Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Must Have Cookbook!



I was looking through my cookbook collection, and I have purchased 11 Vegan cookbooks since we went vegan in February 2010. Some are better than others, but I’ve finally found my “go to” cookbook. It’s called “How it all Vegan - 10th Anniversary Edition” by Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer. I’ve made several of their soup recipes, and the family has loved them. Each time I’ve made a double or triple batch, expecting to freeze some, but have not been able to because the soup is gone by the next day.
The recipes from “How it all Vegan” are fairly quick to make (generally it’s taken me about ½ hr of prep for the dishes I’ve made), use healthy ingredients, and they taste good. Gotta like that!
There is also a baking section that I have yet to explore, but the titles of the recipes sound great – “Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie”, “Maple Walnut Brownies”, and “Better than Butter Tarts” are a few that look pretty darn good.
Now, there are some ingredients that the general omnivore eater may need to go get to make some of these, but many of them are made with ingredients that are found in your average grocery store. Of course, Whole Foods has pretty much anything you’ll ever need to eat vegan if you are lucky enough to have one close to you.
In any event, if you check it out, let me know your thoughts!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Museling (Not for the squeemish)

I made the switch to eating vegan for health reasons, but I find myself being drawn into an internal debate with myself about some animal issues. It was probably inevitable. Most books on Vegan eating are written first with the animals in mind, health secondary.

Recently, I have been introduced to an issue in the wool industry called "Museling." When I first read about it, I was pretty shocked. I never gave wearing wool much thought. I read "Farmer Boy" (By Laura Ingalls Wilder) when I was little, and heck, sheering sheep didn't sound like something bad! It sounded kinda fun! Certainly, it didn't seem like anything that would harm the sheep. I never gave it a thought.

Here is Wikapedia's definition of the process:

Mulesing is a skilled surgical task[1] that involves the removal of strips of wool-bearing skin from around the breech (buttocks) of a sheep to prevent flystrike in regions where it is common.

Hmm, that doesn't sound good. Now, here is a picture:

This is mulesing!

Umm, that really doesn't look good. At all.

Here are the top 10 wool exporters in the world:

Global woolclip (total amount of wool shorn) 2004/2005[26]
  1.  Australia: 25% of global woolclip (475 million kg greasy, 2004/2005)
  2.  China: 18%
  3.  New Zealand: 11%
  4.  Argentina: 3%
  5.  Turkey: 2%
  6.  Iran: 2%
  7.  United Kingdom: 2%
  8.  India: 2%
  9.  Sudan: 2%
  10.  South Africa: 1%
  11.  United States: 0.77%
Australia is #1. Australia had planned on no longer using the Museling method of fliestrike control at the end of 2010. It has changed its mind.

If you'd like more information, google it yourself, or start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulesing.

Sometimes, "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." (Toby Keith)

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Very Exciting! New Restaurant!


Check out this new addition to the plant eating scene in Ann Arbor, MI. It is replacing an old Quizno's location. It's called the "Jazzy Veggie" and it is going to be completely plant based, down to a vegan pizza! How excited am I on a scale of 1 - 10? I'm a 9! To be a 10, it'd have to be my own restaurant! Here is a link about it:

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Finally Getting Organized!


This morning, I spent about 2 hours organizing various grains that I've had sitting in bags in my pantry. As you can see from this shot, I still need a few more containers, but for the most part, they are now labeled and marked if they are "gluten free" or not. (We do not follow a GF diet, but it's good to know). I was about to type up cooking directions to add to the back of each container, so that anyone in the family could easily cook them up if they wanted to (ummm....well a person can dream, can't they?) when my husband walked in and said, "Hey, that looks great! Oh, but are they BPA Free?" uhhhh, I don't know! I looked them up. They are OXO brand, but I bought them at Target. Now, OXO Pop Tops sold everywhere else apparently have round buttons on the top and are made with a thicker plastic than the ones that Target sells, which are  #7 plastic, and a square button top. Usually, #7 contains BPA, but not always. Unfortunately, I already threw away all of the labeling. So, I guess a trip to Target is in my future today to confirm whether or not they are BPA free. It really bugs me that I have to do this. Usually I pay attention to the BPA thing, but I was so excited to find containers that stack and seal well, I just didn't think about it. Honestly, I am not sure if it's even an issue, since everything being stored is a solid. Can BPA leak into non liquid materials? I could not find an answer to this question online this morning, although I only spent about 20 minutes looking.

Am I too anal about this stuff? Maybe. But we are inadvertently exposed to so many things that negatively impact our health, that I feel an obligation to have as much knowledge as possible about products that I use, so that at the very least I can make an informed choice.



Friday, October 1, 2010

New to this

This time, however, my husband is on board, along with 3 of our 4 children. Our oldest, who is 18, hasn't bought what I'm selling (yet!), but I'll give it time.

Why do I call it "herbivore eating" or "plant only eating"? Here is the reason...when you say that you are Vegan, or that you "eat Vegan" or are a "dietary Vegan" or pretty much use the term Vegan when you've cut out eating animal products for health reasons, and not only because of ethical reasons, die hard Vegans get really ticked off! I can respect that, it's just that there isn't any other term out there that means "I do not eat animal products, and this decision was based mostly on health reasons".

However, for the sake of simplicity, I am going to refer to "eating a plant based diet" as eating Vegan in this blog from now on, or at least until I come up with a better term for it.

So, on that note, I hope you enjoy following me on this Vegan eating journey. It has opened my mind, eyes and my arteries, I've loved every minute of it (almost:) so far, and can never see myself heading out for a steak again!