So I’m trying to eat mostly raw foods this week to get my good vibes back. Basically for the past month, it’s been a lot of processed food and blueberry jam for me, so I think what i need to do is drastically cut back on the refined sugar and eat a lot of raw meals. That’s not going so well, mostly because I’m lazy. The raw food diet is not for lazy people.

I was up late last night working on a new design for this website, so I got up all groggy this morning. I had an english muffin with a healthy dollop of … you guessed it… blueberry jam!  Strangely, I’m not sick of the stuff yet.  I also made coffee. This doesn’t exemplify the raw food breakfast, I know, but i had nothing else in my fridge, honestly, and I just needed a caffeine hit.  I had Silk Soy Creamer leftover from a recipe for vegan gravy I brought to the vegan potluck last week. I normally don’t touch this stuff. Aside from having an ingredient list about two thousand words long, the stuff tastes awful. But I don’t like my coffee black. So now, here I am at work, drinking coffee which should by all rights be delicious: Organic free trade coffee sweetened with organic cane sugar and this Silk Soy crap. It’s awful.  If I was a pure vegan,  I’d much rather regular soy milk or rice milk in my coffee (mmmm, rice milk…). However after this box is done, I’m stocking back up on regular organic cream.

Tim Burton’s Catwoman portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer was just plain sexy.  From Wikipedia:

“Catwoman was portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1992 movie Batman Returns. As recreated by Daniel Waters and Tim Burton, Selina Kyle is depicted as a lonely, frustrated woman pushed over the edge into obsession and crime after her boss, tycoon Max Shreck, tries to kill her to keep her from revealing his plot to build a power plant that would steal Gotham’s electricity.

“Mysteriously revived by alley cats after Shreck pushes her out a window, Selina Kyle’s repressed rage allows her to transform into the clever supervillainess Catwoman. Shortly following her transformation, she joins forces with The Penguin. As a masked figure operating under the guise of a theatrical public identity, Catwoman finds a reflection of herself in Batman. In the ballroom scene, to Siouxsie & the Banshees’ “Face to Face,” the two masked crimefighters, Batman and Catwoman, dressed as their alter-egos, Bruce and Selina, discover their dual personalities, thus exposing one of Burton’s main themes — duality — in the film. In the film’s climax, she electrocutes Shreck by kissing him with a Taser in her mouth; Batman never finds her body. She is seen one last time at the end of the film, looking at the Batsignal in the sky.

“When Tim Burton was set to direct Batman Forever, his intention was to use The Riddler as the main villian and possibly have Catwoman return. As Burton was replaced, this never came to pass.”

  The boyfriend has been sent off to Germany today, but not before I made him take me to see The Dark Knight last night.  I was never a huge fan of Batman as a comic book while I was growing up. I preferred the team superhero dynamics within titles like Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, The Avengers and of course, X-Men (such an awesome series during the Chris Claremont years!) and the other X-related books.  But I was a big fan of the Tim Burton Batman movies, and fell in love with it all over again with Batman Begins. Christian Bale makes an awesome Bruce Wayne… note that I said Bruce Wayne, instead of Batman.  In terms of Batman villains, The Dark Knight brought back such a wicked tradition with the characters in this film.  It was pure nerd fun.

It was a good ending to a busy week. I just had a lot of stuff going on for the past little while, and even though work may still be a little busy for me, I think at least I can come home when I can and just relax without having any other projects and stuff hanging over me.  I may add some Batman movies to my collection this week and just chill.

I thought my gooseberry harvest was scant a couple of weeks ago. For some reason, yesterday I went out to check on the shrub and found a bounty. I picked up maybe 2 or 3 quarts of gooseberries, and there is still more ripening. Gooseberries have a firm texture, a thicker skin and I guess the only way I could describe it is an “apple” sort of taste. And they look so pretty green, and ripe red too. This batch of berries went into three and half half pint jars of jam. I’m so glad I decided to harvest my gooseberries this year.

More gooseberry pictures on Flickr!

This is a picture of brownies I made sometime last year, using this delicious recipe from Vegweb.  I revisited this recipe again a little while ago and was going through the comments. I particularly love the comment “They’re just like the real thing…” Hmm, pet peeve of mine, particularly when I once in a while indulge in baking: that vegan products are somehow the “fake” version of the other products that contain dairy/egg.

This is sort of why I think naming anything “vegan” does more harm than it does good. It instantly puts weird associations and prejudices in different people’s heads.  And when you do mention that something you made is “vegan”, instantly people are looking for the differences between that and the other recipes they’re used to… hence comparisons like “it tastes just like the real thing!”.  I’m not a big baker person, but when I do bake, I usually try to make it as vegan as possible… that is no dairy, no eggs, no other animal products. It’s simple, and if you follow a good recipe you come out with a product that is tasty and delicious. If it’s not delicious, scrap the recipe, make something else. So let’s see… what makes a brownie? Chocolate - check. Square or rectangular shape - check.  Cake-like texture - check. More chocolate - check. Deliciousness - check. That seems to be a brownie in my definition. It’s not a fake brownie just because it’s vegan.  It doesn’t “taste just like the real thing”. It is the real thing.  It has nutritional value. It’s fattening. It’s yummy. Put it in your mouth, eat it, it’s fun!

Anyway, I’m off to have my fake dinner.  Rant done!