Vegan Chocolate Crumb Brownies and 3 more frugal bread crust recipes

I love to transform food so it is appealing and doesn't go to waste.  

My family eats lots of bread, but not the ends. (Good luck with this trick to get rid of them. Let me know whether your kids are fooled.)

So we always have annoying frozen bread end collections. Here's how to use them up and enjoy it!

1. We're Bakin' Brownies!

I've totally transformed a brownie recipe so it's vegan, delicious, and uses up heaps of breadcrumbs...

• 2/3 cup nondairy milk
• 2 Tbsp nondairy margarine (opt)
• 1 tsp vanilla (opt)
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 6 cups medium-fine soft bread crumbs (made in food processor, mine were quite chunky)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 3/4 cups brown sugar, packed (or 1 cup + 2Tbsp molasses + 1/8 tsp stevia)
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts or desiccated coconut (opt)
• 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips (opt)
• 1 mashed ripe banana (opt)
• 1 tsp cinnamon (opt)
• 2 egg (replacer equivalent)

They go quickly - here's one left!

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C) and (if not nonstick) spray a 8-inch square baking pan or similar (I used a round cake pan).
2. Melt nondairy milk and margarine and add sifted cocoa powder and vanilla - stir
3. In large mixing bowl, combine bread crumbs, baking powder, sugar and nuts/optional extras.
4. Stir in cocoa mixture and brown sugar; beat until combined.
5. In separate bowl, prepare egg replacer.
6. Combine with bread mixture until all ingredients are moistened. Add more nondairy milk or water if not moist enough to make smooth sticky batter (bread crumbs are hard to measure exactly).
7. Spread evenly in prepared pan. Bake 30 minutes or until done. Cool completely on wire rack.

Loved by the whole family (the brownies...and me, of course)!

2. Dipping Toasties

These are much quicker than croutons and make soup night a bit more special.

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C)
2. Cut at least 2 bread ends in half for each person eating
3. Spread with your choice of:

• Marmite or other yeast spread
• Vegan margarine or olive oil
• Refried beans
• Salsa
• Vegan cheese
• Hummus
• Herb/seasoned salt sprinkle

Place on oven tray and bake until just barely brown - keep careful watch as the edges can get burned easily

Serve with soup, spread with more goodies like guacomole....yum!

3. Vegan Fruit Pudding

This frugal pudding can be made with practically whatever you've got.
 

4. Vegan Stuffing

This savoury stuffing is great for the festive season or anytime it's chilly.

G is for Gifted and that's good enough for me...

Thanks a million, Sesame Street!

...and now I want a cookie.

The G Word

The G Word (gifted) is very much on my mind right now.

I've just opened discussions within our local gifted group about our name: I would like the name to feature "gifted" more prominently, others have very valid concerns about the impact of such a change.

My personal experience with the label of giftedness started very early, with the introduction of a gifted program at my primary school.

The very real impact of gifted labelling and separation continues as a divisive issue throughout generations of our family.

As for our children, any bonuses they may score from being gifted must be weighed against the other attributes they inherit or must otherwise endure in a gifted family.

So, what are the Pros and Cons?

This isn't a new topic, so here are some discussions:

• Being Labelled as Gifted
• Wrestling with Misconceptions
• Online discussion of being labelled
• "Gifted" - what is it good for?
• Gifted Labelling - Good and Evil part 1
• Pros and Cons of Labelling - on video
• Downsides of labels (warning, this one is interesting but unpleasant)

For me, being gifted is the true divider. Not the label - that's far less visible. So our children have enjoyed gifted educational programmes like Small Poppies and Gifted Kids, as well as the more social Explorers.

Owning Gifted

No doubt, there is a cringe factor out there for “gifted”. But what message do we send when we cringe too?  How will our gifted children feel if the word gifted is so awful we can barely say it?

Even more telling than the cringe factor is the public lack of understanding even of the basics of what gifted means...and what it doesn't. While happy to acknowledge levels in sporting prowess, the world is horribly and hypocritically cruel about differing intellectual capabilities. Consider the word "retarded," which is simply derived from a Latin word meaning "delayed" yet has been allowed to become an insult.

Today, when image means everything, can we afford not to say "gifted" as often as possible, with our message of choice attached? Can we own the word gifted instead of letting it be used against us?

This post has been written for the NZ Gifted Awareness Week Blog Tour. Check it all out!

Jessica Parsons is the mother of two gifted children and the president of Explorers, the Auckland branch of the NZ Association for Gifted Children.

Good vs evil: Join the Activist Fan Club

 

As my children get older, I have the perfect excuse to enjoy epic children's adventures - again, for Narnia or The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars - for the first time, with Percy Jackson.

In real life, I'm scornful of the idea that anyone is better simply by birth, but discovering that grungy Aragorn is the Heir of Isildur, or that weedy Percy is actually a demigod, fires my imagination. Why?

It's always the same: the fight between good and evil. Imagining there are people who dedicate their lives and risk their own safety to stop bad people doing bad things...it's inspiring and compelling. And fans of these epics pour limitless energy into keeping the fantasy alive, all for the good feelings.

Making the magic real


What if some of that energy were used in the real world? In real life, a dark wizard rarely lives in a tower on a smoking volcano as a target for the good guys. But evil is out there. Or, if you don't like the word evil, there are people and groups in the world who are doing great harm for their own benefit. And there are people trying to stop them.

Millions eagerly watch Frodo toiling along with his hopeless task. Why aren't we equally excited for our real-life heroes who actually do dedicate their lives and risk their own safety to do the right thing?

Hen's Night is a short movie with no special effects. It shows real people working long and extremely hard to make one brief public statement simply because they hate how horribly animals suffer when they are farmed for food. They hope the truth will eventually make a difference.

Activists like Noam Chomsky and  Penny Bright spend their lives telling everybody about the corruption of the people in power over us. We know power corrupts; why aren't more of us cheering them on?

Maybe we need more special effects.

The power of the dark side

Real-life activists won't get encased in anything as cool as carbonite. Instead, they risk jailtime, fines, beatings, or even death, for saying out loud what those in charge want kept silent. (some victims: Judi Bari, Rachel Corrie, Mohamed al-Gendy, and more.)

This is exactly the sort of willing self-sacrifice worshipped in fiction. Yet most people roll their eyes, call them troublemakers or conspiracy theorists, or ignore them as time-wasters. If they get hurt, they asked for it.

Even nonviolent activists get called terrorists. The information they share is legally protected by "commercial sensitivity" to protect profits. The new Ag-Gag bills, making it illegal to record what actually happens in an animal farm, should alarm any animal-lover anywhere.

Activist Fan Club

When they rolled down the Ban Cages banner in Hen's Night, that was true magic in action.

I'm a big fan. Who's with me?

Normal Vegans? Are you for real?

Voracious readers and voracious vegans, we have a real problem. Most books aren't written by vegans.

So most stories will, without any warning, launch into lingering descriptions of animal-based meals.

Food in Fiction

Revisiting childhood favourites like the Narnia adventures or Little House on the Prairie can be especially jarring for me. Vegetarians or the health-conscious are usually relegated to being the weirdo minor character, a target for the main characters' mainstream contempt. Remember Eustace and family in Narnia?

It's a rare treat to find even one sympathic vegetarian character in a book (eg, the tough FBI agent Dillon Savich in Catherine Coulter's romantic thrillers).

(Hey. I bet I'm not the only one reading escapist fiction as counterbalance to heavy activism.)

What a thrill to read Sweetheart Deal and meet lead character Lilly, who is a vegetarian so health-aware that she travels with boxes of organic trail mix bars for emergencies. This is a semi-autobiographical character for the author, Claire Matturro, and I'm sure rings a bell for many of us too.

Stereotyping is alive and well

However, we soon discover that lawyer Lilly is not only a vegetarian health foodie but also certifiably neurotic. She's obsessive-compulsive about germs and dirt and fears flying. She is constantly finding similarities between herself and her dysfunctional mother.

So we've advanced from odd vegetarian bit players to a strong, sympathetic, but still very odd vegetarian heroine. "Disappointing and unfair!" I thought. Boo! Booooo!

Or... is it?

Truth Stranger than Fiction?

I'm not normal. I'll happily stand up for my many abnormal choices. And I'm struggling to think of any vegans I know whose only quirk is in their diet. Thinking...thinking...

Instead, the vegans I know would agree with this: 

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. (Krishnamurti)

Does a vegan consciousness go naturally hand-in-hand with other social misfittings? 

Stand up and be counted...

Anyone out there want to raise their hands as vegans who are basically normal in all other ways?

Also, please share any cool fiction about vegans. I've almost finished my book.

Why your work is never done - it's just physics

Does it seem like no matter how hard you work to clean the house and feed everyone, it's always time to do it all over again? You're not imagining things.

You could blame the kids. Those little agents of chaos certainly mess up what you've tidied, devour what you've prepared, leave more mess than their entire body weight... But you're fighting a much bigger battle.

You cannot defy the laws of physics!

There's actually a physical law for mess. The second law of thermodynamics says the entropy (disorder) of the universe must always increase.

So the dirt is trying to take over your house. The toys on the shelves are trying to scramble themselves. The marbles simply love to roll to every corner of the room. And everything, absolutely everything wants to fall to the floor.

But humans are a complex species - we need order to exist. The only real work is our constant fight for that spot of order against this messy universe. And naturally, that is never done. Even while you are cleaning, more dust is settling.

Why bother?

You decide. Here are some abandoned houses, where nobody does what you do.

Photographer: Nathan Ross

See how important you are? You stand each day between your beloved home and natural disasters like these.

