Fake Chicken

An adult male chicken, the rooster has a promi...

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Time magazine reported yesterday that the University of Missouri has had a huge breakthrough in the creation of fake chicken meat. Not only does it LOOK like chicken it TASTES like chicken too.

So this makes me wonder, assuming that you really wouldn’t notice a difference between real chicken and the new fake chicken, how do you feel about eating soy-based “chicken?”

Some considerations:

1. Decreasing our chicken consumption means fewer chickens will be tortured and slaughtered – I think this is a good thing!
2. Fewer chickens = less chicken poop and gas = better for the environment
3. Could fake chicken possibly be good for you in terms of calories, fat, cholesterol etc than real chicken? I really don’t know…
4. Fake chicken is, well, fake! So we’re adding one more processed food to the menu. What is the effect on our health?

What do you think?

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My New Favorite Snack: Next Organics

Lately I’ve become addicted to these delicious chocolate treats!

It’s very simple: organic fruit covered with organic dark chocolate. I started with the Dark Chocolate Coconut and I was hooked! From there I’ve tried Dark Chocolate Apricots (winner!) and Dark Chocolate Cherries (yum!)

Next Organics also offers the following:

  • Goji berries
  • Bananas
  • Almonds
  • Walnuts
  • Cashews
  • Brazil Nuts
  • Ginger

All are smothered in dark chocolate. :)

Happy snacking!

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Meatless Mondays! Mongo Salad

I celebrated Meatless Monday today with a huge lunchtime vegan salad:

Organic baby lettuce
Organic bibb lettuce
Organic green onions
Organic carrots
Organic cucumbers
Chickpeas
Walnuts
Fennel*
Organic pink lady apple*

I’ve added apples to my salads before, but since Kate introduced me to adding FENNEL I’ve become a fennel devotee. Wow is it delicious! I never would have thought of it as I didn’t think I liked fennel. But when chopped up small and added in along with an APPLE it’s awesome.

For the dressing I whipped up a vegan cumin-mustard vinaigrette that consisted of:

1/3 c extra virgin olive oil
1/4 c rice vinegar
1-2 T mustard
splotch of agave
pinch of cardamom
pinch of cumin
pinch of salt

And for dessert… a square of vegan dark chocolate!

Did you celebrate Meatless Monday? What did you have for lunch? :)

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The Veganized Double Down

This is hilarious. Or sad. I’m not sure which.

Remember on April 12 when KFC introduced their artery-clogging, blood pressure-blasting, heart-stopping sandwich called the “Double Down?”


“The one-of-a-kind Double Down features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe(R) or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce. And no bun, of course. “

UGH!

Well of course no one wants to be left out of the fun! So Foodswings of Brooklyn has responded with the…

wait for it…

the “Handwich.”


“The Handwich is two faux chicken patties breaded with cornflakes and special seasoning, fried with daiya and tofutti cheese, faux bacon, lettuce, tomato, red onion and a sweet mustard dijonaise (we add veggies because they’re manly too!)”

Thus proving that indeed you CAN be vegan and eat unhealthy junk food LOL!

In other breaking news, KFC announced today that later this month they will sell their 10 MILLIONTH Double Down sandwich.

Source: Jorge in Wonderland http://www.flickr.com/photos/78603183@N00/580541261/

10,000,000!!!

And so KFC is going to keep the once “limited time only” Double Down on it’s menu forever.

I swear I must really belong in some alternate universe. :0

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Meatless Monday: Vegan Coconut Rice Pudding!

Meatless Monday Mania is sweeping the nation! Even Mario Batali is doing it!!

In case you haven’t heard, “Meatless Monday” is an international non-profit initiative in association with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to reduce meat consumption by 15% to improve personal health and the health of our planet.

And while I personally believe that not just Monday but EVERY day should be meatless,
and not just for personal and planetary health reasons,
I joined the Meatless Monday movement and you can too!

Just go to the Meatless Monday website and sign up. You’ll get delicious meatless recipes sent to you each Meatless Monday.

I know it’s VERY challenging to go meatless when you are not used to it. So to help out I’m offering a vegan dessert recipe today that is, well meatless sort of by definition (“dessert!”) and happens to be dairy-free too! So it’s Meatless and Dairly-Less Monday here at Eat. Run. Do Yoga!

Vegan Coconut Rice Pudding

Ingredients

  • 1 cup rice
  • 2 cups water
  • salt
  • 2 cups coconut milk
  • cinnamon
  • agave nectar
  • vanilla extract
  • optional: coconut extract, almond extract, orange essence, lemon or lime rind, nuts, dried fruit, other spices like ginger or nutmeg.

Method

  1. In a medium sized sauce pan, bring the water to boil. Add the rice and a dash of salt and simmer on low until the rice is starting to get tender – about 10 minutes or so.
  2. Add in the coconut milk. Stir frequently until the rice gets soft.
  3. Add in the cinnamon and any other spices you are using, along with agave nectar. I started with just a bit of agave and then kept adding until I got the sweetness I wanted. Continue to cook on low and stir for about 5 more minutes until you get the consistency you want.
  4. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract, and / or any other extract you are using, along with the dried fruits or nuts if using.
  5. Enjoy hot or cold!

Adapted  from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

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Book: Eating Animals

I just finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and while I don’t want to post a full review – there are PLENTY of 511ubaXomAL._SL160_those floating around right now! – I do want to mention a few things I learned from the book.

(By the way I think this is a really important book for EVERYONE to read. I mean, if you are interested in food, your health, and the world ;)   )

Eating Animals is the end result of Foer’s three year journey to understand exactly what meat is. Motivated by his son’s birth and the reality of now being responsible for someone else’s life, Foer decided that he needed to get clear on where meat comes from, how it’s produced, and how the animals are treated before he could, with a clear mind, offer meat to his  son.

In the beginning of the book Foer presents us with a case for eating dogs. Yes, DOGS! His point is well made – we would NEVER think of doing to dogs what we regularly do to cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. Why is that? It’s a question well worth asking. Reportedly, dogs are “quite tasty” and they’re relatively inexpensive. So why do they get to sleep in bed with us while veal calves languish in tight quarters while being shocked with electric prods? Why do baby piglets get to have their testicles ripped out without any anesthesia?

Anyway, Foer systematically walks us through four industries: fish, chickens, pigs, and cows. He visited both “family” and factory farms and reports back on what he found. I don’t want to ruin the book for you, so here is just a glimpse of some interesting, albeit sad, facts Foer reports out:

  • Foer repeatedly sent letters to Tyson Foods asking to visit their facility so that he could see where his food comes from, and he was ignored. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to gain entry to ANY factory farm. Under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (drafted by the animal industry and signed into law by George W. Bush), you’d potentially be tried as a terrorist if you tried to enter into a factory farm uninvited. Why don’t the factory farms want us to see what they are doing?
  • The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, in which 24 MILLION people died in just 24 weeks, was an avian influenza – bird flu. Scientists today argue that ALL flu strains originate from birds, which then jump to pigs, humans, etc. 99% of chickens eaten come from factory farms, which are filthy, disease-ridden environments – perfect influenza breeding grounds. Interesting note: did you know that the origins of the Swine Flu have been traced back to a pig factory farm in North Carolina?
  • Due to overfishing, many scientists predict that our fish supply will be completely exhausted in less than 50 years. That’s REALLY scary.

Foer does find one nationally available brand that seems to have animal welfare in mind  – Niman Ranch. However since his research, Niman Ranch has forced out Bill Niman because they want to run the ranch “more profitably.”

Unfortunately we know what that means.

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Loaded Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potato, an indigenous tuber found in Nat...

Image via Wikipedia

Tami over at Vegan Appetite hosts “Food Network Friday” – a call to cooks everywhere to “veganize” the chosen Food Network recipe. I was excited that I got to pick this week’s recipe: Loaded Mashed Potatoes by Paula Deen. Paul Deen, as you probably know, is the Queen of Cream…and Bacon and Cheese. So modifying her recipe for Loaded Mashed Potatoes, which was loaded with cream, bacon, and cheese, was lots of fun.

Paula Deen’s recipe uses Idaho potatoes. I decided to go a different route and use sweet potatoes as my base. My mom used to make that sweet potato casserole – you know the one with the mini marshmallows – and I had that in mind as I put this together.

loaded sweet potatoes(I learned it’s not easy to photograph mashed potatoes and have them look as good as they really are!)

Loaded Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients
Serves 6

  • 4 medium sized sweet potatoes, cut into quarters
  • 1/2 C So Delicious Coconut Beverage (OR you can use soy milk)
  • 1/4 C Earth Balance natural buttery spread
  • 1 t cinnamon
  • 1 t freshly ground nutmeg
  • 1 t vanilla
  • 1.25 t salt
  • 6 T packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 C unsweetened coconut
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Directions

  1. In a large stockpot, cook potatoes in enough  water to cover for 15 to 20 minutes or until tender.
  2. Drain potatoes and return to stockpot. Beat with an electric mixer until smooth; adding all other ingredients except the pecans. With a spatula stir in the pecans if you are using them. Add more salt or other spices, if necessary. Serve immediately.

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Vegetarian in the News

Wow there’s been a lot of press about vegetarians lately!

Of course Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer has been front and center. Foer was recently interviewed several times, 511ubaXomAL._SL160_including on The Ellen Degeneres Show, and has written articles for CNN, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and more. I’m reading Eating Animals right now and it is excellent – for both vegans and non-vegans.

The Denver Channel 7 news just published an article by a Jennie Castor, a video journalist who decided, along with her carnivore husband, to embark on a vegan experiment to see if the change in diet would improve in their health. Well, their health did improve (!), and you can read about their ups and downs in making the transition to a plant-based diet on denverchannel.com.

Vegetarian kids were recently featured in an LA Times article, with reference to the American Dietetic Association position paper published in July that states “Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.”

More from California – the Oakland Raiders stadium just won the Most Veg-Friendly NFL Concession Stand award from PETA. Go Raiders!

And finally, I certainly wasn’t sad to find this in my reader this morning!

gonzalezPETA-300_299117c

Tony Gonzalez, the starting tight end for the Atlanta Falcons (who was on my list of Vegetarian Athletes), and his wife October posing nude for PETA. Love it!

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Meet Feijoa and Pepino

I tried two new fruits today: a feijoa and a pepino melon!

Feijoa

Feijoa, aka “pineapple guava,” “fig guava,” and “guavasteen,” is apparently the big sleeper of  Fruit World. In the late 1800s it received lots of praise yet very little has come from that.

The Feijoa flower is quite beautiful, don’t you think?

Feijoa_sellowiana_edit

The actual fruit isn’t quite as impressive:

feijoa

The fruits bruise easily, and may overripen without it being apparent from the outside. So for those reasons the Feijoa is not widely exported. In the US Feijoa are grown in California and Florida.

DSC_0023

The fruit has an extremely sweet smell that is apparent even before you cut it open. The taste is sweet with a somewhat gritty texture. I could see these being used to make a smoothie or a pudding. I ate it straight and while it was OK, I’m not in a hurry to get another one.

Pepino Melon

The pepino melon, aka “tree melon,” “bush melon,” and “mellowfruit,” is really cute!

pepino

I was not however, lovin’ the taste. It was OK – a light, mild melon/cucumber flavor.
After doing some research, however, I figured out that my pepino melon was not ripe. Here’s a ripe pepino melon:

pepino ripeHere’s what it looked like when I cut it open:

pepino close

So…I was a little disappointed with my foray into unusual fruits today. I did pick up a few Hachiya persimmons today – I’m excited to compare them to the Fuyus I sampled a few days ago. :)

Have you tried any new foods lately?

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Persimmons

So I haven’t done too well on my quest to try new-to-me fruits and veggies. I had a goal to try five new foods and in reality I tried exactly….one.

Sigh.

The one I tried was the Fuyu persimmon, and it was delicious!

persimmonI enjoyed it straight up, and loved it. The consistency is crunchy like an apple but with a slight creaminess. The taste is mildly sweet. I picked up a few more at the market and I plan to bake something really awesome with them.

Any good persimmon recipes out there?

I’m still going to experiment with new foods. I have a yucca waiting for me in the kitchen, and I plan to pick up some more fruits and veggies tomorrow. Anyone know where I can get a good paw paw?

In the meantime, here is one new food that I do not intend to try:

phpo9dfYIPM

Here’s why I will not be sampling this soda:

  1. It sounds gross.
  2. It’s sold out.
  3. All proceeds support an animal welfare group, an approach I do not agree with.

What about you? Would you try Tofurky and Gravy Soda?

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