Vegan Chocolate Cornflakes チョコフレーク [Recipes, Winter 冬レシピ]
日本語のレシピは ビーガン、ベジタリアン情報満載の Hachidory から ご覧下さい。
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What do you do on Valentine’s Day ?
Give the presents to your loved ones ?
Or have a lovely dinner with your family ?
When my kids were small, it was the happiest day of the year for me.
I used to run a restaurant when I lived in Singapore, and we offered a special Valentine set on this day.
The restaurant was always a full house and the regular customers came in with their loved ones.
Lots of pink hearts were floating in the air, which made me happy too.
I thought how fortunate I was to be able to offer such a special moment for them.
When I was back home late night, my kids were already sleeping.
I knew that their hand made cards were waiting for me on my desk.
When I opened them, the unskillful characters, “I love you mommy.”, popped into my eyes.
“Oh my! ”, they deeply touched my heart.
Back to Japan after over 20 years absence for me during this season, and first living experience for my kids other than holidays, we found the Valentine's Day in Japan is very unique and interesting.
(It was not publicly celebrated during my younger days.)
It is the day that the girls and women give chocolate to the boys and men.
Many girls spend hours to make their original chocolates to give them away to their friends on this date, many women spend their money to buy the chocolates for their co-workers no matter they like them or not.
There was a new word, “Giri choco” which literally means “obligatory chocolate” and practically means the chocolate for any men no matter one likes him or not.
After observing this custom for a few years, I found that Valentine's Day is not a happy day but is a burden to some of both women and men when they work in the companies.
For me Valentine's Day is the day to pass the message not to buy chocolate indiscriminately.
“Eat and consume the food that are grown locally and seasonally.” is the principal of leading healthy and sustainable life.
Buying and eating chocolate is something opposite to this.
The ingredients of the chocolates can not be produced in our region and all of them are imported from overseas, many are from economically poor countries.
It has been revealed that the chocolate trade is violating the human rights and many children are suffering in order to produce the chocolate for the pleasure of people around the world.
You can learn more about chocolate in here.
In fact the chocolate is not the only product that is causing the problems.
So many kinds of foods from all over the world are easily available at the supermarkets.
If it is something rare and expensive, it might not be so bad, but if the thing is sold cheap or easily available all the year round and if those things are imported from the limited so to be called developing countries, there is high possibility that this state may be creating the problems to those nations on individual basis, also to the habitat and environment.
Here's another example, I had been thinking why the bananas were sold so cheap and were available all the year round in Japan though our country was not producing them. The bananas are sold not only in Japan but in most of the developed countries all the year round in very reasonable price though those countries also cannot produce the bananas.
How many countries can produce them and how many countries are growing them in a big scale for export ?
As I suspected, I found the suffering of people, animals and lands from the banana production and trade too.
Our choice of food gives the huge impacts on human rights, animal rights and environment as well as on our health.
It is sensible for us to eat locally, seasonally and eat those exotic food on special occasions only.
Having emphasized the importance of eating locally and seasonally, I am introducing a chocolate recipe today, as it is a good opportunity to pass this message on Valentine’s Day to your friends, co-workers and families.
Maybe you can enclose the message card with the chocolate to tell them what you have learnt.
When you buy the chocolate for this recipe, get the one of the “Fair Trade” from the responsible companies, and make sure it is vegan and does not contain dairy.
