Heartwood Revisited

Heartwood on Quinpool Rd

It was just this time last year that I ended up visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia's little vegan-friendly gem, Heartwood. After a decade of providing Haligonians with buffet-style eats, the place finally coughed up an ordinary menu from which its diners could pick and choose from a variety of delicious options. With the exception of a small handful of dishes using cheese -- which could so easily be substituted with either in-house made or commercial substitutes -- the menu is vegan-friendly. The ingredients used are mostly organic and many of the dishes are gluten-free or have gluten-free options.

When my host and I dropped by last Saturday, I had been anticipating diving into the wonderful vegan pizza I'd had there last year. A rich 9" inch affair piled with ingredients and too much for one person to handle, I knew that I wouldn't be having it when I returned by myself during the week while exploring Halifax, since carrying leftovers around wouldn't be an option. I was disappointed to discover that we were limited to the brunch menu on early Saturday afternoon, but only because I had been so very much anticipating pizza and knew that  this would be my only chance to have it without letting some of it go to waste. Heartwood's brunch menu, to be honest, still left me needing time to decide once the server swung by with our delicious organic coffee (with complimentary soy milk -- screw you, Starbucks). 

So many beverages from which to choose!

Would I have the TLT? The Portobello Mushroom Burger? The Tofu Scramble? How about the organic Spelt-Kamut Waffles with Blueberry Sauce and Fruit Salad? Curious, I asked what the deal was with the Wild Card Salad on the menu. I was told that it could be one of two things: I could either have a salad plate of whatever the cook had handy to toss together in the kitchen, or could have a combination of this salad and a sampler of some of the brunch items. I quickly opted for the latter while my friend Mike had the soup of the day (spicy bean, I think) with a side of gluten-free bread (which he said was almost as good as their regular absolutely perfect sourdough).

Heartwood's Wild Card "Salad"

The plate brought out to me had a salad of mixed greens and cherry tomatoes topped with a subtle dressing and sesame seeds. It was served with herbed roasted potatoes that had just the right bit of zing added to them. I was also given a portion of their tofu scramble which had a bit of a curry taste and included shredded zucchini and carrot (and maybe turnip?) and bits of broccoli and was bordered by a line of 4-5 whole thumb-sized oven-roasted beets. A few wedges of Heartwood's delicious sourdough toast were thrown in, as well. It was one of the best meals I'd had in a long time and thanks to our having indulged in delicious blueberry macaroons from Fruition and then decadent whoopie pies and an assortment of cookies from The Kind Cookie (all vegan and gluten-free) at the wonderful Seaport Farmer's Market earlier, we skipped dessert.

The place had been hopping and things were a bit more low-key when I visited again early on Monday afternoon. I was craving greens, but didn't want just greens or to order them on the side with something and to end up with too much food (or to end up spending too much money).  The Organic Bean and Veggie Burger came with steamed greens, as did the Organic Cajun Tofu. Both those dishes, however, were described as being topped with tomato sauce and I just didn't feel like having anything smothered in tomato sauce, so I opted for the Coconut Curry Heartwood Bowl. According to the menu, it came with steamed greens, roasted vegetables, tofu, sprouts and toasted seeds on brown rice. The greens were kale and red chard and the roasted (or otherwise) vegetables included red cabbage, carrot matchsticks, broccoli and bits of sweet potato. The tofu was crisp and would have been a little tasteless if not for the coconut curry sauce. The sprouts and seeds helped pretty up what was already an esthetically appealing dish (albeit served in a not so esthetically appealing chipped bowl). The rice was perfectly cooked and had onion mixed throughout it. It was a nice amount and a good variety of food, but for $14 or $15 it was a bit underwhelming since I sat there regretting not having ordered the ridiculously yummy pizza anyway (which would have cost the same), even if I'd had to leave some of it behind. The bowl was good, but was unfortunately eaten while I had that pizza on the brain.

The Coconut Curry Heartwood Bowl

Maybe it was just that I've always been wowed at Heartwood. Maybe it was just that I had really, really wanted that pizza and nothing else would have satisfied that craving. Hell, I'm even willing to admit that my experience was probably tainted by having gotten off at the wrong bus-stop on the way into the city and having had to walk for two hours after wandering in an industrial park. The dish was gorgeous and healthy and tasty and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the idea of having a one-dish meal. I'm not sure that I'd get it again myself if I was just dropping into the city to visit and found myself with no more than one or two occasions to eat there. I think that if or when I do return to Halifax that Heartwood's vegan pizza will be a must and that I'll explore their soup and sandwich combo. Maybe, just maybe I'll get the greens on the side next time. I'll definitely have their coffee again. The bottom line is that the food is great, the service has almost always been absolutely stellar and the music and atmosphere are quite wonderful. If you're ever in the city, do stop by; if you have their vegan pizza, please send me a snapshot to tuck into my wallet and carry with me wherever I go until I get to have it again.

Bits and Blurbs in the Media

I've fallen out of the habit of commenting on articles of less significance --albeit still of interest to some vegans -- that pop up in mainstream media from time to time. I'll try to be a bit more vigilant and throw out the occasional find. Today's, for instance:


An article in Maine's The Portland Press Herald today contained a lot of information about vegan and vegan-friendly eateries in Portland and elsewhere in Maine. I was surprised to see them leave out Belfast's vegetarian/organic and vegan-friendly Chase's Daily, as well as the deli at the Belfast Food Co-op. Although I never got around to blogging about them, I visited both (the Co-op repeatedly so) while vacationing in the Belfast and Searsport area along the Maine coast a few years ago and really enjoyed both places.

Although it seems to be put forth more and more often as a given in mainstream media, it's still unfortunate that the article equates "becoming vegan" with eating "a totally plant-based diet" and adopting a new "dietary style". Veganism is, of course, much more than a diet.

-------------------------

The Evansville Courier Press featured an article in which a local chef was asked how he would handle catering a large party with vegan appetizers. It's a mostly positive article but for a guy who stresses the need to "think outside the box", it seems that many of the appetizers are just traditionally animal product based ones for which he uses commercial processed substitutes -- vegan mayo or sour cream, for instance. It's true, though, that there are tons of readily-available, easy to use and tasty substitutes that can be had for most animal products these days and that most of them can be shuffled in to whip up snacks quickly. However, he makes it evident that he's not yet experimented the most recent and popular cheese substitutes like Daiya or Follow Your Heart when he mistakenly asserts that "vegan cheese does not melt". Still, it's always nice to see a positive article stressing that preparing delicious food without animal-based ingredients isn't difficult.

Hacking at Branches: On Petitioning Whole Foods

James McWilliams recently posted a petition on Change.org to persuade the Whole Foods supermarket chain to stop selling meat. More specifically, the petition is (was?) to convince the chain to shut down its meat counters. In his petition, McWilliams does offer up some sort of quasi-broader contextualization for its focus:

Forget (for the moment) dairy and eggs and all the animal-based products dependent on systematic suffering that you believe are integral to a robust stock price. We can deal with these items later.

This contextualization does little to change the fact that for a non-vegan supermarket chain that prides itself on its offering its customers so-called "happy" animal consumption options, singling out animal flesh as significant would just send a confusing message. Whole Foods' "articulated values" (as appealed to by McWilliams) are all about providing its customers with these purportedly "kinder" options. It's not -- and never really has been -- about offering consumers an alternative to using other sentient beings. Instead, Whole Foods profits off of its lulling consumers into thinking that there is such a thing as ethical animal exploitation: This is part of its raison d'être.

Nonetheless, McWilliams suggest the elimination of its meat sales to Whole Foods as a first step it should take. He cushions it by temporarily excusing the sales of other animal products until "later" and then throws this weird bit of flattery in:

As a loyal patron, vegan advocate, and historian of agriculture, I’m asking you to do what you have done so well since the 1980s: lead.

That left me earnestly baffled. I'll 'fess up and admit that I've been reading many of McWilliams' blog posts off and on over the past several months whenever I've had time to sit back and catch up on advocacy-related reading. At one point months ago, I would actually get excited reading some of his posts since they seemed to reflect the thoughts of someone who "got it" and who was bent on forwarding an unequivocal message that other animals deserve nothing short of our going vegan. How on earth would he come to see a company such as Whole Foods as "leading"?

The thing is, though, that even if McWilliams' petition had called on Whole Foods to stop selling all of the animal products it stocks on its shelves, whether meat, dairy, eggs, honey and the other ingredients that manifest themselves in the processed foods and non-edibles it carries, the petition would have been -- however possibly well-intentioned -- really wrongheaded and pointless. As Whole Foods' co-founder and co-CEO James Mackey pointed out in his official response to McWilliams:

Whole Foods Market has no plans to stop selling meat and poultry…or seafood, eggs and dairy items for that matter.

[...]

Our first stakeholder is our customer and the most of them purchase and eat meat.

[...]

At the most, about 10 percent of our customers are strict vegetarians and probably around three percent are strict vegans. To not offer a full array of food options is basically suggesting that we voluntarily commit business suicide.

None of this should come as any surprise, yet many animal advocates have reacted to Mackey's response with outrage. You would think that he had suddenly revealed something quite shocking that should leave him worthy of being deemed evil incarnate. The bottom line, however, is that Mackey is a businessman and that perpetuating the myth that some animal use can be more ethical than other types of animal use has been and is essential to Whole Foods' operations. Asking them to cut out selling a particular animal product when Whole Foods has been insisting to its customers that all of the products it sells come from animals who've been raised "happy" goes completely against how Whole Foods justifies including itself in the cycle of animal exploitation.

Focusing on the middle-man really makes no sense where animal advocacy is concerned. If Whole Foods stopped selling meat, its customers would just go elsewhere to purchase it. Why wouldn't they? Mackey knows this and it baffles me that McWilliams wouldn't see this, as well. Mackey was right in saying that McWilliams was ultimately asking Whole Foods to engage in "business suicide".

More so than this Whole Foods affair (which is just perplexing), McWilliams' recent promotion of Melanie Joy has left me a little saddened. Joy's work emphasizes the ethics and psychology of meat eating, highlighting so-called "carnism" as she calls it instead of acknowledging the actual issue of speciesism as a whole. She chooses to publicly pooh-pooh the delivering of a vegan message as being too extreme, insisting that talking about veganism is somehow counter-productive when trying to get people to take other animals seriously. McWilliams' endorsement of her work was a sad surprise. I had come to really enjoy his writing style and his writings themselves had seemed to indicate that he did indeed understand that teaching people to not use others animals was the first step in making a difference for those other animals.

In his more recent article for Slate ("Vegan Feud"), McWilliams actually takes issue quite explicitly with the those who present veganism as a moral baseline for animal rights advocacy. McWilliams touts it as extremist. Instead, he champions HSUS, whose bread and butter (yep) is also wrapped around lulling consumers into thinking that there is indeed such a thing as a kinder, gentler and more ethical way to treat other animals as things. In his piece for Slate, McWilliams champions HSUS and then specifically singles out abolitionists and the work of Prof. Gary Francione as too, too demanding with their focus on teaching the public to take the rights and interests of other animals seriously by choosing not to participate in the use and exploitation of these other animals.

