New Year Zaru Soba

This semester, my classes at the GTU are rather ecumenical – two on Judaism and the Old Testament and two on Buddhism. So, I am celebrating the Jewish New Year with a Buddhist-inspired New Year Japanese dish: a vegetable-rich zaru soba.

On my favorite show, Midnight Diner, a wise and mysterious restaurateur opens his little establishment at midnight and closes at 7am. A group of delightful locals, as well as one-timers, from the nightlife scene around Shinjuku show up and he makes them the most delicious meals. Watching the show requires a dialectic approach, as almost nothing is vegan, but the care and meaning behind each dish is evident. Here’s the opening sequence:

Every season has a last-episode special in which all the diner guests are treated to soba in hot broth to celebrate the New Year. Since I usually cook soba from dry, I love soba soups. But this week I managed to get my hands on fresh, locally made soba, and it turns out that high-quality noodles are like revenge: best served cold.

I sliced up a few vegetables, quickly blanched some green beans, put some nice fresh medium-consistency tofu in the mix, and made a hasty dipping sauce that turned out phenomenal. Perhaps it’s not the authentic soy-based dressing for zaru soba, but the more I read about the adaptations and permutations of Buddhism in the West the more I’m at peace with there being lots of variations of Buddhism–with big doses of Orientalism and Occidentalism thrown into the debate. For a really interesting take on all this that hits home, read the book I’m currently reviewing, Emily Sigalow’s American JewBu. This doesn’t mean we should stop talking about colonial influences or ask questions about what gets lost (or gained, or fabricated) in translation. But the changes to this now-global religion and many cultures that came to the US are highlighting the futility of having shrill authenticity fights when we could employ our time eating tasty noodles.

This recipe also pays homage to my favorite Japanese Buddhist restaurant, and possibly my favorite vegan restaurant in the city: Cha Ya. They have a really lovely cold soba salad there, as well as delicious soba soups with mountain vegetables, noodles, or kitsune (fried tofu.)

Anyway – less blather, more recipe. Happy Jewish New Year! ユダヤ人の新年明けましておめでとうございます

  • 1 tbsp Nama Shoyu
  • juice from 1 lime
  • 1 heaping tbsp good quality miso
  • 1 chopped garlic clove
  • 1/2 tsp grated ginger
  • 1 cup fresh, uncooked soba noodles
  • 1-2 big handfuls baby spinach
  • 2 Persian cucumbers
  • 5 radishes
  • 4 tbsp green onions
  • 5 crimini mushrooms
  • 1/2 cup green beans
  • 80g medium-consistency tofu
  • 1 tbsp cooked corn kernels

First, make the sauce. Mix the first five ingredients well in a small bowl and set aside.

Thinly slice cucumbers, mushrooms, and radishes; mince green onions; cut tofu into cubes. Layer spinach leaves on a nice, wide plate.

Boil water in a pot. Drop the green beans in for about 30-45 seconds, then get out with tongs (keep the water boiling) and drop in ice-cold water to chill and preserve crispness.

Then, drop the soba noodles in the boiling water. Cook for about 2 mins, then drain and cool under running water. Place on top of the spinach. Arrange the cucumber, green onions, tofu, green beans, mushrooms, and corn on or around the noodles. Drizzle sauce on top.

Canteen vs. Chow Hall: Let’s Have Enough Love in Our Hearts for Two Wars

After much consternation and many compromises, AB 474 cleared the Appropriations Committee last week and is headed for a floor vote at the California Assembly. The bill regulates the markups at prison canteens, setting prices at a level that “will render each canteen self-supporting,” which effectively means a reduction in canteen markup rates from 65% to 35% for the next 4 years (until 2028). On January 1st 2028, CDCR may ratchet up the markup rate to make canteens “self-supporting.”

As someone interested in both prisons and food, I’ve organized events that classified correctional institutions as food deserts, and rightly so: the cuisine is horrendous. When I visited a Brazilian maximum-security prison a few years ago, I marveled at the organic vegetable garden that surrounded the facility and enriched the decent and nutritious meals served there. The battle to lower canteen prices reminded me of those experiences and raises the question: would we be so worried and upset about canteen markups if the regular meals were decent?

I think the answer is: it’s all about balance. A few years ago, I attended a panel about food and law, in which one of the speakers, a law professor and farmer, expounded on the need to bring native foods back to the communities, claim ownership of native crops, etc. etc. I raised the question of prison canteens, and the fact that some of the most oppressed people on the planet just want some comfort and simple pleasure from their food and might not be aggressively lobbying for heirloom beans. The guy almost chopped my head off and was incredibly rude and dismissive. By pure coincidence, linguist Janet Ainsworth was in the audience, conducting fieldwork on gender norms in academic settings, and wrote up the following (M was the anti-colonial radical-farmer-cum-academic guy, I was the F Qer who was thrice interrupted):

