I found this today on Bishop Marc’s blog: What is eaten in one week: a perspective

I decided it might be interesting to try to do something like this in place of a food journal, for the following reasons:

1) For the past two years I tried to keep a food journal during Lent. I think it would be more interesting to visualize, also to have a sense of portion, and to know how much to allot myself for the week.
2) It might help me know exactly what I’m short of, and need to buy.
3) It might help me keep track of how healthy I am or am not eating.
4) If I “start out fresh” with an empty cupboard & refrigerator, I can keep an accurate record of what my food costs really are. (Not that they’ll be “real”, or accurate, because I buy snacks at work, and I tend to “buy one, get one free” whether or not I plan to eat it during a given week.) So I think if I do this on a weekly basis, I’ll just take a picture of whatever I buy (and maybe include whatever I pick from the garden), and the total I spent on food for the week.
5) It might answer the question people have, “What do vegans eat?!”

The picture I’m posting was taken on a Saturday evening. I included old fruit & veggies that I still need to eat. I may buy more tomorrow, but I felt that the amount of food shown in the picture represents pretty well how much I eat in a week’s time.

Actually, I’m posting two. Since this is an animal-friendly site, I feel obligated to post one picture of my cat checking out the Yve’s Meatless Ground. The second is just the food….

Disclaimer for the “Food Police”: I eat Oreos when I get a hankering. I don’t know if they’re vegan. I don’t see any identifiable animal ingredients on the label, and the cholesterol is listed at 0%. So although they contain sugar, and little else that would be considered food ingredients, I consider them “vegan-enough”.

This is probably more and less than I’d eat in a week. I wouldn’t be inclined to eat the Field Roast roast, cold cuts, two packages of Yves Meatless Ground, Lightlife Smart Strips and the Dixie Diners Chicken (Not) ‘n Dumplings all in the same week, all by myself. On the other hand, I’m down to two store-bought potatoes. Will I eat rice and pasta the other nights, or make pizza on the flat breads? Who knows. I’m also out of fresh fresh fruit. What I have, should be eaten tonight or composted.

Maybe I’ll try to arrange future photos in the order of the vegan food pyramid.

On another topic, but about food, I took some pictures of a sweet potato that is growing on its own in my kitchen without dirt or water. I may put it in a pot, because it’s pretty. Here are two of the pictures I took:

But, now I’ll digress. I have this picture on a T-Shirt. I tend to wear it to church picnics (when I go, which hasn’t been for at least a year). I’m posting it, because the pig’s ears remind me of the sweet potato leaves….

Let’s see if I can make it a banner link….

Nope. Click here, if you want to go to the GoVeg site.

From MSN: Oprah Winfrey goes vegan for 21 days

“How can you say you’re trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?”
– Oprah

From Farm Sanctuary Oprah Announces 21 Days Free of Animal Products

“Well, I feel like I got baptized in Vegan Land today.”
– Oprah

Read Oprah’s Blog (with some video links), Menus, Recipes and Talk with Others pages, here on her “21 Day Cleanse” page.

Veg for Life’s page on Oprah includes these quotes on the issue of spiritual progress and diet:

The Dalai Lama

“Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.”

Albert Einstein

“If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”

Mohandas Gandhi

“Spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.”

Albert Schweitzer

“While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on…while so much brutality prevails in our slaughterhouses…we all bear guilt.”

Even though only one of them was a Christian, I think their quotes should be “food for thought”, especially (if only) during seasons like Lent, or whenever Christians give some thought to their spiritual progress. And this should fit comfortably with the Greek Orthodox view. (In my opinion, giving up all animal flesh and animal by-products during Lent should be the expected norm for anyone who observes Lent, not just one vestigial option that has been largely forgotten, ignored, not talked about in our churches, and/or that has been trumped by a vast array of other good things people choose to do instead. I really can not understand why this wasn’t mentioned as even an example, in the World Council of Church’s “Lenten Fast From Violence”, whose name strikes me as a literal call to cut out the most obvious form of violence. This is as close as I could find, which is environmentally-friendly, insofar as it benefits humankind on some level….)