HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE VEGAN SOMMELIER
With wines starting as low as $13, this vegan cruetly-free wine is a perfect gift for that special someone in your life! Order your vegan wine by clicking here.
NO WHEY!
No whey! From sea salted carmels to peppermint bark this vegan bakery will deliver all of your holiday needs! Order yours by clicking here.
BUNGALOW 360
Bungalow 360 offers wallets, purses, totes, and much more! Gifts starting as low as $5 makes holiday shopping fun and easy! Not only are these products cute, they help save animal lives. The company is not only cruelty-free but donates solar power and other resources to keep no kill shelters in business. Order your accessories here.
TOMS SHOES
Available in mens, womens and children sizes, TOMS Shoes will give a pair to a child in need for every pair purchased. Its One for One method makes its Vegan line that much more appealing! Order Tom’s Shoes by visiting this website.
VegWorld Magazine
Issue 005 - Dec 2012 | 15
HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE THE VITAMIX
The Vitamix is an essential in every veggie kitchen! It makes a perfect present for the vegeterians and non-vegeterians in your life! Get your Vitamix by clicking here!
PURE FIBER
These eco-friendly bath robes made of bamboo are a great gift idea! Pick one up here!
GREENFIRE SOY CANDLES
Eco-friendly soy candles will brighten anyone’s night! Order your soy candle by visiting the website here.
aLTERNATIVE OUTFITTERS
This faux jacket would make any animal-lover glow! Available in Red, Black, and White for just $69.99. Order this beautiful jacket here. HempStar wallets are free from all toxins found in other materials and fabrics. Hemp is the Earth’s #1 natural renewable resource! Click here to pick up one of these wallets now.
VegWorld Magazine
Issue 005 - Dec 2012 | 16
Vegan for the Holidays | Zel Allen
SHIITAKE TORNADOES IN CASHEW CREAM SAUCE This sumptuous yuletide dish makes a showy presentation on the holiday table. It’s a winning entrée for those with an inquisitive palate because its deliciously complex flavors present a fun challenge to guess the hidden ingredients. Yield: Makes 12 balls; 8 to 12 servings
Ingredients
Tornadoes • 8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded, caps cut into quarters • 1 onion, chopped • 1 tablespoon tamari • 1 1/2 teaspoons dried tarragon • 3/4 cup water • 1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
• 3 cups cooked short-grain brown rice • 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats • 1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely ground • 1/4 teaspoon salt • Freshly ground pepper • 1 cup black or regular sesame seeds • 12 long sprigs fresh rosemary, for garnish • 6 cherry tomatoes, cut in half, for garnish
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 17 1/2- x 12 1/2-inch rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. 2. Combine the mushrooms, onion, tamari and tarragon in a large, deep skillet. Add water and cook, stirring over medium-high heat for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the mushrooms are cooked and the onion is softened and transparent. Add 1 or more tablespoons of water as needed to prevent burning. 3. Transfer the mushroom mixture to a food processor and add the olives. Process until smooth and creamy, stopping occasionally to scrape down the work bowl. Spoon the mixture into a large bowl. 4. Add the rice, oats, walnuts, salt and pepper and mix well. Pour the black sesame seeds into a deep, medium bowl. 5. Using your hands, form the mushroom mixture into balls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Roll each one in the sesame seeds to coat well. Place the coated balls on the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes. VegWorld Magazine
Issue 005 - Dec 2012 | 59
Vegan for the Holidays | Zel Allen
Ingredients
Cashew Cream Sauce • 2 1/2 cups vegetable broth • 1/4 cup unsalted tomato paste • 1 to 2 tablespoons tamari • 2 cloves garlic, crushed • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme • 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram • Pinch cayenne • 1/2 cup cashews, finely ground • 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice • Salt • Freshly ground pepper
Directions
1. Combine the vegetable broth, tomato paste, tamari, garlic, garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, marjoram and cayenne in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Decrease the heat to medium and simmer 1 to 2 minutes. 2. Add the cashews, and whisk and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened. The sauce will continue to thicken upon standing. Before serving, stir in the lemon juice, salt and pepper. 3. To serve, spoon the sauce into a large, deep platter and arrange the tornadoes over the sauce. To garnish, poke a rosemary sprig into each tomato half, and push them into the tops of the tornadoes, so they stand upright. Note: If not serving immediately, refrigerate the tornadoes and sauce separately. Warm the tornadoes in a preheated oven at 350 F for 12 to 15 minutes before serving. Heat the sauce in a saucepan over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zel Allen is the author of Vegan for the Holidays, a cookbook that’s bound to make the holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day just a little tastier. Zel wanted to create a cookbook that was not only for vegans but also for non-vegetarians who want to serve lavish seasonal dishes that just may stand in for the traditional Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham. Pick up Zel’s “Vegan For The Holidays” book on Amazon by clicking here.
