Protect Your Junk!

Genital warts are sick, right??

It’s been known for a long time that genital warts are caused by a virus called HPV, and that once you got the virus, you would carry it forever like a little infectious knapsack. Most of the strains of HPV (there are literally hundreds, and you probably already have some) are totally innocuous, but some of them cause problems. Big warty problems. Anyway, all this should be old news if you are a lady who has ever gone to a doctor, attended public school, or stolen your sister’s subscription to Seventeen Magazine.

However, a while back, science found out that not only could HPV cause warts, it was also causing 70% of all known cases of cervical cancer. SEVENTY PERCENT!! Whoa, right?!!!?!!

Following this discovery, science developed a vaccine that targets the four most common strains of HPV including those most likely to cause cervical cancer. Amazing. Seriously. This is so rad. Gardasil has been around for a while now and tons of ladies are being vaccinated as we speak. Win.

However, what is totally fucking messed up is that until like, 2 days ago the vaccine hadn’t been approved for use in boys. Even though it is exactly the same vaccine that’s given to women, and men carry exactly the same strains at exactly the same frequency as women. It is something that has bothered me so, so much for the entire time I’ve known about the vaccine. That’s like saying “Well, male bodies can’t get pregnant so why bother with male birth control?”

Just because men aren’t getting cancer from it, doesn’t mean they’re not responsible for carrying it, and spreading it around! Come on!!

Anyway, like I said, it was just reported that the vaccine has finally been approved for use in men, and I am stoked.

Everyone should have protected sex. That’s obvious. But for some horrible reason, condoms aren’t actually all that effective at protecting against HPV. Women should get vaccinated and so should men. If there were some totally dormant STD that I was carrying around that somehow caused testicular cancer in men, I would get vaccinated. Just sayin.

I should mention that I am normally totally sketched out by vaccines, and am doubly sketched out by money hungry drug companies who are constantly fear-mongering in people’s lives so they’ll pay many, many dollars for treatments they don’t need or could have been prevented (or, ironically, for problems caused by other products that the company endorses). BUT this one is important. Really, really important.

Something like this should be free, like water. It should be an earth given right. However, since we don’t live in that kind of world, we should all just agree to pay for it for now. All of us. Girls and boys. Do it.

Vegan MoFo – Gourd Edition!

Autumn in upstate New York brings a whole host of amazing new sensations, textures, and experiences. At Farm Sanctuary, it also brings opportunity for extreme gourd scavenging. Pumpkins, Acorn, Butternut and Summer squash grow like weeds out of the giant compost fields in the Farm’s upper pastures. Earlier this week, we took a truck out to see how many we could find and came back with *92* different squash which have been feverishly squirreled away in various nooks of the house awaiting their turn in the oven.

A couple Thanksgiving’s ago, I threw down some truly amazing acorn squash and black bean empanada’s courtesy of Veganomicon which I intend to reincarnate as burritos tomorrow for a pre-pumpkin-carving feast. As we work through the various roastings, bakings, poachings, fryings and purees that will be required to dispense with these babies, I will be sure to post results and recipes. I also welcome any and all recipe suggestions! Even the totally weird, not at all thought out, experimental ones. Maybe now’s the time to flesh out the details of that butternut squash/leftover rice/sriracha/miso “meal” that you cobbled together from your empty fridge one Thursday night. We are about to become ground zero for squash-cooking innovation.

Put your gourd face on. It’s game time.

Vegan MoFo: Detroit, MI

Oh, Detroit. Sweet, broken Detroit. I spent a week there last month and beginning this winter, I’ll be living there full time while I attend school at Wayne State. What used to be known as “The Paris of the Midwest” is now a decaying wasteland, overwrought with poverty, crime, and neglect. The rapid decline of the auto and manufacturing industries in Detroit that began in the 80’s and continues to this day, has severely crippled the city to a level it may never recover from.

The tremendous poverty in Detroit coupled with a steady decline in population has created an interesting combination of factors that the remaining residents must mitigate in order to forge a legitimate living.

