Sister goes vegan: Tia Mowry's New Vegan Photoshoot for PETA

Tia Mowry's Vegan Photo shoot for PETA

Tia Mowry, one half of twin stars of 90s American TV show Sister Sister and former star of BETs The Game, has teamed up with PETA for a campaign to promote her new found veganism. She looks amazing in the photo shoot wearing nothing but a gorgeous apron made of live veggies—specially designed by costumer Mia Gyzander. Tia was ecstatic at the press launch on Monday.

Tia announced that she and her husband Cory Hardrict had become vegan earlier this year. Tia adopted a vegan diet for better for health, to boost energy, and cleanse mind and body. While she was welcomed by some, she was also met with a bit of bullying from others on twitter.

Any vegans out there? Do you get bullied for being vegan? I sure am...
— Tia Mowry (@TiaMowry) March 21, 2013

She bounced back with a frank and endearing Google Hangout and this brand new campaign. Tia was especially moved to advocate vegan eating to her friends and the African American Community as some of her family members have suffered from diet and lifestyle-related health ailments.

Tia joins a number of black celebrity women who are embracing a meat free lifestyle in order to keep fit and combat illness like heart disease which affects black women at a rate that is twice as high as white women. According to the Black Women's Health Imperative, Black women die from heart disease more often than all other Americans. Vegan and vegetarian diets have been proven to reduce the rate of heart disease by as much as a third so Tia is sending a welcome message.

Check out the behind-the-scenes footage from Tia's tantalizing photo shoot and her interview with PETA about how going vegan has changed her life!

Vegetarian Recipe: Quick Vegetarian 'Lincolnshire' Fajitas?

They say you can take the girl our of California, but you can't take the California out of the girl. No really, they say that all the time. So even though I've lived in England for almost 10 years now, Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance is still my favourite song. I still find it weird cheering for the Clippers. I  regularly take pictures of cars that I think are beautiful. And I am a little bit obsessed with Mexican food. I love everything about it. The beans, the salsas, the freshness, the versatility, the mixture of delicate flavours like corriander (or cilantro as they say in Cali) with earthy beans and tangy lime, tamarind and tomatillo. Oh, and tortillas might be the best thing ever. Dear Mexico, I love your food.

That said....living in England, sometimes it's slim pickings. People: they put sour cream in the guacamole here. No seriously. And it makes me cry. So sometimes one must get creative, when in Rome right? Like check out this little Mexi-British-Vegetarian fusion recipe that is a quick and satisfying, if inauthentic, supper I rustled up the other day featuring Cauldron's Veggie Lincolnshire Sausages. And I know that sounds like it shouldn't work, but I promise it does, and isn't that what fusion is about?

Quick Vegetarian 'Lincolnshire' Fajitas

Ingredients

2 firm 'Lincolnshire' veggie sausages -I used Cauldron
2 sweet peppers
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
3 mushrooms
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander aka cilantro (dried or fresh)
1 tsp black pepper
1 cup of coarsely chopped raw spinach
1 tortilla

1. Take your veggie sausages and cut them into strips - I sliced them across the round in at an angle so that I got long discs and then sliced each disk in half.
2. Stir Fry the sausage strips, garlic, peppers, onion, mushrooms in a little vegetable oil and season with lemon juice, black pepper, cumin, black pepper, coriander until the sausage is a little brown, and the onions are soft.
3. Place fajita bits on warm tortilla add spinach on top of this and roll into a delicious wrap.

PETA's list of Sexiest Vegetarians Celebrities 2012 lacking in Black Beauties

Leona Lewis, former winner of PETAs Sexiest Vegetarain Celebrity

PETA has announced its list of the 100 Sexiest Celebrity Vegetarians of 2012. While every starlet is a contender, I was struck by the lack of black women on the list. While black men make up 14 out of dreamy 50 male nominees, only 4 black women are listed amongst the 50 veggie vixens. So what gives?

I mean Leona Lewis, Serena Williams, Robin Quivers and Angela Simmons are all gorgeous, but there are lots of other black female vegetarian celebrities that could have been listed this year.

If they'd have asked me, I would have included some of these sexy black vegetarian female celebrities.

