The Adventures of Juror #6

The verdict has been reached, read in court, and recorded. I have turned in my juror badge (along with a suggestion for the Juror Suggestion Box) and I have put the business card of a brilliant lawyer on my fridge, just in case I ever need a brilliant lawyer I can't possibly afford. My boss is thrilled that I am coming back to work full time tomorrow, instead of trying to cram as many "make-up" hours as possible into evenings and weekends. I am thrilled to have my life back, and to finally be able to talk about what I have been listening to and learning about over the past three weeks. Justice, or at least what we call "justice" in this country, has been served. And yet there are really no winners in this situation. And I feel very badly for both sides.

Those of you who know me may know of my very weird phobia of jury duty. It's not rational. Phobias never are. It's not something I can totally explain. I've been called to jury duty several times in the past, in two different states. I've been selected for one case that was thrown out after testimony had already started; I've was excused from the Robert Blake criminal trial for financial reasons, due to the fact that my employer did not pay me for days spent at jury duty, and it was expected to be a long case. And I was in the painful process of juror selection for a criminal case that settled on Day 2 before we had all been accepted or rejected by opposing councils. What was so terrifying? I think it's a combination of things. One big factor is the fact that you have absolutely no control over your own life during the length of the trial. You are told when you may have a restroom break, when you may have a lunch break, what you may and may not talk about, and who you may not even say "Hello" to in the hallway. You are told that you must show up at a courthouse 20 miles away from your home (or in the case I was just on, 30 miles for one juror), whether it's in a neighborhood you know or even feel comfortable in or not. (I personally hate downtown L.A. and avoid it as often as possible. It freaks me out.) Then there are the questions. You, as a potential juror, are required to answer any personal question the lawyers want to ask you, and you are under oath. Anything in your background you might feel a bit uncomfortable discussing with a roomful of strangers? You do have the option of requesting a private meeting to answer any question you are asked, but you still have to discuss the personal matter with all the lawyers, the judge, and the court reporter taking down every word. Am I proud of every moment in my past? Do I really need to tell you every detail of my father's past surgeries? Couldn't you honestly just ask me if I can be fair on a specific subject? Or perhaps ask me how I feel about a topic, and not pry into my personal experiences relating to that topic in detail? After all is said and done, you are only going to ask me if I can be fair and unbiased, despite my own experience, so couldn't we skip to that part and make this much faster and more comfortable for everyone?

At any rate, I have a phobia of jury duty. So I was not looking forward to going in again this time. The phobia seems to have increased with every experience of serving as a juror or potential juror. But I psyched myself up as well as I could, and I went in. Now this time around, I wasn't asked to go to downtown Los Angeles. I only had to go to Burbank. That was the only reason I didn't out and out panic and risk jail time by fleeing the country. Seriously. Burbank is very close to my home. The courthouse is small and non-threatening. I did a practice run the afternoon before I was to appear. I'm not kidding. I drove Prince Consort to the courthouse and to the parking garage and even drove in to see the level where jurors were to park. Then we went to the alternate parking lot, in case the first lot was full. I had to practice. As I did so, my anxiety levels came down. We parked near the parking garage and walked to the courthouse. I saw the door I was to go into and relaxed even more. I could do this. It would only be for one day, if I were lucky, and then it would be over for at least another year.

I won't go into the panic about hearing them announce the next morning that they were going to send some of us to another courthouse that needed more jurors. I hadn't practiced at that one, and the thought filled me with anxiety again. But my name wasn't called, and I was staying in Burbank. Not long after about 80% of the jurors in the Juror Assembly Room were packed off to Glendale, I was sent along with the remaining 20% to a courtroom down the hall. By mid-morning the next day, we had a jury. I was now Juror #6.

Unlike all the cases I had ever been involved with before, this was a Civil case. The plaintiff was seeking damages from the Defendant, who admitted to having hit her as a pedestrian with his car three years earlier. Two things came to mind pretty quickly. Number 1, if he already admitted to being at fault for the accident, this should be a pretty simple and quick case. And number 2, why did it take 3 years to bring to court? Maybe there was more to it, and it wouldn't be so simple after all.

The pedestrian had been hit, or really barely "tapped" by the Defendant's bumper as he briefly let up on the break before putting his foot back down on it securely. We heard the top experts on knee injuries, arthritis, and knee surgeries from both the Plaintiff's lawyers and the Defense lawyer. I now know more about meniscus tears and bone edemas than I ever would have imagined. (And when you hear the phrase "bone edema" repeatedly several times in a week, the song "Funky Cold Medina" can get stuck in your head for days!) I have met the surgeon who does all the knee surgeries on the L.A. Lakers and the surgeon who does all the knee surgeries on the L.A. Raiders. They are colleagues who refer their patients to each other for second opinions. And they both saw the X-rays and the MRIs involved in this case and saw totally different things. What do you do when you have two of the top experts, both of whom have been practicing as orthopaedic surgeons since the 1980s, who tell you opposing views of the same "evidence"?

The court tells you to use your common sense. And in fact, while in criminal cases, the burden of proof requires you to be sure "beyond a reasonable doubt," in a civil case, you only have to believe that something is "more likely to be true than not". So we have a driver who says he took his foot off the break for a second, but slammed it back on when he realized there was a pedestrian at the corner of his car, and we have a pedestrian who says the driver came driving at full speed (whatever that is) a block or two towards her. Wouldn't that have knocked her down? Wouldn't she have more issues than knee pain, if that had happened? We're to use our common sense to determine what is "more likely to be true than not".

The Defense was willing to pay for whatever we the jury determined he was at fault for. The Plaintiff claimed that she worked 20 hours a day, 5 days a week, and that as a result of the accident, she could only work 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. Really? Come on! Really? I've been going to jury duty for under 8 hours a day (juries in Department B in the Burbank courthouse get longer lunches, start later, and finish earlier than employees do anywhere I've ever worked) and going to my job for, on average, 3 hours each night and then on weekends. I'm still not averaging 20 hours a day, and after 2 1/2 weeks of this, I am exhausted! I'm also a good decade and a half younger than the plaintiff! If they wanted us to award them the $2 million they were seeking, they should have portrayed a more realistic scenario. There was no way any one of us, trying to fit jury duty into our schedules, could believe that anyone would work 20 hours a day everyday until retirement. And go to the gym. And go out dancing. And do all the housework and cooking for her family at home. Really? So...the plaintiff didn't sleep? Or shower? Ever? Because there was no way she had time to do that, with everything else she used to do before the accident that she could no longer do now.

So I guess my tips to the lawyer for the plaintiff would be #1) Really be on your "A" game. If you're seeking $2 million in damages for lost earnings, medical bills, and pain and suffering, you had better prove that all of the medical problems your client has today are a direct result of the accident you claim they are. We saw x-rays and MRIs and heard expert testimony proving that the plaintiff has terrible knees today. But they showed conditions that had obviously started months or even years before the accident (giant bone spurs, which according to some expert witnesses, are a result of severe arthritis). The plaintiff's lawyers failed to prove, even a little bit, that the plaintiff's knee problems were all a direct result of the accident.

Tip #2) Come up with a better argument! When the defense, which was extremely thorough in everything, disproved your theories again and again, all you came up with was calling the Defense witness an "advocate". Really? That's all you've got? Because name calling didn't impress me. You should have proven your case.

Tip #3) Do your research, and make sure your witnesses do theirs. We literally had one "expert" witness admit that he had only looked over the depositions for "about 5 minutes" before testifying about them. There were several hundreds of pages to said depositions, but the plaintiff's lawyers hadn't given the expert any depositions from the Defense side until 5 minutes before he testified. The Defence expert witnesses, on the other hand, had read all depositions "from cover to cover". One witness from the defence said he had spent 17 hours doing research for this case, and was billing the lawyers accordingly. A witness on the plaintiff's side said he had crunched numbers according to what the lawyer who hired him had told him, rather than getting all the documents himself and seeing which numbers really needed to be considered. He spent some time doing those numbers, but it was nowhere near 17 hours. Be prepared. Because the other side is going to be.

Tip #4), and this is a big one. Do not, under any circumstances, ever, ever refer to your female client as "a cow". Unbelievable. The women on the jury didn't like it, and neither did the woman judge. This was the very last thing the junior lawyer for the plaintiff said in court. The senior lawyer took over again after that. I don't care how funny you might think it is. It is disrespectful, it is completely inappropriate, and it makes you look like a sexist bastard who has never gone to law school. As the judge said loudly at the time, "Sit down, council! That is not funny!" Cow, indeed.

So we came to a verdict. The plaintiff's lawyers did not prove that their client's knee problems were all a result of the accident. So we figured out what we thought was probably a result of the accident and what probably wasn't. We totalled the cost of the medical treatments the plaintiff received for what was caused by the accident, we totalled the wages she lost for a certain "reasonable" amount of time that she couldn't work, due to the accident and not to pre-existing conditions, and we came up with a number to cover pain and suffering due to the accident and not due to what her lawyers wanted. And we awarded her that. Some thought the number was too high, and some thought it was too low. It was not $2 million. It was nowhere near $2 million. But the plaintiff's side did not prove that her medical problems were a result of the accident.

In an ideal world, this woman would win the lottery tonight and get $24 million dollars. Then she can pay her doctor, her good lawyer and her junior lawyer (the "cow" comment), and get a total knee replacement, which every expert agreed she needed. But every expert also stated that you only do total knee replacements for arthritis damage, which is not caused by a car rolling slightly for a second, even if it hits your knee just right. Bone edemas are caused by such accidents; severe arthritis and meniscus tears are caused by other things, such as age, genetics, and working on your feet for 20 hours a day for months and years. I hope this woman does win the lottery. She had no insurance at the time of the accident (which we were not allowed to know or consider at the time of our deliberations, but which we could guess from the fact that she went to LA County hospital; no one goes to County if they have any other options), and she needs a total knee replacement, which is not cheap. But I couldn't make the defendant pay her $2 million, whether or not he even has $2 million (and he can't. He's a retired college professor, like my dad is.), for something he didn't cause. We made him pay a sum in the tens of thousands, which is more than I'm really comfortable with asking someone who takes his foot off the break for a second or two and barely taps someone in the cross walk for, but which we as a group decided was the closest we were all going to get to "fair". Accidents happen. That's life. That's the way it works. We don't all get $2 million dollars when we are involved in any kind of accident. When I'm crossing the street, I don't just think about the laws of traffic: I think about the laws of physics. If someone looks like they aren't seeing me, I don't walk close to their car. Does that make the accident the plaintiff's fault? No. But it's not smart to assume everyone around you is looking out for you, either.

