I am a firm believer of energy. When you ingest something you ingest it’s energy or life force.  We are all part of the environment and I think anyone who has bothered to observe his or her own behaviour has experienced this concept in motion. Happy people draw happy people to them. Good thought and optimistic outlooks draw good outcomes to you.

The same could be said of the food we eat. The amino acids (etc.) that combine to form every molecule of our bodies. It seems to me that eating products from animals is not a peaceful way of eating. There has got to be a negative energy coming from meat that was slaughtered in such a barbaric way. And on a purely chemical level meat (as I have discussed many, many times before) is a nutritionally invalid food. The same could be said of eggs as well. And dairy, being a nutritionally negative food (taking away more than it offers) is the poorest of choices. If you want more information on these topics you’ll want to read the posts specific to this.

So, if we truly are what we eat (which is a FACT on a biological level) then we should watch what we are putting in. Garbage in equals garbage out where as peace in equals peace out. Can you think of a more  harmonious way to be one with the earth than to actually be formed from the earth (instead of from the muscles of fellow beings).

This is really the evolved way to eat. Raw whole foods provide the best nutrition. They build your body with the real building blocks of life. They are full of enzymes and increase your body’s pH (acidic bodies promote disease).

So be one with the earth and eat a carrot stick. Think positive thoughts. Forgive someone. Meditate. Sleep. Get sunshine (even if it is getting colder). Give someone an unexpected gift. Be nude in your house alone. Recycle. Donate one item per day. Share. Smile. Love. Live. Be!

First off I want to apologize. I have a pretty bad headache today so I can’t guarantee that my blog entry will make the most sense.

Earth Day is almost here and there are some of us who actually do care.

I wanted to talk about a couple of changes that someone can make to their lifestyle that will greatly reduce their carbon footprint.

When you stop eating meat you reduce your contribution to global warming.

Think of all these wasted resources associated with meat:

1. Ten times the land is needed to grow food for cows than humans would consume. Without out all that land being used to feed animals we could easily have more than enough asparagus to go around. That is a great misappropriation of resources.

2. The by-products of feedlots and slaughterhouses pollute water supplies. I am pretty confident that with less meat farms there would be less e-coli contamination etc.

3. And as Al Gore was so brilliant in pointing out, cow farts yield greenhouse gases. Personally I think gas shouldn’t count but it’s a point regardless.

3. Then there is the transportation of cattle from fields to fields to slaughterhouses to grocery stores to your home. There is a pile of greenhouse gasses just in emissions from trucks.

Even Al Gore (Al Gore pff!) mentions it on his Inconvenient Truth website. Granted he slips it right in there along with using energy efficient light bulbs. But can you blame him? Cattle ops are in his family.

As a bit of an off topic, I really resent someone when they get paid thousands of dollars per engagement for sharing something that is supposed to be of critical importance. It detracts from the message if you ask me. If Saint Gore was truly worried about the earth you’d think he’d be more worried about getting the message out there and less worried about padding his wallet. But whatever…

There are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint. You can try to buy food locally grown (and it would be healthier too. Not just because the food is riper but because the U.S. and Mexico use more chemicals than we do and they use ones that are banned in Canada).

That leads me to point two, buy organic. You’ll be supporting farms that are sustainable and are gentler on the soil as well as food that is not covered with cancer causing chemicals.

And one more thing, eat whole foods. The more processed a food is, the less nutritious it is and the bigger the carbon footprint.

Anyways, this Earth Day, be green and make yourself a tasty, whole foods vegan dish!

Yesterday I was out and about and managed to snag myself some nifty green deals.

The first was a green cleaning book from Chapters. It was in their clearance section for about six dollars. I have been wanting something concrete with recipes (since I make notes from websites and magazines but it is such a pain in the butt to look for them that I just keep reaching for my Seventh Generation all purpose cleaner) for all sorts of cleaning  needs. They cover everything from floors to pests to shoes to tubs to pans.

