Tuesday, January 7, 2014

My Holiday Season

Happy New Years, everyone!  Though it might be a bit late for that...
Ah, New Year's.  The day where you plan your goals for the whole year.  Only to have your resolution crumble very shortly.  Take my New Year's, for example.  I had planned on going on a juice fast for two weeks starting then and there.  But my family and I were at our friends' house.  And someone brought vegan chili.  And i REALLY didn't want to offend them.  Plus it was freaking delicious.
I AM juice-fasting now, and I've been doing it for three days so far.  I will post about that experience soon.
My resolutions include writing every day, eating more raw food (i bought two raw vegan cookbooks!), losing weight because of the Mermaid Parade in June, and financially supporting my sewing endeavors, which involves me making money on the subway, gypsy-style, which involves a ukulele.

I think you can guess the reason why I wanted to lose weight.  There is a two-month period at the end of the year that involves overeating.  And cookies.  And curling up under a cozy blanket to watch Disney movies.  I ended up being unable to fit into my favorite pair of white jeans.  Whoever said that veganism isn't fattening is a liar.
So for the SALT club closest to Christmas, I invited pretty much everybody in it to my house, and they had to bring cookies.  Any cookies.  And we would all eat cookies.  So... there were about 20 teenagers in my house, no parents.  I spent a good part of the morning making (gluten free and vegan) oatmeal raisin cookies, which turned out AMAZINGLY.  They didn't even taste gluten free, let alone vegan!  I think the trick to gluten-free baking is to mix some sort of texture in there.  Like this one time I made some vegan, gluten-free lemon blueberry scones, and there wasn't enough gluten free flour.  But I had a little extra shredded coconut.  The result was pure decadance!  Even my mom liked them!
Anyway, with 20+ kids, we had many, many cookies, and it didn't take much to get full.

During the meeting (It REALLY felt more like a party) Quintin, Baird, Valentina's brother Matteo, and Michael had a SHIRTLESS snowball fight.  A couple of us watched through the window.  It was VERY funny to watch.  Later, I felt a little green around the gills, which was unsurprising, as there was a bug going around in the circle.
I spent the rest of the party, er, meeting lying on my mom's chaise.  Apparently they played spin-the-bottle in my room.  And I repeat, there was some cold going around in the homeschool community.
I was sick for about a week, during which time i spent watching Disney movies off of questionably legal websites and eating oatmeal raisin cookies.  Thankfully, I was well by Christmas.
Christmas was a lot of fun!  I loved turning on the radio and listening to songs that i knew all the words to!  If there's one thing I love about the Christmas season, it's jazz music.  If there's one thing I DISlike about the Christmas season, it's the cold weather.  In my family, I'm known for having constantly cold hands.
The chilliness really came suddenly this year.  I think that next winter I'd like to go somewhere tropical for a couple of weeks.

This year's hanukkah was rather unusual, as it fell on Thanksgiving!  So there were a lot of crossover jokes floating around the internet and my friends.  Like "Menorackey".  I made a LOT more food than we could handle, even with eight people!  It was about 80 percent vegan.  Ironically, for my mom, the lentil loaf was her favorite dish there!  I posted pictures of the dishes as i made them.  One picture of latkes had quite a few comments from Leo about that there should be sweet potato latkes (yamkes).
There was also risotto, mashed parsnips, and rolls, among about nine other dishes.  My grandma came over with the turkey (hiss), and so did the Wattses (Coco, Ben, and Tiina from the previous posts).  The evening was filled with lots of singing and piano playing.
I think it might have been from the surplus of cooked food (I eat mostly fruits and vegetables and grains) or perhaps the wheat, but I threw up that night.
The next day I ate LESS of the leftovers.  But then I threw up AGAIN.  My dad asked me if I was bulimic.
And then i started researching raw veganism.  I was a bit sick of cooked food that weekend.
A few days after, Thomas and his family invited my family over for a vegan thanksgiving.  (OY VEY)
But it was all delicious.  I really enjoyed Thomas's apple pie.  Also, leo was there, so I came with sweet potato latkes, which were AMAZING.  (They taste like a baked sweet potato!)
Angie (Thomas and Izzy's mom) made me a sweet potato casserole (without pecans), which they insisted on calling the "Jan-the-Sweet potato casserole".  Later we watched "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".  I had never seen it before and, my god, all I can say is; pure genius!
The following week, there was a homeschooling Hanukkah party.  I was SO done with latkes.

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