If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I can't get enough of Autumn or Thanksgiving. I wait for them all year round. I love the sense of change in the air, I love the changing of the colours (the amazing golds, purples, and reds are something I miss des-per-ate-ly about Canada), and I love the idea of the Earth giving up its bounty for us. And I love that we have an entire holiday devoted to feeling gratitude for this bounty. Sound a little hippyish and cashew cheesy? Get used to it.
I know sometimes vegans have a hard time feeling gratitude. Gratitude for what, you might be asking. For the billions of animals who live and die in terror everyday? For the millions of people, lacking real nutritional education and healthcare killing themselves with animal products? For the disappearing rain-forest being used to farm cows for human consumption? Yeah, for those things. Kidding! And yet, I feel that I have plenty for feel thankful for, especially as a vegan. And if you'll be so patient, I'd like to enumerate some of the reasons.
So many people see vegans as judgmental and self-righteous, thinking that we see ourselves as superior and holier-than-thou. Truthfully? I mostly just feel grateful. Grateful that some niggling little thought in the back of my mind drove me to return to the idea of veganism before I ever even realized I was interested. Grateful that I had the time to read the information. Grateful that for whatever reason, at that time, I was open and receptive and willing to act. Grateful that this little word, vegan, came into my thoughts and heart and actions and changed my life forever.
I'm so grateful for every little thing that lead to this change. Access to the internet. An affection for research. Living in a country with easy access to abundant, healthy vegan food. Farmer's markets. Tofu and tahini and cashews and kale and spinach and chocolate and almond milk and potatoes. The knowledge of how to feed myself cheaply and healthfully.
And I'm grateful for specific people. A lot of them. Here's just a small sampling. Thank you to Alicia Silverstone, Rory Freedman, Kim Barnouin, and Colleen Patrick Goudreau for giving them information that blew my mind wide open and left me with no other option than to become vegan. Thank you again to CPD and Alicia, as well as, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero and the Moosewood Collective (not vegan, but they always have plenty of plant based recipes) for keeping me in delicious, interesting vegan recipes.
Thank you to Jack Norris, Ginny Messina, Joel Furhman, John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, and Colin Campbell for giving me endless amounts of nutritional advice, information, and resources, and turning me into a leafy green fanatic.
Thank you to my big brothers, whom I'm sure will never ever read this, for paving the vegetarian way for me in our family, and for teaching me to question the world around me. Thank you to my mother for teaching me to view the world with compassion. Thank you to my father for teaching me it's okay not to accept the status quo. And for teaching me how to hold a kitchen knife properly.
Thank you to my sweet Daniel for, despite his carnivorous ways, supporting me, going to vegan events and restaurants with me, and interrogating our waiters and waitresses on every ingredient in my dinner. Thank you to my dear friend Lindsay for opening her mind and heart to the information I gave her, and attempting to change her cheese loving ways. Thank you to my other dear friend Jean for deciding to take a stand for the fishies. Thank you to my wonderful and witty partner-in-crime Emma, for constantly seeking out new information and flirting with vegetarianism. Thank you to my lovely, kind co-worker Natalie, for opening her great big heart to new information and jumping into veganism with full-force.
Thank you to those who do work I could not do to give animals a voice. Investigative journalists and slaughterhouse workers who document what goes on behind closed doors are rare, valuable heroes, and I'm so thankful that they do the work that most people would not be brave or strong enough to do.
Thank you to Sparky, Stanley, Buster, Sophie, Molly, Jasmine, and Livia for letting me love you for your too-short time on this earth. Thank you to all the animals who learn to forgive and love humans, despite everything we do to them.
And thank you, dear readers, for just being awesome.
Monday, 14 October 2013
Monday, 23 September 2013
5 Online Resources Every Vegan Should Know
So, you've recently turned vegan, and you're walking around, happily slurping green smoothies and snuggling every stray cat you see. And then suddenly you realize your favourite wine has fish bits in it, you have no idea how to make chickpea salad, and everyone you know is acting like a t*** about your new food choices. Your cries are being heard, and rest assured you are not alone. Here are a few online resources that have helped me on my vegany way, and I hope they help you too.
5. Barnivore
Fish bladders, pig fat, and chicken's eggs. Some of the delights which may lurk in your merry glass of wine. As weird and gross as it sounds, your alcohol may not be vegan. The subject of vegan alcohol is perhaps not that commonly discussed, but those who are concerned about avoiding animal additives and processing methods can head on over to Barnivore, where countless beers, wines, and liquors and listed as vegan friendly or not. And I do mean countless. The site is very reader-supported, meaning that most of the information comes from devoted vegans who have taken it upon themselves to email various alcohol companies to clarify their ingredients and practices. The owners of the site are also working on an app!
4. Happy Cow
Is Happy Cow sick of people lavishing praise on them? Anyway, they deserve it. Happy Cow is a magical place where you can enter pretty much any city in the world into their search engine, and they will tell you where you can eat as a vegan/vegetarian. I've found results for Buenos Aires, Lagos, Sofia, Suva, and Little Rock. London alone has 308 results. Happy Cow organizes their establishments into four different categories: vegan, vegetarian, veg-friendly, and health food stores. They have all the location and contact information you need, and they even include reviews from other visitors. The site also has a ton of other veggie information, including tips and recipes, but I've mostly used the travel information. I don't really know how I used to travel before I met this site. I must have just wandered around aimlessly trying to beg food from strangers in the streets.
3. Post Punk Kitchen
The ultimate vegan food blog. If you want culinary inspiration, you need look no further than chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz's playground of creative vegan recipes. Chocolate pumpkin loaf? Ranch salad with buffalo tempeh? Dilly stew with rosemary dumplings? All such delights can be found here. Post Punk Kitchen also has a very active forum, with vegans from all over the world coming together to gripe about their grandmothers trying to feed them chicken stock and brag about how much kale and oreos they ate today.
2. Vegan Health
Registered dietitian Jack Norris has put a lot of effort into obtaining and dispersing reliable, hocus pocus free medical advice for vegans. If you have a question about single nutrients, supplementation, or common myths and confusions regarding vegan health, his site should be the first place you look. Very specific recommendations and plenty of resources abound. He's also posted things like possible meal plans if you can't imagine what a vegan day would even look like. If you want to find out about B12, Veganism and cancer, raising healthy vegan children, and protein, this resource is the place for you!
1. Vegetarian Food for Thought Podcast
So, we've covered your health, your stomach, your next trip, and your next pint. Now it's time for your soul's education. Does that sound a little crazy and over-the-top? You obviously haven't been listening to Colleen Patrick Goudreau's earthshaking podcast. But now you will, and now your life will change. Everything you need is here: education about animal issues, education about animals themselves (every thought about whether you want to cuddle a loving turkey, or nuzzle a calming donkey? You will now.), health issues, how to respond to your co-worker, family member, or anyone else who might challenge you. My explanation isn't doing it justice. Just go over there right now and listen to: How to Talk to Hunters, Animal Advocacy and Emotional Stress, Conversations with Strangers, or Life Without Cheese. You're welcome.
5. Barnivore
Fish bladders, pig fat, and chicken's eggs. Some of the delights which may lurk in your merry glass of wine. As weird and gross as it sounds, your alcohol may not be vegan. The subject of vegan alcohol is perhaps not that commonly discussed, but those who are concerned about avoiding animal additives and processing methods can head on over to Barnivore, where countless beers, wines, and liquors and listed as vegan friendly or not. And I do mean countless. The site is very reader-supported, meaning that most of the information comes from devoted vegans who have taken it upon themselves to email various alcohol companies to clarify their ingredients and practices. The owners of the site are also working on an app!
4. Happy Cow
Is Happy Cow sick of people lavishing praise on them? Anyway, they deserve it. Happy Cow is a magical place where you can enter pretty much any city in the world into their search engine, and they will tell you where you can eat as a vegan/vegetarian. I've found results for Buenos Aires, Lagos, Sofia, Suva, and Little Rock. London alone has 308 results. Happy Cow organizes their establishments into four different categories: vegan, vegetarian, veg-friendly, and health food stores. They have all the location and contact information you need, and they even include reviews from other visitors. The site also has a ton of other veggie information, including tips and recipes, but I've mostly used the travel information. I don't really know how I used to travel before I met this site. I must have just wandered around aimlessly trying to beg food from strangers in the streets.
3. Post Punk Kitchen
The ultimate vegan food blog. If you want culinary inspiration, you need look no further than chef Isa Chandra Moskowitz's playground of creative vegan recipes. Chocolate pumpkin loaf? Ranch salad with buffalo tempeh? Dilly stew with rosemary dumplings? All such delights can be found here. Post Punk Kitchen also has a very active forum, with vegans from all over the world coming together to gripe about their grandmothers trying to feed them chicken stock and brag about how much kale and oreos they ate today.
2. Vegan Health
Registered dietitian Jack Norris has put a lot of effort into obtaining and dispersing reliable, hocus pocus free medical advice for vegans. If you have a question about single nutrients, supplementation, or common myths and confusions regarding vegan health, his site should be the first place you look. Very specific recommendations and plenty of resources abound. He's also posted things like possible meal plans if you can't imagine what a vegan day would even look like. If you want to find out about B12, Veganism and cancer, raising healthy vegan children, and protein, this resource is the place for you!
1. Vegetarian Food for Thought Podcast
So, we've covered your health, your stomach, your next trip, and your next pint. Now it's time for your soul's education. Does that sound a little crazy and over-the-top? You obviously haven't been listening to Colleen Patrick Goudreau's earthshaking podcast. But now you will, and now your life will change. Everything you need is here: education about animal issues, education about animals themselves (every thought about whether you want to cuddle a loving turkey, or nuzzle a calming donkey? You will now.), health issues, how to respond to your co-worker, family member, or anyone else who might challenge you. My explanation isn't doing it justice. Just go over there right now and listen to: How to Talk to Hunters, Animal Advocacy and Emotional Stress, Conversations with Strangers, or Life Without Cheese. You're welcome.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Documentary Review: Blackfish
The poster for Blackfish is undeniably creepy. I'm a big wimp when it comes to anything gory or spooky, so
I was quite frankly a little nervous. Especially because I was going to watch it right before bedtime. Eek.
But I sucked it up and watched it, and shall be forever thankful that I did. Or thankful for awhile, anyway. Blackfish is indeed chilling and haunting, but it's also fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully constructed.
The documentary tells the story of Tillikum, an orca whale who made headlines a few years ago when he killed one of his trainers, Dawn Brancheau. The documentary covers the lives of orcas in captivity comprehensively, illustrating the disturbing and illegal practises of the marine park industry in capturing whales from the wild, sometimes resulting in the death of whales before they reach the sea parks. Soft-hearted? You won't enjoy hearing about the training methods these parks use and the conditions the whales are kept in. The inferior health and quality of life of whales in captivity are shown in sad, frustrating detail.
And Tillikum. The story of a whale taken from his family when he was two, kept in essentially a large swimming pool in Victoria, BC, and bullied by his fellow whales. We see injuries that he suffered at the hands of the other whales, who have turned aggressive due to frustration and unnatural socialization. We see his dorsal fin collapse, a condition symptomatic of poor health that occurs in almost all male orcas in captivity, and less than 1% of male orcas in the wild. Eager to please and loving towards his trainers, Tillikum seems to have lived in frustration, resulting in what some believe to be a psychosis, and ultimately causing him to turn fatally aggressive towards humans. This aggression is mirrored in many other whales in captivity, and Dawn Brancheau is not the other trainer to lose her life, or suffer from injury at the hand of a captive orca.
On the other hand, the film portrays the incredible intelligence of these beautiful whales. From one of the interviewees, we learn that orcas have a part of their brains that humans don't have. Most fascinating to me was the research that found that orcas not only communicate with a complex system of sounds, these sounds differ between difference families of whales. Meaning that orcas speak different languages. The pain of the subjects of the film is interspersed with absolutely beautiful, peaceful images of orcas in the wild, swimming with their families, free to live as they please. My god, what beautiful animals they are.
At the end of the film I was left with one thought. Mom and Dad, in retrospect, I'm really, really glad you never took me to Marineland.
I was quite frankly a little nervous. Especially because I was going to watch it right before bedtime. Eek.
But I sucked it up and watched it, and shall be forever thankful that I did. Or thankful for awhile, anyway. Blackfish is indeed chilling and haunting, but it's also fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully constructed.The documentary tells the story of Tillikum, an orca whale who made headlines a few years ago when he killed one of his trainers, Dawn Brancheau. The documentary covers the lives of orcas in captivity comprehensively, illustrating the disturbing and illegal practises of the marine park industry in capturing whales from the wild, sometimes resulting in the death of whales before they reach the sea parks. Soft-hearted? You won't enjoy hearing about the training methods these parks use and the conditions the whales are kept in. The inferior health and quality of life of whales in captivity are shown in sad, frustrating detail.
And Tillikum. The story of a whale taken from his family when he was two, kept in essentially a large swimming pool in Victoria, BC, and bullied by his fellow whales. We see injuries that he suffered at the hands of the other whales, who have turned aggressive due to frustration and unnatural socialization. We see his dorsal fin collapse, a condition symptomatic of poor health that occurs in almost all male orcas in captivity, and less than 1% of male orcas in the wild. Eager to please and loving towards his trainers, Tillikum seems to have lived in frustration, resulting in what some believe to be a psychosis, and ultimately causing him to turn fatally aggressive towards humans. This aggression is mirrored in many other whales in captivity, and Dawn Brancheau is not the other trainer to lose her life, or suffer from injury at the hand of a captive orca.
On the other hand, the film portrays the incredible intelligence of these beautiful whales. From one of the interviewees, we learn that orcas have a part of their brains that humans don't have. Most fascinating to me was the research that found that orcas not only communicate with a complex system of sounds, these sounds differ between difference families of whales. Meaning that orcas speak different languages. The pain of the subjects of the film is interspersed with absolutely beautiful, peaceful images of orcas in the wild, swimming with their families, free to live as they please. My god, what beautiful animals they are.
