I know one Joshua Hooten that loves when magazines list the “x Ways to ____” teasers on their front cover, so Josh, this one’s for you.

You’re vegan.  Awesome.  But are you the most kick-ass vegan you could be?  Are you pretty kick-ass, but looking for ways to increase your ass-kickitude?  Try these ideas on for size.

1. Make a vegan gift basket.  Do you have a friend that just went veg?  Harken back to your first few weeks… I remember thinking, “Jeez… am I doomed to a life of soy hot dogs and lettuce?”  Go to your local co-op and grab some Red Star nutritional yeast, agave nectar, soy jerky, and some other fun convenience foods.  Then maybe toss in a cookbook or print out some recipes from the web.  Arrange them artfully and there you go: a vegan starter kit to help get your friend on the road to veganism.  (Kudos to my wife who recently did this for a friend of ours that recently went vegetarian.  Great idea.)
2. E-mail local restaurants and bakeries and ask them about vegan options.  I pretty much stole this one from Isa’s article from the last issue of Satya, but it’s a really good one.  You may not get many responses, but if you can start getting vegan options (with the word “vegan” attached to it) into some local eateries, the vegan love and wisdom will spread like a ray of hippie sunshine.
3. Talk to other activists.  In person, if possible.  It can get difficult when you’re sitting at a desk all day to remember that there are other people out there who take veganism and animal rights as seriously as you do.  So talk with them.  I’m not officially a member of any organizations, primarily because most of the ones near me are in DC, which isn’t really all that near me.  But when I volunteer at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, everyone talks about activism, animal issues, food (usually while cleaning the pig yard), and social issues.  I always come away from a day of volunteering reinvigorated and bubbling with new ideas and inspiration.

   When I was in Portland last month, I attended a really great gathering of activists from different causes to discuss burnout and infighting.  I walked away from that not only more inspired than I’d ever been, but wishing that I could go to something like that every month.  Keeping the dialogue active is essential to keeping ourselves excited and motivated.

4. Donate small.  Do you donate to one of the large animal rights organizations?  Have you thought about whether or not your money is being spent in a way you approve of?  If the answer is “no” or “I’m not sure,” then consider donating your money (or time!) to a smaller, local organization.  Small non-profits can have trouble raising money when directly competing with larger organizations for your dollar.  With a small, local organization like a rescue or sanctuary, you can find out specifically how your money is being spent and you can physically see how your money is directly helping the animals.
5. Join a CSA.  When a friend told me about the concept of Community Supported Agriculture a few years ago, I was floored.  It was exactly what I’d been looking for: locally grown organic vegetables picked in the morning and delivered to you by that evening for about the cost of vegetables at the local supermarket.  It really is one of the best things you can do as a vegan (aside from growing your own): you’ll support local farmers (with all the ecological benefits that go with it), you’ll get fresher, more nutritious vegetables, and the taste will be beyond anything you can buy in the store.  It’s a win for everyone.  Search for a CSA near you.
6. Clean out your cleaning closet.  Cleaning products tend to last for a long time (confession: I still have a functioning “stain stick” that I bought before my freshman year of college in 1994), so even if you’ve been vegan for a while, you probably still have a bunch of cleaners that were tested on animals or contain nasty, unnecessary chemicals.  I’m sure you’ve already switched to greener cleaners and only have the old cleaners around because you don’t want to put them to waste or dump them in a river.  Well, donate ‘em.

   I found out today that a local thrift store that benefits the homeless needs dryer sheets.  Why?  The store cleans up clothes and gives them to homeless men and women going on job interviews and, thus, needs dryer sheets.  What a perfect way to get rid of those old animal tallow-filled beasts I have sitting down by the dryer!  Look up a local shelter and see whether they’d be able to use your leftover cleaning supplies and then never look back.

7. Make an animal care kit for your car.  In each of our cars (yes, we have two… thank the suburbs for that), we have a basic animal care kit.  Making Kind Choices has a section on creating one that you may want to look to for suggestions (also covered briefly here), but here’s what I’d start with:

   an animal carrier that could hold a cat or small dog, a very simple leash that can easily be placed around an animal’s head, a card with the numbers of local animal control, rescue organizations, and shelters, pull-tab cans of cat and dog food, a towel, and print-outs of what to do when you find birds, possums, turtles, owls, and other animals.

8. Read.  At any given time, I’m reading 3-4 books.  One of them is always somehow related to animal rights.  Go ahead: build a reading list and see what your local library has in stock (or just walk and browse the shelves - start at Dewey Decimal 179.3).  Read something that you may not agree with.  Challenge yourself.  Read outside of your comfort zone.
9. Give a talk.  Here’s one I’ve been meaning to work up the nerve to do for a while now.  Ideally, I’d like to find a group of young or beginning vegetarians to talk to about veganism, like a high school or college animal rights group.  Spread the knowledge!
10. Stay healthy, like Dead Prez said.  One of the best ways to promote veganism is to be happy and healthy.  Don’t turn into a vegan cheerleader necessarily, acting bubbly when you’re not feeling it, but eat well, be positive, and be a good role model for veganism.  Three cheers for the non-cranky vegan!

I’ve complained before about “faux vegetarians” who muck up things for the rest of us by claiming vegetarian status when they still eat chicken. After all, how’s a vegan supposed to get soup in a restaurant if the staff has been trained to think of chicken broth as vegetarian? But, truthfully, there is some value in labels as a means to communicate what one does or doesn’t consume to someone else. Below contains what I consider to be a complete and correct list of the terms currently in use. Please feel free to let me know if you find any of this incorrect or misleading.

The two (well, four) most common types of vegetarians are:

• Lacto-ovo vegetarians don’t eat beef, poultry, or fish, but do eat eggs and dairy products. (Similarly, lacto vegetarians consume dairy but not eggs while ovo vegetarians eat eggs but don’t consume dairy.)
• Vegans consume no animal products or animal by-products. This means no beef, poultry, fish, eggs, or dairy (many vegans also avoid honey). Veganism also extends beyond the diet. Vegans avoid leather, wool, silk, down, etc. Some people use the term strict vegetarian for people who follow a vegan diet but still use animal products in other parts of their lives.

There are also some restrictive subcategories of veganism:

• Fruitarians eat raw fruit and seeds only.
• Raw/living foodists eat at least 75% uncooked (items may be heated up to 110 degrees), unprocessed, organic fruits and vegetables, with the intention of preserving more vitamins and minerals. There are very few “pure” raw foodists though many people “eat raw” at least occasionally.

Then there are the classifications of vegetarians that aren’t really vegetarians. Their inclusion here does not imply an acceptance of these often confusing, misleading terms, but rather to serve as a reference.

• Pesco-vegetarians eat no beef or poultry but do eat fish.
• Pollo-vegetarians eat no beef, but do eat poultry.
• Semi-vegetarians or Flexitarians eat “less” meat (than who? Most people? Themselves, before? Ted Nugent?)

And, finally, there is the one classification that I made up but at least one person thought I was serious about:

• Cannibal-vegetarians eat no animal flesh, with the exception of human flesh. These folks might do good to consider starting a company.

This page also has some very good information about classifications and definitions of the varying types of vegetarian.

Cookbook author Nava Atlas has penned a series of successful vegetarian cookbooks with a special appeal to families and those looking for simple ways to prepare unique meatless meals. Books like The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet, Vegetariana, and Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons have been go-to books on my shelf since I became vegetarian and her latest, The Vegetarian Family Cookbook is a great addition to her previous publications.

One of the notable differences you’ll find in The Vegetarian Family Cookbook is that while not all the recipes are vegan, there are many expanded vegan options, a difference that reflects a change in Nava’s own life since her previous book. In the lengthy and informative introduction, she discusses soy mayonnaise, non-hydrogenated margarine, and soy milk as well as the reasons she and her family have eliminated cheese and eggs from their diets.

Also included in the introduction are a list of compelling reasons to “go organic,” a list of essential cooking tools, and the best oils to use for cooking.

