25th February 2013

Naked Fig Cafe

278 Marine Pde, Swanbourne WA

As you might guess from its name, this is a stylish establishment of the kind that doesn’t specialize in vegetarian and vegan food, but on the evening we were there it certainly came up with the goods.  We kicked off with beautifully served small dishes of olives and potatoes, before moving on to some serious eating. The moussaka is a richly flavoured melange of cinnamon infused tomatoes, aubergine and tofu, luscious in texture, while the bean burger is based on a serious pattie and comes with salad, corn ships, green tomato chutney and, for those who want it, Swiss cheese; it’s a nice example of a dish that it would never have occurred to vegetarian cooks to create, but nicely mimics what they do on the other side. My companions tucked into two desserts, lemon meringue pie and lime and lemon brulee, each served with both (!) cream and ice cream.

The Naked Fig has a superb location, overlooking the Indian Ocean. As we settled into our seats the sun was sinking beneath the waves; as we rose to leave the moon was setting. How wonderful to enjoy food of this quality in such a place with good friends!

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10th February 2013

VVOC Meet Up 9th February 2013

Today we met up for a relaxed and delicious lunch at John’s.

Some photos of the yummy fare on offer…

image image image image image

 

Lunch at Johns….
Gazpacho
Slow Cooker Vegetable Stew
Yellow Split Peas
Cauliflower with Ginger

No doubt the recipe names were far more interesting but I forgot to ask our host! After lots of laughs and with full tummies we attended to some business…

Business
(1) Recent postings – thank you to all for keeping up with monthly postings. Looking forward to Melissa publishing her list of bobby calf friendly dairy farms.
(2) Future dates : 13 April – picnic, 8 June – Sunnybank, 10 August – Wynnum, 12 October – Mu’ooz Moorooka, 14th December – Christmas get together TBA.

Thank you again John for the wonderful food.

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6th February 2013

Bobby Calves

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” 
Mahatma Gandhi

I truly believe this statement to be true. And as a vegetarian, this leads me to think about the dairy industry. Of course I don’t participate in the suffering of animals that are raised for consumption, but what about the animals that produce the dairy products? Buy free range, and then you believe they have a good life whilst they produce your eggs, milk and other dairy products. But what about all the boys? I mean the males – who of course don’t produce anything to eat. So what happens to them? It’s easy to ignore thinking about this when you think of yourself as doing the right thing by not eating animals. But this too can be an area of great cruelty to animals. Like the bobby calves, for example. — the “by-products” of the dairy industry, unwanted and treated as “waste”. While dairy cows are impregnated yearly in order to produce high milk yield, the problem of ‘disposing’ of unwanted calves is routine across the entire industry. Sent to the abattoir, bawling for their mother, starving hungry as they are allowed by law to be not fed for up to thirty hours, and in some cases, treated cruelly.  Their inability as babies to comprehend what is required of them, whether during loading for transport or up the races of slaughterhouses, requires them to be treated with compassion and patience — two human traits rarely witnessed when it comes to dealing with unwanted and ‘worthless’ animals.

 If the thought of killing unwanted 5-day old calves is unacceptable to you, then  tell the dairy industry that you don’t think animals should be discarded and killed like ‘waste products’. You can take action by writing to the dairy industry, using a link on the Animals Australia website.

 
And choose your dairy products carefully. Barambah Organics for example, don’t consider the calves to be a waste product, and all their calves are kept on their farm in their care. No Barambah calves are sent to the abbatoir. Go Barambah!!


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