During their panel presentations, three of the four panelists invoked critical ideological positions as underpinning their presentations—both men and one woman. Specifically, one of the two F speakers referenced Critical Race Theory in her presentation, one M panelist referenced critical theory (unspecified), anti-racism, anti-subordination, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, and anti-neo-liberalism in his presentation; the other M referenced critical race theory, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, white privilege, and anti-colonialism in his presentation. Conspicuous by its near absence was feminist theory; it was referenced by one of the F speakers once in a response to a Qer. In immediate response one of the M panelists interrupted and responded critically to her suggestion that feminism had a progressive role to play in the topic; she immediately took an apologetic turn, beginning “Yes, yes, I didn’t mean to say…”

This session was marked by interruptions and negative assessments by the male panelists of the speaking turns of the F Qers. One M panelist interrupted F Qers on two occasions, the other M panelist interrupted F Qer speaking turns on six occasions. This more aggressive M panelist began one of his response turns with “I disagree with everything you said,” his response turn took 3 minutes and 52 seconds. (My qualitative assessment of that turn was that it was only very tangentially related to the point that the initial Qer had made.) The same F. Q’er began a follow-up turn, and after eight seconds, the same M. panelist interrupted again, beginning his turn with “No, what you must understand is…” His turn continued for 6 minutes and four seconds. The same F Q’er tried again to take a speaking turn; this time he interrupted her after four seconds. Two of the F. panelists at this point called him by name twice, in what appeared to be an attempt to open a space to speak for the F Q’er. He ignored both F. panelists and took another two minute and 18 second speaking turn. This M panelist interrupted the speaking turn of an additional F Qer later in the session, and he also interrupted the speaking turn of one of the F panelists in her response to a Qer.

Janet astutely remarked about this exchange:

One striking observation is that the male panelists who in their presentations most explicitly and frequently remarked upon their commitment to left-wing and critical theory stood out in the nature of their interactions with female questioners and co-presenters. They interrupted women, negatively assessed female contributions, and seemed unwilling to engage with them, instead taking long speaking turns that were irrelevant to the points earlier made by women speakers. This sample is far too small to suggest that male academics whose presentations prominently reference their commitments to left-wing political theory are more likely to discursively bully women academics. . . However, it does suggest that merely having an academic understanding of power, privilege, and hegemony is not sufficient to counter the tendencies of some male academics to utilize their discursive privileges to silence and discipline women in the academy even today.

But I digress (thanks for indulging me in this little exorcism; who hasn’t interacted with a chauvinist brute at a conference from time to time?) The point is that we must cultivate enough love in our hearts to fight two simultaneous wars. The short-term fix for the prison nutrition crisis is reasonable pricing at the canteen, because people must have access to something comforting and not torturous to eat. The long-term fix must acknowledge that even a 35% markup is an exploitation; canteen foods are goods that currently have no viable alternative. Incarcerated people can’t choose not to eat them, because the default option is inedible. Consequently, for people who want to eat what their palates recognize as food–100% of the prison population–the canteen has a monopoly, and the markup cannot be avoided. If canteens want to make a profit, improving prison food is the way to go; high pricing for luxury items is fair only if they are truly luxury items, not essentials.

The problem of short-term versus long-term goals is a mainstay in social justice struggles. I see it again and again. During COVID-19, as we describe in Chapter 4 of FESTER, activists had to tackle the trade-off between the short-term struggle to make vaccines accessible and increase vaccine acceptance (short-term life-saving measure) and the long-term struggle to save lives from pandemics and other diseases through population reductions (the only viable long-term solution to the prison disease problem.) The challenge was that the vaccines provided courts and politicians respite from the pressing questions of overcrowding, and were universally used as an excuse not to release nearly enough people.

Similarly, I would like to believe that we all want to eradicate rape culture, and that we all know that is a long-term struggle and a worthy one. At the same time, I would really love it if nobody got raped tonight (a short-term struggle.) For that reason, I advocate sensible behavior and caution: self defense classes, a buddy system, and a lot of judgment and circumspection around any situation involving alcohol. Long-term activists might bristle against this advice because it places the responsibility for rape prevention on the putative victims. This, I’m sorry to say, is nonsense; if you are assaulted it is not your fault! it is the fault of your assailant. And at the same time, we do not live in a world devoid of bad people, and if you get drunk or put yourself in vulnerable positions you are taking a risk that bad people will exploit the situation and do bad things to you.

Want another one? When we voted on death penalty abolition, activists argued it would only entrench life without parole, which was “the other death penalty.” Getting rid of the death penalty was a short-term struggle; getting rid of extreme incarceration, including life without parole, would be a long-term struggle. In response, I wrote this:

Unfortunately, the struggle against life without parole cannot begin until we win the struggle against the death penalty, which is within reach. This is, unfortunately, how political reform works: incrementally, with bipartisan support, and supported by a coalition. As I explain in Cheap on Crime, incrementalism produced the considerable reforms that occurred since 2008, and this one will be no exception.

