"Cash for Cluckers" Might Get You a Buck

Why bother with collecting cash for your clunker? Sure, a rebate for up to $4,500 might be nice, but wouldn’t you rather be guaranteed of a dollar right now? You can get that dollar if you go to your grocery store and purchase a vegan faux chicken product and send PETA the receipt. In return you’ll get a $1.00 rebate and a vegetarian starter kit.

One of the motivations for the Cash for Clunkers programs is to reduce emissions, but chickens have a fairly deep carbon footprint as well. From PETA’s blog:

According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the equivalent of taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.

Here are the details of the rebate:

· No tardiness! Receipt for your (repeat) vegan chicken product must be dated between August 6 and September 30, 2009 and received by PETA by October 5, 2009.
· No foreigners! You must be a U.S. resident.
· No liars! You must include a written statement affirming you have never tried faux chicken before.
· No seconds! Sorry, only one per household.
· No swarming! Offer is limited to the first 5,000 entries.

If you fit the above requirements, send your receipt and declaration of fake meat virginity to:

Cash for Cluckers
PETA
501 Front Street
Norfolk, VA 23510

All joking aside, this is admittedly another one of PETA’s creative ways to utilize current events and a catchy tagline to provide more awareness of animal rights. (Maybe next year we’ll see Cents for Salmonella. No?)

Visit PETA’s blog for more info.

Vegetarian Blogs

How many times have you been in this position? You need an asparagus recipe…now. You google “vegetarian asparagus recipe”, and end up with all of these crazy, confusing and unhelpful websites that just do not deliver.

I’ve been doing that for too long, and simply put my foot down on the whole thing. Along my long, tedious journeys for new recipes, I’ve found greater success when landing upon vegetarian cooks’ sites. They have a passion for their cooking, they’re original, and you know what else? They’re healthy!

Here are some of my favorite sites to visit, although I’m sure there’s a million more:

101 Cookbooks
Heidi Swanson is my idol. Her writing alone deserves an award. She pulls you into her articulate web with exquisite descriptions of her meals. She can make roasted pine bark sound appetizing.

Oh yeah, and the recipes are good too! She has some very unusual meals originating from cultures all over the world. I have to admit, I failed at her gnocchi, but I’m not Italian – so it’s clearly not my fault.

Just the Food
This website was a delightful find. I’ve been making imitation ground meat chili for years, but Joni Newman’s recipe made me realize that it could have been so much better. She’s vegan, but her recipes are all filling and satisfying.

the Vegan Kitchen
This is a hardcore, vegan, homeschooling chick. She takes some incredible, inspiring pictures, and is a wealth of knowledge about stuff you would never even think to ask about. But you’ll be glad she told you. She also has other sections for her other interests from homemade soap products to her adorable children. This is a pretty intense site, but I guarantee her fascinating posts will rope you in.

Give me “real” people over corporate sites any day. There is just something about personal experience and enthusiasm for the vegetarian lifestyle that really inspires me to get into the kitchen and cook something delicious.