Onto the recipes.

One of the first recipes I tried was for “Seashells in the Sand,” a simple couscous/bulgur-based dish with small shell pasta. The recipe as it’s listed is quite bland, but the recommendation for “adults” is to season it with fresh herbs or pine nuts. For me, a little marinara sauce did the trick.

A more successful pasta recipe was Pasta with Enlightened Alfredo Sauce. I opened for the vegan version and the end rich was light, yet relatively creamy.

The Baked Tofu Nuggets were tasty, but could have used a bit of a kick. They were made a bit better, though, with an excellent, very easy-to-make vegan tartar sauce on the next page.

One of the best, and simplest, dishes I tried was the Macaroni and Cheese with Secret Silken Tofu Sauce. Why “secret”? Because most people won’t even notice it’s in there. Again, I made the vegan version using Soymage vegan cheddar and the end result was very good. One of those simple, kid-friendly comfort foods that doesn’t require a disgusting packet of powdered cheese. But while this one is good hot, it’s even better cold the next day. This one is served well by some steamed spinach (I needed a whole bag) and some sun-dried tomatoes mixed in. It would probably also work well with some of the new Tofurky kielbasa or Italian sausages chopped up and tossed in.

The favorite around our house, though, was the exceedingly easy but fresh-and-tasty Middle Eastern Pita Bread Salad. With plum tomatoes, cucumber, scallions, parsley, and a few other ingredients, this fattoush is a great go-to meal, especially in the summer when bread salads taste even better with fresh, locally grown vegetables.

The Vegetarian Family Cookbook features over 275 recipes in the normal categories (breakfast, soups and stews—something Nava Atlas excels at, as seen in her excellent Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons, main dishes, side dishes, and sandwiches) as well as a few categories you won’t normally find in “family” cookbooks (tofu and seitan get a thorough treatment as do “wholesome baked goods”).

What’s great about Nava Atlas’ latest effort is that while there are good “family-style” cookbooks and good vegetarian cookbooks, the two categories have not been married in such a successful way to this point. The recipes are simple and while some may be too simple for advanced adult palates, the “Embellish It” tips suggest easy ways for adults to spark up a dish. Who knows, perhaps this cookbook will inspire families to actually eat the same meal, or only slight variations thereof. That would be quite an accomplishment.

Visit Nava Atlas’ web site In a Vegetarian Kitchen and order her book through the Veg Blog’s affiliate link.

The husband-wife team of Josh Hooten and Michelle Schwegmann run the Herbivore Clothing Company, which sells non-lame vegan gear (think “Praise Seitan“) and has been publishing the “vegetarian culture” magazine Herbivore for just over a year.

I had a chance to speak with Josh about Herbivore and being vegan in a very non-vegan world. He told me to go away.

Actually, it went something like this:

Let’s start with your “Vegetarian history” (when you became/why you became “one of those people”).

I went vegetarian about 7 years ago and vegan 5 years ago. Prior to that I had a very serious case of denial. I had veggie friends who were excellent role models but for some reason I held on to the stereotypes I had developed about vegetarians and was very stubborn. Despite the fact that some of my best friends were anything but the stereotype, I just wouldn’t let it go. Then one day my old roommate rescued a goose from a busy intersection near our house and somehow that lead to an epiphany for me about her seeing this goose wandering around, scared, and confused, in traffic (with a fishing hook through it’s wing) and how I would have stopped traffic to help too. But then I’d eat a chicken without thinking twice about helping it out of it’s own confusing and frightening situation. So I decided to stop eating meat. Then a couple years later I was reading Diet for a New America and was shocked at how I thought I had this great compassion for animals by not eating their flesh but didn’t think twice about milk and eggs and so forth. During the reading of that book I truly felt like it would have been less cruel to eat beef than eggs, but I wasn’t going to eat beef, so I couldn’t keep eating eggs. Same with milk, etc. It was a very big moment in my life, I remember where I was and what I was wearing when I decided to go vegan. And I REALLY didn’t want to go vegan. I didn’t want to be inconvenienced by learning all this new stuff and having to start cooking for myself and so forth. But when I read the truth, I knew what I had to do. I really didn’t feel like I had a choice.

I assume you went through all the typical family-and-friends issues when you went vegan. Any good stories about being “The Vegan” (as one of your recent issues refers to it)?

I have a few friends and family stories, some of which I can now look back and laugh at but most are kind of a punch in the heart. Meaning, it doesn’t feel good to not get support from the people who you’re closest to. Which, oddly, always seems to be the group that is most resistant for the people I know. Why is it always family who show you their ass when you make big changes like going vegetarian?

Anyway, I had one friend who would get uptight about a column I wrote for a website and how, in my column, I “couldn’t go a week without mentioning veganism, can you?” I told him it made me sad none of my friends supported my decision, or gave me any credit that I might be on to something and maybe they should look into it. Anyway, I told him I wasn’t going to listen to his shit anymore unless he learned about this thing that had changed my life. I told him to read Diet For a New America, and once he did, he could criticize me all he wanted because he’d finally know what he was talking about. He went vegan before finishing the book. His eyes opened up just like mine had.

Shortly thereafter he’d call me on a regular basis to tell me all the messed up things he was seeing that before never would have occurred to him. Like how his mom had triple bypass heart surgery and on the way home from the hospital his family stopped for dinner at a steakhouse to celebrate the successful surgery.

How’d you decide to start the Herbivore Clothing Company?

For the first 3 years I was one of those “I don’t want to talk about my diet, it’s a personal choice” kind of vegans. I didn’t know any other vegans, so I didn’t have any backup. At first this was because I wasn’t very good at talking about it, I was new to it, and couldn’t recite facts, which I thought would be important. Then one day I decided that was dumb. I had important information that should be shared (regardless of whether or not I could remember how many baby chicks are ground up per year in the United States, or why hunting isn’t an effective means of wildlife population control), especially with people I cared about who I often found saying the same dumb, ignorant things I used to say about vegetarianism. And I was proud that I was vegan, so why wouldn’t I talk about it in the right context? So, like any good American would, I turned to consumerism to speak my beliefs for me and I went shopping for an animal rights message shirt. But I’m a bit of a design snob and couldn’t find anything that I liked or that would express my views in the style I would prefer. So I decided to make a shirt, then thought, there must be other people out there in my shoes. Why don’t I make a few dozen of this shirt? Why don’t I make several designs, a few dozen of each?

I’m a graphic designer by trade, so I knew I could handle that part ok. And I’d just recently learned how to make a really sloppy website, so I knew I could handle that too. I had a friend who owned a screenprinting company how knew where I could get really nice quality, sweatshop free t-shirts and he would let me trade design work for printing with him. So why not? That was a couple of years ago and it’s been going well.

And how did that eventually translate into becoming magazine publishers?

We started the magazine for the same reason we started the clothing biz, just substitute “wear” with “read” and “clothing company” with “magazine.” Example: “As fashion conscious, urban vegans who were convinced of our own cleverness and humor despite any evidence of this, we felt we didn’t have anything vegan oriented to wear. So we started a clothing business.” OR: “As fashion conscious, urban vegans who are convinced of our own cleverness and humor despite any evidence of this, we felt we didn’t have anything vegan oriented to read. So we started a magazine.”

I really wanted there to be a magazine that was about celebrating our culture as much as it was about the issues behind it. We couldn’t find one that was covering the stuff we wanted to know about, so we made one.

And we wanted to show the humorous side of the vegetarian community too. Veggies are so often cast as humorless, rhetoric spewing grumps and that is just not my experience. So many of our friends are fun loving knuckleheads how are passionate about the issues but still love to laugh and have fun and celebrate their lives.

What are your current distribution channels?

We handle the subscriptions through our site, and our newsstand distribution is handled by Big Top Newsstand Services, which is the distribution arm of the Independent Press Association. We’re really excited about working with them as their mission is to support independent publishing and keep that voice alive in a world where ever fewer media outlets exist. If we hadn’t gotten picked up by Big Top, we would have had some hard thinking to do about distribution and whose pockets we would have been lining by trying to go with another distributor. Big Top gets us into a lot of indy bookstores and co-ops as well as bigger corporate chains. I think this is indespensible because as little as I like corporate chains, how many pro-animal rights voices exist on that bookshelf? Little to none, so we feel really proud that we don’t have to curtail any editorial content and can still get an expose on chicken factory farming onto a Barnes and Noble newsstand. Other magazines will write about those topics, but not usually from a pro-activist standpoint, which we think is a really vital voice.

A few months ago, I was staying at a hotel outside of Chicago and I was wearing my “Praise Seitan” shirt. We were heading out to the Chicago Diner, but before we did, I had to go through the “recreation area” (where there’s a pool, game area, etc.) to get to the front desk. I forgot that I was wearing that shirt and got a lot of scared looks from kids who were old enough to read but not old enough to know about wheat gluten and such things. On my way back from the front desk, I had to cross my arms to avoid scaring any more little kids. Have you had any strange reactions like that to any of your clothing line/stickers/pins?

Not as much as my friend Chad from Food Fight Vegan Grocery who makes buttons that say “I Love Hunting Accidents.” What a cold hearted bastard.

That’s almost as cold as Jeb in issue 3 who said what he learned from Atkins was to be careful when walking on ice.

I just got a note the other day from someone saying we were doing a good job except the Praise Seitan shirt wasn’t to her liking. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Thanks? Piss off? Relax? I didn’t know what to say. I got a note from a very serious Christian once who was really upset about the shirt. She said she was a vegetarian and a Christian and she didn’t appreciate the pentagram (made out of forks) and so forth. She said I should stop making them and that it wasn’t funny. I told her, with all due respect to her faith, she should spend her time lecturing her meat eating Christian friends about compassion, rather than lecturing a vegan about Christianity. Oh boy, she didn’t like that. I don’t know what to tell people who get upset by that shirt. My feeling is, if they get upset by that shirt, they were going to get upset by something that day and the Praise Seitan shirt just happened to come along.

That brings up an interesting point: a lot of very religious people still eat meat and, as pointed out in the current issue, it’s actually a main part of many religious holidays and ceremonies. I’m particularly bothered when I see a church having a celebration and they’re doing a pig roast. They wouldn’t consider wheeling out a dead body from a funeral to put in the middle of the celebration, so why would they wheel out a dead pig on a spit?

What do you think causes this seemingly paradoxical behavior in otherwise religious and spiritual people?

Tradition. That’s all I can think of. My experience has been that very pro-meat people don’t ever have any solid back up for their stance, they only have tradition or vague statements like “It’s natural, we’ve done it forever.” Completely ignoring the fact that there is NOTHING natural about hacked up chicken parts in plastic wrap at a grocery store. If they were out there with a spear running down their food, they’d have a leg to stand on but grocery stores aren’t much like the forest, so that argument topples right over. And most of them I’ve heard do with a little inspection.

One thing “traditionalists” fail to grasp is that we’ve also been hating and killing each other over the color of our skin forever too, but that doesn’t make it right. We’ve been hating and killing each other over our religious beliefs forever, but that doesn’t make it right. Having a selective view of history to prove your point doesn’t make for much of a debate.

As for religious and spiritual people who eat meat, I have no idea how you can preach compassion and peace and eat meat. It baffles me every time I think about it. Even if their God did intend for us to eat the animals he/she put here, surely he/she wouldn’t enable them to suffer, then let us torture them with factory farming practices. No idea how otherwise sensitive people keep the blinders on.

What’s the reaction been from those within the vegetarian/animal rights community to your clothing and magazine?

As far as the Praise Seitan shirt goes, it’s far and away our best seller. A lot of responses have been along the lines of “finally I can fly the vegetarian flag with a sense of humor!” As for the company in general, people seem to dig it. It’s very validating to start two companies based on the hunch that there are a lot of other people out there like us and have it work out. It’s validating and scary. What else about them is like us? Do they all also swear like sailors and make up drunken dances called “Gorilla versus the Escalator”? Do they have an attacking type manuever called “The Butt Saw”?

Also, we were nominated by Utne Magazine in their Independent Press Awards in the Best New Title category, which was a real honor. So getting recognized outside the community is also very cool.

That said, I have to point out that just like everywhere else there is competition and underhanded stuff going on in the community, from a business standpoint and other areas. I have no time for this bullshit. We’re all here trying to save lives, getting competitive about business stuff undercuts the supposed goal.

What business lessons have you learned from your short time running Herbivore? What’s been your biggest obstacle?

Running vegetarian companies will never get you on “Cribs.” The biggest obstacle is not being able to afford to launch all the new products and projects we want and not having enough hours in the day to get everything done. But that’s actually a good thing. Keeps us motivated.

I imagine that most of the money that comes in goes right back into the business. Has it been a challenge to “pay the bills” at home?

Most of the money does go back into the company. But we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to pay most of those bills on time, as well as sponsor a cow at Farm Sanctuary for the past two years (his name is Boris), as well as lend what support we can to various AR groups including Student Animal Rights Alliance, PETA, the SHAC 7 legal defense fund, Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary, and a few others. Our feeling is that there’s no use in starting a company if you’re not going to support the community that is supporting you.

I imagine that by the time you start a business based around vegetarianism, you’ve learned pretty much everything there is to learn about food, slaughterhouses, and corporate greed. Have you had any “vegetarian epiphanies”—things you didn’t know before going into this business?

Well, one thing you just have to accept is that you’re going to be spending a lot of money with companies who aren’t vegetarian and aren’t down for your cause. Meaning I’m paying someone to print my magazine and they are taking my money and buying meat with it I’m pretty sure. It’d be nice if that wasn’t the case, but you do what you can. Or for clothing, the person who manufactures our blank shirts, I’m sure their whole company isn’t vegetarian. But it’s a good company who don’t subcontract with sweatshops like a lot of garment industry types, and they are rolling out organic cotton options thanks to their customers inquiring with them about it. So you have to hope your choices balance out. If I didn’t start the magazine, that printer or shirt maker wouldn’t have my money to go buy meat with. But, on the other hand, I got a note from a vegetarian woman today who’s husband eats meat. She said he flips through Herbivore and is becoming more compassionate as time goes on (not only because of the magazine) and she thinks he’ll quit meat soon. Or a person who we run ads for said he had been vegan for years and then started eating dairy. He got Herbivore and went back to being vegan, refreshed and excited about it again. So there’s always a trade off and if we didn’t think we were doing more good than harm, we’d quit.

I wouldn’t call them epiphanies, but being vegan and not terribly excited by capitalism, I question all our decisions and try to make the ones that are most in line with our beliefs. Sometimes we’re wrong and sometimes we can’t figure out why one way would be better than the other, but we do question them all.

Gardenburger or Boca Burger (assuming they were never bought by Kraft)?

Gardenburger. Portland Represent! Even though they just moved to Idaho! (or was it Iowa?)

Not sure. I think they’re both actually the same state.

The excellent Satya magazine recently published two issues about “violence and activism,” after having solicited articles from readers, activists, and others involved in the animal/environmental/human rights movements. I read the March issue cover-to-cover in one sitting, waffling back and forth on the issue based on whatever article I was currently reading, and have read a number of articles in the new issue as well. Below is the piece that I submitted to Satya . It wasn’t printed, but I figured I’d share it here, since I figure other ethical vegetarians struggle with this issue themselves at some point.

During the first break of my freshman year at college, I went out to lunch with a high school friend who had started her senior year and was looking forward to going off to college herself. We chatted about the normal stuff, like what a big change college was and how the last year of high school seemed to drag on forever, but at some point, the topic of conversation drifted to civil rights. We discussed how so-called “radicals” or “extremists” that were part of the civil rights movement played a role and were even essential to its survival. My friend said to me, “You know, sometimes it takes extreme positions to really cause the status quo to change.” It’s this part of our conversation that I remember most vividly ten years later.

