Easy Vegan Holiday Party

I had a few neighbors over last night for wine and cocktail party-ish appetizers. These are good, cozy friends—the kind with whom you don’t worry too much if you don’t get around to cleaning the bathroom. They are omnivores, though—and that causes me to fuss just a little bit more than usual. I didn't have time to cook all day, so I ended up using a few prepared party foods.It’s nice that there are so many great ones available for vegans. In addition, I made one batch of Christmas cookies, a fast cake, some hummus (well, it was a vegan party; you’ve gotta have hummus!), and walnut-broccoli spread.


Here is what was on the menu with some recipes

From the freezer:

Vegetable Bird’s Nests from Trader Joe’s. These are vegetables in a spun batter with a dipping sauce; they were a huge hit.

Potato and Onion Pierogies from my local Safeway store, served with vegan sour cream

Asian Vegetable Dumplings (don’t remember where I got these; probably the food co-op)



Things I made:

Hummus
(I always assume that everyone has their own favorite hummus recipe. I use 1 ½ cups cooked/canned chickpeas, ½ cup tahini, ¼ cup fresh parsley, ¼ cup fresh lemon juice, 2 cloves garlic. Put it in the food processor and blend until smooth. It’s perfect every time!)

Little rounds of French bread with Daiya cheese melted on them.
I used both the cheddar and Italian-flavored cheese and everyone seemed to like both.

Broccoli-Walnut Pate
This was also a big hit and it’s very easy to make.

3 cups chopped raw broccoli
½ cup chopped walnuts
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soy sauce/tamari
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp tahini


Like all dishes using raw broccoli, this is so much better (and prettier) if you blanch the broccoli first. Bring a pot of water to a boil and drop the broccoli in. Cook it for one minute. Stand there and stare at it so that you don’t cook it any longer. Then quickly drain and plunge the broccoli into a bowl of ice water to cool it right away. (Otherwise, it will stubbornly continue to cook.)

In a food processor, blend the walnuts and olive oil until they almost make walnut butter. Add the broccoli and rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth. Add salt if needed, and you may prefer a little more tahini.


Russian Tea Cakes

These are my favorite Christmas cookie and are very traditional in my family. You can find the recipe here on my old personal blog (which I plan to someday resurrect).


Chocolate Chip Cake

This is a wonderful easy vegan cake that dates back to World War II at least (although the chocolate chips are my own recent addition).

1 ½ cups white flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
5 tbsp canola or other bland oil (this is ¼ cup plus 1 tbsp)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 cup cold water
¾ cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together the dry ingredients in a bowl. Put all the wet ingredients in a big pyrex measuring cup or something with a spout. Pour them over the dry ingredients and mix everything together until well-combined. Pour the batter into a non-stick 8 by 8 inch pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top. Bake for 35 minutes.

Promoting Veganism: Finding the Message that Works

I’m always curious about what causes a person to go vegan and I always ask. As an educator and an activist, I’m interested in knowing exactly what message grabbed someone’s attention and put them on the road to veganism. My own background is in public health nutrition which means that I studied both nutrition and education. I’ve also taught Nutrition Education courses to dietetics students, and spent a lot of time looking at the literature on how we craft messages to convince people to change their behavior.

But the answers remain elusive for public health experts, and are much more so for vegan advocates—given the type of lifestyle and belief change we are seeking. We don’t have any real data on what works. So I continue with my informal surveying, asking individuals what they were reading or looking at or to whom they were talking at the moment that they began thinking about veganism.

The names that come up most often are, not surprisingly, PETA and Vegan Outreach (or an individual working on behalf of those organizations). Without a doubt, the books most commonly mentioned are Diet for a New America by John Robbins and Animal Liberation by Peter Singer—especially among those who have been vegan for 20 years or so. (Despite the fact that I have many criticisms of DFANA, I have to admit that it is the book that caused me to go vegan.) People will also often say that a friend got them to look at a video from an animal rights group, and this had a big impact on them. And very recently, I’ve been promoting the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer to friends and colleagues and have been pretty gratified by the feedback. None of that surprises me since these groups and books have powerful messages. But other responses have been unexpected.

I’ve recently been chatting with a new online friend who is on the fast track to veganism. She started out being inspired by the Meatless Monday campaign to decrease her meat intake for health reasons. Here is what she wrote to me a couple of weeks ago:

“From Meatless Mondays to veganism! …What started out as an investigation into diet for health reasons has morphed into something completely different. I feel like my sensitivity sensors have been awakened from a long sleep with regards to animals. I tried to watch Meet Your Meat last night and only made it 5 minutes in before I had to stop. I am really starting to question the way human beings not only do what we want with animals because we can, but our right to use them at all for anything.”


I’ve always been critical of promoting a reduction of animal foods for health reasons, but I’m being forced to re-evaluate my position a little bit. This is not the first time that someone has told me that they started out reducing meat for health reasons and ended up as an ethical vegan. It shouldn’t really be a surprise I guess. Clearly, people are more likely to feel ready to hear an ethical vegan message when they are comfortable with vegan food or even with eating less animal food in general.

Anyone who is involved in public education knows that different types of messages reach different groups of people. In her excellent book Strategic Action for Animals (a must-read for all serious activists), psychologist Dr. Melanie Joy gives sound advice about crafting messages. But she also admits that the animal liberation movement doesn’t have the answers to some important questions about the use of different types of materials for different groups. She points to the important work being done in this area by the Humane Research Council and suggests that market research must be a priority for this movement.


Until we have that research, we have to be humble enough to know that we’re all stumbling around to some extent. We shouldn’t be dismissive of any (non-offensive) campaign or message or book just because we don’t like the way the message is presented. Nobody knows the one and only true way to promote veganism and animal liberation. And we are likely to end up being surprised by some of the things that work.

A Thanksgiving Prayer for the Animals

It's Thanksgiving Eve and I'm cooking up a storm. There will be nine of us tomorrow around the table plus another couple coming for dessert. I'm also answering email and reading the numerous holiday messages that are rolling in to the various email lists to which I subscribe. It's depressing.

Most of the emails are about plans for tomorrow's dinner, about who is cooking the turkey and how. Not a hint of any twinge of misgiving about feasting on an animal who lived a miserable life and died a horrible death for the family holiday. All are cheerfully ignorant of what it means to kill these animals--and I suspect in many cases, the "not knowing" is by choice. It makes me feel just a little hopeless.

Even though this is the holiday of thanks, I always feel inclined to make grace a prayer of supplication--for blessings for the animals and for the hearts of their abusers to be touched with mercy. This prayer was written by English novelist John Galsworthy (he wrote The Forsyte Saga). I found it in the book Love the Animals: Meditations and Prayers, edited by the Reverend Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan. I've changed it just a tiny bit to make it a little more ecumenical. We read it at Thanksgiving last year and I think we'll read it again tomorrow.

To all the humble beasts there be,
To all the birds on land and sea,
Great Spirit sweet protection give,
That free and happy they may live.

And to our hearts the rapture bring
Of love for every living thing;
Make of us all one kin, and bless
Our ways with Your own gentleness.

My Letter to the Editor About Thanksgiving and Turkeys

I live in a wonderful small town where it is not too difficult to get a letter published in the weekly newspaper. I wrote the letter below about going vegetarian for Thanksgiving and it was published yesterday in the Port Townsend Leader. They didn’t put it in their online edition so I can’t link to it. But that’s okay because I want to publish it here exactly the way I wrote it. The editors made some changes that I didn’t like. In the second sentence, they replaced the words “he or she” (referring to a turkey) with “it.”And further down, when I talked about "baby calves who," they changed it to "baby calves that."


This is the kind of language that helps people "forget" that the food on their plate was once an animal, a sentient and aware creature. It's subtle, of course, but the way we talk about animals reflects how we think about them. I know that I slip up on this frequently so I'm not so quick to blame others who refer to an animal as "it." But the editors didn't slip up; they made a point of changing my words to animals-as-things language. I think the changes did a disservice to the spirit of my letter. But I’m glad the letter was published and am going to hope that maybe it reached the ears of two or three people who are ready to think about what it means to eat foods that come from animals .



November 18, 2009


To the Editor


With our community’s emphasis on buying locally-produced items, it’s easy to forget that there are other ethical issues regarding holiday purchases. If there will be a turkey on your table this Thanksgiving, you can be almost certain that he or she suffered a miserable life and death for your brief pleasure. There are no laws for the humane treatment of turkeys on farms or in the slaughterhouse. (Neither chickens nor turkeys are included in the Humane Slaughter Act.)


In the wild, turkeys have complex language—more than 20 different vocalizations—and can recognize one another’s voices. Rescued farm turkeys show affection toward humans, and like cats, they purr when content. But on modern “farms’—including organic farms—turkeys live their entire lives in windowless sheds with about 1 square foot of space per bird. While wild turkeys can fly, farmed turkeys cannot. In fact, because they are bred for excessive growth, many cannot walk. En route to slaughter, 10 to 15 percent of turkeys die from suffocation (an accepted industry standard.) Many others arrive in extreme pain with broken bones.


Because of the fast pace of slaughterhouses, turkeys and chickens are often insufficiently stunned before slaughter. Government estimates are that about 4 million birds per year are still conscious when dropped into the scalding tanks. Conditions for organically-produced animal foods are no better. (The Vermont slaughterhouse that was closed this month after employees were filmed kicking and elecro-shocking 2-day old calves—who were too weak to stand—was one that slaughtered animals from local organic dairy farms.)


