Showing posts with label vegetarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegetarian. Show all posts

February 10 - World Pulses Day

Posted on February 10, 2020


When I hear the word pulse, I think of a blood pulse - the rhythm you can feel in your wrist as your heart beats out blood and the blood beats that rhythm all through your body.

On second thought, I also think of music pulsing - music with a good, strong beat, that is!


But! - I didn't know that the word pulse also means the edible seeds of various plants: chickpeas, lentils, beans, peas, etc.

It is that completely separate meaning of the word pulse that we are celebrating today in this United Nations event. Pulses are important foods, globally, especially nowadays. 

Beef farming is so inefficient, it
represents a 96% loss of food production!
Raising and eating meat is a problem for several reasons: religious reasons, health reasons, and especially environmental reasons. It takes less a lot less energy, land, and water to produce plant-based foods than to grow livestock we use as meat. And some livestock (ahem, cows, looking at you!) add global-warming-causing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

If a country didn't add any acres of land dedicated to agriculture, not even one acre, but only grew plants, they could grow 2 to 20 TIMES more food. (Read more about this here.)

Since there are A LOT of people in the world, including a lot of hungry people who regularly don't get enough to eat, it's important to get as much food from ever acre of agricultural land as possible. And pulses are especially wonderful foods among all the other great plant-based foods, because they are high protein and high fiber, with lots of vitamins and minerals (including iron!). Pulses are also low fat. 

(People on low carb diets often limit how many beans, lentils, etc., they eat, because these nutritious foods do have carbs, but again, much of the carbohydrates are dietary fiber, which is a necessary part of a healthy diet.)

Check out this website as you plan your World Pulses Day celebration. Eat pulse-based meals and photograph them for social media, using #LovePulses and #WorldPulsesDay hashtags.
Black bean salad
Chickpea curry
Potato lentil soup

Maybe next year you can plan a community event promoting pulses and eating low on the food chain!?!







Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

November 28 - Turkey-free Thanksgiving

Posted on November 28, 2019

A tofu "turkey" with stuffing!

There is a lot of talk, these days, about eating less meat, or no meat. Many people are vegetarians (people who eat no meat, including fish), pescatarians (people who eat no meat except for fish), and vegans (people who eat only plant-based foods - so no meat, fish, dairy, or eggs). 

There are three main reasons to eat less or no meat: (1) for your own health, (2) for the sake of the environment, and (3) because the meat, dairy, and egg industries are cruel to animals.



All of those folks no doubt skip turkey at Thanksgiving - either as an entire family or as an individual vegetarian in a meat-eating family.

Many people who eat meat just don't love the traditional turkey meal. They'd rather have a leg of lamb or a prime rib or...?




For those who complain that we should stick with turkey because it's traditional, there is ample evidence that the original Thanksgiving featured lots of things alongside boiled or roasted wild turkey - IF there was turkey at all! Other waterfowl, such as ducks, geese were apparently more popular with the Pilgrims. Swans and even passenger pigeons are also likely. Venison (deer meat) was there for sure, and it's probable that lots of seafood was served - eels, mussels, lobster, and clams.


Of course there was a lot of other food as well - corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, turnips, carrots, chestnuts, walnuts, beechnuts, onions, garlic, corn-based porridge, and cornbread.

This "traditional" Thanksgiving meal
is mostly foods that were added
to historical tradition somewhere
along the way. These upstarts were
far from traditional when they were
first included!
But there definitely were no mashed potatoes, sweet potato casseroles, or cranberries. And there was no wheat-flour based bread, nor any pies at all. So making an argument based on tradition is a bit silly - because all of today's traditional foods were add-ons or instead-ofs to what WAS eaten. So all of us can still add-on or instead-of, all we like, and help grow the various traditions of Thanksgiving!

How about some of these lovely yummies:

Stuffed acorn squash with pecans



Pumpkin-sage stuffed shells


Veggie pot pie






Thanksgiving:


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

June 5 - National Veggie Burger Day

Posted on June 5, 2019

Do you love hamburgers?

Many folks do, and a charbroiled beef patty can be delicious in a well appointed burger! BUT -

Veggie burgers can be yummy, too!

One veggie patty is not like another!



I've had some veggie burgers that were just not as tasty as regular-old beef burgers.

On the other hand, I've had some veggie burgers that were super scrumdiddlyumptious!

Veggie burgers aren't all made of the same stuff, and they don't all taste the same - that's for sure!

Veggie burgers are always plant-based (sometimes plant-and-fungus-based) rather than animal-based. They have one or more of these ingredients: beans, including soybeans and black beans; grains, including couscous; nuts and seeds, including quinoa; vegetables such as sweet potatoes, cauliflower, corn, carrots; fungus, including mushrooms and mycoprotein.

You can see that these sweet-potato/quinoa veggie patties
DO have animal proteins, in the form of eggs. But there is
no beef or any other meat.

 Many veggie burgers don't have any animal products.
Many veggie burgers really are tasty and have wonderful textures as well. And, let's face it, once you've got the entire rest of the burger...

Pesto white bean veggie burger

Lentil-Tahini burger with pickled cabbage

Sriracha veggie burger

Veggie burger on an avocado bun, piled with
cucumbers, tomatoes, and sweet pepper strips

...Maybe the patty isn't the most crucial part?

Why eat veggie burgers?

You may have heard about this little thing called climate change. One thing we can all do to help is to eat less beef - because cows belch carbon monoxide, which is a greenhouse gas. That doesn't mean that you and me should never, ever eat beef again - but maybe beef could be a super special treat, like steak; when we are eating something with a bun and bunches of condiments and toppings, a great tasting veggie patty does just fine. 
If everyone who eats beef cuts back from eating it once a day to eating it once a month, we will need only 1/30th the number of cows!



Try a veggie burger today - and help save the planet!


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)