The more I thought about what she said, and I thought about it a number of times over the years, the more I realize she was right. If there were no Black Panthers or Nation of Islam speaking as loudly as they did, would the more moderate civil rights movement still have made the same impact as quickly? Probably not.

Does this same thought apply to the animal rights movement? As much as some outsiders consider PETA “extremists” for their various publicity stunts that draw attention to their cause, it’s groups like the Animal Liberation Front and SHAC-USA that proudly wear the label of “radical extremist” on their sleeves. When the fight for animal rights goes beyond civil disobedience or other lawful ways of bucking the system, does the argument still stand that change is brought about faster by the most extreme factions of our movement?

My wishy-washy answer is: I’m still not sure, but I think so.

On one hand, I consider myself peaceful and can’t find myself supporting physical harm to any person, no matter how many awful things the person has done. After all, aren’t they just “less enlightened” or something? My mind changed as I read about the wrongs of the meat, dairy, and egg industries, why couldn’t they be the same?

On the other hand, I can’t help but cheer a little bit when I hear that SHAC’s tactics have managed to convince another financial backer to sever their business relationship with Huntingdon Labs. Though the animals that are subject to the most unnecessary, horrible tortures in the name of cosmetics and cleaning products won’t feel the immediate victory, I feel like a step has been made in the right direction.

Really, there’s no easy answer and no one right answer. There are many ways to approach the issue of animal rights and each of us has our own calling to a particular form of activism. While some are disturbed most by the property damage and violence caused by some activists, I’m more concerned by the reason that sort of response isn’t so uncommon. The cause bothers me even more than the response.

For instance, if factory farms didn’t exist, would groups be defacing family farms and damaging property of people who bought eggs from them? Would the Earth Liberation Front be damaging fleets of SUVs if the vehicles were more fuel efficient and manufacturers didn’t so blatantly snub environmental groups by actively marketing vehicles like the Hummer to the general public? If HLS weren’t testing sweeteners on rabbits, would groups like SHAC even exist?

I will always fall on the side of a peaceful solution, when given a choice. I think most people do. But as in the civil rights movement, perhaps the more extreme factions are needed to help change the status quo, as much as the thought saddens me. My hope is that through all of our efforts, in the future, property damage and violence won’t even be a thought. Perhaps we’ll get to the point where our efforts can be focused on education and legislative changes. However, with systems as dirty as the ones we’re dealing with, it’s clear that groups that practice extreme types of activism are far from disappearing.

“All the darkness cannot extinguish the light of a single candle…”

This weekend, after another rewarding day at the farm, I came home and watched the new documentary about New York’s Farm Sanctuary, Peaceable Kingdom. Directed by Jenny Stein, who also directed The Witness, Peaceable Kingdom is one of the most touching and evocative documentaries I’ve seen in quite a long time.

Farm animals are often left out of animal rights discussions, which tend to center on companion animals and animals used for testing or research, but in recent years, the cruelty and pain behind the walls of factory farms has been exposed by videos like Meet Your Meat and books like Slaughterhouse. As informative as those resources are, and as necessary as they are for the animal rights movement, they’re definite downers (no pun intended). It’s hard to to come away from videos or books focused on farm animal suffering with any sort of optimism that one person can make a difference when millions of food production animals die every hour, many just because they’re the wrong sex.

Peaceable Kingdom is different in that the images of suffering and torture are juxtaposed with images of hope. It’s clear than when each year hundreds of millions of baby male chicks are discarded and left to die and a million veal calves are tortured and purposely malnourished, it can seem a pretty daunting task trying to make a dent in a industry whose cruelty runs so deep. But when those numbers and their accompanying images are followed by footage of Gene and Lorri Bauston rescuing downed cows, discarded chicks, and female chickens trapped in a tornado-ravaged hatchery, one can’t help but feel a sense of hope and inspiration. It’s this juxtaposition that makes Peaceable Kingdom so effective and moving.

Many of the painful images come from the Farm Sanctuary’s own library of rescue footage, as well as footage supplied by Compassion Over Killing, the Humane Society of the United States, and other similar organizations. It’s hard to describe the feelings that wash over you when you see humanity at its most disconnected and cruel. During one scene where baby calves are taken away from right in front of their mothers’ eyes, dragged away by a back leg, and then thrown into a crate and purposely made iron deficient, one will realize that this is why people are vegan.

While the Bauston’s Farm Sanctuary is the main focus of the documentary, we also hear from a number of others associated with the Farm Sanctuary and the animal rights movement. We hear from Howard “Mad Cowboy” Lyman, the cattle rancher-turned vegan activist, perhaps the most atypical vegan you’ll ever see. Also featured is Harold Brown, who tells the emotional story of growing up on a beef farm but having his life turned around after adopting and connecting with Snickers, a rescued male cow at the Farm Sanctuary. And, of course, there are the animals, who are given equal billing in the credits as their human counterparts.

Peaceable Kingdom serves a few purposes. First, it’s perfect for activists looking for new material, especially with the built-in “loops” section of the DVD that allows for easy display from a van or at an event. Second, it will open the eyes of the public who are fully unaware of how a cow becomes a hamburger. It does this in the most effective way possible: by showing, in a non-preachy fashion, what happens to food production animals in the factory farm system, how it got to be that way, and why it doesn’t have to continue. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Peaceable Kingdom helps remind those activists who are feeling burnt out that what they’re doing does matter and that despite all the suffering that continues, our efforts are touching the lives of many animals that would have otherwise died a horrible death on top of a pile of dead cows or buried under thousands of carcasses in a trash can.

Peaceable Kingdom runs 77 minutes and is available on DVD and VHS through Tribe of Heart’s online store for $20. You can also buy “Gifts of Compassion,” copies of the video at a discounted rate that you pledge to donate to organizations or give away to friends.

One-half of the Non-Prophets, Rhode Island resident Sage Francis is a rare beast in hip-hop: he’s a vegetarian emcee/spoken word artist and he’s not timid about saying so. While he’s not the first person in hip-hop to leave the beef for a battle (like the 2000 Scribble Battle, for example, which he won), he’s one of the few that talks openly about it in his lyrics. On “Different,” from his solo album Personal Journals, Sage says:

Growing up in a microscopic town prepared me well for this petrii dish, /
Where talk is invisible to the eye and they hate the guy they’re speaking with. /
I’m a real vegetarian: No chicken…not even fish. /
I’m a real underground rapper: My tape quality sucks, my records are warped and my CD skips.

In this e-mail interview with Sage, he discusses how he became vegetarian and how some of hip-hop’s well-known vegetarians may not be walking the walk.

Ryan: Let’s start with the basic background stuff—what type of vegetarian are you? How long have you been vegetarian? What led you to choose to stop eating meat?

Sage: As my vegan friend puts it, I am a ‘half-assed vegetarian.’ I eat dairy products. I stopped eating meat in 1996 and it was basically done on a bet. My straight edge friends tried telling me that I was addicted to beef because of all the drugs that are pumped into cows. I knew the only reason I ate meat is because it was made available to me in different forms and for very cheap (which is absurd). So I stopped eating meat for a year just to prove them wrong and then when i tried to go back to eating meat again I was repulsed by the flesh.

Ryan: So that was some reverse psychology they pulled, huh? While you proved to them you weren’t addicted, their bet showed you the light. As the years went by, what types of things surprised you and disgusted you the most about food production?

Sage: Basically, they pulled the old, “Oh you couldn’t stop eating meat even if you tried.” Well, I proved them wrong. I most certainly wasn’t to meat. I ate it out of convenience. I truthfully believe that they believed I was physically addicted to eating meat and I knew that was nonsense. I had never been addicted to anything. Not to my knowledge anyway. The thing that disgusted me most about meat was that… I am composed of meat. I don’t feel like chewing flesh. It grosses me out. I know where it comes from and I know how it gets to my plate. If I can have an alternative to meat, I will always go that route. I can’t believe all people don’t do that.

Ryan: What are some of your favorite veggie dishes/recipes?

Sage: I absolutely love vegetarian makki. That’s about as classy as I get. Other than that, I am a sucker for pizza. I’m one of those people.

Ryan: How about restaurants? Are there any favorites in towns that you visit but don’t live near?

Sage: I believe that the only ALL veggie restaurant in RI is the Garden Grille [Caf�], which is unbelievable. Classy joint with scrumptious meat alternatives. My favorite place to eat in Providence is the Meeting Street Cafe which specializes in top quality food of all sorts. I have written many love letters and break up letters in that place.

Ryan: Vegetarianism is one of those topics rarely discussed in hip-hop (aside from every rapper and his mother saying, “even vegetarians have beef with me” or some such). Animal rights, specifically, seems to come up even less frequently, even among political emcees… do you think this disconnect is similar to the one that often exists between environmentalists and animal rights activists?

Sage: Ha ha, good call on the over-used vegetarian punchline. But humans have a lot of wrinkles to iron out between themselves before ‘animal’-rights becomes pertinent subject matter in hip-hop. I do wish ALL people could see the benefits of vegetarianism but there’s a lot of work to be done before that sort of awareness permeates the mindset of rich and poor.

Ryan: What do you think is the most urgent thing people need to know about food production/vegetarianism/etc., even if
they don’t go any further in exploring the topic?

Sage: A conscious diet should be a healthy one. A conscious vegetarian diet is a healthy one. You are not making a sacrifice to your body by depriving it of meat, that is a social fallacy. A true revolution begins with your daily eating practices.

Ryan: When it comes time to tour, have you faced any difficulties finding good eats on short notice?

Sage: Most of the time we are forced to settle with gas station cuisine. Horrible, horrible eating habits on tour. And touring Europe will definitely test a vegan’s faith.

Ryan: In a recent poll, England was named the most vegetarian-friendly country, which kind of surprised me because while Asian countries do eat a lot of fish, it’s not unusual for anyone (not just vegetarians or Buddhists) to eat a dish with seitan or tofu in it. I would have expected somewhere in Southeast Asia to be easier to find veggie food since it’s so ingrained into their culture. Did you find any European countries that were more friendly to vegetarian visitors than others?

Sage: That poll sounds like complete bullshit. Granted, there are a lot of Indian restaurants in England, but there is no way that any spot in the UK is the most vegetarian-friendly in the world. Quite the contrary. From my understanding, there are Asian countries that used to be strict vegetarian until they became westernized. From personal experience, the good old northern US of A is the most vegetarian friendly, but there is one buffet-style veggie restaurant in Montreal that takes the cake. I forgot the name though.

Ryan: Dre from Outkast is vegan, Dead Prez go so far as talking about raw foodism… who else in the hip-hop community is vegetarian/vegan that you know of?

Sage: Dre and Dead Prez may talk the talk, but like most rappers I have a sneaky suspicion they ain’t walking the walk. It’s like… KRS claiming vegetarianism on one song and then I read an interview where he was eating chicken. So who knows. Recently I heard a member of Souls of Mischief say he was vegan. Sole is vegan, Odd Nosdam is vegan, Yoni (Why?) is vegan, and I am the half-assed vegetarian.

You can find out more about Sage Francis at Non-Prophets.com. Be sure to check out his solo work (Personal Journals, the Sick of… series, Makeshift Patriot), his work with Joe Beats as the Non-Prophets (the outstanding 2003 release Hope), and his material with Art Official Intelligence.

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

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.

In March, Burger King debuted the BK Veggie, a vegan burger served on a nearly-vegan bun (there are trace amounts of dairy). Burger King promised that the burger would be microwaved by request for those that didn’t want their burger grilled with the meat burgers and that the low-fat mayonnaise could be left off. It was the first move by a national fast food chain (other than Subway) to offer a healthier, vegetarian product for their customers.

A day or two after the burger debuted, I stopped by a Burger King for the first time in years to show my support and do my duty as a prolific (hah!) vegetarian web site host. I had read on Vegan.com that some people had trouble getting their burgers microwaved, being downright refused by some Burger King employees, so I crossed my fingers when I placed my order. “A BK veggie with no mayo, and could you microwave that instead of grilling it?” There was a look of confusion on the employee’s face as we struggled back-and-forth to communicate. I was served my burger and was pleased to see that there was no mayo. The burger itself was good, but I noticed that it had grillmarks on it. I figured that the burgers shipped that way, with faux-grill marks to make it look more authentic. I was wrong: Erik Marcus told me that his BK Veggie burgers had no grill marks. Apparently, I received a burger that was grilled and then microwaved. Plus, I found out a month later that the Burger King fries, which used to be vegetarian-safe, now contain chicken flavoring.

Not exactly a successful first outing.

Last weekend, though, I gave it another shot. My wife and I were on the road past 11pm and were looking for some food. Burger King was the only place open at any of the rest stops, so I decided to give the BK Veggie another shot, figuring that a few months after the product launched, employees would be well-versed in its preparation. This time around, they microwaved it (no grill marks!), as I requested, but they fumbled by putting mayo on, despite my request otherwise. I took my burger back up to the counter and they redid it for me but, unfortunately, simply threw away the other burger. To top it off, the employee had no idea how long to microwave the burger. The discussion I heard in the back went like this: “He wants it microwaved instead of on the grill.” “Microwaved? How long do you microwave one of these things?” “5 minutes, I guess.” “5 minutes!? Are you kidding me?” I hoped that they’d figure it out—apparently one minute will do the job—but they didn’t: the burger was an overheated hockey puck.

While I haven’t exactly had a lot of success with my own ordering of the BK Veggie, I still support the idea of a veggie burger at fast food restaurants and I like the fact that Burger King continues to prominently advertise their BK Veggie alongside their other burgers. McDonald’s now offers a vegan burger on a whole wheat bun in Canada, and hopefully they will follow Burger King’s lead in making a vegetarian option available to their American customers as well.

I eat fast food extremely rarely, but I think that tasty vegetarian options at national fast food spots can do only good in advancing the cause of healthier eating and vegetarianism. Lord knows we’d have a healthier country if everyone ordered a BK Veggie instead of a Double Whopper with Cheese.

Related Links

BK Veggie Nutritional Info:
with low-fat mayo
without mayo
(for comparison: a Double Whopper with the works)
Some nutritional comparisons to blow your mind.

Burger King Launches First-ever Veggie Burger with the Great Taste of Flame-broiling
BK’s press release.

My First BK Veggie
Vegan.com’s Erik Marcus discusses the surreal experience of his first meal at a fast food restaurant in 15 years, and more specifically, his thoughts on the BK Veggie burger.

Vegetarians Have It Our Way at Burger King
PETA’s promotion of the BK Veggie.

My last meal with meat was in September of 2000. It was at a Vietanamese pho restaurant with a co-worker. Pho was my favorite meal at the time, especially after visiting Vietnam and having it once or twice every day. Unfortunately, Pho Bo, by its very definition is a beef noodle soup, so my decision to become vegetarian meant that I had to give up my favorite meal and the absolutely incredible aromas that went along with it.

Or so I thought.

It’s been a full 19 months since I had my last bowl of pho, and since none of the pho restaurants offered a vegetarian version (though I’ve told they exist), I decided it was time to try and make my own. Fortunately for me, the Vegetarian Resource Group had an article about travelling in Vietnam as a vegetarian, including recipes for the broth and the soup ingredients. This past Friday night, I decided to give it a shot, praying that the aromas I fondly remembered would fill the house and the relaxed feeling I got from eating pho would return to me.

I had this feeling that recreating the soup as a vegetarian dish would be successful. I figured that the smells and tastes that go along with pho came not from the meat, but from the seasonings and fresh vegetables. With ingredients like cinnamon and the gloriously-scented star anise, it was bound to smell good while cooking.

