Vegetarianism is healthy exploration for teens

A triptych of pro-veg stories to post real quick:

• mlive.com: Vegetarianism is healthy exploration for teens (positive case "studies" of veg teens)


• Hartford Courant: Meat Too Tough To Eat (letter from PCRM's Dr. Barnard in the wake of announcement that the FDA has approved spraying live viruses (Intralytix) onto poultry and meat products to combat the prevalence of listeria caused by modern meat production)


• China Daily: Vegetarian diet popular in Shanghai (awkwardly translated piece that proves everything old is new again... at least when it comes to vegetarianism in Shanghai)

Tags: health | nutrition

Moosewood Restaurant

I've always heard that Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, NY is a really great place for vegetarians to eat. I was up in Ithaca with my family earlier this week and we decided to go to Moosewood to see what all the hype was about. To those unfamiliar with the place, it's mainly a vegetarian and vegan restaurant with a little bit of seafood. The menu is different every night. They have eleven published cookbooks that include a variety of different ethnic cuisines. I have one of the cookbooks but I don't think I've ever made anything from it.

To be fair, I had really high hopes going into the restaurant. It's a nice place inside and the staff all seemed helpful and cheerful. The orders came very quickly. Vegetarian items on the menu are marked "vegetarian" or "vegan" for easy ordering. Between my family members and I we had salad with ginger-miso dressing, a white bean rosemary dip with bread, spicy peanut soup, Creole red beans with veggies, and vegetable jambalaya.

The salad and dressing were both excellent as was the bean dip. They both had a lot of really good flavors that went well together. We agreed that the peanut soup, although tasty, tasted more like carrots than peanuts and wasn't spicy at all. The Creole red beans with veggies were okay. They were basically beans with tomato-based sauce, some cooked veggies, topped with cold salsa and avocado and all over brown rice. It was nothing special that I couldn't have easily made at home for a fraction of the price. I didn't taste the jambalaya since it was ordered with cheese (although the cheese was optional) but it didn't look that great and I'm told the taste wasn't fantastic either.

On the whole, it wasn't a bad experience but it wasn't great. For the amount it cost ($40 plus tip) I wouldn't opt to go back again for dinner.

Tags: vegetarian dining | vegetarian restaurants | Moosewood Restaurant

Two more pro-veg articles I haven't had time to post

You may enjoy these:

Asbury Park Press: Meatless meals add health to family's diet

MetroWest Daily News: Doctors are catching on to diet trends

Tags: health | nutrition

From the random files...

...Croc goes veg (NDTV):

A crocodile in a temple pond in Kasargod in Kerala has now shot to fame locally after news got out that this reptile has no meaty cravings.

He instead makes do with generous helpings of local boiled red rice.

The crocodile, which is approximately two meters in length, lies peacefully in a dark cave, waiting for its daily rendezvous with the temple priests who feed the hungry reptile.

Tags: crocodiles

Cookies, curry, and rice salad

I've always loved peanut butter cookies, but I've struggled to find a good recipe since going vegan. I've finally found it, the perfect peanut butter cookie. Chewy and sweet with a little bit of saltiness. These are probably the best cookies I've ever eaten, period. Even to omnimom says that they don't taste "vegan". They are kind of fragile but they firm up over time. The recipe is modified from Vegan with a Vengeance.




Huge Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Cookies
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups rolled oats
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 all natural salted smooth peanut butter (if you use unsalted add 1/4-1/2 tsp more salt)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup plain soy milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two cookie sheets.

Mix the flour, oats, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl mix the oil, peanut butter, sugars, soy milk, and vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until combined. Add chocolate chips. The dough will be very moist. Shape cookies in your hands. Each one should be about 1/4-1/3 cup of dough. Place on tray with about an inch in between cookies. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until cookies are slightly puffed and lightly brown. Allow the cookies 10 minutes to cool before removing them from the cookie sheet. If you don't wait the cookies will crumble.

Makes 12-15 huge cookies.


I've been trying to use the fresh vegetables from our garden in my cooking recently. Yesterday I made curry with eggplant, hot peppers, and tomatoes all from the garden. I just cooked it all up in a frying pan with an onion, garlic, and curry paste and served it over rice for a fast meal.



One final recipe that I've really been enjoying is rice salad. Normally I refuse to make any recipe that has the word salad in the title. It sounds close-minded of me but I have this mental block against salads. My mom coaxed me into making this one and I'm really happy that I did. It isn't really a salad at all. The spices balance each other out really well and the nuts add a really great texture. Best of all, it's healthy! Unfortunately, it all got eaten before I got a picture, but I posted the recipe on Veggieboards.


Tags: vegan cooking | vegan recipes

Potatoes and pancakes for breakfast

I'm really excited to be a part of the Veggieboards blog. I guess I should start off with an introduction. I'm Michelle, a sixteen-year-old vegan living in New Jersey. I love cooking and baking, and I'm all about shortcuts that save time and use fewer dishes since I hate to clean up. I don't claim to be the healthiest vegan, but I love to experiment with all kinds of foods, especially the three main food groups: fruits, vegetables, and chocolate

I'm definitely not a morning person but on the rare occasion that I wake up for breakfast, potatoes are the way to go. This breakfast include chili roasted potatoes, pancakes, and blueberry Silk yogurt.


The halved the pancake recipe from my all time favorite cookbook, Vegan with a Vengeance, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz since I was just making breakfast for myself. I froze the leftover pancakes to reheat later in the toaster oven.

To make the potatoes mix olive oil, cayenne pepper, cumin, oregano, and garlic powder in a bowl big enough to fit all the potatoes. Then cut the potatoes into wedges and toss them with the spiced oil. Cover a pan with aluminum foil and transfer your potatoes (try not to drip tons of extra oil on the foil or it will end up really greasy). Broil the potatoes until they get brown and crispy on the outside, about 10-15 minutes.

Tags: vegan food | vegan recipes

Meat Eaters Without The Guilt

This is what some animal advocates are concerned about: Meat eaters will cut down on their consumption, restricting it entirely to "ethically-raised" and slaughtered animals. While this clearly is a step in the right direction, it does represent the real possibility of a difficult-to-budge plateau in altering the American diet, while some parts of the world are back-sliding altogether as they adopt the standard American diet as their own.

The article does bring up the ethics of killing animals at all, saying that "there are people who find that unacceptable under any circumstances," but it doesn't really delve into that notion, which shows just how marginal animal rights is in an article that deals with veganism head-on.

The piece not only references Michael Pollan (search AAFL for more info on The Omnivore's Dilemma) and others who call for eating more locally and sustainably (keeping in mind the farm cycle that incorporates livestock use into production), but even reaches to justify this sort of system by calling on animal liberation inspirer Peter Singer:

Even animal rights hard-liner Peter Singer, in "The Way We Eat" (co-authored with Jim Mason), can't condemn "the view that it is ethical to eat animals who have lived good lives and would not have existed at all." He concludes that it's "more appropriate to praise" this relatively enlightened view than to criticize it for not being the veganism he prefers.

Well, sure. If you're trying to cut down on the worst practices, you'll encourage anything that ends them. But clearly the best practice is not just to eat "happier" animals, and in smaller (more sustainable) quantities, but to consider enjoying a lifestyle that celebrates life instead of death, rather than giving in to some false sense of "moral high ground" because animals killed unnecessarily for your enjoyment had a better (unnaturally) short life.

Tags: carnism | meat-eating | ethical eating

Weightlifters add beef to muscles without eating it

Robert Cheeke, the Portland-based vegan bodybuilder, held a recent gathering (Vegan Vacation, August 3-9) of vegan athletes that drew some positive press from The Oregonian. He hopes to make it an annual thing, so you might want to keep tabs on Cheeke's site if you're interested in "growing" with this event.

Tags: vegan | Robert Cheeke | vegan bodybuilding

VEGAN WITH A BULLWHIP: Hillsdale native vies for superhero role

I typically do not enjoy unscripted (sometimes called "reality") shows. I lean more toward documentary-style shows in this genre, in the vein of Morgan Spurlock's powerful series, 30 Days, than toward gameshow-influenced series like The Sci-Fi Channel's Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

That said, I'm always happy to see a vegan portrayed positively in the media, even if it's in or about a stupid show (we're not above being goofy). Tonya Kay is profiled by The Detroit Free Press, in which we find she has been transformed to Creature, a dreadlocked healthy lifestyles crusader for environmental awareness and no-nonsense nutrition.

The paper describes her as a fitness nut with a special passion for raw fruit (fruitarian, or nearly so?) who tinkers with her own car, a 2001 VW Jetta converted to run on biodiesel, which she evidently gets from a restaurant I go to sometimes (highly recommended).

Now about that bullwhip...

Tags: reality TV | Tonya Kay | Who Wants To Be a Superhero