Stop Bragging and Gloating about Eating Bacon

In the aftermath of the World Health Organization report published yesterday, which linked red and processed meat to cancer risk, several of my friends have recurred to Facebook to reiterate their commitment to stuffing their faces with bacon, because it’s tasty, goddammit, and because the minuscule increase in risk is not worth giving up their delightful pleasure. As a reward for this sentiment, they get “likes”, and “mmmm, bacon”, and smiley emoticons.

I understand why people do this. They cling to what they know and are used to, they don’t want to change, and they therefore reject new information that contradicts their old ways. It’s the oldest heuristic in the Kahneman and Tversky bag of tricks. Moreover, if they post about their desire to cling to their habit, they’re bound to get “likes” and other confirmations from people who are also reluctant to let go, which strengthens their resolve to stick with it.

I also understand how easy it is to ignore the realities of what one is eating as long as one is not directly confronted with them. Any disruption of this ignorance (such as a new report or a vegan’s presence) reminds people of things they don’t like to think about, such as that the meat on their plate once swam, walked, flew, enjoyed the sunshine, and wanted to continue living. Or that the meat on their plate came from someone who lived their lives in conditions comparable to those in a concentration camp before being deprived of life. It’s not a comfortable thought; we all like to believe that we are good people, so it’s easier to ignore our complicity in something horrible and go back to one’s meat-eating support base and get some pats on the back.

Nonetheless, reading these posts throws me into an abyss of distress. I get that it’s hard for people to let go of what was traditionally on their plate. But to take moral relish in the killing of pigs for taste? To openly revel and boast in opting for participating in the world’s vilest, cruelest industry and in the suffering of living beings because it’s tasty, goddammit? It’s particularly disturbing when it comes from people who I know are committed to world improvement in all other aspects of their lives. From people who cry out against much lesser cruelties on a daily basis. I guess the human rights buck really stops with “human”, even though the desire to live, the love of our offspring, and complex emotions of fear, pain, and suffering, are common to all of us.

When things like this happen, I’m reminded of J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals. Like his heroine, Elizabeth Costello, “I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.”  But how do I cope, every day, with friends and acquaintances that I know to be kind, good, moral people, and who participate in the most horrific crime against other living beings every day without batting an eyelash, and feel it is appropriate to gloat and boast about this? It’s a contradiction that is really hard to live with.

Please, open your eyes. If you cut back on animal products–or, better still,eschew them completely–the taste sacrifice you’ll supposedly make is minor (as this blog proves, it’s non-existent!) and you’ll exit the vilest human crime on earth. The cancer prevention is just a side benefit.

Chamin 2.0: Halloween Version

I really hope some of you got to make my four-color chamin recipe from a couple of weeks ago–it really rocked. I’m posting yet again about chamin because I’ve made some seasonal improvements to the recipe and it came out even more wonderful (and more nutritious!) than the previous installment.

Essentially, what I did was replace the white potatoes with a squash and more carrots, making the meal more orange and less white. I also did away with the rice and put in mung beans instead. It came out phenomenal, and I’m thrilled to have a hot meal for the rest of the week!

Film Review: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The new documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution opens with the renown story of the blind men touching an elephant, and the rest of the movie shows the party, like the proverbial elephant, to be as multifaceted and enigmatic as the people involved in it.

Narrated by many members of the Black Panther party, historians, police officers, FBI agents, and informants, the movie offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the history of the party since its inception, through Huey Newton’s incarceration, Eldridge Cleaver’s escape to Algeria, the infiltrations and struggles, the social programming, the collaboration with other social movements, the internal strife, and the last days. It is a mesmerizing, mature, and complex portrayal of a movement that embraced both revolution and reform; gender progress and traditional gender roles; inclusivity and exclusivity.

