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This blog will focus on vegan philosophy, with lots of opinion and looks at the news. (For our blog on what's happening at the sanctuary, click here.)
Testing recipe - mushroom barley soup
I was in the mood for a barley soup this weekend. I found one in "The Vegetarian Meat & Potatoes Cookbook" by Robin Robertson that looked good. I didn't have all the ingredients and I wanted potatoes in the soup so I modified it to be the following (plus some other changes). Actually, I made it with 6 cups of vegetable stock instead of 8, and when I heated up leftovers, the barley had soaked up all the liquid so I'm hoping 8 works better.
If you've got a good barley soup recipe (or suggestions for the one below), email us through the contact page. I'm hoping to include one in a "Veganism for Beginners" zine I'm working on.
MUSHROOM BARLEY SOUP
Ingredients
Olive oil — splash
Onion — 1 large, chopped
Celery — 2 stalks with leaves, chopped
Potatoes — 1 to 2, small, diced
Mushrooms — 12 ounces, sliced
Vegetable stock or water (or combination) — 8 cups
Barley — 1 1/4 cups
White cooking wine — 1/4 cup
Bay leaf — 1
Parsley — 2 tablespoons fresh, minced (or 1 tablespoon dry)
Thyme — 1 tablespoon fresh, minced (or 1 1/2 teaspoons dry)
Bumpersticker: 'Eat Meat, The West Wasn't Won on Salad'
In Reno, you see a lot of pro-meat bumperstickers. “Eat Meat — The West Wasn’t Won on Salad” is a popular one. A co-worker even has it on his desk. Where to respond?
The West was actually “won” using genocide, racism and environmental destruction. It is interesting how opponents of veganism try to link it with being sensitive and thoughtful, with not being macho, with not being capable of massacres and rape. And, you know, I’m fine with that.
~ Mark
VegFund.org helps animal activists give out free food
Mark:
VegFund.org is an organization aimed at spreading the word about the joys of a plant-based diet. We learned about it on Animal Voices (click here to listen to the show). It provides free vegan food for activists to give out at public events, as long as they also give out vegan literature and recipes at the same time. It was started by Rae Sikora, Zia Terhune and JC Corcoran. My understanding is that an anonymous donor set them up with funds to do this amazing bit of peaceful direct action.
So we at CockadoodleMoo contacted them about helping us feed the masses at Nevada Humane Society's annual Walk for Animals at the Sparks Marina. We were just going to do it at our little table, but Nevada Humane Society was so excited when they heard about VegFund.org that they asked if Dianne and I would do the food for the entire event — 2,000 people attended last year.
I'm a little nervous using so much of someone's money. The event is tomorrow. I'll post an update when I can but I wanted to let animal activists know of this great resource. Basically, you put in a request through the site, they approve or deny you (or seek more details, like with us) and then you submit them receipts within 30 days. You put a sign on your table explaining that the food is vegan — no meat, no fish, no eggs and no dairy — and you hand out vegan literature and recipes that you can get from many organizations for little or no money.
Pumpkin pie by Wholly Wholesome at Whole Foods is awful
Mark:
We're preparing a vegan Christmas meal for Dianne's family this year so we've been testing out some prepared foods. (We'll make the majority of stuff ourselves, but it's nice to have a few store-bought things to take the burden off.) So we've been testing some product. First up, Wholly Wholesome Dairy-Free Pumpkin Pie and Apple Pie.
The pumpkin pie is simply awful. It's got a gel-like consistency, not creamy or pumpkin-y. And after it cooked, it got a thick pudding-skin-like top coat that was inedible. The crust was tasty, but we couldn't eat it more than one piece — and we eat all desserts.
The apple pie was fine. It was a typical store-bought, smallish apple pie. For less than half the price, you could make a much better one yourself with a pie crust and a can of apple pie filling.
So the dessert we ended up going for? Our own chocolate turtle tort and five flavors of Purely Decadent soy ice cream. Cookie Dough flavor is killer; it's made with coconut milk! (I'll try to post the chocolate turtle tort recipe by year's end.)