One of the setbacks residents face is the lack of grocery stores in town. Forced out by economic hardship, there remain only a very small handful of markets which amount to little more than amplified convenience stores. The best place I found was the Honey Bee Market which is a Mexican grocery near the abandoned train station. Their produce selection was incredible, as was their variety of grains and canned goods. The biggest bummer was the noticeable lack of organic food, and the prevalence of highly processed garbage parading as actual food HOWEVER, I could say the exact same thing about any Safeway, so I’m not blaming the Honey Bee so much as the agriculture industry in general. There is a Whole Foods somewhere out in the white suburbs, but the large co-op in town closed down about three years ago and has yet to be replaced.

In addition, fully 30% of the buildings in the city are abandoned, and many thousands have been razed over the years leaving ample space for nature to reclaim its stake of the land. It’s not uncommon to pass entire city blocks where only one home remains, the rest having been abandoned and destroyed long ago leaving entire acres of land available and unused. This particular phenomenon combined with the lack of available food, and particularly, lack of money, has led many Detroiters to initiate aggressive urban gardening projects. Literally hundreds upon hundreds of geurilla gardens have been started on land that at one time held homes, schools, and businesses but now needs only a few bags of soil and some regular maintainance to create food for dozens of families.

Some food produced by these gardens is eaten only by those who grow it, but a very large amount goes toward local farmers markets which creates a small, but noticeable boon to the flailing economy. One home I visited was using the old coal cellar in their basement to grow heirloom varieties of mushrooms which they sell to upscale restaurants in Detroit and elsewhere.

I also met a man who was in the process of mapping every wild fruit tree in the city in order to make a comprehensive guide available which included location, variety, and harvest seasons.

What amazes me so much about this entire initiative is that it is totally unlike the major urban gardening platforms in other metropolitan areas. What I’ve experienced in other cities is that most people who grow their own food from their homes do so because it’s the “right thing to do.” By that, I mean there seem to be a lot of people who participate in it much the same way as they would bike to work, recycle their waste, use low energy light bulbs, etc. It is along the plane of political and social righteousness that has the benefit of making the gardener feel as though they are Making A Difference. As though they can’t possibly be wasteful, priviliged, or ignorant – they grow their own food!

What I like about Detroit’s urban gardening movement, which is also what I like about Detroit itself, is that people grow their own food because they have to, not because it’s politically correct, not because they want to be Part Of The Solution, but because they have no other choice. It is a movement that genuinely transcends racial and socioeconomic status. What might be classified in other American cities as activism, is merely a single tool at the disposal of the forgotten and disenfranchised citizens of a dying city.

Personally, I’m hoping that this is the direction the city continues to move in. It’s my belief that the attempt to re-invigorate Detroit in order to restore it to its former status, is actually what is keeping the city from evolving and thriving. If Detroit embraced its emerging ruralization and actually passed measures to support the return of the land from industrial to agricultural, it would open the door for vast economic growth in the realm of food production. This hopefully would provide jobs, relieve the pressure of food scarcity, stimulate the economy, and provide a tangible springboard for city planners who are currently being forced into an outdated box that is no longer suitable for use.

I am hoping that living there and studying the way in which all these factors interact will bring me closer to an understanding of urban renewal in the developed world. Or, at least keep me in delicious, local, organic produce for all eternity.

Vegan MoFo: The Essentials

When I set out to hitchhike across America in August, I packed the absolute smallest number of items I could possibly get away with, which included food. In order to travel as lightly as possible, I decided to forgo the majority of cooking tools and amenities and instead opted for a small selection of dried goods, some disposable utensils that I stole from the food court at Whole Foods, and a metal cup measure that I could use as a bowl.

I tried to choose foods that would be the most lightweight, but also calorically dense (or at least really filling). I chose, a plastic jar of peanut butter, ten luna bars of varying flavors, a small bag of raw oats, and the contents of several freeze-dried soup cups emptied into individual ziplock bags. I chose a combination of black bean, split pea, and lentil. Even the jankiest of gas stations will still have a hot water dispenser attached to their coffee machine which can be used to rehydrate soups and oatmeal.

I went the first 2 weeks of my trip without setting foot inside a grocery store. Breakfast was usually scavenged from whichever home I was staying in (surprisingly, I didn’t end up sleeping outside ever), and failing that, I would either cook up some oats, or smear peanut butter on one of the energy bars. That is usually what lunch looked like too. Dinner was always different and completely dependent on my location.

In several towns, I was able to sleuth out the location and time of the nearest Food Not Bombs. For those of you unfamiliar with FNB, it’s an international organization made up of thousands of chapters whose sole goal is to take donated or dumpstered food and turn it into free, communal vegan meals for anyone who shows up. FNB is active in varying degrees in most every major city (and a ton of minor ones, especially those with colleges) and is always a reliable source of a hot meal for the homeless traveler. The wherabouts of any FNB chapter can usually be found by stopping into any collective/anarchist bookstore or coffeeshop, asking homeless people or crust punks you may see around town, or by visiting this website and finding your location.

The other option for free food* is dumpster diving. Most stores that sell food have dedicated “food” dumpsters where they deposit anything that doesn’t sell quickly enough, or exhibits any possible signs of age. The dedicated dumpsters mean your food never touches a single bag of bathroom trash, or other gross waste that may have come from inside the store. In all my time spent inside dumpsters, I have rarely found food that I would consider to be inedible. I have almost exclusively been treated to perfectly ripe produce (Trader Joes even packs theirs in celophane!), and tons of packaged dried goods, juices, soups, alternative milks, and snacks.

For some reason, some stores have started locking or hiding their dumpsters to prevent people from accessing that which has been assigned a value of zero. Curious.

There are many creative ways to get around this (with varying degrees of legality and difficulty) but one of the best I’ve found, is actually asking some of the employees in the produce department if there is any waste for that day that might be available. I’ve had people leave food for me in secret locations, and even hand me stuff off the shelves. America!!

Another trick I found was discovering free public events where food was going to be provided and then crashing them. For me, this included breakfast at a bike punk conference in Minneapolis, tons of bread and snacks from a hotel buffet in Missoula, and a Chinese cultural festival in DC. Opportunities for the advantageous scavenger are everywhere.

If you’re not one for clandestine activity, there is still a lot of actually nutritious vegan food that can be had for ultra cheap, even in tiny gas stations in Miles City, North Dakota. I favored salted pumpkin seeds, trail mix, saltines, wheat thins, and TONS of apples, oranges, and bananas which seem to be the only three fruits officially acknowledged by the petroleum industry.

You may notice the deep chasm in my road diet where fresh fruits and vegetables should be, which is something I really struggled with. Occasionally, I would stop in a store and pick up some hummus and veggies, and possibly some fruit that I could eat immediately. Without any way to store fresh stuff, it was really a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I found I was able to get a lot of vegetables into the meals I would share with people I stayed with, but if I were doing this trip over, I would make a point of getting some fruit each day and saving it for the following morning just to cram as much real food into my diet as possible. I mean, I could eat corn nuts and black coffee exclusively, but then I’d look like one of those haggard vegans you wish would stop giving veganism a bad rap by eating garbage. Just because it’s vegan, doesn’t mean you should eat it.

The only commodity I consistently didn’t scrimp on was water. I drank tons, and tons of water. I brought my metal Sigg bottle and filled it every possible chance I got. I find that even if I’ve been eating poorly, it doesn’t affect my mood or energy the way dehydration does.

I mentioned that I often shared meals with the people I stayed with which was a great way to connect and offer something to them in return for their hospitality. I understand that some people may fear that their veganism would be a burden on anyone who may be generous enough to provide food for them. I rode through Pennsylvania with a truck driver who was kind enough to offer to buy me dinner. At the truck stop restaurant we came to, I was able to find a garden salad, steamed vegetables, and a baked potato. I know it can be uncomfortable turning down free food that isn’t vegan, but I find most people are understanding when I tell them that I’m ok. This is why it is absolutely essential to have a constant stash of your own food no matter what. Never get into a situation where you have to depend on someone else to feed you or provide anything that you need. This is out of safety and also common sense – people make bad decisions when they’re hungry or desperate. Keep it together.

I am sure I have tons more knowledge to bestow everyone with, but this is the basic outline of my life as a broke, homeless vegan. No excuses.

xoxo
Reno

*This account doesn’t acknowledge the role that shoplifting might play in one person’s quest for sustenance. I can fully appreciate every attempt to occupy what we might call extra-legal territory, but I’m not about to get myself on some FBI tracking list for discussing it on Teh Internetz. You’re on your own.

Back on the Farm

After being gone for almost a year, I have finally returned to the only place outside of Seattle that really feels like home – Farm Sanctuary. I lived and worked here for a year before leaving last winter to return to the west coast. Being back feels incredible. I have forgotten all the things that made me crazy, I am actually enjoying the mud and the freezing temperatures, and being back in touch with the animals I left here has been totally affirming.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be back to work on the shelter helping with farm chores, feeding, and healthcare. Waking up while it’s still dark and going to bed while it’s still light.

I have been thinking for so long that what I really needed in order to grow was to throw myself into as many different scenarios and places as possible. To totally strip myself of everything that comforted me. Now, I’m realizing that most of the plans I made to travel and explore are really just tools I am using to avoid doing the work on myself that I need to do. I realized that what scared me most about settling in somewhere and making a home for myself wasn’t that I was restless, it was that I would think I had let myself down. Or, more specifically, that I had let down an imaginary group of people who assign street cred based on the inverse relationship between life and lifestyle. I realized that the stronger, more independent thing to do was to make a home and a life for myself in a new place and fully establish my own identity from the ground up. I realized it’s ok to want a comfortable bed and a door I can close. It’s ok to want a routine. I think that I’ve finally realized that maturity is based on what you make yourself into, not waiting passively for the chisel of experience to mold you into a new person.

Man. I should write one of those page-a-day calendars.
Photos from the farm to come.

xoxo
Reno

Vegan MoFo: DC Edition

For my first Vegan MoFo post from the road, I thought I would highlight an extreme hitchhiker rarity: the home-cooked meal. I’ve spent the last three days in Washington DC with my cousin Christiana who has been nice enough to take me around to some really great restaurants which I’ll talk about during my next post when it’s not Merlot-o’clock. To repay her for her generosity, I got a mess of stuff from the Whole Foods and whipped up this rad fall meal.

Believe the hype:
Herb and Panko Crusted Tempeh
Roasted Rosemary Sweet Potatoes
Garlic and Onion Stewed Kale
Mushroom and Shallot Gravy

BOO-YAH. I didn’t realize how extremely deprived I’ve been for a totally home made dinner. I didn’t use any cookbooks, but here is my extremely sloppy rendition of this meal…

For the Tempeh:
1 8oz block of tempeh (I used 3-grain. Have you tried it?? It’s so good!)
A few dashes of tamari
A couple cups of mushroom stock (Regular veggie stock would work fine. Or water if you’re some kind of ludite)
1 Cup of regular flour
2 Cups of Panko bread crumbs (Check the label! Some of the flavored kinds use whey!)
1-1.5 Cups Unsweetened Rice Milk (Or soy or whatever, just nothing sweet or vanilla)
Varying amounts of the following spices:
Garlic Powder
Celery Salt
Chili Flake
Rubbed Sage
Dried Thyme
Salt
Black Pepper

Cut the tempeh into three equal squares, then cut those diagonally to make six triangles. Place the triangles in a sauce pan and add equal party stock and water until it it almost covered, but not totally submerged. Add the tamari. Cover, and cook on medium high heat until simmering. Simmer for a minute and turn the temp to low. Continue cooking until most of the liquid is absorbed. Remove from pan and allow to cool (don’t refrigerate though. gross)

Once relatively cool, set up three bowls with your rice milk, flour, and Panko, in that order. For each piece of tempeh, dip it in the rice milk, coat in the flour, dip it again in the rice milk, and dip it in Panko. Set each onto a plate until cooking. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and coat with olive oil. Fry each piece of tempeh 3-4 minutes each side, or until sufficiently brown.