I won't weigh in on the Slate article at this time, since Francione has already done so and even extended an invitation to McWilliams to discuss all of this in a podcast via his Abolitionist Approach website. McWilliams has agreed to participate in the podcast and it should be falling into place sometime in October. I really do hope that the discussion they have brings McWilliams around to realizing that singling out those who provide consumers with what they want or asking them to stop providing in no way convinces those same consumers that they should stop viewing other sentient beings as things. The only way to fight speciesism is to get those who provide the demand that perpetuates the cycle of animal exploitation to understand that animals aren't ours to use. Limiting their options in terms of where they can obtain animal products certainly won't accomplish that.

Francione gets that. I get that. A lot of you get that and even Whole Foods' Mackey gets that. Hopefully, come October, James McWilliams will get it, too.

Veganism Is Not a Sacrifice

(Taken from Gary L. Francione: The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights on Facebook. A photo of a sign noticed in Greenwich Village, NYC by one of Prof. Francione's students.)

What This Vegan Eats

Eats with which I've been stuffing myself over the last month or so:


Gardein & a bit of cheddar Daiya on flat bread. Steamed collards tossed with pickled hot banana peppers. Steamed asparagus.


Romaine tossed with red onion, dried cranberries, sweet onion/lime vinaigrette, sesame and ground chia seeds. The end of a baked sweet potato.


Romaine, bok choy greens, green and red bells, cucumber, zucchini and red onion with balsamic fig dressing. Whole grain pasta tossed with olive oil and garlic, steamed broccoli, sauteed zucchini and onions, organic sundried tomatoes and kalamata olives, parsley and red pepper flakes.


Collards steamed with baby carrots & yellow/green beans. Romaine tossed with red onion, dried cranberries, chia seeds and sweet onion/lime vinaigrette. Maple baked beans.


Tomato soup with gemelli pasta and seasoned with smoked paprika, dried orange peel and garlic. Kale chips made with the same seasonings.


Rhubarb, kale, orange, banana smoothie. Salad with red leaf lettuce, cucumber and a drizzle of thinned roasted red pepper hummus. Watermelon for dessert.


Kale with a "cheesy" tahini, nooch and garlic sauce. Organic tofu stir-fried with baby portobellos and corn, seasoned with organic tamari and Massaman curry paste.


Tater tots, Gardein strips and baby peas.



Romaine, red onions and dried cranberries tossed with a sweet onion/lime vinaigrette. Bananas and blueberries.

Parsley, tomatoes, cucumber, hot peppers, ground chia seeds, smoked soy bits drizzled with olive oil/lemon/crushed garlic. Organic carrot juice.


Pinto bean chowder with wheat berries, carrots, broccoli and wax beans, seasoned with Indian chili powder, dill and crushed garlic.

Orange, banana and kale smoothie. Oven-roasted Gardein, radishes and kale stems.

A Question That's Worth Asking

(It's one that I've been asking myself these days while slacking off on updating the blog.)

On Self-Delusion and Seeking Absolution

A friend of mine sent me a link last week to a small blurb on the ever-inconsistent This Dish Is Veg website. The piece, "Can I make a case for eating eggs?", is the sort of thing you'd expect to see left out as bait by a writer to generate hits and comments. For its writer Shana Kurz, however, it seems more an attempt to garner a little bit of sympathy from readers so that she can feel better about her decision to go back to exploiting other animals.

Kurz begins the short blurb stating outright that giving up eggs was easy -- that she didn't eat them and had otherwise found simple substitutes for them where she might have used them while cooking. Regardless of this, though, Kurz proceeds to try to make a case for her going back to using them. She does so in such an illogical manner that one can't really help but wonder if she's serious.

The eggs from her CSA come from "happy" chickens, she insists, "adopted" from organic farms who'd relinquished them as unproductive. These "adopted" chickens are allowed to roam, she tells her readers. Of course, she also adds that when the chickens go from being less productive to being unproductive altogether, they are either passed on to others or "killed" and that she has no idea of just how these chickens are killed, but is speculating that it must somehow be "humanely". (One almost envisions Kurz crossing her fingers, eyes squeezed tightly shut!)

So someone who had already found substitutes for eggs has a CSA that treats chickens as things and whose slaughter practices for those chickens are unknown to her. So? She views this as triggering some sort of "diet related dilemma" but says so while admitting that she's already made the decision to order them on a weekly basis (i.e. so much for any dilemma). One has to wonder about her self-identifying as having "compassion for animals" considering her eagerness to obtain a sort of absolution from her readers as she informs them of that decision. Even more so, one has to wonder why in the little bio following the blurb, This Dish Is Veg describes her as a "Certified Health Coach (and vegan)".

One also has to wonder if Kurz can really be that oblivious to the fact that the chickens on those original organic farms came from breeding operations where male chicks (deemed worthless) are invariably killed, often simply ground alive or suffocated. It's a shame that -- while not even knowing how the chickens meet their deaths when her CSA deems them useless and disposable little feathered machines -- she still clings to this myth that there is such a thing as a humane way to slaughter another. What's bizarre, however, is that she then chooses to assume -- based on nothing but a hunch -- that the chickens whose eggs she is taking must surely be killed in a manner in which that killing somehow seems more ethical to Kurz.

It's unfortunate that this is the sort of sloppy writing that This Dish Is Veg continues to feature on its website, particularly from someone it presents as being a vegan consultant.

Sophie

It's funny how things just fall into place sometimes. My ex and I had been living with two litter-mates who'd just turned six. Tar and Monzo had been with us for five years and seemed to be spending more time lounging than moving. The apartment felt large and so we decided to adopt a cat to keep them company -- to provide someone new with a much-needed home and to maybe to liven up the household a little. My friend Tanya piped up one day that her dear friends Andre and Stacey were fostering a momma cat and her two surviving kittens for one of the local SPCA shelters. We agreed to go meet them. We watched a zany grey and white ball of fluff bouncing off everything around her, darting to and from the more stoic (and somewhat more oval) ball of white and black fluff we were told was her brother. She was weepy-eyed and it was suggested to us at some point that she wouldn't be considered adoptable if returned to the already-overcrowded shelter.


