No One Has To Die!

Humans like to play god. We like to think god gave us the power to be god on earth because according to some questionable archaic manuscript “he made us in his image” – whatever that is. We like to think we have superior intelligence, (god given or evolved) and should therefore be in charge of the world around us. Humans are control freaks and narcissists, and the millennia have shown us to be dominating, cruel, and destructive – to everything and everyone – including ourselves.

As we formed our respective societies and cultures, we graduated from hunter-gatherers, basically eating whatever came our way – to farmers: growing our food and learning how to utilize it in its various forms, how to store it to last us through cold, barren weather, and how to fine tune its basic nature to give us more variety and better quality. We are pretty amazing when it comes to stuff like that.

I mean, the things we are able to do to food today to sustain us all with healthful options is nothing short of god like. As a result of our smarts and our new and improved diet, we grew as a species exponentially. This of course, meant we needed more food.

One of our strategies in feeding ourselves to keep up with the increased demand was to eliminate hunting as a mainstay and adapt animal husbandry into our farming practices. (Note: in the 1300s a “husbandman” was a farmer, so this aspect of farming became known under this sobriquet) So we bred and domesticated the animals we used to hunt. This way, we didn’t have to brave the elements and rely on our accuracy with aim in order to eat meat. We just had to go outside to our field and there was a plethora of quiet, trusting victims we could brutalize to put on our plates. Our food production had changed to keep up with our populations and needs. Gradually, farms turned into factories, churning out animal products faster than we could use them.

Our species had erupted like a human Vesuvius, and dammit we were hangry! So food became mass produced and then transported everywhere, even into space. We became a raging inferno of consumption, not just food, in everything.

Animals weren’t considered living beings; they were commodities to be exploited for our own gain. They were disposable. They were products. They were the epitome of the “use and toss” mentality. Maybe once of a day, a farmer cared about the animals he raised, even though they still might end up as food, he may have provided them with the best care he could. He may have even shed a tear on slaughter day. Native Americans are said to pray to the spirit of the animal they hunt and kill, to thank it for it’s beneficence to their people. Today however, that is mostly not the case. Our meat is lined up in a grocery store freezer, wrapped in plastic and labelled neutrally. There is no comparison to the living creature it once was. No one thinks about the animal as a being, as a living creature who thinks, feels love, feels fear, is happy or sad – just like us. As long as an animal is the “commodity” on a farm, whether for it’s meat or other by-product, its value is only as good as the dollar value the economy places upon it.

No one thinks about the feelings of the mother cow as her baby is taken from her right after birth so we can harvest her milk; no one thinks about the baby, bawling for his mother as he is locked into a small container to confine his movements so his flesh will remain tender for veal. We turn a blind eye to truck after truck filled with living beings driving down the highway, eyes meeting ours through our windows; eyes that you couldn’t tell weren’t human except for the setting. Do you look away? Do you block it out? (Although once of a day, humans were pushed into containers en masse and transported to so-called work camps, and I’m pretty sure anyone meeting their eyes looked away too.)

And what’s sad about all of this is we don’t need to eat meat to survive. Our farming skills, our nutritional knowledge has also progressed to the extent we understand meat-centric diets are bad for us, and plant-based is not only completely doable, but also super delicious.

And no one has to die!

But whether a small family farm or giant farming conglomerate, one thing cannot be disputed: there is no humane way to die. Electrocuted, throat slashed, boiled alive, strung up then cut, gassed, it’s all cruel, painful, and unnecessary. These animals didn’t ask to be kept in a barn all their short lives; to be kicked and pushed into subservience; to be kept in small cages, lying in their own filth; to have their babies removed right after birth; to be artificially inseminated over and over again by men with tools and thick arms. They didn’t ask to be born into this world of cruelty and inhumanity. They didn’t agree to be oppressed and tortured for our gain. They have no voice to speak their truth. And because of that – because they can’t fight back – they are victimized again and again and again.

And I’m here to tell you, peeps, it doesn’t matter if the cow was “grass-fed” or the chicken was “free range”. It’s all the same when you’re loaded into the back of a truck with prods and jackboots only to end up at a bloody abattoir, smelling the carnage of others gone before you, facing the steely eyes of the executioner who just wants to get his paycheck at the end of the week and doesn’t give two shits whether he is careful in how he administers the coup de grace. (Holocaust survivors recounted similar reasoning.)

Don’t be fooled by big business propaganda: these positive terms used to convince us the animals led a happy life prior to dying is just so much hype. Like the term “Work Camps” during WWII, cartoon drawings of laughing cows; cute, chubby pigs standing before a grill in chef hats; chickens waving on a roadside sign wearing a napkin bib: these are gimmicks designed to keep us blind to the reality of what these beings go through, how they suffer, before being unceremoniously killed all in the name of feeding our families. (Funny, not funny, this excuse was used for the “work camps” too!)

Yes, the meat you feed your family was once a living, breathing animal – like yourself. Like your children. Like your pets. Where is our god-like intelligence now? Either we are not as smart as we think we are or we are purposely turning a blind eye to mass murder on a global scale – once again.

The True Story of the Christmas Turkey

Our family used to have turkey only twice a year: Thanksgiving and Christmas, with mum’s special sausage stuffing and a creamy, savoury gravy – having it so rarely made it extra special. As adults, we followed the same recipe and the same rules, and that made the Turkey Dinner the star of the show.

In fact, turkeys are very intelligent creatures with distinct personalities. They can fly at 55 miles per hour, run up to 35 miles per hour, and can live for up to 10 years under natural conditions. Like all animals, they are sentient, and can feel pain, fear and stress. Farmers have labelled them dumb, hence the sobriquet “turkey” is usually used to insult someone, inferring lower intelligence, but studies have shown they are misunderstood in that when they don’t do what the farmer wants they are labelled “stupid” or “unintelligent”.

Well if not listening to an abuser makes them “stupid” then I am in good company!

The turkey on the Christmas platter was more than likely raised in a dark battery with no space to move, crammed in with other broiler birds. He was fed hormones and gmo grains to plump him up to an unusually meaty size so we can have lots of white breast meat, which caused him to be unable to support his weight, leaving him lying in his own feces, being trampled on by other oversize birds. Because of their tight quarters, their beaks are cut off, along with a portion of their toes, and also males may have their fleshy snood cut off – all without benefit of anaesthesia.

This is meant to prevent them damaging each other while they are confined and grown to optimum size for slaughter. Within five short months a turkey can weight up to 40 lbs, due to genetic manipulation – 56 per cent larger than those produces in the 60s. This means, due to their gargantuan size, they are unable to perform like a normal turkey in the wild: they cannot fly, often cannot walk, and certainly can’t procreate. Hence, artificial insemination is used to get turkey babies.

This is not a pristine, hygienic procedure as we might imagine. Basically, females are held upside down, while someone shoves their hand with a tube or syringe into their vent and inseminates them. A worker in Missouri was quoted as saying, ” I have never done such hard, dirty, disgusting work in my life: 10 hours of pushing birds, grabbing birds, wrestling birds, jerking them upside down, pushing open their vents, dodging their panic-blown excrement and breathing the dust stirred up by terrified birds.”

And once again, don’t think because you purchased ‘organic’ or ‘free range’ that your turkey was living in a meadow, frolicking and cavorting with the other barnyard buddies. Nope. All this means is the food was a little different and the shed they were kept in had no cages, just open floor, giving them a little more room to defecate on each other, step on each other, and breath in more ammonia fumes and dirt.

You may not realize, at the time of slaughter, most birds are suffering from … “painful respiratory diseases and eye disorders, including swelling of the eyelids, discharge, clouding and ulceration of the cornea, and even blindness. There is a high rate of viral and bacterial infections, …” according to ezine Free From Harm.

And if this isn’t bad enough, Mercy for Animals reports animals also suffer from “workers kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or on top of other birds; birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores, infections, and broken bones; and workers grabbing birds by their wings or necks and violently slamming them into tiny transport crates with no regard for their welfare.”

Yes, folks, your turkey probably had some kind of viral lung infection, most likely some sort of skin infection filled with pus from the filth, was not treated, and then you ate it, seasoned with all those GMOs and a few kicks in the head.

After living this five months or so of abuse, they are shipped to the slaughterhouse, where they are dipped in an electric water bath and HOPEFULLY stunned enough so their throats can be more easily cut, and again HOPEFULLY after that, they are actually dead so that the boiling water they are next dumped in to remove their feathers easier doesn’t hurt them – because, you know – we want to kill them humanely. Often, however, they are not dead by the time they reach the boiling vats. It’s estimated more than 1 million turkeys are boiled alive each year.

So much for that humane death.

What does this tell you? Well I know what it tells me: We care more for rapists, pedophiles, and serial killers on death row, criminals who have committed egregious acts, in terms of humane death than we do for the innocent beings on this earth.

