Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end.  Enjoy!

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baby dog mama

baby dog mama

Baby Dog Mama is my new company along with partner Darcy Michalek. This is the official start of what has long been a passion of mine. I'll tell that long story soon enough but what I'm here to do is to introduce our first product, Dog Shampoo. Dog Shampoo is the...

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end....

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of "Cooking Without Killing,"  my "how to" on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  :)Recent PostsFollow Mefacebooktwitterpinterestinstagramyoutube

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of “Cooking Without Killing,”  my “how to” on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  🙂

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baby dog mama

baby dog mama

Baby Dog Mama is my new company along with partner Darcy Michalek. This is the official start of what has long been a passion of mine. I'll tell that long story soon enough but what I'm here to do is to introduce our first product, Dog Shampoo. Dog Shampoo is the...

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end....

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of "Cooking Without Killing,"  my "how to" on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  :)Recent PostsFollow Mefacebooktwitterpinterestinstagramyoutube

Eclipse 2017 Totality in Beatrice, Nebraska

Eclipse 2017 Totality in Beatrice, Nebraska

Was it worth the miles and hours stuck in traffic to see the eclipse in totality? 100% These videos and photos do not come close to the real thing. Especially, because I had no idea how to shoot an eclipse. It just doesn’t come up that often. But it was more than just a cosmic event.  More than hanging with Bill Nye.  It was a celebration of science.  It felt like a communion of the good people of earth.  It was also Nebraska in it’s small town, big heart nature.  It was an experience I’ll never forget.

8-21-17 Homestead National Monument, Beatrice, Nebraska with Bill Nye and a hundred thousand other peeps.

(please click settings cog on bottom of video and set to HD and turn up the volume)

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baby dog mama

baby dog mama

Baby Dog Mama is my new company along with partner Darcy Michalek. This is the official start of what has long been a passion of mine. I'll tell that long story soon enough but what I'm here to do is to introduce our first product, Dog Shampoo. Dog Shampoo is the...

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end....

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of "Cooking Without Killing,"  my "how to" on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  :)Recent PostsFollow Mefacebooktwitterpinterestinstagramyoutube

She’s The One

She’s The One

“She’s The One” written by Karl Wallinger of World Party. One of the first times I played the song was for my mom’s wedding. Now I dedicate it to my wife, Lyndsey Sena that puts up with all my late nights being a musician and doing what I love. Thank you babe.

Tom Sena: vocals, keyboard, drums
Terry Olson: guitars, bass
Video and audio editing by Tom Sena

Every video clip is the actual take of each audio track recorded. No overdubs or fake playing or lip-sync. Mixed with Audition and Premiere by Adobe. Terry and I have played off and on together for many years. We have similar taste in music and this project is something that we hope will be ongoing which allows us to play the songs we love together, but not really together.

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baby dog mama

baby dog mama

Baby Dog Mama is my new company along with partner Darcy Michalek. This is the official start of what has long been a passion of mine. I'll tell that long story soon enough but what I'm here to do is to introduce our first product, Dog Shampoo. Dog Shampoo is the...

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end....

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of "Cooking Without Killing,"  my "how to" on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  :)Recent PostsFollow Mefacebooktwitterpinterestinstagramyoutube

The Church We Chose

The Church We Chose

There’s a lot a beautiful ways to get married… all special in their own ways.  Obviously, it’s the marriage that counts more than the wedding.  Lyndsey and I decided to go to Puerto Rico and get married, just the two of us, for several reasons. Mainly, because we felt it would be just for us. We had some crazy ideas but with no real way of knowing if or how it could happen. I now know it wouldn’t have happened without the invaluable help of our photographers, Marlene Rivera Montesino and Alfredo Riverllano and our officiant, Joel Lopez and very trusting bride. Mother Nature had her hand in this as well and we didn’t mind being upstaged by the beauty of the Cascada Las Delicias.  We thank you all.  Our dream wedding came together and transpired around us, beyond our imaginable hopes and dreams and will never be forgotten.  I love you so much Lyndsey and I’m over the moon that we did this and you got your dream wedding.

This is the wedding of Thomas Sena and Lyndsey Victoria Sena.  The song is “The Falls” by Ennio Morricone, which it seems was written for this moment.  Photos and Video by Marlene Rivera Montesino and Alfredo Riverllano.  Movie edited by Thomas Sena.

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baby dog mama

baby dog mama

Baby Dog Mama is my new company along with partner Darcy Michalek. This is the official start of what has long been a passion of mine. I'll tell that long story soon enough but what I'm here to do is to introduce our first product, Dog Shampoo. Dog Shampoo is the...

