Egg Replacer Hunt!

Well hello there! It's been years and years since I've written anything on this blog. Hell, it's been years since I've even said the word "blog." But something happened this morning that made me laugh and I thought it might do the same for you. And in these times of quarantine and high anxiety, laughter is something we're all in dire need of.

It's Easter. Usually we go to my sister's place and celebrate with her family, do the big plastic egg hunt in their nice big yard with the cousins, eat vegan frittata, etc.

For obvious reasons, that's not happening this year. Instead, we're keeping ourselves and others healthy by staying home. We don't have any eggs in the house (obviously no real eggs, but also no plastic eggs). And to top it all off, it's snowing!

So last night we were sitting in our new basement (oh yeah, we just moved into a new house a week ago) and I was thinking about what sort of hunt we could have. Here's what I came up with:

It's an egg replacer hunt, y'all!

So this morning the kids woke up, ate breakfast and then hunted around our house for 6 bananas, three jars of applesauce, one container of Ener-g egg replacer, and one bag of flax seed. The bonus item was a small spice jar of Spero egg salt.

It was super fun and I think I may have just started a new family tradition!

The last time I posted a photo of Anna and Liam on here was 2013. Liam was 4 and Anna was 6. Liam is now 11 and Anna is 13. So yeah, it's been a while!

A lot has happened in the years since I last posted.
-We started a podcast over 5 years ago: www.childrenoftheforce.com
-Anna is in her last year of middle school
-Liam his in his last year of elementary school
-Liam released his first album a few weeks ago: https://hoodieboss.bandcamp.com
-I left my position of stay-at-home-dad and became a teaching assistant

And countless other things.

Well, that was a fun little check in. Maybe I'll do this again before another 7 years go by!

ARZone Podcast

Well hello there! 

Just thought I'd let you all know that I'm on the most recent ARZone podcast. 

Carolyn Bailey and Tim Gier asked me some really great questions about my essay in Confronting Animal Exploitation and about vegan parenting in general. I also give a really long answer to "The Ronnie Question," which basically lays out my entire vegan history. 

This is the second podcast I've been on now, and I actually quite enjoy it. I'm amazed again at how coherent and knowledgable I sound. Sure, I'd change some things if I could. But for the most part, I'm happy with how it turned out. It shouldn't go without saying that Tim's editing skills likely have a lot to do with how pleased I am at the result. 

So click here and then choose a way to listen to it. And let me know what you think! 

Also, if you've read my essay in Confronting Animal Exploitation, I'd love to hear any feedback you have. I'm so used to the internet where people can tell me if they like or dislike what I've written right after reading it. It feels odd to have put such a substantial piece of work out there and for people to have no direct and immediate way to let me know what they think of it. So humor me if you can, m'kay? 

Until next time...

Bringing the Kids Along

The whole family volunteered at a street fair a couple weekends ago. Left to right is my wife Jen, Liam, Dallas (the program coordinator of Animal Rights Coalition, the organization we volunteer for), and Anna. We were handing out samples of Beyond Meat, telling people about it and explaining why and how one can go vegan. 

Dallas asked me if we would like to volunteer as a family and I told her I'd have to get back to her. I talked it over with Jen and the kids and they all agreed that it would be fun. When we got there, it was decided that Anna would tell people what the samples were made out of (she memorized some of the ingredients). While she did that, Liam would sort of sneak in and hand out a pamphlet about veganism. 

Which reminds me that I wrote something for my Vegan Parenting essay in Confronting Animal Exploitation that I never found a place for.

Parents as Activists - Bringing the Kids Along

Parents of all kinds find themselves with less time to do the things that are important to them. Raising our children becomes of the utmost importance, of course, but we all came into parenthood with passions, and those passions don’t evaporate when we start changing diapers.

Maybe you leafleted every weekend before you had kids. Maybe you were a rabble-rouser at community meetings. Maybe you spent all your free time doing online activism.

Regardless of what you did, you have less time for it after you take on the responsibility of raising a child or children. But this doesn’t mean you have to give up activism. While it’s tempting to get someone to babysit the kids so you can go out and do your adult-world volunteering, the reality is that there’s often no reason you can’t just pack the kids up along with your placards and pamphlets.

Plus, getting a sitter costs money. Just bring the kids along. As long as it’s safe, bring them along and then they can see what their parents are passionate about. And maybe they’ll ask to join in once they realize what you’re fighting for. Or maybe they’ll choose to sit and watch. Maybe they’ll be embarrassed beyond words. Doesn’t matter.

Maybe your friends and family will accuse you of using your kids to advance your cause. How do we respond to the idea that we’re using our kids to support a cause, instead of simply exposing them to that cause and letting them join in if they want? Fortunately, this judgment of parenting likely isn’t anything of the sort. It’s a veiled judgment of the ideology of animal rights.

I saw a lot of children at the protests leading up to the Iraq war and I thought the parents probably just brought them along because they (the parents) really wanted to go and didn't want to have to pay for a babysitter. Those parents also probably wanted to show the kids what community involvement can look like and that standing up for something you believe in is something worth doing. The kids may have held signs, but I doubt the parents were intentionally using them as props.

