Heather Mills McCartney: Defender of Piggies

One of my favorite things to do is listen to Richard Green on Air America Radio on Monday nights. Richard is a big animal lover, a sweet and kind, progressive soul. A few weeks ago one of his guests was Heather Mills McCartney, who of course has had a lot of bad publicity for marrying and divorcing Paul McCartney, whom I really love and respect. Too often when celebrities divorce or split, we humans get a sports team mentality and take a side, just like at a baseball game. How many times have you heard, "I'm on Jen's side" or "I'm on Angelina's side"? It just gets silly. It reminds me also, of how we as humans have to label and categorize each other, for example into "cat people" and "dog people". DUH! I like cats and dogs BOTH, and I don't think anyone should feel squeezed into liking one animal or one person over another. There's enough love to go around for all people and creatures.

There's my Sunday sermon. Now, back to Heather Mills McCartney.

This woman is truly a voice for many: amputees, those who live near landmines and who would come in contact with them and also...animals...all animals, not just the ones more likely to be considered "pets". I was impressed with Heather's story of becoming vegan. She was in the hospital at the time, trying to heal from the horrible accident which cost her part of a leg. The infection from her leg injury kept getting worse and she was afraid she would have to lose even more of it, but a friend convinced her to go on a vegan diet and it proved to be very detoxifying, and the infection healed.

I looked up Heather's website today, and decided to put part of it here for you. If you want to go to it, the address is http://www.heathermills.org/. If you type dot com, you will get the site of a brunette singer named Heather Mills. :)

"Heather's personal experience as an amputee and the positive manner in which she dealt with her recovery gives Heather a unique insight and affinity with those who themselves have lived through a tragic experience. Heather voluntarily counsels people from around the world who have lost limbs in accidents, through illness, natural disasters and terrorist atrocities. Her personal advice, determination and commitment help them and their families realise that they can continue to lead rich and fulfilling lives despite their injuries. It was in this spirit that Heather recently appeared on the Hit US Television show Dancing with the Stars proving this point in spectacular cart wheeling style.

Heather donated all of her proceeds from the show to Viva!, (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) to which Heather is a committed Patron and activist.

Heather now lives purely on a plant based food diet as she is painfully aware of the brutal treatment of factory farmed animals in the UK and around the world.

Her interest in the benefits of holistic nutrition was first stimulated in 1994 when a strictly organic plant based raw diet healed a persistent infection in her leg where prescribed medicine had failed.

Fighting for the humane treatment of animals is now at the forefront of Heather’s campaigning. She has received praise by both Viva! and Peta for her hands on approach helping to fight the animal cause.

Heather recently joined a covert investigation at a pig breeding unit with Viva! to film the cruelty that breeding sows have to endure, and it generated massive publicity to raise awareness of the terrible treatment of these poor creatures."

Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, said "If slaughterhouses had glass walls we'd all be vegetarians."

I can't help noticing the sharp contrast between all of this and Julia Child's way of thinking. When asked the secret of her longevity, Julia replied "red meat and gin". There's no way she could have really known the secret to her longevity, since she wasn't a doctor or a scientist, of course. My bet is that the secret to her longevity was the fact that she was happy and that she had all the money she needed. Happiness tends to extend life, as long as one can avoid war zones and moving cars.

Julia was from the old school, which still says we need meat in order to live and that meat is the only good source of protein. She probably also believed that animals don't have the same physical feelings of pain that we humans do, or she wouldn't have been able, with a clear conscience, to kill a lobster with a knife, or in a microwave. (Yes, she did.) And if Julie weren't from that "old school" she would have released that lobster from the bag as it stared at her from the back seat of her car. (In the near future, I'll comment on the big lobster story involving Rush Limbaugh, Mary Tyler Moore and Ellen Degeneres.) :)

A while before I became veg, I had a friend in grad school who was, and I told her "I'd like to be vegetarian, but I'd really miss meat." She asked me, "Is it the meat you'd miss, or the way it's prepared?"

A valid question. Most meat is totally bland without seasonings, marinades and sauces...or the great (but dangerous) taste of charcoal. What Julia Child offers us in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is pages and pages of wonderful ways to prepare "meat" and veggies. I will continue to research, use and modify those for our enjoyment.

Have a peaceful Sunday,

Bev

Lunch on a Hot Day in the Air Conditioning

Holed up in my sister's house, kitty sitting and doing school work, I decided to raid the cupboards to see what I could muster for lunch/dinner this afternoon. I found a nice-looking can of Trader Joe's organic vegan chili. I broke down and ate it and it was good. If I had had my druthers I would have soaked beans, pulled out chili powder, tomatoes, salt and pepper and ground up veggie patties or Morning Star Farms Crumbles to make it from scratch, but, alas, I had no time.

