In my ongoing attempt to review stuff that was sent to me a long time ago and should have been reviewed back then, I thought I’d write up a few notes on a couple of bars that were sent to me earlier in the year to try.

First up is the PranaBar, one of the many new raw energy bars on the market. All ingredients in PranaBars are raw except for the nuts and seeds, “which require slow cooking to denature enzyme inhibitors they contain.” The bars are vegan, GMO-free, soy-free, gluten-free, and contain no added sugar. The result? Probably the tastiest energy bar on the shelves. They sent along Mango Maca and Raspberry Pomegranate bars for me to try and they were both absolutely delicious. They didn’t taste “health foody,” which I think would make these a great choice for kids or people who generally shy away from anything that doesn’t contain HFCS. The bars are a bit pricey, retailing at about two bucks a pop, but hey… not everything should cost less than a dollar. (Note that this company does produce non-vegan bars under their “Boomi Bar” line that contain whey and honey. Stick with the Prana and Prana SuperCharger bars.)

Next up is the Bora Bora bar from Bora Bora Foods. Bora Bora is a small company focused on organic, gluten-free, non-GMO bars without preservatives, artificial sweeteners, etc. Not all bars are vegan (some have honey), but most are. These will appeal to the fans of straight-ahead fruit-and-nut bars. They’re simple, they’re tasty, and they’ll make you happy. Bora Bora sent along a couple of the vegan bars for me to try and they were quite good, with just enough of a twist on traditional nut bars to be interesting (like the Tropical Sesame Cranberry or Tiki Blueberry Flax bar). The Bora Bora bars were kind of hard to come by when they first sent the product along for review, but since then they’ve developed a pretty solid distribution and have gotten much easier to find. Good stuff.

Over the weekend, Stephanie over at Animal Rights and AntiOppression shared a video (embedded at the end of this post), which comes courtesy of the Tribe of Heart folks. In the video, James LaVeck discusses an event held by the Ohioans for Humane Farming, a “coalition of animal welfare, family farming, food safety, and environmental advocates advocating for more humane standards to prevent cruel factory farming practices in Ohio.” The fundraising event was promoted heavily as having “delicious food” and namechecked famous chefs involved. “Hey,” you might think, “I bet they were serving up some great vegan food!”

You’d be wrong.

In actuality, the event featured “grass-fed cheeseburgers with cheddar,” goat crostini, chicken confit, goat with pesto, and meatballs made of lambs. This, apparently, is the HSUS’s idea of “delicious food.”

LaVeck then points us to the Ohio group’s about page, which lists other members of the coalition, including several local humane societies, sanctuaries, and animal welfare groups alongside the Great American Lamb Company, cattle ranchers, and other farmers and organizations whose livelihoods depend on killing animals.

Listen. Enough is enough. Let’s cut the crap and get to the point: we don’t need national organizations that supposedly exist to help animals a.) forming coalitions with people who directly benefit from killing animals and b.) serving and promoting meat at their fund-raising events. I’m tired of hearing about incremental reform. I’m tired of hearing about reaching out to the family farmer. I’m tired of hearing about different approaches aiming for the same result. I’m not interested (and I don’t think the animals are, either) in approaches that actively promote the consumption of meat and other animal products.

The HSUS has some explaining to do. And if I were any of the animal organizations listed as part of the coalition, I’d be embarrassed and working to get my group’s name removed from that page pronto. All the good work that they do could get quickly tarnished by a coalition like this.

Keep in mind I’m not criticizing every person in these organizations. I know and have met dozens of people in HSUS, COK, Farm Sanctuiary, etc. and most are good people with good intentions. But when HSUS pulls something like this, they–as an organization–have to be held accountable. We need to call them out. We need to criticize tactics (without making it personal) and get an honest discussion happening. You don’t get people to stop eating meat by encouraging them to eat meat. (But you may get people eating meat again, churning out another one of those annoying vocal ex-vegans.)

Stephanie sums it up nicely (emphasis added):

Please, let’s hold each other accountable, even when that’s difficult to do (and yes, even when we know there are good, well-intentioned individuals inside groups). Please, let’s firmly stand together to say that this is not okay. Please, let’s change course. Please, let’s stop making excuses for what is inexcusable. Please, animal rights advocates, let’s fight for what we actually believe and stop supporting groups and campaigns that are less than honest, that do not reflect what we know to be right and just, and that give credibility and the “humane” label to the exploitation and killing of animals. Let’s show more loyalty to the nonhuman animals than to the groups that keep selling them out.

From “Q&A Experts and Studies: Not Always Trustworthy,” an interview in Time with David Freedman, author of Wrong, a book which focuses on how wrong “experts” and “studies” usually are:

What about studies that involve animal testing and take what they study on animals and apply it to humans? Is that really an effective way to determine what we should eat or what cancer treatments will work?

There are some things we just can’t study on humans because it would be incredibly unethical. Of course, it’s a much debated question of whether it’s ethical to study on animals too, but putting that question aside, clearly it can really help science move forward to do animal research. However, the fact of the matter is, the majority of animal research does not translate well to human beings, and in spite of the fact that scientists love to point out that we share anywhere from 90% to 99% of our genes with different types of mammals, we know we’re really different than mice and we’re even really different than apes. Again and again and again we see that drugs and behavior and almost anything you want to look at in animals turns out to not apply well to human beings. So, yes, it advances basic science to ask these questions, but does it result in good advice for us? In general, the answer is no.

Two weeks ago, the coolest place opened up just outside of Las Vegas in Henderson, NV: Atomic #7 Trustworthy Treats. They’re an ice cream parlor that serves huge variety of vegan ice cream (and dairy, too, but they keep everything nice and separate… honestly, the dairy feels like an afterthought with all the attention given to the vegan side of things). But get this: it’s all made to order from scratch. You pick the flavor, the type of milk–including rice, soy, coconut, and almond–and “chunky elements.” And if you want it, a homemade vegan waffle cone.

But wait until you see the video (I shot this last tonight):

How freakin’ cool is that? Add the fact that a local vegan baker was handing out samples of cake and that’s a hard place to beat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some mint chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream waiting to be devoured.

We lost our sweet girl today.

We will miss you so, so much, Amina. Thank you for picking us and sharing your life with us.

Taken in February of this year.

October 2009. This one is one of my favorites.

At Barktoberfest (an annual reunion/fundraiser for the shelter where we adopted Amina), October 2009.

November 2008. Thanks to Natala Constantine for this great shot.

When we first met Amina at FOHA, May 1, 2005.

This Sunday I’m running the 7th annual Poplar Spring Run for the Animals 5k. It’s also my own seventh time I’ve run the race — the first one was just a couple of months after I started volunteering at the farm back in 2004.

As I did last year, this year I’m raising money through sponsorships. I hope that you’ll consider sponsoring me and supporting the farm for whatever you can afford using this big ol’ donate button:

This year I’m running in honor of two animals, both of whom are very close to my heart, reminding me often why I’m vegan and why I will never stop working toward educating others about animal rights.

First up is Amina. We adopted Amina, a bluetick coonhound, five years ago from Friends of Homeless Animals, a nearby no-kill shelter. She’d been found wandering in southwest Virginia seven months previous. She was probably a hunting dog (she has a small buckshot still under her skin on one of her hind legs) and was likely bred, as she has had a litter of puppies. After being picked up, Amina was taken to a shelter, and her time was almost up before a woman adopted her with the intention of finding a new home for her. After bouncing between foster homes and changing names a number of times, she wound up at FOHA, where we met her and instantly fell in love. After our first meeting with her, my wife and I talked it over and went to see her in her kennel run. We asked her through the cage door if she wanted to come home with us and she pawed at the door as if to say, “Of course!”

It’s been a great five years with Amina and all her goofy quirks. For a coonhound, she’s an unsually quiet dog, only barking four or five times in the entire time she’s been with us. She’s had a rough year this year, being diagnosed with very severe inflammatory bowel disease. She’s been on a steady dose of medications for the last month and as a side effect, her leg muscles have weakened quite a bit. It’s been touch-and-go trying to get her on the road to recovery fighting this severe intestinal disease and though she’s far from herself, we’re still hoping that she’ll recover and start to reverse some of these side effects that have set in. We love the girl deeply and have struggled watching her in various stages of discomfort during the onset of IBD (which took well over a year for the vets to successfully diagnose) and during the heavy medication that’s followed. Hopefully on Sunday she’ll be feeling good enough to join us at the race to meet some of the other dogs.

Secondly is Juniper, who I ran in honor of last year. I won’t recall Juniper’s entire story (read up in Poplar Spring’s newsletter or in Deb’s great post from last year), but in short: her family had to leave their farm and when they did, they simply left her behind. Juniper survived difficult weather on her own with only grass to eat for nine months before the neighbors finally called somebody about her. She’d developed a bad infection in her legs that forced her to walk on her front knees. Amazingly, when she came to the farm, she survived and showed quite an improvement in her health. Though she was never able to fully stretch her front legs out again because the muscles had atrophied, she was able to walk on them and loved her relaxed life at the farm.

She’s now 15 years old, making her the oldest goat or sheep ever at Poplar Spring, from what Terry tells me. She’s struggling with arthritis, but is still loving her treats and surprising everyone at the farm with her strength and amazing will to live.

Amina and Juniper are living reminders of how animals in dire straits can recover and live full lives. They’re perfect examples of distinct personalities that go against what everyone expects for their breed or species (have you ever heard of a silent coonhound? Or a goat that’s picky about food and won’t drink water if you’re looking at her?). They’re reminders that animals don’t exist for our use or taste. Let’s respect them and their lives.

Thanks for supporting Poplar Spring and the essential work they do.

A dairy farm in Canada is tweeting for their cows.

The 12 cows are part of the “Teat Tweet” project, tweeting “about their lactation cycle and robotic milking activities.”

I say this is a good opportunity for some activism. I dropped a note to Freeride Speedy:

@FreerideSpeedy It must suck to keep giving birth and then having your babies and milk stolen. Don’t worry: some of us out here respect you.

How about we all adopt one of the dairy cows and tweet words of encouragement? Here are direct links to their twitter accounts. And let’s use the hashtag #dairysucks.

• Attention Please
• Charge Cindy
• Charge Gina
• Charge Mabel
• Contrast Amanda
• Freeride Speedy
• Frosty Lace
• Goldwyn Windy
• Jerry J Lo
• Kurt Appeal
• Montgomery Mae
• Morty Fy

I’ve been meaning to post about her business for a while now, and with this recent feature on a local news broadcast, it’s as good of a time as any:

Dominique is a former co-worker of mine who was pescatarian when she worked with me and went vegan shortly after she left the company. She now owns her own business, Zizania, where she teaches people in the Northern Virginia area how to live, eat, and cook in a healthy way through veganism.

It’s so exciting to see a former co-worker go on to do such positive things. Rock on, Dominique!

500 Vegan Recipes
by Celione Steen and Joni Marie Newman
Fair Winds Press
Buy Now

When 500 Vegan Recipes arrived in the mail for review a while back, I have to admit I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw the title. Here was a compendium of recipes bound for the dollar bin at Barnes & Noble. It didn’t take more than a minute of flipping through the book, though, to see that I was being a big dummy and judging a book by its cover (title).

500 Vegan Recipes has quickly become one of our favorite go-to cookbooks when we want something relatively simple, but new. While there are some old standbys in here, by and large, there are a lot of surprises and interesting twists that will keep this one on the shelf when others gather dust.

Food bloggers Steen (of Have Cake Will Travel) and Newman (Just the Food) compile 20 chapters and 500 pages of recipes ranging from breakfasts to casseroles to sides, and you know the rest. Lots of food from beginning to end in every imaginable category.

Our favorites thusfar include Butternut Drop Biscuits (made with spelt flour, oats, and butternut squash puree, they taste amazing right out of the oven getting that sweet and savory balance just right), a delicious Garlic and Sage Cashew Cream Sauce that we had on pasta but would be perfect as a pizza base (double the recipe… trust me), the budget-friendly Beefy Bacon Burgers) which take the unlikely hodgepodge of peanut butter, bacos, TVP, yeast, oil, and a few other things and make an easy and filling burger), Mac and Sleaze, and a Swiss-inspired Rosemary Apple Potato Rosti that would make a perfect late fall/early winter side.

We’ve made 23 recipes from here thusfar (still not even 5% of what’s in the book!) and only three haven’t been unadulterated thumbs up (and of those three, two were split decisions in our household). Not bad at all.

As I mentioned, while most of the recipes here are within the grasp of anyone with a little bit of kitchen time under their belt, you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. Like the nicely spicy Chorizo, Cranberry, and Cornbread stuffing or the Creamy Pumpkin Almond Sauce as a super simple pasta and veggie topper. The Raw Lemon Cheesecake is another winner I haven’t seen elsewhere (and it’s not hard, even making the raw crust from scratch). There’s a lot of international influence here, too, ensuring a range of flavors for every palate.

While there aren’t any photos in the book (not unusual for such a giant tome), Steen and Newman’s blogs have more than enough to let you see what you’ll be getting.

For well under $20 at most online stores, it’s going to be hard to get a better deal on such a huge collection of recipes that you’ll return to again and again. I recommend this one whole-heartedly.

(Just to show how slow I can be with my reviews, the authors already have another book up for pre-order: The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions and a third book in the works.)

I promise, some more substantial posts are on the way soon. But, for now, the death metal rooster: