Author: Tracy I
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Veganizing family favourites: South African pickled f*sh gets a cruelty-free update
I’m home at my parents’ place for the Easter weekend. While it’s not a vegan household, my mum and dad have both gone a long way to make it vegan friendly. And so when I was chatting with them last week, my mother asked if I had ever given any thought to vegan possibilities for…
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A little catering win: plant-based milk for coffee
I like to write about catering fails and catering wins. And I have noted before that my workplace scores high in the sustainability rankings of institutions of higher ed. Of course I’m proud of this reputation. At the same time I am surprised and disappointed when we fall short on the catering front where sustainable–plant-based…
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I made seitan and you can too
Two things up front: 1. If you can’t do gluten, then seitan isn’t for you. 2. I get that my photo of the seitan doesn’t make it look super delicious, but you can think of seitan as a starting point. What is seitan? It’s a source of vegan protein that is made from vital wheat…
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Engage or chill?
Considering I’m a philosopher who has essentially been trained to argue, you might think my answer to “when to engage?” is “whenever the opportunity arises.” But that is not my approach at all. I have limited time and energy. I do not engage when it is hopeless. And there is a certain baiting approach, where…
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What do you do with the “may contain…” allergen warning?
Anyone who has ever spent time reading ingredient labels to see if a product is vegan is aware of the frequently-seen “may contain” warning. This warning is usually associated with known allergens, and most often will list tree nuts, soy, wheat, dairy, or eggs. I confess that I have usually considered this warning to be…
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Happy International Women’s Day 2024 and a shout-out to five vegan websites to love
Good morning and Happy International Women’s Day 2024! As this posts, I’ll be on my way to a breakfast in honor of the day. I thought it would be a great opportunity to draw attention to five of my favourite vegan recipe sites by women. The amount of work that goes into developing and testing…
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Bees: it’s not just about honey
Lots of people wonder why vegans don’t eat honey. The short answer is that it is produced through the labour of bees, which makes it an animal product and therefore not vegan. You may find some vegans who don’t worry about honey, possibly because they don’t consider insects to be animals or possibly because they…
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Killer Cute Shoes
Towards the end of his brilliant essay, “Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallace asks a series of questions, among them: Which brings me to the issue of leather shoes. [note that the shoes pictured above are cruelty-free, not leather] If people are open to thinking about these issues at all, they are willing to consider…
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Compassion as a reason to be vegan
I’ve said it before: one of my favourite things about starting this blog is that people send me things of interest that I might have missed. Last week someone sent me a link to Leo Babauta’s post, “Why I am Vegan (and how to make it easy),” from his Zen Habits site (thanks Daphne!). I…
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Surprise! These foods are NOT vegan
Lettuce is vegan, but I don’t have any surprise-not-vegan items in my home to photograph, hence, the lettuce. I’ve blogged before about accidentally vegan foods—things we assume aren’t vegan but actually and delightfully are. I still remember the day I discovered the maple cream cookies, which I had dutifully avoided while my friend Diane raved…
Vegan Practically 