Friday night after work, I stopped by the nearby Asian market to pick up some of the ingredients that aren’t at the local Giant: bean sprouts (a huge bagful), some seitan in a can, Napa cabbage, cilantro (available at the supermarket, but it’s more expensive), and the rice noodles (I got specifically thin “pho noodles”—they’re also available in a thicker version). I had picked up cinammon sticks a week or two earlier and got a few pods of star anise from a local health food store. The star anise was so light that it didn’t even register on the scale—they charged me 2 cents. Everything else, I had at home.

The broth is pretty basic, starting with vegetable stock, soy sauce, garlic, and onion and then adding some charred ginger, cinnamon sticks, two pods of star anise (that’s two stars), and two bay leaves. After simmering and removing the solids, I added a couple dashes of Vietnamese cinnamon for a little extra flavor. Regular ground cinnamon would work, too, but Vietnamese cinnamon (available at Whole Foods and similar places) is stronger.

The soup ingredients are also relatively basic: noodles, seitan, bean sprouts, and some greens. The recipe linked above is well written and worth following.

The entire preparation and cooking time amounted to about 35-40 minutes, not bad for a soup. With anticipation, my wife and I took our bowls and sat at the table to try this new recipe for an old favorite. After the first incredible sip, I must have blacked out with pleasure… this stuff was good! And, it was extremely similar to how I remembered traditional pho. The spices were pungent but not overpowering, the textures were proper (especially with the optional added peanuts), and it made me feel warm and comfortable. My wife, who is Vietnamese and still eats meat, also thoroughly enjoyed it. Success!

It’s hard to describe how happy I was to find a suitable vegan adaptation of a favorite meat-based dish. It’s definitely going to become part of my regular arsenal. I heartily recommend it to those of you who have been lucky enough to experience pho and those of you who haven’t, as well.

The broth is ready to be ladled over the noodles and greens.

Ryan (donning the only male Vietnamese garb in the house — the wedding ao dai) prepares the bowls.

The final product.

Related Links

Vegetarian Vietnam
Sally Bernstein’s wonderful Vegetarian Journal article about travelling in Vietnam as a vegetarian. Includes the recipes I used.

A Bowl of Pho
A thorough weblog entry describing the intracies of the pho experience.

Soup restores heart, soul in many cultures
A Washington (D.C.) Times article about various comfort soups, including pho.

We all have different stories about why we became vegetarian and the difficulties we faced as we took that path. Some of the Veg Blog readers are new vegetarians, some long-time vegetarians, some vegans. And I know that some readers of the site aren’t vegetarian, but the fact that you’re here and reading this says that you’ve considered it for yourself or are at least interested. This is my story, and I invite you to submit yours (you can be vegan, vegetarian, or a meat-eater to submit).

Just like any other average American kid, I grew up on meat. Not obscene amounts of it, but “normal” amounts. I never really questioned my diet or the ethics behind it until I was in high school. My sister was a vegetarian for a number of years after seeing a movie on meat production in a sixth grade class. She stuck with it for five years and always impressed me with her commitment. There was also Rebecca, a girl I knew from online (back before the Web), who was a vegetarian for a number of years. I gave it a try a few times, but never made it more than a few meals before I had the urge to have some chicken or some meat. By the time I finished high school, it wasn’t unusual for me to have two Big Macs for dinner. This was back when I had a metabolism that could handle that sort of thing. :)

Fast forward a few years. I went through the rest of high school and college as a “normal” meat-eating American male. I knew a few vegetarians along the way and despite the fact I ate meat on a regular basis, felt some sort of distant connection. By the time I graduated college and was living on my own, my eating habits started to change ever so slightly. I started replacing hamburgers with Boca Burgers (actually preferring the taste and health benefits) and started thinking more seriously about the importance of what I was eating to my health.

In July of 2000, I decided to eat vegetarian meals for 10 days a month. Why 10 days a month? In the CaoDai religion, members are required to eat vegetarian meals for varying amount of days, depending on their rank in the church. It seemed like a good place to start, so, I began marking off days on my calendar when I was meat-free with a “V.” It was surprisingly easy, even without much research. My main lunch meal was a Subway vegetarian sandwich.

After just two months of following this 30% vegetarian diet, I took the next step. On September 8, 2000, I went to lunch with a co-worker for some pho (Vietnamese beef soup, my favorite meal). After that meal, I realized it was only the second time in the last three weeks that I had eaten meat. Somewhat anti-climactically, I said to myself, “I can do this,” and decided that from that point on, I was a vegetarian. At the beginning, I was quite uninformed about what was involved in a successful vegetarian diet (or a successful omnivorous diet, for that matter), but even so, it was a surprisingly easy transition.

Early on, I ate a lot of mock-meats. Boca Burgers, Morningstar Farm burgers, soy sausage, etc. Looking back, mock meats are the perfect transitional food for someone interested in moving from a standard American diet to a full-time vegetarian diet. I don’t rely much on mock meats too often any more since I’ve grown to love and appreciate the diversity of vegetarian cuisine, but coming from a diet that was certainly meat-centric, they were a Godsend. Going cold turkey (pardon the pun) without mock meats would have made it much more difficult for someone like me.

A month later, I posted an entry on my personal weblog about my decision. It’s interesting to look back at that entry and see what I was thinking after my first month of being vegetarian after nearly 25 years of the standard American diet. In that entry I discuss how “I’ve surprised myself” by starting like vegetables I hadn’t cared for before, like squash, zucchini, and eggplant. “Apparently, there are all these things that I might like that I never did before. It’s kind of a cool thing to realize there are a lot of other opportunities, actually more than when I was eating meat.” In the next paragraph, though, I mention that “there are a few things that I still do not like, though: peppers, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes.” Oddly, since then, I’ve grown to like each and every one of those things.

On November 30, 2000, I decided to start the Veg Blog as a separate blog on my personal site to explore vegetarian issues. I realized that there weren’t any other blogs that dealt strictly with vegetarianism, and I thought that if I shared what I learned along the way, it would help others who had recently become vegetarian or who were considering it. But the reasons were also partly selfish. I figured that if I was putting information out there for people to read, I’d be forced to try new recipes, read recent health-related articles, and inform myself about the many facets of a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle beyond just diet. It’s worked.

16 months after becoming vegetarian, I haven’t had a single “lapse” and I feel stronger about my decision than ever. It hasn’t been all sunshine, though. I am still irritated by meat-eaters that feel like I’m attacking them by my own, personal decision to be vegetarian, even though I never say a word to them. It makes me wonder: if they’re so secure in their reasons to eat meat, why are they so threated by someone who doesn’t? I’ve found that bringing up vegetarianism with someone who doesn’t want to discuss it causes nothing but problems, but if someone approaches me first, I’m happy to discuss it with them.

I’ve enjoyed talking with various people in “the movement” and learning from everyone from people just dabbling with the idea of becoming vegetarian to people that have been vegan for more than a decade. Everyone has a different take on this issue and I love learning new facts and perspectives. Who knows… maybe someday I’ll be the one writing a book.

My current diet is still not what I’d consider “optimal” (I still snack on less-than-healthy foods too frequently), but I’m very proud of how quickly I’ve picked up some cooking skills. I’m willing and able to try new recipes to the point I have to force myself to use the same recipe twice. The meals that I make are with health and taste in mind, and I find myself leaning towards vegan dishes more often then not. My dairy intake has decreased signficantly. I use soy milk in my cereal and in most dishes that call for milk. I, do, however still eat cheese occasionally, though when I have soy cheese, I look for the brands without casein. I rarely cook with eggs, though I still occasionally eat those as well. Lifestylewise, I find myself bothered by leather more and more and winced this morning when I saw a commercial for furs. I try to make changes where I can (I’ll choose non-gelatin caplet versions of pills if I have a choice), but I don’t beat myself up about everything. I feel like I’m moving towards a vegan diet, though I’m not ready to fully make the switch yet. I’ve learned that, for me, it’s a progression, and that while the change to a meat-free diet was relatively simple and quick, the change to a vegan diet and lifestyle may take a little more time and preparation.

My story doesn’t involve any “becoming vegetarian saved my life!” lines or anything dramatic, but I can say that it has changed the way I look at food and the food industry.

