Vegan Miscellanies

Atheist Cartoon Illustrating Western Religion's Contribution to Animal Rights/Welfare

I stumbled across this cartoon illustrating Christianity's (and to an extent, Judaism's) silence, via their god's supposed word, on one ethical issue humanity is increasingly beginning to grapple with -- the treatment of non-human animals.

This cartoon obviously refers to the contribution of Western religions to the issue of 'the ethical treatment of animals' and is slightly inaccurate even there, exaggerating a little (the bible does ask that we not hurt animals for fun), and does not recognise the doctrine of ahimsa (non-harm, or non-violence) propounded in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain scriptures. Ahimsa, as laid out in those traditions, does not pertain only to human relationships, but also to our relationship to all other beings. 

There are, of course, many ethical issues -- regard and treatment of women, treatment of children, slavery, labour law, sexuality, aggression, genocide, ethnocide, among others -- we, as evolving, modern humans have thought about, studied, discussed, debated and, recognising that certain universal rights exist and that these rights must be protected, have enshrined in law. We have accomplished most of this in spite of religion, with religion(s) being dragged, kicking and screaming into the modern age, rather than because of or through religion. And we have much work left to do.

Religion is perhaps the biggest obstacle, the biggest threat, to continued human progress. Indeed, religion poses a serious threat to human survival itself. While there are many well-meaning religious moderates with whom we can work, as long as religion is granted special privileges in our society we are driving with the parking brakes on. Imagine how much progress we could make without this baggage! We'd certainly stumble and make mistakes, but we'd have a much better chance of recognising our mistakes and correcting them.

Simple Things: Vegan Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Quick Bread

Two nights in a row we made vegan cinnamon quick bread, based on Derek Markham's recipe on Natural Papa. It is so quick and so good! Of course I made a few changes.

Since we don't like raisins in baked goods, eating them only raw, we used dark chocolate chips in place of raisins. Not having whole wheat flour on hand, and thinking rye, because of its distinctive taste, wouldn't work, we used unbleached white flour. And not having regular quick oats -- we always eat steel cut Irish oatmeal -- but having accidentally purchased flaked 5 grain hot cereal (oats, wheat, rye, barley and triticale), we used that instead. 

Normally if one makes at least 3 changes to a recipe, one can call it one's own, right? Whatever the case, I wanted to give credit to Derek for this fine recipe. I wouldn't have made my modified version of this delicious bread had I not stumbled across his recipe.

Being a chocolate addict, the chocolate chips are excellent in there, though they likely make it a sweeter bread than Derek's version. And I do think the five grain cereal compensates for using unbleached white flour in place of whole wheat.

Yummy enough to bake two days in a row. The first day my partner made it and the next day I did. Not eating the whole thing in one day so some would be left to take to school and work was a challenge though.

Weird Shit: What We Vegans Always Eat

The last few days we've cooked and eaten some great vegan food at home. Last night, for instance, Jihan had made a wonderful raw beet salad while I made veganised Mexican white sauce with whole grain linguine.

Here's the Mexican white sauce, traditionally served drizzled over fish tacos, chiles rellenos, chicken enchiladas, veggies, and green fried tomatoes or whenever you want a lighter sauce instead of a red sauce. I'll provide details another time.

Over the whole grain linguine...

 

And the lovely raw beet salad with which we started our meal:

 

It's what happened when I brought this brilliantly colourful raw salad to work that this post is ultimately about.

I heated up my pasta with Mexican white sauce, left over from last night's dinner, and went to have my lunch at the picnic table outside the office. Before getting to the pasta, I opened my little container of the raw beet salad and began eating it. One of the three coworkers sitting there with me, one who not infrequently joins me there, asked whether I had pickled beets there. No, I answered, raw beet salad. Saying she'd never had raw beets, I offered her some, which she politely declined.

Another coworker, whose food-related xenophopia has inspired a previous post on this site and with whom I do not normally have my lunch, spat out this gem: "He always eats weird shit." It is, quite frankly, the rudest comment I've had to date on my food. After the initial shock wore off, and after having thought of a few choice replies, I focused back on the utter deliciousness of my food instead of wasting my time on her.

Here's an interesting little aside. Apparently conservatives are more easily grossed out in general, and when confronted with food that doesn't fit into the narrow confines of their diet (I was going to say chosen, but most such people don't chose a diet but rather stick mainly to what they've always eaten, that is, what they grew up with) they are grossed out.

On Flour and Homemade Bread

Some time ago, listening to CBC Radio One's Here and Now, I heard food columnist Sarah Elton (the Locavore) talk about a Toronto chef using Red Fife flour for his baking. Red Fife is considered the grandfather of Canadian wheat and is a heritage wheat. It was sent, in 1842, to a Mr. David Fife in Peterborough, Ontario by a friend who got it from a ship in the Glasgow port originating from Danzig (see Sharon Rempel's Grassroot Solutions for more information on Red Fife and other Canadian heritage wheats).

Apparently bread made of Red Fife flour has a unique appearance, aroma and taste. Here's how it is described on the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity site:

Artisan bread made from Red Fife Wheat has a hay yellow crumb, with an intense scent of herbs and vegetables colored with a light acidity. The nose has notes of anise and fennel, and in the mouth the bread is unexpectedly rich with a slightly herby and spicy flavor.

Yum! The language in this description is reminiscent of that used by wine and, more recently, coffee and tea sommeliers. Could there be such a thing as a bread sommelier? Why the heck not? A bread sommelier would be a bread steward who possesses expert knowledge about fine breads and is responsible for serving them. A bread sommelier, carrying the wine, tea and coffee analogy further, should possess detailed knowledge of the breads in their stock, including: grains used, regions where the grains were grown, farms where the grains were grown, where and how the grains were milled, and even 'terroir' (that combination of soil type and microclimate that gives a grain and, by extension, a bread its character).

Anyway, getting back on track here, Jihan recently learned, from my mom, how to make her own homemade bread. I'm talking from scratch, by hand. No throwing of ingredients into a bread machine. My mom was quite well known, back in the small Mexican village in which we lived when I was a child, for her homemade Mennonite bread. It's not so much the ingredients as the technique that distinguishes her bread.

Now that Jihan has a foundation of homemade bread-making, a skill I hope to pick up from her very soon, we intend to build on that and use better flours, from better grains, to make even better, more wholesome, breads. From there we can expand to baking different types of healthy, organic, wholegrain vegan breads.

Because we are also becoming increasingly interested in both the locavore and slow food movements, as both contribute not only to individual health, but also to the health of communities and the environment, we want to, as much as economically feasible, use more local ingredients to make our own bread the slow way. To this end, we purchased some Red Fife flour at our local Bulk Barn today. Since it is somewhat expensive, I think we will generally have to mix it into standard unbleached flour rather making bread exclusively of it, though we do intend to make at least one batch purely with the Red Fife flour.

While at the Bulk Barn today, having just recently found out that most standard flours contain a variety of additives, I did some ingredient checking on at least two fairly standard commercial flours. Here are the ingredients in Five Roses All Purpose Flour: wheat flour, niacin, thiamine, mononitrate, riboflavin, reduced iron, folic acid, benzoyl peroxide, ascorbic acid, amylase. And in Cake & Pastry Flour: wheat flour, chlorine, benzol peroxide, niacine, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid. Some of these ingredients are vitamins, but others are so-called conditioners, ingredients designed to produce a consistent dough that rises well.

Both sets of ingredients, the vitamin additives and the conditioners, disturb me. If we use whole foods with as many of their natural nutrients left intact, and we eat a variety of plant-based whole foods, there should be no need to add artificially isolated nutrients. As T. Colin Campbell emphasises in his seminal book, The China Study, the human body has evolved along with the rest of nature and therefore can best absorb nutrients as they are found in nature. Isolating nutrients to add back into all manner of foods, many of which did not naturally contain the nutrients added, nor in the same form, combination or ratio, is simply not the same as eating a variety of whole foods. Nor is ingesting isolated nutrients in the form of nutritional supplements in capsule, pill or powdered form the same. The body does not process nutrients in isolation the same as in whole foods.

The addition of conditioners disturbs me because, first of all, they don't belong in the natural product and may actually be unhealthy. Secondly, it reflects our inability or unwillingness to spend the time to learn a craft--we seek ease and instant gratification. Thirdly, it reflects an unwillingness to accept uniquenes, difference and diversity--we want everything to be familiar, uniform, homogeneous. How tedious and how boring! And how sad if you reflect on how these traits factor into other aspects of our lives.

Getting back to the organic Red Fife flour, we'll be sure to share with you our experiences with this heritage grain flour. I very much look forward to it.

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Baby Seal Clubbing Prank

I'm not usually a fan of direct action a la Greenpeace, PETA, inter alia, but I stumbled upon an article about a prank carried out by a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew that I actually don't mind at all. Why? First, seal clubbing is such a despicable, entirely unnecessary and unjustifiable practice, on par at least with cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bear-baiting and Spanish bull-fighting, yet is allowed to legally continue in Canada. I don't buy, nor will I indulge here, the arguments that it is an important cultural tradition and an important industry. Second, no one is being hurt here, except perhaps these bastards' pride.

Someone's got to keep bringing attention to this and other issues 'til enough public pressure is brought to bear on the government to ban the cruel practice. This prank is one way of bringing attention to the issue while having a little fun at the expense of the perpetrators. Check it out here.

Homemade Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce and Carribbean Chickpea Curry

Yesterday evening, having bought a package of Scotch Bonnet peppers the day before, I decided to make my own Scotch Bonnet hot sauce.

 

Isn't that colour gorgeous? And it's in one of my beautiful mason jars too boot.

Here's how I made it:

• 130g Scotch Bonnet peppers, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1/2 cantaloupe, sliced and diced (papaya is more traditionally used)
• 3/4 cup rice vinegar
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• ~ tsp salt

1. Carefully, wearing gloves, wash peppers, then remove stems and seeds. Dice. Be very careful how you do all this as you do not want to get any of the juice on your skin or in your face and eyes. These are hot! According to my research, the Scotch Bonnet pepper is the hottest pepper known, with the possible exception of another Caribbean pepper called Piment Ma Jacques.
2. Wash and dice carrots.
3. Slice and dice cantaloupe.
4. Add a handful of the diced peppers, carrot and cantaloupe into a blender with part of the vinegar and olive oil. Blend well, then add a bit at a time 'til it gets almost too thick. Then add more vinegar and olive oil. Continue this process 'til everything is in.
5. Add salt.
6. Taste test (be very careful how much you try, as it is very hot).
7. If using fresh, that is, uncooked, put into glass jars and refrigerate immediately.

I am accustomed to hot foods, but I do like to enjoy the taste of a hot sauce as well, so something like Dave's Total Insanity, made from capsaicin extract rather than from peppers, doesn't do it for me. My hot sauce has a nice, fruity taste, yet is still rather hot. Next time I might make it a little hotter still. Since I had no idea how hot these peppers would really be, I arbitrarily decided on an amount of carrot and fruit to add.

I enjoyed my fresh hot sauce with a Chickpea Curry with Caribbean Spices adapted from Vaishali's recipe of the same name.

 

Since I didn't have potatoes on hand, my version is without them. It being rather late in the evening by the time I got to making the curry, I also took some shortcuts. Rather than using all whole seeds and spices to roast and then grind, I used coriander, cumin and mustard in powdered form and added whole peppercorns and cloves. Aside from being less soupy and without the lovely garnish of fresh onion and tomatoes, these are the main differences. If you have time, please make Vaishali's version. If a little short on time, you may want to, as I did, use powdered spices.

I served the curry over toasted whole grain flax bread with margarine, then added some of my fresh hot sauce over top. Delicious!

Death in my Family

A week ago today I watched my father die of colon cancer. He was given about 4 months to live at the time of diagnosis, when the disease was already advanced and had spread to surrounding organs, but he held on for just over 2 years. He was about 3 weeks shy of his 68th birthday.

Needless to say, this past week has not been easy, nor were the weeks leading up to his death as it was clear he was quickly losing the battle. While it is all over now, it is frustrating to know that he could have had a much better chance of fighting it had he switched to a plant-based whole foods diet. But he would not. He never ate much other than meat, and his faith told him god had created animals for our consumption. How then could they be bad for your health?

I read The China Study just a few months ago and knew the role animal protein plays in feeding cancers, but he was in no state to receive this information. He continued to eat mainly meat even after his diagnosis. It was frustrating to watch as I had to stand helplessly by to watch him slip away. He read some information about natural health near the end, but mainly the type encouraging the supplementation of one's diet with special vitamins and formulae. And neither doctors nor nurses, being ill trained in matters of nutrition and working in a system that ultimately profits from people's illnesses, did anything to dissuade him from his meat-centered diet. In fact, his nurse recommended that he eat some of his favourite meat-based soups.

Given that the disease is hereditary as well, his mother having died of it before him, I am currently undergoing colon cancer screening myself. I might as well work towards early detection. But I know that my veganism at least means that I have a much better chance of preventing and, should I get it, fighting it.

It is not easy, still, losing a parent.

Stuffed Small Sugar Pumpkin

We doted on this little guy all summer. He was an only child :-). Since the pumpkin was planted late spring and the pumpkin was not ready to harvest until after thanksgiving, we enjoyed it today, halfway between thanksgiving and halloween. We don't really celebrate thanksgiving anyway--we are thankful every day for our food. And we don't really celebrate halloween either, but good food is always an option, and 'tis the season for pumpkins.

Here's our little sugar pumpkin's last moment on the vine:


In my hand to show size:


And now to the meal...

Here's what I used:

• 1 small sugar pumpkin
• 2 or 3 tbsp water
• smidgen extra virgin olive oil
  

Stuffing:

• 1 cup brown basmati rice, cooked
  
• 1 cup soy chunks, soaked in 2 cups hot water and 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 3 slices whole grain bread cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  
• 1 cup soymilk (preferably unsweetened)
• 1 large Honeycrisp apple (nice combination of sweet and tart), diced
  
• 1/2 cup raw cashews, halved or crushed
• 1 large onion, diced
  
• 1 large clove elephant garlic, diced
  
• 1 rounded tsp ground sage
• 1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
  
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1 sprig fresh oregano, finely chopped
  
• 3 tbsp whole chia seeds
• 3-4 tbsp naturally brewed soy sauce
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• salt to taste

Preparation:

1. Cook brown basmati rice.
2. Soak soy chunks for about 30 min., then drain.
3. Put bread cubes into wok or heavy pan, drizzle olive oil over and, stirring frequently, fry until cubes are lightly toasted all around.
4. Mix chia seeds and soy milk and stir well (chia seeds will absorb up to 13 times their own weight in liquid). After about 15 minutes, stir again.
5. Clean pumpkin and cut around stem to create a lid (make sure to cut at an angle so lid won't fall into pumpkin as it bakes), then scoop out the seeds.
    
6. Put 2-3 tbsp water into scooped pumpkin, dab or spray a smidgen of olive oil around edges of hole and lid and close. Place in oven preheated at 350F and bake for about 30 minutes or until fork will pierce outer skin without too much effort.
7. While pumpkin is baking, prepare the stuffing. Saute onion, garlic and apple in a little olive oil until onion and apple become translucent.
8. Add bread cubes, soy chunks, cashews, fresh oregano, spices and 3-4 tbsp soy sauce. Mix well and continue sauteeing on medium heat for about 15 min.
9. Add salt to taste and the stuffing is done.
   
10. Carefully remove the baked pumpkin from the oven, open the lid and fill with stuffing until about 3/4 full, then pour soymilk/chia mixture in as well.
11. Close lid again and return to oven for another 30 minutes, then place pumpkin on the middle of the table and carefully (a puff of steam will emerge) open the lid.
      
12. Scoop stuffing onto individual plates, then scrape out the pumpkin flesh (be careful not to scrape right through the outer skin).
     

Serves two without an appetizer or side dish, or up to four with. Enjoy!

A Nice List of Nutrients to Keep Handy

 

It's absurd how often people ask that question of vegetarians and, even more so, of vegans. It's especially absurd in light of the information available to us, via the book I'm currently reading--The China Study--which makes abundantly clear that animal protein, especially the amount generally consumed in North America, is simply not good for us. Indeed, it puts us at extreme risk.

Anyway, this is a neat list to keep handy for ourselves. I also like the counter-question, "Where do you get your vitamins and minerals?" No kidding! I wish I could have gotten my dad, now undergoing one last bout of chemotherapy, to read The China Study and/or switch, at the very least, to a mostly plant-based diet. He still won't change his diet--mostly meat and few vegetables and fruits. Supplements, no matter how good, taken with an unhealthy diet simply can't do much good. Makes me sad :(