a voice for the voiceless
Fall seems to officially have arrived in the DC area, with daytime temps in the 60’s and overnight temps approaching freezing. Just last week it was in the 80’s, so this has been a quick change in seasons for us. Perfect timing for the recipes I made this weekend.
Though to be honest, the food I am in the mood for rarely has anything to do with the seasons, so I’m almost as likely to crave a good bowl of chili in July as I am in January. This quick change from summer to fall did make me crave warming food, however. Luckily my last trip to the grocery store a couple weeks ago had prompted me to get the ingredients for two recipes that turned out to be perfect fall food.
Both were from Get It Ripe – Good Shepherds Pie and Gingerbread. Both were fantastic. I’m really happy with that cookbook – everything I’ve made from it has been stellar. And that had much more to do with the recipes than me!
The Shepherds Pie wasn’t one of those quick weekday recipes, at least not for me. (I’m slow!) It wasn’t a day long endeavor either, so it was perfect to make late Sunday afternoon. I got the lentils and potatoes cooking, and then started on the gingerbread. Once the gingerbread was baking, I did the rest of the vegetable prep and cooking, and by the time I’d done that and got the potatoes mashed, the gingerbread was ready to come out, the Shepherds Pie ready to go in.
I cooked the lentils with some leftover broth I’d had from making the simple seitan from Veganomicon last week, and that might have been the crowning glory to the Shepherds Pie. It is deliciously flavorful and a great comfort food for the first fall weather weekend.
The gingerbread is absolutely wonderful. The texture, the flavor, everything. I wouldn’t change a thing. Thanks to johanna for commenting in a post on one of my earlier VeganMoFo posts about this recipe, because that is the reason I got the ingredients I needed!
It was the first thing I’ve baked that called for coconut oil (at least where I actually used coconut oil), and I wonder if that made some of the difference in the texture and moistness. I would advise anyone making this recipe to make sure that their coconut oil is in its liquid state before they use it. That should have been a no-brainer, but for me I needed the reminder! I fought with it instead, having to mash the semi-solid parts as I mixed it in, which was annoying and gave me a hand-cramp…and still the gingerbread turned out really well! I think that makes it a Deb-proof recipe.
And both of these make great leftovers. It’s going to be a great week, lunch-wise!
If only I hadn’t run out of cocoa so I could have hot chocolate to go with it!
I’ve been vegan about five years now. I’ve been cooking only about five years as well. The 8+ years before I went vegan, I lived off pasta and jarred sauce. Peanut butter sandwiches. I didn’t even own a cookbook.
And now I have a pretty serious cookbook collection (obsession?) and I discovered that I enjoy cooking. I need recipes though (hence the cookbooks), and I’ve always been amazed at people who can come up with recipes, or adjust recipes on the fly, or “use recipes for inspiration” to come up with something of their own. My mom, in fact, is someone who will go through her recipes, and end up with three of them on the counter, from which she makes something that is all and none of those recipes, and it is delicious. Of course people always ask for the recipe, and she’s stumped. She might never be able to recreate it, she definitely can’t give out a recipe that would have a hope of being near what she actually did!
Me, I’m a recipe follower.
Mostly.
In the past year, if that, I’ve discovered that sometimes I can wing it. I can’t claim that I come up with anything that anyone but myself would be satisfied with, but it is still an exciting step for me.
Usually this happens out of desperation. I will have three ingredients and a great deal of hunger, and so I throw stuff together and that’s that.
And that’s sort of what happened one morning recently, as I got ready for work. I needed something to bring to work for breakfast-ish. I had leftover millet. I knew I could work with that. But what to do? So here’s what I did:
Random Breakfast Mash:
Heat in microwave for one minute, and stir it up.
I’m not entirely sure that this would be something that other people would want to eat, but it just might be. I found it delicious, and I was pleased to note that I could distinctly taste the various elements of this random breakfast mash. This might be something others take for granted, but I have a sense of taste and smell that are hit or miss, so distinct tastes are quite often beyond the skills of my poor taste buds.
The great thing about a recipe like this, is that it could be rewritten as:
Even More Random Breakfast Mash:
No pictures of this one. It would just look like a millet mash in any case!
I’m sure we’re all very familiar with “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World,” affectionately known as VCTOTW. (Which I’ve never figured out how to pronounce without sounding like I’m clearing my throat.) I’ve made many a cupcake from this cookbook, and I don’t think it is possible to recommend it highly enough to people who like cupcakes. Or anyone who just plain old like desserts. Or really, anyone at all, since I think these are recipes that would convert anyone to the wonder of cupcakes.
