The Discerning Brute: fashion, food & etiquette for the ethically handsome man » thanksgiving

An Early Thanksliving, So Don’t Be Late

joshuakatcher — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:43:47 +0000

It’s that time of year. The leaves are changing, there’s a crispness to the evening air, and the folks at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary are going crazy getting ready for their biggest, swankest, most talked-about event of the year: THANKSLIVING. Their fifth annual banquet is set to land on Sunday, October 10th, 2010 -- 10/10/10, cool huh? At 1pm, of course! This always sold-out celebration features 250 people enjoying an elegant meal in a heated tent in their goat pasture. It's held more than a month before the actual holiday to take full advantage of the gorgeous leaves and warmer weather. And to give you ideas to take back to family and friends for your own meatless celebration. For the car-challenged NYC-types they're timing it so you can take a bus!

You can expect world-class vegan chow (see menu), with main meal by chef David Silver of Second Helpings, appetizers by Blossom Du Jour and The Regal Vegan, and scrumptious desserts from Vegan Treats Bakery...

Music by Warren Defever/His Name Is Alive, who will be deejaying and playing all the old classics as well as songs from the new album “Midnight Bell Jams”…

Plus an extensive silent auction and raffle, very cool animal-friendly goods and services that had the whole crowd abuzz last year. A sampling includes Olsen Haus Shoes, a weekend at the Waterfall House, a retreat at Kripalu Center, LUSH gift bag, Arbonne Cosmetics, a private airplane ride over the Catskills, a Vaute Couture coat... and more! Get all your holiday shopping done while stuffing yourself!

Gluten free? They got your back but need to know as far as possible in advance, please make a note on the order form when you pay for the tickets.

No Thanks, Turkey Day.

joshuakatcher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:08:26 +0000

For many of us, Thanksgiving is about indulgence. Around this time of year, I'm usually flying down to visit my parents in Florida, where we prepare a feast and eat much more than we typically would. Thanksgiving, not unlike the other major holidays, has become more about buying certain things assigned to that holiday and subscribing to a ritual that makes us feel good (indulging in the company of friends and family) under the guise of goodwill. And maybe that goodwill isn't just a guise, but as we all try to act out that famous Norman Rockwell painting, accurate history just doesn't seem to matter. Consider what historians have recently discovered - that Spanish-speaking, Catholic settlers dined on bean soup with the Timucua Indians almost a half-century prior to the famed 1621 Plymouth celebration (which incidentally did not have a single factory farmed Turkey at the table - and no cranberry or potatoes). So how is it that 500 years later, this holiday has become a showcase of nothing but Turkey? It is know as "Turkey Day". Last Thanksgiving I warned, "It's Me or the Turkey," vowing to never again sit at a table where the body of an individual whose existence was thankless is set out on display. A bird whose morbidly engineered body: painfully detoed and debeaked without anesthesia, forced to live in one sq-foot of space, pumped full of drugs and hormones - is somehow turned into the centerpiece of gratitude. An individual whose life is not considered valid. How is it that this abstinence I have asserted is seen as "radical", yet the processes by which this dead body arrived is not? How is it that talking about the truth of turkey farming is avoided like the plague, yet putting the product of that truth in our mouths is so enthusiastically embraced? Every year almost 300 million turkeys are slaughtered in the US. Of that, 46 million are specifically killed for Thanksgiving. Having been bred to grow at alarming rates (twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors, often causing heart attacks), commercial turkeys are slaughtered after only 14-18 weeks. Many of them die of exposure during transport to the slaughterhouse, and when they arrive, many are not properly stunned prior to slaughter. Turkeys and other poultry are specifically excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires that animals be stunned prior to slaughter. Finally, as the birds who have not been stunned avoid the automated blades slitting their throats, they are often boiled alive in scalding tanks. Even "free-range" turkeys are no better off. In an industry where maximum output and profit are king, it is no surprise that suffering by individuals who fall between the cracks is so easily overlooked. As much as we'd like them to be true, our delusions of these birds having come from peaceful, Utopian farms must be shattered. Please take a look at these undercover investigations in turkey facilities from our friends at Compassion Over Killing and Peta. As Johnathan Safran Foer says in his new book, "We can not plead ignorance, only indifference". Given what we now know about food production and factory farms, where 99% of animal products come from, it's difficult to rationalize eating turkeys in a symbolic gesture of thankfulness. The scientific community recently re-wrote the book on bird-brains, revealing how incredibly intelligent turkeys and chickens actually are, shaming the community that capitalized on their perceived stupidity. We also know that the environmental consequences of raising animals for food is greater than the entire transportation sector. We know that we don't need to eat a Turkey any more than a Twinkie, yet the sentimentality of tradition persists, and so many of us purchase the anonymous, plastic-wrapped, frozen body of a creature and gather with our families around it like some sort of shrine that we are entitled to, never giving a second thought to who he or she was, and what his or her perception and experience of this world was like. Please take a moment to watch the short video I produced for Farm Sanctuary featuring actress Ginnifer Goodwin as she considers this "tradition based on cruelty" while hanging out with some rescued Turkeys at the sanctuary in Orlan, California. So what's the alternative? Can Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving without turkey? Here are some tips on a conscientious celebration and ideas for a truly thankful holiday: • Sponsor a Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary Turkey, or a Farm Sanctuary Turkey (or both!) • Check out my recipe for Pumpkin Pockets with Smoky Seitan, Mushroom Mousse, & Braised Apple, or check out my recipe page for other ideas! • Try Celebration Roast, Tofurky, or Unturkey as the new centerpiece! • More compassionate and delicious Thanksgiving recipes from VegCooking.com:

