Archives for the 'vegans' tag
Quick Bites
The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan (yes, that Caitlin Flanagan) has oodles more faith than I do in the ability of schools to actually teach kids a darn thing. That said, her well-written piece on the growing infestation in schools of the hideous back-to-the-farm worldview of Alice Waters is excellent. (That’s Waters, a true woman of the people, pictured at right.) [The Atlantic]
Latest fuzzy math from the White House: “Mrs. Obama said it cost less than $200 to start the [WH] garden, which already has yielded a positive return on the investment.” I’m sure the organic seeds used to start the garden cost more than that. How about all the child labor used to plant and harvest? Does that count, or is that off the books? (How about all the horrible seed miles, as I’m not aware of any DC-raised seeds?) And the ROI? How’d she calculate that one? I didn’t see her selling produce at the Dupont farmer’s market. [MSNBC]
Morgan Spurlock on The Simpsons: neither funny nor to be taken seriously. [Open Market]
Underage Iowa college frat pledge drinks way too much Everclear. Which naturally leads to efforts to ban Everclear. [IPD, via Leena]
British taxpayers fund fully vegan lifestyle for reprehensible, imprisoned vegan terrorist. [Daily Mail]
Vegan Bin Laden Chocolate for the Troops
Nice gesture or a terrible kind of cruelty all its own?:
A chocolatier and longtime People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals supporter is making the special vegan chocolates for the troops after reading about how difficult it was to get chocolate in Afghanistan. The so-called “bin Laden bites” give the troops the chance to bite his head off, a news release from PETA said.
In addition to supporting the troops and protesting the Sept. 11 attacks, PETA said it also wanted to use the chocolates to protest bin Laden’s torture and killing of animals during and in the days following the World Trade Center attacks, when their guardians were killed, leaving the animals to die of dehydration, starvation or exposure to toxic fumes.
It’s World Vegetarian Day & National Vegetarian Month! Let’s Have a Contest
In honor of October 1 being World Vegetarian Day, which kicks off National Vegetarian Month, we here at Crispy are holding a contest. But first, HSUS on the celebrations:
National Vegetarian Month is kicked off on October 1st by World Vegetarian Day. In response, The Humane Society of the United States—the nation’s largest animal welfare organization—is encouraging consumers to try delicious meat alternatives that are not derived from the routine abuses billions of farm animals endure. The HSUS is also providing recipes for healthy, mouth-watering vegetarian meal ideas.
We here at Crispy would also like to raise awareness about vegetarianism and vegetarian cuisine. To kick off our efforts, we’re urging Crispy readers to try a delicious assortment of meat-alternative alternatives. (Namely, meat.)
We also want to get on the recipe kick. But instead of sharing, we’ve devised a contest in which we ask you, loyal readers, to share your least vegetarian-friendly recipes. Entrants must be in one of two categories. The first consists of some food you have personally consumed. For the second category, we’re looking for (meaty) pie-in-the-sky ideas on what hypothetical dish would be most reviled by vegetarians. Be creative. While cheeseburger = boring, CAFO-aged crate veal in a horsemeat & baby seal reduction = more like it.
We’ll announce our favorites at the end of October. Winners will get some prize of indeterminate (but undoubtedly little) value.
Submit your recipe here in comments or here.
One final note… If the photo above looks mysteriously like a very crispy Santa’s Little Helper to you, I’m with you on that.
Unlike Vegans, Carnivores Don’t Need Meat and Greet
PETA Acts Not Dumb
Yesterday PETA launched a $1 million contest to convince some mad scientist to come up with a way to create meat in a lab setting that “would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten”–what it’s calling “in vitro meat.” PETA claims the contest is a way to advance its so-called anti-cruelty agenda, stop harming the environment, etc.
I think it’s really just an admission by the group of what carnivores and omnivores have always known: meat tastes good. So good that it seems the overwhelming majority of manufactured vegetarian food–plant life that didn’t grow from the ground (or ocean)–serves little more than to provide calories that mimic the taste of meat.
Alas, I could go on about how awful PETA really is, but I must instead respond to a vegan friend, who wrote me this morning, regarding the PETA contest, with this challenge:
I dare you to put up a positive blog post one of these days about vegetarians or vegans and something they do or eat.
So here goes: this contest is a great idea. Bravo to PETA. This is exactly the sort of thing groups like PETA should have been doing all along. Not terrorizing or suing or intimidating what should be free choices made by peace-loving meat eaters. But putting their money where their breasts mouths are in order to effect voluntary consumer change. All while helping vegetarians eat better tasting food.
