November 2022
news, events, & more
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In this issue:
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MAJOR EVENT: Tofurky Trot, Nov 24
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IMMINENT EVENT: Presentation by Tofurky Founder, Nov 12
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WHY WE'RE HERE: Who Are We Anyway?
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HEALTH: Full Disclosure--Killed
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ANIMALS: Fish Facts
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MAKING CHANGE: Good News in the Vegan World
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DID YOU KNOW...?: There's No Fat in Oil?!?
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EVENT: Westside (Orenco) Compassionate Thanksgiving, Nov 19
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EVENT: Eastside Compassionate Thanksgiving, Nov 20, SOLD OUT
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EVENT: Vancouver Potluck/Picnic, Dec 1
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EVENT: Westside Potluck, Dec 18
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RECIPE: Apple-Cinnamon Steel-Cut Oats
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Portland Tofurky Trot
Thursday, November 24, 2022
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Oaks Park Dance Pavilion (map)
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The Portland Tofurky Trot is back! Whether you trot or walk at your own pace around the 5K (3.1 mile) course or help out as one of our very important volunteers, we'd love to have you join us on Thanksgiving morning, November 24, for the return of Portland's Tofurky Trot!
The Trot kicks off at 9 AM from the Oaks Park Dance Pavilion and benefits Oregon farm sanctuaries. The Pavilion is stroller- and wheelchair-accessible.
We are seeking approximately 60 volunteers to help on the morning of the Trot with both indoor and outdoor positions available. All volunteers will receive a free Tofurky Trot t-shirt and are also invited to enjoy the beverages and snacks.
Go here for details and registration and we look forward to seeing you there!
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Partner Event:
Zoom Call with
Seth Tibbott,
Founder of Tofurky
Saturday, November 12, 2022
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Zoom Meeting (link below)
Join the Plant-Based Nutrition Group at Willamette View at 3:00 PM Saturday, November 12 for their monthly Zoom meeting. Seth Tibbott will speak on the topic “The History of Vegan/Vegetarian Thanksgivings – From Plymouth Rock to Tofurky.” Seth is the founder and CEO of Turtle Island Foods, an Oregon company. Their LEED Platinum-Certified headquarters in Hood River created and manufactures the 35 different Tofurky products. Don’t miss this meeting; Seth has promised that “door prizes” will be awarded!
To join the meeting, click on the link below and then enter the passcode:
Passcode: 1955
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Who Are We Anyway?
by Keith Iding
Northwest VEG President
NW VEG promotes the importance of replacing the meat and dairy we consume with plants.
That is our primary mission. We do this by holding vegan potlucks, picnics, and meetups; educational opportunities such as presentations; and field trips to places like farm sanctuaries. Our core outreach event is Portland VegFest—started in 2005 as the Compassionate Living Fair at Friends Hall on SE Stark. We showed the film Peaceable Kingdom, presented cooking demos, handed out vegan food samples, and offered “oodles of information.” It seemed like we were on a roll every year since then, expecting our event to be at the largest venue we could find, the Oregon Convention Center—until Covid got in the way. VegFest is now on hold until we rebuild our organizational momentum to attract enough volunteers to handle all the details, but that is one of the reasons this newsletter exists, to bring us all back together.
We totally trust that Portland has a growing vegan community who support...
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Full Disclosure--Killed
by Donna Reynolds
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In 1977, Senator George McGovern chaired a committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, creating the first US dietary guidelines. This report stated that the diet of the American people had become rich in meat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sugar, and that the harmful effects from these substances represented as great a threat to our health as smoking. It stated that too much fat, sugar, and salt was directly linked to heart disease, cancer, obesity, stroke, and other killer diseases.
But the powerful meat, dairy, and egg producers did not want this information to reach the public and succeeded in dissolving the McGovern Committee by having the Agriculture Committee take over. Yes, Agriculture—the ones who produce the meat, dairy, and eggs, which the report said cause our chronic diseases, and, due in part to that report being suppressed, still are the causes of our diseases four decades later, despite small improvements in the guidelines since then.
