“Vegan Brain Food”: A mashup of book covers related to this latest edition of “Intersectionality ‘Round the Interwebs.” Clockwise from the upper-left: Sistah Vegan: Food, Identity, Health, and Society: Black Female Vegans Speak by A. Breeze Harper, ed. (2010); Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals by Anthony J. Nocella II and Steven Best, eds. (2004); Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for a New Millennium by Robin Morgan, ed. (2003); The Pornography of Meat by Carol Adams (2004); The Year of the Flood: A Novel by Margaret Atwood (2009); Penelope by Marilyn Kaye (2007); Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism by Melanie Joy (2009); and VegNews, March+April 2010.
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Sistah Vegan Book: Win a Free Copy!

Editor Breeze Harper is giving away a free, signed copy of her upcoming anthology, Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health & Society. The catch? You have to answer a short essay question, which will (hopefully) get you thinking about issues of food, race, gender, and/or nonhuman animals in new (and fruitful!) way. The deadline is April 1st, so don’t delay!

Let Live Foundation: Food Justice w/ lauren Ornelas (3/21)

I’m so terribly jealous of all you vegan folks living on the east and west coasts; y’all always throw the coolest conferences and lectures! (There’s a reason I titled this link roundup “Brain Food,” yo!) This Sunday, March 21st, Let Live Foundation will be hosting speaker lauren Ornelas of the Food Empowerment Project. On the menu?: Food justice, veganism, and the intersections of human and animal exploitation. If you happen to find yourself in Portland this weekend, attend, take notes, and report back, mkay? (Pretty please? With an organic, raw, fair trade cherry on top?)

The Washington Times: Food For Life Global Is Coming Through Big In Haiti

Who says animal advocates only care about nonhumans, hmmm? Check out this nice writeup Food For Life Global received in The Washington Times, and then hop on over to Disaster Relief in Haiti: Animal Rescue & Vegan/Animal-Friendly Resources to see how else you can help with disaster relief efforts in Haiti (and Chile).

The Voracious Vegan: International Women’s Day: Why Feminism? and “Until We Are All Free”: International Women’s Day (@ Choosing Raw)

In honor of International Women’s Day (which took place on March 8th), the Voracious Vegan penned not one, but two posts. The first includes a short film that, in Tasha’s words explains why “women’s rights and feminism are still relevant and necessary in this day and age.” Additionally, in a guest post at Choosing Raw, Tasha discusses the intersections of feminism and veganism, including the shared ideologies and social systems which allow human, animal and environmental exploitation to thrive. It’s a lengthy piece but well worth it – she touches upon a number of salient points, including the objectification of women’s and animals’s bodies; the state’s (and businesses’) attempts to control the reproductive systems of females, human and nonhuman alike; food and environmental justice; and public safety and human health concerns.

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Dogs Deserve Better, an anti-tethering group, is in need of photos for its 2010 calendar. If you’re a guardian, foster parent or rescuer of a formerly chained or penned dog(s), read on:

Calling for Calendar Photos

DDB is once again calling for photo entries for the 2010 Dogs Deserve Better Calendar!!

Please send (happy) after photos of rescued formerly chained or penned dogs along with before photos (if possible) in high resolution.

Send your entries to dogs [at] dogsdeservebetter.org

All entries are needed by September 10, 2009

I apologize for the late notice – it’s been a busy few weeks.

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Update: 6/19/09: Using the random number generator www.random.org – which selected the #4 – we have a winner! Sharon, I’ll contact you at the email address you provided in order to get your shipping info.

Thanks for playing, everyone. I’ve seen a few similar contests pop up here and there, so if you didn’t win, keep an eye on your favorite veg blogs for more chances to enter!

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We’ve all been hearing about the new documentary Food, Inc. for what seems like months now, and tonight it finally opens to limited release in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Additional screens will be added on 6/19, and every weekend thereafter – through at least mid-August, it looks like. You can view the entire list of play dates here. (Sadly, Kansas City didn’t make the cut, so I guess it’s Netflix for moi.)

In honor of the release, the kind Food, Inc. PR peoples offered me a copy of the film’s companion book, also called Food, Inc., as well as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (the film adaptation of which is still languishing in my Netflix queue; what can I say, I’ve been on a period piece kick as of late!).

They also offered up a set of the books for a reader giveaway. My first ever, at that!

So here’s the deal: in order to win a copy each of Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation, drop a comment on this post and name your favorite animal-friendly movie: Babe, Behind the Mask, Harry and the Hendersons, whatever. It doesn’t have to be a documentary, in fact, the more creative, the better. Entertain me! A mention of this giveaway on your blog will earn you a second entry (just make sure it shows up here as a trackback, or else leave a second comment with a link to your blog post).

