Well its that time of year again, my beautiful wife’s birthday! Everybody  feel free to wish her a goood one (oh and I did not make the cake heh)

–Shane

Welcome to another episode of "ask Dino, because this darn recipe makes no sense".

I have a vague memory of Aloo Matar, from long in my past that was awesome, and I had it at a restaurant somewhere. I've made a few versions at home but they have fallen a little flat (not so flat that I wasn't willing to eat them, but you get the idea).

Recipe: 8 potatoes sliced
1/2 cup veg oil
Small onion, chopped
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tomatoes, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 lb peas
(made a half recipe each time)
Basically it called for sweating the onions, frying the potatoes for 10 min, adding everything else and cooking another 10-15 min. Very easy. I gave it a try, but as above a little bland. I also coarsely cubed the taters, never just sliced them.
My recipe called for tossing in cumin seeds halfway through the cooking, so I tried to Dino-ize it a little and pop them at the beginning. They never popped, but they sizzled and smelled good. No heat in the original, so I chopped a serano pepper and added it with the tomatoes and peas. Better, but still seemed to be missing a little.

Questions: 1) Should my cumin seeds pop or do they just sizzle?
2) What other spices and when to add them?
3) What sort of potatoes would you recommend (bakers?, gold?).

Thanks!

You can cut back on that fat big time, because it's not necessary in the beginning like that. Start with a tablespoon or two, and work forward from there. You can always add more fat, but removing it is not so easy. Also, when you start with a small amount of fat, the pot and the fat get hot extremely quickly, and maintain that heat, so that the spices will pop properly.

Start with a pot that's larger than you think you'll need. Add just enough oil to coat the bottom of it. Let the oil get so hot that it smokes a little. Add in your cumin seeds, and boost the flavour with a bit of coriander seeds for good measure. Let them pop. They MUST pop for the flavour to be worth anything. When the seeds have stopped popping, pitch in the onions. Cook it over very high heat, and let those suckers get softened, then browned around the edges. You don't have the fully get them caramelised, but it won't hurt anything if you let them go to full brown.

All these steps take a tiny bit of extra effort, but they're worth it in the end.

Then, you add your cubed potatoes. If you just slice them, they don't tend to cook so evenly, and they're harder to stir around in your pot. You also tend to miscalculate the amount of fat you need, because the sliced potatoes tend to stack up, and not allow a crust to form.

Here's the trick to getting them to taste like the restaurant. Boil the potatoes first, let them get cold, THEN cube them up. It'll make the potatoes fry off so much more nicely.

As you continue to fry the potatoes in the fat and spices, you'll notice that they take up the fat nicely. THIS is the point at which you can add extra fat, about a teaspoon or so at a time, should the potatoes start sticking to your pot. If you're working with nonstick cookware, you really won't have to worry about this so much.

The next point is a matter of personal taste. Being from the south, I tend to throw in 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric, but this is strictly your own call. I like the colour and taste, but not everyone does.

After about five minutes of cooking over furiously high heat, turn down the heat to medium-low, and cover the lid of the pot, so that they can roast slowly.

SHORTCUT: If you are comfortable with it, lay the potoatoes out onto a baking sheet, and throw them under the broiler of your oven for 2 minutes at a time, until they get brown and crusty and lovely. Then, when the potatoes are brown, toss through the peas, and let it sit under the broiler for another minute or two, to heat the peas up through and through. This method also prevents you from mashing the potatoes as you stir them through. Even my mother, who's been doing this for the better part of 40 years tends to end up with half the potatoes mashed.

At the end, adjust your seasoning with salt, chili, or any other such flavouring you like.

If you do the boiling step, you can use any potato you like, because they tend to all get that lovely texture like the classic dish does. If you don't, just use any good waxy potato, like a yukon gold, or red bliss, or new potato. If you want to add some more north-indian-y spices, like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, or cardamom, do so in the last five minutes of cooking, so that they stay strong. Just add a few hefty pinches of cinnamon, a pinch or two of clove, a scrape of nutmeg, and a pinch of cardamom powder, and you'll be golden.

If your cumin doesn't want to pop in the fat, or you've forgotten to do so and are adding it halfway through, just dry toast the cumin in a separate skillet, and toss it in. Without properly cooking the cumin, the flavour will fall flat.

Hope this helps a bit!

Tumeric and coriander, excellent. I don't mind if they get a little mashed up. I probably should cube the potatoes a little smaller and I'll have to try the pre-cooking method.

Would you recommend a chili powder or fresh green chilis or what? Thanks again for your time!

Well. There's a couple of routes to go with /that/ as well. Depending on how much you want to control the heat, and what kind of chili powder/fresh chili you're talking, it can change things. The chiles used in India are the Thai Bird chiles. It'll give you the most authentic flavour, and will be sufficiently hot to peel off the roofing tiles if you add enough of them. If you remove some of the seeds, you can scale back on the heat. If you fry the seeds with the onions, you can seriously make the heat a hell load more sneaky.

Here's how it works. You pop your cumin seeds, bla bla bla. Everything is screaming hot in that pot, and it's smelling fantastic. You add in a very big handful of chopped up finely Thai Bird chiles once the spices stop popping, instead of the onion. THEN you add the onion, and let the whole mess get softened, bla bla bla. The heat will dissipate into the fat, and sneak up on you much more slowly.

The chili powder can be ground red chili, cayenne pepper, or hot paprika, depending on your level of heat needs. Add it at the very end in the last minute of cooking, or else your kitchen will fill with lung-searing, painful smoke that you will be coughing up for the next hour.

Personally, when I make something hot, I like to go for a one-two punch. Start with the chiles in fat, and then finish with the powder. That way, when you're eating, you get the immediate jolt of hot hot fire. Then, as you chew and savour the flavour, the sneaky heat that's hiding in the fat comes skulking out and gives you another tingly stabby heat. It's lovely.

Thanks for the answer (and for the question)! Could you substitute plantains for the potatoes? I know it would be non-traditional and all that, but I made the curried plantains out of your book recently and loved them. So I bought more plantains. Thanks!

Yes yes yes yes YES. Yes, definitely. There are a variety of things that you can use in place of potatoes for recipes in the book: plantains (just peel them first), yucca (peel and core first), sweet potatoes, taro (also called ñame in Latin American stores), yautia, or pretty much any other starchy vegetable. In fact, when you're making soup, using yucca would make the flavour superior, because it's got a sort of fragrance about it that works ever so well in soups and stews. Plantains are absolutely a wonderful substitute for potatoes. They work for bajji, curry, soup, stew, or anything else you can dream up.

Oooh, with plaintains! I would assume not completely ripe?

Yes, exactly. Green plantains. I think I put up a youtube video on how to peel them easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I6ZU_LB-aE

---

Suffice it to say, it was a bit of back-and-forth, but it was lots of fun to discuss food with people who are into it.

Wadia’s best friend’s youngest sister was denied a proper burial because for two days they couldn’t douse the flames the allied planes had showered on her tiny body. And all the paper trails that lead to all the roads that lead to all these Basras make it seem like we’re all just “collateral damage” waiting to be happened in some unforeseen Pentagon budget-drill. Today’s Ba’ath regime is just the Red Scare of yesteryear. And I drink myself to sleep because I’m losing faith that any of us will ever amount to anything more than reluctant human subsidies, the moving parts in a death-machine, protesting their complicity, but waiting for somebody else to throw their body on the churning gears. I drink myself to sleep because I’m losing faith that we, here in the Cradle of Affluence can cease this sickening drive for individual strength through state-powers’ swinging fists or that we’ll ever look back and laugh at the irony that is: an atomic murderer is enshrined in Independence, USA while 8000 miles from here (back in the Cradle of Democracy) it’s another banner year for a cottage industry ? a ritual at the corner of George and Constantine – as foundries scramble to recast his decapitated monument.

This Star-Tribune story on “dealing” with vacant homes is truly infuriating:

“[Vacant home registration fees have] become more popular as cities are contending with larger inventories of vacant properties,” said Jennifer Leonard, director of advocacy and outreach for the nonprofit Center for Community Progress in Washington, D.C. Vacant building registration “has become an incredible tool in the past few years,” she said. ” … Cities have to figure how to manage their inventory by doing inspections and seeing that they are boarded up and safe and the property is maintained.”

There are plenty of empty homes to register. In Minnesota, almost 5 percent of all residential properties have been foreclosed in the past five years, according to county sheriffs’ sales data. Last year, the state had 23,019 foreclosures, with one of every four in Hennepin County.

From start to finish, the only concerns reflected here are those of property — why there has been such a dramatic rise in foreclosures, what happens to the folks who have been forced out of their homes, why it is that homes are allowed to sit empty (indeed, made “transient-proof”) while shelters swell to capacity … none of this registers. It’s just not relevant to public discourse, I guess.

For a plus-sized gal who is into vintage, it can get disheartening to see all the lovely smaller patterns and actual vintage garments.  The commonly held belief that everyone was thin “back then” is a myth.  Today’s leader in plus-sized fashion, Lane Bryant, has been around for a long time.  I love looking at old Lane Bryant catalogs because them give me inspiration for sewing, as well as an idea of which patterns might work for my figure.  My latest Lane Bryant catalog is the Spring/Summer 1935 Stylebook.