Veg Pledge
Start by shifting to a plant-based diet over a 60-day period and get materials to support your attempt. And look at a picture of Kevin Nealon. :)

Vegetarian Resource Group
The VRG has a wealth of information about going vegetarian to help you.

Vegetarian Starter Kit
A guide from the Physician’s Committe for Responsible Medicine. Includes the “3-Step Way to Go Vegetarian.”

Open Directory: Going Vegetarian
A large selection of sites to help you make the switch.

My wife and I were married in September of 2001, but since she was in graduate school, our honeymoon was limited to a weekend at a local bed and breakfast. So, in December we took a delayed honeymoon to the Finger Lakes in New York. We started in Geneva, spent some time in Ithaca, and finished in Watkins Glen. While we were in Watkins Glen, we decided to take a day and volunteer at the Farm Sanctuary, a farm animal shelter established in 1986 for rescued “food production” animals.

Many of the pigs, cows, turkeys, and other farm animals at the sanctuary were once downed animals, left for dead by slaughterhouses or meat delivery trucks, or escaped food production lines (in well-known cases like Queenie’s). The animals get to live out their lives on one of two clean, spacious farms (one in New York and one in California) and are cared for by a loving, understanding staff.

We arrived in the late morning and met with Michelle, who works in the education division. She gave us a choice of working on the farm or helping out with some envelope-stuffing. We wanted to a little of both, so Huyen and I started with some farmwork.

I wonderered what kinds of things the Sanctuary folks had one-day volunteers do. Would they go easy on us since neither of us had ever been on a farm before? Turns out (thankfully): nope. In the three hours we helped outside, we helped clean the rabbit pen (a relatively easy job), the turkey pen (a little more intensive), and the chicken coop (a messy, but necessary job). What amazed me is that the barns and pens the animals live in are cleaned out daily. Keep in mind that on most factory farms, cages and stalls are rarely cleaned, but here, where animals are truly “free range,” their living quarters are kept nearly spotless. All the old hay is removed and new hay is spread. Droppings are cleaned up and cages are emptied out. It really is quite amazing, and touching, to see how well these formerly neglected and abused farm animals get to live their lives.

After we came back from lunch, we decided we’d help out in the campaign office of the Sanctuary, helping to stuff envelopes, but first we made the rounds of the farm to visit some of the animals we didn’t get a chance to work with. The cows were grazing and didn’t seem to interested in us, but the real experience was visiting the pigs. The staff was cleaning out the barn, so the pigs were all put outside. We stood at the gates and pet some of the pigs while talking with one of the Sanctuary workers. The pigs seemed quite anxious to get inside… the hogs sounded angry and many of the females were in heat. Still, there was something very cute about them… I got a sense of the individual personalities. I wasn’t looking at the source of bacon and sausage, I was looking at sentient beings with feelings like any other farm animal or pet.

As we were leaving the barn, we spotted a pig laying in the hay by himself. The worker guessed that this particular pig was “Boots,” a 1500-pound animal that was the sole survivor of a fire in the pig’s barn a number of years back. Boots was happy for the attention he got when we leaned down to pet him and talk to him. Huyen and I both swear that he smiled at us. The sad thing about Boots and a lot of the other pigs at the Farm Sanctuary is their size: many pigs are genetically engineered to grow quickly and to a greater size than nature ever intended. The reason, of course, is for a greater food yield per animal. After all, if you can get more bacon and sausage from an animal by giving it hormones, why not? Boots was one reason “why not.” He had a difficult time supporting his own weight, having trouble just standing up. When animals are engineered to exceed their natural growth pattern, the people doing the engineering don’t take into account what happens if the animal doesn’t become a side dish at breakfast.

After visiting the goats, we took a short drive down the road to the office where the farm’s various campaigns are headed. There, Huyen and I took an hour or two to help address and stuff envelopes as part of their new mailing campaign. They were writing to restaurants in New Jersey, asking the proprietors to pledge not to serve veal in support of the state’s anti-cruelty laws. I read the letter that was going out, and it wasn’t pushy or aggressive, but rather, professional and informative.

Before we left for the evening, we had a chance to meet Gene Bauston, who founded the Farm Sanctuary in 1986 with his wife, Lorri. After meeting Gene, we were convinced he must have founded the place when he was 13. He’s a friendly, incredibly young looking guy that doesn’t look a day over 28. He thanked us for helping out but it would have been more appropriate if I had thanked him for all the time, effort, and love he’s put into the farm over the last 15 years.

I truly can’t say enough about the work the Farm Sanctuary does. Every person that we met there enjoyed what they were doing had a respect for the animals that I’ve never seen before. Whether it was a farmhand cleaning the chicken coop or an intern in the campaign office keeping the place clean, they believed with a passion in the common goal of better treatment for farm animals.

With factory farming such a huge industry in the United States, the Farm Sanctuary is clearly “the little guy” working against often unethical big businesses that treat their animals as objects rather than sentient beings with feelings and personalities. If you’re in Watkins Glen, make sure you take some time to stop by and visit or volunteer.

Sometimes it seems that everyone is out to make gobs of money in the business of exploitation, but a day at the Farm Sanctuary is an experience that will remind you of the good in people’s hearts.

Related Links

The Farm Sanctuary
The Sanctuary’s main site.

FactoryFaming.com
The Sanctuary’s site devoted to information about cruelty of factory farming.

NoDowners.org
The Sanctuary’s site about downed animals, “animals so diseased or badly injured that they cannot even walk.”

Poultry.org
Another Sanctuary site, this one focusing on the poultry industry.

Farm Animal Shelters
Here, the Farm Sanctuary has set up a resource for individuals and organizations interested in providing a similar service for abused farm animals.

Free Farm Animals from the Cruelty of Confinement
A Sanctuary site focusing specfically on confinement of factory farm animals.

SentientBeings.org
A Farm Sanctuary campaign to make people aware of agribusiness exploitation of animals, treating them as “tools of production” rather than sentient beings.

NoVeal.org
Of all the stories of confinement and cruelty, there is none worse than the every day treatment of cows that become veal (if this picture doesn’t bother you…). This is the central site for the Sanctuary’s “Say No to Veal” campaign.

Ban Cruel Farms
A campaign to get rid of gestation crates for pigs.

Animal Rights Law Project
From the Rutgers University School of Law, a very through site with all sorts of animal rights-related info.

An artist by training, a cookbook author by happenstance, Nava Atlas has become one of the more unlikely successes in vegetarian cooking. Because of her initial training as an artist, Nava has released some of the more unique vegetarian cookbooks on the market, including Vegetariana, her labor of love that features not only healthy and hearty recipes, but also a nice dose of history and quotes related to vegetarianism as well as a bookful of original illustrations done by the author herself.

Nava’s cookbooks aren’t all for the eye, though. Her focuses range from regional American cooking (Great American Vegetarian) to holiday cooking (Vegetarian Celebrations) to simple, quick dishes (the new Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet and Vegetarian Express) to soup-by-the-season (Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons). She’s received positive reviews from Shape magazine, the Burlington Free Press, and the New York Daily News, and rightfully so: her recipes provide great taste and texture in a healthy fashion that’s accessible to the amateur home cook.

When did you become vegetarian and for what reasons? Why type of vegetarian are you now (and did it come in stages?)?

I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly 30 years, though for about 5 or 6 of those, I occasionally ate fish, so my sons don’t think those “count.” I became a vegetarian primarily because meat just viscerally made me uncomfortable. All the other reasons came later. My two sons, ages 12 and 10, are already lifelong vegetarians. I can officially call myself a lacto vegetarian now. I gave up eggs not long ago. But I only use organic dairy products.

What are the differences and similarities in the vegetarian movement when you stopped eating meat versus today?

