Will We All Be Forced To Be Vegetarian?

Speaking of leaving our world a better place...

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/will-we-all-be-forced-to-be-vegetarian-by-2050/#

I'm a religious person and my religion tells us to eat very little meat, only in times of winter or famine.  There are great many reason for avoiding meat, both health and environmental.  I encourage all my friends and family (and anybody who may read this little blog of mine) to consider eating less meat.  And who knows?  From there you may decide to cut it out completely. I did - and I never thought I'd see the day!!

Plastic Bottle Wall

This is so sad!  We all need to be aware of our choices and the effect we are having on our planet!  We have to make changes and leave this place better for our children and their posterity.

http://www.startribune.com/local/yourvoices/167725245.html

Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry

I urge you to read this article!  Urge, URGE I say!!  It doesn't matter if you already know that food processing is bad for you - this shed a little more light on some subjects and I learned some things I didn't know before (the behind the scenes aspect).  Read it, my friends and be enlightened.  As I've said before, ignorance is not bliss :)

http://www.foodmatters.tv/articles-1/dirty-secrets-of-the-food-processing-industry

Vegan Smash Cake :)

My little baby turned 1! It was an exciting and fun celebration for us.  It was also a little crazy on my end because I wanted him to have the smash cake experience but I didn't want him to have any of the cake!

I contemplated doing just a vegetable or fruit, such as an apple.  I researched raw desserts like crazy but, as raw desserts always have nuts as a base, I didn't want to take the chance of some sort of nut reaction.  Now, my baby up until about 1 month ago, has been exclusively breastfed.  He hasn't shown much interest in food until recently and so now we have introduced foods that we can give him that are as much in their raw natural state as possible - specifically fruits.  Out of curiosity we let him try something (now I can't remember what it was) other than fruit or veggie and he didn't care for it.  So with that in mind, I decided to make him a cake because I didn't think he would have any interest in putting any in his mouth anyway.

I actually did two different recipes.  One for his 1 year pictures and one for his birthday party.

I ended up going with a vegan carrot cake recipes that didn't have any sugar in it.  

In this picture, I used the 'Single Lady Cupcake' recipes called Five Minute Carrot Cake from Chocolate Covered Katie.  Her desserts look delish and I thought this carrot cake would have a super cute look paired with my kiddos outfit.  As expected, he didn't care to eat it, he only cared to swirl the stuff on the ground with the candle :)   I used Coconut Milk frosting instead of some vegan soy crap.  I had to do a bit of experimenting with that one, too and I'll have another post on that.

For his big birthday bash I made him a big smash cake.  Although in hind sight I kind of wish I wouldn't have worried about the cake itself since I already knew he wouldn't eat it and just worried about what was on top.  Instead I worried about both.  

For this cake, I used a recipe found on this blog.  I made a little variation and used the rest of my spelt flour instead of wheat flour and I made it into a cake using a round cake pan instead of going with the cupcakes.  I  wasn't too impressed with the taste though (I stole a bite after the smashing was done - hence why I wish I wouldn't have worried about having actual cake under that frosting - it ended up being a waste).  I was, however, super happy with my raw chocolate icing found on one of my favorite raw dessert websites, The Rawtarian.  You can find this particular recipe here and I liked it a lot because it was so simple and made with ingredients I already had on hand. It's creamy and has a dark chocolate taste which normally I wouldn't care for but Husband and I wanted to keep on licking. It also spread incredibly easy. 

Again, my baby wasn't too into smashing.  He was a little curious but I think he has a thing about getting super dirty!  He had to have help from some kiddos to get a little dirtier :)  I thought he would actually like eating this frosting because I let him lick a little off the spatula when I made it and he was really into it.  However, when I helped him out and put some in his mouth, he gagged.  Not the first time he'd done that but   I promise it wasn't because the recipe sucked cuz it didn't..or doesn't!

Hopefully someone else finds this information a little useful.  :)

How To Afford Eating Raw

Hey all!!

Thought I'd share this YouTube video by Kristina from Fully Raw.



She's got some great tips!

Just How Bad Is Sugar?

Click on the following link to watch an eye opening 60 Minutes interview on the dangers of sugar.  It's as addictive and dangerous as cocaine and yet, nobody realizes this as they consume pound after pound of the white stuff!  I think you'll learn some interesting things that you may have not known before.  I also believe that it is TREMENDOUSLY important to get your kids off of sugar completely.

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/toxic-sugar.html

Ps - the notes from the author of the article found below the video are worth reading as well and I tend to agree with him on those points :)

6 Ingredients You May Not Want In Your Food

6 INGREDIENTS YOU MAY NOT WANT IN YOUR FOOD

By: Food Republic, Huffington Post

Garden burgers. Power bars. Protein brownies. Bottled water that makes you thin, young and smart. And we used to wonder what they put in Pop Rocks...

These days it's hard for even die-hard foodies to know what they're eating or drinking. That's because food has changed from something that didn't need a modifier -- if it walked, swam, flew or grew out of the ground, it was food -- to something that stopped off at Mr. Burns' nuclear plant on the way to your plate.

Let's call it "foodiness." Like Stephen Colbert's truthiness, which wasn't about truth, we're not consuming food as much as we're consuming an edible manufactured doppelganger designed to look and taste like food, but isn't actually food: like veggie puffs with no vegetables; fruit bars with no fruit; like goldfish crackers with no goldfish.

And now, below, a look at some typical foodiness ingredients that are packaged, flavored and presented as food.

1. TBHQ, A.K.A: Butane

Turns out butane isn't just for lighters anymore - it's also an artificial antioxidant that they put it in chicken nuggets to keep them "fresh" tasting. So instead of your chicken nuggets being fresh, butane keeps them "fresh." Eating butane probably wasn't what you had in mind last time you lit up, got the munchies, and ordered those nuggets. Try homemade chicken wings instead, for fuel-free food. 

Found in: Frozen, packaged or pre-made processed foods with long shelf lives such as frozen meals, crackers, chips, cereal bars and fast food.

2. Estrogen

Regular milk is full of hormones used by the milk industry to keep the cows knocked up and lactating all year round. Sound gross? It is. So when you drink regular milk you take a shot of hormones with it. And all you wanted was a bowl of cereal. 

Found in: All non-organic dairy, so organic is recommended. 

3. Spinach Dust

Think that green sheen on your veggie snacks is giving you your daily serving of vegetables? Think again. That's just powdered spinach dust, which is spinach that has been dehydrated and sucked dry of its nutritional value. So the upshot is that green sheen is about as nutritious as actual dust.

Found in: "Healthier" vegetable flavored snack foods.

4. Propylene Glycol, A.K.A: antifreeze 

Antifreeze is used in cars, pills, cosmetics, deodorant, moisturizer... And, in a way, food! It keeps your car from freezing over, your moisturizer moist, and your fat-free cookie dough ice cream creamy, smooth and juicy. If it's good enough for your SUV it's good enough to eat, right? Right?? Right???

Found in: Cake mix, salad dressings, low-fat ice creams and dog food.

5. Wood Pulp: Vanillin 

Vanillin, which is a byproduct of the pulp industry, is used as an artificial vanilla flavor. Ester of wood resin, which comes from pine stumps, is in citrus-flavored sodas to keep the citrus flavor evenly distributed through the can 

Found in: Artificially flavored yogurt, baked goods, candy and sodas

6. Castoreum

Castoreum comes out of a beaver's behind - it's extracted from their anal glands and is used to make artificial raspberry flavoring. Try not to think about that next time you order the diet raspberry tea.

Found in: Artificially raspberry flavored products such as cheap ice cream, Jell-O, candy, fruit-flavored drinks, teas and yogurts.


Source: www.huffingtonpost.com/food-republic..
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obtained from the Food Matters website