eating Animals

Here is a site describing a new book of interest:

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

I attended a vegan cooking class Monday night and got some new recipes as well as info about various products. I bought stick margarine and vegetable stock cubes as well as a vegetarian cookbook. I am still partial to my macaroni salad but will try something new for potluck at church.

The spice cardamom was recommended but it is outrageously expensive.

Why Wall Street is Booming While Everyone Else is Pinching Pennies

In case you'd like to be pissed this gorgeous Sunday morning, New York Times article for you. Excerpt:

Even as the economy continues to struggle, much of Wall Street is minting money — and looking forward again to hefty bonuses.

Many Americans wonder how this can possibly be. How can some banks be prospering so soon after a financial collapse, even as legions of people worry about losing their jobs and their homes?

It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions’ debts — helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth.

. . .

A year after the crisis struck, many of the industry’s behemoths — those institutions deemed too big to fail — are, in fact, getting bigger, not smaller. For many of them, it is business as usual. Over the last decade the financial sector was the fastest-growing part of the economy, with two-thirds of growth in gross domestic product attributable to incomes of workers in finance.

Now, the industry has new tools at its disposal, courtesy of the government.

With interest rates so low, banks can borrow money cheaply and put those funds to work in lucrative ways, whether using the money to make loans to companies at higher rates, or to speculate in the markets.

Food, Inc.

Last night, the U of C student film group showed this movie, and followed it with a discussion led by a professor of geophysical sciences who studies how our food choices shape the environment.

The movie itself doesn't focus (much) on the environmental; instead, Food, Inc. scares you by showing you where your food really comes from, and how the massive agribusiness industry has been amassing more and more control over it.

The film challenges how agribusiness raises, processes and sells meat. What it doesn't do is challenge the sagacity of eating meat in the first place. Still, it is really eyeopening, and makes you want to act. (I signed back up for a CSA this morning!)

Momcat, I think you should show this movie to your "ethical eating" group when it comes out on DVD, which should be soon.

Corn Chowder

This is my latest version of corn chowder that my WIC nutritionist colleague calls "Starch Soup"

Cut kernels off one ear of corn.

In small pressure cooker add:
1 corn cob
1 bay leaf
1 celery stalk
1 washed and cubed small potato
1 cup water

Heat to pressure, cook for exactly 3 minutes and allow pressure to reduce to zero. Remove cob and celery but scrape and squash juice back into pot before adding

corn from above cob
1/8 to 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 chopped carrot
1/2 more cup of water.

Bring to pressure a second time and immediately turn off heat (that's all it needs!)

Optional: Stir in 1/2 cup soy milk with 1 tbls of Better Than Milk powder added in to make a thickish cream.

Share and enjoy with one cute little nephew!

VeganMania

Today, starting at 10:00 am, there was a convention in Chicago with tons of free vegan food and various vegan vendors. The first 100 people who showed up got a bag filled with free vegan stuff.

Vegans are dirty, lazy hippies for the most part, so I didn't think anyone would show up much before 10:30. Wrong! There was a line of 200 before it even opened (no free bag of goodies for me!) It was a madhouse.

Anyway, in addition to buying some vegan cheese made of cashews which turns out to be a bit nasty, I also bought 8 gourmet vegan chocolate truffles, figuring I'd share them with Kipsy and Uncle Sam if they come here for a spa ghettoway over Christmas. I didn't ask how much they cost before she made the box up... and let's just say, you had better LOVE those stupid truffles.

Do not try this at home!

Have you ever had an idea at night that seemed really good, but then in real-life it was not so much? Well, I recently read about how good kale is for me. I add flax seed to my smoothies to make them healthier. I got an idea that a little kale blended into my fruit smoothie would boost the nutritional value. I wish I could say I was drunk or something when I got the idea, but I haven't had a drink in months if not years!

So... I put a few pieces in with my fruit this morning; maybe 3 T or so. It was about as aweful as you might imagine. Kale doesn't actually "blend". It gets finely chopped and clumps together as kind of a suspension. I do not recommend kale as a smoothie-booster. I repeat: fruit + kale = YUK!

Victory

It's time to rejuvenate this blog.

On August 15 my cholesterol was 233. I went vegan that same day and have not eaten anything with cholesterol in it since. Yesterday my cholesterol level was 193!! That's lower than it has EVER been. Here is my favorite recipe which I make up in bulk and feed off of for a week

1 pkg whole wheat macaroni
3 chopped peppers (red, green, orange, or yellow)
chopped onions (to taste and after getting tired of chopping I have gone to frozen)

I added tofu at first but found it didn't last the week so dropped it.

I mix all the above ingredients in a large bowl. When I am ready for a meal I put a generous serving of the mix in a bowl, add a tablespoon or so of veganaise and a generous tsp of nutritional yeast and stir.

Snacks consist of pistachio nuts. Sometimes a peanut butter sandwich. I eat Kashi cereal with soy milk for breakfast. Costco no longer carries my favorite but other grocery stores do.