On our walk home, we weren't even a block away before we decided that there was no way we would end up not bringing both home. They spent the next dozen years known as "The Kittens". Zeus decided to shadow Tar and Sophie fell in love with Monzo. Since Tar usually shadowed me, Zeus followed suit; since Monzo pretty much adored my ex, Sophie ended up spending a bit more time with him more so than she did with me. Her first few years, most of our interaction involved my sending wads of paper down the long entrance hallway, watching her gallop full throttle and leap up and off of the walls in chase.

It's hard to write about Sophie without writing about Zeus. Their antics were the stuff of giggles and horror. I still remember the day I'd been in the kitchen preparing dinner and heard a loud crash in the living room. I ran out to find them tiny and immobile in the middle of it, having knocked over the tall and heavy decorative glass bottle I'd assessed as unbreakable. I quietly begged them - as if they understood my words -- to not budge as I gingerly stepped in to scoop them both up out of what seemed to be thousands of tiny shards of glass, ignoring the upstairs neighbour's frantic knock at the door in response to the loud smash. There was no way those little pink toes were going to end up bleeding on my watch.

Sophie's weepy eyes led to her soon developing a much closer relationship with her veterinarian than I would have liked. Surgery for fused tear ducts and then a diagnosis of eosinophilic granuloma complex led us to restrict her diet and to make lifestyle changes to eliminate scented products or any allergens we could possibly think of that might need to be considered. Periodic steroid injections led to the customary and necessary warnings of the side-effects of long-term steroid use. Still, Sophie and I perfected our game of catch, by which I'd lob wads of paper up at her as she perched on a kitty condo, eventually learning to catch them in flight between her paws and training me to throw more accurately in the process! When she wasn't catching wads of paper, she was burrowing beneath the blankets on the bed. We eventually nicknamed her "the lump" since sitting anywhere on the bed that wasn't an obviously completely flat surface invariably risked eliciting a startled "meowch!" from that spot.

When Sophie's favourite human moved on, she and I found ourselves reevaluating our previous relationship as she so obviously mourned an absence. When Monzo -- "her" cat -- died less than a year later, I was left with a sad girl who found herself burrowing beneath the covers more often than not. In no time, though, she seemed to decide that the "pay attention to me" way of proceeding worked for her. Visitors soon became familiar with the "pat-pat-pat" of her paw on their arms, laps, hands, shoulders -- whatever was within reach. If you said 'hello' to Sophie, you were inadvertently acquiescing to providing an evening's worth of scritches, plain and simple. Failure to fulfill your obligations would lead to a stream of chirps and grunts in protest and that gentle "pat-pat-pat" reminder, Sophie sitting beside you (im)patiently.

As the eosinophilic granuloma cleared up with treatment and management over the years, another immune system and allergy-related issue arose. Sophie developed asthma, requiring further medical intervention. I still remember going to the neighbourhood pharmacy to pick up her first inhalers and to set up her account, the pharmacist promptly informing me while shaking his head in disbelief that she was his first feline customer. He and his assistants came to know me by name as I went in every month or two to refill prescriptions.


Sophie eventually rekindled the kinship she and Zeus shared and they would frequently cuddle up to one another. Eventually, she even came to allow Sammy, who'd tried to befriend her from his first day in our home, to sidle up to her without hissing at him. But the asthma took its toll and after years of her steroid use's having left her a more portly kitty than most, her weight began to decrease -- and to continue decreasing. The complication of a severe and sudden bout of rhinitis and her worsening asthma left her losing more weight and sneezing what seemed constantly. A friend who visited in June ended up on the receiving end of a few streams of mucus, something I'd come to accept as being ordinary when interacting with Sophie, and deemed it gross. At that point, I'd been spending months cleaning "Sophie snot" off of things, including myself. It came with the territory and I loved her with all of my heart regardless.

After an unfortunate mishap as a kitten while held -- and dropped -- by a friend, she was always a little wary of being picked up and held by strangers. Her compromise with those she trusted involved crawling up close against our throats, claws dug firmly into our shoulders. It was pressed into my throat with her claws firmly outstretched that she let me hold her and rock her for hours our last afternoon together. The rhinitis had returned and her asthma has been worsening over the months, regardless of the inhalers and steroids. Her weight had dropped more significantly and rapidly and the vet suspected that blood tests would show the onset of renal failure. So after a long series of bad days where eating seemed optional to her and wheezing was constant, on a day that somehow turned out to be a better one than we'd had in months, I cleaned Sophie's face with a cool damp cloth, combed her carefully-- which she'd always loved -- and held her closely, nestled against my neck and purring, rocking her and talking to her until the time came to take her to the vet's to follow through with the heartbreaking decision I'd been making all week. It's one I still regret now, because how can someone not regret making that decision, even if others assure you that it's the right one?


Two weeks ago my heart broke. I miss my girl, I do.

I'll Keep My Teef, Thanks!

Hindsight and Nostalgia: Animals on the Screen

Both of my parents had been raised on small family farms and my mother's official stance was that other animals belong in the forest or in a barn -- not in a house. The idea of bringing any non-human in to share our home was unacceptable to her. Of course, she didn't count on the fact that she'd end up with the sort of kid -- not terribly unlike most kids -- who would end up fascinated with every single insect she encountered and drawn to every single cat or dog whose path she crossed. Growing up in a small town, those cats and dogs were everywhere and generally allowed to wander. "The Solomon's dog's in the yard again!" "There's that Comeau's cat in the flowers." I'd hear these things and rush outside, wanting to say hello.

