Macaroni and Cheese
I think that the world is forgetting what Macaroni is. It seems that shells are replacing the timely classic. I just did a video of Mac N Cheese, now available on my You Tube channel...http://www.youtube.com/user/HowsYourFood
Why is this? Do people just prefer shells? And why are we tempted to still call it Macaroni and Cheese? It's much like the Fettuccine Alfredo dilemma. What is the fettuccine and which is the Alfredo? WHO is Alfredo, really?
I'm in love with Daiya cheese.
Introducing the videos for my recipes!
So, I've recently been getting obsessed with the Flip camera that I bought for my partner, Stephen, for Christmas this past year. I think it's because we're both over-enthusiastic about video-taping our newborn. Like, when he laughs, when he smiles, rolls over, wakes up...breathes...etc.
Today, I was having a boring morning because of the rain (Hurricane Alex)...and I decided to make a recipe video with some of the ingredients we have in our kitchen.
So, this is my first instructional video: Pizza Roll Ups. You can hear Sam crying in the background. No, I am not a horrible mother. He's been having constipation issues and won't stop crying. He's not hungry! Ask my boobs...
Here it is, be nice, and tell me what you think!
Earth Day
Earth Day always gets me thinking about whether I'm correct in rolling my eyes at hybrid cars. As a vegan, I can already boast that I'm single-handedly saving the world. The beef industry is the leading cause of green-house gas emissions. I think?
We use Seventh Generation diapers in order to save the planet, also. All recycled materials, and assumed to be biodegradable. If not, I would just be using Huggies. They work so much better. Did you know it's better to run the dishwasher than wash dishes by hand? That is, if your dishwasher works properly. When we first moved in, ours didn't. Washing dishes in the dishwasher twice is worse than hand-washing, if you're wondering.
Stephen and I met up with a VRA friend at Fête Accompli for their Earth "Week" vegan specials. Normally, they're a murderous restaurant, but for the slowest day of the week (Monday), they decided to humor the Austin vegan population and serve only vegan food for the day. Well...vegan food plus cheese for sale. Want some cheese, vegans?
Ha!
Vegan Mom
Since my last entry, I’ve acquired a new title, and with it has come immense responsibility and a drastic change in lifestyle.
Because we’re active in the vegan community, my partner and I have tried our best to continue our meet-ups. Baby Sam attended his first Vegan Book Club meeting at two weeks of age, this past Wednesday. He managed not to cry too much, so we were very proud of him.
As far as the changes that have occurred in my life, it seems like I never get off the couch, now. I want to go out walking so badly, but I don't believe I'm ready just yet. I find myself scrambling to get stuff done in two-hour periods when he's asleep. I'm home all day long, yet still find myself not accomplishing much. This is only the third week, so it only gets easier from here, right?
Sam is a vegan baby aside from the formula he was given at the hospital shortly after his birth, when his temperature was too low. He's as vegan as it gets, though, so his birthday is his veg-anniversary.
This is just meant to be a short blog, though, so I won't go on! I need to change someone's diaper.
I don't work well with Recipes
Last night, my partner and I attended a themed potluck for Vegans Rock Austin featuring recipes from Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.
We signed up for Curried Udon Noodle Stir-Fry and Potato Latkes. Knowing me, however, I decided to stray away from the recipe as per usual. I don't get it, though! I can't even sacrifice myself for one potluck! I feel bad for not following recipes exactly - even for the first time, you know, just to try it out. Nope, can't do it.
I compare it to people who shoo away from trying my vegan food simply because it's vegan, and I know how offended I get: Yet I shoo away from using simple ingredients that don't sound "good" at the time. I have the same problem with baking as I do cooking. I prefer using egg-replacer, so I'll change every recipe I find that has cornstarch. My apologies to Moskowitz and Romero. I'm sure that your Curried Udon Noodle Stir Fry is amazing! One of the things I should work on this year is learning to trust.
Believe me, I'll be developing a recipe from what I made for the potluck, since it barely resembles that of the cookbook's. It was awesome! It just wasn't what people thought it was!
As an aside, we didn't make latkes because, after buying all the ingredients, we realized that we didn't have a potato shredder. So we made homemade potato chips instead! Yay for deep-fryers! And my apologies to the other vegans at the potluck who actually followed recipes, the food was great.
