CALLING ALL CALIFORNIANS

**UPDATE - 11/14/2012** The good news is in: ALL VOTES ON PROP 37 WILL BE COUNTED. The counties of California have until December 7 to report the vote and Secretary of State Debra Bowen has until December 14 to certify the vote.

Every vote cast on Prop 37 will be honored. The results will be published once they're in - fingers crossed!

                                                             

Proposition 37 was on the ballot in California during last week’s election, calling for a mandate to label genetically engineered food.  The prop was endorsed by most of the major health, labor and environmental groups in California, including the California Democratic Party, Whole Foods Market, MoveOn and Food Democracy Now!, just to name a few. 

According to polls, Prop 37 was likely to pass up until just a couple of weeks prior to the election. Monsanto spearheaded an anti-Prop 37 campaign, funneling millions of dollars into deceptive ads aimed at convincing the public that the proposition was poorly written and discouraging their support of it.  For a briefing on the evils of Monsanto, check out Millions Against Monsanto on the Organic Consumers site. 

Here’s where the controversy comes in. The released ballot measure results state that only 46.9% voted yes, while 53.1% voted no, thereby defeating Prop 37. However, according to the investigative journalist Jon Rappoport, over a million votes on Prop 37 have gone uncounted to date.  

Here’s how you can make a difference: sign the petition for the Secretary of State of California, Debra Bowen, to insist that ALL the votes cast on Prop 37 be counted

Read more on the fight for Proposition 37 here.

Protect your right to know.

xx

THEY HAD ME AT CIDER

This handsome fella is Farm Sanctuary's Russell. 

Yesterday, I attended the Celebration of Turkeys event at Farm Sanctuary up in Action, CA with my dear friend Jess. An unusually chilly day in SoCal, they greeted us with hot cider and vegan chocolate chip cookies (a.k.a. the express lane to my heart).  The afternoon commenced with their annual Feeding of the Turkeys ceremony. Instead of being the main course, the rescued turkeys at the farm were the guests of honor – and were pretty freakin’ adorbs. Gaggles of our feathered friends swarmed around the surveyors to gorge on pumpkin pie and cranberry salad.

The Feeding of the Turkeys ceremony in full swing.

After the turkey festivities, we all huddled together in a (thankfully) heated tent and sat down to our own vegan holiday feast. Catered by One Veg World, the meal consisted of kale chickpea salad, Tofurkey, mashed potatoes and gravy (still salivating over that one), stuffing, cranberries and a sinfully delectable pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting. Every morsel was lip-smackingly good.  

While the overall sentiment of the day was celebratory, there were fittingly sobering moments, as well. Seeing the rescued, genetically-engineered turkeys and pigs, goliath-sized compared to their cousins in the wild, was chilling. It was like peering into the pages of a Jurassic Park-esque novel, describing a futuristic society overrun by genetic engineering and on the verge of collapse. Additionally, the speakers - Susie Coston, Jonathan Balcombe and Gene Baur touched on the abuse that turkeys undergo in factory farms (an alarming 300 million are killed every year), the sensory and emotional complexity of the turkey, and the overall powerful impact of veganism. 

I want to give a huge shout-out and thank you to Gene Baur and the whole Farm Sanctuary family for hosting such a delightful and informative event. The day was a solid  reminder of why we’ve committed to a more compassionate lifestyle - and how delectable and invigorating that lifestyle can be.

Me, Jess and the founder of Farm Sanctuary, Gene Baur

                                                                          

Peace xx 

A DIRTY WORD

For years, "vegan" was a dirty, rarely uttered word, associated with an uninspiring diet of flavorless brown rice and steamed vegetables, ill-fitting hemp clothing and unpalatable pretension. 

We are so fortunate to be living through a culinary and nutritional renaissance, when healthy, cruelty-free food and a compassionate lifestyle are steadily being accepted and gaining popularity.  

This blog is my playground for sharing all my favorite pastimes - food, fashion, beauty and travel - and approaching them with a conscience. It's a compilation of my vegan discoveries, adventures and mishaps.  The hope is to create a destination where vegans and the vegan-curious troops can rally to support and encourage each other. 

Yea, I believe we can have our vegan gluten-free cake AND eat it, too. Let's do this. 

Be dirty. Be rotten. Be vegan.