Digital Alterity

While watching the True Grits episode of Good Eats, I got a hankering to make some grits/polenta. Forsaking chicken broth and dairy, I marched into my kitchen and started yet another delicious vegan experiment—a savory polenta that will make you swear that heaven is a place on earth. Do you know what that’s worth?

Ingredients

• 30 ml of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 15 g of chopped, minced, or smashed garlic (about 1 tablespoon)
• 120 g of coarse grind whole grain corn meal (about 1 cup)
• 1 liter of water with 25 g of Better Than Bullion vegetable base mixed in(1) (about 4 cups of water with about 4 teaspoons of vegetable base)
• 30 g of vegan margarine (about 3 tablespoons)
• Black pepper (to taste)
• 50 g nutritional yeast flakes

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 175 C (350 F).
2. Heat olive oil over medium heat.
3. When oil is warm, begin sweating onions slowly.
4. When onions are starting to get tender, add in your garlic and sweat for another 1-2 minutes. Your kitchen will start to smell sexy.
5. Add your water/stock mixture, and turn stove heat to high.
6. When mixture boils, remove from heat and slowly whisk in your cornmeal(2).
7. Cover pot with a tight fitting lid and put into your oven.
8. Bake for 35 minutes or so, stopping to stir the mixture about every five minutes or so.
9. When you remove the polenta from the oven, add in your margarine and some black pepper. (About 10 grinds from my pepper mill made me very happy.)
10. Slowly stir in your nutritional yeast. Pour a bit in and fully incorporate it before adding more. I worked in about four stages. Your mixture will thicken as you add the yeast.
11. Serve immediately with fresh steamed vegetables of your choice on the side.

Footnotes

1. Alternately, you can substitute vegetable broth here.
2. Be mindful of Alton Brown’s advice to pour slowly. If you dump the cornmeal in quickly, you’re going to get lumps.

Many people live in under the false impression that vegans are picky eaters who have to plot out meals for weeks in advance or risk starvation. This misconception is almost certainly born out of the fact that we have to refuse verboten snacks that our well-meaning and warm-hearted omnivorous loved ones offer to us. In actuality, anyone who has been a vegan more than a month or so probably has some favorite vegan treats to reach for when your day has been crappy, your stomach is grumpy, and you (inevitably) have to fart from all the fibrous vegetables you’ve been eating. With the aim of educating my readers and further putting myself on exhibition to the Internet at large, here are some of my favorite little vegan delights:

• Bacos and Vegenaise on whole grain toast. The first time I made this Allyson turned up her nose at it. I made her take a bite and instantly converted her to the saving knowledge of savory snack perfection. Vegenaise is actually—honest to God—better than real mayonnaise. I kid you not. The Bacos add a nice smoky bacony flavor without killing any piglets. Even if you’re not vegan, give this snack a try. In fact, if you know me in meatspace, just ask me to make one for you.
• Luna bars. Luna bars are my addiction of choice. Imagine a sweet granola-like bar in host of wonderful flavors like chai, peanut butter cookie, and chocolate pecan pie. They provide me with enough vitamins that I could live for quite a long time if theses were my only food source. If the Christ crackers at Communion were Luna bars, I would convert to Catholicism right now.
• Vegenaise and Sriracha chili sauce. Individually these two condiments already rule the world, but together they merge into the vegan Voltron of condiments—the vegan spicy sauce. That’s right, the spicy sauce you get on your spicy tuna rolls is nothing more than Sriracha mixed with mayo. And since Vegenaise is better than mayo, vegan spicy sauce is so amazing that you’ll need to smoke a cigarette after consuming it. What do I eat it on? Effing everything. I have been known to take plastic containers of it with me to Subway. I have dipped carrots in it. A better question would be what wouldn’t I eat this on?
• Starbucks soy no-whip valencia mocha. Do you like those chocolate oranges? Well, imagine one of those in liquid form. I don’t care if Starbucks is the devil. The devil makes a deliciously sexy vegan beverage that I would gleefully suckle through a rubber nipple.

