How to go vegan

Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times's "Well" blog has put up a nice post titled "How to Go Vegan."  She interviewed my favorite vegan blogger, Susan Voisin, and the post has generated a lot of great comments.  In fact, some of the comments are better than the original post.  It's worth a read, and it inspired me to come up with my own list of "how to go vegan" tips.

• Do it for the animals.  Lately it seems like a lot of people are adopting vegan diets, or veganish ones, for their health.  A vegan diet can certainly make you healthier -- it's done that for me -- but from my perspective, that's more of a side effect than the main goal.  My personal experience is that if I'm trying to make a dietary change for my own health, I'm much less likely to stick with it than I am if I'm doing it for ethical reasons.  Read about factory farming.  Check out the pictures and videos Compassion Over Killing has taken at farms and slaughterhouses.    Watch "Meet Your Meat."  I know, I know, PeTA, but they really have done some good work here.  Visit a farmed animal sanctuary, get to know the animals, and hear their stories.   Your mileage may vary, but my own experience has been that even after a significant health scare (or series of scares), compassion for other creatures is a much stronger motivator than fear for my own well-being.
• Don't neglect umami.  Umami, the "savory" taste, is one of the things people miss most about meat and cheese.  Seeking out vegan sources of umami -- miso, tomatoes, nutritional yeast, mushrooms -- will help make your meals yummy and satisfying without animal products. 
• Skip the substitutes, at least in the beginning.  Commercially available vegan substitutes for meat and  dairy tend to be highly processed, full of salt and fat, expensive, and not very satisfying.  Especially in the beginning, they will seem like very feeble substitutes for the real thing.  Daiya cheese, probably the best vegan cheese widely available in the U.S., may satisfy your Velveeta jones, but it won't take the place of  a good aged cheese, and if you expect it to you will just be disappointed.  On the other hand, six months after you last tasted "real" ice cream, a bowl of So Delicious coconut milk ice cream -- especially the Turtle Tracks flavor, OMG -- will really hit the spot (so much so, that I can't eat it any more). 
• Expand your culinary horizons.  Take this opportunity to learn new ways to plan a meal, and explore new tastes.  If you don't cook now, learn (or you can be one of the laziest vegans in the world, but I don't recommend this).  There are a zillion vegan recipe sites on the Web -- Fat Free Vegan and the Post Punk Kitchen are two of my favorites -- and many of the recipes are quick and easy.  Explore cuisines that have a strong tradition of meat-free cooking.  Asia is now your favorite continent.
• Learn to love beans.  Cheap, high in protein, high in fiber, low in fat, and very satisfying -- beans are the word.  Beans are how you get protein-rich satisfaction without relying too heavily on soy products and fake stuff.  There are so many varieties, you could eat a different bean every day for weeks. Dry beans are cheaper than canned and, in my opinion, healthier and tastier (and there's a much greater variety available), but canned beans are also very good and with canned beans, you don't have to plan ahead to have a great meal ready when you want it.  I eat beans at pretty much every meal.  Yes, including breakfast.  Baked beans on toast are a traditional part of an English breakfast, but it's also worthwhile to expand your concept of what constitutes appropriate breakfast food.  There's no law that says you can't eat the same things for breakfast you eat for lunch and dinner, and in my opinion "lunch and dinner" foods can be a much more appropriate way to start the day than the sugary crap so many people eat for breakfast.
• Abstinence is easier than moderation.  Again, your mileage may vary, but this is my experience.  If you keep eating animal products "once in a while," you won't lose your taste for them, nor will you really learn how to thrive without them.   Just quit.  When it gets hard, watch Earthlings.

I do have a criticism of the Times post.  It focuses completely on food, and there's a lot more to being vegan than that.  Finding nice winter clothes and shoes that don't contain animal products can be a challenge, and you may need to start shopping for cleaning products and personal care stuff at the health food store to find things that aren't tested on animals (or made by a parent company that tests on animals).  Shoes, sweaters, and lip balm have been the toughest ones for me, but it's all doable, and there are a lot more choices now than there were even a few years ago.  It's not that hard.  And it's worth it.  

What are your best tips for new and aspiring vegans? 

Massaged kale with tahini-miso dressing

This afternoon at Wegman's I found a huge box of organic baby kale.  I knew it was coming home with me, and of course I immediately thought of massaged kale salad.

Massaged kale salad has been a thing for a couple years now.  Basically you tenderize the kale by physically massaging it with your hands, plus an acid, a fat, or some salt.  It's fun and messy.  I made a massaged kale salad a while back with beautiful fresh pineapple and tomatoes.  The acid from the pineapple and tomatoes tenderized the kale, and the fruit basically formed the dressing.

This time I knew I wanted to use a tahini-based dressing.  I had seen a yummy-sounding kale salad on Choosing Raw, with a dressing made from soaked cashews.  I can't have cashews in the house because they (and most nuts) are like crack to me, but for some reason I am OK with tahini.  I started to type "massaged kale" into Google, and it suggested "massaged kale tahini dressing" as a search option, so clearly I am not the first person, or the five hundredth,  to think of this combination.  

