This morning I actually woke up in time to make breakfast! Yesterday I threw together some homemade bread without following a recipe. It was my first time and it turned out wonderfully! There’s really nothing better than French toast with homemade bread.
Even if you’re not a vegan I think you’ll enjoy this. Especially if you enjoy caramelized bananas as part of your breakfast.
Vegan French Toast makes 3 pieces
half a very ripe banana
a tablespoon or 2 of coconut ice cream(you could use any milk sub as well)
3 slices of bread
tablespoon or 2 of earth balance for frying
Mash the banana and ice cream together until you have an eggy type wash for your bread. Not too thin, not too thick. Almost like cold syrup.
Heat earth balance in pan.
Dip bread, one at a time, into the wash then lay in pan. Cook until golden brown or slightly crisp on each side.
It’s that easy! I sprinkled mine with cinnamon and drizzled with maple syrup but feel free to expand on that. Maybe add some pecans, walnuts, fruit, powdered sugar, etc.
There’s been something on my mind lately. Something about Christianity and its diet.
I glanced over a headline recently that said something about people of faith, predominantly Protestant Evangelical Christians, being fatter or at least the youth being fatter. I found the article here at USA Today’s site. It was brought back to my attention this weekend when I saw a bunch of young kids walking around the city who were in town for a Baptist Youth Convention. What I continually noticed was a trend of unhealthy weight in the kids and adults. Then I remembered a thought I’ve had stuck in my head for awhile that really irks me. Protestant Christianity, with maybe the exception of Methodists, don’t seem to abide by any sort of dietary guidelines. I say Protestant because Catholics observe dietary restrictions during Lent and I believe Methodists do too, don’t quote me on that. Why is that? Why have these religious groups seemingly thrown any dietary guidelines out the window?
The group I meet with every week that is collectively called Eikon has been going through the Beatitudes. Tonight we talked about the verses where Jesus says he came to fulfill the law of Moses, not to abolish it (Matthew 5:17-20). Along with that we examined some of those crazy Levitical dietary laws and one thing that resonated with me was their function of aiding in sanitation/healthfulness. Without proper cooking methods, etc things like eating pork and winged, disease carrying insects could’ve meant death for some of these people. That makes sense to me.
If the idea of the law for those dietary guidelines was to keep people healthy then why have we decided to completely ignore that? There’s been study after study after study proving the direct link between meat and cancer, meat and obesity, meat and diabetes, dairy and bone loss (sounds opposite right? go watch the perils of dairy on youtube. dude breaks. it. down.) yet we continue eating without any regard. I’m not about to go on a “God doesn’t want you to be fat!” rant because that’d just be dumb and untrue. Some people are just bigger than others, that’s okay.
Hopefully you understand I’m not saying we should go pick and choose Levitical laws to follow. That’d be crazy. What I am saying is that if part of the spirit of the law lies in healthfulness why do we just seem to not care anymore? Why is it that almost every other religion adheres to some sort of dietary restrictions yet Christians just go all willy nilly and scarf down that barbeque or catfish buffet on sunday after church then leave 50 cents for a minimum wage worker? And before you try to say, “Well the spirit of the law is about love not health…” let me say that health is absolutely reflective of love for yourself and others. If I’m making food for me, another person or a group of people do you think I’m gonna try to feed them the fallen grapes that have turned to mush? The bread that has mold? The meat packed with antibiotics? The milk laced with pus and antibiotics? Absolutely not. That’d be the most unloving thing I could do.
About a month ago my mom told me their pastor was in the hospital for some bypass surgery. Big surgery but rather common these days. Maybe she asked me to pray for him? I don’t know. All I could remember thinking was, “Prayer is stupid right now. This man doesn’t need prayer. He needs a better diet.” I’m all for prayer. I’m not a big praying person myself but I understand its function. However, I get really frustrated at situations like this where the pastor has the power to better himself but for whatever reason hasn’t. That’s willful ignorance and stubbornness. Surely at some point a doctor told him he needed a diet change, right? I mean a heart bypass surgery doesn’t just sneak up on you, right? I’m sorry but in this situation I don’t think prayer’s gonna do this guy much good.
