I think I am deciding to be a good, old-fashioned sort of vegan again. I have been for a while. I was meaning to blog about it before. I ended up deciding symbolic lines were actually helpful. The artificial constraints are a good discipline. Deciding what you think is ethical on the fly is hard work, tiring and confusing for other people. Labels are frustrating, but not easy to do without. Becoming a vegan the second time was definitely a slower process than the first time. I hope there isn't a third time.

Trains really are the most fun. It's just like being in an old mystery movie. All these different people have been thrust together and are stuck on this train. I think there's some mischief going on with the crew. I just walked past two crew in the kitchen and one of them said "Sssshhh. None of them can know." There was also a strange passenger man standing next to them, who I now assume is compromised. I'd like to assume the best of him but I know that these train trips really bring out the spy in people.

I also found a very noice pumpkin soup for dinner. They have a lot of delicious, budget (in price and quality) train food which reminds me very fondly of plane food. Although perhaps that is not so surprising.

It is wonderful though. So much better than driving. And apart from the industrial espionage everyone is so laid back. Totally winner.

Always pushing the boundaries, ALDI now has fair trade tea and coffee. Most of the big supermarkets I go to don't even have fair trade tea (coffee seems to be the popular one). So good on you ALDI. You make me so happy.

They also have full-on drill presses for $49.95. Brilliant.

Update: The tea is actually good too.

Emmeline and I spent our Valentine's Days eating suburban pizza at No. 1 Alberto's Pizza and watching Vanishing Point. It's my third seeing of it, and it doesn't get any worse. What a lovely film. And there are a few great scenes that I really love. Even Emmeline thought it was reasonably alright I think.

For my birthday, Anmol bought me the most amazing toaster I have ever seen. It has extra-wide slots and high-lifter. And guess what – it has crumpet control! The best invention since the toaster. Thanks Anmol.

The last few years I've spend a reasonable amount of money. Probably about $10 a week I reckon, which is quite a substantial proportion of my income. I used to try and work out how much money I would save if I rode to uni. I'd do the maths in my head while I waited for late buses. "I'll show Sydney Bues," I'd think to myself, "I'll get to uni quicker, get fit and save money. Damn you." I worked out how long I'd have to ride to pay of the cost of buying the bike in the first place. It was a long time, but in the long run it would be well worth it.

However, I hadn't considered all the costs of riding. Over the past few days I've realised that $1.11 (a bus ticket) worth of food isn't very much food. When you're riding for half an hour twice a day you get hungry. Or I'll get to uni and buy an orange juice for $2.50, completely eliminating any money savings I might have made.

So you win this round Sydney Buses, but just wait until I build my solar-powered scooter.

Jo Kemp came around for dinner tonight and it was well fun. We made basil pesto pumpkin and pasta. Emily burnt the eggplant but it didn't matter. I didn't take out enough of the pesto oil and it did matter. But it was all kind of OK. Jo Kemp is a good egg.

Mum and I are going to Bombay Heritage in Crows Nest tonight. I think it is my favourite Indian restaurant in the world after Arjuna in Katoomba. I'm pretty excited. That eggplant korma is so so good.

I am thinking about changing from being a vegan to a cheegan. I am finding myself caving in to so many camembert exceptions that it would be more honest to call myself a cheegan. Another possibility is to become a cheegurtan, because stewed rhubarb without yoghurt is not nearly so delicious. And then there is whipped cream. Gosh.

We made some soup the other day and this is the recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 potatoes
• 1 orange sweet potato
• 1 white sweet potato
• 2 leeks
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 vegetable stock cubes (we used Massel)
• 1 teaspoon of cumin and coriander powder
• 1 cup of milk (soy worked for us)
• Quite a bit of pepper
• A handful of crushed cashews

Method

1. Fry sliced leek and garlic in some oil for 5 minutes.
2. Add 5 cups of water and stock cube/powder.
3. Add diced potato and sweet potato. We chopped it pretty small because our guests were coming soon.
4. Add pepper, cumin and coriander.
5. Cook for 15-20 minutes.
6. Blend. Add milk until it looks the right colour.
7. Eat.

A few different people seem to have done research on the "full" environmental costs of some of our green solutions are. I've often wondered how much food we need to eat to replace the energy consumed walking somewhere instead of driving. It seems that if you eat beef, you're better off driving to the shops. Although that point is tells you more about the impact of cattle than about the inefficiency of walking. If you're purely vegan then walking will be a much better option (by my own calculations), because wheat takes so much less energy to grow per calorie.

