La Vida (Almost) Vegana

I've had to supplement my vegan diet with a few non-vegan foods in order to combat my bone issues (thank you, osteoarthritis, for adding new problems atop the old.) I also have moderate atherosclerosis, so I can't take calcium supplements. Instead I drink two 16 oz. glasses of fat-free milk every day. This gives me 1200 mg of calcium that my body is more likely to add to my bones rather than my already clogged blood vessels. I have to take pills to help me digest the lactose in the milk, of which I'm intolerant, but that's been an issue since childhood.

Sadly drinking milk is not a treat -- I've hated the smell and the taste of it since I was a kid. Basically I hold my nose and drink it as fast as I can, like cough syrup. The things we do for the body in old age.

Aside from the fat-free milk, I still avoid all dairy and egg products products, or use vegan alternatives. Here are three I've found that are actually very good, and hardly different from the real deal.

I love bagels, and Thomas's has some varieties that are vegan, like their whole wheat. Not having cream cheese to put on top of my bagels, however, was a pain until I started testing some of vegan alternatives. Daiya had one that was okay, but Kite Hill is better -- and tastes almost exactly like the real deal.

Most vegan cheese alternatives aren't all that great, and they can be expensive, so I don't invest in them very often. When I make homemade pizza, however, I use Violife mozzarella shreds to top my slices. They have a different texture, but they do taste just like the real cheese.

Not being able to use mayo to make my favorite homemade salad dressing limited me to using vinaigrette, until I discovered Vegenaise. It is exactly like real mayo in taste and consistency.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

You know I'm not vegan, but I am lactose intolerant thanks to aging. I drink Fairlife milk. When I first tasted it, I thought it was so much more refreshing than other milk I'd tried. Turns out, it has 50% less sugar than other milk and it's lactose free which they weren't capitalizing on when I first started drinking it. I like it for those reasons, but it just tastes good. They have a 2% chocolate that's amazingly tasty cold and makes great hot chocolate too. Just putting that out there.

I can't take calcium either, but it's because my calcium levels have always been high so other than a little milk on my cereal and the occasional hot chocolate, I try to avoid it when possible.

February 17, 2020 at 7:12 AM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Valerean

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