Vegan spawn

For those keeping track… Yes, I haven’t updated in a while…

Ms Baby arrived at 41 weeks: 3.5kg (7.7lb) & in great health. She’s already put on half a kg in her 1st week of life! + slept 6hrs straight one night, giving her parents a nice rest… well, sort of. We kept waking up & checking on her!

We’ve named her after my great grandmother + grandmother: Alice Dawn. There’s a few dodgy-mobile-phone-quality photos on my Twitpics, & I’ll be uploading a few nicer shots to my Flickr & Facebook in the not-too-distant future.

Fresh new blog posts coming soon… I’m still in the process of adjusting to life with offspring! & she just woke up from her afernoon nap, so I’m off! Hope everyone is well out there in Veganland. xo

Raw Food page updated

I haven’t blogged for a while, it seems! Pregnancy keeps one a little busier than one expects. Of course, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that my husband & I are also in the process of completing renovations on our unit & buying a house… So it hasn’t all been extra snacking & growing a baby! There are plenty of other Time Vampires at work in our lives right now… I’m coming up to 36 weeks. Not long to go now…

But! I’ve finally thrown some info together on the Raw Food page of this site.

I’ve also recently read Evie’s Kitchen – a book about mostly-raw vegan nutrition & living for kids (& their parents!). There’s plenty of fascinating up-to-date info in there that you won’t find anywhere else, & it’s packed with brilliant recipe ideas. Combined with reading & rereading a stack of other books lately, including Skinny Bitch: Bun In The Oven & Raising Vegan Children in a Non-Vegan World, I doubt there’s a vegan nutrition element that’s been left out of my literary diet these last few months. Yum!

ETA: I’ve added another page: Raw Vegan FAQ

Creamy Banana Passion Smoothie

In the house where I grew up we had a passionfruit vine growing along the fence for some years. I recently rediscovered my passion for passionfruit thanks to some cheap summer produce & created this delicious & simple smoothie.

2 large bananas, chopped
6 passionfruit, halved
2 cups water
¾ cup almonds (soaked is best)
⅓ cup dates
1 tsp vanilla extract or ½ bean

Blend bananas, water, almonds, dates, & vanilla until smooth. Scoop out passionfruit seeds & flesh, add to blender, & whiz until well combined & seeds are broken up (into pieces around the size of black sesame seeds). Serves 4.

Don’t over-blend this one or it will froth up! If you want to make your smoothie extra-icy, add ½-1 cup of ice & blend for 10 seconds.

&here’s a bonus blurry pic of my most excellent raw pizza lunch & green juice:

&for people who are counting: 11 weeks to go…

Happy New Year!

2008 was the year for a few big changes for me… I tried eating loads more raw food, ending up at around 80% minimum daily. My health improved: I didn’t catch any colds or flu at all, & my immune system improved to the point where allergies, like hayfever & hives that have been reoccurring my entire life, vanished entirely. I hadn’t been able to wear earrings for an awful long time without my ears swelling up, & now that problem has gone, too… which is great as I’ve recently had my hair cut short!… &This year I lost my grandpa about a month before my wedding, who I’ve been pretty close to my whole life. It was a bit of a shock, even though it had been coming for years… As a “coupled” person… We got married. We began starting talking about possibility having children, & suddenly I was pregnant with our daughter. We paid off our home loan… All in all, 2008 was quite intense.

In 2009 there are going to be a few more changes… Our daughter is arriving, probably at the end of March via homebirth if everything continues to go smoothly. I’ve never spent much time around kids, so it could well be a steep learning curve! We are looking to buy a house for extra space & room to grow fruit & veg in the yard, & we’re currently planning on renting out our renovated unit.

Other than that, my New Year’s resolutions for 2009 thus far are:

#1 Smile more

That’s about as far as I’ve got! No specific plans as yet. I’m currently reading some personal development books to refine my other resolution/life-improving-type ideas!

I have considered going “100%” raw. There seem to be a few benefits to hitting that mark: a bit more energy, even less sleep required, & many people report it’s easier to maintain all-raw than minimum-80%-ish raw that I’ve been doing, to avoid sliding back into old, over-cooked habits. However! I’ve decided against this for a few reasons… We still intend to travel more extensively in the “developing world” & there are some issues surrounding clean water & such for washing/preparing fresh produce, so we want to keep our digestion used to some cooked food when raw isn’t always safe or available. Vegan is easy, raw: not so much in certain circumstances & remote areas. I also feel like I have plenty of energy already & I sleep around 6 hours already before waking up fully refreshed (or, lately, around 8 on a few “old tired pregnant lady” days!), which is enjoyable. I’ve also found living food usually has richer, preferable flavours, so sliding back doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. We put on pretty close to a “high raw” brunch on Xmas day with family & friends, aside from some bread & crackers on the side (but made raw crackers as well!). My husband, however, prefers a bit more cooked – his sensitive digestion is more sensitive to nut fats & seeds, & likes to eat more broken-down carby foods to fill up – eg. soups, cooked gluten-free & low-gluten bread, while I prefer raw soups & dehydrated bread – I seem to be better with some extra fat & extra moisture-rich raw food in my diet… We both love raw desserts, though! However, with the huge increase in living foods, he can now also tolerate gluten foods now, which is handy when we’re out & about, although we still avoid it at home -  gluten-free is certainly a lighter feeling, digestion-wise, for both of us, & offers more variety. We both feel we need to concentrate on getting back into exercise more than just dietary issues insofar as health is concerned – working on raw has distracted us a bit there! Being pregnant has also meant no rock climbing for me! & I can’t belay, either. So. I suppose I do have another resolution:

#2 Get back into regular exercise ♥

&, as stated previously on a few occasions:

#3 Blog more regularly

I daresay you should expect a few more personal posts, photos, & child-related posts in addition to recipes & such this year!

Entertaining &/or useful related links:

• About New Year’s resolutions @ wikipedia
• 43 Things: for all your resolution needs all year round
• The Baby Name Wizard: a great resource for parents-to-be & writers seeking character names! Features a nifty Name Voyager graph exploring name trends.
• Pretty, shiny, & useful Vegan Etsy goods – for all your animal-eco-friendly grassrootsy shopping needs (+ their Etsy shop front page + their blog).
• &An interesting read for all us arty-yet-geeky types: Best & Worst Science Fiction Movies of 2008

Hope you’ve all had a lovely holiday period. &Have you come up with any great resolutions for 2009? I could do with a few more ideas. Please tell me about them!

Addendum – a note on sugar:

I don’t eat it these days. Anything that’s a processed sugar (or from an animal, obviously). I left this out of my initial post.

That leaves me with agave nectar & stevia as basic sweeteners, which are low-GI & healthier than all the rest, along with a few thousand types of fruits & veg, which are even healthier. Not eating forms of processed sugar means I don’t get ups & downs from ridiculously high-GI, low-fibre junk. I don’t crash after eating a piece (or, um, 10) of cake, because I only eat cake with low-GI sweeteners – usually raw cake, too, so there’s a good lot of fibre, non-deranged fats, & minerals in there, too. Of course, a non-raw cake can be just as easily made using agave or stevia or some sort of unprocessed fruit sugar/paste (eg. dates).

Trying out a living food diet, leaving out sugar (”raw sugar” is heavily processed & not raw, also) is an obvious component to those who have adventured down that road, but perhaps not to others. I thought I’d miss that sort of sugar, but – between the agave & the dates & the fruit – I didn’t miss it a bit. Pretty fascinating (at least to me!) given my cake-baking, cake-lovin’, cake-crazy history. It feels good, this whole feeling better thing. Leaving out processed junk like sugar is probably a significant part of that. &Probably a significant contributor to the whole reduced allergies/hayfever business.

The way I see it, the only thing I’m depriving myself of are post-sugar indulgence crashes & revolting cases of bed-ridden hayfever & itchy, snotty allergies whenever the seasons change: 4+ times a year. I’m trading a few minutes of the convenience of chomping down on a sugary, fattening cake or cookie for hours a day – nay, weeks – of feeling on top of the world where health is concerned. Not exactly deprivation! Especially since the healthier alternatives are at least as good (outside of some truly epic failures at a certain hippie Gold Coast beachside café I could mention… Srsly, what are you folks doing? You make it look/taste so difficult/bland!)… In the case of a lot of the raw desserts & cakes, I’d have to say they’re way better & richer in flavour.

If there are any exceptions, I guess it’d be when I eat out & someone has added a pinch of sugar to a sauce or dish that I’m not aware of… So pretty darn rare & insignificant. It’s not an ethical issue, unless it’s palm sugar or something from a bee. The popular Skinny Bitch books are a big proponent of leaving out sugar as well (I recently read Skinny Bitch: Bun In The Oven & it really is one of the best – & most refreshingly, helpfully, wonderfully, brutally honest – pregnancy/baby/nutrition guides around).

7 facts about me

I don’t usually participate in memes, however I like the number 7 & have read several interesting “7 fact” posts… Although I don’t claim that my 7 interesting facts will be quite so interesting! But here goes:

1. Mum has been visiting me (hence the recent lack of updates), & we did lots of shopping for baby things… I don’t think I ever want to go shopping again! I am not a fan of shopping at the best of times, aside from poking around bookshops & fresh produce markets. Despite being a fan of non-violence, if I am violently opposed to anything, it’s ridiculous overconsumption habits. Frivolous shopping & purchasing drives me up the wall, & I can’t stand being in the midst of it as far as I can avoid it! I know I’m not the only vegan who feels like this, but it’s certainly not just a vegan thing. I prefer to shop online rather than descend into shopping mall hells when I can, particularly around this time of year & during school holidays…

2. Speaking of bookshops, I love ‘em. I prefer second-hand ones, but I’m in-love with a few independent shops as well. I adore the smell of fresh pages as well as old dusty ones. I find book jackets on hardcover volumes to be quite annoying & tend to stick to paperbacks… I need more bookshelves at home! I lend books to friends frequently & donate the ones I don’t intend to re-read, but they still seem to keep piling up! Fiction, non-fiction, everything. I’m constantly reducing clutter in my home, but books are an obvious exception. I’m hoping we can devote a room to being a library in our new house… once we find a house to buy!

3. We’re lucky to be in the market for purchasing a house at the moment while the housing market is hitting bottom. We’re still trying to figure out whether we can get a large enough place near our current location, or whether we’re going to move south a bit. We want a bit of garden space to grow fruit & veg, but also extra bedrooms & space to make working from home & raising our daughter more comfortable.

4. I’m 24 weeks pregnant now. Only 16 weeks to go!

5. I’m a fan of personal development books & blogs as well. I enjoy writing to-do lists & shopping lists, although I rarely manage to follow them. I’m more of a big picture person & get distracted if I break down tasks into small steps.

6. I was an only-child growing up, aside from mum’s Burmese cat Taffy, whom I adored. I’m a total “cat person” – I’ve never met a cat I didn’t like, nor have I met a cat who didn’t like me. Dogs, on the other hand… I like them, but I don’t relate to most them as well. I tend to get along better with rats & small animals! My cats Mao & Fuji were adopted from a refuge as adults. All our “pets” – companion animals – are rescues. I won’t support any breeding or selling animals from petshops for at least as long as their are animals being dumped in shelters…

7. Speaking of adoption… I’ve always intended to adopt children, & my plans there haven’t changed. My husband & I intend to apply for international adoption as soon as we are eligible, which, in Australia, means we have to wait until we’ve been married for 2 years… assuming we don’t move overseas before then, of course! We are still making plans to travel around & see the world in the future.

