I try to be a compassionate person. Some things push my buttons, but for the most part, I consider myself to be pretty calm and level-headed. As a relatively new vegan (less than a year), I especially try to be compassionate with people who don't understand the cruelty involved in their choice to eat animal product. How can I throw stones? As little as a year ago, I was eating chicken and fish and eggs and milk.

I firmly believe there is a need for reform in the food industry, and I would like to see a shift in the way people think about animals, and how they are treated. We don't need to eat meat to survive, after all. I've been very hopeful that this is beginning to happen. There seem to be more and more stories about veganism, and the negative-environmental impacts of eating meat... "It's just a matter of time," I thought. "We're well on our way..." And then I read this:

60,000 pounds of lobster lost in Boston fire.

That's the title of a CNN story written last night. I understand that this fire is a big deal. The company has been in business since 1925 and the fire caused and estimated $5 million in damages. There were concerns that the pier might have been damaged or might collapse, and that other structures may have been damaged as well. It's a big story for the Boston area.

My objection is to the title. "60,000 pounds of lobster." As I skimmed through the other news sites, most of their titles focused on the loss of the business. CNN, a journalistic source I (mostly) respect, focused on the loss of the food. As if the tragedy here was the loss of the ~ 30,000 lobster dinners. And maybe there was no tragedy. No one was injured. It could have been horrific. Instead it's just sad for the owners. Insurance will probably cover their losses, and since they're an old established business, they can expect to keep most of their customer base. In the end, they'll probably wind up with a better building and very little loss.

But what about the lobsters? If this were a pet store that went up in flames, there would have been discussion of the pain and suffering the dogs and cats endured before they finally expired. If humans had perished in the blaze, I would understand the fact that the author of this article ignored the plight of the lobsters; that would be a true tragedy. But none of that was the case. I don't want to be overly melodramatic here. The only loss of life here was suffered by the lobsters -- but 60,000 pounds of lobsters actually represent a significant number of living beings. Lobsters feel pain too!

We humans claim to be more evolved than the other animals on the planet, perhaps it is time that we start considering the pain and suffering they endure too. It might be time to consider the animals we eat as more than simply food, before its been processed and packaged and pressed into appetizing shapes and pieces. Or, better stated, it might be time to consider the pre-packaged chicken, turkey, beef, etc. we're buying as an animal and not simply an ingredient in the next meal we are preparing.

As you've heard me complain about in the past, I miss cow's milk. For breakfast I have banana/almond butter/protein powder/milk smoothie almost every morning. I use homemade almond milk. I really like the taste. But as an accompaniment to cookies or brownies, or on cereal, I haven't found anything I prefer over cow's milk. Recently, we discovered Silk's Light Chocolate Soymilk and may have found a substitute - well, I'm not sure if it'll work on cereal, but it works with our desserts. The light stuff has 120 calories per cup, and 1.5 grams of fat, as compared to 200 calories and 5 grams of fat for their "Regular" Chocolate Soymilk.

After 10+ months of eating vegan, we weren't sure if our taste buds had acclimated, or if the chocolate milk was a good replacement for cow's milk. We actually had the opportunity to test it on our omni friends who stayed with us for a few days. Well, the verdict is in. The omni's loved it too, the kids especially, they didn't know they weren't drinking "regular" chocolate milk. I'd consider that quite the testimonial.

We're paying about $3.50 for half a gallon, so it's a treat, not a daily drink. It's nice to have in our arsenal of goodies. What we like best about it, aside from the luscious taste of chocolate, is the mouth-feel. The vegan milks tend to be a little "thin." This beverage is nice and thick, just like the consistency I remember "real" milk having.

Or perhaps it's the casein in milk (and cheese) which I'm missing. I've read that milk/cheese can be more addictive than morphine! According to a 1981 study, Eli Hazum and his colleagues at Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, NC found:

Cow's milk-or the milk of any other species, for that matter-contains a protein, called casein, that breaks apart during digestion to release a whole host of opiates, called casomorphins.
If you examined a casein molecule under a powerful microscope, it would look like a long chain of beads (the "beads" are amino acids-simple building blocks that combine to make up all the proteins in your body). When you drink a glass of milk or eat a slice of cheese, stomach acid and intestinal bacteria snip the casein molecular chains into casomorphins of various lengths. One of them, a short string made up of just five amino acids, has about one-tenth the pain-killing potency of morphine.

That makes me feel better. After consuming a morphine like drug for 40+ years, at least I can understand why almost a year after quitting, I'm still craving my casein!

If you're interested, you can read more about the addictive nature of casein and other foods in this VegSource article, or Breaking the Food Seduction by Dr. Neal Barnard.

Unfortunately for our guests, it's been "winter" here. By that I mean, the weather is not cooperating, and it's been rainy and unseasonably cold here. The high yesterday was only 64°F. That's actually cold for Los Angeles! And while we welcome the respite from the hot summer weather we know is imminent, our company would prefer something a bit more balmy.

Since it's been so wintry, we made a hearty breakfast this morning. We tried a new version of a quinoa porridge we've been making on and off since we've been vegan... Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa, which we found at 101 Cookbooks (my picture isn't nearly as attractive as Heidi's, but I'm sure it tasted just as good!).

