Thanksgiving in the United States was originally celebrated as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Nowadays, it usually involves a big meal with a cooked turkey as the centerpiece.
In our home, we choose not to eat animals or animal products - turkeys included. We believe it's healthier for us, the planet, and certainly the animals! The above image is our main course for Thanksgiving Dinner - the big log-looking thing in the dish is a Hazelnut Cranberry Roast.
We had never tried this one before and I must say, it was a great improvement over other products we've tried over the years. It has a great texture and taste and made a great focal point for the dinner. (And a good conversation piece for our non-vegan guests).
Accompaniments included roasted vegetables - potatoes, asparagus, red peppers, cauliflower, and....
....a quinoa-based salad with carrots, garbanzo beans, avocado, and corn among other veggies.
And the leftovers the next day were the best!
Many of you have asked about my vegan posts - some with the classic question, "how do you get enough protein without eating meat and dairy?" The following link contains a very well written answer: http://www.forksoverknives.
Spoiler alert: the following is my lecture about being vegan. Stop now if you don't want to learn more.
Being a vegan is not a club where you get a gold star for joining. And I'm not trying to be a salesman for a vegan diet or otherwise sell some product or widget. Rather, I am trying to make a positive contribution to the world by spreading information. Simply put, a vegan diet is healthier for us humans, for the animals we don't kill to eat, and for the planet that we don't harm to support inhumane and destructive animal farming.
Raising and slaughtering billions of animals is not a sustainable path for our planet. It is not okay to support the wholesale slaughter of billions of living and feeling creatures because we like the taste of their cooked (or raw) flesh. It just isn't right. It's not right that we keep them in horrible conditions in factory farms that additionally create excrement-laden runoff that damages water and other ecosystems both locally and downstream in the watershed.
The photos above show good wholesome food that didn't involve caged, abused, farmed, and slaughtered animals. I like that feeling, I like that idea as a way of life, I like what it portends for a planet that seeks to be its best self.
There's a reason that many humans like to eat so much food - it tastes good and we like that. Eating is one of life's greatest pleasures. But we need to THINK more about what we eat.
You'll never be able to experience the benefits of a vegan diet if you don't "get" the whole idea about the connection between the suffering and death of animals for food and the core awareness of who and what we are as humans on this planet.
Farming and killing billions of animals is not okay - especially for the millions of people who profess to be "animal lovers."
People once believed the earth was flat.
People once believed the sun revolved around the earth.
People once believed that mistreating, killing, and eating animals was a good idea.
Raising and slaughtering billions of animals is not a sustainable path for our planet. It is not okay to support the wholesale slaughter of billions of living and feeling creatures because we like the taste of their cooked (or raw) flesh. It just isn't right. It's not right that we keep them in horrible conditions in factory farms that additionally create excrement-laden runoff that damages water and other ecosystems both locally and downstream in the watershed.
The photos above show good wholesome food that didn't involve caged, abused, farmed, and slaughtered animals. I like that feeling, I like that idea as a way of life, I like what it portends for a planet that seeks to be its best self.
There's a reason that many humans like to eat so much food - it tastes good and we like that. Eating is one of life's greatest pleasures. But we need to THINK more about what we eat.
You'll never be able to experience the benefits of a vegan diet if you don't "get" the whole idea about the connection between the suffering and death of animals for food and the core awareness of who and what we are as humans on this planet.
Farming and killing billions of animals is not okay - especially for the millions of people who profess to be "animal lovers."
People once believed the earth was flat.
People once believed the sun revolved around the earth.
People once believed that mistreating, killing, and eating animals was a good idea.
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