Serenity in the Storm

Biscuits and Gravy

If you were gearing up to have a Celiac’s test, what would you eat to make sure you were getting a fair amount of gluten leading up to the test? I would eat (and did!) biscuits and gravy. When I was a kid, my dad was the king of biscuit making. He’d just roll out a batch of biscuits like it was second nature, pop ’em in the oven and in no time at all we would have warm, fresh biscuits with dinner. I’ve always loved biscuits and, really, who doesn’t?! On Saturday morning, I woke up with a hankering for biscuits and gravy and whipped some up. They were surprisingly easy and ready in a short time. Fluffy biscuits…savory mushroom gravy. Delish!

The Recipe: Biscuits

Makes 6-8 biscuits

2 cups flour

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 Tbls sugar

1/2 cup cold vegetable shortening/margarine

2/3 cup non-dairy milk (e.g., rice)

Preheat oven to 425 F. In a bowl, mix dry ingredients. Cut the shortening/margarine in small chunks and add to the dry mixture. You can use two butter knives to cut the shortening into the dry mixture, but I like to use clean fingers. With the knives or your fingers, blend the shortening into the dry mixture until all the shortening is in tiny bits and the dry mixture changes consistency slightly so that it looks like it might start to hold together in places. Create a little depression in the flour mixture and add the milk. With a fork, gently stir in the milk. When the milk is mostly combined, you can use your hands to fold the dough together just a few times. IMPORTANT: DO NOT OVER-HANDLE. The less you handle the dough, the more delicate and fluffy the biscuits will be. Turn dough out onto a floured surface or piece of wax or parchment paper. Pat the dough out flat (about 1/2-3/4 inch thick). With a round cookie cutter or upside down glass, stamp out the biscuits and place in a round greased cake pan so that the biscuits are touching (you can use any kind of pan). Bake for 15 minutes or until slightly golden brown.

The Recipe: Mushroom Gravy

Makes 3-4 helpings for biscuits and gravy

1 cup mushrooms of your choosing, chopped small

1.5 cups of vegetable stock/broth (if you’re watching your sodium, get the low-sodium kind)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1.5-2 Tbls olive oil

~3 Tbls flour

salt/pepper to taste

Mince garlic and heat olive oil in a small saucepan. Saute the garlic for a few minutes on a medium heat (careful not to burn the garlic). Add the chopped mushrooms and stir frequently. The mushrooms should get slightly soft and release some moisture. Add some freshly ground black pepper (wait on the salt to see if you need it at the end).

Add the flour and stir. This will make a pasty kind of consistency. Now, it’s time to add the vegetable stock/broth. You want to add this a little at a time, stirring to mix the flour/mushroom mixture fully with the stock.

The combination of the stirring and the heat will cause the flour to thicken the mixture. Keep adding the stock until it is all incorporated. Let it simmer, stirring frequently for 5-10 minutes after all is incorporated to thicken up. If you want it thicker, add a little more flour. If you want it thinner, add a little more stock.

Taste the gravy for flavor and adjust salt and pepper to taste. I find that the vegetable stock is plenty salty and so I usually do not add more salt, but feel free to do so if you prefer.

For Biscuits and Gravy

Place two warm biscuits on a plate. Pour a generous helping of gravy over the top. Enjoy immediately!

Celebrating a Vegan, Eco-Friendly Winter Wedding

Source: Gown by Lindee Daniel; hanging lights photo by Tiger Shout; twig lights photo from Wedding Bee

One nice thing about having finished teaching last quarter is that I was able to catch up on some of my guest posting commitments at other blogs. You can head on over to The Kind Life today to check out my guest post on eco-friendly, vegan winter wedding planning. If you missed the fall wedding post, you can check that out, too. These wedding posts are so fun to write. You can expect a spring wedding post in the coming months.

For now, have any of you celebrated or do you plan to celebrate a winter wedding?