I’m including a link here which has a video of such a turkey facility, right here in Ontario. Hybrid Turkeys is the second largest producer of turkeys in the world – so chances are, yours came from there. In this plant, workers abused the turkeys in front of management, but when a hidden camera exposed the brutality, management was quoted as saying it was an isolated incident, and the workers were let go.

Don’t kid yourself. None of this is isolated or unusual, and it’s not limited to just turkeys and chickens. I urge you – no, I implore you – to watch the video, as horrific as it is, and then tell me you can eat your turkey on Christmas Day without a thought as to how it got there.

Hybrid Turkeys, Ontario – undercover video

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/hidden-camera-captures-blatant-animal-cruelty-at-turkey-farm-1.1729233

Merry Christmas.

Some Gross Morning Thoughts…

These days, many conversations often go something like this:

“Oh are you vegan? That’s cool. I don’t eat much meat at all. Maybe like twice a week?”

Why? Why do some people I speak with find it necessary to explain their animal consumption to me once they find out I am vegan? I mean it goes without saying I would like everyone to become vegan and finally have all living beings treated with compassion and respect; failing this at least eat less meat and dairy, but contrary to what you see on my social media, I don’t ram veganism down everyone’s throats…. No, really, I don’t.

Yet for some reason, without prompting, many people I meet seem to feel it necessary to explain to me how LITTLE meat they eat as soon as they learn I’m vegan – and I have to wonder why.

Is it guilt? It could be guilt because they know vegans in general are against the abuse and cruel treatment of animals, and the animal agriculture industry is being exposed, more and more, as proponents of the commodification and abhorrent exploitation of domesticated animals. It could be because they know vegans are also against the fur and leather industries, animal lab experiments, and puppy mills, and these folks know definitively these industries also profit from the cruel useage and eventual death of innocent animals.

So as I sit here drinking my tea with almond milk, I THEN start to wonder if they feel this guilt, then they KNOW, or at least SUSPECT, that the consumption and commodification of living, sentient beings is unquestionably WRONG so the next question is: WHY ARE THEY STILL DOING IT?

Why is it still such a battle for us who advocate for animal rights? I mean, they already actually know or they wouldn’t be justifying themselves to me, and if they know…well….why would they want to be part of it?

If you are eating less meat and dairy, or transitioning to veganism at your own pace: good for you! I’m so happy about that! The best method to being heard is affecting these industries where it hurts: their bank accounts. Every little bit you don’t consume helps get the message across – slowly – but still. And they are not going bankrupt, peeps, don’t worry about that. They will – and are – responding by filling alternate plant-based demands which are getting more and more popular all over.

But if you are, by making this statement, acknowledging there is something wrong with the animal product industry, and yet NOT actually working towards cutting it out even a little bit, then you are a hypocrite. And I don’t actually want to hear how many times a week you don’t eat meat. Because all I hear is the how many times you still do eat the flesh of a once living, breathing, feeling creature.

That’s another thing: it’s flesh – skin, muscle, tendons, blood, bone, capillaries, nerve endings, veins, all things we have, too. That crispy coating your licking your fingers over is SKIN, with hair follicles and bruises and scars. It could be your skin – but it’s not, luckily. It’s some other creature’s skin. You know in Nazi Germany, the skin of the Jews was used to make book covers, furniture covers, and lamp shades…but I digress.

Gross eh?

Anyway, that’s my gross thought for today. Maybe someone out there has an answer for why people explain themselves to me when they learn I’m vegan. I think it’s guilt. Guilt because they know and understand how cruelly animals are being treated for our consumption, and that makes me feel sad because if that is the case, then it’s going to take a lot more than some undercover videos of the inhumane treatment of pigs to stop people from eating bacon. If you already have the knowledge, and you do it anyway, that doesn’t bode well for humankind on this earth.

Why One and Not the Other?

Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute.

What if pigs, cows and chickens were not used for food. What if they were, let’s say, roaming the wilds like elephants, deer, and rhinos. And what if you found out, through some undercover activists, that there were places where these animals were kept and bred for an unnecessary use, like trophies, rather than for food. And what if this enterprise kept these animals in dirty, deplorable conditions; beat them, cut off horns and tails without anaesthetic, forcibly impregnated them to control births, prevented them from seeing the light of day by keeping them in tight metal cages and just generally abused them in order to profit off them. And they are not food. Think elephants, dogs, cats…

Would you be appalled? Would you be angry? Wouldn’t you do everything you could to lobby for the animals’ freedom? Wouldn’t you picket these organizations; produce petitions to be signed; sneak in to take videos to show the world what is actually going on? A warehouse full of dogs kept in metal crates, their puppies laying in their own filth around them. Like puppy mills but for cows, pigs, and chickens.

Wouldn’t you think this is a bad thing? That humans were evil to the core to be able to do that to innocent beings? I mean, they are not being used for food, we have loads of other things to eat – remember this is hypothetical. Try to be honestly neutral here.

You would, I know it. I can see the articles being shared on Facebook, IG and Twitter. I can see your comments. They are the same ones I see under pictures of abused dogs and cats. The same ones I see plastered all over; photos of Trump Jr. and his slaughtered trophies; Michael Vick and his bait and fighting dogs; carcasses of elephants missing tusks. I know you would think it was wrong.

So why is it alright now?

Why is it ok for cows, pigs, and chickens? Because we eat them? So there are certain animals we can abuse and some we can not. Why? Are they lesser in some way? Are they ugly? Is that it? An abomination to our senses? No…Do they damage our property, encroach in our neighbourhoods, steal our children? No…What do they do that gives us the right to maim and kill them when other animals are protected?

Why one and not the other?

That is All.

Endlings

Endlings: TV show or reality? It’s both, actually. And it’s pretty fucking serious.

The term “Endlings” was coined in the scientific journal “Nature” in April 4, 1996. Correspondence between various commentators was published where it was suggested a term be created to describe the last living member of a species. Endling was chosen.

Now let me emphasize an Endling is not the last few hundred of a species’ kind, it is the absolute complete final one – ONE – of a whole species. No further of its kind will be born. The species is caput after the Endling dies.

Think about that for a minute.

I looked it up. Five billion species are already gone. That is calculated at over 99 per cent of all species. Now, I’m no mathematician, and I must admit anything other than the basics completely confounds me, but this seems like a whole lot. So I’m just going to copy and paste what my best friend, Wikipedia, said: “Estimates on the number of Earth’s current species range from 10 million to 14 million,^[5] of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.^[6] In 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one thousandth of one percent described.”

Wiki also said this: ” According to the 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by IPBES, the biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction—all largely as a result of human actions. Twenty-five percent of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction.”

I hope that clarifies it for you, because it doesn’t for me. That being said, what I DO get out of this is the fact that our plants and animals are dying off AND IT’S ALL OUR FAULT!

Now the TV show part: a company called Sinking Ship Entertainment has come out with a series called Endlings, which is geared for families and children 9 to 12 years old, and tells the story of a group of orphans who find out they are not alone in the universe after the extinction of the last elephant on earth. It actually sounds kind of cool, and is probably effective in teaching children about these issues – but don’t get the two confused. Endlings the TV show is fiction.

An Endling outside of TV is a very real, very serious, problem.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says of the upwards of 41k species on their “red” list, more than 16k are endangered. (That is almost 1/2 of them!) This is both plants and animals, peeps. According to EndangeredEarth.com, ” The species endangered include one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one third of all amphibians and 70% of the world’s assessed plants on the 2007 IUCN Red List are in jeopardy of extinction.” And many more are becoming extinct which have never been identified by scientists.

Animals have become extinct over millennia without any help from us. This is nothing new. Climate changes, survival of the fittest, catastrophic environmental events, all these natural incidents have contributed to the loss of many species, some we never knew. But the current extinction crisis is well documented as being man made. The loss of biodiversity is happening way too quickly to be anything else. In fact, it’s happening at a similar rate to our technological progress over the centuries. As we progress, so our world deteriorates. Now that’s math I understand.

I hate to say it, but I feel like our attempts at clean up are too little, too late. Huge changes need to be made to fully reverse the cataclysmic catastrophe we have triggered. David Suzuki has a list of changes we can make in our lives to curb climate change. From obvious things like “greening your commute” and “using less for less waste” and “using energy wisely” to voting in the upcoming election and demanding politicians put climate change first.

But one of the quickest most direct actions is eating less to no meat. Changing our diets to one that is plant-based. The other suggestions are great and all but will only slowly help our planet because we are so used to the ease and convenience of our mod cons. Going plant-based in diet, on the other hand, significantly and more importantly IMMEDIATELY impacts our earth.

I know, you’re thinking holy fuck, will this chick ever get off the vegan soapbox? Well, no. No, I won’t. Because of the animals. HOWEVER, not everyone cares about that aspect of veganism (how? wtf?) but I’m pretty sure EVERYONE cares about our planet.

So you say you’re an animal lover, but you eat animals. By the same token, you love our world, and you want to preserve it, heal it, and keep it healthy, but you eat animals…

See what I did there? Yeah, I probably pissed you off, and you can curse me all you want, but the facts are there. CNN, BBC, The UN, – all mainstream non-partisan organizations – have all released articles and reports reflecting the massive positive changes possible by adopting a plant-based diet – at the very least, going flexitarian and reducing the amount of meat in our diets. Not only would we be saving our health, but we would be saving the health of the planet and all the animals and plants on it and around it. Yes – around it! The air too!

It’s so huge it makes me scared, but it’s so easy to get a good start fixing it my heart aches because people just really, really want their Big Macs and steaks. And I just don’t know why these are so fucking important when cutting them out would do so much for our world and everyone and everything in it.

So I’m gonna keep making a whole whack of noise about this, peeps, because it is THAT important a thing. But it is also THAT easy a fix.

Recycle, reuse, REDUCE.

Soapbox Moment

Ok, where’s my soap box? I got something to say.

The TV remote control is a deadly weapon. You want a definition of “weapons of mass destruction”? The clicker, plain and simple.

And not just the TV clicker either: left button on a mouse, toggle switches, channel changers, the “escape” key, ctrl-alt-delete even. Our electronics makes it so easy to avoid seeing and hearing things we don’t like and eliminating unpleasantness from our daily lives. When we don’t want to see or hear something, we can change channels or turn it off, and voila – unpleasantness vanished!

The unpalatable truth is then hidden from view, and we can enjoy our trip to the mall or our dinner out, dodging nasty facts and oblivious to troublesome issues and events. Whew!

Calamities and crises threaten our environment, our people, our animals by our very own act of turning it off – our inaction is in itself an action. Our disinterest is in fact the biggest weapon of mass destruction we have. And it’s dissemination is massive – world wide, in fact.

The clicker, as a weapon of mass destruction, has a sibling, cognitive dissonance. They are different, but the same. Where the clicker allows us to physically shut out what we don’t want to hear, CD allows us to mentally block connections to facts so we remain disconnected from the truth, all done subconsciously. It’s the yin and yang of voluntary ignorance.

The thing is, it’s out there everywhere. We don’t need a presidential “football” or red button to remind us the end of the world is nigh. All we need to do is look at our clicker and the impact of inactivity, of lethargy, of disregard to what is going on under our very noses. This will be enough.

The Amazon is burning – “THE LUNGS OF THE EARTH” peeps, all because farmers want to clear land for raising livestock which will further deplete the world’s natural resources: food, water, land. It will also contribute even more to climate change with carbon emissions. Carbon tax? pfffffff whatever, that won’t do much in the bigger picture – the facts are very clear in any scientific journal: animal agriculture contributes in massive quantities to climate change. The amount of beef harvested is minimal compared to the impact made on our world. There are articles out there, news stories, memes, interviews, photographs, statistics, and scientific reviews but all we do is push that fucking little button on the clicker and take a bite out of our Big Mac.

Cause we don’t want to know that WE ARE TO BLAME; we don’t want to admit responsibility. We don’t want to have to change our lifestyle in any way to accommodate changes and improvements in our world because our comfy little status quo will be uprooted and we might experience a bit of turmoil and heaven forbid we can’t have hamburgers or steak anymore! And all for what? So we don’t experience mass extinction of insects and animals? So we don’t lose air quality? So we can all continue to have potable water? Is it worth it?

Go ahead, push the fucking button on your clicker so you don’t have to put two and two together – show the world how much you really care.

OR – and here’s a thought! – or stay tuned, listen to the horrifying truth, watch the alarming videos, be educated as to the reality of each individuals’ actions (yes, especially your own!) and make a choice. You can choose to contribute to the well-being of the world or you can add your energy to the weapons of mass destruction currently looming on the horizon and gaining power.

I know what I’m choosing.

#govegan

 

 

 

We Gotta Start Somewhere

I saw a meme today, peeps. It was on IG and it intrigued me because it seemed kind of harsh, but I’m kind of a softie, so I thought I would read what other people thought of it – and holy fuck! Some people are just MEAN!

This was the meme:

It’s basically saying people who choose Vegetarianism (as opposed to full-on Veganism) are doing more damage to the movement than those who eat meat, because their “partialism” (now I just made that word up and I think it’s a great new word!) causes people to think Vegetarianism is doing as much good for the animal world as Veganism – which technically it is not.

Are Vegetarians, as this meme indicates, no better than carnivores in the bigger scheme of protecting animal rights? Is it actually worse to be a vegetarian? I don’t think it is. I think it is a step towards a greater good. But let’s have a look at specific meanings first, shall we?

According to Wikipedia, “Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals.”

By contrast, Wikipedia says “Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat, and may also include abstention from by-products of animals processed for food. Vegetarianism may be adopted for various reasons. Many people object to eating meat out of respect for sentient life.”

That’s in a nutshell. There is wayyy more information for each on Wikipedia, and the links are there if you’d like to have a look.

So, I see both lifestyles may be adopted out of respect for sentient life, religious reasons, moral reasons, environmental reasons, and health reasons. Vegans choose to use or consume absolutely no animal products or by-products for ethical reasons, and Vegetarians might still use some by-products, such as dairy or leather. So far, so good – I can see Vegetarians perhaps don’t go all in, but surely their actions count for something – and surely they can’t be AS BAD as those who eat meat and utilize all animal by-products. Well there is a faction of Vegans who believe this is the case.

What the fuck?

I don’t think that’s right, and certainly it isn’t fair.

Personally, I don’t eat meat or dairy, and I don’t purchase new leather or other animal by-products BUT I still have some leather items in my wardrobe – things that I am not able to replace immediately – Am I a bad Vegan?

And wait – there’s more! As mentioned in a previous post, plant-based farming can result in the deaths of many wild animals through the use of traps, or machinery, destruction of habitats, etc. So knowing this, and choosing to eat plant-based foods, logic dictates that would make MOST Vegans bad too.

Where do we draw the judgmental line, peeps?

I’m doing my best, ffs! And so are a ton of other Vegans AND Vegetarians. We are bound by the constrictures of our society as to how effective we are, regardless of how committed we are to our beliefs.

I have nothing to be ashamed of in using my pre-purchased leather goods or eating foods in which unintentionally, an animal died. Field hands and farmers have been hurt and killed on the job – we still eat the corn or beans.

Shit happens, peeps!

So ethically, as a Vegan in the world, in this life, my behaviour is considered acceptable, but Vegetarians are not….hogwash and hooey, I say!

The comments on the IG post made it abundantly clear Vegetarians were not given the same sanction as Vegans who still use pre-purchased animal-based items – and I wanted to know why?

One word, peeps! INTENTION.

If the intention to do harm to another being is not there, then it’s all good. However, a Vegetarian still uses or consumes some animal products, possibly knowing the cruelty involved, thereby giving the idea that some animal oppression is acceptable. While I agree it is NOT acceptable to knowingly kill or hurt an animal for our personal use, I also agree Vegetarianism is a step in the right direction, and should not be vilified or maligned.

Statistics show a Vegetarian can reasonably be said to prevent approximately 100 animal deaths per year. A Vegan, according to Peta, is said to prevent the death of 198 animals per year. Although it appears a Vegan “saves” more animals, the 100 animal deaths prevented by being Vegetarian is not too shabby either. It’s 100 more PER PERSON than would otherwise be saved.

Could a Vegetarian take it a step further? Of course! And they just might – unless judgers out there turn them off of belonging to this niche. Who wants to connect with and be part of a group of nasty, judgmental, downright intolerant people? Whether the group is doing good in the world or not?

Humans are pack animals. We want to belong – we want our tribe to accept us, love us and protect us. We want encouragement to progress, not condemnation for not moving fast enough. So I made this point on the IG meme:

You see, my compassion extends beyond non-human animals – it encompasses all sentient beings. This is what I believe Veganism is truly all about.

There is enough cruelty in this world, enough conflict, enough abuse, without inserting it into our attitude towards and treatment of people who are AT LEAST making an effort to help. We all come to our truths at different stages in our lives and in different ways. We all have individual paths to walk, perhaps governed by an omnipotent power or perhaps predicated by a past life – WE DON’T FUCKING KNOW!

So we have to stop fucking acting like we have all the answers and try to teach each other better with kindness, compassion and by example. Humans are impressionable and perceptive. If we see certain behaviours are working – and some are not – we will figure it out, in our own way and in our own time. Successful movements don’t happen overnight. Someone has to make a start.

Someone has to refuse to move to the back of the bus.