At the end of the film I was left with one thought. Mom and Dad, in retrospect, I'm really, really glad you never took me to Marineland.
Sunday, 8 September 2013
Vegan Heroes: Dr. Melanie Joy
At the end of my last post about lentils I promised that recipes were soon to follow. That was in May and it's the end of August now, so clearly I lied. And it was kind of a big lie, because this post is not comprised of lentil recipes. Oh no, my friends. This post is so much bigger than lentil recipes/nothingisbiggerthan lentilrecipes.
Earlier in the year, I wrote about meeting the amazing Dr. Melanie Joy at Brighton VegFest, and I'd like to use this post to tell you more about Melanie's interesting and important work. She a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts, a Harvard graduate, a talented speaker, the author of Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows, and the founder of CAAN, the Carnism Awareness and Action Network. Um, I feel inadequate.
What the heck is carnism? Melanie coined the term to describe the philosophy of eating animals and their products. Essentially, it's the opposing belief system of veganism. Whereas vegans believe that humans have no right to consume the flesh and secretions of animals, carnists believe they are entitled to the bodies of animals.
Why do we need a word for this philosophy? Melanie argues that without naming the ideology that allows us to use animals for our own pleasure, it remains hidden in our culture, naturalising and normalising the practice. Meaning that because the mindset that allows us to eat animals doesn't have a name, we can't see it, talk about it, or even really think about, allowing us to continue without questioning, or seriously questioning, why we all accept that animals are there for our consumption.
I'm not going to say much more. Melanie explains the idea better than I could ever hope to. Instead I'll strongly encourage you to all watch her incredibly moving, inspiring speech on carnism.
Watch it, watch it, watch it now!! You will feel so inspired and motivated afterwards. Note: there are about five minutes of upsetting footage starting at about 28:30 in the video. It's difficult to watch, although not the worst footage available. Melanie resumes her talk at 33:12, if you feel that you need to skip this part.
Aside from watching the speech, I highly recommend Melanie's book: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.
The book explores the same themes as the speech, looking at the ways in which animal exploitation is both normalised by animal industries, and kept out of our sight. If you've never read an animal rights book before, I think this is a great book to start with, as it's engagingly written and not too heavy on theory. And I've got a signed copy. Jealous?
This post has not been sponsored by Dr. Joy and her people in any way. I just think she's that freaking cool.
Earlier in the year, I wrote about meeting the amazing Dr. Melanie Joy at Brighton VegFest, and I'd like to use this post to tell you more about Melanie's interesting and important work. She a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts, a Harvard graduate, a talented speaker, the author of Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows, and the founder of CAAN, the Carnism Awareness and Action Network. Um, I feel inadequate.What the heck is carnism? Melanie coined the term to describe the philosophy of eating animals and their products. Essentially, it's the opposing belief system of veganism. Whereas vegans believe that humans have no right to consume the flesh and secretions of animals, carnists believe they are entitled to the bodies of animals.
Why do we need a word for this philosophy? Melanie argues that without naming the ideology that allows us to use animals for our own pleasure, it remains hidden in our culture, naturalising and normalising the practice. Meaning that because the mindset that allows us to eat animals doesn't have a name, we can't see it, talk about it, or even really think about, allowing us to continue without questioning, or seriously questioning, why we all accept that animals are there for our consumption.
I'm not going to say much more. Melanie explains the idea better than I could ever hope to. Instead I'll strongly encourage you to all watch her incredibly moving, inspiring speech on carnism.
Watch it, watch it, watch it now!! You will feel so inspired and motivated afterwards. Note: there are about five minutes of upsetting footage starting at about 28:30 in the video. It's difficult to watch, although not the worst footage available. Melanie resumes her talk at 33:12, if you feel that you need to skip this part.
Aside from watching the speech, I highly recommend Melanie's book: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.
The book explores the same themes as the speech, looking at the ways in which animal exploitation is both normalised by animal industries, and kept out of our sight. If you've never read an animal rights book before, I think this is a great book to start with, as it's engagingly written and not too heavy on theory. And I've got a signed copy. Jealous?
This post has not been sponsored by Dr. Joy and her people in any way. I just think she's that freaking cool.
Sunday, 26 May 2013
The Hows and How Nots of Lentils
Lentils. Why? How? Where? Huh? I know these questions have been milling around your head for years. And I have the answers.
What are lentils?
Teeny tiny lentils, despite their humble appearance and flavour, can be surprisingly mysterious. In most English speaking countries, they're underused and misunderstood. Like beans, but not. How do I cook them? Why would I want to do that? Will the vegans show me their secret handshake if I eat them once a day? The answer to that last question is yes, by the way. Not only that, but lentils are amazingly nutritious and so cheap it's kinda stupid. They have more protein than any other type of legume, and have good bits of dietary fiber, folate, and iron.
There are a lot of different kinds of lentils and a myriad of ways to use them, and I'm not going to talk about each and every one of both here because I have stuff to do, people! But a few of the most common of each are detailed below:
What different types of lentils are there?
Red Split Lentils: These are the first kind of lentils I ever learnt to cook with, so I feel a certain amount of loyalty to them. And they are super easy to cook, only taking about 15 minutes. They're supposed to turn to mush, so they're pretty forgivable. By that I mean that once red split lentils are done, they won't really hold a lentil shape, they will be soft and formless. Don't freak out. This is natural and as it should be. Red lentils are widely available, and have an array of uses, including soups, stews, dals, and curries. They're also orange. I have no idea why they're called red. Weird, eh?
Brown/Green lentils (aka continental lentils): Brown and green lentils are, confusingly enough, the same kind of lentil (this type of green lentil is different to Puy lentils, below). Like red lentils, you can get them anywhere, and are probably the most commonly called for type of lentils in cookbooks. They take about 30 mintues to cook properly, and hold their form somewhat, but they can turn mushy if cooked a little longer. If that's what you're into. So they're good in all kinds of applications: soups, stews, meat subs, salads, and loaves, etc. Just chuck them into anything you want.
Puy Lentils: Also known as French lentils and lentilles vertes. These pretty little suckers come from the volcanic region of Le Puy-en-Velay, France. And they are So Pretty! The lovely green little pulses are not only a beautiful, jade-green colour, but they hold their shape very well once fully cooked, which takes about 20 minutes. Puy lentils are especially good in lentil salads, both warm and cold, but they also work well in soups.
Black Beluga Lentils: Again, so pretty. So much prettiness! These glossy black gems are very similar to Puy Lentils. They hold their shape well and can be used in the same recipes as their green counterparts. Weirdly enough, they are named for their resemblance to Beluga caviar, seen them used to replicate caviar in appetizers (for appearances only). They also take about 20 minutes to cookand work well in salads and soups.
Yellow/Green Split Peas: These aren't really lentils, but I've included them here as they can often be used in the same way. These monkeys are nutritious and cheap as can be, and so should be staples in any student's kitchen. There is no difference between the two types except for the colour. Split pea soup is a classic use of them, and the smoky flavour that pig's meat sometimes adds can be replaced with a curious little ingredient by the name of liquid smoke. Split peas can also be used to make stews (especially in a slow cooker), curries, and dals. They take longer to cook than lentils: about 40-45 minutes, and they should be pretty mushy by the end of things.
How do you cook them?
In a pot. Ha! Rinse your lentils, and keep an eye out for little stones (although little stones in your lentils are pretty rare nowadays). One cup of dry lentils will generally equal 2.5 cups of cooked lentils. There are two ways of cooking them: 1) cover with a good amount of water and salt (optional), cook for the time mentioned above, and drain and rinse; 2) use 1 part lentils to two parts water and check the lentils periodically and add a bit of water as needed. This way you don't have to drain the lentils, meaning you don't have to wash your strainer, which everyone knows is the worst part of washing up.
Of course, you can also sprout the lentils, but I don't really know anything about it, so I can't offer any advice.
What types of dishes can you make with them?
Soups and Stews: Happy, warm, soupful tummy. Lentil soups are pretty common even outside of vegan land, and even in the pulse-phobic UK these bowls of homey bliss have stood the test of time.
Best type of lentils: red, yellow/green split peas. Both of these types of lentils will cook down until they're soft, making a thick, blended-esque soup. Green split pea soup is a classic, and the smoky flavour of ham can be replaced using liquid smoke.
Good types of lentils: brown/green lentils, puy lentils, black lentils. There's no bad lentil for soup. Brown and green lentils can still be cooked into a sort of mushy texture, and make a thick soup. Puy and black lentils will make a brothier soup.
Flavours: cumin, coriander, cinnamon, garam masala, tomatoes, thyme, rosemary, lemon, ginger, and basil are all common.
Dals and Curries: If you're unaware, dal is a type of smooshy, lentil based Indian curry, although it can be made with other types of pulses. Dals are usually thick in texture, although sometimes they have a thinner, more soup-like texture. Outside of dals, lots of curries will accept a handful of lentils thrown in for extra bulk.
If you visit a middle eastern or Indian grocery store, you'll see a lot of pulses with names like chana dal (split chickpeas), toor dal (yellow pigeon peas), and urud dal (black gram). Try currying them up and see how you like them.
Of the lentils in this post:
Best: red lentils, green/yellow split lentils (not commonly used in India, but suit this type of dish very well.
Good: green/brown lentils
Flavours: cumin, coriander, tomato paste, mustard seeds, garam masala, fenugreek seeds...general Indian-ish flavours.
Cows' Meat Substitute: Lentils can often be used instead of minced cows' meat (blurg). If you're trying to avoid the more processed soy protein or commercial veggie minces, lentils can take their place. Don't use this method expecting the lentils to taste exactly like cows. They won't. This is a garden of new delights you'll be entering. In particular, try lentils substituting for cows' meat in spaghetti bolongnese, in lasagne, tacos, sloppy joes, and casseroles.
Best: brown/green lentils.
Good: red split lentils.
Flavours: whatever the recipe calls for. Mediterranean herbs, Mexican spices, bay leaves, garlic, etc.
Lentil Loafs: Welcome to the 70's. The 70's of deliciousness! Oh, time tested loaf of hippie goodness. You are so much better than the hideous meatloaves of my childhood nightmares. And you usually come with delicious tomato-y sauces too. Mix together cookied lentils, grated carrots, nuts/seeds, oats, maybe some breadcrumbs, and some herbs, and bake. Serve with ketcup or tomato sauce or whatever the heck you want.
Best: brown/green lentils
Good: red lentils
Flavours: you can be creative here, but traditionally these are made with woodsy flavours, such as rosemary, sage, basil, parsley, and thyme.
Salads: Variations of lentil salads are endless, and putting them together is easy as pie. There's not really much to say about them...salads made of lentils. Sometimes combined with rice.
Best: Puy lentils, black lentils
Good: green/brown lentils.
Flavours: whatever you want! Dressings: lemony, orange uice with jam, vinegar, mustard and thyme, tahini and miso. Salad ingredients: nuts, seeds, raw veggies, berries, tropical fruit, peaches, apples, pears, raisins and other dried fruit, spinach. Dang it, now I want one.
Mujaddara: Yes, this dish needs its own entry. One of the oldest recipes that's still with us today, it is reputed to be a descendant of of the dish with which Jacob buys Esau's birthright (bible stuff). And the dish is so simple. Lentils and rice are cooked together with a few spices and topped with carmelized or fried onions. Vegetarian comfort food.
Best: Brown/green lentils.
Ok: Black lentils, Puy lentils, red split lentils
Flavours: cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, allspice.
I hope this answers your lentil-based questions and I hope you make mujaddara tonight. Recipes soon to follow.
What are lentils?
Teeny tiny lentils, despite their humble appearance and flavour, can be surprisingly mysterious. In most English speaking countries, they're underused and misunderstood. Like beans, but not. How do I cook them? Why would I want to do that? Will the vegans show me their secret handshake if I eat them once a day? The answer to that last question is yes, by the way. Not only that, but lentils are amazingly nutritious and so cheap it's kinda stupid. They have more protein than any other type of legume, and have good bits of dietary fiber, folate, and iron.
There are a lot of different kinds of lentils and a myriad of ways to use them, and I'm not going to talk about each and every one of both here because I have stuff to do, people! But a few of the most common of each are detailed below:
What different types of lentils are there?
Red Split Lentils: These are the first kind of lentils I ever learnt to cook with, so I feel a certain amount of loyalty to them. And they are super easy to cook, only taking about 15 minutes. They're supposed to turn to mush, so they're pretty forgivable. By that I mean that once red split lentils are done, they won't really hold a lentil shape, they will be soft and formless. Don't freak out. This is natural and as it should be. Red lentils are widely available, and have an array of uses, including soups, stews, dals, and curries. They're also orange. I have no idea why they're called red. Weird, eh?
Brown/Green lentils (aka continental lentils): Brown and green lentils are, confusingly enough, the same kind of lentil (this type of green lentil is different to Puy lentils, below). Like red lentils, you can get them anywhere, and are probably the most commonly called for type of lentils in cookbooks. They take about 30 mintues to cook properly, and hold their form somewhat, but they can turn mushy if cooked a little longer. If that's what you're into. So they're good in all kinds of applications: soups, stews, meat subs, salads, and loaves, etc. Just chuck them into anything you want.
Puy Lentils: Also known as French lentils and lentilles vertes. These pretty little suckers come from the volcanic region of Le Puy-en-Velay, France. And they are So Pretty! The lovely green little pulses are not only a beautiful, jade-green colour, but they hold their shape very well once fully cooked, which takes about 20 minutes. Puy lentils are especially good in lentil salads, both warm and cold, but they also work well in soups.
Black Beluga Lentils: Again, so pretty. So much prettiness! These glossy black gems are very similar to Puy Lentils. They hold their shape well and can be used in the same recipes as their green counterparts. Weirdly enough, they are named for their resemblance to Beluga caviar, seen them used to replicate caviar in appetizers (for appearances only). They also take about 20 minutes to cookand work well in salads and soups.