Book Review of “Zooland: The Institution of Captivity”

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses to the post on marriage and childrearing. I’d love to hear more thoughts on this subject from everyone as it can be topic that draws out strong opinions one way or another. And I’ll definitely be posting another post on this topic soon. In the meantime, though, I want to nudge you over to Our Hen House to read my review of Irus Braverman’s excellent book, Zooland: The Institution of Captivity.

Has anyone read this or another good book about zoos?

Happy Friday!

Thoughts on Marriage & Childrearing (Part One)

When I was growing up, I always thought that someday I would get married and have kids. That’s what most people around me thought because that’s the dominant discourse we are exposed to—we grow up, go to college, get married, buy a house, have a child or two, raise them, send them to college and perpetuate the cycle. This is familiar, of course, because it is the heternormative American Dream. The unspoken traditional values underlying this are that we become well-disciplined consumers. To be ‘good, productive citizens,’ a certain level of education is encouraged, we are expected to commit to one person in a monogamous marriage (in most states, a marriage between a man and a woman), we are expected to reproduce, all the while consuming goods produced to sustain this lifestyle of consumption. And the government provides incentives for this life trajectory—we are given tax breaks for being disciplined citizens. U.S. taxpayers receive tax breaks for education, for getting married, for buying a house, for having children, etc. Parents are often given paternity leave by their employers whereas child-free employees are not. I apologize if this sounds pessimistic. There are, of course, many wonderful things about marriage and parenting. But this is just to point out the ways in which the system in which we live benefits from, and reproduces the institutions of marriage and parenting.

After Eric and I had been together for a while, people started asking, “When are you going to get married?” as if that was, of course, the next step in our relationship—the goal. Then, as soon as we were married, people started asking the question, “When are you going to have kids?” Not “ARE you going to have kids?” but “WHEN?” At first, my answer was a non-committal but cheerful, “I don’t know…not anytime soon, but someday.” Then things started to shift as I thought more carefully about this question and what it meant. Tons of people actively choose not to have children for all kinds of reasons, so why the expectation that, of course, a heterosexual, married couple would have children? The more I thought about this institution of human reproduction, the more closely I started to pay attention to conversations about having children.

I’ve now seen quite a few of my friends and family members have children. For some of them, there was little choice involved. They got pregnant accidentally and went with it. For some, I think they had children because it was the next step after marriage and they didn’t necessarily see any good reason not to. For some, having children was something they had always wanted to do, they loved children, were great with children—they were, in other words, born parents. Other friends thought extremely carefully about the decision to have children and are raising their children with that same careful thoughtfulness. And still others made the choice to adopt children.

When I was younger I always thought I wanted to be a mother. I’ve always felt like my body would be good at pregnancy and childbirth. I even went so far as to think about the ideal time for childbearing/rearing in terms of career, etc. (late 20s seemed to be a good time). But then as I started creeping into my late twenties and started thinking about animals in a new light, something changed. I had started to become vegan and I was thinking about activism more seriously than ever before. I started thinking about the animals with whom we share our home and the impact that having a child would have on them. I started thinking about the way having children (as it should) makes you prioritize your children over other projects. I started thinking about my career and what having children would mean for that. I started thinking about writing and how having children would complicate my time for writing every day. I started thinking about how little time we have here on this earth to make change and I started to wonder if having children wasn’t necessarily the most productive use of my time. In other words, I started to radically rethink the assumption that I would have children. To be clear, when I say all of this, I do not mean to pass any judgements at all on people who have chosen to have children and for whom the decision was easy. I am merely giving my own thought-process and perspective on what I see to be a huge decision.

After many, many conversations with Eric, family and friends about this subject, I’ve encountered some interesting insights about the choice to have children (or not) and I’ll share some of those in my next post. To be continued…

In the meantime, what’s your perspective on having children?

New Blog Design

I’m trying out this new design of the blog. I still want to tweak some font, colors, etc. But I’d really like to hear your feedback. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Specific critiques? Thoughts? Requests?

Thank you and Happy New Year!

Plans for 2013

On the last day of 2012, I’m turning my thoughts to the new year. Okay, who are we kidding? To be honest, I’m a big-time future planner and I’ve been thinking about the new year for a while now.