The funny thing is that I had never made a cupcake in my life until I got the cookbook. I wasn’t sold on the cookbook at all when I first heard of it. “An entire cookbook for cupcakes? WTF?” was my essential reaction.
When VCTOTW came out, frosting seemed to explode all over the blogosphere. Food bloggers or not, vegans couldn’t stop talking about it. Being the stubborn sort, it actually made me more resistant. I mean, sure I love Babycakes, but not so much that I could see the point in making cupcakes myself.
Maybe I’m just a cookie person, and find it hard to switch my thinking.
Maybe I’m honestly so lazy that the thought of having to make frosting was too much for me.
But then I was in Mooshoes on a visit to NYC, and I couldn’t resist flipping through VCTOTW. I was sucked into the world of cupcakes. I got cupcake tins and papers, I spent months making tons of cupcakes. I loved it!
I think the Margarita cupcakes were my favorites, but it is hard to say.
Eventually my essential laziness crept back in, and it has now been quite a while since I’ve made cupcakes.
Last weekend at the sanctuary, a new volunteer (new to me) brought a really yummy spice cake. Sheryl insisted that we eat it all, and after much arm-twisting, we reluctantly devoured the entire thing, barely managing to leave a single piece for Dave.
Not surprisingly when faced with a delicious dessert, the conversation turned to VCTOTW, but Terry, ever the optimist, called it “Vegan Cupcakes Rule The World.”
That is what will happen after the cupcakes take over the world, after all. Terry just lives a bit in the future!
I went looking for a cupcake picture, and all I found was the 2nd cutest cat in the world
Oh, as long as I brought up cats via a picture of Beanie, who happens to be a very handsome black and white cat, go read what Neva blogged about recently regarding why there tends to be a greater number of black or black and white cats in feral colonies. Fascinating reading!
A connection between meat eating and violent behavior? I’ll start by saying that as often as I’ve heard this kind of statement tossed around, I’ve always passed it off as unsubstantiated and unscientific. I’d be interested if anyone does have some medical/scientific information that would back it up, however. It does seem at least somewhat possible that the chemicals released as the animals go through the horror that is slaughter could remain in the muscles and organs, and thus be absorbed into and impact our systems, were we to eat those muscles and organs. (That is so gross to even think about.)
Then again, how likely is it that these chemicals would survive exposure to air, heat, and just plain time?
These are things I don’t know.
But the question has been asked, quite seriously, by my vegan friend Jesse, who I wrote about recently. The guy who went vegan in prison. I mentioned that he is thoughtful, didn’t I? I did. He is.
So I happened to get a letter from him last week. He asked whether there is a link between meat consumption and aggressive behavior. He has observed what appears to be a correlation among the people around him, as well as a remembered change in behavior by his ex-wife when she went on the Fatkins diet.
Correlation does not necessarily equate to causation, but it is still interesting to tease out what might be at the root of this. He even comes up with a couple of his own ideas, and says,
I happen to notice that those people who eat a lot of meat tend to be more violent. Meanwhile, vegans and vegetarians are more pacific. Is their temperament the result of their diets, or does their temperament influence the diets they choose? Perhaps compassionate people are more open to the idea of a vegan diet. I believe in some cases that could be true, but in my case I noticed that I’ve become less aggressive.
Personally, what has made me less angry and less reactive is bike commuting. However, I do remember when I first went vegan feeling more at peace than I ever had before. I think that it was the relief of moving away from the consumption of animal products, of not having to suppress ugly knowledge of my complicity anymore. That’s exhausting, and disruptive. Much easier to just align your life with your ethics.
At least that is how it worked for me, and I have a feeling that it is true of many of us. I also expect that as we learn about the exploitation of animals (and all the ways it comes into play, and thus all the ways we must research and educate ourselves so we can make informed decisions to avoid that exploitation), we also become sensitive to the myriad ways that our fellow humans are exploited. As we learn these things, don’t we continue to make the more compassionate choices? Does that lead us further and further along a pacific path?
I’m sure this doesn’t apply to all of us, but I don’t think Jesse is far off base in his observations. The root cause is what is not clear.
Jesse also asks if I know of a good vegan bodybuilding/weightlifting book. I forgot to mention yesterday that Jesse is always busy with vegan advocacy, so when he talks to these guys in prison who are convinced that they need to eat as much red meat as possible to get strong, he researches so he can go back to them with real information that refutes those assumptions.
I have a feeling that there are no books out there, yet, on this topic, but if anyone has ideas on a book that would do a good enough job for what he needs, let me know!
