Mar 5th, 2010
by admin.
133 views
In the video below, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson explores the question “Why do you eat meat?” He provides the clearest, most succinct, and most honest answer I’ve ever heard to this question. For those of you reading this blog who are still consuming and using animal products, I hope Masson’s answer gives you something to think about as you gauge the appropriateness of your habits. Here’s the video — enjoy!
Masson has an amazing series of books on the emotional lives of animals. I’ve personally read the following books which I highly recommend (Consumer Notice – the links to Amazon below are paid affiliate links):
- When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (with Susan McCarthy) (Available from Amazon.com
and Amazon.ca
.)
- The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals (Available from Amazon.com
and Amazon.ca
.)
- The Emperor’s Embrace: Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood (Available from Amazon.com
)
You can find out more about Masson’s other books by visiting his Amazon.com author page
or by visiting Jeffrey Masson’s personal website.
I discovered just last night that Masson has jointed Twitter (@jeffreymmasson). You can follow him to get updates about his books, tours, and lectures.
Of Masson’s books I’ve read, my favorite thus far has been The Emperor’s Embrace (simply entitled in The Evolution of Fatherhood outside of Canada and the USA).
QUESTION:What’s your favorite book by Jeffrey Masson and why? Please share your thoughts in the comment section of this post.
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Posted in: book, veganism, video.
Tagged: animals · books · Jeffrey Masson · meat · vegan · video · YouTube
Mar 1st, 2010
by admin.
205 views
A couple of weekends ago I finally got around to making a batch of kale chips. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to make great tasting kale chips! Since I haven’t been using a tried & true marinade for the chips (you can be as creative as you like), I won’t post a specific marinade in today’s post. What I will share is the rough outline of the basic marinade I’ve been using. It consists of lemon juice and olive oil with a little cayenne pepper, onion powder and salt. I personally like using as little pressed oils as possible. However, using a little oil helps soften the kale. My impression from my kitchen experiments is that the crispy kale chips you get are more tender when using a little oil. It’s possible you can forgo the pressed oil if you’re using a marinade made with blended nuts & seeds, olives, or avocado.
Special Equipment
- Excalibur food dehydrator or other food dehydrator with temperature control functionality.
Ingredients
- 1 bunch of kale per 2 tray spaces in the Excalibur.
- marinade (your choice)
Directions
- Thoroughly wash the kale and tear large pieces from the main stems.
- Thoroughly massage the kale and marinade together in a large bowl.
- Since the Kale will take up a lot of vertical room, you’ll likely need to remove
one tray in the Excalibur for each tray of kale chips you add. If you’re using a light marinade, you can place the kale on the normal meshed sheets. For a thick marinade that’s dripping, you may consider using teflex sheets, though this will slow down the dehydration process some. In either case, you may want to place a teflex sheet under the last tray with chips on it to catch any marinade that drips from the trays above.
- Place the messaged kale on the trays and dehydrate at 115 degrees Fahrenheit until the kale chips are crispy, approximately 6 hours.
- Serve & Enjoy
Basic kale chips made with lemon, olive oil, cayenne, onion, and salt marinade. Please click to view a larger image.
If you’re not big into salads or kale, this may be a great way for you include an amazing green food into your diet. I think most people can very easily eat a whole bunch of kale in one sitting when it’s served as chips. If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, kale chips are excuse enough to start growing kale. Kale is also one of those amazing plants that grows almost all year round in places like Vancouver, BC, Canada.
You can try mixing different kinds of kale for slightly different results. I’ve made the recipe with both curly kale and black kale. My favorite batch so far was a combination of these two varieties. Note that if you’re using a very heavy thick marinade, you may have to dehydrate the chips longer than 6 hours. You can store dehydrated kale chips in airtight containers.
QUESTION: Have you ever tried kale chips? If so, what did you think? Please share in the comments section of this post.
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Posted in: Recipe, Vancouver, chips and crackers, equipment.
Tagged: chips · dehydrator · Excalibur · greens · kale · marinade · photo · Recipe
Feb 15th, 2010
by admin.
295 views
There are still many local grocery stores that don’t have dedicated organic sections. Their food buyers go to the food terminal in their city and buy whatever they consider to meet their price & quality standards. For example, there is a store not far from my house that sometimes has organic cauliflower, but it’s never sold as such — as far as they are concerned, it’s just plain old cauliflower & it’s priced accordingly — way lower than cauliflower from stores that specialize in organic produce or have dedicated organic produce sections. Why? Because the owners of this store know that they can’t take a greater margin on the produce because their clientele won’t be willing to pay. Knowing how to identify organically grown produce by the labels found on fruits and vegetables can save you a lot. What you are looking for is the Price-Look Up (PLU) code found on most fruits and vegetables sold through traditional grocery stores.
Organically grown produce is identified by placing the digit “9″ in front of the standard 4 digit PLU code. For example, an organically grown standard yellow banana will have PLU code 94011.1 Here’s a code you most definitely want to avoid: genetically engineered produce will have the digit “8″ placed in front of the standard 4 digit PLU code. For example, an genetically engineered “standard” yellow banana will have PLU code 84011.2
Not only can knowing about how to identify organic produce using PLU codes save you a little money on groceries from time to time, you can protect yourself from someone selling you traditionally grown produce but claiming it’s organic. This of course doesn’t apply to produce you may buy from farmer’s markets where the produce is not labeled with PLU coded labels.
Summary
- Organically grown produce labeled with a PLU code will be five digits long beginning with the digit 9. Think to yourself: “If it doesn’t start with 9, then NEIN!”
- Genetically engineered produce labeled with a PLU code will be five digits long beginning with the digit 8.
- Currently produce grown using “conventional” farming practices that may use pesticide & herbicide poisons along with chemical fertilizers have a four digit PLU code falls within the range 3000 to 4000.3
For more information on Price-Look Up codes, please visit the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS) website.
References
- IFPS:: FAQs “How do I code organically grown produce with a PLU code?” http://www.plucodes.com/faqs.aspx Accessed February 15, 2010.
- IFPS:: FAQs “How do I code genetically engineered produce with a PLU code?” http://www.plucodes.com/faqs.aspx Accessed February 15, 2010.
- IFPS:: FAQs “What ranges do PLU codes fall within??” http://www.plucodes.com/faqs.aspx Accessed February 15, 2010.
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Posted in: Uncategorized, health, organic foods.
Tagged: banana · food · fruits · genetically engineered · herbicide · organic · organic produce · pesticide · PLU code · poisons · vegetables
Feb 1st, 2010
by admin.
619 views
The following recipe for a basic raw vegan basil pesto goes well on spiralized veggie noddles (e.g., zucchini, carrots, turnips, yam-style sweet potatoes) and on raw broccoli or cauliflower and combinations of those types of vegetables (for more on how to better enjoy raw broccoli, check out my earlier post entitled Raw Organic Broccoli – It’s All About The Sauce!). For example, for dinner this evening I had the pesto over a combination of cut cauliflower florets and broccolini (a cross between broccoli and kai-lan). The evening before I had the pesto served over spiralized organic turnips and yam-style sweet potato. The following is an adaptation of the basil pesto recipe you can find in Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine by Gabriel Cousens and the Tree of Life Café Chefs (available on Amazon.com
and Amazon.ca
). I’ve cut the volume in half so that it’s more appropriate if you’re making the pesto for 1 or 2 people.
Special Equipment
- Food processor or blender. A mini-prep food processor or small blender works great for the volume.
Ingredients
- 1/2 -3/4 cup organic raw pine nuts
- 1/4 cup fresh de-stemmed organic fresh basil
- 2 Tbsp organic unfiltered cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil
- 1-2 Tbsp organic lemon juice
- 1-2 cloves of organic garlic
- 1 tsp Celtic sea salt or Himalayan salt.