Whenever I happened to come across an animal who was a stranger to the neighbourhood and who seemed hungry or frightened, I'd more often than not find a way to entice him home, sneaking him under the back patio and stealthily raiding the fridge for food to share. I remember one day when a childhood friend and I heard the nervous collie who lived on the corner barking furiously, and then the screeches that followed. We ran as fast as we could to go see what was happening. The collie's people were at work and she had attacked a cat who'd strayed into the yard. Knowing that I couldn't take her home, I scooped her up, bleeding and weak, and my friend and I proceeded to knock on the door of a surgeon who lived a few houses down, begging him to help. He refused and offered no assistance to these two blood-stained and crying girls lugging a cat in obvious distress. We knocked on more doors until the mother of another neighbourhood friend took her off our hands and promised she'd do whatever she could. She nursed the cat back to health and kept her for years and to this day I'm grateful and remember her basic decent kindness when so many other adults had sent us -- and the injured cat -- on our way. To me, there'd been no other option but to scoop up that cat and to find help.

Growing up in that small town, I was also fascinated with what trickled in of the outside world through the numerous televisions in our home. Members of my family were, more often than not, glued to one telly or another and it was not out of the ordinary to find 3-4 of us home, each watching something completely different. What almost always drew me in most (no surprise) were the television programs involving animals. Whether it was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or Grizzly Adams, I was tuned in and enrapt. Along with whichever nature documentary happened to come across PBS (usually watched alongside my father, a lumberjack who was just as fascinated with other animals), my favourite shows included old Flipper reruns and The Littlest Hobo. I was the first kid in line to see the two first Benji movies at our small local theater and remember the insistence with which I had persuaded my parents to take me to see Disney's The Cat From Outer Space at the local drive-in. Oblivious to whether or not these animals were behaving the way they'd usually behave and even more oblivious to the circumstances -- from possible capture to training and torture -- facilitating their ending up on these shows for my entertainment, I soaked it all in happily. It was a huge part of this animal-loving kid's life and I was "animal obsessed" -- but at what cost?

I remember years ago in some online vegan discussion forum or other, asking whether others who'd grown up exposed to television programs and films in which animals were used felt about it in hindsight. I had asked how they managed to mitigate the nostalgia they may have felt with the knowledge they now had later in life of the exploitation involved. Over the years in one sad tale after another, the awful truth has surfaced of what was really behind some of what seemed to be the most innocuous nature programs. The worst of the brutality inherent in Hollywood animal films revealed itself over and over. Even without the information concerning the most outrageous cases, the truth is that the entertainment industry revolves around profit. It's a business like any other. When other animals are used to entertain humans, they're not valued as beings with interests of their own; they're used as props to push the buttons of the sort of sentimental folks who, as I did, grew up watching other animals before them being used as props. It's exploitation regardless of how those animals are treated. Seven-year-old me certainly didn't get that, but I get it now. It makes me incredibly sad to think about it now.

Part of getting it now means that when friends and I dip into the nostalgic sort of reminiscing we'll often do about childhood pop culture, the warm fuzzies I'd get years ago humming the theme song to The Littlest Hobo just don't happen anymore. Worse is when I'll occasionally forget myself and slip into a sentimental pocket and then end up sort of yanking myself back out of it, feeling guilty and wondering how I let myself slip if even for a second. When I watch friends, family and acquaintances around me attempting to nurture their kids' love of animals by taking them to the latest talking dog film (or to the local petting zoo), I'm reminded of my own childhood. The thing is, though, that this childhood love of animals I had was never what led to my connecting the dots -- certainly not to go vegan, and not even when I decided years ago to become vegetarian. I first became a vegetarian in college for environmental reasons. See, all of these sappy shows I'd watched had left me with this notion that even the animals we raise for food were somehow beloved and well-cared for. After all, we never saw Charles Ingalls chop the head off a chicken or castrate a calf on Little House on the Prairie! For years as an adult, I'd been quite convinced that having watched all of these shows as a child had somehow left me more open to eventually weighing the morality of animal use. I realize now that even more insidiously, all of this exposure to "cute" or "happy" animals on television or in films merely served to further entrench in me the speciesism we're each taught from the ground up. Watching those shows, I was taught to believe that animals were perfectly happy to be used for human entertainment. I was convinced that they had the best possible lives available to them and (nature documentaries aside) I learned to accept this idea that their value increased relatively to the amount of good they could bring to the humans around them (think "animal heroes" and stories revolving around them).

Of course, I know now that all of this was terribly wrongheaded. It's sad and weird to look back at it, though, and to see it for what it was. Sentimental creature that I am, it throws a wrench into my own sense of self-awareness and leaves me all the more aware of all we're exposed to our entire lives that ultimately leaves us truly confused about our relationships with other animals. This understanding also leaves me more patient when faced with others who balk upon hearing why I'm vegan. There are so many knots to undo when confronting speciesism; as with most knots, patience and perseverance are more effective than force and frustration. As advocates, we need to keep this in mind when talking to others. We really do.

The Difference Between Steps and Standing Still

Veganism as Something-ism

Just a few days ago, I got into an exchange with an individual who subscribes to the My Face Is on Fire Facebook page. It was triggered by a link I'd posted to an article from The Thinking Vegan ("My interest lies in animal liberation, not making more vegans"). Gary Smith's article is largely a commentary on what's been left in our laps as animal rights advocates now that the term "vegan" has been co-opted and mangled by so many to purportedly mean any variation on using less animal products. Not making "more vegans" in this sense means not turning someone on to the former Freston fast craze or Bittman's "Vegan Before Six" thing and then convincing oneself that some sort of meaningful advocacy has actually been done. Smith writes:

At what point do we start to articulate animal liberation, the ethical argument for veganism? At what point do we start to articulate the animal rights message? [...] The outreach we are currently focused on is disingenuous and misleading, and backfires if it takes longer for people to understand the ethical message of liberation.