Yellow/Green Split Peas: These aren't really lentils, but I've included them here as they can often be used in the same way. These monkeys are nutritious and cheap as can be, and so should be staples in any student's kitchen. There is no difference between the two types except for the colour. Split pea soup is a classic use of them, and the smoky flavour that pig's meat sometimes adds can be replaced with a curious little ingredient by the name of liquid smoke. Split peas can also be used to make stews (especially in a slow cooker), curries, and dals. They take longer to cook than lentils: about 40-45 minutes, and they should be pretty mushy by the end of things.
How do you cook them?
In a pot. Ha! Rinse your lentils, and keep an eye out for little stones (although little stones in your lentils are pretty rare nowadays). One cup of dry lentils will generally equal 2.5 cups of cooked lentils. There are two ways of cooking them: 1) cover with a good amount of water and salt (optional), cook for the time mentioned above, and drain and rinse; 2) use 1 part lentils to two parts water and check the lentils periodically and add a bit of water as needed. This way you don't have to drain the lentils, meaning you don't have to wash your strainer, which everyone knows is the worst part of washing up.
Of course, you can also sprout the lentils, but I don't really know anything about it, so I can't offer any advice.
What types of dishes can you make with them?
Soups and Stews: Happy, warm, soupful tummy. Lentil soups are pretty common even outside of vegan land, and even in the pulse-phobic UK these bowls of homey bliss have stood the test of time.
Best type of lentils: red, yellow/green split peas. Both of these types of lentils will cook down until they're soft, making a thick, blended-esque soup. Green split pea soup is a classic, and the smoky flavour of ham can be replaced using liquid smoke.
Good types of lentils: brown/green lentils, puy lentils, black lentils. There's no bad lentil for soup. Brown and green lentils can still be cooked into a sort of mushy texture, and make a thick soup. Puy and black lentils will make a brothier soup.
Flavours: cumin, coriander, cinnamon, garam masala, tomatoes, thyme, rosemary, lemon, ginger, and basil are all common.
Dals and Curries: If you're unaware, dal is a type of smooshy, lentil based Indian curry, although it can be made with other types of pulses. Dals are usually thick in texture, although sometimes they have a thinner, more soup-like texture. Outside of dals, lots of curries will accept a handful of lentils thrown in for extra bulk.
If you visit a middle eastern or Indian grocery store, you'll see a lot of pulses with names like chana dal (split chickpeas), toor dal (yellow pigeon peas), and urud dal (black gram). Try currying them up and see how you like them.
Of the lentils in this post:
Best: red lentils, green/yellow split lentils (not commonly used in India, but suit this type of dish very well.
Good: green/brown lentils
Flavours: cumin, coriander, tomato paste, mustard seeds, garam masala, fenugreek seeds...general Indian-ish flavours.
Cows' Meat Substitute: Lentils can often be used instead of minced cows' meat (blurg). If you're trying to avoid the more processed soy protein or commercial veggie minces, lentils can take their place. Don't use this method expecting the lentils to taste exactly like cows. They won't. This is a garden of new delights you'll be entering. In particular, try lentils substituting for cows' meat in spaghetti bolongnese, in lasagne, tacos, sloppy joes, and casseroles.
Best: brown/green lentils.
Good: red split lentils.
Flavours: whatever the recipe calls for. Mediterranean herbs, Mexican spices, bay leaves, garlic, etc.
Lentil Loafs: Welcome to the 70's. The 70's of deliciousness! Oh, time tested loaf of hippie goodness. You are so much better than the hideous meatloaves of my childhood nightmares. And you usually come with delicious tomato-y sauces too. Mix together cookied lentils, grated carrots, nuts/seeds, oats, maybe some breadcrumbs, and some herbs, and bake. Serve with ketcup or tomato sauce or whatever the heck you want.
Best: brown/green lentils
Good: red lentils
Flavours: you can be creative here, but traditionally these are made with woodsy flavours, such as rosemary, sage, basil, parsley, and thyme.
Salads: Variations of lentil salads are endless, and putting them together is easy as pie. There's not really much to say about them...salads made of lentils. Sometimes combined with rice.
Best: Puy lentils, black lentils
Good: green/brown lentils.
Flavours: whatever you want! Dressings: lemony, orange uice with jam, vinegar, mustard and thyme, tahini and miso. Salad ingredients: nuts, seeds, raw veggies, berries, tropical fruit, peaches, apples, pears, raisins and other dried fruit, spinach. Dang it, now I want one.
Mujaddara: Yes, this dish needs its own entry. One of the oldest recipes that's still with us today, it is reputed to be a descendant of of the dish with which Jacob buys Esau's birthright (bible stuff). And the dish is so simple. Lentils and rice are cooked together with a few spices and topped with carmelized or fried onions. Vegetarian comfort food.
Best: Brown/green lentils.
Ok: Black lentils, Puy lentils, red split lentils
Flavours: cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, allspice.
I hope this answers your lentil-based questions and I hope you make mujaddara tonight. Recipes soon to follow.
Monday, 22 April 2013
Sitting in Judgement: how to tell people that you're vegetarian
I know all you meat-eaters think that giving up cheese is a gigantic, oppressive cross that vegans have chosen to wear. It's not. Life after cheese is not that hard. I rarely ever even think about cheese. But what is often truly difficult about plant-based living is dealing with the social aspects of being vegan or vegetarian. New vegetarians are often surprised at the reaction they receive from other people when announce that they follow a different diet from the norm. These reactions can range from mild disrespect to mockery, or from vitrolic insults to uncomfortable silence. Of course, it's not all bad, sometimes people are just curious, interested, politely baffled, or completely non-plussed.
I don't think I know any vegetarian hasn't had someone challenge their eating practices in a disrespectful way. And this situation is strangely contrasted by the perception that vegetarians are judgemental extremists who simply can't stop themselves from shoving carrots up the noses of all the meat-eaters they encounter.
Why on Earth would anyone care, let alone react badly when someone tells them they're a vegetarian? I've come to believe that I understand the reasons for these reactions. The key word up there is judgemental. Obviously, no one likes being judged. The realization that we don't always control other people's perceptions of us makes most of us feel panicky and defensive. Most people have a general desire to be seen as compassionate, kind, and intelligent, and it's rude awakening whenever we realise that other people have come to different conclusions about us.
But is the label of Judgy McJudgerson a fair one to slap onto vegans? Are some vegens judgemental? Sure. For a long time, 10 years or so, I would have said no. I genuinely hadn't encountered it. But since becoming vegan, and entering online VeganWorld, I've noticed a species of vegan that are absolutely up on their high, pleather-saddled horses. And this behaviour is completely misguided. None of us are perfect vegans, and very few of us became vegans or vegetarians the second it occured to us there might be something unethical about eating animals. And it's not exactly appealing behaviour that's going to convince others that veganism is a club they really want to be part of. But these vegans don't speak for the majority of us.
Truthfully? I'm absolutely a judgemental person. I judge people all the time. It's something I'm working on doing less, but I have to admit: I love judging people. And I usually find people who don't share this past-time kind of boring. It's fun. But I am really not a judgemental vegan. I don't care what you are or aren't putting in your mouth. Believe it or not, I don't spend that much time thinking about your eating habits. Do I want everyone to stop eating meat, dairy, and eggs? Yes. Absolutely. Do I waste my time judging individual people for eating meat, dairy, and eggs? No! I have bigger potatoes to fry, and I spent years ignoring the truth of the dairy and egg industries myself.
What does "judgemental" mean anyway? We all make negative moral judgements about other people all the time, and plenty of these judgements are useful. If I said that I thought we needed to take some more time to understand the reasons behind Stalin's behaviour and not be so quick to label his actions as "evil", I wouldn't arrouse much support. Because it would be idiotic. Saying that child abuse, genocide, murder, sexual assault, and not give your seat to old ladies on the bus is wrong is a judgement. But a useful one. One that lets us know what kind of behaviour we don't want to be involved in. What we really mean when we call someone judgemental is that they make a negative judgement about someone that is unfair. We take a slice of their behaviour or beliefs and using it to make a wider negative judgement about their worth as a human being, or their intelligence as a whole.
Put into perspective, if I say that I believe eating animals is morally wrong, does that make me a judgemental person? I don't believe that it does. If I say that I believe that someone is an immoral person based soley on their consumption of animals and their secretions, does that make me a judgemental person? Yes, I believe it does. And I don't honestly hear the latter judgement come around too often in vegan and vegetarian circles. I'm perfectly aware that someone who eats meat might donate plenty of his/her time to other charitable or social justice calls. Maybe they spend hours letting friends cry on their shoulders after their friends have been dumped. Maybe they call their grandmother every weekend. I don't think I'm a better person than a meat eater is. But I still think eating animals is wrong.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's perfectly possible to disagree with a moral position or lack of position that another person has, without thinking that they are an immoral person. I don't have to agree with everything someone says or does in order to think they are a kind and intelligent person.
Sooooooooo, what does all of this have to do with vegetarians telling people about their veggie munching lifestyle? I think understanding why people react against vegetarians is hugely important for us. and I think it's important for us to have the confidence to talk about these issues without feeling that we are being judgemental. And I think it's even more important that vegetarians keep telling people that they are vegetarian. Who benefits from you keeping quiet? The animals? Even the people who are supposed to be fighting for their rights are too afraid to speak up for them. You? Does it really sound reasonable that you should have to hide something important to you so that someone else doesn't feel momentarily uncomfortable? The other person in the conversation? I guess if you stay quiet they don't have to feel momentarily uncomfortable. But one of the most common things I hear vegans saying is that they wish that had known all this information before. They wish the vegan they lived or worked with 10 years ago had spoken up. They feel pain at the idea that they contributed to cruelty so often for so many years.
So my advice for speaking up and telling people that you're vegetarian? Tell them you're vegetarian. My advice for answering tactfully when people ask you why you're vegetarian? Tell. Them. Why. You're. Vegetarian. I'm so tired of hearing other vegans start threads on vegan forums asking how to "handle the conversation" with their co-workers, or their family members, or their spouse's relatives about the reasons for their veganism. As though they are supposed to squeak out their reasons quiet as a mouse and then rock the other person softly and comfortingly back to their happy place. Just tell them! But tell them YOUR reasons for becoming vegetarian. You don't need to tell them all the reasons under the sun for veganism, or tell them why they should be vegan. Tell them what made sense to you and moved you the most. If you are talking about what matters to you and what moves you, how is that judgemental?
If they react against your calm explanations of your own beliefs, recognise that you can't control their reactions. Recognise that they may feel judged and that may not be your fault (assuming you really didn't shove those carrots up their nose). You don't have to engage with anyone you don't want to. You can walk away from the conversation if they react disrespectfully. You can even point out to them that they are reacting disrespectfully. You end here. They begin there. You don't control their reaction.
We live in a world in which people don't feel comfortable telling other people that they have opinions different to the norm. We live in a world where people don't feel comfortable telling other people that they actually act in accordance with their beliefs. We live in a world where it's considered normal and reasonable to believe one thing, and behave in the opposite way. Fix that. Speak up.
I don't think I know any vegetarian hasn't had someone challenge their eating practices in a disrespectful way. And this situation is strangely contrasted by the perception that vegetarians are judgemental extremists who simply can't stop themselves from shoving carrots up the noses of all the meat-eaters they encounter.
Why on Earth would anyone care, let alone react badly when someone tells them they're a vegetarian? I've come to believe that I understand the reasons for these reactions. The key word up there is judgemental. Obviously, no one likes being judged. The realization that we don't always control other people's perceptions of us makes most of us feel panicky and defensive. Most people have a general desire to be seen as compassionate, kind, and intelligent, and it's rude awakening whenever we realise that other people have come to different conclusions about us.
But is the label of Judgy McJudgerson a fair one to slap onto vegans? Are some vegens judgemental? Sure. For a long time, 10 years or so, I would have said no. I genuinely hadn't encountered it. But since becoming vegan, and entering online VeganWorld, I've noticed a species of vegan that are absolutely up on their high, pleather-saddled horses. And this behaviour is completely misguided. None of us are perfect vegans, and very few of us became vegans or vegetarians the second it occured to us there might be something unethical about eating animals. And it's not exactly appealing behaviour that's going to convince others that veganism is a club they really want to be part of. But these vegans don't speak for the majority of us.
Truthfully? I'm absolutely a judgemental person. I judge people all the time. It's something I'm working on doing less, but I have to admit: I love judging people. And I usually find people who don't share this past-time kind of boring. It's fun. But I am really not a judgemental vegan. I don't care what you are or aren't putting in your mouth. Believe it or not, I don't spend that much time thinking about your eating habits. Do I want everyone to stop eating meat, dairy, and eggs? Yes. Absolutely. Do I waste my time judging individual people for eating meat, dairy, and eggs? No! I have bigger potatoes to fry, and I spent years ignoring the truth of the dairy and egg industries myself.
What does "judgemental" mean anyway? We all make negative moral judgements about other people all the time, and plenty of these judgements are useful. If I said that I thought we needed to take some more time to understand the reasons behind Stalin's behaviour and not be so quick to label his actions as "evil", I wouldn't arrouse much support. Because it would be idiotic. Saying that child abuse, genocide, murder, sexual assault, and not give your seat to old ladies on the bus is wrong is a judgement. But a useful one. One that lets us know what kind of behaviour we don't want to be involved in. What we really mean when we call someone judgemental is that they make a negative judgement about someone that is unfair. We take a slice of their behaviour or beliefs and using it to make a wider negative judgement about their worth as a human being, or their intelligence as a whole.
Put into perspective, if I say that I believe eating animals is morally wrong, does that make me a judgemental person? I don't believe that it does. If I say that I believe that someone is an immoral person based soley on their consumption of animals and their secretions, does that make me a judgemental person? Yes, I believe it does. And I don't honestly hear the latter judgement come around too often in vegan and vegetarian circles. I'm perfectly aware that someone who eats meat might donate plenty of his/her time to other charitable or social justice calls. Maybe they spend hours letting friends cry on their shoulders after their friends have been dumped. Maybe they call their grandmother every weekend. I don't think I'm a better person than a meat eater is. But I still think eating animals is wrong.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's perfectly possible to disagree with a moral position or lack of position that another person has, without thinking that they are an immoral person. I don't have to agree with everything someone says or does in order to think they are a kind and intelligent person.
Sooooooooo, what does all of this have to do with vegetarians telling people about their veggie munching lifestyle? I think understanding why people react against vegetarians is hugely important for us. and I think it's important for us to have the confidence to talk about these issues without feeling that we are being judgemental. And I think it's even more important that vegetarians keep telling people that they are vegetarian. Who benefits from you keeping quiet? The animals? Even the people who are supposed to be fighting for their rights are too afraid to speak up for them. You? Does it really sound reasonable that you should have to hide something important to you so that someone else doesn't feel momentarily uncomfortable? The other person in the conversation? I guess if you stay quiet they don't have to feel momentarily uncomfortable. But one of the most common things I hear vegans saying is that they wish that had known all this information before. They wish the vegan they lived or worked with 10 years ago had spoken up. They feel pain at the idea that they contributed to cruelty so often for so many years.
So my advice for speaking up and telling people that you're vegetarian? Tell them you're vegetarian. My advice for answering tactfully when people ask you why you're vegetarian? Tell. Them. Why. You're. Vegetarian. I'm so tired of hearing other vegans start threads on vegan forums asking how to "handle the conversation" with their co-workers, or their family members, or their spouse's relatives about the reasons for their veganism. As though they are supposed to squeak out their reasons quiet as a mouse and then rock the other person softly and comfortingly back to their happy place. Just tell them! But tell them YOUR reasons for becoming vegetarian. You don't need to tell them all the reasons under the sun for veganism, or tell them why they should be vegan. Tell them what made sense to you and moved you the most. If you are talking about what matters to you and what moves you, how is that judgemental?
If they react against your calm explanations of your own beliefs, recognise that you can't control their reactions. Recognise that they may feel judged and that may not be your fault (assuming you really didn't shove those carrots up their nose). You don't have to engage with anyone you don't want to. You can walk away from the conversation if they react disrespectfully. You can even point out to them that they are reacting disrespectfully. You end here. They begin there. You don't control their reaction.
We live in a world in which people don't feel comfortable telling other people that they have opinions different to the norm. We live in a world where people don't feel comfortable telling other people that they actually act in accordance with their beliefs. We live in a world where it's considered normal and reasonable to believe one thing, and behave in the opposite way. Fix that. Speak up.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Pizza Hummous!
Two weeks ago I blogged about food cravings and our misconceptions about what they tell us about our bodies. So today, I give you a recipe combining the one thing all vegans crave beyond reason and one thing almost everyone craves: hummous and pizza.
A huge variety of different flavoured chickpea dips are making their way around the internet, so when I saw the idea for pizza hummous on another blog, I had to try to create my own version. I think I'm a little addicted to coming up with bastardized, creative versions of hummous now, so be warned, this probably won't be the last time I post a non-traditional garbanzo recipe.
Pizza Hummous:
1 can chickpeas
1 large spoonful tahini (1-2 tbsp)
Either 1/2 cup prepared pizza sauce OR 1/2 cup of simple sauce recipe below
4 olives, any variety
1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/2 bell pepper (in the photo above I used a PURPLE bell pepper! What???)
Tomato sauce (use only half of this recipe):
1/2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp italian seasoning (or 1 tsp dried basil, 1 tsp oregano, and a pinch each of rosemary, sage, and marjoram)
1 500g tin tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
Blend chickpeas and tahini together in blender.
If making your own sauce, heat olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Saute garlic gloves for 1 minute, until fragrant. Add dried herbs and saute for 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes. Simmer over medium heat until reduce slightly (5 minutes or so), and then add the salt. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Add either the 1/2 cup of pizza sauce, or 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce, olives, nutritional yeast, and salt to the chickpeas and blend until smooth. Taste, and add more salt if necessary. Fold in bell pepper and serve with pita bread, or strips of plan pizza crust!
A huge variety of different flavoured chickpea dips are making their way around the internet, so when I saw the idea for pizza hummous on another blog, I had to try to create my own version. I think I'm a little addicted to coming up with bastardized, creative versions of hummous now, so be warned, this probably won't be the last time I post a non-traditional garbanzo recipe.
1 can chickpeas
1 large spoonful tahini (1-2 tbsp)
Either 1/2 cup prepared pizza sauce OR 1/2 cup of simple sauce recipe below
4 olives, any variety
1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/2 bell pepper (in the photo above I used a PURPLE bell pepper! What???)
Tomato sauce (use only half of this recipe):
1/2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp italian seasoning (or 1 tsp dried basil, 1 tsp oregano, and a pinch each of rosemary, sage, and marjoram)
1 500g tin tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
Blend chickpeas and tahini together in blender.
If making your own sauce, heat olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Saute garlic gloves for 1 minute, until fragrant. Add dried herbs and saute for 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes. Simmer over medium heat until reduce slightly (5 minutes or so), and then add the salt. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Add either the 1/2 cup of pizza sauce, or 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce, olives, nutritional yeast, and salt to the chickpeas and blend until smooth. Taste, and add more salt if necessary. Fold in bell pepper and serve with pita bread, or strips of plan pizza crust!
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Brighton VegFest
An hour into attending the annual Brighton VegFest, my omnivore boyfriend turned to me and said, "you know what I've learnt today? Vegans are just like normal people. I thought they'd be all weird, but most of them look just like people." Um, thanks, honey.
The Brighton VegFest, which I attended for the first time this year, is a happy annual event where animal products are checked at the door, and vegan food sellers, animal organisations, beauty product producers, and clothing stalls mingle happily with vegan-related workshops, speakers, and performers. The air is heady with free samples of strawberry coconut milk, vegan pastry and cake, nut cheese samples, and animal-free bath bombs.
Two years into my vegan wagon-ride, I'm starting to realise that actually associating with other vegans is an essential part of vegan well-beaning. Not being much of a joiner, this thought has mostly occurred to me and then drifted away aimlessly. But with this thought in mind, I decided to spend the afternoon among my own people.
So, from 11-3pm I frolicked around three floors of stalls, and aquired a vegan Snickers-type bar, signed multiple petitions, tried coconut milk samples, raw chocolate samples, bought The Joy of Vegan Baking for £5 (yay!), thought about investing in a weekly delivery box of organic veggies (jury is still out on this idea, what do you think?), and gelatin-free vegan jelly candies (I'm not usually a fan of jellies, vegan or not, but these were good!), and used my feminine wiles to convince the boyfriend to buy me a carrot shaped bubble bath thingy from Lush. Okay, I just asked him to buy it for me and he did. And then I had a sugar-rush so had to have some real food, and dug into a super-yummy chickpea curry, and once full promptly spilled the remains of it over myself.
By far and away, the most amazing, inspiring, and moving aspect of the event was the beautiful speech by Dr. Melanie Joy, a professor of social psychology, and author of the book that I had coincidentally just finished reading, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. Melanie talks about the means through which most people are able to cultivate a gap in their consciousness, allowing them to ignore the true origins of what's on their plates. I wouldn't be able to express it as articulately as she does, so I'm not going to try, but I urge you all to read her book. I left the speech feeling motivated and re-devoted to the cause.
After we let the speech we made one more stop to Ms. Cupcake's stand, which is the happiest place in Brixton: a vegan bakery. The boyfriend bought himself a ferrero rocher cupcake (a chocolate and hazelnut cupcake so chocolatey it might be illegal), and I got a gigantic cookie sandwich, which was a meal in itself and AMAZING. Like a big oreo cookie, but actually good.
Who knew that a rainy day in Brighton could turn into a trip to Vegan Disneyland?
For anyone interested, there is another Vegfest in Bristol in May (admission £2), and one in London in October (admission £10).
The Brighton VegFest, which I attended for the first time this year, is a happy annual event where animal products are checked at the door, and vegan food sellers, animal organisations, beauty product producers, and clothing stalls mingle happily with vegan-related workshops, speakers, and performers. The air is heady with free samples of strawberry coconut milk, vegan pastry and cake, nut cheese samples, and animal-free bath bombs.
Two years into my vegan wagon-ride, I'm starting to realise that actually associating with other vegans is an essential part of vegan well-beaning. Not being much of a joiner, this thought has mostly occurred to me and then drifted away aimlessly. But with this thought in mind, I decided to spend the afternoon among my own people.
 |
| Carrot Bubble Bar from Lush! |
 |
| Melanie Joy and I! |
 |
| Ferraro Rocher Cupcakes! |
Who knew that a rainy day in Brighton could turn into a trip to Vegan Disneyland?
For anyone interested, there is another Vegfest in Bristol in May (admission £2), and one in London in October (admission £10).
Thursday, 7 March 2013
Food Cravings and Why You aren't as Smart as You Think You Are
Although vegans are frequently accused of being hippies, there's plenty of hippy fodder than annoys the kale out of me. Granola, Simon and Garfunkel, and not shaving your legs, all good stuff. Slippery Elm food, people named Rain, and optimism, all bad stuff. Carob I could do with or without. But the particular New Age-y, bullshiitake concept that I'd like to talk about today is one that's seeped out of the hippie realm and into everyday usage. And it goes like this: you need to listen to your body.
I'm not talking about listening to your bodies signals for basic functions, like sleeping and washroom trips. This concept pushes forward the idea that once you strip away the conditioning of society that makes you want to chug Coke and scarf cheeseburgers, you will be beautifully intuned to your body's signals, which will always be sensible and perfectly aligned with your true nutritional needs. So if you're lacking in beta-carotene, your body will crave carrots. If you're lacking in vitamin C, you'll crave broccoli. Whatever your body needs, it will naturally crave, and if you only learn to interpret your body's signals, you'll be bouncing off the walls with vibrant, sparkling energy.
And at face value, the idea doesn't sound that crazy, does it? It sounds pretty comforting. Once you reset your body's dials, you'll never have to fight its desires again. You will want exactly what you need and you can trust yourself totally. And if you aren't craving things that are healthful, than you simply haven't learned to listen to your body yet. How nice and neat and bundled into a little package of gobledegook.
Maybe my body speaks Portuguese. Maybe I need a hearing aid. But my body doesn't do much talking to me. At least, not any talking worth listening to. And its not for lack of me trying to become attuned. For years, I toed the line between thinking one day my body would be able to communicate beautifully and flawlessly to me about its needs, and thinking that the whole idea was poppycock.
And then one day, I sat listening to someone telling me that she ate meat only in small amounts, but every once in a while she craved meat strongly, and then she figured that she really needed it. Now, immediately this line of logic struck me as fallacious. If I'm strongly craving a can of Dr. Pepper (which is frequently enough the case), does that mean my body really needs a whack of sugar and food colouring devoid of any nutritional value? I don't think so. And aren't most people's cravings for...junk? True, I often crave healthy food, like kale, or berries, or sweetcorn, or more hummous than you might think any one human could consume. But I'm pretty sure your average diabetic, angina-suffering, meat-and-potatoes guy doesn't crave any of those things. And I think it's fair to assume he'd benefit from eating them. So it seemed more likely to me, in this moment of revelation, that I crave these healthy things simply because I often eat them, and was privy to their many charms.
And thusly, after this conversation and my reaction to it, I did what I am wont to do, and researched my butternut squash off. And what I found is that once upon a time, medical researchers hypothesised that food cravings were routed in specific nutrient deficiencies. But they haven't been very successful at demonstrating this relationship in the lab. Instead, modern research points to the relationship between what we crave and what we perceive as indulgent or forbidden. We crave chocolate partly because we're told that we crave chocolate. And partly because we believe that we're not supposed to eat it.
According to research, another possible cause of our cravings could be biological instinct. Our bodies haven't exactly evolved to deal with the western world. We crave fat and sugar because things high in fat and sugar have a high level of calorie density, which used to keep us alive back when food was scarce and required actual effort to come by. Now, these cravings hindering us instead of helping, and the excess fat and sugar we are consuming is making us ill.
There's also evidence to suggest that we crave what we eat a lot of, which is why I dream about a big, lemony forkful of spinach, and the meat and potatoes heart disease patient doesn't. Western women craving chocolate is so predictable it's a little embarrassing, but in countries where chocolate is seldom consumed the inhabitants crave more savoury foods.
Those of you reading this who are involved in the online vegan community will probably have guessed why I wrote this post now. Last week, a well-known vegan health counsellor (whom I have no intention of naming) shocked everyone by revealing that after 12 years of veganism, she was going back to eating animals and their secretions. Her reasoning? She had been experiencing uncontrollable cravings for animals. Now, she has not said she was experiencing health problems, but the implied sentiment of her announcement seemed to me to be that if she was craving animals, she must need them. So, without judging, I felt it was timely to present an accurate view of cravings and their true sources, insofar as we currently understand them to be. I hope that it will help not only those who feel crippled by their cravings on their way to better health, but more importantly those who still experience cravings for animal flesh and fluids. You do not have to bow down to your cravings.
I mean, let's face it, we're just not that smart, are we? Our bodies are not insightful, magical instruments that, if we only learn to listen to them, will lead us to good health. And neither are our minds. We consciously and unconsciously continue to make stupid decisions about our health, our work, our extra-curricular activities, our relationships, and just about every aspect of our lives under the sun. We gravitate towards foods we know are bad for us, and avoid foods we know are good. We value the wrong things. We fail to appreciate people who care for us. We procrastinate on things to the level that it seriously mucks up our lives. So why do we think that our cravings for stuff indicates anything other than simple, sometimes inadvisable, desire?
So if you are reading this and experiencing omnivorous cravings, give in to them. In a way. Don't try to decode your bodies signals. Sit down and eat a big, indulgent, vegan meal. Try the chickpea patties from Veganomicon. Or the chocolate peanut butter cups from The Kind Diet. Or the scalloped potatoes from The Vegan Table. And by that I mean, eat all those things in one delicious meal. Indulge. Without being self-indulgent.
