Sometimes, life is poetic in its demonstrations of simple lessons.

Every summer and winter, our home is visited by ants. They come in two varieties, for which we have common names.

1) Sugar ants - these are the larger, common ants you likely know best.
2) Oil ants - these are the tiny, tiny ants that may be less common where you live.

Here I was, today, thinking about the LBAM spray poisoning and how it will devastate our health and environment, and while my thoughts were thus occupied, a fair-sized swarm of oil ants came in my kitchen screen window above my sink. This is an experience we’ve gotten used to over the years, and my husband and I got right to work.

The oil ants need to be gotten out of the house for 2 reasons:

1) They would be injured and killed in the kitchen, falling into water, onto hot burners, etc. The house is not a proper environment for them - they belong outside.
2) Oil ants do bite people. Their bites are rather painful.

Why not reach for a can of Raid?
It’s true, like so many Americans, we could reach for a can of insecticide and blast away the oil ants, but in so doing, we would not only be killing innocent little critters who, after all, are just trying to go about their day, but we would also be poisoning our own home and ourselves. The fumes of the Raid would also drift out to our neighbors, possibly sickening them. The poisoned ants might stagger back outside and be eaten by birds or my neighbor’s kitty cat, thus poisoning further innocent bystanders.

Raid is the dangerous choice. It is also the lazy choice when, with a little work, it is possible to send the ants about their business without a drop of poison.

Today, we began by carefully sliding a piece of printer paper under the ants to pick them up and transport them outside. This works well with Sugar Ants, but I was having trouble with the miniscule oil ants so we switched tools. I got a remnant of porous linen from my fabric scrap box and very gently swished up the ants with it, taking care to be as soft in my movements as possible so as not to damage the ants’ tiny, fragile antennae and legs, which are so important to them. Once outside, they can go rejoin their colony again and start making other plans for finding a summer home.

In twenty minutes of relays from the sink to the kitchen door, my husband and I had transported the swarm outside. It is my observation that when ants stop returning to their home base, the ants at home realize something is wrong and pause in sending new ants. So, once you’ve got the ants outside, you can take step two.

With a clean sponge, carefully wipe down all of the areas where the ants were walking with vinegar and non-toxic liquid soap. We like Avalon Organics peppermint. We have observed that this appears to remove the ants’ scent trails and discourages them from thinking they’ve claimed the kitchen as belonging to them.

Lastly, locate the point of entry for the ants and make a barrier around it with non-toxic liquid soap. No new ants will be able to cross over it if you carefully surround the entry area. Thus, your little problem is solved.

If you’ve got the larger Sugar Ants, the solution is often even easier. If you can pound on the counter and wall where they are walking and speak in a low, loud voice, telling them to go away, they turn and run back to their entry point 9 times out of 10. They do not like that awesome, massive voice warning them and they don’t like the vibrations. You can also blow gently on them. They don’t seem to like the smell of human breath or the gust of wind.

If this doesn’t work, you can use the printer paper or soft cloth technique. Always follow up by washing away the scent trail and creating the barrier around the entry point.

What It Takes
What it takes is time. It took us about 25 minutes from start to finish to deal with this visitation of oil ants. Apart from the soap, which we already have on-hand as a household staple, this solution costs nothing. But the real savings is so much more far-reaching than that. We aren’t poisoning nature’s important creatures, we aren’t poisoning our neighbors and we aren’t poisoning ourselves. In today’s toxic world, you can’t overstate the value of that.

Insecticides and pesticides have been created and marketed to the laziness of people. The proposition made is that you can either put in a few minutes of your time or your can poison yourself. Amazingly, Americans so often choose poisoning themselves because they are obsessed with ’saving time’, or, sadly, because they don’t realize what their non-toxic options are for dealing with small inconveniences in daily life.

We Are Like The Ants
Agribusiness and CDFA are the epitome of the lazy approach to living in this world. Rather than working hard to create a good, and vibrant Earth with healthy ecosystems where good farming practices and diversity keep all populations in a correct balance, farmers have been marketed the lazy, ‘time-saving’ poison approach. Thousands of years of indigenous agriculture say that poly-culture (growing lots of kinds of plants together in the same place) keeps soils healthy and foods nutritious. But farmers have been sold the non-sustainable approach of growing vast acreages of a single crop (monoculture) and covering the land in poisons because the other organisms get so out of balance in so artificial a setting.

