Autumn Pudding

Serve this hot with some coconut whipped cream. You may want to wrap yourself in a blanket while eating. This is sweet, soothing and delectable.

Blend all ingredients in a blender. Then add walnuts if you want some bumps.

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled, quartered and cooked in the microwave until soft
2 apples, quartered and cored
1/2 c. unsweetened apple sauce
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Bake in a greased 9" square pan at 350 for 35 minutes. 
Cut into squares and remove from pan, and serve in single-serving dishes.

Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate-Chip Cookies

These are show-stoppers! Absolute blue-ribbon.

(Wet)                                          (Dry)
1 c. peanut butter (unsalted)     1 c. white all-purpose flour
4 very ripe bananas (black)      1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. apple sauce                     1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla                        
1 c. choc chips                                            
1 c. walnuts

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, and then combine together. Spoon onto a baking sheet. (I use an ice cream scoop.) Bake at 375 for 8 minutes, more or less, depending on whether you like them squishy-mushy, soft, or crisp. Serve with a glass of cold almond milk!

Fabulous Cookbook!

Brooklyn native Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a best-selling author of several vegan cookbooks and is followed by millions on her website, Post Punk Kitchen.

Isa Does It is her most recent triumph. There are nearly 200 recipes, and almost every one of them is photographed! These recipes are smashing. Marinated portobello mushroom burgers with Korean kimchi, sesame dragon noodle salad, carrot cake pancakes...You can just close your eyes and point to a page, and something unforgettable will be on offer. And if you're hosting, you'll never know a skeptic again!

Cognative Dissonence

Cognitive Dissonance is emotional conflict caused by believing two things are true that are opposites. If a child is abused, for example, he might believe that his parents are bad, but also that his parents are good. This creates deep stress.

If you eat pork, the following photos will create cognitive dissonance because they're all true.

A piglet, very curious.

A piglet, ready to play.

A piglet being castrated and having his tail cut off
without anesthesia
("standard farming practice" in the U.S.)

A piglet having his teeth cut out from his gums
without anesthesia
("standard farming practice" in the U.S.)

Piglets playing.

Pigs in gestation crates. They will spend 2 1/2 years locked up
in these crates without being able to move or turn around.
("standard farming practice" in the U.S.)

A mother pig after being rescued from abuse
on a farm, blissing with her babies.

Pigs on their way to slaughter.
Ask any farmer, and she or he will tell you,
pigs know what's coming.

A pig is shot with a bolt gun and then slashed across the throat.
After this is done to him, he thrashes and screams
more than any other animal.

This looks like just meat, but it is actually the remains of
a confined, tortured, and terrified animal.

What is Speciesism

Speciesism is the belief that members of other species are inferior to the human species. Speciesism causes people to be emotionally detached from other species and makes people capable of cruelty.

What else could account for this photo? These monkeys so obviously feel and have a desire to live and be free just like we do. How else could people possibly perpetrate this, if not of the mindset that animals are lesser?

Like racism and sexism, speciesism is culturally inherited and can be overcome easily through simple consideration of the phenomenon. Once someone points out the bias, it becomes glaringly obvious, and the cruelty becomes repugnant and intolerable.

Please join the National Anti-Vivisection Society to help animals in animal labs. Animal Experimentation has always been a crude scientific method for shedding light on human health because in critical ways, animals physiology does not match our own. And now animal experimentation is even more obsolete due to high-tech, superior alternatives. Click here to learn about these alternatives and to join others in stopping animal experimentation.

Why Vegan?

Most of us grow up eating meat and eggs and drinking cow’s milk. It becomes as natural as breathing air. The children’s books we grow up with are filled with farm pictures - pigs smiling, geese acting silly, cows lying reverently in the grass. And maybe our parents take us to a petting zoo - a sweet, irresistible picture of gentle harmony. 

But the meat we eat is not from these animals. Nor the eggs, nor the milk. 99% of the animal products sold in stores is from CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). CAFO’s are a new invention, started in the 1950’s, and their name elucidates the deep problem they pose for animals. The animals are ‘concentrated’ together in order to maximize the amount of 'product' sold. The space allotted is the minimum possible without the animal dying, not the space desired by the animal. For an egg-laying hen, a pig, or a male calf, this means a life in a cage too small to move in. And the O in CAFO is for ‘Operation’, which means it processes a product, as opposed to caring for an animal, an animal that without any doubt, feels and suffers.

A few viewings of pigs in gestation crates, hens in battery cages, and cows knee-deep in their own feces makes it easy to see the moral problem with eating meat and eggs, but why give up milk and cheese and yogurt? How is milking a cow harmful? It turns out that in order to get milk from a cow, you have to impregnate it once a year, and then when the calf is born, you need to take the baby from her mother so she doesn't consume the milk. When the baby is taken from her mother, the bellowing of distress from both the mother and baby is one of the most heart wrenching experiences one can witness on a farm. Also, if the calf is a male, after he’s taken, he’s chained inside a pen too small to move, where he stands, motherless, for 4 months, until he’s taken to slaughter. So when we drink cow’s milk, we absolutely support the misery of this little calf.

So the milk we might lap from our cereal bowl at breakfast, or the yogurt we spoon at lunchtime - what is quintessentially wholesome in our minds – we now can see for what it is – something taken without asking, forced from a mother against her will, and something that causes male baby cows to live a life of sadness. This is very hard to believe, but only because CAFO’s are off limits to the public, and advertisers make things very, very beautiful.

For Non-Vegans

If you eat meat and dairy, please watch this movie. You'll see that vegans are not fringe, bushy-under-the-arms, self-righteous worry-warts. Well, some of us may be, but we're just people who know what you'll know after seeing this movie. That's the only difference. A year ago, I had no idea that the animal I was eating was miserable before being slaughtered and packaged up for my plate. I absolutely had no idea. I simply never thought about the fact that this animal had feelings and suffered. Absolutely incredible. I ate chicken for breakfast!

Ginger Cake For My Mom

This is my amazing mom. She passed away a month ago from cancer. My mom was very much the center of the family, and now my 5 siblings and I are learning to be a family without her. We're re-connecting - carefully, gratefully - with her death reminding us that the only thing that matters is to be kind to one another.

For the weeks before my mom died, there was a constant stream of visitors from friends and family. One evening, her best friend, who's a gourmet cook, brought a ginger cake. There was very big crowd that night visiting, and amidst the tear-filled tributes and toasts and the intense gratitude for having a mother who was so loving and kind, there was also, strangely, a lot of yelling about how good this cake was!

My mom loved fun, and loved to cook and have people over for supper. She was the most laid-back hostess ever, whipping up new and exotic dishes on the fly, without a trace of anxiety.

I made this cake last week, and my mom and I shared it, in spirit. It's absolutely wow. It's dark, wet, and packs a real punch of ginger. She loved it. (We topped it with coconut whipped cream.)

Ingredients:
(Dry)                               (Wet)
2 c. white flour                  1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. white sugar              1 c. molasses  
1/2 tsp. baking soda           1 c. stout
1 Tbs. ground ginger          1/2 c. unsweetened apple sauce
1 tsp. cinnamon                 1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. salt
3 Tbs. grated fresh ginger

Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, and then combine together. Bake at 350 in a fluted Bundt pan. (Prepare the pan well with either Smart Balance and flour or Smart Balance and raw sugar.) Test with a toothpick after 55 minutes of baking.

Coconut Whipped Cream

Coconut whipped cream is as easy to make as dairy whipped cream, and incredibly rich, smooth, and delicious. Just buy a can of full-fat coconut milk, turn it over, and store in the fridge overnight. Then open the can and skim the top few inches of opaque cream off the top and put into a mixer. Whip just the way you whip cream, adding powdered sugar at the end to taste. You can also flavor with vanilla extract, orange zest, cinnamon, or anything else delectable.

A Return to Green Pastures

Until very recently, humans have had a harmonious relationship with animals. Perhaps the most beautiful passage ever written about this relationship is from Psalms, 23: 

"The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not  want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever."

Imagine, a shepherd being likened to God! A shepherd, tending with such consummate care and tenderness, that the relationship between he and his flock is sacred. A shepherd, possessing all that is wise and righteous, a completely dependable source for moral guidance. 

It's clear that we cannot feed today's population on meat from green pastures. We cannot even feed the world on meat, period, no matter how horrifically we mistreat animals. But once we come to see this, and meat is phased out of the global supply, we can shepherd what populations remain with the reverence they deserve, and in so doing, manifest the true potential and glory of humanity.