Technorati Tags: Food, Vegetarian, Vegan

Okay, people, once and for all…This time from Today’s Dietician magazine:

It was once widely believed that vegetarians were at risk for a protein deficiency and that it was necessary to combine different types of plant sources at the same meal. Now this is known to be unnecessary, as amino acids are stored in the body and drawn upon when needed. Protein deficiency among well-fed vegans is rarely a concern.(1)

And furthermore:

Most vegetables (except for root vegetables) and beans contain more than 20% of calories from protein; most grains, nuts, and seeds contain 10% to 17%; and fruits contain 1% to 10%. So a variety of these foods, in adequate amounts, will easily meet a vegan’s protein needs.(2)

Yes, I am getting enough protein without meat. If you’d like to see for yourself, the vegan nutrition article is currently online. If you want to ask an intelligent question and simultaneously show me that you’re hip to the vegan cabal, ask me one of the following questions instead:

• Do you supplement B12?
• Do you get your Omega 3 from flaxseeds?
• So do you eat refined sugar or avoid it because of the bone char?
• Where can I find a great pair of inexpensive non-leather shoes around here?
• Which restaurants in our area are most vegan friendly?

Footnotes

1. Dina Aronson, MS, RD, LDN, “The Virtues of Vegan Nutrition … and the Risks”, Today’s Dietician, Volume 8, Number 2, page 46.
2. Ibid.

Technorati Tags: Food, Health, Vegetarian, Vegan, Nutrition, Protein

On Saturday, I made Alton Brown’s split pea burgers from Good Eats, and I have been absolutely blown away by the result. I used red bell pepper as my pepper of choice, and the only substitution I made was matzo meal for bread crumbs since all of the available bread crumbs from my local grocery store contained whey.

The end result is delicious with just a really light hint of Indian cuisine from the cumin and coriander. I suspect that the burgers would be really good if they had a crispier crust on the outside, and I have half a mind to try broiling them in my oven in an attempt to realize that vision. When I took the mixture off the stove, I would have been happy to just eat it with a spoon instead of pulsing it to make a burger texture.

As just a tip, don’t heat up your burgers until you’re ready to eat them. The burger mixture keeps remarkably well in the fridge. Just cook up the patty in a frying pan when you want one. Next time I might even try freezing some patties for future use.

If you think you don’t like vegan food, if you think you don’t like peas, try this recipe immediately. It’s a truly amazing and tasty way to get some nutrients in your body with relatively few calories. We have been eating these every day since I made them.

Technorati Tags: Food, Cooking, Vegetarian, Vegan, Good Eats, Alton Brown

Not so long ago, I made an internal commitment to the eightfold path. Much like my veganism, this was an outward expression of something already in my heart, so it has been something of a joy to implement. My trouble always seems to come in when I’m not aware and present in the moment in front of me.

“I don’t suppose I could just cook it all together and then separate it out later.”
“No…”
“How long have you been a vegan?”
“I went vegetarian at the end of November and then vegan at the end of December.”
“Did you do it for health reasons?”
“No, ma’am. Ethical. I knew for a long time that I wouldn’t be willing to kill my own food, but I was letting other people do it for me.”
“When you put it that way…”
“Don’t worry though. I’m not an evangelical vegan. What other people do is just fine with me. Allyson still eats meat. Of course I cook most of the time, so she doesn’t eat much meat.”
“Can you still drink wine?”
“Sure.”

Now this statement was partially true. My vegan ways don’t prohibit me from drinking wine, but as part of my internal convictions I’m not really drinking alcohol anymore. I’ve never been the least bit intoxicated in my life, but I’m choosing not to drink because of the harm I have seen it cause in the life of others. And yet the statement was out of my mouth before I had time to remember my intention to not drink alcohol anymore. I regretted my words when I remembered five seconds too late.