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Fish Facts
by Donna Reynolds
Science and technology have enabled the fishing industry to become so good at catching fish that the oceans could actually be empty by 2048 if we continue fishing at our current rate. Many of us may be able to mentally justify eating fish, but are we also okay knowing that countless sea turtles, sharks, dolphins, whales, and even albatross are also killed in order to obtain our fish? Is it worth it? And fishing boats go on killing animals even after they’ve left the area as animals get tangled in all the lost or discarded fishing nets. This abandoned “ghost gear” now makes up half of all that plastic debris polluting our oceans.
All that bycatch means that up to 35 percent of the two trillion fish caught every year never even make it to our plates. But we don’t just kill all this fish for ourselves. Roughly 6.5 million tons of the fish that’s caught becomes fish meal and is fed to farm animals including cows, pigs, sheep, poultry, and farmed fish.
And although the farmed fish industry doesn’t kill any bycatch, their fish do suffer from overcrowding, disease, and even cannibalism. At least in vegetable gardens, giant zucchinis haven’t resorted to that!
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Good News in the Vegan World
by Susan Hanson
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Pope Francis has asked young people to eat less meat in a bid to take better care of the environment. In a letter to participants at the EU Youth Conference in Prague earlier this year, the Pope urged that we “break this self-destructive trend” of consumerism and prioritize sustainability.
Congressman Jamie Raskin and 31 other Congress members have sent a letter to President Biden urging him to put at least one vegetarian entree on the menu of every federal cafeteria to improve the health of Americans and mitigate the climate crisis. You can write or call Biden to advocate for this at https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
An amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023 could require the Navy to serve plant-based protein options at two overseas bases. The Guns and Rocket Dining Facility at Fort Sills, Oklahoma, became the first Army base to offer a 100% plant-based option.
On May 6, 2023, there will be a march and rally in cities all over the world to demand a societal vegan paradigm shift that normalizes non-violence, sustainability, and collective liberation for all earthlings through the immediate development and transition to a plant-based veganic food system.
King Charles’s private residence is opening its gates to the public for Christmas dinner…and there’s no turkey on the menu! It will be a completely vegan meal. Visitors will enjoy celeriac and truffle soup, and choose between pan-fried roots or a chestnut cake for the main course, served with squash puree, Brussels sprouts, and red salsa. You can read more below:
If you have some good news about the plant-based world that you think we should share—whether it’s worldwide, national, local, political, grassroots, or whatever—please email susan@nwveg.org, and we may include it next time. Thanks!
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Did You Know...?
There's No Fat in Oil?!?
by Donna Reynolds
Have you ever noticed the words “Fat-Free” or “0 grams Saturated Fat” on a can of cooking spray whose main ingredient is oil? If oil is 100% fat, how can that be? Apparently it involves being incredibly quick with the spray nozzle and rounding down.
If a product in the U.S. has less than 5 grams of fat per serving, it can round the fat content to the nearest 0.5 grams. And if that product has less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving, it can be rounded down to 0 grams! So even though there’s one gram of fat in a one-second spray of cooking oil, by making the serving size just 1/4 of a second, that’s small enough that companies can then list the fat content per serving as “0 grams.”
Unfortunately those 1/4 second "0 fat" blasts can add up pretty quickly, so it may be better to simply invest in some nonstick cookware instead!
