Couch Surfing

I just signed up for Couch Surfing! So, if you ever want to visit Amsterdam, feel free to send me a message! Find me here :)

Also, I’m sorry for the lack of updates recently. Our 4-month-old cat, Sheriff, fell off our balcony two weeks ago and I’ve spent almost a full week going back and forth to the vet clinic for diagnoses, an operation, etcetera. Very stressful and didn’t sleep much. University has also been crazy, I’ve been drowning in homework and my first tests are this week (the fourth week! usually there are not tests until week 8, hmpf).. In other words, I haven’t had any spare time between personal stuff, work and uni to write anything interesting. I’ve been updating my tumblr a lot though.
I promise to get more up here soon.

Vegan sausages

Recipe, modified from Vegan Dad:

Ingredients:

- about half a cup of chili beans, including the liquid from the can.
- approximately 1 cup of cold vegetable broth (you could use a little less)
- two tbs of a neutral vegetable oil (I used sunflower)
- two tbs of soy sauce
- a generous splash of chili oil
- 2 or 3 large fresh cloves of garlic
- heaped teaspoon of dark miso
- generous amounts of paprika, oregano and chili pepper seasonings
- fresh ground black pepper

- 1 1/4 cup of wheat gluten

Set up something to steam the sausages in: I used a large soup pan with a colander squeezed in it, but of course an actual steaming pan or some rice cookers work just as well, probably even better. I also like to get most ingredients ready in small bowls so I can throw everything together quickly.

Mix the first set of ingredients together in a food processor, until it is quite a smooth mix with no beans left whole. Transfer to a bowl and add the wheat gluten. Mix with a spatula or big plastic spoon and proceed to knead by hand. Let the dough sit for a minute or so while you get ready sheets of tinfoil, how many you need depends on how many sausages you want to make. I made thin, long ones, and got about 16 out of the dough.
Divide the dough into equal parts and roll out the sausages by hand, it’s easiest on a clean countertop or a plastic cutting board. Roll each sausage tightly into tinfoil and twist the ends to close it. I like to fold the ends inwards so that they don’t stick out, because otherwise I can’t fit them into my colander. My sausages were about 1cmx20cm (about half an inch by 8 inches) because I wanted to use them for snacks.

Make sure that the water for steaming is boiling and put all sausages in there. It doesn’t matter much if they cover each other, this time I put about four layers on top of each other and they turned out fine. Put the lid on the pan and turn the heat to low. You can put a thin towel between the pan and the lid if it doesn’t close properly. Steam for 40 minutes.

After 40 minutes, take the sausages out of the pan (they’re HOT!) and transfer them to a plate or cutting board. Let them cool down a little before attempting to take off the tinfoil. You can eat them right away, although I think that the taste and texture is MUCH better after you let them sit for a night or so. I also like to grill them in a stove-top grill pan for a minute or 5 so that the outside is a little crispier, but that is of course optional.

Photos will be uploaded next time I make them ;)! Enjoy!

(Of course you can vary the spicing and beans according to your taste, I also make them with pinto or kidney beans and italian spices. I like this combo though because you usually have to put a lot of spices in to actually taste them after the sausages are done.)

Peta, do you ever learn?

Sigh.

Quote

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

~Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler

My dad just called me to say that he and my mom will no longer eat any foie gras or veal, and possibly beef. I’m so excited about this, coming from the man who was always (and still is, really) an enthusiastic meat-eater and used to eat massive steaks for dinner. He said he was influenced by the conversations we had had about my veganism and the hypocrisies and environmental impact of the dairy and meat industry. Who knows what other things they might swear off :)

Quick little update

Yesterday my classes at university started again after a three-month summer break. Yes, three months are way too ridiculously long if you ask me.
I had the first lecture of my Survey in American History course, which was pretty cool. The professor emphasized the difference between “white male protestant” history and “minority” history a lot. When he quoted the feminist movement’s goal to “turn history into herstory”, a guy next to me started laughing. I wanted to kick him in the face.
Other than that I’ve had to spend loads of money on printed-out black and white readers (50 euros for a bunch of copies anyone?) and had at least 15 freshmen ask me directions.

Tomorrow I have to go to this hearing on “biotechnology on animals” aka animal testing for my work. It’s at the ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality in The Hague and concerns the University of Utrecht who wants to test on +/- 500 genetically modified mice. I’m still debating whether I’m going to call this other activist (an older man, I think) who is going there and whose number I got from a colleague to meet up with before the hearing.

Hydra

From gloomyvegan.

The following is an excerpt from a Nation Books review of Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and Triumph of Spectacle, where Chris Hedges attends an enormous porn convention in Las Vegas:

The largest users of internet porn, which is slowly draining away profits from magazines and DVD sales because so much of it is free, are between the ages of 12 and 17. And porn producers know their market is increasingly underage. “The age demographic has moved downwards, especially in the UK and Europe,” explained Steve Honest, the European director of production for Bluebird Films. “Porn is the new rock and roll. Young people and women are embracing porn and making purchases. Porn targets the mid-teens to the mid-twenties and up.”

There are some 13,000 porn films made in the United States a year. According to the Internet Filter Review, worldwide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs and the ever-expanding E-sex world, topped $97 billion in 2006. That’s more than the revenues of the leading technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink. Annual sales in the United States are estimated at $ 10 billion or higher. There is no agency that does precise monitoring of the porn industry. And porn is very lucrative to some of the nation’s largest corporations. General Motors, for example, owns DirectTV, which distributes over forty million streams of porn into American homes every month. AT&T Broadband and Comcast Cable are the currently biggest American companies accommodating porn users with The Hot Network, Adult Pay-Per-View and similarly themed services. AT&T and GM rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers. (…)

From here.

De Tafel van 5

Net5 has aired the new “women’s talkshow”, De Tafel van 5 (The Table of 5), on which five women were talking during this episode about women in politics, the glass ceiling, a possible female MP for The Netherlands and the fuzzy line between male-female looks of 12-year-olds that seems to be disappearing. Too bad that at the start of the first commercial break you had a little clip on how the show was sponsored by L’Oréal Pantene haircare, with the typical woman with “perfect hair”.

(Overall the show is a little disappointing though. But it is a nice alternative to most dinner-time shows.)

What Does a Vegan Eat?

Lunch:

Multi-grain tortilla wraps filled with mixed sprouts, fresh tomatoes, kidney beans and hummus. And a banana!

Dinner:

Stir fry with spinach-rice noodles, garlic & onion, red bell pepper, mushrooms, broccoli and beans, with sesame seeds and a sauce made out of hoi sin, rice vinegar and soy sauce.