jae steele’s “Ripe From Around Here” is the most important vegan cookbook of 2010. If you want to stick around to see me qualify that statement, make sure you are in it for the long haul.

Around the first time I met jae, at a music fundraiser for animals in Toronto, I was delving into the vegan/animal rights community in the Niagara Region. Before finding the animal rights community, I stumbled first upon the social justice community, a distinction that I didn’t support, but worked for others. Within the course of a year priorities shifted dramatically, as the same people who I thought once shared the same beliefs regarding the exploitation of animals were now crafting awkward arguments about “use” and locavorism. Stories of backyard chickens, treated like Kings and Queens, made my head spin. Or narratives about the happy farmer (slave owner) who cares so deeply for the mother cows as he politely rips milk from its intended target, the mouths of calves (who by the way, if male, will get snuffed out as veal) made me want to vomit. How could people who saw the abuse before and condemned it, now turn the backs to it? (Keep Reading)