Close on the heels of last week’s Blog Action Day for Climate Change comes today’s International Day of Climate Action. With a focus on the number 350 – “as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere” – the campaign’s goal is laudable:

350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand.

Our mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis—to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet.

Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number–it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.

To tackle climate change we need to move quickly, and we need to act in unison—and 2009 will be an absolutely crucial year. This December, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to craft a new global treaty on cutting emissions. The problem is, the treaty currently on the table doesn’t meet the severity of the climate crisis—it doesn’t pass the 350 test.

In order to unite the public, media, and our political leaders behind the 350 goal, we’re harnessing the power of the internet to coordinate a planetary day of action on October 24, 2009. We hope to have actions at hundreds of iconic places around the world – from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef to your community – and clear message to world leaders: the solutions to climate change must be equitable, they must be grounded in science, and they must meet the scale of the crisis.

If an international grassroots movement holds our leaders accountable to the latest climate science, we can start the global transformation we so desperately need.

Certainly, we need bold, cooperative, global action to combat climate change – and we need it now. Yet, 350’s campaign materials do not so much as mention vegetarianism, let alone veganism – this despite the fact that animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, including methane and nitrous oxide (which have a global warming potential 23 and 296 times greater than C02, respectively). Given the world’s burgeoning human population and rise in “meat” and dairy consumption, we cannot stop and reverse climate change – not to mention, air and water pollution, deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction, world hunger and poverty – without transitioning to a vegan diet. Our exploitation of nonhuman animals echoes in our exploration of the earth, and of one another.

While I’m happy to see that many of the planned actions include vegan meals, this isn’t enough: the International Day of Climate Action must include veganism as its centerpiece. Talk about C02 and Copenhagen, yes, but don’t stop there: speak also of veganism and the politics of what’s on your plate. Anything less is dishonest, regressive, hypocritical. Suicide and murder, both.

I get that “350″ is a cute, catchy, universally-understood campaign gimmick – so why not make next year’s theme 365? As in, GO VEGAN!: not just meatless on Mondays, or meat- and dairy-free on on November 1st, but vegan 365 days of the year. That’s real, meaningful change, and with minimal effort, too. Omnivores, vegetarians and vegans: we all already shop, cook and eat. To do so in a compassionate, (truly) green manner requires little to no extra action, especially in the long run – and living vegan will only become easier as demand and support for veganism increase.

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Freecycle ™ is a network of local groups (primarily hosted on Yahoo, though the renegade/breakaway chapters aren’t necessarily) that allow members to request items they need, and offer items that they need to get rid of. It’s much like Craigslist, with one significant difference: everything offered and requested must be 100% free. Membership is also free, as are all ads. (Full disclosure: I founded and moderate my local group – a fact which doesn’t necessarily bias me in favor of the concept. I kid, I kid.)

Of course, you can’t get any cheaper than free! While food isn’t necessarily the most popular category of freecycled goods – methinks that honor goes to secondhand clothing, or perhaps household items – it is possible to score some yummy vegan finds.

- Expired food is perhaps the most popular edible commodity, and while I recommend caution when buying/trading/eating expired food, many non-perishable foods can be consumed well beyond the expiration date. Even perishable goods, such as soy milk and yogurt, are usually okay for up to a week after the expiration date. Just be sure to do your homework – and when in doubt, throw it out.

- Occasionally you’ll also see members offer up specialty vegan or vegetarian foods. Perhaps someone decided to give Meatless Mondays a try, bought a box of Boca Burgers at Sam’s, and decided they didn’t care for them. While this is certainly a hit for Team Vegan, there’s no need to let perfectly good food go to waste. Their loss is your gain.

- The summer and autumn months are an especially fruitful time for vegans on Freecycle: it’s not uncommon for green-thumbed, kind-hearted members to offer up excess fruits, vegetables, nuts and even plants on the list. Among the fresh vegan foods I’ve seen change hands on my local list are green and red tomatoes; walnuts; pecans; apples; peaches; pears; strawberries; and all manner of fruit, veggies, herbs, and flowering plants. Trees and shrubs, too!

Naturally, vegan freecyclers need not limit themselves to food! Commonly freecycled items include secondhand clothing; hand-me-down furniture; small appliances, including the very popular but rarely used bread machines; larger appliances, usually older and displaced due to renovations; books; and crafting materials.

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So the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine – PCRM for short – has introduced their own version of the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid, called The New Four Food Groups. (Actually, they created the guide way back in 1991 – when vegetarianism was just a niggling feeling worming its way up through the depths of my conflicted brain – but that’s neither here nor there. I just happened to discover the guide today, and that’s what counts. Particularly since I’m running low both on time and VeganMoFo post ideas!)

