Food has always been fuel. Us thirsty vegans just made it into a delicacy or something to rejoice. Yes, food is delicious but it also should serve a purpose.
Conscious eating is conscious living. And awareness brings happiness and the ability to fight whatever comes our way.
On the list of nearly every nutritionist’s list of immunity-boosting ingredients is the mighty green floret queen, broccoli.
So, here’s a simpler than soup recipe where all you non-cooks can also delightfully prepare it within minutes. I call this a throw-together recipe. These are the ones where I’m most in my element because they require little-to-no skill and mostly just assembly & paying attention to the measurements.
I choose this right now as we enter a worldwide quarantine. Really, this is the stuff of scifi movies, but at least you have this vegan recipe to warm your hearts and days. Also, listen to this.
Ingredients
1 pound broccoli, cut into florets
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp lemon juice
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp chili flakes
2 tsp maple syrup (optional)
Preparation
Toss all ingredients together in a bowl.
Whisk until you can’t (pronounced cane+t) mix no mo’!
Fire up the preheat to 200 degrees
Put all the seasoned broccoli florets onto a baking sheet for 15 minutes or until they look ready
Still bothered by the US cultural idea that men can only be non-romantically intimate with one another in war-like or competitive circumstances.
I’m pretty quiet about the fact I’m a transman usually, but holy shit I need to tell you about the culture shock I’m going through because it’s blindsidingme.
There’s a huge sense of social isolation that comes with being perceived as male, because now people are subconsciously treating me as a potential predator. Allstrangers, no matter their gender, keep their guard up around me.
It made me realize that there is no inherent camaraderie in male socialization as there is in female socialization—unless, of course, it’s in very specific environments. And the fact I don’t amnbiently experience this mutual kinship in basic exchanges anymore is an insanely lonely feeling.
You know how badly this would have fucked my mind up if I had grown up with this?
It is 4:30am and I’m mourning the loss of a privilege I didn’t even know I had.
Anyway, I’m going to figure out how to navigate this. Don’t know how yet, but I’m gonna.
Absolutely, because it’s an extremely sticky issue.
Frankly, this is something I would’ve never understood without living the experience.
It’s now blatantly clear to me that most cis men probably experience chronic emotional malnutrition.They’re deprived of social connection just enough for it to seriously fuck with their psyches, but not enough for them to realize that it’s happening and what’s causing it.
It’s like they’re starving, but don’t know this because they’ve always been served 3 meals…except those meals have never been big enough.
This deprivation comes from all sides of aisle, by the way.
In the case of women: When I’m out in public and interact with women, all of them come off as incredibly aloof, cold, and mirthless. I have never experienced this before even though I know exactly what this composure is—the armor that keeps away creepy-ass men.
As someone who used to wear it myself, I know this armor is 100% impersonal. Nobody likes wearing it, and I can say with absolute certainty that women would dump the armor in favor of unconditional companionship with men if doing this didn’t run the risk of actual assault. (Trust me when I say women aren’t just being needlessly guarded.)
But I only have a complete understanding of this context because I’ve experienced female socialization. If I hadn’t, I would’ve thought this coldness was a conspiracy against me devised by roughly half of the human population. Even now, with all that I know about navigating the world as a woman, I’m failing to convince my monkey-brain that this armor isn’t social rejection.
And as for male socialization? Again, it seems taboo for a man to be platonically intimate with men for reasons I have yet to fully understand, but I think it boils down to a) the fact society teaches boys that it’s not okay to be soft with each other, and b) garden-variety homophobia. Our media only shows men being intimate with one another when they’re teamed up against a dire situation, and I’d bet real money it’s a huge reason why men gravitate toward activities that simulate being teamed up against an opposing force.
But men are not machines of war. Yes, testosterone absolutely gives you Dumb Bastard Brain, but that just makes you want to skateboard a wagon down a hill or duct-tape your friend to the wall, not kill someone.
The human species looks so much colder standing from this side.
I can see how men might convince themselves that their feelings of emotional desperation is personal weakness as opposed to a symptom they’re all experiencing from White Imperialism. Because this human connection, this frith, is as essential for our wellbeing as water is.
So sick. How sick. I want to destroy this garbage.
Guys who get mad at discussion of “toxic masculinity” don’t understand that this is what it means. Grown men are conditioned to feel weird if they’re too personable or too easygoing or otherwise too human. Humans evolved to want to be kind and happy and open but a mix of paranoid religious and military culture is devoted to mercilessly crushing healthy emotion in half the population.
4 years ago, I was sleeping about 4 hours every night. Many of my closest friends at the time had, or were in the process of, leaving me and I would cry from the loneliness. I was fighting with my parents and wanted to leave home. They thought I was exaggerating and attention-seeking. Every appointment ended with “we can’t help you” or “there’s nothing wrong with you” or medications that made me worse, to put it lightly. More than once I wanted to end it
This morning, I woke up after sleeping for 9 hours in a room built by my dad specially for me, so I would have a space for me if I stay at home longer because of my health. I texted my best friend who yesterday asked me to be her bridesmaid. Before asking me, she spent weeks making sure it would all be accessible and fun for me, not stressful. My mum brought my medication in for me, ones that actually make me feel better, and asked how I was feeling. Later I’ll text one of the members of my lovely and amazingly supportive medical team to see when we can video call. We always have tea when we call, and cookies or a cupcake- food doesn’t scare me so much anymore. Every appointment ends with “you’re doing so well”. I haven’t hurt myself in years, I actually stopped counting, and when it all gets too much I know I have people I can talk to and strategies prepared to get through it and it will pass. Life is still hard. But it keeps moving, and I’m so grateful.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it will be ok. It might not be now, and I don’t know when it will be, but it will be. It doesn’t all happen at once. Things are still hard. But one day you’ll wake up and be so glad you didn’t leave, because you would have missed these moments of happiness and love, and some of them-probably more than you realise- wouldn’t have been possible without you.