Memory Jar

The memory jar is a thing I saw floating around the internet last year or the year before and I thought, “I want to do that next year!” The idea here is simple and sweet. Take a mason jar and, throughout the year, fill it with memories from the year—good things that happened, hilarious moments, poignant or sad moments, random thoughts you don’t want to forget. In short, fill it with the little day-to-day things you’re likely to forget. Obviously if you got married this year, you’re not going to forget the wedding, but maybe you will forget the hilarious meltdown you had about the fact that you had to rent spoons for the guests at your wedding. Why do people need spoons anyway?! On New Years Eve, sit down and read all of the notes you’ve put in the jar. I like this idea because it’s not resolution-y. I think we all tend to forget a lot of the little things throughout the year, and this is a way to remember them.

Writing/Work Plans for 2013

These last few weeks, I’ve been on project CLEAR THE DECKS. I have had lots of small writing projects hanging over my head throughout the fall while I was teaching and these last few weeks have been about getting them done and out the door. The last thing on that list is to finish a course proposal for next year for a new class on animals in fashion. Once this is done, there’s not much standing between me and the good old dissertation. 2013 WILL be the year of writing a dissertation. This isn’t some New Years resolution that I hope will happen. Barring any unforeseen incidents, by this time next year I will have a complete draft of the dissertation and be working on revisions. Also during 2013, I plan to get started on writing a book that I’ve been thinking about for a while. More on the specifics at a later date. First, I have to get going on the dissertation and focus my energies on that.

Writing is something I love and it’s something that I’ve learned how to do fairly efficiently. In certain ways a year filled with writing seems a little like a cavernous abyss that keeps me awake at night. All of those questions we ask ourselves in the dark: What if I can’t do it? What if the writing isn’t good enough? But in the light of the morning, I feel better about answering those questions—if the writing isn’t good enough, I’ll make it good enough. That is what revision is for. And this is something I can do. This is something I’ve been training my whole life to do. My childhood was filled with writing instruction—from summer writing day camps to writing classes in school to one-on-one sessions with my English professor father. Writing is in my bones. My mom reminded me recently that when I was 16/17 and looking at colleges, my one requirement was that I go somewhere where I could write really long pieces of writing. I chose correctly—heading to Sarah Lawrence College where I really learned discipline about writing. I always thought I was going to be a fiction writer, but somewhere at Sarah Lawrence I began to feel a nagging sense of doubt about dedicating my life to fiction. I made my way to geography and learning to write nonfiction—writing about social justice and politics and animals. It has been a struggle at first to learn the new language of nonfiction, analytical writing. But in many ways, it has felt like coming home and I excited to continue learning and growing on this path. The dissertation is a huge part of that.

Blog Plans for 2013

As part of this year of writing, the blog will certainly be a regular writing project. In the immediate future, I plan to do a series of posts on children. It’s something I haven’t talked about much at all on the blog, and it’s a subject that isn’t talked about enough (in my opinion) in the animal rights community. I’m hoping the kid posts can spark some conversation in the comments because I would love to hear all of your thoughts, dear readers, on the subject!

This week, I’m planning some aesthetic changes to the blog. Nothing major. Just a few renovations in the look of the blog. Hopefully those transitions will all happen smoothly, but in the event there’s a major blog catastrophe…you’ve been warned.

I would love to have your feedback on the blog more generally. What’s working? What’s not working? What would you like to see more posts on? Fewer posts on? What topics haven’t I covered that you think would be good to discuss in this forum? Let me know in the comments below or you can always email me at serenityinthestorm@gmail.com. Thank you so much for any feedback you have—it would be so helpful!

Reflections on 2012

As we near the end of the year, I’ve been thinking about what kind of year 2012 has been. For me, 2012 has been a year of pondering and growing up in many ways. The beginning of the year was about expanding my horizons, taking on new projects, getting myself out into the world more with my writing and my work. It’s also been a year of reckoning in some ways—thinking carefully about the near and more distant future career-wise and more personally. The later part of the year has been about trying to focus—closing certain doors so that I can go ahead and walk through others.

Serenity in the Storm in 2012

Last fall I started the old blogaroo and have learned so much since then about writing every day, about blogging, about the online community (and I have SO much more to learn!!). Writing the blog quickly expanded to writing for some other websites and organizations. This has been great and it helped to connect me to the broader animal rights/social justice community. Then several months ago, I realized that I needed to make some changes with where I was putting my time and energy. Rather than increasingly expanding my involvement in the broader community willy nilly, I needed to take a step back, take stock, and focus my energies more. Part of this was meant to adjust for making more time for the upcoming dissertation writing. And part of this focusing was in order to ensure that the projects that I was taking on aligned with my values. This year, I’ve really begun to take to heart the importance of realizing the intersections of oppression for animals, humans and the environment and the last few months have been about trying to align my energies with projects that work for the liberation of all sites of oppression and discrimination and not just animals.

Work life in 2012

2012 has been an amazing year of school and work. It’s definitely had some ups and downs with my project being rejected funding at the beginning of the year and coming to terms with having to proceed without the financial and moral support of external funding agencies. Then, of course, was the nightmare of getting my project approved by the ethics review boards and discovering that my project was in a weird no-man’s-land of subject matter—not animal research in the sense of being lab research and not straight-up human subjects research—and dealing with the repercussions of that. And then there were the ups and downs of the project itself—from the difficulty gaining access to dairy farms, to the difficult nature of the work itself. I went to a number of amazing conferences where my mind was exposed to brilliant and thought-provoking ideas and where I met some extraordinary people—the Association for American Geographers meeting, the Institute for Critical Animal Studies conference, the Animal Rights Conference (recapped in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), and the Decolonizing Cascadia Critical Geographies Conference. Most days, I feel so lucky to be in the position to be doing this work, engaging with these amazing communities and I can’t imagine anything better than being in school, getting to choose the topic that most interests me, and spending huge amounts of time researching, writing about it, and sharing what I’m learning with others. Heaven!

Personal reflections in 2012

This year, I’ve thought a lot about the future. Apparently the late 20s are a time of reckoning (Saturn Returns), a time to think about what growing up really means and to take stock and make plans for the direction we’re heading. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be going on the job market next fall and I’ve spent a great deal of time this year thinking about what that means, what kinds of jobs I would and wouldn’t like to do, what going on the job market will mean for our family, etc. I’ve also thought a lot about the choice to have or not have children and had many conversations with Eric and friends and family about it. We haven’t made a decision about that one way or another and for now that conversation is on the back burner, but I plan to do some posts in the new year about the thought-process behind this choice. 2012 began (literally on January 1) with the beginning of a 10 years in the making tattoo project. It is now finally finished, except for some touch up, and it was a wonderful project to mark a year that felt significant in many ways. Overall, 2012 has been a wonderful year at home with Eric, Maizy, Eden and Abigail, the chickens, and now, Saoirse.

Next up, I’ll share a little of what my plans are for 2013—changes to the blog, writing plans, etc. In the meantime, I am ever grateful for all of you who read the blog, comment and are part of the broader online vegan/animal rights community!

What reflections/highlights/realizations are you having as we near the end of 2012?

Rajma (Indian Kidney Bean Stew)

I hope you all had good holidays! I’m coming off of several very relaxing, restorative days and now I’m trying to get back into the rhythm of getting work done. I have to write a chapter of my dissertation in the next three weeks (no small feat) so that I can workshop it with our animal studies working group at the end of January. The deadline will be a good push to get going on the dissertation writing, I hope. But it does feel a bit daunting to finally begin writing this project that has been such a long time coming.

In addition to couch time, dozens of walks with the dogs, and Skyping with family on the east coast, we did a fair amount of pretty good eating over this mini-break. The cinnamon pull apart bread turned out even better than last year, I think. Perhaps because we were more restrained with eating it, which is a good thing. Last year, I remember feeling pretty sick from eating half a loaf in a day. This year, we interspersed eating it with real food, like some pasta and fresh grapefruits!

One of my favorite Indian dishes has always been rajma, a tomato based kidney bean stew with spices. It’s surprisingly easy to make and it is flavorful, filling and makes a good main or side dish. I like to buy some vegan naan at the store and toast it up to eat alongside this dish, but you could also serve it with rice or on its own. You can, of course, cook dried beans and/or use fresh tomatoes if you prefer them to canned and have the time to cook dried beans.

The Recipe

Serves 2-3

2 cans kidney beans

1 can crushed tomatoes (fire-roasted are good in this)

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbls minced fresh ginger

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp curry powder (or more garam masala)

3/4 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)

generous grinds of black pepper

1/8 tsp red pepper (or to taste)

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

juice of 1/2 lemon

Saute onion, garlic, and ginger in a splash of olive oil (or water) until slightly soft. Add all spices, salt and pepper. Let the spices bloom stirring frequently to prevent burning for 3-4 minutes. This phase should smell amazing! Add the tomatoes and beans and stir to combine. Simmer on low for 20 minutes or so. Taste frequently and adjust seasonings as needed. Before serving, stir in the cilantro and lemon juice and cook for 2-3 minutes more. Serve with some naan, rice, or alone.

What did you do for the break? Are you, perhaps, still enjoying a nice long break?

Holiday at Home with the Pups

Eric and I spent the weekend in some much-needed relaxation and time at home on the couch with the animals. The quarter is over and my grades are all submitted and Eric has been working hard at work on a number of projects. I think we’ve both been a bit burned out and decided to take a stay-at-home vacation. Usually when we do this, we binge on some TV show that we watch together, but this time, I’ve been watching really crappy TV (perfect for a tired brain!) and Eric’s been playing the Xbox. We’ve been cooking together and taking the dogs for walks and talking and laughing and it’s been so nice. The other night, we made homemade applesauce and potato latkes. So good! I love latkes and we rarely, if ever, make them. Last night I made rajma (an Indian kidney bean stew) with some naan from the store. I’ll post that recipe soon—It was so easy and delicious. Tonight, Eric’s mom and her husband are coming over for dinner and I’m thinking about making a vegetable pot pie, some brussel sprouts, maybe a salad and gingerbread. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to make some cinnamon pull-apart bread in honor of Christmas. Good food, good company and some time away from the world is just what we’ve been needing!

But enough about our lazy weekend…an overdue update on Saoirse and Maizy! If you missed the story of Maizy having to have surgery to have her dewclaw removed, read it here. It was a tough first week after the surgery and Maizy had to wear a bag on her foot to protect her bandage and, even so, her bandage ended up sliding down and getting pretty gnarly. We were so relieved when we were able to take her in to the vet to have it removed. Then there was the stress of keeping her sutures clean and wondering if the skin around her sutures looked too red or swollen, etc. Luckily, now Maizy should be in the clear. I just got back from taking her to have her sutures removed and she was pretty happy. She’s been in good spirits for the last week or so and has been eager to get back to playing.

Still, we’ve been taking it pretty slow and we have been trying to be very careful of her suture site. Now that the stitches are out, though, Maizy knows that there is very little to hold her back from being her usual crazy, playful self. And I bet she can’t wait to get back to the dog park, but I think we’re still a couple weeks out from that.

To celebrate, we had a pretty big play session with Saoirse when we got home from the vet this morning. Photographing them when they are on the move is really hard—Saoirse especially. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of her that are just a reddish-brown blur!

If you’re not caught up on Saoirse’s story, you can read about bringing Saoirse home, her initial adjustments, and her bonding with Maizy. She continues to settle in and adjust to being with us. She has grown so close to both Eric and me now and is genuinely happy to see both of us when we come home and she rarely gets frightened by things we do. She is becoming more confident on our walks and bounds around on her leash when we walk around the neighborhood. She’s still not a fan of the UPS truck (she just can’t understand why anyone would make anything so evil and scary as a big, loud truck that carries big, scary boxes!). She’s been a bit better about going to the bathroom outside instead of in the house, though we’re still having the occasional accident. Things are going well over all and it feels like she’s made huge progress!

The last week or so has been difficult for her because my dad was visiting us and she had a lot of trouble getting used to him and his noises. She pretty much spent most of the week in her safe spot—the couch—watching him from afar. And she occasionally even barked and growled at him, which was the first time I heard her bark and I have to admit, it’s pretty cute. We’re hoping visitors will get easier for her as time goes on and so we’re continuing to expose her to people other than us even though it is scary for her. She has her safe spots (the couch and the bed) and hopefully this exposure to people will help her realize that humans are not going to hurt her.

I hope that you all are getting some time off work to spend with the humans and animals you love and that you have a restful break with good food and no stress!

Help to End Child Slavery

5021951712_e9ac35e583_b — Source: www.foodispower.org

Chocolate is a luxury many of us enjoy quite a lot. For years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to buy ‘Fair Trade Certified’ chocolate, coffee, tea and sugar with the aim of ensuring that producers around the world get a fair wage for the products they grow. Thus, you can imagine my horror when I found out that buying ‘Fair Trade’ chocolate does not guarantee that child labor and/or child slavery was not used in the cacao farming (to be clear, ‘fair trade’ certifiers do not endorse slavery—because of the difficulty of determining whether or not slavery is used, it has been found in certain fair trade farms and they have worked to remedy this situation).

According to the Food Empowerment Project’s efforts to compile research on the subject, the overwhelming majority of cacao (cocoa) production occurs in Ghana and the Ivory Coast (in the region of West Africa). Investigative journalists and human rights investigators have discovered that child labor and, more specifically, child slavery are rampant in this region. The cocoa industry in West Africa is shrouded in secrecy and it is increasingly difficult to attain information about working conditions there, but investigations have shown that children and adults are forced to work (often with no pay), are locked up at night to prevent their escaping, are beaten if they refuse to work, they work and live in a hazardous environment and are fed the cheapest food available.

The Food Empowerment Project is working to contact individual companies selling vegan chocolate to find out where they source their cocoa to create an exhaustive list of brands they do and do not feel comfortable recommending. Clif Bar, in particular, has refused to disclose where they source their cocoa and the Food Empowerment Project has launched a petition to demand transparency from this company that claims to be ‘socially responsible’. If you want to read more about the plight of enslaved children and adults in the West African chocolate trade, click here. NOTE: I actively choose not to use the term ‘slave’ because I feel that it implies that to be enslaved is that person’s inherent purpose and plight. Instead, the term ‘enslaved person’ acknowledges that slavery is a external condition that has been forced or imposed on the person (similar to the ‘farm animal’/’farmed animal’ problem)—not who they are.

Why should animal advocates care about this issue?

How can we NOT care?! I have encountered some vegan/animal rights advocates who have been resistant to promoting activism that works on issues like child slavery in the cocoa industry, the argument being that this is not an animal rights issue. These advocates for animals argue that any activism based on human forms of injustice and oppression detracts attention from ‘the animal issue’. But animal rights advocates and anyone else concerned with any other social or environmental justice issue cannot afford NOT to care about suffering and injustice near or far, human or animal. If we think we can end the exploitation of animals while simultaneously turning our back on distant children who suffer for our lifestyle of luxury—if we think we can continue to eat vegan chocolate produced by enslaved children or continue to buy vegan boots produced in a sweatshop—we will never make lasting change on any front. We are sorely mistaken if we think we can act with tunnel vision about any social justice issue and make a difference without, at the same time, actively resisting other forms of injustice. Conditions of injustice for humans, animals and the environment are deeply intertwined and the best thing we can do is to actively and constantly expand our circle of compassion outwards as we become more informed.

What can you do right now to help?

1. Use the Food Empowerment Project’s recommendation list when purchasing chocolate.

2. SIGN THE PETITION to ask Clif Bar to reveal country-of-origin information for the chocolate they use.

3. Keep up-to-date on what the Food Empowerment Project is up to—they run some great campaigns for global food justice. And you can always donate to help their work if you feel so inclined.