I have a ton of lovely pictures from this catalog in my flickr stream! http://www.flickr.com/photos/12275674@N08/sets/72157623467391873/

As abolitionist vegans and feminists, we oppose the use of sexist tactics in the animal advocacy movement. Ethical animal rights veganism is part of the logical conclusion of opposition to the exploitation of all sentient beings -- both human animals and non-human animals. Opposing speciesism is incompatible with engaging in sexism or any other form of discrimination, such as racism, heterosexism, classism, and other forms of oppression.

Unfortunately, we have witnessed many female activists saying that there is nothing wrong with using "sex" as a tool to get our message across, using various arguments to try to justify this view. Further, other advocates have been unfairly attacked for "sexism" because they are openly critical of sexism and sexist choices in the movement. Neither should be acceptable to advocates who take anti-oppression work seriously.

Some advocates defend the use of sex by accusing us of being "anti-sex" or prudish. Abolitionist vegans are not prudes by any means, however, we see that the way sex is used to sell things in our patriarchal society reinforces a view of women as commodities. For example, just take a look at the way in which PETA uses sex in its campaigns - they reinforce harmful Western beauty standards by using only thin, large-breasted women, who tend to be posed to appear vulnerable and alluring to the (heterosexual male) intended viewer, as well as using only men who are muscular and trim and posed to look powerful and self-assured. When sexism is being used to try to "sell" justice for non-human animals, at the expense of reinforcing harmful attitudes towards human women, the irony is clear. The seriousness of the injustices committed against both non-human animals and human women in this world are cheapened by the use of tactics based on inane and harmful stereotypes; far from challenging the issue of animal exploitation, this kind of approach reinforces the very stereotypes that have harmed human women and non-human animals alike.

Some of the activists defending the use of sex believe that showing our sexuality will call the attention of potential vegans by appealing to their own self image, implying that when they see how sexy being vegan makes us, they will want to become vegan too. This notion is not only misguided but also detrimental to the actual message we should be getting across. Veganism is about animal rights, not about feeling sexy, or having better sex (characteristics we all know have little to do with being vegan or not, but with each individual's lifestyle and well-being) and it is most certainly not about "looking better" than people who eat meat.

Promoting veganism as a way to become "sexy", which unfortunately is almost always equated with "losing weight" in our society (for example, the book "Skinny Bitch" comes to mind), further reinforces prejudices against larger or overweight people, which harms both women and men in our society, but particularly women. Not to mention that veganism is not some magic bullet to lose weight - there exist plenty of vegans who are far from "skinny", who are essentially being given the message that they are failures by these sorts of campaigns that imply or flat-out promote veganism as a way to achieve western beauty standards. Appealing to these harmful standards not only reinforces them, but draws attention away from the true reason people should go vegan, which is to acknowledge the moral personhood of non-human animals.

Many of these activists defending sexist tactics claim that they are not, in fact, sexist tactics, that they "empower" the women who choose to participate in them, and so that criticizing these campaigns is disrespectful to these women - some even claim that to criticize them is itself sexist. These arguments are false for a number of reasons. First of all, these claims are usually made to male activists when they criticize such campaigns. But one's gender does not in and of itself make one more or less qualified to speak about sexism or feminism.

There is a real "men should shut up and listen to women" attitude in these claims that seeks to replace the egalitarianism that feminism demands with a hollow and biologically-based authoritarianism. As bell hooks suggests, while sisterhood is powerful, feminism is for everybody. As abolitionist vegan women, we are extremely glad to have as allies men such as Gary L. Francione, among others, who has been denouncing sexism in the animal advocacy movement and consistently speaking up for feminism for years. While we do of course believe that women should be listened to and taken seriously, listening does not equate to agreeing with or accepting someone's arguments simply because that person is female; disagreeing with those arguments and presenting logical counter-arguments does not equate to being sexist. It is unfortunate, but sexism is so pervasive in our society that some women do not even believe that it's still an issue, do not see how sexism has an impact on their lives, and do not feel that feminism is relevant to them. Some male feminist allies have spent years studying feminist theory; just because they're male doesn't invalidate this expertise.

Furthermore, the view that anything a woman chooses to do "empowers" her is simplistic in that it ignores the patriarchal context in which those choices are made. Yes, the women who participate in the campaigns we are criticizing have chosen to do so voluntarily, and some may feel liberated, or feel as if their choices are themselves a challenge to female objectification, and we do recognize that they feel this way. We are simply asking them to seriously consider that these campaigns are both harmful to women as well as ineffective in challenging the exploitation of non-human animals, and that, in view of this, women should no longer support or participate in them.

