Please Eat The Minestrone Instead

I don't know if any of you love turtles like I do, but I just read an article that said that terrapins have nearly disappeared in China due to the Chinese's love of turtle soup. Why should that matter to us? Because the U.S. is exporting terrapins to China from our southern states.

Terrapins are turtles that inhabit the brackish, slightly salty waters of marsh areas. They were almost hunted into extinction in the 1930's. Terrapins have a very slow reproductive rate so removing even a few adults has a devastating impact on their population. These unregulated "harvests" could bring our terrapin population to the point of extinction.

So, if you have the chance to order turtle soup - don't. And if you live in Texas, Georgia or Florida, please write your state representative and ask that they end commercial turtle gathering.

Messing Around In The Kitchen

Today was a good day to cook up some items in the refrigerator that would otherwise go bad in a few days. I enjoy the challenge of creating something nutritious, satisfying, and hopefully delicious out of whatever I've got handy. For lunch I made lentil and rice stuffed tomatoes with lots of onion, garlic, mushrooms and mint. I also made my old standby, hummus, with cilantro thrown in for some pretty green flecks of flavor. For dinner I made tofu steaks with quinoa, salad, and fruit salad.

I'm not sure these stuffed tomatoes look very pretty...

... but they were delicious (if I say so myself.)

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) is relatively new to me but it's supposed to be super nutritious. At the end of this post I have inserted a video that reveals many interesting facts about quinoa for your viewing pleasure. :-)

To the left of the box of quinoa is some fresh rosemary out of a friend's garden. The fruit salad was simple: cantelope (probably from California), kiwi fruit (from Italy), and organic strawberries (from Mexico.) Though delicious that fruit salad cost me a lot in terms of my carbon footprint... I'll have to do better. On the bottom right is a mixture with which I coated my tofu steaks: whole wheat flour, nutritional yeast, onion powder and garlic powder. After dipping each steak in tamari sauce I dipped it in this coating and then baked in the oven. Yum.

After cooking up the quinoa I sauteed it with the fresh rosemary, onions, and then added some zereshk, a Persian berry not unlike cranberries. I think the English word for zereshk is barberry.

This closeup of the quinoa mixture shows the cool way the germ of the seed curls off the seed to show that it's done. It looks kind of like a white tail or sprout.

In reviewing the food above I happily notice that everything was vegan. Happy, happy, happy. I'm learning that even when one doesn't use animal products in their cooking, animals still die as the fields are harvested and as the grains go through production, but the amount of animal suffering has been reduced about as low as I can get it.

Here are the basics about quinoa:

The Last Five Videos

Yes five, because Cyrus was so cute walking around in the kitchen I had to keep taping. I really like video number three because he almost catches Obi and gets a handful of Chappu. And I love how he goes from person to person for affection. Also notice that he has mastered getting up from the floor in order to walk rather than having to pull up on something. Enjoy the little walking bubsie.

More Videos

I seem to remember two little twin girls that liked to do this too:


Then he decided that HE wanted to be in charge of the basket:


You can lead a child to basket, but you cannot make him ride:


Just hangin' (I want to kiss those little footsies):


Believe it or not Saeed's computer still works.


That's it for now; there are a few more processing in the YT queue for tomorrow.

The First Two Videos

Cyrus' Khaleh Anahita is always demanding videos of her nephew so I took quite a few this weekend. Poor YouTube is struggling to upload them all but here are two short ones that are ready.

I love this one. It shows Cyrus, the independent being, walking around with his balloon while the adults talk at the table.


Splish splash:


More videos later.

Happy Spring/NoRooz/Birthday!

The gang (minus Anahita) was home this weekend for NoRooz (Persian New Year) which falls on the first day of spring. In honor of NoRooz Saeed spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking up delectable delicacies which we were all too happy to sample.

Shirin is feeding Cyrus a dish Saeed invented and then named after him: Siroos Khan. "Siroos" is the Persian way to pronounce Cyrus and sounds like See-Roos. Khan means chief. There are other dishes that are named after people in this manner such as Baba Ghanouj and Mirza Qasemi.

Chief Cyrus thought Siroos Khan was mighty delicious.

A bit later I nearly burned the house down (jk!) in my attempt to blow out all the candles on my birthday cake. How many were there? None of your business! But I got them all out with one breath, so there couldn't have been too many, right?

Cyrus was more interested in my laptop than my candles or my balloons. As you'll see later he is already in love with computers. He doesn't even know what they can do but he knows they're super cool.

After eating Siroos Khan, homemade lentil soup and birthday cake we headed off to Earth Fare to stock up on baby diapers and organic baby foods. Shirin can't help but be attracted to the marinated tofu items since they're so easy to throw into dishes for some added delicious protein.

It looks like so many choices of baby food, but many have meat or broth in them which limits the selection some. Cyrus is such a good little eater and seems to prefer "real" food anyway, but jarred foods are a nice convenience.