So nobody really won. The Defendant, who had no intention of hurting anyone, and who didn't hear from the plaintiff after talking to her briefly the day after the accident (and whom she told repeatedly that she was OK) until more than 2 years later when he was suddenly being sued, has to pay what to me is a chunk of money. In addition to that, he has to pay his lawyer's fees, which are another chunk of money. I know how much the expert witnesses charged the lawyer! That was all in the testimony! The plaintiff didn't win. She got just about enough money, total, to cover her medical expenses so far, including expenses related to the accident and expenses not proven to be related to the accident. But her lawyers are going to take a cut of that, and she is still going to owe something to her doctor. She isn't going to be set for life, by any means. And she still needs to have a total knee replacement. I just couldn't award her the money for that, since it wasn't the defendant's fault or responsibility to pay for that.

I told Prince Consort at the beginning of this trial, when I couldn't say a thing about it, that I thought one side was trying to take advantage of the other, but that I didn't know which was which. Now I think I know. I think the poor plaintiff, a minority woman for whom English is a second language, was told to seek legal advice since she had been in an accident. And she found the junior lawyer, who would later call her a "cow" on record. It turns out he isn't really a junior lawyer who normally works with the "good" lawyer on the plaintiff side. He was a young-ish lawyer who hadn't done many trials (he told me this after we were through today) who spent most of the last 3 years working on this case, only to have a much more experienced lawyer brought in at the last minute to do most of the arguing in court.

The younger lawyer, to be honest, was a bit "creepy" to me. He would smile and nod whenever he thought his side was winning, even if it was when his client was crying on the stand about being in constant pain. Seeing someone in pain doesn't make me want to smile at the thought of the paycheck it could bring me. I found his behaviour disgusting. But that wasn't why I agreed to the verdict I did. He asked me point blank after the trial was over if his "cow" joke had influenced my verdict. I said no, that we came up with the verdict we did because he and his colleague failed to prove that his client's pain and suffering and medical needs were a result of the accident and not the pre-existing condition seen in the x-rays taken the day after the accident. He didn't get the point.

There was one other juror left from this case in the building with me, as everyone else had taken off already, happy to be free to get back to their own lives. And the creepy younger lawyer was asking both of us for as much feedback as we could give, since he is still new to arguing cases and he has one coming up in 2 weeks that he will be handling alone. I told him the tips I mentioned above, and he somehow took that to mean that he should have done more of the arguing in this case instead of the experienced lawyer. He just didn't get it.

So here's what I think happened: the plaintiff took the advice of her co-workers or perhaps family to seek legal council. She found Mr. Creepy, whose eyes turned to dollar signs when he heard her story. He recommend her to his doctor of choice, who also suddenly had dollar signs for eyes. Dr. Dollarsigns agreed to do the woman's surgery on a lien and did a controversial surgery that the New England Journal of Medicine has specifically published an article about, saying that this particular surgery should not be done on a patient who has arthritis in the knee. The x-rays and MRIs that had already been taken showed extensive arthritis, and yet Dr. Dollarsigns did the surgery, anyway. Suddenly, the woman has more pain and trouble than ever. Creepy lawyer thinks this is great, as it could be more evidence of pain and suffering caused by the defendant, rather than the questionable doctor. By the way, this doctor has been in private practise for 4 years, unlike the two expert orthopedic surgeons who had each been in practise since before I graduated from high school in the late '80s. I think the less experienced lawyer and the less experienced doctor saw a poor, minority woman and thought they could make a lot of money off of her. They tried to take advantage of her. But they could only do this if they convinced her to take advantage of the Defendant. I don't for a minute think the plaintiff wanted to take advantage of the defendant. In fact, both the plaintiff and the defendant referred to each other from the witness stand with utmost respect, for the most part. I think the defendant was genuinely concerned for the plaintiff, even telling her when the accident happened to go get checked out by a doctor, just to be sure. I think the lawyer and the doctor thought they could take advantage of a simple accident and make money off of it. And now there is a poor woman who lives in constant pain who can't afford knee surgery, because her lawyer got greedy and didn't do his homework.

So nobody wins. I made it a point to get the Defense lawyer's business card immediately after the trial, and all the other jurors came up to him after I did so and asked for his card as well. He actually ran out of cards today. We talked with him for a few minutes, and he admitted that a settlement sum had been discussed and rejected by the plaintiff's lawyers. He wouldn't tell us the sum, but he said that in 90% of cases, the plaintiff would do better to settle out of court.

So, my dear readers, please be extra careful as you drive. Accidents do happen, and while some of us are honest and try not to take advantage of each other, there are some people who will. A simple bump of your fender could land you in a trial seeking $2 million or more. Oh, and don't feel too sorry for the woman who does need a total knee replacement. Yesterday, during closing arguments, she made a rare appearance at the courthouse (the defendant, on the other hand, was there for every second of the trial). At one point, her cell phone rang, despite the sign in plain view to turn all cell phones off or to vibrate. She made a mad dash for the hallway to take that call without a hint of a limp. Does this make her injury claim less valid? It didn't enter our deliberations, as none of us thought about that moment until the Defense lawyer pointed it out to us after the trial was over. But it does make me feel better about not awarding her the full amount her lawyers had been seeking.

I think I will sleep well tonight.

Vegan (Couch) Potato

So in what turns out to be the ironic twisting of the universe (this week), I find myself in the posession of a fully renewed gym membership before being in posession of 839 channels of glorious, full color cable. "How did this happen??" you ask. Trust me-- you're not the only one asking.

Back when Prince Consort was laid off from his Full Time Job With Benefits almost four years ago, we were very practical. We decided not to panic immediately, and to take things as they came, which we hoped would include a new job (and ideally, one that was more interesting to Prince Consort than the last one had been). He worked gigs and odd jobs as they came along, all the while sending out resumes and taking online classes (one of the perks of being laid off from the Full Time Job With Benefits was a year of tuition reinbursement). And little by little, as time went by with no long term work and fewer and fewer interviews, we started making cuts in our budget.

