Saturday, June 27, 2009

Day 41: Refreshed

For the past 8 years ever since my son's death, a good portion of the month of June is hard for me. I often disappear from the radar, I'll stop blogging, avoid my usual internet haunts, hole up at home, reading books, watching movies, and quite often, just go to bed.

This past week I did not eat healthily; I ate completely vegan, but I basically ate nothing but bread. I took in no fruit at all, and very few vegetables. I took refuge in homemade naan and whole wheat flatbread. I craved Korean and Indian food for some reason, and made aloo gobhi and kimchi fried rice. Kimchee fried rice was one of my comfort foods when I was teaching in Korea: cheap, easy to make, and very filling, it satisfies.

This morning, though, I feel as though I've finally woken up. The girls have been begging me to take them to see the movie "Up," so we're off to the movies in a little while. They also asked for Chinese food, but I told them that a trip to the movies and take out was too much for one day, but said that we could do our DIY takeout, and they liked that.

So, later on, we'll be making mandu, veganized, 0f course. I'm planning on two kinds: the fake ground beef sort adapted from my original meat-based recipe here (I'll use the Gimme Lean fake ground beef), and veggie mandu filled with baby bok choy, tofu, shiitake mushroom, green onion, soy sauce, garlic and ginger.

I have some nice asparagus that I'll roast, glazed with soy sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds, and I still have some leftover sticky rice that could heat up as an accompaniment. Presto! DIY takeout Chinese night. It keeps the girls happy, and as the three of us sit together at the dining room table making the mandu, we do silly things like sing songs and tell stories. Then we'll eat pic-nic style in the living room while we watch some dvd.

The girls' gradual introduction to vegan replacements for old standards has gone very well. They are actively taking an interest in what I eating and are willing to try things out. They have found that "these things taste good," which is the usual fear with healthy foods.

I'll post pictures of our mandu feast later on.

Have a great weekend!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm glad to see you back. :) It's always so nice to see when kids integrate themselves into their parents' new/better ways of eating. I'm seeing similar behavioral changes over here, and I really haven't had to force it on them either. It's like they're learning by observation.

Babs said...

Thanks. :)

I never know how long it'll take me to come back out of my cave.

The girls have been surprisingly adventurous, although they both pleaded with me NOT to force them to eat scrambled tofu. lol

Poor babies.

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