You have to read the Comments Section in an article in the NYTimes about dating outside of your "veg race".

[Article][Comments]

I've converted people to veganism. It takes time. Certainly, you can convince your romantic partner to eat less meat, especially if you cook. Who is going to turn down a home cooked meal made with love? Only someone so addicted to eating bad food. Afraid they're not going to get the same rush.

Ah well ... natural raw food is the best rush. Natural cooked food is the second best rush.

Trust me, and no hangovers or side effects.

~inga~

Hello friends,

Rumi. I don't really read poetry, I just write it. I don't really read books to the end, but I write them. Getting confused, lost, uninspired and disappointed turns me off from most things I read. Most likely, if its short I'll love it. If it's long, I won't finish it and usually give it away. If there is too much going on, I'll become lost and confused. If the writer or poet gives up, I can sense it and get uninspired and disappointed. If it's perfect, I'll probably put it here. This is perfect but most of what I've read is perfect. Of course, the long ones are untouched. Enjoy:

Art as Flirtation and Surrender

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that sight becomes this art.

[Source]

Poetry / Shambhala Library / Special Offers / Sufism

Labels: love, poem, poetry, romance, rumi, words

Where’s the Beef? PETA Has Sent Treats

“Have you ever been a vegan?” Bruce Braley, a Democrat from Iowa, said as he ran down a list of people who receive injections of vitamin B12, as Clemens has said he did.

“I don’t know what that is,” Clemens said. “I’m sorry.”

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sensed an opening, and took it, mailing Clemens a care package Friday of vegan treats, along with a tongue-in-cheek letter urging him to “get drugs out of your system once and for all and choose a meat-free diet.”

The package included vegan chocolate bars and faux beef jerky, as well as a list of athletes who swear by the diet, including the former track star Carl Lewis and guard Salim Stoudamire of the Atlanta Hawks.

Dan Shannon, the assistant director of campaigns for PETA, said he was startled to hear that Clemens, an aficionado of diet and exercise regimens, had not heard of veganism.

“We were a little surprised to learn that in this day and age, anybody wouldn’t know what vegan was,” he said. “We felt like we could educate him a little bit.”

[Source]

SoCal slaughterhouse at center of recall

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Chamomile, German

Matricaria chamomile

Other Names: Camomile, Chamomile, Wild Chamomile, Sweet Chamomile, German Chamomile, Hungarian Chamomile, Mayweed, Scented Mayweed, Pineapple Weed

Camomile Green Tea

A smooth and refreshing green tea, delicately blended with camomile.

Chamomile is one of the most widely used flowers for herbal tea. Chamomile Tea is so popular, it is found in most grocery stores in the tea aisle. It is used as a mild sedative, and is good for insomnia as well as many other nervous conditions. It is nervine and sedative especially suited to teething children and those who have been in a highly emotional state over a long period of time. Except for the small risk of allergy, Chamomile is also one of the safest herbs to use.

Chamomile flowers are used in alternative medicine as an anodyne, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, nervine, stomachic, tonic, vasodilatory. The anti-inflammatory properties make it good for rheumatism, arthritis, and other painful swellings. Additional uses in herbal medicine include an antispasmodic for intestinal and menstrual cramps, relieving gas pains, and a very mild but efficient laxative. Milder tea in large doses is given throughout the day for fevers, sore throats, the aches and pains due to colds, flu, and allergies.

[Source]

TRAITS	BROWN/ (DEMERARA) SUGAR	ORDINARY WHITE SUGAR
Physical Appearance	Yellowish-brown sugar in the rich aroma of tropical sugarcane.	No flavor, taste, or color from natural sources.
Production Process	Produced by a precise co-crystallization process to retain natural flavor & color components.	Ordinary sugar manufacture process employs several chemicals.
Chemical Additives	At no stage in the production process, are any chemical additives added. It is free from any harmful chemicals like phosphoric acid, formic acid, sulphur dioxide, preservatives/bleaching agents. This results in a health-friendly and chemical-free sugar.	Processing involves a potpourri of chemicals; all finally showing their impact on our health in the long run. Sulphur carryover puts health at stake.
Nutrition Content	Apart from a pure and natural sweetness, it contains 187 mg calcium, 56 mg phosphorous, 4.8mg iron, 757 mg potassium, and 97 mg sodium per cup of sugar-all from natural sources.	Does not contain natural minerals.

Demerara sugar is a type of unrefined sugar with a large grain and a pale to golden yellow color. It is suitable for a number of cooking and baking projects, and tends to be very popular as a sweetener for tea and coffee. Many grocers stock demerara sugar along with other specialty sugars, often in small packages for consumers who simply want to experiment with it. It is also ubiquitous in coffee houses, often in single serving packets along with other sweeteners.

The sugar is named after a colony in Guyana, which first began producing and selling the sugar in large volume. The bulk of demerara production now takes place on the island of Mauritius, but the name appears to have endured. It is extracted primarily from sugar cane, rather than sugar beets, and tends to be more expensive than refined sugars as a result. The minimal processing gives demerara sugar a unique flavor and texture.