Actually the recipe is in John La Puma, MD,s new cookbook -- ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine. It's not a vegan cookbook, but it does provide a wealth of healthy eating information, including what foods to eat for specific medical conditions, and what to stock in your pantry. With only 60 of nearly 300 pages devoted to recipes, cookbook is probably a misnomer; the nutritional information is the real reason to pick it up. Again, La Puma writes for omnivores, but there is a lot of good information here for anyone.

But back to our breakfast... We've made a few different versions of Quinoa "porridge" for breakfast, and while they've been good, we've still been hoping for something a little more remarkable. This was it. We used the organic quinoa found at Trader Joe's, and of course, we subbed the cup of milk for a cup of almond milk. It was delicious. For sweeteners, we tried agave nectar, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, and honey*. The honey and brown rice syrup were the winners in this particular dish. We all thought the maple syrup a little too over-powering and the agave nectar just wasn't right.

Jane's thinking of making this again and refrigerating it overnight. It might make a good cold breakfast too, or a nutritious dessert.

* Honey is one of those things that divides the vegan community, this post touches on our philosophy on the subject of honey and sugar.

We'll be having the standard American barbeque this weekend to celebrate the Memorial Day holiday, vegan-style that is. Jane's been working on the menu; while doing so, she came across this information on the dangers of grilling. None of this is new, but it's certainly worth repeating. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine compiled a list of the five worst foods to grill. What makes these foods so bad, is that when grilled, they produce something called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which are carcinogenic compounds created during the cooking of animal products.

So what are these five foods to avoid on Memorial Day weekend? Nothing that we vegans will concern ourselves with, but we all have friends and/or family members who still consume these foods and should be warned of the dangers...

1. Chicken breast, skinless, boneless, grilled, well done -- 14,300 ng/100g
2. Steak, grilled, well done -- 810 ng/100g
3. Pork, barbecued -- 470 ng/100g
4. Salmon, grilled with skin --166 ng/100g
5. Hamburger, grilled, well done --130 ng/100g

The measurements are HCAs per 100 gram portion. 100 grams is aproximately 3.5 ounces

You'll be happy to learn that vegetarian foods result in extremely low to no HCAs being formed during the grilling process. So pass the vegan burgers, and hold the cancer.

It's that time of year again here in the United States. It's the unofficial start of summer. Actually, I'm a little premature. Monday will be the Memorial Day holiday, and this weekend is when most of us break out the grill. Now living in Southern California, I have truly lost all sense of seasons. It's either warm or hot, and we can grill year round. But we will be out there on Monday, along with most of America.

I don't know what the rest of you have planned, but we're having some family and friends over. We'll be serving the traditional fare of salads, burgers, hot dogs, and corn on the cob. The only difference is we'll be serving vegan fare. We'll also be grilling a bunch of portobello mushrooms and a slew of veggies from the farmers market, plus a bunch of onions and peppers, because in our opinion, they can really make a burger or dog!

We bought MorningStar Farms Grillers Vegan last week at our local Trader Joe's (they retailed for $2.89 for a package of 4 burgers). We figured we'd give them a test run tonight. They were delicious! And, we both thought they tasted like meat. Granted, neither one of us has tasted meat in an awfully long time, but they tasted like what we remembered beef patties to taste like. They smelled like meat too. And it bears repeating, they were delicious!

We don't eat a lot of the MorningStar items because they often have egg, milk, or cheese in their products. For example, the Chick'n and Garden Veggie Patties contain milk and eggs. But these burgers specifically state "vegan" on the package. MorningStar Farms even goes so far as to say "natural flavors from vegetable sources" which should put a number of people at ease. Unfortunately "natural flavors" can, and often does, mean derived from animal by-products.

If you haven't tried these yet... we highly recommend them. They're 100 calories a patty, with 12 grams of protein, 7 grams of carbohydrate, and 2.5 grams total fat.

Consumer Reports has an interesting article entitled, Healthful Burgers That Taste Good, in which they laud the veggie burger, saying that 10 of the 12 burgers they reviewed were very good. (Parenthetical comments are ours.)

CR's take. MorningStar Farms Garden Veggie Patties (not vegan but the Original, Roast Onion, and Roasted Garlic burgers are vegan) are a top choice, falling somewhere between meatlike and grainlike, and they're especially moist and flavorful. If you're looking for a meat wannabe, consider Boca All American (not vegan), cheaper than most at 96 cents per burger. Eaten on a bun with condiments, it could be mistaken for ground beef. If you don't favor a meaty taste, try Dr. Praeger's (we like the Tex-Mex burger), whose crisp vegetables and soft filling have a flavor that comes through best without toppings or bun, or Gardenburger Portabella (not vegan), which stands up to bread plus trimmings. Lightlife (as of this writing, only the Light Burger is vegan), the priciest of all, is low in flavor and high in sodium.

Surprisingly, everyone we invited was game to try a vegan meal. We expected a few people to decline because we won't cook meat here. We've found our burgers, the ones we believe might even fool or convert our omni friends. For our "meat" burger, we'll be serving MorningStar Farms Grillers Vegan. For those not looking for a "meat" taste, we'll serve the Gardenburger Black Bean Chipotle Burgers (our review at this link).

We don't believe in beating anyone over the head to make our point, but we believe in leading by example. Perhaps we'll win a few converts to our cause. Provided I don't burn the burgers!