Sunday, December 29, 2024

 



Here's what Monica Chen of New Roots (formerly Factory Farm Awareness)  says at the beginning of letter going out:


Did you know that factory farms are exempt from the Clean Air Act? This means they’re allowed to emit hydrogen sulfide and ammonia at levels higher than the EPA permits for the oil and gas industry.


This came in when I was writing a letter to the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle:

There's a connection between Peter Hartlaub's article on the fire station decoration contest and Patti Breitman's letter to the editor of  December 24th.  Both mention the manger scene, which Peter Hartlaub reports was created by one fire station between 1948 and 1950 when it "borrowed live animals on route to a local slaughterhouse and used them in a manger scene."  Patti Breitman pleads for showing concern for the animals at peace in the manger scene by abstaining from eating them, an act of kindness in an era when cats and dogs are part of our family but we treat farm animals like insensate beings and accept their suffering  on route to our stomachs.  I want to know more about the incident with the animals temporarily rescued from slaughter.  How did they adjust to the manger scene?  What was their ultimate fate?  I can't find anything online.  Could Peter Hartlaub dig into the archives and do a follow-up?


Friday, December 6, 2024



I heard this read by Peter Singer himself (I think).  I ordered 5 copies to give to different people.

Yesterday it occurred to me to write to him and share my "Thanksgiving Day with Doctored Seuss."

Dear Peter Singer,

I heard you reading your book Consider the Turkey and ordered 5 print copies to give to friends.

Thank you for writing that book and for including recipes.   

Several years ago, I wrote a short story I'd like to share with you. Even though I wrote it before reading your book, your book and my story are closely related!  In fact, I mention the pardoning of a turkey on the first page!

I'm attaching it, but now I want to write a stanza in your honor.  I'll get this off to you, and then I'll add to it!

Thank you for all you do!


 https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/388499/wicked-elphaba-animal-rights-dillamond 

Did you know that Elphaba was an animal rights activist?

Sunday, December 1, 2024



Lion has finally opened in the space where the Fuji Restaurant burned down in April 2022.  Christiane and I went together for the first time on November 27th, a week after its "soft opening."  

Here's what Christiane wrote, when we were given a little post it along with the tab.  




 

It was good to have a West Coast family Thanksgiving at Millennium, which serves no animals or animals products!  Days before I'd read Peter Singer's Consider the Turkey.




 

Monday, November 25, 2024



Leslie Simon treated me to lunch at a Vietnamese cafe I'd been wanting to try--Mong Thu on Hyde Street near Eddy. It was written up in the SF San Francisco Chronicle. Here's a paragraph that's really touching: "Even the name of the restaurant is a nod to the importance of family. Kim considered each of her four daughters’ names before deciding that her third-born’s was the best suited for a cafe. Five years later, Má»™ng Thu was killed in a car accident shortly before her high school graduation. Kim is thankful that every morning when she comes to work, she gets to see her daughter’s name on that hand-painted sign."


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Monday, October 7, 2024


  An Immense World covers human beings, spiders, octopi, ants, snakes--just about all life you can imagine, but I'm not sure that it covers the sentient beings in factory farms.  Today I plan to go to West Portal and find the print book.  I've been reading with my ears.  

If he doesn't consider factory farmed animals, is that because we've normalized thinking of them only as meat, eggs, and dairy?  Does he not want to study caged animals because he's interested in what's natural and knows that caged animals and animals otherwise used as food can't follow their instincts?

Tonight I was listening to the chapter on pain.  It appears that regardless of how animals behave or react, there will always be people who say they can't feel pain--not the way that we human beings do.  I'm afraid there are still people who think that some human beings don't feel pain the way we do, that they don't value life, their lives don't mean as much as ours do.



Friday, October 4, 2024


 We had a mostly-vegan luncheon at the China North Dumpling Restaurant on Noriega yesterday, but I'm using that only to have an illustration.  

I finally responded to a very nice person who I thought believed in vegan causes but may not wish to "push" the cause in any way.


I have a lot of respect and affection for you.  I also really want to support the vegan cause both for animal welfare and for the environment.  I'm aware that a lot of people, while aware of some animal abuse in the production of meat, are not aware of what goes on with dairy and poultry, so it was my hope that I could simply provide an alternative to the products with eggs and milk. Before I became a vegan, I had no idea that cakes and cookies could be made without the eggs and milk I usually used.   But when I brought home-baked cookies, you opened the ones that Lisa had brought, and I'm sure they were delicious but not what I hoped people would be trying.  You also announced that Lisa would be providing cookies and coffee/tea for the next gathering in person, so I decided you preferred to go back to the milk and egg products, and that disappoints me, but I'm not angry with you.  You do a wonderful job keeping the Sunset Book Group going while also being very active in a lot of other activities.

