Sunday, February 22, 2009

Breakfast Pizza and Seeds and Not Milk

Most of you know, we turn out heat down at night. Basically, we turn it off since our thermostat doesn't go below 50 degrees. It saves energy and it isn't that tough if you use lots of blankets, but mornings are cold until the old radiators kick on again. This means on cold weekend mornings we all hang out together and snuggle, talk, read, etc. until the house warms up. This morning, I was surfing blogs on my iPhone and Rob was asking what was for breakfast while we listened to the knocking of the steam heat and procrastinated about getting out of bed. Rob had made a double batch of pizza dough earlier in the week and we hadn't gotten around to making pizza so he said he could make pizza for breakfast. That sounded good to the rest of us and about that time I was reading a local blogger, Sulking in Illinois. Her latest post had an awful link I just had to visit. It was like rubber necking at an accident. I just couldn't look away from the "food". Nope, I don't think it can be classified as food...it was all too de-custing (as the boys used to say) to be seen as food even for omnis. I was reading the descriptions to Rob for added horror. This prompted a memory of his teenage years. He used to work at a restaurant in NC owned by the parents of his friend, Buzz (still a dear friend whom he just caught up with on the phone yesterday). This restaurant experience is why Rob is in charge of making pizza dough in our house. Rob recalled on some weekend mornings, Buzz would make a special breakfast pizza for them. The pizza was loaded with scramble eggs, Canadian sausage, and other "traditional" breakfast fare. We often gross each other out with the things we ate as kids...usually Rob wins, he is from the South after all...how can I compete with Southern food when it comes to things we wouldn't dream of eating as vegans. This breakfast pizza was a new story to me and it sounded pretty bad. Rob is not one to miss non-vegan foods, but he said the breakfast pizza was pretty good. We'll have to try some scramble tofu and fauxsages sometime, but this morning he stayed with more normal (for us at least) toppings. This pizza has carrots, kalamata olives, and chickpeas.
In the background you see some of Parker's seeds sprouting. He received a recycled plastic pot and seeds kit for Christmas. It is keeping us going during this long cold winter we find ourselves frozen in. The funny thing about the kit is that recycled plastic is ironically made from milk jugs. I didn't notice when he opened his box, but when I was looking at them at the store the other day I saw that they actual promote milk drinking on the sets. How messed up is that? It says something like "Step 1. Drink Milk, It's Good for You!" Well, as we all know cow's milk is good for baby calves, but not good for human kids or grown up for that matter. Humans are the only mammal that regularly drinks the milk from another species and continues to drink it long after we wean. Consumption by humans of milk meant to take a calf to a large cow in a short amount of time causes lots of health problems, environmental problems, and obviously issues for the poor cows who are kept lactating for human consumption while their calves are usually taken away from them within 24 hours after birth. I'm concerned that a toy which is sold as "eco-friendly" would promote something as unhealthy, unethical, and environmentally damaging as drinking cow's milk.

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