Minnesota Parent Article

Greetings to anyone coming here after reading the story in Minnesota Parent about raising vegan kids and the vegan parenting group, VegKins! Welcome to my sporadically updated blog. Feel free to have a look around. A few of my favorite posts are here:

Stats: a post about the health of my children.

Cat on the Playground: on Anna's reaction to kids chasing a cat on the playground.

Flabbergasted: about Anna's reaction upon hearing that a lot of people care about dogs and cats, but not other animals.

My Daughter the Monkey Eater: on pretending to eat animals.

We're All Made of Meat: on explaining what "meat" is to Anna.

Happy Feet: a review of the movie.

This is Not a Post About Milo & Otis: on Anna trying to understand others who aren't vegan.

The Life I Did Save: about a squirrel I brought into a rehabilitation center.

Anna's First Correction of "It"

And just for the hell of it, here's Anna singing a medley of tunes from Annie at a talent show. And here's Liam doing the same ... but not at a talent show. 

Please feel free to post a comment here or send me an email if you have any questions at all about being vegan or transitioning to being vegan. I'm more than willing to answer any and all questions you have. Even the stupid ones (kidding!). 

Now that I think of it, I should tell you that if you think you want to go vegan, you should check out Vegan University, which helps people transition to being vegan. We do mentorship (I'm a mentor), vegan shopping tours and workshops. And we're on Facebook, if you want to like us so you can get tips, tricks and reasons to be vegan dumped straight into your news feed. 

Links and a Deleted Scene

Hello! How are you?

Us? Oh, we're fine. Just living life. Anna's doing pretty darn good in Kindergarten. No problems to report on the vegan front.

Liam's coming along. He just turned three, still plays guitar a lot and loves drawing and playing with toys.

I should really post some videos and photos. But today I'm going to just throw up a few links.

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Here, read this piece about raising kids vegan over at Our Hen House.

That's a guest post written by Robyn Moore. Robyn is the author of the blog, Raising Veg Kids.

And over on Raising Veg Kids, my friend Celeste has written a guest post about our VegKins group: The Power of Getting Together With Other Vegetarian/Vegan Families.

"Frankly I can't tell you how much it means to our kids to interact with vegan peers. The supportive nature of the group has been amazing. We share advice on handling difficult situations, school activities, as well as recommend books and movies to each other."

I've been meaning to write about VegKins for a few years now. But Celeste sums it up nicely in this piece, so just go read that!

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Finally, I'm going to post something I cut from the essay on vegan parenting that I wrote for an animal rights anthology due out later this year. I cut quite a bit of passages just because they hindered the flow of the essay, not because I didn't like the ideas expressed within them. So I saved them in a different document because I have a hard time throwing away ideas. I'm calling them deleted scenes. Here's one:

Zoo apologists contend that zoos are instrumental in teaching our children about animals from around the globe. This contention comes into serious question in light of books referring to those animals as “zoo animals,” and when books intending to teach our young about animals tell them what those animals eat in a zoo instead of in their natural habitat.

I'll add that the problem, linguistically, is that those captive animals aren't referred to as "animals in a zoo," but are instead viewed as "zoo animals." As a result, books say things like, "Pandas come from China and Tibet," as opposed to, "Pandas live in China and Tibet."

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Well that's it for now. I'll occasionally put up more deletes scenes in between now and when the book is published. And once it's published I'll probably pull some paragraphs out of my essay to give you more of an idea of what I wrote about. And don't worry, I will totally let you know how you can get your hands on a copy of the book once it's released.

MoFo 2011

Wow. I've been pretty much nonexistent in the blogging world as of late. But I have a good excuse! I've been writing an essay that will appear in an animal rights anthology, due out next summer. That's all I'll say about it for now, but you can be absolutely certain that you'll hear much more about it in the near future.