Rather than teaching farmers to grow abundant food with organic polyculture, CDFA intends to blanket 7 million human beings, all lands, all wildlife with carcinogenic, deadly poisons because of the presence of a single kind of bug. It would be like dropping a nuclear bomb on your house because you found a ladybug in your bathroom. It might be a quick way to get rid of the lady bug, but then, you’d end up with no place to live.

And that’s what Agribusiness and profit-driven, shamefully lazy entities like California Department of Food and Agriculture are doing. Blowing up the house because of a ladybug.

We are like the ants that visited my kitchen today. Innocent, hardworking beings, just trying to go about our business, meaning no harm to anyone. My respect for nature and myself made the scene in my home play out so that no toxins were inflicted on anyone, and the one chance to live life was honored for all beings. But CDFA claims that California is their house, and they refuse to deal with us respectfully. Their fingers are on the triggers of the vast pesticide bottles and they have no compunction about poisoning us all. Because they are allowed to neglect the wisdom and necessity of sustainable polyculture that makes NO insect a major threat when the environment is so diverse. Because they are after the instant answer and the easy money. Because they are so lazy.

Gandhi said you must be the change you want to see in the world. I want to see people finally reach the consciousness that a little ant’s life is as much to him as my life is to me. In vain, have countless people tried to win this recognition of our own value, our own hopes, dreams, lives, from CDFA so that they will realize the evil of poisoning us. I believe in doing unto others as we would be done by.

So, there is no Raid in my cabinet. There is no devilish Round-Up in my tool shed. And I can’t stop working until I am secure in the knowledge that there will be no deadly Checkmate in my body.

Greetings Readers!

On the vegan forums and blogs I visit, I see three things that concern me.

1) Parents who are scared about their kids going vegan. Understandably, they are concerned about proper nutrition. I applaud that and certainly share their worries of a child being malnourished by adopting an animal-product-free diet that consists mainly of meat substitutes and potato chips.

2) New adult vegans who get into eating habits that rely mainly on packaged, processed foods because they are still craving meat and dairy products. While this is understandable for brand new vegans, in the long term, adopting a diet that focuses on substitutes instead of whole foods is not the best choice for human health or planet health.

3) Well-funded advertising campaigns trying to grab the vegan dollar in exchange for foods with little nutritional value. A box of white rice with a packet of seasoning may not contain animal products, but it also doesn’t contain real food. Marketing executives have realized that it can be profitable to cater to vegans, but they are often unscrupulous as to what they are advertising under the dubious umbrella label of ‘natural’.

Isn’t it enough if I’ve stopped eating animal products?

So you’ve gone vegan, and instead of the hot dogs and macaroni & cheese of yesteryear, your fridge is stocked with soy dogs and imitation cheese macaroni. Let me be the first to thank you for adopting this compassionate lifestyle. Vegan kitchens have a kind and wholesome atmosphere you will not find elsewhere. I hope you are feeling really positive and joyful about the new choices you are making at the market.

But, this is the Hard Truths category of Vegan Reader, so I’m going to take a closer look at what’s going into your shopping cart.

Over the past decade, the meat and cheese substitute offerings have truly skyrocketed. When I went vegan some 17 years ago, there simply was not the array of commercial products available that there are today. Now, we have a choice of brands, just like real Americans. We have Gimme Lean, Smart Dogs, Yves, Fantastic Foods, Boca…the list goes on and on.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have options. It’s nice to know that corporations realize there are vegans sitting at the table.

On the other hand, these pre-prepared, heavily processed foods have the power to turn vegans away from the simple, whole foods diet that is actually best for them and for the world. I see Americans as being particularly in danger of getting sucked in by clever marketing. Remember, we were raised by our society to be obedient consumers, freely giving our time and attention to the demands of corporations who served up the ads and TV commercials that told us what to eat, wear, and buy. Manufacturers of vegan products want your money, too, and that is why vegans need to keep exercising the discernment that helped them to see beyond the typical American lifestyle in the first place.

