Vegan for Das Laxan

For the Digambar Jain festival of Das Laxan, my parents have been going to the temple and listening to lectures on the qualities of forgiveness, humility, straighforwardness, contentment, truth, self-restraint, penance, renunciation, non-attachment and brahmacharya.  How wonderful, that in keeping with the spirit of Das Laxan, my dad has gone vegan! How wonderful to allow the cows some peace of mind and freedom from artifical insemination and how wonderful that he practiced self-restraint, straightforwardness, non-attachment,  and renunciation in keeping away from some of the foods he habitually eats. He had already been avoiding many fatty dairy containing foods such as butter, ghee and buttermilk, and the traditional Gujarati food that my parents enjoy at home is largely vegan. My dad kept the temptations of party food at bay for these holy days, and did not travel for work, so he didn’t have to struggle to change his diet when faced with the inconveniences of travel.   Now,both my parents  have  continuing concerns about the sugar in store bought soy milk, and keeping digestion working normally despite excluding dairy. My mom’s favorite TV Doctor, Dr. Oz, however, recently had a show on gas that  named dairy as one of the top gas-producing foods because of people’s inability to break down sugars,  and her more positive experience with Lactaid has borne this out. But they acknowledge the violence involved in milk production.  

 For Dad and our gentle readers, I am posting dairy_almondcomparison , which was formatted to be printed as a poster that we displayed at the JCNC 10th anniversary celebrations on the comparison between cow’s milk and home-made almond milk.  If you print this out, place the slides in 2 columns, with every other slide referring to cow’s milk and the others referring to almond milk. If you view it as a slide show, bear in mind  that it doesn’t flow like a normal presentation but is meant as a compare and contrast visual display with alternating slides making the sequence of events for cow’s milk and almond’s milk, respectively.

Dad promises me that he will try store bought and home-made almond milk, rice milk and other alternatives. In the next several days, I will also post an almond milk recipe with nutritional content.