Tree Vegan Kitchen

So I had this idea for a vegan food blog about a month or so ago, and in the midst of finishing school and work and preparing for an interstate move, it never came to fruition.

Well, now that I'm unemployed and have a wealth of free time at my disposal, that's changed. So here it is: the Tree Vegan Kitchen.

It's just a baby right now. But more contributions are underway and should be up soon. Bookmark it! And if you want to contribute, the format for posts is already on display, so just drop me an email with the filler, and I'll post it with your name. I want this to be a community endeavor that anyone can enjoy.

Word to your moms.

If you're smart, you'll grow up vegetarian.

"As a child's IQ rises, his taste for meat in adulthood declines, a new study suggests.

British researchers have found that children's IQ predicts their likelihood of becoming vegetarians as young adults -- lowering their risk for cardiovascular disease in the process. The finding could explain the link between smarts and better health, the investigators say.

'Brighter people tend to have healthier dietary habits,' concluded lead author Catharine Gale, a senior research fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre of the University of Southampton and Southampton General Hospital."

I must say, the vegetarians and vegans I know are quite intelligent people. It's fair to say that when it comes to health and diet, we make smarter, more informed choices.

Who'd have thought?!

Whey pissed.

So, for the past several months I have been buying soy margarine from the People's Food Co-op. It is manufactured by another co-op and sold at the PFC for like $1.59, which is a fantastic price for soy margarine. On both the front and back of the box, it clearly states that there are no animal ingredients used in the product or its manufacturing. So, it's safe.

Or so I thought.

Last night, after using the last stick and discarding the box, my eye caught a glimpse of a "D" next to the circle U. I don't know much about kosher food laws, but I know enough to mean that it either contains dairy or is made on equipment that process dairy. I'm not militant enough of a vegan to worry about equipment that processes dairy, so long as there is none of it in my food, but I got curious anyway and flipped the box over to the ingredients. And then I noticed the clause. "Contains: soy and milk."

"What the fuck?"

Sure enough, at the very end of the ingredients listing is whey, a milk product. So then, just to make sure my memory wasn't failing me and that my reading skills didn't revert to a 2nd grade level, I flipped back to the front, where it explicitly said no animal ingredients. And then I flipped it back over to where it explicitly said that the products contains no ingredients of animal origin. Then I read the whey part again. And then I scratched my head. I had just been duped by a co-op in Iowa. Angry? Oh you bet.

I mailed out a letter of disgust and ridicule today. I mean, how is it even possible not to consider whey an animal ingredient? It comes from milk! Last I checked, milk comes from cows, brah.

Pssh.. Iowa.

Could these crazy people be vegetarian?

At work this past weekend, I encountered a rather eccentric man. I helped him return some towels and washcloths that he thought were god-awful, and he was right. Whoever bought them for him spent a lot of money on a lot of ugly.

He and his equally as eccentric wife returned tonight to spend some of their store credit. Everything was going as usual, and then they asked me where they could find vegetarian belts. Let me say that I've never before had anyone ask me about vegetarian belts, so this came as quite a surprise. "Could these crazy people be vegetarian?" Indeed, they were.

For all of five minutes we talked about veganism, fake leather, and mall etiquette with enough rapidity and casual tangents to make the Gilmore Girls proud.

After they left, I concluded that these middle-aged, hyperactive vegetarians probably did a lot of drugs in their hippie youth, and I smiled.