Cheap Easy Vegan/Mcdougall Soup

Wherever you live, winter is coming...

This soup is made mostly of very cheap and available ingredients, with lots of room to add your own variety. 

Make lots and feed a crowd or eat for days or freeze for weeks...

Prep and cooking time: 1 hour+

Equipment and Ingredients

Large pot - 5L pictured
Food processor very helpful

Note: I use an electric kettle to preboil water for the pot but adding regular temperature water will eventually result in soup too.

• 1 to 3 brown onions
• 1/3 to 1/2 cabbage plus optional 1 cup of any chopped greens eg kale or dandelion leaves
• 3-5 large carrots
• 2c brown rice or barley (may substitute 1 c of rice/barley with 1c lentils)
• Optional - any other vegetables eg mushrooms, corn, peas, canned beans or vegetables
• Seasoning suggestions: stock powder, salt, turmeric powder, chili powder, garlic, bay leaves

Instructions

1. Peel the onions, grate in food processor, and add to pot to brown on med to high heat. Stir occasionally until soft and slightly browning - meanwhile grate the cabbage and carrots.
2. Add the cabbage and carrots to the browned onions. Stir and keep heating until the vegetables all soften. Any further browning is fine too.
3. Add water to fill pot at least halfway, stir well and heat back to bubbling. Add 1 tsp of salt or stock.
4. Add the brown rice, stir and simmer until rice has cooked. Add enough water if needed to keep soup very liquid and easy to stir.
5. When rice is cooked, add any optional vegetables like mushrooms, frozen peas or corn. Canned beans and canned chopped tomatoes are great quick additions.
6. Add more water to make a full pot and keep simmering.
7. Season to taste. This can be made Italian or curry style, or just lots of chili, garlic and stock.

Optional I usually add 2x servings of rice vermicelli at the end to make the goodness of the soup more appealing to the family. As seen in the pot pic. Omit and/or sub with grated potato or quinoa for McDougall MWL compliance.

The SAFEty of New Zealand

Can you believe it? SAFE are threatening us all with further ads and actions like that one in the picture if the MPI and/or the government don't do what they want about this "animal abuse".

Who do they think they are? Our government does fine if everyone would trust them and leave them alone. Anyway, here's a roundup of what the country has to say about this so-called animal activism!

• These naive treasonous economic terrorists haven't thought for a second about what happens if everyone goes vegan but are deviously planning to ruin NZ and then move to their second Hawaii homes.
• All the farm animals will die off because they can't raise their young without our help, while overrunning the entire planet due to uncontrolled breeding. And the farmers will never work again, because they have no other skills and nobody has ever retrained for a second career.
• The filming was illegal and staged, and they should have immediately gone onto the farms, stopped the workers, and rescued the animals while they were being abused on hidden unmanned cameras. That would have been legal, right?
• We already know for a fact there are only a few who abuse animals (real farmers hug their cows!) so why didn't they immediately hand over their first footage instead of looking for more widespread evidence to selfishly grab headlines? This is all about their ego. And bringing down NZ farming by making us all go vegan. But mostly their ego.
• They only saw 0.000001% of NZ farms and let's face it, to us townies all farms look alike anyway. It was probably just one farm. And it was staged. With animals that "sanctuary owners" pretend to "rescue"! Because that's just how much sanctuary owners hate farmers...and animals.
• Why didn't they send their evidence to the SPCA who everyone knows is the agency for, duh, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or even our police who are animal experts and would have done something right away, instead of the MPI? Who's the MPI??
• Why did they go to the media instead of waiting for our government to do its job properly? The media is only supposed to be for sports and the movie star news. They just wanted more media attention and donations to waste on paying salaries. Everyone knows that only a few abuse animals, so why did the media even air it? Nobody wants to know if a few people abuse animals - just keep quiet and report it to the SPCA!
• We'd be a third-world country without dairy exports. Why did they take an ad in the UK? What's the UK got to do with the NZ dairy industry? Hello, they're different countries, stupid SAFE. Our PM is even helping us take the Union Jack off our flag.
• The filming of abuse by transport workers and a slaughterhouse worker was clearly an attack by SAFE on all dairy farmers! So those great dairy farmers struck like a cornered snake against SAFE in self-defense, pointing out it wasn't them on the video that wasn't said to be them. We haven't heard from the transport workers or slaughterhouse workers against SAFE yet - they're probably still on shift trying to feed their families on those casual rates instead of browsing the web or making a FB page.
• Do they only care about cows? What about the pigs and chickens? If they really cared, they'd have campaigns for them too! Then that would really be attacking the NZ economy! Good thing SAFE won't be a charity for much longer - we have a petition.
• Mmmmm bacon.

So what's this rubbish about no-cholesterol milk and meat that doesn't even come from animals?

Is that from SAFE too? Someone had better warn the farmers.

Mother's best old-fashioned vegan oatmeal porridge recipe

The best thing about porridge is that you can add anything!

The best thing about becoming a mother is that you learn to go with the flow...

Morning Oatmeal 
(or whenever my day allows time for eating with utensils)

1. Boil the kettle.
2. Take kids' leftover bowl with some extra soymilk and cold cereal sloshing in the bottom.
3. Add random crumbs from yesterday's bags of kids' car snacks
4. Add organic wholegrain oats
5. OK, ran out of wholegrain oats. Add some instant oatmeal and some of that cornmeal I bought months ago when I was going to start making fresh cornbread.
6. Add some raisins, or shred some dates with bare hands, or just decide the soymilk will be sweet enough.
7. Cinnamon? Ginger? Nice if you have a few extra seconds.
8. Pour boiled water over the ingredients in the bowl.

• Cooking time - 1 shower, 5 answered emails and 1 shopping list (don't forget organic wholegrain oats!) 
• If in a super hurry, just add more soymilk to cool and eat right away as limp muesli

Bon appetit! Remember while eating that these are the best years of your life...

5 upsides of the Farmwatch expose

It's very easy to get caught up the immediate anger, denial, and polarisation when whistleblowers expose what we'd prefer not to see. Social criticism can be violently unpopular, and "killing the messenger" is a cliche for a very good reason.

But undeniably, whistleblowers get us talking about the important stuff instead of sitcoms and sports. No other way works like it. And beneath the painful arguing, this is our common ground...
 
1. Compassion

New Zealanders love animals, and we don't want to see what we all had to see. Nobody. The farmers, the businesses, the animal activists, the consumers. Not even the perpetrator of the worst videoed violence would enjoy that footage. Animal industry workers have a stressful, traumatic job that is generally insecure and badly paid, and as such are another victim of the system, as well as being the convenient scapegoat for the offenses.

2. Public pressure

The government and MPI now know without a doubt that New Zealanders want action for better treatment for farm animals. This is the only sort of pressure that really works. Simply reporting the abuses was not working.

3. Awareness

Many more people, including townies, now know the open secret of what happens during industrial farming to produce milk for the shops. Don't they say education is key? Of course it doesn't have to be this bad. Let's look for short and long-term solutions together to acknowledge that animals as economic objects are at risk.

4. Memories

So many people from rural New Zealand backgrounds have shared their memories of how farming was back on their family farms and how unbelievable it is that these traumatic scenes could be widespread. For better or for worse, caring for their animals is the common theme.

5. Vision of the future

New Zealand's economy doesn't need to depend on industrial dairy so desperately that we accept  welfare compromises for financial success. Even if New Zealanders didn't care about animals (we do!), we'd be wiser to diversify our rich land into more sustainable operations.

The future could be cruelty-free, if we decide we want it.

Shocking abuse of New Zealand dairy calves

Shocking footage, as published on TV. And further unaired footage, from Farmwatch.

Of course, it's only shocking if you haven't been paying attention. For decades, investigative psychic geniuses, I mean, animal activists like those at Farmwatch always manage to find the only tiny .0001% of farms where terrible, horrible, no-good very bad things are happening.

When the government organisations like MPI in New Zealand somehow can't find them. Or do anything about them.

The news has gone worldwide. And the reactions come flying. All versions of:

"Please please don't make me feel guilty about this."

Everyone wants to blame somebody else for those adorable horrible dead-eyed baby animals.

Sick twisted individuals

Those 99.99999999% of dairy farmers who naturally love their animals flap their hands accusingly at the transport operators who have let them down. Who knew that animal transport workers leave the calves for hours at the side of the road? Or fail to cuddle the baby calves gently into padded baskets in the backs of trucks?

Something must be done to those bad people! (And now it will, thanks to the media attention.)

And the farmers post kissy pictures of themselves with animals...who are still alive and conscious enough to enjoy their photo op.


Biased troublemakers

Actually, it's the activists' fault, for publicising the covert pictures. That's illegal! Fonterra is "very disappointed". No, it's the TV station's fault, for not presenting "the other side". After all, it's not fair to just show the tiny tiny minority of bad stuff found by the investigative psychic geniuses.

Blinkered consumers 

Fact: the dead baby calves have always been a part of your glass of milk. The money from the sale of the baby calves is just as much a part of dairy farmers' shaky profit margin as the highly-publicised milk powder price. And where there's profit margin, there's a margin to cut - i.e., the time spent getting those pesky calves into those trucks, and into the slaughterhouse machines, as quickly as possible. Having the calves reduced to weak and unresisting objects is good for the economy.

You know what they say in show biz. Never work with animals or children. Baby animals must be the worst.
This is the price of your cheap milk and cheese.


Now we see the violence inherent in the system. And it's ugly. Luckily, there are so many options instead of cows' milk.