Naturally, PCRM’s reconstruction of the USDA’s food pyramid eliminates all animal-based products, instead focusing on fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes:

Many of us grew up with the USDA’s old Basic Four food groups, first introduced in 1956. The passage of time has seen an increase in our knowledge about the importance of fiber, the health risks of cholesterol and fats, and the disease-preventive power of many nutrients found exclusively in plant-based foods. We also have discovered that the plant kingdom provides excellent sources of the nutrients once only associated with meat and dairy products—namely, protein and calcium.

The USDA revised its recommendations with the Food Guide Pyramid, a plan that reduced the prominence of animal products and vegetable fats. But because regular consumption of such foods—even in lower quantities—poses serious health risks, PCRM developed the New Four Food Groups in 1991. This no-cholesterol, low-fat plan supplies all of an average adult’s daily nutritional requirements, including substantial amounts of fiber.

Specifically, PCRM recommends that you eat the following, along with “a good source of vitamin B12, such as fortified cereals or vitamin supplements”:

Fruit: 3 or more servings a day

Fruits are rich in fiber, vitamin C, and beta-carotene. Be sure to include at least one serving each day of fruits that are high in vitamin C—citrus fruits, melons, and strawberries are all good choices. Choose whole fruit over fruit juices, which do not contain very much fiber.

Serving size: 1 medium piece of fruit • 1/2 cup cooked fruit • 4 ounces juice

Vegetables: 4 or more servings a day

Vegetables are packed with nutrients; they provide vitamin C, beta-carotene, riboflavin, iron, calcium, fiber, and other nutrients. Dark green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, collards, kale, mustard and turnip greens, chicory, or cabbage are especially good sources of these important nutrients. Dark yellow and orange vegetables such as carrots, winter squash, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin provide extra beta-carotene. Include generous portions of a variety of vegetables in your diet.

Serving size: 1 cup raw vegetables • 1/2 cup cooked vegetables

Legumes: 2 or more servings a day

Legumes, which is another name for beans, peas, and lentils, are all good sources of fiber, protein, iron, calcium, zinc, and B vitamins. This group also includes chickpeas, baked and refried beans, soymilk, tempeh, and texturized vegetable protein.

Serving size: cup cooked beans • 4 ounces tofu or tempeh • 8 ounces soymilk

Whole Grains: 5 or more servings a day

This group includes bread, rice, tortillas, pasta, hot or cold cereal, corn, millet, barley, and bulgur wheat. Build each of your meals around a hearty grain dish—grains are rich in fiber and other complex carbohydrates, as well as protein, B vitamins, and zinc.

Serving size: 1/2 cup rice or other grain • 1 ounce dry cereal • 1 slice bread

Apropos last week’s discussion of how one can obtain adequate amounts of protein on a low-budget, cruelty-free diet, note that the only “faux” “meat” or dairy item PCRM mentions by name is soy milk: no Fakin’ Bacon, no Daiya cheese, no Purely Decadent ice cream. Instead, many of the foods touted by PCRM are relatively inexpensive: pasta, cereal, millet, chickpeas, beans, broccoli and melon. You can even grow items from two of the four groups in your own backyard and eat them raw! While not exactly free, it’s hard to get any less expensive than homegrown.

PCRM also produces a weekly webcast devoted to the dietary and health aspects of veganism. The most recent three episodes examine “The New Four Food Groups” in greater detail; so far, fruit, vegetables and grains have received their due, with an episode devoted to legumes forthcoming. I’ve embedded each after the jump.

Now go forth and veganize, my frugal grasshoppers!

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Many, many years ago – back when the show was still “innovative” and “popular” – a designer on TLC’s Trading Spaces pulled a grotesque and speciesist stunt. Genevieve (Gorder), tasked with redecorating a kitchen, created some “artwork” by raiding the family’s fridge in search of decomposing animal corpses, posing the “meat” products in various “comical” positions, and photographing and framing the result (“meat people”). Cue laugh track.

Granted, the bit was rather inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but to me, the utter pointlessness of Gorder’s actions made them that much more offensive. It’s bad enough that cows, pigs, chickens and other farmed animals suffered and died in order to feed humans who could just as easily subsist on a plant-based diet; worse still that their corpses were mocked, ridiculed, and then wasted further. (There’s no way that “meat” went back into the fridge after being handled under hot camera light for several hours.) It was enough to turn me – then an apolitical vegetarian – off of the show for good. I even fired off a few complain letters to TLC, Trading Spaces and Ms. Gorder herself. I’m still waiting on a reply.

Anyhow. My point in telling this story isn’t to rail against Trading Spaces, but to introduce today’s post – a vegan version of Gorder’s “meat people,” if you will. Fruit and vegetables make for darn shiny fun artwork! Mr. Potato Head is perhaps the most beloved human-vegetable hybrid – (Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to ask my mother if she still has my old family of Potato Heads; methinks they’d look cute on the mantle. But I digress.) – however, he’s only the beginning. There’s life on melon (and lettuce and tomato and eggplant), after all!

Halloween is coming, so it’s only natural that we start the exhibit seasonally, with some Great, big, beautiful pumpkins!

Pumpkin art runs the gamut, from crazy creepy smiley faces:

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(This post has absolutely nothing to do with zombies; it’s just that time of the year, and you happened to catch me in the midst of a zombie kick. A more appropriate title might be “Frugal vegans buy in quantity.” Not nearly as catchy though, am I right?)

Naturally, the more you pledge to buy of any given item, the better overall deal you’ll get on said item – per pound, per box, per case, per widget, per whatever. This maxim is equally true of “normal people” foods (fruit, vegetables, grains, etc.) and vegan specialty items (meat analogs, faux cheeses, soy milks and dairy substitutes, etc.) – so buying in quantity is a strategy that frugal vegans can employ, no matter their dietary habits.

There are four ways that regular consumers like you and I can “buy in quantity”:

1. Buy packaged foodstuffs in the largest available sizes.

Usually the savings here are minimal – we’re talking pennies per pound – but you can save a little money by purchasing the largest available size of cans (jars, bags, etc.) of food. Some stores make it simple to compare cost across sizes; Wal-Mart and Wegmans, for example, include price per pound (ounce, fluid ounce, etc.) information on the shelf pricing label.

If not, it’s fairly easy to calculate (and if you usually shop at the same store or chain, you only need to run the numbers once – then keep a list of the cheapest goods and stick with it!):

Price per ounce = The cost of the item divided by the item’s weight in ounces

Price per pound = (The cost of the item divided by the item’s weight in ounces) x 16

Price per fluid ounce = The cost of the item divided by the item’s volume in fluid ounces

Price per quart = (The cost of the item divided by the item’s volume in fluid ounces) x 32

Price per gallon = (The cost of the item divided by the item’s volume in fluid ounces) x 128

Always be sure to compare cost across sizes and brands. The largest size usually gives you the greatest savings per pound, however, this isn’t always the case. A two-pound jar of name brand peanut butter, for example, may actually cost more per pound than a 1-pound jar of the generic/store brand.

Of course, buying a gallon of tomato sauce will only save you money if you’re able to use it all; toss it out, and you’ve wasted money in the end. When buying perishable items, a) make sure you have a way to save or preserve the extras and/or b) don’t purchase more than you can actually use.

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Oh, Twitter. I love it, I hate it, I can’t live without it. Well, actually, that’s not true. I totally can (and sometimes do). Take, for example, the other day, when the site was down for 12 hours or so. Truth be told, I was a wee bit glad at its temporary implosion. Because in all honesty, Twitter can be a real timesuck, and occasionally I curse my husband for getting me started on it. (And the youths for their newfangled, cottonpicken, fly-by-night social media IT tools. MyyyySpaaaace!)

On the other hand, Twitter can be a hospitable place for vegans to network, navel gaze and – most importantly vis-à-vis VeganMoFo – share recipes (abridged vegan flame wars aside).

If you’re vegan and on Twitter, here are three trends to follow:

1. VeganMoFo: VeganMoFo has a Twitter account! Tweet your VeganMoFo posts using the hash tag #veganmofo, so readers can follow along, and retweet the daily VeganMoFo link roundups so your followers can get in on the action.

2. What Vegans Eat: Tweet your vegan meals, snacks, recipes and related blog posts, using the hash tag #whatveganseat. (These tweets were previously retweeted by @whatveganseat, but apparently Twitter’s TOS put the kabosh on that idea. Boo! Hiss! *middle finger*) In addition to sharing cooking ideas with fellow vegans, this also allows us to illustrate the variety and nomniness of vegan foods to non-vegans. And, who knows, perhaps one day there will be enough of us twittering our mid-morning snacks to launch #whatveganseat into the Trending Topics!

3. Vegan Help Bot: Veganhelp retweets cries for help from non-vegans thinking about transitioning to veganism. Follow @veganhelp in order to receive these tweets, and then offer up your expertise to a would-be-vegan in need.

Of course, you should also…

Hit me up!: @easyvegan

Keep an eye on the Trending Topics and use hash tags and keywords accordingly (e.g., the great animal ag #oink hijacking of 2009; beating cancer and vivisection).

Use hash tags on most (if not all) of your tweets; for instance, #vegan and/or #animalrights on any AR tweets.

Most importantly, remember to step away from the computer at regular intervals. Eat, sleep, shit, shower, play, frolic, rub soft warm doggy bellies, enjoy life a little. Twitter will still be there when you get back. Probably. Twitter or its replacement, anyhow.

Damn kids and their damn intertube trends.

Photo via seanbonner on Flickr, whom I do not know, nor have I ever accepted a vegan cupcake from.

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Once again, I’m using the Monday Mashup / “get out of veganmofo jail free” card on a Sunday. The Mr. and I squeezed one last mow into the season; I raked leaves away from the fence, house, and other assorted obstacles, while he decimated my piles with the lawn mower. Lazy, us? No way! I prefer “time savvy.”

Anyway, this mashup is all me – dishes I’ve made or, in three cases, bought. I’d challenge you to guess which three, but meh, it’s too easy!

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My mother is notoriously difficult to shop for. If you buy her clothing, odds are she won’t like it. Give her jewelry, most likely she won’t wear it (allergies). She doesn’t have much extra time to read books or watch movies; now that her nest is empty, she works three jobs (making her kids look like lazy asshats in comparison!). Edible yumyums are a good choice, but I’ve fallen back on chocolates so often that I’m starting to look somewhat unimaginative. So when Mother’s Day came around, I found myself in bit of a pickle. And while I love pickles, it’s not my favorite place to be.

For whatever reason, Etsy came to mind, and I decided to check it out. The craftacular Etsy, by the by,

is a website that provides the general public with a way to buy and sell handmade items as well as vintage items and craft supplies. Handmade items cover a wide range including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, edibles, bath & beauty products, and toys. The site follows in the tradition of open craft fairs, giving sellers personal storefronts where they list their goods for a fee.

Etsy allows sellers to self-organize into different “teams” – which are kind of like plazas composed of similar store fronts. Teams can form around a location, craft, medium, interest, lifestyle, philosophy…I think you know where I’m going with this! Etsy boasts two teams of interest: EtsyVeg (tagline: “Your source for unique goods from vegan and vegetarian artisans”) and the more discriminating Vegan Etsy (“We Read Ingredients” – please and thank you!).

After much browsing – I am an obsessive comparison shopper – I settled on some baked goods from The Cupcake Mint: 1 Dozen Giant Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies; 4 Oatmeal Raisin Spice Vegan Cookie Cream Sandwiches; and Half Dozen Jumbo Vegan Cinnamon Rolls, samples of which are pictured above (photo courtesy my lil’ sis). Naturally, I cannot attest to the yumminess of any of these, since 1,000+ miles separated my mother the baked goods and myself, but I heard from my mother, my grandmother, and yes, even my sister that they were incredible: huge, gooey, soft, sweet – everything cookies and pastries should be. Win!

Anyhow, since my minor victory, I’ve taken to browsing Etsy in search of gift ideas. I prefer to support fellow vegans with my purchasing power whenever possible, and Etsy is home to some really talented vegans! (Many of them women, which is a double bonus for this vegan feminist.)

For example, the Vegan Etsy team features 146 members, including these storefronts, which are among my favorites:

* The Cupcake Mint, whose specialty is – duh! – cupcakes. Mark my words, cinnamon rolls – one day, you will be mine.

* KT’s Kitchen – Another vegan bakery, KT’s has a wide variety of goods, including Liz Lemon cookies, which makes me all smiley and happy.

* UberDuperCreations, which sells handmade dog dishes and treat jars, as well as vegan and animal rights zines. Dog treat production will be resuming sometime in the future!

* SweetFritsy is home to vegan baked goods and some homemade candies, too. Everything is crazy cute, especially the seasonal Halloween goodies.

* Cody Pendent rocks the party. And if you were to buy me the Little Red Riding Hood, you’d totally rock, too. (*wink, wink*)

* Starrlight Jewelry makes incredibly gorgeous goth jewelry – and for animal companions, too.

I could go on and on, but seeing as it’s 7PM and I’ve yet to eat dinner, probably all I’ll do is inventory vegan bakeries and drool on my keyboard, so it’s best to wrap this shit up. Etsy can be a magical place for vegans, especially if you know where to shop! Many of the sellers are individual DIYers or small businesses, so if you have a special request or need something made custom, Etsy is your friend. There are also lots of good deals to be had, plus the aforementioned fuzzy wuzzies that come from supporting Team Vegan.

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If I had to choose a favorite veggie, it’d be a toss up between tomatoes and potatoes. Taters give you tots, fries, soup, pancakes, flour, pierogies, gnocchi…yum! But sundried tomatoes – sundried tomatoes are hard to beat. Concentrated goodness, and healthy, too!

Anyhow, Shane made this bread for me the other night. Seasoned with tomato paste and sundried tomatoes, it’s an awesome side to basically any pasta dish you can dream up. We enjoyed it with a rather simple meal: linguine with red sauce. Rivers of red sauce, actually, in which we drowned the freshly baked bread, bringing the tomato count to three.

The recipe calls for sundried tomatoes packed in oil, but if you only have bagged sundried tomatoes on hand, soak ‘em in a little olive oil for an hour or two – or overnight, even – and that should do the trick.

If you don’t have a bread machine, don’t despair! After letting the dough rise, you can shape it into baguettes or whatnot, and bake it in the oven. But you’ll have to find instructions for doing so elsewhere, since my bread machine and I are BFFs.

Tomato Bread

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups water
3 tablespoons tomato paste (though a lil’ extra won’t hurt)
1/3 cup oil-packed sundried tomatoes, chopped (again, go wild!)
2 3/4 cups bread flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tablespoons gluten
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Directions

Place all the ingredients in your bread machine pan, according to the order set in your manufacturer’s booklet. Set crust to medium or dark and bake on the machine’s Basic cycle.

Serve warm with…whatever!

Makes a 1-pound loaf.

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As you may have already heard, today is the third annual Blog Action Day. Started in 2007, the goal is to create awareness of a single issue through mass participation. Activists online – and in the real world – focus their attention on a social problem: by writing or blogging about the issue; by posting links to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites; by donating time and money; by discussing the topic amongst friends and family members; and so forth. This year’s topic is climate change; previous areas of concern were the environment and poverty.

While easyVegan is an animal rights blog, this is the third year I’ll be participating. The environment, climate change and yes, even poverty – all can be discussed vis-à-vis our relationship to animals. In fact – and this occurred to me while voting on next year’s topic – pretty much any subject you dream up can be tied back to animal rights, environmental justice and/or veganism. Issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, size, health, nutrition, labor, poverty, xenophobia, species, nature, the environment – you name it – all are interconnected. (So much so that it’s starting to feel arbitrary and capricious to file some posts under “intersections” at the expense of others; ditto: veganism. This entire blog is centered around veganism, yo!)

Some of these connections are more obvious than others; for example, like many of the animal advocates taking part in Blog Action Day, my focus will be on the significant contribution of animal agriculture to climate change. Other intersections are much more subtle; take, for example, PETA’s “Save the Whales” billboard. While clearly sizeist, PETA’s fat-shaming is classist and racist, too. Because PETA fails to address factors linked to class and race (which themselves are inextricably connected) that make it more difficult for disadvantaged populations to consume a healthy, cruelty-free diet, the campaign reinforces class and race privilege and shifts responsibility to the individual, in contrast to systemic factors that set certain people up for failure.

So it feels somewhat serendipitous that the third annual Blog Action Day – for climate change, to boot – falls smack dab in the middle of the third annual Vegan Month of Foods. I guess you could write this off as laziness, but the two blog carnivals (swarms? whatever!) seem a perfect match – so much so that they can share one post between the two of ‘em! Action to combat climate change must include veganism – not as an afterthought, not as a quirky personal choice, not one day a week – but as a lifelong commitment by humans (at first living in privileged/developed nations, and perhaps some day globally) to stop viewing other animals as commodities, products to be bought, sold, used and discarded at our convenience.

For we all share the same fate: the water we poison with animal waste; the antibiotics we inject into sick and tortured factory farmed animals; the methane we unleash into the atmosphere; the forests we de-virginize; the so-called “pest” species we eradicate; the ecosystems we decimate – we are all one. We all share one planet, one environment. We all breathe the same air, drink the same water, bask under the rays of the same sun. That which we do to one being, we do to all beings. Once we rationalize and accept our subjugation and exploitation of one class of “lesser” animals, it becomes that much easier to extend the oppression to other classes of animals – humans and nonhumans alike.

Veganism is a diet, yes, but it’s also so much more: a lifestyle, an ethical system, a new way of viewing the world and one’s place within it. A light bulb, if you will.

Before I get full-on radfem, let’s return to the topic at hand: climate change and veganism (or, because I’m all about the macro, the environment and veganism).

Here are five reasons (out of a multitude) why environmentalists should – must – eliminate animals and their secretions from their diets.

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