Today marks the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade - and it’s also the fourth annual Blog for Choice Day!

This is the first year I’m participating in the blog swarm over here; in years past, I reasoned that reproductive rights were far enough removed from animal advocacy that a pro-choice post on an animal rights blog just wouldn’t make sense. The more I learn about intersecting oppressions, the more I realize how wrong, wrong, wrong I was.

There are many reasons why animal advocates should support a woman’s right to control her own reproductive system*: the environmental consequences of overpopulation and increased resource consumption; empowering women activists, who are overrepresented in the animal advocacy movement; a respect for bodily autonomy; and, perhaps most importantly, the similarities between speciesism and misogyny as expressed through the control of animals’ and women’s reproductive systems.

Much as a the reproductive systems of non-human animals are controlled, manipulated and exploited, anti-choicers seek to do the same to women.

First, let’s consider the ways in which humans manipulate animal reproduction in order to make a buck and satisfy a want (as opposed to a need):

Dairy cows are kept perpetually pregnant, so that they continue to produce milk. Typically, they produce up to 100 pounds of milk a day, or ten times as much as they might under natural conditions. The continued pregnancies and lactation is stressful on the cows’ bodies; common maladies include mastitis, ketosis, laminitis and “Milk Fever” (caused by a calcium deficiency). Once their calves are born, the sons are slaughtered to make beef or veal, while the daughters face the same fate as their mothers. Dairy cows usually live only 3 to 4 years before they, too, become beef; their natural life span is 25 years.

Egg-laying hens are packed into tiny cages, debeaked and forced to lay 250+ eggs per year. Since this is more than they would produce in the wild, their bodies are severely taxed; they may develop osteoporosis, fatty liver syndrome and cage layer fatigue. In order to eke a few extra eggs out of their hens, farmers initiate forced molts - they starve the entire flock simultaneously. Once the birds can no longer produce eggs - when they’re “spent” - they’re made into low-grade “meat” or “recycled” into animal feed. As with the dairy industry, male chicks are of no use to egg factories; consequently, farmers literally dispose of them: they’re stuffed into garbage bags to suffocate, thrown live into wood chippers, and otherwise treated like garbage.

Pigs, who are destined to become pork, don’t fare much better. Breeding sows are continually pregnant, birthing up to 20 piglets per year. During pregnancy, sows are confined to gestation crates; for birth, they’re transferred to farrowing crates. Piglets are taken from their mothers at 2 to 3 weeks of age. They are fattened up for “meat,” while heir mothers are forcibly impregnated again and again.

These are only three examples, taken from the modern animal agriculture industry. Add to this list dogs, cats, rats, ducks - basically any species of animal that humans “use” for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, etc. is exploited in a similar manner.

Likewise, just as the megatheocorporatocracy exerts control over non-human animals’ sex organs, so too does it try to control women’s sexuality and reproduction. Exerting control over a woman’s reproductive cycle is just the first step in controlling her as a person.

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Spoiler alert! - Namely, for Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005). Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

OK, so perhaps this post is six days late, but I’ve been busy enjoying the last throes of warm, sunny weather here in the Midwest. Plus, there was this minor matter called the presidential elections on Tuesday…maybe you’ve heard of it?

As I mentioned previously, Shane & I have a longstanding (three years now?…maybe four?) Halloween tradition: namely, we spend the day watching horror movies and scarfing junk food. This H-day was no exception, although we didn’t get though as many scary movies as we usually do; we watched three flicks, compared to the normal five or six. Probably because the first film, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, ran three and a half hours! Also on the roster were Identity and Untraceable.