And more importantly, no one was accusing them of doing so. Anyone who did would rightfully be criticized as grasping at straws. Searching so hard for something to criticize that they set their sights on children. In addition to calling into question our parenting abilities on the face of it, the critics also negate our children’s obvious ability to grasp arguments and form opinions about issues. Yes, of course, very young children almost always believe what their parents believe, act how their parents act, do what their parents do. But for some reason, their ability to do even this is called into question when our kids are handing out a vegan pamphlet, or holding a sign critical of the pet trade. 

We may not bring them to the protest with the intention of them holding a sign, or maybe we do. But no one can make a child hold a sign. They choose to do it, and their choice should be recognized as just as valid as any other choice a child makes. 

Plus, how adorable is Liam handing out that literature? He doesn't look it, but he said he was a little nervous. I know the feeling. 

Cancer

My friend Ryan has cancer.

You might remember Ryan from Midwest Vegan Radio. She and Dallas interviewed me and Anna for a podcast a while ago.

She has stage 3 breast cancer. She's 33. So far, expenses have surpassed $60,000 and she's had to miss quite a good deal of work because of chemo sessions and such.

At the end of the month, I'll be shaving my head to raise money for Ryan. If you can afford to donate, please do so at this medical fundraising site and write a note saying that you're sponsoring Al's not-yet-shaven head. Anything helps. If all of you reading this donated just a little bit, it would help a whole hell of a lot.

Plus, the head-shaver who raises the most money gets a prize. I'm not going to lie, I like prizes.

And since I'm shaving my head at the end of the month, I decided to take this opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a long time: dye my hair blue.

First I had to bleach it (this photo was taken by Anna, by the way).

Then I turned it blue.

So there you go. I dyed my hair so that you would keep reading and see yet another link to go donate money to my friend who, in addition to having to deal with the horror of cancer, is also having to deal with the horror of paying for cancer.

Thank you in advance,

Al

Panda Club

During recess at school, Anna participates in something called Panda Club. It's something one of her friends came up with. The gist is this, according to Anna: Pandas are endangered because people are cutting down the forests. Panda Club helps the pandas. At the beginning of recess, they have a meeting and each kid comes up with ideas to help out the pandas. I asked Anna what one of her ideas was.

"Plant more trees," she said.

Liam was sitting with us when we were talking about this. He chimed in, "But then they'll keep cutting down the trees."

"But then we'll plant more trees," Anna said.

"But even those trees you growed," Liam said, "they'll cut down."

At which point Anna started ignoring Liam.

One of her friends had the idea that they could stop the people from cutting down the trees. I asked how they go about doing that.

"We tell them that we'll hurt them if they don't stop."

Yeah. I know. If that ain't some militant FBI-probe-inducing stuff right there, huh? I hope the FBI isn't reading this, because then they might have to issue a grand jury summons to Mrs. Jones' first grade class.

I asked Anna, in a one-on-one conversation, if she thought it was OK to actually hurt people who wanted to cut down the forest. She said she didn't think so. I told her that people have done things like slashing tires and doing other things to stop people from destroying habitats. She thought that sounded better. I agreed, but then asked her to think about the people who work for those companies that cut down forests and how the money they make from that job might feed their children. On the other hand, they could just get a different job. 

Then I explained how we try to see the world in black and white, but sometimes it's actually grey.

You know what they weren't doing in Panda Club though? They weren't capturing pandas and imprisoning them in zoos in order to preserve their species. That's just ridiculous. Stopping the habitat destruction makes way more sense, right? 

The One Where Anna Goes to a Zoo

Anna's class took a field trip to the Minnesota Zoo today.

We don't go to zoos, since we believe that animals have the right to live free from ownership and exploitation (if you want to read more of me moralizing and condemning zoos, read my post, One More Dead Wolf).

We told Anna that she could make her own decision of whether or not to go on this field trip. She chose to go. And honestly, I would be a bit concerned if she chose to stay home. She's a social kid and she wants to be with her friends and classmates. She knows that simply going to the zoo on a free field trip (at least free to her and us, since we didn't have to pay anything for it) isn't going to make those animals' lives any harder. And yeah, I'm rationalizing letting her go. But the way I see it, it wasn't my decision. It was hers and I respect her right to make it. (Letting go is a long process that starts with baby steps like this, right?)

Also, she was really excited to see penguins.

Sigh.

I can't help but sigh. Don't get me wrong, I would be excited to see penguins too! I totally get it. But I also get why zoos are sad, sad places and I want nothing to do with them.

I gave Anna a basic rundown of why zoos are sad, sad places. I didn't do this to make her feel guilty for wanting to go (she didn't) but to clue her in on things to look for and think about while she's there. My hope was that she wouldn't uncritically accept the notion that animals in a zoo are as happy if not happier than they would be in their natural habitat.

"They try to make it like their natural habitat," she said, repeating something she heard from her teacher. I asked her to think of how big the savannah is. Now think of how big a lion's cage in a zoo is. They recreate just an itty bitty tiny slice of their natural habitat, if that. Lions move from place to place. They run distances zoos are unable to accomodate. They hunt.

"I know, but I still want to go and see different animals."

Fair enough.

Last night, we read some of her Wild Animal Atlas book, and there was some info in there about emperor penguins in Antarctica. They can dive to depths of over a thousand feet. "The amount of water they have for penguins in a zoo," I couldn't help but adding, "would be like us going to a water park and there being just a small bath tub to sit in."

When Anna came home from school today, I asked how the zoo was. "I saw penguins!"

"What kind of penguins were they," I asked.

"I don't remember. I think they were the kind that build their nests out of rocks?"

"How much water did they have?" I asked.

"It was a pool. And it looked like there was an ocean in the back, but it was a painting."

"Like in Happy Feet? Remember when Mumble runs into the wall painting and then dives into the water and runs into the glass because the pool is so small?"

Yeah. She remembered.

Again, I didn't say this stuff to make her feel bad about going to the zoo. I said it so that she would know why I think zoos are sad, sad places. She gets this. She's also able to completely separate it from the fact that she actually got to see Real. Live. Penguins. That's understandable, I think.

I asked what other kinds of animals she saw. Some turtles and some bat rays, she said. She couldn't really tell me anything about the animals other than that she saw them. Nobody told her anything about the animals, according to her. She didn't read anything about them either. So, all in all, not really an educational trip to the zoo, which is one of those things zoos are always bragging about -- education.

After looking at some animals, they took a break for lunch. I had to pack a lunch for Anna because she was told in advance that there wouldn't be a sufficient amount of vegan food there for her. I asked what the other kids ate.

Hotdogs, she said. They ate hotdogs.

So much for having the animals' best interests in mind, huh zoos? Not only are hotdogs made from the flesh (among other parts) of tortured animals, but they're also a product of the meat industry, which is, according to the UN, “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems." Problems, by the way, which negatively effect the natural habitats of members of the same species who you keep caged at the zoo because you claim to care about ... wait for it ... the survival of their species!

But fuck that, right zoos? Who the hell is going to come appreciate the wonder and beauty of imprisoned nature if they can't dine on the flesh of animals while they do it?

Ahem.

Anyway, Anna went to a zoo. So ... thoughts on that? Anyone else out there had to deal with non-vegan field trips? Care to share?

Living up to the Lessons We Teach our Children - an excerpt from Confronting Animal Exploitation

Here's another excerpt from my 23-page essay in Confronting Animal Exploitation, officially due out April 1st (though it looks like you can put it on a Kindle or a Nook right now if you wanted to).

The late Stanley Sapon, professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Rochester, said, “we typically raise children from birth to five or six years in a kind of fantasy-land of ideal behavior on the part of the world’s inhabitants … a ‘land of goodness and mercy,’ a land where the animals are our friends, and we are the friends of the animals.”

Children under a certain age are not taught that other-than-human animals are here for us to exploit and kill. Instead, representations of these beings are used in children’s media to illustrate life lessons, as in books like Chicken Little and The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Other stories also teach us that other-than-human animals should be spared suffering and death—as is the case in Bambie—and should live free from captivity and have their intrinsically valuable lives respected by others—a major theme of, for example, the children’s movies Free Willy and Rio.

Vegans parents take these lessons to their logical conclusions and teach their children to not only say that animals are our friends, but also act as if they are. It’s not enough to say, “Be nice to animals.” We need to actually be nice to all animals. Chicken dinner, steak on Fridays and eggs for breakfast run counter to this message.

Vegan Kids Rebelling Against Their Parents? - an excerpt from Confronting Animal Exploitation

April 1st! That's the official publication date of Confronting Animal Exploitation. To celebrate the impending release of this book, I'm posting an excerpt from my essay, Vegan Parenting: Navigating and Negating Speciesist Media, which appears in a section of the book titled Veganism in Action.

As the title suggests, my essay centers on speciesism in children's media. But the essay also includes a section that focuses on attitudes which undermine vegan parents and a section in which I outline some practical advice on how to talk to our kids about veganism and speciesism. This excerpt is from the section about attitudes intended to undermine vegan parents.

Another reason children of vegan parents will inevitably choose to eat non-vegan foods, according to some, is that they will rebel against their parents when they reach their teens. They will become ardent meat eaters, much to the joy of the meat-eating majority. It’s an interesting claim, but it’s one that doesn’t warrant much concern from vegan parents.

Vegan parents who are vegan for the reason of respecting the interests of other-than-human animals will likely pass that respect down to their children. An analogous example would be children who are raised as anti-racists. When a person learns from the get-go that oppression is wrong, it’s hard to lose that knowledge. If parents teach their children about the oppressive ideology of speciesism, the oppression of other-than-human animals, and sentience and the interest in living that it entails, then there’s no compelling reason to believe that the kids will someday unlearn that.

Of course, there is still a probability that children of vegan parents will decide that they shouldn’t respect other-than-human animals, or that respecting them means something other than being vegan. On the flip side, there’s also a chance that all the kids of non-vegans out there will come to veganism later in life. Parenting is full of unknowns. All parents need to make peace with that fact.

I'll be posting more excerpts as the publication date gets closer. I'm so excited for this book to come out and for all of you to buy it!

Want to know more about the book? Check out the description, table of contents and author bios. And like it on Facebook! 

Apa's Nighttime Poem

Here's a Friday poem from Anna.

Apa's Nighttime Poem 

I love you in the morning
I love you when I'm at school
I love you in the afternoon
I love you in the evening
I'll always love you, Apa

Here's Apa. He's a flying bison. He's awesome.

Anna asked for and received a stuffed Apa for Christmas from her Grandpa Ned. She looooves him. So much so that he's started to eat breakfast with us:

And when he's done with breakfast, he plays with some Legos:

And she writes love poems to him.

Photos!

Guess what happened to my blog? Facebook, that's what!

This blog used to be the way I would communicate with my family and friends, in addition to the world at large. As such, I would put photos up from trips and holidays and all that. 

But now I'm connected with my family and friends on Facebook, so I put photos up there. And no offense world-at-large, but I just plain forget to put the photos up here, too. 

So my posts have been a bit more cerebral in nature as of late. And that's fine with me if it's fine with you. Actually, it's fine with me either way (again, no offense).

But I occasionally need to remind myself of why I started this blog in the first place. First and foremost, I wanted to show the world my healthy and happy vegan family. I wanted to show how we exist within and contribute to our culture while abstaining from certain aspects of that culture. I wanted to contribute to the normalization of veganism in general, and vegan families in specific. 

Because I do feel like part of a normal family. So normal, in fact, that the average blog reader may find us boring. Which may, in part, explain the lack of photos and posts about our familial exploits. 

Anyway, enough of that. Here's a bunch of photos taken within the last few months.

Liam with a sword.

Liam with Darth Maul's double-bladed light saber. The kids have been big into Star Wars as of late. 

Took a trip to Colorado to visit family for Thanksgiving. Here, Anna and Liam duel their older cousin Noah, who wields the double lightsaber with great skill.

First big snow of the year. Anna builds The Serpent's Pass from Avatar: The Last Airbender. That show is awesome. Jen and I loved watching it as much as the kids, if not more.

Liam bought Saesee Tiin's Starfighter with the money he got for Christmas. It was a pretty big set and he put together about 90% of it (with my help, but he put the pieces together by himself ... I just sort of directed him and helped him understand the directions).

Anna and Liam were pretending The Empire Strikes Back. Here's Anna's best "Han in carbonite" pose:

And some original lego creations. This one by Liam.

This one is Wolverine's House by Anna.

And one more by Liam. These are 100% their own creations. I love seeing what they come up with.

After a trip to the children's museum. According to Liam, one side of his face is Zuko from Avatar, and the other side is The Emperor from Star Wars. 

Anna put together one of Liam's birthday presents. That's an AT-RT.

Finally, we went to Minnehaha Falls last weekend. It was frozen and awesome. We tried getting behind the ice, because it's like Superman's fortress of solitude back there, but it was too dangerous. Maybe next time...

Hey, that wasn't so boring after all. We should do this more often!

Lego Birthday Party!

Liam's Lego birthday party, to be exact.

My newly four year old son loves Legos, and this is probably the last big themed party that we're going to do (actually, we never did a themed party for Anna ... Liam's Star Wars themed party last year was the first time for us, unless you count the hospital-themed birthday party they each had when they were born). So we went all out (or at least our version of "all out") and dove headlong into the theme. I've been a big fan of Legos for most of my life, so that may have something to do with my willingness to put in time and effort.

Here's a hot tip for Lego parties: Just buy yellow things and draw little smiley faces on them like this.

Kids' cups, gift bags, etc. Easy peasey.

We bought a couple lego molds online and had fun with them. The bricks on top of these cupcakes below (which are topped with the cookies and cream frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World) look like plain chocolate, but I actually put a small layer of chocolate down in them, then a layer of crushed oreos and then another layer of chocolate. So basically, you have oreo candybars on top of a sugarbomb. We don't roll this way often, but when we do, we do it right.

And yeah, I need to perfect making candy with chocolate. I guess I need to learn how to temper chocolate?

We bought a minifigure mold, too. I made one batch of chocolate minifigures in it and then made the mistake of melting crayons in the mold (I didn't get a photo of them, but we sent two minifigure crayons home in each party bag), thinking I'd make more chocolate guys later. Well, after making the crayons, I couldn't get this white film off the mold, except for with Goo Gone, which then left a horrible orange smell (and probably toxic chemicals) on the mold. So yeah, no more edible minifigures coming out of of that mold. 

It was pretty easy to put a Lego twist on party games. This is Pin the Plunger. I built this on a baseplate, and the goal is to put a lego plunger (you know, those long skinny round pieces with a single round convex peg on the end of them? ... I really should have taken a picture of the plunger ... oh well) as close to the middle as possible. Blindfolded, of course. The winner got a little Lego set. 

Guess how many legos are in the jar. Spoiler alert: It was something like 152. Again, the winner got a little lego set or a minifigure. 

And that was it for games. Which is OK, because we brought a bunch of Legos for the kids to play with. And they did. (Megablocks for the little kids, regular Legos for the bigger kids.)

Even the utensil holder was made from blocks. Liam and I made this one together. 

The food spread. We did make-your-own bagels this year. In addition to veganizing the two recipes from here, we cut up some cucumbers and tomatoes and had some Tofurky slices. We also made a delicious Maritime Chickpea Salad (that's what I call it, since I dislike the phrase "mock tuna") from Yeah, That Vegan Shit (I smile every time I see that blog title). And some fruit, peanut butter and jelly, and babka from Breadsmith. 