[Updated to add: The PR people didn't mention location restrictions, and I totally forgot to ask, so I'll assume for the time being that they'll only mail the books to U.S. residents. Mylène, if you win, I'll personally ship you your set if need be, since that's only fair!]

The contest ends next Friday, 6/19 at 2 AM, CDT, and I’ll announce the winner sometime that day. (Not often you see Central time, eh?)

By the way, I’m 99.9% sure that I managed to fix the comment issue I mentioned last week. Somehow, somewhere, some way, a requirement that users must be logged on to Word Press in order to comment was accidentally enabled; don’t ask me how. It should all be fixed now, but if you run into any issues (knock on sustainable wood), please email me at easyvegan [at] gmail.com. Or, if instant gratification’s your thing, tweet me @easyvegan.

In the meantime, keep reading for some additional info about Food, Inc. (which, much like Fast Food Nation, seems to be more welfare-oriented, but may still be worth checking out – if only to praise the good and refute the bad).

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Update, 5/14/09:

Yay! We’re winners! Thanks for the copy of Veganomicon, Vegan Soapbox!

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On March 1st, Convenient Vegan @ Vegan Soapbox issued the following challenge:

The rules:

1. Go into any convenience store with ten bucks.
2. Choose vegan food.
3. Take it back to your house or motel room, add water, spices, herbs, or nutritional yeast if you like, to make a meal that serves one or more.
4. Add nothing else.

That’s it. The meal does not have to be super-healthy, low-fat, low-sugar or anything like that. It does need to be something that most of us would recognize as a meal, not a snack.

Post your pictures or at least your description of what you got and what you made here and tell us what convenience store you bought from. OR post your meal on your blog and give us the link here. [edited Mar 2, 2009: can post your meal on your blog and put the link here]

Deadline: March 31, 2009

Shane and I were out and about on Thursday, so we decided to give it a try. We stopped for gas at a Shell station along our route, then popped into the store – without any luck. There were precious few non-snack grocery goods to be found, and most of the canned stuff contained meat. So we went across the street to a Pour Boys store, and…same story. On our way home, we decided to give it one last try, this time at a Quik Trip. Success!

We actually came up with a few different meal plans*, but ultimately decided to go with Shane’s idea: spaghetti, topped with salsa, corn and Spanish olives, with a small bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos (yes, they’re vegan!) for dessert.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: United Poultry Concerns – news [at] upc-online.org
Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 2:20 PM
Subject: [UPC] Call for Entries: CHICKEN RUN RESCUE PHOTO CONTEST!

United Poultry Concerns
17 March 2009

Call for Entries: CHICKEN RUN RESCUE PHOTO CONTEST!

Submissions are being accepted for this year’s Chicken Run Rescue Photo Contest.

To view entries so far and vote for your favorite – visit and vote often:

www.brittonclouse.com/chickenrunrescue/photos09/index.php?x=browse

You will join Chicken Run Rescue and United Poultry Concerns in recognizing May as International Respect for Chickens Month by capturing the beauty, joy, intelligence, dignity, agility and zany exuberance of your birds in a photograph. Each year, twelve winning photos will be published in a calendar and winners will receive a free calendar. An exhibit of the winning photos will also be shown at the Justice for Animals Exhibition Space in Minneapolis, Minnesota. All calendar sales proceeds will enable Chicken Run Rescue to continue helping chickens for another year.

TO ENTER:

CONTEST RULES

Photograph everyday activities that are natural for your birds – no costumes, staged stunts or props. Chicken Run Rescue reserves the right to decline any images that conflict with our mission to promote the adoption of homeless chickens as companion animals and discourage breeding or buying. There are never enough homes for displaced animals.

Submission Deadline: May 15
Voting: Ongoing thru May 15
Winners Announced: June 4

Send HIGH RESOLUTION DIGITAL PHOTOS to chickenrunrescue [at] comcast.net. Include your name, title or bird’s name, address, phone number and email address.

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Update, 2/18/09: Want further convincing that the HSUS is undeserving of your financial assistance? Done and done.

For those too lazy to click through, the HSUS led a raid on a dogfighting outfit in North Carolina, “rescuing” 127 pit bulls, including 60 puppies. With the HSUS’s blessing, the Wilkes County court ordered all 127 “rescued” dogs destroyed – murdered. By the time the court order was obtained and carried out – several months after the initial raid and “rescue” – some of the dogs had given birth to more pup. These pups had never even been exposed to the fighting ring, and yet they, too, were deemed “dangerous” and slaughtered. As of this writing, 146 innocent lives have been taken.

With the HSUS’s blessing.

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The deadline to enter the HSUS’s Spay Day 2009 contest is fast approaching – February 27th, to be exact. I finally got around to submitting photos of my furkids. Aside from my slow internet connection, it was fairly easy – you just have to create a profile, then you can submit a photo for each of your companions. There are a few cutesy questions for you to answer, but nothing lengthy. I was under the impression that they wanted a mini-essay, which is why I kept putting this off, but the longest field is a brief 200 characters long. True to form, I had trouble staying within the maximum.

As for prizes, a panel of celebrity judges will choose a Grand Prize Winner, 10 Finalists, and 25 Honorable Mentions; the Grand Prize winner gets a $1000 shopping spree to HUMANE Domain.

The HSUS also uses this contest as a fundraiser. In addition to the celebrity judging category, members can “vote” for one another’s photos by making a cash donation. The prizes in this “fundraiser” contest are way cooler (including a session with a professional “pet” photographer and a custom painting of your animal), BUT – if you’ve got money to spare, I highly encourage you to make a donation to a local or grassroots animal rescue/rights group instead. Trust me…most likely, they’ll make much more efficient use of the funds than the HSUS, which in the past has hoarded Katrina relief funds and offered a reward to help the FBI catch so-called eco-terrorists – among other offenses. Ahem.

Naturally, I’m totally using this as an excuse to whip out the furkid photos. Here are my entries – all six of ‘em!

Ralphie – dog

My person: Kelly, Plattsburg, MO, United States

Nickname: Ralphie Bear

Favorite thing to do: walking, hiking, digging, eating, sunning

Most endearing bad habit: bossily barking at me while I prepare his meal.

Ralphie loves to dig, so we’ll go out to a pasture behind our house, and I’ll let him dig for a few hours while I read, nap or just enjoy his company. He’s my silly little cuddle bear!

My Charity: Kansas Humane Society (Wichita, Kansas, United States)

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Okay, okay, last contest for today – promise!

I’ve blogged about the CNN Heroes project in years past. Whereas I was under the impression that it was a one-time contest (with a one-time sequel in ‘08), it appears that CNN plans on holding the Heroes contest annually. You can nominate a Hero any time throughout the year; at least, until CNN selects the year’s finalists and opens up viewer voting. I was unable to find a definitive timeline on the Heroes website, but nominations for 2009 are now open.

The process is rather straightforward: simply fill out this form and submit it online. You’ll need to know your Hero personally, at least well enough to provide full contact info. There are a few essay-type questions as well, with a cumulative 500 word maximum.

Your Hero must belong to one of seven categories:

1. Championing Children — Commitment to the welfare of young people.
2. Community Crusader — Creating solutions to a local program or social issue.
3. Defending the Planet — Innovative efforts to preserve and protect the environment.
4. Everyday Superhero — Spontaneous acts of courage in the face of danger by members of the public.
5. Medical Marvel — Dedication to the enhancement of human health.
6. Protecting the Powerless — Advancing the cause of human or equal rights.
7. Young Wonder — Outstanding achievement by a person 25 and under.

An animal advocate might “fit” in several of these groups. For example, someone working to trap, neuter and release feral cats may be a “community crusader,” inasmuch as she is finding non-traditional solutions to a community problem (e.g., companion animal overpopulation and feral cats). Activists who focus on whale protection are “defending the planet.” “Medical Marvels” could include scientists or activists who use (or encourage the use of) humane research methods. And so on.

If you know someone who is working to better the world for non-human (and human) animals in 2009, share their story with CNN today. It’d be great to see one or more animal advocates make the cut in 2009! And keep checking back for updates – I’ll let y’all know when voting’s open for the 2009 finalists.

If you do nominate a Hero, drop us a line in the comments – I’d love to hear about him or her!

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts animal advocacy contest activism volunteerism cnn heroes cnn heroes

Nominations are open through March 5, 2009 for the Purpose Prize:

Launched in 2006 as the first Baby Boomers turned 60, The Purpose Prize is a major initiative investing in a new generation of social innovators – individuals in the second half of life who are marshaling their accumulated experience to tackle some of America’s most pressing problems.

Unlike any other major national award or fellowship, The Purpose Prize challenges prevailing perceptions by investing significantly in accomplished social innovators over the age of 60. Each year, up to six people who have demonstrated uncommon vision, determination and entrepreneurialism in addressing community, national and international problems win $100,000 each. A second group of innovators wins $10,000 each, and dozens more are named Purpose Prize Fellows.

All are making extraordinary contributions to society in their encore careers. Nominations for the 2009 Purpose Prize are open through March 5, 2009. For more information or to nominate someone (including yourself), go to purposeprize.org.

The Purpose Prize is sponsored by Encore Careers. To nominate yourself or a friend, acquaintance or loved one, go to www.encore.org/prize

As with the Public Citizen contest I blogged about, this is a great opportunity to put animal advocacy issues front and center. If you know someone over the age of 60 who includes animals in his or her circle of compassion and activism, nominate them for the Purpose Prize today!

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts animal advocacy contest encore careers Purpose Prize activism cash prize volunteerism

Public Citizen wants your photos! The group is running a photo contest through the month of February – show President Obama what issues matter to you, and you might make it onto the front page of Public Citizen’s newsletter or inspire a new action campaign.

Here’s the announcement, from their January 31st enewsletter:

Photo Contest: Get Out Those Cameras!

If you could tell the Obama administration what issues matter to you, what would you say? Would you call for greater government accountability? Would you ask the administration to ensure every American has health insurance? Or maybe you’d ask for safer prescription drugs. Whatever the message, Public Citizen wants to know!

Over the next month, we’ll be collecting YOUR photo submissions to feature on our Flickr page, in this newsletter and possibly in future online campaigns. So take a photo of yourself holding up a message of what you’d like to tell the new administration. It can be a word, a policy goal or an issue you think is crucial in America. Submit your photos to feedback [at] citizen.org. We’ll spotlight our favorites next month.

So what are you waiting for? Get out your camera today!

This is a great opportunity for animal advocates to have their voices heard. Veg lunch options? Repeal the AETA? Public assistance for companion animal guardians in need? Stricter (pet) food safety laws? Share your veg*n wish list with Public Citizen today!

My photo(s) forthcoming…

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts public citizen photo contest flickr barack obama animal advocacy

Holy Rover. I glanced at the calendar this morning and realized that Save-a-Turkey Day is less than two weeks away…and I’ve yet to settle upon a Tofurky recipe!

I usually stick with the classic soy sauce and OJ baste recipe, but last year I got all adventurous and tried out the Caramelized Onion and Cherry Relish roast, which was super yummy. Coming off of VeganMoFo, I think I might feel like a bit of a cheat if I don’t try something different. But what? Did I mention that I’m a super-annoying-fussy eater?

The good peoples at Turtle Island Foods have really “beefed” up the selection of Tofurky recipes available on their website. In addition to the old standbys, there are recipes for a Maple-Pecan Tofurky Roast, South of the Border Tofurky Bake, Yam Good Cranberry Tofurky, Tofurky Wellington, Ginger-Garlic Tofurky, Deep Fried Tofurky, Pomegranate/Cranberry Tofurky, Crock Pot Tofurky with Cranberry Onion sauce, and Tofurky a la King, as well as recipes for chili, stew, gumbo, pizza and gravy (!). If you try searching the Google for additional recipes, you’ll find that many of Turtle Island Foods’ concoctions are echoed elsewhere. The Vegetarian Resource Group does have a few original ideas, though, including a Korean Barbecued Tofurky, Glazed Tofurky, Tofurky Stew and Tofurky Aztec.

Turtle Island’s recipe for a Maple-Pecan Tofurky Roast sounds intriguing, but I’m a wee bit worried about the chili paste – too spicy for my overly sensitive taste buds? Maybe I’ll be a goober and stick with Matt Lush’s simple Tofurky baste suggestion: 3 tablespoons olive oil (or other vegetable oil) + 1 tablespoon soy sauce + 1/2 teaspoon ground sage. Or dare I try his third option, with apricot jam?

Any suggestions from the veg*n gallery? What are y’all doing for the holiday? Are you even celebrating the holiday?

Whether you are or you aren’t, PETA2 is giving away a few free Tofurkys. Just blog about “why you won’t be eating turkeys this Thanksgiving (for all of your friends to see!), then leave a link to your blog as a comment below” – by November 19 – and drop a link to your entry in the comments.

Why won’t I be eating a dead bird on 11-27, you ask?

Because there’s someone behind – inside, actually – that meal. A previously living, breathing, loving, thinking, sentient being, with rights and interests far more important than my wish for a meaty meal.

Turkeys are always welcome at my place, of course, just not in the oven.

So, why won’t you be eating a turkey – and what will you be eating instead?

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare contest peta peta2 thanksgiving save-a-turkey day tofurky turtle island foods recipes dinner holidays observances turkeys wild turkeys flickr photos vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism