Restoring Balance - November 2014

                     by Fireweed,  for the Island Word, November 2014 edition

     In Irish mythology there are fantastic tales about salmon as the bearers of great wisdom. Celtic deities, poets and other heroic characters were bestowed with mystical powers such as salmon's ability to shape-shift and impart the gift of inspiration. According to these stories, the knowledge did not actually originate with the fish. Instead, the salmon accessed it by eating the nuts of certain magical trees, when they fell into rivers.

     Just in time for salmon returning to spawn on Vancouver Island, the low water flow resulting from our dry summer was relieved by October's stormy weather. Samhain (the Celtic New Year, Nov. 1st) arrived to the sound of rushing rivers and the sight of swollen wetlands. Overshadowed here in the west by a commercialized Hallowe'en, Samhain is  celebrated as a time of both beginnings and endings. It corresponds with the Mexican Day of the Dead as a seasonal halfway point between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. These holy days traditionally honoured death and descent into the dark half of the year not as journeys to fear, but as sacred rites of passage that lead eventually to rebirth and renewal - as long as we live respectfully in balance with the natural world.

photo by Dave Ingram

     On the Puntledge River in Courtenay,  Vancouver Island this month, you can literally smell winter's return. The decaying carcasses of spawned-out chinook, coho and chum are recycling precious nutrients back into the ecosystem, as they have done for millennia. Given the importance of salmon to all life here on the west coast, we must come to terms with the fact that human-caused climate change is another challenge to the continuation of this vital fertilizer and food source for future generations of countless species. Salmon populations have already been in decline due to the impact of logging, dams, and over-fishing for decades. Now we have warming ocean temperatures altering migratory patterns. And according to biologists like Alexandra Morton, newly proposed federal regulations for the expanding aquaculture industry still fall far short of ensuring protection of wild salmon from the devastation of fish farm contamination.

     Oceanographer Sylvia Earle is among those calling for a very serious re-evaluation of

Dr. Sylvia Earle

humanity's relationship with the marine environment. Featured in the excellent new documentary Mission Blue (currently available on Netflix), Earle has spent half a century campaigning to save our oceans and is greatly alarmed at the depletion she has witnessed. She acknowledges the problem of people thinking of fish as mere commodities – as if they exist only to be eaten. “Wild fish, like wild birds, have a place in the natural ecosystem which far outweighs their value today as [people] food. They're part of the systems that make the planet function in our favour, and we should be protecting them.”

     Earle is sympathetic to coastal peoples with a long tradition of making their living from the sea. She does not think these communities should be targeted as the problem, but that everyone must face the fact that “modern technologies have the power to extract far beyond what natural systems can produce.” Earle grew up in an omnivorous household herself, but no longer eats any fish at all. A growing number of people are recognizing that the least we can do to give the oceans a fighting chance at recovery is to leave them alone. When asked in a recent interview if those of us with the privilege of choice should be following a plant-based diet, Earle replied, “It's obvious. It's not a matter of me saying so. It's not a matter of opinion. There's no question that a plant-based diet is better for you and better for the planet.”

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     No one knows why the ancient Celts held salmon in such high regard (far more so than other once plentiful species of fish.) It may have been their amazing ability to find the way back home to the rivers of their birth. Or as historian James McKillop suggests, perhaps it was the colour of their flesh - pink, like ours. What we do know for sure is that bears, orcas and eagles depend on this shape-shifter for their survival. In contrast, most humans today continue to consume salmon not out of necessity, but out of habituated choice. And there is no need to kill fish in order to include certain omega oils in our diets because the cultivation of seaweed today allows us to access those nutrients the same way fish do - through plants.

     
      It's instructive I think that the Celts in Ireland attributed the wisdom of their mythical salmon to the plant kingdom. A tree of knowledge is central to many cosmologies, but surely they also appreciated hazelnuts as the nutritional powerhouse they are, even without the scientific knowledge their descendants have today. Hazelnuts are an excellent energy source, rich in protein, carbohydrates, fibre and phytochemicals - including flavonoids which may help reduce symptoms associated with allergies, improve circulation and support brain health!

     One of my favourite places to spend a dark and stormy winter's eve is right next to the wood stove, with a big basket of organic hazelnuts ready to shell in the glow of the fire light. But if the power hasn't gone out, the glow of a good Netflix doc like Mission Blue will do just fine!
                                                                           
                                                                                …                    
                  For links and additional info, please visit NOV. LINKS (on the right)
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   Fireweed's HAZEL BITES

These yummy energy balls require no baking and can be whipped up in a flash. The recipe is gluten-free, vegan, of course, and super easy! It makes up to two dozen fudgey brownie bites – or, you can double the recipe, press the mixture into a pan lined with parchment paper, and cut into squares.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of  organic hazelnuts (you can buy them shelled)

1/3 cup Cocoa Camino Cocoa Powder (Free Trade organic)

7 ounces of dried figs

1/4 cup of raw organic agave or a similar amount of maple syrup

water – only if needed

shredded organic coconut

INSTRUCTIONS

Pulse the hazelnuts to a fine crumb in your food processor, add cocoa powder and combine completely. Chop figs. You can substitute some of the figs with a few dates if you'd like to reduce your sweetener. Add the agave and the figs to the mix and blend until a ball has formed. Add a sprinkle of water only if required to bring the mixture together. Divide the dough into bite sized bits, then roll in shredded coconut. Bon appetit!

Water Wise - September, 2014

         by Fireweed, for the Island Word, September 2014 edition

      Who knew that the thrill - or the threat - of an ice cold shower could harbour such potential? The phenomenal success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised more than big money and awareness about a debilitating disease with no known cure. It has inadvertently raised ethical concerns about fundraising dollars and animal research. And it has also called into question the squandering of potable water. People as far away as drought-stricken Henan, China, have responded to the viral campaign by staging photos of themselves with empty buckets raised above their heads. In thirsty California, some participants have substituted sand to highlight the water crisis there.

-water waste wrong for drought-strieken Henan, China 

     American Jim Gulliford, executive director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, has informed reporters that indeed “fresh water is one of our nation's most precious resources” and “should never be undervalued or wasted.” Nonetheless, he has chosen to downplay the significance of the millions of gallons of water the Ice Bucket Challenge has already involved, by admonishing critics to channel their concerns in “a more positive way.” His suggestion? Fix leaking household faucets! Good to know, Jim, that a kitchen tap dripping eight times a minute wastes five gallons of water a week. Not so helpful to keep people in the dark about the water-greedy agricultural systems behind food choices made daily in the very same room. For example, according to Cornell University's Dr. David Pimentel, you can go "two years without a shower and still not save as much water as you would by not eating one pound of beef!”

click to enlarge

      It is reasonable to think that every drop in the bucket should count in California these days, now in its third year of the worst drought to hit the region in five centuries. The state is currently short more than one year's worth of reservoir water for this time of the year - about 3.8 trillion gallons short! Groundwater extraction and agricultural expansion is only exacerbating the problem. By some accounts agriculture uses 80% of California's water, and almond groves in particular are most frequently singled out for their high water intake at 10% of the total. But cows in California are fed a lot of alfalfa, which uses 15%. It takes approximately 683 gallons of water to grow the 6 pounds of hay one bovine requires to make a single gallon of milk. And in addition to the state's 1.7 million factory-farmed dairy cows, the most recent census from Food and Water Watch estimates 563,000 beef cattle, 131,000 hogs, 49.6 million broiler chickens, and 19.7 million egg-laying hens – all intensively raised, and producing as much untreated manure as 456 million people (more than the entire U.S. population!)

     California produces nearly half of all fruit, nuts and vegetables consumed in the United States and is responsible for 70 percent of the plant foods imported to British Columbia. According to UBC Land and Food Systems Professor James Vercammen, we import three times as much fruit as we export, due to our short growing season. What is happening in California is far reaching and should be instructive, particularly in terms of how much precious water is diverted into unnecessary animal products. We could and should be growing far more plant foods here as well on arable land currently occupied by livestock.

     It takes approximately 435 gallons of water to produce a standard four ounce serving of beef in the US, according to a study by Mekonnen and Hoekstra. The same size serving of pork uses 165 gallons of water, and for chicken that figure is 66 gallons. Grass fed animals do not have a smaller water footprint, because access to sunlight and outdoor activity increases thirst. Contributing even more to livestock's water footprint, of course, are the copious quantities of water necessary for the slaughter process – an estimated 132 gallons per bovine carcass.

     While meat products have a far greater water footprint than dairy, revealing the H20 'hidden' in a single stick of butter (109 gallons), a single serving of greek yogurt (90 gallons), two thin slices of cheese (50 gallons), or one small scoop of ice cream (42 gallons) exposes these products as the water squanderers they truly are! Switching from cow's milk to almond milk reduces water waste by about 25%, while choosing a glass of organic soy milk is 75% more water conserving. Transitioning to a fully plant-based diet can reduce one's water footprint by 60%.

     Not only would a concerted public shift away from animal product consumption be immensely helpful to the survival of California's finite water reserves, it would greatly reduce the rate of GHG emissions from animal farming - a bigger contributor to global warming than all transportation combined. When world leaders gather in New York City for the 2014 Climate Summit this month, they will be greeted by tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding real solutions. A growing number of activists are fed up with the fact that mainstream environmental organizations continue to marginalize the elephant in the room by focusing primarily on fossil fuel reduction and anything but animal agriculture in their climate campaigns. It's true that the animal agriculture industrial complex is a daunting force to be reckoned with. “Cowspiracy - The Sustainability Secret”, an excellent crowd-funded documentary recently launched in San Francisco is exposing this problem to sold-out audiences far and wide. Showing at Denman Island's Sustainability Festival on Saturday, September 20th! Click HERE for details! 

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For article references and additional info, please see the column on the right hand side of this page under  Sept. 2014- Useful LINKS.

Fireweed's Dairy-Free Decadence!

topped with walnuts and agave syrup

Ingredients:

3 or 4 frozen organic (preferably Free Trade) bananas, peeled

1 whole peach (can be fresh frozen, or canned frozen with liquid drained)

1/4 cup of frozen berries (blackberries, blueberries, or other fruit of choice…the photo included cherries)

a pinch of cinammon

a pinch of stevia, or a drizzle of agave syrup

*optional: home preserves

Instructions:

Dip frozen ripe bananas in hot water for a quick minute or two to easily strip the skip, break into thirds and place in cold high speed blender with frozen peach, berries or other frozen fruit of choice with sweetener and cinammon, and pulse. If you don't have a Vitamix, or other heavy duty blender, you can add a little bit of coconut or nut milk (not too much!) to help the process along. Speed is essential…you want to keep your frozen ingredients from thawing out too much! You can fold in additional fruit preserves separately for a streaking effect or add to the initial mix. In the photo example I used frozen pitted cherries. Consume at once or scoop into small containers and freeze immediately. Soften slightly to scrape out of container whenever you're ready to serve at a later time. Bon appetit!

THE HEAT IS ON - June 2014

                              by Fireweed, for the Island Word, June 2014 edition

Keeping a brick under a seat in your car during the warm summer months could come in handy.

SPCA HOTLINE: 1-888-703-7722

     Outrage over the recent deaths of six dogs from heat exhaustion in the back of a pickup truck here in B.C., Canada has been widespread. Faced with an emergency situation, it seems that plenty of people would be willing to act boldly on behalf of animals like Buddy, Teemo, Mia, Salty, Oscar and Molly. “Just snap a picture with your phone and call 911 before you break a window,” advised one dog lover on an online news site covering this sad story. Proof of life-threatening distress, her comment implied, would legitimize resorting to property damage.

      The law, of course, may not necessarily see things that way. And in spite of the fact that virtually every jurisdiction in North America has laws that say animals should be treated humanely and not be made to suffer unnecessarily, Canadian lawyer Lesli Bisgould says, “These laws really don't provide protection for animals from human-caused suffering in any meaningful way.”  Now it's not that the BC SPCA hasn't recommended that criminal charges be laid in the deaths of the six dogs. And hopefully a conviction will result based on unnecessary suffering leading to death. But Bisgould points out that a lack of rights for animals means that when the law prohibits 'unnecessary' suffering it creates a corollary - meaning it permits us to cause whatever is considered to be 'necessary' suffering and then protects those activities when it comes to a staggering number of animals under human care. Since we “write the law, interpret the law and enforce it,” Bisgould explains in her 2014 University of Toronto Tedx Talk, it turns out that it's necessary for an animal to suffer pretty much “whenever we say so.”

