Sunday Song Day: "You Ain't Worked Hard Enough to Say..."
Current forefront themes in this realm are: time, alarm, and direction. There are only so many moments in a day, there are more calamities than we can mentally map, and it is dizzying to sort out which path is best fought forward.
Atop America’s usual woes, this week we have: the withering hypocrisy of Republicans wailing about nominating Justices during an election year and then rushing to do just that, the heart-draining absurdity re: lack of convictions in the Breonna Taylor case, COVID cases ticking upwards in our district children, and the perpetual backdrop of climate change.
To approach everything at the same time is impossible. It’s best/easiest/wisest to start with you and radiate out from there. It can be as simple as taking a breath and starting with self-care…eventually “self-care” translates to things that better your health (<—ultimate self-care) and/or the environment (<—that thing we all need stable to survive.)
Heart-wailing about our judicial injustice? Please vote and speak to your reps (does Katko actually care about what I send him? Likely not, but that doesn’t stop me from putting my dissent in word.) Furious about the treatment and murdering of fellow souls in varying human shades? Check your own privilege, listen, support, and speak about the whole bloodied system to your kiddos so they move forward on better footing.
And if you’re feeling water-tread and floundering on how to push back against inarguable/unmissable/imperative-we-start-acting-on-it-now climate change, listen to the 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 National Kidney Foundation, even our Leading Doctors, and start transitioning toward a plant-based diet. Why? Because it is the biggest/least-expensive thing you can do to impact your environmental impact and it is simultaneously the biggest thing you can do to vastly BETTER your health.
It is a win-win, positive-path, high-five all around path forward, and we need more of those right now, eh?
Continue for: Nathanial Rateliff & the Night Sweat’s “Hey, Mama” (<—also, a phrase I hear on repeat about every 8 seconds :-D); 4 days of plant-based (mostly) whole-food feasting examples/ideas/recipes all swept around the whirl of remote kindergarten; a family learning to live by Lifestyle Medicine example; plus working hard every day to wake humanity up to the benefits of healing this planet and the dangers of continuing status quo.
Live Kindly, Feast Kindly, Grow Forward.
From “We Are The Weather” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Plant-Based Whole-Food Breakfast: berry bread, berry sauce (<—homemade blueberry, strawberry, mango), and peanut butter.
In “We Are The Weather” Jonathan Safran Foer proposes we start shifting our breakfasts and lunches Plant-Based for the sake of the planet. This is so simple, and it can also be delicious (like berry bread), heart-healthier, and not carcinogenic like the Standard American animal-product offerings.
Remote PE Views / Reflection on Direction & Time
The school’s PE Teacher records videos for the remote kids and they get Q in a good sweat. I plan to start doing these with him but am still on post-surgical restrictions, so right now I’m using these PE moments to take a step back, assess what I’ve learned from the previous unit Q has gone through, and untangle how we can do it better.
Remote learning has not been an easy transition and it’s by no fault or lack of his teacher: kindergarten is just tricky to translate through a computer. The mix of cacophony, not-being-heard (via din or technology), ramped up workload (something most kindergartners are overwhelmed with anyway; and in this case you need to do multiple assignments each day <—given by words via video and/or uploaded unto the Classroom site, work through the online Open Court system, document all work, then submit through a labyrinthine shared-by-many-kindergarten-classes Google Classroom), plus the start-up shuffling of the school set-up to accommodate more new materials coming home, gets Q wound up up in a way rare to him.
Twelve of his 14 school days have involved tears, so I have refocused most of my Time and Energy (<—Direction) flowing along with him, witnessing what’s getting him wound, redirecting or alleviating that energy through different planning or greater assistance, and sorting out how we can settle these times in a way that gives him the joy of learning and less of this pent-up stress. This is a particular juggle, because one of his frustrations is that he’s being asked to submit work for things he already knows how to do, so finding ways to “challenge” him while not overloading him has been another frequency setting that keeps flickering with static.
It meant that this week I tabled the idea of drafting up a recipe (<—I didn’t even start Wednesday’s post til 7PM) as well as most of the things I’d usually be doing while he was schooling, because the remote system understandably requires a lot more parental presence.
Thankfully, each day has brought less tears as we’re getting new foot-holds. The more secure/calm/focused Q is, the more I can drift off to blaze through house imperatives, and then shift to continue working on starting-up our business aimed at helping folks in Onondaga eat sustainably, compassionately, and healthier.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Lunch: Black Rice, Mixed CSA Greens, quick-pickled (green) cabbage, red bell pepper, quick-pickled beets (thanks, Tara!), kalamata olives, furikake, with Q’s Sesame Dressing.
If you make a big pot of rice at the beginning of the week and dice/cook up a few vegetables, you’ll have a handy set up to make super quick/healthy meals.
Time Appreciation / Plant-Based Whole-Food Dessert: blueberry, raspberry, mango, oatmilk smoothie.
We take breaks during schooling to shake off paperwork/computer work, get fresh air, soak up Vitamin D, and discuss what has been done and what is yet to be.
And when he’s finished with work, Q’s favorite past-time continues to be drawing. The theme is most often sandworms, and he’s getting better and better at details. <3
Plant-Based Whole-Food Family Dinner: Arepa Pizzas (with garlicky lentil loaf topping, red peppers, hemp shake, and Crystal’s PBWF cheese-sauce <—any whole-grain/dairy-free option could be substituted for the arepa) plus side salads (mixed CSA greens, balsamic tomatoes, hemp shake, beets, and a balsamic dressing).
Plant-Based Breakfast: leftover arepa with peanut butter, berry sauce, and a pear.
Remote Learning Compromises: there are letter/writing sheets Q has to fill in every day and he’s loathe to leave a page bare, so the deal is that after he does the assignment he can write whatever sentence he wants and add a picture.
“Jump! It’s a grabboid!” <3 (The perspective has it coming on down a hill toward them.)
He had an assignment to go out and create a leaf creature (and to estimate the amount of leaves it would take to make it, and then counter that with what was actually used), so he of course made a leaf sandworm, and then drew all this chalk signage to keep Ian from stepping on it (<—that’s supposed to be a foot in the bubble closest to him, a shai-hulud in the next)….and then the wind blew it all apart and he freaked out, so he eventually decided to glue it to a piece of paper like his peers.
“It’s a leaf shai-hulud and this tiny stone is Paul riding it!…It’s from Dune which is both a book and a movie. I love them both!” <—actual thing he tried to describe to a zoom class of kindergartners.
What it looks like in the background of assisting Q through remote learning: organizing bills to be paid, dishes air drying and awaiting clearing, sending out emails re: starting a business, reading through Board of Ed emails while processing 2 positive COVID cases in our district (both with kids who were keeping distances, yet somehow still got it <— as of writing this, we’re now up to 3), reheating coffee for the 5th time like every Mom Meme in existence, and taking a breath before answering whatever comes from the next, “Hey, Mama….?”
Ian first brought Nathanial Rateliff & The Night Sweats to my realm when he fell in love with “I Need Never Get Old” and that song remains an energy-lifting song the whole family loves, but their song “Hey Mama” got back in my head like glue this week first because Q says that before just about every schooling query, but then after listening to it again (to scratch the itch of “Huh, you saying that keeps reminding me of the Night Sweats!”) the lyrics slapped my brain-space to pieces as they tied the friction of the week, year, humanity arc in one taught knot.
You ain't gone far enough to say
At least I've tried
You ain't worked hard enough to say
Well I've done mine
You ain't run far enough to say
My legs have failed
You ain't gone far enough
You ain't worked hard enough
You ain't run far enough to say
Ain't gonna get any better
Oh dear, do I feel this deeply. And some of y’all are likely getting your hackles up and thinking, “How dare she?!” but I mean me too.
I mean all of us.
If every day is a day to be working toward betterment, and if every day is a new day of learning more about the world around us (where we’re continuing to learn the damages we have caused by our actions, and simultaneously learning new ways that we could prevent more damage and/or fix as much as we can of what has been done), then we should never be apathetically complacent enough to sit back and say, “Ain’t gonna get any better.”
There’s always more that can be done and there are plenty of paths forward for you to take toward environmental sustainability, but again: the least-expensive/most-impactful/full-of-health-benefits option is to shift toward plant-based feasting.
And for me? I have an overwhelming frustration with my immediate realm’s lack of concern with all of the above. I have ample empathy/compassion/endless-understanding for folks who have absolutely no idea what’s going on and/or struggling to find any food (let alone the time to research the most nutritious/environmentally-kind), but of the 745 souls I reach via my FB page there’s less-than-ten souls I know who have struggled enough to be on SNAP (<—Ian and I are among that number, BTW), and they are economically stable enough for a $5 a day (or even as low as $1.50 a day!) plant-based whole-food lifestyle.