Anyway, I thought I'd post today about Vegan MoFo (that's Vegan Month of Food, in case you didn't know). I love Vegan MoFo. This year there are 658 blogs participating, all planning to blog about vegan food five days a week for a whole month. If they were all successful, that would be 69,090 blog posts about vegan food in a single month (not counting the vegan blogs not participating in MoFo).

How fucking cool is that?

My friend Celeste is doing the MoFo this year. She just posted a recipe for a veganized juicy lucy. Do you know what that is? It's a burger with cheese inside of it. I don't remember if I ever had one of these in my pre-vegan days, but damn, I want a vegan one. In my belly. Like right now.

Celeste is also doing a bunch of giveaways this month, so be sure to check out her blog. She currently has two giveaways going:

1. $25 gift certificate to Vegan Essentials. (giveaway ends Oct. 8th)

2. 9 Eli's Earth Bars (candy bars) and the cookbook, Vegan Lunch. (two winners, ends Oct. 12th)

It seems like this year is the MoFo Year of the Giveaway. Or maybe it's always been that way and I'm just paying more attention this year.

Anyway, Vegan Heartland is doing a giveaway too. Enter over there to win the cookbook, Vegan Slow Cooker. (And yes, me linking to that blog earns me an extra entry into the contest. I'm shameless and I don't care.)

One more giveaway: Chicago Soy Dairy is giving away a year's supply of Dandies Marshmallows (12 bags ... though I don't know in what crazy marshmallow-deprived universe a mere 12 bags equals a year's supply).

So yeah, get your blog-reading butt over to those blogs and enter.

And then peruse the 658 blogs participating in Vegan MoFo by following this link that I will title awesomeness: AWESOMENESS.

Anna's on Vegansaurus

Vegansaurus is a blog, for those of you who don't know, about vegan dinosaurs. Except actually it's just about vegan stuff.

Anyway, they're doing a series called Happy Veggie Kids and Anna is featured today.

Check it out.

And read all of the Happy Veggie Kids posts here.

And to those of you coming over from Vegansaurus, hi! Welcome to my sort-of weekly updated blog. Feel free to have a look around. A few of my favorite posts here are:

My Daughter the Monkey Eater (on pretending to eat animals)

We're All Made of Meat (on explaining what meat is to Anna)

Happy Feet (a review of the movie)

This is Not a Post About Milo & Otis (on Anna trying to understand others who aren't vegan)

The Life I Did Save (about a squirrel I brought into a rehabilitation center)

Anna's First Correction of "It"

Activism of the Waffle and Educational Kind

The Global Vegan Waffle Party is nearly upon us. The Animal Rights Coalition is putting it on again this year, and if it's anything like it was last year, it'll be awesome.

The event will take place from 10-12 at Fuller Park on 48th St. and Grand Ave. (indoors at the little rec center there) in Minneapolis. The Facebook invite for the par-tay is here.

But maybe you don't live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Check out the Global Vegan Waffle Party page here to see a list of parties across the world.

And check out this collage they have on their site:

Anna's there in the far upper right corner. She is now famous.

I'm of the mind that having community pot-lucks and parties like this are a great way to open people up to delicious food that doesn't involve the oppression of other animals. It's a legitimate form of activism.

Events like this also foster community within the animal rights movement, which I think is important. Almost all of us want to belong to a community of some sort. The reason for that (at least in this instance) is not to insulate ourselves from the outside world, but instead to get our bearings, get refreshed, share ideas and commune with those who have, in their own time and way, come to view the world as we have. It's not essential, but it's damn close.

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Speaking of the Animal Rights Coalition, I've been volunteering for them for a while now and I keep meaning to write about how I came to do that, but never get around with it. I won't it in this post, either. But soon...

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After the waffle party, I'm co-facilitating a workshop called Help! I'm going vegan! with Dallas Rising, ARC's program director. We've done this once before and it went really well.

So now we're doing it again as part of ARC's Vegan University program, which includes these workshops, grocery tours and ongoing mentorship for new vegans and people who are transitioning to veganism.

