Photos - Vegan Cooking 101

Photos from the Sept. 7 Vegan Cooking 101 demo are posted on our Picasa album. See for yourself all the great nibblies, like those in this photo. Delish!

playing with graphics

Playing with stuff in Photoshop again....

Vegan 101 Class

On September 7th, a Vegan 101 class was given by several New Leaf Vegan members, and held at my home. Tanya and Mark came early, bringing plant and nut milks to sample, taco filling ( for a dip ) homemade Hickory Bits ( where's the recipe, Tanya ?? ), chips, plates and bowls ( that are awaiting their entrance into the compost heap ) and some good ideas on setting up the event. We had 12 great "students" attend who spanned the range from committed vegan mothers raising their children vegan to a certain mother-in-law who gamely came along to "see what it's all about". It was really nice to see so much enthusiasm, curiosity and a willingness to try new ways with food !
We made a very simple seitan,tossing it into the oven to bake ( wrapped in foil )while I demonstrated making Eggless Egg Salad and Chickpea Of The Sea ( recipe to follow ! ) We also sampled 2 other types of sietan...one I had made the day before ( a 'chicken' type)and J brought some fantastic chewy BBQ seitan that she had made at home. All 3 seitans had different textures, flavors and nutrition...and all very cheap to make at home. Good news when a little tub of it costs close to $4.00 in a grocery store, if you can find it! Homemade seitan is great...you can slice it up for sandwiches ( hot or cold ) brown it up and use it as you would ground beef ( before you went vegan :>) in any number of ways. maybe we should have a seitan contest at some point...just to get the creativity going !
The plant and nut milk table was a hit...rice, almond, hazelnut, hemp, soy, oat were standing in for cow's milk. All were offered chilled with chocolate syrup on the side for those who wanted it. Hemp is my current favorite...it's got lots of protein, calcium and some omega-3's. Oh, and it tastes great, too !
Gina brought some fantastic brownies and the recipe for them, and we made ( with the help of 17 year old V )and baked some Oatmeal Chocolate chip cookies to demonstrate that beaten ground flax seed can replace a hen's egg very nicely, adding fiber and omega-3's.
We talked about beans and grains (and sampled some Quinoa and Blackbean salad )and I wish we could have covered more nuts and seeds...nut butters, too ! So much to cover, because there is so much food that is vegan...you just have to look beyond what's being pressed on us through clever advertising. The following is from Appetite For Profit

.." the food industry spends upwards of $36 billion annually to market its products.." and "...food corporations spend roughly $12 billion a year directly targeting children with junk food marketing. If parents are supposed to be the ones making decisions for their children, then why are companies bypassing parents altogether and marketing directly to kids? Because corporations such as McDonald’s aim to undermine parental authority by getting children to nag their parents. And it’s not only marketing for junk food that parents must contend with, but also for toys, video games, clothing, CDs, cell phones, computers, you name it."

Hmmm.....

OK, here's the Chickpea recipe. It's lifted and altered from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's fabulous cookbook : Vegan With A Vengeance. In her book it's called Chickpea-Hijiki Salad Sammiches. You'll be amazed how much it tastes like tuna !

I call it : Chickpea Of The Sea.
1 tablespoon dried hijiki, dulse or wakame granules, or other finely ground sea veggie
1 can ( 15-ounce) chickpeas, drained
2 tablespoons Fresh lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons finely minced onion
1/4 to 1/2 cup finely diced celery
2 Tablespoons Nutritional Yeast ( Red Star Vegetarian Support )
salt and pepper, seasoning salt to taste.   I like a little ground cumin, too.
3-4 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise
Stir the lemon juice or vinegar into the celery ,sea veggies, onion, nutritional yeast,salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Set aside for a few minutes to soak.
Then mash the drained chickpeas into the stuff with either a fork or potato masher  until no whole chickpeas remain. Add the mayo, and mix it all up.
Use in sandwiches, wraps, lettuce cups or as a dip.

Lip Smackin' Smooze

While wandering through Whole Foods, my husband recently discovered Smooze fruit ice. It is a refreshing and delicious vegan treat and perfect for a quick cool-down during these hot summer days. In its tidy little package, this chilled goody is not as messy as Popsicles, and nutritionally it has only 5o-70 calories and no high fructose corn syrup. This makes Smooze a smart choice for children and calorie-counting adults. Thanks to 100% coconut milk, this fruit ice is sinfully creamy and the tropical flavors (passion fruit, pineapple, mango, and pink guava) will transport you to a balmy beach in the South Pacific. Don't let its small size fool you, it is completely satisfying and full of flavor. I have fallen in love with Smooze and I bet you will too!

Lovin' Cake Love

In the last couple of years, the humble cupcake, once relegated to home-baked, school birthday party treats, has surpassed cakes, brownies, pies, and pretty much any other pastry, as the dessert du jour. Every bakery in town has a plain and fancy selection. However as a vegan, unless you live near only a handful of vegan bakeries in the country, you will need to drag out the bowls and baking pans and make your own. So what a delightful surprise when my husband and I were walking through Tysons mall and found the Cake Love bakery in the food court with two (!) vegan cupcakes for sale! We bought one each of the yellow and chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting, and the verdict is...yum! The buttercream frosting is wonderful...creamy, buttery, easily melts in your mouth, and has just the right amount of sweetness. The cake portion is not extraordinary, but it is good and I give the cupcakes an enthusiastic thumbs up.

The big story here is not that I've discoverd a really good cupcake, but that a mainstream bakery is progressive enough to offer vegan (and even gluten-free) items. Cake Love is the dream come true of lawyer turned baker Warren Brown; his story is inspiring and a must read on the website. Be sure to check out the information under the Green Label as it includes a great explanation of vegan products and veganism as well as links to goveg.com and veganforlife.com. With two locations in DC, two locations in Virginia, and three in Maryland, if you live in the area, plan a special day that includes stopping in to Cake Love, thanking them for considering us vegans, and enjoying an absolutely lovely treat. If you don't live in the area, well they do ship...you'll have to save your pennies, but no doubt you'll have no regrets.

A Whale of A Tale

If you’re looking for an easy and entertaining read this summer, grayson by Lynne Cox, is a great choice. This is the true story of a solitary event experienced by the author – swimming in the California coast with a lost baby whale looking for his mother. Lynne was only seventeen at the time, but certainly no ordinary teenager; she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina channel, and her comfort and ability in the water comes through in her writing. Her connection with Grayson (the baby whale) is extraordinary, but Lynne’s vivid and reverent description of the sights, sound, and feel of the ocean will equally hold your attention. In the following example, Lynne senses an intensifying energy in the water and takes a look below the surface:

“Thousands of baby anchovy were darting through the water like lit sparklers.

Blinded by panic, they were frantically tearing away from their schools and leaping out of the ocean like popcorn cooking on high heat. They were trying to evade something larger.

Light was exploding around me like hundreds of tiny blue flashbulbs constantly firing.”

Lynne’s knowledge and ease of the ocean is enviable and wondrous and for the first three chapters, you will marvel at her ability to stay calm knowing something large and unidentifiable is swimming beneath her. Nonetheless, you want to be in the water with her or simply be her. On her back beneath the waves, she watches a school of stingray glide above her, observes sunfish basking in the sun near an oil rig, and is enthralled by a graceful, acrobatic show from a pod of dolphins. If you ever had a fantasy about being a mermaid, Lynne comes as close as humanly possible to living the dream…it is truly magical.

Therefore from the perspective of an animal lover, I was sorry to read the following passage about Lynne’s relationship with fisherman friend Carl:

“…Carl usually caught an extra halibut or two, and he always gave me some to bring home for dinner. It was always a little strange kicking ashore while holding a five – to ten – pound dead halibut above my head with fish juices sliding down my arms.

No fish ever tasted as fresh or as sweet as the ones Carl gave me. I liked the fish even more because they were from Carl and I could tell he was as excited about giving me the fish as I was receiving them from him.”

To be so intimately involved with the world of the sea and have an obvious love for its mystery and its inhabitants, and then to eat and thoroughly enjoy fish, to me, is a bizarre disconnect. I realize there are people who revere nature and still justify hunting or fishing and eating meat / seafood, but I can never really understand it. I suppose they feel it is all about the circle of life; whether an animal dies by man or another animal is irrelevant, it’s what happens.

To appreciate this connection is preferable to the alarming apathy and struggle to manipulate nature that is now the norm, but with particular reference to the ocean, considering man is tipping the scales and causing a possibly irrevocable imbalance with pollution, trash, and over fishing, perhaps Lynne could do her part to balance the scales and truly engage in her love of the ocean by abstaining from eating its inhabitants. Maybe she could talk to Carl too!

Despite this disappointing vice of the main character, this is a charming and heartwarming story. It’s a perfect read for your next visit to the beach. Get comfortable on the sand under a big umbrella, read this book, gaze intermittently at the gentle sea, and contemplate the intricate, marvelous world that lies beneath.

Speaking of Gardening...

This company, Terracycle, really caught my eye the other day...saw it profiled on the Weather Channel, I think. They sell worm-derived fertilizers in recycled bottles and jugs. They are recycling in an actual, meaningful way. So much of what we think is recyclable, is not...not in many local areas, anyway. We toss yogurt containers, and all sorts of other plastics in with the most recycled beverage bottles and jugs into the recycle bins, thinking that things will get sorted out on down the line. Often they do not. And you have no real way of knowing. Now at least some of it can go back into the stream of use...check out what Terracycle will pay you to send the less popular plastics to them.