The vast majority are are also definitely educated enough to understand the importance of the articles I’ve posted, to read the studies I linked to, to listen to the podcasts with doctors explaining why you need to shift toward plant-based foods for ideal health. Knowing folks COULD do better (just as we had), I started sounding the alarm because I thought, “Man, I wish I knew all of this stuff years ago! I feel so much better! I need to let people know they can save the earth, better their health, and radiate compassion all at the same time!”
A surprising majority of the comfortably-living souls simply shrugged their shoulders, covered their ears, walked away, and a small fraction lashed back out with an illuminating array of disrespect. (<—I had to realize this is a group where time is wasted, and I started pruning life-branches in all directions.)
I could have thrown my hands up and walked away in tears wailing “It Ain’t gonna get any better / No one is every going to change their ways and this earth will be doomed!”, but the stakes are too high, so I kept at it.
An inspiring swell piped up to say they need/needed this voice to propel them forward. These folks fuel the fire to continue working against my peace-making/appeasing nature and why this klaxon still comes with shaking both mental and verbal.
Yet another group stepped forward to say, “We know we need to make changes, but we need you to do the cooking part for us. We can’t do it ourselves, and we can’t buy what you’re showing.” And I realized there was a LOT more work to do.
I thought “helping” was illuminating information that can better your health and planet, crafting/posting you recipes to make for yourselves, showing you meal ideas, and I swiftly learned that some/most folks don’t like cooking as much as I do (or can’t/don’t), and a better use of my time would be work harder and help you out.
So Crystal and I are stepping waaaaay out of our comfort zones and are meeting y’all where we’re needed, and some days this means I am over my head with a weeping kindergartner, a sink full of dishes, a lawyer on the phone, and a stack of mental to-dos that sets the brains to fits; but there will Always be a swarm of life around forward movement; and I haven’t gone far enough, worked hard enough, or ran far enough yet. :-)
I take a breath, reshuffle what’s within my realm to work on (<—like Q’s schooling), and then kick it into higher gear to move further along that path of personal (and planetary) betterment.
There’s always more that can be done, and we can always be better.
If you feel yourself feeling rushed through mealtimes and always grabbing for the wrong thing, help yourself out and set aside a few hours on the weekend to do some meal prepping: it makes preparing weekdays meals easy-breezy and will assist in your overall health goals.
Here seen: a big batch of black rice we can pull from all week (<— it’s going to turn into something even more fun soon), roasted balsamic beets, roasted bell peppers with onions.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Lunch: Black Rice, balsamic roasted beets, balsamic tomatoes, kalamata olives, Mixed CSA Greens, and Cappello cornbread.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Dessert: berry bread, almond butter, and maple syrup (<—some local soul delivers this to my in-laws in darkly glowing mason jars, and it a delightful treat. <—Hey, did you know maple syrup is packed with calcium, potassium, iron, zinc, and manganese and has 24 different antioxidants? If you’re still eating pure-white refined cane sugar, maybe consider shifting toward some less-refined/mineral-packed sweeteners. Maple can be good step on the path of reducing sugar intake, and you’ll even find recipes using it in Dr Will Bulsiewicz’s bestselling gastroenterology wonder-book Fiber Fueled <—That book is a must-read and is going to blow your mind with nutritional betterment.)
Powered up by lunch and an afternoon of more schooling, this Aquarian cub played around in the yard for an hour, and when it shifted to rain he got excited and danced around like a sprite. <3
Plant-Based Whole-Food Knock-Out-of-the-Park Dinner
Crystal handed off some of her precious plant-based whole-food cheese sauce (<— If you’ve had this you’ve no doubt sung its praises too <— it’ll definitely be a weekly offering through Your Kind Kitchen), and I mixed it with the roasted peppers and onions, folded that into some black rice, topped it with hemp shake (hemp hearts, nutritional yeast, salt, garlic, paprika, black pepper), baked it until it was nice and bubble and GOOD GRAVY. I lamented I’d used the other half of the jar on those arepa pizzas because we immediately wanted more than we had.