What Liam looks like when everyone sings Happy Birthday to him:

What Liam looks like when he blows out all four candles from almost two feet away:

Like I said, I didn't get a photo of the party bag contents, but it was two minifigure crayons, a homemade Lego coloring book (do a google image search of "lego coloring pages" to get an idea of what was in there), and a mini Lego set.

So that was our Lego party. And now Liam's awash in new Legos and everyone's happy (including me ... because Legos are awesome). 

Um ... but with all that said, go check out this Birthdays Without Pressure page. As awesome as this party was, you really don't need to go stressing yourself all out in order to have a great time. [end of hypocritical PSA]

Veggie Nugget #35

"Take the broad view of what veganism stands for - something beyond finding a new alternative to scrambled eggs on toast or a new recipe for Christmas cake. Realise that you're on to something really big, something that hadn't been tried until sixty years ago, and something which is meeting every reasonable criticism that anyone can level against it. And this doesn't involve weeks or months of studying diet charts or reading books by socalled experts - it means grasping a few simple facts and applying them."

-Donald Watson, founder of the Vegan Society.

That quote is from an interview with Watson which you can read here. When I feel down about the prospects of a widespread movement toward veganism, I think about Watson, who died only 8 years ago. The man invented the word "vegan."

Tour of Chicken Run Rescue

This is how time has been going for me lately. In August I wrote a review of the book City Chickens. At the end of that review, I said,

Coming soon: Photos and a re-cap of the VegKins tour of Chicken Run Rescue on July 21st. SPOILER ALERT: It will contain photos of adorable chickens and humans.

Well here we are in mid-November and I have yet to post that re-cap. Better late than never, I guess! Here are some photos (I didn't get as many as I would have liked because I was too busy managing my kids and petting chickens):

First up, our gracious host, Mary. Chicken Run Rescue is literally her and her husband's basement and back yard. The amount of good that they do with that square footage is awe inspiring and humbling.

Anna wondering if this chicken would let her pick her up.

She was unsure at first (they both were).

Anna and Liam with a couple VegKins friends. VegKins (our vegan family group that meets up monthly) has blown up in the last year or so, largely because of events like this and our annual Halloween party and Spring (plastic) Egg Hunt.

Your's truly. What a rare thing it is for me to post a photo of myself on this blog.

Holy crap, here's another one of me! That's a six or seven year old Herbivore shirt that I'm wearing, by the way.

Anna eventually grew more comfortable with the chickens.

 

Liam never really warmed up though. Maybe next time...

All in all, it was a nourishing day. All four of us met and held chickens for the first time in our lives (Liam held one briefly, but I didn't get a photo).

I know on an intellectual level why I'm vegan. My kids know why we're raising them vegan. Meeting these birds though, really drove home a different aspect of veganism. It's one thing to say that the principle of equal consideration dictates that all sentient beings should have the right to live free from unnecessary harm and death, but it's quite another to hold a living, breathing, thinking, feeling being in your arms, stroke her feathers and scratch her head, apologize on behalf of your species, recommit yourself to never participating in the exploitation of beings like (and not like) her ... and to know that as long as you breathe you will be vegan because it matters as much as something can matter.

Curried Squash Tomato Bisque

It's that time of year when my dad realizes that he planted waaaaay too much squash, and so he pawns it off on his more-than-willing children. Or maybe that's why he plants so much. Either way, I always get a ton of squash from my dad's garden around this time of year and I've found the perfect recipe for using a bunch of it. 

My mom made a vegan tomato squash soup a few years back for Christmas and it was delicious (yeah, my mom rocks). If I remember correctly, it was tomatoes and squash pureed together with some vegetable broth and then sauteed onions were added to it (or maybe the onions were blended in, I can't remember). She gave me the recipe and the first time I made it I taste-tested it and it wasn't as good as my mom's. Not a big surprise there. I let it sit for a while there on my stove and pondered my inadequacy. 

But instead of coming to terms with my failure in the kitchen, I decided to make the soup my own. I added a can of coconut milk to it and some curry powder, garam masala and cumin and BAM! It became something very different and very delicious. The recipe has been tweaked since then, of course. I took garam masala out of it because I ran out and didn't feel like buying more. I'm sure you could put a little in and it wouldn't hurt. And I found that it doesn't need veggie broth, though I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to have some in there if you wanted more leftovers. 

It eats like a meal. And it goes great with saltines or some good crusty bread. 

It's not every year I post an original recipe on this blog. So enjoy, dear readers:

Curried Squash Tomato Bisque

4 cups of butternut squash pulp (other kinds of squash work, too, but probably not every kind)
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds (or 1/2 tsp ground cumin)
28 oz can whole tomatoes with juice
15 oz can of of coconut milk
1 tsp. curry powder (start with 1, add more to taste)
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp fresh ground pepper
1/8 tsp garlic powder
2 bay leaves

Bake squash (cut in half the long way, place in 1/4 inch of water in a casserole dish, bake at 375 until easily pierced with fork) until tender. Scrape it all out.

Heat oil on med/high heat, add cumin seeds and let them sizzle and/or pop for 30 seconds or so. Add onion and sauté until browned.

Put Tomatoes (with juice) in processor. Blend.

Add squash and onions, process until smooth (the cumin seeds won't blend up and that's fine). If you have an immersion blender, you can blend everything in the pot, but I like to used a food processor and then an immersion blender later if needed. I think it's easier to get a smoother texture that way.