One final note… I wonder if the chicken breast cutlet photo PETA used to announce the contest comes from chickens killed specifically for its campaign, or whether they nabbed the photo from a provider like Corbis. Just wondering.
Bourdain Inspires… Vegan Blog?
Anthony Bourdain once called vegans the “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarians. The vegan response generally mimicked what the more extremist elements of Pakistani society did after the whole Muhammad cartoon controversy.
But lo and behold — at least one vegan understands how to express her anger where it counts: in the kitchen. Thus, we have Hezbollah Tofu.
Last month, a North Carolina blogger named Sara (who self-identifies as a B-12 enema addict) decided to take Bourdain’s criticism of vegans’ bland, gas-inducing food and veganize the French classics Bourdain lovingly churned out for years from his perch in the Les Halles kitchen. In an open (and no doubt unopened) letter to Bourdain, Sara writes:
Because, Anthony, you’re kind of tragically wrong about us. But don’t worry, we’re not going to do something silly like picket the Travel Channel or go around bookstores drawing giant penises on your book covers with Sharpies. We have two key advantages over you in this game: we’re easily mobilized, and we can cook.
So we aren’t just going to “enjoy” food, we’re going to enjoy vastly improved, veganized versions of your masturbatory, blood-oozing recipes. And then we’re going to compile them, sell them in zine form, and donate the proceeds to vegan outreach organizations and farm sanctuaries–in your name. Anthony, I have to say, I’m really looking forward to the great work we’re going to do together for veganism.
This is an open call to vegan cooks of all stripes: professional chefs and bakers, cookbook authors, food bloggers, amateur cooks, and–perhaps most importantly–ordinary, everyday people who just want to live their lives and eat their dinners without unnecessary heckling from the heroin-addled peanut gallery.
This blog will serve as a meeting ground of sorts. Send in your veganized recipes, your ideas for veganized recipes, your photos of veganized recipes, and your thoughts in general to hezbollahtofu@gmail.com, and they will comprise the blog content and eventually the zine. In addition, I will periodically post Bourdain recipes in their original format, and you can veganize them as you see fit. Further, once the Hezbollah Tofu project reaches its zenith, the non-profits that receive the proceeds will be decided on by consensus.
I can’t wait to be part of the “consensus”. My vote? Send the donations to the Culinary Institute of America. Or the Artisan Farmers Alliance.
Mom and food writer Nancy Rommelmann reconsiders her tolerance for her daughter’s vegan boyfriend’s crappy palate here.
Foie Gras Protesters Try to Take ‘Charm’ Out of Charm City
Predictably shrill foie gras protesters — of the variety that’s previously yelled at peaceable diners in several U.S. cities — have invaded Baltimore, seeking to force first Salt and now Kali’s Court to stop serving the wonderful delicacy. The Baltimore Sun has a relatively good account of the mess they’re causing — see haggard, whiny-looking megaphone woman above — and of the diners who are fighting back.
Salt, like many restaurants, buys foie gras from Hudson Valley Foie Gras, a farm in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the largest producer in North America. Farm Sanctuary has targeted it.
Marcus Henley is Hudson Valley’s operations director and a member of the Artisan Farmer’s Alliance, a nonprofit charged with countering the protests. Calling objections to his farm “completely unfounded,” Henley repeatedly points out that anyone can visit the farm anytime to see scores of healthy, happy ducks.
“If you could come here, you can go in any building, you can watch every part of the operation,” he says. “The people who come here walk away and say, ‘Wow, that is not like anything depicted on the foie gras Web sites.’”
Protesters incorrectly imagine people in the birds’ place and how torturous it must feel to be force fed, Henley says. The procedure simply doesn’t hurt ducks, he contends.
The activists who’ve taken pictures of sick birds, he says, have documented the exception rather than the rule.
[...]
Meanwhile, Baltimore food enthusiasts are coming to Salt’s defense. In fact, they’ll celebrate foie gras there at a dinner on Thursday – four deluxe courses, starting with sugar cane skewered foie gras and closing with the famous (or infamous) beef slider with foie gras.
Lars Rusins, who founded Baltimore Foodies, said his group’s dinner, which will cost about $100 a person, sold out in 48 hours. As it is, the party of 20 will take up about half the restaurant.
“I have no problem consuming the product – none at all,” said Rusins, who calls foie gras “silky” and “fun on the taste buds.”
Check out the Baltimore Foodies here. Me on similar efforts in Chicago here. The Grinder linked to my piece on Anthony Bourdain in discussing his winning foie gras politics here.
