About Me
All About Me
Hi! My name is Katie and this is my site. I was born thirtyish years ago in Springfield, IL. I lived in Tennessee for a few years, and now am back in Illinois for what is hopefully a short time. I’m married to a pretty awesome dude who shares most of my interests and who can tolerate me more than most people. I have a part-time job working for an architect, which I like because I get to earn a little money and still have time to take care of the house and cook and what not.
I enjoy taking my dogs to the park, playing video games where I get to shoot zombies in the head, half-assed gardening, vacuuming because it makes all of the animals go into a panic, bike riding, hula hooping, cheering people up, buying presents, eating chocolate, talking about my bowel movements, making fun of my husband, and you! Well, I might enjoy you. If you’re not a dick.
I am also an unashamed tv lover, if you would like to discuss Rupaul’s Drag Race, exchange Veronica Mars quotes, or debate exactly how much of a waste of time watching Lost really is, i’m you’re girl. I live in a drafty old house, so my very favorite winter activity is me, a blanket, a dog, and streaming t.v.
While I started this site as a food blog, it’s kind of evolved into a more personal site. I still blog about food, but since I repeatedly eat the same things over and over, even if I only posted about fun things i’ve eaten, I would update even less than I do now! I also post about music occasionally, since I spend about 90% of my waking hours listen to it, or singing to my animals, or wishing people would stop talking to me because they’re interrupting the song in my head.
FAQs That No One Actually Ever Asks
Answers to a few things you may or may not wonder while reading my site.
Where did you get the name for your site?
It’s from a Cramps song, ‘Don’t Eat Stuff off the Sidewalk’. Yes, I am uncreative, but I like it!
Why Vegan?
I’ve been a vegetarian since I was thirteen, and a vegan since July of 2006. Believe it or not, my vegetarianism came about because my mother said I wouldn’t be able to not eat meat. Can I get an ‘in your face’? If you’re wondering why it took me so long to make the change to vegan, I don’t really have a good answer other than, I never considered it. I had already cut down a lot on my dairy intake to help keep my eczema in check, and never bought eggs because I knew I wouldn’t eat them all. So I started looking into vegan baking, which led me to the PPK. I was a member there for about a week before deciding to go vegan. To make a long story short, it just makes sense to me. If you are interested in any of the many number of reasons one should go vegan, go here. Being vegan is a lot easier than most people realize. If I did it in a little army town in the south, anyone can do it!
I should also note that while i’m very passionate about being vegan and animal welfare issues, I am also probably the most non-confrontational person you will ever meet. I am just here to post about my life and i’m not interested in debate or hearing about how you’re gonna eat three animals for every one I don’t eat. If you are interested in veganism and have any questions about the lifestyle, what the best vegan cheese is, etc., then i’m here for you.
Is your husband vegan?
Not yet! No, but he did finally go vegetarian. I never wanted to try and force him into agreeing with my ethics because that would probably just result in pissing him off, or him not sticking to it. Very few things would make me happier than for him to be vegan, but that’s his journey if he decides to make it.
Before he was even a vegetarian, we agreed on a mostly vegan house and it worked for both of us. There was no meat (not even deli slices or frozen items), and since he rarely eats eggs or drinks milk and they would just go bad, there was none of that either. Also, if he wants to buy something like crackers that are non-vegan, I try to find a similar item in the natural food products that is vegan so we can share as much as possible.
Are your pets vegan?
The short answer is no, because veganism is a choice that my pets can’t make. The long answer is: the cats are carnivores, so they eat the best meat-based kibble I can afford to give them, and I even occasionally give them wet wood that is either just chicken chunks or pieces of sea food. I know there are vegan cat foods available, but cats are meat-eaters (okay, Gozer eats a lot of cooked vegetables and grains but i’m pretty sure he’s a big exception) and if I didn’t want to feed them meat, I just wouldn’t have cats.