My Chicago trip was super quick, and I didn’t end up having time to go out for lunch at all, so I was limited to one fun vegan dinner. I’ve been hearing about the Chicago Diner for years, so naturally I had to go there.
It was my first time ever in Chicago (I’m not counting all the times I’ve changed planes in the airport), and I lucked out with absolutely gorgeous weather. Sunny and warm. The hotel was right on the water. A river of some kind? A canal? I’m completely ignorant about everything to do with Chicago. I had to ask to figure out what lake we went by on the way to the Chicago Diner from the hotel!
Chicago impressed me, I’ll be honest. There were so many people on bikes, and bikes locked up outside luxury apartment buildings and fitness centers and movie theaters and stores and … well, everywhere. It was clear that bikes were a part of the life. The drivers of cars, from what I could tell, weren’t agitated about it either. It was just part of the life.
I saw only one person lycra’d up on the bike, which was also exciting for me, because it makes biking more real and functional, and something you do to get places, rather than just something you do to ride a race.
So there was the biking. And along that huge lake (Michigan, as I learned) there were paved paths, wide enough that pedestrians and bikes didn’t have to compete for real estate. And a beach!
If I had more time, I’d have rented a bike and wandered the city. I think it would have been a lot of fun.
But I didn’t have that kind of time, so most of my whirlwind sightseeing was after dark, in a taxi, to and from The Chicago Diner.
When I walked in, there was that immediate warmth that comes from a place that’s well worn, with the edges smoothed out by years of use, casual but quirky. I sat at the counter because the tables were pretty much all full, and after my lunch that can only be called A Giant Plate of Plain Lettuce (which actually tasted a lot better than it sounds, because the lettuce was really good), I was hungry. I didn’t want to wait for a table. And I got to chat with one of the wait staff as well as people who came in to order take out.
I didn’t do much decision making when it came to that extensive menu, I just asked for recommendations and favorites. I had the sweet potato quesadilla, which had spiced black beans and spinach, but I had it without the cheese, even though they had vegan cheese. I just wasn’t really in the mood. So it wasn’t really a quesadilla so much as a sweet potato burrito! It was good. Comforting food more than exciting food, but I felt nourished and satisfied, and that was the point of the food, wasn’t it?
I had a mango margarita to go with it, and I finished the meal off with a raw cheesecake, which I have to say rocked my world. It was simply amazing. Everyone who said “the Chicago Diner is good, make sure you save room for dessert!” really gave spot on advice.
I’m going to have to go back someday and explore the vegan options in Chicago more thoroughly. I can easily see myself spending time exploring the city. Just…not in the winter.
Free vegan food! No joke.
On Sunday, there is free vegan food (from Java Green, Antonio’s Cafe, Vegetable Garden, and cake from Sticky Fingers) at the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary Open House.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
1 to 5 p.m.Our biggest event of the year – and everyone’s invited! Come enjoy a live band, delicious catered food and drink, a fabulous silent auction, clowns and face painting, speakers, and the opportunity to stroll around and visit the rescued animals.
Karen Dawn, animal activist and author of Thanking the Monkey, Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals, will be the keynote speaker. Proceeds from book sales will benefit the rescued animals.
No admission fee, but donations (of any amount) are very much appreciated. RSVP requested.
On Monday, there is free vegan food plus a talk on nutrition by Dr. Greger.
On Mon., Oct. 13, COK is hosting a free vegan dinner and nutrition lecture featuring Michael Greger, M.D. Learn practical advice on how best to feed ourselves and our families to prevent, treat, and even reverse chronic disease. Dr. Greger is a physician, author, and internationally recognized professional speaker on a number of important public health issues. He serves as the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States.
WHERE: Greenbelt Library at 11 Crescent Rd. in Greenbelt Md.
WHEN: 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
On Tuesday, it is a COK benefit day at Stickyfingers. This is not free, but since you can get free Stickyfingers at the sanctuary on Sunday, let’s not quibble. Stickyfingers is worth paying money for!
Now you can get the best vegan buns in D.C. and help COK help animals at the same time! Starting on Oct. 14, the all-vegan and award-winning Sticky Fingers Bakery is hosting a benefit day on the second Tuesday of each month—a portion of the day’s sales will be automatically donated to COK. Join us for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert!
Unfortunately I’ll be in Chicago for most of these events. I’ll be at the sanctuary for the Open House, of course. I signed up to help in the chicken area, so if you wander down there, say hello! I’ll probably be the grumpy one.