Put that all in a pot, add the coconut milk and heat it up. Add curry powder, salt, pepper and garlic powder (and ground cumin if you didn't use cumin seeds back when you fried the onions). Taste and add more of any of these spices as needed. Add bay leaves and simmer for as long as you want, stirring occasionally.

I'd post a photo, but it's just orange. Close your eyes and imagine the color orange. There you go. That's what the soup looks like. 

OK fine, I'll take a quick photo with my webcam. 

See. Orange. And now you know I have a Maytag stove. 

Reheats wonderfully. Enjoy!

Veganism and Woo

Here's the third part of my veganism and religion essay series (parts 1 and 2 are here and here): 

What is Scientology? A cult? Religion? Despite what one wants to call Scientology, there’s no real appreciable doubt among the majority of society that it’s something rooted in an irrational, illogical, non-scientific, fantastical view of the world.

Scientologists who are vegan—people may be tempted to refer to them as vegan Scientologists—may have a “VEGAN” bumper sticker on their car alongside a “SCIENTOLOGY” bumper sticker. Will this result in non-vegan-non-Scientologists thinking that Scientology is something that vegans do, or that veganism is something that Scientologists do?

Both Scientology and veganism are on the fringe, as defined by dominant culture. Whether or not it’s true in any individual case, people who aren’t vegan will associate the other fringe aspect of a vegan’s life with veganism.

When someone voices two distinct marginalized views in a society that is indifferent or hostile toward those views, they tend to get lumped together. It’s the bumper sticker effect. It may be that veganism or the other fringe element is seen to be the dominant element about a person—one may think, “Oh, being vegan is just something Scientologists do,” or, “Oh, Scientology is just something that vegans do.” Either way, it’s a lose/lose for veganism.

It could be rightly said that I’m unfairly picking on Scientology by using them as an example. Other examples could be used, of course. I’m writing specifically about marginal systems of irrational belief here—marginal in the sense that they have a small numbers of adherents—as opposed to mainstream, culturally dominant religions. I'm not saying here that mainstream religions have some greater claim to supernatural truth than do these marginal beliefs.[1]

I focus on marginal belief systems here because they are viewed by dominant culture as on the fringe, far beyond what the average person would believe.

Given this, lumping veganism in with marginal belief systems hurts veganism. It may well be the case that the inverse is true, that the lumping hurts the marginal belief system, but that’s not my concern here. I wish to see veganism, an ethic of justice for all sentient beings, to proliferate beyond the fringe. As such, I desire to see veganism associated with the mainstream values it already reinforces. I’m not arguing that vegans should instead hitch the vegan wagon onto major religions, but that vegans shouldn’t hitch the wagon of veganism onto anything other than the idea that we should not cause the suffering and death of other-than-human animals when we don’t need to. Nothing else is required.

This argument also goes for the bumper sticker effect that is observed when raw food and other dietary restrictions, myriad new age beliefs, and “woo” are lumped in with veganism.

Regarding the extraneous dietary restrictions that get associated with veganism when vegans advocate them, vegan and registered dietitian Ginny Messina writes:

Advocating diets that incorporate unnecessary nutrition-related restrictions makes it harder for people to go vegan. That goes for fat-free, soy-free, and raw foods diets. Sometimes these variations on veganism are perceived as steps in the same dietary evolution. They aren’t. Veganism is an ethical choice and it’s a diet that is healthful and appropriate at all stages of the lifecycle. Raw foodism is a fad diet that is appropriate only for adults and is based on shaky scientific principles at best. Fatfree veganism is a therapeutic diet for adults with health problems—and as I’ve noted before, it’s not necessarily the ideal approach.

An example of someone who utilizes “woo,” which Wikipedia defines as, “a term used by scientific skeptics for pseudoscience, alternative medicine and New Age beliefs,” is advocate and author of The World Peace Diet, Will Tuttle.

Tuttle co-founded Circle of Compassion, which runs a prayer circle website. On the site, an essay Tuttle authored with co-founder Judy Carman says, “Those of us who saw the film What the Bleep Do We Know? learned, or probably already knew, that our thoughts create energy fields that can affect matter in powerful ways.”

This is what is meant by “woo.” Aside from utilizing junk science and selectively interpreting good science in order to propagate a spiritual worldview, What the Bleep Do We Know? has intractable ties to a sect which believes that a woman, Judy “JZ” Knight, channels a 35,000 warrior named Ramtha.

The claims made in the movie are not supported by science.

Tuttle and Carman continue,

What we are proposing is that we all increase the power of these [animal advocacy] actions exponentially by uniting our focused thoughts on this single phrase at least once a day: “Compassion encircles the earth for all beings everywhere.” Imagine this phrase—this vision—being brought into the minds and hearts of millions of people each and every day and thus generating an energy field of compassion around the world.

I have to wonder why, if this sort of thing works, Tuttle and Carman don’t ask people to focus their thoughts on this phrase multiple times per day, or perhaps focus their thoughts on nothing but this phrase all day long. (I know that Tuttle does not do this, himself. He's a tireless advocate for peace, touring all over the place in order to spread the message of radical inclusiveness detailed in his book, The World Peace Diet.)

This concept that Tuttle and Carman put forth is, of course, similar to the Christian concept of the power of prayer: Pray, and Jesus will answer. Again, I’m not claiming that one way is closer or less close to the “right way.” That’s not the point I’m making here.

