Bergfest

Halfway through the term exactly. Thank goodness.

I encourage everyone to read this: Top 10 Reasons Not to Eat Pigs, and not just because the picture of the baby piggies at the top of the page is one of the most adorable things I have ever seen. If you're interested, May 19th-25th is World Vegetarian Week. I encourage anyone willing to make a change in their lives (and those of the animals) AND who care about the environment and their health, to sign up for the Pledge to be Veg for 7 Days! thing that goveg.com is going. SETA recently did a Try Vegan Week! for Earth Week on campus, and 47 people signed up. It's just 7 days out of your lifetime, and during those seven days you can live more simply, conciously, and compassionately. And you know you have a vegan friend who is willing to send you information, recipes, or answer questions. :)

I leave you with a pic of me and Meredith at our Try Vegan Week table on Earth Day:





I made those signs. :3

Happy Vegetarianniversary to meee!

That's right folks. Today is ONE YEAR without ANY MEAT! I can't believe it. I am the last person who would ever go vegan, let alone vegetarian, and yet here I am, a year later, meat-free and loving life way more than I did before (and now with the added bonus of being dairy-free, but that year-mark isn't until July).

I am:

-Healthier
-More fun
-Way more passionate about life
-An amazing cook and baker
-Actively advocating for those whose voices are silenced
-More aware of MANY more social justice issues
-The owner of a palatte not smothered in cheese and fat, hiding all the amazing flavors of just FOOD
-More creative
-More concious
-...and enjoying living simply, compassionately, and joyfully.

To celebrate I indulged in alcomahols last night for my BFF Morgie-poo's birthday, and today I dropped $50 on stuff from Food Fight Vegan Grocery, including but not limited to Teese and a cute little cookbook called Rabbit Food.

Woo!

As of the past Wednesday, not only have I been vegan for 8 months, but I have not eaten any cows or pigs for a YEAR!!!!!

If you want to learn more about the meat industry and how cruel it is to animals, check out GoVeg.com, TryVeg.com, and Compassion Over Killing. For any of you folks in California who grew up with the 'happy cows' ads on TV, check out UnhappyCows.com. Or check out my and Kelly's blog at The Sisters Vegan.

Baking (not in the Eugene sense)

I didn't feel like doing homework this evening, so I baked the Lemon Poppy Seed Crackle Cookies from Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan!, which I got for Christmas. This past weekend was an ED&BV weekend, as I made three other recipes from this book, and boy, was I pleased.

The cookies, as you can see, turned out well, too, except I think I got a little ambitious with the lemon peel. I tend to try and get as much as I can from one lemon...the result being I think I can taste a little bit of the pith-y bitterness under the classic lemon and poppy seed combo. But ah well. If you eat them while you're slurping away on a mug of chamomile tea, as I did, they're fine.

It's just started snowing again. I'm not surprised, it was damn cold today. I am displeased, I only want it to snow if it's enough to close campus tomorrow. Here are some more snow pictures from Sunday's fantastic-ness:

View from the front door.


Awkward self-taken photo in which John looks amazing and I look bizarre.


Our first snowman; I named him Drunky. He is our hippie methhead Eugene themed snowman!


Our neighbors really got into it. And yes that's a beer can in the right snowman's 'hand'.


Our second snowman peers across the street in alarm at the scene!

It snowed yesterday.

I took a day off from homework and Holy Cow stuff (well, most of the day) and played in the snow with John. There were snowballs, and snowmen, and a long walk, and lentil-walnut burgers.

I've been insanely busy, hence the lack of update-y-ness. I've baked and cooked so many things I can't even remember them all. Lemon poppy seed muffins, lemon gem cupcakes, pad thai, bean & corn tortilla lasagna with avocado, crepes with fruit puree and celestial cream, chocolate chocolate chip walnut cookies, almond-quinoa muffins...the list goes on.

I'm currently trying to save the only vegetarian/vegan restaurant on campus. Join http://oregon.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8680109351 if you're interested in keeping a sustainable environmentally-friendly cafe alive and at UO.

School is going to drive me mad, I've decided.

Also I have a new job as a tutor for student athletes.

Tired.

I lied, best Christmas Eve ever

So apparently all it takes is food to make familial drama calm down. Kelly and I made THE BEST EVER vegan Christmas Eve feast and everything so amazing and delicious and OMGwooooooow. And that's not even including the piiiiiiiiiie we still get to eat with soy whipped cream!

Picture time!:

The pretty table that Mumsey set:


Kelly being a drunky:


Mumsey 'basting' me:


All the famfam in one photo! Sort of.


The vegan roasty!


The chef (sans sous chef):


My plate, complete with delicious homebrew courtesy of Johnny-poo.


The rest are here: http://flickr.com/photos/herbstanfang/

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Mrrrf. I get all lonely without Johnny-poo around, I'm such a big baby. Not sure how I'm going to handle it when he moves away next year.

Made buttery lemon cutout cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance tonight, really good, ate about a thousand of them. I found the 6-8 minute baking time not enough for them though.

Kelly and I are going out tomorrow in search of a Celebration Roast from Field Roast for our vegan Christmas Eve dinner we are cooking. Menu:

Hot cider (with or w/o rum)
Celebration roast
Sweet potato cassrole
Green beans
Corn bread
Garlicky kale with tahini dressing
Gingerbread-apple pie

YUMMERS.

(...It's my blog and I'll say 'yummers' if I damn well please, thankyouverymuch.)

Peter Young speaks @ University of Oregon tonight

Peter Young- Former Animal Liberation Prisoner Speaks
When: Thur Dec 6th @ 6pm
Where: PLC 180, University of Oregon, Eugene

Peter Young is an American animal rights activist and former political
prisoner jailed for two years for his role in releasing and conspiracy
to release thousands of mink from fur farms in the midwest. He was
released earlier this year and has been speaking at numerous events
around the country. He will be speaking about his experiences, going
underground for 7 years, being jailed for freeing animals, and on animal
rights.

There will also be a presentation of "Behind the Mask," a documentary
about the Animal Liberation Front, and a free vegan dinner will be
provided by Food Not Bombs!

Admission is free! If you're unable to attend, please feel free to
invite friends and community members who are interested!

For more info: www.supportpeter.com

Come by the SETA table to see meeeeeeeee and eat some of the chocolate chip cookies I made! :3

...on a slightly unrelated note, organizing this has been a nightmare. At least, for me. The guy in charge has really not been very good at keeping me in the loop and has done a lot of things at the last minute. I took today off from work so I could help out, because I was told we would be doing food prep at 9am...well apparently not. >:/ It's really frustrated me and I just missed the bus, so all I'm going to do is do what I said I would do: show up, table for SETA, and try to get people interested in the club and in veganism. Plus I made effing cookies for the SETA table.

3 recipes + garlic!

Well I have some time before the bus comes to take me to the library for lots and lots of writing (two papers due tomorrow) so I thought I'd take the time to do some recipe reviews.

I did THREE from Vegan with a Vengeance this weekend. Saturday night I made lemon poppyseed muffins. They were really good and REALLY quick! I whipped them up in about 20 minutes while John was making dinner and then they bake for 20 minutes. w00t! A dozen delicious muffins in less than an hour. And I had everything on hand except the lemons.

Sunday for breakfast I made Banana-Walnut pancakes (I subbed walnuts for pecans because that was what we had). They were EXCELLENT! I normally don't like pancakes because they're too cakey and fall apart or taste too sugary. I blame the egg. These eggless yummies were nice and firm but a little gooey, which is exactly how I like them! They puffed up right fine and made for a thick banana-y pancake with lots of walnuts for crunch (I added 2/3 of a cup instead of 1/2 because I chopped too many but they tasted perfect).

Last night I made the roasted butternut squash soup. It was really good, except it was pretty dang garlicky. Normally I love that but we tried some new garlic from Sundance that was advertised as being very strong, and put a lot in...and it was definitely very strong. But still very yummy. Even my overly-roasted squash didn't mar an otherwise very good recipe. I also modified it a bit - I left out the serrano chile and used lemon juice instead of lime juice to save a trip to the store. I also only used half an onion since I'm not an onion fan.

It was definitely a perfect soup night last night, too: it's been VERY windy up here (knocking down branches and setting off car alarms) so it was the perfect night to settle in on the sofa, have some very squashy soup, and watch The Paperchase.

Well I finished this after being at the library for a while. I'd best get back to researching paleoenvironments at Koobi Fora.

I like the blogspot entry post form better than LJ. So far I'm happy with the switch. I figure this way people don't have to have animal rights entries or vegan food entries on their friends' list if they don't want to see them since a couple people had expressed...distaste, if you will, about certain entries.