Day 78: Fresh and Easy

    Today I went to the relatively new grocery store, Fresh and Easy, that opened up down the street. I was expecting it to be over priced like whole foods, but to my surprise their food was relatively inexpensive. While this store does not carry a large sum of vegan substitute products it has a great gluten free section, for those of you that have a gluten intolerance, and all there products contained no artificial colors or flavors, no high-fructose corn syrup, and no added trans fats.

     Not only does this store offer fresh affordable products, but they strive to be environmentally friendly by making all their stores "green buildings" and adding solar panel at their distribution centers. They also are known to donate large sums of money to the various communities they reside in.

    Along with being enviromnetally friendly, and having great fresh products, their store also has a few other perks such as big wide uncluttered isles and a cute little eating area in the front where you can get eating utensils, coffee, and warm up your food you just bought if you so desire.

   The thing that I did find a little bit strange though was that there were not cashiers! All the check out stands were do it your self, with just one cashier standing by to help if needed. I must say I did mess it up a few times and had to call the cashier over to help me. But overall this is a pretty cool new store and I will definitely be going back.

Day 77: PMU in Premarin

     My roommate, and best friend, is borderline obsessed with horses. Just the other day when were having a conversation about my vegan blog, and different animal products in our medicine, she somehow was able to relate it right back to horses. She informed me that a drug called Premarin, that is used as a female hormone replacer for menopausal women, is actually pregnant mare's urine! Premarin (also including Prempro, Premphase, Prempac, and Premelle) is a drug that is made up of conjugated estrogen from the urine of pregnant mares that is prescribed to menopausal women to reduce symptoms, as well as prescribed by doctors to reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Yuck! Not only is that just nasty but it is bad for you, and the horses that they get the urine from.

      If you are taking Premarin stop, and ask for synthetic or non PMU organic estrogen-replacement drugs instead! There has been a decline in the production of this hormone due to the fact that it has been known to cause cancer in women. Over 300 PMU ranches have closed since this was discovered, but there is over 70 in operation, and Premarin is still on the market. Even on Premarin's manufacturer's site it states that these "Estrogens increase the chance of getting cancer of the uterus". When researching this further I found on http://premarin.org/ that Premarin was once the most prescribed drug in america between (1975 to 1999) and in 2002 it was still the fourth most commonly prescribed drug. Besides the fact that it is bad for your health, the production of Premarin is harmful to the animals producing it as well.

     Mares are kept pregnant in order to collect this precious urine. Those of the mares that do not become impregnated with in a short period of time are sent back to auction or simply sent off to a slaughter house, and sold for meat in Europe. These mares are often kept tied up indoors for at least six months out of the year, without any exercise or fresh air. Also the foals these horses have are considered a by product of this business and need to be adopted or other wise are sent to a slaughter house as well.

    My roommate also supplied me with the sad story of one of the horses named Trinity that the owner of the ranch she worked at had. Trinity was a Premarin rescued foal that was donated to the director, Nora Klein Fischbach, of Strides Therapeutic Riding Center. When they first got Trinity she was taken to the vet who believed she was malnourished. They then started to train trinity at the age of three until she was five years old and flipped over backwards after being shod. A few months later Trinity went down in her stall and couldn't get back up. The vet once again said it was from the malnutrition she underwent from her original breeder, and they had to make the agonizing decision to put her to sleep.

    So it you are currently taking Premarin stop! It is bad for your health as well as the health of these beautiful creatures. For more detailed information check out http://premarin.org/.

Day 76: Project Lean and Green Kids

     Today I started to once again going through my stash of pamphlets, movies, and newsletters I accumulated at the Animal Rights Conference that I attended on day 53. After sorting through the huge pile I picked out a flyer titled "Project Lean and Green Kids".

     This organization focuses on working towards better nutrition education, healthier school meals, and green food policies in many schools across the country. Those of you who have children know that you want them to grow up healthy an accumulate good eating habits, but often our public schools are feeding your children loads of junk food and teaching them unhealthy eating habits which will impact their adult life. If any of you watched last season of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution you got a chance to see first hand what the Los Angeles public school district was feeding their children and how it affected them.

     The Project Lean and Green Kids provide teachers with lesson plan material for various types of classes that can be easily put in the curriculum. For those of you that are not teachers there are many other things you can do to help.

How you can help:

1) Call or write the Nutrition Director and Superintendent of your child's school district, and ask them to incorporate more plant based vegetarian meals into the school lunch menu.

         - If you live in California, Hawaii, New York, or Florida make sure to check out the state's veg lunch legislation in those states.

2) Work with your school district wellness committee to amend the district's "Wellness Policy" (all schools are required to have one) to integrate more organic, locally grown, and plant-based vegetarian school entrees.


