So I thought that each week I'd pick something from the CSA box and write about what I do with it, how it tastes, why it's good for you. You know, stuff like that.
I'm going to call this project, "What The Hell Do I Do With..."
And this is going to be as much for me as it is for you, dear reader (can I call you "dear reader"?). This is the third (or is it fourth?) year we've done this CSA thing, and I still have no idea what to do with, for example, kohlrabi. Seriously.
So I'm going to say what I do with stuff, but then I want YOU to tell ME what YOU do with it.
So first up: Radishes.
Honestly, I just eat these raw. Wash them off. Scratch off any dirt that doesn't wash off (unless you like dirt, which hey, more power to you if you do). And then eat them raw with nothing on them (though I suppose a smidgen of salt might be nice).
This is how my family ate radishes growing up. I don't remember them served any way other than a bunch of raw radishes, straight from the garden, washed and in a bowl on the table.
I hated them.
I hated most vegetables and fruits growing up. I don't know why, and I'm thankful that my children don't have the same aversion I did. Though if I could grow up passably healthy eating nothing but meat and grains, I'm sure my kids could grow up healthy eating nothing but beans and grains. And then in their twenties they'd start eating fruits and vegetables again once they they realized that they were missing out on a WHOLE WORLD OF FLAVOR (I'm in an all-caps (and parenthetical) mood. Sorry.).
So, radishes. They're high in vitamin C, folate and potassium. And they have this really great spice thing going on, sort of like wasabi (which makes sense, since they're both members of the Brassicaceae family, thankyouverymuch Wikipedia). It's the kind of spiciness that doesn't hurt your mouth, but sort of makes your nose tingle.
I love them.
And while I'm sure that eating them raw is the best way to make use of their nutritional value, I wouldn't mind actually preparing radishes in some way that doesn't just involve running cold water over them.
So please let me know what you do with them in the comments and I'll post some or all of the replies along with next week's installment of ... "What The Hell Do I Do With..."
Here are some photos from yet another trip to the Children's Museum of Minnesota.
Pony tail before we leave the house.
The first thing the kids usually see is the face-painting station. Anna really took to it this time. Liam, too.
There was a dinosaur exhibit this time around. I thought Anna might be afraid, but she loved it. I think the reason kids love dinosaurs is that they aren't around anymore. They're these huge monsters, basically, and you'll never ever see one in real life (well, I probably won't, but she might if they're ever brought back a la Jurassic Park). But they were real!
If you stand perfectly still, he won't be able to see you.
And here it is again, my favorite window in Saint Paul, MN.
If I can digress for a bit here, I've always loved taking photos of the kids in front of this window. I just love the big circle and the fact that it's so much lighter outside than it is inside. It's a pain in the ass, because the kids are always back-lit, but I see it as a challenge. And I never seem to face that challenge the same way as last time. Here are some other photos of them in front of the window, not from the most recent trip.
This is Anna in August '07.
Anna in October '07.
Liam in November '09.
Anyway, that's just a taste of them. There are a lot more, but I'd have to crack open the external hard drive and, well, there are more photos to show from our most recent trip. So, back to present day:
I wrote a long post about this and it somehow got deleted and I don't think I have it in me to write it all out again. I'm going to sum it up now.
Photos of the birds suffering and dying in oil are horrible. I agree.
I've seen these photos linked on Facebook quite a bit recently. It makes me sad too and I understand the urge to post the photos and make sure others know what's going on.
It's important to share in the communal outrage.
I feel that outrage. But I also feel something else.
On one hand, it's frustrating to see outrage over the photo on the left and silence when it comes to the photo on the right.
On the other hand, the amount of concern for the animals affected by the oil leak proves that people can and do care about animals even if they don't personally know them. This gives me hope. I wish that everyone could connect the dots and realize that the animals we exploit on purpose are every bit as sentient, thinking and feeling as the Brown Pelican drowning in oil.
There is no moral distinction between the bird on the left and the birds on the right. Both deserve the right to live free from unnecessary suffering and death. Both deserve our consideration and sympathy and empathy. Both live(d) brutal existences (one accidental, one intentional) caused by humans.
The big difference between these two situations is that one is an accident and other is on purpose. Billions upon billions of animals unnecessarily suffer and die every year on purpose.
Which do you feel worse about? But more importantly, why?