Those 100 animals the Vegetarian saved are happy someone did.

We all gotta start somewhere to get to our destination. It doesn’t matter where we start as much as it matters that we do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pizza Reinvented

Sometimes, I think about pizza.

There I’ll be, minding my own business, and suddenly, there is a piece of pizza in my head. A hot, gooey, stretchy mess of cheese and fat. It was one of my most favourite foods.

I’m not gonna lie, peeps, vegan pizza is the one food I have not been able to recreate adequately to satisfy the heart and soul. But staunchly, I stayed the course, eating my rice and beans (which I actually really love!) while everyone else in the house noshed down on that finger-licking perfect pie of my past.

It’s ok – I’m more than happy knowing my food did not contribute to the pain and oppression of the meat and dairy industries – but still, the Culinary Creative Carol part of me was challenged to design a vegan pizza that even a carnivore would love.

It’s like when my ex used to tell me “no” or “don’t do that or else” – what was I supposed to do? Listen? Tow the line? Pfffff  hell no. Challenge accepted!

My epiphany about pizza occurred last week when I went to Toronto with my friend Joanne and her daughter, Tatiana. We had lunch at a pizza place called “Apiecolypse Now” There were a range of different pizzas that looked distinctly unpizza-like except for the crust, and suddenly, the skies opened up and beams of angelic light played down upon us like gentle harp strokes as the beatific choir sang “aaahhhhhhhhh” in perfect, melodic, harmony.

Not really. It was more like a slap upside the head as my brain yelled “Holy shit! I never thought about doing this to pizza! Amaze-balls!”

There were pizza topping combinations I couldn’t even imagine: there was a pizza topped with nachos; there was a big mac pizza; there was traditional cheese style; plant-based pepperonis, bacons, and ground not-meat; there were non-dairy feta cheeses, Notzzarellas, plant-based cheddars, tons of different veggies; different types of sauces; the permutations were endless and delicious and totally, completely, pushed traditional pizza boundaries.

So I realized, it wasn’t about recreating the pizza, IT WAS ABOUT REINVENTING IT! Creating a new type of pizza with it’s own flavours and with its own identity.

So I ordered the most unpizza-like pie on the menu: The Fat Mac (Big Mac copycat). This pizza had a plant-based meat topping, with onions, pickles, cheese, lettuce, special sauce on a sesame seed pie crust. I needed to taste it and see if it really did taste like a Big Mac, and more importantly, decide whether lettuce belonged on pizza! I needed to determine the ingredients used to recreate it at home. If it could be done at home, then I could recreate any other favourite food item into a pizza and revolutionize vegan pizzas completely so they no longer had to compete with the real thing, but could stand apart from and alone as its own entity.

Like I said: Challenge Accepted!

I was wielding my spatula like a samurai, peeps. Herbs, spices, plant-based proteins: check! Flour coated the surfaces, cast through the air like semolina wraiths. Vegan mayo transformed into Mac sauce with a few simple ingredients. Vidalia onions and sammich pickles found new life in a fine dice job. Pizza dough flew onto a pan like a UFO. It was a thing of beauty, peeps. I kid you not.

When it came out of the oven all bubbly and hamburgerly, I added the finely chopped lettuce and drizzled the Mac sauce all over it. The earth was created in seven days, according to Bible thumpers. In this case, Big Mac Perfection was created in an hour.

I did it.

The Big Mac Pizza was born. And I saw that it was good.

OMFG peeps, it was so tasty, if you like Big Macs, which I definitely do. The flavour was identical, but it was healthier (no animal fats, no cholesterol, lower in calories) and no one was harmed in the process. Win-win for all concerned.

And I learned an important lesson. Sometimes it’s better to embrace new things than hold onto and try to recreate old things. Sometimes old things are old things for a good reason, and maybe they should stay old things, because we’ve progressed beyond that.

Frankly, I’m lovin’ it!

 

 

The Day I Cracked The Cheeze Code

Yesterday was a landmark day, peeps! I’m actually going to put it in my calendar as National Vegan Cheeze Day because it was THAT fucking special!

Going vegetarian two years ago was easy: I never ate that much meat. I have a mouth-feel/ textural thing going on, which I have since found out many people share. I cannot stand the feeling of gristle or fat or bones in my mouth and immediately become nauseated if it happens. I can’t eat food with bones in it because I can smell the boney-ness of it and it turns my stomach. So going veg was easy. Going vegan was a bit more of a challenge because, well you know, cheese.

