Purely Decadent !

Wow...This is the best ice cream I've had in years !!!! My sweet husband picked it up at a mainstream grocery store ( tomorrow he's going to look for more flavors ! ) I've seen it around, but had not tried it yet. The chocolate flavor is smooth and rich, and blends seamlessly with the incredibly silky coconut milk. I can't wait to try the other flavors...no more making excuses or apologizing for vegan ice creams ! The ingredients read : Organic coconut milk, organic agave syrup,chicory root extract, cocoa, carob bean gum, guar gum, natural flavor. What baffles me is if such a good product can be made from such simple, pure ingredients without harm to the animals, why on Earth would you have it any other way ?

For The Birds

This morning I made 10 "suet" cakes to give away as gifts, and to feed to the wild birds that visit our feeders. I used tofu tubs as molds. Last Spring I used tofu tubs as seedling starter trays.
the recipe I found online and then adapted, using some older wheat germ and buckwheat kernels to bulk it up a little. I hope they hold together ! They're all in the fridge, chillin down and firming up right now.
I'd followed an older thread online about making vegan suet cakes for birds and someone chimed in and said that the vegan was "self-righteously imposing their warped values on the natural order of things"......as if using animal suet rendered from farmed animals was not imposing on nature, or , the very animals who had to endure very unnatural conditions and then slaughter. Jeez !
I'll post the recipe later :>

Gingerbread Peace Activists

The results from the flurry of baking for CCAN's Open House at Mike Tidwell's home in Takoma Park on the 13th of December included these guys, ready for action and totally vegan !

Mike graciously lets us set up our vegan advocacy tables and tent during the event to offer plant-based food information and bake sale goodies to compliment their message of reducing our impact on the planet. Chesapeake Climate Action Network promotes individual actions such as eating lower on the food chain, replacing old lightbulbs with CFLs , installing solar panels, collecting rain from your roof in barrels for the garden, and writing to our representatives in government demanding clean renewable energy. Check out their website and get involved :>

Mike Tidwell is a tireless, informed and engaging speaker and writer for the cause and can be heard hosting Earthbeat Radio, along with Daphne Wysham and on Jay Tomlinson's excellent podcast, The World On Fire , as well as appearing on numerous television shows. He's written essays for Orion, Audubon, Grist and others as well as authoring the prescient book Bayou Farewell and a follow-up of sorts, Ravaging Tide. It is an honor to be associated with him, CCAN, the small army of dedicated interns, and of course, Jay!

Here's the recipe for the cookies. Of course, use organic ingredients when ever possible....it's better for everyone . The dough is easy to work with, and does'nt spread out or puff up too much while baking. Makes 10-12 4" delicious Agents Of Change.

GINGERBREAD FOLKS ( adapted from a Vegetarian Resource Group recipe )
1/4 cup oil
1/3 cup evaporate cane brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses ( not blackstrap...use a mild molasses )
2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup oat flour ( grind some oatmeal in a blender till is is finely crumbled...some bigger particles are ok...you don't need it as fine as wheat flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh orange zest ( optional but nice :> )
1/4 cup plus 1 Tablespoon orange juice
Beat together the first 3 ingredients in a large bowl ( or bowl of stand mixer ). Sift together all the rest of the ingredients except for the orange juice. Add the dry, sifted ingredients to the sugar and oil mixture, alternating with the orange juice. Refrigerate dough for several hours. Roll out dough no thinner than 1/8", cut out shapes, transfer to baking sheets and bake at 350 for 8-12 minute...depending on shape and thickness. The thinner they are rolled the crisper they will be when baked. Don't over-bake ! Cool on racks. These also freeze well.

Vegan Baking Musings

It has recently occured to me that there seems to be two major reactions to vegan baking, as a subject.
The predominant one : " How could you possibly bake without eggs, butter, milk ? ! ", and then there is, " What ? Why would there be any animal "product" in this bread, cookie, pie, cake..." I was of the first opinion before I became vegan. But pretty quickly I came to (and after two years of baking, sampling, reading, talking about, sampling some more....) the second opinion...why would you want to sully sweet baked goodness with the pain and suffering inherent in animal abuse and slaughter ? Especially when easy effective alternatives abound.

Maybe that's what is so wonderful about vegan baking...every cookie, cake, pie or loaf of bread that gets baked without using the animals is a silent offering to them.

I'm getting ready to go into bake-sale mode for an upcoming event and look forward to introducing more people to the joys of vegan baking ( and eating ! ).

So many great vegan cookbooks out there now..including this fantastic one by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau: The Joy Of Vegan Baking.