Resources
I'm not talking about listening to your bodies signals for basic functions, like sleeping and washroom trips. This concept pushes forward the idea that once you strip away the conditioning of society that makes you want to chug Coke and scarf cheeseburgers, you will be beautifully intuned to your body's signals, which will always be sensible and perfectly aligned with your true nutritional needs. So if you're lacking in beta-carotene, your body will crave carrots. If you're lacking in vitamin C, you'll crave broccoli. Whatever your body needs, it will naturally crave, and if you only learn to interpret your body's signals, you'll be bouncing off the walls with vibrant, sparkling energy.
And at face value, the idea doesn't sound that crazy, does it? It sounds pretty comforting. Once you reset your body's dials, you'll never have to fight its desires again. You will want exactly what you need and you can trust yourself totally. And if you aren't craving things that are healthful, than you simply haven't learned to listen to your body yet. How nice and neat and bundled into a little package of gobledegook.
Maybe my body speaks Portuguese. Maybe I need a hearing aid. But my body doesn't do much talking to me. At least, not any talking worth listening to. And its not for lack of me trying to become attuned. For years, I toed the line between thinking one day my body would be able to communicate beautifully and flawlessly to me about its needs, and thinking that the whole idea was poppycock.
And then one day, I sat listening to someone telling me that she ate meat only in small amounts, but every once in a while she craved meat strongly, and then she figured that she really needed it. Now, immediately this line of logic struck me as fallacious. If I'm strongly craving a can of Dr. Pepper (which is frequently enough the case), does that mean my body really needs a whack of sugar and food colouring devoid of any nutritional value? I don't think so. And aren't most people's cravings for...junk? True, I often crave healthy food, like kale, or berries, or sweetcorn, or more hummous than you might think any one human could consume. But I'm pretty sure your average diabetic, angina-suffering, meat-and-potatoes guy doesn't crave any of those things. And I think it's fair to assume he'd benefit from eating them. So it seemed more likely to me, in this moment of revelation, that I crave these healthy things simply because I often eat them, and was privy to their many charms.
And thusly, after this conversation and my reaction to it, I did what I am wont to do, and researched my butternut squash off. And what I found is that once upon a time, medical researchers hypothesised that food cravings were routed in specific nutrient deficiencies. But they haven't been very successful at demonstrating this relationship in the lab. Instead, modern research points to the relationship between what we crave and what we perceive as indulgent or forbidden. We crave chocolate partly because we're told that we crave chocolate. And partly because we believe that we're not supposed to eat it.
According to research, another possible cause of our cravings could be biological instinct. Our bodies haven't exactly evolved to deal with the western world. We crave fat and sugar because things high in fat and sugar have a high level of calorie density, which used to keep us alive back when food was scarce and required actual effort to come by. Now, these cravings hindering us instead of helping, and the excess fat and sugar we are consuming is making us ill.
There's also evidence to suggest that we crave what we eat a lot of, which is why I dream about a big, lemony forkful of spinach, and the meat and potatoes heart disease patient doesn't. Western women craving chocolate is so predictable it's a little embarrassing, but in countries where chocolate is seldom consumed the inhabitants crave more savoury foods.
Those of you reading this who are involved in the online vegan community will probably have guessed why I wrote this post now. Last week, a well-known vegan health counsellor (whom I have no intention of naming) shocked everyone by revealing that after 12 years of veganism, she was going back to eating animals and their secretions. Her reasoning? She had been experiencing uncontrollable cravings for animals. Now, she has not said she was experiencing health problems, but the implied sentiment of her announcement seemed to me to be that if she was craving animals, she must need them. So, without judging, I felt it was timely to present an accurate view of cravings and their true sources, insofar as we currently understand them to be. I hope that it will help not only those who feel crippled by their cravings on their way to better health, but more importantly those who still experience cravings for animal flesh and fluids. You do not have to bow down to your cravings.
I mean, let's face it, we're just not that smart, are we? Our bodies are not insightful, magical instruments that, if we only learn to listen to them, will lead us to good health. And neither are our minds. We consciously and unconsciously continue to make stupid decisions about our health, our work, our extra-curricular activities, our relationships, and just about every aspect of our lives under the sun. We gravitate towards foods we know are bad for us, and avoid foods we know are good. We value the wrong things. We fail to appreciate people who care for us. We procrastinate on things to the level that it seriously mucks up our lives. So why do we think that our cravings for stuff indicates anything other than simple, sometimes inadvisable, desire?
So if you are reading this and experiencing omnivorous cravings, give in to them. In a way. Don't try to decode your bodies signals. Sit down and eat a big, indulgent, vegan meal. Try the chickpea patties from Veganomicon. Or the chocolate peanut butter cups from The Kind Diet. Or the scalloped potatoes from The Vegan Table. And by that I mean, eat all those things in one delicious meal. Indulge. Without being self-indulgent.
Resources
Clemens, Roger M.D. and Peter Pressman, M.D., "Are food cravings the body's way of telling us that we are lacking certain nutrients?" Scientific American, May 23 2005.
Hormes, Julia. "Towards a Socio-Cultural Model of Food Cravings: Evidence from the Case of Perimenstrual Chocolate Craving" University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons, 2010.
Pelchat, Marcia, et al, "Images of desire: food-craving activation during fMRI," NeuroImage, 2004.
Sunday, 9 December 2012
"Everybody knows, Tofurkey and some mistletoe..." A Guide to a Vegan Christmas
Tradition is pretty comforting. As Tevye tells us, tradition reminds us of who we are and have been. Change is terrifying. So it's no surprise to me that people don't like to imagine changing their traditions in the name of protecting animals. And so many of our holiday traditions are centered around animal flesh and bodily...outputs, that the idea of changing these rituals, ingrained in and treasured by us since early childhood, seems unnerving or even ridiculous. It's one thing to say that you believe that animals have the right to roam, fly and snooze as they please. It's quite another to give up the Christmas turkey and chocolate orange you've looked forward to all year for as long as you can remember.
I love Christmas. And I love tradition. And I understand these fears completely. But I think traditions, like everything else, are in flux. Maybe that's a depressing thought to you, but traditions can be modified to reflect the you that you are now. So those of you who are experiencing your first vegetarian or vegan Christmas, I hope the following post will help your transition be a little easier. Relatives of vegans may find some helpful ideas below for incorporating vegan food into their usual menu, and even if you're just leaning towards veganism, you might find some ideas for increasing the vegetable ratio of your Christmas.
1. Replacing the Turkey. Finding another option for the big dead bird in the centre of your table is probably the most stressful, or unimaginable part of a vegan Christmas for most people. But there are plenty of delicious options!
I love Christmas. And I love tradition. And I understand these fears completely. But I think traditions, like everything else, are in flux. Maybe that's a depressing thought to you, but traditions can be modified to reflect the you that you are now. So those of you who are experiencing your first vegetarian or vegan Christmas, I hope the following post will help your transition be a little easier. Relatives of vegans may find some helpful ideas below for incorporating vegan food into their usual menu, and even if you're just leaning towards veganism, you might find some ideas for increasing the vegetable ratio of your Christmas.
1. Replacing the Turkey. Finding another option for the big dead bird in the centre of your table is probably the most stressful, or unimaginable part of a vegan Christmas for most people. But there are plenty of delicious options!
- Vegetable Pot Pie. When I'm cooking Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, the Winter Vegetable Pot Pie from Moosewood Celebrates is my absolute favourite. The original recipe is not vegan, but I simply replace the butter with a vegan margarine, and omit the haverti cheese. See my recipe below. There are lots of different pot pie recipes that might be to your liking. I like this option partly because it's a nice, pleasing big centrepiece in the middle of your table, that provides a focal point, just like a turkey.
- Nut Roast. Maybe you've heard some mocking in the media about this vegan holiday standby. Forget everything you've heard, my friends! Nut roasts are deliciously delicious! For years now, my mother has made a really lovely nut roast with pine nuts and cashews, with a tomato gravy to go on top. I don't actually understand what sounds bad about a nut roast. Nuts. Roasted. Um, yes?
- Tofurkey. You're all making a face, aren't you? If nut roasts receive mocking... Tofurkey is the classic vegan "meat" in the form and flavour of a turkey. I tried one once. It's not the kind of thing I'm really crazy about, but if you're in that transitional phase of craving animal flesh, you might find Tofurkey the thing for you. Plus, then you get to say the word tofurkey a lot.
- Stuffed Squash, Pumpkin, or Sweet Potatoes. Baked starchy veggies filled with grain, spices, dried fruits and nuts...delicious, nutritious, and all familiar food. And also really easy to make super pretty.
- No Main Dish. You can skip trying to find an edible centrepiece, plop your kid's weird Christmas art project in the middle of your table instead, and just have a plethora of delicious, familiar, vegan side dishes. Just make sure you make enough to feel disgustingly full afterwards.
2. Side Dishes. This is the easy part. Most of your usual side dishes are probably already vegan or effortlessly veganised. Use Pure, Vitalite, Earth Butter, or olive oil instead of butter. Soy, almond, hazelnut, rice, oat, or coconut milk instead of cow's milk. Pick up almost any vegetarian cookbook you will see an amazing array of delicious options, both traditional and creative. Roasted veggies, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, garlic green beans, cranberry sauce...YUM. Here are a few classic things you might want to think about:
- Stuffing: Its so easy to make your traditional stuffing vegetarian. Just cover it in vegetable stock and bake it in the oven. I promise you it's delicious this way. And if you want to step outside the traditional bread stuffing (um, why?), I've seen many tempting stuffing recipes with nuts, dried fruit, apples, even vegan sausage!
- Gravy. Again, it's so easy to make a good vegan gravy. You can use miso, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, onions, mushrooms, or even just a good vegetable stock as your base, and you will not feel at all deprived of the fat laden animal-based version. And no one has to drink the fat.
3. Dessert. Most any dessert can be veganised with a little creativity. There are so many options I can't even list them all here. If you are looking for a traditional Christmas pudding recipe, try the one on The Vegan Society's website, found here. For a cream or custard option, Apro makes a nice soy custard option in both vanilla and chocolate. You can try soy cream, oat cream, or even coconut cream! Think about a cranberry and orange cake, poached pears in cinnamon red wine sauce, a chocolate and cranberry tart, or a trifle with soy custard or cashew cream. Oooh, I'm thinking about all of those things right now.
4. Christmas Cookies. Who doesn't love a Christmas cookie? It's even fun to say. There are about 1,690,313 vegan cookie recipes online. If you want to veganise your traditional recipes, here's a crash course in vegan baking: for butter, use margarine or canola oil. For milk, use...non-dairy milk. For eggs, in cookies try either a good quality egg replacer, flax gel (1 tbsp ground flax/linseeds mixed with 1 tbsp of water), or use a pre-existing recipe for vegan cookies that doesn't use a replacement as your guide for ratios. And try my super simple, healthy and delicious recipe for date rolls below. For your gingerbread needs, look at these adorable gingerbread men from PPK (Post Punk Kitchen).
5. Stuff your sorries in a sock! Also known as stocking stuffers. Candy canes, apples, oranges...already vegan! For some vegan milk chocolate ideas, try MooFree vegan chocolate. The make kid friendly, cute milk chocolates with rice milk. They also make a vegan advent calendar that I was VERY pleased to purchase. You can also use hard candy, vegan trail mix, roasted nuts, or dark chocolates.
6. Chocolates. Gifts of chocolate truffles are an unavoidable part of Christmas. Obviously, I don't mean unavoidable in a bad way. Try Booja Booja truffles, Green and Blacks dark selection, or Allison's Gourmet Vegan Truffles. Turkish Delight, although not chocolate, is another nice option that's usually vegan. You may also find that conventional chocolate shops or sellers have a range of dark chocolates that will be vegan. BUT, please don't just assume that dark chocolates are vegan, you really have to check the label to make sure there are no milk products, eggs, or gelatin in the chocolates or the fillings. And of course, you can just make your own chocolates and truffles. There are a gazillion recipes online for this purpose.
Here's the bottom line. Christmas traditions like turkey, roast beef, or chocolate oranges are completely arbitrary. They have no connection whatsoever to the birth of Jesus, or the winter solstice, or whatever you believe the real origins of this holiday to be. And they are replaceable with equally delicious alternatives that in time will come to mean as much to you, and that you will look forward to just as much. There's nothing inherently wrong with arbitrary traditions, but I think I'd like some traditions in my life that mean something to me. I'd like the tradition in my household of valuing life, my own, and that of all the other animals. Perhaps you, Dear Reader, would like to teach your children that in your house it's more important to have compassion than to have turkey. I think that sounds more like a tradition worth handing down the generations than bread cooked in a turkey's rear end.
Peace to all creatures on Earth.
Ethical Eats!
Winter Vegetable Pie
This recipe is one of my favourites. It's fairly time consuming, so I only make it a couple of times a year, but I dream about it the rest of the year. As I said above, the original recipe, found in Moosewood Celebrates, includes cheese, but just omitting it will still give you a delicious, creamy sauce. You could also add, say, a 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast to the sauce to give it a cheesy flavour, and I think it would be really scrumptious.
Pie filling
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 bay leaves
2 1/2 cups cubed potatoes (about 2 medium taters)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
1 cup vegetable stock
2 cups cut green beans about 1 in pieces
3 cups peeled, cubed butternut squash (I'm usually not a fan of pre-prepared veggies, but if you can buy the squash already cubed, it will be a huge help to you)
2 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 1/2 tbsp chopped fresh dill (dill and I are going to get married one day)
Sauce
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1/3 cup unbleached white flour
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes (optional and untested, but potentially yummy)
salt and ground pepper to taste
Pastry
1 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 cup vegan margarine of vegetable shortening
1/4 cup ice water
For the filling:
Heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the onions and the bay leaves and saute until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes, salt, celery, and the vegetable stock. Cover the pot and bring to a boil then lower the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the beans and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the squash and cook for 5 to 10 minutes. Add the mushrooms, parsley, dill, and cook for 5 minutes until soft. Cover the pot and lift to stir occassionally and enjoy the delicious, country soup aroma. Once the vegetables are just tender, not too mushy here because you will be cooking them again a long time in the oven, remove the bay leaves (or, as I understand it, you will choke and die). Cover the pot and set the vegetables aside while you prepare the sauce and the crust.