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Westside (Orenco) Compassionate Thanksgiving
- Saturday, November 19, 2022
- 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
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Orenco Unitarian Universalist Church (map)
- 6815 NE Birch Street, Hillsboro, OR
Limited Space: Registration Required
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Join us for a leisurely vegan Compassionate Thanksgiving potluck followed by games and fun for the family. See your old friends and meet new ones. Bring a dish to share, an ingredient list, and your own utensils, cups, plates, and napkins. If you come alone, figure the amount to serve 4-6 generously; increase the amount 4 servings for each additional person in your party/family. Tofurky will also generously be donating Tofurky Roasts to this potluck. Be sure to register soon, as we only have 50 spaces for this event at this location. To register, click on the picture above, and fill in the registration form on that page. |
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Eastside Compassionate Thanksgiving
- Sunday, November 20, 2022
- 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
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Stone Tower SDA Church (map)
Sold Out
We have 50 people registered, but you can click here to learn more about the Eastside gathering and to sign up for a wait list in case someone cancels. Also, there is still space at the Westside Compassionate Thanksgiving on Saturday, November 19.
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Vancouver Nov/Dec Potluck/Picnic (BYOF)
- Thursday, December 1, 2022
- 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
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The Good Shepard Lutheran Church and Preschool (map)
Join us at 5:30 PM for a “Bring Your Own Food” picnic/potluck or at 6:30 PM for our presentation, or both. Amber Canavan has been an activist for over 20 years after finding animal rights information on the internet from peta2.com. She has a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies and works in the Campaigns Department PETA for her day job. In her free time she is on the Advisory Board of Animal Rights Collective Portland and co-founded Compassionate PDX, which works to help pass animal rights legislation such as fur and foie gras sale bans in Oregon and Washington.
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Westside Potluck
- Sunday, December 18, 2022
- 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
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West Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (WHUUF) (map)
Join us for our Westside vegan potluck at 5:00 PM or the program at 6:30 PM (program to be announced). For the potluck, please bring a plant-based (no animal products, including honey) main dish, salad, or dessert; a card listing its ingredients; and plates and utensils for your use. If you come alone, figure the amount to serve 4-6; increase the amount 4 servings for each additional person in your party/family. A donation of $2-5 is suggested to help cover the cost of the venue rental. WHUUF is located at 8470 Southwest Oleson Road, Portland, OR, 97223.
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Apple-Cinnamon
Steel-Cut Oats
(Instant Pot or Stovetop)
by Linda Tyler
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With the Instant Pot, you can have a piping hot batch of apple-cinnamon whole-grain cereal ready in less than 30 minutes from stepping into the kitchen. There are countless ways to customize this recipe: choose different whole grains, your own apple type, and fun toppings. Serve 4-5 people at one breakfast, or portion it out for 4-5 days in a row for yourself.
See stovetop instructions below the recipe.
Add the following ingredients to the Instant Pot. Lock the lid. Set the knob to “Sealing.” Use the “Multigrain,” “Pressure Cook,” “High,” or “Manual” setting. Set for 8 minutes. Use a 10-minute quick release (i.e., let it sit for 10 minutes after the 8 minutes of pressure-cooking is done, then move the knob to venting to release remaining steam, then open the lid).
- 3.75 cups water
- 1 cup steel-cut oats or any combination of whole grains/seeds like buckwheat groats, amaranth, quinoa, millet, barley, spelt, kamut, flaxseed, and steel-cut oats
- 2 apples, peeled and grated or diced (or leave the peels on) (any kind of apple)
- 1/4 cup flaxseed meal (optional but very healthy)
- 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
Remove the lid and stir the cereal. It is ready to serve with optional toppings:
- Nondairy milk
- Pecans or other nuts
- Maple syrup, date paste, or other sweetener
- Raisins or dates
This dish can be refrigerated or frozen for leftovers. You may need to stir in some nondairy milk or water when you heat them up to eat.
Stovetop Instructions
The night before (or at least 2 hours before). In a large saucepan, bring the water to a boil.
Turn off the heat. Add the grains, apples, flaxseed meal and spices and stir. Cover and let stand 2 hours or overnight.
In the morning, set pan over medium heat, bring to a boil, reduce to low, and simmer until grains are tender, about 10-15 minutes. Add more water if needed.
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NORTHWEST VEG | nwveg.org |
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