The other one was that installing an eco-friendly light-bulb for a year saves the same energy as you'd lose buying two bags of imported fruit and vegetables. Which, again, probably says more about imported food than about good light bulbs.

Three-quarters of supermarket energy expenditure goes to keeping stuff cold. I wonder what cold things I could take out of my diet. Not-burgers? No. Camembert? Definitely not.

After Jo and Emily had left the house this morning, it was totally up to me to test the new maple syrup I bought yesterday. But I was up to the task. I made the pancake mix, cooked the pancakes and added the syrup all by myself. And it was good. UNSW Food Coop Organic Maple Syrup gets my Pancake Condiment Stamp of Approval™.

Jo and I made a stir fry last night, from our left-over capsicum and ageing snow peas. And for the first time I can remember, I didn't stuff it up. I didn't put in too much oil, nor garlic, nor soy sauce. We just had a plain old tasty stir fry with organic udon noodles. It was also the first time we'd tried udon noodles (which were left-overs too), and they worked really well. I will buy some more from our brilliant food coop.

Plus, we cooked the whole thing in something like 30 minutes. It was so express.

We cooked Andrew Lorien's recently invented Pumpkin Parmigiana last night. It was well delicious and easy to make. Except we put about a kilo too much parmesan cheese in it. I might never want to eat parmesan again.

In other news, I'm trying to decide if I should become a cheegan. My love of camembert and my weak will has virtually pushed my quasi-veganism to the point of not being vegan at all. I've always sneered at pescatarians, but here I am doing the same thing. Oh the humiliation. I hope Tully will still be my friend.

In all, 109 subjects were recruited by means of a background questionnaire. They were then divided into three groups according to age, gender and soup preference.

Paired comparisons for the evaluation of crispness of cereal flakes by untrained assessors: correlation with descriptive analysis and acoustic measurements

I could read research paper titles all day long. Oh yes, so I am.

While David and I were waiting for our film yesterday we ended up in David Jones. They were having a sale and Scanpan stuff was 50% off. So a giant Scanpan pan was only $120. That still sounds like a lot, but only if you haven't used a Scanpan pan before. They are brilliant. And you can pay $70 for some Tefal or Circulon crap anyway. Although Tefal and Circulon are in totally different categories of crap, Circulon being the pretty good and sturdy category and Tefal being in the totally useless shit category.

The Scanpan is a present for mum, so everyone has to keep it a secret.

I went shopping the other day and bought a bunch of different mueslis. And I've hit the jackpot. Dick Smith's Bush Food Muesli is not only nutritious and delicious, but it's cheap too. The dried fruit in it is totally edible! Amazing! How many times have I been late for work because I've spent half the morning picking the dried fruit out of my muesli. Dick Smith is going to do wonders for my punctuality and overall breakfast happiness.

The report also shows Australia's meat-products industry all up accounts for 91 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. By comparison, an Australian Greenhouse Office 2005 figure shows the Australian transport industry produces 80.4 megatonnes.

Into the Meat of the Issue

I got some good vegie burgers from the supermarket last week. They are called Eat Smart burgers. They are basically mushed potato that you shallow fry in oil. I smarter way to eat I know not.

After drinking a whole pot of tea out of mum's fabbo new teapot that I bought her, I think it is safe to say that everything works normally.

I love MSG. I makes things so tasty. Qin made a really yummy dinner tonight. I couldn't work out what had made it so good, but she told me the trick. I'll have to learn how to use it. Even better, I just read that the health problems of MSG aren't that bad.

I'd been planning to go to the Quaker meeting in Surry Hills this morning. I thought I would have time to fit in vegetable shopping at the farmers markets, but I didn't. I slept in too much.

The vegetables at Marrickville organic farmers are pretty expensive. And there is only one fruit and vegie stall. I spent $43 and didn't get very much. Then I spent another $9 on apples at the specialised apple stall. And $5 on bread at the bread stall. They're very good apples and it's very good bread. But I think the vegies at my uni are a stack better. Cheaper and better.

I need to go for another run today. Staying at mum's house wasn't very good for my discipline.