This’ll definitely be a meal-option through Your Kind Kitchen (<— It is packed with fiber, plant-based protein, plant diversity, minerals, and Vitamin C! <3 )
Plant-Based Whole-Food Dessert: sweet cinnamon oats, peanut butter, almond butter, flax meal, and something Ian named “chocolate pousse” (<— tastes like a mix between pudding and mousse. <— it’s oatmilk, tahini, almond butter, cocoa powder, date powder, and vanilla.)
Art & Food / Playing With Your Food
There’s a swell-feeling, fleeting mandala sort of wellness to carving his food into something fun, then seeing his face light up with that beam of his. It took just a few breaths to angle in a little sandworm shape, and the reward for that speck of time was an excited-cub’s heart-lift: which lit up many more moments than the few seconds it took to light the spark. <3
Plant-Based Breakfast: Arepa Sandworm, Miyoko’s Butter, berry sauce, apple, peanut butter.
Him: being the “morning helper” and answering the day and date queries that start his remote session. (<—Me wondering why kindergartners have to focus so intently on something as conceptual as days/months when there are so many other things to learn.)
Him: 3 years ago in that same shirt (the smallest one we could find was swimming on him).
Friday’s delight is that Ian works extra long days M-Th so he can be home on Friday, which meant that he was able to do Q’s PE session with him.
…and Ian also helped out with some of the schoolwork in the afternoon (he cut a LOT of recently delivered flashcards) and set-up and documented this alphabet exercise with Q (they went through the whole alphabet).
Plant-Based Whole-Food Lunch: Black Stuffed Pepper Casserole (black rice, roasted peppers and onions, Crystal’s PBWF cheese sauce, topped with hemp-hearts/nutritional yeast/seasonings), black beans that had been roasted with balsamic tomatoes, smoked paprika, and cumin (<—this is going to be replicated soon because it was AMAZING and tasted like smokey/sweet baked beans), fresh CSA greens, and homemade hot sauce from CSA peppers.
This meal will be replicated again and again and again.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Dessert: berry bread and “chocolate pousse”.
Remote Learning “Fun”: Q has pleasantly surprised me with his love of math. “Fun” (<—his word) for him is rolling these ten-frame dice, writing out the “number sentence” (<—a term his school uses, but I also make sure to call them equations too), and solving the answer.
When he’s done (just like with the writing work) he can decorate it however he wants. Still Sandworms all the dang time: this is one coming at you. :-)
For once, the afternoon had enough time to get some footing beyond water-treading, and I was able to clear out all the hutch cupboards so Q can use them for his school work and supplies. There’s more stuff coming home all the time, and in the spirit of autonomy we needed to make sure he had easy access.
This dear hutch is as old as Opa, once held whatever childhood dishes my father’s family used, and was gifted to me when my grandmother died. It’s already been an unexpected treasure in holding cards we’ve made for each other through the years (plus pottery Ian made, one our beloved Zakin gave us, and brick-a-brack found on travels) and it’s a continued delightful twist that it’ll now house this young scholar’s tools.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Dinner: black rice noodles, sugar-free version of the peanut-sauce, peas, mixed greens, roasted peppers and onions, roasted balsamic beets, kalamata olives.
Saturday Social/Business Vent Session with Crystal who was having one HECK of a week, and Wicket must’ve sensed it because she is usually aloof, but she snuggled into to give Crystal some love.♥️
Plant-Based Breakfast: arepa with Miyoko’s Butter, cinnamon, date powder, and apple slices.
This smelled (and tasted) like those cinnamon dessert pizzas I remember from my pizza-buffet youth. Q was in heaven.
CSA array (fleshed out with extra vegetables from our Tuesday pick-up <—because we missed last Saturday’s due to camping)
Plant-Based Whole-Food Prepping: roasted eggplant, yellow squash, and zucchini. I roast them all up together to save on dishes/oven-use and will then use these in varied dishes through the week.
This heirloom jumble turned into a delicious sauce.
New favorite thing to do in the kitchen: gather a bunch of tomatoes, puree them (in either the blender or with an immersion blender: SKINS AND EVERYTHING), add them to a pan of caramelized onion/garlic, add a little balsamic vinegar, and salt; let it bubble away until it’s thick; and you have a rustic fiber-filled tomato sauce that can then be turned into any vector of tomato-based delights. No need at all to do the fuss of removing the skins and seeds.
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?✌️🤟🖖
