A Humane Turtle

This year I had my first real Thanksgiving!! I was invited to a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, and it was all-vegan! (And the food was just stunning. my was belly as full as can be…) So, I wanted show that I was thankful for the invitation, and I figured I could make something nice for the kids. And so I spent my pre-Thanksgiving evening making sweet bread bowls

Now, I didn’t make the dough according to any recipe really. I took half a kilo of white flour, the according amount of yeast, warmed up a soy milk and margarine mix, and added Xylitol (the wonder-sugar) until the dough seemed to be sweet enough. Then I took quite small glass bowls and draped strips of dough over it, from the center outwards. Here’s a picture with the almost-done draping:

Once that was done, I cut off the  strips around the edge of the bowl and added one thin twisted strip of dough around the rim. Then it looked like this:

And, after baking, it looked like this:

The bread bowl gets brown on top quite fast, so I had to cover it with baking paper for most of the time. Not sure how long it was baking, maybe around 15-20 minutes? Until it was lightly brown, in any case…

Once the bowl was ready, I rubbed it with a little margarine. Then I took it out of the glass bowl it was baked on (to make sure it wasn’t stuck), cooled down and washed the glass bowl and put it back into the bread bowl. I let it cool down in the form over night, since the bread bowl loses its shape and gets somewhat flat otherwise.

The finished product, filled with organic vegan candy can be found on the Pine Family’s blog.

Without knowing any pigs in person, I find them especially likable.  Winston Churchill would probably agree with me, as he is quoted saying: “I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” Call me speciesist, but for some reason I feel closer to them than to some other species. I tend to think that I share quite some characteristics with them (potentially quite intelligent, very sensitive, lazy at times, VERY much into food ).

Just a few moments ago, one of  them was killed. Well, it’s probably millions of pigs that die every day, but this specimen, even though growing up in an animal factory, got to be known by many people: He and his brother are part of the project Pig Vision, some sort of pig reality TV. You can follow the pigs’ lives, starting with their birth in the factory. After that, the siblings go different ways: one of them is freed, gets a name (Jackpot), and lives a life in freedom on an animal sanctuary. The other one has to stay in the factory farm, endure the pains of being a product rather than a being.

Today, the pig without name was slaughtered, only 7 months old. May your life (and death) have helped to understand what cruelty is done to so many like you.

Rest in peace.