Vegan burger at McD's - Lest we forget

News flash on the local Auckland vegan network: you can get vegan burgers from McDonald's now! In some very limited outlets, you can use a touchscreen to create your own gourmet burger. Guacamole, mushrooms, tortilla strips, lettuce, tomato and tomato and chilli relish - sounds delicious!

So is this news to be celebrated? Is this a step in the right direction for vegans everywhere and time for a stampede to try the new offering to support McD's vegan efforts?

Yeah, nah. Time to watch (or re-watch) McLibel.

• Remember how crappy McDonald's is as an employer to vulnerable young and poor people. Anti-union barely begins to describe it.
• Remember how awful they are to their own franchisees.
• Remember how they target children in their advertising.
• Remember how they pressure their way into neighbourhoods and globalise the food economy, with their power undercutting business from local food outlets where the profits support local families. 
• Remember how they consistently resist accountability from their animal product suppliers to be humane, sustainable, or even sanitary. 
• Remember how their business and food philosophy is as anti-compassion as it is possible to get.

(Source: McSpotlight )

Lest we forget

Yes, I have taught my daughter to boo when we pass a McDonald's. I can't forget what I learned during the McLibel case. Yes, they are worse than other fast-food restaurants and supermarkets, if only because their size allows them to be.

No, I wouldn't cross the road to get FREE vegan food from them. Corporate criminals like Nestle and McDonald's bank on most of us forgetting their crimes. They're right.

Yes, it matters where you spend your money - you are voting to support that business's growth. There are lots of other nonvegan restaurants where you can already celebrate vegan options that have been available for years. Hooray!

Obquote from The Princess Bride

In the words of the (apparently) immortal Westley: "My brains, his steel, and your strength against sixty men, and you think a little head-jiggle is supposed to make me happy?" McDonald's head-jiggle may be in the vegan direction, but they're still McDonald's.

Bee my Valentine!

Don't bee shy! (the camera loves ya)

This post will be short and sweet, like its main characters. But it won't bee a quickie.

On our driveway, two bumblebees are celebrating Valentine's Day in the best way they know how: making the bee with two backs.

So as naturally nosy primates, we took some photos. (Also available on video.)

Try another angle - beeautiful.

While Valentine's Day in New Zealand was yesterday, I prefer to beelieve there may have been extended courting - some special nectar and pollen, perhaps - and foreplay.

Clearly they have adopted the theme song "Why don't we do it the road", by the Beetles. A bit of research shows bumblebees mating on the ground is normal, but they can continue for 10 to 80 minutes!  One observer reported mating bumblebees can bee moved, so I did.

While much of the public concern over bee populations highlights honeybees, we need all pollinators much more urgently than honey.

So I hope you'll join me in wishing the happy couple a much longer and fruitful...coupling...beefore they buzz off.

Further bee puns may bee left in the comments.

Obesity: Supporting satisfaction instead of surgery

Hot news from down under - a couple of surgeons who perform bariatric (stomach-stapling) operations would like to perform more of them on us, and would like tax money to fund their work. The media is running their advertisement as if it were a public health statement.

I've battled weight problems for my adult life, and I know there is no magic bullet for maintaining a healthy weight. Neither is there a magic scalpel. Cutting open your body to reduce your stomach capacity and all that could mean for your future is not a tenable general treatment.

Battling obesity en masse

New Zealand is, like most developed countries, guilty of more reporting than acting on the growing obesity problem. While this is always a sensitive subject, a recent longterm study showed that while there are obese healthy people, they are much less likely to remain healthy over the years.

So is it true that "Surgery still remains the most capable strategy for inducing robust and long-term weight loss"? May I see the source please? The (US) National Weight Control Registry research does not mention surgery at all in their summary of how most of their participants lost long-term weight.

But I am even more interested that New Zealand's tax money supports industries that support obesity. Fatty cholesterol-rich foods like beef, pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy. "Added-value" processed foods, which take natural raw foods and package them for the highest profit and shelf life instead of fiber and nutrients. Food technology trumps food quality.

Calorie density

Why does this matter? Jeff Novick, RD, MS explains in this article and this video presentation, but in short, calorie density reigns supreme in how much people eat.

Steak doesn't fill you up like oatmeal. Potato chips won't fill you up like potatoes.

Where the money goes

So if we're going to tweak our economic contribution to solve the obesity epidemic, let's not psych everyone into thinking we have to catch up with the Aussies in dangerous life-altering surgery rates.

Let's at least stop being part of the problem, and remove tax funding from those industries harming our national health. Restrict their advertising which often reports positive health benefits or just plain fun...and often arrives in our schools to advertise to our children.

Help make healthy food cheaper, more available, and more acceptable instead.

Secondhand Smarts - community works!

I haven't posted a Secondhand Smarts update for a while, but rest assured I get so many bargains from secondhand shops, TradeMe, etc, that I can hardly keep up.

An extra special nod must go to the bargains I got at last year's school fair. OK, I put in a lot of hours at the White Elephant sale where I got the goodies, but it was a great community event and raised much needed funds for the kids' school. And hundreds of people went away happy with their bargain finds!

Community and charity work can seem thankless at times, but as well as the reality of the help you're providing, you are also making connections that can sometimes reap more tangible rewards. Sometimes you need something and someone else already has exactly what you need. Like these...

Stepping out...

The boy needed some shoes. Look what I found!


Tevas. Good as new. In the right size. For a couple of dollars!

Frozen

Yeah, this attachment!

I love making frozen banana ice cream. It is pretty hard work for the S-blade on the food processor though, and we've heard that juicers and mincers do an even better job on the frozen bananas. I don't want another whole gizmo in my kitchen, but I have idly considered buying the mincer attachment for our mixer.


I almost let this amazing coincidence at the White Elephant Sale pass me by. I'd even shelved this box and moved it around a couple of times. But it wasn't until a customer said "there are bits missing from this" that we both realised it was an attachment, not a standalone machine. Just exactly what I needed for the machine we have at home, and luckily the customer didn't! $5, for an attachment retailing new for £38.


I can confirm that the banana ice cream product from the mincer is far superior - it can take the totally frozen banana chunks without strain and produce a really really cold treat instead of one that melts almost as served.

The icing on the cake

And cookies, and vegan cupcakes for the Vegan Society stall, and...

My sister's a decorating ace with all the equipment, but sometimes there's no chance to go borrowing. There were a couple of icing sets in the sale, and I knew I wanted to go home with one.

This one was pretty and compact, so it won the toss, and at $4 was quite the bargain. Especially when later at home, I found this was a collector tin retailing for $70.

Yes, there were even more bargains we got at the fair, but enough already! Secondhand is totally smart shopping.

Why this vegan won't go to Hell

...that's Hell Pizza, in New Zealand, of course.

What the Hell?

Recently, my network feed from my local vegan friends and vegan boards have been dripping with pizza selfies. What's the news? Hell Pizza with the brand new addition of Angel Food's delicious vegan mozzarella cheese. I have eaten Hell Pizza before, but they are expensive and gourmet, and I'm a frugal gal, so although they are just up the road we don't often meet anyway.

But we won't be meeting anytime soon, in spite of the vegan cheese. I'm in a minority compared to the Hell-ravers, and I don't enjoy feeling in conflict with a business coup for a well-loved vegan business, but here we go.

Hell of an advertisement

Hell Pizza's name and image is based on exploitation of Christian ideas. Because only a minority in New Zealand take religion seriously, Hell is able to appeal to the majority by using those familiar ideas lightly with that hint of sacrilege to spice up their commercial presence and grab attention.

That's just how they roll. So no surprises really when they advertise rabbit pizza with a billboard of actual rabbit skins and lamb shanks with a cartoon "lambputee". This little lamb came out right before the vegan cheese deal and pushed me over my personal limit. I will get my pizza elsewhere.

Thanks SuicideFood!

Who the Hell cares?

At the end of the day, none of this matters much. But this sort of advertising represents the sort of over-the-top satire about animal rights often summed up as "MMMMM...bacon".

Some vegans believe that rabbit skin and legless lamb ads encourage us to connect the dots with animal production and use. Unlikely. Hell pays to design ads to increase sales, not make their loyal customers question their food. It's far more likely that the advertising focus groups showed that this level of satire encourages meat-eaters in their recognised defense mechanism.

Few people walk around draped in furs, and everybody knows that the lambs don't haunt the paddocks with prosthetic legs. The absurdity is a shared joke that avoids consideration of the reality.

But...vegan pizza!

I know, I know. Hell has always offered an unusual range of gourmet vegan pizzas, and now they're offering vegan cheese too!

But Hell's ads show me that they are confident in offending the minority of animal rights supporters, just like  Christians (and amputees, and who's next?), and still sell lots of pizza to those who overlook or even enjoy such jokes at other's expense. Controversy stimulates sales, so offending a minority is a win-win situation.

Ick.

Hell offering vegan cheese may be a shining example of how far veganism has come. Another sign of how far we've come is how other pizza places (Domino's or Pizza Hut) don't even blink when you order a pizza with no cheese - and then perhaps add your own Angel Food mozzarella at home.

And if you're a vegan who still wants to support Hell, please consider, between mouthfuls of pizza, sending a message to them about the message their advertising sends to us.

Bestiality vs animal husbandry: a roleplaying game

Alex Macmillan - Northland beef farmer and
artificial insemination technician. Source http://www.teara.govt.nz

Apparently New Zealand farmers would like cows to get pregnant earlier and more easily.

(Warning: this post is not graphic but discusses sensitive topics. In case the title wasn't enough of a clue.)

DairyNZ senior scientist and project leader Dr Chris Burke says “More cows in-calf means more milk in the vat before Christmas, fewer replacements required, more flexibility when making culling decisions to improve herds and better returns overall for dairy farmers.”

But can we ask how rewarding it will be for the cows in this study? Nationwide outrage was generated against animal testing for party pills; sadly animal testing to increase productivity barely raises an eyebrow.

(For extra credit and fun, also ask a New Zealand farmer to say "killing" and "culling" and see if you hear any difference.)

Source: http://pawjustice.co.nz/

Bestiality vs animal husbandry

If I were an animal, what is the difference?

Consent

Bestiality	Animal Husbandry
I did not consent	I did not consent

 



Abuse Risk

Bestiality	Animal Husbandry
High - I might be hurt or killed for fun or by accident	High - I might be hurt or culled (oops, killed) for fun, by accident, or if I am not economically beneficial.

Pregnancy Risk

Bestiality	Animal Husbandry
I won't get pregnant.	High. I am meant to get pregnant (if I can't, I may be killed...erm...culled) The stress of pregnancy and lactation is business as usual for my body, with my babies taken away to be more industrial product. I will be sicker and die earlier.

Motive

Bestiality	Animal Husbandry
I'm used for pleasure.	I'm used for profit.

Legality

Bestiality	Animal Husbandry
It is illegal to do this to me.	It is legal to do this to me, and encouraged and rewarded.

I could be better off as as a victim of bestiality - at least I won't get pregnant and the violator would be stopped and possibly prosecuted.

Legal links and loopholes

Admittedly, bestiality isn't even illegal in a lot of places. You may not want to recognise a link between bestiality and animal husbandry, and New Zealand and Australian law still both sorta take it for granted that farmers and other breeders are just doing their job when they...do the job.

However, bestiality laws being implemented now in many states of the USA (eg Maine) have seen the logical need to exclude animal husbandry's intimate interference with animals' bodies. Similar exemptions are listed for other practices of cruelty to animals.

So it's OK to abuse animals, even sexually, as long as someone is making money out of it, and not just enjoying it.

Because they're just animals. Right?

Go vegan please...

Superbugs and deadly silence

In the news today - again - scary deadly superbugs. A new WHO report reiterates that antibiotic overuse has led to antibiotic resistance, and there is now "no escape" from the risk. .

But even with this documented developing threat, this alert avoids mentioning an inconvenient truth to you. The article shares a few handy hints, implying you (yes you) can use antibiotics responsibly.

But despite all of your personal caution, the global animal industry's very model depends on routine (not prescribed) antibiotics.

I cannot say it better than councillor and veteran consumer advocate Sue Kedgley did in her 2013 article:

"There's little point in a nationwide campaign to reduce the amount of antibiotics we humans use if at the same time we turn a blind eye to the massive use of antibiotics in agriculture."

Clean green New Zealand

If like me, you are lucky enough to live in clean green New Zealand, you might think our system is not as bad as the rest of the world. And you are right - Sir Peter Gluckman says so. If only "not as bad" were good enough. 60 per cent of the total amount of antibiotics used in New Zealand are used on farmed animals, and even if they don't end up in the final product that you eat, they don't disappear.

• Experts in New Zealand know we use antibiotics in animal agriculture. They talk a lot about "minimisation" - surely a case of locking the barn door after the superbugs have bolted.
• The full WHO report says it "will also be of interest to the other sectors that are directly involved, including veterinary drug and animal husbandry, agriculture and aquaculture." And was it just in 2011 that we were talking about the last latest WHO report?

These facts need to be part of any antibiotic discussion, anywhere.  And especially in a national news report aimed at you, the consumer, who can vote with your money. You can go vegan. You can boycott any product from animals treated with antibiotics. You can make real change.

Your story and the media - every day is April Fool's Day

Janette Murray-Wakelin, 64, and Alan Murray, 68

You are a committed person with a serious cause that could change the world. You have a strong worldwide group supporting you.

You're in a small minority compared to the mainstream, but you're OK with that, because you have so many great reasons, both emotional and evidential, why you do what you do.

Sharing your story

Then you get approached by the mainstream media, wanting to tell your story in detail. You think it will be a good opportunity to reach a wide audience with the knowledge you have. And then this happens... 

• Raw Vegans in the news

This is exactly the freak treatment I expected to see - because it happened to me on a different topic. (That video is still out there in cyberspace, but I am going to be selfish and use the Raw Vegan video as the illustration instead.)  

Mainstream media is not about balance and reason, but about outraging and then stroking the mainstream to get as much attention as possible - satisfying the advertisers who pay the bills. No genuine critique of current accepted norms will come from this source.

Mainstream treatment of counterculture

In the Raw Vegan video, I see:

• The subjects explain what they are doing, to an interviewer with some pretense at neutrality. Many of their reasons will seem emotional, disjointed, or just plain insufficient.
• Mainstream experts present their opposing opinion, sounding far more credible than the subjects.
• No experts support the subjects' position, leaving the viewers to (falsely) assume that no experts do.
• No groups support the subjects' position, leaving the viewers to (falsely) assume that the subjects do this in isolation or as a fad.
• The subjects have at least one shocking statement as a distancing barrier between them and the viewers (e.g., for the vegan couple "missing out on the grandchild" and for the twins "the self-loathing").
• The viewers are left with the strong feeling that, however interesting the subjects are, they are probably misguided and shouldn't be used as models.

Eerily familiar...

So how does this happen?

Nobody decides to appear publically making themselves and their cause look nutty. You go in thinking at least you will get to tell your story, and that has to be worth the effort.

The interviewers are all friendly, cosy and interested. They talk with you for a long time. You feel heard and acknowledged, because you get to tell them the whole story behind your unusual choices, including all the scientific support and history behind it and the doctors and community groups who recommend it because of the results. 

You feel a sense of accomplishment for how much great information has been recorded. You feel comfortable with them, so you will relax and say personal things and make jokes.

Then for their show, they pick a few short segments which support their bias, especially including any isolated shocking sound bites. Even if the interviewers and camera operators seem totally convinced by you, remember that the story is made by the editing.

They leave out all the boring factual support you told them for why you are choosing a different path. Which simply leaves your face and voice confirming people's biases as they watch the program.

No matter what they say, the mainstream media won't tell your story. They will use you to tell their story.

Forewarned is forearmed

Before I had my experience, I was also warned. But I thought it would be different for me. I hope that others may avoid having the media build them up and let them down.

If you think I'm overly cynical, please check out an even more experienced voice at:

How to do interviews with the mainstream media

While (as for my experience), the converted found some inspiration in seeing their topic on the news, the unconverted found only confirmation of what they already thought.

Remember this when you watch a "freak" show about some other topic you don't know as well.

There are forums to advance your cause. Just don't expect the mainstream media to be one of them.

One Green Planet - Marathon Vegan Couple
Huffington Post - Marathon Vegan Couple 
 

The Moneyless Man - Review

You may already have heard of vegan Mark Boyle, the former businessman who vowed publicly to live totally without money for an entire year.

With my interests, this was a book I had to grab from the Librarian Recommended shelf. You can read about his experience in multiple interviews online, but the book really gets into the details.

The motivation

It sounds crazy to voluntarily give up all the comforts that his money can bring and live apart. Just imagine:

• No grocery stops
• No cafe trips
• No car
• No toilet paper
• None

Why? Mark had become disillusioned with our money system. The first simple role of money is as tokens in a bartering system. But we've left that far behind, and money games now include international currency trading, derivatives, stockholder profits, and more. The more complicated it gets, the fewer people can possibly understand the game and get a living share. 

Mark cites the impact of money on community, security, competion/cooperation and the climate as vital motivations for his drastic change.

The preparation

Going from a money-based society to surviving totally moneyless takes preparation to work well. Others have managed with less, but probably not by choice. Mark set up rules for his challenge:

1. No receiving or spending money
2. "Normality" (eg yes, Mark can eat a meal at a friend's house; no, he can't eat there for 2 weeks straight)
3. "Pay-it-forward" - help others without worrying about the reward
4. Respect - for other people (eg use the toilet when visiting others, not a hole in the backyard)
5. No pre-payment of bills (eg, paying an electricity bill for a year to get through the year)

Mark first discovered the vast difference between living frugally and living moneyless. He had to scrutinise every item he might consume, and he gave himself a small budget to set up his moneyless year.

On the night before his challenge would start, he got a puncture in his bicycle tyre, stranding him far from home and help - I was quite impressed that he solved this in the same DIY way he'd committed to begin the following day.

Shelter  - On Freecycle, Mark was given a decent caravan that was a burden to its owner.

In our world of overconsumption, there is an oversupply of still-useful products that are not in use. Networks like Freecycle help solve this problem.

And he bartered his labour to a farm to get a space to park the caravan.

Sanitation - DIY Composting toilet, solar shower. Drinking water from the farm.

Power - cooking: DIY rocket stove; light: windup torch; heat: DIY woodburner; electricity for laptop and mobile:solar panel (the biggest cash outlay)

Food - foraging, urban foraging (from commercial waste food), growing, and bartering. (Being vegan makes the food requirement that much easier!)

Transport - bicycle and trailer

Communications - mobile phone (incoming calls only) and internet (WiFi on the farm)

Buy Nothing Feast

On top of all of that, Mark successfully organised a free, moneyless feast for about 150 people for his first challenge day, Buy Nothing Day, 2008. (Remember, when things went wrong, he could not just spend his way out of the problem.) The success of the publicity overall meant that Mark spent a lot of his time early that year giving interviews!

Settling into moneyless life

Mark's typical moneyless day has exercise, wild foraging, personal grooming (with no purchased products), meal preparation, and online and farm work. After the day's work and dinner, he might cycle to a meeting and back (36 miles).

The book explains how he handled problems like the oncoming winter, keeping his bike in action, keeping in touch with friends, Christmas, international travel and doing everything the slow way. It also reveals a few facts worth knowing about the wastefulness of the "regular" way of doing things (eg: water usage from a plumbed vs composting toilet).

More challenges

Like any alternative lifestyle, one of the biggest barriers is interacting with the rest of the world. The media interest was fading, and he did his best to keep up with friends, but Mark's romantic relationship did not surive the strain of his challenge.

While Mark's general health was even better than anyone expected, he did have to find a natural remedy for his hay fever. He also had a tiny mouse visitor who became a big problem.

The moneyless community

Mark learned about other people around the world who also lived with little or no money, including Daniel Suelo and Heidemarie Schwermer. Heidemarie started an exchange group (Tauschring) to help people live without money, and Mark started the Freeconomy site.


Summer fun and food

Summer brought more ease to the moneyless life, and Mark describes how much food and fun there is available for free. Developing communities like Freecycle, Couchsurfing, etc, make it all even easier.

Autumn, almost there!

Mark found that the closer he got to the year's end, the less he was worried about ending it. He and some friends had a great wild-food foraging adventure, and Mark himself chose to spend a week in silence - probably a good preparation for the finish line and the renewed media attention.

Finished...?

He celebrated with an even bigger free "feastival" for hundreds of people, and handled media that brought a range of applause, curiosity, and criticism. And he made his decision that he was not going "back" to his regular life.

The book finishes with the lessons Mark wants to pass on from his moneyless year.

Mark chose to live this way for a year, as a statement and personal achievement. Hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone are forced into indefinite homelessness and poverty or zero-income.

Even if you have no urge to live moneyless, this book will open your eyes to the casual overconsumption our society is based upon, alternative choices you could use, and the people and organisations who seek a better way.

Mark's experience would have been quite different without the overabundance of products going to waste each day. However, without all that waste, everyone's lives could be richer.

Live simply so others may simply live. (Source debatable, intention admirable.)

Why we plant grass, kill dandelions and buy kale

I return from our summer travels to a garden invaded by tough shoots of invasive grass as the surrounding lawn tries to take over.

I walk down a street with sweeping square metres of berms planted with grass. Many animals eat grass, but of course they're not allowed here in the city suburbs, and mowing them has become a notable problem.

So what is it with the grass fetish?

History of Green Lawns

This comedy grass discussion with God highlights the insanity: GOD: "Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?" And much more.

The lawn as we know it today developed in Europe - then, as now, a quirk for people with enough money to maintain a purely decorative (nonproductive) stretch of land, with human labour. And apparently, we can also blame the Scots and golf!

Chickweed

It is common to poison dandelions, chickweed, and other "weeds" in the pursuit of a smooth homogeneous expanse of non-edible grass, regardless of the potential risk from the poisons.

Getting your Greens

You can't eat grass. But other dark green leafies are some of the most nutritious edibles around. The produce section of the supermarket is happy to sell you bunches of kale for your dinner. Garden centres carry out a thriving trade in salad green shoots of all varieties (to plant in dedicated gardens, not lawns, of course).

Kale is great (I have some in the garden), but those free pesky dandelion greens from the lawn compare very well with kale. Sure, dandelions have less vitamin C, but they have more iron, etc. And they grow even when you don't want them to!

And if you aren't convinced yet, in the supermarkets you can also buy bags of expensive mesclun salad...which will probably include dandelion greens.

Rethink Lawn Care

There are many alternatives to the traditional grass lawn. But even if you're not ready to dig it out and start again, next time you see a dandelion in your lovely lawn, go get some leaves instead of the weedkiller. And when you see a fluffy dandelion head, remember your childhood, make a wish, and blow.

 

• Edible Weed Photo Gallery
• Edible Weed Tips
• Edible Weeds - What not to do

Not a diet, a lifestyle change!

We've all heard this. So what does it mean?

Diet

Your food choices must change for life (unless you mean to join the yo-yo club). And so your food choices must not only help you lose weight (plant-based diets are great for this) but also be healthy enough to do forever (again, plant-based diets get the tick).

+ Exercise

"You can't exercise off a bad diet" (I certainly spent enough years trying) and "80% diet, 20% exercise" is flooding the internet. Exercise is still a potent health weapon, and a Stanford study showed that changing both food and exercise habits at the same time had the greatest results. The National Weight Loss Registry confirms this.

= Lifestyle Change?

So: food and exercise. That's a lot of important change. Surely that's a lifestyle change?

Yes. And probably, no.

