Tag: veganism

Bloggery Day 18: A Recipe

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

This is really more of a formula than a recipe, but I did tailor it to a specific flavor just as an example. For the general recipe and how it was created, go here to the source.

Recently, the inimitable Big Box Vegan did extensive testing to find an answer to this question: How can you make a better vegan cake from a mix?

Most boxed cake mixes accidentally vegan (check the label, though, you never know when milk powder is hiding around the corner), but though they’re essentially foolproof with eggs, achieving true vegan success with a mix is a bit harder.

Luckily BBV did the hard work for us! He developed a method for cake mixes and another for brownie mixes – I haven’t tried the latter yet but I’m going to! I’ve used the cake method three times now and it’s come out amazing every time, which is no surprise; I’ve used several recipes from the blog and they’ve all been great. (Also, BBV does another great service – the original Instagram posts images and labels of vegan products found at chain stores like Target, Wal Mart, Kroger, Randalls etc.)

This variation is one I’ve made twice and, let me tell you, it’s damned amazing. I use a Bundt pan so it comes out all pretty but you could use a regular cake pan if you like or make cupcakes.

I have plenty of cake recipes, but the wonderful thing about this is that there’s far less measuring, and you need barely 10 minutes to get a badass cake in the oven. When you are super busy, or have executive functioning issues but want cake, it’s a godsend.

Amazeballs Vegan Lemon Cake
Pin
Print

Amazeballs Vegan Lemon Cake

Recipe by : Based on one by Kreg Sterns of Big Box Vegan
Prep time

10

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

A truly easy and delicious lemon cake mix from a boxed mix, with only seven ingredients!

Ingredients

  • 1 lemon cake mix (I used Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme)

  • 1 5oz container of vegan yogurt (lemon would work well but I used vanilla; also thicker is better)

  • 2/3 cup oil

  • 3/4 cup plant milk (I use oat)

  • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar (in a pinch you can use white vinegar)

  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

  • zest of one lemon, minced finely (use the juice for the icing)

  • Lemon Icing

  • 1 cup powdered sugar

  • 3-4 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 and hose down a Bundt pan with cooking spray (or butter/flour it if you prefer)
  • In a measuring cup stir together the milk and apple cider vinegar. Let this sit for a few minutes to get all curdly.
  • Basically dump everything in a mixing bowl and stir it until it’s mostly not lumpy – some are fine, and you don’t want to overbeat and activate the gluten in the mix too soon.
  • Pour into the pan and bake 30-35 minutes. Let cool for at least 15 before flipping out (or if you’re using a glass pan or something pretty just leave it be until it’s completely cool before icing.

Notes

  • Specific brands I used, if you’re interested:
    Duncan Hines Signature Perfectly Moist Lemon Supreme Cake Mix
    Oatly regular oat milk
    Silk vanilla soy yogurt
    HEB store brands for the oil, vinegar, powdered sugar
    La Vencedora Mexican Vanilla pura

Why the V-Word?

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan
Ahimsa, the Sanskrit word for “non-harming”

People often wonder why, given the social stigma associated with the word “vegan,” I wouldn’t just call myself “plant-based,” which is apparently way more palatable to the mainstream.

There are several answers to this, the first one being, I am not all that interested in being palatable. I am interested in living according to my values. If my being vegan upsets you, well, there’s the “back” button.

The second answer is that to me, “plant-based” is a diet.  It’s a fad, to be perfectly honest, like Keto or Paleo or whatever the hell the newest “eat all the bacon you want” thing is, just in a different direction. A large percentage of people who call themselves “plant based” are doing so merely to lose weight.

This irritates me mightily because we know diets don’t work, and I can tell you firsthand that eating only plant foods does not guarantee any particular health outcome (there’s no meat in a French fry). So when people decide that their plant-based diet is way too hard because it doesn’t offer enough pleasure or satisfaction (which I get in spades from non-diet vegan food, by the way), they quit, often becoming the dreaded “ex-vegan” who evangelizes against the entire lifestyle despite never having really lived it.  Basically, dieters don’t make good lifelong vegans because dieting is bullshit, and a diet of bullshit is only sustainable long-term for flies, mushrooms, and people who watch Fox News.