I do agree with that wholeheartedly and have been writing around that on My Face Is on Fire for a spell now, so it was bizarre to have someone who'd chosen to like and follow the blog's Facebook page suddenly pipe out to disagree with Smith's message about the need to include the ethical argument when engaging in vegan advocacy. The individual asserted that she feels strongly that if you convince someone of the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet that a conversion to veganism is almost a sure thing. We talked in circles around each other a bit as I attempted to explain to her that it doesn't follow that buying into self-concerned reasons having nothing to do with other animals would lead to a sudden epiphany about the immorality of exploiting other sentient beings.

A Step is a Part of... Stepping

As an abolitionist vegan, I'm not just interested in getting some people to not use this or that part of another animal on this or that day of the week. At least, I'm not interested in getting some people to not use this or that part of another animal on this or that day of the week for its own sake and as its own end. There needs to be movement towards not using other animals -- an actual "going" vegan. When engaging in vegan advocacy, it needs to be made clear that this going vegan is the starting point that needs to be reached for each of us to work towards the real goal -- to bring an end to the exploitation of others animals -- and that anything less falls short of it.

The aforementioned individual on Facebook, however, was convinced that using one argument to get someone to stop eating animals would either get them to connect their own dots somehow, or leave them more open to an ethical argument to cut out other forms of animal consumption and exploitation. Somehow, to this individual, this vegan, actually talking to people about animals having an interest in not being enslaved and slaughtered for human pleasure seemed counterintuitive to getting those people to stop providing the demand that perpetuates the enslavement and slaughter or other animals for human pleasure.

Baby Steps or Bog?

Too often I'll hear a "tsk" and the words "baby steps!" when I point out to advocates that the best way to talk to nonvegans about not using animals is to explain to them in clear terms why other animals aren't ours to use. The call for "baby steps!" is patronizing, honestly, as if nonvegans are somehow unable to grasp simple concepts like sentience or to be able to weigh actual facts rather than be coddled. Even more often, I'll hear the term "stepping-stone" tossed around to excuse advocating for variations on reduced animal use. A clear argument for veganism is what got me to go and stay vegan and the many, many years I teetered between lacto-vegetarianism and strict vegetarianism were no stepping-stone at all: They were a bog in which I was quite contentedly stuck, engaging in communal congratulatory backslapping with others in that same bog. I convinced myself that I was doing "enough" until someone finally told me that I wasn't and explained why in plain language. Many other abolitionist vegans with whom I've had conversations over the years have shared similar stories and sentiments. Why on earth would I advocate anything less than veganism and risk leading others into that same bog?

What the Veganism I Advocate Surely, Surely Ain't

So let's go back to Smith's article on The Thinking Vegan and this so-called vegan advocacy in which those who dodge being clear and consistent in providing it with a clear animal rights context now claim to be engaging . What's it left us with? The Huffington Post has become what a fellow-abolitionist and I half-jokingly call "re-veganism central" over the last few years, with its numerous articles by "former" vegans, wool-wearing or honey-eating "vegans" and as of this week (assuming I haven't missed any previous gems!) even butter and cheese eating "vegans". To her credit, Sasha Turgman does indeed add a "mostly" qualifier in her article's title and otherwise occasionally slips it into her article "On Being a Mostly Vegan". The article focuses on diet only, which is no longer a surprise in mainstream media articles touted as being about veganism. Turgman does refer to herself as a vegan without the qualifier, though, as if somehow being a "mostly" vegan is being a type of vegan.

I decided to become a vegan [...]

When I first became a vegan [...]

In fact, she describes herself quite explicitly at the beginning of the article (albeit again merely focusing on diet) as not eating some animal products:

It never crossed my mind that I would choose to give up all the creamy deliciousness of my favorite food to become a vegan, but here I am, meat, cheese and dairy-product free.

She lumps herself in with vegans again by perpetuating a few stereotypes to clarify to her readers that "we're not all tree-hugging, paint-throwing, fanatical activists" and that what apparently differentiates her from those other awful, awful vegans is her own insight into what acceptable veganism should be like: "It's about listening to my body and being healthy, if I eat butter or cheese one night, who cares?" (It's no wonder that she inserts into the article at some point that being whatever-it-is-she-is-that-clearly-isn't vegan "hasn't been hard at all"!)

Whenever I hear other animal advocates insist that they accomplish something by taking an apparently more kind and gentle poke at the status quo as they fall short of talking to people about plainly and simply not using other animals, there is inevitably another Sasha Turgman who pops up in mainstream media. And these Sasha Turgmans indulge in a weird sort of self-congratulatory happy dance, presenting themselves as some sort of vegan while unapologetically condoning -- even promoting -- not just that any human should continue to use other animals, but that vegans should as well. (Y'know, lest you want to end up branded a "fanatical activist" or something.)

You tell me, though: Baby-step or bog? It seems pretty obvious to me that it's incredibly disingenuous of us as advocates to conveniently omit any mention of the actual ethics of using and exploiting others. In teaching people that there's anything about vegan advocacy -- about veganism -- that shrugs off deliberately choosing to continue to exploit other animals, are we in fact advocating the taking of steps or are we merely advocating standing still? And if those of us who engage in advocacy don't present nonvegans with a clear consistent message about what veganism really is and of how it must factor in the rights and interests of others to not be exploited, who will? Surely not "(mostly) vegans" like Sasha Turgman.

To learn more about abolitionist animal rights and about vegan advocacy, please visit The Abolitionist Approach website.

A Tangent and Ramble on Potentiality and Speciesism

The Seed

The prolific James McWilliams recently wrote a piece about humans who use intelligence and then "potential intelligence" as criteria to assess whether it's moral to exploit others. You know the ones. Upon your bringing up the argument from marginal cases in response to their trying to assure you that they only eat "dumb things", they'll sometimes veer off in a slightly different direction to justify their continued use of others. They'll insist that regardless of being a toddler or in a coma that a human still has the "potential" to be more intelligent. McWilliams deals with the veering with ease, both bringing up that one could argue against this line of reasoning when discussing someone with Alzheimer's, for instance, whose potential in this sense -- at least in terms of being a rational agent -- isn't assured. Beyond this, McWilliams writes:

Potential hardly ensures the achievement of it. I have the potential to be the President of the United States, but this doesn’t mean that I should now be granted security detail and access to Air Force One. My potential to reside in the Oval Office, much less learn calculus, by no means ensures its fulfillment. In this sense, a potential right to something is, in effect, not a right at all.

He's right, of course that it's a failed stretch to try to hinge another's moral worth or value to us on that other's potential.

On Other Potentials

McWilliams also brings up in passing in his article that he views all non-vegans as potential vegans. It's not an uncommon assertion for those engaged in vegan advocacy to make. I think that in this sea of speciesism, most of us would like to cross our fingers and believe that friends, family and other loves ones -- that neighbours, coworkers and strangers alike -- will eventually "get it" and reject the violence inherent in the exploitation of others animals. After all, we each came around. We each came to view other animals as persons with their own wants and needs existing outside of their use to us so why shouldn't others? The thing is that some of them very well may.

Off on a slight tangent (and ramble), I guess that on one level, I would like to view all non-vegans as potential vegans as well. Of course, asserting this doesn't always sit well. I've had loved ones who've overheard me mention it (or who've read something in which I've written it) who have felt that this was patronizing. In a few cases, some told me that this sort of mindset left them feeling as if their being accepted -- whether by me, or by other vegans -- felt conditional, as if they were only being welcomed in to this or that vegan's life with the expectation that they will eventually go vegan. Of course, as McWilliams argued in his aforementioned article, someone's having a potential to be something hardly assures its achievement. I bring this up because I do worry about those vegans who cling too tightly to viewing their decidedly nonvegan loved ones as "potential" vegans and who end up disappointed when things don't fall into place.

On the Mingling

I've written quite a bit about vegan-nonvegan relationships over the years. Almost three years ago, a discussion with a vegan advocate I know and respect led to his stating to me that he would no sooner go out with a speciesist than he would a racist. Considering the fact that the context of our discussion involved my own relationship at the time with a nonvegan who was adamant that, although he would happily -- and voluntarily -- avoid consuming animal products in my presence, he would never come around to recognizing that other animals have a right not to be used by us, the comparison left me feeling that my own judgment had been questioned. In a post called "Being an Abolitionist Vegan in an Omni World" I wrote the following about my reaction to the discussion:

On a plain and ordinary level, I've always found myself agreeing with others that racism=sexism=speciesism. However, the association made concerning this person for whom I'd come to care didn't sit well, especially where I felt myself being judged for having allowed myself to accept this person regardless of his speciesism. I'd felt I'd been deemed inconsistent--a bad abolitionist.

So why the disconnect? I felt like a hypocrite. But then I didn't. I have an omnivorous mother. I have an omnivorous sister and two omnivorous nephews. I've explained to them my reasons for going vegan and those reasons have bounced off of them. Should I feel shame for continuing to love them or continuing to associate with them? Is the onus somehow on me to keep pressing them to change, however uninterested they've seemed thus far? Where does one draw the line with regards to one's obligation to educate others about veganism? Particularly when it comes to your personal relationships? And what of the aftermath? What if you fail? Do you "tsk-tsk" and walk away? Or do you acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of humans--whether strangers or loved ones--don't view nonhuman animals as anything other than things to be used? Does compartmentalizing this make you a bad abolitionist? Does it make you a hypocrite? Does it make you a realist?

As I soon discovered, I was far from the only vegan with these questions weighing on her. The truth is that, with very few exceptions, most of us weave our lives around nonvegans around us. We do this on various emotional levels and in the end, it really is up to each of us how far we wish to take it. We're each left examining our own boundaries and sussing out how to sort out out our perhaps conflicting emotions and to hammer out a rationale with which we can be happy.

I won't revisit the whole "should or shouldn't" debate that some occasionally try to rekindle concerning whether vegans should (or shouldn't!) seek out romantic relationships with nonvegans. It's not my place to make up someone else's mind about who she welcomes into her life. Even less so do I have any business admonishing or even chiding another over the whole affair of how she goes about falling in love. What I have done in the past, though -- what I will continue to do -- is to take issue with those animal advocates who do shame others in the vegan community for how they set their own boundaries, whether or not the setting involves opting to involve themselves with nonvegans. Dealing with others is often the hardest part of being vegan and I think it's complicated enough for vegans to navigate an overwhelmingly nonvegan world without having to deal with antagonism from fellow-vegans on a matter which already weighs heavily on our hearts and minds.

Where Factoring in Potential Can Become Problematic

You've heard it before: "I won't be there to hold your hand if she doesn't go vegan!" Tantamount to a heads-up to an impending I-told-you-so, this sort of statement is made every so often by advocates chiding others for their romantic involvement with nonvegans when those others end up trying to defend their decision or choice to be with a nonvegan. Now, you'd think that it would be the threat of withholding support that might get my attention when such a thing is uttered. In fact, what troubles me more is what invariably leads to such a statement's being made in the first place.

"He really likes animals. I know that if I give him a few books to read, he'll come around."

"She's already a vegetarian; after enough time with me, I'm sure that she'll see that consuming dairy and eggs and other animal products is no different from consuming meat."

"He's really involved in social justice issues; I just need to open his eyes to justice issues involving nonhumans, as well."

"If she eventually loves me enough, she'll go vegan for me."

The translation? "S/he has the potential to go vegan, so I just need to cross my fingers and wait for it to happen." But as James McWilliams points out in that somewhat different context in the article mentioned at the beginning of this post, "[p]otential hardly ensures the achievement of it. I have the potential to be the President of the United States, but this doesn’t mean that I should now be granted security detail and access to Air Force One". I bring this up because, as I mentioned above, I do worry about vegans who do choose to involve themselves with nonvegans and who -- whether they're fully aware of it or not -- do so with strings.

What? Is she saying that it's wrong for me to hope that my new boyfriend might become vegan?

The answer to this is a jumbled yes and no. You see, as mentioned earlier, I'd certainly like to believe in the possibility that many of the nonvegans around me could one day go vegan. Someone in whom you sense and see moral concern for other animals and whom you think may very well follow through with the moral impulse to act upon this concern would surely benefit from receiving that additional information and hearing those sound ethical arguments. But what if this doesn't pan out and you'd hinged everything upon it? Then what?

Isn't it incredibly problematic to walk into any relationship keeping your eye on an ideal? Does it honestly make sense to choose to be with someone with the expectation that this someone will one day, hopefully sooner than later, be significantly different in both outlook and action? Think about it for a second and also think about it outside of the context of animal use. Can you really expect to fall in love -- truly, madly and deeply in love -- with someone you expect someone to be, rather than with the someone that individual already is? Is it fair to you or to that individual to have some sort of unspoken condition tucked in-between the lines from the very beginning?

Hope as an Obstacle

Here's the thing: Hope should never be an obstacle to your own self-awareness, nor should it ever be a replacement for effective communication. The bottom line is that vegans who choose to swoon alongside nonvegans have two clear options: One is to come to terms with the fact that the relationship into which you wish to enter with a nonvegan could very well end up being a relationship which will always be with a nonvegan. The other is to be honest with yourself about what you think you can -- or can't -- live with and to pile your expectations excruciatingly clearly on the table early on. This doesn't mean that change won't or can't happen, but it's a good earnest and authentic starting point in terms of keeping things as uncomplicated as they can be. Is it any sort of guarantee that things will remain uncomplicated? Of course not! We're talking about relationships, after all. If you truly cannot come to terms with the first option, though, and then don't feel "comfortable" following through with the second option -- to lay it all out on the table for discussion early on, I can guarantee you a whole heap of complications. And you know what? Those complications aren't just in terms of juggling a vegan-nonvegan romance, but involve problems reflecting a lack of the sort of basic communication needed to juggle any sort of relationship at all. Think about it.

What This Vegan Eats

Some of the foodstuff going around in my apartment this past month:

Oven-roasted artichokes on iceberg and spinach, with tomatoes, avocado and broccoli slaw. with sundried tomato and roasted garlic dressing.

Pho-ish broth, shiitakes, baby bok choi, nappa cabbage, red bell peppers and udon noodles with pan-fried tamari-sprinkled tofu, mung bean sprouts, shredded basil, a line of hoisin and a line of sriracha and a couple of lime wedges.

Oven-roasted collards with crushed garlic and Cheddar Daiya. Seitan chunks and pickles on an organic kamut bun with ketchup and mustard.

Mushroom-lentil stew with tomatoes, turnip, carrots and broccoli. Seasoned with smoked paprika and dried chipotle, dill weed and parsley.

Beets (oven-roasted w/balsamic vinegar and a touch of sea salt), fiddleheads, medium-firm tofu (marinated in a touch of organic tamari and sesame oil, dredged through multigrain flour and 12-spice seasoning, pan-fried in olive oil), ketchup w/a dab of blackstrap molasses.

Iceberg, red bell peppers, tomatoes, tofu marinated in a sweet onion/lime dressing, slivered almonds, hemp seed and a couple of Brazil nuts.

Tofu with turmeric, parsley, black pepper, a pinch of black salt and some nutritional yeast, scrambled with red onions, zucchini and corn. In the dish, fava beans cooked with tomato, cumin and a bit of lemon juice.

Iceberg, cucumbers, tomatoes, shredded purple cabbage, radishes, organic carrots, red bell peppers, walnuts, ancient grains Gardein chunks, scallions, hemp seed and a drizzle of sweet onion/lime dressing.
Sautéed green/wax beans, steamed baby Brussels sprouts & baby carrots, baked sweet potato and pan-fried multigrain Gardein chunks.

Romaine, tomatoes, purple cabbage, mushrooms, steamed broccoli, hemp seed, black sesame seed, a drizzle of sweet onion/lime dressing. Corn on the cob w/sriracha.

Red onion, Gardein chunks, shanghai choy, red bell pepper, organic heirloom rainbow carrots and mung bean sprouts stir-fried with Massaman curry paste. Rice noodles.

Into the blender went: A banana, three huge strawberries, an organic carrot, a plum tomato, a bosc pear, a large collard leaf, a heaping tablespoon of almond butter, a teaspoon of hemp seed, half a small pink grapefruit, a cup of frozen blueberries, half a cup of blueberry soy yogurt.

Steamed collards tossed with a sweet onion/lime vinaigrette, steamed carrots, oven-baked Gardein patty, good old reheated beans w/ tomato sauce.

Potato-onion whole wheat perogies, beet stems & greens sautéed with olive oil and crushed garlic. Green/yellow beans and baby carrots tossed in lime vinaigrette.

Pho-ish broth, shiitakes, baby bok choi, nappa cabbage, red bell peppers and udon noodles.