading back home.
If the sadness of that smell (and the corresponding algae blooms) weren’t enough of a heart wallop, we tripped over discarded fishing lines 2 times, saw over a dozen beer cans scattered throughout the grasses and water, and there was a heartbreaking array of single-use plastic, packaging, food wrappers, and misc human junk thrown all around.
Humanity’s lack of care for this planet is a daily dagger to my heart. I, however, am the sort of soul who is always looking for a silver-lining or catharsis, and music is most usually that release.
Just like my father bettered my whole life and trajectory by motivating me beyond my difficulties with writing and reading (which is now helping me shake y’all awake for the betterment of our species, every other species, and this crumbling environment), about 30 years ago he urged my always-singing-to-myself young soul to join our church’s children choir. That parental push amplified a positive portion of my life for the next several decades (and continues), and it’s through that venue we’ll get to today’s Sunday Song Day offering.
Many of us know the beautiful traditional hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth” but when I joined the Holy Cross Children’s choir in second grade, I was new to it and we sang this John Rutter version.
Both versions could/should stir your soul as they are paragons of melody melding, the sentiment should snap you awake to the preciousness of this planet we treat so carelessly, and the harmonies within have always moved me to tears. [<—case in point: I played this for Q last night as we were talking about what was coming up on Sunday Song Day, and as soon as he heard it he said, “Wow! This is the kind of beautiful that probably makes you happy-cry right? I LOVE it!”)
There’s an array of vectors allowing humans to work together with fellow humans, but literally getting on the same wavelength as another soul and making harmony out of that union is my all-time favorite; and realizing it at such an early age and getting to immerse myself in such a powerfully fine-tuned machine was more of a balm than I can ever articulate. I sang in AMAZING choirs from 2nd grade all through college, and the bond of being in harmony with other souls bettered my whole life. Some of my favorite souls on earth are people I was able to sing with —not outshine— and revel in what we could create by joining together.
For the beauty (and sustainability) of the earth: What if we all got on the same wavelength and worked together to right what we have wronged? What if we became the stewards of this earth that we should be? What cognitive dissonance is stopping you from moving beyond your own selfishness and owning up to the responsibility of stewardship and compassion?
Silver-Lining Cub: “Well, the water smells disgusting and I’m worried about the fish and birds who live here, but look! This log kinda looks like a shai-hulud!”
Dinner: roasted red potatoes and a salad with romaine, green beans. shiitake mushrooms, ruby kraut, quick-pickled beets, red bell pepper, furikake, and Q’s Sesame Dressing.
Nightly Reading
Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: “crust bars” (take the crust part of the cashew cream cake recipe, double it, and add a little nut butter of choice), peach, peanut butter, and berry sauce.
Thursday: hiking through the Rand Tract with Q and our friend Mark.
My ever-growing cub walking just like his father, filling into a barrel chest that comes directly from his Opa. <3
Reminder, that this kiddo had failure-to-thrive and a feast of health issues (just like me & ian) until we put him on a plant-based diet. We became healthier, stronger, more energetic that we’ve ever been and have compassion and planetary healing as a side effect. What do you have to lose?
Plant-Based Lunch: black rice noodles, shiitake mushrooms, green beans, yellow squash, red bell pepper, and peanut sauce.
Dessert: chocolate mint nice cream. (You can thank Ian for the idea to put a mint leaf in this. “You may want to take another picture for your recipe post, and throw in one of our mint leaves or something. It kinda looks like turd.”)
We’ve been on the lookout for a snail to add to Rad’s terrarium (because snails are apparently social creatures. Who knew?) and then we found this little buddy gobbling up a melon plant, so brought him into the fold. Q has named him Louie.
Size differences between Rad and Louie
Louie hanging out on Rad.
Dinner: roasted red potatoes and a rainbow salad.
Romaine, cucumber, green onion, shaved corn on the cob, balsamic tomatoes, quick-pickled beets, and Q’s Sesame Dressing.
Summer Schooling :-)
“So down below on the sand, there is a man who brought a pickaxe to pick some rocks; and there is Beetlejuice riding a sandworm: and one mouth is saying “cbbss” which is like a sandworm speak, but the bigger mouth is saying, ‘VOTE!’. And there is me riding a giant earthworm, and Val riding a graboid, and Mama and Papa are riding a shai-hulud because you guys both say it is your favorite of the sandworms.”
Plant-Based Dessert: “crust bars” (take the crust part of the cashew cream cake recipe, double it, and add a little nut butter of choice), cashew cream, mango, and fresh berry sauce.
Annnnnd then we found another snail on the melon plant and Q said we needed to bring that one in because it may be a friend of Louie’s…
…and then one of those snails laid some eggs. So things are about to get interesting in the terrarium.
Nightly Reading
Nightly Reading: that’s good ol Dr Kim Williams (president emeritus of the American College of Cardiology) agreeing that this book by world renowned Dr Dean Onrish could save your life. What’s Dr Ornish urging? For you to eat a plant-based diet so you can avoid the number one cause of death in America: cardiovascular disease. Raise your hand if you somehow know ZERO souls with some form of cardiovascular disease? Did you know it starts in our children?
Again, you could stop that nonsense now and start eating health instead of disease and destruction.
Early Morning Reading :-)
Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: peanut butter and berry sauce sandwich on whole-grain/sprouted bread with an orange.
Lunch: sweet potato, roasted red potatoes, and salads with: romaine, cucumber, green onion, squash, kraut, bell pepper, and Q’s Sesame Dressing.
Dessert: berry bread, cashew cream, and berry sauce.
Showing Ian his work. <3
"Up above there is a father Venus fly trap --a ravenous one--, and next to him is a baby Venus fly trap and another one trying to eat some flies. And below there is a shelf with Venus fly traps each trying to get a fly, and there is an upside down monkey cup (<--pitcher plant), and a fully grown sundew grabbing a fly. And on the ground, there is a shelf called "The carnivorous plant section", and 50 dollars for the monkey cup, and one dollar for the Venus Fly Trap, And 7 dollars for the sundew: greediest of them all! And there is Seymour holding a baby Audrey 2, and next to him is a bigger Audrey, with a Mean Green Mother next to it."
Caramelized an onion, added several cloves of freshly grated garlic, diced up some lentil loaf, added some water to make a roux of sorts; spread that over the arepa; topped it with some roasted broccoli; topped that with mozz and sharp cheddar Parmela; dipped it in homemade marinara. <3
It. Was. AMAZING.
Homemade popcorn & when you’ve been burned once by a flying hot kernel so now you hide as far back as possible. :-)
Movie Night with Grandma: The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Nightly Reading
Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: berry bread, cashew cream, peanut butter, and berry sauce.
Stone’s Throw CSA pick-up with Crystal <3
The joy of picking through dew covered vines to pluck out golden tomatoes. <3
This week’s CSA array.
Pre-Lunch side-view of those amazing arepa pizzas. If these didn’t take so long to prepare, we’d eat these all the dang time. THERE ARE NEVER ENOUGH.
Lunch: Arepa Pizzas (roasted broc, caramelized onion, seared lentil loaf), roasted brussel sprouts, and fresh balsamic tomato medley.
Dessert: “crust bars” (take the crust part of the cashew cream cake recipe, double it, and add a little nut butter of choice), cashew cream, mango, kiwi, and fresh berry sauce.
I spent the whole afternoon wrapping up meal prepping with that CSA haul and was amazed and just how many green onions we have. We love sprinkling these on every meal, but the sheer abundance calls for another Arepa Pizza batch: this time with seared green onions.
Aw shucks. :-)
Dinner: mashed purple sweet potato (made just like our usual potatoes), mushroom gravy, Swiss chard, yellow squash, and seared green onions.
Homemade Popcorn’s most important ingredients: cold-pressed flax oil to put on it after it’s done popping, and as Q says, “As much paprika as possible, please!!” We also add salt, garlic powder, and nutritional yeast.
