Christmas Summary and Happy New Year!

Hi all, it's been a while since I've posted. Holidays make it hard to keep up with this kind of thing.

Well, I've had several food adventures, one being that I tried making Creamy Red Pepper Lentil Lasagna. It turned out fine, except that the only nondairy milk we had in the house was vanilla soy milk, and I made the ghastly mistake of using that to make the cheesy sauce for the top. The sauce tasted like vanilla frosting or something... it was really ... odd. But everybody seemed to like it anyway, so no worries I guess. Just don't try that at home; your family might not be as chill with it as mine.

So on Christmas Eve I stayed up baking so I'd have some nummies for the next day that I could eat. I tried Marbled Banana Bread which has mild chocolateyness in it, and also made an Old Fashioned Chocolate Pudding Pie, but the only problem was I scalded the chocolate pudding stuff and so I thought it turned out kind of gross. However, my sister, who is not LDS, says that it just tasted like a mocha pie and she liked it a lot. So apparently mocha = scalded chocolate?? I found that a little amusing. But my mom also liked it once she had put crumbled mint Oreos on top (Oreos are generally vegan btw). The banana bread turned out awesome.

Also the graham cracker crust I made was pretty crumbly...

My family always has a big Christmas Breakfast. At my house, normal breakfast is fruit and toast, and always has been, maybe with a little bit of cereal. But on Christmas day we have waffles or pancakes, hash browns, eggs, bacon and/or ham, etc. The works. It's also a tradition that we drink eggnog with ginger ale in it. So Dad was wondering what I could eat and drink for Christmas breakfast. Bisquick actually seems to be vegan if you just mix it with water and no eggs or milk, so the waffles were no problem. Hash browns were no problem once fried in olive oil or Earth Balance. I also got some Tofurkey Italian Sausage and cut them up and fried them too. I didn't have any vegan eggnog (the stuff I've tried isn't very good... anybody have recommendations?) but I had some cranberry and black cherry juice with ginger ale instead. All in all I was stuffed by the end of it, especially since I had some banana bread too.

I like my hash browns crispy.

Then recently, my mom and I made some impromptu pizza, using bisquick to make the crust. We baked the crust before putting the stuff on it. So we had three rectangular pizzas, and she made the smallest one with real cheese on it for the picky young'uns, and I made the middle one an alfredo-y pizza and the largest one had tomato sauce with globs of leftover alfredo-y sauce. Both the middle and largest also had crumbled tofu, and all the pizzas had sauteed red onion, yellow squash, and red bell peppers on them. I used one red onion, one small yellow squash, and four red bell peppers. Oh and a can of olives.

For the tomato sauce we just used some canned Hunts sauce, one of the ones without meat or cheese in it. I think it was garlic and herb? And for the alfredo, we bought a carton of MimicCreme which is vegan and made from cashews and almonds etc. I put 3 tablespoons of earth balance in a deep pan and melted it on medium-low heat, then put in two tablespoons of flour and whisked until it made a paste, then poured in a cup of MimicCreme and put in a ton of chopped garlic, probably around 6 big cloves... then whisked it until it was thick (the creme was already pretty thick!) and then added another cup and stirred again on low heat. Just kinda let it sit there on low heat for a little while, stirring occasionally, and added garlic salt until it tasted right. Also a little bit of No Chicken Better than Bouillon, which gave it more flavor.

Pretty awesome. We baked them each at about 400 or 450 F, just until they looked and felt done... kind of a vague recipe, I'm sorry. But maybe I can perfect it later.

In general, it's been a pretty good Christmas, food-wise. The kids still don't like the stuff I make half the time, and there were still a lot of uncomfortable moments of going caroling to someone's house and getting smacked in the face with the bleghy smell of a roasting turkey, and watching my family eat meat, especially my dad's family up in northern Utah at their annual get-together, and listening to my uncles joke about hunting. There will always be hard moments like that. But it has meant a lot to me that my parents are supportive of my choices and willing to try the food I make or even help me make it.

And it has been a good Christmas in other ways too. I have been completely spoiled this year. I asked people not to get me presents, because I was too poor to get presents other than cards for anyone but my mom and one of my brothers (and I wasn't even spending my own money) but by various twists of fate I have ended up with almost an entire wardrobe of clothes both new and used, an e-reader, a fantasy book, a used graphics tablet, a cute winnie-the-pooh mug, and a beautiful necklace. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things....

We always watch a movie on Christmas Eve and this year it was Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Aslan is an important symbol for me, and I went to bed hoping I could learn to see God more like how I see and adore Aslan. Lo and behold, the necklace I got the next day.

In general Christmas was very spiritually filling and emotionally draining. This whole trip has required me to reevaluate a lot of things.There have been miniature crises and long talks and crying spells. It's always hard going out of your comfort zone, but I'm grateful for the chance I've had to spend time with my family and my friends, especially to get to know one of my sisters better and her two precious kids.

Life is so precious....

And this world is so beautiful....

From the drive up north (I drove part of the way!)

And all the beautiful music from/with my family and the choirs they've been in, it really helped me to think again about what Christ's life really meant and what kind of person he really was and is. Something I'd like to share is parts of the 2nd and 3rd verses of O Holy Night, because most people don't sing those, but they are really beautiful especially when sung by a choir.

 The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friends.
He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!

So... I would always get emotional listening to these lyrics, especially "He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger" and "in his name all oppression shall cease". I would really like for that to be true. As much as we sing peace on earth and good will to men, it is easy to see that the world is not at peace. But God still loves us anyway and would like for us to get there someday. I guess all we can do is trust that Jesus will be there with us to lead us toward that better world, that little child who was born among the animals of the field and grew up to heal all people and give up his life out of love. And we can try to be that kind of person to those around us who are not at peace, and who are suffering either emotionally or physically.
This post has been pretty long and rambly and I probably should have divided it into two, but whatever. To round it all off, here's a tentative list of new year's resolutions.

