The Veg Blog

Here’s an odd story: fruit has been banned in a Los Angeles County prision. Why, you ask? Pruno.

Pruno, “cellblock wine,” is made of fruit, sugar, and cafeteria punch. “It is potent, easy to brew and has been around for ages,” the article says. Starting in October, the prision stopped serving fresh fruit in the boxed lunches given to prisoners to make pruno production more difficult, with the end result being to lessen violence and substance addiction in the prison. State corrections officials are considering a state-wide ban on fresh fruit.

“Prisons already are prohibited from serving three popular pruno ingredients — oranges, raisins and sugar packets. But a state report determined that creative prisoners can make pruno from yams, flavored gelatin, honey, hard candies — anything with sugars that can be converted into alcohol in the fermentation process.” … “‘Some institutions have tried, and they’ve found that about the only thing they can serve is meat,’ [state corrections spokesman Russ ] Heimerich said. ‘You can make [pruno] out of ketchup. Some inmates were even using the frosting off of cakes. It’s pretty much an unwinnable battle.’”

Fruit is still served in the cafeteria during breakfast and dinner.

Now available, a new feature interview with horror director Larry Fessenden. He discusses animal rights, vegetarianism, and ecologically sound filmmaking.

Despite my deep interest in horror films, especially low-budget independent and foreign horror films, somehow I hadn’t heard of writer and filmmaker Larry Fessenden until Exhumed Films showed a double-feature of No Telling and Wendigo. I was really surprised to see that No Telling was a horror film whose main topics were animal rights and organic farming—when you think of a “typical” horror film, these issues aren’t exactly the first to pop into your mind. I spoke with Fessenden briefly between movies after having spotted him looking through some Farm Sanctuary literature I had left out. Here was a humble, unassuming guy who made horror films with a message and was a strong advocate of “low-impact filmmaking.” In the months following the Exhumed Films show, I had a chance to speak with him about his view on animal rights, vegetarianism, and ecologically sound filmmaking.

Tell me a little about yourself and how you got started directing.

In high school I was primarily an actor, but I fell in love with the super 8mm camera and the way the camera was such an important part of storytelling. I had grown up watching movies on TV and had always liked horror.

How did the idea for No Telling come about?

I was interested in updating horror stories to the present day and in showing how horror themes from old movies were still relevant to current life. I was working on a vampire story when I read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I was very taken with her book, and continued on to read all the classic environmental and animal rights books. I shifted away from my vampire tale and decided to make a Frankenstein story dealing with vivisection and pesticides.

What was it about Silent Spring that intrigued you the most?

That she could sustain interest and suspense by these testimonials about pesticides and birds. But the book was very emotional for me, and that’s when I knew that these issues affected me on a personal and spiritual level.

What other books made an impact on you?

To name early influential books: Silent Spring (Carson), Animal Liberation (Singer), Small is Beautiful (Schoonmaker), Entropy (Rifkin), Animal Factories (Mason/Singer), The End of Nature (McKibben) etc. I have a reading list at Glasseyepix.com.

Did you go into No Telling with a strong belief in animal rights, or was it something that developed more from the actual making of the film?

By the time we actually made the film, I was well versed in all the animal rights issues. ever since I absorbed these issues, I have addressed them in all my films, however obscurely.

Can you give an example of how you addressed them in Habit and Wendigo?

In Habit, Sam says “I could be a Vegetarian, but I couldn’t commit.” It’s a throwaway comment, but it suggests something about his change. Vampire movies are naturally about devouring each other so there’s an awareness of issues there. And Sam eats raw liver as he descends into madness. Wendigo is about man and nature more overtly. In general, because of my sensibilities, my films stress different themes and details than other filmmakers. Those themes often have to do with hidden truths, degredation of the sacred, self delusion, addiction—all themes which are at play in our arrogant treatment of animals and the environment.

What type of vegetarian are you? How long have you been?

I’ve been some sort of vegetarian since 1987. I was a vegan for a year (no leather!), but ended up a lacto ovo veggie since then. For the last three years I’ve eaten fish, so I’m no vegetarian, I just refrain from eating mammals and birds.

What kind of challenges did you face when you first made the change?

My main challenge was that I loved meat of all sorts. I became vegetarian cold turkey, but I would allow myself table scraps, because food that was about to thrown out was better off enjoyed than tossed. My main agenda is not to perticipate in the economy of meat production. Anyway I remember being at a baseball game, behind the bleachers, feeding on the wasted fried chicken from a huge group picnic. Waste is a fetish of mine.