As stated above, the view that women are "empowered" or "liberated" by choosing to commodify themselves ignores the structural dimension of sexism in our patriarchal society. Whether we like it or not, our choices to try to "take back" patriarchy's commodification of women by participating in it voluntarily affect the lives of other women, especially women with less power. In a culture that still views and presents women as sex objects on a daily basis, the "taking back" or "reclaiming control" intent of these choices is entirely lost to the greater public, and the objectification and commodification is simply reinforced. When this sexism is reinforced as being acceptable or no big deal, the overall effect is to reinforce the attitudes that allow the trafficking, abuse, and other forms of exploitation and violence that are inflicted on women in poverty and of lower socio-economic status around the world every day.

Some claim that these campaigns are necessary to get the attention of the public. As we mentioned above, this draws attention away from the real reasons behind veganism: the rights of sentient beings not to be considered property. Getting attention at all costs is not the way to promote a serious issue such as violence against animals; in a world where this violence is already not taken seriously, attention-at-all-costs tactics only serve to further trivialize the issue. PETA's sexist campaigns do get attention, but overall it is attention for PETA, not for the real issues. It's a guerrilla marketing tactic designed to get people talking about PETA so that the donations keep flowing. (And look, it's working, since here we are talking about PETA, but we felt we couldn't discuss this issue without mentioning the largest and worst offender, unfortunately.)

Even more disturbing are the video campaigns that juxtapose sex and explicit, gory images of violence to animals, purportedly to grab the attention of young heterosexual men and then to inform them about the treatment of non-human animals. For example, PETA's "State of the Union Undress 2010" features a woman stripping "for the animals", after which a second video automatically begins playing, depicting graphic violence inflicted on nonhumans. How exactly is getting men to associate these sexually arousing images with gory images of violence going to help anything?

The campaigns that blatantly use sex and Western beauty standards are not the only sexist tactics used in the animal advocacy movement. For example, the longstanding campaigns against fur have a distinctly sexist element. By singling out fur, advocates are not only implying that there is some moral difference between fur and leather or other types of animal-derived clothing, which there is not, but they are also singling out those humans who wear fur while ignoring or minimizing the actions of those who wear other types of animals. Most fur in our society is worn by women. Effectively, these campaigns single out as morally wrong a particular use of non-humans mainly by women, while minimizing other equally morally wrong uses by all genders. Does pointing out that a little old lady in a fur coat is wrong to use animals while ignoring a biker in a leather jacket really help anything?

Also worth mentioning are the gender issues involved in animal exploitation. The animals exploited specifically for their milk and eggs are, it should be obvious, females being exploited for their reproductive cycles. They are repeatedly forcefully impregnated in the case of cows and other mammals used for their milk, i.e. raped, then their babies are taken from them, which causes extreme distress to mother and baby. Both mammals and birds are killed once they reach an age such that their reproductive cycle slows down or stops, and they are no longer profitable to their owners. Similarly, female animals of most of the species exploited by humans are used as "breeding" animals, forced to have litter after litter of young, and discarded when their usefulness for this purpose wanes.

While, as is to be expected in our speciesist society that considers non-humans property, feminism and sexism have always referred to humans, when looking at it from a perspective that is both abolitionist vegan and feminist, this exploitation of female animals' "femaleness" could be seen to fall into the intersection of these two struggles. It is odd that some people claim to be vegetarian (but not vegan) for "feminist reasons" - one would think that if someone believes the eating of animal flesh to be connected with the treatment of women "like meat", that they would also see the use of animal products that come specifically from female animals' reproductive cycles as being connected. Feminism is not merely a matter of having a vagina and a monologue; it is a daily lived practice, a dynamic force for change and liberation, a dialogue, a community, and a social transformation embodied in words and actions every turning moment of our lives.

If feminism is for everybody, that includes nonhuman animals. As animal rights advocates, whether we are male or female or genderqueer, it is our responsibility to oppose the exploitation and oppression of all sentient beings. This will be achieved by educating others in a creative and objective manner. How can we presume to end the exploitation of non-humans while encouraging or accepting the exploitation of our fellow human beings?

The bottom line is: commodifying ourselves does not truly "empower us". We can't use sexist methods to further a social justice issue. All exploitation of sentient beings is related; we're not going to end speciesism, the oppression of non-human animals simply because they are not human, without a firm commitment to ending sexism as well, and certainly not with the kind of attention-at-all-costs opportunism engaged in by certain activists at the expense of other oppressed groups.