It’s a complaint I hear all the time: I could easily be vegan except I could never give up cheese. Hey, I said it myself!

Ditching milk and eggs was not a problem. After I learned what goes into making milk and what we are actually consuming when we drink it, I turned to nut milks, soy milk and even oat milk. Yummy! Eliminating eggs was not a problem because they were ….ewwwww… runny! Plus having lived with chickens for a few years, I knew where they came from and what that was all about. Underlying all this was the animal cruelty factor which soon became the main motivation to go vegan completely, but man, I was not going to be able to kick cheese.

I thought that was the dealbreaker.

But, I boldly went where no carnivores had gone before: vegan cheeze-making.

Now, those of you who know me, know I love to cook. I have a pretty decent palate and can be very creative in the kitchen. I figured I had vegan cheeze in the bag. I mean, the internet was jammed with blogs, recipes, and videos of all kinds of vegan recipes to substitute for all the foods I normally enjoyed, but veganized. This was a no-brainer. *Me snapping my fingers and shaking my head* “Girl, I got this!”

Not.

Holy fuck getting a good cheeze was really fucking hard!

I tried everything: bechamel sauces using nutritional yeast (nooch) and store-bought vegan shreds, almond milk mozzarella, cashew cheese, millet cheese, tofu cheese, parmesan cheese, cauliflower puree cheese sauce, chickpea cheddar cheese. Every damn type of cheese out there.

I had some success: cashew cream cheese – better than the real thing! Parmesan sprinkle – so good on everything! (Hey, that rhymes!) And I had some HUGE failures, which I do not want to go into here because the memory actually makes me shudder. Some of the glutinous, gloppy, cheese-wanna be products ended up like something rivaling a really poorly made horror-film creature.

And then *cue angelic voices* yesterday happened.

I had almost given up, resigned myself to settling for store bought and off-flavoured sauces, but then I happened upon a recipe on Pinterest calling for potatoes and carrots.

Say what?

How in the hell would a mere humble potato, paired with the vibrant yet unexciting carrot make something as decadent, as creamy, and as richly satisfying as a cheese sauce for macaroni and cheese? I didn’t know, but after a really busy day where I didn’t eat anything except a whole-wheat fig bar, I was so starving, it didn’t really matter, I would have eaten it anyway. I mean, how yucky could it be? At worst it would just be pureed spuds and carrots. So, I tucked in my apron strings, rolled up my sleeves, and grabbed my Lancashire potato peeler, and moved in with alacrity and determination.

I watched in mild disbelief as I turned on the blender (once everything was cooked and all ingredients added) and watched an ordinary lump of boiled potatoes and carrots turn into a smooth, stretchy, ORANGE sauce.

But the real test was the taste.

I dipped in my spoon. The orange sauce had the consistency of a bechamel sauce with a bit of stretch, as dairy cheese would add. It had attractive flecks of seasoning peppered through it. Tentatively, I placed the spoon between my lips and felt that velvety smoothness along my tongue.

My tastebuds jolted.

Wait – wasn’t this just potatoes and carrots? My mind was whirling in confusion. I’d had potatoes and carrots before. It didn’t taste like this. The only thing that tasted like this was….CHEESE!

OMFG! I had done it. I had cracked the cheese code. Not only was the sauce the perfect consistency, but IT ACTUALLY TASTED LIKE FUCKING CHEESE! No lie, peeps! It tasted like cheese sauce.

My life flashed before my eyes: I saw bowls of cheese sauce mixed with salsa for chip dipping; casseroles with the family’s favourite cauliflower in cheese sauce at holiday dinners; lasagna with a mozzarella version; baked potato skins with veggies and cheese sauce.

But for now, it was all mine and I poured it on my elbow macaroni liberally and had the best macaroni and cheese ever made with no cholesterol, very little fat, and ABSOLUTELY ZERO animal cruelty.

Now who wouldn’t want that?

Recipe: Amounts are approximate because I rarely measure properly

2 cups of spuds, 1 cup of carrots (cooked til soft)

Place veggies in a blender with 1/2 cup of the cooking water and add a tablespoon of vegan butter, 2 tsp salt, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1/2 c nooch (nutritional yeast), 1/2 tsp each of onion and garlic powder, a blob of dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon tapioca starch, pepper as preferred, (cayenne optional, or other herbs. I did not this time around)

Whiz it all up in the blender and VOILA! deliciouso vegan cheeze sauce!