-Draw more (one finished picture a month)
-Pray more, and with greater sincerity
-GET A JOB.
-Do some kind of garden again
-Publish at least one article (I already submitted one to Sunstone Magazine just yesterday!)
-Stay in touch with my family and friends
-Write to Alma (my brother on a mission in Korea) weekly
-Do better at my blog

I hope 2012 is an awesome year for everyone! And don't believe those silly people who totally misinterpreted the Mayan calendar. If you ask the Mayans they'll tell you it's a load of bullhonky (not sure if that's a real word).

Why VEGAN?

I've been feeling like I should write a post about why I am Vegan, rather than just Vegetarian or an Organic-loving Locavore. Why give up dairy and eggs altogether, when I could get some from a nice little family farm where the animals are treated well? For that matter, why give up meat when I could get it from a nice little family farm where the animal lived a long and happy life?

Well, first of all, when it comes to meat, I believe that no matter how nicely it's done, killing is killing, and it's wrong. Violence harms the soul of the perpetrator, making them distant from God and hardening them to suffering, making it harder for them to feel compassion. Killing something or someone unnecessarily is even worse. Since I don't need to eat meat to survive, it's completely unnecessary for an animal to die for me. How selfish would it be of me to have an animal give up its life just because I like how it tastes? My own personal feeling is also that my life is no more or less valuable than an animal's... they want to live just as much as I do, so what gives me the right to kill them or support their deaths by consuming their flesh?

It's true that milk and eggs are not created directly through killing like meat is, but that doesn't mean that death is not a part of the process. Let's start with milk.

In order for a cow to give milk, she must be impregnated. Once the baby is born, it needs the first, fattiest, and best part of the milk in order to get the right start on a healthy life. Now, some farms deny the calves this (especially factory farms, which drag the calves away from their mothers basically as soon as they're born) while others don't. The mother will only keep giving milk for 2 years after the birth of her baby, and then she must be impregnated again. So, in order to keep getting milk from a mother cow, a farmer will inevitably end up with multiple baby cows. You may think, well that's just fine, he'll just let them grow up and add them to his herd and milk them too. Well what if someday he doesn't have enough land or feed for those cows? And what if a good number of them turn out to be male? What happens to them? For most farms, even smaller ones, it is common practice for "unprofitable" babies and grown males to be killed for veal or beef. Even if that farm doesn't do it themselves, they will probably sell the babies to someone else to be killed or exploited.

Also, what happens to the female cow when she is too old to be a profitable milk cow? In most cases she will be killed rather than allowed to live out her life, because keeping her is a drain on resources.

While there may be a few places which will keep unprofitable cows, bulls, etc, they would definitely be rare and not the norm. Just try to find one.

Let's talk about eggs. Hens will continue to lay eggs even without a rooster around, so there shouldn't be any violence involved, right? Well... when a hen stops laying, will she be killed? If some of your hens end up dying (and it happens often enough because of predators and other things), and you want more eggs, you will have to get more hens. If you choose to get some fertile eggs and hatch them, some will turn out to be male. Roosters are unproductive compared to hens, only one being needed for each bunch of hens, and multiple roosters will often fight with each other over dominance in the flock. So then you are faced with the choice of what to do with the rooster. Even if you go and adopt some hens and bypass the choice of what to do with male chicks, those hens came from a batch of eggs that likely produced some roosters which may have been butchered, discarded as unprofitable or too much trouble to keep around. There are people who will give their roosters away for free on craigslist to people who want one for their flock of hens, but the reason they're giving them away for free is because people who actually want roosters are not nearly as common as unwanted roosters are.

I would eat eggs from hens which were treated like pets, meaning that they were valued for more than their egg-producing capabilities, and therefore guaranteed to be cared for even after they become unprofitable. Any roosters in the flock would also have to be treated in a similar way. I would only eat eggs under these conditions because hens do simply continue to lay eggs even without human intervention and in that case the eggs may as well be eaten. But as soon as I saw any hint of the chickens involved being treated as mere egg-producing machines instead of living beings who have a value separate from their usefulness to humans, I would not eat those eggs anymore.

Milk is more complicated because it is meant for the cow's baby. I really do not feel comfortable taking that milk from her and her baby, and I especially don't feel comfortable viewing milk as something which should be constantly available because it comes at the price of bringing new lives into the world, babies with an uncertain future, babies that will probably grow up to be exploited or killed and not valued as the individuals they are. With so many good milk alternatives I would feel very selfish if I insisted on taking a cow's milk, or a goat's milk, or any animal's milk. Humans weren't really meant to drink milk anyway... most people are at least slightly lactose intolerant and find that they get more congested when they drink milk, or have digestive issues.

Many of the other things that I try to avoid as a vegan should be obvious. Leather and fur comes at the price of an animal's life... It's kind of grotesque to wear someone else's skin when there are so many good plant and synthetic fibers.Why is it alright to wear a cow's skin, and yet the thought of killing one's dog or cat and wearing their fur is repulsive (at least for people with a heart)? Feathers are only okay to wear or use if they're just found rather than plucked from the animal. Anywhere feathers are packaged and sold, especially in large amounts, I'm sure that a bird or many birds had to die somewhere along the way. Gathering them from live birds is just not efficient enough; it doesn't make good business sense.

Beauty products and other things which are tested on animals or contain animal products are also unacceptable because if I pay for them, I am giving money to an organization which exploits animals and sees them as objects instead of living beings.

Honey is something I need to learn more about, because I don't know all the details of how it is harvested, but all the same I want to avoid exploiting even honey bees if I can. There are so many other good sweeteners. They made that honey for themselves... it's pretty selfish of us to let them do all the hard work and then take their food from them.