I’m not going to tag anyone because, like most memes, tagging is a presumptious evil. Or something.

Getting animals out of shops… or is it?

You may have seen Say No To Animals In Pet Shops info, pamphlets, or the website before – a campaign against the proliferation of puppy farms/mills and generally seeing “pet” animals as commodities to be bought and sold with little regard for their welfare.

Here’s a new one: Lead The Way: The Animals (Regulation Of Sale) Bill – for animal welfare, against puppy farms (Australia):

We are a nation of Animal lovers, but we need to do more to ensure their well-being and eliminate animal cruelty. Regulating the sale of animals means a better beginning in life, and helps reduce the 60,000+ unnecessary deaths in NSW alone every year. This website has more information on the Bill, and makes it easy for you to support it.

‘The principle here is about our responsibility as humans to the animal world’. Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP

It looks like a step in the right direction for cats and dogs… but unfortunately this Bill seems to only apply to cats and dogs. It appears to be only aimed at cat and dog rights/welfare, not animal welfare or animal rights at all – very selective and clearly speciesist – it makes no mention of extending these “better conditions” to include other animals being mistreated and neglected in shops.

While “other mammals” get a mention in the Bill (although predictably livestock is excluded, which makes one wonder about the status of – and hypocrisy involved with – certain small animals that are considered “food” for other animals…), birds and fish often get the worst treatment in stores, being seen as novelty short-term “disposible pets” or “pocket pets.” Rather a large oversight, given the far greater numbers of small animals going in and out of pet shops. Barely an encouraging move in real terms, but perhaps better than nothing? Although…

Selectively saving lives? Is this really a step in the right direction, or is it encouraging further discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics? If so, will this really even benefit cats and dogs in the long-term? Or is it just another case of token “feel good” welfare efforts primarily designed to relieve guilt? Efforts that will get in the way of the abolition of animal abuse and use for all species? Why are we continuing to put limits on our compassion according to what animal people think looks cuter in our house or backyard? According to what animal it’s more socially acceptable to feel compassion for? … Vegan food for thought.

Seedy flax flatbread

Raw bread = yum! And so easy to make. This is the only bread I’ve been eating at home lately.

You’ll need a temperature-adjustable dehydrator or a very-low-heat-capable oven for this one! I find a spice/coffee mill to be another good tool for making this bread as well – freshly ground seeds make a much better flavour and texture. Old flaxmeal develops a bitter taste as the plant oils begin to break down. Keep your flaxmeal in the freezer and your flaxseeds in the fridge so you don’t miss out on a better flavour and those valuable omega oils!

3 cups ground flax seeds (linseeds)
4 cups water
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup seeds – your favourites! I use a mix of pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, & poppy
1 tbsp dried herbs – I usually go for Italian herbs like oregano and thyme, & a bit of crushed garlic is nice occasionally, too.

In a large bowl, mix together the ground flax seeds, water, and salt until well combined. If you let the mix sit a few minutes while you get out the rest of the ingredients it will begin to thicken.

Stir through your favourite seeds and mixed herbs. Spread the batter evenly on to dehydrator trays – in an Excalibur dehydrator you’ll use 3 trays, and in a smaller circular dehydrator you’ll use around 5 trays (don’t forget to line the trays with parchment/baking paper if you don’t have other tray inserts to use on top of the mesh!). Use the back of a spoon to smooth the mixture out.

Dry at 40ºC/104ºF to 45ºC/113ºF for approximately 4 hours. Flip the bread over and score it into slices – approx. 9 square slices on each Excalibur dehydrator tray, and 6-8 wedge slices on the round trays – the lines will make it easy to break the bread into slices. Continue to dehydrate until desired texture/dryness is reached – for at least another hour.

Store the yummy seedy flax flatbread in the fridge. When fully dry, it can last 6-8 weeks at least! If you are going to use the bread immediately or within a week or two, under-dehydrate it a little and serve it warm straight out of the dehydrator – retaining a little extra moisture makes the bread more flexible.

Coming up soon: easy instructions on how to make your own Excalibur-sized dehydrator for around $50! As soon as my handy engineer-type husband gets around to putting it all together…

Yummy Carob & Coconut Cookies

Makes around 6 large or 12 small biscuits/cookies.

1 cup raw almonds
¾ cup dates, pitted
pinch sea salt
½ cup raw carob powder*
⅓ cup shredded coconut
¼ cup buckwheat crispies (whole hulled groats soaked & dehydrated) (optional)

Put almonds (air-dried or towel-dried if pre-soaked) & salt into food processor. Process until chopped into tiny pieces. Add dates slowly, processing until well-combined. Add carob powder & process until combined. Add coconut, pulse until mixed through. Tip mixture into another bowl & stir through the buckwheat. Grabbing about a tablespoon of mixture at a time – roll into a ball & squash flat into a cookie/biscuit shape (if you don’t use soaked almonds, you might need to add a little water to get the mixture to stick together). Repeat until all mixture is used up. Refrigerate (or dehydrate until desired texture is reached).