Ana María Aboglio
Paola Aldana de Meoño
Jo Charlebois
Elizabeth Collins
Vera Cristofani
Mylène Ouellet
Trisha Roberts
Kerry Wyler

http://www.norelpref.com/media/slack4/sexAndthingsLikethat.mp3

http://www.norelpref.com/media/slack4/changefortheBetter.mp3

http://www.norelpref.com/media/slack4/alwaysWearCleanUnderwear.mp3

http://www.norelpref.com/media/slack4/loveYourButtWell.mp3

http://www.norelpref.com/media/slack4/iHaventTheSlightestIdea.mp3

http://www.norelpref.com/media/slack4/churchOfTheGoldenShower.mp3

I promised to let some of the BWI ladies know where I get my little wooden folk and my wonderful kunin felt, and I also promised to update my blog, so here I am doing both at once, multi-tasker that I am!

The wee folk: I get the Man one and the Little Boy one from Casey’s Wood Supplies. My usual gnomes are the Man-sized ones, and the mama gnome keychains are funnily enough made from the Little Boy size.

The felt: In my modest opinion Kunin ecofelt is the only felt worth buying (I don’t use wool felt, but I imagine that is also good) ! I buy big boxes of Kunin felt online from SpinBlessing in the US, you can buy all the colours by the sheet and even including the shipping cost it is much better value than my local fabric store. You can see the shipping cost as you add felt to the order which is handy as you can squish in a couple of extra sheets before the shipping cost goes up

Now, in return for that very useful information… I had to leave the LLL conference early and missed Mike Brady from Baby Milk Action’s talk on the Sunday afternoon, did anyone catch it? Grumble, grumble, it was the one talk of the weekend that I really wanted to attend but DD had different ideas, and we left the conference much earlier than intended! So, if anyone got to the talk, was it good?

Loved catching up with you all

I have been invited to ARZone’s Live Guest Chat this weekend, Saturday, March 13, at 3pm Pacific Time to answer questions about welfare reform, abolition, animal rights, and veganism.

Participants must pre-register to ask questions. You can find more details, including time zone information, here.

The weather is not ready for spring yet. We visited a friend in Heidelberg this weekend and exactly Saturday morning it started snowing again. Heidelberg was beautiful but cold.

Evidence Nr. 1:

Evidence Nr. 2:

It was freezing cold and a bit windy. Walking around wasn’t much fun although it may look like it:

Since we were invited to a party, I wanted to bring some cake. In the end I didn’t even take it and we had these wonderful bars all to ourselves. They have a wonderful intense and tender chocolate shortbread bottom and a soft, buttery caramel topping, which is filled with hazelnuts and drizzled with chocolate. I cut them into bite-sized pieces because they are very rich and addictive. They are also soy-free, if you are able to find soy-free chocolate.

Chocolate-Caramel Bars with Hazelnuts (makes 25 small bars or 9 large):

For the shortbread (I used this recipe):

Preheat oven to 160°C (325°F) and line a 20 x 20 com (8 x 8 inch) baking dish with parchment paper)

227 g (1 cup) margarine, cut into small pieces
100 g (1/2 cup) sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground vanilla (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1/4 teaspoon salt
180 g (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
45 g (1/2 cup) Dutch processed cocoa powder
3 tablespoons cornstarch

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until a dough forms. Press into prepared pan and bake for 25 minutes. Set aside and let cool.

For the caramel topping (I used this recipe):

125 g (1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon) coconut oil
200 ml (4/5 cup) full fat coconut milk
200 ml (4/5 cup) oat cream (such as oatly)
2 tablespoons golden syrup (corn syrup or agave syrup will work fine)
75 g (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
200 g (1.5 cups) toasted hazelnuts
100 g (3.5 oz) bittersweet chocolate

Melt coconut oil in a medium-size saucepan. Add coconut milk, oat cream, syrup, sugar, and salt. Cook over medium heat for 30 minutes, stirring from time to time.. The mixture should have been reduced by less than half with  a slightly gooey consistency. Stir in cinnamon and hazelnuts and pour over shortbread. Transfer to fridge and let cool until set. (about 1 hour).

Cut into squares of desired size. melt chocolate and drizzle over squares. They will keep refrigerated for 4-5 days.

Filed under: bars, cake, candy, chocolate, recipes, vegan

Today, I wanted a meal I would normally make with couscous. I have all of sod in the house of a couscous-y nature. It was 6pm on a Sunday, when shops tend to be shut, and I had very little energy to actually go out and hunt down grains that might not fill me up so well anyway. What I do have is pearl barley. And, amazingly, it worked out pretty well.

Pearl barley, I have to admit, takes a while to cook - basically you cover it with cold water, bring it to boil and simmer it for an hour. On the other hand, I've found it freezes pretty well (in terms of being edible afterwards), which means it is always worth doing double quantities and freezing some for another time.

So, today I did that - I used one of my smaller coffee mugs full of dry barley, simmered it for an hour, then took about half out to cool down ready for freezing. Then, to go with my stir-fried veg, I flavoured what was left in the pan:
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-1 teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg
-a pinch of salt

Turned out ok and probably filled me up better than couscous would have!

COMPENDIUM 87 YOU KNOW THE DRILL

I came across a delightful little recipe for a super simple tomato sauce that made its way around the internet some time ago: Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter by Marcella Hazan. I was intrigued that it only has 3 main ingredients (tomatoes, onion and butter) and received rave reviews from everyone. So of course I had to make a vegan version.

You'll find the original recipe in the link above. Basically you take 1 large 28 oz tin of good tomatoes (don't settle for crappy cheap tomatoes*) smooshed up with the juice along with about 5 tbsp of your favourite vegan margarine (Earth Balance) and an onion** cut in half and throw that in a sauce pan. You can use unsalted vegan margarine and then salt to taste but I found that the salted margarine wasn't too salty for this. Anyway, bring the mixture to a simmer and cook uncovered for about 45 mins, stirring occasionally. Then you take out the onion and serve over pasta.

Sounds too simple to be that good right? Wrong. It's incredible. Really! The combination of margarine, slowly cooked onion and tomatoes works so well that I wanted to just eat the sauce as is. I did deviate from the original in that I did throw in some roughly minced garlic. I also cut the onion into 8 wedges and left that in the final sauce. Next time I'll try it like the original — no garlic and take out the onion.

I served the sauce over thick homemade wheat pasta with basil since I was out of packaged pasta (and no semolina flour). Just 2 cups white flour with 1/4 cup soy flour, salt, basil, olive oil and about 3/4 cup boiling water. Mix and knead until smooth, cover and let sit for 30 mins. Then simply roll out, cut and let dry for a few minutes and then cook in boiling salted water until done. It's super easy and yummy, but it is a bit time consuming. Sometimes it's worth it though and the homemade pasta was awesome with this sauce.

And there you have it. A 3 ingredient sauce that folks all over rave about. I think that this sauce is going to become my go-to sauce around here since I always have those ingredients on hand. Now, this is NOT a low-fat sauce by any means but it's really good, and for me, worth the calories and fat. Give it a try!


* If all you have are cheaper mediocre canned tomatoes, you might want to add a sprinkle of sugar to the sauce when simmering.

** I was reading that quite a few chefs swear by not sauteeing onion or garlic in tomato sauces and letting it cook in the sauce itself for the best flavour. I think they're on to something because this tasted way better than any tomato sauce I've made with sauteed onions and garlic.

This is my first, completely finished 1930’s dress.  There is no date, but the full skirt and puffed sleeves suggest late 30’s.  I don’t know 30’s fashion enough to narrow it down further than that.  The only alteration needed, beside the straight grade up to my size, was a 1in FBA.  This is the same amount I need for modern patterns.  Other than that, it fits like a dream.  The waist hits at my high waist, the armscye is nice and high.  If I make more, I will take in the waist a touch more and do a slight narrow shoulder adjustment.  What surprised me about this pattern was just how full the skirt is.  The hem circumference is the same as some of my 50’s patterns.  I bought the last of this fabric on the bolt, so I had to use some creative cutting.  There might be enough scraps to make a belt, but I’m not sure.

What I like most about this dress is the rick rack and the cherries on the collar

So I took a month off to get some work done on various side projects, but never fear I have new episodes in the works, including the episode of Ask Science Dude that went up earlier today. And I will be putting together another ep of the Angry Hippie before the end of next week.

Among my accomplishments in my time off I finished my third DJ Mydnyt album, and am redesigning the website for launch TBA. In the meantime, I have uploaded the album cover that I made and the tracks to my account at Behance if you want to check out the full album. Here is a look at the front cover:

Also during the month I put together my first ever zine, and will be getting that printed and available as the summer approaches, with future issues to follow soon. Angry Hippie Unplugged is the name of this project and the first issue is called Digger’s Dream. So look for more about that to come soon. Anyway, it was a busy month ‘off’, but I am excited about everything that I was able to get done. Thanks for sticking around, and I will see you on the flipside.

[German version here ~ Deutsche Version hier]

When it comes to fast food in Germany, currywurst aka sausage with curry sauce is always on top of the list. The sausage used for currywurst is usually a bratwurst (“fry sausage”) which is cut up and smothered with a curry-ketchup mixture. Yes, that’s right: curry-ketchup mixture is what we call curry sauce here in Germany.

I probably had one currywurst in my whole life and never missed it. But when I was a kid, I really loved curry ketchup. Me and my sister refused to eat regular ketchup, so my father always had to buy a large bottle of curry ketchup when he went grocery shopping. It was probably only because of the curry sauce/ketchup that I wanted to veganize currywurst. I know, I could just have grabbed a bottle of curry ketchup. For those, who are not familiar with the whole bratwurst/currywurst/currysauce obsession, here’s a recipe.

Bratwurst (makes 4 sausages)

144 g (1 cup) gluten powder (vital wheat gluten)
10 g (2 tablespoons) chickpea flour
25 g (4 tablespoons) yeast flakes
2 teaspoons dried marjoram
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
65 g (2.3 oz) smoked tofu
2 cloves garlic, minced
240 ml (1 cup) cold water

Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F). In a bowl, combine gluten, chickpea flour, yeast flakes, marjoram, granulated onion, black pepper, and salt. Mix well.

Mash tofu as finely as possible (or process into a paste using a food processor).

Add mashed tofu, garlic,and water to gluten mixture and knead until everything is well combined. Let rest for five minutes and knead again for 30 seconds.

Divide dough into four equal parts, form into logs (about 30 cm or 12 inches long) and tightly wrap in aluminium foil. Seal the edges by twisting the foil and bake for 25 minutes. Let cool completely before unwrapping.

Currywurst (serves 4)

Heat a large pan and add 1 teaspoon of oil. Fry the sausages until brown and crispy. Meanwhile prepare the sauce in a small saucepan:

For the sauce:
250 g (1 cup) ketchup (use a sweet version)
60 ml (1/4 cup) water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons mild curry powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

In a small saucepan, mix all the ingredients and cook sauce for 1 minute. Cut the sausages into bite size pieces and add to sauce. Stir and divide between four plates. Sprinkle with curry powder and serve with fries.

Filed under: German recipes, recipes, seitan, vegan

Supply-side Versus Demand-side Advocacy

We live in a market economy made up of two major factors – supply and demand. These two factors determine what is bought and sold and for how much. Qualitatively, demand represents the wants and needs of buyers in an economy. Supply represents the efforts of firms to profit from existing demand. The stronger the demand for a given product, the more potential profit and resulting competition among suppliers there will be in attempting to satisfy demand for the product. If there is no demand for a given product, there will be no supply for the product because firms will not be able to profit.

The most important conclusion to draw from the simple qualitative economic facts above is that demand drives supply. Marketing firms may help a product realize its potential demand, but they cannot create demand. [1]

Since demand drives supply, if we focus on changing demand, we can change supply. But the reverse is not true: we cannot change demand by focusing on supply.

For example, Hellmann’s® Mayonnaise recently announced that it has switched to “cage-free eggs” in its Light Mayonnaise. In a discussion with advocates about this switch, I suggested that if large animal welfare organizations insisted on engaging in single-issue campaigns (because such campaigns are good fundraisers), then instead of “cage-free egg” campaigns, they would at least be engaging in legitimate animal advocacy to campaign for vegan alternatives in restaurants and brand-name products.

However, the problem with such vegan-oriented single issue campaigns is that they are supply-side advocacy. To use the example above, let’s assume that Hellmann’s® developed a vegan mayonnaise to compete with Vegenaise® and Nayonaise®. Only if there is sufficient demand will it be sufficiently profitable for Hellmann’s® to keep the product on the market and develop it further. If there is not sufficient demand, the vegan product will not be sufficiently profitable and Hellmann’s® will discontinue the vegan product. The marketing and chief executives and stockholders don’t care what sells (e.g. vegan products or animal products), they only care that a product or service sells, i.e. that there is a demand for the product.

So what does this imply for animal advocacy? It obviously implies that we must focus virtually 100% of our time and energy on increasing demand for vegan alternatives to replace animal products. The only way to do that is through vegan education; that is, informing people why they ought to go vegan and how to go vegan. As we create more demand for vegan products through vegan education, suppliers will respond by catering to the new demand.

There can never be enough vegan education. New vegan products can be taken off the shelf for a lack of demand; but people, once genuinely convinced that animals are persons to be fully included in the moral community, and once educated on how to be a vegan, will stay vegan for a lifetime and influence others, thereby increasing demand.

Welfare Activities Versus Vegan Advocacy

It is illegitimate to call welfare reform activities animal “advocacy” because such a paradigm and the resulting activities encourage people to continue consuming animal products. The welfare paradigm and activities are not merely neutral and unproductive; they are harmful and counterproductive. On the surface, welfare activities appear to reduce violence and suffering in their temporary focus on the symptoms of speciesism. But below the surface, welfarist thinking is the very problem of exploitation itself. All animal exploiters, virtually without exception, “take animal welfare very seriously.” This is because the philosophy of animal welfare accepts, as a most basic and dogmatic premise, that nonhuman animals are here for us to exploit.

Welfare activity, because of its inherent ineffectiveness and support of animal exploitation and killing, as both a theoretical and practical matter, is the active promotion of violence.

Vegan advocacy inherently rejects all animal exploitation and the promotion of violence. Such rejection is the essence of vegan advocacy, and is the only advocacy for nonhuman animals.

Four Types of Activities

Below are four types of activities distinguished by whether they address supply or demand, and whether they are vegan or welfare activities.

Type 4 activities are supply-side welfare activities. They generate most of the revenues for the large corporate animal welfare groups like PETA and HSUS, which is one reason they are so common and popular from the standpoint of the welfare groups. They are counterproductive because they indirectly encourage animal product consumption. They also drain resources from demand-side vegan activities.

Examples of Type 4 activities are welfare single-issue campaigns, welfare law campaigns (e.g. Prop 2 in California), welfare reform campaigns, controlled atmosphere killing and cage-free campaigns, gestation crate campaigns, and foie gras prohibition campaigns.

Type 3 activities are demand-side welfare activities. They are counterproductive because they directly encourage animal product consumption, increase demand for animal products, decrease demand for vegan products, and drain resources from demand-side vegan activities.

Examples of Type 3 activities are encouraging or condoning “happy meat” and “cage-free egg” consumption. A typical Type 3 statement is, "If you're going to insist on eating that anyway, at least buy free-range." If we would not say, "If you're going to kill or rape anyway, at least don't beat the victim as many times as you normally do", then we should not say similar things about animal product consumption. Silence is far better than Type 3 statements.

Type 2 activities are supply-side vegan activities. With the exception of owning a vegan business, these activities do little or nothing to decrease demand for animal products or increase demand for vegan products. Owning a vegan business is an excellent advocacy activity. All other supply-side vegan activities, while not necessarily counterproductive, drain resources away from demand-side vegan activities, and in many cases (such as anti-fur campaigns), are counterproductive as they encourage speciesism by their narrow focus.

Examples of Type 2 activities are requesting vegan products from grocers and restaurants (as an advocacy tool; not because you simply want a certain vegan product available); vegan product campaign (e.g. campaigning for Hellmann’s® to develop and market a vegan mayonnaise); owning and operating a vegan restaurant (again, a great form of advocacy, largely because it incorporates Type 1 activities); vegan product development; elimination single-issue campaigns (speciesist and utterly useless unless we've eliminated demand).

Type 1 activities are demand-side vegan activities. They decrease demand for animal products while simultaneously increasing demand for vegan products. Because of their focus on demand and vegan education, demand-side vegan activities are the only activities capable of eventually abolishing animal exploitation.

Examples of Type 1 activities are vegan education (explaining why and how to go vegan through various media and opportunities); abolitionist education (explaining the legal and many other similarities between human chattel slavery and modern nonhuman slavery); vegan food blogs and cooking classes; educating fellow advocates and others about the problems with welfarism and single-issue campaigns.

Important: Unless we are operating a vegan business (which is mostly a supply-side activity), we should spend between 97% and 100% of our animal advocacy time doing Type 1, demand-side vegan activities and the remaining time, if any, doing Type 2 supply-side vegan activities. We should always stay entirely away from harmful Type 3 and 4 welfare activities.

Welfare activities are popular because they accept our society’s violent and speciesist belief that nonhuman animals are here for us to exploit and kill, but they are counterproductive because by such acceptance, they also promote and strengthen the violent and speciesist notion that animals are here for us to exploit and kill. Welfare activities are part of a vicious circle.

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Note:

[1] Marketing firms are in the business of realizing the potential demand for products, but the realization they are able to generate consists in making consumers aware of a given product or service along with various psychological methods of stimulating potential consumers’ interest in the product. Marketing a product can only fulfill a product’s potential demand; it cannot create demand. We can market a highly undesirable product or service all we want, but if the product has no inherent demand, the product will not sell.