Meatless Mondays in Baltimore school

To save money and promote healthy eating, Baltimore schools have started Meatless Monday. Students don't care, parents think it's a good idea, the school obviously likes it... who's upset? American Meat Institute. Surprise surprise. They claim that it's indoctrination. What about being indoctrinated to eat meat? Damn double standards.

The American Meat Institute says that children should not be forced to use to eat meat every day but that parents and children should have a choice. Um... parents don't have any say in what is served at school and usually in elementary and middle schools you have a hot option, maybe a salad bar and some junk snack type foods. Yup loads of choices. Even high schools don't have that many options in some places. Also in all honesty most kids aren't going to pick the healthy, vegetarian option if it were available when they have all the awesome tasting junk foods right next to it. What about the veg*n children who don't have any choice at all?

And of course the American Meat Institute wants to throw out the outrageous "statistic" of 75% of children don't eat enough protein. How the hell is that POSSIBLE?! Maybe they mean animal protein but there's really no difference nutritional wise (besides the health problems that excess animal protein brings).

With the menu they showed they would be no issue with protein. They have the choice between grilled cheese (37g, mostly because of the cheese) or vegetarian chili (12g if it's just beans). They also have corn (5g), green beans (2g) ,refried beans (13g without lard), fruit.* A 100lb 12 year old needs 45.5g of protein a day. If this 12 year old picks the grilled cheese, corn and refried beans that's 55g right there, for one meal. The kids are fine.

I don't want to believe that the meat industry is actually throwing a fit about this but I'm not surprised. While the school is saving money, the meat industry is losing it. Imagine how much one school pays for meat to feed its students for one day. Depending on the size of the school that is a pretty good profit to the companies selling the meat. Yeah I'm sure they are upset about it but to come and use scare tactics because a school district is feeding kids meat one less day out of the week is pretty pathetic. Be glad that they are buying your dead animals the other 4 days of the week and get over it.

*I pulled those numbers from NutritionalData.com and the actual amount of protein the kids are getting will vary a bit depending on how it was cooked and how much the kids actually eat. But it's the basic idea.

Vegan family among the omnivores

One of my favorite things about this new moms group I joined recently is they have monthly pot lucks for those of us whose husbands work late or out of town at the time. This month it falls on a day that the husband works (his "weekends" shift ever month) so I am excited. I RSVPed already and said what I was bringing - rosemary mashed potatoes and dirty rice with "italian sausage".

I was sneaky enough to pick to "side dishes" that will be a full meal for us. Other people are bringing meat loaf, mac and cheese, chicken and a most likely dairy filled dessert. The bread/rolls may be vegan since she said she would pick up fresh bread from our local grocery which does have a few vegan options.

At this point it hasn't come out that the kids and I are vegan. With only some email exchanges and a park day it hasn't been an issue. On Thursday though someone is bound to notice. I'd just rather not make a fuss or make anyone feel like that need to go out of their way to cater to my family's choices. I'll bring food that works for us so no worries. I'll hopefully get others thinking that vegan food isn't all tofu and twigs after all.

This seems to be a very accepting group (I only got one weird look about my pink hair, that I noticed anyway) so I don't see it being a big issue. I think I'm just destined to be the weird one of the bunch. And I'm okay with that.

How do you handle food based group events?

Lions, Tigers and E. Coli Oh My!

Funny how I come across a few different articles posted recently that all tie together. Let me show you.

First (although most recent) is Fecal Matters at Care2. There's some big numbers (as in billions) thrown around but it basically boils down to: Animals poop a lot. And with the meat industry the size it is, we're talking about an extreme amount of it and it is contaminating the land and water, as well as the meat from the animals themselves.

Which brings us to E. Coli in hamburger, due to flaws in beef inspection, including a tragic story of a 22 year old now paralyzed all because she ate a hamburger. It is a long article but definitely worth a read through if you eat meat but I'll give you the gist here.

