Filipino vegan food in Oakland, CA (USA) February 8, 2010

I think I first stumbled upon No Worries Catering online a while ago, but as it was unclear whether they were still in existence & I’ve never lived near Oakland, CA, it slipped my mind. (EDIT: I may have also been confusing them w/a Filipino vegetarian restaurant somewhere in CA that I think closed a while ago — I’ve never lived anywhere in CA so it probably all went into the “you can’t go there anyway” part of my brain!)

However, this Filipino vegan catering business is alive & well, with a sleek website & the news that, starting in April, they’ll be selling food at the Jack London Square Market.

Color me jealous! If any local Pin@ys out there are reading (or anyone else, of course), why not try them out & report back?

Also, I LOVE that No Worries’ tagline (at the top of your browser when you’re on their site) is “Have you eaten?” Because as some of us know, “Did you eat?” means “I love you”.

Vegan cookbooks: helping folks eat the Other February 8, 2010

I’ve written before about exotification in discussions around vegan food, but it’s something I’m always thinking about & that has come up a lot lately. This year I’ve set myself a goal to cook at least one recipe from the many cookbooks I own. Hence I’ve been scouring them more than usual.

Has anyone else noticed that a staple of many a vegan cookbook is a recipe for African Peanut Stew or African Yam Stew or something similar? I’ve also seen (though less frequently) recipes for, say, Asian-Style Tofu or whatever. I cannot recall ever seeing a cookbook featuring anything like European Bean Soup. Is it because to most vegan cookbook authors/food bloggers, it would be preposterous to assume that there is anything universal or overarching about the many countries that make up Europe, or their cuisines? And yet we don’t often see the same distinction granted to countries in Africa.

“African” stew? Is the recipe from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa? Is that tofu done Chinese-style, Japanese, Filipino? Never mind the many variations even within those categories (just to preclude comments along the lines of “But hey, lots of countries in Africa do that kind of stew / lots of Asian countries use tofu!”).

Another thing I’ve seen not infrequently in vegan cookbooks & food blogs is the following construction:

“[Non-English ingredient or recipe name] must be [non-English language] for ‘delicious’!”

I also spotted this recently at Food Fight, who guess that “Mahalo is Hawaiian for ‘fake Almond Joy.’”

Oh, how cutesy. How patronizing. We don’t know what those funny foreign languages mean but we sure do love their grub!

The obsession with authenticity is another thing. This, like all the food othering in this post, is not limited to vegans, of course. My white boss (a one-time vegetarian turned omnivore due to happy meat, I might add) once praised my lunchtime curry because it “smelled really authentic.” She then went on to bemoan how she couldn’t manage to cook Indian food “authentically.” I squirmed, & said something about how surely what mattered most was whether she liked what she cooked. This only served to encourage her to rattle on about how important it was to get food “authentic.”

Anyway, there are countless examples of vegan recipes that stress their authentic nature. One I stumbled upon recently was in The Urban Vegan, in a recipe for “Blue Mosque Ayran,” which apparently is a drink you can find “at any cafe or from any street vendor in Istanbul.” I’ve never been to Istanbul, so perhaps I’m missing something in how this drink would be connected specifically to mosques (whose architecture are often held up as images of the exotic & dangerously foreign, I note), much less how the recipe in the cookbook is “so refreshingly good that the imam would definitely approve.” I dunno — has anyone ever seen an Italian recipe touted as being so delicious that the priest would approve?

I did some Googling & found that a common Turkish recipe is Imam Bayildi — which apparently means “The imam fainted” (when he tasted the recipe). I didn’t really see any other references to the imam having a lock on what is authentic Turkish food or not, but if someone knows differently, please let me know. I wonder if the Urban Vegan knew of this particular recipe & made a deliberate reference to it, or if it was just an example of throwing in something seen as “exotic.”

On the same page of that cookbook, by the way, is a recipe for “Political Biscotti.” The recipe notes that cafe culture frequently features both biscotti and political discussion. The biscotti are political because they contain both carob & chocolate, two flavors about which “people tend to be very ‘either/or’”:

They are always considered separately, as two distinctive flavors that were never meant to come together, sort of like Palestine and Israel. … The dates [in the recipe] act as a sort of sticky-sweet peacemaker, a culinary UN if you will.

Yeah. She went there. The bloody oppression of Palestinians reduced to a clever comment about biscotti.

Statement on Haiti from Adoptees of Color February 2, 2010

… We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking…

The entire statement can be found here.

Women of Color writers needed for critical animal studies (JCAS) February 1, 2010

This came into my box this morning.

Breeze

———————–

The Journal for Critical Animal Studies (JCAS) seeks essays from women of color scholars and activists across a variety of disciplines and social justice initiatives to develop understandings on the issues of race, gender, and animality in critical animal studies.  Since the term “critical animal studies” was introduced by the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, there has been a void of people of color contributions to the new and developing field. Particularly absent have been the thoughts, concerns, and activism of women of color.  For critical animal studies to engage a holistic politics for total liberation, women of color must play a role in the field’s development.  The goals of this issue are (1) to vitalize the intellectual participation of women of color in critical animal studies, (2) to examine overlapping concerns that are central to critical animal studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory, and (3) to promote avenues of thought and ideas for action that can move us beyond pernicious forms of “othering” that undergird nonhuman and human animal suffering.  Topics may include:

·         addressing racism, sexism, and gender oppression in critical animal studies

·         the role of white privilege in the animal rights movement

·         domestication and the decolonization of mind and body

·         semiotics of animality in racial discourse

·         traditional ecological knowledge of animal relationships

·         being an ally to nonhuman animals: animal activism from a woman of color’s perspective