Ginnifer Goodwin stars in PSAs for Farm Sanctuary, produced by Joshua Katcher

joshuakatcher — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:24:19 +0000

I traveled to Orlan, California to produce a series of PSAs for Farm Sanctuary with superstar, Ginnifer Goodwin (Big Love, He's Just Not That Into You, Walk The Line). Ginnifer is an amazing animal advocate and we were thrilled to work with her. Beautiful inside and out! We also got to hire Ryan Pfluger to shoot Ginnifer's photo campaign for this. Click on the photos to see larger versions, and watch the PSAs below! Also don't forget to visit AdoptATurkey.org!

Fresh Friday Finds

TheDiscerningBrute — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:42:45 +0000

1. BUY NOTHING DAY is a holiday that is more important than Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Hanukkah, and yes - even New Years? Why, you ask? Because the integrity of the ecosystems we depend upon for survival hang in the balance. Consumption - something Americans are better at than the rest of the world, requires production. Production requires resource extraction. Every product has to be dug up, ripped out, cut down, or gathered - it doesn't magically appear! Even greenwashed products, unless totally recycled or thrift, requires a piece of the landbase in some form. So on November 28th, let freedom ring - exercise your right NOT to go shopping! 2. A Breaking Investigation Reveals That Turkeys Were Stomped, Punched, and Kicked. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, do you really need to condone this by choosing to eat a big, dead bird? Really? What can you do about it? Don't pay the callous people who do this by purchasingthe body of a turkey this Thanksgiving. Instead - adopt a turkey! 3. Like the Peacoat look, but hate the wool? If you need a really warm, non-wool peacoat, check this out from VeganStore. $199

4. Emilie at The Conscious Kitchen has prepared some mouth-watering thanksgiving fare. If you need inspiration, she is your go-to gal for sure!

5. Where Does Donna Karan Stand On Fur? I love the new ad campaign from PETA that is being wheatpasted up all around Donna's office and apartment.

It's Me or the Turkey!

TheDiscerningBrute — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:33:55 +0000

Thanksgiving is already a holiday that's wrong on so many levels. I don't need to go into the details of the nature of our ancestors interactions with the Native North Americas - or the clinging to the fantastically ridiculous and false fairy tale of our chummy dinner together one night a few hundred years ago. But the last thing we should allow Thanksgiving to continue being is yet another massacre concealed under the guise of tradition, goodwill, and entitlement. This holiday season, I am refusing to sit at any table with a big, dead, tortured, cooked bird on it!

Why? For one, I had no idea how similar turkey's are to cats until I met one. Like most people, I subscribed to the convenient belief that they were dumb and void of personality. This is such a pervasive stereotype because A) Most of us do not get to actually meet a turkey who is not dead, frozen, sliced, de-footed and beheaded. B) The turkeys can't speak in any language that we validate; their clucks and gobbles are written off as nonsense in that same fashion that racist and xenophobic Americans make fun of any language they don't understand, and C) It's the only way to rationalize what we do to Turkeys - because if they're dumb, they must have a dull ability to feel pain and fear, right?

When I finally met a turkey who approached me and rubbed his head against my leg like a cat and purred as I scratched his warm belly, I realized just how silly our rationalizations are for calling some animals 'pets' and others 'Thanksgiving dinner'. Just because something is popularly participated in, and offered up on a platter doesn't make it right. Our third-grade history books could tell us that much. This thanksgiving, I am telling my friends and family, "It's me or the Turkey!". I will not sit at the table if there is a Turkey's body on it. I never thought I'd say this, but I have friends that are turkeys! It doesn't sound silly to say we have friends that are dogs and cats, but when we take an animal that is typically stripped of individuality, and whose sole purpose is supposed to be getting it's throat slit, cooked, and eaten - it comes out sounding strange. Thankfully we don't need to have dead turkeys at our tables, and we can certainly insist that our families and friends give the turkeys something to be thankful for this year. At Farm Sanctuary, Animal Acres, The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, and other sanctuaries, Thanksgiving is for the birds. Literally. If you have no plans, or don't know what to cook, check out the THANKSGIVING SURVIVAL GUIDE: EVENTS:

SuperVegan's NYC Thanksgiving Dinner Events Page! DELICIOUS TURKEY ALTERNATIVES: OTHER THANKSGIVING RECIPES: VEGWEB Thanksgiving Recipes