Aside from some dreadful “primitive tribal heathen” stereotyping early on, King Kong is an incredible film. There’s definitely a strong (albeit most likely unintentional) animal welfare message underlying Kong’s story, and it’s handled beautifully by director Peter Jackson and actor Naomi Watts. Jackson’s Kong is the last of his (her?) kind, living a life of solitude and loneliness on Skull Island - that is, until Carl Denham (Jack Black) and crew arrive in order to film a movie. Leading lady Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is kidnapped from her ship by the island’s natives and sacrificed to Kong (cue awful stereotypes), presumably to keep the “beast” happy, content, and out of their camp. Kong, instead of devouring Darrow, initially keeps her as a sort of “pet.” (Kong is taken with her comedic vaudeville stylings, it seems.) Darrow soon escapes, but finds herself lost on a prehistoric island filled with rampaging dinosaurs and giant bugs. Kong, distraught at his only companion’s disappearance, tracks Darrow down, just in time to save her from two raptor-like dinos. Once Darrow is safe, Kong skulks off, injured both physically (from the battle) and emotionally (at Darrow’s desertion). Whether from fear or compassion (or, most likely, a combination of both), Darrow rejoins Kong.

Meanwhile, in the face of stampeding brontos and an angry Kong, Denham’s crew has abandoned their search for Darrow. Instead, they leave Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) to continue the search for Darrow (with whom he’s fallen in love), while the crew heads back to the ship in order to set a trap (unbeknown to Driscoll) for Kong, who’s sure to pursue the pair. Driscoll manages to find Kong’s den, which is littered with the bones of Kong’s long-dead relatives. Darrow is asleep in Kong’s palm; the two, who have formed a reciprocal, interspecies bond, watched the sun set and then nodded off together. Driscoll wakes Darrow, and the two attempt to sneak away without rousing Kong. Kong awakes in time to see the two creeping away together, and in the ensuing scuffle, a hoard of bats stir from their cliffside perch and attack the trio. Driscoll and Darrow manage to hitch a ride on one of the bats’ backs, and Kong runs after them in frenzied pursuit.

Naturally, this is where the story becomes a tearjerker. Kong is tranquilized, captured and caged during his attempt to retake a regretful Darrow. Back in NYC, Kong becomes part of a grotesque monster display, wherein Darrow’s sacrifice to the beast is reenacted for the entertainment of “horrified” audience. Darrow, who during her time with Kong had come to recognize his humanity, intelligence and sentience, wants nothing to do with the circus act, so director/showman Denham hires a Darrow lookalike to play the part. Kong begins the show partially sedated; as he comes to, he initially starts at the blond actress: I know her! Kong reaches out to Ann - only to become enraged when he realizes that it’s an impostor. Now furious, he rips free of his shackles and storms New York in search of his Ann. On the streets, he scoops up any and every thin blond he can find, only to toss the women aside when he realizes they aren’t the ones he wants.

Performing in a small, low-budget vaudeville hall, Darrow hears the commotion and runs towards Kong while throngs of flee in the other direction. Once Kong is reunited with his Jane Goodall, the two enjoy a few brief moments of reconnection. Kong, who hails from a tropical island, has never before seen ice or snow, and he delights in skidded across a pond in Central Park with Darrow perched safely in his hand. This playful scene is interrupted by a hail of gunfire; Kong, though he hasn’t intentionally harmed anyone (and is in fact a captive slave in the city, there against his will), must be destroyed! You probably know the rest: Kong is pursued by the police and military to the top of the Empire State Building, from which he is eventually gunned down.

Kong dies for our stupidity, greed, selfishness and speciesism.

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We spent the day outside, playing with the chainsaw, so we wanted a quick, easy meal idea. Spaghetti squash with tomatoes and herbs - does it get any simpler than this? Seriously, the hardest part of this dish was slicing the spaghetti squash in half. After five minutes, I was starting to think I’d need the jaws of life to crack the sucker open!

Spaghetti Squash with Tomatoes and Herbs

Ingredients

1 spaghetti squash
2 tablespoons minced garlic (or two cloves minced garlic)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
1 can mushrooms (optional)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil (we used dried basil)
1/8 teaspoon dried oregano
Vegan Parmesan cheese (optional)

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Tonight, I wanted to make a drink with all the watermelon chunks I sliced up the other day. I found a recipe for Watermelon Juice from Recipe Zaar and gave it a whirl, with some minor changes. I also changed the name, since “Watermelon Juice” isn’t especially descriptive!

Spicy Watermelon Smoothie

Ingredients

4 cups chopped watermelon, with or without seeds
2 cups ice, crushed or cubed
4 teaspoons agave nectar (you can also substitute sugar if you don’t have any agave nectar on hand)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon black pepper, to taste
fresh mint (optional garnish)

This recipe requires a blender.

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Shane picked up some Kalamata olives from Wild Oats’ salad bar yesterday, so I asked him (demanded is more like it!) to make me some olive bread this afternoon. Which was really a double bonus - yummy olive bread for me, plus a day’s rest from veganmofo recipes!

Shane adapted the “Classic French Bread” recipe in our Sunbeam Breadmaker manual to create this Kalamata Olive loaf. The original recipe lists a bunch of machine-specific steps, which I’ll skip; after all, if you already have a bread machine, chances are you know how to use it! And if you don’t have one, check out your local Goodwill or a family member’s attic - it’s a kitchen gadget no carb-loading vegan should be without.

Shane’s Kalamata Olive Bread

Ingredients

1 cup + 2 tablespoons water (75-85 degrees)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 1/4 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast
3/4 cup chopped Kalamata olives

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Since the Mr. and I moved into a new place with an extra-large garden last year, we decided to step up our gardening game. This past spring, we added a few new veggies to our repertoire, including some spaghetti squash we picked up on whim. About halfway through the summer, the squash was growing like a superweed, and before we knew it, we had a workbench piled high with spaghetti squash. Yet, being an incredibly lazy and easily intimidated vegan, I continued to ignore the growing mound of Italian squash, instead cooking the more-familiar green and yellow zucchini. Until this weekend.

Feeling confident from our first successful attempt at refinishing (polishing? waxing? sealing? I’m not quite sure what you’d call it.) our concrete floors, I decided to try another first, and cook up an Italian squash for dinner Friday night.

I was a bit flummoxed when I first carved the squash open; silly me, I thought the flesh of the squash should actually have a thin, spaghetti-like shape, um, naturally. Not so! The inside of a spaghetti squash kinda resembles a pumpkin: some fleshy goodness just below the rind, with some seeds and a weird stringy mess in the middle.

Luckily, cooking spaghetti squash is super-easy:

* You can bake it either whole or halved.

* If whole, place it in a roasting pan and pop it in the oven at 375 degrees for an hour. After it’s cooled, slice it in half, length-wise, and scoop out the stringy/seedy innards. Then, scrape the prongs of a fork through the flesh; this will cause it to fall away from the rind, in a stringy, pasta-like formation. Once the rind is scraped clean of the pasghetti/flesh, you’re done! Serve warm: with a little margarine and salt/pepper, with pasta sauce, or with a veggie combo. Google “spaghetti squash recipes” for some ideas.

* Alternately, you can slice the squash in half before cooking, in which case you can scrape out the innards while the squash is room temp. Way easier, right? (Plus, if the squash is home-grown, this will also tell you whether any little buggers wormed their way into your dinner *before* you prepare it!) Then place the squash halves in a cooking pan, rind-side up, and cook at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. When it’s done, scrape the squash flesh, length-wise, with your fork, and it will fall away in the aforementioned spaghetti-like formation.

You may also want to save and roast the seeds, which allegedly taste like (and can be prepared similarly to) pumpkin seeds. My squash only yielded about 30 seeds, not enough to prepare at once, but I’m going to keep saving them up until I have a cookie sheet’s worth. It’s kind of a hassle, separating the seeds from the stringy pulpy mess, but it’s worth a try - especially since pumpkin seeds sell at $4 to $5 a pound!

So, now I feel awfully silly, dancing around all that Italian squash for months, because I was too lazy to try out a new veggie.