Johnathan Safran Foer is not Vegan
J.S. Foer is the author of “Eating Animals”, a book released in 2009 that includes both personal stories and investigative reporting of factory farms. The book has caused uproar among readers and critics. Many people have purported going vegetarian after reading “Eating Animals” and some, including celebrities such as Natalie Portman, have reported going vegan. But, following in the footsteps of Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation,” Foer is not following the lifestyle that his investigative findings have promoted to his readers. This is not a new thing, by any means. Many authors throughout history have published literature that has acted as the backbone of social change. In the animal rights community, Peter Singer, the author of “Animal Liberation” is touted as the “Father of the Animal Rights Movement,” and has also stated that he does not follow a vegan lifestyle. You would think that the lack of connection with investigative findings and actual lifestyle change would bewilder and disappoint the followers of such authors, but people are far more forgiving than logic would have you think. When it comes to information and theory, the writers and journalists who provide the actual texts seem to be the exception to the principles they promote. Foer’s disagreement with veganism takes away more from non-human animals than it gives. Much like Schlosser, who claimed to eat fast food after his best-selling book convinced many to stop eating at large chains, Foer is saying to readers that mere changes in consumption are not practical and are not the appropriate response to the exploitation of non-human animals. What we know in the vegan community is that consumption is everything, and authors like Foer are the problem, not the solution.
Welfarism and Veganism don't go together.
I would just like to make one thing clear. If you are an ethical vegan it is a necessary distension of your eating practices to also adopt an abolitionist view of animal rights. Participating in welfarist campaigns, such as KFC Cruelty, McCruelty, and others perpetuates the idea that it's OK to consume animal products, and to use non-human animals for human use (so long as they're being treated better!)
Abolition of animal exploitation in all its forms is the only path to true animal liberation. Congratulating food chains when they adopt larger cage policies and humane killing standards is against animals entirely. Animals have an interest in not being exploited before their interest in being killed or used in a nicer way. Vegans! Please don't support humane farming laws! Please don't support anti-cruelty campaigns unless they are purely vegan and result in the abolition of animal exploitation.
Vegans Love Pancakes and Pastries!
This is a fact. I'm sure some vegans will tell you they "don't have a sweet tooth," just like many omnivores will tell you as well. This, however, is a lie and no one can be trusted, because especially vegans love cupcakes and cookies and pancakes and ice cream. I fall into the category of truth-telling vegans in that I can exclaim proudly that not only do I make wonderful pastries, but I love to eat them.
The problem for most vegans, which vegetarians (lower-class citizens) will attest is indeed not a problem, is that most of these things contain dairy and egg products. Some may even contain honey or refined sugar. So, we must substitute ingredients to accommodate, which is a very easy task. My favorites are Soy Milk (to replace regular milk), Earth Balance (to replace butter), Vegan-Safe Cane Sugar and Ener-G brand egg replacer (which is a starch mixture that has a similar chemical reaction in baked goods as real eggs).
There are many grades of "vegan." Some vegans eat honey products, bug products (such as Confectioner's Glaze), and some eat refined sugar, such as Imperial Brand sugar (the biggest brand in Texas), which uses bone char in its processing (quite disgusting). Until a few days ago, my boyfriend and I ate refined sugar, but we have since decided to stop for the sake of veganism.
It's a hard thing to call oneself a pure vegan, as veganism is a conscious effort to have the least impact on animals as possible through consumer choices. I think that as consumers, we can only do our best, and granted, I say often that if you eat honey or bug products and call yourself vegan, you are lazy and are lying. I can now say that I believe the same is true for vegans who buy bags of Imperial Brand sugar, who knowingly consume a product where bones from dead animals were purchased and used by the company to create a product that many vegans consume with or without the knowledge of it.
Lately, my kick has been with Bisquick. Until I met my boyfriend, I did not know that Bisquick was anything more than a pre-made pancake batter that you buy at cheap grocery stores. Now, I know that not only is it vegan, but it can be used to create some of the most wonderful things in the world. Let me list a few: Pancakes, Batter for Deep Frying, Cupcakes, Muffins, Tortillas, Pie Crust, Pizza Crust, Naan, Fresh Bread, Biscuits, Dumplings, Granola Bars, Brownies, Sugar Cookies, and more! This may be going too far, but it's almost safe to say that Bisquick is a great substitute for flour when you don't have any baking soda or baking powder around. Betty Crocker even came out with a new Bisquick recipe book. Something that I've wanted to do for Ramen Noodles since I was a kid: a recipe book for all the possibilities!
