Eating Out as a Vegan

I really like Kitchen Istanbul even though their vegetarian entre had a cream sauce instead of the one I make at home with pine nuts and tofu.  (It's better than it sounds, and there are other ingredients.)

I just sent off an e-mail to some people who are connected to the Truth or Dourght website and brochure I like so much.

Someone named Ronnie Steinau asked whether I would be in LA for their conference, and I told him what I'd be doing instead, including going to a dinner to discuss our upcoming abbreviated Camino.de Santiago de Compostela.

"They're going to make one "normal" paella for the five of them and another vegan one for me," I said,

I can't help wishing that my friends were less inclined to make vegan dishes to accommodate my life style  and more inclined to make vegan dishes for other reasons.

Considering that even at the Paris COP 21--whose very theme was the environment--there weren't even enough options for vegetarians!  I wonder what the Camino will be like in Northern Spain between Leon and Santiago for vegans!  

I found this link, which was helpful!

http://www.caminoadventures.com/camino-de-santiago-as-a-vegan/

I also asked Ronnie Steinau and the others whether there's a place (online) where we could discuss "vegan issues" like the possibility of writing to restaurants to suggest vegan options.  If I choose a restaurant, I choose one that's vegan, but when I go out with friends, they usually choose one where they can get meat, and the vegan options are limited.  I want to write to Toreador, for example, to suggest vegan tamales--maybe butternut squash--and Kitchen Istanbul to suggest a pine-nut/tofu option for the vegetarian moussaka with the bechamel sauce. 

But I know restaurants may be more likely to be annoyed than receptive!

McDonald's All-You-Can-Eat French Fries--and Not so Free Cage-Free Hens

I just wrote a letter to Tara Duggan, whose  article on just what "cage-free" means appeared in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

Dear Tara Duggan,

Welcome back!

Just yesterday I was talking to friends about the misleading phrase "cage-free," so this very morning, thanks to you, I was able to send them the link to your article.

Thank you!

I also have a couple of questions:

Do you know the outcome of the discussion at the Commonwealth Club when they showed Cowspiracy?

What do you think of the decision of McDonald's to offer all-you-can-eat french fries?  Have you noticed any reports on responses to this announcement?  Everyone seems to be writing about it with headlines like "...might be key to a less boring McDonald's."

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/04/17/all-you-can-eat-french-fries-might-be-key-to-a-less-boring-mcdon/21345484/

Fox News 6 reports this as "french fires," and that might be true too.

We looked this news up on the Spanish news, but all we could find was "comida saludable en McDonald's," healthy food at McDonald's!

Looking forward to reading you!

Tina Martin

Paul Simon's Words on Seventy!

One of the best essays in the compilation 70 Things to Do When You Turn 70 is one by Marshall P. Duke, "Sometimes 70 Is Just 70," in which he brought up the "Sixty-four" song of the Beatles, which I'd forgotten about,  and Paul Simon's lyrics for "Old Friends,"  which I didn't remember at all.

Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy

Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear

Old Friends« see all songs

Lyrics:

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
On the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old friends
Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends

Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy

Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear

70 as Old Age in Vendela Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

Following up on yesterday's blog, I want to write a snail-mail letter to Djamila, the now-a-grandmother student I taught in Algeria when she was fifteen and whose brother--I found out yesterday-- died just three months after her mother.  Also, my wonderful octogenarian friend and YMCA co-worker-outer Fran is expecting me at 9:00 so we can take a walk to substitute for the exercise the Stonestown Y isn't offering this week, their second week of innovation.

But I have to share the passage from Vendela Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty that I first heard on Audible books, which prompted me to buy it in print.  It's on page 132:

...you will know.  you will have existed.  You will have proof that you were here.

You are picturing yourself at seventy, looking back on your youth. You will remember that you were young once, that you were thirty-three...

More (life and aging) later.

By the End of the Day

Tonight I'm going to a practice for a story telling jam, and that's how I hope to end the day.  I almost always take public transportation downtown, but I may try driving this time since the location is a bit south of Market.  By by then I hope to have

made Nigerian stew--mostly because (besides loving it) I have some cabbage that's a bit too old for a raw salad.

used up the not-quite-fresh softsilk tofu and mushrooms on a farfelle and mushroom salad with peas.

tried another recipe for vegan Spanish potato omelet

written and mailed a card and letter to Eileen Gertz.

written and mailed a card tp Katherine and Barry.

Worked a bit more on my narrated slide show "How South Pacific Changed My Life."

Added this to the park bench Jim and I sat on while we read A Separate Peace in January 1970  in Honolulu:  "And we would kiss between chapters.  Or pages. Or paragraphs.  Or sentences.  Or words."

Found the folder of photos from Tonga so I can use the one of Ron and me on his motorcycle for "How S.P. Changed My Life."

Subscribed to FlexPass at the SF Playhouse.

Read Djamila's message and responded.

Finished the collage on Oscar Night!

Finished the collage on Visit with Dana, late January  2016

Written to Dana.

Written to Suzy.

Gotten something together for Erik's 70th birthday?

Ordered The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida whose book contains a passage I heard just this morning after practicing telling about "An Important Date in Peace Corps History" from the perspective of a 70-year-old.  The thirty-year-old "You" in the book talks about being seventy someday and looking back at your youth!

Do What You Want to Have Done

Maybe it's true as Madonna once sang that girls just want to have fun.
But I say, "Don't do what you want to do.  Do what you want to have done."

I wrote those lines in my head on my way back from the Richmond Y, where I went this morning because the Stonestown Y has closed for renovation for two weeks.

Exercise is a really good example of what I'm talking about.  I don't want to do it, but I want to have done it.  I'm glad I've done it once I've finished.

There are so many things I enjoy doing at the moment, but exercise isn't one, and anything having to do with finances isn't either.

So here's a list of things I want to have done by the end of the day--some of which I actually want to do and some that I just want to have done:

Writing this blog (Want to!  I want to  put writing above everything else except picking up for people I love.  An example of this is my call from Eileen Gertz yesterday.  More on that another time.)

Straightening up according to my very low standard, which means making the bed and doing the dishes and moving piles of clutter to the next best spot.

Transferring the notes I took with Javier yesterday and creating a Spanish translation for some of the dialogue on the first two pages of  You Don't Say, the SuperBowl version of what now takes place on Oscar Night, And the Winner Is...

Getting Melissa Riley, the librarian at the West Portal Libray, on Next Door.com

Getting off the part of NextDoor.com that sends out warnings about suspicious people.

Adding the photo of the Dec. 1 car driving itself south in a north-bound lane on 19th Avenue and changing the subject.

Reading more about Mercury, the play given a Rough Reading at Custom-Made Theatre today at 2:00 PM.

Test out a vegan version of the Spanish potato omelet I've always loved.

Get  Han Kang's The Vegetarian plus the CCSF Enrollment Material I accidentally left at the West Portal Library

Going to the reading of Mercury at the Custom-Made Theatre at 2:00 PM.

Breakfast Buffet of Books Was a Lot to Digest This Morning!

I began my breakfast buffet of books a bit later than usual today--at 5:10 am--starting with the often trite 70 Things to Do When You Turn 70.  This time the essay was "The Thank You Prayer" by Lewis Richmond, who may have dumbed it down for us 70-year-olds.  I understand that his How-To book was a best seller.  Anyway, I'm already grateful, and I agree with Anne Lamott that there are basically two prayers:  Please, please, please!  and Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then I went to Let's Talk about Love and an essay by James Franco--as fascinating as the other was trite.  I really had no idea who he was, but now I must know more about him than most people do!  Besides his several university degrees and his PhD, he managed to get on General Hospital as an insane artist, and lots of projects came from that stunt!  I'm curious about how he messed up the Oscars when he was co-host in 2008.

But before going to YouTube to check it all out, I read more of Camus' Algerian Chronicles, which are describing the starvation and near-slavery (when they could find work at all) of the Kabylie in 1939.  I had no idea!

Then I read in French for just a few minutes--Tonvoisin, which is harder than most French books for me to understand.    I do get the idea that "les cons de table sont des etres qui viennent d'ailleurs."  Of course it could never be me!