Chester (and Fawkes) eats a vegan diet, however, because dogs are omnivores and I was able to find a decent vegan kibble and wet food that doesn’t cost too much. But he takes medications that aren’t vegan, and his glucosamine tablets are liver based. I also don’t care if people give him dog cookies that aren’t vegan, but if someone was trying to slip my dog meat on the regular I would be pretty pissed.
Chester has had high liver levels for a few years, despite his meds, and according to his doctor he should basically be miserable all the time, but he is a happy dog and thinks taking all of these pills is tits because he gets ‘treats’ all the time. It turns out that sweet potato (which he eats nightly with his dog food) is actually a good food to eat if you have liver problems, so I would like to think that his diet helps a little in keeping him happy.
You never mention your parents or anything.
You’re right, I don’t! I am estranged from my family (my choice). I may occasionally make jokes, like the time I got grounded because I wouldn’t eat a mustard sandwich, but I make a conscious effort to avoid talking about my parents. Most people know the very basic whys, but it’s not something I want to talk about here.
Why do you live with your father-in-law?
When Brian was getting out of the army, he was already signed up for school in a town a few hours south of here, he chose that school so he could enter their flight program. We would be getting the GI Bill so school was covered, and some housing was covered. But we hadn’t sold our house so we couldn’t buy a new one, and trying to rent with two dogs and three cats would be practically impossible, if not insanely expensive. I couldn’t stay in Tennessee because we only have one car (and I didn’t want to stay).
It was either live with Frank or put the animals up for adoption. I would rather be the loser who lives with their father figure than the heartless asshole who put five souls out of their home. Also, he was living in a big house alone with three dogs, and we already knew that all of our dogs got along so it wasn’t a huge life-ruiner on anyone’s part. Now that Brian is out of the flight program he can go to school here, so we can actually save a little money.
Why don’t you and Brian drink?
I don’t drink because I have a (thankfully short) history of addiction problems. It’s not a good idea for me to drink, so I don’t. The smell of alcohol makes me gag now, so that helps. When I met Brian he was straight edge, and he’s still never smoked or drank. Both of our fathers are alcoholics so neither of us have pleasant associations with alcohol, BUT we are not assholes and love our drunk friends and will totally drive them home whenever they need us to.
What kind of camera did you use?
I’ve been rocking the same Canon Rebel XT for almost five years, and it’s served me well. I tend to break electronics a lot, so the fact that my camera has survived this long is a pretty good endorsement in itself. If it breaks, I might save up for a fancier model, but I don’t plan on replacing it otherwise. I mostly use this lens, which is one of the most affordable Canon lenses you can find, and it is an excellent lens for the price (and if you’re patient you can sometimes find it for as low as $80).
I use minimal Photoshop to edit my images, and everything I know about taking pictures I learned from trial and error and gentle guidance from my friend Andria, a professional photographer. I don’t think i’m a good photographer, but I think I do okay and sometimes I get lucky and get some really good shots.
So what happened with the zine? Wasn’t there supposed to be a third issue?
Yeah…okay, so I had a great idea for my third issue, which would be the last. I had a theme, I had a list of recipe ideas that fit the theme. But I had no recipes ready to go like the last two, and I could never seem to get up the motivation to mess around with making 20 all new recipes. If you’ve been here before you know that I am horrible at writing things down, even when I go into the kitchen with a notebook and i’m ready to Invent Some Vegan Shit, it doesn’t always go great. So I slacked, and I slacked, and I slacked…three years later!
As far as reprinting the first two, I stopped doing that because I couldn’t deal with Kinkos anymore. I just really hated it so much. They would always argue with me over if I could use the big machine (and therefore get a discount for bulk printing) and it always required me explaining with charts and sock puppets and needing a manager. And I hated selling them myself, so that’s why for the last six months or so of them being in print, they were only sold through Herbivore. Oddly enough, I didn’t mind sitting on my floor for hours, folding and stapling and stuffing envelopes.
I have thought about taking the first two zines and putting them together with a few new recipes (and removing some shitty ones), and that is much more likely than the third one ever getting made, because I am lazy and that just sounds like soooooo much less work.