Most Americans say that they care about animals, that they would never hurt or abuse an animal. The hard truth is that when you eat meat, eggs and dairy, you participate in animal abuse.


Thanksgiving—an expression of gratitude and a celebration of family and abundance—is the ideal time to go vegetarian. In his book “Eating Animals,” Jonathan Safran Foer says this about a vegetarian Thanksgiving: “There is no turkey. Is the holiday undermined? Or would Thanksgiving be enhanced? Would the choice not to eat turkey be a more active way of celebrating how thankful we feel? Try to imagine the conversation that would take place. This is why our family celebrates this way. Would such a conversation feel disappointing or inspiring?”


Vegetarians know the answer. It feels good when our choices reflect our true values about compassion for animals.


Ginny Messina
Port Townsend

Vegan Thanksgiving is Easy, Traditional and Delicious

This year, I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper about why we don't have turkey in my home on Thanksgiving. I hope that I was able to capture some of the joy that comes with embracing compassion on this day of all days--one that celebrates family, friendship, abundance and gratitude. (Please take a look at my article on the myth of free-range turkeys, too.)

I look forward to my cruelty-free Thanksgiving dinner every year. I’m a traditionalist, and so my Thanksgiving menu doesn’t change a lot from year to year. There is an entrée surrounded by all the “trimmings,” ie, the dishes that were always a part of my family’s Thanksgiving meals when I was a kid. They are tweaked ever-so-slightly to make them vegan.

But there is occasionally something new on the menu—some great item that I saw on the internet and can’t resist trying. This year it is going to be coleslaw with beer dressing.

Here is what will be on the menu for Thanksgiving, 2009.

Stuffed Mushrooms. I’m using my mom’s recipe for this. She always baked the mushrooms in cream, and I’ve skipped that part in the past. But this year, I have MimicCreme, a wonderful new product made from nuts and with a luscious creamy feel and taste. You can see the recipe here in this article I wrote for Suite 101.

Veggie Strips with Onions: I use the Vegetarian Stir-fry Strips from White Wave, which are seasoned seitan. But any faux meat product you like would be fine. I slice them and sauté with sweet onions, and then pile them on a platter next to the stuffed mushrooms.

Stuffing: My favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal! I use a packaged stuffing mix and make it with vegan margarine and veggie broth. I usually sauté onions, chopped celery, walnuts, and dried fruit bits and mix those into the stuffing before baking.

Mashed potatoes: This is the only time of the year I make mashed potatoes so it feels like a major treat. I mash them with vegan margarine and plain soymilk. I may add a little bit of the MimicCreme this year.

Gravy: I always fret over this a little bit, but I think my gravy problems are finally over. My friend Judith, the Savvy Vegetarian, posted a recipe for gravy made with chickpea flour. I found the flour made by Bob’s Red Mill (they call it garbanzo flour) in my grocery store. I like Judith’s recipe a lot, but am going to keep mine sort of basic. I’ll use a mixture of olive oil and vegan margarine, the chickpea flour and some veggie broth. I’ve already tested this and it is wonderful!

Sweet potatoes: In the past, we’ve had sweet potato salad with toasted pecans and I may do that again this year. Or I may go with tradition and just bake and mash the sweet potatoes. I don’t really need to bother with vegan marshmallows because I know most of my guests don’t care. But just for fun, I think I’m going to order some coconut toasted marshmallows from Vegan Essentials and make one little casserole dish of sweet potatoes topped with those.

Green Bean Casserole: We didn't have this when I was growing up, but I love it—all-American comfort food at its best! And even if I weren’t vegan, I don’t think I’d want to use that gloppy condensed cream of mushroom soup. Here is a vegan recipe for this classic dish:

8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
3 Tbsp vegan margarine
2 Tbsp white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup plain soymilk
2 packages frozen French cut green beans
¼ tsp ground black pepper
2 2/3 cups French fried onions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the margarine and sauté the mushrooms until just tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the flour and salt and cook over low heat for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Slowly add the milk and cook until thick. Add a little more milk if the sauce seems too thick.

In a large casserole, combine the mushroom sauce, green beans, pepper, and half the onions. Bake uncovered for 25 minutes. Top with the remaining fried onions and bake for another five minutes.

Cranberries: I was raised on canned jellied cranberries and had no idea until I went to college that there were other options. I’ve had all kinds of wonderful homemade cranberry recipes, but the basic one is still my favorite. And it is certainly easy. In a pot, combine 12 ounces of cranberries, 1 cup of vegan sugar and 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the cranberries burst—about 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.