Pasghetti food porn after the jump:

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Winter’s coming, winter’s coming. There’s a chill in the air, a snap in the wind, a bite in the morning dew-turned-frost. Can’t you feel it? Winter’s coming!

For all of Mother Nature’s blustering, though, the surest sign that FSMas is round the corner comes not from the cold weather, but from the grocer’s cold storage section:

Silk Nog! And Pumpkin Spice! Happy holidays, my long lost friends! My, how I’ve missed you.

Shane and I did some Halloween shopping on Saturday, and on a whim, I peeked in the big box store’s “dairy” section. (We were just round the corner, picking up some booze and chips. *shrug*) Lo and behold, one lone row of Silk Soy Nog! Even though yesterday was a wonderfully warm fall day, I knew then that winter wouldn’t be far behind.

Tonight we’re supposed to get our first frost.

Tomorrow I’m sending Shane to Wild Oats to pick up some Pumpkin Spice.

Maybe later this week I’ll make some Spicy Three Bean Soup.

Yup, it’s that time of the year.

So, tell me veg*ns: you’re stuck on an Arctic island, and you can only have one case of Silk. Which do you choose: Soy Nog or Pumpkin Spice?

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Tagged: veganmofo vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism blog swarm october food carnival lost silk silk nog soy nog pumpkin spice soy milk winter fsmas fall flickr photos

Shane and I are finishing our concrete floors today (and given that we’ve owned the house for just over a year, it’s our first time maintaining the concrete, so we’re about as fast as molasses, natch), so no vegan mofo recipe post today. I do, however, believe I have just enough time to fill out this vegan survey from Vegan Soapbox while I wait for the floor finish to dry.

1. What was the most recent tea you drank?

Fennel seed. I’m usually a green tea gal, but fennel’s supposed to help with IBS. TMI!

2. What vegan forums do you post/lurk on? If so, what is your username? Spill!

I’m more of a lurker, though I tend to skulk around blogs moreso than forums. I usually go be the oh-so-creative “kelly g.,” with a link to either easyVegan.info or Smite Me!

3. You have to have tofu for dinner, and it has be an Italian dish. What comes to mind first?

Lasagna, but using the tofu like noodles. The dogs love it. (Me, not so much - I’m not big on tofu. *ducks*)

4. How many vegan blogs do you read on an average day?

I have about 100 blogs in my reader, but I tend to rotate through individuals blogs, as well as subject matter (animal rights/welfare, food blogs, environmentalism, feminism, current events/politics, GLBT issues, POC bloggers, etc.). In the AR sphere, currently I check Invisible Voices, Animal Person, Elaine Vigneault, Vegan Soapbox, That Vegan Girl, Superweed, The Veg Blog, PPK, Vegans of Color, and Green is the New Red most often.

5. Besides your own, what is the most recent one you’ve read?

Vegan Soapbox, obviously - that’s where I got this veganmofo post idea, duh ;)

6. If you could hang out with a vegan blogger that you haven’t met, who would it be, and what would you do?

I’m a recluse. I don’t usually socialize with anyone who doesn’t walk on four legs.

Not to suck up to our carnival host, but Isa seems pretty kickass. Of course I’d beg and/or pay her to help me bake some vegan cupcakes, and then we’d take over the world. Muahahahaha!

7. If you had to base your dinners for a week around one of the holy trilogy – tofu, seitan or tempeh, which would it be?

Tofu, because tofu and I are experienced.

8. If you had to use one in a fight, which would it be?

Tempeh, because I could probably poke someone’s eye out with a tempeh strip, dontchathink?

9. Name 3 meals you’d realistically make with that tough protein of choice!

Oh jeez, I dunno. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked with tempeh. So…all three recipes would probably be dog food in the end. My dogs aren’t fussy; one of many reasons I love the little buggers.