I used the first dressing recipe that came up, minus the cilantro.  I liked the idea of combining tahini with white miso (mmm, umami), and I had all the ingredients in the house.  I put everything in my mini food processor and whipped it up in less than a minute.  Here's what I did next:

First, I had to give some kale to the cat, so he would leave me alone and let me cook.  He loves greens.

This is what the kale looks like right out of the package.  The leaves are about the same size as baby spinach.

I put about a third to a half of the pound of kale in a big stainless steel bowl, and sprinkled it with a few pinches of coarse kosher salt.  Then I started squeezing and massaging it with my hands.  The salt adds friction and helps draw out the liquid in the kale.  After I'd worked on it for a few minutes, it looked like this:

 See how it's kind of glossy and wet looking?  It also takes up less room in the bowl than it did before.

Next, I mixed in a little dressing and massaged the kale some more:

Then I let the salad rest while I prepared the rest of dinner, which was basically the same leftover dry chickpea curry and brown basmati rice we've been eating all week.

Here's my dinner plate.  I drizzled some extra dressing on the kale.  Om nom nom.

If you like cooked kale but can't imagine eating it raw, I strongly encourage you to try a massaged kale salad.  The massaging really does transform the kale, as if it had been very, very lightly steamed or sauteed.  Plus it makes a mess, and it's fun!

If you've made massaged kale salads before, what is your favorite dressing?

The dairy habit

Here is a good collection of information about the addictive qualities of dairy products, and why they are so hard to kick.  So many people tell me, "I couldn't be vegan because I could never give up dairy."  There's a reason for that:  it's addictive.

Back when I ate dairy, cheese and ice cream were two of my major binge foods.  As a vegan, I continued to binge on soy or coconut milk "ice cream," and I found that Daiya cheese (especially those cheese blocks they have now) was almost as much of a problem for me as dairy cheese had been.  I think it has to do with the texture and the fat, rather than the umami flavors, since I can eat other umami foods like miso and nutritional yeast (and Bragg's) and do okay.  These days I don't eat ice cream or cheese, whether it's cow-based or vegan.

Book Review: Eat Vegan on $4 a Day

Image stolen from Amazon

I'll start this review with a confession:  I don't know how much money I spend on food.  I shop carefully, and most of what I buy is unprocessed or minimally processed:  bulk dry beans and whole grains, and fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables.  When I do buy processed stuff, like canned tomatoes, or the almond milk (for smoothies) and coconut milk (for Indian food) that are on this week's shopping list, I tend to buy store brand, and I compare prices.  But if I want, say, organically grown pears, I don't worry about the fact that they are $2.50 a pound.  I buy the more expensive balsamic vinegar because it's better quality.  I often choose organic, even if it costs a lot more than the conventional item.  Then there are the days I say, "Screw organic, I'm buying this 10-pound bag of conventional potatoes for $5."  I also enjoy cooking and have the time to devote to it, so I don't have to weigh price against convenience (if I go for convenience, it's because I'm lazy, not because I really need to).    So I have the luxury of not having to struggle with a tight food budget, and I have the time to do things that save money, like use dry beans instead of canned.

Still, I was curious about this book.  I care a lot about making sure healthy food is accessible for everyone, and I hate how our government subsidizes things like meat, dairy, and highly processed grains so they are cheaper (until you factor in the medical bills) than the good stuff.  And I know there are plenty of people who could benefit from advice about how to eat healthy on a tight budget.  So I wanted to see if this book was any good.

There is some good stuff in here.  I was appalled, though not really surprised, by the chart comparing how much the USDA spends promoting animal products ($107.8 million for fluid milk alone) versus plant foods ($10.7 million for potatoes).  There are the usual tips, which are excellent if you've never heard them before: keep a running grocery list and don't shop without it, shop the periphery of the store, compare unit prices, avoid processed food, do food prep on the weekends to save time during the week.  The author includes one of my favorite time-and-money-savers, which is to cook dry beans in the slow cooker rather than use canned.  There are cooking time and yield charts for beans and grains, and a sidebar explaining the vegan four food groups (whole grains, legumes, fruits, and veggies).

I haven't tried any of the recipes, so I will have to make a few and report back.  Reading through them, they sound pretty basic, but tasty.  There's a quinoa-and-chickpea loaf (with mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes, yum!) that I would definitely like to try.  There's a "chocolate surprise cake"  containing beets, carrots, and zucchini, that I'd be very curious about if I ate cake.

But the big question, of course, is can you actually use this book to feed yourself for $4 a day?  The author gives estimated costs per serving (rounded to the nearest $0.25) for every recipe,  and in the front of the book there are sample menus for a week, with the cost of each item and the total cost calculated.  The costs range from $2.25 to $4.00 for three meals and a dessert or snack.

But here's the thing:  the portions are TINY.  For example, the recipe for "Hot Whole-Grain Cereal" calls for one cup of raw rolled oats to serve 4 people, and that's the entire breakfast.  That's half a cup of cooked oatmeal.  Period.  When  I eat oatmeal for breakfast, my food plan calls for me to eat a full cup of cooked oatmeal (1/2 cup raw),  plus a protein like beans or tofu, plus a fruit.  There's no way 1/2 a cup of oatmeal is going to keep someone going until lunch.  And then lunch that day is hummus with lettuce on a whole wheat pita.  How much hummus?  Well, 3 1/2 cups of chick peas are supposed to serve eight people.  That's a little less than half a cup of chick peas per person.  It just isn't enough food.