Other options:
+ Press a piece of dried fruit, dried berry, a nut (eg. pistachio, macadamia, or chopped walnut pieces), or another “topping” into the centre of each biscuit for decoration & extra tastiness.
+ Roll the cookies in extra coconut to coat them – extra coconut yum!
+ Instead of buckwheat, you could also stir through chopped raw walnuts or another favourite nut or seed.
+ To make raw buckwheat crispies rather than buy/order them from a raw shop: To make raw buckwheat groats edible & crispy you have a couple of options: (1) Soak hulled buckwheat for 8 hours or overnight, rinse very well (get all that lovely “slime” off!), then dehydrate until dry; or (2) Soak hulled buckwheat for 15 minutes, sprout for 12-24 hours in a jar or sprout bag, then dehydrate until dry. The 1st option creates a crunchier, sweeter texture, & the 2nd option an earthier, less crunchy flavour that’s a bit healthier (& a bit easier to digest if you have digestive problems).
+ Add a teaspoon of cinnamon for a richer, earthier flavour.
+ You might want to reduce the amount of dates to about half a cup if you use a particularly sweet date like medjool.

*For a truly superb flavour, get a good quality untoasted carob powder – organic is usually a good bet. Carob oxidises rather quickly & loses its rich flavour, so the best place to get it is usually from a healthfood shop or organic supermarket with a high stock turnover. If you can’t get decent carob, try using a bit more &/or adding some spice like cinnamon. Additionally: these cookies harden up after being stored in the fridge for a while. I rarely bother dehydrating these sorts of foods – I prefer more water in my food for better hydration!

Sweet banana kale smoothie

This is a HUGE smoothie. I’ve been having it very regularly in the morning since I’ve been pregnant… followed by more breakfast! If you’re not pregnant, you will probably drink half, or have a few glasses of this throughout the morning.

2 medium to large bananas
3-4 large kale leaves, torn up
10-12 almonds (preferably soaked)
1-2 brazil nuts
1 tbsp goji berries
3 dried figs, chopped
medium to large dash (bloop!) of cold-pressed linseed (flax) oil
2 cups water

Put all the ingredients in the blender & blend until smooth, then drink up & say OMNOMNOM!

Other options:
+ If the smoothie is a bit warm after blending, add up to a cup of ice and blend for another 10 seconds.
+ Add a teaspoon of cinnamon &/or sprinkle some on top.
+ Add a teaspoon of spirulina &/or a teaspoon of dairy-free probiotic powder.
+ Swap linseed oil for chia seeds, which are super-high in omega oils, & – like linseed/flax – are in the correct ratio for absorption. Note that if you let the smoothie sit around before you drink it, the chia will turn the smoothie into a thick pudding texture! & on that note, stay tuned for my chia pudding recipes!

* Note almonds are softer after soaking & blend up more easily, making a smoother milk. Soaked almonds are also sweeter! Ideal soaking time is at least 12 hours, but just a couple hours or overnight will make a big difference. Additionally: when raw seeds – including almonds – are soaked, it begins the sprouting process, during which fats begin to be converted for the growing process into other nutrients, such as protein. I keep a bowl of raw almonds (about a cup or two) soaking in water in my fridge, and I change the water every day or two.

Coming up next: raw carob cookie recipe, raw chia pudding & choc pudding recipes – all super-easy & requiring no cooking!

New blog layout, new pages, new stuff!

If you come to my blog to read the posts, you’ll have noticed I’ve changed the layout to make it a bit “fresher” to reflect the fresher way of eating I’ve been enjoying. There’s also a new info page coming called Raw Food that I’ll be updating with living food health information in the coming week. I’ll also be adding more information (of both the “cooked” and “raw” variety) to ye olde Flours & Grains and Other Ingredients info pages that have never quite been finished, and certainly haven’t been updated in some time!

Also, before you leave an epic comment on this blog, you might want to read the FAQ. I’m not a fan of irrelevancy. This blog is about gluten-free living and vegan living and all the things that are tied into that cruelty-free, health-oriented lifestyle. It’s certainly not about you finding opportunities to sell your unrelated junk or narrow political views. If you want to discuss a subject, you’d better make sure it’s relevant to veganism in some way. Read the blog title: it’s Gluten-Free Vegan! And note that I’m not from North America – most of the time I’m quite a bit further south and on the other side of the planet. I don’t appreciate irrelevant conservative capitalist drivel as much as some other people might, although I can appreciate the recent US political frenzy to some extent… But can we has a lil moar global awareness pls?

Much thanks and/or love to those of you who actually have your critical thinking caps on who have sent me emails and comments lately! I would rather not turn off comments entirely, but many folks do recommend it, at least for non-recipe posts. Perhaps people who are really keen ought to comment in their own blogs and I’ll put up the trackbacks instead… Deleting irrelevant junk does take up time that I’d rather not be wasting, and with a kid on the way… well! My husband and I are going to be a little busier for the next two decades at least!

Additionally, I’ll be moving this blog to its own domain soon – the feeds and subscription stuff should stay the same, and the links should automatically update – more on that later when it happens… Please make sure you are subscribed to the Feedburner RSS/XML feeds, or the email updates.

For the moment, stay tuned for better info pages, recipes, and photos this week! In fact, I’m about to whiz up a green smoothie and dust off ye olde overpriced camera equipment right now… and I have an awful lot of cat photos to sort through before I can snap any more pictures…!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Overconsumption, overpopulation, having children

The question “when will I have children?” was never as important to me as “will I have children?” and – perhaps more importantly – “should I have children?”

These are some of my thoughts on the matter…

Should I?

The question of should relates to the ethics involved in bringing another person into the world, and the argument against that is usually the fallacy that overpopulation of the human race is a major destructive force, which is simply not the case. Yes, humans can be destructive, but it’s not a population problem. A person living in the developed world (or “first world”) on average consumes 32 times as many resources as someone living in underdeveloped “third world” nations. Not only that, the idea of “food shortage” is a problem, as it is an issue of food distribution and rising costs and competition rather than a true shortage. The planet certainly has a food crisis, but not a food shortage.

Here’s a great article that covers 10 key points about “overpopulation” -

10 Reasons to Rethink ‘Overpopulation’
A Publication of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College, No. 40, Fall 2006

Fears of overpopulation are pervasive in American society. From an early age we are taught that the world is overpopulated and that population pressure is responsible for poverty, hunger, environmental degradation and even political insecurity. If we don’t get population growth under control now, the argument goes, our future is in danger.

Conventional wisdom, however, is not always wise. Placing the blame on population obscures the powerful economic and political forces that threaten the well-being of both people and the planet. It leads to top-down, target-driven population control programs that undermine voluntary family planning and women’s reproductive rights. It reinforces racism, promoting harmful stereotypes of poor people of color. And it prevents the kind of global understanding we need in order to reach across borders to work together for a more just, peaceful and environmentally sustainable world.

Here are ten reasons why we should rethink ‘overpopulation.’ …

Click to continue reading…

Blame the “breeders”?

On the other hand, to say we don’t want to have children out of consideration for animals or the environment, or because modern human “breeding” is “unnatural” somehow, delves into areas that are speciesist when we frame the issue as a them versus us problem, and perpetuates the problematic view that humans are somehow “above” the environment, rather than fostering a healthy, sustainable relationship with it. This human superiority complex – our alleged need for hierarchical relationships to (or “dominion” over) others – is to blame for overconsumption, environmental exploitation, and the commodification of – and consequent disregard for the welfare of – humans and animals. The behaviour and ignorance of individuals conforming to and perpetuating a faulty system is what needs to be challenged, not “breeding” or “breeders.” Throwing blame around is easy, but it’s not a productive or kind thing to do! And it’s certainly not in the interests of improving conditions for other people or animals, nor for improving on the status of reproductive rights… but that’s another post for another day… as is the option for adoption, where it exists (and where it’s grossly restricted due to problems and bigotry of a different nature…).

Will I? When will I?

The questions of will and when are rather more personal, and involve different sorts of considerations, such as more personal, individualised philosophies of life, religion, and personal financial considerations, which I’ll not go into here to avoid a long-winded ramble of potentially no interest to anyone other than myself and my husband… other than to say until I was pretty much in the “will not” camp in regard to having children until I was in a relationship with my husband, who made me rethink a lot of things in my life. And vice versa, actually. I also wasn’t completely sold on the “idea” of marriage and weddings until he came along. (That’s “tru wuv” for you!)

Reducing consumption

On the subject of overconsumption – how does one reduce their consumption to contribute to environmental protection? Recycling? Take the bus? Don’t use plastic bags? Change one’s lightbulbs? These things – and others – together can make a small impact, but the largest impact involves food consumption and the food crisis – and the most destructive and unsustainable food industry is the animal industry: land is cleared for animal grazing and for crops to feed animals, farming animals uses up far, far more water than any plant crop, and animal industries pollute more than all other industries combined.

UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport.

“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” he told BBC News.

“So I want to highlight the fact that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is something one should consider.”
- BBC News

There’s a reason why those little “what’s your ecological footprint?” quizzes ask you questions about your diet. If you are serious about reducing the impact that human beings have on this planet, the answer doesn’t lie in not having children – it lies in making sure your own impact on the world is minimised, and a large portion of that does include what you shovel into your mouth on a daily basis – which a lot of people don’t like to hear! It’s easier for us folks in rich countries to throw money at a problem – like buying a hybrid car, for example – and tell ourselves that’s enough, and that using low-flow showerheads makes us environmentally aware. The fact of the matter is: if you eat meat, you’re not living a sustainable or environmentally-friendly life. Helping other people – including your kids! – go vegan and stay vegan is probably the best of the best things – and one of the easiest things – you can do to help protect the environment. Having kids or interests other than veganism does not have to hamper your ability to engage in animal rights activism or in improving the environment, human rights, the world, etc, etc… In fact, it can improve upon it!

Save everything! Go vegan!

(For further info, see my other posts on environment stuff.)

It’s a girl!

I had my 20-week ultrasound (morphology scan) on Monday at lunch time. I paid a bit extra and got enhanced 3D images, along with a DVD (4D!) and booklet of pictures. Pretty nifty! Now I’m absolutely certain that it’s not just a “food baby” – in fact, “it” is a “she”!

She’s above average for development, with a particularly good-looking spine and brain, apparently! Good stuff. We actually don’t give two hoots whether we’re having a boy or a girl, but were curious nonetheless. We are more concerned with avoiding all the gender colour-coding rubbish! But one good thing has come of it: we have plenty of girl names that we agree on, but hadn’t been able to settle on any boy names! So we’ve dodged that bullet… for now… Now we just have to narrow down the list!

I’ve put up a few pics from the scan on my Flickr and Facebook, so if you’re my “friend” on either of those sites you’ll be able to take a peek…

The Malicious Cup

Yesterday the Melbourne Cup was held in Australia, as part of the Spring Racing Carnival. During this time, women stick dead birds in their hair, calling it fashionable and attractive, and everyone sits on their lazy asses to watch horses get flogged around a race track. Sound pleasant? A little bit of light-hearted fun?

If you open your eyes and look beyond the fluff presented on your idiotbox, you’ll see that it’s far from a “bit of fun.” Having seen the trauma racing inflicts on horses first-hand when I was growing up, I know even the most well cared for horses suffer when they’re forced into racing… Never mind the drugging that goes on behind the scenes. When there’s money to be made off animals, exploitation and abuse isn’t far behind.

This article from Animals Australia covers a heck of a lot:

Horse racing – the glitz, the glamour, the grim reality.

The Melbourne Cup: a celebration? Think again. The only thing being celebrated is an ignorance of cruelty towards animals.

