Archive for September, 2008

Our Mother’s Milk

Today everybody is talking about the federal government’s proposed bail out of our messed up financial economy … but I’m going to talk about PETA. Obviously I know about PETA – people for the ethical treatment of animals. I feel on the whole that they try to raise awareness about animal cruelty but sometimes are a bit drastic in their approach. Today my husband as well as friends sent me this great news article “PETA Urges Ben & Jerry’s To Use Human Milk: Group Says Move Would Help Humans, Cows.” Everybody was like … “PETA has gone too far”. But have they?

Now lets take a look at this and turn the tables for a minute. Let’s say dairy farmers started breeding humans instead of cows to produce milk. Just bear with me here. So these baby humans are brought into this world with no volition of their own. Their sole purpose is to create milk for other people to drink. What happens to the baby boys? Oh that’s right … there is no need for them. They can’t produce milk. So they’ll get shipped off to some strange confinement place where they get very little food and can’t move just so their flesh doesn’t develop muscles and remains delicious for consumers that like to eat little boys.

Ok … but the baby girls … they can stay because eventually they’ll be able to produce milk. They are separated from their moms at birth because the dairy farmers are convinced they can give the baby girls better supplemental formula than their moms could. When they mature, they are then put in the large “feed lot” type area where they get to live on hard, dirty ground for their entire lives. They live outside … no barn in sight … despite temperature changes that can range below freezing to over 100 degrees. Sometimes the adolescent girls have fans and misters in the summer if the farmers are nice. Then when they are ready, the farmer gets this friends together, mixes up a concoction of sperm from a donor male cow, sticks his hand up her vagina into her uterus to implant some sperm. Now if you ask me, this can’t be good for the farmer or the adolescent girl!

Wallah, in 9 months, the adolescent girl has a baby and that means she can produce milk! But she can’t give her milk to her baby, it’s for other people to drink. Her baby gets taken away … you know where the baby boys go and where the baby girls go. And her milk gets pumped twice a day so that other people can drink and eat it. Ttwice a day this adolescent girl is hooked up to a metal machine that pumps the milk out of her breasts and sends it down these tubes and onto a truck and eventually into the supermarket. If she has a little stray hairs around her nipples, don’t worry! They won’t contaminate the milk because the farmer comes by with a flamer that he blasts across her breasts to scorch off any bacteria or hair just before milking. Then when the adolescent girl becomes a young woman, after all her hard work, she is sent to slaughter so people can eat her flesh.

Ben and Jerry responded to PETA’s request. “We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child,” said a spokesperson for Ben and Jerry’s. I do to which is why I’m writing this blog. Why is it that we take a cows milk away from her child to drink or eat for ourselves? It just seems strange doesn’t it? I mean there are so many other great things to drink like juice, water, soy milk that don’t involve the torture and abuse of sentient beings. Think about it.

The full article can be found at http://www.wptz.com/news/17539127/detail.html.

Leave a Comment

Meat and the Supermarket

Well today I went to the supermarket and my husband asked me to pick up some food for him. This inevitably means meat. Having grown up near cattle in Nebraska, he is still a carnivore despite my attempts at persuasion. I know, I know. You’re asking, why is Josie buying meat? It’s a very difficult thing for me to come to terms with. I love my husband. And any of you out there that love your husband know we would do anything to help keep them healthy and happy. I don’t buy food (aka meat) at the supermarket, then he eats out at every meal and that is unhealthy. Not that he can’t cook, he’s just busy like ever one else.

So our agreement is that I take care of many chores around the house including grocery shopping and he takes care of all our joint monthly finances. Those of you that know me know how terrible I am at math so while we tried switching these jobs a while back, I failed my expectations miserably because anything with numbers makes me want to go hide under the covers. So alas … this is the way it is. On the rare occasion that my husband asks me to pick up some food for him at the supermarket, I do.

Today it was lunch meat and stuff for spaghetti (translation … sauce, noodles, and ground beef). I think I have officially been vegan long enough that I can not look at meat and not see a face on it. I stand next to all these other people in the supermarket gobbling up samples of turkey and picking out their choice cuts of meat and I think … how can you not see the face on that cow or turkey or chicken? The package is bleeding for gawd’s sake! But then again, maybe they are just buying meat for their husbands. Then I imagine them taking this meat home to feed to their kids! Their kids! Why would anybody feed a bloody piece of flesh to their kids?

If that piece of meat was set in any context other than on the kitchen table, people would be horrified. What if you were walking your dog around the neighborhood and all of the sudden you saw a rack of ribs bleeding on someone’s front lawn. Wouldn’t you freak out? So why is it that if we put that same piece of bleeding flesh on the table, it’s ok? I could go on here about lobbying and the meat production industry but I think I’ll call it a day :)

For those of you reading this who think I’m a half-arsed vegan now that you know I occasionally buy meat for my husband, I think you’re wrong. I don’t eat meat. My husband does. That is what it is. Lawd help us if we ever have kids!

Leave a Comment

Green Tea Cupcakes Recipe

from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
Serves 12 | Vegan | 30 Minutes

Ingredients
1/2 cup soy yogurt
2/3 cup rice milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 to 4 teaspoons matcha tea powder (can be found at Whole Foods)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line cupcake pan with liners.
2. In a large bowl, whisk toether the yogurt, rice milk, vanilla, oil, and almond extract, beating well to blend in yogurt. Sift in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, matcha powder, salt, and sugar. If using rice flour it will be a little lumpy. Beat a little longer to break up any large lumps. Fill liners two-thirds full and bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted through the center of one comes out clean. Cool on racks before topping with glaze.

Great Tea Glaze
2 tablespoons margarine
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon matcha tea powder
1 to 2 tablespoons rice milk
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Drop of vanilla extract

Directions
1. With a fork, beat margarine to fluff, then mix in confectioner’s sugar and matcha to form a crumbly mixture. Slowly beat in 1 tablespoon rice milk, almond extract, and vanilla. If icing is too thick to spread, pour in additional rice milk a teaspoon at a time and mix till desired consistency is reached.

To Assemble
1. Use a tablespoon to pour green tea glaze into the center of each cupcake. Spread out a bit with the back of the spoon but it’s nice if you can see the green edges of the cupcake.

If you like this, you should buy the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. You won’t regret it!

Leave a Comment

Vegan Green Tea Cupcakes & Open Minded Ranchers

There aren’t many days I get to deliver vegan green tea cupcakes to open minded ranchers. The irony of it all is just so fulfilling! And to say that they LOVED the green tea cupcakes! I so appreciate an open mind. I am not vegan because I stick my head in the sand and would rather not know what happens to animals in our commercialized production industry but rather because I am educated about what happens as are most vegans which is why we choose to eat this way.

On Friday I visited Mike, a physical therapist, for some help with an injured hamstring. We often talk about my vegan lifestyle because I think he’s never met someone like me. See Mike grew up on a cattle ranch in northern Arizona. His dad still owns that ranch. He works at rodeos and has three cow of his own that he puts through 4-H and sends to slaughter to raise money for his grand kids. To Mike, there is nothing wrong with using cattle for industry. He’s always lived that way.

On his dad’s ranch, the cattle get to roam for hundreds of acres and eat grass. Imagine that! They are not kept in a feed lot and eating terrible animal byproducts and high-fat grain. They actually get to live a pretty normal cattle life but then, of course, in the end they are slaughtered for meat. While I don’t agree with the slaughtering part, I have to be thankful that there are still some ranchers out there that do allow their cattle to roam. But there is little profit for them to make. The demand for meat is high and people don’t want to pay much for it. So ranchers like these sell their land so they can retire. Eventually that will only leave feed lots for cattle. So sad :(

Mike however is quite progressive … or seems to be since I’ve made his acquaintance. He likes my cupcakes and even went to Sprouts Farmers Market to busy some non-dairy cheese. Turns out he’s lactose intolerant but didn’t really think there were better options until we started talking about it.

Today I’m feeling so happy that I can have these dialogues with people like Mike because I am opening his eyes to variant food options and my perspective on raising animals for food. He also is helping me understand the challenges ranchers face in today’s marketplace. He’s not likely to go vegan but he is trying vegan cheese and that’s a start :)

Comments (2)

Do you know what happens to male diary cows?

That’s the question my good friend and client, Linda, posed to me today. It has been such a fun adventure for me to have gone vegan 6 months ago and continue to inspire others to look at their food differently each and every day. Linda is amazing! She is continually reading and learning more and more just the way I have over the years. This makes for good conversation.

So today she asks “Do you know what happens to male dairy cows?” I do but it was fun to hear her express her sorrow over the terrible fate the majority of male cows face in the dairy industry. I love when people come to their own “a-ha” conclusions. I could talk to people about the benefits of veganism until I’m blue in the face but it won’t do any good until they learn for themselves that the decision is right for them. So wonderful Linda has now decided to phase out dairy where possible in her diet. How fantastic is that?!

So what does happen to male dairy cows … they become veal. Yep … it’s not something I wanted to know either but that’s the reality. You see the dairy industry can only use females. Only female cows produce milk. So where does that leave the males? They’re not the finest “angus beef” so they are instead sold to veal producers who put them in confining crates where they can’t move or see light for 18-20 weeks. They can not turn around, stretch their legs or even lie down. Then of course they are slaughtered for their pale, grey meat. So sad!

For more about dairy factory farming visit http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/dairy/.

Leave a Comment