See, cows, being locked in small cramped pens as they are, will defecate on themselves. They are not hosed down before the slaughtering process (for a look at that this is a good video) and the intestines get nicked during slaughtering so the bacteria spills out so that crap (pun intended) ends up on the raw beef headed to packaging and a store near you. It doesn't matter so much on whole cuts, the fecal matter/bacteria is on the outside and will be killed during cooking. The problem comes when you take this "seasoned" raw meat from many different cows, possibly from many different slaughter houses and grind it all together to make hamburger. Then with lax testing practices or blatant ignoring of test results you get E. Coli contaminated hamburgers being sold in stores, served in restaurants and schools.

There was a Larry King Live hosted a discussion about E. Coli and the safety of meat shortly after that article came out, which included Colin Campbell who wrote The China Study. You can watch the show here, it is just under 30 minutes or read the CNN summary of the show.

This was too good not to share. Anthony Bourdain, the host of the show "No Reservations" said, "We have eyes in the front of our head. We have fingernails. We have ... teeth and long legs. We were designed from the get-go ... so that we could chase down smaller, stupider creatures, kill them and eat them."

Um what? I'll let you ponder the idiocy of that comment on your own. (The guy is an asshat anyway. I thought so before and now even more so after watching him talk on Larry King Live.)

But E. Coli doesn't just effect meat. I'm sure if you've been conscious over the last few years you've heard of recall after recall of various kinds of veggies, like tomatoes and spinach, because of E. Coli risks. How does E. Coli, which lives in the digestive systems of animals, get onto vegetables? Go back up to the top of this and take another look at that first link. That is how. (It's also mentioned on the Larry King discussion.)

How do we fix this? Shut down the meat industry.

One could hope right?

Pizza dough

I realized I hadn't put this up yet so I yanked it from the original blog on momaroo and just pasted. Welcome to the novel of making pizza. Haha!

Pizza is a staple in our house. We have it usually once a week, that is if I can remember to start the dough early enough in the day. I have been promising my loyal fans that I will post this recipe for a while. So without further ado, here it is.

Disclaimer: You need to start the dough at least 2 1/2 hours before you want to bake it. So don't take it on if you are pressed for time.

This recipe makes two 14 inch pizzas or one deep dish. I have two 16in pizza pans that I use. You can use a regular cookie sheet or the best would be a pizza stone. Either way, you need two or you can cook one, take it out, remove it from the pan and put the other one on. But to make it simple, get two.

Ingredients
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 teaspoons if you have the jar)
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus about 2 teaspoons for the rising bowl
3 cups all purpose flour
(Variant: I like heartier crust. I like it with 1 1/2 cups of all purpose and 1 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour. Or you can make it with 3 cups of whole wheat flour.)
1 teaspoon salt
Cornmeal

Now a silly step. There's really no need to proof yeast these days but hey that's what the recipe calls for. Get 1 cup of warm water (100°-110°) in a bowl or large measuring cup, add sugar, stir up so it dissolves. Add yeast, stir a bit to get all the yeast wet and set aside for 10 minutes. If the yeast foams up and pretty much doubles in size then your yeast is good. If not, try again. (I have yet had a bad batch of yeast.)

Wash your hands if you haven't already and remove rings. Mix the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Once your yeast is done, add it and 2 tablespoons of oil. Mix as well as you can then get your hands in there. It doesn't take much until it's time for kneading. Sprinkle out some flour on your very clean counter top or a large cutting board, dump out your bowl and get to work.

Don't work too hard. It will take about 10 minutes so you don't want to get tired quickly. There's no right way to knead, just push, pull, stretch, squish, fold that dough. Be rough, punch it if you feel like it. The longer you work with it, the stretchier it will be, ya know like pizza dough.

After 10 minutes or so, your dough should be soft and stretchy, tacky but not sticky. Form it into a tight ball. Get a large bowl, at least twice the size of your dough ball. Pour in a bit of oil, about 2 teaspoons, I just eyeball it. Put your dough ball in it and swish it around a bit, flip over, swish again. The point is to completely coat the ball and the bowl with a thin layer of oil. Cover the bowl with a damp towel. Walk away.