Wool is something I have been asked about once or twice. If shearing a sheep is really good for the sheep like some people have told me, and the sheep were kept as pets rather than money-makers, then that wool would be acceptable to use. I have heard of some farms that sell wool from rescued sheep in order to help fund their sanctuary. I would probably be fine with using wool from a place like that.

For me, it comes down to our attitude toward animals. They are not objects, they are living beings with a will to survive and a desire for love and safety and happiness. Even if I bought "cage-free" eggs (which doesn't even mean they're treated well, just not treated in the worst way) or milk from a "pasture-fed" cow, I would most likely be giving my money to someone who saw those animals primarily as economic units, money-makers. Even if those animals lived a relatively great life, if they were not loved by their owners enough that their owners would keep them even when they stopped producing, I wouldn't want to support that.

The first step toward violence is seeing the other person/animal/creature/whatever as an object. That's why racism happens, that's why war happens, that's why sexual, physical, verbal abuse happens and all other kinds of violence. Because most people can't bring themselves to feel okay about hurting another living thing unless they see it/him/her/them as completely different from themselves... they see it/her/him/them as something or someone that doesn't matter. As long as we see animals or people as objects, and think they're only valuable if they're doing something which profits us, we are making it easier for ourselves to hurt those animals or people. That attitude in itself is a form of violence.

Finally, as a side note, I'd like to mention that there are many studies which have been done that show that our planet cannot sustain itself if everyone keeps eating animal products every day. It takes so much more resources and energy to produce it, especially milk and meat, and animal products produce so much more waste and pollution than plant foods and products. Eating animal products also contributes to world hunger. So much grain is used in animal agriculture that there is not enough left over to sell at fair prices to starving people in other countries. Our apathy toward animals is causing suffering for other people as well. For myself, since I know about this connection, I feel that it would be a form of violence against both people and animals for me to continue to harm the earth in this way.

I Stand Corrected!

Today me and my youngest sister walked to the nearest grocery store, called Farmer's Market. A year and a half ago, when I first came home after turning Vegan in Hawaii, I had a sad incident involving having to buy someone yogurt  that was almost certainly made from factory farm milk because there was nothing else. So, I was bracing myself to be disappointed again, but I needed garlic today and I knew they had to at least have garlic.

Boy, was I surprised! Things are getting better. The produce section was actually quite impressive... they had a big long thing full of what I suppose you would call specialty items, and the prices of everything were pretty comparable to what I paid in Bellingham, except the organic stuff was slightly more expensive than at the Co-Op.

Brace yourself for an onslaught of Rae-fanning-over-vegetables!

Kale, Chard, Leek, Beets, Celery/Celery Root!

Note the tiny amount of Yukon Gold potatoes. But at least they're there! xD ALSO... if you click on this photo to enlarge it, there ARE Kaffir lime leaves! There was also a sign for lemongrass but I didn't see any lemongrass anywhere. Hmmm.

LOOK AT THAT BEAUTIFUL PURPLE KALE. OMG.

This is mainly because of the (2) Daikon.

My sister was making fun of me for taking pictures of everything xP Oh well... it wasn't in a mean way, we just teased each other.

Our cart. Note the lovely SMALL/cheap bottle of cooking sherry.

I was also very very pleased to see the large array of nondairy milks and also a section of the freezers devoted to Amy's products.

We bought about $40 worth of stuff and I went home determined to cook 3 different things for dinner that night. So, I made a double batch of this Leek and Potato Soup, some Black Bean Salad with Corn from vegweb, and a bunch of baked asparagus with garlic salt and rosemary (I didn't use any other herbs or normal salt).

It was exhausting. But, everybody seemed to like everything, so I was happy. I made the asparagus especially because it's one of the only vegetables my youngest sister ADORES... and thus she ate about half the tray before I could take a picture.

Stupid yellow tint...

 Somehow the soup didn't turn out as green as it usually does... I wonder if it's because I didn't use the actual blender but instead used the handheld/immersion blender my mom has. The consistency wasn't as nice that way.

This was the smallest pot I could find that wouldn't be full to the brim with a double-batch.

I forgot to add cilantro.

My 2-year-old nephew LOVED the salad... he ate a lot of it. So did my sister / his mom.

Two people in my family are having digestive issues since the stew last night. I'm not sure why, since nobody else who ate it is having problems... but now my brother is leery of curry and lentils, so I figure I'll take a break from both for the next few days if possible.

Soup Success... and stats!

Well, my to-do list for today didn't go completely as planned. My laundry wasn't done yesterday so I didn't have anything to wear to the grocery store this morning, so I had to make do with whatever was in the house. Therefore, I took a shot at a Vegweb recipe I've never tried before (which is always a risk) called Lentil and Kale Curry Stew.

Sorry, the splatters in this picture make it look extremely unappetizing, I know....

Since my family has varying levels of spicy tolerance, I only put in half the cayenne and left out the dry mustard powder entirely (though we didn't even have dry mustard powder, I could have subbed 3 Tbsp wet mustard or a little less than a tablespoon of horseradish or something if I wanted it hotter). I think I put in a tiny bit extra curry powder too, and only used half the kale because the whole bunch wouldn't fit.

It was a success! Everybody liked it, although my youngest brother's eyes were watering a little. Best of all, it made enough for everyone to have at least one bowl, and my youngest sister who is the biggest carnivore of all of us said that the texture of the lentils made her feel like she was eating a meaty stew and she liked it a lot.

I still need garlic if I'm going to make anything in the next few days though.

