South Texas Vegan

Sad about seitan

2008-04-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I've been slow about posting blog entries. I have several I want to get off my chest soon (with pictures). I only have a week left in this semester, and maybe (perhaps I am being too hopeful) I will be able to get some of my mind back then. I just wanted to relay my birthday experience (from April 16, I'm slow). My wonderful wife made me sesame seitan for my birthday. It was so delicious. I've had similar dishes in the past, but now I'm learning I don't feel so well after having such a mega-dose of wheat gluten. After I eat it, I start getting a headache and feeling flushed. It's hard to explain, but I really don't want to experience that ever again. I know for certain it was the seitan because I ate two plates of leftovers, and the symptoms returned. The strange thing is I don't think I am overly sensitive to gluten in foods. I'm guessing it is just having such a concentrated amount in one dish. Well, at least my last seitan dish was a winner, and so much for snubbing my nose at others who balked at seitan. I understand how they feel now.

Spit out that mystery meat and get on over to the Great South Texas Meatout

2008-03-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

Are you ready to treat your body right, be consistent in your moral values and help the environment? Then you might want to put down that barbacoa taco and head over to the third-annual Great South Texas Meatout at the Good News Mennonite Church in San Juan (on the corner of Raul Longoria and Eldora) on March 30 from 2-6 p.m.

The free Rio Grande-wide festival will feature vegetarian cooking workshops and demonstrations, with a wide selection of delicious meat-free dishes available for purchase from a cash bar. Samples of the classes include Growing a Salad on Your Front Porch, Vegan Nutrition, Easy Bake Recipes, Mexican Vegan Cuisine, among others.

Visitors will get to sample food from the classes, and for $5, visitors can purchase the Rio Grande Veggie Cookzine, a magazine complete with numerous original South Texas-inspired recipes.

The Great South Texas Meatout is sponsored by the Association for Vegan and Vegetarian Awareness (AVA) and the Cochehua Vegetarian Collective.

AVA (www.myspace.com/ava_utpa) is a student organization on the campus of the University of Texas-Pan American. Cochehua (www.myspace.com/cochehua) includes vegetarian (and non-vegetarian) members from Cameron and Hidalgo counties and conducts regular meetings in both counties.

For more information about the festival, please contact Sara Alvarado, AVA president at (956) 330-3721 or tataboxbp@gmail.com.

For more information about the Great American Meatout, visit www.meatout.org, and for a free download about the reasons and concerns of switching to a vegetarian diet, go the Web site for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine at www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vsk.

Bummed

2008-03-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

I do not like writing when I only have negative things to say, but I am really saddened by the announcement of the impending deah of Herbivore Magazine. I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall when they reduced the size of the publication to a tiny booklet and reduced the number of issues per year. The magazine was the one real true voice for vegans. The magazine made me feel less like a freak and more a part of a greater community of people who have similar beliefs. It was edgy and provocative. It cut straight to the heart of the issues more politically correct publications (i.e. Veg News, Vegetarian Times) wouldn't dare cover. Herbivore Magazine once bravely asked meat-eaters, "Why not eat your pets, too?" That isn't such an outrageous statement considering our bloody habits toward other creatures. I learned about people who promoted vegan issues I might never have learned about otherwise, including the singer, Michael Franti. The death of Herbivore Magazine comes on top of the recent closure of Satya, another publication that highlighted vegan issues. To make all of this bad news worse, members of our local vegetarian society recently expressed a desire to allow dairy and egg dishes at our local potlucks. They say that the rule of vegan dishes is discriminatory against vegetarians. Um, isn't vegan food vegetarian? Ugh. It's not like vegans can eat dairy and eggs. Which rule is more discriminatory? Anyway, I'm not posting again until I have something positive to say. RIP Herbivore Magazine.

Losing a great man

2008-02-22T06:54:00.000-08:00

Jim Koch sings to his daughter, Anita, the night before her marriage to me.

From left to right are Jim Koch, Anita, me and Sylvia Koch.

It has been a rough two weeks. I lost my father-in-law, Jim Koch, to heart disease on Feb. 13. He was just 68. I enjoyed his passion for left-wing politics and for life. One of the most touching experiences in my life was during the rehearsal dinner on June 22, 2001, for Anita and me. During the dinner, a mariachi band performed, and to the surprise of everyone, my future father-in-law got up and sang several songs in Spanish to his daughter. And you know what, he sang beautifully and powerfully. He cared deeply about his family and was always there when we needed him. He enjoyed being the caretaker for family history. He spoke three languages, English, Spanish and Portuguese. He was a retired public school teacher, an election judge and a political activist. During the last few years, he translated Brazilian poetry. Unfortunately, he had diabetes and was overweight. He liked his fast food. As vegans, Anita and I tried to encourage him to eat less meat. When he came over to our place, he enjoyed the vegan food we prepared. We also made food during the holidays and brought it to his house, such as tamales. At his home, he ate lots of hummus and some tofu. He switched from chorizo to soyrizo. Despite his positive changes, it wasn't enough. He needed to do so much more, namely avoiding fast food. His last heart exam had been 10 years ago. If he had gotten the exam every year, I believe they probably would have caught the build up in his arteries and could have provided him with some treatment. It simply was too late when he was taken to the emergency room. Heart disease, especially build up in the arteries, can easily be remedied with a good diet and exercise (read "The China Study"). I hope anyone who reads this will take better care of their heart and encourage their family members to do the same. We will miss you so much, Jim.

The not-so-smart car: Where veganism and environmentalism clash

2008-02-01T06:30:00.000-08:00

I was so excited that the Smart ForTwo car was coming to the United States this year after being available for years in Europe. It is the most fuel-efficient nonhybrid on the market. Only the Toyota Prius gets better highway mileage (45 mpg to 41 mpg, according to the EPA's 2008 standard). Unfortunately, the ForTwo comes standard with a leather steering wheel and leather gear-shift knob. I e-mailed the company about it, and here was their response: "Dear smart Enthusiast, Thank you for your interest in smart USA. Unfortunately at this time leather is the only option available for the steering wheel." It makes me so disgusted. I am trying to be a good environmentalist and want to do the right thing, but I will not buy a car that's dressed up with the skin of another animal. The idea that you can't even special order a non-leather steering wheel and gear-shift knob is just amazing. I'm so glad a company is making a small, reasonably priced and fuel-efficient car. Unfortunately, there's too much cruelty in its make-up for my green.

A fair shake is not too much to ask for

2008-01-29T07:01:00.000-08:00

I realize it's a dollar short and a day late and not even really a vegan issue, but I just put up a bug supporting Dennis Kucinich for president. He's already dropped out of the race, so it doesn't matter that much. I try not to be overly political on this blog, but I do want to make a point. Kucinich dropped out of the race because he couldn't get a fair shake in the coverage of the election. He was excluded from debates because TV networks said he wasn't doing well in the polls. He was excluded from stories about the presidential election because he wasn't performing well in the polls. The problem is that you can't fare well in the polls unless you are covered with equal vigor. Michael Bloomberg, who denied his interest, got more presidential campaign coverage than Kucinich, and he wasn't even running. Fred Thompson, who did worse than Kucinich in New Hampshire, got far more campaign coverage than Kucinich. Even in the debates that Kucinich was allowed to attend, he didn't get an equal amount of time or questions as the "leading" candidates. Candidates who have been anointed with the special media buzz get covered by the media. Hillary Clinton got plenty of mention because she is the wife of a former president. Guess where such a public figure starts off in the polls? At the top. As far as I'm concerned, we need campaign reforms that prohibit the reporting of political polls. People get so caught up in perceived leaders that they end up supporting one of them instead of a candidate they identify most with. If a person qualifies to be on the ballot, that should qualify them to be given equal coverage. The media should do stories on the issues rather than on the polls. Let people decide who to support based on where they stand on those issues. Who has the best health-care plan, for instance? I saw a story in The New York Times several months ago about the Democratic candidates' positions on health care. Guess who wasn't mentioned? Kucinich and Mike Gravel. Would it have been so hard for the Times to have put in a few more paragraphs about the other two candidates? Many of the stories that mentioned Kucinich came at the end and said, "Also running are long-shot candidates Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel." What position is the media in to determine who is a long shot and who isn't? Let the voters decide this without interference. Maybe words like "long shot" could be used after early primaries are over. By the way, the public owns the air waves. We should require all networks to run free ads from all of the presidential candidates and dictate that all be given equal coverage. Well, I've said my piece.

Veganism is a win-win for the environment and people's health

2008-01-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

I have not been good about keeping up with entries in this blog. I have committed myself to graduate school, and I have a full-time job. Thus, my spare mental energy and time are not there enough for me to keep up with the blog as often as I'd like. I'd like to say I'm resolved to be better about it, but I don't want to make any promises I may or may not keep. Having the blog has been wonderful. It has let me get issues off my chest and provide some education about vegetarian issues to others who live in the Rio Grande Valley. It is one more useful tool to help vegetarians connect with one another. I hope I've conveyed that eating a vegan diet is not difficult, and anyone can do it. Meat is expensive to buy, and it also exerts a tremendous toll physically and environmentally. Long since it printed a column on its opinion pages with blatantly false information about veganism, The New York Times finally printed something honest on Sunday about the cost of meat production called "Re-thinking the Meat-Guzzler" by Mark Bittman. Among his very interesting comments is this nugget: "If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals." The reality is that the planet cannot sustain the current levels of meat eating. It is destroying the environment both in terms of greenhouse gases and pollution to our waterways. It is destroying people's health, and it is making humans desensitized to enormous amounts of pain and suffering by the animals we slaughter.

A Vegan Feast

2007-12-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is usually a time for increased stress. It is nice driving to San Antonio to visit family, but it isn't all that nice eating the vegan food we prepared around such a massive animal massacre. After six years of marriage, however, this was the first Thanksgiving that we had at our house. We cooked up our best Thanksgiving meal to date. I mostly made the cornbread stuffing and the potato salad, and Anita made the muffins, the sugar-glazed baked sweet potatoes and the cashew encrusted baked tofu. She also made the cornbread that I used for the stuffing. I really can't believe how well the potato salad came out. We looked through all of our cookbooks to see if we could find something that could be veganized. We used a recipe from an old cookbook put together by some Army wives (including my mother). Wouldn't you know it, after we made the potato salad the first time a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, we discovered the recipe had been written by my mother.

Enjoying some vegan eating in Austin's neighborhood

2007-10-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

This is the famous Protein 2000 dish: vegetable proteins made of soybeans in a slightly sweet brown sauce with broccoli, garlic and onions.

This is called Lucky 7. Here's how the menu described it: seven fried tofu balls made of celery, carrots, chestnut, vegetable protein, and breadcrumbs are cooked with broccoli, baby bok choy, cauliflower, carrots, napa cabbage, onion and garlic in a slightly sweet and spicy red sauce.

One of the difficult parts to living in the Rio Grande Valley is the shortage of restaurants that serve to vegans. There are simply slim pickings down here. Perhaps that's a good thing, considering I don't eat in restaurants as much anymore. I did this weekend though when I went to Austin and had lunch at Veggie Heaven next to the campus of the University of Texas with my friend, Dean. I forgot to take pictures of what we were eating until after we had already started chowing down. That's why they look a little a sloppy. The restaurant serves such a crazy variety of vegan dishes. So many are good, but I always find myself gravitating to Protein 2000. It is simply soul food. I love their fried spring rolls, steam buns and the brown rice with lentils, as well. Here's a link to Veggie Heaven's menu.

Only cruel-free dating, please

2007-09-27T18:06:00.000-07:00

The other day my wife asked if I would ever date anyone who wasn't a vegan. It's a ridiculous question, I know, because I wouldn't be happy being with anyone but her, but she wanted me to consider the hypothetical. As a vegan, would I consider a relationship with anyone not a vegan? I have a hard time thinking that I could have a successful relationship with anyone who isn't a vegan because she wouldn't share the same values as myself. Being vegan is a deep ethical committment, and it revolves around my love for life, the environment and my health. An anti-vegan in the midst would undermine my values. Is it much different than a lover of peace dating a known mass murderer? I think not. The differences between vegans and others are immense. I can't disown my family, and I would never consider it, but having a romantic relationship with someone who would conspire to stink up the house with burning flesh is quite revolting. Perhaps I would be condemning my life to one of loneliness, I don't know, but perhaps there would be more time to pen the great American novel. Anyway, the question was prompted by this online Newsweek article: "Love Me, Love My Tofu." It mentions one of our favorite vegan couples, Bob and Jenna Torres, who run the famous vegan podcast, Vegan Freak Radio.

Oh, gross

2007-09-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

Yet again, meateaters continue to gross the world out. Check out this Associated Press story:

MAIDEN, N.C. - A man who bought a smoker Tuesday at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first.
Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.
The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found.

To read the rest, click here.

Naturally the place to eat on South Padre Island

2007-09-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

Tofu salad sandwich

Portabella with mango-chili sauce sandwich and sweet potato fries

For those who haven't heard, Naturally's Health Food Store and Cafe on South Padre Island recently got a lot better. Formally, it was in a much smaller location. Now, it is in what was once a fast food restaurant that became a fine-dining restaurant. Half of the store is the health food part and the other the cafe. The selection in the health food store, while still in a small area by grocery store standards, actually rivals Sun Harvest in McAllen in many ways. They have items that the McAllen store doesn't have. We found organic canned pineapples, organic molases and a brand of organic tofu that Sun Harvest doesn't carry. Anita and I went back again this past weekend so we could take a few photographs. In the restaurant, I got the seasoned tofu salad sandwich on rosemary sourdough rye bread. Anita got the chef's recent creation, a portabella with mango-chili sauce sandwich. Both were fantastic. Just be sure to ask to hold the cheese. Where else could you go out to eat and drink a kombucha and organic tea? Naturally's is definitely the place vegans in the Valley should make a point of going to.

Maybe veganism doesn't sell magazines

2007-09-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

It hasn't been a good year for vegans in the publishing world. We all know the damage done by The New York Times' printing of a column full of fabrications by Nina Planck. Herbivore, the magazine for hardcore vegans, decided to stop printing the magazine. Now, they print a tiny booklet and publish poorer quality stores on the Web. VegNews has been sliding downhill for quite a while in order, I guess, to pick up a larger audience. VegNews doesn't speak to veganism that much anymore; instead, they frame things in a much broader vegetarian sense. VegNews has gotten away from what attracted their core subscribers. These subscribers were reacting to Vegetarian Times basically throwing vegetarians onto the street to appeal to a wider audience (or to make more money). Satya also recently gave up publishing, as well. Now, there's a wide opening if some enterprising person wants to start up a magazine that caters to vegans. Maybe you won't get the widest audience in the world, but we would be loyal as long as you stayed true to your roots. Nothing is more frustrating in the publishing world than people so paranoid about stepping on people's toes. When VegNews and Herbivore were in their heyday, they had no problem printing edgy, even shocking, stories about the food industry and culture. Now, saying something negative is frowned on by publishers worried about selling even more magazines. I'm hoping someone with some decent vegan values sees the need for a new magazine for vegans. Perhaps the next guy won't be so willing to sell out.

Some ramblings

2007-09-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official, the fall semester is well underway. I haven't written in the blog in a while because I've been using every spare moment to read something for one of my classes. I'm just starting in my journey to earn a master's degree in English. Oh, the things I've forgotten. I earned my bachelor's degree in 1998 so I'm basically playing big-time catch-up. Being back in school is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. I was worried the other day at work because I had been asked to attend a lunch meeting that started at 11 a.m. No one would do anything for the oddball vegan, and I couldn't exactly eat lunch beforehand at 10 a.m. I was getting mentally ready to be hungry and miserable for a long period of time. The organizer of the lunch came to talk to me about what I'd be doing at the lunch and made the comment, "I know they won't be serving your preferred cuisine." I responded back (perhaps with a little too much vitriol) with, "I know; it'll be painful." Perhaps it was my bad attitude, but I got a call later that I wouldn't have to attend the lunch. Wahoo! Whining does work. Really, veganism is not simply a preference. This is the core of my ethical beliefs. A vegan is who I am, much like a Jew is Jewish. Really, would people make that sort of comment to a person who had a religious conviction? The lunch is pork and the organizer tells the Jew, "I know it's not your preferred cuisine," how would that person react? Would there be grounds for a discrimination complaint? Also on my mind has been this ridiculous argument by meat-eaters that plants have feelings, too, and vegans are wreaking more pain than meat-eaters. Ummm, no. Say the meat-eaters are correct and plants do have feelings, what is the weight of their argument? Not very good. Take cows, for instance. Of all the corn and soy beans that are fed to the cow, only about 20 percent of those calories are available in the animal's flesh. That means, instead of feeding those plants directly to humans, five times as much cropland have to be used to get the same amount of calories from the cow. In other words, you have five times as much plant suffering from the meat-eater, and you still have the suffering of the cow. Being a vegan would actually cause less plant suffering, believe it or not. Plus, we know the environmental destruction being caused by razing of rainforests to clear the way for land to grow crops for domesticated animals. We have far more farmland than we need right now to feed the world a vegan diet. The same can't be said for feeding the world an American-style meat-centric diet.

Wedding blues

2007-08-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

I actually was looking forward to the wedding on Saturday. My wife's cousin, Erica, had made a point of telling us there would be a vegan meal for us at her wedding reception. Erica and her beau got hitched in the fanciest of places, the country club at The Dominion in San Antonio, the place where country singer George Strait and former basketball great David Robinson and other famous people reside. Normally, when we go to a family event, we come prepared or get a bite to eat beforehand. That wasn't the case, however, when Erica's sister, Susan, got married in January. Susan knew full well we were vegans, so we came relaxed. The only thing we could find at that wedding was chips and salsa -- albeit good chips and salsa. Needless to say, that was a let down, but we let our guard down again this past weekend when we drove four and half hours to attend Erica's wedding. The wedding was beautiful, but what were they thinking to have a wedding outdoors in August in Texas? One of the bridesmaids got faint and had to leave. We had to hear the preacher talk about how a wife is in "servitude" to her husband, but the pastor goes on to say, "That doesn't mean they aren't equals." Huh? I don't care what the Bible says. Servitude means slavery. Supposedly John and Erica really care about animals -- he's a vet, she a nurse and they both are members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Yet, they didn't see anything cruel about releasing turtles and butterflies during the wedding. I thought about those poor butterflies all cooped up and hungry when they flew to the nearest flowers after being released. How many in that box died, I wonder? Anyway, we made it to the reception, which was thankfully indoors. Everyone but us got a plate full of beef kabobs, asparagus, rice and some sort of sauce made out of the beef droppings. We got our plates after everyone else. It was grilled vegetables that were cooked on the grill that had been used for the kabobs. They didn't have any sauce on them. They were disgusting and not vegan. Afterward, we went to a Mediterranean place (Alex's Shish Kabab, 7500 Eckhert Road, No. 152, San Antonio, TX 78249, (210) 680-1826) close to my parents-in-laws' home. This wonderful chef made to-die-for pitas, hummus, fresh baba ganoush and dolmas. The chef had recently come to San Antonio after having had a successful restaurant in Seattle for two decades. We couldn't have been more fortunate.

Relief: Hurricane likely to miss Rio Grande Valley

2007-08-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

It looks like Hurricane Dean won't hit us in the deepest part of South Texas. It has been a lesson, though, to be better prepared. We need to be ready to board up our windows, sand bag the doors, pick up loose items in the yard, have several days worth of food and water supply, and if we need to evacuate to put our cats (all six) in cat carriers and collect the few most precious items (pictures, important documents) before we leave. Hopefully, if a hurricane ever strikes, there never is any serious flooding in our neighborhood because it would break my heart to lose the plants in our garden.

Dog dumping in South Texas

2007-08-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Fellow Valley resident Noemi Martinez (She runs a kool Web site called Hermana Resist) brought a series animal abuse articles printed in The (McAllen) Monitor to my attention. It looks as though the city of Edcouch was picking up living stray dogs and then dumping their dead carcasses in ditches around Hidalgo County, apparently to save money, according to a city worker. I presume the dogs were being killed somehow, either by starvation or other methods. Either way, this is grossly despicable behavior. "It's revolting and disgusting," Noemi said. I think this shows how mean humans can be, but thank goodness at least one person had a conscience and shed some light on this tragic story and may prevent further abuses. I can't help but think how odd our culture is when it is OK to treat some animals (cows, chickens, pigs) in the torturous conditions of factory farms, but others, such as dogs, cats and horses, draw gasps from most in society when they are treated cruelly. The only reason why The Monitor pursued these stories is because it fit in that weird category where the line is drawn on animal cruelty. The problem is that the ethics of animal cruelty are not consistent, and so it obvious why some can't understand what the rules of decency are. It is equally strange to me why some think it is OK to eat cows, chickens and pigs and odd that someone would consider consuming a horse, dog or cat. We don't need to consume any animal to survive, and if had a culture of treating other animals with dignity and respect as fellow living creatures, we would never fall into the trap of what's ethical or not. Being cruel to any animal would not be ethical, and no one would confuse that. Here are the links to the stories from The Monitor on the dog abuses: No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4

Here is a little bit from the first story that Noemi sent me.

EDCOUCH — Nestled in a ditch less than two-tenths of a mile east of the city maintenance shop here rests a lumpy, gray, plastic garbage bag.
Inside it is the fly-ridden, decomposing carcass of what was a black, medium-sized dog.
Municipal workers here have been starving dogs to death and irresponsibly tossing their carcasses in ditches inside and around the city limits for months, as ordered by the city manager, according to former city worker Abel Escovedo and Mayor Jose Calin Guzman.
Along with other city maintenance workers, Escovedo said he was ordered by City Manager Ernesto Ayala Jr. to pick up stray dogs in town and keep them at the maintenance shop for a week.
"We've been dumping dogs," he said. "(Workers) went at least 10 times in the last two months."
After talking with The Monitor Wednesday afternoon, Guzman said he had heard from various city workers that "a lot of dead dogs" had been dumped outside the Edcouch city limits.
"That's enough to fire that guy or have him quit," Guzman said. "I'm so discontented by this."
Escovedo said he was told by his supervisor that the dogs were dumped to avoid the costs of turning them over to area animal shelters.
"I said, 'Isn't (dumping dogs) against the law?' but Ayala told me they didn't have no money for the city to drop them off at the dog pound," Escovedo said.

To read more, click here.

Dean is a comin'!

2007-08-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

Hello, I am Anita, Andrew's wife, here for a guest post. We are bracing for Hurricane Dean, which may or may not bare down on us on Thursday. I went to the grocery store today, to pick up some veggies for dinner, and one of my favorite voyeuristic things to do is to see what other folks have in their grocery carts. Of course, because of the pending storm, I saw lots of water bottles, chips, snacks, and "potted meats"....(Can there be a more revolting item than a potted meat?) And so much pre-seasoned pre-marinated HEB beef in plastic bags. Why so much meat? Just what to they intend to do with it? Are they going to have a BBQ during the storm? I think of raw animal flesh as one of the least convenient things to prepare during a storm. MMMMM, the thought of a well-stocked deep freeze chock-full of a side of a cow, in the aftermath of a hurricane, losing the protection of its electrical chill...now putrefying in the lovely humid heat of the Rio Grande Valley.

In Austin prior to Hurricane Rita, I remember being in another HEB with empty shelves where the sodas, water, bread and chips had been. I have no use for these things. This is my plan. We have "Windmill" water stored up in reusable bottles (no use in bringing home tons and tons of plastic bottles just for "one-use" water), we have organic corn chips, jars of salsa and canned beans and canned tomatoes with green chilies. We have avocados and watermelon and nectarines. I have some really tasty instant bean soups and oatmeal that require nothing more than boiling water. We have some instant humus mix and pitas. We have peanut butter, and walnuts and peanuts and almonds. We have "Hemp Bread". Hopefully we will be able to use our gas stove, and if not, we have a propane camping stove as a last resort. I think I'll do some baking on Wednesday and make up some cinnamon rolls and some more peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. I will miss Andrew's amazing tofu and buckwheat noodle stir fries with beets, carrots and cabbage or his tempeh jerk sandwiches with sprouts and pickles. But we certainly won't starve!

I haven't lived through a hurricane since I was a child, when we were living in McAllen and fled to Austin, only to run into a bunch of offshoots of tornadoes! But we are ready now, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. Knowing the damage that cyclones cause around the world, I wish for the best for everyone possibly impacted by this storm. Have mercy on us Dean!

How can people be so cruel?

2007-08-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

I have to say, I'm a little flabbergasted by this alleged story of animal cruelty from Big Sandy, Texas. I know animal cruelty exists, but I always wonder how people can be so mean. Here are the first two paragraphs of the story, which appears in the Austin American-Statesman:

Two East Texas women face charges of animal cruelty after authorities found the remains of dozens of dogs in their trailer home, authorities said.
The dogs' bodies were stuffed into coolers, plastic bags and the freezer. Animal control officers also recovered nine living dogs.

The naughty fruit

2007-08-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

The avocado is a remarkable fruit and one I would find hard to live without. A perfectly ripe avocado is a culinary experience unto itself. Some of the best avocados I've ever had were here in the Rio Grande Valley. It's because we are closer to the best source for quality avocados, the central-southern parts of Mexico. When Anita and I crossed the international border on Saturday to Nuevo Progresso, we picked up several avocados. Because of customs laws that were meant to protect Californian and Hawaiian agricultural interests, whole avocados were long banned from being allowed to cross the border into the United States. Recently that ban was eased, and commercial interests can import them, but the ban still exists for the individual. They do permit avocados without their pits to come into the country. The vendor removes the pit, puts a chunk of a chili in its places and closes the avocado back up. These can stay good for a couple of days. The ones we got in Nuevo Progresso were simply amazing. We used them in tacos, guacamole and a hummus sandwich. By the way, the root of the word avocado comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs in Mexico. They named it ahaucatl because of its resemblance to testicles.

What do you want human?

2007-08-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

Cuteness queen Snowbell isn't quite sure yet what to think about this intrusion into her catnap.

A trip across the border to Nuevo Progresso

2007-08-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, Anita and I ventured to Nuevo Progresso, just on the other side of the Rio Grande in Mexico. This was our first time visiting this popular tourist trap. The town would obviously not exist without American shoppers. The first thing I noticed over there was the numerous dentist and doctor offices on the main dusty drag just across the international bridge. I suppose people come across the border to have their teeth or body worked on. I don't know how comfortable I would be to do something like that, but if you can't afford something in the United States, at least there is a cheaper option. I really wonder if there is a difference in the quality of care. The main drag is littered with shops selling things from bootleg CDs to woven blankets to ceramic pottery to prints of Frida Kahlo paintings. There are street-side vendors selling food, including cabrito tacos (baby goat meat) and lonches (meat sandwich). For the vegan, there really are slim pickings. There was one guy roasting corn. Anita had an ear and really enjoyed it. There are places that sell chilled cut fruit in cups. When Mexicans buy it, it is common for them to sprinkle a hot chili pepper/lime/salt powder on it. You can buy cheap spices over there, and you can pick up some avocados (Vendors remove the pit and put a chili in the middle because you can't take a whole avocado across the border). Of course, there were lots of places selling alcohol. Tourists walked up and down the streets clinging to their beers. The voices of some tourists belting out choppy lyrics would drift out from karaoke bars. There were also a lot of beggars, waving cups or their hands, hoping for some donations. Nuevo Progresso is probably considered a prosperous city by Mexican standards, but even so, there's a lot of desperation. It really makes me sick watching Americans living it up, getting plastered in the open-air bars while a poor malnourished Mexican sits on the sidewalk a few feet away trying to draw the notice of any passerby.

The death of a vegetarian restaurant

2007-08-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

The closing of Nu Age Cafe, a mostly vegan fine dining restaurant in Austin, comes as a complete shock (See story in Austin American-Statesman). My wife and I were there when they opened their doors and saw with pride as they slowly picked up their clientele. We enjoyed one of our wedding anniversaries there. I absolutely loved their sesame seitan and the brown rice served in banana leaves. They had amazing deserts and an incredible assortment of fun drinks. Since moving from Austin, I have missed the vegetarian restaurants I used to frequent, and I must say Nu Age Cafe held a special place in my heart. The closing of Nu Age Cafe had nothing to do with the quality of the food. It was because of a death in the family. This news comes a few years since West Lynn Cafe in Austin closed. That was another fine dining vegetarian restaurant. It sold to Cosmic Cafe, a Dallas-based vegetarian Indian restaurant chain. That, too, closed. Losing a cherished vegetarian restaurant feels like a death in the family. It feels like I've had the breath sucked out of me. I can only hope a new vegetarian restaurant will soon emerge from this sad tale that will take me on a new adventure I won't ever want to leave from.

She's back: Niiiiina

2007-08-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

Clearly, The New York Times wasn't shamed by the slanderous "Death by Veganism" column it printed a couple of months ago. You remember: Veganism is unnatural and dangerous, while humans are made of fish oil. The New York Times never did provide corrections for all of the errors in the column. Now, the Times is going back to the author of the column, Nina Planck, in a story today about raw milk. This woman who belittled vegan mothers for what they feed their children, feeds raw milk to her 9-month-old child. She's basically playing Russian roulette with her child's health. Planck said it is unnatural to feed a growing child a vegan diet, but I guess she doesn't think it is unusual to suck on the tit of another animal and consume the milk meant for its own baby. Here is what the article says in part:

Nina Planck, the author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why,” defied the F.D.A.’s warning and drank raw milk while she was pregnant. She not only continues to drink it while nursing her 9-month-old son, Julian, but also allows him the occasional sip. She has an arrangement with a couple of farmers to deliver it to New York City.
“We drink raw milk because we trust the traditional food chain more than the industrial one,” said Ms. Planck, who knows a number of farmers from her days as director of the New York City Greenmarkets and through her boyfriend, Rob Kaufelt, the owner of Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village.
“We’re willing to spend more money the higher up the food chain we go,” she said. “We’re not alone, either. You cannot categorize the people who are drinking raw milk. They are people from the blue states and red states, farmers and yuppies and Birkenstock wearers.”
Food scientists can hardly believe that so many consumers have turned their back on one of the most successful public health endeavors of the 20th century. In 1938, for example, milk caused 25 percent of all outbreaks of food- and water-related sickness.
With the advent of universal pasteurization, that number fell to 1 percent by 1993, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group in Washington.

Now, I don't wish anything but the best for young Julian, but wouldn't it just be the grandest of ironies if Planck's child became sick or died because of what she fed him?

Taking cruelty to a new level

2007-08-07T06:50:00.000-07:00

I should've expected to be shocked when I tuned into "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern" on the Travel Channel. Any part of a dead animal is pretty bizarre to me. I'm always amazed how meat-eaters can be grossed out about eating a different part of the same animal that they crave. Now, that's bizarre. The cow's tongue is gross, but the cow's butt flesh is yummy? Anyway, Zimmern sunk to a new low yesterday while dining at a New York sushi joint. He had a lobster carved up and served to him alive while he ate the living animal's flesh out of its body. Imagine being kept alive while someone dined on your legs. Don't we as humans have at least some basic sense of morals? Killing is wrong, but what Zimmern did reached an all-time karmic low.