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end....

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of "Cooking Without Killing,"  my "how to" on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  :)Recent PostsFollow Mefacebooktwitterpinterestinstagramyoutube

Oh Donald, you ol silly racist you. On the record.

Oh Donald, you ol silly racist you. On the record.

I try very hard not to be publicly political.  I do try hard to live by my politics instead.  But I also live and work in a state that does not align politically with me.  I know and respect many people on the other side of the isle.  But this is not about politics or policies.  It’s gotten too personal and has gone on too long for me to stay silent.  Shame on me for waiting so long.

I guess if there was ever a chance, which there wasn’t, I would say Donald lost me when he first made his racist remarks about Mexicans. I’d like to think he’d have lost me by being racist about anyone. But full disclosure: I’m Mexican.  Yep, I’m one of those. No wait let me say it like full on say it.  I’m a Mexican.  Ya, there it is.  I’m not just of Mexican decent.  No, no, let me say it like I mean it…. “I’m a Mexican”.  Ya baby let that sink in.  Yes, I know you thought I was Italian or just tanned easily but no, I’m a Mexican.  As some white people have pointed out with a tone of encouragement, “You’re Mexican?  Hmm, you don’t really look it….I mean….”.  Oh, thank you.  Now, let me be clear from the start…. most white people that know I’m Mexican are just fine with it.  No biggie.  My mom is white as the new driven snow. Irish/anglo.  She gave me green eyes and a slight bump on the “exposure photo filter” if you know what I mean.  Though not 100% Irish, she identifies as Irish.  Not unlike the way I feel I’m Mexican.  I’m more Mexican than anything else.  But my mom, the lassie fell for some South O Mexican back in the day and there you have it. My Dad was full blooded Mexican as in yes, he even looked Mexican. He worked hard to lose his accent by the time he was an adult. Very hard.  He was a loving, attentive father for the most part.  Oh sure he was a little old school and beat my ass a few times too much for my liking but by the standards of those days nothing to report.  He worked hard at everything. Not your “typical lazy free loading Mexican” thank god!  No, he wanted very much to be as American as I am.  No accent, no past, just another west Omaha suburbanite.  And that’s what he became.  Kind of.  No one would ever hear him speak Spanish except at gramma and grampa’s house.  On occasion if we ran across a Mexican waiter for instance, he would speak Spanish to him or her to make them feel comfortable but it was rare.  He never spoke it to us kids even though he knew we thought it was cool.  I never really realized what that was all about until I grew up and saw how the world worked and how a lot of Americans looked at Mexicans.  I experienced a few racial incidents growing up that slapped me cold in my Mexican face, but it was such a rare occurrence, it seemed more of a novelty.  I just shrugged it off or even laughed at how silly it seemed.  “You’re acting racist to me?  Have you seen my mom?  Hell, I lived on 128th, I went to St Roberts!”  But eventually you do learn.  And here’s another thing I’ve realized.  The older I get, the more Mexican I feel.  I’ve talked to other people of various ethnicities that feel the same way.  I guess a lot of parents that busted their ass to get here usually tried to get their kids to be as “American” or white acting as possible.  Some do a good balance of continuing their cultures but others are happy to leave that all behind.  I’m sure they just wanted the best for their kids.  I regret not learning Spanish.  I’ve always wanted to speak it fluently.  I love going to Mexico and being surrounded by Spanish speaking Mexicans.  I can fake it a little but it’s embarrassingly bad.  And yet I love it.  There is something that pulls on me.  It always has.  I didn’t get it until years later.