For the Kale:
1 medium sized shallot
1 small yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
1 bunch kale
1 large handful of crimini mushrooms
Olive Oil for the pan
Salt and pepper

Stem and rinse the kale and set aside. Wash and slice the mushrooms lengthwise. Roughly dice the onion, garlic and shallots. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a big fry pan. Add the garlic, onion and shallot and cook until translucent. Add the mushrooms, salt and pepper. After a few minutes, add the kale and cover with a lid to reduce. After a couple minutes, stir it all around and continue cooking until it looks/tastes done (seriously). Using tongs, move the kale and most of the mushrooms and onion to a serving dish. Leave some onion and mushrooms in the pan – this will become the base of the gravy. There should be quite a bit of liquid in the bottom of the pan, if there isn’t, add some stock. While the pan is still hot, throw a couple tablespoons of flour into the pan and whisk vigorously. If there isn’t enough liquid, add more stock, if it’s not thick enough, add more flour. You get the idea. Add salt if needed.

For the Potatoes:
2 medium sized sweet potatoes
A few pinches of dried rosemary
Some olive oil
Some salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400F. Peel and cut the potatoes into little cubes that are all pretty much the same size. Toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary until lightly coated. Place in a roasting dish and bake for 40-45 minutes, turning once.

I made this for a totally un-vegan, un-cooking relative who was floored. The key ingredient is salt. Don’t be stingy.
More words from DC soon, including my totally accidental trip to Sticky Fingers, an amazing Lebanese meal in Virginia, and Neapolitan pizza with vegan cheese. Dope.

Tomorrow I return to Farm Sanctuary where I will spend a month or more snuggling my babies, cleaning pens, making up meds, and going to bed at 9pm. Can’t wait.

xoxo
Reno

People Are Also Animals

For the last two years, the Post Punk Kitchen has hosted a month long celebration of vegan food, titled Vegan MoFo (MOnth of FOod – duh), wherein, participants catalog their adventures in vegan eating for 30 days. As horribly banal as it might sound (Julie and Julia? Please), I have actually been thinking a lot about my food choices while I’ve been on the road, and think that addressing some of the issues I’ve been facing trying to balance nutrition, thrift, and availability could be somewhat cathartic. This year, it’s being hosted by Cake Maker to the Stars, and is rumored to include the largest number of contributors yet. This bandwagon is on fire.

Beginning October 1st, I’ll begin compiling my thoughts on every way that my life on the road has affected my diet and general interaction with food. Dumpster diving, Food Not Bombs, truck stops, the overwhelming tendency toward packaged food, keeping it all as cheap/free as possible. I’ve had an interesting time. Maybe some people who are too afraid that their busy lifestyles or socioeconomic status won’t allow them to be vegan will get a little insight as to why those excuses are entirely bogus. Or maybe I’ll just talk to myself for a month about the one thing I probably talk to myself most about anyway. Either way, it’s gonna happen. That’s what I wanted to say.

See you then,
Reno

Dispatches

Word up Wednesday Volume 6 – Invisible Man’s Band

SO SPECIAL SATURDAY EDITION! AREN’T YOU SO GLAD I CAME BACK!?!??
This is going to be an even more body rockin’ edition than normal because it’s really a double post between the Invisible Man’s Band and The Stairsteps. Hype!

It seems that practically every great musical group of all time (with the exception of perhaps, 98 Degrees) has been anchored by siblings. That shit is Fact. Invisible Man’s Band, originally The Five Stairsteps, are a quintet of Burke brothers (and sister) out of Chicago. They were discovered by Curtis Fucking Mayfield and spent the first few years of their career shuffling through the many incarnations of Mayfield’s Windy C label before ending up on Dark Horse under George Harrison.

Without a doubt, the group’s most recognizable hit came in 1970 with the elevator-ready, elementary-school-graduation-style-joint “Ooh Child” which you may have heard EVERY DAY OF YOUR WHOLE LIFE SOMETIMES TWICE.

The Burke siblings recorded and performed under the ballad-heavy Stairsteps flag for over 15 years, releasing several charted hits, the first of which was 1966’s sweet, halcyonic groove “You Waited Too Long”. The group went on to enjoy a solid run of soft hitting radio joints including “Danger, She’s a Stranger”, “We Must Be in Love” and the later soul-pop hit, 1976’s “From Us to You.”