10. What’s a recipe in vegan blogland that you’ve been eyeing?

More than I can count, but vegandad’s Creamy Mac and Cheeze dish springs to mind.

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Though there are some yummy varieties of tofu or soy jerky available (Turtle Island’s Tofurky Jurky is my personal favorite), they tend to be rather expensive - and for good reason! When you’re talking dried goods, whether it’s fruit leather or soy jerky, it takes a good amount of raw ingredients to make a dried product.

Consider, for example, these rolls of fruit leather I made:

That’s one whole pot of strawberry applesauce, folks!

So there are incredible savings to be had for those veg*ns who are willing to make their own tofu jerky. Plus, the flavors are only limited by your imagination!

The basic process is pretty straightforward:

1. Start out by pressing your tofu (like a vegan mofo, yo!);

2. Then cut it up as desired: you can cube it, slice it into long strips, or something in between. (In the photo below, you can see that I went with stubby strips for today’s recipe.)

3. Next, make your marinade. There are a number of recipes out there - Google, for example, “Tofu Marinade recipe” or “Tofu Jerky recipe” to get started. Some involve liquids, while other marinade ingredients are spice-based.

4. If you really want the tofu to soak up the flavor, you can combine the sliced tofu with the marinade in a Tupperware dish and let it marinate in the fridge overnight. This step is strictly optional, of course.

5. Combine (or transplant) the tofu and marinade into a baking dish and pop it in the oven. The temp will depend on how much tofu you’re cooking; how much of a hurry you’re in; and how dry you want your jerky. The baking temp/time can range from 100 to 300 degrees and 3-10 hours. If you want to play it safe, cook slow and low. It’s hard to burn tofu at 100 degrees! Always cook uncovered; if you want your jerky bone-dry, cook with the oven door slightly open, at least near the end of the cooking cycle.

And, that’s about it. As I type, my tofu jerky is cooking at 300 degrees, and it’s been in there for about 4 hours. I’ve steadily been upping the temp, though - I want this dish done before bedtime! I’m not completely drying the tofu out, though, as this dish is for the dogs. Literally - my babes are spoiled. But if you’re looking to store your jerky for an extended period of time (not something I really recommend, since tofu is available year-round and thus not really worth preserving like, say, home-grown produce), make sure you dry it completely. This means cooking it on low - maybe 100, 125 degrees - all day, and then some. Maybe even with the oven door ajar.

I’ve included some marinade recipes after the jump. These are meant for one brick/pound of tofu, so if you’re baking more, adjust accordingly.

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Though the “City of Fountains” may be Kansas City’s official nickname, Kansas Citians are also fond of boasting that they live in the “Steak Capital” of the world. Indeed, Kansas City’s Wiki entry claims that the city is home to over 90 BBQ joints - and that’s just on the Missouri side (!).

So it was with much trepidation that the Mr. and I relocated from Rochester, NY to Kansas City in 2002. While it’s not exactly NYC, Rochester is a relatively liberal area, with some decent options for veg*ns: Wegmans, a popular grocer, has a large natural foods department (and, ugh, cruel egg farming practices); there’s also Lori’s Natural Foods, located by the MCC Henrietta campus; the Natural Oasis Cafe, which is all-veg, all-the-time; Organic Alley Cafe, which is bills itself as both green and veg-friendly; Dogtown Hots, which offers a multitude of vegan options; as well as a whole host of restaurants and markets that hawk veg*n wares. “Whatever will we eat!?” we fretted up till moving day.

Happily, Kansas City is much more veg-friendly than you’d think. Instead of a natural foods department, Kansas City boasts two natural foods stores - Whole Foods and Wild Oats (which have since merged, thus reducing the total number of stores in the area). There’s also a thriving farmer’s market community, as well as more than a few vegetarian cafes and restaurants.

Since Shane and I live in the sticks, we haven’t yet had a chance to sample all the local veg*n businesses. Hopefully this roundup will give us a much-needed kick in our lazy veg*n asses, eh?

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