Hopefully understanding your wrong speech is a form of Right Speech.

Technorati Tags: Buddhism, Vegetarian, Vegan, Confession, Right Speech, Eightfold Path

I had a hankering for a nice creamy and delicious dish that I could serve over rice, so I applied my vegan ingenuity and created this stroganoff. The sauteed mushrooms provide a nice beefy flavor, and the roux flavors the end sauce into something just sort of divine.

Ingredients

• Two 225 g containers of pre-sliced mushrooms(1)
• 45 ml of margarine
• 45 ml of soy sauce
• 45 ml of flour(2)
• 750 ml of soy milk
• Salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)

Procedure

1. Heat your margarine in a large sauce pan over medium heat. Don’t go any higher than this or you’ll cause your margarine to burn.
2. Once the margarine has a nice warm smell, add your mushrooms to the pan a handful at the time. When each handful has reduce in size a bit (about 1-2 minutes), add a new handful until all the mushrooms are added to the pan.
3. Continue to simmer over medium heat until the mushrooms have suddenly given up all their water and you’ve simmered that water off. You’ll be left with dark, small, and flavorful mushrooms that are buttery and delicious.
4. Sneak a mushroom or two into your mouth when no one is looking.
5. Add salt and pepper to your mushrooms until they make you seriously consider just forgetting about the rest of the dish in favor of just eating the mushrooms.
6. Remove the mushrooms from the pan, but leave the leftover fat in the pan.
7. Add your flour to the pan and reduce heat to medium-low. Use the fat in the pan to make a roux that is golden brown in color.
8. Add the soy milk to the pan and stir/whisk until the roux has been incorporated. Simmer until the mixture is a nice thick cream sauce(3)
9. Add your mushrooms back in to your cream sauce.
10. Remove from heat and stir in soy sauce. Allow to stand for five minutes before serving.
11. Serve over your favorite rice. I love white basmati, but I know I’m supposed to eat brown rice instead.

Footnotes

1. Because I’m too lazy to cut them on work days.
2. Yes, volume is a terrible measure for this, but I didn’t have a kitchen scale. I promise that it doesn’t need to be exact.
3. If the sauce doesn’t thicken like you’d like, add in some cornstarch that you whisked with a little water. No one will know.

I’m of Irish (and Scottish) descent, and I wanted to make something easy and traditionally Irish for my office Saint Pat’s party. What’s a vegan to do when nearly everything Irish involves bacon? Soda bread is quick, painless, and absurdly simple to veganize.

Ingredients

• 0.75 to 1 liter of flour(1)
• 5 ml of salt
• 5 ml of baking soda
• 15 ml of apple cider vinegar
• 450 ml of soy milk

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 425 F/220 C
2. Combine vinegar and soy milk and set aside while you work on the dry ingredients.
3. Grease a 8-inch (20 cm) diameter cake pan with some canola oil
4. Mix together dry ingredients thoroughly with a whisk. If you don’t even distribute the baking soda, your bread will not rise properly.
5. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in your vegan “buttermilk”
6. Combine your wet and dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. You might not be able to mix in all your flour. Conversely, you might need more flour. You’re aiming for a sticky flour covered dough.
7. Put some flour on a flat surface and dump your bread dough out on the surface.
8. Knead the dough for no more than thirty seconds. If you over work it, your bread will be tough, flat, and not at all Irish.
9. Flatten your dough into your greased cake pan and bake for thirty minutes.
10. Turn the bread out onto a cooling rack for no less than thirty minutes.

Sources

Some handy original soda bread recipes can be found here:
http://www.bookguy.com/cooking/SodabreadRecipes.htm

They helped me come up with a vegan way to make traditional soda bread.

Footnotes

1. Please excuse my measure of flour in terms of volume. I was converting an existing non-vegan recipe that used cups, and I didn’t weigh my flour instead.