Despite the group’s success as the “first family of soul” (it is rumored that they held the title before being usurped by the Jackson Five. Burn, right?) it is the latter incarnation – Invisible Man’s Band – that ushered the group into the realm of funk and took their jams to the dance floor.

The first record by the new name was 1979’s All Night Thing, the title track of which was arguably the group’s most poppin’ joint and includes everyone’s favorite disco staple – The combination horn and whistle section.

The follow up album to All Night Thing, the self-titled Invisible Man’s Band, was released just one year later and continued the tradition of blending characteristic soul elements with emerging disco, funk, and electronic stylings. One of the more genre abiding tracks from the album also went on to be the most popular. The high energy “Love Can’t Come” is a succinct answer to the more bass heavy funk of the time, and also includes a nasty horn section that I will never stop jamming to.

Particularly notable is the pseudo-experimental track “Full Moon” which incorporates classic soul and R&B rhythm with more subversive island and dance hall style instrumentation. I’m pretty ambivalent about the song itself, but I appreciate it as a brave departure from the old formula.

And as if that weren’t enough, the Burke brothers did almost all of their own producing both as Stairsteps and Invisible Man’s Band. Nuff said.

What I like about the Stairsteps/IMB is the tangible evolution they took from safety-netted soul jammers to disco-funk legends. Any group that successfully conquers not one, but two decades worth of genre’s is worth some time, both here on the hyperwebz and also on the dance floor. Get it kids.

Sorry I can’t post any tracks for download right now. I’m on borrowed computers. Once I get my own spot again I’ll re-up these with the actual MP3’s. Jam.

All Talk

Well, well. It seems that instead of making promises we can’t keep, some of us should just keep our big mouths shut. I am going to overlook my severe neglect and mountain of lies and look forward to the future. I suggest you do the same.

Anyhow, after slogging through an ambiguous (read: drunken) spring, I made some plans to take leave of Seattle again and travel for as long as possible without paying rent or getting a job. SPRING BREAK, WOO!

Fast forward to now, and I’ve been on the road solo for about 3 weeks, not including the 5 vacation-ey weeks I spent between Portland, OR and Plymouth, MA. I set out from Seattle with a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a jar of peanut butter. I’ve been trying to travel as cheaply as possible which means a lot of hitchhiking. I’ve never hitchhiked alone until this trip and am glad it’s an experience I no longer have to wonder about. As I finish editing some of my journal entries, I’ll post them here so I don’t waste time repeating myself.

I have amassed quite a trove of angst ridden quarter-life drivel about being a lone girl in the big, big world, with nothing but her bootstraps (and the internet) to get her through. I’m sure you’ll find it riveting.

I’m in Detroit now. Sweet, broken Detroit. I’ve been here almost a week which is 4 full days longer than I planned. The atmosphere here makes it so easy to stay, and the horrendous state of transportation makes it so hard to leave, so I’m kind of taking it as it comes.

I’m scheduled to be in DC from September 18th through the 29th in order to take an intensive self-defense class which will hopefully prepare me for traveling alone in Europe which is phase 2 of my personal extradition program. I’m stoked to finally learn how to disable mouth-breathing “why’d-you-dress-that-way-if-you-didn’t-want-me-to-touch-you?” frat boys with just one arm.

All in all, I feel fucking great. I’m finally in a position where my decisions are solely my own. I don’t have to worry about considering anyone else’s wants or needs or allergies, at all, ever. I can literally go wherever I want, whenever I want, and all I have to think about is which highway I want to traverse. I am being wholly, unapologetically selfish for the first time in my life, and it is every bit as amazing as I ever thought it could be. You should try it. Actually, if you’re someone I’ve ever been close to, you’re probably already really, really comfortable being selfish and controlling, and don’t need my advice about how to demand what you want. However, for me, this has been a major transformation that I hope will seep into every level of my life and inform my relationships from here onward. It’s already effected the way I behave in certain interactions where I would normally sacrifice my own wants or needs to avoid conflict. Instead of doing that, I’m not. Fucking amazing.

I think Saturday I’ll move onto north Ohio and be in Pennsylvania by Sunday night. Check back for updates (for real this time!) and the triumphant return of Word Up Wednesday!

xoxo
Reno

PS: omg9/11neverforget