I’ve been meaning to post about her business for a while now, and with this recent feature on a local news broadcast, it’s as good of a time as any:
Dominique is a former co-worker of mine who was pescatarian when she worked with me and went vegan shortly after she left the company. She now owns her own business, Zizania, where she teaches people in the Northern Virginia area how to live, eat, and cook in a healthy way through veganism.
It’s so exciting to see a former co-worker go on to do such positive things. Rock on, Dominique!
When 500 Vegan Recipes arrived in the mail for review a while back, I have to admit I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw the title. Here was a compendium of recipes bound for the dollar bin at Barnes & Noble. It didn’t take more than a minute of flipping through the book, though, to see that I was being a big dummy and judging a book by its cover (title).
500 Vegan Recipes has quickly become one of our favorite go-to cookbooks when we want something relatively simple, but new. While there are some old standbys in here, by and large, there are a lot of surprises and interesting twists that will keep this one on the shelf when others gather dust.
Food bloggers Steen (of Have Cake Will Travel) and Newman (Just the Food) compile 20 chapters and 500 pages of recipes ranging from breakfasts to casseroles to sides, and you know the rest. Lots of food from beginning to end in every imaginable category.
Our favorites thusfar include Butternut Drop Biscuits (made with spelt flour, oats, and butternut squash puree, they taste amazing right out of the oven getting that sweet and savory balance just right), a delicious Garlic and Sage Cashew Cream Sauce that we had on pasta but would be perfect as a pizza base (double the recipe… trust me), the budget-friendly Beefy Bacon Burgers) which take the unlikely hodgepodge of peanut butter, bacos, TVP, yeast, oil, and a few other things and make an easy and filling burger), Mac and Sleaze, and a Swiss-inspired Rosemary Apple Potato Rosti that would make a perfect late fall/early winter side.
We’ve made 23 recipes from here thusfar (still not even 5% of what’s in the book!) and only three haven’t been unadulterated thumbs up (and of those three, two were split decisions in our household). Not bad at all.
As I mentioned, while most of the recipes here are within the grasp of anyone with a little bit of kitchen time under their belt, you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. Like the nicely spicy Chorizo, Cranberry, and Cornbread stuffing or the Creamy Pumpkin Almond Sauce as a super simple pasta and veggie topper. The Raw Lemon Cheesecake is another winner I haven’t seen elsewhere (and it’s not hard, even making the raw crust from scratch). There’s a lot of international influence here, too, ensuring a range of flavors for every palate.
While there aren’t any photos in the book (not unusual for such a giant tome), Steen and Newman’s blogs have more than enough to let you see what you’ll be getting.
For well under $20 at most online stores, it’s going to be hard to get a better deal on such a huge collection of recipes that you’ll return to again and again. I recommend this one whole-heartedly.
Two events in the area I wanted to make sure everyone in the area knows about. First…
Vegan Bake Sale Benefit for Haiti (Falls Church)
After having to postpone two times because of, you know, blizzards and stuff, Gary his team will be offering up some great vegan goodies. Get there early! There’s a lot of buzz around this event, so I suspect the foodstuffs will disappear quickly. Benefits go to Food for Life Global.
(My wife and I made some mini-donuts. Try ‘em!)
The bake sale is being held outside of the Giant at 1230 W. Broad St. in Falls Church, VA tomorrow from 10:30am–2:30pm.
DC Premiere of Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home (DC)
Though I won’t be at the showing, I cannot wait to catch the video release of this when it’s available. The original cut of this movie blew me away and I can only imagine what this refined and updated version will be like.
Catch the movie as part of the at the Environmental Film Festival. It shows tomorrow at 12:15pm at the Carnegie Institution, Elihu Root Auditorium (1530 P Street NW (Metro: Dupont Circle), Washington, DC) and is free. First come, first serve, so get there early!
Children’s books about animals can either be really awesome or really depressing. The ones that teach children about animals’ personalities and their individual likes and dislikes are great. The books that make fun of them or end up making light of things like eating eggs or bacon are pretty evil.
And there’s a new breed of books coming out that are explicitly vegan-friendly, like Maya Gottfried’s Our Farm: By the Animals of Farm Sanctuary. Maya’s fun (but not overly cutesy) poems are a perfect match for the paintings and sketches by Robert Rahway Zakanitch. The animals featured are all actual residents (past or present) of Farm Sanctuary.
Rather than go into any further detail myself, I thought I’d get some help from Rasine to review this book. Here’s the audio (with some sections edited out for brevity and clarity):
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
You heard her. Go buy a copy! (And become a fan of Izzy and Morty on Facebook, since they came up in our discussion.)
