Close to Callaloo...Close to Heaven!

I arrived home this evening amidst a rainstorm so furious that I couldn't see the road in front of me. The ferocity of the downpour was quite unbelieveable and I really feared I would get home to find My Beloved manning the mop and bucket, squeegee-ing the basement dry. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth...although I had to do a 'double take' when I saw what he was up to......

...making Callaloo!

Always one for trying new and perhaps exotic dishes, My Beloved found a recipe called 'Close to Callaloo' in Robin Robertson's Vegan Fire and Spice. When he discovered that callaloo is not only the vegetable (of the green leafy variety) but also the name of the dish itself, he just had to try it. Widely used in Caribbean cuisine, callaloo sports multiple broad, darkish green leaves along a main stem and, when roughly chopped and set on simmer, it wilts like spinach, thickening and adding flavour to the dish. This is what it looks like:



The creaminess comes from the addition, right at the very end, of unsweetened coconut milk which really tempers the soup. It's thick and hearty and perfect when you really can't face another summer salad. Yes yes, vegans can get tired of salad too, right?

So we enjoyed it this evening with a fresh crusty sourdough bread and some homemade hummus and watched the rainstorm outside.

Here's the recipe - and if you like it, go out and buy the book!

You will need:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 hot chile, minced
1 can (14oz) diced tomatoes
1 bunch callaloo, roughly chopped
1 bunch swiss chard, roughly chopped
3 cups veg stock
1 can (13oz) unsweetened coconut milk
salt/pepper to taste

Here's what you do:

Heat the oil in a large pot and then add the onion, garlic, sweet potato, bell pepper and chile. Cook 10 mins until softened. Drain the tomatoes and add them to the pan along with the callaloo and swiss chard. Bring to gentle boil, and then reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are soft (use the sweet potatoes as a guide - if they are done, everything is done!).

Add the coconut milk and salt/pepper and warm through. Serve with crusty bread to your sweetie.

:)

Just one more way to enjoy your green leafies....

Stay Vegan, Friends! :)

Lost: One Vegan Mojo....

...if found please return to owner. Reward.

Today was really messed up. I lost my vegan cool. My v-Wa was thoroughly disturbed. It could be said that my Zen-compassion was thrown out of whack.

And whack I wanted to....most people in sight.

OK, so today was a bad day and, in good faith, I cannot really link it in any way to Matters Vegan, so I'm just going to let off some steam and and ask you why, oh why, all the crazies come out on the same day??? Is it the heat? It was 97 degrees at one point this afternoon so it might be safe to assume that it had effects on people.

My Beloved and I went to the local shopping mall to purchase a garage door opener. The story of the garage door is hardly scintillating, I'll admit, but here it is anyhow. Having lived through 6 (can it really be 6????) freezing New England winters with a 'leaky' garage door (old-style wooden with huge cracks all over), we finally (FINALLY) decide to spring for a new one - vinyl, fully insulated, nicely fitted and secure. This is particularly important as the garage in question is an 'under-house garage' so - unlike in Vegas - what happens there does not stay there. It permeates into the rest of the abode.....

Anyway, the garage door is now installed and - what is more to the point - it comes with its own, pre-nibbled mouse exit in the bottom left corner. Who knew this could be possible???? Or, at least, this is what I asked myself when I came home on Day One and found a mouse-shaped hole in the seal edge....

Now OK, I know we all just have to 'get along' and I know that Micky (or Minnie) was probably here before I was and that I should respect his/her inviolate right to live his/her life just as I would have others respect that self-same right for me, but we just paid close to $1K for this door (sans opener) and already someone of a furry, four-footed persuasion has made their own entryway and let themselves back into the garage. I sighed a heavy sigh and, amidst none-too-vegan thoughts, dusted off the Have-A-Heart trap.....

