Twitter? Tweets? Does this mean I'm twit-curious? Or would that be tweet-curious?

So, my communications manager (aka El Hombre) suggested that I consider using Twitter. Actually, I set up an account a few years back just for kicks, though I never did anything with it. It's really a foreign world to me, but I'm willing to give it a try and see how it goes. I can be found here: @jasweeten (did I do that right?).

Anyone else use Twitter? Any tips or advice? Obviously, I don't know what I'm doing!

A Little Bit More About Me, and How I Roll

My introductory post is here, but I just wanted to mention a few more things.

Although I am a born-and-bred Oregonian, I now live in Austin, Texas with my husband and our two daughters. I never thought I'd ever live in Texas (you know, because of stereotypes and preconceived notions and the like), but we LOVE it here in Austin.

In this space, I will refer to family members with nicknames, and I probably won't post pictures of faces. My husband's native language is Spanish, so here, he will be know as El Hombre. He's awesome. We have two daughters: SweetPea, a nine-year-old, and SweetPotato, a seven-year-old. They're awesome, too.

As a matter of fact, our girls are the very reason our family has become vegan. Just a little more than a year ago, they both decided to stop eating meat for ethical reasons (first, SweetPea, and then SweetPotato shortly thereafter). We had also just previously learned the reason for SweetPotato's chronic belly-aches: dairy. We weren't huge carnivores anyway, but the thought of no meat and no dairy for growing kids put me in a sort of panic. After all, WHERE would they get their PROTEIN? Their CALCIUM? You know, the usual concerns of the uneducated.

So I began to research. This is something I'm good at. And the more research I did, the more I realized that transitioning to a plant-based diet was good for ALL of us. And it was good for the planet. And its good for the animals. Duh. I mean, I already knew this all this. But the more I learned, the more I realized that I couldn't come up with one good reason NOT to go vegan. I cooked vegan at home, and then one day El Hombre surprised me by announcing at dinner that he was ready to go full-board, too. Soon, we begun to apply this philosophy to other areas of our life as well, beyond the food we eat: the clothes and personal-care products we buy, etc.

So that's us, in a nutshell.

But before I go, a word about how I cook: unless I've said otherwise, I will modify these recipes so that there are no added oils. I'm not trying to go "fat-free," but I do want my dietary fat in it's whole-food form, not processed and extracted. Like from, say, nuts, seeds, olives, avocados. (Here is a good list with plenty of reasons to avoid oil, and here is an excellent commentary on the topic.) For example, instead of pouring cooking oil into the pan to saute onions or whatever, I'll will saute without the oil, using a technique similar to this.

And that's all I can think of for now...

Welcome to The Reduction Project!

Hello, and welcome to my new project! I need to lose a little - okay, more than a little - weight. I am a vegan and try to be as plant-strong as possible when it comes to food, but it seems that the baby fat (my babies are, ahem, seven- and nine-years old) along with the holiday-and-special-occasion binging has caught up with me. And the lack of exercise. Well, it's time to get serious and do something about it!

I love to cook. I love to eat (obviously, but who doesn't?!). I also love to collect cookbooks and try out new recipes. (Sorry, inter-webs, but you will never be able to replace my beloved collection of treasured cookbooks!) My newest addition to my collection is Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Appetite for Reduction. I thought it would be fun to cook my way through the book while journaling about my weight-loss trials and tribulations. Hence, the inspiration for the title of this new project and blog!

I'm also a fan of all those really smart, plant-strong doctor-types, like Esselstyn, Campbell, McDougall, Barnard... I think they have a really important message that everyone should at least consider. There seems to be a nutritional crisis in this country, and it's not getting any better. Currently, I'm re-reading Dr. Joels Fuhrman's book, Eat to Live, which advocates a "nutritarian" diet-lifestyle, i.e., focusing your eating efforts on food with a high nutrient density. It's not as complicated as it sounds, really. But the recipes in his Eat to Live book are, well... okay. Just okay. Some are pretty good. But some are boring. And some are kinda weird.

Enter Isa's new cookbook. All of her recipes in this book are low fat, and it looks like most, if not all, can be made without any added oils, if some slight modifications are made. (I'm not necessarily "fat-phobic" - I just prefer my fats to come in their whole, unprocessed form instead of from refined oils, especially if I'm trying to lose weight.) And most, if not all, of Isa's recipes look EXCITING and DELICIOUS! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

I've already lost about ten pounds using the plant-strong, no-added-oils approach over the last couple of months, but I have more to lose until I get to my goal. I'd like to achieve this goal before my next birthday, which is about nine months away. Given that the amount I want to lose is about the same as the amount I gained over the course of my pregnancies, I think nine months is a reasonable time frame to take it off, too.

So, let's see where this goes!