Which of the following sounds best for you and your planet?

Meal One:

• Brown rice and red beans bought in bulk and cooked at home
• Tomatoes and lettuce from the farmer’s market
• Homemade hummus as a nice sauce
• Homemade spice cookies for dessert

Meal Two:

• Road’s End Packaged Penne and Chreese
• Gimme Lean Textured Vegetable Protein Sausage
• Cascadian Farm Frozen Hash Browns
• Tofutti Cuties for dessert

No animals were harmed or killed in the making of either meal, thank goodness, but the similarities end there. Meal #1 is accomplished with a minimum of factory processing, and the purchase of local vegetables, where possible, further cuts down on fuel emissions.

Meal #2, by contrast, is an extravaganza of factory processing and not one of the items on the menu are whole or fresh. Optimum nutrition for this planet’s animals (including we humans) comes from eating foods that are as close to their natural form as possible. If the contents of your shopping cart are predominantly processed foods, the amount of energy being consumed to put dinner on your table is as wasteful as if you were eating a Hungry Man dinner. And, because so many vegan products are so heavily processed, the resultant nutrition is quite dubious, despite vitamin or mineral additives.

The Big Lie

One of the American food industry’s most clever and successful pitches to the public is that modern people don’t have time to cook. Since the 1930’s, so-called convenience foods have been billed as saviors for the overworked homemaker. Inventions from Bisquick to Jiffy Pop have promised to save us hours of time in the kitchen.

The truth is, this is a big lie.

I urge you to stop listening to any marketing firm that tells you you are benefiting from the swap of their prepared 10 minute white rice for your 20 minute bulk brown rice. You are winding up with poor nutrition and a house cluttered with fancy recycling materials. During the extra 10 minutes it takes for your brown rice to cook, make a salad, talk to your dear ones, step outside for a last look at the setting sun. Don’t listen to Uncle Ben.

When I met my husband, he was subsisting on microwave vegetarian foods in plastic trays. No one had taught him how to cook, and he didn’t think he would have time to prepare a home cooked meal. My feeling was that he simply didn’t love himself enough to take proper care of his need to eat. Fast forward years into the future and you will find my husband concocting fabulous from-scratch soups, burritos, salads, pies, pizzas and casseroles. He loves cooking for us. I consider it one of the most loving things he does for me. And we love spending time together in our kitchen.

Our pantry is stocked with basic staple whole foods, and from these things, we can make an almost endless number of healthy, tasty meals. We work long days and lead a busy life together, but we are not willing to do a deal with any society that tells us there is no time for us to feed ourselves. That is a mindset that speaks of unfeeling neglect.

Finding The Middle Ground

Going vegan is easier for some people than others. The last thing I want to do is discourage you from making this important change in your life. If that means you need to begin with packaged foods that mimic typical American products, go for it. I would ask only that you make these crossover eating habits temporary.

The core of the vegan heart is love and compassion for one’s self, one’s fellow earthlings, and the environment. In becoming vegan, strive to develop habits that improve the way you care for yourself while at the same time cutting down on the energy and pollution involved in others providing for you. Processed foods are not optimal for your body or the Earth.

Does this mean you can never buy anything that comes in a box, can, or container? Wouldn’t I love to be able to say ‘yes’ to that, but the fact is, few of us have the luxury of living on self-sufficient farms where we can grow everything we need. Because of that, we’re going to have to buy our rice, our flour, our rice milk, our maple syrup from someone else. And, once in a while, we may simply feel like trying out a package of vegan raviolis or vegan Polish sausages, just to see how they taste. If you are eating a diet that is predominantly made up of whole foods, don’t worry about buying a couple of containers of vegan ice cream in the summertime. Variety is important.

My hope is that in reading Vegan Reader, you will discover new ways in which you can cook most of what you eat from scratch. I know that the fake meat/dairy appeal is huge, but if I show you how to make convincing ‘ham’, ‘hot dogs’, ‘chicken’, and ’steak’ out of simple tofu, will you give it a try? My goal is to see you feeling skilled and powerful when it comes to nourishing yourself in a way that is truly loving.