Western Maryland Vegetarian Society and a recipe

Wow...almost 2 months since I've posted anything. It's not like there is a lack of vegan related topics to blog about...in fact, the further I get into this, the more I realize how much loops back to our society's brutal ( or indifferent ) treatment of animals and our disconnect from nature. Living right across from a cow and calf operation is a constant sad reminder.
But yesterday afternoon, I took a break and attended a Vegan Holiday Potluck in Hagerstown, hosted by Western Maryland Vegetarian , met some great people and am now re-energized ! We had some fantastic food at the potluck . The big hits were Chocolate Almond cupcakes made by the daughter of a couple attending. I'm sorry I don't remember their names, but I do recall that the young baker got the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I think there was a total of 15 people ...and like Ginnie says, we were all speaking the same language :> Nice, also, to see a table loaded with beautiful, tasty vegan foods and not have to wonder about it's origins.
And now, a recipe for a chicken-like Seitan. It is easy to make, just make sure you have everything. I've made this several times and love it as a sandwich filling ( slice it thinly ) , cut into strips and fried up for fajitas, chopped up and added to a Shepard's Pie...and it freezes very well. The recipe originates from Ann Gentry's Real Food Daily cookbook. Lot's of great recipes in it, and all vegan !

Chicken-style Seitan:

1 tablespoon canola oil, plus more for pan, plus 1/2 cup canola oil

2/3 cup chopped onion

1 tablespoon minced garlic

3 1/2 cups gluten flour

1 cup garbanzo flour

2/3 cup nutritional yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt

1 3/4 cups freshly cooked cannellini beans, see Cook's note*

1/3 cup tamari

3 cups water

*Cook's Note: If your blender isn't large enough to hold all of the water called for in this recipe, add just enough of it to create a smooth and creamy bean puree, then stir the remaining water into the puree in a large bowl. You can substitute canned organic white beans for the freshly cooked cannellini beans, if desired. After draining, a 15-ounce can will yield 1 3/4 cups of beans.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line an 8-inch square baking pan with 2-inch-high sides with parchment paper. Lightly oil the parchment paper. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute for 5 minutes, or until tender. Set aside to cool.

Stir the gluten flour, garbanzo flour, nutritional yeast, and salt in a large bowl to blend. Puree the beans, 1/2 cup canola oil, tamari, and sauteed onion mixture in a blender until smooth, adding some of the water to create a smooth and creamy consistency. Whisk the bean puree and the remaining water in another large bowl to blend. Quickly stir the bean mixture into the flour mixture until a very wet dough forms. Transfer the dough to the prepared baking pan and smooth the top. Cover with aluminum foil.

Place the pan of Seitan Dough in a larger roasting pan. Add enough water to come halfway up the sides of the pan of seitan. Bake for 2 hours, adding more water to the roasting pan if necessary, or until the seitan is firm on top. Cool the seitan to room temperature. Quarter the seitan into 4 equal (1-pound each) squares.

The seitan will keep for 2 days, covered and refrigerated. Wrap the seitan squares separately in plastic wrap, then enclose them in a resealable plastic bag and freeze them up to 1 week, if desired.

Yield: 4 1/2 pounds

It's The Animals !

Animal agriculture has been in the news a lot lately. October has seen a lot of coverage.

Oprah's powerful October 13th show focused on California's Prop 2 coming up for a vote Nov.4th. Both proponents and those opposed to the initiative were well represented. Video clips were shown from a variety of sources, even some undercover footage taken in a veal barn. The farmers who oppose Prop 2 insist that they will be ruined, forced to give up the business of raising animals for food. They happily gave tours of their modern 'farms', unabashedly presented hundreds of enormous sows living their lives out in gestation crates so confining that they cannot ever turn around, or hens crammed into cages suspended in barns, their feet, wings and beaks in constant danger of becoming entangled in the wire of the cages....presented this as the most modern humane way...this way they're free from food competition, aggression from the other animals and can be administered shots and have their health managed much more individually....all in the name of better animal health and food safety, they say. Other farmers, who use more "humane" methods, also happily gave tours of their farms, insisting that more sunlight, space ,natural food and opportunities to stretch wings and root in the dirt is not only better for the animals and the taste of their flesh, but also for the farmer's bottom line. HSUS's Wayne Pacelle spoke eloquently and patiently for the animals who have no voice in all of this debate over their bodies and lives.

Michael Pollan wrote a fantastic 8,000 word letter to the incoming president addressing changes that need to be made in how we grow and eat our food in the October 12th issue of the NYTimes magazine. Very worth reading.

And this week's NYTimes Magazine has an article about Wayne Pacelle, titled, The Barnyard Strategist, and how he's shaped the HSUS in the last four years into a very powerful politically savvy voice for farmed animals as well as advocates for cats and dogs.

Daily reminders of food prices going up , due in part, to feeding 70% of US grain to farmed animals and to quote Pollan's letter to the president, "...40% of the world's grain output today is fed to animals; 11 percent is fed to cars and trucks, in the form of biofuels."
Animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of global manmade greenhouse gases. We're bringing the planet down for the luxury of eating cheap animal flesh and their secretions. How is it that people can't connect the dots, now that it's been drawn out for us to so plainly see ?

