Lots to read about

There are many articles in our stockroom here at Mondays are Meatless, just waiting to be linked and enjoyed by readers like you. Some of them have just been patiently sitting there, waiting for their shot at the limelight and this is it. I will start with two funny short pieces, one that is too funny to be true and one that is true and inadvertently funny. It's okay if these make you want to skip a few fast food meals this week--in fact, that's always okay. And if you ever hope to enjoy the canned meat product Spam again (some other day of the week, of course), you'd better not read this article. It is well-researched, well-written and sure to make you retch a little bit every few paragraphs. 

On the serious side of things, there was more bad news about superbugs this week. This time it was close to home (an area from which our family just returned this week, in fact) and involved the c. difficile bacteria outbreak in the Niagara region. Better get used to stories like this, because they're going to keep happening. Another sobering article in Mother Jones, alerts us to a possible link between pesticide levels in meat and the rise in diabetes. As if we needed another reason to cut back on our consumption. But new reasons seem to keep cropping up every few weeks, am I right? 

What if we could just make our own meat in a laboratory and not worry about all those nasty hormones, pesticides and superbugs that come along with factory-farm raised meat? What if it turned out that we could grow meat in the lab using only 1% of the land and 4% of the water associated with conventional meat, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 96%? Guess what, this article in the Guardian says exactly that. Does it help with the squeamishness regarding it being a "frankenfood?" Just a bit?

And lastly, for your reading pleasure should you still have time after reading all the foregoing, is this great Huffpo piece by Dr. Dean Ornish which explains the truth about cholesterol in a very easy to understand way. He explains how we should think of HDL cholesterol, the much-lauded "good cholesterol," as the "garbage trucks" of the body. Now that's easy to remember! 

You're probably thinking, Mark, I've been sitting here reading for an hour and a half and you still haven't mentioned this week's recipe. Don't worry--it's coming. Now, in fact. You can prepare this dish on a stove top in about 20 minutes and it can be enjoyed right away hot or as cold leftovers the next day. The name includes a pun on an old saying from Sylvester the Cat in the Looney Tunes cartoons. This is a "no suffering" concoction because it is easy to make and avoids use of a hot oven and also because it promotes no animal suffering by omitting the traditional ham. Good, good and good. Hope you enjoy it.