Nightly Reading
If you haven’t checked out any of the Izzy Gizmo books, please do. THEY ARE SO DANG GOOD. Q requests this book so often, and says he loves it because, “She shows how you can make a purpose out of everything, and do it sustainably too!” It also focuses on moving past failures and always stumbling forward with experiments. I love everything about these books.
How y’all doing on that goal to get at least 30 plants in you within a week? The best nutritionally-focused docs recommend that you get at least 30 different plants into you within the week. Why? Your microbiome is bettered by plant diversity.
Is your diet a rotation of meat and grains? That’s what mine used to be, and then I grew forward.
You only make what you measure, and America is sadly known to be severely deficient in fiber. Gut health = whole health so it is worth focusing on and growing forward.
Wed and Thurs.
Have you guys checked out “Down to Earth” yet? Q and I watched this over lunch breaks and LOVED it. It is a great eye-opener to sustainability around the globe, and there’s a plant-based health-guru to boot. :-) Or if you’re a Disney fan, it’s co-hosted by Zac Effron who realized he had a platform, was given this platform by not really offering up much in the way of meaningful involvement (<—his words!) and he wanted to use that platform to show people how they should (and NEED) to be kinder to this planet.
What’s the most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help your kin, community, millions of species, and planet? Transition as plant-based as possible.🌎♥️
Why? Plant-Based foods are environmentally imperative 🌎. They also promote ideal health💪 (which takes stress off our overburdened health care system), are inexpensive🙌, delicious🤤, & compassionate. 💕
Why imperative, though? 🤔We’re approaching (& have crossed) climate tipping points that will doom our kin & millions of other species. 😱📣Reducing/eliminating animal products is the *most impactful thing an individual can do* to prevent worse. 🌎🔥
Why? Animal Agriculture creates more emissions than the entire transportation sector combined, it’s tied to water waste/loss/pollution (<-- freshwater is our most precious resource💧), land loss/deforestation (<-- exacerbates climate change by reducing our ability to sequester carbon🔥🌎), ocean acidification (<-- FYI 50-85% of earth’s oxygen originates from oceanic plankton🌊) & vast species loss/extinction/suffering💔📣🌎
Plus, consuming animal products is tied to increased risk of cardiovascular disease❤️🩹, diabetes👎, cancer👎, and chronic disease👎; whereas Plant-Based feasting is linked to preventing/reversing some of our most common diseases (<— like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer); plus it promotes ideal health & robust strength (ie Olympians, Weightlifters, Endurance Athletes are thriving via PBWFs too). 🎉🙌♥️
What organizations are promoting plant-based diets for best health and environmental stability? National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Yale, the United Nations, Harvard School of Health, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, National Kidney Foundation, even the Parkinson’s Foundation.
We’re all overwhelmed in one way or another, but for the sake of our kin (and the millions of species we share this planet with) we need to start pivoting forward. As someone who once rarely ate green things & used to eat animal products at every meal, I can assure you that is possible, affordable, enjoyable, & purposeful to pivot Plant-Based. In fact, our whole family is now healthier/stronger than ever. 🙌♥️
Anecdotally, our son had failure-to-thrive, was also plagued with perpetual ear-infections/sinus-infections, and had an omnipresent runny nose. What was he eating? Grass-fed milk, organic/antibiotic-free/grass-fed/local meats, eggs from organic-fed/well-loved chickens from a neighbor, every meal came with vegetables, and we limited junkfood. He was healed via a plant-based diet: he’s launched out of that diagnosis and the last time he had a sinus-infection (or was sick at all) was in 2019 when he had some cheese at a school Christmas party. Before shifting to PBWF’s he was sick every month, and how he’s a robust, vital, thriving kiddo. 🙌🎉♥️
If you think any of the above sounds over-reached/absurd/impossible, please go read the links above. I understand the inclination to hackle-raise (<—because I was once totally there) but the science is clear: any step we make forward is imperative (<—and again “STEPS” is the focus. Don’t leap, just start making steps!). It’s as simple as starting with one meal a week and growing from there.💕
We have the ability (deliciously, healthfully, kindly, inexpensively) to *preserve/protect* the planet we share with millions of species & our kin. How are we going to use that power today?✌️🤟🖖