I'm making the most giant curry I've ever made tonight. It is because my house is crap and haven't cooked any of the vegetables this week. So we have all these poor vegetables languishing in the crisper. Not that they are very crisp anymore. Luckily I have returned, and I have now graciously thrown all those vegetables into our big pot. They are cooking merrily away now the poor forgotten dears.

I hope it's tasty. I'm trying not to make it too hot.

I just ate a giant raspberry and white chocolate muffin (which is vegan, except for the white chocolate) from our trusty vegetarian cafe. Mum gave me money for breakfast because we had to leave so early and because she's a nice mum. It really was a huge muffin. The fellow at the shop told me it was a "full feed" and he wasn't lying. Apparently, they sell 180 of those suckers every day and some people come back for a second one.

Jo and I (and little bit of Emily) went for a giant run just then. I thought it would be about 4 or 5 kms, but I reckon it ended up being closer to 7 or 8 km. We ran non-stop for about 40 minutes. I haven't been for a job in a good while, and I'm starting to feel seedy. I was reading today about the different sorts of fats. Fat makes me feel a bit gross, and I was reading that some sorts of fats are really hard to get rid of. There is this fat called "visceral fat" which lodges itself between all the organs in your stomach. It's what gives people beer bellies.

So apparently I read this paper and I have to run 33kms a week for six months. I will lose 7% of my visceral fat and 8% (or something) of my subcutaneous fat on average across the sample (of one). I reckon they give the fats such disgusting names because they want us to be disgusted and start exercising. Jogging for an hour seems far more appealing than have a belly full of visceral fat, even if you hate exercise.

I give my new regime about three days. Luckily I forget nearly every paper I read in about that long.

Yesterday morning Jo was amazingly patient with me. We'd been planning to go for a run at Coogee at 9am. So when she woke me up at 10am I was already feeling a bit bad. I got dressed and made it out to the car. But then I decided I should come in and get my university work stuff so I could get dropped off on the way back. I was very speedy packing my bags, but a little too speedy running down the drive way. I tripped over the little gate lock hole in the middle of the driveway, sprained my ankle, did a funny roll across the footpath and wound up out on the road. I limped back to the house and Jo went off for a run by herself. I iced my ankle with frozen wedges. Which I later ate.

Helen and Jon came around for dinner tonight. It was pretty fun but those two sleepy kittens always have to go nap just when the party's getting started. Jon always inspires me to not worry so much about feelings of inadequacy concerning social appropriateness.

We had curry which was hot but pretty tasty. We should have put less curry paste in.

I watched the very end of The Departed after months of wondering and was well satisfied. Scorcese is pure brilliance.

I went to help out the Greens on election day. It was going to be with Libby at Asquith, but it ended up being with Rachel at Hornsby South. It was a fun day. We handed out how-to-vote leaflets and tried to reveal as little as possible when people asked us policy questions. Our little stall didn't have a single policy brochure so when people asked us things like "How do the Greens feel about seal clubbing?" we had no idea. It's one of those tricky questions where the Greens could go either way. Seal clubbing increases the number of fish in the ocean, but it reduces the number of happy baby seals. You can never tell if it's Greener to love fish or love baby seals.

Cath was a good candidate. Better, I think, than the one at the last election. She was definitely more photogenic than Judy Hopwood and the Shooters Party fellow. I guess it goes to show that in politics it's not always the most photogenic person who wins.

I made friends with the guys from the Shooters Party. I spent most of the day chatting to one fellow about hunting. He had untold numbers of amusing anecdotes about hitting or failing to hit animals with bullets. He invited me to go hunting with him. Probably too late in the day I told him that I was vegetarian, and probably wasn't likely to start shooting at living things. But when he suggested I go visit them at the rifle range I was keen. They said they'd lend me a gun, but I had to get a shooting license.

Rachel and I had really tasty [non-vegan] margarita pizza for lunch. It was only $10 for a giant one and it was huge. There was a Chinese chap standing next to us in the queue. He announced that the pizzas there were excellent. And so cheap! He was really excited about how cheap they were. Very very excited. I asked him if it was the first time he'd been there. He told me he came there all the time.

It rained towards the end and we had to huddle with the Liberals and Christian Democrats under an eave. Rachel and I were going to do scrutineering, but we arrived a few minutes too late. So we went to the pub while we waited for Libby to finish her scrutineering.

We finished up with a party at Cath's house. We watched Peter Debnam on TV. I've never seen him talk before. He's a bit embarrassing. Then we went home and watched Green Wing. It was all tops.