The gym was the first thing to go. We didn't even like the gym. It was a necessary evil, a self-inflicted torture that we avoided whenever we could while trying to justyfy keeping up the payments. By the end, we weren't even pretending we would go most nights, and as we used the gym less and less, it became the obvious first item in the budget to get the ax. Mind you, this was after going approximately three times a week, nearly every week, for close to 5 years. Or was it 6 years? Either way, we had started out quite well, fighting the good fight regularly. And it was a hellish fight. Natural couch potatoes, we had to reach down deep to find motivation. But we did for several years. A high school reunion was the best gym-motivation in all that time.

But as our resolve grew weak and our bank accounts weaker, we gave up the gym memberships. It felt pretty good, too. No longer did we guilt ourselves several times a week into doing something we loathed. We had more time for things like television and Facebook! We told ourselves we would go walking in our neighborhood for exercise and keep trying to play tennis at the local park tennis courts (and that's a story for another blog entry...). We would make an effort not to get fat and lazy, but we wouldn't spend money on our fitness endevours.

In the meantime, we kept the cable. Only an insane person gives up cable before it really becomes necessary! And yet... after more time had gone by with little to no work for Prince Consort, and with my own paycheck now covering medical, dental, and vision for both of us, cable became... a non-essential.

You may have heard the agonized cries of anguish the day we said "Good-bye" to our 839 channels of non-stop media blitz. Prince Consort came home one day with a little, black box to convert our non-digital tv into something that would at least receive the basics: ABC, NBC, CBS, and, for cartoon viewing only, Fox. It felt like we'd had a Ferrari taken away and replaced with a pogo stick. But just as we'd gradually learned to live on less and less money, we slowly started to find our way in a cable-free zone. Hulu became a new best friend. The internet was not only good for distracting us from our empty television, but also for providing tv shows we could no longer get from cable, even if it meant waiting a while for the episodes we wanted to become available. Netflix streaming tied Hulu in the competition for our love. And I could always put on one of my many Anglophreak movies again. The Young Victoria got quite a bit of airtime in our apartment.

And then one weekend, we went cat-sitting for a friend who had cable. We rejoiced at the idea of being able to catch up on tv show episodes we couldn't get online or through Hulu or Netflix! We eagerly anticipated seeing cooking shows we'd never seen on the Food Network channel, new Britcoms on BBC America, and fascinating documentaries on Discovery, TLC, and the History Channel! We sat down with Luscious the cat and prepared to be engaged by all cable had to offer!

We flipped through hundreds of channels and found the best options were a Say Yes to the Dress marathon, Teen Mom 2, and a Valerie Bertinelli biography on Lifetime. Really? We asked ourselves. Surely there must be something more! But the Food Network was showing nothing but meat barbeques, the History Channel was showing 24 hours of black and white footage of WWII airplanes, and BBC America was showing Top Gear alternated with Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare for the next 7 hours. We had access to 839 channels, and there was still nothing on. We began to realize that our decision to cut the cable to save money had indeed been the right decision.

Fast forward several more months: Prince Consort has a new Full Time Job With Benefits! It may pay about half of what he made before, but after almost 4 years of unemployment and temporary gigs ranging from sanding foam muscles and wiring electrical costumes to installing ceiling fans and unclogging drains, he was happy to have it. So we're now cautiously adding expenses we cut back into the equasion. We tried a free week of Hulu Plus to see if it might be worth the $7.99 a month fee. We've gone out to dinner here and there, whereas before, we would have given a lot of thought to doing so and probably would have stayed in for leftovers instead. And yesterday, I renewed our gym memberships. For a full year.

Because the truth is that even when we do go walking, it's not necessarily for the full amount of time we'd spend at the gym. And walking, while excellent low-impact exercise, isn't nearly as strenuous a work out as the eliptical is. And we've gotten fat and lazy, despite trying not to. Sugar is always more tempting than a fast walk around the block, and chocolate beats stomach crunches every single time. So we're going back to the gym. And we're not going back to cable.

Who knew?

The Blog and its Double

So I sat down and was about to write a new blog entry when I realized the last one was gone.  Missing.  Disappeared into cyberspace of its own accord.  Did you happen to see the entry I posted 2 days ago about the wonders of vegan junk food?  I swear it was there!  An enforced Artaud style blog.  The Blog of Cruelty, indeed.  At first, I was frustrated.  Where did my blog go??  Did the makers of High Fructose Corn Syrup, which I blamed the Bubonic Plague of the late Middle Ages on, shank my blog entry in the night while I was asleep and unable to come to its defense? 

Antonin Artaud

But then I decided that maybe blogging should be rather like Artaud suggested about theater: that each instance should be experienced fully and then discarded.  Never keep back up copies!  Never perform (or in this case, read) the same work twice!  Move on, and create something new!

So in this case, that's what I will do.

Prince Consort's birthday is next week.  What does one get for the Prince who has everything?  And by everything, I mean 21 different video game systems, with hundreds of games to play on them.  Shelves of books and gaming manuals, toys, and collectibles I don't even begin to understand.  In fact, we've started having yard sales to pare down the stuff we've acquired since moving into our apartment 11 years ago.  At least when people move, it gives them the chance to go through things as they pack and toss a percentage out.  But I hate moving.  So we haven't done so in, as I said, 11 years, and we're not planning to anytime soon.  As if just knowing you have too much stuff isn't enough incentive to get rid of some of it, there are the hoarding shows on tv that show just where this kind of behaviour can lead!  So Prince Consort and I have begun going through things and creating piles of things to donate, things to sell, and things to throw away or recycle.