While the best part of all is the focus on individual narratives, the historical footage, mostly of Oakland in the 1960s, is stunning and extensive. The Panthers light up the screen with their distinctive appearance–the afros, the jackets, the berets, the weapons–and with their powerful display of black freedom and independence. The movie ingeniously moves from images of prominent Party members to interviews with the same members, many years later, in which they offer mature, reflective commentary about the explosive events. Many Panthers have remained on the public scene as activists; we recently covered Elaine Brown’s reentry farm project. Their honesty in describing their experiences in the movement–being watched by the police, conflicted about the aims of the movement, and, for the women–pushed out by Huey Newton’s later years, in which he was erratic and abusive–make the movie an unforgettable experience.

The film provoked me to think about two angles. The first is the prominence of the criminal process, and especially police-citizen interactions, with both the formation and the eventual destruction of the movement. One of the main points in the Black Panther platform was the fight against police brutality–and it is that very brutality that is evinced in police reactions to the party, starting with J. Edgar Hoover’s institutional plan to “neutralize” the party and prevent a “messiah” from rising (via, as is convincingly argued, the assassination of Fred Hampton. Moreover, the intense and oppressive use of the criminal process against the Panthers, especially the “New York 21” trials, makes the point the Panthers themselves wished to make. In one of the trials covered in the documentary, Bobby Seale (later to unsuccessfully run for Mayor of Oakland) is gagged and bound at his own trial, making the comparison between the old and new Jim Crow painfully evident.

The second angle is the provision of much-needed historical context for the current Black Lives Matter protest movement. First, it is always useful to inform young joiners of the protest that the problems between police and communities of color are not new and run deep. And second, I think the current movement would do well to learn from the Panthers’ willingness to reach a hand to other social movements and find common themes in different struggles for justice. It is possible to have a strong voice stemming from one’s identity AND to involve allies and partners beyond merely asking them to “shut up” or “check their privilege”. It is possible to highlight distinctive experiences AND appeal to a common ember of the human experience and to empathy. Sadly, the Panthers, like other social movements, were not immune to the left’s destructive tendency to eat its own. While their internal struggles, such as the strife between Newton and Cleaver, were initially exploited by the FBI, toward the end, all the FBI needed was to watch from the sidelines as the movement destroyed itself.

Tofushuka

This morning I happily found a way to veganize one of my favorite egg dishes, shakshuka. Old-timer followers of this blog may recall that I once posted a shakshuka recipe here, and I’ve rather missed it. But FEAR NOT. It’s very simple: All you have to do is, in lieu of the egg, crumble some tofu into the red sauce. The texture is a bit different, but I have to say that the taste is remarkably similar, and it delivers a heap of protein.

I’d use about 85 grams of tofu (a two-inch-by-two-inch-by-half-an-inch block) for every cup of sauce. This really requires some generosity with the sauce.

New Smoothies: Carrot Pineapple and “Poached” Pear

The new Vitamix is a thing of marvel, and it has inspired me to create new types of smoothies. Every morning I make up a new recipe. The latest two successes have been really special:

Carrot Pineapple
1 cup soymilk
1 carrot
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
1/2 cup chard
1 tsp turmeric

“Poached” Pear
1 cup almond milk
1 pear
2 plums
1/2 cup unsweetened cranberry juice
2 cloves
1 tsp cinnamon

Morning Tofu Scramble

It’s been a long morning; I started working at 5am and will be working until 10pm. Fortunately, I have a brief lull getting from home to the office and managed to make myself a decent breakfast:

100gr extra-firm tofu (about 3/4 cup crumbled)
1 tbsp chopped onion
1 garlic clove, chopped
12 cherry tomatoes
2 cups chard leaves, sliced into ribbons
3 large mushrooms
1 tbsp hot sauce
1 tsp olive oil

Heat up olive oil in pan. Add onion, garlic, and mushrooms, and sautee until they soften a bit. Add chard and tomatoes and sautee a few more minutes. In a little bowl, crumble the tofu and mix with the hot sauce. Add to pan and stir fry with the vegetables. Yum!

UPDATE: Great variation – pesto sauce in lieu of the hot sauce, and a little bit of Miyoko’s Kitchen mozarella! Also marvelous.