It also absolutely breaks my heart when I am in a grocery store and see some of the things people buy for their families to eat. Bacon, refined bread, packaged meals, twelve packs & 2 liters of soda, ground beef, sausage, ham, turkey, cheesy chips, juice laced with sugar and the list goes on. I’m not judging these people. I would never do that. It breaks my heart because of what I believe and understand from what I’ve read, watched, talked about and learned. Unfortunately the grocery store checkout line isn’t really the place to go confronting a mother of 4 about her food choices. That’d be rude and downright disgusting.
This ultimately comes down to an issue of education and whether or not you believe those studies. If you don’t believe them then that’s cool, go on eating the food that, I believe, will probably kill you. If you do believe them, or think they might have an inkling of truth then start examining the love & spirit of the law going into your food.
While I won’t say, “God doesn’t want you to be fat!!” I will say that I’m pretty sure God, Allah, god, your parents, your family, your friends, your lovers all want you healthy and that’s a sincere form of love.
P.S. There’s a documentary making its way around called “Forks Over Knives” that examines the link between sickness and food. Check out the trailer below and read more on their site. I’m excited to see this when I get a chance.
Yesterday on the Twitters @AJShannon posted her recipe in The Betty Crocker Project for a Whole Wheat Cheesy Focaccia Bread. As part of Lent I’m striving to let go of processed foods and learn to make my own. One of the major things is bread so I jumped at the opportunity to make this focaccia. However, I didn’t really want it whole wheat or cheesy so I modified her recipe to make a more basic focaccia…and it’s incredible! I started by halving the recipe (as mostly I’m cooking for myself and maybe one other person). So here goes:
1 1/4 cups white unbleached bread flour (add more if necessary)
1/2 Tb rosemary
1/2 Tb agave (originally sugar)
1/2 Tb salt
1/2 packet dry yeast (1 & 1/8 tsp)
2 1/2 Tb olive oil
1/2 cup very warm water
yields 1 10-12″ loaf of focaccia
- mix half cup flour, rosemary, salt, yeast, agave, 1.25 tb olive oil, and warm water. mix for 3 minutes - slowly add rest of flour. (may need dashes of more water or flour). mix well, turn on lightly floured surface and knead for 6 minutes - form dough into ball, lightly oil the surface of the dough ball. place back in bowl, cover with lid/plastic wrap etc. and let rise in warm place for half an hour (or doubled in size) - preheat oven to 400 and flour a baking stone or lightly oil pan - remove dough ball, flatten into disc shape about 10-12″ in diameter. cover again and let rise for 30 minutes - remove cover. press fingers into dough to make several small indentions - brush olive oil over surface - bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown
My dough had some trouble in the initial rise and I just couldn’t wait but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I was able to make a small pizza out of this and pulled out a little bit to have a small focaccia piece about 3-4″ in diameter. The pizza was incredible and I wish I had pictures but I gobbled it up. I’ll tell you what i put on it though:
I used the other piece, pictured above, to eat with homemade hummus and it was incredible! Thanks @AJShannon for the inspiration and overall direction.
More than this post will convey. First, it’s a zine! It looks like a zine, it’s written like a zine and it’s just fantastic. Besides throwing bricks through Starbucks windows (Against Me! nod) what’s more punk than a zine?! As an alum of Harding University I’m just absolutely stoked some students took the time to put this together. My friends and I always wanted to do something this awesome but never got around to it. We were too busy sneaking out of dorms to stay up all night in Waffle House or IHOP.
I could go on and on about the rules at Harding and how it can be oppressive, etc, etc. I won’t, you can read about that elsewhere. What makes me happy about this is that it gives a voice to the unheard. It exercises a right to free speech and if Harding decides to do anything about this publicly it will surely garner some national attention. Unfortunately, I think because Harding is a private school their intolerance and rules really can’t be messed with. In some weird way they sort of reserve the right to be exclusive about who/what/how they let people in or kick them out.
What I can tell you about this zine is that these kids are heartfelt. To me, if you boil down the argument within churches about homosexuality it comes down to whether it’s a choice or if you’re born that way. After you read these entries I’m not sure how you can hold on to the belief that it’s a choice.