To make demerara sugar, sugar producers press sugar cane and steam the juice of the firstpressing to form thick cane syrup. The cane syrup is allowed to dehydrate, leaving behind large golden brown crystals of sugar. Because demerara sugar is not heavily refined, it has a rich, creamy, molasses-like flavor which enhances baked goods. The large grains also remain crunchy through cooking, which makes demerara sugar a great choice of sprinkled topping on scones and similar dishes which might otherwise have a uniform texture.

Another version of the sugar, known as London demerara, is actually refined sugar with added molasses, rather than raw sugar. London demerara retains the crunchy, big grain of demerara sugar, but the flavor tends to be less complex, and it is not always safe for vegetarians, since bone meal is sometimes used in the refining process.

[Source]

Labels: code, religion, spirituality, ten commandments, vegan, veganism

Total Lunar Eclipse: February 20, 2008

Path of the Moon through Earth's umbral and penumbral shadows
during the Total Lunar Eclipse of February 20, 2008.
(Eastern Standard Time)

[Source]

So, this weekend, I'm hanging out on Lincoln Road in South Beach with my friends. One of them tells me there is a vegan activist a few blocks away. Of course, I had to go right over.

Turns out I knew the guy running the station, where he showed videos of cows being murdered and all that. We caught up a little bit about our mutual friends blah blah.

This girl, obviously inebriated, interrupted us to ask him, "What do you do with all the cows once everyone stops eating them?" Sounds innocent right? He tries to answer her but she chimed in, "Because who's going to take care of them?" Like she cares about the cows. She continued, "If the farmers aren't raising them for food, then he's feeding them and not making any money. How are we going to feed the world's population without meat? There isn't enough agriculture. Animals would roam free and overrun the planet!" He said, "The food you feed the animals would go to humans. Eventually, animals will stop being impregnated and bred by the hundreds of thousands, and the food grown for them would be eaten by us." She blurted, "Yeah but ..."

He did the best he could to answer her questions, but you could tell she just wanted a fight. I just walked away because I knew he could handle it.

I'm sure he hears this all the time. Showing those videos makes people angry. You're just trying to save them and some people really resent that. There are ways to reach militant omnivores. I honor those that do it. They truly are my heroes ...

[Photo]
~inga~

I think first you have to know what I mean by "diet".

[yes] food and drink regularly provided or consumed
[no] a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight

People would consider me thin or petite.

Here is the "Ambrosia Diet":

I eat - beans, grains, legumes, fruit, soy and vegetables
I avoid - bread, pasta, rice, cheese, nuts, sweets, soda, refined sugar
I can't get enough - avocados, naval oranges, applesauce, romaine, corn, potatoes
I rarely drink coffee or alcohol.
Never do energy drinks.
I drink green tea almost every day.
Tons of water.

Somehow that's the recipe for being thin.

The trick is to avoid fatty foods. The five minutes it takes to eat it will cost at least 4 hours of cardio, not worth it right? Don't think you have a handle on it by cutting down. You don't. Something inside your body always wants more of what it had yesterday. Its called food addiction.

If you don't eat it, you don't have to deal with the consequences. What doesn't go in, doesn't stay in. Isn't it funny how simple that is?

See, I didn't even mention being vegan ... =)

~inga~

Labels: diet, obese, overweight, weight loss

The other day I went to the grocery store, and this man and his daughter were selling Girl Scout cookies. I had my headphones on so I didn't even stop. I knew there was nothing there for me.

On my way out, I asked the man if there were any cookies made without animal products. He said, "Sure! There's no meat in here." I turned over the first box and it said, "Made with wheat, milk and soy." They all said that.

He said, "Well, what's wrong with milk?" We got into a nice discussion about why milk is bad ... blah blah. I told him to go to www.goveg.com and look at some videos. Then I said, "Ignorance is not bliss."

His daughter was listening to every word, which is who I was really talking to. He seemed receptive until we got on the topic of karma. He said he didn't believe in karma. I said, "What about the 'Golden Rule', it's the same thing?" He disagreed.

Moral of this story is, big companies don't care about animals or vegans. Vegans are so in the minority it's not even funny. He did say one thing that put it all into perspective for him, not me. He said, "But, look what you're up against. The meat industry is so large. The whole world is based around eating meat at every meal." It showed me how paralyzed someone might feel being outnumbered, and how much I've grown past that 'learned helplessness'. Learned Helplessness is a term used in Psychology, to describe the behavior of a dog-in-a-cage experiment. After repeated shocks the dog wouldn't move, even after they opened the door. Cruel experiment!

Veganism is the 'open door'. The meat industry will not determine how healthy I am, by how healthy they keep the animals they feed me. You take that control right out of their hands when you refuse to buy meat and refuse to patronize such a horrible industry.

So, I didn't buy any cookies, but hopefully that little girl will think twice when she picks up that chicken wing or hamburger. Kids remember stuff and that's the generation I'm truly meant to reach. Do I have a right to save her life? Sure do. God bless 'em .... =)

"The world within is the Universal Fountain of supply, and the world without is the outlet to the stream.
Our ability to receive depends upon our recognition of this Universal Fountain, this Infinite Energy of which each individual is an outlet, and so is one with every other individual."

~Charles F. Haanel ~

"Man is a stream whose source is hidden, our being is descending into us from we know not whence...
When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season it's streams into me,
I see that I am a pensioner, not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water..."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~