Thursday, September 24, 2009

Autumn bounty

Tuesday marked the offical start of autumn, which fills me with ambivalence. I hate that the days are shorter and that it’s now dark when I leave work. The shivering specter of winter lurks on the horizon, a scourge to my cold-natured constitution.

And yet I love the vibrant colors of fall leaves, and I’m excited at the prospect of the holidays (Halloween is my favorite). I love so many of the foods of autumn. Pumpkins, winter squash, apples, pears and cranberries are some of my favorite foods and ingredients to cook with. They’re tasty, warming and comforting. I recently bought a collection of autumn recipes, and I’m looking forward to trying out a lot of them.

To get you ready for the flavors of fall, here are a few vegetarian autumn-foods collections online:

The Vegetarian Society, heavy on potatoes and mushrooms.
The Veggie Table, with a wide variety of dishes and ingredients.
About.com, lots of strictly pumpkin-related recipes.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Hatchery horrors

The group Mercy for Animals has posted the results of its new undercover investigation of a huge hatchery for egg-laying hens, where about 300,000 chicks hatch each day. At every step of the way, these babies are treated like unfeeling things, or like trash. They are roughly, mechanically separated from their eggshells, then sorted by sex. The females have parts of their beaks cut off; and the males—useless from the egg industry’s point of view—are tossed into machines that grind them up alive.

These horrors are only the start of a lifetime of suffering for egg-laying hens. An MFA investigation earlier this year captured evidence of abuses of hens at an egg farm.

These are shocking videos—wrenching and unbearable. And they should be required viewing for anyone who eats eggs.