Jason's Vegan Rice Krispie Treats
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ingredients
one cup peanut butter (chunky or otherwise)
one cup sugar (or that non-sugar stuff)
one cup corn syrup (mmmm.... sticky)
six cups rice krispies or some generic cereal *
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get a huge pot and a 2 qt. sauce pan. put the huge one on the stove and set it to low heat. measure six cups of cereal and put it in the 2 qt. pan. measuring and pouring takes longer than you think, and you have to keep stirring the stuff on the stove, so do this part now. hang on, i'm getting to the mixing.
well, not now, but after this: grease a 13" x 9" baking tin. and kids, if you use butter spray, you will die. try pam or something that contains no dairy. read the label, do you want me to do everything for you?
put corn syrup, sugar, and peanut butter in pot on stove and stir until they are all melted together. then dump all the cereal in. (i told you that you needed a really big pot. maybe next time you'll listen.) you have to really really cover all the ceral in the goop that was once peanut butter, corn syrup, and sugar. then turn off the heat and keep stirring until it's nice and goopy.
dump all that crap in the baking tin and spread it so that it's even. you can
do it, i know you can.
if you are me, you let it cool or put it in the fridge. if you are an
impatient ex-girlfriend of mine, you won't wait and will eat it warm. it's good both ways, trust me. if you really really crave rich desserts you can add icing to the top of it. we used to use chocolate icing, but it was too rich and a lot of us cut out caffeine from our diets. so now it's just plain, but still good.
* quick cereal note: bran flakes will work, corn flakes will also work. when i lived in brooklyn, we used to get this generic mexican cereal with some weird creature on the front. but any ghetto cereal will do fine. go generic!
Web Resources:
www.vegan.org is the central online resource for news and information about not consuming animal products.
Vegan Views is a collection of links to important vegan articles and features all over the Web.
Vegan Outreach is a global organization "working to end animal exploitation through the promotion of a vegan lifestyle."
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I guess I was spoiled. Until very recently, I lived in New York, where I had very few (two, maybe) non-vegetarian friends. So I sort of took it for granted that everyone my age eats the same way I do. Unfortunately, outside of the big cities, for the most part they don't. Now I live in a small town in western Massachusetts, and I'm not going to mince words: There is so little here that is vegan, I can't believe it. I never realized how dairy products have infiltrated every variety of food. (I guess I was just ignoring it.) Things that, even if I wasn't vegan, I would never put cheese in — like marinated vegetables — have cheese in them when served in the one deli here in town. When I complain people ask me if I'm lactose-intolerant, to which I reply: "No, but I'm intolerant of those who eat lactose." They usually don't get it.
You have to be careful: Even the natural food store here has whey in its carob chips. And there was this bakery here that I went to every day for a while because they always had vegan soup — and while a $3.00 cup
of soup isn't cheap, it came with some fresh-baked bread. They told me that the bread was vegan, and whether they were lying or stupid, I'll never know. But one day I found out that there's an egg wash on every bread that they make. Needless to say, I tend to hold a grudge, and haven't been back. I like Subway, but the old woman in there hates me because once she got tuna on my sandwich, and of course I asked her for new bread — and I asked her to wash her hands. She became enraged. She was grumbling under her breath while she made my sandwich, and then she covered it in so much oil that it dripped everywhere. So now I don't go to Subway unless I really have to.
I usually get apologies when I go into a store and ask if a certain dish is vegan and get a negative reply, but apologies don't curb my hunger. So what does a vegan guy eat when he goes out for lunch with his co-workers? There's always hummus, and there's bagels (which are usually vegan), but I can't eat that shit every day! Salad is OK, but they don't make good salads here and, contrary to popular belief, vegans aren't bunnies. (OK, some are, but I'm not talking about them.) The deli usually has some cold sesame noodles for sale, and half a pound of those plus a bagel is usually enough carbohydrates to tide me over until dinner. I miss vegan fast food. It makes me want to move back to New York. Plus, the bagels here suck.
| I kill nothing and nothing kills me, I rape nothing and nothing rapes me. |
So let me tell you why I'm vegan, and maybe some of you will read this and get it. It's about rape and power. (When is it not?) Not eating meat should be obvious for health reasons alone, if not for the obscene amount of resources that it takes to feed a nation of meat-eaters — but there's enough written about vegetarianism to keep you reading for the next 10 years. So I'll delve right into the vegan reason.
It's my belief that going through life disturbing nothing and having nothing disturb you is the way to go. I kill nothing and nothing kills me, I rape nothing and nothing rapes me. In case you didn't know, humans and cockroaches are the only animals who drink other animal's milk. Many humans, as many as 2/3 of us, have some sort of trouble digesting milk as adults — what does that tell you? Humans have a hard time digesting wood, too, so we don't eat it. Besides, milk is terribly fatty and its nutrients are easily replaced by vitamins. Speaking of fat, even if you never exercise, eating right will keep you thin. I only know one fat vegan kid, but his mom pumps him full of vegan chocolate cake. Then again, it could be a glandular thing. But I digress....
Why I'm vegan: Dairy cows are kept in terrible conditions and are forcibly impregnated in order to produce milk. That's right: Cows don't just "give" milk, they have to be impregnated year after year and forced to give milk so that you can eat your cereal. Why doesn't it stop? Because they can't speak, that's why. Think for a second of a barn full of women, their heads jammed into stocks, forcibly impregnated, shot full of hormones, and left there to rot in their own feces until they begin to produce milk, at which point they're hooked up to electric milking machines and sucked dry. Their female children will suffer the same fate.
So when the local deli puts cheese into their marinated vegetables, or when someone offers me milk, cheese, ice cream, cream cheese, sour cream, or any other dairy product, I imagine my friends and loved ones in the cow's place, and say, "Get bent."
Jason Patrikios works in a factory and wants to fight you. Don't sue him, please.
Illustration by Federico Jordan
© 1998 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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