VegWorld Magazine
Issue 005 - Dec 2012 | 60
A Well-Fed World: Making a Difference For Animals and People
a well-fed world:
Making A Difference for animals and people An Interview with Dawn Moncrief
1. What is the mission of your organization? A Well-Fed World is a hunger relief and animal protection organization. We chip away at two of the world’s most immense, unnecessary and unconscionable causes of suffering: The suffering of animals used for food and the suffering of people for lack of food. We do this primarily through our support of vegan food and farming projects for people in need, animal care organizations, and advocacy projects at all levels. 2. Please share the story of how you decided to start this organization. I had been vegetarian since I was a teenager for humane reasons, but like most people I thought that meat was needed in low-income countries. During that time I was introduced to the concept of veganism. As I researched the issues, the environmental destruction caused by the consumption and production of animal-based foods was glaring.
VegWorld Magazine
Part of this stems from the massive inefficiencies of converting plant calories and plant protein into animal-based foods. Poor countries were exporting food to be used as animal feed while their own people were starving. Ethiopia during the ‘80’s famine was exporting food to be used as feed to produce meat for high income countries. This is still common practice. Basically, wealthy countries outbid poor countries for their own food. So, why wasn’t anyone in the development community giving this attention? In 1999, the “Livestock to 2020 Report” was published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). It explicitly warned of the dangers of increasing global meat consumption, stating that the increases have been unprecedented in their speed because low income populations consume more animal-based products as their economies improve. So, that’s when I decided my work would be to bring attention to the benefits of reducIssue 005 - Dec 2012 | 71
A Well-Fed World: Making a Difference For Animals and People ing global meat consumption. I used this as a basis for my second master’s degree in Women’s Studies with a focus on economic development. My thesis demonstrated the ways in which high levels of meat consumption undermine global hunger efforts and hurt the poorest of the poor, especially women and children. A Well-Fed World is able to work full-time on these issues and those of animal cruelty from a relatively mainstream position. As a program-based advocacy organization, we are able to directly support vegan feeding and farming programs that provide food to people in need (both immediate and long-term). We are able to support farm animal sanctuaries and animal protection projects, as well as a wide variety of advocacy and educational campaigns. Last but not least, we are able to work topdown to change structures by bringing attention to the benefits of reducing animal consumption, sometimes at the highest levels of
decision-making, such as United Nations forums, World Bank seminars, food policy think tanks, and within other social justice groups. Among other things, we have been official NGO delegates to a UN Conference on Climate Change and a founding partner in the Pan African Animal Welfare Alliance (PAAWA). 3. Can you share some statistical and/or scientific data that supports your method of curing world hunger as being more effective than other non-vegan methods? At the global level, there’s no dispute that much more food can be raised when consuming plants directly instead of cycling them through animals first. Common statistics are cereal-fed, factory-farmed animals consume - 16:1 ratio (plant to animal calories ratio) for beef, 7:1 for pork, 2:1 for poultry. That’s just food inefficiencies and doesn’t include loss of animals due to extreme conditions in raising and transport or the losses such as the male chicks of egg-laying hens being killed at birth since they have no financial benefit. Other estimates are that plant-based diets could feed nine billion people. A vegan world is not a cure all, but it will have much more food to distribute and with much less environmental pollution, greenhouse gases, oil use, water use, deforestation, desertification, and slew of other considerations that help or hinder hunger solutions.
A well fed world empowers and helps enable local communities to feed themselves sustainably through a vegan diet.
VegWorld Magazine
On a local level, it’s not as clear-cut. In calorie-deficient and resource-limited areas, animals can sometimes increase food security. But the problems stemming from reliance on animal-centered solutions far exceed the need for it and draw attention away from plant-based solutions that can provide longterm benefits. Animals are not always assets. They need food, water, medical care, etc.
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