The prison food struggle exhibits the same characteristics, and I think this requires a dialectic approach. I fully support the fight to reduce markups today, and at the same time I support continuing to fight for a world in which the food one is supposedly getting for free somewhat dulls the necessity for markup reductions. The problem, as we see with prison disease prevention and with rape prevention, is that sometimes short-term and long-term struggles can get in each other’s way. In those situations, I recommend thinking about the viability of the long-term goal and operating accordingly.

The Dream Is Over? Seasons in Fitness and Sports

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
4     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclestiastes 3:1-8

For many of us, this is an ordinary Friday; not so for the small subset of people interested in marathon swimming. Today, my friend Avishag Kofman-Turek, whom I met through our mutual interest in swimming the Sea of Galilee, completed an amazing athletic feat: swimming the North Channel from Ireland to Scotland.

Throughout the day, since the wee hours of the morning, I followed the GPS feed and rooted for Avishag’s safe and successful crossing. It is a huge endeavor. The water is frigid and required many months of difficult acclimation, not to mention a considerable increase in practice yardage (I should say, mileage.)

While witnessing this accomplishment, I was busy reading and completing assignments for four courses: Modern Jewish Thought, Intro to Buddhism and Buddhist Studies, How to Read the Book of Job, and Buddhism in the West. Recently, I’ve embarked on my own marathon swim, an intellectual one; I’m pursuing rabbinical ordination at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism and a masters degree at the Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Jewish Studies. I’ve been keeping this on the down-low during the application process, but if you peek here you’ll see a familiar face. It’s a feat no less solitary than marathon swimming, nor is it going to be easy (I continue to work full time as a law professor and be a full-time devoted mom to my son – I just sleep a lot less and have eliminated idle Internet time from my schedule) but it looks a lot less heroic, as it entails nothing photogenic: just sitting in front of my laptop, reading and writing.

It’s been ages since I trained for, and participated in, a real marathon swim. I know exactly when the last time was: the Thames Marathon in 2016. It was beautiful and serene and a good way to go about semi-retirement from marathon swimming. I still swim in the bay once in a while, and I did crank out a 5k without much effort in Kona last year, but nothing like the distances I used to put in week after week when I was training for big things like the Sea of Galilee or the Tampa Bay Marathon. In the last year, I shifted my efforts into multisport and lifting, partly to combat perimenopause and its discontents, but in the four months since my dad’s illness everything came to a grinding halt and the grief has made it very hard to work out at all, let alone swim a meaningful distance. I’m experiencing a really rough somatic reaction to breathing while swimming, perhaps because dad died of a rare lung disease and struggled to breathe before he was intubated. The lack of exercise and some emotional eating resulted in putting on some weight, and while a couple of months of careful whole food/veg juice diet and vigorous exercise will do the trick, I’m just not feeling it as a pressing priority. I am making an effort to eat healthy things, take good supplements, and move every day (I commute by bicycle, lift in my garage, and take walks in the neighborhood). But it really is an effort.

I did feel a little melancholy today reflecting on Avishag’s amazing swim. Not a sense of envy at her success, but rather a bit of wistfulness about how I don’t seem to be able to muster the kind of gumption and perseverance I used to have about dramatic athletic feats. I take some comfort in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, echoed in this awesome Rich Roll podcast about periodizing one’s life. Now’s the time to take good care of myself without embarking on big health-and-fitness goals, make sure I’m well nourished when I go to teach and study, and invest in my new academic pursuits. Thing is, I’m not getting any younger, and while swimming is something you can continue to do and improve in throughout your life, I doubt I’ll be able to pull off big marathon swims out of the blue when I’m in my 60s and 70s without putting the requisite time now. But none of this matters if I just don’t have it in me at the moment.

The dream is over,

What can I say?

The dream is over

Yesterday

I was the dream weaver, but now I’m reborn

I was the walrus, but now I’m John

And so, Dear Friends, we’ll just have to carry on;

The dream is over.

John Lennon, “God”

Best Minestrone

As we are ensconced here at home, hiding from #hellastorm2023, I decided to make us the soup to end all soups and ended up with this delicious minestrone. One of its major secrets is that, rather than using canned beans, I used Rancho Gordo beans that cooked inside the soup from dry, adding the wonderful bean liquor to the already flavorful soup. I made it in the instant pot, but you can easily make it on the stove (the beans might require extra cooking time in that case.) Enough chitchat – here’s the recipe:

  • 1 tsp olive oil (optional)
  • 1 onion, minced
  • 2 Russet potatoes, diced
  • 3 carrots, diced
  • 1 cup chopped celery
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 10 kale leaves
  • 1 tsp herbes de provence
  • 1 can crushed tomatoes
  • 1/2 lb good quality dry pinto beans
  • 1 quart water, plus two cups
  • 2 tbsp vegetable stock concentrate
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • salt and pepper to taste (I didn’t put any and it turned out very flavorful)
  • 1/2 package lentil or chickpea pasta, or whatever pasta you like

Using the sauté function of the instant pot, sauté the onion, carrot, and celery for about 6-7 minutes (with or without olive oil.) After the onion is translucent, add the potatoes, garlic, kale, herbes de provence, crushed tomatoes, beans, water, stock, and tomato paste. Close the lid and cook for 40 mins on high pressure.