3) Submit progressive health articles for the school newsletter.

4) Volunteer to teach the award winning, multi-cultural, and plant centered nutrition curriculum in your child's class or after school program.

5) Volunteer to read veg-themed children's story books in your young child's class, such as Victor the Vegetarian and Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, which you can find at your local library.

6) Start a Lean and Green Kids campaign in your school district.

Day 75: Visiting Grandma

     This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to go down to San Diego to visit my grandparents. I knew this would be an interesting trip for my grandparents are excellent cooks, who take pride in making me their well renown dishes, and now that I am on a vegan diet I wasn't sure how they would take it. While my grandma was seemingly supportive of my new diet on the phone, informing of all the new things she learned after reading my blog, I was still wary of how she would react to the change when she was faced with the challenge of feeding me a vegan dinner.

      After reading my blog my grandma decided to use my vegan pesto recipe from day 51 along with my grandpa's famous bean salad. Every one else had the regular pesto with meatballs, but I was touched that my grandma went out of her way to make me my own pesto sauce and even went as far as to find me some vegan parmesan cheese.

      And to top it all off, my grandma even picked up some vegan vanilla soy ice cream at Trader Joe's. I must say they make a mean vegan meal.

Day 74: Native Foods

     Today my boyfriend and I where on our way to visit my grandparents in San Diego. For lunch we decided to take a pit stop at the well known vegan restaurant Native Foods, in Irvine. This little restaurant is hidden in an center of small community of environmentally conscious retail stores. The restaurant it self it a large tent like structure with a casual dinning ambiance. At one point a portrait of an elephant caught my attention. After reading the small inscription I found that it actually inspired the vegan owner, for elephants are the largest of the animal kingdom which survive on a strictly vegan diet. I was also pleased to find a large variety of vegan dishes from savory seitan burgers to chocolate pie.

     After looking over the menu a few times I decided on the portobello and seitan sausage burger. This massive burger was absolutely delicious and came with a side or coconut and lemon grass soup.

     My boyfriend tried the Greek Gyro, which to his surprise was not encased in bread like tradition gyros but rather it was tossed like a salad. The gyros consisted of thinly sliced native peppered seitan sauteed with shallots on quinoa, steamed veggies, and kale with lemon garlic sauce and hummus. He commented that he found the peppered seitan to be more appetizing than the traditional pork or beef in gyros.

Day 73: Volunteering

    Yesterday I was inspired by one of the posts on my favorite blog Zen Habits, for he had written about his goal to try and volunteer with his family at least once a month. I use to volunteer religiously at St. Vincent de Paul Society, which was a homeless soup kitchen in Northern California, before I moved to Southern California, and found it to be extremely rewarding.

     There are many great places you can volunteer. If you are interested in volunteering I would use the site Volunteer Match to find places to volunteer in your area, and to tailor a volunteer experience to your personal interests. There are also a bunch of vegan friendly organizations that could use your help as well.

    One of the fliers I picked up from the Animal Rights Conference on day 53 was Food Not Bombs. This grassroots organization puts together fee standing booths in over 1,000 different locations around the world, where they serve vegetarian/vegan meals to the hungry, and work for peace, human rights, and a healthy environment. This organization works for positive change throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
 
     Along with Food Not Bombs there are many other organizations that could use your help. For those of you that are animal lovers you could also choose to consider volunteering at an animal sanctuary or another great organization is Animal Rescue Corps. This is a volunteer based organization that is dedicated to ending animal suffering through rescue and relocation of abused animals. The opportunities are endless and not only would you be making a difference, but you will feel great in the process of helping others.

Day 72: Lotus Yogurt Bar

     Today I went to meet with the owner of Lotus, a new yogurt bar that opened in Northridge near my school, to talk about advertising. After my meeting he was nice enough to offer me a complimentary frozen yogurt, which I had to turn down since I do not eat any dairy products. After informing him of my dietary restrictions he jumped to tell me that they actually always offer two non-dairy flavors. I was so excited that they had a dairy alternative option, that I was set on trying both flavors. Right now the two flavors they have are pink lemonade and raspberry pomegranate sorbet. Both flavors were absolutely wonderful, and not to mention fat free! The pink lemonade flavor was slightly softer than traditional frozen yogurt with a more icy texture to it which fit the flavor well, and the raspberry pomegranate sorbet was thick and rich with the more traditional texture. They will also be rotating the flavors Kiwi Strawberry, Mango, Sublime Lime, Watermelon, Mango Passion, Hawaiian Delight, and Green Tea.

    This location offers a 15% discount to csun students. I also found out that the owner is planning to knock down one of their walls and combine the Vietnamese restaurant Bun Me next store with the Lotus yogurt bar. He hopes to expand the menu, and who knows maybe they will include some vegan things to eat there as well.