Coleslaw: Not a tradition for me, but it is for many others. I think it’s a nice fit to any Thanksgiving feast and I’m dying to try this recipe for coleslaw with beer dressing. 

Gingered Turnips: My friend Kate is making these, and the recipe is included in my 2007 Thanksgiving menu.

Wild Rice with Mushrooms: Kate is from Minnesota so wild rice is a tradition in her family. I don't think there is an official recipe; it's just cooked wild rice sautéed with onions and mushrooms.

Pillsbury Crescent Rolls: Yes, they’re awful, but they’re traditional and they are vegan!

Dessert: Apple pie and wonderful pumpkin cheesecake, both made by my friend Phyllis who is a superb vegan baker. The recipe for the cheesecake is at the end of the post on my 2007 Thanksgiving menu.


For drinks, we’ll have wine, beer and sparkling cider.

I can't imagine how anyone could even think of having a turkey, can you?

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer: Some of My Favorite Reviews

I posted my review of Eating Animals on the examiner site yesterday. I’m so grateful for what I consider to be a brilliant and important book. (And let me just say, as a complete aside, that it also has what is one of my all-time favorite covers!)

Jonathan Safran Foer has a unique talent for educating people about the horrors of factory farming through an engaging storytelling approach. No one can deny the impact that this book is having on readers. It’s likely to reach many more mainstream consumers than any other book so far on this subject, with the exception of the much more tepid Omnivore’s Dilemma.


I’ve been reading lots of reviews and discussion about the book and have compiled a few favorites. Eating Animals is not a perfect book by any means. And there are definitely some things that Foer doesn’t “get.” And yet, if every person in the country read this book, I think it would begin to change attitudes not just toward factory farming, but toward animals as well. And we need as many vehicles for changing attitudes as we can get.

This is my review of Eating Animals on examiner.com.


And here are some other reviews that I like a lot.


Erika Ritter, reviewing the book for The Globe and Mail says “Jonathan Foer's book does more to afflict the comfortable than it does to hamper the struggle to bring non-humans within the purview of ethical consideration. Ultimately, the readership of The New Yorker, The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, along with the fans of Michael Pollan and humane slaughterer Temple Grandin, are going to have to reckon with the vast unease generated by Eating Animals.”



In the Huffington Post, Rabbi David Wolpe says “I hope this book falls with an explosive charge on the somnolent consciences of meat-eating Americans. We know something of the agony, waste, disease and unhealthiness behind the gleaming counters. Perhaps Eating Animals will persuade us to stop pretending to be asleep.”


On vegan.com, Erik Marcus wrote: Not only is Foer’s writing first-rate, the research that went into this book was a massive undertaking. I write on this subject daily, and still learned things on every page.


Finally, I liked this review by Geoff Nicholson in the San Francisco Chronicle. He says that Eating Animals is "ultimately a work of moral philosophy. Having made us long for humane farming methods, he then concludes that ethically there's no such thing."

Buying Cookbooks is Good Vegan Activism

I tweeted and facebook-status-updated this yesterday but I think it deserves a quick blog post, too.


I noticed that the best selling cookbook in America this week is The Pioneer Woman Cooks. In case you haven’t heard of her, The Pioneer Woman has a wildly popular blog sub-titled “Plowing Through Life in the Country…One Calf Nut at a Time.” She’s a city girl who met a rancher in a bar, married him and moved to Montana. It’s hard to figure out which blog posts are more annoying—those waxing poetic about the joys of throwing calves to the ground to brand and castrate them, or the adolescent ramblings about her husband, whom she calls “The Marlboro Man.”

Either way, she is not exactly a friend to animals. Apparently Ms. Pioneer was a vegetarian when she first met her husband-to-be. Asked recently why that was, she responded “I have no idea. I think it’s because I wanted to say I was a vegetarian.” It’s depressing that she is so popular.

But on a happier note, the beautiful new cookbook by vegan chef Tal Ronnen, The Conscious Cook, trails just a few steps behind Pioneer Woman at number 3 on the list. How great would it be to see that book become the best selling cookbook in America? How great would it be to see Ms. Pioneer knocked out of that number 1 spot?

I need another vegan cookbook like I need a meat thermometer, but I immediately ordered a copy of The Conscious Cook. It felt like a little tiny bit of great activism to do so. And of course, it was also a treat. Since amazon.com loves me dearly (I wonder why?), the book arrived in less than 24 hours. It’s gorgeous. It has photos, recipes from guest chefs, and wonderful menu ideas. It’s about divine cuisine that happens to also be ethical.

I’m buying this book for all the cooks on my Christmas list, vegan or not. I want them to have it but, more importantly, I want the number one cookbook on the New York Times bestseller list to be authored by someone who understands that compassion is a vital component of true “good cooking.” You should buy it, too.