On the stove, cook the pasta until al dente.

Place some pasta in each dish and top with generous ladles of soup. You can top it with vegan parmesan but, honestly, it’s delicious as it is. Enjoy!

From Endurance to Strength… in Perimenopause… with Plants… with Positive Groundlessness

In the last few weeks I’ve been making big changes to my nutrition and fitness routine, which call for some careful reflection. The whole thing started when a colleague–a badass athlete in her own right–lent me her copy of Stacy Sims’ new. book Next Level, the first (as far as I know) book about perimenopausal and menopausal athlete. Just a few days later, I attended an open water swim camp in Hawaii, where my wonderful and knowledgeable coach, Celeste St. Pierre, recommended the same book, and impressed upon me the vital importance of Lifting Heavy Shit.

Up to this point, my athletic endeavors were almost squarely in the endurance world. I swam long (and slow) in open waters, transitioning then to multisport to protect myself from injury. In the heyday of my marathon swimming days, I did no cross training whatsoever – only swimming. Later, I added on calisthenics, in the form of fusion classes (which I took and taught) and antigravity fitness (using silky hammocks.) I’m not quite sure whether I was fully aware of the importance of doing all these things at the same time, and I’m also pretty sure I wasn’t told to increase the resistance and challenge or to eat more. Generally speaking, and relatedly, my weight has been almost entirely the product of my diet: when I eat more and poorly, I gain weight; when, with great control and care, I eat less and well, I lose weight. Going in the former direction is easier than the latter.

For many important biological reasons that Sims explains in a lucid, straightforward way in her book, the wellbeing and athletic priority during perimenopause and beyond should be building lean muscle and bone. For many of us, this means changing our body composition, which is not an easy thing to do and not one that can be accomplished merely with dietary changes. The building block for muscle is protein, which has to be consumed in adequate amounts, and the muscles must be used in a progressively challenging fashion for them to grow stronger.

I read the book cover to cover and then, through the recommendation of another wonderful athletic colleague, was introduced to lifter Casey Johnston and her excellent couch-to-barbell program. Two weeks ago, for the first time, I mounted plates on my barbell, and am quite fascinating with this transformation, though I still have many questions and uncertainties. Here is some of what has been happening:

  1. I am lifting three times a week – twice at the school gym with my colleague, once or twice at home. This has required a certain change to my routine. I lift on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday; I now swim on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. I also kept up my pilates on Saturday and my boot camp (which includes lifting) on Sunday. On lifting days I also do a short plyometric set (quick, HIIT-type jumping). Monday is somewhat of a lighter day, though I do ride the cargo e-bike, as I do every weekday, to drop my son off at school. That means shorter but more intense workouts, which is what Sims recommends. It does feel weird, as someone used to endurance workouts, that there’s none of the prolonged suffering that we marathoning people tend to glorify. Hilariously, I am finding the mantra “I can take anything for twenty seconds” useful for both HIIT and lifting.
  2. I am already experiencing improvement in my strength. Last week I flew to Atlanta for a conference (ASC was very good this year, and I’ve already posted about some of what I learned–on court fees and on extradition) with a big, heavy backpack containing everything I needed for four days. When I got to my airplane seat, I lifted my bag into the overhead compartment–and was immediately struck by a big difference. Reader, it was child’s play. Not that it wasn’t heavy; I was stronger, noticeably so, and it was very gratifying. Same story with groceries. My partner was astonished yesterday when I came back from the co-op with a gigantic box of produce, oat milk cartons, and the like, and carried it myself as if it was nothing despite its weird shape. All of this is very good news and provides ample motivation to keep going.
  3. The progress arc at the beginning is very satisfying. Every time I lift I think to myself, there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to lift five pounds more in two days. And then the next workout arrives, and to my astonishment, I can! I’m sure this fast progress will slow down as I progress, but for now, this linear improvement (2.5-lb increments for upper body, 5-lb increments for lower body) is providing a huge motivation boost. This is a good thing. Throughout my life, I’ve often see-sawed between two good sensations: growth (picking up a sport or a skill I know nothing about and getting through the uncomfortable months/years that it takes to become “good enough” to enjoy it) and relishing skill (making small improvements in a sport I’m already quite proficient at.) Sometimes it feels like I need to stay in my comfort zone (as with, say, swimming or flute.) Sometimes I pick up something new (such as tai chi or the handpan.) Now is a time for the latter, and I feel excitement building for when I get “good enough” to know what I’m doing.
  4. I’ve also introduced some changes to my swimming. At the open water swim camp, Celeste taught us to activate our muscles through dryland practice before getting into the water. I’m finding this highly effective, and I’ve made one more adjustment–my sets are shorter and sprintier now. I cover fewer yards overall, but the intensity of the practice has increased, which is exhilarating. I’m also hitting some surprising times with my 50s and 100s – times I hadn’t seen in the pool since I was training for Tampa Bay in 2012. At 48, this is gratifying and makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing.
  5. I’m still not 100% sure what I’m doing, nutrition-wise, despite having gotten excellent advice. Sims’ book, the coaching figures in my life, and my awesome new acquaintance, vegan fitness coach Karina Inkster, have all emphasized two principles: I have to eat a lot more than I’ve been eating, and I have to prioritize protein. These things go hand in hand, because it is a pretty impossible job to double one’s protein intake (especially on a vegan diet) and keep the caloric situation low. Sims discusses the common problem of low energy availability, or LEA, and stresses how crucial it is to fuel properly before, during, and after workouts. We vegans love to scoff at ignorant meat eaters who ask us “where do you get your protein?” and, indeed, one can get a lot of protein on a plant-based diet, but it does require more planning, as the things one should eat (good, plant based food with fiber and phytonutrients) don’t tend to come in easy protein-rich packages. On Karina’s website, one can find lots of excellent resources for protein and other nutrition strategies for vegan athletes. She even has a handy vegan protein calculator, which instructed me to eat twice as much protein as I had been eating. This means I’m chasing protein throughout the day (tofu scramble; adding vegan protein powder to green smoothies; adding hemp, flax, and chia to my morning oatmeal) and all the other calories sort of work themselves out.
  6. I’m also not sure what’s happening with my body size-wise. Despite eating almost twice what I ate during the Big Weight Loss and Health Restoring Project, and despite putting on about 12 lbs or so, my size doesn’t feel significantly different. My measurements are almost the same. The scale is unhelpful, as its body composition readings are inconsistent and bizarre. Parts of me feel more muscular, other parts softer, and, in general, I feel more like a work in progress than like the chiseled ancient Greek statue my mind imprinted on as the picture of health and strength. I can’t argue with the functional improvement, but there is definitely a part of me that is terrified of regaining all the weight I lost through so much effort–if only because I have wonderful clothes and would like to continue wearing them. This is a really interesting and juicy place to explore in meditation–attachment to body, attachment to clothes, the possibility that I purchased my current wardrobe as a protective talisman against weight gain, lots of new things to learn about myself and my relationship to my body.
  7. Spiritually, the whole thing is weird, fun, and a bit discombobulating. One of my favorite teachers, Pema Chödrön, speaks of “positive groundlessness“: coming to a sense of tentative, floating peace with the idea that nothing is permanent and there is really nothing to hold on to:

The idea of letting go of fear and becoming comfortable with groundlessness has been a recurring theme for me in the last few weeks, pretty much since I participated in the Smithfield Trial and experienced the elation of its aftermath. Recently, Wayne Hsiung and I recorded our third podcast together, in which I espoused a theory about the judge’s closed fist where it came to affirmative defenses and evidence in the trial. I’m increasingly convinced that what drives these aggressive judicial court-management maneuvers is the fear that the trial will evolve and bloat into some landmark political moment beyond the judge’s ability to handle. Fear of uncertainty, of having nothing to hold on to, no buffer or protection, drives a lot of behavior, including very bad behavior. This includes my own fear: during the trial, as Wayne and I discuss in the podcast, I was sure that taking a mistrial was the right choice for him, but he decided to take the chance and see what the jury would decide. Happily, he was proven right. It was a moment that taught me that Wayne has more guts than me, and that I need to develop my relationship with positive groundlessness.

In his book Becoming a Man, one of my favorite authors, Paul Monette, wrote: “When you finally come out, there’s a pain that stops, and you know it will never hurt like that again, no matter how much you lose or how bad you die.” I think this is true for virtually anything worth being brave about: animal rights, helping incarcerated people, fighting against an unjust regime, resisting orthodoxies (from the right and from the left), and changing something as solid and fundamental as one’s relationship with one’s body. Let’s just say this lifting journey is a wonderful opportunity to explore my own bravery in picking up something new, and it’s a spiritual journey as well.

Dandelion Greens with Leeks, Sundried Tomato, and JustEgg

Thanks to the amazing cooks at Moya and the good folks at Imperfect Produce, I’m enjoying the most wonderful brunch. A couple of days ago we had a hankering for Ethiopian food, with which my family has a special relationship because of my aunt Michal’s years as a social worker working with the Ethiopian-Israeli immigrant community. We ordered Moya’s excellent veggie combo, with extra injera, as well as tofu tibs, and had a tiny bit of sauce from the tibs left, as well as some of the injera.

Enter the vegetable box, which brought us a big bunch of dandelion greens, a gigantic leek, fresh green onions, spry parsley sprigs, and a little jar of Sicilian dried tomatoes. We also had a container of JustEgg in the fridge, though crumbled tofu would do the trick here just fine. A few minutes later, a brunch fit for royalty.