Cool logo, huh? 'Like' the Vegan University page here if you've been wanting to find the vegan you.

The workshop will be on May 28th from 1-3 at Ethique Nouveau, ARC's store where all proceeds from sales go directly into their animal advocacy programs.

Anyway, this is the type of volunteering that I simply adore: Helping people go vegan. If I could do nothing but this all day (when I'm not taking care of my kids and cooking, going out with my wife, etc.) I totally would.

Some Light Earth Day Reading

There are only a couple hours of Earth Day left in my time zone. I meant to post this earlier, but oh well.

And not all of it's light reading. I'll start off with the lightest and get heavier from there.

First, there's 10 Kid-Friendly Earth Day Tips from Ruby Roth, author of That's Why We Don't Eat Animals.

Then there's, Want to Go Green? Eat Less Meat, which focuses on Gene Baur and his organization, Farm Sanctuary, an organization that I have my qualms with. I love Farm Sanctuary's sanctuary program, but have my problems with their focus on improving animal welfare instead of abolishing animal use. I met Gene a few years ago and he's a nice guy. We had a good discussion about my qualms and, while I didn't leave convinced that welfarism is a valid way to advocate for animal rights, I came to realize that his heart is, of course, in the right place. We don't necessarily differ in regard to our goal, but in the way in which we advocate for that goal.

Anyway, I liked most of what he had to say in this article.

"Switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, carpooling, recycling — these are all great ways we can lessen our carbon footprint," says Baur, "but when compared with the difference you can make simply by eliminating or reducing meat and animal products from your diet, other aspects of green living pale by comparison."

Next, there's This Earth Day, Go Vegan from The Guardian which, unfortunately, repeatedly links to PETA. But other than that it's pretty good. Some highlights:

In Livestock and Climate Change, the Worldwatch Institute estimates that raising animals for food actually accounts for 51% of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
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A totally vegetarian diet can be produced with only 1,100 litres of water per day, while producing a diet that includes meat requires more than 15,000 litres of water per day.
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Our meat-based diet is partly to blame for world hunger, because land, water and other resources that could be used to grow food for human beings are used to grow crops for farmed animals instead. It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just one pound of meat.

And here's Veganism: Morality, Health, and the Environment, a post from Gary Francione that illustrates how we can't really separate our caring for the environment and our caring for animals, including ourselves.

And finally, Livestock and Climate Change by the Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization that, "focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society."

Some of you may remember the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations paper called Livestock's Long Shadow. It was a page turner, let me tell you. Well, what the Worldwatch Institute did was take the FAO's paper, apply reality to it, and come up with different numbers.

Livestock are already well-known to contribute to GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. Livestock’s Long Shadow, the widely-cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), estimates that 7,516 million metric tons per year of CO2 equivalents (CO2e), or 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions, are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs, and poultry. That amount would easily qualify livestock for a hard look indeed in the search for ways to address climate change. But our analysis shows that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

And they back that up with a lot of numbers. Be warned. There are a lot of numbers. But it's worth the read, at least up until page 15. After page 15 they get into marketing stuff and focus too heavily on soy as the supposed magic bean to save the world. Don't get me wrong, I like soy. And I guess from a "way to convince people to stop killing the earth" standpoint, soy is pretty versatile. What with the analogs and all.

At any rate, I personally don't think that there's some sort of line you have to draw in the dietary sand when it comes to being an environmentalist. These things are all graded on scale, and a drastic reduction in your animal and animal product consumption would, without a doubt, translate into a drastic reduction in your carbon and water footprint. So, for the environment, I would say that we should all drastically reduce our animal and animal product consumption, preferably to nill.

For the the non-human animals we eat and wear, on the other hand, I'd have to say that we should go vegan.

Other People's Posts (and my thoughts on them)

Hey there. I read a lot of blogs. A lot of them, I'll share via Google Reader, but every so often I'll want to blog about them.

First off, my friend Celeste wrote a great post about her and her husband's attempt at redefining the meaning of "milk" with less than desirable consequences.

The first paragraph of the post:

Since our eldest was young we made a conscious decision to "take back" the word milk. After contemplating it, we thought it would be good to refute the common acceptance of cow's milk taking the all-encompassing title of "milk". While this seemed like a good idea, it turned out to be unhelpful for our son.

Now go read the rest of it and then come back here.

This is something I think most vegan parents have to deal with at some point (or many points). I know that we try our hardest to give foods names with modifiers in front of them. Milk is "soy milk", "chicken" burgers are "veggie patties", and cheese is "soy cheese". Anna's pretty good about asking people if something's vegan, and if they don't know what that means then she'll clarify, since she knows (as much as a 3 1/2 year old can know) what "vegan" means.

Last night at Early Childhood Family Education she asked her teacher if the freeze-dried peas they were having for snack had cow's milk in them.

And by the way, Anna does not hesitate or feel awkward in asking questions like this. It's all matter of fact with her. The teachers tell us that she never complains about not having the food other kids eat. There was even one time when someone brought cupcakes for their kid because it was their birthday and she didn't care about not eating them because she knew they weren't vegan. Her vegan upbringing is as mundane and ordinary as anything else in her life.

That may change as she gets older, of course. But it's not going to change because of Anna or Jen or me. It's going to change because of non-vegan kids and adults making her feel embarrassed and awkward and ashamed for asking if something is vegan. Do I worry about this? Sure I do. But I'm sure I don't worry about it any more than same-sex parents worry about their kid or interracial parents worry about their kid or... You get the point.

Our job as parents isn't to follow the status quo at all costs in order to ensure that our child has an upbringing free of teasing and being ostracized. Our job is to raise our children the best way we know how and to grow them into confident adults who do what they believe to be right regardless of how others may view them.

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There's a new vegan parenting blog out there called Spawn Better. The blog, run by Jason Douchette of the Better Network, utilizes the experiences and opinions of a Council of Vegan Parents, which now has over 30 members (including yours truly).

Spawn Better's recent post titled Vegan children, meaty world: dealing with overlap, is a good sampling of what the blog has to offer.

Note: Spawn Better might seem boring or possibly even annoying to non-vegans. So, warning to non-vegans, this blog really isn't for you. Unless, of course, you're considering going vegan (come on, you know you've thought about it). If you want a window into the types of things vegan parents talk about amongst themselves, then go have a read.

One more post from Spawn Better. Veganizing Children's Songs features a video of Anna at the end. She's a star now.

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Finally, the post Clarifying the Meaning of a Right by Gray Francione at Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach is definately worth a read. If you're perplexed and unsure of what we're talking about when we vegans argue for animal rights, this post spells it out as clearly as I think is possible.

Happy reading.

Random Photos

So I have photos. And I want to post them. So here you go.

We made cinnamon buns last weekend. We used this recipe at Vegan Yum Yum. We didn't use a big enough dish and didn't bake them long enough so the inside rolls were kind of gooey and not fully cooked (I think it's mostly because they didn't have enough room to expand, but then agian I'm sort of a bread novice), but the outsides pieces were pretty damn good. Definitely going to try it again with a bigger pan (or 2).

Here they are basking in the yellow glow of our stove light.






Liam's first birthday was in January. At first, we were going to have it at our house, but enough people RSVPd yes that we decided to move the party to a hotel near our house. All we had to do was rent a room for the night and they let us use the pool area the next day. There you go. A cheap pool-party birthday.


Liam wasn't actually too into the cake. He ate some, but like any food, he tired of it after a few bites and wanted something else (this is a blessing in disguise because it means he loves eating new foods).


Sledding in the back yard.


And I made a snow angel.


This was Anna's idea. I thought it looked cool.


