Morning Goodness!

Over the last few months, life has taken me on a completely different venue. I became a VEGAN! I know....odd! How did I ever come to this decision, you might be asking yourself. From the time I was a child meat has never been a big love of my life. I pretty much stuck to chicken and turkey and had the occasional red meat in the form of burgers or a steak with as little fat as you can get. I had already made the switch to soy, rice and almond milk a few years back, but after a visit to my daughter's in January 2010, I made the decision to eliminate meat from my diet entirely.

A month or so before that visit to my daughter's I had watched a video that was recently aired about where our meat comes from and what is done to it. How disturbing! Now many of you may be thinking that the government mandates that our food is handled with utmost care when it comes to hygiene, however, they do not mandate the treatment of these animals before they even make it to the meat packing plants.

Animals are given obscene amounts of hormones and anti-biotics that cause these animals to grow in the most UN-NATURAL ways! This should frighten you! Chickens grow such huge chests, due to the demand of white meat in our country, that they cannot even walk. They are packed into such tight quarters with thousands of other chickens (all indoors) that they have to have their beaks cut off because they peck at one another from the stress that they are under. Now that is just chickens (and turkeys).

Our beef is raised pretty much under the same circumstances. In addition, they are fed a corn diet because they are raised in tightly penned areas with no vegetation. Cows are meant to roam the grassy hills of our land and feed on that grass. Corn just makes them fat and under nourished. Seems like a contradiction. I could go further to explain the horrible treatment of calves when they are born to milk cows, but I won't.

Consequently, I have come to the decision to eat only what grows in our country without the aid of pesticides and toxic fertilizers. I am now dedicated to bettering my life by living vegan. So, now I would like to share some recipes that I have found and modified to my liking that use only vegetable based products.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Mix together:

2 cups flour (I use soft white wheat that I grind myself along with a Tblsp of flax seed)

1/2 cup Sucanat or sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup poppy seeds

In separate bowl mix well:

3/4 cup rice milk

2 egg replacers (I use 1 Tblsp flax seed ground and mixed with a couple Tblsp water)

1/4 cup olive oil

3 Tblsp lemon juice

1 6 oz container of Silk Soy Yogurt (lemon or vanilla)

Pour liquids into the dry ingredients and mix just until moistened. Spoon into oiled muffins cups and bake @ 400 degrees for about 12 minutes. Remove from pan, place onto rack and glaze with the following:

Juice from 1 lemon sweetened with honey (to your taste)