  • 1 big bunch dandelion greens
  • 1 leek (just the green part)
  • 1-2 sprigs green onion
  • big handful parsley
  • 2 tbsp chopped dried tomatoes
  • 3 tbsp Tibs sauce, or tomato sauce
  • 3 tbsp JustEgg, or 3 oz crumbled tofu

Heat up a bit of water in a pan. Thinly slice the leek and green onion, chop the parsley, and cut the stems of the dandelion greens into bite-size pieces (the top part of the leaf you can leave whole.)

Pop the vegetables into the hot was. Add the tibs sauce or the tomato sauce, as well as the dried tomatoes, and mix. Cover the pan and let steam for a few minutes. After the greens have wilted and the water has all but evaporated, add the JustEgg or the tofu on top (the tofu might need mixing with the flavorful greens), close the lid again, and allow to cook. Serve with injera (or bread, or nothing.)

Whole Food, Plant-Based School Lunches!

It’s been a big week for our family! The news about FESTER’s dispatch to our publisher are small potatoes compared to the bigger journey: Our son is now a schoolboy! It’s been a big transition, helped by the kindness and wisdom of his new teachers at Red Bridge SF. This also means that we have to roll up our sleeves and make school lunches – enough calories, nutrition and flavor to sustain and gladden a little boy until the afternoon.

I’ve talked to a few experienced school-lunch-packers, as well as read the oldie-but-goodie Vegan Lunchbox. I think the winning formula for us is going to include:

  • 1 whole grain mini-pita with a wholesome filling (avocado, nut butter, cashew cheese);
  • a container or two with a hearty and tasty starch + protein + veg (brown rice sushi; quinoa pilaf; rice and chili; chickpea or lentil pasta);
  • a container or two of raw or lightly steamed vegetables and fruit;
  • a sweet treat: dried fruit and/or a slice of quickbread (zucchini bread, banana bread, pumpkin bread, black bean brownie);
  • a water bottle.

I’m trying to be more organized ahead of time, and I think what this means is that every Sunday we should:

  • batch-cook a grain
  • batch-cook a bean
  • make sure we have cute vegetables and fruit for snacks
  • bake a batch of mini-pitas and freeze them
  • bake a quickbread, slice, and freeze

My most successful school lunch this week was the vegan sushi and tofu combo you see above. In the little bag are slices of green apple and cucumber sticks. There was also an avocado-filled mini-pita and dried blueberries. If you are plant-based, tell me what you’re sending to school with your kids in the comments!

Red Vegetable Quinoa

This simple little dish turned out fantastic with very little effort and fanfare, largely thanks to excellent spices from Havat Derech HaTavlinim in Bet Lechem HaGlilit, my favorite spice shop, but you can obtain these at Middle Eastern markets and online. The combination of these red and purple spices with a lot of red vegetables yields something very special with a sweet flavor profile. An ideal Instant Pot recipe but this is easy to make in a lidded saucepan – it’ll just take a few more minutes.

  • 1/2 white onion, minced
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 tablespoon baharat
  • 1/2 tablespoon sumac
  • 3 big carrots, grated
  • 1 little tomato, finely chopped
  • 1 little beet, finely chopped (I used a precooked beet from lovebeets)
  • 1 cup quinoa (I used tricolor, but would’ve used white quinoa if I had any)
  • 1 cup water

Set the InstantPot to “sauté,” heat it up, and then pop in the onion and garlic. Cook for about five minutes or until beginning to be golden. Then, add the spices, carrots, tomato, and beets. Continue cooking for about five more minutes. Turn off the sauté function and add the quinoa and the water. Mix well, close the lid, and set the Instant Pot to pressure cook on high temperature for 11 minutes. When it is done, let it sit for about five minutes before depressurizing.

My Day in (the Food) Court

In 1992 I left home and moved to Jerusalem for law school. Being on my own for the first time was an opportunity to revise and question many habits, including my nutrition. The impetus for becoming vegetarian came from a humiliating (but, in hindsight, funny) incident: in my first year of law school I dated a classmate who came from Jerusalem’s academic aristocracy. His family invited me to a famous gourmet steakhouse. I had obviously not grown up eating such fancy things and had no idea how to order my steak, so I thought well-done would be safe, and they proceeded to repeatedly ask me throughout the meal in concerned tones: “Are you sure your steak is not too dry?” That meal was the last nail in my carnivorous coffin; I eschewed animal flesh that evening when I came home.

Ours was not a kitchen-centered household, and my hard-working mom would bring me food from restaurants near the courts where she tried criminal cases as a defense attorney; so, being a serious person, I decided to teach myself how to cook and eat vegetarian by purchasing my first cookbook, Phyllis Glazer’s A Vegetarian Feast. I also discovered an amazing natural foods grocery store in a nearby kibbutz, Ramat Rachel, which was a complete revelation. It was there that I encountered whole grains for the first time, as well as exotic things like tofu (promoted as “soy cheese”); I come from fairly humble beginnings and did not grow up eating such foods. My new way of life was strange to my family, who were pained by my avoidance of meat and were puzzled by the whole grain thing (gradually, they all came around.)