That aside, today was the day for purchasing the opener. So My Beloved and I set off, parked up near to Sears and went in search of the recommended opener. Now, what happened next could be interpreted in two ways depending upon whether you are a 'glass half full' or a 'glass half empty' kind of person. Me myself, I am a 'well, that depends on whose glass we're talking about' kind of person....

Having located said opener in record short order, we realised it was rather heavy and, it being 97 degrees outside, we opted for 'Merchandise Pickup', whereby you simply bring your car up to the curb and someone with a dolly delivers heavy items directly to you. No schlepping across a baking parking lot; no sweating it out with a half-ton, half-horsepower chain-driven door GDO (as those in the know term it)...hurrah. So I sent My Beloved straight back out again into the heat to bring up the car while I made payment and then we were off to get some more bits and pieces. At least that was the plan....

A few minutes later, My Beloved reappeared looking flustered and the following conversation (approximately) ensued:

Me: What's up? (naively)

My Beloved: He had a pair of pliers.... (bewilderment)

Me: Who? (distractedly)

MB: The guy. The guy who was letting down our tires in the parking lot.

Me: WHAT?????? (now with full attention)

MB: There was a guy. I got to the car and I could hear a hissing noise. And he was crouched down besides the tire with a pair of pliers jammed in the valve. (glasses fogged with bewilderment and incredulity...or perhaps fierce in-store air conditioning...)

Me: WTF? Did you ask him just what the (bleepety bleep) he thought he was doing? (now red in the face and sweating profusely despite the AC)

MB: Er...yes, He said we'd almost hit him so he was letting the air out of out tires. (matter of factly)

Long story short....the guy was evidently crazed as we'd not been anywhere near him. My Beloved said as much (the last part, not the crazed part) to which the guy claimed mistaken identity, tried to shake My Beloved's hand and then sauntered off. Cool as a cucumber.

That was the big thing that happened today and now it's all in print it doesn't seem so terrible. But at the time it left us both - unaccustomed as we are to conflict and confrontation - like a schizoid martini: quite shaken AND stirred. So much so that we both just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge and retreat to the sanctuary we call home. Which we did, albeit not before seeking a medicinal pint or two at the local brewery - just to settle our nerves, you understand.

OK, so in no way is this story or this post at all really vegan-related. I guess I *could* claim that My Beloved's 'measured' reaction to this hostile act of vandalism was due entirely to the absence of animal-fat fogging his brain and clogging up his arteries. That his fundamentally placid and non-aggressive stance in the face of a certain level of provocation was due to his having opted out of the violence and sadism that permeates - indeed underpins - the meat and slaughter industries. That his effective and peaceable handling of The Crazy was a direct result of his peaceful and compassionate diet.

But that would be stretching a point.

Stretching it a long way in fact.

Especially so as My Beloved is not 100% vegan.

I am.

But if *I* had gone out there and found The Crazy at work....well, suffice to say, I would have had some decidely un-vegan things to say. And that is how I would have lost my Vegan Mojo.

That's it. That's all I've got.
Stay Vegan, friends, and well, welllllll away from The Crazies........

Tofu in Paradise

I have been offline for the longest time with no real excuse except for life having become busier than ever and then My Beloved and I...went on vacation. Nothing particularly blog-worthy about that, I guess, except that this was my first vacation - out of the country, in fact - as a vegan.

I was nervous. Ready to be surprised. Worried I'd go hungry. Pleased that I might be forced into losing a little more weight, a little more quickly. Anxious that I would find myself faced with the choice of an endless stream of salads or a beheaded bovine on a bun.

I had cause to worry. And at the same time I should have trusted in people's inate goodness and reluctance to let me starve. At least, on their watch.

Grab yourself a nice cup of tea and a vegan mojito muffin and let me back-track a little....

My Beloved and I are scuba divers. Here we are, in fact:



I am the one in the extremely fetching blue mask.

Now divers are a strange bunch, I have to confess. We - I use the collective plural, not the 'Royal We' - love, love, love to spend time with our piscene little dive buddies and then what do we do? Grill 'em for dinner!

Where, I ask you, is the logic in that?

So this year was the first in which I could look these wonderful little mites in the eye and honestly wish them no harm. It was an incredibly liberating feeling. At least, I think, until dinner time when, after the exertion of the morning followed by an arduous afternoon slumber in the hammock, I would be ready for just about anything that happened to wind up on my plate.

Or so I feared....

You see, for those of you who are not divers or who do dive but have immense, magnificent and preternatural (ohhhh, I just knew at some point I'd be able to use that word!) control over yourselves and your appetite, diving is an exquisitely hunger-inducing activity.

Much more so than - say - light sleeping....or extreme origami.

This is especially true for me as I am horribly seasick and rarely fail to delight the fish with my early morning 'offerings'. So by the evening, I am generally ravenous.

In years past, I have devoured more than my share of chickens' body parts smothered in a variety of sauces, of cows' behinds grilled over fire and, of course, of fishes hauled out of their world directly onto my plate. But this year was different. That was all off the menu to me now. And I'll admit to having a twinge of anxiety that my hunger might triumph over my ethics while on this tiny island, far from home, far from censure, in the Caribbean. (BTW: we stayed here and I cannot recommend it too highly - it was wonderful!)

So it was with trepidation that I was introduced to the resort's chef on checking in. As My Beloved struggled with our enormous dive bags, I was introduced to Chef Gregory who strode out of the kitchen to shake my hand. 'Here's our vegan!', exclaimed the receptionist breathily, and with a beautiful tropical lilt and the kind of inflection usually reserved for calming small children. Attempting to strike a particularly veganly pose, I flashed Chef Gregory the most gracious smile I could muster at such short notice and declared that - ah well, salads are always good...I could do with losing a few pounds of course! - and then felt extremely silly.

I had fallen into the trap already of apologising for my choices - what a twit. Oh well, as it was, it made no difference. Every evening after scanning the buffet-style food available to everyone else, I was treated to a wonderful vegan entree - each night a surprise, but uniformly delicious. So excited was I at the fact that they'd gone to the effort of getting tofu for me - and learning to cook it - that I couldn't focus my camera well enough to get a good picture. What follows is blurry but crucial evidence that people will bend over backwards if you state what you want. And if you state it ahead of time, preferably by email so that if your anxiety gets the better of you, at least the groundwork's already been done!

Feeling hungry, albeit in a salad phase:




A tofu-based confection:




Damn, this was good and pretty as a picture:




And on our last night there, I was treated to this wonderous creation:




As said, my pix do not do the dishes justice as I was so excited by the prospect of it all that I screwed up the focus somewhat. However, My Beloved's cool composure managed to capture the image that summed it all up:



One very happy vegan!

Remember: wherever you are in the world - with only the fewest of exceptions - there are always vegetables, usually rice and generally fruits. So really: don't worry - stay vegan, friends!

Don't Buy the Myth

This is probably all over the vegan blogosphere, but I haven't seen it yet so here goes....

Launched today is a terrific new website, humanemyth.org - dedicated to debunking once and for all the myth of 'humane meat', in the vegan community known derisively as 'happy meat'.

Living in New England - surrounded by pastoral charm - I know plenty of folks who subscribe to the happy meat idea, conscientiously seeking out and paying a premium for grass-fed, free-ranging, cage-free, organic cows/chickens/pigs which produce superior steaks/milk/eggs/whatever. And these folks universally believe that they are doing a good thing - contributing to the maintenance of the species, the general environmental well-being of the area and the good of the planet. These are the same folks who purchase a Prius and then cycle to work anyhow, who volunteer at the homeless shelter, who compost and recycle (often 'freecycle') and sport chic apparel made of hemp fiber or recycled plastic.