Personal development with a hint of vegan-friendly spice

Time for a book review! Welcome to my thoughts about Personal Development for Smart People. Author Steve Pavlina is a raw food vegan, but this isn’t a book about veganism, or about motivation for vegans, although it is mentioned in places as an example of self-improvement (who’d have thought there was a connection?… ha.).

Self-help books have been coming out of the publishing world’s wahzoo for the last decade in insane numbers. People can’t get enough of feel-good quackery and quick-fix pick-me-ups. But, if you’re like me, most of what you’ve stumbled across will have gone in one ear and out the other – either the author’s are repeating what you’ve heard a million times before, or they’re not quite hitting the mark where your issues are concerned, or they’re spouting tired, old rhetoric you can do without.

If you want help or new ideas about how to get things done in life or to take life up a notch, and you don’t want to be one of Those People who hangs around therapy offices throwing money at psychologists (whose patients, for the most part, only have an average 30-something-% success/improvement rate), what do you do? Improving diet is a good start – keeping it clean to keep out unnecessary hormone and chemical imbalances. You might look to friends and family who have something in common with you, often, but failing that – then what?

How about some people with similar interests and ethics who are writing self-help books? How about nerdy vegan bloggers who can string together coherent sentences? They ought to be capable of ringing a few bells in the old noggin if you’re anything like me! But looking for non-fiction books by vegan geeks that aren’t about veganism specifically narrows the field a little… and then along comes Steve Pavlina and his shiny new tome Personal Development for Smart People.

About the book

I have plenty of positive things to say about this book, but! I’m going to quibble nonetheless. I hate a review that doesn’t quibble in the slightest, even if the result is 5 stars! I think slapping the perfection label on something is a bit lazy… but, to be clear, this book certainly doesn’t nuke any fridges. It doesn’t even come close (and thank goodness for that! I’ve had about all I can take of people surviving nuclear blasts by hiding in refrigerators for this year!).

Personal Development for Smart People starts out well: it draws you right in – like any book worth half its salt should! – but towards the end of Part I it started to lose me. Part I is the theory behind his personal development practices, and it goes into a lot of detail. It will probably improve on a second or third read-through, if you apply his methods studiously and refer back to the text during that time, but straight up I was keen to get into some practical application a little earlier on. Most of it was pretty darn inspiring nonetheless! Steve Pavlina assumes his audience is smart, and his conversational, blogger-influenced tone is far from condescending or instructive, which is probably what stops a lot of people from acting on the useful information hidden within the depths of most personal development books.

Part II grabbed my attention very early on with methods of putting his theory into practice: I’ve read a lot of self-help books over the years, and truly this is the first one that’s ever got me off my butt immediately upon reading it! There’s some magic in them thar pages! But towards the end of Part II, the applied theory seemed to fade back into the realm of theory a little… but perhaps that was just me! The career chapter was quite motivating for me, at this point in my life, and the other sections, perhaps, are not so vitally important to me right now.

The spiritual components of the discussion may throw some people. An element of New Age creeps in, but for those familiar with personal development books of old, such as The Power of Positive Thinking, this will be seen as a very welcome improvement! Authors inevitably share themselves in motivation writing – this is not Psych 101 where the doctor keeps his issues strictly separate (or tries to) from his patients. This is your friendly neighbourhood überblogger, and he knows you – his audience – quite well and you probably know him already, unless you’ve been living under an 8-bit rock or confined yourself to a self-help-free zone. A great deal of the power behind Personal Development for Smart People comes from the personalised approach… and here’s where I’m going to delve into a few of the parts that interested me the most, and that are most relevant to the content of this blog…

The vegan-related bits!

Chapter 11 discusses health-improvement aspects of personal development, and, like all the other chapters in Part II, is divided up into sections that relate to each of the theory chapters in Part I: truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence. Under the heading of “Health and Love” we find a piece about Steve Pavlina’s journey into veganism that is quite fascinating.

      ” … The principle of love helps you to connect with the foods that are most naturally attractive to you. Pay attention to which ones feel intuitively right and which feel intuitively wrong. How do you feel about an apple? A hot dog? A bowl of rice? A stalk of broccoli? Do some items feel healthy to you while others don’t? Could you improve your health simply by doing a better job of honoring what your intuition is already telling you? Are you treating your body in a loving manner?
      I feel most connected to foods that sprout from the earth itself, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. Items that emerge from a factory or a slaughterhouse feel intuitively wrong to me. I feel more loving and connected when I eat natural plant foods.
      When I think about eating animals, however, I feel disconnected from empathy and love. I’m forced to connect with the reality of rotting, decaying flesh. I know that a living being has been violently killed before its natural life span is up, usually after being imprisoned its whole life under conditions any human would consider torturous. I know that slaughterhouses experience massive employee turnover because few human beings can stomach such work for long. I know that enormous amounts of resources must be expended and tons of waste produced in order to deliver animal foods to my plate. I see major incongruencies and unfairness, with some animals being valued as loving human companions while others are treated as edible substances, merely because of differences in taste and profitability. I see a living being that’s been reduced to a dollar sign.
      The only way I can justify eating animal foods is to disregard my intuition and dismiss my conscience. Since I’ve committed myself to conscious living, I cannot possibly do this. I’ve eaten no animal flesh since 1993 and no animal-derived products since 1997. I wish I could say that these realizations were the catalyst for those changes, but the truth is that I conducted a 30-day trial of eating no animal foods purely out of curiosity, and my awareness of the consequences of my food choices increased during and after the experiment to the point where I could never go back.
      When I eat processed, packaged foods, I feel more foggy and disconnected. I see lifeless chemicals that may fuel my body but can never fully nourish me. I know such foods are marketed and sold based on their profitability, not their health properties, so these products don’t feel loving to me. I see falsehood promoted as truth, fragmentation presented as wholeness, and weakness pitched as strength. Eating large quantities of such foods lowers my consciousness and makes me less of who I am.
      What do you feel when you tune in to the foods you eat? … ”

Personal Development for Smart People is by no means a non-mainstream book, but here, within the pages and anecdotes, we nonetheless find ourselves with some vegan smarts usually not brought up for fear of frightening people off. And the one above is not the only mention made of his preferred ethical and healthful approach to life.