How do you see being a vegetarian now different versus when you started?

It is more accepted. In fact it is common comparatively: at work, restaurants, cover of Time Magazine—vegetarianism is out of the closet.

What reactions do people have when they find out that you, a director of horror movies, don’t eat meat?

I make horror movies because I have an acute awareness of the horrors of life. There is no more explicit an example of everyday horrors than in people’s treatment of animals, in the labs, the slaughterhouses.

You mentioned a couple stories at the Exhumed Films showings about the shooting of Habit (involving liver and a veggie burger, if Iremember correctly)… could you recount those stories?

Well one story is only that in a scene where I eat a hamburger and reject vegetarianism, I am of course eating a veggieburger. The other more distressing story is: in a climactic scene our vampire victim hero pulls out a store bought piece of liver and licks the packaging of blood. I hadn’t eaten meat for ten years, but I opened the cellophane and licked the package. If you look closely, you see me dry heave, and you see the camera jiggle because the cinematographer was laughing. One take, let me tell you.

What is “low-impact filmmaking?”

That’s a book I wrote after making No Telling. I guess I felt I still hadn’t done enough to explore the issues in the movie. The book, which was distributed independantly, gives a history of environmental concerns, and tells of the waste you can avoid on a film shoot.

If George Lucas were to read your book, how much waste do you think he’d save?

I suspect Lucas is fairly enlightened in his thinking, and my book is not that insightful, but the giants of the film industry and all influential people can affect the level of waste in a given system. Our whole American system of single-serve water bottles, over-wrapped junked foods, all is on display on a film set. The trailers and trucks run all day long, on and on. It is an enormous systemic problem that would require new thinking from the ground up. Filmmaking is just one contained part of a greater society gone haywire.

Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo is now available on special edition DVD from Artisan Entertainment.

Links

Glass Eye Pix
Fessenden’s movie production company.

Low Impact Filmmaking
Fessenden’s book about making movie in an ecologically and animal-friendly way.

ADDmovies.com reviews of Fessenden’s films

Tattoos linked to risk-taking behaviour

The general theme of this article is kind of interesting, if not terribly enlightening: “teens with body piercing and tattoos are risk takers who are more likely to be involved with cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana than teens without piercing or tattoos.” And within those two groups, the teens with tattoos live closer to the edge than those with just piercings. The study says that teens with tatoos are “64 per cent more likely to believe marijuana should be legalized.”

However, included in the so-called “risk-taking behaviour” is a vegetarian diet: “Teenagers with tattoos are … 53 per cent more likely to be vegetarians.” I realize this is likely presented as more of a “Hey, look at these kids, they have tattoos and they shun the societal norm of eating meat! They’re wacky!,” but with the headline as it is, vegetarianism is lumped in with drinking alcohol, smoking, and doing drugs. Oh, and with listening to all that crazy “Goth, Punk, Metal and Electronica” music.

<sarcasm>The kids today are just amazing with their wild music and weird dietary choices, aren’t they?</sarcasm>

Veg Blog regular Johanna has launched a new recipe site worth taking a look at, Swooning Veg*nism. The site features recipes that are far from run-of-the-mill vegetarian recipes (“thereby smashing the ‘tofu & iceberg lettuce’ image that the omnivoric world persists in having of us,” she says) from a variety of sources.

A full-length cookbook review of Mollie Katzen’s excellent Sunlight Café has been posted along with a recipe from the book for polenta waffles with berries. Remember that you can now comment on specific feature articles and recipes.

When Mollie Katzen wrote the original Moosewood Cookbook 20 years ago, I doubt she ever imagined that her collection of vegetarian recipes would become one of the ten best selling cookbooks of all time. Well-known amongst vegetarians and meat-eaters alike, Katzen has developed quite a name for herself. Sunlight Café is Katzen’s latest vegetarian tome, providing over 350 breakfast recipes for those looking for some bright morningtime tastes without the use of meat.

Sunlight Café is organized into 12 sections, including beverages, fruit, grains, eggs, vegetables, and “breakfast bars, coffee cakes, and sweet somethings.” Each section offers a good number of recipes and numerous variations on many. Most of the ingredients are readily available from the grocery store or a health food market and should appeal to everyone, not just vegetarians. Though there is a section dedicated to tofu and other soy products (I’d imagine that tempeh makes a great breakfast accompaniment), there’s not a heavy emphasis on them like in many vegetarian cookbooks.