On a different note... I have a small announcement to make! Today I received my first comment from someone I didn't already know! It was kind of a big surprise for me because I wasn't sure if this blog would ever be of interest to anyone who didn't know me, but I hope that as a fellow LDS Vegan some of what I say will be of benefit to her. Her comment was really kind and made my day.

I went and looked at my pageview stats for the first time today, out of curiosity, to see if I could figure out how this commenter found my blog, but it didn't really give me any answers, although it did reveal the interesting fact that I have had 30 pageviews from Russia and 11 from Germany since my blog started. That's nothing compared to the 239 from the United States, but the internet really is amazing, isn't it? I daydream about being able to reach wide audiences of people, but at the same time I am a little intimidated even just knowing that anyone can read my thoughts here if they want to.

In any case, thanks to the commenter and to everyone who reads this blog. I hope you find some value in it, and feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, or advice with me as well!

It's Easy... In Some Places

I'm home for Christmas, for a month, meaning that I have flown back to Utah to spend time with my parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews as well as my Utah friends. It is back to Mormonville, and more than one kind of culture shock. I almost wish I had a photo of the massive table covered in dutch-oven-cooked meat at the ward Christmas dinner last night.

I came with more confidence this time, considering that I actually know how to make some good food rather than subsisting mainly on homemade burritos, Amy's microwavable burritos and enchiladas, spaghetti, fruit smoothies, cheerios with soymilk, and sandwiches with Vegenaise. Not that those things aren't good, but they're hardly the way to impress upon one's loved ones that Vegan eating is full of exciting variety and homemade deliciousness.

My first impression after coming back was... man, I really took Bellingham for granted. You can get any ingredient you want at either the co-op, the asian store, or Trader Joe's or Haggen or something. The point is, if you want it, you can find it, and it will usually be good, and fresh, and maybe even local. But here, it's just not like that...you can't find some things anywhere. My sister Faith said she couldn't get fresh lemongrass or kaffir lime anywhere when she wanted to make good Thai food... she had to buy them on the internet. Now, that's definitely one option... I will have to start looking into that if certain missing things start to be essential.Thank goodness for the internet (without it, I would not know how to cook...). I am also wondering if there is anywhere within reasonable distance which might sell nutritional yeast. I'm thinking probably not... it's kind of an obscure thing.

So my main option right now is to try and adapt to my surroundings and make whatever recipes don't call for really exotic ingredients. Luckily that probably won't be too much of a problem... and we have an abundance of spices in our spice cabinet, which is great too. I did buy some turmeric and cumin though since Dad thought we probably didn't have any (we didn't).

Today was encouraging though... I decided to just make the usual Me-and-Danielle sized portion of the Creamy Lentil Soup (Dal Shorva) and let everybody have a little bit just to see if they liked it. Everybody did, although my youngest sister who is notoriously picky didn't like the onion topping or the cilantro. But the fact she liked the soup at all was amazing since she doesn't like tomatoes... she may not have realized there were any in there though, hahaha.

So I will be making that again sometime soon, in a larger quantity.

Next on the list... well... I have to go shopping. I am missing some important stuff which would be necessary to make the 10-ish recipes I have listed so far... I need to buy a ton of fresh garlic, some lemons and limes, CASHEWS, coconut milk, lots of LEEK, coriander, bread I can eat, some cooking sherry or wine, some sweet potatoes, possibly some squash, and vanilla extract... and couscous and fresh mint because me and Faith might make Tabbouleh... and more I'm sure if I actually look at the specific recipes I picked out...

To end I'd just like to say I've already been humbled in a few different ways.

One is... okay, for those of us who don't live in a super awesome granola-y town, being vegan, or just eating healthy in general, is not as easy. My hat is off to you... your job is harder than mine.

Secondly, it is definitely more difficult to feed a large family, especially when everybody has different likes and dislikes. I am amazed at how well my mom has managed to do it over the years. Somehow the thought of making a meal for a busy family is much more intimidating than making a meal to share with a busy fellow college student.

Gandhi and the Spirit of Christ

You might ask what Gandhi has to do with being a Vegan Mormon, since he was Hindu. Well, first of all, Gandhi apparently wrote a whole book about the morals of vegetarianism, and he is attributed with some of my favorite quotes, including: "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated." He is also a worldwide symbol of the principle of nonviolence, a concept which has been behind every choice I've made concerning how far I was willing to go in my non-cooperation with evil. That concept, of non-cooperation with evil, is at the root of why I became vegan.


I've been having a hard time connecting with God lately, because of various questions I've been pondering and also because of being busy with schoolwork. But today I decided to sit down and watch the Gandhi movie for the second time in my life. The first time I watched it was 3 or 4 years ago, and it was a turning point in my life, where I realized that the use of violence for any cause is not going to produce good results. Violence only begets more violence. You can go on a crusade, and you may be bringing Christianity to the heathen, but you are also bringing violence and an elimination of freedom, which is the opposite of Christianity. You may believe gay people are sinners and tell them they are being tricked by the devil, or disown them as a friend or family member, or refuse to give them your full love, trust, and acceptance unless they "repent", but even if you are right about homosexuality being forbidden by Christianity or  Mormonism, you are still using psychological and emotional violence on others, and that is the opposite of Christianity. I realized that while, like Gandhi, there might be some things I could be willing to die for, I should have no cause which I am willing to kill or harm others for.


Now, the line is fuzzy sometimes with emotional violence, but I still have to try my best, which is why I catch myself whenever I find I might be making others feel guilty when I talk about Veganism, because I don't want to use guilt (emotional violence) to manipulate someone into changing. The change should be their own choice, and I can continue my non-cooperation with evil without having to coerce anyone else to join me.