Finally, I would just like to say to all vegans, that if you are concerned that you are making a lazy choice to consume animal products for the sake of comfort or enjoyment, even in the smallest form, that it might be a good idea for you to take a step back and have a decision-moment. It's a really powerful thing when you make a choice to stop consuming products that you know have a negative impact on some one or some thing: it's the reason people go vegan in the first place.
Don't buy into anyone telling you that you have to take fish oil for your heath, or bee products for your allergies, and don't buy candies and sprinkles that you know have Confectioner's Glaze. You don't need these things, believe me. And you're making so much better of a choice by not consuming them than it might seem at first.
With that, go bake something vegan and share it with someone!
My Cat's Gunna be Vegan
Today, we made vegan cat food using Vegecat cat food vitamin mix that we ordered online through a man who makes this stuff himself, at his house.
The process took about 3 1/2 hours including the amount of time my boyfriend and I sat on the couch and picked apart every individual kibble bit before dehydrating them entirely. It helps if you do that part of the process while watching a netflix movie or something. It was almost therapeutic.
Finally, when the food was placed in his bowl, he was immediately curious and came over to check it out. My cat, Stanis, then quickly began to "cover" it up by pretending to bury his food bowl with the carpet around it. This is something that cats do with their litter to cover up their feces. I didn't guess he liked his new food too much. Even an hour after we covered it up with his regular food entirely, so as to see if he would get tricked into eating, he refused to eat his food.
The guide suggested that we use nutritional yeast to lure him to eat his food. (Little did I know that sprinkling nutritional yeast on food worked for things other than human vegans). Just a few minutes ago, almost 5 hours after we started this mess, Stanis picked at his food for a good five minutes or so. I'm content.
We're going to add more to his bowl for his next meal. Maybe next week, we can make the wet food!
I'm Vegan at Thanksgiving, too.
I'm the kind of vegan who can easily sit at the same table as someone eating animal products. I think I may not mind it as much as other vegans because I know that I am better than a meateater, but I don't expect others to think it. Being "better" than someone else is a relative thing and it's really up to the individual to decide for him or herself that he or she is superior to others. And I'm confident that I can sit next to anyone and look cooler if I'm munching on pita chips and they're munching on cheese fries. This makes celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family pretty easy.
This Thanksgiving, there was less meat-eating than ever before. This was my first year eating with my partner's family (My partner, Stephen is also Vegan), and his mother went way out of her way to cook about six or seven classic Thanksgiving dishes to vegan standards. At my family's house, we eat pretty healthfully for Thanksgiving, serving non-traditional items instead of the starchier ones. It's not a tradition, per se, but it is something that's evolved over the years since my mom has become the primary holiday chef.
This year, at my family's house there were only 4 of us (I have a very small family to begin with, and my father's whole side of the family was out of town for the holidays), so we spent the majority of Thanksgiving morning cooking and chatting. There were no break-away groups, so we spoke mostly of food and vegan things. When the topic of stuffing came up though, I remembered a dish my Grandma, who I playfully call "Grammy", makes once a year: Her Breakfast Casserole. By far my favorite bit of holiday nostalgia, this breakfast casserole is a sure-fire way to guarantee a Happy Thanksgiving, the only problem is, it's the furthest from vegan you can get besides the whole turkey sitting, looking at you on the dining room table.
I called her this morning to ask for the recipe because I love to "veganize" anything I can get my hands on, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity create something wonderful out of something wonderfully cruel, yet wonderfully delicious. She replied to my request with an irresolute "Well, I can give you the recipe, but you can't eat it!" I politely explained that it may be easier than she thought (to replace the eggs, dairy, and meat products that comprise the vast majority of the casserole), and that come Christmas, she'd be eating the same casserole she'd been making for years without the guilt that comes with eating 1 1/2 lbs of sausage. I'm sure she doesn't feel one bit guilty, but I'd like to think there's potential.
As you can imagine, my excitement is growing. I will indeed post the results of this experiment soon, and you'll be sure to note that the farm animals' nightmare that was my Grammy's Breakfast Casserole will be sitting in the middle of the table, come this Christmas, and my small family will be dining on its cruelty-free goodness.