       Due in part to pressure from the animal agriculture industry, for example, the criminal code has barely changed in regards to animal cruelty laws in Canada in more than a century. Over 700 million animals are intensively confined here by agribusiness every year. They are subjected to routine practises deemed 'necessary' that would never be tolerated by an aware general public if inflicted upon our beloved dogs. So depleted by their ordeal by the time they are packed onto transit trucks destined for the slaughterhouse, several million un-named individuals arrive there already dead. Bisgould reminds us that for the most part this industry writes its own guidelines and that there is very little government oversight. She asserts that for every story we hear in the news about some atrocity done to a companion animal, “there is an industrial counterpart where that violence is normalized and multiplied by hundreds or thousands or millions of times.”

       Moving away from the factory farm model towards smaller scale animal husbandry operations is commonly lauded as a major step in the right direction. But while in this day and age most of us concede that so-called 'farm animals' experience pain, fear, joy and a desire for freedom – a lot like the companion animals we prefer to spare from an early death - we remain reluctant as a society to abandon centuries-old laws that categorized all animals as mere 'things.' In spite of the fact that non-sentient entities like corporations, churches, and even ships have been granted 'personhood' under the law so that they may be recognized as individuals with certain protective rights, the legal status of animals as 'property' here in Canada persists so that they remain powerless - and the humans who would use them may do so freely under the rule of law.

       Regardless of how animals are raised, as long as we insist on exploiting their bodies we are reinforcing an industry that guarantees enormous suffering. In “The Dilemma of Humane Execution and Humane Slaughter,” author and Cornell law professor Sherry F. Colb reflects on the fact that even human executions in US prisons are predictably botched on occasion even though each human is executed singly. With over 55 billion land animals slaughtered around the world every year, the sheer volume and speed involved translates into an enormous number of torturous deaths. Colb goes on to acknowledge that while reducing the appearance of suffering in slaughter has the effect of relieving consumer discomfort, it ironically generates more suffering for animals by spurring demand. In contrast to what some farmers would have us believe, she concludes that marketing the concept of “humane” measures for animals is likely to prove more harmful than helpful to animals over all.

Jeffrey Cohan, executive director of Jewish Vegetarians of North America puts it this way, “The reality is, you will never hear spokespeople for the industrial-livestock companies criticize or complain about the 'humane' meat movement. And there's a reason for that. The 'humane' meat movement is perpetuating the idea that it's perfectly OK to kill young animals if you like the way their flesh tastes. And in so doing, the movement is sustaining the industry.”

      As a leading source of GHG emissions, water depletion and rainforest destruction, animal agriculture is responsible for cranking up the heat for domestic and wild animals alike. The good news is that shifting to a plant-based diet offers an immediate means of reducing unnecessary suffering in multiple ways. And it's never been easier to find support for transitioning away from unnecessary reliance upon animal agriculture. Feel free to kick the heat up in the following delicious vegan chickpea curry recipe! Visit past columns in The Transition Kitchen blog to access additional recipes, links, and lots more climate-friendly, animal-friendly food for thought.          
  
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FOOTNOTE: I should add that when doing research for this article I learned - not surprisingly- that neither the BC SPCA nor the local RCMP recommends vigilante action on behalf of dogs in hot cars. Both institutions are permitted to break a window as required whereas other folks might end up being charged by the owner of the vehicle for damages. Surely the more likely scenario is eternal gratitude for saving a loved one…especially when time is of the essence. The hotline for the SPCA throughout BC is 1-888-703-7722.

Fireweed's Vegan Garbanzo Curry

edible  kale flowers for decoration 

Ingredients:

1 can organic whole Italian plum or diced tomatoes

1/2 a small onion

1/4 cup raisins

1/2 tsp finely chopped garlic

1/2 T olive oil

1/2 organic herbal veggie bouillon cube (optional)

1 T organic lemon or lime juice

2 cups canned or home-cooked organic chickpeas

1/2 T (or more to taste!) PATAK brand curry paste (Madras is my fave)

a pinch of stevia, or drizzle of maple or agave syrup to taste

salt, pepper

Optional: steamed or oven roasted cauliflower, chopped spinach, kale or other greens

Directions:

Chop onion and sautee in olive oil until lightly browned in a large skillet, add tomatoes, veggie bouillon, garlic and chickpeas with all liquids; season to taste with curry paste, salt and pepper; add sweetener and raisins. Cook gently over medium heat, stirring to avoid sticking until sauce thickens a little. Add optional items, cover the pan to wilt greens over low heat, and serve over either brown rice, cous cous, polenta or quinoa. Bon appetit!