Preheat the oven to 375F/190C.
For the sauce:
Melt the vegan margarine in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour to make a roux. Cook for a couple minutes stirring the whole time so the roux doesn't burn. Whisk in the stock and cook on medium heat, stirring often until the sauce thickens. You know you've done it right when the sauce starts to thicken in beautiful, smooth swirls. If you're using the nooch, add it now and stir until smooth. Add the sauce to the filling, and pour it into your baking dish.
I've used a big 9x13 baking dish, a large oval Le Crueset dish, or just a large, oven proof mixing bowl, all to happy results.
For the pastry:
Mix together the flour and rosemary in a large bowl. Work in the margarine or shortening with two forks or a pastry cutter until the dough resembles course meal. Sprinkle the ice water over the dough 1 tablespoon at a time and lightly mix it in. Form a ball with the dough and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. You have a few options: you can make one big crust with a few slits to allow steam to escape, you can do a lattice top with strips, or you can cut the pastry using shapes. Fit your cutouts or crust on top of the filling and then pop the whole thing in the oven and cook for 40 or 50 minutes. The filling will get bubbly and the crust should turn golden and puff just a little.
Eek, I want to eat it now!
Healthy Chocolate Cherry Truffles
Makes 7-10
I made these one day when I realised how much money I was spending on Nakd snack bars (I think they're the same as Larabars across the pond) as snacks for work, and figured it couldn't be that hard to make my own. And it wasn't, but they're so good that I eat them all for dessert and now I still don't have any snacks at work. The flavour combinations are vast and varied here, but I thought chocolate and cherries were particularly Christmas-y.
100g (about 1/2 cup) pitted dates (if your blender or food processor isn't very strong, I'd suggest soaking the dates for an hour or so beforehand)
60g cashews (about a scant 1/2 cup)
50g dried cherries (about 1/3 cup)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp almond extract
Roughly chop the dates and cashews. Add all ingredients into your food processor and process. Stop to savour the ambrosial smell of the almond extract. I like to leave the ingredients a little chunky so that I get nice chewy bites of dried cherries. Once blended, form the mixture into little tablespoon sized balls with your hands. If they are a little moist, you can roll them in cocoa powder.
4. Christmas Cookies. Who doesn't love a Christmas cookie? It's even fun to say. There are about 1,690,313 vegan cookie recipes online. If you want to veganise your traditional recipes, here's a crash course in vegan baking: for butter, use margarine or canola oil. For milk, use...non-dairy milk. For eggs, in cookies try either a good quality egg replacer, flax gel (1 tbsp ground flax/linseeds mixed with 1 tbsp of water), or use a pre-existing recipe for vegan cookies that doesn't use a replacement as your guide for ratios. And try my super simple, healthy and delicious recipe for date rolls below. For your gingerbread needs, look at these adorable gingerbread men from PPK (Post Punk Kitchen).
5. Stuff your sorries in a sock! Also known as stocking stuffers. Candy canes, apples, oranges...already vegan! For some vegan milk chocolate ideas, try MooFree vegan chocolate. The make kid friendly, cute milk chocolates with rice milk. They also make a vegan advent calendar that I was VERY pleased to purchase. You can also use hard candy, vegan trail mix, roasted nuts, or dark chocolates.
6. Chocolates. Gifts of chocolate truffles are an unavoidable part of Christmas. Obviously, I don't mean unavoidable in a bad way. Try Booja Booja truffles, Green and Blacks dark selection, or Allison's Gourmet Vegan Truffles. Turkish Delight, although not chocolate, is another nice option that's usually vegan. You may also find that conventional chocolate shops or sellers have a range of dark chocolates that will be vegan. BUT, please don't just assume that dark chocolates are vegan, you really have to check the label to make sure there are no milk products, eggs, or gelatin in the chocolates or the fillings. And of course, you can just make your own chocolates and truffles. There are a gazillion recipes online for this purpose.
Here's the bottom line. Christmas traditions like turkey, roast beef, or chocolate oranges are completely arbitrary. They have no connection whatsoever to the birth of Jesus, or the winter solstice, or whatever you believe the real origins of this holiday to be. And they are replaceable with equally delicious alternatives that in time will come to mean as much to you, and that you will look forward to just as much. There's nothing inherently wrong with arbitrary traditions, but I think I'd like some traditions in my life that mean something to me. I'd like the tradition in my household of valuing life, my own, and that of all the other animals. Perhaps you, Dear Reader, would like to teach your children that in your house it's more important to have compassion than to have turkey. I think that sounds more like a tradition worth handing down the generations than bread cooked in a turkey's rear end.
Peace to all creatures on Earth.
Ethical Eats!
Winter Vegetable Pie
This recipe is one of my favourites. It's fairly time consuming, so I only make it a couple of times a year, but I dream about it the rest of the year. As I said above, the original recipe, found in Moosewood Celebrates, includes cheese, but just omitting it will still give you a delicious, creamy sauce. You could also add, say, a 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast to the sauce to give it a cheesy flavour, and I think it would be really scrumptious.
Pie filling
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 bay leaves
2 1/2 cups cubed potatoes (about 2 medium taters)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
1 cup vegetable stock
2 cups cut green beans about 1 in pieces
3 cups peeled, cubed butternut squash (I'm usually not a fan of pre-prepared veggies, but if you can buy the squash already cubed, it will be a huge help to you)
2 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 1/2 tbsp chopped fresh dill (dill and I are going to get married one day)
Sauce
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1/3 cup unbleached white flour
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes (optional and untested, but potentially yummy)
salt and ground pepper to taste
Pastry
1 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 cup vegan margarine of vegetable shortening
1/4 cup ice water
For the filling:
Heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the onions and the bay leaves and saute until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes, salt, celery, and the vegetable stock. Cover the pot and bring to a boil then lower the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the beans and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the squash and cook for 5 to 10 minutes. Add the mushrooms, parsley, dill, and cook for 5 minutes until soft. Cover the pot and lift to stir occassionally and enjoy the delicious, country soup aroma. Once the vegetables are just tender, not too mushy here because you will be cooking them again a long time in the oven, remove the bay leaves (or, as I understand it, you will choke and die). Cover the pot and set the vegetables aside while you prepare the sauce and the crust.
Preheat the oven to 375F/190C.
For the sauce:
Melt the vegan margarine in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour to make a roux. Cook for a couple minutes stirring the whole time so the roux doesn't burn. Whisk in the stock and cook on medium heat, stirring often until the sauce thickens. You know you've done it right when the sauce starts to thicken in beautiful, smooth swirls. If you're using the nooch, add it now and stir until smooth. Add the sauce to the filling, and pour it into your baking dish.
I've used a big 9x13 baking dish, a large oval Le Crueset dish, or just a large, oven proof mixing bowl, all to happy results.
For the pastry:
Mix together the flour and rosemary in a large bowl. Work in the margarine or shortening with two forks or a pastry cutter until the dough resembles course meal. Sprinkle the ice water over the dough 1 tablespoon at a time and lightly mix it in. Form a ball with the dough and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. You have a few options: you can make one big crust with a few slits to allow steam to escape, you can do a lattice top with strips, or you can cut the pastry using shapes. Fit your cutouts or crust on top of the filling and then pop the whole thing in the oven and cook for 40 or 50 minutes. The filling will get bubbly and the crust should turn golden and puff just a little.
Eek, I want to eat it now!
Healthy Chocolate Cherry Truffles
Makes 7-10
I made these one day when I realised how much money I was spending on Nakd snack bars (I think they're the same as Larabars across the pond) as snacks for work, and figured it couldn't be that hard to make my own. And it wasn't, but they're so good that I eat them all for dessert and now I still don't have any snacks at work. The flavour combinations are vast and varied here, but I thought chocolate and cherries were particularly Christmas-y.
100g (about 1/2 cup) pitted dates (if your blender or food processor isn't very strong, I'd suggest soaking the dates for an hour or so beforehand)
60g cashews (about a scant 1/2 cup)
50g dried cherries (about 1/3 cup)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp almond extract
Roughly chop the dates and cashews. Add all ingredients into your food processor and process. Stop to savour the ambrosial smell of the almond extract. I like to leave the ingredients a little chunky so that I get nice chewy bites of dried cherries. Once blended, form the mixture into little tablespoon sized balls with your hands. If they are a little moist, you can roll them in cocoa powder.
Friday, 21 September 2012
Vegan accommodation review: Fern Tor B&B
You know that daydream that you have? The one where you quit your tedious job in the city, stop unwillingly smelling other people's armpits on public transport, leave the Saturday night crowds of puking students behind, and escape into the countryside? And then you fix up a charmingly delapidated farm house, surround yourself with roaming animals, locally-grown fresh vegetables, and feed breakfast to lonely wanderers? Well, Jane and Cliff Strehlow have done just that, although even better...they've done it VEGETARIAN!
Okay, I don't actually know if Jane and Cliff were living in the city before they moved into Fern Tor Vegetarian and Vegan Guest House. And I don't know if the farm house out of which they operate was delapidated before they got to it. And I don't know if they've ever found themselves fighting through crowds of puking teenagers. But I do know that they run a beautiful bed and breakfast nestled amongst peaceful Devon fields, and I know that they serve delicious vegetarian meals chockful of local produce, and I know that they provide a loving home for many rescued farm animals.
I know this, because a little over a month ago, Dan and I took our spinachy selves out for an anniversary trip to Devon, and stayed at Fern Tor for two happy nights, right outside the little village of Meshaw, Devon, surrounded by waves of green hills dotted with snoozing sheep.
We stayed for two nights, one in the twin room upstairs and one in the lovely double room downstairs. Both rooms are spacious and comfy, with ensuite bathrooms (with bathtubs). From the twin room you get a great view of the garden where you watch the pigs happily snort. And when you wake up in the double room with the sun shining in through the windows and gaze over at the leafy garden just outside your door, you will think you've woken up in a countryside hazy morning dream.
Of course, my main reason for visitng Fern Tor was to increase my proximity to the rescued animals they give sanctuary to. On their fair banks they house a multitude of rabits, two Scottish pigs, several chickens happily snuggling with each other, at least one very disgruntled goose, several shy sheep, and a handful of friendly, curious goats, one of whom came over to me for a little cuddle. Fern Tor is no zoo; the animals need their privacy, but we couldn't resist a wee tip toe around to watch the peaceful, unthreatened animals be, well, peaceful and untreatened.
As I said, my main reason for wating to come to Fern Tor was the animals, but my over-riding memory is of the amazing, plentiful vegan food on offer. We were fed ooddles of aduki bean pie, fresh salads, butternut squash and rosemary soup, mushroom cassoulet, grilled veggie skewers, lemon and ginger "cheesecake", and vegan ice cream sundaes, alongside hearty vegan breakfasts. Amazing. We left the table in pain.
And we left Fern Tor well-rested and well-fed. Happy vegan travels.
Okay, I don't actually know if Jane and Cliff were living in the city before they moved into Fern Tor Vegetarian and Vegan Guest House. And I don't know if the farm house out of which they operate was delapidated before they got to it. And I don't know if they've ever found themselves fighting through crowds of puking teenagers. But I do know that they run a beautiful bed and breakfast nestled amongst peaceful Devon fields, and I know that they serve delicious vegetarian meals chockful of local produce, and I know that they provide a loving home for many rescued farm animals.
I know this, because a little over a month ago, Dan and I took our spinachy selves out for an anniversary trip to Devon, and stayed at Fern Tor for two happy nights, right outside the little village of Meshaw, Devon, surrounded by waves of green hills dotted with snoozing sheep.
We stayed for two nights, one in the twin room upstairs and one in the lovely double room downstairs. Both rooms are spacious and comfy, with ensuite bathrooms (with bathtubs). From the twin room you get a great view of the garden where you watch the pigs happily snort. And when you wake up in the double room with the sun shining in through the windows and gaze over at the leafy garden just outside your door, you will think you've woken up in a countryside hazy morning dream.
Of course, my main reason for visitng Fern Tor was to increase my proximity to the rescued animals they give sanctuary to. On their fair banks they house a multitude of rabits, two Scottish pigs, several chickens happily snuggling with each other, at least one very disgruntled goose, several shy sheep, and a handful of friendly, curious goats, one of whom came over to me for a little cuddle. Fern Tor is no zoo; the animals need their privacy, but we couldn't resist a wee tip toe around to watch the peaceful, unthreatened animals be, well, peaceful and untreatened.
As I said, my main reason for wating to come to Fern Tor was the animals, but my over-riding memory is of the amazing, plentiful vegan food on offer. We were fed ooddles of aduki bean pie, fresh salads, butternut squash and rosemary soup, mushroom cassoulet, grilled veggie skewers, lemon and ginger "cheesecake", and vegan ice cream sundaes, alongside hearty vegan breakfasts. Amazing. We left the table in pain.
And we left Fern Tor well-rested and well-fed. Happy vegan travels.
Friday, 22 June 2012
Break the Fast with Vegans
Never let it be said that I don't listen to the pleas of the masses (okay, the one-time request of one person). Here it is, an ENTIRE post devoted just to the breaking of the fast, veganly. Herein we will discuss many options for the vegan breakfaster, both healthy and indulgent, cheap and, well, mostly just cheap.
A few posts ago, I suggested that if you're looking to adopt a more healthful diet, fixing one meal at a time was a good idea, and suggested starting with breakfast first. I don't want to repeat that maxim about breakfast that we've all heard a million times since birth (you know which phrase I'm talking about), but it's true. The quality of your breakfast will affect how you feel on a particular day more than anything else you eat. That's reason one to fix breakfast first. Reason two, healthy breakfasts are often the cheapest. Reason three, when you wake up first thing in the morning, you're generally too sleepy to give into cravings for crappy foods; therefore, simply by getting yourself into the routine of eating healthy, plant-based breakfasts, you will stay in that routine. Reason four, a lot of traditional breakfast food is either already vegan, or very easily made vegan, so it's an easy adjustment.