After an hour, your dough should have puffed up impressively. Give it a good punch and watch it deflate (my kids love doing that part). Time for more kneading. Sprinkle out some flour, grab that dough. It only takes a few minutes to get it feeling less like a sponge and more like dough again. Put it back in the bowl, cover, walk away.

This next part is up to you. You can freeze the dough then just defrost it to finish up later. If you are impatient you can wait as little as 10 minutes but your dough wont be very stretchy and you may end up with sad small pizzas. At least an hour is the best. Whenever you are ready, turn on your oven to 500°. Get whatever you are cooking the pizzas on and sprinkle a little cornmeal on them.

Time for stretching. After an hour or so, the dough will be puffed up again. Knead it a little and you're ready to go. Take your dough ball and cut it in two. Put one part back in the bowl. Take the piece left out and pull around on it. I found it easier to use a rolling pin to get it started. Then pick it up and hold it, letting gravity stretch it more, moving my hand a couple of inches each time to make the pizza stretch evenly. Play around with it to find the way that works best for you. The first few times you make pizza, I can guarantee that it will not be perfectly round. That's okay! Call it rustic. Shape doesn't effect how great it tastes. (Note: After a year of making pizza on a fairly regular basis I have never had a perfectly round pizza.)

Place your crust on the pizza pan or whatever. Repeat for 2nd piece. Now for the toppings. You know what you like but also at the same time don't get stuck in the tradition pizza toppings. Have fun and experiment. Make two different styles of pizza to satisfy everyone. I often use BBQ sauce in place of pizza sauce when I make my Hawaiian style pizza with pineapple. Play around with it.

By now your oven should be nice and hot. When your pizza is to your liking, throw it in the oven. Don't go far, it doesn' take long, about 6 to 8 minutes and you have to keep an eye on it to avoid charing your pizza. About half way through, I switch the pizzas to the other rack so they cook more even. Be careful when you open the oven or you will get a face full of hot air. When the crust is light brown it's done! Take them out carefully and let them sit for a minute before you slice them up and serve.

So there ya have it, homemade pizza.

Vegetarian Spider

I stumbled across something extremely interesting today....

In Latin America, there lives a unique spider called Bagheera kiplingi. It's a jumping spider and it shares the group's large, acute eyes and prodigious leaping ability. But it also has a trait that singles it out among all 40,000 species of spider - it's mostly vegetarian.

Bagheera Kiplingi

And yes Bagheera like in the Jungle Book.... written by Rudyard Kipling. Ha!

Steve-O Goes Vegan!

I just received a shock - Steve-O, ya know one of the Jackass guys, is actually pretty well spoken. Oh wait... he's also vegan! And not just any vegan but a raw organic vegan. Who saw that one coming? Definitely not me.

From his website dated September 10th - Provocative Nudity!!!

Hello Everyone,

My friends at PETA asked me to post their new commercial featuring Pam Anderson and myself. The fact that it has been banned (for graphic nudity) has led to massive amounts of publicity surrounding it. I don't think it was by mistake that PETA included enough nudity to get it banned. Actually, I believe more people know about it than would've had it aired on television- and I don't think it was ever intended to air on television in the first place. I applaud PETA for using PR dollars extremely effectively during these rough economic times.

When I first became involved with PETA, it was on an "issue-by-issue" basis- they interviewed me in my old apartment about animal abuse in the circus as I sat on a leather sofa. At that time I was a meat-eater, and told them I believe that if anyone is going to wear the flesh or fur of an animal, they should at least have the decency to eat the meat of that animal. That comment led to my involvement in PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" campaign. The following year I chose to stop eating meat (and stop wearing or purchasing anything made out of leather), however, citing reports that Jesus Christ fed lots of people with fish, I continued to eat fish. Most recently, for just over a month now, I've kept to a strictly vegan diet and I've not felt "hard-done-by" at all. I have been really enjoying making a project out of seeking out an extremely healthy diet of raw, organic, vegan foods- and I plan on continuing to do so.

A vegan diet isn't for everyone, and not everyone is going to agree with every position that PETA takes in the world. It's not my choice to try to tell people how to live their lives (not anymore, anyway!), but I will say that PETA is guilty of nothing but showing love for all living creatures, and I'm running out of issues to disagree with them on. Here's the commercial that cost almost nothing to get the attention of millions of people all over the world, it's my honor to be a part of it:


'Cruelty Doesn't Fly'—Learn More at PETA.org.

I love you all,

Steve-O

Wow huh? Now I can hope that his fans will have more awareness of veganism and maybe even try it.

What do you think about this?

Vegan food... Rabbit food?

Vegan Pantry

I told ya I would. You got a peek at my vegan fridge and now here's my pantry! I took these pictures right after a grocery trip so yeah, we have duplicates in some things just because one box is mostly gone. We aren't food hoarders. Haha!

(Note: Not great quality pictures because they were taken with my phone in a windowless room. Plus they are pretty wide shots so no real detail. You can click on the picture to see the super big version if you really want a good look at something.)

Top: Mike's protein power, limon lime gatorade, extra bottles of Mt Dew (since we buy them 8 at a time), vegan vitamin powder (I've been mixing it with our smoothies), extra almond milk.

Bottom: All my wonderful spices and other cooking stuff like canola oil, pure maple syrup, vegetable broth.

These are what we call our snack shelves.

Top: Nutter Butter cookies (vegan!), extra Clif bars, vegetable crackers, granola bars, more Clif bars, more granola bars, these weird fried peas that they kids asked me to buy, bulk jelly beans, peanuts, whole raw almonds, popcorn for our air popper.Then off to the side is some of our canned stuff like vegan chili, refried beans, enchilada sauce, etc.

Bottom: More vegetable crackers, store brand teddy grahams, poptarts, granola bars (are you seeing a trend? Granola bars are easy snacks for Mike to take to work so we have a variety of them around.), mostly gone bag of chex mix, more almonds. And I love my bulk stuff: dark chocolate covered blueberries (vegan whee!), milk chocolate covered cherries (not vegan boooo! They are Mike's.), glazed pecans (those lasted maybe 24 hours, SO good). Raw shelled pistachios, banana chips and these little cocoa cubes called "energy nuggets". They have sunflower and pumpkin seeds in them among other things. Not vegan but they are good, mostly healthy sweet treats for the kids.

And various kinds of chips - Doritos that I bought for when a friend came over and no one is eating them. Haha! A couple big bags of corn chips. In there are my Rice Works salsa chips. Vegan and ooooooh so yum.

Big (blurry) shot!

Top: All my baking stuff - flour, sugar, corn meal, chocolate chips, all that jazz. Off to the right is our multiple boxes of tea.

Middle: Cereals - Kix (vegan!), apple cinnamon cherrios (vegan!), Honey nut chex (Not!). Oatmeal (with some syrup hiding back there). Tortillas, both small taco size and big wrap size. Brown rice (both regular and minute) and dried beans. Noodles.

Bottom: Another angle on our canned stuff. Add in peanut butter and extra jars of marinara and pizza sauce. Then our bread. Gotta love our bread. Cranberry pistachio bread (yes it sounds weird but it's SO GOOD!), hamburger buns and whole wheat loaf from our grocery store's bakery. All vegan.

(Side note: Sometimes it can be frustrating to find vegan bread products. If you are having issues, check out your store's bakery. Because things are made in store and not needing to be shipped and have a long shelf life, they have very simple ingredient lists and it's more likely that they will be vegan. )

Then we have a loaf of Nature's Own 100% whole wheat (vegan!) and 2 loafs of Nature's Own Honey Wheat (not!). Yeah, we are so not afraid of carbs here. :P I believe there's also a single potato in that bread mess.

Off to the right of bread is some miscellaneous baking things, like ground flax seed, shredded coconut, etc that didn't make it back up on the baking shelf during organization. Haha! To the right of that is our laundry stuff... since our pantry shares a room with our washer and dryer.

