In the Kitchen

Here's a look at what I've been cooking this week (or, eh, rather, like three weeks ago, I somehow forgot to put this post up!).  Anyway, it's nice to be back in the kitchen after the whole VegNews fiasco.  Ahhhhhhhhh.

One of my favorite things for breakfast or dinner is a sweet and white potato hash with red and yellow bell peppers and a sweet onion.  My husband makes it and it is amazing every time.  Sometimes he fries up vegan chorizo (Trader Joe's kind) and adds it, but it's great plain, too:

Hubby's Hash

Homemade vegan pizza with sourdough baguette, olive oil, spices, organic basil, organic Roma tomatoes and Daiya mozzarella, just put it in your toaster oven for a few minutes and it's done.

This isn't a great pic, but I love to put the potato hash over pasta, whether it has the chorizo added or not! 

This is my quick marinara sauce (with spinach).  It's so creamy dreamy because I added some cashew/tofu ricotta to it that I had in the freezer.  That stuff freezes just fine, then just defrost on 50 percent power in the microwave for a few minutes.

I served the creamy spinach marinara over packaged gnocchi and it was fantastic (and quick and easy!).

And then on Friday I just had to try Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's chocolate chip cookies from The Joy of Vegan Baking.  I love that book and everything I have made from it comes out great (and receives the review of "best ever" even from omnivores and even in comparison with traditional baked goods).

 I added walnuts to one dozen of them.

P.S. I want these all time time, now.  I honestly think about making them every single day. JOVB is the best!

Next, I had to try Isa's new recipe for Mac & Shews and, as expected, it was stupendous.

 My hubby rinsed, drained and cooked the sauerkraut for me with white wine, freshly grated pepper and probably secret ingredients.  He used to make it as a fancy side with pork chops.    

It's so gross and sad to think of eating any part of a pig now :-(   But the kraut is fantastic.

Here is the finished product.  AMAZING.   

If you guys want recipes for anything above (except the cookies, those are from Colleen's book, but I can ask her to post it if you guys want!), let me know.

Enjoy your week,

Dawn

Name That Plant!

Hey guys, is this just parsley?  It smells SO delicious, is so supple, green, I can't believe it might just be really fresh and amazing parsley.  It's growing on the side of my house (planted by the former owners, this is only our second spring in our house).  The leaves smell like parsley, but are super floral and delicious with a cumin note (it's not cilantro, at least I don't think it is) and the stems resemble celery with celery scent.

I want to eat it asap!  

Hope everyone is having a great weekend and someone can help me out with this little problem.

On Your Daily Vegan

My guest post is up on Your Daily Vegan, In Support of A Vegan Omnivore Alliance.

In this guest post I am talking about my own, original ideas for A Vegan Omnivore Alliance. I'm not really sure what Tom Philpott was after since he only wrote one article on it.  What I really am envisioning to start off with is a web resource (maybe a FB page or something) with a skilled moderator.  My article was inspired by Tom's article, so I give him that in the introduction.

Again, to make it clear, regardless of what people think of Tom's ideas, in my post, I am talking about my OWN ideas.  I don't pretend to know what Tom or anyone else is thinking when he conceives an idea, but I know what I am thinking.

This guest post is a follow up piece to the original article I published on my blog, though it almost has the same title.

Please check it out.

Let me know your thoughts.

Sincerely,
Dawn

Juice Goose

So, we went to Whole Foods in Marlton, NJ today.  I was on a mission.  A juicing mission.

 Me, with pulp. 

 Dragged the Breville out from the basement!  Do you see my juice goose? He loved it.

 Plunder from Whole Foods.  HOLY prices.  You don't want to know. I thought about posting a photo of the receipt, seriously.  It's Wegmans and Trader Joe's for me!!

 These beauties are worth the $$ though (they weren't that expensive, it was the other, more "normal" stuff that was jacked!).

Organic apple, carrot & celery layers.

 Apple, carrot & celery juice.  WAY too sweet for me.

So, I added some spinach and more celery, with a squeeze of organic lime juice. Better.

Would love some juice recipes, guys, this is fairly new for me.  I need to try adding some ginger and garlic because I like it spicy.  I am really interested in green juices, I have a Breville ikon mulit-speed juice fountain.  Want to do like a juicing for energy/cleanse kind of thing.  Any help is appreciated, especially links to blogs or websites.  Trying not to buy any more books for right now.

Have a great week, guys! <3 Dawn

On Time

I'd like to say a few things about an interesting article published this week in Time magazine that has been circulating FB and Twitter.

Overall, the Time piece is excellent for mainstream coverage.  Walsh covers Gene Baur's pro-vegan viewpoint well.  However, Walsh misses two points that often go unmentioned in articles like these.  I know he is also responding to Myers' piece in The Atlantic, and isn't trying, in this one article, to completely inform folks on how to make their food choices, so bear with me.

When Walsh discusses the food movement's idea of shifting towards "more humanely" raised animals and "better meat production," he says nothing of the effort needed to significantly reduce demand for animal products in general. That's a problem.  If people want "more humanely" raised food animals, overall demand for animal products must go down, whether folks go vegan full or part time.  We currently slaughter ten billion animals a year.  I don't think we should kid ourselves about being able to come remotely close to producing enough animal products to meet current demand for cheap meat with family farms.

From the Time article, "When the food movement succeeds, it can break down ignorance — and then it's up to individuals to decide how that will affect their lives. Some will go vegan. Others might choose to eat meat that has been more humanely produced, following the writer Michael Pollan's basic dictum: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." And whatever you do, be aware of what you're eating and why."

Personally, I think I only know one non-vegan person who follows Pollan's advice. ONE person, and she is really a part-time vegan.  Most people who eat animal products eat a lot of them at the known rate of about a half pound to a pound per day.  Using the USDA's report from the year 2000, I calculated a per capita intake of 0.63 pounds per person per day (and it is likely higher now, but the USDA has changed how they represent that data, no more easily read report, no more neat graphs and tables that add up all animal products and all meats for you...gee, I wonder why??).

And no one I know who eats animal products ONLY buys family farmed products.  Factory farmed items like cheeses, cream cheeses, butters, milks, ice creams, etc. sneak their way into the fridge.

The second point he misses is an important one for the argument to go vegan.  Food folks who talk about "more humanely" produced and farmed animals rarely talk about slaughterhouses (though I am personally aware of the mobile slaughterhouse movement).  The problem is this: family farms use commercial slaughterhouses.  The same houses where the known atrocities and torture occur for factory farmed animals.  But no one ever talks about that.  The Time article certainly doesn't mention it.  It is difficult to get more information on this.  If your family farm doesn't use a commercial slaughterhouse, I want to hear about it.  In detail.  Comment on this post.

Vegan folks effectively avoid contributing to both of these problems.

Well, it's Friday, and it's raining (here in the Northeast) and I've got to get ready for my day.

What do you guys think?