While sitting in the Earth Fare cafe we notice that Cyrus has perfectly smooth baby skin. Gabriel can't find even one hair or one pore.

He then looks down at his own mammalian arm covered in fur. It's hard to imagine Cyrus growing hair on his arms, but I guess at some point in his adult life he'd better not be as smooth as a baby's butt!

On the way out Shirin and Gabriel met an old Winthop friend and her son. Cyrus and Felix eyed each other knowingly.

The weather was beautiful so we headed to Winthrop Lake for a walk.

Can you believe it? He's walking so well and looking mighty proud about it too.

How cute.

This was Cyrus' first real, up close and personal, introduction to grass.

I forget sometimes just how amazing all these new things must be to someone experiencing them for the first time.

Maybe one day we'll go back with some duck food.

This family portrait was taken not too far from the spot where Shirin and Gabriel got married.
(remember that they said their marriage vows in a sweet little ceremony right here in the grass at Winthrop Lake)

My dad used to carry me around like this - I loved it. I probably held onto his ears too.

What a great day. A tired, yawning little bubsie gets ready for bed.

With the baby asleep the adults began a game of "Settlers of Catan." We played it once before but needed Shirin's reminder of the rules.

It's a bit complicated but loads of fun. It's sort of a combination of Monopoly and Risk. You see Saeed studying the board very intently. Shirin won.

This is the next morning. Boy is Cyrus a morning person!

See? Do you see him any happier than when he's at the computer?

He's probably pounding on the keyboard - yikes!

I have a video of this computer session. It's not uploaded yet, but when I post it you will see an uncharacteristically lenient Saeed as Cyrus beats the keyboard to a pulp with the mouse. Only grandparenthood could turn someone into such mush!

Please check back in a day or two for the videos I took this weekend.

Cows v.s. Cars

I want to pass along an article Saeed forwarded me that I found informative and very bittersweet. Sweet, because it affirms my lifestyle choices (who doesn't want to be validated!?!) and bitter because it's so frustrating that the message isn't getting out there...


The article is called, "Are Cows Worse Than Cars?" and I wish I'd had it for you when I did my "Going Green For St. Patick's Day" post on the 15th. As a present to me please read it. It's quite amazing what information is being withheld from the American people.

Pics Of The Snow

Two weeks ago when we had our big snow my desktop was having some issues. Now it's happy again and I have been able to process my photographs from that morning. As I came out the back door the back yard was still quite dark and had a mysterious feel to it, but as I walked into the front yard (which faces the northeast) the sun was rising. What a beautiful morning it was.

No bike riding today!

Our gutters have never hosted icicles before.
(they're new gutters)

The sun coming up in our front yard.
I love this picture.

Our cedar tree branches got pretty heavy.

I had to surgically excise the willow leaves from the ice on my car.

The next two pictures show that I was not the first to walk down the sidewalk in front of our house.

A newly planted baby bush nearly covered.

Fluffy looking bushes.

Our holly bushes look quite comfortable with snow on them.

Red maple tree leaf buds with an icy cap.

Camelia flowers hiding under the leaves.

These Nandina bushes look quite happy with snow as well.

And now for my sister in hot, humid Australia where it's summer right now, a video that will make her glad she's sweating instead of scraping:

Going Green For St. Patrick's Day

Usually "going green" on March 17th means wearing green clothes and eating green food. It means the folks in Chicago dye the Chicago River green and all the beer is green. But that's not what this post is about. I'm sure you can tell where I'm going with this and the direction is not Irish, it's environmental. A true environmentalist doesn't eat meat or meat products. Here are a few facts:

A U.N. report states that the animals we raise for food creates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes... in the world!

The same report says that “expansion of livestock production is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America where the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring.”

A University of Chicago study explains that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering climate change than switching from a standard American car to a Prius.

The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook states that “refusing meat” is “the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.”

Nearly half of all the water used in the U.S. is squandered on animal agriculture. A meat-based diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water a day, while a vegan diet requires only 300 gallons.

Animals raised for food produce 89,000 pounds of waste per second—that’s approximately 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, factory farms pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.

Food for a vegan can be produced on only 1/6 acre of land, while it takes 3 1/4 acres of land to produce food for a meat-eater.

More than one-third of all the fossil fuels produced in the U.S. are used to raise animals for food.

Cows, chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals are fed more than 70 percent of the grains grown in the U.S.

Around 1.4 billion people could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone

Chris Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, states that “[y]ou can have a much bigger impact by shifting just one day a week from meat and dairy to anything else than going local every day of the year.” Imagine how much of an impact you’d have if you were to stop eating meat or dairy products altogether.

The U.N. report concluded that the meat industry is “one of the … most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”

All Earthlings deserve compassion and respect.

PLEASE GO GREEN
For the earth, for the animals, for our survival.