Looking for a nice tasty and hot vegan drink for a nice relaxing night at home? Think you have to pay four dollars per cup for a decadent and sexy beverage? Why not make a maple chai latte in the privacy of your own home?

Ingredients

• Chai tea blend. Loose-leaf is best, but if you must use bags, try to buy a quality blend that’s more than just tea dust.
• Soy milk. (I use plain, but vanilla yields a sweeter result.)
• Water.
• Maple syrup.

Procedure

Keep in mind that none of this is a precise engineering effort. No one will die if you vary the amounts to your taste. I won’t come to your house to kick your ass or anything. It’s just food. If you don’t like the way it comes out, change things up next time until you love it in a way most unholy.

1. Put tea into a container. You’re going to be brewing a double strength tea. If you intend to make one cup, use enough tea for one cup but use enough water for half a cup. If making two cups—and trust me when I say that you will want two cups—use enough tea for two cups but enough water for one cup. In essence, use 2-3 grams of tea (a heaping teaspoon or so) and 100-120 ml (about 1/2 cup) of water for each cup you intend to make.
2. Put your water on to boil. Get it to a nice rolling boil. If you do this a lot, buy yourself a thirty-dollar electric kettle. It’s fast, convenient, and energy efficient.
3. Pour your boiling water over your tea and steep for four minutes. Don’t steep longer than five minutes for chai or other black tea. It will end up bitter and unpleasant.
4. While tea is steeping, put about 15 ml of maple syrup in each cup you’re making tea for. Add soy milk until your cup is still about half empty (or “half full” if you’re one of those obnoxious optimistic types). Put this in the microwave until it’s hot and all the syrup can be stirred in but not so long that you have a milky syrupy mess to clean up in your microwave. My microwave only takes about a minute for this, but it is admittedly awesome.
5. Strain your steeped tea directly into your cup(s). Stir your maple chai latte to distribute the goodness evenly.
6. Share and enjoy!

I wrote a letter to Quizno’s recently to find out if their bread had any dairy/honey/eggs/other vegan no-nos, and I actually got a letter back in the mail yesterday:

In response to your inquiry on bread ingredients I can tell you we have no animal or dairy derived products in any of our breads except the cheese in the rosemary parmesan bread. We get many inquiries from vegans and with the exception of the cheese bread there are no problems in eating any of our breads. Some bakeries use an animal-based L-Cysteine(1) as a dough relaxant in the dough conditioners; we do not. We have also eliminated all hydrogenated oils and shortenings from our breads long ago so our bread servings have 0 grams of trans fat. Our ciabatta has only flour, water, salt, starter and olive oil and is baked in stone hearth ovens.

Add another chain restaurant to your list of vegan safe houses.

Footnotes

1. As an aside to this, Einstein Brothers uses L-Cysteine derived from duck feathers, a fact I discovered when I wrote the company to inquire about their ingredients. While Panera uses L-Cysteine in their bagels as well, they verified via email to their corporate office that they only use plant/synthetic sources for it. Vote appropriately with your dollars.

Technorati Tags: Food, Vegetarian, Vegan, Quizno’s, Fast Food

A common response when people first hear that I’m a vegan is that being a vegan is a lot of work. Yet if you talk to most vegans, they will claim that their lifestyle isn’t really a lot of work at all. Why the disparity?

The fact is that I can objectively say that I have put in a lot of work into being a vegan. I’ve contacted restaurants by phone, mail, and email. I’ve started collecting notes about products without animal ingredients to aid me with shopping. I forgo convenient products for ones that are much harder to find. The strange part is that I really don’t feel like I’ve put in any work at all. For me, the decision to be a vegan was internally motivated. I’m doing all of these things because I have an ardent desire to do so. As a result, I don’t feel like I’m doing any work at all. At the most basic level, all I’m doing in each moment is exactly what I want to be doing. I’m not swimming upstream; I’m floating.

Technorati Tags: Work, Vegan