Brownies

As part of my quest for "healthy" desserts for Sam, I have introduced several variations on the "brownie" theme, and in the process have learned quite a lot.  For one, if your recipe doesn't call for (and if you don't fix it!) melting the chocolate in with the liquids and sugars before adding it to the dry ingredients, you aren't really making a brownie, you are making a chocolate cake with chocolate chips.  That can be yummy, but it is not a brownie.

I have also been reminded that applesauce, while good at providing moistness when replacing oil, is more likely to also leaven the final product rather than help keep it dense and chewy.  I am working on that, and thinking banana and soy yoghurt might be the way to go.

But through all this experimenting, my partner and I got a serious hankering for "real" brownies.  Enter the following recipe, which turned into one of, if not the, best brownies that I have ever tasted.  They are made by a blogger who goes by the name "Elizabeth".  I am not going to link to her blog however becuase while she understands the dietary aspect of veganism well enough to put together this recipe, the vast majority of her recipes are not suitable for vegans, and she lacks a significant understanding of what exactly veganism is (ie: not just a way of eating!), so much so that her blog post about the brownie recipe made me slighly nauseous at what I am sure were attempts to be funny at the expense of nonhuman animals.

So, on to the recipe (with my modifications mixed in).

Ultimate Chewy Brownies

1 cup organic coconut oil
4 oz. (or 112 grams) organic bittersweet or dark chocolate.
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup of strong fair trade coffee
2 cups sugar (I used 1 cup of organic raw sugar, 1/2 cup of oraganic brown sugar that was suitable for vegans and 1/2 cup of organic succanat)

1 cup organic unbleached white flour
1 cup organic whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup fair trade dutch process cocoa (I used Cocoa Camino's cocoa powder).
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp flax seeds (ground)
6 Tbsp hot water

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 350F and grease an 8"x8" pan.
2. In a double boiler set over gently simmering water, melt down your chocolate and coconut oil.
3. Mix the vanilla and coffee and combine thoroughly.
4. Add the sugar, stir to combine and remove from the heat.
5. While the ingredients are melting, mix the 2 tbsp of flax seeds with 6 tbsp or water and let sit for a few minutes while it congeals.
6. In a large bowl, mix together the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
7. Combine the ingredients from the double-boiler into dry ingredients and mix until just moist.
8. Gentrly stir in the flax mixture until combined.
9. Spread the batter into the 8"x8" pan and smooth out until it is even.  Cook it on the middle rack of your pre-heated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until done.
10. Remove from heat, and let it cool on a wire rack until it is COMPLETELY cool.  Yes, we are all tempted to taste it right out of the oven, but do not do it.  It is best cooled, and even better after a night of chilling.
11. Share with friends because you don't want to eat the entire pan to yourself, and you will want to.

Things to try:

• Mixing in a grated beet.
• Adding chopped nuts.

 

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Ice Cream

And now for something completely different!

My eldest son has a serious sweet tooth. At this stage, I prefer to just try and deal with it by offering him healthy, or at least healthier, alternatives to the commercial junk that is out there.

Home made ice cream or sorbet is one such treat. This is a new one that I whipped up tonight that got rave reviews from the little one. Described as "the yummiest ice cream [he] ever yummed.", I present to you: Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream. No refined sugars, and of course, animal product free.

You don't absolutely need an ice cream maker for this, but stirring it by hand every few minutes does get tedious.

Makes: About 1 quart.

Method:

Blend the following ingredients in a strong blender until smooth. If you don't have a VitaMix or equivalent blender, blend the cashew and water for several minutes until smooth, then add the remaining ingredients one at a time blending between additions to ensure smoothness.

Finally, chill your ice cream mixture in the fridge for several hours to overnight and then freeze as per your ice cream maker's instructions.

Ingredients:

1 cup of raw cashews or cashew pieces
1 3/4 cups of water
1 cup of pitted dates, covered in water and soaked (include the soaking water in this recipe!)
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1/4 tsp of almond extract
1/2 cup of raw cocoa powder
3/4 cups of smooth natural peanut butter
Stevia to taste (I often use a dropper full of liquid stevia just to round out the sweetness from the dates)

I will try to get a photo up tomorrow. :)

Veganarchism - The Revolutionary Endeavor

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px}

This part six of an ongoing series of posts featuring essays written by Brian A. Dominick and published in a pamphlet called "Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perpective on veganism" (with a preface by Joseph M. Smith). First published by Critical Mess Media in 1995.

Previous posts in this series:

Preface: "Sharpening the Tools of Revolution" by Joseph M. Smith
Introduction: The Veganarchists
What is Social Revolution?
Radical Veganism
Violence in Everday Life
Alienation in Everday Life 

The Revolutionary Endeavor 

Understanding ourselves and our relationship to the world around us is but the first step towards revolution. We must then apply our understandings to a practical program of action. When I speak of action, I am not merely referring to weekly or monthly events when we, in collaboration with an organized group, state our beliefs at a demonstration, or when we execute a planned raid on a facility of oppression.

Action is not so limited. It can be found in our daily lives, our routine and not-so-routine activities. When we assert our beliefs by speaking out in conversation, on the job, at the dinner table, we are acting. In fact, whether we realizing it or not, everything we do is an action or series of actions. Recognizing this allows us to transform our everyday lives from repressed and alienated to libratory and revolutionary.

The role of the revolutionist is simple: make your life into a miniature model of the alternative, revolutionary society you envision. You are a microcosm of the world around you, and even the most basic among your actions affect the social context of which you are a part. Make those effects positive and radical in their nature.

The revolution must become part of our lifestyle, guided by vision and fueled by compassion. Every thought we think, every word we speak, every action we make must be rooted in radical praxis. We must liberate our desires through constant critique of what we have been taught to think, and a persistent quest for what we truly want. Once our desires are known, we must act in their interest.

After identifying how our society works, and deciding what we essentially want, we must commence to dismantle the present and assemble the future-and we must go about these tasks simultaneously. As we tear down the vestiges of oppression, we must also create, with both focus and spontaneity, new forms of social and environmental relationships, facilitated by fresh, new institutions.

For instance, economically speaking, where there is private ownership today there must be social ownership tomorrow. Where production, consumption and resource allocation are now dictated by irrational market forces, in the future there must be a rational system for the acquisition and distribution of material goods and services, with a focus on equity, diversity, solidarity, autonomy, and/or whatever we deem to be the values which guide our visions.

As visionary, the vegan sees a world free of animal exploitation. Further, she sees a truly peaceful and sane relationship between human society and its natural environment. The deep ecology movement has shown us that non-animal nature has value which cannot be quantified in economic terms, just as vegans have demonstrated the worth of non-human animals, a worth that cannot be calculated by economists, only measured by human compassion. That compassion, demonstrated for the proletariat by socialists, for women and queers by feminists, for people of color and marginalized ethnicities by intercommunalists, for the young and aged by youthists, and for those at the end of the state's gun barrel by libertarians, is the same compassion as that felt by vegans and radical environmentalists toward the non-human world. That each of us needs to become all of these "types" of radicals-and to incorporate their ideologies into one, holistic theory, vision, strategy and practice-is a truism we can no longer afford to ignore. Only a perspective and lifestyle based on true compassion can destroy the oppressive constructs of present society and begin anew in creating desirable relationships and realities. This, to me, is the essence of anarchy. No one who fails to embrace all struggles against oppression as her or his own fits my definition of an anarchist. That may seem like a lot to ask, but I will never stop asking it of every human being. 

Veganarchism - Alienation in Everyday Life

This part six of an ongoing series of posts featuring essays written by Brian A. Dominick and published in a pamphlet called "Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perpective on veganism" (with a preface by Joseph M. Smith). First published by Critical Mess Media in 1995.

Previous posts in this series:

Preface: "Sharpening the Tools of Revolution" by Joseph M. Smith
Introduction: The Veganarchists
What is Social Revolution?
Radical Veganism
Violence in Everday Life
Alienation in Everday Life 

Veganarchism - Violence in Everyday Life

This part four of an ongoing series of posts featuring essays written by Brian A. Dominick and published in a pamphlet called "Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perpective on veganism" (with a preface by Joseph M. Smith). First published by Critical Mess Media in 1995.

Previous posts in this series:

Preface: "Sharpening the Tools of Revolution" by Joseph M. Smith
Introduction: The Veganarchists
What is Social Revolution?
Radical Veganism
Violence in Everday Life

Violence in Everyday Life

Our society, few would disagree, is one based largely on violence. Everywhere we turn, it seems, there is violence, a perception enhanced exponentially by corporate-controlled media images.

This violence, as part of our culture and our very existence, undoubtedly has a profound affect on us the extent of which we can hardly hope to ever truly understand. Those who are on the receiving end of violence naturally suffer a severe amount of disempowerment. Because power is a social concept, we as people do not necessarily comprehend what it means to us. When we perceive a loss of power, one of our typical reactions is to assert what little power we have left. Once we have internalized the effects of oppression, we carry them with us, often only to become victimizers ourselves. It is an unfortunate truth that victims often become perpetrators specifically because they themselves are victimized. When the victimization takes the form of physical violence, it often translates itself into still more violence.

That in mind, we can see clearly why abuse of animals-whether directly, as is the case regarding the mistreatment of pets, or indirectly, as through the process of meat eating-correlates to social violence. Humans who are mistreated themselves tend to mistreat others, and animals are among the easiest, most defenseless victims. This exposes yet another reason social oppression must be struggled against by those concerned for the welfare of animals.

What's more, this cause-effect dynamic works both ways. It has been shown that those who are violent towards animals-again, directly or indirectly-are also more likely to be violent towards other humans. People fed a vegetarian diet, for instance, are typically less violent than those who eat meat. People who abuse their pets are unlikely to stop there-their children and partners are often next.

It is absurd to think that a society which oppresses non-human animals will be able to become a society which does not oppress humans. Recognizing animal oppression thus becomes a prerequisite to radical social change.

Veganarchism - Radical Veganism.

This part four of an ongiong series of posts featuring essays written by Brian A. Dominick and published in a pamphlet called "Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perpective on veganism" (with a preface by Joseph M. Smith). First published by Critical Mess Media in 1995.

Previous posts in this series:

Preface: "Sharpening the Tools of Revolution" by Joseph M. Smith
Introduction: The Veganarchists
What is Social Revolution?
Radical Veganism

Veganarchism - Introduction: The Veganarchists

This part two of an ongiong series of posts featuring essays written by Brian A.Dominick and published in a pamphlet called "Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perpective on veganism" (with a preface by Joseph M. Smith). First published by Critical Mess Media in 1995.

Veganarchism - Sharpening the Tools of Revolution

Since I have been a little low on energy these last few weeks, I am behind on my planned posting.  So while I work on some more essays, I thought that I would share with you, over several posts, some works first written by Brian A.Dominick and published in a pamphlet called "Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perpective on veganism" (with a preface by Joseph M. Smith). First published by Critical Mess Media in 1995.

 

Playgroup - Circus Time.

We haven't been to playgroup in two weeks. First Sam was sick the first week and this week it was my turn (though thankfully not bad. The worst seems to be my voice.)

With the cold weather we haven't gone out much either. Needless to say, we are stir crazy.

So this week the theme is "circuses". This is a theme that could go either way in my books -- either the focus on Montreal style circus, as taught by our two circus schools and as exemplified by the Cirque du Soliel. Lots of clowns, and amazing feats of human skill beautifully choreographed.

Or, it could focus on "traditional" circuses, with their exploitation of animals (both human and non).

I am really hoping it is the first. If it is the second, I am going to have to explain to Sam how and why the animals are in the circus instead of in the wild where they belong. Further, and perhaps even harder, I will have to explain why some people think that is OK.