Even feeding everybody is part of the battle against impending chaos - as our bodies need fuel to renew the cells that are constantly dying. Creepy, but true. And you even have to prepare the food while it's still fresh - if you don't pay attention, the food wanders to the back of the refrigerator and forms a chaos puddle.

Thankless tasks

• Cleaning
• Organising
• Growing, gathering, and preparing food
• Teaching
• Healing
• ...

The payoff for these is not in completion, but in progress.

Work that can be defined with a beginning, middle, and end, with precise goals to be accomplished and therefore visibly finished and celebrated, is generally a modern invention with very little impact on the real world.

Woman's work?

"A man may work from sun til sun, but a woman's work is never done." This is not because men don't do real work. (No, really, they do.) But in traditional roles, women live in their workplace, and we are constantly faced with the undone work. Men's undone work is usually offsite.

What to do?

We can reduce our own chaos by reducing our belongings. But peace comes with the acceptance that undone work is universal. Literally.

And if anyone hassles you about the state of your house, you can now tell them about entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. They will never bother you again.

Ethics vs Health: Crossing the Great Vegan Divide

Photo from Farm Sanctuary

I just got my hands on a copy of The Vegan Sourcebook. It certainly earns its nickname of “The Vegan Bible” – it has a wealth of valuable information, recommendations, and history, and more than a few judgements from on high.

While presenting a vast range of reasons to be vegan, it also repeated how ethics is the strongest motivation and health the weakest, including a very memorable quote from Catherine Nimmo:

If we become vegans because we understand animals and feel great compassion for their sufferings, it is the easiest thing, and proves to be of the greatest benefit for ourselves too; but if we become vegans for health reasons, it seems full of worries based on fear, ignorance, and above all egocentric thinking.

...Read the rest as my guest blog on Josh Latham's My Vegan Cookbook. Trust me, it's worth clicking just to see the cool graphic his twin designed for this post.

I'm still vegan. Cravings, health, and satisfaction

Oh dear. Another high-profile vegan goes public with her vegan failure.  Alex Jamieson is most famous as Morgan Spurlock's vegan girlfriend and inspiration in the iconic movie, Supersize Me.

Ravings on Cravings

I've heard plenty of much less famous people talk about craving animal food "after a while of not having any." But in 17 years without animal foods, I've never had these cravings. When I'm not near animal food, I don't even think about it.

When a smoker craves nicotine, it's a dangerous addiction. When an alcoholic craves just one drink, we recommend medication and support. When someone craves a sugar hit, we don't applaud their instincts and buy them chocolate.

But a craving for animal products is the body asking for what it naturally needs? Let's think again.

I have not yet reached vegan nirvana - I'm not disgusted by all animal products. I still enjoy the smell of cooking meat, eggs, or cheese. However, I have no drive to eat them, perhaps because I am already fully satisfied - not only with my awareness of cruel the animal industry is, but also all the evidence on how unhealthy animal products are for my body.

Even when I was clinically vitamin-B12-deficient and had a series of injections as treatment, I did not feel any craving for animal products with their B12 (and cholesterol, saturated fat, etc). Where were my body's "natural cravings" then?

Vegan Diet Satisfaction

Alex described her long struggles against her cravings. (Hint 1: if you're craving your friends' meat burgers, it might be time to eat with different friends.) But her weapons were apparently green juices and nuts, for extra nutrition. Here's 30BananasADay's reaction to her story.  

For any diet change to work, you must be nourished and satisfied. I stopped eating animals on the recommendations of Dr John McDougall, who supports a very low fat but satisfying starch-based diet with sound medical references and overwhelming clinical success.

The only limitations on starches are if you are trying to lose a lot of weight fast (which clearly, Alex did not need). Could this starch satisfaction be the reason I've never craved animals?

Veganism vs Your Health?

Most people won't stay vegan if they feel bad and only get worse. Of course not.

Alex believed she was an ethical vegan, but she changed because she felt bad and couldn't find the solution. She is not the first. Others complain of unwanted weight gain after going vegan.

Here's a true vegan health crisis story to admire. This woman was not just enduring a few cravings on her high-raw vegan diet, and she persisted until she found a vegan solution.

Given these stories, shouldn't vegans pay more attention to good health as a major and necessary support for the vegan cause? Instead, we hear that it's a nice benefit if it happens, but not the real reason to be vegan. Or worse, that health considerations hinder the vegan cause and damage vegan outreach.

If "veganism is not about health" because of its origins, isn't it time to accept that the vegan health horse has long since bolted and is not going to return quietly to the stable no matter how much we shout? We have to deal.

Let's promote sound vegan health information, instead of just distancing ourselves from the bad...even if only so that ethical vegans don't suffer health crises in public. It's not a good look.

I don't have all the answers, and I'm certainly not perfect. But I am still vegan.