Even the comic strip, Mutts, written and drawn by Patrick McDonnell brought the animals' plight to the table in the Washington Post for the week of October 12-17th with the animals themselves sweetly pleading people to hear their voices.

So. I should be happy that all of this is hitting mainstream America. Right ? I am, to some degree. What I'm not seeing, feeling, is the outrage that I had hoped people would feel when they see what a horrific, filthy , polluting, cruel scam the whole animal agribiz is. It is still business as usual. Pollan weakly promotes eating less meat , but mentions grass-fed beef as the answer so often I wonder if he's got a stake ( no pun intended, seriously ! ) in it. But it's not just "meat"....it's dairy, it's eggs.......it's the animals !!!!!!!
I keep hoping Pollan will come to his senses and go vegan. What a force he could be. I do really love his idea of a White House Organic garden on the South Lawn....what a wonderful example.

So. Yes. Word is getting out. But with the constant election buzz on and the economic meltdown in mid-ooze, I think the message that industrial animal agriculture is bad, bad, bad, just becomes background noise. Too bad it can't sell air time for the networks like the silly doings of celebrities and/or the presidential and vice presidential candidate's mudslinging. Sigh.

Well, as my husband says, Continue To March...!

One more thing.... You would think that the alternative to breeding, feeding, applying antibiotics and growth hormones; disposing of all the waste of the animals and dealing with the attendant water, air, and land pollution; and finally slaughtering, processing, shipping and storing ( all very energy intensive ) of the body parts and by-products was something so repulsive and difficult as to be a non-starter. Tofu ? Plant milks ? Nuts, grains, fruits, vegetables...such simple, easy and incredibly tasty ways to feed ourselves without bringing down the planet. It feels so good to be vegan, but so sad to take this all in.

New Calves in the Field

My husband and I live directly across from a "cow and calf" operation. On the surface the farm presents the perfect pastoral scene: green rolling hills fall away to a creek that meanders along the edge of some woods. Birds flit in and out of the trees, deer emerge and browse. We've seen 5 kinds of woodpeckers, Indigo Buntings, Redstarts, Blackpoll Warblers, and enough other kinds of birds to wear binoculars many days that I walk with my neighbors and our dogs through the woods. There are even nesting owls and hawks within the little forest.
Cattle navigate in the sea of grasses, content to eat, sleep, chew their cud and tend to their young, who are born right there in the field. Sometimes you can see them minutes after they enter the world. You could even see them being born, if you knew when to look.
The cows udders swell with milk for their babies...just a little though, not like those hideously stretched, distended and painful looking udders on the poor milk cows. The young calves play amongst each other, literally kicking up their heels, nuzzling faces and forming friendships. Sometimes they follow us, as we walk the dogs along the fence line, the bolder ones making a big show of coming closer and closer then suddenly, expolsively, eyes rolling wildly, losing their nerve and wheeling off, arcing clots of dirt, grass and manure through the air. These "meat" cattle enjoy a relatively peaceful and natural existence, until the calve are "weaned ": rounded up and herded onto a transport trailer and hauled off to feedlots or other "finishers". The mother cows bawl heart-breakingly for days, calling for their calves. The calves are all of 4-5 months old. Where ever the calves are , they must be terrified. The cows are already pregnant with the next calf. This process will continue for several years until the mother cow herself will hauled off to a feedlot or slaughterhouse.
The latest mass calf removal happened to fall on the day we hosted the Vegan 101 class on the 7th of September. ( see previous entry by Tanya...thanks for taking and posting the pictures, Mark ! ) I was unaware of the frantic calling, bawling, crying of the mothers...calling their babies over and over and over....until i stepped outside to walk one of our dogs in the early evening. I was all aglow with how well the class went... we had shared stories, recipes and food completely animal-free, and got to introduce some of the great food to people new to veganism. So it took a few minutes for the mothers' cries to penetrate.

Inside my head I wailed, " I am SO, SO SORRY ....." over, and over and over again. I can still hear them, and my own voice.

Scratch the surface of any food animal enterprise, no matter how "humane", and you will find an endless stream of needless suffering imposed on creatures whom we feel entitled to use. Going vegan alleviates the direct connection to the meat, milk and egg industries ( and going vegan is a direct action ), but it heightens your awareness of a horribly skewed food culture that views a simple, peaceful, nutritious plant-based diet as radical and extreme.
I'm only two years into being vegan, and every single day delivers new ( and many distressing old ) examples of why I continue to advocate for a vegan diet on behalf of the animals.

This evening I noticed down where the hill levels out and meets the stream , at the edge of the woods, 8 brand new calves and their mothers resting in the sea of grass. A few of the babies stared at us with wide-eyed curiosity as we walked by.
To the cows and their calves whom I share the sky, the rain and the Earth with, I can only say, again, I am so, so sorry.