I think you are doing great, good on you for thinking about what you eat and doing your best to do it thoughtfully. I think you should feel comfortable calling yourself vegetarian because you are doing your best to eat as little meat as possible. People who ask questions are probably mostly curious how it works and sharing your experience might help them make similar choices. In my experience the only people policing these labels are too online or openly antagonistic to the entire premise I don’t pay either much mind.

Personally I don’t like eggs much, but I think getting then from a local farm you have a relationship with is the best possible scenario. I do try to avoid dairy as much as possible. You have to remember, in order to get animal milk you need to take it from the baby animals. At scale this involves a pretty horrible love for everyone involved. At small scale maybe it’s ok. If the mom is overproducing for example, and both the mom and child have a good life. But that doesn’t exist in the grocery store or even at most farms. So I just avoid it. It’s hard at first until you find good replacements but many cultures in the world got by fine without it for centuries so there’s plenty of great recipes to learn. I’m not interested in trying to get everyone off it, but most people I talk to have never given it a thought. They think cows just make milk no matter what and need you to milk them so we might as well. I think if you know the true cost of something you might at least have more respect for it.

But as far as things like bone broth, gelatin etc. I basically agree, these are waste products. I might not like the industry it’s coming from, but for God’s sake if you are going to kill an animal at least use every last bit of it.

This is the best way to go in my opinion. I started going just plant based with maybe some dairy or eggs occasionally in the home, and still eating meat at restaurants. As I got more comfortable with the recipes I just kept making more changes that felt right. Now I have been fully vegan for over 5 years.

I always tell people don’t try for it all at once. Start small. I honestly think the definition of veganism should be that if you are doing as much as is feasible for you wherever you are at in your life to reduce your impact on animals, then you can call yourself vegan. Fuck the purity bullshit, fuck the gatekeeping. I want to move society towards the goal post of harm reduction for beings that can’t advocate for themselves. I don’t give a shit how vegan you are, just start.

What is your relationship to your mom? The way you describe it, it sounds like she is putting you down which is sad and not ok. Shouldn’t she help you learn if she feels you don’t know? What is the point of giving you one day to prove yourself? But maybe there is context I am missing.

As others have said, you develop your ability to cook through repeated use, trial and error, and ideally knowledge passed down from your family. If you want to become someone who can cook, it won’t happen after one try or ten. Just keep trying out recipes that sound good to you, and treat each one as a learning experience. Overtime you will build up recipes that you have memorized and can riff on confidently.

You must like to cook, since you want to prove you can. Whatever you make, take your time, trust your gut, and do it to feed yourself something you like. Cooking is a personal thing, just because not everyone likes what you make doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

Looks like all that studying paid off

Just watched the series (again… I think like the fourth time) and the movie. The movie has some of the best songs. Future is less rewatchable, it’s not bad but I can watch the series over and over except for a couple episodes from the first season

Getting salmonella while breastfeeding sounds awful, that is just not fair

Ok let’s hear the story. I had a similar teacher experience, even had the dual teacher thing, but it was not as bad. Although she ended up having a major seizure in the middle of class which was pretty upsetting for us, but obviously that had nothing to do with how she was treating me.

Well said, thanks for that little bit of measured realistic optimism I needed it today.

I want to hear that lecture!

Can you elaborate? Fully ready to be on your side but I don’t have the time to dig in to know what you are taking about.

I like e-reader for a camping setup since it is lightweight. You can also do a little cyber deck build and load up all of wikipedia.

In a situation where you don’t have constant access to abundant electricity, you would naturally reduce your use of electronics quite a bit. An e-reader battery lasts a long time, so load it up with a bunch of good and useful books and that panel will be able to power it indefinitely. Winter is tricky, still it would probably be enough to keep it going with sparse use. Or you could rig up a bike-alternator-car battery set up. But you need to think about how much power you can reasonably generate and base your planned consumption off of that. This makes me sound like a big prepper, I’m not, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Wonder why…

I was just thinking about that series. I read the first three I think when it first came out. I saw someone talk about how they reread it and decided it wasn’t as good at they thought it was when they first read it. But I’ve always thought I might still give it another go, mostly for nostalgias sake. Is this your first read through. Is it a concluded series?

Same, I didn’t know why but it’s actually working as a journal better than any other app I’ve tried for me. Maybe just feeling like it’s not going to try to sell me something or steal my data.

Never heard of her what a bad ass

Sorry that happened that must have been a real bummer.

I’m going to have to agree, end the article saying that it will drag on and hurt his midterms. What a joke, no shit but so will innumerable other equally damning things. He’s clearly banking on the midterms not happening.

Looks great and nice picture too! Crust looks perfect!

Won’t be destroyed, definitely very out of tune though. Wouldn’t be great to play on but cold is not as bad as heat can be. Luckily he didn’t take it in with him.

Shh don’t tell them… Ignorance is bliss