My knowledge of nutrition was fairly limited at the time; the reigning theories of vegan and vegetarian nutrition were the now-debunked “food combining” and “complete protein” myths, which seemed like a whole lot of trouble. I had no concept of the extent to which the cruelty to animals permeated the dairy and egg market (I did buy “cage-free” eggs after visiting an army colleague’s home and being horrified by her family’s chicken coops.) And I had no idea how to stay healthy on a vegan diet; vegetarianism was already a pretty radical step considering where I came from. So, I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and remained such until getting to the States in 2001.

Arriving in America was a harsh blow to my health and digestive system. U.S. food was richer, more laden in chemicals, and far less fresh and healthy than its Israeli counterpart, and throughout grad school I suffered from debilitating stomach aches and miseries that would put me out of commission for days at a time. With the help of a wonderful nutritionist I met through my Chinese medicine studies at the Acupressure Institute, I did an elimination diet and eschewed bread and dairy; I immediately felt better. Since I didn’t quite know what to substitute it with, I went back to eating fish. Meat crept back into the menu several years later, when I was training for long marathon swims. I thought I needed the protein, but the whole thing never sat well with me, morally and ethically.

Everything changed in 2014, when I saw Judy Irving’s wonderful documentary Pelican Dreams and suddenly realized that everything was interconnected–the food chain, the ecosystem, the planet, our health, the health and welfare of our nonhuman friends–and that I wanted nothing to do with the animal torture industry. I came home that very evening and told my partner I was going to be vegan from now on (he joined me not long after and we’ve been happy and proud vegans ever since, raising a happy and proud vegan son.) I became involved with Direct Action Everywhere and started writing about factory farms and open rescue. It was also, as it turned out, an easy and convenient time to go vegan, because the next generation in quality nut cheeses and meat substitutes emerged.

During the pandemic, we relied a lot on these substitutes, which were not only easy to procure and order in, but also psychologically soothing (salt and oil will do that.) My weight started creeping up to an alarming degree, and unpleasant, debilitating symptoms, which I had ascribed to perimenopause, became a way of life: relentless low-grade headaches, digestive problems, brain fog. Litigating the San Quentin case and advocating for incarcerated people during the pandemic took an enormous psychological toll, and my health continued to deteriorate. In March 2021 I fell in the street and could not get up – to this day I’m not sure if it was cardiac or something else. It was a sense of utter weakness and frailty. But at that instant, all the shame I had been feeling about my health decline turned into rage: I don’t deserve to live like this, I thought, I deserve a better life. The next day I bought all the vegetables and fruit I could think of and took a walk around the block. I juiced for 30 days, then added fresh salads, soups, and smoothies to the menu. The walks grew in length and became runs, I bought a bike, I started swimming again, I completed my lifeguard training. In March 2022, a year after I fell in the street, I completed the Oakland Marathon. At that point, all my symptoms were gone, my bloodwork cleared up, all my health metrics were transformed, and I lost 60 lbs, getting back to my high school weight. My swim and run times were, and are, better than ever in my life, and I continue seeing personal bests in the pool and on the trail.

Most of the inspiring success stories on the Forks Over Knives website involve folks who ate the standard American diet before shifting to a whole-food, plant-based plan. I’m here to tell you that it’s entirely possible to be 100% vegan and eat in a horribly unhealthy manner. I’m so glad I shifted to whole foods, juices, smoothies, chilled soups, and other vegetable-rich meals. I am sure that eating this way has saved my life. On social media, I frequent various vegan groups, and many of the posts involve a search for the perfect meat analog, faux egg, or rich cheese on a pizza; I very keenly recognize the feelings driving this quest in myself as well. It’s not just cravings from the animal-consuming days; it’s a sense of deprivation and righteousness. Whenever I crave something like this, I detect in my own thinking a sense that dammit, I’m doing the right thing here for the animals and the planet, I deserve this tasty reward.

I have found a way to set aside this righteous thinking pattern: I interrupt it by thinking, what I deserve is to feel splendid, wake up fresh and pain-free, and live many years to be with my son and to push myself to athletic heights. That’s my reward. The way to earn my “just desert” is through chilled green soups, delicious salads, and concoctions rich in healing greens. To learn more about nutrition, I’ve read up on the latest research on a variety of conditions, and taken my plant-based nutrition certificate from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, as well as the Forks Over Knives cooking course. I feel so wonderful now that I don’t want to ever not feel this way; I wake up every morning yearning for everyone to feel this way. It’s hard to describe how profoundly pleasing it is to go about my day with everything humming and working the way it should. I want the same for you, and for everyone else.

Thinking Like a Community

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the disappointing, but not unexpected, outcome of Happy the Elephant’s case. Taken with similar attempts to imbue animals with legal personhood, this can induce a lot of despair: fringe legal philosophies have not produced the change we’re hoping for.