This kind of deception really pisses me off.  It's like processed food labels that try to convince you the food is lower in sodium, fat, or calories than it really is by making the serving sizes ridiculously small.  And this is clearly supposed to be a book for people who are not experienced with plant-based diets.  I'm really afraid someone would try these menus, feel hungry for a week, and decide going vegan is not for them.

What's really sad is that these menus do not meet the basic needs described in the very chapter of the book in which they appear!  For example, the sidebar on the vegan four food groups says a person should eat at least 5 servings of whole grains per day.  The menu I was just describing contains three servings (in addition to the oatmeal and pita, there's a half-cup of brown rice included with dinner).  So on page 26, there's a menu that the nutrition advice on page 18 says is nutritionally inadequate.

The recommended daily food plan on page 18 is as follows:

3 or more servings of fruit (one piece, or 1/2 cup cooked)
4 or more servings of vegetables (1 cup raw or 1/2 cup cooked)
2 or more servings of legumes (1/2 cup cooked beans, 4 oz tofu, or 8 oz soy milk)
5 or more servings of whole grains (1/2 cup cooked grain, 1 oz dry cereal, or 1 slice bread)

According to my dietitian, that's not nearly enough beans, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

The menu I referenced above costs only $2.25.  So maybe in theory, we could add another $1.50 worth of food and make it nutritionally adequate.  Let's look at a menu that costs a full $4.00:

Breakfast is "multigrain cereal combo".  That's 1/2 cup puffed grain, 1/2 cup soy or other plant milk, a banana or 1/4 cup berries, and 1/2 cup chopped nuts.  That's one serving of grain, maybe one serving of fruit (1/4 cup berries seems small), and actually quite a bit of protein from the 1/2 cup chopped nuts.

Lunch is a Portobello Poor Boy Sandwich.  You get a mushroom, a roasted red pepper, an ounce of spinach leaves, and half of a "small loaf whole wheat french bread."  I have no idea how big that small loaf is, but let's say we're getting 2 slices of bread.  So I've got 2 grain servings and what, 2 servings of vegetables?  Maybe?

Dinner is "penny pincher pitas."  Each person gets a little less than half a cup of beans, 1/2 a whole wheat pita, a little bit of corn, and some raw veggies.  Call it one bean serving, one grain, and not even one vegetable (Half a cup of lettuce for four people?  Really?)

Dessert is a mango smoothie.  Each serving contains 1/4 cup mango, 1/4 a banana, and (not making this up) 1/8 cup soy milk.  So we've got . . . . about a half serving of fruit and a 1/8 serving of beans?

Daily total:  4 grains, 1 1/2 fruit, 2 veggies, and one serving of beans, plus all those nuts.  1/2 cup of chopped nuts actually contains about as much protein as a cup of beans, so in terms of protein we're not doing badly at all, but that's a lot of nuts to eat in one day.  Still, according to the vegan four food groups as described in this book, the menu is inadequate.

To sum up:  this is not a bad book for a beginning vegan cook, or someone who is just starting to live on his or her own and doesn't know how to grocery shop or plan menus. I've seen better books for that, but this one isn't bad.  But when it comes to proving that a person can eat well on $4 a day, forget it.

An interesting exercise, and maybe a subject for a future post, would be to figure out how much a day's worth of my own meal plan (which I'm assuming is nutritionally adequate, since it was prepared by a registered dietitian) would cost.  I'm guessing it's more than $4 a day, but I'm kind of curious, now, to know how much more.  Since I buy so much of my food in bulk, it's going to involve a lot of weighing and calculating cooking yields and prices.  We'll see if I find the energy.

Vegan Books at Barnes and Noble

My girlfriend took this picture at our local Barnes and Noble today.  "You could put it on your blog," she said.  I usually do what she tells me, so here it is.

I've actually bought quite a few vegan cookbooks at Barnes and Noble.  They've had a good selection for a while now, but it's nice to see it so prominently displayed.

Hoppin' New Year!

In honor of the new year, I quickly whipped up some Hoppin' John, Maryland-style.  I threw a bag of frozen black-eyed peas in a pot with a chopped onion, green pepper, 2 stalks of celery, a can of diced tomatoes, smoked paprika, Old Bay (the Maryland element), and water.  Cooked it uncovered until the veggies were done and the water was almost gone.  Here it is served with a baked potato and some plain kale.  It seemed kind of bland to me, so I sprinkled more Old Bay on everything.  Om nom nom.

I think next year I'll take more time with it and start with dried black-eyed peas.  Or I may do something non-traditional, like Goan black-eyed peas with coconut milk.  Actually, I don't think I'll wait until next year to make that one.

Resolved: not to make any New Year's resolutions

January 1!  Time to make all those resolutions about quitting smoking, losing weight, and going to the gym.  Or not.