I hear from a LOT of people that they often just don't feel like eating in the morning, or even that they feel a little nauseated if they try. I used to be one of you. I really had to force food down my throat at 7:30am, and left the table feeling queasy. But I whole-heartedly believe that once you start eating breakfast, you will eventually not only be able to eat it without any problems, you will need to eat it, or suffer for the rest of the day. And I'm sure I don't need to quote at you the many studies that have found that those who eat breakfast have higher rates of this good thing and lower rates of that bad thing, because I know you've heard them, and you all know that you're supposed to be eating breakfast.
But, you don't want to puke on your morning train in the meantime. I get it. A reasonable request. So my suggestion would be to simply start small, and start light. Grab an apple or a banana. Maybe mix together some dried fruit and nuts. Try a small fruit salad. You could even try the pre-run breakfast I used to eat in the mornings, back in another lifetime when I actually ran (ha!). Nuke a banana for a few seconds in the microwave, then add in a little spoonful of natural peanut butter and mix it together. I know it sounds gross, but it's kind of like a warm peanut butter and jam sandwich, without the bread. Once these lighter breakfasts become old hat to you, try adding a little more until your ready for a proper breakfast.
So, for the rest of you who, just like I do, think about food the second you open your eyes in the morning, here's a collection of vegan breakfast ideas. They're roughly ordered from most healthful to most indulgent.
Everyday breakfasts:
1. Porridge.
Are you sick of hearing me talk about porridge yet? Too bad, I'm not going to stop. Porridge is amazingly nutritious, easy, and cheap. And it can be dressed up in so many ways. Try it with dates, dried apricots, raisins, sliced almonds, walnuts, frozen or fresh blueberries, jam, frozen or fresh raspberries, apples and cinnamon, or even a little dark chocolate, if you're feeling indulgent.
Porridge need not be limited to oat porridge. Try a porridge of brown rice, quinoa, or cornmeal if you don't like oats, or have trouble digesting them.
2. Muesli.
When the weather turns warm, or theoretically when the weather turns warm because it doesn't happen in the UK, sometimes you don't want want a nice steaming bowl of porridge. Sometimes you want essentially the exact same thing, but cold. Try making your own out of rolled oats, dried fruit, nuts, and maybe some wheatgerm, or look for a brand that contains no added sugar. You can vary up the flavour by trying a more traditional combination of dried raisins, dried apples, and cinnamon, or you could go foresty and make one with dried blueberries, raspberries, cranberries, and strawberries, or you could go CRAZY and make a tropical version with dried pineapple, mango, papaya, and coconut. Serve with soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, coconut milk, or hazelnut milk. The oat milk might be overkill.
4. Fruit Salad.
A salad of fruit. Doesn't really need an explanation, does it? I tend to like my breakfasts a little grainier, but some people like it.
5. Fruit Smoothies
If you've got a blender or a hand held blender and a tall container, chuck in a frozen banana, some berries, a spoonful of nut butter, a splash of non-dairy milk, and a little natural sweetener. And then blend it.
7. Peanut butter and jam sandwich/peanut butter and banana sandwich
Why
not, eh? Wholemeal bread, natural peanut butter, fruit juice sweetened
jam. Wholefood goodness and delightfully immature, to boot.
6. Toast.
Top it with vegan, non-hydrogenated margarine, with fruit jams, with nut butters, with Marmite, with peanut butter and sliced bananas, with a little sweetener (maple syrup, agave nectar, brown rice syrup), cinnamon, and sliced apples, with vegan chocolate spread, with baked beans, or with sauteed mushrooms. Please note, the last two can only be consumed if you are living in the UK. Otherwise, too much confusion will ensue.
Commercial sliced bread is the work of the devil! It tastes like how my brothers' shoes used to smell after their various sporting activities! Even the supermarket brand unsliced stuff is so much better, and no more expensive.
3. Granola.
Granola
has had a long-undeserved reputation as an undisputed health food. In
truth, most commercial brands of granola are loaded with processed sugar
and oil, and even a lot of healthier recipes contain large amounts of
oil and concentrated sweeteners of some form. That being said, granola
is generally pretty delicious, and its base is healthful oats,
nuts, and dried fruit, so it's certainly not the worst option
available. Try serving it with a non-dairy milk, or with a non-dairy
yogurt, or with some fresh fruit. Or even some applesauce.
8. Cereal with non-dairy milk.
If you like. Plenty of commercial cereals are vegan, just check the box.
You might be reading this list right now thinking, what the heck? These are just foods I already eat for breakfast. That's because vegan food is just food.
More time-consuming, cooked, savoury breakfasts
1. Tofu scramble
Tofu scrambles are a mainstay of vegan breakfasts and brunches. They're pretty much exactly what they sound like: scrambled eggs made with tofu. Crumbled tofu is mixed usually with soy sauce and nutritional yeast for taste, and turmeric to add a yellow colour. Tofu scrambles are also normally loaded with veggies like spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms. I think they will surprise you.
2. Tofu Omelets
Similar to a tofu scramble. I've never tried one, but they sound interesting. Silken tofu, non-dairy milk, nutritional yeast, and some seasonings are mixed together and cooked to turn into a firm omelet, which you can then fill with whatever veggies you like.
3. Aga's TomMarmite Toast
See recipe below.
4. Spanish toast
I'm the only person in the world who refers to this dish as Spanish toast. When we were in Spain a year or so ago, I kept finding offerings of crispy, toasted bread topped with olive oil and pureed tomato on cafe breakfast menus. Kind of like lazy bruschetta for breakfast.
5. Full English Breakfast
Soooo...Brits do this weird thing wherein they eat a much of stuff you wouldn't think of as breakfast food as breakfast food all together on one big plate and they call it a full English, or more affectionately, a fry up. I know, it's weird. But it grows on you. Traditional components are generally bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, toast, sausages, hash browns, and baked beans. Most cafes offer some sort of vegetarian option, but making your own vegan version is certainly possible.
Vegan bacon: I mentioned this in the 5 Crazy Vegan Foods post. Fry some tempeh or tofu marinated in soy sauce, maple syrup, etc. There are also commercial vegan bacon products available.
Eggs: Try some scrambled tofu.
Sausages: Commercial vegan sausages are readily available, in various levels of processing. Some people make their own vegan sausages. This seems crazy to me. Go for it.
Obviously you can healthy this breakfast up as much as you want; cook the vegetables with a little respect, and add as many other veggies as you like.
Happy Tummy Yummy Crazy Indulgent Weekend Breakfasts
Everyone needs them.
1. Vegan muffins or quick, sweet breads
Just as easily accomplished without animal bodily fluids. Try replacing the egg in recipes with 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp white or cider vinegar per egg. Replace butter with canola oil. Replace cow's milk with soy milk.
2. Vegan Pancakes
See link to recipe below.
3. Vegan Waffles
Pretty much the same replacement techniques listed above, and recipes can easily be found on the internet.
4. Vegan French toast
See link to recipe below. The recipe below is a little more complicated, but you can also try a simple mixture of non-dairy milk, vanilla extract, and cinnamon.
5. Vegan Crepes
I've never made vegan crepes, but you should be able to find recipes with ease. For gluten-freebies, buckwheat flour is apparently a very good substitute in crepe recipes.
Recessionpe
Giving you just one recipe for a breakfast post seemed kind of cheap, so you lucky ducks, you get several. Or at least links to several.
Blueberry Almond Porridge
A note about cooking porridge in the morning. It sounds time consuming, but actually porridge requires very little babysitting while cooking. Throw the oats, water, and salt in the pot, stir together, then walk back into the kitchen once or twice and stir the mixture to stop it from sticking. Then you're done.
1/2 cup oats
1.5 cups water
pinch of salt
1/3 cup frozen blueberries
2-3 tbsp sliced almonds
1 tbsp ground flax seed
splash of non-dairy milk
Put oats, water, and salt together in a small pot on medium high heat, and cook for 5-7 minutes, or until thick and sort of...burping. Pour into a bowl and add in berries, almonds, and flax seed and stir. Add in the splash of milk to taste.
Aga's TomMarmite Toast
My friend Aga is graciously lending us this recipe that she surprised and delighted me with once while I was staying with her.
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
freshly cracked black pepper to taste
4 slices wholemeal bread
enough vegan margarine to cover 4 slices of toast (optional)
enough Marmite to cover 4 slices of toast
Heat the oil in a sauce pan on medium high heat. Add the cherry tomatoes, and black pepper (more is better), and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are soft and juicing a bit.
In the meantime, toast the bread, and spread on the margarine, if using, and the Marmite.
Once the tomatoes are cooked to your taste, top the toast with the tomatoes and serve. Aga says "a fork and knife make this breakfast easier to eat elegantly." You heard her. Eat it elegantly!
Vegan Blueberry Pancakes
See recipe at the bottom of this post. Don't just stick to blueberries. Try any kind of berries, apples and cinnamon, chocolate chips, bananas and walnuts...let your mind and ingredients wander free and unfettered!
Vegan French Toast
This recipe is my favourite vegan French toast recipe. Chickpea flour is also known as gram flour, and you should be able to find it in any middle eastern grocery store.
Everyone needs them.
1. Vegan muffins or quick, sweet breads
Just as easily accomplished without animal bodily fluids. Try replacing the egg in recipes with 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp white or cider vinegar per egg. Replace butter with canola oil. Replace cow's milk with soy milk.
2. Vegan Pancakes
See link to recipe below.
3. Vegan Waffles
Pretty much the same replacement techniques listed above, and recipes can easily be found on the internet.
4. Vegan French toast
See link to recipe below. The recipe below is a little more complicated, but you can also try a simple mixture of non-dairy milk, vanilla extract, and cinnamon.
5. Vegan Crepes
I've never made vegan crepes, but you should be able to find recipes with ease. For gluten-freebies, buckwheat flour is apparently a very good substitute in crepe recipes.
Recessionpe
Giving you just one recipe for a breakfast post seemed kind of cheap, so you lucky ducks, you get several. Or at least links to several.
Blueberry Almond Porridge
A note about cooking porridge in the morning. It sounds time consuming, but actually porridge requires very little babysitting while cooking. Throw the oats, water, and salt in the pot, stir together, then walk back into the kitchen once or twice and stir the mixture to stop it from sticking. Then you're done.
1/2 cup oats
1.5 cups water
pinch of salt
1/3 cup frozen blueberries
2-3 tbsp sliced almonds
1 tbsp ground flax seed
splash of non-dairy milk
Put oats, water, and salt together in a small pot on medium high heat, and cook for 5-7 minutes, or until thick and sort of...burping. Pour into a bowl and add in berries, almonds, and flax seed and stir. Add in the splash of milk to taste.
Aga's TomMarmite Toast
My friend Aga is graciously lending us this recipe that she surprised and delighted me with once while I was staying with her.
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
freshly cracked black pepper to taste
4 slices wholemeal bread
enough vegan margarine to cover 4 slices of toast (optional)
enough Marmite to cover 4 slices of toast
Heat the oil in a sauce pan on medium high heat. Add the cherry tomatoes, and black pepper (more is better), and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are soft and juicing a bit.
In the meantime, toast the bread, and spread on the margarine, if using, and the Marmite.
Once the tomatoes are cooked to your taste, top the toast with the tomatoes and serve. Aga says "a fork and knife make this breakfast easier to eat elegantly." You heard her. Eat it elegantly!
Vegan Blueberry Pancakes
See recipe at the bottom of this post. Don't just stick to blueberries. Try any kind of berries, apples and cinnamon, chocolate chips, bananas and walnuts...let your mind and ingredients wander free and unfettered!
Vegan French Toast
This recipe is my favourite vegan French toast recipe. Chickpea flour is also known as gram flour, and you should be able to find it in any middle eastern grocery store.
Sunday, 27 May 2012
5 Crazy "Vegan foods" and What to do with them
I tell people a lot of the time that being vegan doesn't mean eating weird food that you've never heard of before. You've likely eaten vegan meals before, you just weren't thinking about it. Apples, carrots, walnuts, rice, bread, kidney beans, pasta, tomato sauce...all vegan and all "normal." On the other hand, it's absolutely true that you're culinary horizons will broaden once you become vegan, and you will almost certainly start eating some foods that you've never encountered before. And some of them sound positively, well, weird.
So in an attempt to make these foods a little more accessible, I've demystified a few of them below.
1. Tofu
Okay, I'm assuming you've all heard of tofu, but most non-vegetarians are baffled, nay, terrified of the stuff. Don't be scared. Tofu is simply made from soymilk (which is really just soybeans that are blended with water, and then strained), with a coagulant added, then formed into a solid little cake. It's kind of like making cheese, but without the pus.
You can buy blocks of tofu that usually come in soft, firm, or extra firm, or silken tofu. The first kind is what you commonly find in the refrigerated section of your supermarket. Silken tofu (the kind that almost falls apart in your hands) is usually found shelved in aseptic boxes with other Chinese/Japanese style food.
Been served tofu that tastes like, well, nothing? Or worse, used gym socks? Naughty chef. Tofu isn't usually eaten by itself. That's just weird. The point of tofu is that it's got all these little pores that suck up flavour like Paris Hilton sucks up...never mind. Even more so if the tofu is frozen beforehand and then thawed. Take a firm or extra-firm block of tofu, wrap it up in either a clean tea towel or paper towels, and press it underneath a plate or cutting board weighed down by The Joy of Cooking. Don't own The Joy of Cooking? And you think tofu's weird. Just use any big, fat book. Press it for ten minutes and then chuck it in some marinade for 30-60 minutes. Any marinade you like will do, but try a simple Asian-style one, or even an Italian marinade with white wine, Italian herbs, and tomato paste. Bake it, grill it, or fry it. Eat it as the main protein in your meal, or throw it into a curry, miso soup, stir-fry, or fried rice. Silken tofu is used a lot in desserts as an egg replacement, or as a different way to make puddings and mousses.
