New Vegan-Friendly Cafe: The Ark

A new church-run restaurant offers mostly vegan fare as a healthy alternative in a low-income neighborhood.

Seventh-day Adventists opened The Ark in a former Pizza Hut earlier this year. Adventists established meatless restaurants as early as the late 19th century in a bid to encourage healthy living.

For Adventists, who believe discipleship involves care for the body as well as the soul, meatless restaurants provide vehicles to bless the world. They also enable new friendships to take root as diners, wait staff and cooks share common passions. 

The Ark’s main purpose is to promote good health and the happiness that comes from feeling healthy. The Ark offers midday meals six days a week and dinner two nights a week.

After lunch on weekdays, tables are routinely folded up and chairs reconfigured for free workshops on health-related topics such as therapeutic massage, hydrotherapy, smoking cessation and vegan cooking. Eating meat taxes the environment far more than a plant-based diet does.

Some patrons of The Ark are now rethinking how they relate to the natural world and other creatures--even if they are not signing on to Adventism, which encourages but does not require a meatless diet. For those seeking spiritual connections, Adventists are glad to share about their faith, but only if restaurant customers ask about it.

Outside of lunch hours, tables are sometimes cleared to make room for worship, Bible study or a prophecy seminar. But if all people do at The Ark is eat lunch, that’s quite alright.

Click The Ark to get to their website.

Mind If I Order The Cheeseburger?

Great episode from podcast, ARZone:


Episode 75 features Professor of Law and author Sherry Colb.

Sherry Colb is professor of Law at Cornell University and is the author of the book, Mind If I Order the Cheeseburger? and Other Questions People Ask Vegans (2013). 

Sherry visits ARZone to talk about that book, in which she offers practical and well-reasoned advice to all of us who may encounter some of the most common questions put to vegans by non-vegans. She also talks with us about the importance of empathy and understanding in advocacy and how feminism intersects with animal rights.

http://www.arzonepodcasts.com/2013/12/arzone-podcast-75-sherry-colb-mind-if-i.html

Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart, Vaute Couture, and Michelle Schwegmann, Herbivore Clothing

Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart, Vaute Couture, and Michelle Schwegmann, Herbivore Clothing

A great podcast from: Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Episode Info | Unity.FM

Dairy-Free New Year's Eve Recipes

Most New Year's Eve recipes contain some sort of dairy. The link below has a recipe collection of cruelty-free dairy-free renditions of the classics that are sure to bring in the New Year right!

Cruelty-Free New Year's Eve Recipes

Cruelty-Free Christmas and Kwanzaa Meals

Again, like Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, there are thousands and thousands of holiday cruelty-free meals, so here are some of the best Christmas and Kwanzaa links to them:

Vegan Christmas Recipes

http://www.vegkitchen.com/tips/a-colorful-vegetarian-christmas/

A Joyful Vegan Christmas Dinner

http://vegparadise.com/cookingwith512.html

Top vegan Christmas & holiday recipes

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/998735/top-vegan-christmas-recipes

Vegan Kwanzaa

http://veganpeace.blogspot.com/2009/12/vegan-kwanzaa.html

Vegetarian Kwanzaa Feast (actually, all "vegan" meals)

http://www.peta.org/living/food/kwanzaa-vegetarian-feast/

HAPPY CRUELTY-FREE HOLIDAYS!!

Become Vegan for the Right and Only Reason: For the Animals

I hear that how vegans should not push too hard in educating others about veganism, but I disagree and feel this is missing the point of why we become vegans in the first place. It's for the animals, not to please other vegans.

Look at it this way for example: I decide to continue being cruel towards animals--eating them--because some human was too hard on me in trying to get me to become vegan? What does the "pushy vegan" have to do with whether or not I would become a vegan? I would become vegan for the animals' sake not for the sake of pleasing some vegan.

People that use pushy vegans as an excuse not to become vegan really isn't becoming vegan for the right and ONLY reason anyway--for the animals. They are thinking of becoming vegan to please or get along in the vegan community, otherwise they wouldn't care how aggressive a vegan was. If they find that vegan too preachy/aggressive but they need support, then they should go to vegans that do a softer approach. 

I think how vegans educate others varies according to their style/personality. 

Gary Yourofsky said in an interview, during one of his lectures at a school that a person was complaining he was too preachy and aggressive with his approach. He said something like, "OK, how many people here feel I'm being too aggressive?" No else else raised their hand. He said to this person, "How can this be? They heard the same lecture as you, but yet they feel I gave the lecture fine." Gary then said in the interview that it doesn't matter how you talk to people about veganism; either people are ready to hear it now and become vegan or they are not at that time. 

It's about whether you want to hurt animals or not. Period. It's the facts in the message that changes one to being vegan--not any person. Tell it to a person strongly or softly, it's still the same news, the same facts.

So those vegans who turned omnivores again never were vegans for the animals anyway. They were just vegans probably for the sake of being social in the vegan community, like as if we are some kind of club, otherwise they would have said (If they felt the vegans were being pushy), "Screw you guys. I'm staying away from you all, but will stay vegan of course because I'm doing this for the animals."

It's all about the animals--and that's thee only way to stay a vegan for life. It has to be or otherwise that potential vegan, newbie vegan, or a vegan for years, will in time come up with some excuse to go back sooner or later to their omnivore ways.

So to those vegans who say, "I don't care how a person becomes vegan, as long as they do," should care. Because why a person becomes vegan is important to whether they stay vegan for life, or in a day, month, year or so to becoming an ex-vegan.

Animal Protection Laws: Where Does Your State Rank?

The Animal Legal Defense Fund published it's longest-running, most comprehensive report that tracks animal protection laws across the entire U.S. This year’s biggest trends included strengthening penalties for neglecting an animal (now a felony in six more states) and requiring that abusers reimburse those who care for cruelly treated animals—including Arizona, the most-improved jurisdiction in 2013. 

The best five states for animal protection remained the same this year, with Oregon enacting a felony penalty for animal neglect and rising to the number two spot. North Dakota completely revamped its cruelty code to include a felony cruelty provision for the first time, and jumped out of the top states to abuse animals. South Dakota is now the only state that does not include a felony penalty for even the most heinous acts of cruelty.