FOOD FOREST GARDENING - APRIL 2014

                                   -by Fireweed, for the Island Word, April 2014 edition

     Throughout wetlands and along stream banks here in the Pacific Northwest, a large yellow flower is currently holding court. Even the leaves of the majestic skunk cabbage are bigger than anything you'd expect to find outside of a tropical rainforest! Its showy presence has affirmed the return of spring in this region for millenia.

Daffodils and lambs are also considered synonymous with the month of April on the island where I live, but these additions to the rural landscape are still relatively new. Daffodils originated in parts of Europe and Africa. Sheep, too, arrived with the first Europeans to settle here. That happened only about 140 years ago - at least 5,000 years after the Coast Salish people are known to have first visited these shores in search of food.

Skunk cabbage isn't good for eating, but its waxy leaves are ideal for drying berries. According to ethnobotanist Dr. Nancy Turner, approximately 100 species of plant foods were once harvested by the First Nations inhabitants of coastal British Columbia. For various reasons, the majority are no longer in use. Including fruits, greens, inner bark, beverages and root vegetables, these traditional foods have been among the most hugely impacted by colonization.

 
 Only a century ago in Kingcome Inlet, for example,

camas bulbs

Tsawataineuk women were still cultivating root gardens of silverbank clover, Pacific silverweed, northern riceroot and Nootka lupine, when a man named McKay decided to fence off the land and deny any further access. Also reported (in 1914) by Hereditary Chief Cesaholis to  the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of BC, Pacific crab apple trees that had provided another source of food well-suited for over-winter storage were cut down by settlers. Additional elimination of traditional root-digging grounds came about through the introduction of imported livestock.

“....and then the animals of the whiteman, such as the pigs and cattle would come and eat it off, and then my forefathers and the women got tired and gave it up when they saw their food was destroyed by the cattle...” (Cesaholis 1914)

One hundred years later, the US-based Centre for Biological Diversity has just unveiled a brand new project called Take Extinction Off Your Plate. It highlights the fact that animal agriculture has become one of the main drivers of environmental destruction world-wide and calls for an immediate reduction in flesh consumption. Substituting dairy or eggs for meat is discouraged, and so is simply switching to “grass-fed” beef. Studies have shown that grass-fed cattle are responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than grain-fed animals – as much as 500 percent more. With over seven billion people on the planet and counting, meat production has already tripled over the last 30 years alone and could double again by 2020. The Centre for Biological Diversity's message is urgent: “there are too many people eating too much meat for any form of meat production to be considered sustainable.”

Commonly referred to as the lungs of the earth, the Amazon Rainforest continues to disappear at an alarming rate (the cleared land there is used mostly for cattle ranching and crop cultivation - including soy for animal feed.) But over half of Vancouver Island's old-growth is now gone as well, and even the BC government admits that our forests have been emitting rather than storing carbon for the last ten years. Proposed changes to BC's Agricultural Land Reserve could further reduce biological diversity and exacerbate global warming by opening the door to even more potential oil and gas development.

     Today's locavore movement must begin to take a far greater interest in ensuring future food security through transitioning away from animal-based farming towards better use of existing arable land - for the growing of crops intended to feed people directly. On top of being more climate-friendly, a plant-oriented diet uses five to seven times less land than an omnivorous one, and also saves nearly 600 gallons of water per day in comparison. Examples of successful stock-free growing operations that likewise conserve these valuable resources are finally beginning to gain mainstream recognition.

According to Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest, water conservation and reforestation are the main ecological issues of the 21^st century. Global warming poses a particularly huge threat to food security in India, for example, where over 1.2 billion people are at the mercy of increasingly severe droughts and monsoon flooding. Over the past ten years Sadhana Forest India has attracted thousands of volunteers from around the world to help heal 70 acres of severely degraded land in southern India the stock-free way. They have focused on bringing back a tropical dry evergreen forest from the brink of extinction by planting 29,000 indigenous trees, and implementing water retention methods that have increased the local aquifer by 20 feet! “Greening the planet from the grassroots,” the aim of Sadhana Forest projects (now expanded into Haiti and Kenya) is to “introduce a growing number of people to sustainable living, food security through ecological transformation, wasteland reclamation, and veganism.”

Food forests were actually an ancient means of securing sustenance in the tropics (along with fibre, tools and more), that we might think of today as “Gardens of Eden.” Designed to mimic self-sustaining, multi-storied indigenous ecosystems, they are abundant in edible plant growth from the ground up through at least seven layers into the canopies of mature fruit or nut-bearing trees. In the 1960's, food forestry principles were adapted to Britian's temperate climate by the late master gardener Robert Hart, a longtime vegan pioneer in the UK. An exciting North American example is the seven acre Beacon Food Forest just south of the Canadian/Washington State border. Free public foraging of healthy food is available on the honour system to the surrounding Seattle community. Abundant living in the coming age of the tree* is indeed here for the planting!

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* “Abundant Living in the Coming Age of the Tree” was an ecological treatise published in England in 1991 by veganic pioneer Kathleen Jannaway. Visit the LINKS list for April 2014 on the right hand side of this page for more. Be sure to check out Robert Hart HERE!  To read other posts on The Transition Kitchen blog, click HERE  and you'll be able to scroll down for more:)                                            

Stinging nettles are a wild local edible in the Cascadian bioregion. They make excellent fertilizer for the garden, can be dried as an iron-rich medicinal tea, and even spun into twine. Alongside skunk cabbage and salmonberry blossoms they are another harbinger of spring in my local watershed that will hopefully be here forever. They also happen to make awesome spanakopita!

                                Fireweed's Nettle Spanakopita (makes approximately 6 servings)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (at least) lightly steamed stinging nettles (pick only the top tender leaves to avoid stalks...or alternatively use fresh or thawed frozen spinach, since you do need to pick lots of nettles)

1 block (16 ounces) organic medium tofu (squeeze out water and crumble into bowl)

1/3 cup nutritional yeast (available at Edible Island)

2 Tablespoons dark or light miso (add more to taste)

1 clove garlic, crushed and finely minced

1/8 cup carmelized onion (sauteed over low heat in a little organic olive oil)

sea salt and ground black pepper to taste

1 Tablespoon pine nuts (optional)

6 sheets of organic whole wheat phyllo pastry (or more)

Fireweed's Nettle Spanakopita

Directions:

Combine crumbled tofu with nutritional yeast, miso and garlic really well by hand or lightly pulse together in food processor. Remove and fold in remaining ingredients (except nettles and pastry sheets!) Season to taste. Press liquid out of cooled, steamed nettles, chop fine, and evenly distribute into tofu filling. Brush your first sheet of phyllo lightly with a little olive oil and fold it in half lengthwise. Brush again, and spread 1/3 cup mixture across one end. Flatten a little so you make a rectangle of sorts. Brush exposed edges of the phyllo and tuck in as you fold/roll up the filling, continuing to lightly brush each layer until complete. Repeat with each sheet until you're out of filling. Place your spanakopita gently on a non-stick cookie sheet or lightly-oiled alternative surface and bake at 375 F for 12-15 minutes or until barely golden brown (you could turn up to 425 F for a few more minutes to help with browning.) Cool on cookie racks. Reheat before serving. Bon appetit!

HEART TO HEART - February 2014

                                                                     by Fireweed, for the Island Word, February 2014 edition

   

 “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly…”

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

According to legend, Valentine's Day originated with a miracle in ancient Rome. A Christian priest by the name of Valentine was imprisoned and condemned to death for his unwavering religious beliefs. While awaiting his fate, Valentine is alleged to have cured his jailer's daughter, Julia, of her blindness. One version of the story tells us that the night before his execution he sent the young woman a farewell message signed, "Your Valentine." An embellishment to the tale (likely added centuries later) includes Julia planting a flowering almond tree near the martyr's grave. And so to this day the almond tree remains a symbol of abiding love and friendship!

      Of course, it is the nature of legends to evolve - with colourful 'new' details adapting them to time and place. Even the shape now commonly identified as a valentine heart is most likely a composite of earlier symbols and meanings now obscured by the mists of antiquity. Scholars point to stylized depictions of female anatomy as well as leaves, flower petals, and early renderings of pine cones and seeds as possible predecessors. It wasn't until the 14th century (and the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer) that Valentine's Day and its now popular emblem were associated with romantic love.

    Besides the crescent moon and the cross, however, no symbol is more widely recognized on the planet today. It has indeed been co-opted by crass commercialism. But as an expression of love, warmth and approval, the contemporary heart motif is understood to represent harmony and goodwill. It also remains emblematic of the muscle that pumps blood through our veins and oxygen to our brains. Perhaps we would do well to imagine its ubiquitous presence in our modern world as a reminder of the vital connection between mental health and physical well-being! What is necessary for the soul is certainly vital to the body.

     Without heart-centered relationships - without compassion for self and others - we simply do not thrive. February is Heart Month in the US, Canada and the UK where cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death for both men and women. General medical consensus has it that stress reduction goes hand in hand with a whole-foods plant-rich diet, sufficient exercise, and other healthy lifestyle choices when it comes to avoiding the risk factors that can lead to heart problems. 

     According to the Harvard Mental Health Letter (Feb. 2006), "Mind and mood affect the cardiovascular system directly by creating a state of emergency readiness, in which stress hormone levels rise, blood vessels constrict, and heartbeat speeds up. If a person is seriously depressed or anxious, the emergency response becomes constant, damaging the blood vessels and making the heart less sensitive to signals telling it to slow down or speed up as the body's demands change."   

     Along with practicing empathy in our human relations, opening one's heart to animals has become well established as highly beneficial to health enhancement. A ten year study through the University of Minnesota's Stroke Institute in Minneapolis concludes that cat caregivers showed a remarkable 30 per cent lower risk of death from heart attack compared to those without feline companions in their lives! Simply petting a cat or dog has been shown to reduce stress and decrease blood pressure significantly. 

     Recognizing the value of the human-animal bond is leading more and more people to reconsider the nature of their relationships with animals of all kinds. For example, since Ontario couple Derek Walter and Steven Jenkins decided to add a pig to their family which already included cats and dogs in 2012, the notion that animals exist in separate categories as either 'friend or food' no longer holds true for these former meat-eaters. 

     Currently weighing in at over 375 pounds, Esther the Wonder Pig is gaining renown as an internet sensation. Her caregivers mistakenly believed they were adopting an unwanted mini-pig at the time, not rescuing an animal destined for the slaughterhouse! In a matter of days both men knew they could never eat bacon or pork again. They set out to educate themselves about the animal agriculture industry and transitioned to veganism as a result.

  
    The joy of experiencing Esther grow into a playful, affectionate, highly intelligent animal prompted the creation of a Facebook page for sharing videos and photos with friends and family last December. Walter and Jenkins could never have imagined that in less than two months time over 81,000 Facebook fans would help their story (and Esther’s) go viral! The two men hope to eventually open a sanctuary for pigs. In the meantime they are taking advantage of the spotlight to raise awareness about the problem of commercial pet pig breeding (here in BC, Hearts on Noses Sanctuary in Mission can use our support). Walter and Jenkins have also become advocates for the benefits of a heart-smart vegan diet - first and foremost out of respect for the lives of other sentient beings like Esther. 

    

      Fortunately, there is nothing human beings with the privilege of choice require for optimum health from other animals. And our heart health certainly benefits from avoiding the cholesterol and saturated fat found only in animal products. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are the good ones and they are easily sourced from plants like avocados, nuts and seeds. In the spirit of Valentines Day, here's a slightly decadent but super simple, gluten-free vegan cookie recipe to share with the sweethearts in your life! (Thanks to Shae, who believes that gratitude, compassion and love will change the world. )

Shae's Chewy Almond Butter Cookies 

Ingredients:
1 cup organic almond flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

1/2 cup organic almond butter

1/4 cup maple syrup

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add all dry ingredients to your food processor and pulse into a fine powder. Add the almond butter and maple syrup and process to combine into a dough. Using a tablespoon, measure the mixture into 15 cookies. Roll into balls and press onto cookie sheet, flattening with your fingers. Alternatively, roll out the dough (not too thinly) and cut using a small heart-shaped cookie cutter. Bake time is only 7 minutes, or until golden brown, so stick around!

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