She still loves her stuffed friends. George is laying on Rocky (the dog) who is laying on Buddy (the bear).


Anna's frosty window in the morning.




Jen and Liam.








Anna likes to help in the kitchen.


And I suppose the secret is out now. That's right. I'm pregnant.

OK. Not really. Seriously though, my gut is not usually that pronounced. But it is what it is. What can I say? I like food, beer and I don't regularly exercise. Sue me.

Actually, I sort of wear my weight with pride. I haven't lost a single pound since choosing veganism over seven years ago. That's not to say that you can't lose weight by going vegan, but ... well, look at me. I'm not exactly wasting away over here.

I'm still watching Ella on Friday's, much to my kids' delight. Liam has taken quite a shine to her. He even wants to hug her now when she comes over. It's awwwwwdorable.

Veggie Nugget #32

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

-Bertrand Russell

I came across this quote over at Dan Cudahy's excellent blog Unpopular Vegan Essays, in his post On Chance, Choice, and Character.

And, by the way, I have shared that post via Google Reader.

Just in case you haven't noticed, there's a box in the upper right of this blog which contains items I've recently shared. These are other peoples' blog posts that I think are great. Not whole blogs, just individual posts.

Feel free to take a look every once in a while. You can also view my Shared Items page here, and, if you're feeling so bold, subscribe to the feed in your reader.

One more thought: I firmly believe the above quote should be applied across the board. I've been vegan long enough that it's something I take for granted now. It helps to occasionally question the foundations upon which my veganism rests. It's a good exercise. One that I think we should apply to every aspect of our lives.

This doesn't have to mean constant questioning of ourselves, of course. I think that's why Russell chose to include "now and then" in his statement. Constant self-questioning would drive anyone crazy. Even philosophers.

One Planet - Animals and Us

The BBC program One Planet recently aired a two-part series called Animals and Us by Victor Schonfeld.

Schonfeld produced The Animals Film twenty-eight years ago.



I've never seen The Animals Film, but it looks like it was one of the first of its kind. It seems to me that it was Earthlings before Earthlings was Meet Your Meat.

So now Schonfeld has produced a two-part radio series, "to give a very personal view on what, if anything, has changed since then."

Listen here:
Part 1
Part 2

Gary Francione (who is interviewed in each broadcast), Roger Yates and Elizabeth Collins did post-show commentaries which can be listened to here (review of part 1) and here (review of part 2). I have to admit I haven't listened through both commentaries yet, but I know Gary's podcasts (not to mention his guests) are always insightful and thought-provoking, so I feel confident in linking to them here.

I felt that Animals and Us was well done. Shonfeld, largely by virtue of interviewing Francione, gave quite a bit of air-time to criticism of the use of animals (as opposed to just focusing on the treatment).

Schonfeld is clearly taking an activist stance in these broadcasts, which I find refreshing. He states early on in each broadcast, "Be warned. This is not balanced dispassionate journalism. I'm opposed to animal suffering for human needs and pleasures, as are most of the people we'll be hearing from."

Given his activist stance, my main qualm was that there was too much of a focus on lab animals in the second broadcast (pretty much the whole thing). The overwhelming majority of animal exploitation occurs within animal agriculture. That's not to say that we shouldn't also care and talk about vivisection, fur, circuses and zoos. But when all you have is two 28 minute broadcasts I think the most productive angle to take, from an efficient activist point of view, is to focus on the use of animals for food.

Not a huge qualm, but a qualm nonetheless.

Did you listen to Animals and Us? Have you seen The Animals Film?

If so, what did you think?

Halloween

Halloween seems like a month ago already. But it was just last Saturday. Weird.

Liam didn't have a costume this year. Just this "My 1st Halloween" shirt and another shirt with an alien on it that says "Be Green."


For the third year in a row, Anna was Yoda.