·         interlocking oppressions of animality, race, and gender

·         racialization of the other

·         invasive species and invasive races

·         veganism, raw foods, and food justice

·         the social construction of overpopulation and female reproductive control

·         women of color ecofeminism and an ethic of care

·         racism, sexism, and gender oppression in the animal rights movement

·         addressing violence against women of color and nonhuman animals

·         imperialism, colonialism, and the oppression of native peoples

·         the future of critical animal studies for women of color

·         the role of women of color in the total liberation movement

Papers Due: April 12, 2010 at 5pm EST

Visit http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/?page_id=389 for submission guidelines (but forward all submission for this issue to the contact below)

Send papers to:

Anastasia Yarbrough

Institute for Critical Animal Studies

ayarbrou@ymail.com

http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org

Testers wanted for vegan Caribbean cookbook January 30, 2010

Taymer over at Vegan in the Sun is seeking testers for her upcoming cookbook. She’s especially hoping for more Caribbean testers.

Her blog is full of deliciousness, so I’m excited that there will be a cookbook! I don’t think I can commit to being a recipe tester myself right now but if you think you can, get in touch with her.

Intersectionality Includes Animals January 26, 2010

Renee at Womanist Musings says: Vegans, Vegetarians It’s Time To Talk. In the post, she explains the problems she sees with not eating meat, & with veg*ns & animal rights activists.

Anyone who has looked at this blog will see that the bloggers here share many of the same concerns as Renee: the treatment of farm workers (as well as slaughterhouse workers); the sustainability of veganism; PETA (there have been so many posts slamming PETA on this blog I can’t even link them all); racism among vegans & AR activists (ditto); whether a vegan diet is cheaper; how vegan doesn’t always mean “cruelty-free”; factors that affect access to vegan food (this has come up in numerous posts & comments); etc. Royce also wrote an eloquent response to an earlier post on WM about these topics.

The bloggers here see veganism as part of a larger anti-oppression movement. We, too, are frustrated & angered when vegans do not have a similarly intersectional approach.

That said, despite the complications sometimes involved, we are obviously still vegan for a reason.

Two parts of the post struck me particularly: Renee says though she eats meat, she “would certainly not support intentional animal cruelty.” This is something I have heard meat-eaters say not infrequently. Even leaving aside the issue of taking away an animal’s life (if one could leave that out of the equation!), information on how farmed animals are treated (beaks cut off without anesthetic, tails cut off without anesthetic, hung upside down on a slaughtering line & cut open while alive, boiled alive, kicked around by slaughterhouse workers, stuffed in wire cages unable to walk — to name only a few examples) is widely available & has received a lot of attention in the press over the last few years. This information is not a secret.

Intentional animal cruelty is central to the meat industry in places like the US, because it means more animals can be killed faster; to do otherwise would cut into profit. (& “happy meat”? A myth.) I’m not sure how much more intentional one could get.

The second part that struck me was the statement that some veg*ns use “their choices as a stepping ground to moralize to others.” This, too, is something that I have heard used many times in reference to veg*ns, though I’ve also heard similar statements used to critique feminists, anti-racist activists, etc. — it’s very easy to accuse someone of being preachy. I find it frustrating that the dominant ideology — to eat meat, in this case — is not recognized as an ideology, that the status quo is unquestioned & those disagreeing with it can be accused of moralizing while those in line with it are not espousing any moral view at all. (There’s lots about this in the recent book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, discussed here.) Let’s at least be honest about the fact that the ideology of meat is indeed an ideology, & its proponents can be as moralizing as anyone else.

is veganism a deal breaker? January 26, 2010

I’m curious.  Is veganism important to you in selecting a partner?  Over the past eight years, I have had a strict vegan-only policy.  I tried to date someone who was not vegan about 10 years ago and it just didn’t work because I kept wanting him to change.

Is veganism a deal breaker for you?

Pragmatic? January 23, 2010

Newkirk published a defense of Peta in the Guardian on Thursday.

Her defense is of two different arguments used against Peta: 1) Their use of what Newkirk calls gradualism, and 2) Their offensive ads.

why the megafauna? January 23, 2010

What do walruses, tigers, and the Javan rhino have in common?

According to this they are the “10 most threatened species of 2010.”

Critical Animal Studies Conferences January 19, 2010

The 9th Annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies will be hosted at SUNY Cortland this year on Saturday, April 10th. The theme this year is “Abolition, Liberation, and the Intersections Within Social Justice.” I’m very excited about this conference, and plan to submit a proposal to present, and I’m super excited to see what sort of conversations can emerge from a conference that is dedicated to looking at intersections between animal abolition and other justice movements.

What I also find interesting is that this conference does not seem to be exclusively for academic types, but welcomes (encourages) proposals from activists, non-profits, and other non-academic members of the community. They are also open to formats other than simple presentations of papers, and list on their website such examples as theater and workshops.

I hope that many of our readers will submit proposals to the conference and/or attend in April. Proposals are due by February 15th.

For those on the other side of the Atlantic there is the European Critical Animal Studies Conference which is on April 23rd. Unfortunately (in my opinion) this conference has a different theme, The Future of Animal Studies, and has, as far as I can tell, already decided on speakers and so as no call for proposals. It is however the first European critical animal studies conference over there, and so is I guess expected to begin with developing a telos for themselves.

As I’ve expressed before, I’m very glad that animal studies is emerging as a serious area of academic and intellectual inquiry.