The Catholic concept of a wafer magically turning into the flesh of a god because an ordained man in a robe says some words to it is pretty darn out there when you step back and look at it. But the fact remains that Catholics are a respected demographic in our culture. One can’t simply say, when trying to determine how best to advocate on behalf of other-than-human animals, that since the majority of society believes in an all-powerful spiritual being or beings, then statements like the ones Tuttle and others make in regard to vegan advocacy should be treated as just another way of viewing our spiritual relation to reality.

Put another way, in the public relations fight between Jesus and Ramtha, Jesus is winning by a lot, and his odds are great to keep on winning for the foreseeable future. I happen to think that vegans shouldn’t bet on either of them, but if you do bet on the one who has little to no odds of winning, maybe just … keep it to yourself while advocating for other-than-human animals?

Carman and Tuttle write that their books, “can help you educate people about how activism and spiritual work are inextricably linked with animal rights issues. For example, world peace and personal inner peace cannot be attained among human beings as long as we are violently dominating, exploiting, and eating our animal kin.”

I agree with the second sentence, but I wonder what inner and world peace have to do with spiritual work. Spirituality is the belief in non-physical things. Inner peace and world peace are real, physical matters. I need no spiritual belief in order to advocate on behalf of animals and I take offense at the claim that I do.[2]

Veganism requires no more faith than is required when we see a dog yelping in pain and say, “That dog is in pain.”[3] There’s a preponderance of scientific evidence to back up that claim of pain. On the other hand, there’s a poverty of scientific evidence to suggest that merely thinking about something can change it, or that a woman can channel a 35,000 year old warrior, or that raw foods are always healthier than cooked foods, or that oil has no place in healthy diets.

Vegans may do well to keep a large gap between their advocacy of veganism and their advocacy of other fringe beliefs and actions, especially when those beliefs and actions are supported neither by the culture at large or by anything close to the scientific evidence which supports veganism.

[1] For what it’s worth, if I were to make a claim at all in this regard, I would claim that all supernatural claims are equally, patently false.
[2] I am aware of the humor of this statement, considering that it appears within a piece sure to offend many people.
[3] Substitute any animal you want for “dog” in this statement, including “human.”

Coming Soon: Confronting Animal Exploitation -- and another Deleted Scene

The book which contains my essay on vegan parenting is almost published. Confronting Animal Exploitation: Grassroots Essays on Liberation and Veganism should be out from McFarland Books early next year. 

I'm really excited for this book to drop. I've read most of the essays contained within and their awesomeness is matched only by their diversity. Some essays are heavy and ground-shifting while others are personal and contemplative. Here's a description of the book from McFarland. 

As animal exploitation increases, animal liberation issues are of growing concern, as seen through the rise of veganism, academic disciplines devoted to animal issues, and mainstream critiques of factory farms. Yet as the dialogues, debates and books continue to grow, the voices of "street level" activists--not academics, journalists or vegan chefs--are rarely heard on a national level. 

This volume broadens animal liberation dialogues by offering the arguments, challenges, inspiration and narratives of grassroots activists. The essays show what animal advocacy looks like from a collective of individuals living in and around Minnesota’s Twin Cities; the essayists, however, write of issues, both personal and political, that resound on a global scale. This collection provides a platform for rank and file activists to explain why and how they dedicate their time and what is being done for animals on a local level that can translate to global efforts to end animal exploitation.

Pretty cool, huh?

I'm going to start posting more snippets that I've cut out of my parenting essay on here, which I'm calling "deleted scenes" because it has a better ring to it than "essay cuts." Though these scenes won't be published, they should give you a decent idea of the sorts of themes I touch on in my essay.

In the essay, I use books and other media as examples of the barrage of speciesism our children face. Thankfully, not all books perpetuate speciesism on a readily apparent level:

Wild Talk: How Animals Talk to Each Other details the many ways that other-than-human animals communicate among one another. From the booming howels of howler monkeys to the songs of humpback whales and blinks of fireflies, the book presents conscious communication as just that. In addition to taking communication at face value, all animals in the book are either gendered or referred to as the plural “they,” as opposed to the genderless, deindividualizing "it."

Wild Talk is not an animal rights book. It doesn’t give us any guidance on how to treat animals. And there are slight improvements that would make it even more animal rights-friendly. For example, after a section in the beginning that details how we humans talk to each other, the book says, “Animals have a lot to say to each other, too.” It should, of course, say, “Other animals…” because we humans are definitely animals as well. Also, referring to the animals in the book as “wild” lumps them in an artificial category that serves to further the perceived divide between humans and other animals. But aside from those qualms, this book is a great, neutral (in that it doesn’t take a stance on any contentious issues) treatment of how other-than-human animals communicate with one another.

Just a note on the "wild animal" critique that I make there. I prefer the term suggested by Joan Dunayer, which is "free-living animal." The word "wild" reinforces the perceived normalcy and rightness of domestication in all of its forms. Free-living animals aren't wild, they're just animals, freely living in their natural habitats. By creating a category for animals who live in their natural state, we suggest that that state is just as benign and normal as the state we created for them - the domesticated and/or caged state.