These recipes are made with baking soda, citrus juice, borax, vinegar and other natural substances. Even with the natural/eco-friendly cleaners you still get far to many chemicals. Granted they are worlds better than Windex and Mr. Clean but they still aren’t the safest!

I am looking forward to replacing all of my cleaners with homemade ones!

The next green deal I found was a ceramic coated frying pan made by EarthChef. It’s non-stick like Teflon pans are but made from non-toxic ceramic.  Teflon is notorious for being toxic. Especially if it gets too heated. But who wants to cook something delicate like polenta in a stainless steel pan? Enter ceramic cookware.

I have had a chance to try mine on something very sticky and it was just as good if not a bit better than Teflon. Yay to non-toxic food!

I can’t say if it’ll stand up as well as my Lagostina pans but I can’t imagine that the ceramic would start to wear faster than the Teflon. The EarthChef pans come with a lifetime manufacturer’s warranty so I would infer that the ceramic is pretty resistant.

Plus, they are quite inexpensive. I bought a small pan for $7 or $8 at Sears! The big ones were a mere $30.

So here’s to healthy eating and non-toxic homes!

1. Reduce the amount of unnecessary items we purchase. Every few months I go through my whole house and send about two bags worth of stuff to my sister or Goodwill. This is a clear indicator of how we consume too much stuff. In many places of the world there are people who are barely surviving on less than what would be allocated for one person. Yet in the U.S. (Canada ranks a tiny bit better) people consume ten times what is allotted per person. I am sure that if you just take a look at your house you can see thousands of dollars of worth of rarely used items. Not only that, but most of those items are likely purchased using credit. This is a very unstable existence!

2. Borrowing more books/movies etc. from the library instead of buying them. Same premise as #1.

3. Reducing the amount of dining in/take out we participate in. Take out food is over-packaged with materials that aren’t always recyclable. This contributes to overfilled landfills. Also, any form of eating out is often unhealthy (especially compared to home cooked wholefoods meals) and far more expensive.

4. Trying to unload my plastic junk. Now this one requires some buying but it is a long term investment that is good for the family. Plastic is horribly toxic stuff and the sooner I can get it out of my home the better.

5. Using my computer and TV less and lowering my heat in the winter. This little effort can save hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. It’s funny that what benefits the environment often benefits my budget. I can’t lower my heat too much with a new baby in the house but I do try to lower it during the day. I also plan on spending much more time outdoors when it gets warmer out and that will mean a lot less time when the TV is on. We don’t have cable but we use it for watching movies and as a CD player these days.

6. Going fully vegan. The only vice left is cheese! We have given up all meats, eggs and all dairy except cheese. This will need to be a slow transition if we are going to stick to it but we will get there, so help me, by the end of 2009. The meat and dairy industry uses up piles of land and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions tremendously through all the different attributes of farming (from cow farts, to transportation of goods, to processing, to packaging).

7. Not eating any processed food. This is one that won’t be very hard for us to acheive. We didn’t eat much before. The processing of food often exposes it to chemicals and other garbage. It also reduces the nutritional value of many food items and makes them higher on the Glycemic Index scale. This means you aren’t nourished adequately and your body sends you signals to nourish it causing you to overeat and gain weight. Eating fresh foods means less packaging and less of a carbon footprint from all the over-packaging and processing.

8. Eating/buying items locally. Also buying organic food. I already boycott anything from Mexico (because of the pesticides) and try not to eat things from the USA either because of the GMO. The hardest will be giving up avocado but, I will likely allow myself to indulge in the healthy fruits and veggies. I want to start shopping at the Farmer’s Market more often too.  This also means that I’ll have to stop shopping at Wal Mart. Ha ha ha. I have hated shopping there but it is the closest store to my house and the prices are often what we can afford as a family of five living off of one income. But I am hoping that we can save a lot of money by changing our buying habits and can afford to shop in more local shops. Organic farming is much easier on the environment and the fruits/veggies from organic farms are often more nutritious and contain less pesticides. Another perk is that they cannot contain any GMO’d products.