Erykah Badu - Musician, Actress and Vegan

Angela Bassett - Actress and Vegetarian

Joy Bryant - Actress, Animal Rights Activist and Vegetarian

Tina Turner - Legend and Vegetarian

Nia Long - Actress and Vegetarian

Alicia Keys - Singer and vegetarian

India Arie - Singer, Song Writer, Vegetarian

Book review: Michael Clarke Duncan agrees that Skinny Bitch is awesome

Oscar nominee Michael Clarke Duncan, describes himself as a 'big guy' and is not the image that most people conjure up when when they think of vegetarians. But last week, the star of Green Mile, and partner of American Appretice vegetarian vixen Omarosa, confessed to PETA that his recent conversion to vegetarianism was inspired by a combination of health concerns, a screening of Meet Your Meat and a reading of classic vegan/health manifesto, Skinny Bitch.

What is it about Skinny Bitch?
Well, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin's book 'Skinny Bitch: A No Nonsense, Tough Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous',  has been a New York Times Bestseller and spawned a suite of follow ups because it's more than just a book about vegetarianism or veganism. It's about getting you to understand how your body is affected by all the food and drink that you feed it. Caffeine, dairy, meat, aspartame are all strictly off the menu. Water, sleep, fruit and legumes are all definitely in.

I originally borrowed the book the shelf of my friend at Teeny Vegan Kitchen . She said it was a must read and she was right. The thing that really carries this book is the tone. The girls are straight talking, frank and curse a lot- their chapter on bowel movements is very amusing - but they speak the truth. By the end of it I felt more than motivated to cleanse myself of the toxins that were making me sluggish, unhealthy and keeping me from harnessing my inner skinny bitch.


I found the book to be quite an eye opener and a great read, and apparently I'm not the only one.

Happy Birthday to Hip Hop Vegan, Andre 3000

Source PETA

 It's May 27, which means that Roots and Greens has the honour of celebrating the birthday one our favourite human beings and commited vegan, Mr. Andre 3000. Along with performing serious services to awesomeness with hip hop crew Outkast, Andre 3000 has dabbled in acting, activism, fashion, and music production. His commitment to the cause earned him a place as PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity in 2004. For his birthday, I put on the Love Below and I've prepared a special Andre 3000 inspired vegan meal that even Ms. Jackson would like. Happy birthday Dre, I hope you like the Bombs over Butter bean Cassoulet with Idle -Wild Rice and Spinachplayalisticohsosimpesideofsalad as much as I did.

  Idle-Wild Rice

Wild rice needs a little bit more prep than most store bought rice. I used a Thai Glutinous Black Rice for this and it need to be soaked for a hour before I could put it in rice cooker - but it was worth the wait for the beautiful colour and nutty flavour of the rice. I'll be honest, though, I didn't find it that sticky! 

Book review: Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals

I picked up Jonathan Faran Foer's Eating Animals book about becoming vegetarian by accident really. I was in an airport looking for something to read and I grabbed this thinking that like everything else Jonathan Safran Foer has written that this would be fiction. What I got was the most affecting and effective discussion on vegetarianism that I'd ever encountered.

I say discussion because it really is just that. It's full of anecdotes, the letters and quotes collected in his journey from being a omnivore to deciding to give up meat all together. He interviews people from throughout the meat industry, organic and commercial. He encounters activists and traditionalists and explains the history behind how we got to the point where we as a society eat more meat than ever before.And his descriptions of the industry's processes, he is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in his no hold bar approach to the horrors of the slaughter house.

It starts off harmless enough, with a beautiful anecdote about JSF's Jewish grandmother in war torn Russia. This humane approach to his human subjects is really what carries the book, setting it apart from a solely political treatise. He realises the importance of food for families, communities and individuals and brings it to the fore. His acknowledgement of the fact that we eat for more emotional, social, AND physical sustenance is key.

When I read this I was in the same place as the author when he started writing: someone who ate ethical meat and a lot of veggie food to appease a conscience that I occasionally ignored in favour of BLTs. By the end I felt certain that I could do what I'd considered doing for years - eat my greens.