The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

10 Friday, November 4, 2022brooklintowncrier.com There's a trend towards cutting back on meat. At one time, if I mentioned I didn't eat meat, I would get negative or defensive comments. Today people are more likely to share they're cutting back on meat and describing themselves as primarily plant-based. If you're one of those reducing your meat intake or experimenting with going entirely plant-based, here are some ways to incorporate more vegetables into your meals: 1. Swap out pasta for spiralized vegetables. Vegetables are more nutrient dense than wheat pasta. Using spiralized vegetable noodles is a healthy swap. Use zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash or beets in place of regular wheat pasta and thus increase the nutrient density of our meal. You can buy a spiralizer to make your noodles or buy vegetables pre-spiralized. 2. Swap your butter for oil or plant-based. There are lots of butter replacements on the market, which taste pretty good. Read the label but watch for saturated fats and avoid too much coconut oil. 3. Cauliflower is great for just about everything. Cauliflower can be roasted and added to tacos and rice bowls. You can also bread the florets and make cauliflower wings. Have you tried cauliflower rice, an excellent substitute for regular rice? It's best made fresh at home and is easy to make. I've seen frozen brands but have yet to try them. I also boil cauliflower and mash it as a substitute for mashed potatoes. 4. Use non-dairy milk. There are many kinds of non-dairy milk on the market -almond, hemp, soy, and oat, which are fine for coffee and cereals. Coconut milk is great for curries and baking and there's quite a range in price and quality. Still, you need to read the label and know what you are buying. 5. Rethink tofu. People tell me they hate tofu, but I'd give it another try. Firm and extra-firm tofu holds its texture when cooked. It can be fried, roasted, air fried and baked. The internet provides many wonderful tofu recipes. Perhaps years ago, you had poorly made tofu, which left a bad taste in your mouth. Keep an openmind. It may just surprise you. 6. Swap out ground beef. Swap out ground beef in chilli, spaghetti sauce and lasagnas. You probably won't even notice much of a difference. Use extra beans in chilli, a ground beef replacement in spaghetti sauces, or skip the replacement. 7. Plan your vegetables. In my old days of cooking, I would think to myself, okay, we're having chicken for dinner tonight. What goes great with chicken? Now when I cook, however, I know I this great cauliflower in the fridge, so what goes great with cauliflower? It's all about perspective. 8. Overbuy vegetables. If you're like me and hate throwing out food, over-buy vegetables. This forces me to cook them. I use leftover vegetables cold in salads or reheat them for rice bowls. Sheree's Hack: As the fall harvest season ends, frozen vegetables are a good way to add more of them to your diet. Using more vegetables more often Plant-Based Eating by Sheree Nicholson In the 2018 municipal election, a candidate for the North Ward councillor seat, Bill Windrem, set up gobs of signage in front of the Brooklin Community Centre polling station but few elsewhere. He still captured 27% of the vote, about half of what the winner Steve Lee received. Lee had spread signs around the ward, riding the voluminous plantings to victory. This was clear scientific proof that voters traipsed into the polls with Windrem in mind, providing him the bump he sought although it wasn't nearly enough to win. In the recent election, signs littered the town. These were, I suppose, the candidates' messaging. If interested enough, voters could read a bit about their views in the BTC or elsewhere. But really, the signs were the medium. Given Whitby voter turnout was a meager 23%, it doesn't seem like the medium was much of a message after all. I'm trying to imagine a municipal election where no signage is permitted, where each ward hosts an all candidates town hall and someone steps up to conduct a couple of debates for regional councillors. Because when you come down to it, how do the signs lend themselves to intelligent decision-making? A recent American study of election signage stated that they might make a difference of one or two percentage points in a close race. Frankly, I'd love to pose a few questions to Whitby voters about the signs and how they influenced their votes. 1 - What was your favourite election sign colour? Why? 2 - Were you swayed by the number of syllables in a candidate's name? Example. Steve Lee - two. Bill Windrem - three. Lee won. 3 - When driving and there was a section of road with signs, did you look at them for even an instant? If yes, did your vehicle stay within its lane? If not, why not? Weren't the time and money candidates spent worth even a glance, or was road safety weirdly more important? 4 - If a sign was huge, did you assume the candidate's ideas were similarly huge and obviously brilliant? 5 - Conversely, if a sign was small, did it mean the candidate was an Less than half the picture by Richard Bercuson Signs of the times, begone! Whitby Certified Results of Election 2022 introvert? Not that there's anything wrong with that. 6 - Some candidates had unusual names. When you saw their signs, did you try to pronounce the names? In doing so, did others in your vehicle give you odd looks? Did you look at their looks? Was that a distraction? 7 - If there'd been no signs, how would you have decided who to vote for? (Circle all that apply) A - Most Facebook posts B - Fewest Facebook posts C - Most interesting rumours D - Whatever your cousin's neighbour's co-worker said E - I was open to bribes My own choices weren't based on any of those. Instead, I counted the number of signs for each candidate. It made as much sense as anything else.