I became a vegetarian 30 years ago or so. It was still considered quite an oddity and novelty. It provoked a lot more questions, and though many people are still confused about what vegetarians eat, for the most part, people accept it as an alternative. Today there are more vegans, and there is greater availability of vegetarian proteins such as tofu, tempeh, and the various soy-based meat alternatives. Vegetarian cookbooks in the 60s (the few that there were) were the “sprouts and brown rice” variety, as were vegetarian restaurant menus.

In the early 70s, people like Mollie Katzen (Moosewood Cookbook) and Anna Thomas (The Vegetarian Epicure) made vegetarian meals very luscious and rich; perhaps more so than we do today, but it put across the point that vegetarian cuisine could be delicious and not look like a plateful of brown glop. From there, things gradually evolved to where they are today.

Today, I think the strongest movements are veganism, due to ethical concerns, and far more kids and teens are also deciding to become vegetarians on their own, again, mainly for ethical reasons, and from the e-mail I get from them (or their concerned parents), they don’t really know much about how to make the transition; the desire to do so is greater than the means to implement it.

What are the main obstacles for vegetarians today?

I honestly don’t think there are any! There are so many resources, books, web sites, and foods, that it’s more a matter of holding to one’s convictions than anything else.

What kind of issues have your children faced as life-long vegetarians? Have they ever come home and shown any doubt in their vegetarian lifestyle?

Luckily their path has been easy. They go to a progressive school whose lunch program is primarily vegetarian (though they still want Mom to pack their lunch every day). If anything, they are getting ever more militant, at ages 10 and 12. They curse fast-food commercials, and are even concerned that most of their food is organic. We’ve become more aware of the issues surrounding agribusiness, so as a family we have become more strict about limiting non-organic produce, etc. The boys still like milk and eggs but we always use organic versions.

Wow — concerns about organic foods at ages 10 and 12. That’s impressive. Have other parents in your community been supportive of your decision to raise your children vegetarian, or do you still encounter the stereotypical, “Are they getting enough protein?”-type response?

The Hudson Valley is a rural/progressive region and there is a lot of sophistication about food. So luckily, no, I don’t get that tired old protein question. What I get more of is people I know calling and telling me that their child wants to be a vegetarian, and asking how to create a more balanced diet for them.

What prompted you to write your first book?

I never intended to become known as a cookbook author! My background is in illustration, fine art, and graphic design. From the time I started to cook for myself, though, I always enjoyed it. Soon after I married, my husband, who gave up meat as soon as we became an item, urged me to write down the recipes for the meals I made for us. As a non-cook himself, he was amazed at my improvisations as well as my attempts to re-create the dishes we had in NYC’s ethnic restaurants.

After a couple of years, I found myself with a slew of recipes and thought it would be fun to try to combine them somehow with my illustration and design skills. The result was my first book, Vegetariana: A Rich harvest of Wit, Lore, and Recipes. It’s really an offbeat cookbook and still my favorite. It was published in 1984 (revised in 1993) and is still available.

With The 5-Ingredient Vegetarian Gourmet, was your target audience recent vegetarian converts or long-time vegetarians looking for a good collection of easier-to-prepare meals?

I actually think this book’s audience might be primarily non-vegetarians or those looking to add more vegetarian meals to their repertoire. A lot of people who I hear from who have bought this book are not necessarily vegetarians. Though one of my former editors said he thought it was wonderful for his lazy/busy vegetarian family. Experienced vegetarians may enjoy the simple approach, though there may be no great revelations for them. Maybe the core audience for this book would be busy people for who healthy meals would otherwise be daunting. I also think it’s good for families with kids, as I have observed that kids are more likely to eat things that are simply prepared.

What do you feel separates your books from, say, Moosewood books or VRG books?

Moosewood’s books, VRG’s books, Mollie Katzen’s books, etc. etc, are all excellent. It’s amazing and delightful that there are so many choices. My earlier books distinguished themselves through my use of my own illustrations and food-related quotations and anecdotes. I think that’s how I made my reputation. In V5IG my illustrations are very simple (like the recipes) and the design, which was done by the publisher, is appropriately minimalist.

After this, I’m working on some new books that are not cookbooks, and which go back to using my original, lush style of illustration, which I stopped doing for some years after my little vegetarians were born.

What types of books will these be?

These will be a fairly wide range of books, once I get the momentum. Most will be women’s interest-type books?gently humorous and inspirational?I hope! A few years ago, I wrote a parody of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” called “Expect the Unexpected When You’re Expecting!” It was published by HarperCollins, though under a pseudonym based on the original authors’ names. It was a fun experience, though I must admit the book didn’t take hold like my cookbooks seem to.

What do you see in vegetarianism’s future?

Quite honestly, I am surprised that there is not a stronger movement toward full-fledged vegetarianism. The numbers have been pretty flat for many years. It surprises me since there is so much more known now about the evils of fast food, the horrendous practices of the meat industry, the proliferation of food-borne illness such as e coli and salmonella, etc. It’s quite an uphill battle, as I see it.

I think it’s only a matter of time before there is a documented case of Mad Cow disease in this country. Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, but it may take such a calamity to make the mainstream rethink their eating habits.

There is certainly more acceptance of vegetarianism, and vegetarian meals are definitely seen as more appealing than ever before. Maybe the future of vegetarianism lies with the current generation of kids and teens who tie their eating habits with ethical and environmental beliefs.

Media events like World Vegetarian Day (Oct. 1) and Great American Meatout (First day of each spring) will continue to create awareness. And I hear a rumor that Oct. 1 to Oct. 7 is now Say No to Fast Food Week. How cool!

Links

In a Vegetarian Kitchen
Nava Atlas’ site, which features a nice selection of recipes and general vegetarian info.

Nava Atlas’ books
Amazon’s listing of Nava Atlas’ books.

Vegetarian Kitchen Newsletter
Subscribe to Nava’s e-mail list.

If you’re even a casual listener of reggae music, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard the word “Ital” mentioned at one time or another. Ital has been translated from Jamaican patois slang as “pure,” and that’s appropriate, especially when taking into account that Ital is usually mentioned in connection with food or cooking.

So what is Ital food? Simply put, Ital food is organic, non-processed food from the earth (that is, vegetarian, by most definitions). “Ital is vital” best summarizes the Rastafarian belief that pure food from the earth is the most physically and spiritually beneficial. Interestingly, while table salt is not considered Ital because of the chemical processing it undergoes, ganja (marijuana) is considered Ital since it is smoked in its natural state. Even more, ganja is considered as an holy herb that can be used in pretty much any recipe.

An Ital diet is nearly vegan (some recipes contain honey as an optional sweetener) and prohibits tobacco (because of the heavy processing), alcohol, and other drugs. Milk is referred to as “white blood” (Rastafari Selassie I Center, Finland) and is therefore not included in an Ital diet.

So, no milk, no flesh, no processing… the recipes must be bland, right? If you’re visiting the Veg Blog, you’re probably well aware of how satisfying vegetarian meals can be. Indeed, Ital dishes often contain a variety of herbs and spices as well as a wide range of exotic fruits and vegetables. While some of these may be hard to hunt down if you’re not on a Carribean island, others are readily available to be cooked up “inna Ital stylee.”

A good place to start looking at Ital recipes is online, through one of the links below. As far as cookbooks go, there’s only one that I know of, and that is The Rasta Cookbook: Vegetarian Cuisine Eaten With the Salt of the Earth, compiled in 1993 by Laura Osborne. The eggplant dish is especially good.

Ital Links

Earth Culture Roots
Click on “Ital recipes” on the right side (it uses frames and doesn’t allow direct links). Contains a good number of ital vegan recipes.

Ital-list
An active, quality discussion list that focuses on ital/raw vegan food as well as the Rasta lifestyle.

http://members.aol.com/PraizeJAH/Ital.html
A series of recipes in several categories: Drinks, Soups, Porridge, Main Courses, Breads and Cakes

Ital cooking - necessity or religious fervor?
A lengthy article about why Ital cooking may have been born more out of necessity rather than religious ideology.

Root Nattie: Ital is Vital Discussion/Reasoning Forum

Rastafari Selassie I Center, Finland