Important side note: Many people who have issues with eating a vegan diet forget that you still have to eat enough. If your overall caloric intake has dropped of course you’re going to feel like hell! EAT! If you eat a varied diet with sufficient calories, it will be very difficult for you to become medically deficient in anything, especially protein.  When was the last time you heard someone mention the actual medical term for the condition caused by protein deficiency?**

That brings me back to my overall point:  Veganism is not just a diet.  It encompasses far, far more than what you eat.  The definition of veganism, as offered by The Vegan Society (whose leadership actually coined the term “vegan”), is,

Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.  [italics are mine]

When I say I’m a vegan what I mean is that I try to follow this definition, not just that I don’t eat meat, dairy, or eggs. I also practice compassionate consumerism when it comes to household products, clothing, shoes, accessories, body care, and more.

There are of course areas I don’t have much control over. No sane vegan would tell people to stop taking their antidepressants because they might have animal products in them – or because they were almost certainly tested on animals.  (If anyone ever tells you to do this, run away.)  Note that the definition says, “as far as is possible and practicable.”  If I don’t take my meds, I may commit suicide one day, which means I can no longer advocate for animals (or the environment or minorities or anyone else), so I choose to stay mentally healthy and try to make the world a more compassionate place.

There is NO SUCH THING as 100% vegan. It’s just not possible. At some point you’re gonna step on a bug.  We live by consuming living things; that’s just how being alive works.  Vegans are not ignorant of this fact.  We make an informed choice to cause the least harm we can in every way we can…and we do the best we can. Sometimes we fall short. Humans do.

Thus, I personally eschew the term “plant-based eater” because it’s a one-dimensional phrase, typically bandied about by fatphobic dieters, that only covers one part of my vegan practice. 

Yes, I consider it a practice, and a vital spiritual one at that. I chose to call it that because it reminds me that, as with any other kind of practice, perfection is not attainable and that’s okay; I can only keep doing better than the day before.  It also reminds me that these choices are as much a part of my spirituality as any other. My meditation practice, devotional practice, divinatory practice, and vegan practice are all strands in my wee spiritual web. They all inform each other and in many ways depend upon each other.

** kwashiorkor

An Important Thing

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

For a long time – years – I’ve tried to avoid talking about the dreaded v-word (vegan, not vagina) on my blog because I didn’t want to deal with arguing or rolling my eyes at anti-vegan “jokes” about desert islands or antagonistic questions from people who don’t actually care about the answers but just want to bait me.

Very recently I had a revelation that I’d like to share with you:

Fuck that shit.

I’m not going to pussyfoot around an important component of my spiritual life just to pacify trolls. I’ve avoided subjects like my veganism or fat-positive posts because a long time ago I got death threats and extremely cruel emails and I shrank back into my cave to hiss at passersby and never actually express the totality of myself to the world.

Again: Fuck that shit.

I’m watching people all over the world stand up and be seen and killed for what’s right. Obviously the BLM movement is not meant as a self-help tool for White people, but having taken up the work of examining my behavior and educating myself, in the midst of learning a lot of hard truths I also realized I don’t want to play small anymore, whether about fatness, veganism, mental health, magic, social issues, or religion.

Now, please note, I am not going to be posting inflammatory things or vegan-themed rants full of horrifying images of tortured animals. In fact my intention isn’t to “convert” anyone, but just to share this part of my life as it fits into my spirituality and other aspects of who I am. There will be food and probably some meditations and prayers, but I intend neither to guilt nor rage, only to be me. I will put together a post of links for those who want to know more. There are so many people out there who have already created great resources both for the whys and hows of vegan living and I’d rather send traffic to their good work.

In that same vein I am not interested in debating the subject. I don’t want to hear “mmmm, bacon” “humor” on my feed. I don’t want to hear why you can’t be vegan because cheese or how you tried it once and ALMOST DIED OMG or whatever. I don’t care about the asshole vegans you’ve met. Honestly I don’t care about your why-nots and I do not respond to antagonism. I don’t approve/I delete comments that aggravate me because this is not a democracy. I am not obligated to teach you or engage with you.

You are more than welcome to skip any post you want. It’s your time and energy! You decide where it goes! Just like it’s my time and energy that goes into writing here, and my time and energy that will not be spent engaging with trolls.

This is not to say I expect any of my regular readers to behave badly. You’re all great, and I’m so glad you’ve stuck with me. But whenever I bring up the v-word or talk about fat positivity I get a ton of static, and it’s that potential static I’m talking about.

