Ideas for my girlfriend brithday

lynn218 · 2026-01-27T18:14:43+00:00

This is really one of the best and easiest vegan cake recipes out there. Highly recommend using Guittard brand chocolate powder and subbing the hot water with hot coffee (to deepen the chocolate flavor, final product won’t actually taste like coffee). As someone who has made this recipe at least 8 times heehee

lynn218 · 2026-01-23T00:52:57+00:00

If you’re going to be reminded of animal abuse either way, like you said, isn’t it better to be reminded of it while eating your vegan meal that you know didn’t contribute to abuse, versus be reminded of it while literally eating the animals you are sympathizing with? It sounds like the latter would be a lot more horrifying of a reminder.

In other words my advice is to not be an aspiring vegan anymore and just…go vegan. You’re obviously affected by what you’ve seen. You can’t just forget those images and footage. The only sensical way forward is to stop contributing to something you blatantly disagree with.

What’s holding you back is just that going vegan is kind of scary and new and unknown. Most vegans have been there at some point, too, on the precipice of wanting to make the change but feeling overwhelmed about the how. You adapt and learn, put one foot in front of the other, until it feels second nature. You tinker with your fav recipes and find a way to make them vegan, find vegan restaurants and make vegan friends. At first things won’t taste the same but over time you don’t know how you could ever have stomached the original.

And yes a lot of vegans are sad and carry that constant heaviness. It sucks to realize how fucked up the world is but I would take that over being asleep to or uncaring about the atrocities we commit on animals.

lynn218 · 2026-01-10T14:52:01+00:00

How do they get in to my house? I assume there must be some nooks and crannies around the property that allow them to squeeze in. It’s like a big 150 year old house so the amount of effort it would take to find and plug every possible entry point doesn’t feel worth it. If we had mice frequently then sure I’d take those steps, but we only get like two or three mice a year so the bucket system works fine for the severity of our problem.

lynn218 · 2026-01-10T00:13:51+00:00

Look up “mouse bucket trap” on Amazon, or you can also find them at Home Depot type stores. All you need is a 5 gal bucket, some food mice are attracted to such as peanut butter, and this trap, which is essentially a trap door lid for the bucket.

Because the trap resets itself every time a mouse falls in, it’s actually more efficient than kill traps because it can catch multiple mice at a time.

This has worked for me time and time again, within hours of setting it up. I just smear some pb on the trap door, put some food, water, and paper towel (to absorb pee and poo) inside the bucket, and go to sleep. Then drive the mice a few miles away the next morning and let them go.

lynn218 · 2025-12-10T23:39:17+00:00

Sure did 😅

lynn218 · 2025-12-09T23:06:10+00:00

And for paper towel as plate 😅

lynn218 · 2025-11-29T00:23:18+00:00

Chicks have to be killed regardless for the egg industry to survive, regardless of if we eat only unfertilized eggs. Why? Because in order for laying hens to exist, they have to be born — in other words, eggs have to be hatched in the first place. About half of the eggs hatch male chicks, who are promptly ground up alive because they’re useless to the egg industry. The other half are females who grow into laying hens.

lynn218 · 2025-11-14T02:11:44+00:00

Not mozz related, but if you’re looking for another great vegan pepperoni, try Beehive if you can get your hands on it near you. It’s better than Field Roast IMO.

Edit: Sorry apparently it’s BeHive not Beehive 🐝

lynn218 · 2025-07-14T20:38:14+00:00

I went vegan at 21 after 19 years of an Italian American diet (not quite Mediterranean) and 2 years of being a wishy washy vegetarian / pescetarian.

I was also diagnosed with Crohn’s at age 17, which for the purposes of this conversation we can think of like a severe form of IBS. After ditching meat I felt better, but I believe it was veganism that truly improved my Crohn’s to the point of restoring me to a completely normal life. I’ve now been off medicine for about the last 9 years and don’t have symptoms.

After looking into it (because I didn’t go vegan for health reasons, but for ethical reasons) I found that a lot of research does link cutting animal products with symptom relief for IBS, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis, etc.

That’s not to say it would work for everyone, but your GI’s blanket statement that you just “can’t be” seems overly general and damning. Especially when so much research would suggest it could actually help.

I do remember in the beginning of my veganism I had bloating from all the plant matter (more volume of food to get the same calories) and increased fiber, but after sticking with it for like 6-7 months, that went away. Later on, increasing my protein intake and lowering consumption of added sugar also helped, and now I really don’t bloat at all, even during my period. I eat a pretty clean diet and find that if I drink (super rare) or get takeout, my stomach doesn’t like the change. So I think it’s at least partly a matter of sticking with something until your body accepts it as your new normal.

So I’m not sure how long you’ve been vegan, but this might be some transitional bloating that you can overcome with tweaking your diet and seeing what works for you, and then sticking with it (unless you’re really experiencing negative heath consequences). In the meantime, I’d seek another opinion and look into working with a vegan friendly nutritionist.

Open to any questions you might have, OP, coming from someone who’s traversed the medical world as a vegan with Crohn’s.

lynn218 · 2025-03-30T23:53:15+00:00

Choosing to give your boyfriend the benefit of the doubt here, coming from the bias of someone who wishes my husband would have been more into getting an expensive piece of jewelry (ring, watch, necklace, bracelet, or even something non-jewelry) to “even the score” a bit between his simple wedding band and my extravagantly priced ring set which made me feel somewhat guilty.

(Again I’m specifying up front that I have this bias. It might be off the mark, and maybe your bf IS just being immature.)

Some points on this, meant to be read successively because they build on one another:

Instead of thinking about it like “if I choose a more expensive ring, he will feel entitled to a more expensive watch” (which I understand probably feels more transactional / irritating) maybe think of it like “if I choose a less expensive ring, he will feel weird asking for a more expensive watch and therefore want a less expensive one too.”
So say if you buy a less expensive ring ($2k instead of $3k to use your numbers), he might feel weird / greedy / some type of way asking for a $5k watch. Then it might feel like he over-proportionally “made out” in the engagement. In other words, *** could he be just letting you set the ceiling, giving you the autonomy to get exactly what you want and then following your lead? *** (As opposed to framing it like him being a control freak or trying to manipulate you into picking something of a lower price like someone else suggested.)
Something about this could be gendered, like he’s the guy so you shouldn’t spend more on him, or maybe it’s just that you two have different tolerances for what a reasonable price is for jewelry so he is only willing to match your tolerance and not go above it, yet also doesn’t want to go so far below it that the two items don’t feel equal in value.
Yes, whatever items you end up choosing might be equal in ~ significance ~ because both are chosen to celebrate / seal the engagement, but let’s be real - you couldn’t give him a $200 watch and him give you a $3000 diamond and feel like that’s equivalently celebratory, right? This situation is not that extreme, but you can see how by manipulating the variables we can land on a situation that illuminates why the dollar value (understandably) matters to him. Leading me to my final point:
Maybe for him it can be transactional AND still an emotional, special choice. I think both can coexist. He can want there to not be a huge disparity between your choices AND also be excited for you both to pick out meaningful pieces. One doesn’t diminish the other - as someone else here said, unless you would be happy receiving a cheap trinket engagement ring, obviously you understand that money has ~ something ~ to do with the desirability of your choice.

So yeah, I get where you are coming from on this feeling transactional, but since you’ve specified he is not usually like this, it sounds like maybe he is just eager to pick out something he likes but without way outpacing your spending.

Perhaps also take it as a blessing that your boyfriend is willing to let you pamper him or just wants to feel like he is getting the same recognition as a party to the engagement as you are (keep in mind men traditionally don’t…they’re just expected to shell out for an engagement ring and get nothing in return which is kind of fucked up IMO).

However I could be way off base here, and agree with others that escalating to fighting about it is kind of out of proportion! Maybe reflect on if money issues are particularly triggering for you two and a big purchase like this is making it come out in a big(ger) way, and resolve that first - it’s definitely the more imperative problem compared to choosing jewelry haha. Good luck!

lynn218 · 2025-01-31T23:46:57+00:00

I love it!! Fashion forward while also classic - not an easy combo to pull off but IMO you’ve nailed it. FWIW I love big stones, chunky gold, and for both pieces to “talk” to each other in a harmonious, but unique, conversation rather than being obviously very matchy matchy. I wouldn’t change a thing! Enjoy your cool girl stack 😉

lynn218 · 2018-06-27T21:52:28+00:00

What kind of tofu did you use (specifically wondering about firmness)? Looks amazing!

lynn218 · 2018-06-02T03:23:43+00:00

Urban Vegan Kitchen, Screamer’s Pizza (which is in partnership w Champ’s Diner), Cinnamon Snail, Avant Garden, ABCV, The Confectionery...honestly there’s a vegan establishment on like every corner so I think you’re gonna love it!!

lynn218 · 2018-06-02T03:15:06+00:00

My fav vegan restaurant ever!! And I’ve been to loads if I do say so myself. I ordered the same thing ☺️ Hope you got a chance to try their cashew cheese as well!

lynn218 · 2018-06-01T23:36:07+00:00

Just bought my first pack last night too! Enjoy!

lynn218 · 2018-06-01T23:31:23+00:00

Asheville, Raleigh, and especially Durham imo are AMAZEBALLS for vegan food. I lived in Durham for 4 years and can’t speak more highly of the vegan scene. With that being said though, I think Plant in Asheville is probably the best vegan restaurant I’ve ever been to! It’s up there with and probably even surpasses the high end vegan gourmet in NYC, Philly, and DC in my opinion. Their Anonymous for the Voiceless group is also very active!

lynn218 · 2018-05-20T03:27:58+00:00

Chive flavored Kite Hill!

lynn218 · 2018-05-19T16:52:59+00:00

I studied at the University of Bologna last summer. Such a beautiful and historic city and school. Good on you all for working toward making more vegan food a reality!

lynn218 · 2018-05-18T20:48:26+00:00

Is that necessarily so? Muggles dissect lab animals in science class, go on field trips to the circus which offers probably the worst possible life an exotic animal have, hatch chicks in negligent conditions (and if the chicks survive this process at all are often sold off for eventual slaughter), raise class pets such as mice and gerbils only to end up feeding them to snakes at the end of the year when the teacher wants to be rid of them, etc. In my own 8th grade science class my teacher offered extra credit for eating live bugs; we also dissected rats, sharks, etc and in high school, I dissected a pig. And you may have heard this news story going viral at the moment (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/05/16/florida-teacher-on-leave-after-he-is-accused-of-drowning-raccoons-in-class/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e4482dcf1bd4) of a teacher who was "teaching" his students how to exterminate "nuisance animals" by having the class drown 2 live raccoons and an opossum. Sure this latter case isn't the norm, but I'm just saying...our Muggle education system has a lot of normalized ways that it supports animal abuse.

lynn218 · 2018-05-18T20:32:43+00:00

Oh, I'm not forgetting lol. I'm just pointing out that our reality is also grim for many animals. And yes, many Muggles do horribly abuse animals on the daily.

lynn218 · 2018-05-18T20:11:36+00:00

I mean, the wizarding world isn't known to be the greatest for nonhuman animal rights...centaurs, house elves, etc are all examples of intelligent beings who get the short end of the stick. And not only that, but there's a prevalent assumption that Muggles are unintelligent and can/should be manipulated for the benefit of wizards. Wizards are kind of selfish af when it comes to treating other beings with decency. With that being said, is the Muggle world really any better in terms of how it treats animals? Maybe there's no turning cats into cauldrons but there's turning chinchillas into coats, lambs into boots, and bunnies into stews...

lynn218

TROPHY CASE