'Kids can too be vegetarian'
Dianne and I tabled at an event called Walk for Animal this weekend at Sparks Marina. We passed out Don't Have a Cow newsletters and some things from Farm Sanctuary, including a pamphlet called Vegetarian Diets for Kids.
A girl who looked about 11 spotted it and showed it to her mother. "See, Mom, kids can too be vegetarian."
The mother rolled her eyes at her daughter. The daughter replied, "I'd think you'd be happy I'm not eating junk." The mother just grumbled and moved away.
~ Mark
Our first public event — vegan booth at pet fair
This past weekend, we were invited to have a table at a big pet-adoption event at the Reno Livestock Events Center. "Livestock events" — how could we pass that up?
It was actually a great event — sponsored by Best Friends, SPCA of Northern Nevada, Nevada Humane Society and Shakespeare Animal Fund — that gave exposure to small animal charities and helped them get their word out and/or adopt rescued animals. We gave out literature from Farm Sanctuary (their recipe booklet and "Go Veg" kids stickers were a big hit), plus postcards of CockadoodleMoo and the latest edition of our newsletter Don't Have a Cow (ordering info is on the home page).
Dianne painted an awesome banner with a painting of Ally the chicken on it, as well as posters with photos of the animals. So here's where it got fun. Talking with dozens and dozens of people — none of whom were vegan — and giving them vegan stuff. One thing I'm horrible at is not judging people by their looks, and boy was I off-base at this event.
Essay by Lee Hall on welfare reforms
Lee Hall, author of "Capers in the Churchyard" and a key member of Friends of Animals, wrote a good essay for Dissident Voice this week about how welfare reform efforts by so-called animal-rights groups often work against the goal of ending animal exploitation and, in fact, work as marketing triumphs for the meat and dairy industry.
In a passage that really reflects the differences between animal advocates who seek "victories" to solicit more donations and animal advocates who truly want to see an end to the exploitation of animals, Hall quotes Priscilla Feral in regard to animal activists working with the meat industry to create more profitable and slightly less abhorrent ways of killing animals: "I’m standing for people who expect us to ... challeng[e] the exploitation of animals. It’s a serious mistake to swap a commitment to justice for short-term, media-grabbing performances that pretend animals win even as they’re being slaughtered and consumed. That trivializes everything animal rights stands for. The animals win? The animals are betrayed twice — once by the profit system, and again by the non-profit system. Animal advocates can do better than that."
Question of power and authority
Our volunteer Dusty came out this weekend, braving nearly impassable rutted and icy roads. She's volunteering as part of a class, and her teacher asked her to write up how the situation relates to "power and authority."
This is an important topic for me, and one I expect to write a lot about in the future. But here are some rambling thoughts off the top of my head as to how power and authority relates to CockadoodleMoo.
A position of power — such as humans have over animals or a parent has over a child or a government has over a people — is not healthy if the one in power uses that power to exploit those at the mercy of that power. Unfortunately, "might makes right" is a guiding principle for many — of course only when they happen to be on the side of "might." This is especially the case with humans' relationship to nonhuman animals. People justify the worst exploitation of animals with quips about liking it at the top of the food chain. Yet they would never accept this excuse in other contexts, such as accepting another nation's rationalization for massacring a conquered people. Or imagine if an alien race invaded Earth and began putting humans in factory farms with the cows and pigs and used the same logic that THEY are now at the top of the food chain.
Email to Bank of America
We recently opened a small business account with Bank of America to handle CockadoodleMoo's finances. Unfortunately, I had to send BofA the following email today. I'll let you know if I get a reply back:
I was hoping you could add a vegetarian option for getting an introductory checkbook with a new account. As it is, with the small business account I recently opened, the introductory checkbooks could only come with a dead cow skin in the box. Having a vinyl cover with the introductory checkbook kit was not an option. Please add this option or, better yet, get rid of the dead cow skins altogether. Pleather is a nice option and is made from recycled plastic bottles.
~ Mark