What I hope you gain from these sorts of posts isn’t why you should behave a certain way so much as it’s how your ethics and beliefs mesh with your practices and how you behave in the world, whether as a spiritual person or merely as a consumer. I want more people to consider how their spiritual practices and beliefs do – and SHOULD – affect every part of their lives, not just the hour in front of the altar, on the mat, or in the pew.

I won’t be dedicating a huge number of posts to this topic, and it won’t be all in a row, just now and then when I feel the need to talk about it, or in posts where I think it has some bearing on the post’s subject. I’ve already been trying to do some of this since I restarted my blog back in March.

Now that I’m over 40 I’m coming to understand what “authenticity” really means and how we simply don’t have time in our brief human lives to trot out incomplete versions of ourselves for the approval of strangers. Therefore I’m hoping to be a less hesitant in posting things that are important to me just because they might bother a few people. I don’t want to lock parts of me away like they’re a dirty secret. So I won’t.

Fuck that shit.

A Pig, a Paintbrush, and a Practice

Posted on by Dianne Sylvan

From Wikipedia: Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as kinsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

I discovered the art and philosophy of kintsugi a while back and like many other Westerners found it intriguing. It’s certainly become more well known in the last few years, appearing everywhere from Pinterest to fan fiction. (It’s very popular with fan artists as well.)

While I feel that I’ve grown past my “broken” phase of life, I remember it very well, and at the time it didn’t feel like I was filling my cracks with gold as much as it felt like stapling myself together haphazardly, then slapping a coat of plaster over the whole mess.

Nowadays kintsugi has a different relevance for me. Even in a reasonably-together stage of life, I often have chips break off or a new crack appear, either in a spot I didn’t patch well enough before or in someplace entirely new. That’s often how life works, though. The first time an issue arises we say, “All I’ve got is mud and straw, it’ll have to do.” The second time we’re older and wiser (hopefully) and patch more skillfully, with cement. But eventually when the flaw comes out we’ve lost the desire to hide our cracks from the rest of the world and think, with a flick of our feather boa, “To hell with what anyone thinks, this time this bastard is GOLD.”

In October of 2018 my lovely friend Nan took her first trip to the UK and brought back a wee gift for me. She knew how much I adore pigs and found a wonderful locally-crafted pig ornament at the Spode visitor center.

At the time I was having another bout of depression that had knocked me off my vegan practice (and into a vat of queso). I have never claimed to be a “perfect” vegan because such a thing cannot exist; what most people don’t know is that I’ve been on and off the wagon for years, usually only off for a few days (sometimes only a single meal) then back on, depending on my mental health. I have been gradually shortening those episodes, but I still wobble. That’s why I call it a practice.

This is of course not what I want. I want to be steadfast and dedicated to living my values. When I’m on my game it’s actually pretty darn easy to be vegan, especially here in Austin; it’s me that’s the problem, not the lifestyle.

So, when Nan gave me my pig, I decided to use it as a talisman. I charged it ritually to help boost my ability to make good decisions and to walk my talk. Every month on the Full Moon I’d give it a refresh. Eventually, though, I missed a month, then another. As with so many spiritual habits mundane life got the best of my intentions.

You can probably see where this is going.

One day, while dusting and rearranging my altar, I knocked the pig off the wall and it broke into pieces.

Sometimes the Universe gives you less a Cosmic 2×4 and more a Cosmic Anvil.

I cried. I looked at the broken little ornament and thought about how shitty I am and how I have no integrity and I cried some more.

Then I got out the Superglue and fit the pieces back together. There were enough tiny shards missing that it didn’t look very well mended, especially on the back; I also glued my fingers to it at one point (don’t tell my roommate) and re-broke it while trying to free myself.

It was quite some time later that I made the connection between my busted-up talisman and kintsugi.

Once I did, however, the course of action was obvious. My piggy ornament had to have its cracks made gold.

I had already glued it back together, so instead of missing lacquer and gold powder or any other more traditional Japanese method, I bought a bottle of metallic gold paint and a tiny paintbrush and began applying layers of gold in the cracks. I’ve done this several times in the last few months, just adding a little more shine each time, and as I paint I reinforce my intentions to keep going, to do better and then better again, to become the person I want to be inside and out.

It’s not perfect. What is? Perfection is a lousy goal. You’ll drive yourself to an early grave chasing a toxic illusion. What’s far better, and better for us, is looking at all our failures and faults as another place where we can add something shiny. Or, to let a much better poet than myself say it,

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

“Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen