Gary Francione has started a new podcast called Abolitionist Approach Commentary. In the first episode he discusses why we should not promote vegetarianism as a gateway to veganism. Excellent stuff.
Go here to listen.
Ask a non-vegan and the answer is likely to be rabbit food, salad or leaves and twigs with a side of bark. Not so! Gone are the days when veganism meant subsisting on brown rice and lettuce. Good tasting, healthy, easy to prepare vegan food is not a myth and here’s the proof.
Breaded tofu stirfry is something we eat regularly and it couldn’t be easier to make:
1. Cut a package of firm tofu into cubes. Dip each cube into soy sauce, then into nutritional yeast (aka nooch) or breadcrumbs, then fry in a little olive oil until brown on both sides.
2. While the tofu is cooking, put on some brown rice to go with. Allow about half a cup per person? This is just a guess since I always make waaay too much rice.
3. While the rice is boiling and the tofu is browning, stir fry some vegetables in paprika, chili powder and oregano. In the photo I’ve used frozen corn, yellow onion and carrots.
4. Cover a plate with lettuce leaves and when everything is ready, layer rice and veggies on top of the lettuce then top with crunchy tofu. Enjoy!
While I enjoyed the first six months of breastfeeding, I was really looking forward to introducing Breanna to the yummy world of vegan food. I read up on children’s nutrition, took my time picking out ingredients and then spent hours in the kitchen chopping, peeling, steaming and mushing.
More experienced mums can guess what happened next. Bree ate one mouthful and then needed a nap. I hadn’t realised how tiny those first portions would be and had made enough mushed carrot to last YEARS!
What was I to do with the leftovers?
Fortunately, more experienced mums are all over the internet and a quick search led to me freezing portions of my lovingly mashed veggies in ice cube trays. I had enough to fill a large plastic storage box with cubes of frozen potato, broccoli, sweet potato and carrot (in fact, I had been so enthusiastic with the cooking, that was the one and only time I had to do it). A simple solution yes, but it worked brilliantly even with a small freezer like mine. All I had to do was remember to take some cubes out to defrost in the morning, and if I forgot they quickly thawed in the oven on low heat. Since each cube was a single veggie, it was easy to introduce new foods slowly, mixed with a bit of plain soya yoghurt.
Bree was able to enjoy mealtimes with us at the table, I had easy meals to defrost for her, and aren’t they pretty?
When it comes to comfort food, there’s nothing like a big ol’ lump of seitan. I’ve been tinkering with a basic seitan recipe from Penny and so far this week have made cottage pie, stir fry and a roast, but none of them come close to this little slice of gluten perfection – breaded seitan burgers.
I’ve been experimenting with breadmaking and that leftover heel of crusty bread I’d thrown in the freezer came in handy when I was looking for something to coat the burgers in. We ate them with roasted potatoes and a melon/banana/orange smoothie. Not very summery, but neither was the weather! Absolutely delicious, and definately one for B’s cookbook project.
My latest cooking jag has just about used up all the recipe ideas I had floating around in my head so I’m looking for inspiration! Tell me in the comments: What is your favourite comfort food?
or, since I’m up for a challenge: What recipe would you like to see made vegan? Send me that pesky recipe and I’ll give it a try!
Not related to veganism, but bear with me…
Sherry recently wrote a great entry about balancing work and home and I couldn’t agree more. Basically, she says women need to stop cutting each other down because of their home situation and support each other for working hard at being a mum.
She’s exactly right. It’s not a competition and we should support each other instead of playing the martyr and whining about who has the most stressful life.
It is choosing between working outside of the home and being a stay at home mum (still work!) that is the difficulty because no matter which one you choose, you must give something up. Working outside the home means giving up time with kids, and staying home means giving up a career and the social bit of the office.
Working from home seems to be an option many resourceful women choose but you can often end up chasing your tail all day if anything extra happens outside a tightly organised schedule.
Single mums have to make all the same choices but without a partner there to help out.
I’ve got two months of maternity leave left, after which I’ll be headed back to work. As I type with one hand, Bree is snuggling in my lap and I can’t help thinking how much I will miss cuddling her when I’m sitting in the office working. At the same time, I like the company I work for and the people i work with and would really miss them if I left. There’s also the small matter of needing to bring in an income.
It’s hard work being a mother, regardless what your situation is. We have to keep in mind that at least we’ve got the luxury of choosing and make the best of it.
Wow, my first comment! Thanks for visiting Sara, your comment got me thinking about arguing vs. discussing veganism.
Sara says:
I find that about myself too, that over time I’ve gotten lax in my keeping up with AR education (so I’m at the ready for those always wanting to argue for the sake of it) and just take my veganism for granted. I’ve definitely become more involved in vegan outreach, if just in the online community (with my food blog) and pushing for people to donate to sanctuary’s and such instead of giving me presents for my Bday or Xmas. I want to become more involved, but that would involve time I don’t have yet (I’m a grad student). I look forward to reading you journal and journey into more vegan outreach!
It’s good to keep up on the facts, because we all face the inevitable questionning from non-vegetarians. There will always be people who want to argue for arguements’ sake. You know, the ones who make long lists of things you don’t eat and ask you about each one ‘What about chicken? What about fish? C’mon you gotta eat honey? Whaddya mean you don’t eat eggs!?‘ Or better still, the ones who try arguing that if everyone stopped eating meat, cows wouldn’t exist.
Once you’ve been vegan for a couple of years, you’ve answered every one of these many many times and you can get to the point where everyone you know has either run out of questions or gone vegan themselves (!). Veganism can become so normal to you that you no longer think to talk about it with other people even if they’re interested.
All my friends and everyone I work with knows I’m vegan. They know why, and have already asked me all the typical questions, so I was living in my own little bubble where I didn’t have to explain myself every day and I got very comfortable. Of course, being pregnant and having Breanna changed all that and caused me to revisit the reasons I went vegan in the first place.
Sure, my friends and colleagues know I don’t eat or use animal products and they know it’s ‘for the animals’ but I don’t think I’ve ever used the word abolition in explaining my reasons, nor have I actively encouraged anyone to try veganism who hasn’t approached me first. Have I been too passive in my approach? I’ve succeeded in normalising veganism to the point where my colleagues all check the ingredients on packages of biscuits and let me know which ones are vegan, but to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t convinced anyone to make the switch themselves.
I ask myself if I have done enough, and if not, where do I go from here?
Is it worth arguing for arguements’ sake, as Sara puts it? Or, should I be open to questions, but distanced, leading by example instead of debate? It’s hard to know which approach is best; debating certainly gets attention, but is a softer approach more convincing in the long run? If we’re measuring success by the number of people convinced by our efforts to adopt veganism, spending more time with people who are genuinely interested (as opposed to people who just want to annoy us) makes sense, because, as Sara says, it takes a lot of time to do good outreach.
Bob Torres, co-author of Vegan Freak calls this triage, which I think describes it nicely, taking the defensiveness out of the picture and focusing on the positive – the difference going vegan can make for animals, the earth and ourselves.
Interested in trying veganism but don’t know where to start? Think vegans eat only lettuce and twigs? Take the Vegan Society’s Pledge. Pledge to give it a try for 7, 14 or 30 days and you’ll receive an information pack full of yummy recipes and free advice from mentors.
B and I have been vegan for over six years now, and while I’m still as committed as I was when we first began, over the past couple of years I’d started taking it for granted. It had become a familiar part of me, like having green eyes, or liking olives, and I didn’t question it anymore.
When we got pregnant, instead of the usual What do you eat??, people I didn’t even know all that well started telling me ZOMG YOU’VE GOT TO EAT MEAT YOU’RE KILLING YOUR BABY!!11! and pointing out various newspaper articles about malnourished children with brittle bones to make me ’see sense’.
Then I was misquoted in a popular parenting magazine in an article about vegan pregnancies, and I started to get angry. It occurred to me that the confidence and comfort I had in being vegan was being mistaken for complacency and ignorance and I knew I had to do something about it.
I’ve always described veganism as a lifestyle – something you are rather than something you do like a diet, but for years I’d been limiting my participation in veganism to what I consumed and the occasional potluck. When Breanna was born I had a lot of time to think about what I want to do with my life and where my priorities are, and I’ve decided that vegan outreach is one of them.
This journal is the start of that with plenty more to come. Thanks for reading.
Breanna & I at Lake of Menteith
Did this work? ::crosses fingers::