And they buy into the myth because it eases their conscience. It allows them to kid themselves that they are doing all they can while still indulging their culinary predilictions and not really changing anything. In the face of an increasing global population, strained natural resources, a rapid growth in countries like China and India of the economic 'middle-class' with their concommitant desire for petroleum and meat, the civil conflict that inevitably trails in the wake of scarcity and fear, they content themselves with 'free-range' chicken and an expensive hybrid car, all the while expounding the notion that their 'happy meat' choices are sustainable and sound.

Humanemyth.org is just the latest in a line of wake-up calls. How many more will it take to convince these folks to go vegan?

Stay Vegan, Friends.

Targeted Marketing?

...or....Are You Serious???????

I am the proud recipient of my first Amazon.com package.



This medium-sized brown box, sporting the now universally-recognized Amazon smile, was wedged safely inside the screen door when I arrived home last night. Gleefully, I tore open the sealing tape and pulled out the following:



Whilst My Beloved was somewhat less than gleeful at the arrival of a raw food book ('Good luck with that' were his exact words if I recall correctly), he could barely wait to get his hands on Robin Robertson's Vegan Fire and Spice. I too was thrilled.....until I lifted it from the box to reveal the following lurking at the bottom.....



Let me get this right: I order two - not one but TWO - vegan cookbooks....which probably means that

a) I don't eat animals
and
b) I probably eschew the dubious 'merits' of the Golden Arches in favour of cooking actual food

......and they send me a coupon for a chicken sandwich????????

I guess the message inside the coupon flap could not really have been more apt.



"Your search for the perfect chicken sandwich is SO over."

Yeah.

It has been since September last year.

Since I learned of the unspeakable cruelty endured by the birds McDonalds thinks of only in terms of a cheap sandwich.

Since I turned vegan.

And started ordering vegan cookbooks.

Sheesh!

Perhaps it does lend weight to the theory that eating meat makes you stupid - I mean, what are the chances that a vegan shipper added that particular coupon to my order????

Stay Vegan, Friends!

We Survived!

The last 4 days have been hot. Really hot. Hotter than hell, in fact.
Then there was The Storm.

On Tuesday night, we were battered by winds in excess of 70 miles an hour. The night was lit up like a negative and debris flew through the air.

It was most exhilarating.

This is the damage one street away:



Driving to work the next morning (yesterday) it took me three attempts to find a passable road out of town. The road pictured above was Option #2....and this is why I couldn't get out!



And this is our neighbour's house directly opposite to ours....



The tree which fell was over 100 years old - I was informed by the two scamps who were sitting on the upturned rootball posing for passers-by. They were delightful kids who were clearly making lemonade of the meteorological lemons their home-owner parents had been given. Having given me a tour through the tree (yes, literally through the tree), they scampered back up to wave to each fresh set of rubberneckers. So I couldn't resist a few more pictures of them:





And THIS is the damage we incurred at home:



We were most fortunate.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

I have to admit that I am more frequently more cynical than I would aspire to be. Some might even say that I am not sufficiently charitable in spirit.

And they might be onto something.

However, I am excited and somewhat humbled to confess that I have learned something these past few weeks. That people can change. That you can, in fact, teach a 'venerable pooch disparate exploits'...if you catch my drift.

As faithful visitors to Cackleberry will recall, my Dear Mama has been visiting for a while. She arrived warily anticipating the culinary equivalent of Colditz - a dietary regimen of gnarly carrot sticks and toxically-green wheatgrass juice on one side and thwarted attempts to escape to a steakhouse on the other. (And no, before you wheatgrass devotees get on my case - there is nothing intrinsically wrong with grass juices or carrot sticks, but they're not really my bag either.) This delusion did not persist long, however, as - and the breadth of my rear will attest to this - I much prefer carrot cake (covered with a thick coating of vegan cream cheese frosting) to carrot sticks and sugar cane juice (from 'The Islands') to wheatgrass....