In case you did the math and figured out that I didn't show the very bottom shelf on that side, there's no food there. It's just my mini food processor, crockpot, old water filter pitcher, dog treats, and some odds and ends that don't fit in our "junk drawer".

So, I've given you a sneak peek into my fridge and now my pantry. Will you give me a sneak peek at your food in storage? Take pictures, blog it and comment with the link! Pretty please. :)

Who are you callin' Vegangelical?

Go read.

Vegan Fridge

Hello there! Today after a quick produce run, I thought I would open my (fridge) door and let you see what I keep cold 'round here. :) Come on, I know you are DYING to see what I have in my fridge. Take a peek....

Top: Apple juice, Mountain Dew, a couple bottles of margarita mix (lime and strawberry), a pitcher of lemon lime gatorade and there's a single Capri Sun back there in the corner. (We have water and ice in the fridge door so no more water pitcher!)

Bottom: Soy yogurt, Smart Balance vegan butter, a big bowl of cooked black beans and a container of left over brown rice.

Deli drawer: Two packages of firm tofu(one frozen and thawed, other fresh), regular cheddar cheese (the very last of the last cow milk cheese that we'll buy) and some soy mozzarella, vegan sausage links, seitan stir fry strips, soy taco "meat" (that stuff is AMAZING!). You can't see it but there's also a roll of mock ground sausage off to the right. (I've been laying off the mock meats lately but Mike and the kids eat them.)

Top: Left over curly fries and chili, left over of the mock taco meat that I've been using for Mike's lunches, the red container is cut celery, on top of that is chopped onion, two left over waffles (my dinner tonight) and strawberries.

Bottom: Almond milk, veggie sushi rolls... and 3 kinds of alcoholic beverages. I swear we aren't alcoholics! We had plans for a friend to come over that ended up falling through but not until after we stocked for the visit.

I pulled out all of the things that I cram into my two crisper drawers so you can really see. A majority of it is organic. Lets break it down from left to right, top to bottom.

Mushrooms (in the paper bag, best way to store them), corn, green onion, mint leaves, alfalfa sprouts, baby spinach leaves.

Plumcots, small head of boston lettuce, tomatoes, avacados, peeled garlic.

Romaine lettuce, green bell peppers, baby carrots, raspberries.

On to the door!

Top: Vegan stick butter

Bottom: Tofutti mock cream cheese, the last bit of strawberry cream cheese for Mike, dijon mustard (I mix with agave to make vegan "honey" mustard), sweet and sour sauce, salsa, lemon juice.

First: More sweet and sour (unopened), mango lime salsa, marinara sauce, BBQ sauce, Mike's honey mustard.

Second: Miracle whip (need to check expiration on that...), ketchup, sweet pickles, berry ice cream sauce, strawberry jelly.

Third: Soy sauce, mustard, worcestershire sauce (that's not vegan and hasn't been used in... a long time), raspberry vinaigrette, banana peppers, olives, Soy ginger sauce.

Okay this isn't part of the fridge but here's my over flowing fruit bowl.

Organic gala apples, organic pears, organic kiwi, bananas and under there is a mango.

I didn't take pictures of the freezer because it's actually kind of empty and not as pretty looking. :) But I thought I would give you a run down on what it is in there too.

The top shelf is packed with bags of frozen veggies reserved for lazy days. I have chopped spinach, a couple varieties of stir fry, onion and red and green pepper mix, peas, corn and I think there may be a mixed veggie bag with carrots, peas, broccoli, etc.

The second shelf is curly fries, a bag of ice (bought when I forgot to turn on the ice maker for taco and margarita night with friends), and fruit popcicles.

Third shelf is a bag of frozen fruit.

The only thing in the bottom drawer thing is a single vegan burger. Ha!

Randomly thrown in the door: A package of frozen tofu, an old partly broken orange flavored popcicle, a box of black bean chipotle burgers and a pint of vegan ice cream.

So there ya go. If I get the motivation I'll organize the pantry and go camera happy in there soon. :)

Would you post pictures of your fridge if I asked please? :) Do it, blog it and comment here with the link! Pleeeeeease!