Four-Color-Chamin: Vegan and Satisfying

Despite the fact that El Niño has not arrived yet, I found myself in a winter preparatory mood (I know, I know, it’s 75 degrees outside) and made chamin, the cold-weather, slow-cooked wonder my grandma used to make on Saturdays. Typically, we’d all show up, eat a fresh salad and a big plate of chamin, and then essentially collapse in a diagonal fashion and fail to move for hours. The vegan version is much lighter than the one that includes big chunks of beef and stuffed guts.

My recipe changes a bit every time I make this, but this time I decided to follow the advice of an expert and made one of Ori Shavit’s recipes. I had no red quinoa, so I substituted it for red kidney beans, and included black dal and white beans as well. Here’s the recipe, translated to English, with my changes and modifications:

1 cup black dal
1 cup white beans
1 cup basmati rice
1 cup kidney beans
2 russet potatoes, thickly sliced
3 sweet potatoes, thickly sliced
3 carrots, thickly sliced
1 red onion, coarsely chopped
5 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
3 prunes, chopped
3 bay leaves
5 sage leaves
blackened spice to taste (I used 1 tbsp for the whole pot)
salt to taste (I used 1 tbsp for the whole pot)
7-8 peppercorns
olive oil

If possible, soak the beans and rice in water overnight; if not, no worries (this is a slow-cooked recipe.)
In a heavy pan, heat up a bit of olive oil and sautee the onion, garlic, bay leaves and safe leaves. After a few minutes, add the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots, and sautee for a few more minutes. Then, place and layer that whole mixture at the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker. On top of it, arrange the rice and beans in four distinct areas (each in every corner), add prune pieces, peppercorns, salt, and blackened spice, and carefully cover with boiling water. Set slow cooker to “high” for three hours. Then, add boiling water to cover again, and set slow cooker to “low”for twelve hours.

This improves when reheated, refrigerates and freezes wonderfully, in case you don’t have a horde of people coming over for the weekend.

Marijuana Legalization Proposition Filed Today!

Today, The Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform filed a proposition to legalize and tax marijuana in California. All the information on the propsition is on their website, Reform CA. The full text of the initiative is here.

The new law would make the following behaviors legal:

(a) To personally possess, process, share, or transport not more than one ounce of cannabis or cannabis products, solely for personal use, and not for sale. 

(b) To consume cannabis or cannabis products that are obtained and possessed in compliance with this Act when such consumption occurs at a private residence or such other location as permitted under this Act. Nothing in this section shall alter current law regarding the rights of a property owner or landlord to regulate or prohibit smoking on their property. 

(c) To cultivate homegrown cannabis in an area not to exceed one hundred (100) square feet; to possess the living and harvested plants and results of any lawfully harvested homegrown cannabis pursuant to this Article; and to transport homegrown cannabis between a lawful cultivation site and the cultivator’s residence. 

The new law also eliminates the penumbral legal implications of marijuana:

26012. (a) No person shall be prosecuted for child endangerment pursuant to Section 273(a) of the Penal Code, or any similar or successor statutes, for an action taken that is in compliance with the provisions of this Act, unless it is determined that there exists an immediate and actual threat to the health and welfare of a child. 

(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an action taken that is in compliance with the provisions of this Act, by itself, shall not be sufficient evidence of parental unfitness, or child abuse, or otherwise be used to restrict or abridge custodial or parental rights to minor children, and shall not be the basis of a criminal act nor the basis to diminish parental rights or remove a child from his or her home, unless it is determined that there exists an immediate and actual threat to the health and welfare of a child. 

The law also sets up an office that will steer policy, manage interstate issues, and determine impairment standards, among other things, and a fund for the tax revenue (5% plants, 10% edibles). The money will go toward environmental restoration of damages resulting from cannabis industry.

Still defined as a criminal offense are supplying to a minor and involving people under 21 in cultivation enterprises; and there are still duties imposed on public employees to be sober during the performance of their duties.