My dad had always told us a bogus story about how he was born in Kansas shortly after he, his parents and little sister had moved here.  He stuck to this story till the day he died.  But I always felt there was something off.  I don’t know how I knew but I swear I always did.  His story was told to us as the gospel truth.  Even mom was in on it.  We didn’t learn the truth until he was practically on his death bed.  Too late for chats to edify the story.  Unfortunately, most of the truth died with him.  We don’t know much about it.  Just some patchy details mom can recall my gramma telling her years ago.  As little as we know, the story we can imagine was horrific and harrowing at best.  As secretive and horrible as the story of their crossing was, we always knew they had moved around the midwest as migrant farmers for some years before settling here in Omaha.  Extremely poor and fighting for their existence, you can guess the rest.  Not pretty.  But it’s amazing how very little we ever heard about any of this.  Dad never complained or talked about it except occasionally letting us know that he came from nothing but love.  His mother so loved him and he loved and respected her with everything that he was.  His biological father, Pedro Sena died not long after they got to the US.  My dad was very young.  My gramma remarried George Hernandez Negrete, who was no better off but did a wonderful job helping to raise the kids and serving as the only grampa we ever knew on Dad’s side.  He was strong, quiet and spoke virtually no English but seemed to understand us just fine.  Of course, gramma rarely let him get a word in anyway.  She spoke Spanglish well and would translate for him whether he wanted or not.  We loved and respected them to no end.   A typically ethnic gramma’s house.  They stayed in south O and lived very meager lives.  She worked at the Campbell Soup plant and he worked in the UP rail yard until retirement.  But you couldn’t get out of her house without getting fed, nor would you ever want to.  The smell of cumin will forever send me straight back there.  My mouth still waters at the thought.  “Ohhh hijo!” she would say.  Just sit down.”  She would roll out tortillas with an old metal pipe and flip them back and forth on an iron plate over gas flame with her bare hands.  I can cry thinking about how perfect her tortillas were.  Don’t get me started about her food.  She would love on you like she’d never see you again.  Then in junior high came the day I would never see her again.  She died just days before she and grampa Negrete were going to be sworn in as US citizens.  They had done all the work, come so far for so long and against their biggest fears had studied hard to finally become legal citizens.  Grampa, with everyone’s encouragement went ahead and became a US citizen without her.  The family petitioned to grant her citizenship posthumously but was denied.  For my grampa’s lonely effort, the Omaha World Herald did a piece on their bittersweet story.  George Hernandez Negrete would die a US citizen not long after.   Years later when I had my own daughter I would use my gramma’s name as her middle name.  Claire Bacilia Sena.  Oh god there goes the water works.

It’s funny, I actually try to get my kids to feel they are Mexican.  I want that.  Just the opposite of my dad’s experience.  I don’t have to fear they will be looked at as inferior because the sad truth is they don’t really look that Mexican.  They’re even lighter than me.  That’s hard for me to say.  Not about how they look but about how it works.  It cuts right to the heart of racism.  It is the sad reality we live in.  There is a spectrum of racism based on an actual spectrum of color.  It’s that simple and ridiculous.  For all of our advancements we still can’t quite figure that out.

Donald and his supporters will try to tell you he was just talking about criminals, drug dealers, rapists and murders that are also illegal immigrants from Mexico.  But that’s not what he said is it?  No it isn’t.  He referred to illegal Mexicans as criminals, drug dealers, rapists and murders.  That’s what he said.  Do you get that’s an entirely different and RACIST thing?  Not just semantics, not just that one speech and not an accidental slip of the tongue.  This isn’t about political correctness.  He’s racist and he’s doubling down on Muslims.

My dad was an illegal Mexican.  Get it?  He served overseas in the US Navy and paid US taxes his whole life.  FUCK YOU DONALD!  He was more “American” than Donald will ever be.  If you are going to vote for Donald, you are either making a grave mistake or you’re a RACIST.   There, I’ve said it.   As a fellow American I respect your right to disagree with me politically but as a human I do not respect your support of this racist fuck or his behavior.  It’s like you can’t kind of be pregnant.  It’s not kind of racist.  It’s racism.  There is so much more I’d like to say about all of this but you’ll have to wait for the book.  We can argue all night about policies and motivations but at the end of the day, words mean shit and actions mean even more.  WORDS like Donald said, and ACTIONS like VOTING for the guy that said those WORDS.

WORDS=RACISM=RACIST=DONALD=VOTING=VOTER=YOU=RACIST

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baby dog mama

baby dog mama

Baby Dog Mama is my new company along with partner Darcy Michalek. This is the official start of what has long been a passion of mine. I'll tell that long story soon enough but what I'm here to do is to introduce our first product, Dog Shampoo. Dog Shampoo is the...

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

Vegan Albondigas (Mexican Meatball Stew)

My vegan version of a great Mexican dish my grandma and them my mom used to make called, Albondigas.  I’ve missed this so bad since becoming vegan years ago.  I’m so happy to crack the vegan code for this recipe.  Here’s the how to with recipe at the end....

Vegan Brunch

Vegan Brunch

In the latest installment of "Cooking Without Killing,"  my "how to" on cooking a vegan brunch including a delicious substitute for eggs.  Mostly just having fun but we really do eat this way.  :)Recent PostsFollow Mefacebooktwitterpinterestinstagramyoutube

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