If you have any friends or family that still eat meat, you may want to share with them this award winning set of photos from inside an Italian slaughterhouse (WARNING: extremely graphic and disturbing photos). The first photo is shocking, a butcher shot from the neck down holding a decapitated cow’s head by the horns.
But the second photo is the one that really struck me. It’s a photo of three lambs looking in a doorway at three skinned sheep hanging from by their legs. It reminded me a lot of the Corridor of Death video that Gary Francione pointed to last year. The image of animals witnessing what will be their ultimate fate is a sobering one. Put yourself in their place and imagine the terror and despair. And now imagine that happening every second of every day, whether the animals come from a factory farm or whether they come from a “humane” meat operation.
I’ve been a big fan of this song ever since it came out a few years ago (and a fan of the producer and vocalist for years before that). Sure, it perpetuates the myth of pigs being “unclean,” but still, you’ve gotta admit this is one of the catchiest vegetarian anthems in recent memory:
Have you seen the piece that aired on World News Tonight and Nightline last night? Let’s talk about it a bit.
Just to get it out of the way: yes, the story has the expected issue of focusing on abuse rather than use, but I’m going to focus on the positive effect a piece like this could have. Here’s why I think that, obvious problems aside, the airing of this piece will be positive in the long run:
1. It aired on a mainstream news program (actually, programs)
This piece aired on ABC during prime time on World News Tonight and later in the evening on Nightline. The former is a news broadcast my dad watches (he’s not one for overtly political leaning newscasts in either direction). That’s mainstream. And they’re showing footage from Mercy for Animals. That’s pretty impressive. Sure, it’s happened before, but when this sort of footage gets in front of a mainstream audience, the idea of veganism seems a little more normal to these same people.
2. A dairy farmer dug his own hole
Did you catch the dairy farmer they interviewed? He started off by giving the standard “it’s in our best interest to treat them well” line and shortly thereafter was stumbling all over himself defending tail docking and horn clipping as “standard industry practice” (which it is) and saying, “Of course I wish we didn’t have to do it…” It was enough to make you feel sorry for the guy. Almost. Except for the whole exploiting animals for personal gain thing.
I don’t think too many people can get behind docking cow’s tails or cutting their horns. (Except for those who convince themselves it’s not a standard practice.)
3. The artificial insemination footage
It was only about two or three seconds long and it only aired on the Nightline version of the story, but I think the very brief shot they showed of a farmhand elbow deep, artificially inseminating a dairy cow could be the most important piece of footage. I think the majority of people still kid themselves with visions of happy bovines humping in meadows of green grass. I’m also pretty sure the sentiment that “well, the cows have to be milked” is still prevalent. This very short piece of footage, though, is like a slap in the face: no, these dairy cows are not naturally pregnant and happily giving their milk to us. We’re raping them, confining them, and then stealing the milk meant for their offspring, all so we can have our next hit of cheese.
I’m hoping that short bit of video replays in people’s minds when they sit down with a glass of milk or a bowl of ice cream.
And, yes, there are some problems…
While the majority of the piece focuses on these cruel practices that are going on every second of every day, there’s just enough of the welfare message that I can certainly imagine someone coming away with the idea that, “Hey, that’s awful, but at least they’re starting to phase out those practices. Now I can feel OK about consuming milk.” And that’s the big downside of championing welfare legislation as a victory: a marginal welfare improvement becomes marketing fodder for the dairy industry.
And in case there’s any doubt that this is the message that people are getting, one need look no further than the comment section on the web version of the story (or a blog entry from before the story aired). Skip past all of the “gee, thanks for only showing one side of the story!” comments and you get to ones like this:
“I pledge to drink water and hope everyone that reads this will do the same. We can live without milk, until the humane society can get this straightened out.”
It’s a shame, because if that quote ended after “We can live without milk,” it’d be perfectly fine. But I’m sorry to say: if you wait for the Humane Society to “straighten it out,” there’s a problem. Everyone has to stop waiting for someone else to fix the problem. You can help fix the problem right now, this instant. Stop drinking milk, stop eating cheese, stop eating ice cream, stop consuming dairy. There’s no magic welfare wand that can be waved that will make it all OK. I hope that soon people will start coming away from stories like this thinking, “That’s terrible and I’m not going to be a part of it” rather than “That’s terrible and, boy oh boy, someone should do something about it!”
(If you haven’t seen the story, here’s the shorter version that aired on World News Tonight. A longer version appeared on Nightline, but doesn’t appear to be archived online.)
Local homie Alex has alerted me to rumors of an all-vegan pho restaurant in Richmond that also has funnel cake. *head explosion*10:41:31 PM February 02, 2012from Seesmic