Mumble the emperor penguin, in a zoo, yelling at humans: "Hello! Hello from Emperor Land. Good afternoon. Why are you taking our fish? I'm sure you don't mean to, but you're causing an awful lot of grief. Am I not making myself clear? I'm speaking plain penguin. Penguin! Don't you understand? You're stealing our fish! Please! Anyone! Talk to me! For pity's sake, you're stealing our F-I-S-H!"
Voiceover: "After 3 days he would lose his voice. After three months, he would all but lose his mind."
And that right there is when I fell in love with the movie Happy Feet. It took the movie over an hour to get there, but this scene... Whew! The protagonist, Mumble, is in a zoo, put there after he's found on a beach. A beach he ended up on after swimming after a fishing barge. A fishing barge he swam after because he wanted to tell the "aliens" to stop taking their fish. The "aliens" who were taking their fish because, well, why do we eat fish again?
Right after the voiceover tells us Mumble all but lost his mind we see him with the other penguins, swaying back and forth with a vacant look in his eyes, mouth open as fish are thrown over a ledge and down to the penguins.
Anna was watching this scene with a friend of hers the other day and she said, "This is a happy and sad part."
I asked her why it was happy and sad.
"It’s sad that he’s in a cage and it’s happy that he gets fish."
I was pretty proud of her for recognizing that something could be happy and sad at the same time. And yeah, free fish falling from the sky could be seen as a positive aspect of zoo life. But at what price? Penguins can't really be penguins when they're stuck in a zoo.
And of course, the movie (being a kid's movie) gives us a simplistic view of things. The fish in the ocean aren't any more the penguins' as they are the humans'. Nobody owns the fish. The fish aren't possessed by anyone (that is, until they're captured or eaten).
Here's how I explain it to Anna:
Penguins need fish to live. Without eating fish, penguins would die. They have no choice. Fish don't want to be eaten, but penguins have to eat them to live.
People do not need fish to live. Without eating fish, people live long, healthy lives. We have a choice. Fish don't want to be eaten and we don't have to eat them to live.
She understands this. In fact, she seems to completely grasp the concept.
At the end of the movie the "aliens" decide to stop fishing (at least in the area around Antarctica) and the fish's numbers grow and the penguins' famine is over.
When this happens, Anna's gets happy. She has no aversion to carnivores. She sees nothing wrong with a penguin eating a fish and I see nothing contradictory about that fact.
It's all about choice and the ability to choose. And I'll write more about this in a future post. Specifically, I'll write about how I've explained non-human omnivores to her. For example, bears eat plants and fish. But if they can live on plants, then why do they eat fish? It seems like we intuitively know the answers to questions like these, but try explaining it to an almost-four-year-old.
It's not easy, but it sure is fun.
Anyway, a little more about Happy Feet. There's a part where a leopard seal chases Mumble with the intention of eating him. This is a little harder to explain to Anna, since she's rooting for Mumble to escape. Here we get into the complexities of narrative a little more. The leopard seal is portrayed as a "bad guy", but on the face of it, he's just trying to eat what he needs to eat to live.
Leopard seals eat penguins, penguins eat fish. Who we root for is dependent solely on the story. In a few years, Pixar will come out with a touching movie about leopard seals and we'll all root for them to catch the penguins.
My point is that accepting and appreciating the need for some animals to kill and eat other animals to survive does not contradict an animal rights position. The animal rights position is dependent upon the fact that we as humans do not need to exploit animals in order to survive. We don't need to eat or wear their flesh, we don't need to drink their lactations and we do not need to scramble their menses every Sunday morning. It's all unnecessary.
If it were necessary; if we needed animal products to survive - if we could not survive without them - then there would be no animal rights movement. There may still be an animal welfare movement though who would say (as they pretty much do now) we should still own, rape, exploit and kill animals because we have to ... but do it a little nicer, m'kay?
Luckily for us and for those exploited non-human animals, there's another way. We can live just fine by eating plants.
But this was supposed to be a review of Happy Feet. Let me just say that there are a couple overtly and covertly sexual parts to this movie. Just so you know. I mean, it's nothing that big. Just stuff like one penguin saying, "Gloria! Gloria! I want to see more of ya!" And there's some talk of making love. There's this one quick scene where, no joke, two penguins are stumbling over each other on the ice and manage to hit all the major sexual positions. I don't think Anna picks up on a lot of that stuff, but even if she does I'm not too worried. We're open about the biology of sex with her.
In fact, just the other day I heard her saying to Liam, "Do you see birds outside, Liam? Are they having sex, Liam?" Then she asked us what sex was again, I explained it to her and she then explained it to her baby doll.