Steve Pavlina is known for being forthright, and his book is no exception. It’s a relief! And it’s honest, and it encourages you to bring more honesty and directness into one’s own life. To me, the whole book is about healthy living! I was a bit wary about reading chapter 10 about Money, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I found there, too. I thought the Spirituality chapter would bug the hell out of me (excuse the pun), but it was a holistic, dogma-free approach that was more about philosophy than religion… although a religious person approaching it from a different perspective would probably interpret much of it otherwise!

In conclusion…

So… I think I’ll cut it short and end the review here… yes, short. There’s plenty more I could say about this book! It’s sure to find a home on my “favourite books” shelf in my rather extensive little library.

Stars? Is it possible to put a value on a useful book? Really? If I have to, then I give it: 4.5 shining stars out of 5… but, as I said, some sections of the book may improve on a second or third read-through, so that score may be amended in the future.

Personal Development for Smart People is available in bookshops all over the internet. I’m not going to give you a link to Amazon, because I’m not a fan. Instead, here’s a link to The Book Depository, which has free (free!) postage… worldwide! Nice. Interestingly that means that it works out to be the cheapest online bookshop for Australians to buy from… Wacky.

You can also check out Steve Pavlina’s blog over at stevepavlina.com, where you will find him currently engaged in a trial of a juice fast! Fascinating stuff, and some good juice recipes to boot. Yummy. Check out his blog archives for other fascinating trials he’s conducted on various ways of living/improving, such as polyphasic sleep.

Coming up next…

I’ve updated the look of this blog over the past few days! I think it’s pretty, but let me know if it bugs the heck out of you.

                   

I’ve noticed a lot of vegan blogs are participating in Vegan MoFo – “Vegan Month of Food” – in which people post about what they’re eating and other vegan-type things during the month of November, rather than participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). So… count me in! It’s about time I started updating this thing on a regular basis again.

I’ve pretty much got into the swing of incorporating a lot more raw food in my daily life, and my pregnancy has settled down and the little bits of nausea and tiredness and other bothersome issues have passed by now… So, onwards, and into Vegan MoFo, with recipes, photos, research tidbits, news, and other fun (hopefully!) bits and pieces. The beginning of next week is a bit busy, and includes my 20-week ultrasound, various homebirth midwife and other baby-related things, and also World Vegan Day stuff, so the first week might be a bit scant, but I’ll do my best to post daily-ish… or thereabouts! See you ’round the interwebs!

Happy Halloween/Samhain, northern hemispherians! & Happy Beltane to the southerners!

Cure everything!

And increase longevity! With vegan and living foods.

Free lecture found on Google videos:

FREE GARY NULL LECTURE – CHANGE YOUR LIFE
60 min – Jan 4, 2007

Watch Gary Null’s Latest Incredible Lecture. This Extraordinary Presentation Was Filmed LIVE before thousands of people in Dallas, Texas. Enjoy!

Worth a watch. Good science, other good ideas, and good references. Quite a funny presentation in places (and even includes information on improving rat diets & health, too!).

Also, I’ve changed the header on this site to stacks of colourful fresh produce. Looks prettier! The old header was gluten-free baked bread… and I don’t bake cooked bread these days as I prefer raw flaxbread, so it didn’t seem appropriate any longer.

Recent Eats

In The Raw @Home

Since my pregnancy nausea has settled down (which didn’t take long, thankfully! so long as I steer clear of onions) I’ve been eating more raw foods and trying out recipes.

A lunch of raw spinach dolmas full of pine nuts, dill, dried tomato, raisins, olive oil dressing – a variation on the Mediterranean dolma recipe from Ani Phyo’s Raw Food Kitchen.

A breakfast of raw flaxmeal (linseed) coconut pancakes, with bananas and orange-date syrup, also from Ani’s book.

I can’t recommend Ani Phyo’s Raw Food Kitchen book enough – perfect for gluten-free eating as there’s not so much as a trace of offending grains or processed products, as well as anyone interested in incorporating more crisp, fresh, raw food into their diet. Her stuff is so creative, and much quicker to make than one would expect. Check out Ani Phyo’s videos on Youtube for examples of that.

Snacking @Out&About

Combo meal at Kuan Yin Teahouse – talk to the owner Michael if you want info about gluten in their stuff. If, however, you’ve been eating more raw food at home as we have, you’ll find your tolerance for small amounts of gluten in the diet will noticeably go up pretty much immediately, particularly if you’re simply gluten intolerant rather than allergic… Healthy eating = health improvements = like magic. I haven’t had a trace of cold, flu, or hayfever for almost a year now, which still surprises me given my chronic hayfever and sinusitis history. Ani Phyo, author of the book mentioned above, hasn’t had a cold or flu for over 10 years now. This seems common among mostly-raw and high raw folks, and in statistically significant numbers. (The best raw nutrition info is probably in Raw Revolution Diet, co-written by two dieticians.)

Gluten-free Chocolate Macadamia Cake, made by Jane at the Forest, who also made our wedding cake. We sometimes get free samples of her new creations these days… Free gluten-free cake? From the best baker in Brisbane, and probably in the entire country? Yes, life is wonderful.

The Other

For those keeping tabs, I’m 14 weeks pregnant now – only 26 weeks to go! My iron levels and everything are great, unsurprisingly, and my cholesterol is lower than the Mariana Trench. I’ll be getting a “4D” ultrasound in around 6 weeks time.