So anyway, today, I watched it again, and I had forgotten just how painful a movie it is to watch. In some ways it is very depressing because of how many times the masses fail, or turn against Gandhi, and how long it takes the British rulers to see that their attempts at domination are unjust and futile. People are massacred, and India no sooner gains her independence when she begins to fall into civil war along religious lines. Gandhi is heartbroken that all he has worked for can be upset so easily by fear and revenge, and in the end he is assassinated. In a way it seems like evil had the last say, and humanity is a hopeless wreck of insane, violent fools. But Gandhi never saw it that way, and he said himself that we must never lose our faith in humanity. This was something I needed to hear, because with all the history I've been studying, and all the ways in which I am constantly surrounded by violence against the innocent, humans and animals alike, I often find it hard to keep faith in humanity at all.


The scriptures talk about the Spirit of Christ dwelling in people. Somehow I found myself seeing Jesus in Gandhi even more than the first time I watched the film. Even just on a superficial level, look at these two pictures... the similarities in clothing, posture, and demeanor are striking.

The descriptions throughout the film, of Gandhi as a man without formal title, without riches, and yet beloved for the way he gave people power through humility, courage, and a strong sense of love and morals, are so similar to how Christ is described. There are many scenes of Gandhi sitting in nothing but a loincloth, a white wrapping about his waist very similar to what Christ is depicted wearing while hanging on the cross. The way Gandhi traveled throughout India and did whatever he could to help the poor also resonated. And the pain he felt at the divisions between his people echoed Jesus' mourning over Jerusalem. 


And then there's the simple fact that Gandhi spoke of how we are all children of God, and referred to the teachings of Jesus repeatedly throughout the film. Love thy neighbor as thyself, and turn the other cheek. 


Tonight, I saw Christ in Gandhi, a man suffused with God's spirit of love for his children, walking among them again, loving them, encouraging them, and shedding tears for them. Of course, Gandhi was human like everyone, not a literal incarnation of God like Christ, but through him I suddenly saw again why I want to be like Jesus. 


Both were murdered because they taught that love goes beyond borders of religious creed, nationality, gender, class position, or any of the other things which separate us. I like to think their teachings also included other divisions such as species, sexual orientation, you name it....


I couldn't stop thinking about how much Christ must have been like Gandhi. But then, it's really that Gandhi was like Christ. The two reflected each other and helped me to see the most important attributes of both, more clearly, and I came to love them both, and to trust, at least for a moment, that God really is active in the world, and humanity is capable of listening to the messages he sends them through people like Gandhi and Jesus. I hope I can be a messenger for him some day, in my own small way.


Moroni 7:16 16 For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

Post-Thanksgiving and Finals Week

Hey! It's Final's Week and as I've been trying to beat back the stress, it has been hard to find time to write about how well Thanksgiving went.

Here's a picture, since I know everybody likes pictures.

Lookit the pretty table and nice food! Fruit salad, pea salad, squash, mashed potatoes and thick mushroomy gravy,  stuffing, cranberry sauce... I feel like I'm forgetting something... and it's not the turkey because we didn't have any! YEAH! Oh yeah there was a green bean casserole for the nonvegans, but it was vegetarian... it just had cream in it.

Here's a picture of the pretty candles and the mountain of stuffing that took us 3 days to eat the leftovers of. Mmm they were so good...

And here are the two desserts me and Danielle made via recipes from the Post Punk Kitchen: Pumpkin Cheesecake and Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf.

We were really scared the cheesecake wasn't going to turn out because we used soft tofu rather than extra-firm and halfway through we realized OMG there is no vanilla extract in this house!! So we rummaged and rummaged in the cupboards and found a bottle of vanilla beans which apparently you can make your own vanilla extract out of, except it takes like 7 months or something. So we just chopped up bits of the bean and blended it up. Ehehehe. But it turned out! Everybody liked it.

I felt especially grateful this Thanksgiving to be having it with my second family. Even more so because I found out over that weekend that I no longer have to worry about getting back up to Bellingham after Christmas break. I will be flying back in January and then the job search commences. I am truly blessed to know such generous people. I hope someday I can pay it forward.


Actually, life is going well in general, especially food-wise! I find that eating well has made a big difference in how I feel... even though it kind stresses me out to take extra time to make food, I have stopped stressing as much since I've realized I get stressed even more easily if I don't eat well. That was brought home to me last Thursday when I woke up after a day of nothing but applesauce, cereal, and Newman-Os, and my school stress suddenly seemed absolutely unmanageable. Once I had a good meal everything looked about ten times easier to handle. Ah, the simple lessons of life.

 I've been trying a lot of recipes with curry paste lately, and predictably, the best one I've tried so far has been from the Post Punk Kitchen: Red Curry Soup with Rice & Purple Kale. It was delicious... the lime juice is an absolute must though, it really changed the flavor and made it awesome.

Another quick shout-out to Brother and Sister Mumford for taking such good care of me at the last Friday Forum I went to. We sang Christmas Carols and everyone else was having taco soup, but they made a pot of black and pinto beans with tomatoes and green peppers, and I made my own taco salad with it plus a veggie burger. Was stuffed by the end!

Today we made some Ayurvedic dish with mung beans and cauliflower which was pretty good once we added some stock. I don't know what I'd do without Better Than Bouillon. It's become a kitchen staple for sure.

Later this week we plan to make onion rings, possibly some nacho sauce, and have a reprise of the creamy red chard linguine, except with kale. Just the thought of all that yummy food makes Finals Week look a little less daunting.

Six days until I fly home for Christmas! I hope to do a lot of cooking while I'm home... I feel a lot better this time around, like I actually know some things.

Thanksgiving - Giving Thanks for Life

Well, it's been over a week since my last post. I have been busy thinking about many other things in my life, but as I sat down today I realized that as always there have still been things happening in my life which relate to how I think about animals, and God. Thanksgiving is coming up, which is awesome because I firmly believe that gratitude is one of the biggest keys to happiness. We could all do with a little more of it, myself included, especially now while I'm worrying about the future.

One of the most basic things we all take for granted is the opportunity to keep living. Most of us, as far as we know, will wake up tomorrow with the same freedom to go out and seek our destinies in the world, to keep learning, loving, and experiencing all the things we thirst after in order to improve ourselves and our relationships with others. We have the right to live and to live happily. It's something I know I sometimes forget to be thankful for, especially when life is stressful.

I'm really excited for thanksgiving this year, not just because it is a break from school but because both my family back in Utah and my second family up here in Washington are (so I heard) thinking about or planning on having a vegetarian thanksgiving. Which means two great things, one being that I don't have to be around meat during the festivities, and the other being that this celebration of life will not involve unnecessary death. It also cheered me to hear of people leaving the local Co-Op with expensive non-factory raised turkeys, because if they're going to insist on eating turkey, at least they're not supporting this kind of cruelty.

I recently read a blog post from a fellow vegan in Bellingham (whose blog is called Vegan in Bellingham) about how she decided to give up meat because of one thanksgiving when she watched the tradition of the President pardoning the turkey on TV. I guess this happens every year--a turkey is taken out of the factory and the President formally pardons it, meaning it won't be slaughtered for meat. Whether the turkey lives a long, full life afterward is another story, but in any case I'm sure the President probably still has turkey (just a different turkey) for dinner anyway.

I wish I had the money to sponsor a rescued turkey, but it's $30... that would just be the icing on the happy cake of a nonviolent Thanksgiving. Still, I can't complain. Things are getting better all the time! *cue Beatles music*

This all hits home so much harder because recently yet another undercover video investigation of a factory farm was put up by Mercy for Animals about an egg farm which supplies McDonalds with a lot of the eggs it uses in its McMuffins and such. It's a typical factory farm from what I can see, and a lot of the cruelty charges were for typical factory practices such as suffocating the male chicks in plastic bags, keeping hens in battery cages with open sores and sharing the small space with birds who had already died and begun rotting, workers burning the beaks off the chicks. That's all normal factory procedure. It's always hard sharing these types of videos with friends because I know they're terrible to watch and everyone's first instinct is to believe that this is an isolated incident and the workers were just bad people. We don't want to believe that this is normal and happening all the time. But it is.

I know those are chickens, and I was talking about turkeys earlier, but a life is a life, so I think about them the same way. And anyway people probably eat eggs and chickens more often than they eat turkeys, so arguably the special focus on turkey in this season is just a relatively small addition to the already constant cycle of death and torment going on.

It was actually a video of an egg "farm" like the one in that video which prompted me to make the transition from vegetarian to vegan. I saw a short clip in the artistic film Baraka (a film I would highly recommend by the way. Be warned, there is no dialogue. It's very abstract but powerful.) The clip was relatively tame as far as being graphic went, but it still gave the idea of how harmful it is for both humans and animals to see living things as mere objects or numbers. In the part where the chicks are being sent spinning down a funnel to be sorted on conveyor belts, my classmates (in my Art History class at BYU-Hawaii) laughed. I couldn't tell if they honestly thought it was funny, or if it was a "that is too bizarre to be real" laugh. Either way, I remember instantly deciding I would never buy factory eggs again.

 That was about this time of the year, 2 years ago. I made a resolution that by January I would also cut out all factory dairy as well, and anything that had dairy and eggs in it that couldn't be traced to a smaller, less cruel farm. I have never regretted that decision. Do I sometimes miss certain foods? Every once in a while. But at times like this I can only rejoice knowing that my happiness and life does not have to come at so high a cost.

So, this thanksgiving, in whatever way you deem most in line with your own heart, give thanks for life. For the opportunity to keep learning and discovering new ways to be fulfilled. For a life that was meant to be lived to the fullest. For the ability to wake up every day to a new day, to seek happiness, to learn, and to comfort one another. In many ways even the most miserable times of our lives are bliss compared to the fate of some other souls. God gave life and a desire for love to all of us, and what a gift it is.

Kohlrabi!

I had Kohlrabi for the very first time today. I didn't know anything about it when we picked one up at the Farmer's Market last weekend, so here's a little bit of info. Apparently, its name is German for "cabbage-turnip". When it's raw it kinda tastes like broccoli stems. The one we got was purple, like this (except bigger):

Apparently they're more commonly all green like these ones:

So I asked the best cook I knew (Danielle's Oma) how to cook it (though apparently you can eat it raw like carrot sticks and such), and armed with that knowledge and some helpful tips from the internetz, I made this!

And it was good too!

So here's what I used:

1 Kohlrabi (one bulb? not sure what it's called)
Half an onion
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
A few tablespoons of Earth Balance
A few tablespoons of flour
Some water
Garlic salt

Okay. So I chopped up the onion and the garlic, then I cut the leafy stems off the kohlrabi and then cut the ...bulb thing... into quarters. Then I peeled the quarters because I was afraid the skins might be too woody to eat. Then I took each quarter and sliced it up julienne style. Chopped up the stems of the leaves. Then, using a handy trick I just learned from the internet, I rolled all the leaves up together and then sliced the roll thinly... that made slicing thin strip a lot easier than trying to do it while the leaves were laying flat! Why haven't I been doing this the whole time? Anyway...

So using a medium or large pot, I melted some globs of Earth Balance on medium heat and sauteed the onions in it until translucent, then the garlic. Then I added the stems and the julienne sticks of the kohlrabi but not the leaves, and stirred it all up. I then took a spoon and used it to sprinkle some flour over the whole dish, 2-3 spoonfuls, stirring between each one so that it would get incorporated with the "butter". If it's not getting incorporated, add more oil or earth balance. Then I added some water and covered it all with a lid to let it simmer and steam, stirring every 1 or 2 minutes and adding more water if it boils out. Once the kohlrabi sticks weren't loudly crunchy anymore, I added the leaves with a little bit more Earth Balance and sprinkled garlic salt all over it, stirred it up, and steamed/simmered it for a few more minutes.

Then it was done! The flour made a kind of creamy sauce. Kind of a nice comfort food for a rainy, miserable November day like today.

Creamy Pasta Sauces

So lately we've been trying different ways to make creamy pasta sauces without using tomatoes, since Danielle is more into alfredo-y stuff than marinara-y stuff. The first try was a complete success thanks to the Post Punk Kitchen's amazing Cream Red Chard Linguine recipe, where the creaminess is cashew-based and alfredo-like. I used fettuccine noodles instead of linguine, and sherry instead of red wine. Oh man... it was delicious.

Then we tried using the Pesto Soup recipe to make a sauce to put over Rising Moon Organics Spinach Florentine Ravioli and that was delicious too. There the creaminess was cauliflower based.

Feeling encouraged, yesterday when my original plans for lunch (lentil sloppy joes) fell through, I decided to use some of the sweet meat squash to try and make a creamy squash-based pasta sauce. I figured if I found a couple of recipes and then used the basic idea of the pesto soup sauce recipe, it should work.

Here's what the finished product looked like. I feel like it needs something more to it, flavor-wise, but the consistency was really good.

So I took a look at this recipe and this one too. And then here's basically what I did:

Chopped half a very large onion, about equivalent to one large onion... then 3 cloves of garlic. Peeled about a pound or two of the squash and chopped it into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces, chopped 2 carrots into small pieces, and chopped up a bit of fresh rosemary too.

In a big pot, sauteed the onion in olive oil until translucent, then added garlic until fragrant, then added a cup of broth (made with Better than Bouillon's No Chicken Base), 1 1/2 tablespoons of dried basil, a pinch of thyme, and the rosemary. Put in the squash, stirred it around, and it looked like there wasn't enough liquid so I poured in a little bit of almond milk, then covered it and let it simmer until the squash and carrots were soft. While this was going on, I chopped up two leaves of kale and mixed together a little over half of another cup of broth with about half a tablespoon of cornstarch. I also started cooking my pasta (I used penne). When hte squash and carrots were soft I stirred in the cornstarchy broth and then let it boil uncovered for a while until it was slightly thickened. Then I poured it by halves into a blender (be careful to let the steam out) to make it all smooth and creamy, and poured it back into the pot with the kale to let it wilt and soften the leaves. Drained the pasta and stirred it in with the sauce. Added garlic salt as needed, and when Danielle got home she put in a little cube of frozen basil to add more flavor. I also put a little bit of nutritional yeast on mine, but it didn't make much difference with the taste actually...

So, a cooking experiment which was a semi-success but leaves a lot of room for improvement. If anyone tries this and comes up with a way to make it taste more like BAM THAT WAS GOOD let me know xD

Just Loving Life

Amazingly, in the middle of all my school stress, I am still really enjoying life lately. Almost all of that enjoyment is closely associated with cooking, the changing seasons, and animals. No joke. Well, and beautifully done Hetalia fanart music videos, but that's totally off-topic....

Last weekend Danielle's Oma (aka German Grandma) came up to visit us and we made her lunch. Recently we've started to try out free recipes from The Post-Punk Kitchen website, which is by the same people who did Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Suffice it to say that it's all delicious so far. For this lunch we made Pesto Soup with Gnocchi, Beans & Greens, along with home-made veggie spring rolls. Danielle did basically all the work with the soup and I put the spring rolls together (they had lettuce, mint, cilantro, cucumbers, rice noodles, pickled carrots and daikon).

 

When we went on an early morning walk/bike ride in the cold November air to Haggen to get rainbow chard and other stuff that we needed, we were both having a fan attack over the vegetables. Sometimes vegetables and fruits are just so beautiful you have to stop and BE AMAZED. Srsly. 

The lunch was delicious and then we went to the Bellingham Farmer's Market to see what we could find. Some really nice guy gave Oma a large sweet meat squash for like 3 bucks or 3.50 or something like that! It was big enough that we split it between ourselves when we got back to the apartment.

Please excuse the dorky crazed look.

Even though it was a little smaller this time, there was still plenty of colorful produce.

We had a good time hanging out at Value Village and got some "new" sweaters now that it's getting super cold. I also got a purple scarf xD !

On Sunday I was walking home from church and there was a deer on the trail. We locked eyes for almost a full minute and it actually took a step toward me rather than away. Seemed very unafraid, but I kept a respectful distance anyway. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me at the time. Here's one of a young buck I took a few weeks ago by the Institute.

I also recently witnessed some interesting things in the sky. Today there was a hawk circling over campus, close enough that I could see the spots on its wings. It was beautiful. Last week when I was walking to the bus station, a large flock of pidgeons (I'm pretty sure anyway) burst out from under a nearby alcove and proceeded to spiral rhythmically through the sky, in perfect tandem with one another, for nearly a full minute before they left the area directly above the street I was on. It was mesmerizing to watch. Then just the other day a facebook friend posted a video of a huge flock of starlings  "dancing". It was a bit like watching those huge groups of little fish in the ocean on the Discovery Channel. You know, the ones that form up into very specific shapes in Finding Nemo? Well, this was certainly even more impressive and astonishing. Are they doing it just for the joy of flying, of cooperation? That was the thought which popped into my head as I watched the pidgeons. I always have to wonder what the cause of such incredible behavior is.

It is already getting toward the end of the colorful leaves, and I'm sad that I haven't taken more good pictures, but that's part of what makes autumn special--it's fleeting, but it always comes back next year.

Cooking Can Be Spiritual?! NO WAI.

I've been having a tough time lately, emotionally. Trying to figure out how to get home for Christmas, how to have enough money to get back up here in January and get a job so I can stay for the rest of the schoolyear... it's all pretty annoying and stressful, on top of midterm stress. And in the middle of all of that having a brain which tends to latch onto inconvenient contradictions and questions about religious, social, and cultural issues (one example: gender & sexuality issues and mormonism... not a fun topic). I've been lucky to have lots of little things which have been cheering me up, like having a nice dinner with my visiting teacher last night (though that too was fraught with some awkward moments) and actually (sort of) having a social life all of a sudden... where did that come from? xD (a social life meaning only that I talk to people in classes and on the bus, someone actually came over to my apartment for dinner last week, and then this week someone invited themselves over for next week).

Still, when I headed home from institute today I felt like all I wanted to do was curl up in a blanket and bury myself in a pile of pillows. And maybe cry (yeah I'm a baby okay deal with it). Knew I should make dinner so I wandered aimlessly around the co-op on the way home and finally got some potatoes and an onion so I could make this recipe from a fellow Bellinghamster's vegan blog. I've been craving such potatoes for a while (mom calls them scalloped potatoes).

Here's a bad flash-y picture of the finished product (already cut into--we were hungry!)

(Some quick notes on my recipe variations: I didn't have any parsley so I used chopped bits of fresh rosemary and dried basil. Also put in only 1 1/2 onions since I get so tired of buying onions all the time... we use so many of them! I used 3 or 4 large potatoes but there was some left over once my casserole dish was full. I also didn't have garlic powder so I chopped several small-medium cloves of garlic and added a bunch of garlic salt. Made my own unsweetened almond milk in the blender. Added a tiny sprinkling of Follow Your Heart cheddar on top.)

The funny thing about all the cooking I've been doing lately, is that it has become a de-stresser for me for some reason. It has also become a handy form of procrastination. I come home from a tense day at school--oh, I need to make food! Better get on that right away, homework will have to wait... 30 minutes to 2 hours later... food's done, now I have to eat, maybe we'll watch a movie while we're eating... then it's time to do dishes. Eh there's a few hours left before bedtime, I can cram it all in then right?

But in all seriousness, cooking is becoming a haven for me. I'm someone who struggles at being in the moment... I worry a lot about the past and the future. Cooking somehow puts me in the right frame of mind. While I'm washing and cutting up vegetables, my mind calms down and focuses on the task, the moment at hand. The same thing sometimes happens when I'm washing dishes, though not as often. Maybe it has something to do with being a part of a life-cycle process.

While I was slicing the potatoes, I suddenly became aware of how much my mind had calmed, and how peaceful I felt. I was tapping into a sense of continuity. The potato I held in my hand came from a plant that had constructed itself out of water and sunlight and minerals from the earth... honestly, quite a miracle when you think about it. Now I was part of that process somehow. It's difficult to explain. Sometimes I feel like we make life so complicated, when at its best it is beautifully simple in its complexity. There are patterns; we ourselves, as well as something even so simple as a potato, have complicated cellular structures, but I guess sometimes we lose the beauty of just being a part of this intricate and breathtaking web of life.

I remember in my East Asian Art History class at BYU-H, hearing about a particular Buddhist sect which believed that sudden enlightenment could be achieved through repetitive, mundane actions, such as sweeping the floor. There's a famous ink painting of a leader of this sect chopping bamboo, as one example.

Maybe there's something to this idea. Perhaps that is why many people feel a kind of joy when they are exercising, especially outdoors--it frees their mind and makes them aware of their physical surroundings, their interconnectedness, through the air they breathe and the reality of their own sweat and aches. Maybe that's the same reason many people say that they often feel closer to God while hiking in the mountains than they do while sitting in a chapel.

Last spring, when I was in a particularly dark and chaotic place mentally, I suddenly decided I wanted to have a garden. Living in an apartment, that makes things a little more difficult, but Danielle's mom said I could use some of her big plastic pots and so I impulsively bought a 50-lbs bag of soil from the local nursery (getting it home was another adventure entirely) and some seeds and went to work. It seemed like an irrational thing to do... it used more money, and cut into my precious study time. But filling the pots, pushing the seeds under with numb fingers (it was still very cold outside), watering... these moments were full of a peace I couldn't find anywhere else. And then the sprouts started to come up.

Every time I came home from school or left the apartment, this beautiful growing life was waiting for me by the door. Something about the simple process of watching them grow really put some light back into me, and I think was one of the main reasons I made it through that time. Those sprouts were a promise of cycles, of things getting better, warmer, brighter.

Eventually my garden got so big the fire department threatened to haul all the pots away if I didn't move them off the walkway!

I could go on with even more specific stories of times in Hawaii when meeting eyes with a bird (or a dog or a gecko or a mouse) gave me something like a spiritual breath of fresh air, a sense of communion with something larger than myself, like stepping into the edge of the ocean. That was a time of special awakening in me, of discovering a sense of family with the rest of the natural world.

Overall I guess my point with this post is to re-affirm to myself that God is out there, and that his presence, his spirit which connects everything living, is present for me to find in even so humble a thing as a potato, if I am willing to just calm my mind down enough to see it. This aspect of God, this beautiful life-force of joy and love which causes plants to reach for the light and moves human hearts to compassion, is not judgmental or wrathful (apart from the kind of heartbroken "how could this happen?" anger a kind person feels while looking upon violence). So when I trap myself in these mental obstacle courses of trying to reconcile all the tedious bits of doctrine which don't seem at first glance to line up to my conscience, I just have to take a deep breath of Life and chop some potatoes, plant some seeds, pet a cat, or go take a hike.