And yes, I realize that "free-living" is a category in a similar way that "wild" is. The difference is that it more accurately and objectively describes the individuals we're talking about. There's a fog that needs to be cleared here and the phrase "free-living" helps in that effort.

Conversion Narrative in Veganism

The following is part two of a three-part series I wrote quite a while back. There was a chance that these were going to be published in an upcoming anthology in which a separate essay (by me) having nothing to do with religion will appear, but it didn't pan out (nobody's fault and no hard feelings). Honestly, I'm sort of OK with these mini-essays not being published, since they are sure to irk people in a way that I don't necessarily feel comfortable irking. 

The previous essay in this series, Religion and Vegan Advocacy, received a couple comments that deserve a response. I plan to write a separate post addressing these and any other comments I get on this second installment and the eventual third installment. 

OK. Here's the essay now. 

Oh wait, one more thing. If these essays had actually made it to the point of being published, I can assure you that they would have been edited and re-edited and fleshed out and would just be plain better (because my editors are rock-stars, that's why). So ... now that I've sufficiently lowered expectations, here you go!


The words “convert” and “conversion” come up a lot when vegans talk about choosing to be vegan. In many ways, this makes sense. In others, it’s problematic.

In what way is this conversion narrative a positive?

First, it’s something that just makes sense. Everyone knows what conversion means: in the simplest sense, it’s changing from one thing to another. When non-vegans choose to be vegan, that’s a type of conversion. Often, it can feel like a religious conversion; something akin to a spiritual awakening. As one blogger writes:

People often ask me why I made the decision to go vegan. I can point to certain events leading up to that moment that are helpful in explaining how I got here, but at the same time, when I really think about it, it’s almost as if it wasn’t a choice at all … What I mean is that it was almost like I had been asleep before and suddenly I woke up and saw the cruelty and suffering around me; being vegan seemed like something I simply had to do. 

I’m sure that many vegans can relate to this. I know I can.

This blogger may not have used the word “conversion,” and maybe that was intentional on her part, but the above quote still falls under the umbrella of what I mean when I refer to conversion language.

One could imagine Paul—formerly Saul—saying something similar about his conversion on the road to Damascus: “All of a sudden, I saw a light and I woke up.”

Sentiments such as these are all over the internet. One blog, The Vegan Light Bulb, has the tag line, “Stop looking at the shadows and look into the light!” Another blog is called My Vegan Awakening. James McWilliams even has a "Vegan Conversion Narrative" series on his blog.[1]

The word conversion is apt when describing the change from one ideology to another, and so I submit that the use of the word when talking about the change to veganism is technically correct. When one chooses to be vegan, it could be said that they are rejecting the ideology of speciesism and embracing equal consideration of other-than-human animals. Veganism could be said to be the ideology of this embrace.

That said, it’s important to consider what problems arise from use of the conversion narrative.

By framing veganism as a conversion, vegans present veganism as something ideologically different from what non-vegans believe. Conversion language doesn’t give enough weight to that fact that many people already agree, to an extent, with the precept that unnecessary killing of animals is wrong. The conversion narrative presents veganism as an ideology that is wholly different from the way non-vegans already view animals, but in many cases, this is not true.

The word conversion is also closely—perhaps intrinsically—tied to religion in our culture. For reasons that I state in my post, Religion and Vegan Advocacy, I see this as a problem.

Another pitfall of the conversion narrative is that most people don’t want to be converted. Most people are happy with who they are. When a non-vegan hears a vegan talking about their conversion, they may see it as this odd metaphysical shift instead of a simple decision made for rational reasons; reasons the non-vegan may likely be able to identify with.

If the problems of the conversion narrative outweigh the positives, and I think they do, then what easy-to-understand alternative could vegans use when describing their transition to veganism?

Carol Adams has used a different term to describe the act of becoming vegan in her book Living Among Meat Eaters. She refers to non-vegetarians as “blocked vegetarians”[2] and the process of becoming vegetarian as becoming “unblocked.” Living Among Meat Eaters is obviously a book geared toward people who already eschew animal flesh (a point Adams reinforces within the book), but it’s worth asking whether or not vegans should use the blocked/unblocked language when speaking to non-vegans.

Non-vegans may bristle at the notion that they’re blocked and somehow less connected to their minds than vegans are. Additionally, this term has caused a few vegans I know to refer this the book as a little too “woo” for their liking, meaning that its language takes on a new age feel and/or seems to be rooted in nonscientific thought.

If “unblocked” seems to exchange religion for woo—which may work for some, but not for others—then what other word or phrase could be used to talk about our transitions to veganism?

Vegans may appeal to a broader set of people when, instead of using conversion language, they say something like, “I chose to be vegan because…” This frames our actions simply as a choice.

It’s true that “conversion” also denotes a choice, but it carries baggage. It also suggests, because of its close association with religion, that vegans substitute one faith-based way of thinking with another faith-based way of thinking.

Veganism is a rational choice that most people are capable of making. Framing that choice as a conversion, though, may keep them from seeing it that way.

[1] This essay was written before McWilliams started the "Vegan Conversion Narrative" series, so that name and the name of this mini-essay is nothing more than coincidence. I just decided to add a reference to his series in at the last minute here since it seemed to fit so well. 
[2] In this book, Adams uses the word “vegetarian” to refer to vegetarians and vegans.