The good news is, my school work is out of the way enough that I will be able to work on something from scratch tomorrow.

Here is a great tip for recipes and ready made food for the hungry vegan appetite. Go to amys.com and check out the information on organic eating and look at her great line of prepared foods. I love her frozen vegan entrees and pockets, especially the vegetable pot pie and the veggie pot pie pocket. The 'chicken' is just right and it has just the perfect amount of sage. (When I was a little girl, my grandma's Thanksgiving stuffing was so full of sage you could have smudged two houses with it. I didn't think I'd ever enjoy sage in the future, but a little hint of it can be kissably good.)

Good night and have a happy Sunday...or whatever day it is when you read this.

Peace!

Bev

Looking Ahead...Petticoat Junction!

I just completed the book on the 60's hit sitcom, Petticoat Junction and it should be in print sometime around Christmas of this year. There is not one episode of that cozy classic that didn't make your mouth water in at least one scene. In fact, the pilot episode, Spur Line to Shady Rest, features a scene on the show's favorite character train, The Cannonball. The Bradley family is on their way back to the Shady Rest Hotel, so the proprietor, Kate Bradley (played par excellence by Bea Benaderet) invites all the riders to a home cooked meal at her Shady Rest Hotel. In her tempting voice, that menu included:

"Fried Chicken

Mashed Potatoes with Cream Gravy

Corn on the Cob with Fresh Churned Butter

Hot Biscuits and Jam

Home Made Apple Pie with Ice Cream....

and let's see...what else?" --Kate Bradley

Watch me try to vegan up and thin down that one, folks! HA! I've thought about it ever since I first started the book! Hard to believe the girls would keep those lovely figures with that kind of home cookin'! :)

Keep an eye out for the Shady Rest Menu, comin' up!

Tofu Is the Base...not the Dish, Julie and Julia.

Silken Tofu. It's an absolute staple for vegan dishes, cooked and raw. Every grocery store should carry it and it shouldn't be hard to find. Unfortunately, sometimes it is. It was for me today.

For anyone who hasn't experienced vegan dips, sauces, shakes and smoothies, Mori-Nu Silken Tofu, the soft one, is a great base. The first time I'm sure I had it was at a restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, of all places...back in the mid 80's. The restaurant was called "Everybody's Vegetarian Restaurant" and the place was packed both times I went when I was there. It was called a vegetarian restaurant, but it was actually vegan, but I didn't know the word vegan then.

Everybody's featured main dishes with either tempeh or tofu: barbecued, in Italian and Chinese dishes, Indian specialties aslo if my memory serves me well. There were fried tempeh sticks with cucumber/dill dip. There was a wonderful salad bar with all kinds of dressing, even creamy ones and none of them contained animal products. The menu included several flavors of shakes and smoothies, and I had no clue what the base of these creamy treats was. Then, years later, I learned that it was a very soft, very silky tofu, hence its name. The difference in taste? They were more like some cold, delicious cake batter...with fruit in some cases.

Silken is the brand I plan to use in my vegan hollandaise sauce this weekend, and the stores that I thought would carry it, didn't: Trader Joe's and The Market (Von's gourmet mini-store). I will stop by a couple of other stores tomorrow to see what I can find. It could easily be located in the Asian section of a more upscale grocery store, but I'll have to check it out and let you know!

If you remember anything from this missive tonight, or tomorrow, keep one thing in mind if you are not vegan, or if you "don't like tofu". Tofu is like flour or a raw egg; it is the base of the dish and it has to be prepared right or it won't taste right and the texture will be slimey. To say you don't like tofu is like saying you don't like flour. It has to be mixed, marinated, seasoned, or blended with other ingredients to give it the flavor you want. By itself, tofu tastes really, really weird, bland and slippery.

Blended in chocolate pudding it is heavenly. Mixed into unbaked cookies, it's divine and I'm looking forward to seeing how wonderful it is as a hollandaise sauce. I will let you know...as soon as I find my Silken Tofu.

Julie and Julia, I wonder if your minds are/would have been open enough to try a wonderful chocolate silk pie made with tofu instead of milk and eggs. ?? Better for the cholesterol as well!

NOTE: Don't use Silken Tofu in main tofu dishes; use any other brand, particularly organic if possible, and for a meat substitute, use the extra firm. If you want it kind of spongy, freeze it and when it thaws, squeeze out the excess moisture and tear it into chuncks. This makes great "Sloppy Steves"! (I'll give that recipe later.)

Have a great Friday night!

Peace and Cruelty Free Living!

Bev

Asparagus with Vegan Hollandaise

This wonderful looking dish is what I'm going to make this weekend. Here is the recipe and of course I'll let you know how it turns out. The photo and the recipe are both from "The Vegetarian Times" online:

Traditional hollandaise sauce is made of egg yolks and butter, which as we all know is just mah-velous for the cholesterol count...not! The ultra soft silken tofu is a great substitute for the eggs, and guess what..no curdling! Read on...