9. Getting back to using cloth bags instead of taking plastic ones. We are pretty good about this one. When we do forget and are only buying a few, easy-to-carry items we often decline a bag and then just bag it in the car with one of our reusable bags. My goal for this year is to stop forgetting to bring the bags!

10. Streamlining our errands (ie. wasting less fuel because we go out to go get one container of soy milk).

Other, more personal goals:

1. Cheap dates. There are so many activities that are considerably cheaper than a dinner and a movie. We have thought of going swimming, going for walks on walking trails and playing tennis. There is also dancing at a latin club (we are taking lessons in the spring). These activities have the added benefit of offering quality time together and making our bodies healthier.

2. Exercising regularily and losing my baby weight.

3. Clearing out debt and not buying any large items with credit. Learning to have patience and save for the items we need.

4. Being more involved in my children’s education (see last post for details.

I spent over an hour with a Facebook friend discussing the ability of people to shape the future. Can we change things that have been prophesied?

OK. This really comes from the idea of all these different religions and beliefs declaring that 2012 is a crucial time in our future history. A time when we enter a different age that will redefine the world we live in. I don’t know that I believe in this but I find myself a little worried about what could happen if they are right.

What does this redefinition look like for us? I have no idea. So it makes me wonder if trying so hard to oppose political corruption and stop global warming, which, even as a naturalist and environmentalist, I don’t really believe in, even matters. If we are running out of time and these outcomes have been decided ahead of time, is there anything we can do? There was an article a couple weeks back about how Mars and Jupiter are experiencing the same rates of global warming that we are without the pollution and greenhouse gases.

It’s like the idea of God giving us free will but Him knowing everything that will happen to us. How can it be free will if it’s pre-determined? How can our destruction be written in the God’s book if we have the ability to stop our governments from uniting us for the sake of profit, or, the environment from engulfing us? These are some of the spiritual questions that I am encountering in my journey.

I have decided that Que Sera, Sera. Whatever will be, will be. I will do my best to help the environment by conserving water, recycling, buying natural cleaners etc. But I won’t burden myself trying to stop the inevitable. What good can come from stressing and being angry over things I have no control over.

So should we admit defeat and surrender ourselves to everything? Should we live selfishly because there is no point in caring about the environment and animals and whatever?

I don’t think so. I still continue to try to make a difference with my time here. I try not to pollute water supplies with harsh chemicals and contaminate my kids with pesticides and I try my best not to add to our waste problems by making sure I recycle everything I can. I hate cleaning out peanut butter jars but I feel guilty if I am lazy and throw them away.

So what can we do? We can LOVE!

What is love? I don’t know. Poets and philosophers have debated this issue since the dawn of free thought I am sure, and alas, love is indescribable. It is a feeling, yes. It is also an action. I think of love as an action even more than a feeling. I am passionately in love with my husband and he with me yet it’s not his feelings that make me feel loved but rather his actions. The way that he cares for me. I love my children too but it’s the actions that leave them cared for. The hugs, playtime, meal times and even discipline.

How do we show love to others? We take care of them. We treat them as we would like to be treated. We take care of their environment. We try not to cause pain and suffering.

For vegans it is respecting all life forms. From plants, animals, children and even fetuses. We respect the living and the non-living as well. We share. We give. We love.

There will always be things that we cannot control. Things we won’t understand but love will conquer all. Love will make our circumstances tolerable. Love will make us stronger as individuals and united with others. Love will redeem us. 

Not only that but loving is good for your health. Being scared, angry and stressed will only make us sick and distracted. It will make us easier to manipulate. It has long be a political tactic to keep the masses fearful of everything. Loving and being loved will make you happy. You can change your world. You can change yourself. You can’t necessarily stop anything larger than that but that’s OK. You can be happy. You can be healthy. You can have peace. You can love!