The recipes are all appropriate for lacto-ovo vegetarians, as many use butter, eggs, or milk. However, in most cases, it’s perfectly acceptable to do the magic vegan ingredient replacer trick and swap in some soy milk, non-dairy spread, or Ener-G egg replacer. There are no fish recipes, as in many of the Moosewood cookbooks (and you’d be surprised how many cultures include fish as part of their breakfast).

The recipes and ingredient lists are presented in a visually appealing, easy-to-follow way, most peppered with great little tidbits of information about specific ingredients or the history of certain dishes. It was through one of these sidebars that I learned about the best way to extract pomegranate seeds (hint: it involves a bowl of cold water), usually a very messy job. And did you know you can freeze pomegranates for months? Or that egg whites will keep in the freezer for up to a year? These introductory sections and sidenotes are what really make Sunlight Café a joy: this is one of those rare cookbooks that you can sit down with, open to a section, and just read it without any intention of cooking. The ingredient information is useful and well researched, and the anecdotes provide good context for a recipe before you try it.

Though no pictures of the dishes are included, the chapters are headed with attractive illustrations by Katzen herself. You may not get a good visual idea of how a dish should be presented, but the illustrations give the book a pleasing aura.

Now, let’s get to the good part: the food.

I’ve eaten oatmeal perhaps five times in my whole life, and I never really liked it. But I decided that if there was ever a time to give it a shot, now was it. For dinner one evening, I opted for Chai Oatmeal, a warm, simple, blend of oatmeal and chai spices (cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, and turmeric) with some optional saffron and vanilla. I swapped in soy milk for cow milk with no adverse affects. The optional minced pistachios and (soy) yogurt were a great touch. One bowl was quite filling and this is the type of meal that’s easy enough to make with a few extra minutes in the morning (total preparation and cooking time was about 20 minutes).

Masfouf worked great as a dinner one night and, indeed, seems more like a dinner recipe than something you’d have for breakfast. This dish combines couscous with pine nuts and pistachios with dates (something else I never thought I’d like), a bit of lemon, olive oil, and yogurt. The dish is simple enough to prepare, but the end result is surprisingly complex, with a nice blend of flavors and textures from the nuts, yogurt, and couscous grains.

As a diner lover, I tried the Basic Home Fries recipe with great anticipation. Though they’re not the healthiest thing on the menu, some hardcore home fries with ketchup are the perfect accompaniment to any greasy diner breakfast dish. The preparation time was a bit long, but I’m happy to say that with Katzen’s recipe, diner home fries have truly come home. They were just salty enough and the nice, crispy, browned potatoes had the proper texture. And using an oil like high oleic safflower oil—Katzen’s oil of choice for frying like this because, unlike olive oil, it’s not damaged by high temperatures—it’s not quite as unhealthy a choice as if you ordered a batch at a greasy spoon.

One recipe that didn’t come out quite as expected was a batch of Amazing Amaranth Wafers. I was pretty psyched to try these out, as amaranth is one of those grains that’s not very common, but is quite distinctive in its taste and texture. Though they were easy to make, the cooking time listed varied widely from what was appropriate for my gas stove. I cooked mine in a high oleic safflower oil (as suggested) for 6 or 7 minutes at a slightly lower temperature than the recipe called for. Katzen recommended at least 10 minutes, but after 7, the wafers were more like solid bricks of charcoal. I plan to give this one another shot, keeping a closer eye on the wafers in the final minutes. I think it has potential, with some adaptation. I have high hopes for getting this one right, though, as the side note about amaranth points out its many health benefits: it has more protein than beans, more fiber than wheat or soybeans, and more iron than brown rice! Not to mention that it’s an affordable grain.

Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café may be one of the most appropriately named cookbooks this year; the recipes will lift your spirits and bring some light into those dreary winter mornings and add a splash of fresh flavor to a Sunday in the spring. The range runs from quick and basic dishes to creative recipes that encourage experimentation. Katzen’s friendly, conversational style makes the stories and recipes feel like they were shared over a light brunch. If you really enjoy breakfast (at any time of day), you’ll certainly want to consider Sunlight Café for your collection.

Find out more about Mollie Katzen at MollieKatzen.com and keep an eye out for an upcoming Veg Blog interview.

Sunlight Café is available for purchase through the Veg Blog store. You are also invited to try out one of the recipes from the book, Polenta Waffles with Berries.