So it quickly became apparent to her that she was not about to starve on the cornucopia of new foods that awaited her. In fact, she was able to do what Erik Marcus suggests (in his current series of Oprah-related podcasts) and 'crowd out' the animal-based foods she has consumed all her life. Gone were the filets of tortured chickens, the steaks of 'spent' dairy cows and in their place were hills of beans, thick slabs of tofu, home-made seitan, toothsome tempeh, vibrant vegetables, mountainous plates of salads and the occasional egg-free, dairy-free, cruelty- and guilt-free dessert.

Together we investigated erstwhile unknowns like quinoa, low-glycemic load pasta (she's diabetic), TVP and other meat analogs of all kinds, nutritional yeast, collard greens, cashew butter, tapenade, israeli couscous, avocado, torn fresh herbs straight out of the garden in salads, oven-roasted garlic, home-blended hummus and, of course, some 'commercial' products too - Earth Balance and Braggs Aminos being perhaps two of the absolute favourites.

And so, it was a proud moment for me when I arrived home yesterday at dinnertime to find that My Dear Mama had taken it upon herself to recreate one of my childhood favourites: spaghetti bolognaise. Absent from this dish was the standard ground cow flesh with its accompanying heart-clogging fat and heart-rending cruelty and in its place was TVP. Also present were carrots, peas, onions, celery, green peppers, tomatoes, corn and a host of herbs. I had stopped on the way home to pick up a bottle of wine and so we sat aimiably in the garden, me virtually *inhaling* the pasta sauce, and celebrated Mum's newfound dexterity in the vegan kitchen.

Not a bad way to spend a Monday evening...






Cheers and Stay Vegan, Friends!

An Afterthought...

...Oh, and if you'd like to know more on the subject - written by someone infinitely more eloquent than I - visit Peaceful Prairie's website to read the 'Letter from a Vegan World'.

And meet production units #6, #36 and #67,595 - the faces of the 'organic dairy', 'humane veal' and 'cage-free eggs' we are so encouraged to consume.

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Thoughts On Small-Scale and Humane Farming...

As you know, I live in New England - a beautiful and bucolic area of the country where the rolling countryside is dotted with family-owned farms seasonally producing berries, corn, maple syrup and - year round - milk, of course.

Driving to work every day, I see the cows in the fields ambling around grazing, rubbing along the fences, laying down to soak in the sun. And, knowing some of the people involved, I also know how hard their 'owners' work to look after them, to keep them safe and well.

And I am conflicted.

I have always been a believer in supporting small producers over agribusiness - the Davids over the Goliaths.

So surely it is better to buy cows' milk from the little guys than soy milk from WhiteWave Foods Co???

But then there is the 'bigger picture' - when the lens is widened to take in the full scope of the industry. When you view the panoramic shot, you see how the dairy industry - for that is what it is despite the pretty picture of the old-fashioned family farm - feeds the veal industry, that most intolerable and unconscionable of capitalist profiteering. The industry which imprisons babies from their first day until their slaughter at 4 months old. Which orphans them, confines them, renders them sickly anaemic and then transports them, to the knife.

You see how the 'spent' dairy cows end their days in the very same slaughterhouse hell as those free roaming steer, raised for beef. How their lives of enforced pregnancy and constant bereavement are artificially-foreshortened when they are deemed no longer economically viable as units of production.

And when you bear this in mind, you realize once again that despite the touchy-feely hype this system is not humane. Far from it. That organic, free-range, hormone-free milk for which you are paying top dollar comes at such a price - such a terrible cost to the animals - that it cannot be considered a humane, sane or sustainable alternative. The only sane option is the vegan option; the only 'humane' farming is arable farming.

There is no alternative.

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Interesting in Becoming Vegan?

If Oprah can do it - you can do it!

For an excellent introduction to all things veggie and vegan, Erik Marcus is producing daily podcasts on his new Vegtalk blog! If you have even the mildest interest in how to make your diet more compassionate and healthy - for you, for the animals and for the environment - please do check out Erik's work...