Walk for Farm Animals

On our last visit to Ithaca, I happened to see a flier for a charity walk for farm animals, sponsored by Farm Sanctuary. Click this link to see their website. It looked like such a fun way to donate to the cause of the farm animals rescued around the country, some of whom I was lucky enough to meet. Today, I went online to register, and it's really easy. For only $10, you can walk and you get a t-shirt. You can, however, take it further by creating a donation page that you can email to friends and family so that they can contribute to your effort as well.

What is even better is that there are walks happening all over the country and Canada! Click here to see a list of cities with this event. These walks are happening at various dates in the next days and weeks. You can register by phone or online. Grab a buddy or a team and walk for animals! If you're walking in Ithaca, NY, I will see you there!

By the way, Daiku and I have decided to adopt a turkey. When we saw the turkeys at Farm Sanctuary, they had been rescued from awful conditions, but they had such a dignity and you could see a will to live in their eyes. Ok, I'm getting teary-eyed. But stay tuned for developments on this front, which we will be sure to blog about!

Walk for Farm Animals

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Just a note to let everyone know that this blog is now a beta blog. Whatever that means! Hopefully, this can get rid of some of the technical problems we have been having, including any difficulties our visitors may have had with leaving comments. Enjoy!

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I <3 Westcott Street: A Photo Essay

We live in the Westcott neighborhood of Syracuse, a neighborhood that is really rich in culture and history, and has a plethora of interesting people, organizations, shops, pets, and kids. Every September for 15 years, they have been holding the Westcott Street Fair, an event that brings the neighborhood and the city together for one fun day filled with music, dancing, food, politics, conversation, crafts, and fun. Daiku and I went there yesterday, once again volunteering for the Syracuse Peace Council booth. We saw some friends and neighbors, met some new people, helped out with a good cause, ate some good food, and generally acted giddy to have a warm sunny day.

Here, I will show you photos that will help you see why I love Westcott and why I love Syracuse.


Because we have...







groovy people

We have...







Our politics in the right place

We have...









some great community activist groups including the Peace Action Network, the American Friends Service Committee, the Syracuse Cultural Workers, and the Community Animal Project.

We have...





Our very own food co-op (The Syracuse Real Food Co-op) whose volunteers go around at fairs giving out free food.

We have...







great music including a Klesmer orchestra, jazz and jazz vocalists, African drums, punk, gospel, and even good old rock and roll playing (sometimes simultaneously at different bandstands!) at the street fair.

We have...



Cute kids

We have...







A great public library that holds book sales where you can find bizarre items like a Workbench magazine from 1965 and a cookbook published by Benson & Hedges (that's right Benson & Hedges of cigarette fame. These corporations had some nerve, didn't they?!)

We have...



Great local artists

And last, but most certainly not least, we have...









some great food! Las Delicias serves authentic Caribbean fare, including some veg. options, Alto Cinco has fantastic burritos and other healthy Mexican food, including the specials that you see posted above, and best of all, I met someone who is going to open the Gaia Cafe and Lounge, Syracuse's first and only restaurant serving all vegan food! You can see her sign above. Stay tuned for more on this story-- if the cheesecakes that she was selling are any indication of things to come, I'm drooling with anticipation.

**Caution: Food Porn Ahead**
If you swoon or faint easily, do not scroll down any further

Kids, get your parents' permission

Last Warning!!





For lunch, I got a ginormous jerk tofu burrito from Alto Cinco. It tasted of curry more than jerk, but it was so spicy and delicious. The best part was that it had gooey vegan cheese. I don't eat vegan cheese very often because it is so expensive, so this was a luxury for me.

I hope you enjoyed these photos. If any of you are going to be in Central New York, you are more than welcome to stay with us!

I <3 Westcott Street: A Photo Essay

Japanese night

One of Daiku and my all-time favorite cuisines is Japanese. In fact, I love all things Japan so much that my nickname for my husband, Daiku, is a shortened form of the word Daikon! I'd been craving sushi so much lately. In fact, I'd been having the following for lunch almost every day:



Brown rice and nori.

Tonight, we decided it was time to get serious and try making sushi. We assembled the ingredients:



(daikon, carrots, scallions, avocados, tempeh, and a cucumber and chili pepper from our garden) and we got to work. I decided to use the spicy tempeh roll recipe from the Post Punk Kitchen. You can find that recipe here, and I doubled it to have leftovers. The recipe calls for steamed tempeh to be mashed with chili oil and mayonnaise, and then rolled with rice and scallions. I have to admit, I found it pretty bland. Daiku finally solved the problem by adding some Vietnamese chili paste- that gave it the much-needed zing and made it taste like an authentic spicy tuna roll. If you like spicy, I recommend you kick PPK's recipe up a notch. I also added a few pieces of dulse to the mix for that extra sea flavor.

Made some seasoned rice...



Note: Brown rice worked almost as good as white rice (both were short grain) so use whichever you prefer. We liked the variety of having some rolls made with each.

We also used some rice seasoning made of nori strips, sesame seeds, salt and sugar.



Time to roll!



Bazu rolling her first sushi...



Daiku rolling his first...

And here's the result!



Ta da... not bad for a first try. The Post Punk Kitchen gives really good step-by-step instructions- how to toast the nori, how much rice to use, where to put each thing, etc.

We started to fill up the plate



And soon had too much. We did all kinds of combinations of tempeh, white/brown rice, and vegetables.



Some condiments (fresh pickled ginger, wasabi, tamari)



And we were good to go!



Your humble sushi chefs decided they deserved to put on their Japanese robes as a reward for a job well done.



Ahhh...ご馳走さま (gochisōsama) - click on the link to hear how to say "bon appetit" after a meal in Japanese

As much as we stuffed ourselves, we still had leftovers, which gave me a chance to use my favorite giraffe bento box to save them for tomorrow.



I don't know if it's the sushi, or the Asahi beer, but I'm feeling pretty giddy right now. Yay for sushi!

Japanese night

"The Conscience of a Carnivore"

Please go read this article on Slate.com, it's called "The Conscience of a Carnivore" and it's writen by William Saletan. There have been a lot of books and articles lately written by carnivores who realize that eating meat involves all kinds of double consciousness, denial, or just plain cruelty. One good example is Omnivore's Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan.

For any vegans or vegetarians out there who sometimes want to scream HOW CAN YOU BE SO MINDLESS AND HEARTLESS, this article is a breath of fresh air, proof that against all odds, carnivores do have flashes of insight.

Some choice quotes:

"Shrinks call this "cognitive dissonance." You munch a strip of bacon then pet your dog. You wince at the sight of a crippled horse but continue chewing your burger."

"Every society lives with two kinds of moral problems: the ones it's ready to face, and the ones that will become clear or compelling only in retrospect. Human sacrifice, slavery, the subjugation of women—every tradition seems normal and indispensable until we're ready, morally and economically, to move beyond it."

"300 years from now, when our descendants look back at slaughterhouses the way we look back at slavery, they won't remember the benefits to us, any more than they'll remember our dried-up tears for a horse. They'll want to know whether we saw the moral calling of our age. If we do, it's time to pony up."

Saletan's conclusion is that humans supposedly can't give up the desire for meat (I don't agree with that) but they should stop slaughtering animals and instead eat meat grown in a laboratory (I agree with this- I wouldn't want any meat, but I'd rather the world ate lab meat than factory farmed meat).

Our kitties, Bijou and Marble wish more people had compassion for animals.



What do you think about the article and whole lab meat idea?

Speaking of cognitive dissonance, Homer Simpson does a nice job of demonstrating it in this video from "The Simpsons." Pinchy is a lobster that Homer lovingly raised, intending to eat him. But then he grew attached to the lobster and felt he couldn't eat him...until he accidentally gave Pinchy a hot bath...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ksEihdkv-E

"The Conscience of a Carnivore"

Nonviolence

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard an interview on the Diane Rehm show that I have to share with everyone. It was with author Mark Kurlansky on his new book, entitled Nonviolence: 25 Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea.

He began the interview by explaining the title of the book, and the fact that while he himself does not think of nonviolence as a dangerous idea, throughout history, advocates of nonviolence have been met with ridicule or great fury. Interestingly enough, he mentioned, when one thinks of the word nonviolence, it becomes clear where our cultural values are. He claims that no language in the world has a proactive word for nonviolence, rather what we have is a negation of the idea of violence. In other words, linguistically and culturally, violence is the norm and nonviolence is an aberration. Kurlansky distinguishes between nonviolence and pacificsm. (This was interesting to me, as I had always thought of the two terms as interchangeable). But according to him, nonviolence is active resistance, just through means that do not bring bodily harm to your opponent. Part of nonviolent ideology is that violence begets violence and there is no way out of that path. He talked about how nonviolence has repeatedly scored victories (Gandhi and Indian liberation, the overthrow of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile) while wars and violence constantly fail (cf. Palestine vs. Israel, the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan) but that it is normal to think of wars as what "gets things done" and nonviolence as cowardly and ineffective.

His insights on supposedly "just" wars such as the American Revolution and Civil War are truly enlightening. I think this idea of nonviolence-using strategies such as resistance, demonstrations, non-cooperation, legal proceedings, street theater, information dissemination- are very close to what veganism is all about. Every time we refuse to eat an animal product or purchase from companies that test on animals or participate in circuses or zoos, we are actively resisting a cultural wrong. However, as someone whose political views are often in the minority (veganism, Green party, radical feminism, etc.) I also know the frustration that leads us to sympathize with more violent forms of protest and resistance. I am sympathetic to the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and other groups such as these.

What the interview this morning inspired me to think about, though, was what tactics have the most chance of having real material results in the long run. Either way, standing up for what you believe is difficult. The question is, what is the best way?

Nonviolence

Farm Sanctuary

As we mentioned in this previous post, Daiku and I had been planning for a long time to go to Farm Sanctuary for our anniversary. The weather had been so bad all week, though, that we were afraid Saturday would not be road-trip worthy. When we woke up it was sunny and warm! (The weather report mentioned showers and thunderstorms later in the afternoon, but we conveniently ignored that...) So we woke up, put together a road breakfast



(whole wheat toast with Tofutti cream cheese and (l) Polish sour cherry preserves and (r) homemade peach butter)

and got on the road.



It is around 90 miles from our home to Watkins Glen, where Farm Sanctuary is located. As I took the above picture of a typical central New York scene of rolling hills and farmland, however, our camera told us it was running out of batteries! I was so upset, because I planned to take lots of pictures of the animals at Farm Sanctuary, and now I was threatened with not being able to take any. We were on a rural road, so there was no place to stop and buy batteries, plus we were short on time because we wanted to make it on time for the last tour of the day, at 3 p.m.

So this is my warning that the pictures I managed to get, with our camera and my cell phone, are not the best quality. What happened is that we would turn our camera off and every 10-15 minutes, it would get a slight charge that would let us take one or two pictures. Augh!

We showed up at 3 and signed up for a tour. Our tour leader, Jessica, started us off with a short video explaining the origins and activities of Farm Sanctuary. This video was touching, but we both had to turn away as the upsetting scenes, such as geese being force-fed for fois gras, or baby turkeys being de-beaked, were being shown because we did not want to start the tour crying.

First, we saw the cows.



Unfortunately, we couldn't get too close to the cows because there is a recently rescued cow who is (understandably!) suspicious of humans, and there was the risk that they would charge us. It was nice to see them grazing under the sun, though, since their present life is such a contrast to their nightmarish pasts: most of them are rescued from the dairy industry, some of them were "downer" cows who are considered useless by dairy farmers and left to die. Some of them had rescued themselves by literally escaping from slaughterhouses. This was just a hint of the spirit that all the animals had. One thing we immediately noticed was the lack of smell. Our only previous experience of cows had thus far been driving by huge feedlots on various freeways, and I realized now that cows (and other farm animals) are not inherently dirty or smelly, rather the smell and polution is a direct result of factory farming practices.



Here is a cow we were able to get close to. Here name is Queenie and she lives on the special needs pasture because she has a hip injury. She was the most gentle and friendly cow, allowing us to pet her, and even walking up to us. Now I realized how absolutely large a cow is-- and Queenie is a young and lanky cow! Unfortunately, a bunch of flies were bothering her this day. Jessica explained that they put an ointment on her face that is successful at repelling flies for a few hours, but then they come back. Fortunately, this does not happen all the time, just a few warm summer days.

Queenie lives close to some goats and the sheep pasture.



Here is Daiku with Dino the goat. Dino's from Brooklyn. He was given such a horrible diet that his bones are weak, so he has to hang out with the sheep (as you can see in the background) because normal play with other goats would potentially hurt him. He was so friendly and trusting and let us pet him.



This was my favorite goat. This cell-phone picture doesn't do justice to his beauty, with long horns and flowing white hair. After the tour, when we were allowed to roam the farm by ourselves, we went back to him and fed him an apple. Jessica told us that what the goats like even more than apples is leaves from the apple tree, so we fed him some, and he took them hungrily. He was (like most of the rest of the animals here) trusting, and came out of his barn toward us when he caught wind of the leaves in our hands. Beautiful.

We also saw the turkeys, who were adorable.



Here is one of the ladies in the pen. These poor turkeys were cruelly de-beaked, but they are all getting better and thriving now. I tried to pet them, but they weren't into it much on this day- and that is their perogative! When I managed to touch them briefly though, I was so surprised by how soft and fine their feathers were. Some of them were rescued from a man who was selling them to families who wanted to raise and slaughter their own turkeys for Thanksgiving. Apparently, nothing teaches children about the circle of life better than watching their parents raise, slaughter, and then eat turkeys. I was horrified, as I was never aware of this D.I.Y. style of Thanksgiving before.

Unfortunately, this is not limited to turkeys. One of the pigs we met was being raised by a family to be slaughtered for a father's day picnic! Thankfully, he escaped.

Here are the adorable pigs, who we found sleeping in their barn.



These are creatures after my own heart--they like sleeping and relaxing all day long!



And getting their bellies rubbed. I was once again overwhelmed by their sheer size. Pigs are huge! And their bellies are so fatty. If you rubbed really vigorously, she would raise her arms and her body would start shaking--just like a dog. Adorable.

We also saw lots of chickens. Some of them were broiler chickens rescued from Mississippi after hurricane Katrina. Their barn had been destroyed, and they had been abandoned, left to die. I did not realize that broiler chickens (and I hate that name) only live to be 42 days old. Naturally, chickens live to be many years old.

I took this picture for Urban Vegan:



This was the group that includes your new baby, Agnes! I'm happy to report that they look robust, relaxed, and happy.

On our way out of the farm, we saw this guy, hanging out by himself in the mud.



He was so adorable. And he didn't mind that we were intruding on his relaxation time to pet him and coo to him--very sporting of him, I do say.

One strange thing I saw at Farm Sanctuary was in a wastepaper basket in the women's restroom:



WTF-- a receipt from McDonalds...??!! I'd hate to think someone went to McDonalds and Farm Sanctuary in one day!

Then we headed to Ithaca, which is about a half hour from Watkins Glen. The weather was still cooperating (rain? what rain?) and we even saw a rainbow. Here is another scenery shot.



I wish our camera was not running out of batteries. One thing I really wanted to photograph was all the rolls of hay on farms that we passed by. The golden hay on the warm green grass with dappled sunlight-- ahhhh, perfect cliched shot!

In Ithaca, we went in for an early dinner at Moosewood Restaurant. This is a great old establishment, serving vegetarian and vegan food [but also some fish.] We went here last year on our anniversary, so we figured we'd continue the tradition. The food was good.

For appetizer, we had black bean ful, which replaced the fava beans of the classic recipe with black beans, along with cumin, lemon juice, tomatoes, and garlic. Pretty damn tasty. We also had spicy peanut soup, which tasted also of carrots and ginger. Here is a shot of those things, along with some locally made hard apple cider. I love drinking cider with meals, and this was one of the first "autumny" things that we've done this year- is summer really over?...



For entrees, Daiku ordered the Russian streudel, which came with a beet and cucumber salad. I didn't have any, because it had a lot of cheese on it, but it seemed to have some of my favorite flavors: fennel seeds, dill, phyllo dough, the works. Here is a photo:



What did I have for dinner? A vegetable tagine, a smoky mixture of potatoes, colorful peppers, black and green olives, tomatoes and artichokes served over couscous. Unfortunately, I will have to leave that to your imaginations since the camera finally gave up the ghost for good right after we took the picture of the streudel.

After dinner we walked over to GreenStar food co-op, one of my favorite food markets. It has a produce section that puts many mainstream supermarkets to shame, as well as a bakery with vegan treats, and an all-around fantastic selection of food, at great prices, with a strong community vibe.

As we headed home, we went to a coffee shop in the Ithaca commons, where many students hang out and got a cup of coffee for the drive home. In addition, we got some dessert, a slice of vegan banana blueberry cream pie. This is what I like about Ithaca- you can walk into any restuarant or cafe, no matter how big or small, and be guaranteed vegan choices. It was so funny, because this cafe had some scones that were marked "not vegan." Now, why can't the whole world be like this, where vegan is so normal, that non-vegan items have to be marked out?

Overall, a great day. We will not forget the animals we met, nor the lessons they taught us.

Farm Sanctuary