No, no, no!

So I know that for his birthday, Prince Consort doesn't want anymore "stuff," cool as it may seem for a minute or two.  We've talked in the past about buying each other shares of stock whenever we have a birthday or holiday where a gift would be greatly appreciated, but nothing perfect comes to mind.  I think this is a great idea!  It would truly be "the gift that keeps on giving," assuming it's not stock in something like Enron.  And yet have we ever given each other any stock?  Not even a 16th of a share.

So I debated.  And I thought.  And I tried to come up with something that Prince Consort would like better than another item from his amazon wish list and that wouldn't collect dust on a shelf, only to be sold at a yard sale somewhere down the line.  You'd think that after being with someone for nearly two decades, this would be easier than it is.  You'd think.

And then one morning, it came to me.  I'm not positive it's the perfect gift, but I'm pretty sure it's one he will like, and one he will enjoy more than just something to try to find room for among his shelves.  So I ordered it.  And it arrived today.  And I can't wait to see what he thinks of it next week!  I'd tell you what it is, but you see, I have a sneaking suspicion that my mother and my cat are no longer the only readers of this blog.  So you, and he, will just have to wait the week.  But I think this one is worth waiting for.

And if I'm wrong, well, then maybe Prince Consort can throw his present away and have an Artaud Birthday and enjoy some vegan cake instead.

A cake fit for a Prince Consort!

Vegan Junk Food

If you're new to veganism, or just trying to cut back on animal products, you may think you are going to have to give up junk food.  While it's true that a vegan diet is just about the healthiest diet there is (no cholesterol at all, virtually no saturated fats, super high in fiber and vitamins and minerals, etc.), there are vegan junk foods.  Fritos are vegan.  Oreos are vegan.  And while you may have do to a little searching in stores or online, there are vegan versions of many junk food staples.  (I say this while eating a handful of vegan chocolate chips.)

There are vegan Cheetos.  They are every bit as delicious as the original, and they don't leave nearly as much mess behind on your fingers.  They are called Tings, and they are made by the same Pirate brand that fed your addiction to Pirate's Booty. 

You can get them at places like Whole Foods and sometimes the health food isle of big chain grocery stores.  Or you can get them here: http://piratebrands.com/products/tings/original

There are finally really amazing vegan versions of the candy bars you grew up hoping for when you went trick-or-treating.  You know, the candy you went back to the same house for over and over again and hoped they didn't notice that the Dracula/ghost/fairy princess on their porch was the same one who had been there five minutes before.  Milky Way.  Snickers.  Nestle Crunch.  Almond Joy.  Three Musketeers.  Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. You know, the good stuff.  Only they're better now, because they don't have all the crap in them, like whey.  And crap.  Their vegan names are Twilight, Jokerz, Snap!, Mahalo, Buccaneer, and Cleo's Peanut Butter Cups.  Some of these are at places like Whole Foods.  All of them are at Food Fight! online.  (http://www.foodfightgrocery.com/)

Mmmmmmm...

Soft drinks, another junk food tradition, are vegan, but as junk food is not known for being particularly good for you (hence the term "junk food"), there are slightly better and worse versions.  Most of us know by now that High Fructose Corn Syrup was the primary cause of the Bubonic Plague that wiped out half of Europe in the late Middle Ages.  OK, not really.  But we do know that High Fructose Corn Syrup is evil and that if we consume it, the terrorists win.  In addition to being evil, high fructose corn syrup just doesn't taste great.  There are several brands of soft drinks now that offer HFCS-free versions of refreshment.  Hansen's drinks are made with real sugar instead of the highly processed crap most soft drinks depend on.  They come in hundreds of tempting flavors, such as Key Lime Twist, Cherry Vanilla Creme Soda, Grapefruit, Kiwi-Strawberry, Vanilla Cola, etc. 

Ahhhhhhh!

And in Mexico, Coca-Cola is still made with real sugar, the way the gods of junk food intended.  Having had a genuine Coke bottle of The Real Thing from Mexico in a restaurant recently, I know how much better it tastes.  And I hear you can buy Mexican Coca-Cola at Costco, now!  http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/05/costco-is-selling-mexican-coke.html

That alone might be worth the membership.  If only Pepsi were available in HFCS-free form!

Isa Chandra Moskowitz, the Goddess of Vegan Cooking and Baking that I bow down before, has a recipe for homemade vegan cupcakes that you will recognize at once, if you grew up in the 70s in America as I did (or before that, or after that).  They look like this:

Fauxstess Cupcakes

And the recipe is here: http://www.theppk.com/2005/05/fauxstess-cupcakes/

So if you've been thinking of trying a vegan diet for a while, but knew you could never give up your junk food IV, go ahead and try it.  You don't have to cut out all the junk-- just the animal crap.  Your body will thank you for it.  Your taste buds will thank you for it.  And you'll find out that you can have your cupcake and eat it, too.

technorati tags: vegan junkfood, Tings, vegan candy bars

The Luxury Vegan

I've often said that Prince Consort and I are "Luxury Vegans."  A Luxury Vegan is not a Bark and Twig Vegan.  Luxury Vegans take their food very seriously.  We don't skimp, we don't settle, and we rarely go without dessert.  A Bark and Twig Vegan may be "all natural," but a Luxury Vegan is never going to give up her cruelty-free hair dye (nor her Stella McCartney fragrance or even her Urban Decay lip goop). One of the ways you can tell the difference between a Luxury Vegan and a Bark and Twig Vegan is by the number of words needed to describe their food. Are you having a salad?  Or are you having the roasted fennel and hazelnut salad with shallot dressing from Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero?

If you're new to the idea of veganism, you may think it's all about plain tofu or vinyl cheese.  But if you've ever had one of the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon, you know what Luxury Vegan food is all about.  If it's a gourmet entree, or a dessert so spectacular you talk about it for weeks, or just super yummy comfort food that makes you happy on the worst of days, it's Luxury Vegan. There's no reason in the world why we vegans can't have 5 star restaurant menu items, just because we eschew both the surf and the turf.  How about some butternut squash ravioli with sage sauce, from Skinny Bitch Kim Barnouin's Ultimate Everyday Cookbook?  Or the to-die-for Beet Tartar appetizer at Madeline's Bistro in Tarzana, California?  Do you think you have to settle for fruit every night for dessert?  Not when there's vegan turtle cheesecake, you don't!  And there's not a single Bark or Twig ingredient in there.

Don't get me wrong-- Luxury Vegans are not always as pretentious as you might think!  We're not afraid to don our old jeans and a pair of rubber boots to volunteer at the local animal rescue farm.  We'll just have our Luxury soy caramel latte on our way there.  And why not?  Life is meant to be enjoyed.  Taste things worth tasting!  Yes, sometimes the simple life is all well and good.  Organic produce grown in your own garden, for example, is one of the best parts of a simpler life.  But sometimes, marinating your tofu before you grill it is worth the little bit of extra time and effort it takes. OK, it's always worth it.  Life is challenging enough.  It may as well taste good.

Climbing the Family Tree

One of the more boring things I find absolutely fascinating is genealogy.  My parents have each done quite a bit of research on the subject, and I've taken over the project in the last several years and have added to what they knew.  The Internet, and particularly ancestry.com, has been immensely beneficial in this quest for knowledge of where I came from.  (And my grandmother used to tell me my mother found me under a rock.) 

I love hearing the stories of individual family members, and the range of extremes blows me away.  I grew up hearing the story of one great-grandparent who was so poor that there literally were not enough pants for each child to have his own pair.  It has always been assumed that whoever got up last each morning wore long underwear to school.

At the other extreme, I've found royalty in England, Scotland, and France.  Now you've seen the wildly inaccurate movie, Braveheart, haven't you?  OK, for those of you who are half my age, you've heard of the wildly inaccurate movie, Braveheart, haven't you?  Humor me. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braveheart#Historical_accuracy

One of the slightly more accurate parts of that movie was the relationship between arch enemies Edward the First of England, a.k.a. Longshanks, and Robert the First of Scotland, a.k.a. Robert the Bruce.  The two leaders battled for control of Scotland off and on for years.  When I found that I was descended from Longshanks on one side and Robert the Bruce on the other, well, I decided that accounted for absolutely any possible inner turmoil I might ever have about anything.  (Or at least I can use it as an excuse!)

So here are a couple of branches of my family tree.  Do you see any names from your own family tree here?  Maybe we're long lost cousins!

Edward I. of England                                                            Robert the Bruce (Robert I. of Scotland)

Princess Elizabeth Plantagenet                                                                       Princess Marjorie Bruce

Lady Eleanor de Bohun                                                                                         Robert II of Scotland

Lady Thomasine Dagworth                                                                                       Sir John Stewart

Baroness Joan de Furnival                                                                                       Sir James Stewart

Maude de Neville                                                                                                    Sir Ninian Stewart

Lady Katherine Talbot                                                                                             Sir Ninian Stewart

Louis Eaton                                                                                                              Sir James Stewart

Henry Eaton                                                                                                               Ninian Stewart

William Eaton                                                                                                            Charles Stewart

William Eaton                                                                                                           Margaret Stewart

Nicholas Eaton                                                                                                          James McCurdy

John Eaton                                                                                                                 David McCurdy

Mary Eaton                                                                                                                 John McCurdy

Rebecca Mason                                                                                                         Robert McCurdy     

Hannah Ockington                                                                                                      Robert McCurdy

Mindwell Holden                                                                                                     Sarah McCurdy Hall

Rebekah Farrington                                                                                                 James Somerville Hall

Josiah Everett                                                                                                             Great-Grandfather

Josiah Everett                                                                                                                Grandmother

Franklin Everett                                                                                                                  Mom

Great Grandmother

Grandmother

Dad

                                                                    Vegan Pagan (that's me!)

technorati tags: Longshanks, Edward I, Robert the Bruce

Vegan Escargot (You know, all the yummy goodness without the snails)

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I had this idea to go through a traditional cookbook and veganize all (or most) of the recipes and post them here, with photos.  This has been done before.  Even the movie Julie and Julia, while not remotely vegan, was based on a blog about working one's way through a cookbook and posting the results.  I have a particular British cookbook in mind, and I need to order it online, as it's not in stores.  I was also hoping to be able to make a separate section here just for recipe blog entries, but I haven't been able to figure out how to categorize my blogs yet.  These are the things I am working on!  But whenever I get it all together, those recipes are going to be damn tasty!  (We've been trying some of them out and taste testing them already, using the few recipes posted online from the book I plan to get.)