Oh, and there's a nice "rational thinking trumps superstition" theme that comes into play at the end of the movie. Have I mentioned that I love Happy Feet?
It's a musical, too. There's a ton of music and dancing in it, which is why I think Anna considers it her favorite movie. It's a movie and a work-out for her. I'm actually quite sad that they don't make more musicals these days. And I'm looking forward to the day when she's old enough to watch West Side Story. Mambo!
Well, I'm rambling. I'm going to reward you now for sticking with me for this long. Here's a video of Anna dancing to the end of Happy Feet. The video didn't pick up the sound of the movie, so I threw in a song by Malajube.
So, have any of you seen Happy Feet?
Vegans, how have you talked about the movie with your kids?
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.
-
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.
-
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.
And while you're there take a look around at the other posts. She's an amazing photographer and a great person and we're super lucky to count her as a friend.
Oh, and for more of Britta's photos of our kids, see here (Anna in March '08), here (Anna in May '08) and here (Anna and Liam in April '09).
Well, 36 people answered the question of why they are or aren't vegan. That's a pretty good turnout. Thank you to all who answered.
To be honest, I was hoping for more, but the responses I did get were all civil and mostly thoughtful, which just goes to show you that vegans and non-vegans can coexist in an online public place without jumping down each others' throats.
We have honest differences, to be sure. And those differences do matter (indeed, they're a matter of life and death). But the point is that we can and do discuss these differences with each other without resorting to name-calling and/or pie-throwing. I think the hardest part of starting a civil conversation about veganism is convincing both sides that it's a conversation worth having civilly (which can include speaking openly and honestly and not stifling our ideas simply because someone's sensibilities might be offended).
Anyway, a pat on all your backs.
Now on to the winners!
(The new camera does widescreen and I haven't figured out yet how to embed that correctly, so I suggest just clicking on the video and viewing it on the YouTube page.)
So that's what eight minutes of my day looks like. If you felt rushed, confused and pulled in different directions while watching it, then you know what my days are like. Let's just say I appreciate concurrent naps.
A note on the video, we had picked names (two of the three, to be exact) one time before what you see in this video, but the camera wasn't recording when I thought it was (it's a new camera that I'm not used to, as is evident by the sound being muffled now and then when I put my finger over the microphone area). So I decided to do it all over again. The same person was picked first both times! Crazy.
And toward the end of the video I give my reason for being vegan. To elaborate, I'm vegan because I don't need animal products to live a long, happy and healthy life. Since I don't need these products, I'm presented with a choice of whether or not I should continue to consume them. I can find no good argument to cause suffering and death when that suffering and death is not necessary ... so I choose veganism.
I'm vegan because animals are sentient beings who should be extended the basic right to not be treated as things; as property. The property status that we place upon animals is what allows we humans to cause the aforementioned suffering and death for reasons such as tradition, convenience and pleasure (not necessity).
Simply and more concisely, I'm vegan because I agree with the majority of humans that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering and death on another sentient being.
For a great introduction to this view visit this page and spend a few minutes reading the pamphlet.
OK! Well thanks again to everyone who answered the question. And to the three who won, Alafair, Ashlee and PL&V, just click on the "email" link on my profile page and send me your address. Then wait patiently for the goodies.
And thanks again Go Max Go Foods for donating the candy bars! You're the best.
So today (or, I guess yesterday, since this is posted after midnight) was supposed to be the day that I did the whole contest drawing (hopey changey) thingey. But, honestly, my brother-in-law and nephew are in town for the week and today my nephew and I built a spaceship.
Uh-huh. A spaceship. So, yeah, we've been busy.
My nephew and I are in pre-production for the third movie in the "Awesome" trilogy. (I still need to post the second installment of the trilogy on this blog, but just in case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, here's the first installment.)
Today we took a trip to Ax-man Surplus to pick up some circuit boards and what-not (for the spaceship to fly, ya know) and some silver spray paint at Menards (to make the spaceship silvery and all). Because space ships have to be silvery, ya know.
In short, it's all worth it and the new movie is going to be epic (so much so that it may not be done for another year or so).
Anyway, because of my dereliction of duty, I'm extending the giveaway deadline a few more days. Look at this as your second chance to make a first impression (or at least more time to figure out why you are or are not vegan).
The new deadline is April 5th (Monday), which means I'll do the drawing on Tuesday (and post the winners either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning).
Don't worry, those candy bars are waiting patiently in my fridge (so as not to melt in our crazy March/April heat), and the books are waiting patiently on my bookshelf.