1/2 cup silken tofu
2 Tbs. lemon juice
1 Tbs. nutritional yeast (This stuff is awesome, gives a 'nutty' flavor.)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp. turmeric
2 Tbs. corn oil (I wonder why it has to be corn oil. Flavor?)
2 lb. asparagus
Instructions for Sauce:

Heat tofu on plate in microwave 30 to 45 seconds, or until warmed through. Transfer to food processor, and puree until smooth. Add lemon juice, nutritional yeast, salt, cayenne, and turmeric; pulse until well combined. With food processor running, add oil in steady stream to finish sauce.

I don't have a food processor, so I'll use a blender. :)

Asparagus:

Steam asparagus 2 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Drain, and serve with sauce.

Yield: 6 servings

Next? I found a wonderful recipe for scalloped potatoes with other veggies, in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I'm going to modify the recipe to make it vegan. It's easy to find good melting "cheeses" that are vegan. It's just hard to find vegan cheese that is tasty when it's "raw".

Wow...this was all about food! Imagine that!

Took my mind off the Obamaphobics for a while! :)

Peace and Good Dreams!
Bev

Hollandaise Daze

Leftovers

Raw corn chowder is better the first day. On the second day, especially after a full day of school, auditions and introductions to the parents of all the students, one wants a flavorful bite before going to bed. The leftover soup didn't fit that bill. What I will do when I have the energy is add more perks to it on the second day: salsa, more lime etc. Fresh, the stuff is fantastic!

Looked through Julia's book of the dead tonight, and I have a sudden hankering to try a vegan version of hollandaise sauce. I wonder how one would sub egg yolks and butter! Must be a way that is just as tasty.

I fully believe that Julia, along with the majority of the population, was and is addicted to the animal taste in butter and eggs. Nothing quite takes their place in the minds and on the taste buds of carnivores and gourmet vegetarians. I'm going to see what I can come up with to make a kinder, gentler, but equally tasty hollandaise to go with the asparagus.

Note on the asparagus: Julia recommends peeling it up to the tip. I won't do that, because Julia was probably still thinking of, or aware of, the fact that the vitamins and nutrients are often in the skins of veggies. This is why you won't see me peeling any veggies, only washing and slightly scrubbing them.

I hope you had a wonderful day! The bright news on the school front is that I got apologies from three of four students who wanted to play top dog with me yesterday, and the one who did not apologize, at least acted decent and was cooperative.

Romeo and Juliet are going to be played East L.A. The Shakespearean language will remain in tact, however, and I plan to prepare a lot of snacks for the cast during rehearsal season.

Help me think of something fun and healthy. They get enough sugar, hfcs and preservatives.

Tomorrow we reflect on a Cosby Show episode dealing with healthy food.

Peace and Joy,
Bev

In the Raw!

Tonight was the night. Spurred on my my roommates, I made the raw corn chowder tonight, after grading two sets of papers for some ungrateful seniors...who are about to see what it's like to tangle with the queen bee.

It was the easiest soup anyone could make: no messy fat, no animal renderings, no boiling and waiting to add such and such. It was pure unadulterated (well, not organic, exactly) raw soup with raw ingredients:

2 1/2 cobs of fresh corn which I shucked happily on the back porch over a newspaper provided by Dori, who also helped me choose a knife and showed me how to trim the corn closely. (Thanks, Dori.)

1/2 medium avocado instead of the small whole one called for (Mine wasn't ripe enough yet.)

1 1/4 cups of multi grain milk from Trader Joe's :)

I made half the original amount of the recipe. just to make sure we would all like it. :)

Following the instructions for blending, I added the extra handful of corn that I was told to set aside. I threw in some sea salt to taste, and voila, raw corn chowder of a light whipped cream green filled the blender. (No I don't have pictures of it because I can't find the USB cord to upload pictures from my phone yet.)

Did I like it? Yes! It was so fresh and clean tasting, not all heavy and greasy and salty like a lot of soups. It was sweet with a touch of savory...and then my roommates came and decided it needed more.

So we threw in some basil (about 10 leaves). Good addition.
More salt and some pepper. Good too.
Finally, the juice of most of a freshly squeezed lime. Gave it a zing.

The final product was great. Most people would be like Dori and Dianne, wanting the added zip. I liked it either way.

My recommendation? Try it! The only thing I'm not sure of is the nutritional value, but hey, it's a far cry from artery slammin' bacon! :)

Now I set my sights on asparagus, rosemary potatoes, the mandatory parent meeting tomorrow night and thinning the obnoxious seniors from the herd of willing learners in my journalism class....some who think Edward R. Murrow's exposure of McCarthy tactics have no meaning for them today.



Good night and good luck.