I'll be in flight on October 9th, so I won't be able to attend our next discussion, but I'll write something about my reading of Women Talking so you can count me in!

Thanks again for all you do even if it isn't always supportive of the vegan cause!

Sunday, September 29, 2024


 I loved and will always love Kevin Fisher-Paulson, even though his "Be kind" supplication to us didn't include be kind to factory-farmed animals.  There was a lovely reception after the service for him at The Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church at 100 Diamond yesterday.  There was nothing vegan.

I know he had at least one vegan friend.  Did that friend die?  He once said that he'd be at the home of a vegan on Thanksgiving Day, so he would probably be pushing tofu around his plate--an unfortunate stereotype of vegans.  Here's the passage:  I'm writing a separate tribute to Kevin Fisher-Paulson, but here I'll just say that "courage to change" can apply to diet,and saying that Mr. Sasb has turned vegan "as part of his midlife crisis" does not show how enlightened Kevin Fisher-Paulson was in most ways.

November 21, 2017

I want to be grateful for tradition, but what I really should be grateful for is the courage to change. We’ve transplanted Thanksgiving this year. Since 2001, we’ve hosted an orphan holiday in the blue bungalow, but for the first time ever, our boys are spending the fourth Thursday in November at the Sasbs, who have seen each and every one of our mood swings, and yet still invited us to break bread. As part of his midlife crisis, Mr. Sasb has turned vegan, and despite all my assurances that the turkey himself was a strict vegetarian, so certainly the meat would be vegan, it is likely that I will be pushing a hunk of tofu around my plate tomorrow.

Monday, September 16, 2024

It's surprising that the best-stated reason for choosing vegan comes from a cookie company!  I'm disappointed that these cookies are no longer sold at the Opera Plaza Cinema and that the Embarcadero Cinema, where they were sold, closed down.  I remember how surprised I was years ago when I asked, "Do you have any vegan cookies?" and the person behind the concession stand said, "All of our cookies are vegan."  Brave new world!

But at least there's a place in SF where I can get them--George's Zoo, 2650 Sloat Blvd!



 

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

 

Regarding Aviva Bechky's article "Sonoma loves its farms. Activists call them factories. Could a ballot measure upend this county?"

I don't blame Mike Weber for doing what we've normalized--treating farm animals as a commodity--and he at least gives some of his chickens some chance to follow their instincts.  That may be true of his dairy cows too.  I doubt that Proposition J will pass in Sonoma because animal-eaters choose to ignore how sentient beings suffer if the sentient beings aren't human or the animals they've chosen as pets. I believe that someday we'll look back in horror at factory farms, but that probably won't come about because of concern for animals.  It will probably be for environmental reasons.  Instead of the government's subsidizing the products from factory farms, they'll start educating people on the atrocities involved and the environmental damage done.  

Even people who consider themselves progressive are resistant to change when it comes to their eating habits.  But paying taxes in the US, we're funding animal agriculture.  For every $100 we pay in taxes, about 50 cents goes directly to funding factory farming,  a cruel, unhealthy practice.  


https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/sonoma-farms-measure-j-19607917.php

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

In an effort to share vegan bliss, I made three batches of cookies to take to the Sunset Book group.  Our leader Janet Tom may no longer be a vegan because she opened the other boxes that weren't vegan, and they were from Andronico's instead of from my oven!  Heavy competition and not free of eggs and dairy.

People thanked me but no one said they were good!  Of course, they didn't like the book either.  (Ari Shapiro's Best Strangers in the World.



 

Tuesday, August 13, 2024



Thanks to Carol Fregly, kindred vegan, I found out about this game.  Even though the mailing was $19, I got two of them!

 https://plantbasednews.org/culture/media/vegan-gaming-company-card-game/





Sunday, August 11, 2024

   

Photo from SF Chronicle, taken by Minh Connors



Here's something from a review of  Mong Thu's Cafe in the Tenderloin--the vegan paragraph!


https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/mong-thu-cafe-vietnamese-19503917.php

Larrimore had a hand in more than just the branding; he’s also responsible for the two plant-based items on Má»™ng Thu’s menu. Larrimore has kept a vegan diet since he was a 12-year-old straightedge punk in Philly, and Kim has been cooking him special meals since he and Meng started dating 13 years ago. In the Vietnamese Buddhist tradition, adherents follow a vegan diet on specific days in the lunar calendar, and Kim has always been happy to substitute tofu when cooking for Larrimore. According to Meng, Kim even likes to brag to her friends about Larrimore’s rigor in avoiding animal products, alcohol and cigarettes. 

Sunday, August 4, 2024

At West Portal today, early afternoon, I asked some high school kids who were selling cookies whether they had any vegans.  They said no.  

I don't think I'll make it back there today, and they probably won't be there tomorrow.  But I want to have something handy for such occasions--the statement by the Alternate Cookie Company and at least one recipe for a vegan cookie.













Monday, July 29, 2024



When OWL announced our choice of dishes a couple of weeks ago, I spoke up, saying that nothing was vegan, and I was assured that there would be a vegan option after all.  The server in charge took this very much to heart, but I didn't see signs that they were prepared.  I asked about getting olive oil for the bread, and I wasn't the only one who dipped into that instead of choosing a pad of butter.  I liked their vegetable soup too.  The vegetable stew they gave me was nourishing, and as I told them in a thank you note, I appreciated their including pistachio nuts for extra protein.  Then the dessert came--cake with a dollop of whipped cream.  I heard the server whisper "Shit!" when I told him it wasn't vegan, and he quickly returned to the kitchen and took off the whipped cream, apparently not knowing that eggs and milk weren't vegan either.  These are people who've turned their lives around, so I want to encourage them and have been in touch with Carol Fregly, who has taught English at Delancey for ten years and is also vegan!  I want them to know that I've turned my life around too. I no longer eat animals or animals products.  




 


The SF Chronicle had this article on comparison shopping, and I couldn't help wishing that a social consciousness would direct them towards getting readers away from beef if not from eggs and dairy.  I know that plant-based milk is still not as popular as cow's milk, but are they running for office?  And where are all the fruits and vegetables?  A jar of jam?  An onion?

 

Monday, July 22, 2024






Elaine and Jonathan were so thoughtful about planning my visit, suggesting places I could go while they were working or after they finished their work day.  Before I get to the tasting menus at Folke and Acorn, here are some dishes from Kokomo, near their place on 7th Avenue between Vine and Yew.    Yum!  Also some pastry they had waiting for me when I arrived in Vancouver and some dishes at Meet in Gastown, one of the places they suggested going to.    Here's the list they prepared for me!
 

Sunday, July 14, 2024

 This is what an otherwise progressive organization is proposing for our luncheon at Delancey Street:



ENTREES
(Select one per person.)

(1) Spinach Salad: Feta cheese, bacon, Greek olives, tomatoes, spicy pecans and mint

(2) Grilled Vermont Cheddar Cheese Sandwich
served with regular fries

(3) Grilled Vermont Cheddar Cheese Sandwich
served with sweet potato fries

(4) Grilled or Blackened Chicken Breast Sandwich: 
Lemon cayenne aioli on a Kaiser roll, served with regular fries

(5) Grilled or Blackened Chicken Breast Sandwich: 
Lemon cayenne aioli on a Kaiser roll, served with sweet potato fries

(6) Vegetarian Crepe: Smoked mozzarella, roasted peppers, sliced Portobello mushroom, tomato and basil

DESSERT
(Select one per person)

(A) Warm 3 Ginger Gingerbread with whipped cream, OR
(B) Sweet Potato Pie with whipped cream


 I responded by saying


Dear Friends,

Thank you for the invitation to OWL's luncheon in July!  I definitely plan to join, 
but there's absolutely nothing on this menu that I or any other vegan can eat.  
The NYTimes says that a having a vegan diet is one of the most effective ways 
we can lower our carbon footprint, and in addition to being environmentally friendly,
it's a diet that's much kinder to animals abused in factory farms.

In other words, vegan isn't a personal preference.  It's a cause--and a good one.  

Could we ask Delancey Street to create a vegan menu for those who share
 our concern for the environment and animal welfare?

If not, I'll bring my own lunch and dessert and have plenty to share with others.

Many thanks!

Tina
Sun, Jul 14 at 6:55 PM


Wednesday, July 10, 2024








Jenny used to be a vegetarian, but she's gone back to eating animals--but not in my house and only once or twice when she was with me.  The pictures above are of Jenny eating dishes at Kayma, an Algerian spot in IKEA's Saluhall.  My favorite dish there was the mushroom dish.  The prices were high, but the adventure was worth it.  

A good surprise was Il Parco at the Presidio Tunnel Tops--beautiful setting and tasty, reasonably priced vegan dishes:  two soups, a farro dish, focaccia, and a beet salad, and a pasta dish too.