My Gay Friend at Harding
I guess it was near my junior year when we had a friend come out to us. I had already heard the rumor and somewhat confirmed it one day when I went to use his computer and upon waking the screen I was staring at gay.com. It didn’t really bother me. I thought to myself, “Oh, ____ probably is gay.” Less than a day later he called me saying he wanted to talk about some stuff and he came out to me. I’m glad he felt comfortable and loved enough in our group of friends to let us all know. Now he wouldn’t be tortured by having to be someone he wasn’t.
Our friend was on a path for nursing and didn’t get into the nursing program. Couple that block with trying to be gay at Harding and he left the next semester and came out to his family. I’m not sure how well they received it. I still talk to him on occasion and make sure he’s doing okay out there in the world.
I’m sure he wasn’t the only kid. There were (are) probably loads more. I heard about one guy, an alumnus, within the past year or so who came out on Facebook and you should have seen the hatefulness directed at him! It was awful.
This is Where I Got Pissed
If you go over to huqueerpress.com and read the zine then one of the first few posts you’ll come across has notes from a Christian Home class taught by Joe Brumfield. Hear this, Joe is a super nice dude. I went to his church a few times my freshman year and felt very welcome there but these notes regarding the way to avoid having a gay child, specifically male, drives me bonkers. See the texts below:
Was this written by a real person? Seriously? You think this is the way to ‘prevent’ gay? By this rationale I and every other fatherless child in this world should be gay. I wasn’t entirely fatherless. My parents divorced when I was 4 leaving me to be raised mostly by my mother. Guess what? I HAD A REALLY STRONG BOND WITH MY MOM AND I’M HETEROSEXUAL. Don’t be ignorant. “Take him fishing…wrestle with him…” What a crock-pot full of crap based on some weird standard of what boys have to be. I was that quiet kid in the corner often times. I’m an artist, I don’t hunt (I have, like twice), I don’t fish (I have like 3 times), I don’t really care for sports (I played soccer in a small southern town that idolized football, imagine the barrage of “Fags!” “Queer bait” and other things I got hurled at me because I didn’t want to tackle people and get hit on the football field), I don’t want to wrestle with people, I don’t eat meat or dairy and I don’t feel emasculated by any of this. I think I’ve turned out alright Mr. Brumfield.
All in All, Kudos To These Students
We can sit around and argue about whether or not homosexuality is a sin or a choice and blah blah blah blah but none of that is what we should be focusing on right now. What we should be focusing on is a better understanding of the scriptures and the issue of free speech. Harding is a weird place. You basically sign over your rights upon attendance. Unless someone is to stage an overthrow of most every teacher, staff member, president and board member I doubt you’ll see much change. They’ve created this odd little space that doesn’t really co-exist with the world going on around it. However, I have hope that the people behind the Queer Press do help change something about Harding. It is in dire need.
*I’ve learned now that the site has been blocked on Harding’s campus, so if you’re reading this from there head over to Midnight Oil or somewhere off campus and read the zine. It’s heartbreaking, genuine and beautiful.
My friend Ryan Dement always says it like that. “Valemptime’s!” It’s stuck in my head. Anyway, the lovely girlfriend, Anna, and I had a fantastic day overall. Unfortunately she’s now at work listening to the laments of the broken-hearted. Above you see the valentine card she made me. It has a nice little poem on the back that you don’t get to read. I also did some cooking today. I made these fantastically easy thumbprint cookies with dollops of strawberry jam.
For dinner on valentine’s day there’s really nothing that beats Italian. One of the lovely girlfriend’s favorite dishes is eggplant parmesan. However, I’m not a big fan of eggplant and I didn’t have any so I opted for a new creation. With the help of some breaded/fried tofu, Daiya Cheese, Rao’s Marinara Sauce and VeganYumYum’s Hurry Up Alfredo we were able to have a delicious tofu parmesan over basil linguine.
To top it all off she got me this rad new keychain:
I got her a necklace from Farm Sanctuary, a place that we both really enjoy learning more and more about. I’ll let her show you that little diddy IRL.
