I’ve gotta try this!!

theveggieblackboard:

EASY HEALTHY VEGAN CHICKPEA AND CARROT TUNA SALAD RECIPE - PERFECT PACKED LUNCH

This is the easiest recipe ever and absolutely delicious. The hardest part is getting hold of vegan mayonnaise. All you need is:

• 2 carrots
• 1 can of chickpeas
• 2 tbsp of vegan mayonnaise

Throw the carrots and chickpeas into the food blender and blend until you have small chunks, resembling the texture of tuna. Add two big dollops of vegan mayonnaise and salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste. And that’s it.

I love having this on wholegrain bread with spinach or slices of cucumbers. Perfect for a packed lunch. Enjoy!

(via nyuszoka)

here’s a touching story of a mother’s love:

One of my clients called me one day with a puzzling mystery: his Brown Swiss cow, having delivered her fifth calf naturally on pasture the night before, brought the new baby to the barn and was put into the milking line, while her calf was once again removed from her. Her udder, though, was completely empty, and remained so for several days. As a new mother, she would normally be producing close to one hundred pounds (12.5 gallons) of milk daily; yet, despite the fact that she was glowing with health, her udder remained empty. She went out to pasture every morning after the first milking, returned for milking in the evening, and again was let out to pasture for the night—this was back in the days when cattle were permitted a modicum of pleasure and natural behaviors in their lives—but never was her udder swollen with the large quantities of milk that are the hallmark of a recently-calved cow.

I was called to check this mystery cow two times during the first week after her delivery and could find no solution to this puzzle. Finally, on the eleventh day post calving, the farmer called me with the solution: he had followed the cow out to her pasture after her morning milking, and discovered the cause: she had delivered twins, and in a bovine’s “Sophie’s Choice”, she had brought one to the farmer and kept one hidden in the woods at the edge of her pasture, so that every day and every night, she stayed with her baby—the first she had been able to nurture FINALLY—and her calf nursed her dry with gusto. Though I pleaded for the farmer to keep her and her bull calf together, she lost this baby, too—off to the hell of the veal crate.

Think for a moment of the complex reasoning this mama exhibited: first, she had memory—memory of her four previous losses, in which bringing her new calf to the barn resulted in her never seeing him/her again (heartbreaking for any mammalian mother). Second, she could formulate and then execute a plan: if bringing a calf to the farmer meant that she would inevitably lose him/her, then she would keep her calf hidden, as deer do, by keeping her baby in the woods lying still till she returned. Third—and I do not know what to make of this myself—instead of hiding both, which would have aroused the farmer’s suspicion (pregnant cow leaves the barn in the evening, un-pregnant cow comes back the next morning without offspring), she gave him one and kept one herself. I cannot tell you how she knew to do this—it would seem more likely that a desperate mother would hide both.

(Source: “Dr. Cheever On a Mother’s Love” from blog On Non-Human Slavery)

So Happy ALL Mothers Day! In solidarity with all the moms in the world: imagine the pain of losing your child or the pain of being exploited for your reproductive capabilities. Imagine what countless mother animals go through daily for our unnecessary consumption. 

We can leave the milk they made for their babies. We can let them raise their kids instead of taking them to be eaten. We can allow hens to fulfill their motherhood instead of endlessly producing eggs for us. Let’s show love to all mothers! ♥

Going vegan has improved my life in many ways. One way is how I was empowered to be more self-sufficient by educating myself on food, nutrition, and health. In the U.S., I’d always dined out or bought convenience foods. But Switzerland is not very restaurant-friendly, fast food-friendly, vegan-friendly, or working-woman friendly. So living here forced me to learn how to shop for groceries, cook, and simplify to eat better. It’s completely changed how I look at food and the products sold to us as food.

Someone once told me that my need to read all food labels was paranoiac. I disagree: I deserve to know what I’m eating and putting into my body. Our food system is utterly corrupted; are we supposed to blindly trust industry to care for our well-being?

Michael Pollan discussed this recently while promoting his new book “Cooked” on the public radio program, The Splendid Table:

I found that there were some other virtues to cooking. I think of cooking as a political act. I think we have fallen into this place where we are so dependent on others to do everything for us. All we do is we take the one thing that we do for a living, we sell that into the market, we take that money and use that to outsource everything in our lives.

That leads to a dependence that is almost infantilizing. There is something very satisfying in providing for yourself — even to some extent in a playful way — and I would include gardening in that too. You feel so much more competent, self-reliant, and independent when you know, “Hey, I could make a loaf of bread if I wanted to, if I needed to.”

Source: http://www.splendidtable.org/story/michael-pollan-cooking-for-yourself-is-the-real-independence