At the AR conference this year, Dallas Rising made an announcement at the end of one of the sessions about a new group being formed to work for getting vegan food in prisons. The other members of the board of directors are Peter Young and Aaron Zellhoefer. I signed up to be on the mailing list, but have yet to hear anything. Anyone else sign up? And if you did sign up, have you heard anything from them?
I finally found a website for them, SARP (Support Animal Rights Prisoners), which looks like it is very new, so perhaps they’re not yet ready to bring on the mailing list aspect, and organizing the interested folks into targeted campaigns.
Vegan food in prison is important. I can’t imagine how demoralizing it would be to be sent to prison for, say, waging a successful and non-violent and legal (if controversial) campaign against a company that tested on animals, only to get there and have a daily struggle for vegan food.
I was, of course, talking about the SHAC folks, and I know that they are having a hard time even though they (or at least some of them) have court orders requiring that they be given vegan food.
But it isn’t just activist prisoners who are impacted by the lack of vegan food in prisons. A former cell mate of Josh Harper‘s went vegan after many conversations with Josh. Jesse is someone I keep in touch with, and he amazes me. He is completely dedicated to being vegan, he researches issues, is incredibly thoughtful about all of it, and he’s doing all that in prison. He is working on getting soymilk into the commissary at the state prison he’s now at, even though he doesn’t expect it to happen while he’s there. And even though he’d have to pay for that soy milk out of his own pocket if it was there. He just wants that option.
I think it is absurd that a healthy, if basic, vegan option isn’t given for prisoners.
Some might think that these people are in prison, and thus don’t deserve options or special consideration for ethical decisions, but I can’t agree with that. People end up in prison for many reasons, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not. Regardless, not all prisoners are the hardened criminal types of people, and even if they are, the supposed mission of prisons is rehabilitation. Encouraging, or at least not blocking, prisoners in making ethical choices could only be a good thing. Part of the mission, you’d think.
If nothing else, it is the compassionate thing to do. And, as it happens, in the UK where there has been a lot of work done to get vegan meal options into the prisons, there are quite a few prisoners who go vegan because the vegan meals are better.
While it is true that most of these prisoners are likely to only be temporarily eating vegan food, it is still less animal products being consumed. I can’t fault that. And you never know what long-term changes people might make after they have a chance to step away from their animal-product habit.
Hearing that there was a group being formed in the U.S. to work towards the same goals was very welcome, especially as it seems more personal to me, from keeping in touch with Jesse. I know from him just what he has to deal with, and how much it would mean to him to see even small positive changes.
Jesse is inspiring, and in his dedication and positive spirit despite an almost oppressive lack of options he makes one truth bitingly clear – no matter what our food situations are on the “outside”, we really have nothing to complain about. We have options, and even when our options suck on planes or at conferences or for team lunches, all we have to do is put up with it for a few hours, and then find ourselves some real food. Jesse has to wait years, not hours. It puts an entirely different perspective on things. Working on a campaign to get vegan food in prisons seems like an fantastic way to participate in prisoner support.
Though for immediate support, nothing can really beat writing them letters. I do that too.
When we talk about what food we are going to eat, most of us think of those ingredients simply as things we go to the store to buy. And indeed, that’s the extent of our involvement, usually.
About a year and a half ago I read Food Not Lawns, and it began to change my outlook on food. Not to mention on lawns. Around the same time I read Diet For a Dead Planet, and though only part of the book focused on supermarkets, enough information was in there to leave me horrified.
“How can I shop in a grocery store again? Ever?” Those were my thoughts.
The reality, somewhat unfortunately, is that I am dependent on the grocery stores. Even when I’m buying as much as I can from farmers markets and growing as much of my own food as possible, I’m still having to supplement at the grocery store.
That’s just modern life, in many ways. The best we can hope for, it seems, is to grow as much as possible in our own backyards or in community gardens or in the empty lot down the street, and get as much from farmers markets or local growers as possible. Lighten our supermarket burden.
This year I started gardening. I have a small patio, and I had no idea what the soil was like under the decorative rocks, or really any idea what I was doing. I just went for it, figuring the worst that could happen is nothing would grow, which was the guaranteed outcome if I didn’t try at all.
My tomato plants are doing amazing. The cucumbers are trying to take over the patio. The peppers also have done really well. I never did get around to planting greens – I ran out of the rock-moving energy to clear a spot. The eggplant never did anything at all.
So the first year is a resounding success. I couldn’t keep up with the cucumbers, and I’ve struggled to keep up with the tomatoes. It is really amazing how much food we can grow in pretty small spaces. The thing I can’t imagine growing is grains. That’s what would keep me going to the grocery store. Oh, and spices, and cocoa and tofu and…well, a lot of things. But I can say that I haven’t bought a cucumber or a tomato in about three months, and rarely have I needed to buy a pepper.
Plus, as it turns out, gardening is a lot of fun. Watching things grow, knowing that they started from little seeds, and ended up being a foot taller than me (I’m short, it is true), producing fruit I can walk outside to get.
Starting a recipe, and seeing that it calls for a can of diced tomatoes, and being able to walk outside, and pick straight from the vine what will be used for dinner that night? Really, it is a wonderful feeling.
Next year I hope to grow even more. Someday I might put myself on the waiting list for a spot at a nearby community garden. But really, I want to put to play some of the other things that were talked about in Food Not Lawns. I want to take back, in small degrees, unused public spaces that could grow food to nourish a community. I’m not exactly sure how I’d start, but it is always in my head.
I’m going to be in Chicago very very briefly next week – flying in Monday morning eye-bleedingly early, and flying back out early Tuesday evening.
It is for an incredibly geeky conference, which I’m astonishingly excited about. Luckily my employer was interested enough to agree to pay the entrance fee, which is astonishingly expensive.
So anyway, I’ll be in Chicago briefly. I have time for one dinner for sure, and I’m debating whether to try to scrounge from the “lunch buffet with something for everyone” at the conference (I just can’t imagine that they’ve imagined a vegan will be showing up, and I haven’t asked yet if they’d have food for me), or to head out for some real vegan eats at a real vegan (or vegan-friendly) restaurant for one or both of the lunches.
The location is near metro stops. Or whatever they are called in Chicago!
The conference takes place at the Sheraton Chicago, located near the Chicago River, Lake Michigan, Milton Lee Olive Park, great shopping and better architecture.
The only Chicago vegan eatery I can remember hearing about is the Chicago Diner. Which looks to be a not bad trip via transit, based on my sketchy research.
Anyone know of other places that they’d recommend making the effort to go to?
I never used to have to be so prepared in advance with regards to food. I had a lot of bad habits, and that included rarely having a real lunch at work. Let alone breakfast. Now that I’m riding my bike to and from work, I can’t afford to do that. I need to eat something when I first get to work, and I need to eat lunch. And then I need to eat dinner too.
It is a lot of food. Am I the only person to get tired of thinking about food? I’m sure I’m not. I might just be the only person who decided to participate in VeganMoFo who gets tired of thinking about food though!
The post-ride meal has been a challenge for me – I was never much of a breakfast eater, so I don’t have anything to fall back on.
Sometimes I eat Supercharge Me! cookies, sometimes I eat oatmeal, I had a lovely week with a nice tofu scramble too. This post over at Zoey’s Kitchen got me thinking about hot breakfast cereals. Seemed like a great way to get in some different grains as well as whatever else I might throw into the mix. I remembered a friend talking about using her slow cooker for this purpose, and since I have a slow cooker that I’ve hardly used, I decided to give it a try.
So I cracked open “Fresh from the vegetarian slow cooker” and threw the ingredients into the slow cooker on Saturday night.
1 cup millet
3 cups apple juice
1 cup water
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 fresh apple, cut up (the recipe said pear, but I had an apple, and no pears)
1 cup chopped dried fruit (I used pineapple, unsweetened)
1/2 tsp salt
Cooked it on low for 7 or 7.5 hrs. It was supposed to be 6 hours, but hey, I was sleeping! (I’m going to pick up a timer at the hardware store this weekend.) It was a little overcooked, but not bad. The millet was a bit of a hard clump on the bottom, which I’ve been told by the slow-cooking-breakfast-cereal friend is a common occurrence with millet in the slow cooker, but luckily I was able to stir everything up, and it turned out really well in the end.
It looks like a mushy anonymous concoction, but it tastes *really* good. It was really satisfying after my ride this morning. Sweet and rich tasting, and it kept me going until lunch.
There are other similar recipes in that cookbook that I plan on trying in the next few weeks. I’m actually excited about these morning mushes! Go figure!
I also realized that Get It Ripe has quite a few similar grain-and-fruit based morning hot cereal meals, stovetop based. I’m going to have to give those a try as well, in addition to the recipe on Zoey’s blog. I might have to start eating breakfast for dinner!
morning millet melange
All proceeds will be donated to the sanctuary.
Coupons: http://www.lulu.com/current_specials?cid=eng_advent_specials_112210
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