Adopting successful new food and exercise habits, with results you see and feel every day, is highly motivating. Why would you ever go back, when the change is so rewarding? Why indeed. Could it be there was a bigger reason for the bad habits?

Home. Friends. Family. Job. Hobbies. Money. Relationships. Mental health... the wider context for poor choices of all flavours. Fail to address your whole lifestyle and expect to reach the end of the honeymoon with your food/exercise successes. Expect to wonder why you can't do the right things anymore even though you know what they are.

Losing weight does not solve the problem of you working too much, or too little, or hating your job, or feeling unappreciated or lonely, or just plain wanting more from life. And if your coping strategies made you fat before, they can do it again.

The big picture

Losing weight through diet and exercise is hard. But a lifestyle change may be even harder.

Seeking the why of your stresses could lead you into deep waters. Your job, your home, your relationships...and like it or not, you may need professional help and crazy solutions if your familiar DIY approach leads you in ever-increasing circles.

Asking real questions and demanding better answers from yourself is key to a lifestyle change.

Chicken - it's the new veal

Thanks to animal activists, most of us know about the extreme industrial cruelty involved in turning calves into veal, or force-feeding geese and ducks to give them fatty livers for foie gras.

Also recently highlighted - the cruelty of battery cages for egg-laying hens. But why would anyone hold a vigil for broiler chickens?

Sound silly? In fact, chicken on the menu is as much an ethical nightmare as veal or foie gras.

7 ways chicken is like veal

Broiler chickens and veal calves are both:

1. Taken from their mothers
2. Kept inside all their lives with only artificial light to control eating and activity
3. Live all their lives with very little room to move - therefore can't move or develop properly
4. Fed specifically to meet market requirements rather than health
5. Medicated to prevent diseases caused by their living conditions
6. At high risk of dying even before before slaughter time
7. Very young when killed (broiler chickens are only 5-7 weeks old at slaughter)

And a few extra horrors, just for the chicks

1. Their sheds are not cleaned out in their entire lives, so they live in increasingly deep piles of toxic ammoniac chicken waste.
2. They have been bred to put on so much weight, so quickly, that they cannot balance on their legs as they grow. So they spend twice as much time sitting in, and breathing, that waste pile.
3. Since they often can't walk, they are grabbed in bunches and carried by their legs when they are gathered for slaughter. This often breaks their legs (if their legs are not already broken).

Care for a game of Tic-Tac-Toe?

“It is now clear that [chickens] have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates.”
—Dr Lesley Rogers, professor of Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour, University of New England.

Chickens may not be your favourite animal. But any animal with enough brains to learn to play a tune or even a silly game deserves better than this. Follow a broiler chicken through his short life here...

Please enjoy your personal choice - use it well and kindly.

Substitutes for chicken

"What’s key is to remember to season any dish that contains a vegetarian chicken substitute. It is not the substitute but the seasonings that simulate the taste of chicken."

• Best vegetarian and vegan mock chicken recipes

In a vegan tomorrow, would vegans be happy?

Bad celebration picture. Fireworks aren't vegan.

Imagine it! Tomorrow - no animal farms torturing animals for profit. No enslaved mother cows and orphaned baby calves. No more animals being skinned alive for their fur. No more male chicks being ground up or smothered in plastic bags. No more reading labels for casein, whey, lard, gelatine...

Think of the vegan celebrations! Vegans worldwide would be so happy...

Maybe. For a little while, anyway.

Making a better world

Vegans would be happy if all the above happened. But it wouldn't be long before other targets arose. Because the only one who shares your exact vision is you. A vegan world, overnight or gradual, might still not grant your wishes.

Would a vegan world still have:

• carnivorous companion animals
• uncontrolled human population growth
• abortion
• pest control
• religion
• political parties
• guns
• nuclear power
• wars
• fake meat
• junk food
• economic divide
• humans being stupid and selfish

etc?

Vegan wars are legendary. Many vegan activists would quickly move on to the next global problem, or argue that the world is not vegan enough yet.

Hypothetical, so who cares?

The world today is imperfect. But a vegan world would still be imperfect, with problems desperately needing solutions. (The house will never be clean, and the world will never be perfect.)

We absolutely, positively need people who work to make the world a better place. Humans are great problem-solvers.

But activist burnout is very real and dangerous to mental health. Every day, a vegan shares anger and despair over the billions of animals suffering right now, or the people responsible. Every day, even more vegans feel but don't share.The knowledge of the problems leads to a feeling of overwhelming responsibility. There is no end to the problems, and one human, or one group, can't encompass the solution.

So today, while we work for a better world, we also must make space every day to celebrate, personally, the good things about this one. If we forget to enjoy this world, how will we remember how to enjoy a better one?

What is one good thing about your world today?

• Preventing Burnout
• Survival Strategies for Activists
• Honesty vs Burnout