Here she is two years ago:


One year ago:


And this year:


She hasn't seen any of the movies and has no idea what the force is. I tried to briefly explain it, but didn't want to say too much because a) I didn't want to freak her out, and b) it's rooted in spirituality and religion and I don't feel like it's my place to instill those in her (seeing as how I have neither). And yes, I know, it's pure fiction. But I'm not sure she'd understand that at this point.


This year was Anna's first year of trick or treating. Obviously, a good deal of the candy given out at Halloween isn't vegan. That's a problem for us. But we want Anna to have the experience of going house to house in her neighborhood, saying trick-or-treat, taking whatever is given to her and saying thank you.

We really want Anna to grow up partaking in the same (or, at least similar) cultural experiences as her peers. We don't want to deprive her of trick or treating any more than we would want to deprive her of partaking in a Thanksgiving feast. On the face of it, it may seem like veganism would preclude us from these experiences or make them super difficult. But in reality, it's easy. It just takes a little bit of extra thought. Most decisions in parenting do.

So we decided that Anna would go trick or treating and she would then trade the non-vegan items for vegan ones. Her cousin isn't vegan, so he was willing to trade quite a bit of his vegan stuff for her non-vegan stuff. But he wanted to keep some vegan candies of his own, which left Anna with some non-vegan treats in her pumpkin. Of course, we had plenty of back-up candy for just such an occasion. We actually picked up a huge bag of assorted vegan candy at the Animal Rights Coalition.

So there you go. Vegan kid during Halloween problem: solved. Barely even a problem, actually.

Anna's cousin Noah didn't dress up as a scarecrow, he dressed up as The Scarecrow. From Batman. The face paint was applied after this photo.


Anna's uncle, cousin and uncle's girlfriend flew in from Colorado for my father-in-law's 60th birthday party, which was on Halloween night.








Where did that third kid come from? That's Sophia, daughter of our neighbor friends.


Here we are at the birthday party. I went as a Target employee, in case you're wondering. I used my old Target name tag from when I used to work one-hour photo there eight years ago.


Anna was up until 12:45 on Halloween night. I think that's the latest she's ever been up. From 10:30 on, she got more and more delirious. About a half hour before we left the party, she crashed (but didn't fall asleep) on a chair, staring blankly at a televised baseball game (is there any other way to watch baseball?).




So that was Halloween.

Honey, Honey.

I ran across an article today about why vegans don't eat honey.

It's one of those things that people are confused about, and I understand why. In fact, I know vegans who eat honey and I still consider them vegans. I'm not sure that eating honey disqualifies you from being considered vegan and I don't know if it's something to make a big deal about ... I don't know.

I ate honey until just a few years ago. I didn't make a point to buy it, but I didn't refrain from eating things that contained honey either. But if you ask me, I'll tell you I've been vegan for about seven years.

Maybe that's dishonest. I don't know. It's not like there's an application out there that you have to fill out to be a vegan. But at the same time, words matter and I think the word "vegan" should mean something specific, and not just whatever you want it to mean.

Food for thought, I guess.

Anyway, this site is what caused me to realize that honey wasn't vegan (yes, I realize that statement contradicts my previous statements ... like I said, it's confusing and I'm dishonest) and that I couldn't justify eating it anymore. It's an in depth look at honey "production" and the moral implications as it relates to veganism and animal rights. It was illuminating.

And once I read that page, it was easy to stop eating honey. Here's how I did it:

I stopped eating honey.

I know. Groundbreaking, right? The hardest part of any change is actually deciding to make that change. Once you summon the will to change and then commit to it, it's easy.

Going vegan is easy once you decide to go vegan. Give it a try if you haven't already. The animals, the Earth and your body will thank you. Well, none of them will literally express thanks to you. Animals don't speak the language of humans, and the Earth doesn't speak at all. I guess your body could thank you, but then you'd just be talking to yourself...

Uber

Hase over at Vegan Macht Glucklich gave me this award:


I'm flattered. And I'm positive that her blog is awesome, but I can't read German. I took a year of it back in high school, but I've lost almost all of it. Danke, Hase. (I remember that much, at least.)

I'm passing the award on to Half Pint Pixie, whose blog is consistently informing, entertaining and engaging. She's vegan, a proponent and practitioner of attachment parenting, and Irish. She was one of the first vegan blogs I started reading and probably one the first people to read my blog (thanks to the Vegan Freak forums).

So, depending on what language you speak, there are two more blogs you should read.

Peaceful Prairie Interview

I just saw this video over at On Human-Nonhuman Relations and thought I'd pass it along. This is the first thing I've ever watched from vegan.fm and I look forward to watching more.

It's a really great, not-too-long interview with the owners of Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary.

Note for the squeamish: There are no images of animal cruelty in this video whatsoever. All you'll see are animals living a life of peace and freedom. Enjoy!



I can't wait to someday visit this place. We were so close to touring it the last time we were in Denver, but then it had to go blizzard all over the place.

NOW he jumps.

You can't say you weren't warned. Here's day two of Liam in the jumper:

He was jumping for at least 20 minutes before this video was taken, and for about 20 minutes after.



You could say he's taken a shine to it.

Perhaps coincidentally, but hopefully not, he slept better last night than he has in months. 8:30 to 7:00 with only one wake up at 3:00. Needless to say, he's been in the jumper a lot today.

Also, I swear we're not getting paid by Zappos. (Note to Zappos, I'll put your logo in the background of every video I do if you'll give me fifty dollars per video ... just sayin'.) All joking aside though (I'm serious, Zappos), it's a pretty sweet website for ordering shoes. Free shipping. Free returns. You can narrow your search to look for only vegan shoes.

Ahem.

Veggie Nugget #24

"There is absolutely no single personal change that the average person can make that has a better impact on the environment than going vegan."

From "On the Environmental Disaster of Animal Agriculture" over at Unpopular Vegan Essays.

If you have some time and the wherewithal to think deeply about an uncomfortable subject, then I suggest checking out the rest of his blog.

Vegan MoFo Day 23 - Lazy Links

I spaced the MoFo today, so here's a round-up of food posts/recipes I've done since starting this here blog.

A bunch of food I made last New Year's Eve.

Grab Bag o' Food.

Punjabi Chhole in 17 Seconds.

Anna munching on an tomato.

My recipe for Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter, Chocolate and Marshmallow Rice Krispie Bars.

I review a couple restaurants in the Denver area.

A post in which I am enthusiastic about a fully vegan cafe opening in Fargo (still haven't been there, by the way).

Better than Cinnabons!

Recipe for Down-Home Upper-Midwest Vegan Potato Salad.

Mocha-Vanilla Soy Cream With Chunks of Chocolate Covered Pretzels in it Right There, See?

Vegan MoFo Day 22 - I Mean It. Seriously. Make It. Now.

Make this NOW.

You can thank me later.

What's up with me, you ask? Well I made some Peanut Butter Chocolate Balls last night for a big school potluck tonight. And today I'm going to make that Polenta And Stuff With Cornbread On Top for the same potluck.

But seriously, make this. Now.

Vegan MoFo Day 18 - Special Weekend Edition

So I made some Mac 'n' Trees today:


It wasn't amazing, so I'm not going to post the recipe. Though this one and this one look really good. So ... you should probably make those.

Vegan MoFo Day 15 - Scrambled Tofu

I don't feel like writing much. So here are a couple photos of my scrambled tofu.




Basic ingredient list:
Tofu - one block, squeezed
Some frozen diced potatoes
Diced peppers
Spinach
Fresh ground pepper
Turmeric
Nutritional yeast

Lazy directions:
Just fry it all up.

And just because I have nothing else to say right now, here's a link to a site.

There you go. Another day of Vegan MoFo in the bag.