Food, Cooking & Recipes

“I kill 80 pigs a day. I come home and my daughter asks me to pet our little dog. My name is Massimo, I work on a factory farm. I’m the hand. I’m the executioner. The mechanism that turns terror into silence. The sun never shines here. The days are marked by smells: chlorine, shit, blood. Every day. Every day. They arrive. We call them “the material.” Piled up, one on top of the other. Exhausted. Terrified. It’s their last day: they understand it perfectly. Electric shocks. A few beatings. Then a blow to the head. Blade to the throat. Some remain conscious, but it’ll all be over in five minutes anyway. It’s a waltz. One, two, three: he looks around. I shock him. One, two, three: he understands what’s about to happen. A beating. One, two, three: he wants Run away. I block his head. One, two, three: screams. A blow to the head and a blade. Every year in Italy, we “process” 13 million of them like this. They call it the production chain. The assembly line of death. Yesterday, however, a “material” behaved differently. It was still. Silent. It stared me in the eyes. Then, with a wet muzzle, it licked my hand. A plea? A desperate plea for mercy? Yes, it’s the final message of someone who knows it’s over. Then the boss shouted: “There are deadlines!” A blow and a blade. They say they’re as smart as three-year-olds, you know? They understand. They feel. They hope. They recognize their name. Three years old. Like Sophia. It’s for her that I do this. When I open the door, she runs to me: “Dad, give Arthur a pat!” Arthur licks me. He looks me straight in the eyes. He trusts me. Arthur looks at me and trusts me… He has the same look, precise, crystalline, innocent: the same look before the attack. So this morning it wasn’t mercy? Why was he looking me in the eyes? That bastard didn’t want mercy: he wanted to trust. How dare he do that? How dare he trust me, damn it? I can’t breathe. A few minutes later I’m at the table. My wife has cooked the sausages. “Eat them, they’re getting cold.” Sorry. But I can’t tonight. I can’t.”

Mine is tuna casserole and other casseroles such as cheeseburger casserole. I like making casseroles because you can turn almost anything into a casserole.

I certainly value my life, why should other lives not be valued? I would not want harmful treatment to others of other species. Most won’t change from their ways to not contribute to such, I am aware. It is still what would be very well for all of us in general to do. We do not have to contribute to the misery and slaughter of many animals being used, we could be much healthier, and not contribute to more land, water and resources being used with greater waste left, as environments are worsened and many species go extinct with the contribution. I really found tasty meals with this way I have, to continue with, and have been doing very well with it for well over a decade.

Hi all. As this is the internet, I’m sure I’m going to get backlash and negative comments about me personally (“you were never REALLY vegan”), but before you do that please know this post is coming from someone struggling with a lot of things beyond just this and is legit looking for help.

Popcorn kernels are becoming harder to find here. And was never able to buy local. Do you guys have good alternatives to popcorn than buying expensive chips and bagged popcorn?

Thinking about getting back into homebrewing after a ~9 year hiatus.

I am vegan now for about thirteen years, and there is not any likelihood of stopping that the rest of my life. I have been living in ways so healthy, and doing well with that still. I am older now. Others die off and then they won’t hear me say I told you so.

Kind of a local post for the Pittsburgh region.

Yes, I will also web search. Just wanna know if y’all have a favorite.

Fourteen years ago, there were my own money troubles, so that I was needing to get food where there was help for that, this made a difficulty in going vegan when I might have otherwise. Going vegan itself right after that difficulty was not hard, I can give tips for that.

Got a few demijohns of mead that stalled, it’s like cola for sweetness and if mixed with rum its pretty nice but otherwise it is probably like 3-4%.