- 1/4 cup filtered water, reserved.
Directions
- Add all the ingredients to the food-processor or blender. Pulse the mixture in food-processor or blender, adding 1 Tbsp of water at a time to help facilitate blending and in order to reach the desired consistency for the sauce.
- Serve & Enjoy
The pesto should keep for about 2-3 days sealed in the fridge. As mentioned earlier, the pesto makes a nice dressing for spiralized vegetables noodles. Here in Vancouver, you can purchase spiralizers at OrganicLives, Gorilla Food, Eternal Abundance, and from various other places and people (e.g., Katherine Marion aka the Rawsome Chef).
Some other notes:
- If you plan on serving this pesto with a dish that you’ll bring to a potluck, consider de-veining the garlic. Some people find raw garlic too intense. By de-veinging the garlic, they’ll enjoy your dish a lot more. When making the pesto for myself, I usually don’t remove the garlic vein as raw garlic doesn’t give me any problems.
- You can get organic raw pine nuts, organic unfiltered cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, and Himalayan salt from OrganicLives.
Please share your modifications and improvements to the recipe in the comments section of this post.
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Posted in: Recipe, dressing, equipment, sauce.
Tagged: basil · blender · brocolli · dressing · food processor · garlic · lemon juice · olive oil · pesto · pine nuts · Recipe · sauce · spiralizer
Jan 27th, 2010
by admin.
397 views
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using a simplification of a raw vegan Caesar salad dressing recipe. This past Friday, I had a chance to go to a very unique raw food potluck. I brought a “Caesar Salad” with raw vegan croutons that I purchased from OrganicLives. My friend M. asked for the recipe for the dressing, so here it is
Equipment
- Mini-prep Food Processor or Blender (small blender is best)
Ingredients
- 1 cup raw organic pine nuts
- juice of 1/2-1 medium or large organic lemon
- 1 medium or large clove of garlic
- 1 tsp kelp powder
- 1 tsp salt (sea salt or Himalayan salt is best)
- 1 Tbsp cold-pressed organic extra virgin unfiltered olive oil
- 1/4 cup filtered water (reserved)
- 1 date (e.g., Medjool or Hunza dates)
- organic black pepper (to taste)
Directions
- Add all the ingredients except the reserved water and black pepper to your mini-prep or blender.
- Blend all the ingredients, adding 1 Tbsp at a time of reserved water until you reach the desired consistency
- Mix in ground black organic black pepper at this point, or later after tossing with Romain lettuce greens, etc.
- Enjoy!
The dressing should keep for a few days sealed & refrigerated, but it’s always best to use it up fast. Toss with Romain lettuce greens for a “Caesar Salad”. If you have raw vegan croutons available, add them as well as it will take your raw vegan Caesar salad to the next level. I’ve also used the Brutus dressing on spiralized root vegetables and on a kelp noodles salad.
Some other notes:
- Regarding the kelp powder, you can purchase ground kelp powder, but you may have better results by grinding your own sun-dried kelp strips.
- If you are going to be serving the dressing with a dish that you will share with people who may find raw garlic too intense, consider de-veining the garlic clove. I usually de-vein garlic for any dishes I bring to potlucks.
- If you make a very thick dressing, it can be used as a Caesar-like veggie dip
- The dressing will thicken in the refrigerator. Add a little freshly squeezed lemon juice or filtered water to thin if desired.
- You can purchase raw organic pine nuts, dates, Himalayan salt, Peruvian raw organic olive oil, etc., from OrganicLives (1829 Quebec Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada).
I hope you have some success with the Brutus dressing recipe. Please share your modifications/improvements in the comments section of this post.
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Posted in: Recipe, Uncategorized, dressing, salad.
Tagged: black pepper · blender · Caesar salad · croutons · dates · dressing · food processor · garlic · kelp powder · lemon juice · olive oil · pine nuts · Recipe · salad dressing · salt