In the meantime, here is a recipe I originally made a few years ago, when there was a fabulous project online called Hezbollah Tofu.  I know the woman who started that ended up not having the time to keep up with all the recipes we readers submitted, and she had someone else take over the project.  Now, when I look for it online, I find a site, but no project anymore.  The concept of Hezbollah Tofu came about when a rather famous chef described vegans in an interview as being so militant and extreme that we were comparable to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization in Lebanon.  Comparing pacifists who refuse to participate in animal cruelty to violent, militant terrorists may have seemed like a great way to get some publicity, and hey-- I guess if you can't cook, Anthony Bourdain, you do what you have to do.

At any rate, the Hezbollah Tofu project was started by a wonderful woman who decided to collect vegan versions of Bourdain's animal based recipes and publish them in a book, donating any profits to animal rescue groups.  A noble plan indeed.  I submitted a few recipes, one of which I saw on the site before the project was turned over to others, and I don't know what happened after that.  I am hopeful that somewhere out there, there is indeed a book of vegan recipes that includes my version of Champagne Scallops.  But whatever happened to that project, here is my recipe for vegan escargot, or, since the snails are long gone, Escargone.  Enjoy!

2-3 packs whole, crimini mushrooms (about 30 to 40), cleaned and de-stemmed

2 shallots, finely chopped

½ c. white wine

1 entire head of garlic, cloves peeled and pressed or very finely chopped

Approx. 1½ c. loosely packed flat leaf parsley

¼ c. Earth Balance butter (or any other vegan margarine), preferably room temperature

Sliced crostini or baguette or mini toasts

            In a large skillet or dutch oven, bring the mushrooms, shallot, garlic, and wine to a simmer.  Cook until the mushrooms have given off all of their liquid and the wine has reduced a bit, about 10-15 minutes.

            Chop the parsley in a food processor.  Add the vegan butter and process until well combined.  Add the parsley paste to the mushrooms and continue to cook over medium-high heat until most of the liquid has been reduced.

            If desired, lightly toast the crostini slices in a skillet over low heat.  Serve the mushroom mixture over the bread while everything is sizzling hot.

           

**Note: Obviously, this doesn’t taste exactly like traditional escargots, but the mushrooms have a similar shape, size, and color to the non-vegan version.  And if you like garlic and mushrooms, you’ll like this.  In fact, this recipe could just make a grown man cry.

"The more you do, the more you can do."

So last night, Prince Consort and I watched The 1940s House, which had just arrived from Netflix.  It's one of those shows created by PBS where they stick a modern day family (or two or three) into a setting from the past and make it as realistic as possible.  Sort of a social experiment, or living history.  PBS hates that the series has been referred to as "the thinking person's reality tv," but it kind of is.

This particular PBS "House" documentary takes place in Britain, and as we all know, I am an Anglophreak, so I was obviously fascinated.  And as a bit of a history buff (a bit: my dad is a retired history professor, and more than a bit rubbed off on me), I found it very interesting to learn about the things I didn't know.  Such as that in England, rations were much worse than they were here in America.  And that people had to black out their windows every night for fear the enemy would see lighted neighborhoods and bomb the city.  And that if the windows were not blacked out severely enough or at all times (even opening the back door with the lights on during a bomb raid to get everyone out to the shelter was an offence), very hefty fines would ensue.

But what really struck me was how resourceful this family became and how much we take for granted today.  Money was tight and rations were strict, and you never knew what you would be allowed or able to afford to buy at the grocery store.  Soap ran out.  Shampoo was gone almost immediately.  Sugar? Virtually non-existent, and it might take the entire family's rations for the week to buy too tiny an amount of sugar to use in a recipe.  Victory gardens were required if the family wanted to eat.  The family experimented with homemade household supplies and even hair dye with the few ingredients they could come by.  And all this took place in the greater London area during bomb raids most of us can't begin to imagine.  At one point, the sirens went off, signalling more bombing, 17 times in a day.  And during the London Blitz, there were bomb raids for 57 consecutive nights.  I don't think I would have bothered to come out of the shelter! 

Yet the British people went on with their daily lives.  They didn't have time to wait for the next round of bombing or to freak out or to feel sorry for themselves.  In addition to all of the housework that had to be done (and cooking on minimal rations would have been challenge enough!), the women were expected to both work outside the house for the war effort (much like our American Rosie the Riveter) and volunteer with groups like the Women's Voluntary Service.  As the woman in the tv series says at one point, she is lucky if she gets five hours of sleep a night.

As I was watching this program, I was wondering how on earth the women had the energy to do everything.  Work, which was building planes, not answering phones at a desk; volunteer work, which in this case was feeding the residents of a retirement home and essentially running a kitchen and dining hall; cleaning the house with no cleaners or appliances; raising your children in an environment where there were no televisions, computers, video games, or even lights outside as they rode their bikes in the evening; and trying to make yourself look presentable to the standards of the 1940s with no razors, soap, or hair dye, much less make up, would have been exhausting, to say the least.  Add into this equation the fact that not only was there little food for everyone, but the women were expected to give up most of their shares to the children and men.  I don't know how they did it.

Keep young and beautiful, girls!

But one of the most interesting statements a women in the program made was, "The more you do, the more you can do."  Now that got me to thinking.  And feeling a bit guilty.  Here I have access to a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, a car, and so on, and I feel like I have barely anything to show for myself at the end of the day.  So I let the 1940s House women inspire me a bit today.  I recently planted tomatoes from seed as well as basil, but now I'm thinking we should grow so much more of our food.  Last year was the first time we had a garden in LA, minimal though it was, and those tomatoes were so much better tasting than even the expensive organic tomatoes on the vine from Whole Foods!  We should be re-using things as much as possible and not just recycling after one use.  (The dreaded plastic bags of this world come to mind. I've been working harder to remember to take my cloth bags to the store each time.)  And if people in my parents' own generation could make it through rationing and so on, I can certainly get off the couch and walk downstairs and do my laundry... in a machine.  I don't have to wash it by hand and run it through a ringer and then hang it up to dry!  I can let machines do all of that for me!

So I did.  Today, I did 3 loads of laundry.  I got the dishes done (in the dishwasher, which doesn't have much water pressure, so you still kind of have to wash them by hand first, but not as thoroughly as you'd have to without a dishwasher).  I ran to the grocery store with my cloth bags.  I even broke out the weedwacker and cut the weeds by the sidewalk along the length of my apartment building.  I haven't used the garden weasel to really dig the weeds out yet, but I spent a good part of the afternoon just getting the weeds down to manageable size.  And I think the woman in the show was right: the more you do, the more you can do.  And while I'll never know how people with kids manage to do everything in a day, I didn't fall asleep on the couch; nor did I spend the entire day in front of the computer.  I got things done. And I could probably do some more.

But it is Cinco de Mayo.  And there is a vegan Cinco de Mayo party tonight.  It's even here in the Valley, which means I'm 800 times more likely to actually go.  So I will take the inspiration from the 1940s House and keep the education it gave me and go celebrate another victorious battle.  Salud!

Osiris, King of the Gods, Lord of the Underworld, gets a Time Out

It begins early in the morning.  For the first time in years, Prince Consort is working and I am not, so once Prince Consort is out the door at 7 am, I sit down with my bowl of corn pops and my lap top and begin to waste copious amounts of time on the Internet.  Osiris, our black and white tuxedo cat who is approximately 78 in human years, begins slowly.  He starts with a glare, directed at either Lewis or Clark, but usually, it's Clark.  If I'm really not paying attention to the Cat Antics going on around me and am absorbed by the latest news about the British Royal Family on Yahoo's Headlines, I may not even notice the glares.  Then he begins stalking, slinking across the room towards the unsuspecting Clark, who may be having a morning bath on the sofa armrest, completely unaware of the impending doom.


"Osiris..." I'll call in a warning tone.  Osiris, named after the Egyptian King of the Gods (and oh, doesn't he know it!), might actually stop at my word, but he never breaks eye contact with his target brother.  "None of that, now," I say, still reading about what the new Princess Kate, Duchess of Cambridge wore the day before.  Hardly deterred and only pretending to listen to me when he thinks I am watching him, Osiris resumes his mission, creeping silently as though he were about to take down a wildebeest somewhere on an African plain.  As though we didn't feed him enough prescription food formulated for senior cats! 


"Hey!" I say now, looking up from the picture of Kate's latest Issa designed gown.  "What are you doing?  Do not chase your brother!  You know where you're headed, if you keep this up."  Osiris has stopped in his tracks, but he still doesn't look at me.  Eye on the prize, Baby.  Eye on the prize.  Or in this case, on the now very alert Clark who has stopped bathing and realized the danger he is in.  He jumps down from the sofa armrest to be on equal footing with his attacker.  It must be hard to be an explorer, named for one of the two men Thomas Jefferson sent out on an expedition to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, knowing you are unequipped to deal with The Dark Lord and his ways.  Yet Clark readies himself for attack, his ears at attention, his own glowing, green eyes meeting the amber gaze of Osiris.


"Come on, Guys!" I plead, moving my lap top and getting up, resigned that I must either be ready to grab Osiris as he charges or be a human shield for Clark.  Osiris strikes, but I scoop him up before he can reach Clark and carry him into the bathroom.  "I told you what would happen if you did that," I scold The God of the Underworld.  He growls slightly in my arms, disappointed at being intercepted in his hunt.  "Don't you take that tone with me!" I say as I set him down on the bathroom sink counter.  "Would you like a mousie to play with while you're in here?" I ask.  He looks offended at the suggestion.  Dark Lords rarely admit to wanting to play with mousies.  It really diminishes their street cred.  "OK, fine.  Well, you sit here and think about what you've done.  See you in ten," I tell him, closing the bathroom door and setting a kitchen timer that is kept nearby for just such occasions.


The king is not amused.

Coming Out of the Closet

So it was time.  The closet was as close as a closet can get to throwing clothes back out at one who is trying to hang all of one's clean laundry up, and it wasn't pretty.  It was time. 

I texted my husband and warned him that I was going to weed out whatever we didn't wear anymore or shouldn't wear in the first place and organize what was left.  I told him he would still have veto power over his own stuff, but that I was starting, because there wasn't room for his clean clothes in the closet.  He texted back, relieved that I was starting the process.  Sometimes, it takes a few days of unemployment to get a true procrastinator started on something like that, and I was on Day 2.  Of this week.

My copy of The Little Black Book of Style says to edit one's closet mercilessly.  It's a good book.

So I began editing.  Anything that was the wrong color, too worn, or had lost its shape went.  Certain items of sentimental value went, and others stayed, but when I was done, there was enough room that nothing was getting smashed and wrinkled from simply hanging in the closet.  And 99% of what was left was stuff we actually wore.  I mean, come on.  We're vegan, and we live in Southern California.  The long, wool, winter coats left from our pre-vegan days in Colorado had to go.  I threw out my retainers from high school last week.  The clothes could go to charity this week.

Clearing out the old stuff made a little room for the new stuff.  And I recently bought a pair of shorts for the first time in 17 years.  My legs have not seen the light of day in nearly 2 decades.  It was time.  And they not only fit well, they were actually a good color on me.  And how often do you find teal shorts??