I have come to like the meals I learned to make, so much, I was having them all the time, though I come to vary them, even more, increasing the variety I get for every week, as I learned the healthier ways, and it is with whole foods. I have not gone out, for eating at restaurants, for a good while now. I don’t call these meals anything, I make them myself not going by a recipe, but with the variation of cut up vegetables distinct each time, including leafy greens and other color besides green, and lentils, nuts, and seeds, that go in the meals, there is always the sauce I have from hummus and medium salsa I am getting, and healthy tasty herbs and spices, often I put in guacamole and maybe shredded jackfruit too. I alternate with cut up potato, quinoa, or whole grain pasta for these meals. A couple of times in a week I will put in a bit of dried seaweed. I will have such a meal each day! These are big meals. At lot goes into them now, but I have become quick at making these. I don’t think about anything I have given up, at all. It’s no sacrifice this way of being vegan, the healthy way. Having a sandwich I make and a bean burrito I make in the day as well will be enough for me besides a bit of protein cookie with the tea or coffee I can have.

No pictures yet since I’m not planning on starting this brew until the weekend, but I’m going to be brewing a dark ale style thing. I will post updates if I remember.

Has anyone attempted to use controlled browning via cut & bent paper/allu foil masks to create art on buns (especially pretzel)?

Since learning what I really want in meals (it has been an ongoing process as I add more things I find that I will want with the meals) it becomes routine enough, even with the things I alternate between, to prepare quickly enough. So this isn’t difficult. The prepared processed stuff that a lot of others have, which was in my past, could possibly be made yet quicker, but those are not desirable to me in this part of my life while I have really tasty and very healthy meals, using the Whole Foods Plant Based (WFPB) way, now with more variety.

I’ve had plenty of pellicle lately despite not changing anything in my routines. I even have it in some bottles with a small head of air. I’m not worried but I’m curious about the cause. I’ve done a few brews with brettanomyces that are more prone to pellicle but even several without have had a thin white surface. Could it be brett living in the air contaminating or the spring times have naturally more wild yeasts of which some are more sensitive?

I see that we can avoid that our action is causing unnecessary suffering or death. There is a lot of evidence showing suffering animals experience and their desire to live. I know what is used from animals is not necessary to human well-being, I have gone well over a dozen years without animal products and over a decade with whole foods and avoiding processed stuff, and at my older age I have more energy and go further.

I messed up my body by eating ultra processed junk food all my life. I switched over to a carnivore diet and feel the best I ever did.

Food being all plant-based is not in itself healthier for us. What people include in that is alternatives for animal products they have liked and want to continue with something like any one of those, closely enough. Those alternative things then have a lot of what is processed, that they are not anything left natural at all. There are healthy benefits to have but that is with naturally growing foods, left as whole foods, while these can be added or mixed with each other, but not with chemicals or processed stuff added, this would be the healthy way. https://www.greenmemag.com/health-nutrition/7-days-on-plants-only-heres-what-happens-to-your-body-and-mind/

Animals with any nervous system should surely be given benefit of the doubt, any of them likely do feel things with awareness, so that should be with us leaving them alone. For all our nutrition to be the healthiest, which still allows for vitamin supplements, we would have it from plants. That is all I have been eating for over a dozen years, and nothing else but taking a little of vitamin supplements. These healthy ways I know of, that changing to would be good in any case, are with the great variety we should have, with being whole and not processed stuff that is used. It’s all from just plants: https://healthyaging.emory.edu/could-eating-30-plants-a-week-be-the-answer-to-better-health/ https://www.naturalon.com/10-nutrients-you-can-only-get-from-plants/view-all

I am not young, still I really see benefits from the choices I have made, I am sure I would not be seeing them otherwise, my family wasn’t doing this well as they aged. This is with how I eat and activity I do included. Animal products are not needed with this, but getting the variety from whole foods from plants really is. https://healthyaging.emory.edu/could-eating-30-plants-a-week-be-the-answer-to-better-health/

I’m visiting Germany, Italy and France over the next few weeks. I won’t have access to a kitchen most of the time, but I am going to want snacks. It has taken me a lot of time to find my favorite snacks in my home country, and I won’t have that much time in each country to try all of your delicious and less delicious offerings.