remembering the happy meat

Its taken a while to eliminate a lot of my old habits but I have noticed over the last 6 months or so that my unconscious brain has moved over into accepting full happy meat consciousness. I now remember to search out the vegetarian dishes when Im dining out; no proscuittto on my pizzas, no chicken in my past sauce, no prawns, not a lot of fish. Its taken a while to accept this as I am definitely a meat lover by nature but i just cant do it anymore. Not from a happy meat point of view or a human population health point of view. Its happy meat or its the vegetarian option. Actually if I was a vegetarian it would have been alot easier to remember; the full monty would be with you always. So i have found that the trick is to pick the right place for anticipated failure. Japanese is good, so is Italian and Indian, well Thai too. All the eating out vegetarian options are really tasty if they dont do happy meals. As a meat eater, doing veg when Im out has been very very difficult but its really just taken a shift in how i think about it. No longer do i go 'nooo' carbonara is what i want! i reframe from 'Im missing out' to 'i can do this', be Big and do the right thing and retrain my brain to think it can all be delicious without the meat. Anchovies have been known to save me from despair!

As I have become more diliget about it, the BBQ chicken pizza loving B1 has been known to object, not taking to it to well (especially when olives are present to ruin the WHOLE thing) but she is coping and she understands the reasons. It sounds fanatical , I cant quite believe Im 'one of them', Im usually all for putting the stomach first but Im finding that harder and harder to do as my knowledge has increased over the years. Ive been good for a long time on buying happy meat for home consumption but eating out has always been my downfall. So what's next for me is to start asking if the chicken/pork is free range or if there is a free range option when Im out. I have resisted this tactic as i know damn well its not, but its like the whole smoking in public places thing. If people didnt start asking to sit in non-smoking sections in restaurants, societies attitudes would have taken a lot longer to change. You have to market the idea, one individual at a time and at all points of sale, not just the butcher. Remember life before real vegetarian options? A pineapple ring, a half a canned peach and some ricotta cheese set in the abyss. That used to be the veetarian dining out alternative. It had to start somewhere. Self as one-woman happy meat consciousness raising and marketing campaign.
Sigh. Then there's the unhappy cheese on the pizza...no wonder we dont eat out often!

I came across this blog postyesterday, its easy to read and informative so I thought a cross post would be simplest( my brain is otherwise occupied). or you can cut straight to the Farmacology article here. Anyone out there still eating intensively farmed meat? Thinking about switiching? Why? Why not?

wise woman deodorant

Just like angry chickens, only...different.
Im an alpha male woman. I can pong when the going gets tough. its not nice. I used to hate 'natural' deodorants; no aluminium, tea tree, crystal, rock, organic yaddah yaddah yaddah. None of them worked like the nasty ones did. So i used the nasty ones. Until about a year ago when i saw angry chickens post on her home made pong purger and her declaration that she too was an alpha male kinda woman, who also ponged. Sister! "If it works for her maybe it will work for me too?". So I started making my own and its brilliant. No pong. No sweat. B2 declares it the best ever, I didnt even suggest she use it, she just started and declared in a kinda surprised way that it really works. It does. Its so simple and i get to put to good use the lovely little huon pine box my step dad made for me when i was a teenager from mill scraps collected on holiday in Tasmania(lid missing in pic). I just run the deodorant down to its last scrapings and then whip up a new batch. It takes, oh, about one minute.

Angry's recipe
3 tablespoons shea butter
2 tablespoons cocoa butter
3 tablespoons bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons cornflour
essential oil, I used Jurliques' Wise Woman blend
2 vitamin E oil caplets, squeezed ( i dont do this)

Put ingredients together in a glass pot/jug/bowl, except the essential oil, and zap in a microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute or melt in a double boiler. Add essential oil. Stir until mixed and lumps removed. Pot up into container. Thats it. The longest part will probably be sourcing the butters.I sourced some organic, fair trade shea butter and cocoa butter from RAW Organique, an organic online store based in Melbourne.

The deodorant sets firm into a moist chalky texture and its used by pinching up a small piece and rolling it around under your pit until its all worked in. Give it a shot. No plastic. No fuss. No smell!

poo bar [and another diva cup] update

Well, I really wasnt happy with using the Lush poo bar. It was a great introduction to removing the plastic bottle backlog that was our shower experience and getting us all in the habit of using a poo without the squirty factor. But, despite it being package free, it still had the water unfriendly phosphates, sulfates and chemical surfactants and it was drying out the locks a little. Changing to a poo bar was so much less painful than I thought it would be. I really had imagined B1; the very teen, really going to hyperbole town on the awfulness of not using her favourite hair product. But, not so. She's even told me a regular soap does a pretty good job! who woulda thunk it? ( it is olive oil soap but its the principle thats counting here) So, months later we're still happily using a bar, but have switched to a Sugar Shack olive oil, locally made bar in recycled cardboard. I could make my own i know, and i do get inspired to do these things, but time...

*warning* diva cup details about to follow.

I have been using the Diva Cup now since my period returned after the bean was born; so six months or so. I had a few issues along the way that nearly made me stop using it, but i persevered and all problems seems to have resolved. I was getting rather 'internally achy' and i think i just needed to find a better 'fit' or else it was just 'that' month, coz i havent had that weird ache since. It really was quite uncomfortable in there! The issue some people have had with the tiny holes in the side being difficult to clean, i resolved easily by holding each 'hole' under running water while similtaneously squeesing either side to open the hole. No need to use a needle to clean it; it just rinses right out very easily this way. The most challenging issues around using the diva cup is when your only have access to work or public toilets. i usually avoid it if possible due to a) the bloody (no pun intended) noise *schlerrrrrrrrrrrrrrp POP* ...could be my technique; too much speed? will have to work on that as its most socially disconcerting and b) rinsing. I usually just tip, wipe it and keep on going!
Haven't died yet..