But perhaps there is another way to go, which learns from contemplative and deep ecological perspectives. At 5:30am on election day I rode my bike to the polls and was treated to a magnificent dawn chorus of San Francisco’s diverse and colorful bird population. A thought flew through my mind: The birds don’t know and don’t care that there is an election today. Much of what we will vote on (transit, construction, garbage collection) will directly affect their lives, but they are not involved in this process–they live adjacent to it, oblivious of what it may bring in its wings. Who will speak for their interests at this election? 

I’m obviously not the first person to introduce contemplative practices into ecology and animal rights. In their 1988 book Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings, John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Flemming and Arne Naess propose a blueprint for human decisionmaking that takes all perspectives in mind. Through transformative, contemplative practices, a Council of All Beings invites humans to deeply adopt and articulate the perspectives of nonhuman entities in decisionmaking. I participated in one such Council as part of a facilitator training; I spoke for a mushroom and some of my fellow participants spoke for parrots, rocks, and blades of grass. It was a profound immersion in the interests, if they can be called that, of nonhuman entities.

This transcendent notion of perspective taking has migrated from deep ecological theory to the legal realm, with some expressing optimism for its potential for transformation. In his article We Are the River, my colleague and friend David Takacs offers some examples: The New Zealand Parliament has recently granted the Whanganui River and the Te Urewera mountain ecosystem rights as legal persons, with a Māori governing board to speak for the nonhuman entities, based upon traditional cultural precepts. Similarly, governments in Australia, Colombia, Ecuador, Bangladesh, India, Uganda, and the U.S. have also declared that rivers and other living systems have legal rights. While these initiatives stem from  disparate historical, philosophical, and legal backgrounds, and pursue disparate goals, they all seek to enshrine in the law the fundamental symbiosis between human and nonhuman ecological health, and to empower suitable stewards who will nurture that symbiosis. As Takacs explains, newly vested spokespersons for nature–often indigenous populations, who savvily position themselves as more authentically empowered to speak for natural entities–can, and sometimes do, turn novel legal theories into real legal work that protects human and nonhuman communities. 

So, perhaps the solution to our failure to effect real change through animal personhood is to eschew performative (often prosecutorial and anthropomorphized) rhetoric on behalf of animals and give some careful thought, through discerning political considerations and contemplative experiences, to two important questions: what are the genuine interests of nonhuman animals and who should be vested with the authority to represent these interests? As I explained here and here, and as Justin Marceau explains so well here, deep engagement with the true interests of nonhuman animals does not and should not include a reliance on incarceration. The answer, perhaps, is that criminal courtrooms are not the right places for deep, thoughtful perspective-taking. This is not to say that meditative retreats or multiparty government meetings would be completely free of anthropomorphism: any humans speaking for nonhuman entities necessarily translate very different lives to their own into human terms and might, manipulatively or carelessly, twist or convert these into their own interest. This is why it is essential to identify speakers for animals who are truly curious, knowledgeable, and sincere. 

When we understand on a deep level what animals want (they are more similar to us than we might think, as Larry Carbone explains in his treatise on laboratory animals), the solutions are up to us. Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute often explains that the true solution to the horrors of factory farming lie at least partly in the hands of the market: we must create substitutes to animal products that taste the same or better, and cost the same or are cheaper. Would factory farmed animals provide us with this solution? Naturally not. This is an entirely human solution, derived from an entirely human conceptual world, for the genuine problem nonhuman animals face–the horrific reality of exploitation and torture that is the CAPO industry. What Friedrich’s solution shows us is that, when we set out to comprehend the unmediated experience of our fellow living beings, with as little imposition of our own agendas on it as possible, we can then fashion human solutions to these problems. I resolved to participate in (human) elections and vote on measures that humans introduced, and on human candidates, while “thinking like a mountain” at the ballot box.

But we can find even more uses for thinking like a community, such as in physical and mental health matters. Recently, I read and enjoyed Will Bulsiewicz’s Fiber Fueled and listened to this podcast with him, in which he explained that we should think of our eating habits as eating not just for ourselves, but for a whole community including trillions of microbes. What I eat is for them as much as it is for me, or for whatever “me” is (not that easy to parse, with so many microbes in the mix, right?) So, when you crave a mountain of nutrition-empty things, consider that there’s an emotional aspect of “you” who wants them, while there are many aspects of “you” – the physical, biological, mental “you”, that needs other things. Think of the cliché of pregnant women “eating for two:” we’re all eating for trillions.

There’s also a psychological aspect to this: I’m enjoying Richard Schwartz’s No Bad Parts, an excellent introduction to family systems theory in psychology, which is all about the notion that we contain multitudes. It is useful to give a voice to neglected parts of the self, even if one believes there’s some “core self” (a better fit for western psychology than for Buddhist psychology.)

Next time you’re involved in decisionmaking, for yourself or for others, try thinking like a community and see how it feels.