Recently I’ve been reading several books, including Raising Vegan Children in a Non-Vegan World, Raising Vegetarian Children, and My Mother Wears Combat Boots. On the net I’ve been surfing around articles on VegFamily: Vegan pregnancy and Vegan Babies & Toddlers. Also checking out vaccine information, having heard mixed opinions and having personally seen immunisations fail for whooping cough, measles, and hepatitis. Vaccines are far from 100% effective, not 100% risk-free, and certainly contain non-vegan ingredients. My husband is educated in several science fields at advanced tertiary levels and, from his research, he has decided he’s not keen on vaccinating in general, particularly the overly aggressive immunisation schedules pushed in western nations. Some sites I’ve looked at recently: VegFamily: Are Vaccines Really Safe and Effective?, Immunise Australia Program, Australian Vaccination Network, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein Vaccine Lecture, HealthSentinel.com, WAVE: Vaccine Ingredients, an interesting peer-reviewed journal article: “The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy, and long-term health-related consequences” by Neil Z. Miller, among many others…

He’s the protector of beancurd

“It’s nice to know that tofu really is good for your health.”
- Bruce Campbell

My Name Is Bruce is due in cinemas October 2008, and DVD January 2009. [IMDb]

Australian vegans: 4th October gathering!

Calling all veg Aussies: a national event is coming up!

Love Earth Gathering

What is the Love Earth gathering?
Concerned citizens are calling on your help to save our planet from the impending catastrophes of climate change. We believe that the policy makers of our time are going to great lengths to avoid the one solution that is easy and affordable and will have a dramatic and powerful effect in reducing global warming.

A worldwide adoption of a Vegetarian/Vegan diet.

If all people in Australia could adopt a vegetarian/vegan diet we could reduce green house gas emissions by one third.

31% of total greenhouse gases in Australia are caused by animal industries – from A Balancing Act (2005), a report by CSIRO and The University of Sydney.

It is a simple inexpensive solution that will buy us more time to wean our civilization off fossil fuels. Yet the policy makers are afraid to suggest this idea for fear of losing votes.

We want to change that and get the vegetarian/vegan diet on the agenda of anyone seriously concerned about reducing the impact of climate change.

And we need your help. The Love Earth Gathering is our opportunity to encourage the world to adopt a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle so we can reduce green house gas emissions and save our planet.

It is a celebration of love and a demonstration of unity.

On the 4th of October, 2008 we are asking all the vegan and vegetarians of the world to gather together in their city and publicly request the world governments to recognize and promote the vegetarian/vegan diet as a real and viable means to reduce green house gas emissions.

So come and join us on the 4th of October in your city (details of venues to be advised) Wear something bright, funny or just come as your own good looking self, But do come. Make a stand and be counted. Together we can save our world.

Date: Saturday 4th of October.

For more information on gatherings in your city, including locations, times, and celebrity guest speakers, check out the Love Earth Gathering website.

Tiny vegan footprints

A quick, to-the-point article turned up on MSN Singapore News recently about the environmental benefits of veg diets.

Going veggie can slash your carbon footprint: study

Giving up meat could drastically reduce your carbon footprint, with meat-eaters’ diets responsible for almost twice the emissions of those of vegetarians, a German study said on Tuesday.

A diet with meat is responsible for producing in a year the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving a mid-sized car 4,758 kilometres (2,956 miles), the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOeW) said.

But the food a vegetarian consumes in 12 months is responsible for generating the same emissions as driving 2,427 kilometres, the IOeW said in a study commissioned by independent consumer protection group Foodwatch.

The calculations are based on emissions of greenhouse gases, including methane produced by the animals themselves, as well as emissions from food production including manufacturing feed and fertiliser and the use of farmland.

Going vegan — giving up meat and dairy products — would cut the emissions released in making what you eat more than seven-fold, to the equivalent of driving 629 kilometres, it said.

And if it is all organic, your food footprint is almost a 17th of that of a meat-eater — the equivalent of driving 281 kilometres.

Beef is particularly environmentally unfriendly, it said, with producing a kilo (2.2 pounds) the same as driving 71 kilometres compared with 26 kilometres for pork.

Switching to organic farming can cut emissions dramatically, “but what counts is the way we feed ourselves … production and consumption first and foremost of beef and milk must be cut drastically,” the study said.

[Agence France-Presse - 8/26/2008 4:21 PM GMT]

So if, in the future, you want to know why I’m baffled by meat-eating “environmentalists” and meat-eating hybrid car drivers, please refer to this article – one among many, both on this here blog and in the great Googleverse beyond. K thx.

An ethical wardrobe: it’s so hot right now

The UK media, from what I’ve seen, seems to be reasonably vegan-friendly. From pro-animal rights articles to health, they aren’t quite so afraid as certain other western nations of throwing the v-word around. *cough*Australia*cough* *cough*UnitedStates*cough*cough*

The Guardian has been doing a series called The Ethical Wardrobe in their Life & Style section that’s worth checking out. Recent articles include info about leather and silk.

Don’t hide from the truth
Many ethical consumers excuse their leather purchases on the grounds that skins are simply a byproduct of the meat industry. The reality is not so simple, as Kate Carter reveals

& More on vegan-friendly weddings!

A whiter-than-white wedding
Wedding dressing can include a catalogue of ethical no-nos, from low-paid seamstresses to tortured silkworms – not to mention the sheer waste involved. Kate Carter explains how to keep a clear conscience on your big day

Thanks to Andrew Bartlett for pointing this out in his recent blog post “Queensland government’s hot air on climate change continues unabated.”

And speaking of ethical clothing, there’s a great photo group on Flickr dedicated to Vegan Shoes. That’s hot.