You can buy tofu in your regular grocery store, but in the UK I make the extra effort to buy it from an east Asian grocery store, where you will find it for about half the price.
Note: Japanese seasoned tofu, especially the tofu used to make inari sushi pockets has a secure place on my top 10 favourite foods. Ask your local Asian grocer about it.
2. Tempeh
What the what is tempeh? Still not a very commonly seen food outside of vegetarian world, tempeh is tofu's artsy little sibling. A traditional Indonesian food, it is technically a cake of fermented soybeans. And it looks weird as heck. But stick with it! Tempeh is very nutritious and even some people who have a sensitivity to soy find that they can tolerate tempeh much better. It's got a fairly unusual taste...it tastes to me of wine, nuts, and yeast. Tempeh can be used in loads of different ways. Try cutting it into the form that you want it, steaming it for 10 minutes to remove any bitterness, and then marinating it for a while and frying it. Lots of vegans like to make tempeh bacon by slicing it into strips, steaming it, marinating it in maple syrup and soy sauce, and then frying it. Uses for tempeh abound, so check out a vegan cookbook and see what looks good to you.
In the UK, it's not an easy thing to find, but independent health food shops and Wholefoods carry the Impulse brand in their refrigerated section. I've also found it in Chinese grocery stores in the freezer section, but I haven't been too keen on this type; I much prefer the Impulse kind. In Canada, I've seen it beside the tofu in regular grocery stores.
3. Seitan
Seitan rounds out what vegan gurus Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero refer to as the holy trinity of tofu, tempeh, and seitan, otherwise known as three traditional, relatively wholefood sources of protein that can kinda be used on a dinner plate in the same way meat is. Seitan is another import from Asia, created from cooked wheat gluten, the protein from wheat. And it's very yummy! And it's very, very hard to find in the UK! And don't feed it to your celiac suffering friends; it's exactly what they can't eat!
Seitan is usually sliced or cubed and used instead of meat in a multitude of dishes. It's texture is very meaty and it's taste, um, it's just kind of...savoury. It's a pretty easy sell for newbies...there's no adjustment period like there might be with tempeh or tofu.
I have only ever found seitan sold pre-made in the UK twice for £8 a jar, so I make my own. And I can't find wheat gluten (the flour used to make it) in bricks and mortar stores here, so I order it online for £5 per kilo bag. Luckily, I don't make it very often, so I've only ever had to do this once. Yes, I really needed to spend that much money on a bag of flour. You have no idea how much frustration it was causing me. My impression is that both seitan and wheat gluten are much more easily found in Canada and the States. Try Bulk Barn.
4. Agave Nectar
Ah-Gah-Vey. Not A-Gave. Agave nectar has risen in popularity as of late as a natural sweetener, famed for being very low-glycemic. Vegans often use it instead of honey. Made from the agave plant, which is also responsible for tequila (which is responsible for many poor decisions around the world), it's got a mild sweetness that makes it a good alternative to honey. Originally thought to be gentle on your blood sugar levels, resulting in the health-inclined and gullible to pour it on top of everything, a really boring debate has struck up around it, and whether or not its really any better than sugar and other sweeteners. My own, half thought-out opinion is that being less processed and closer to it's natural state, it probably is a healthier product, but I would have thought that it was common sense that any concentrated sweetener has to be consumed in moderation. Apparently not.
Agave nectar can be found in both light and dark forms, the dark being less processed and stronger flavoured, and both can be found in your regular grocery store. It costs around the same as a good quality honey.
5. Nutritional yeast
We're in VeganWorld now, my friend! Nutritional yeast, or nooch, as it's affectionately called by it's followers, is really the height of crazy vegan food world. What is it? It's a powder or flakes (the flake kind is better) made from cultured yeast. What do you do with it? High in B-complex vitamins and a complete source of protein, it's sometimes used as a vitamin supplement, but it's mostly loved by vegans for having a cheesy taste.
Some brands are fortified with vitamin B12, which has caused some confusion with people thinking it's a natural source of the nutrient, but it's just fortified with it. Not every brand does this, so be sure to check the label before your rely on it as your source of B12.
The first time I ever opened a container of this stuff I was scared and confused. To the novice nooch nose, nutritional yeast doesn't exactly smell like a round of freshly baked brie. Cut to me a few years later, and my mouth waters whenever I smell that weird, vegany, cheesy smell.
I love sprinkling it on top of pasta or a risotto in the same way you might use parmesan cheese. It's often used in cheese sauces or vegan cheeses. Throw it on top of some popcorn or kale chips, or put a few spoonfuls into your mashed potatoes. Once you start using it its very addictive and you'll want to use it in everything.
You can find nutritional yeast in your local independent health food store (Holland and Barrett's does not carrying it). It's not too expensive, usually about £2 for tub that will last you quite awhile.
Ethical Eats
Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo with Spinach*
Last night I was sternly reprimanded by a friend for making a spinach pie into a chard pie in the last edition of Market Madness, when my blog is called Spinach. How could I? Thusly, I thought I'd better make my next recipe a spinach one. This recipe is a nice way to introduce nooch into your life; it just adds a nice little savoury kick to your sauce. This sauce is also much lighter than both the dairy original and a lot of the vegan versions out there. And just because it's vegan, doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat it with the traditional golden fork. Um, you do have a golden fork, don't you?
500g of wholewheat fettuccine pasta (spaghetti or linguine will work just fine if you can't find fettuccine)
1 can of coconut milk
1 clove of garlic, minced
3 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
1 tbsp flour
1/3 cup water
2 tbsp canola oil
dash of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
approximately 250g of spinach
Cook the pasta in a pot of boiling water until al dente (or however you prefer it).
Meanwhile, steam the spinach until just wilted. Cool and try to squeeze as much liquid from it as possible.
Heat the oil in a medium-sized sauce pot over medium-high heat. Add the minced garlic and sauteed for a few minutes until it's just starting to turn brown and fragrant. Add the coconut milk and nutritional yeast flakes. Turn the head down to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes.
Mix the flour and water together in a small bowl. Add to the coconut milk mixture and stir until it reaches a thick consistency.
Add the spinach and stir until combined. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.
Mix with the cooked pasta and serve.
*Modified from a recipe that I found on VegWeb that I can't find anymore.
So in an attempt to make these foods a little more accessible, I've demystified a few of them below.
1. Tofu
Okay, I'm assuming you've all heard of tofu, but most non-vegetarians are baffled, nay, terrified of the stuff. Don't be scared. Tofu is simply made from soymilk (which is really just soybeans that are blended with water, and then strained), with a coagulant added, then formed into a solid little cake. It's kind of like making cheese, but without the pus.
You can buy blocks of tofu that usually come in soft, firm, or extra firm, or silken tofu. The first kind is what you commonly find in the refrigerated section of your supermarket. Silken tofu (the kind that almost falls apart in your hands) is usually found shelved in aseptic boxes with other Chinese/Japanese style food.
Been served tofu that tastes like, well, nothing? Or worse, used gym socks? Naughty chef. Tofu isn't usually eaten by itself. That's just weird. The point of tofu is that it's got all these little pores that suck up flavour like Paris Hilton sucks up...never mind. Even more so if the tofu is frozen beforehand and then thawed. Take a firm or extra-firm block of tofu, wrap it up in either a clean tea towel or paper towels, and press it underneath a plate or cutting board weighed down by The Joy of Cooking. Don't own The Joy of Cooking? And you think tofu's weird. Just use any big, fat book. Press it for ten minutes and then chuck it in some marinade for 30-60 minutes. Any marinade you like will do, but try a simple Asian-style one, or even an Italian marinade with white wine, Italian herbs, and tomato paste. Bake it, grill it, or fry it. Eat it as the main protein in your meal, or throw it into a curry, miso soup, stir-fry, or fried rice. Silken tofu is used a lot in desserts as an egg replacement, or as a different way to make puddings and mousses.
You can buy tofu in your regular grocery store, but in the UK I make the extra effort to buy it from an east Asian grocery store, where you will find it for about half the price.
Note: Japanese seasoned tofu, especially the tofu used to make inari sushi pockets has a secure place on my top 10 favourite foods. Ask your local Asian grocer about it.
2. Tempeh
What the what is tempeh? Still not a very commonly seen food outside of vegetarian world, tempeh is tofu's artsy little sibling. A traditional Indonesian food, it is technically a cake of fermented soybeans. And it looks weird as heck. But stick with it! Tempeh is very nutritious and even some people who have a sensitivity to soy find that they can tolerate tempeh much better. It's got a fairly unusual taste...it tastes to me of wine, nuts, and yeast. Tempeh can be used in loads of different ways. Try cutting it into the form that you want it, steaming it for 10 minutes to remove any bitterness, and then marinating it for a while and frying it. Lots of vegans like to make tempeh bacon by slicing it into strips, steaming it, marinating it in maple syrup and soy sauce, and then frying it. Uses for tempeh abound, so check out a vegan cookbook and see what looks good to you.
In the UK, it's not an easy thing to find, but independent health food shops and Wholefoods carry the Impulse brand in their refrigerated section. I've also found it in Chinese grocery stores in the freezer section, but I haven't been too keen on this type; I much prefer the Impulse kind. In Canada, I've seen it beside the tofu in regular grocery stores.
3. Seitan
Seitan rounds out what vegan gurus Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero refer to as the holy trinity of tofu, tempeh, and seitan, otherwise known as three traditional, relatively wholefood sources of protein that can kinda be used on a dinner plate in the same way meat is. Seitan is another import from Asia, created from cooked wheat gluten, the protein from wheat. And it's very yummy! And it's very, very hard to find in the UK! And don't feed it to your celiac suffering friends; it's exactly what they can't eat!
Seitan is usually sliced or cubed and used instead of meat in a multitude of dishes. It's texture is very meaty and it's taste, um, it's just kind of...savoury. It's a pretty easy sell for newbies...there's no adjustment period like there might be with tempeh or tofu.
I have only ever found seitan sold pre-made in the UK twice for £8 a jar, so I make my own. And I can't find wheat gluten (the flour used to make it) in bricks and mortar stores here, so I order it online for £5 per kilo bag. Luckily, I don't make it very often, so I've only ever had to do this once. Yes, I really needed to spend that much money on a bag of flour. You have no idea how much frustration it was causing me. My impression is that both seitan and wheat gluten are much more easily found in Canada and the States. Try Bulk Barn.
4. Agave Nectar
Ah-Gah-Vey. Not A-Gave. Agave nectar has risen in popularity as of late as a natural sweetener, famed for being very low-glycemic. Vegans often use it instead of honey. Made from the agave plant, which is also responsible for tequila (which is responsible for many poor decisions around the world), it's got a mild sweetness that makes it a good alternative to honey. Originally thought to be gentle on your blood sugar levels, resulting in the health-inclined and gullible to pour it on top of everything, a really boring debate has struck up around it, and whether or not its really any better than sugar and other sweeteners. My own, half thought-out opinion is that being less processed and closer to it's natural state, it probably is a healthier product, but I would have thought that it was common sense that any concentrated sweetener has to be consumed in moderation. Apparently not.
Agave nectar can be found in both light and dark forms, the dark being less processed and stronger flavoured, and both can be found in your regular grocery store. It costs around the same as a good quality honey.
5. Nutritional yeast
We're in VeganWorld now, my friend! Nutritional yeast, or nooch, as it's affectionately called by it's followers, is really the height of crazy vegan food world. What is it? It's a powder or flakes (the flake kind is better) made from cultured yeast. What do you do with it? High in B-complex vitamins and a complete source of protein, it's sometimes used as a vitamin supplement, but it's mostly loved by vegans for having a cheesy taste.
Some brands are fortified with vitamin B12, which has caused some confusion with people thinking it's a natural source of the nutrient, but it's just fortified with it. Not every brand does this, so be sure to check the label before your rely on it as your source of B12.
The first time I ever opened a container of this stuff I was scared and confused. To the novice nooch nose, nutritional yeast doesn't exactly smell like a round of freshly baked brie. Cut to me a few years later, and my mouth waters whenever I smell that weird, vegany, cheesy smell.
I love sprinkling it on top of pasta or a risotto in the same way you might use parmesan cheese. It's often used in cheese sauces or vegan cheeses. Throw it on top of some popcorn or kale chips, or put a few spoonfuls into your mashed potatoes. Once you start using it its very addictive and you'll want to use it in everything.
You can find nutritional yeast in your local independent health food store (Holland and Barrett's does not carrying it). It's not too expensive, usually about £2 for tub that will last you quite awhile.
Ethical Eats
Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo with Spinach*
Last night I was sternly reprimanded by a friend for making a spinach pie into a chard pie in the last edition of Market Madness, when my blog is called Spinach. How could I? Thusly, I thought I'd better make my next recipe a spinach one. This recipe is a nice way to introduce nooch into your life; it just adds a nice little savoury kick to your sauce. This sauce is also much lighter than both the dairy original and a lot of the vegan versions out there. And just because it's vegan, doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat it with the traditional golden fork. Um, you do have a golden fork, don't you?
500g of wholewheat fettuccine pasta (spaghetti or linguine will work just fine if you can't find fettuccine)
1 can of coconut milk
1 clove of garlic, minced
3 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
1 tbsp flour
1/3 cup water
2 tbsp canola oil
dash of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
approximately 250g of spinach
Cook the pasta in a pot of boiling water until al dente (or however you prefer it).
Meanwhile, steam the spinach until just wilted. Cool and try to squeeze as much liquid from it as possible.
Heat the oil in a medium-sized sauce pot over medium-high heat. Add the minced garlic and sauteed for a few minutes until it's just starting to turn brown and fragrant. Add the coconut milk and nutritional yeast flakes. Turn the head down to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes.
Mix the flour and water together in a small bowl. Add to the coconut milk mixture and stir until it reaches a thick consistency.
Add the spinach and stir until combined. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.
Mix with the cooked pasta and serve.
*Modified from a recipe that I found on VegWeb that I can't find anymore.
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