My favorite Vegan food site. The recipes are delicious and the food photography puts me in a perpetual state of hunger.
Frankly, They’re Delicious.
Just in time for the 4th of July, Field Roast has come out with an all-new Vegan Frankfurter.
I just got a chance to try it and I have to say that they are absolutely fantastic. The texture is great, the flavor great, too. And, these dogs are soy free, which is is a nice change.
They’d be perfect on any weekend grill.
Must See: Forks Over Knives
Forks Over Knives premiered here in Jacksonville on Saturday, November 6th at 5-Points Theatre at 5:00 pm. This was a powerful and important documentary.
I encourage everyone who cares about their health and what they eat to see it.
Pizza or Vegan? A New Post Over At Elephant Journal
I’ve got a new post over at Elephant Journal about my struggle with giving up pizza. It’s my one big, cheesy, saucy, yummy hurdle on the road to being Vegan.
Here’s an excerpt:
I’ve been vegetarian for a couple of years now. I slowly let a vast array of meats fall away as I settled nicely into the very comfortable dairy and eggs only category (octo-lavo-something or other, right?). That was fine for a while. But alas, I now feel a tug toward the next step and find myself faced with the toughest food choice ever: Vegan or pizza?
The Fantasticness of Field Roast Vegan Sausage
The Field Roast Artisan Vegan Italian Sausage is fantastic. In fact, it’s my favorite new veggie product. I made a Bolognese sauce using the Field Roast sausage, whole wheat spiral pasta, Roma tomatoes, freshly minced garlic, red chili flakes, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Damn, was it good.
The sausage had amazing flavor, a firm texture and had a hearty fennel flavor which infused the entire dish with a robustness that I absolutely love. This is a great product for any vegetarian and non-vegetarians who want a lower fat option without sacrifing flavor.
A Gorgeous New Vegetarian Cookbook
The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I’ve ever seen. The typography is beautiful, the colors exquisite, the food photography completely tantalizing.
And that’s just aesthetics. The recipes themselves are amazing. This book, along with Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet provide an incredible Vegan one-two punch of delicious, natural, earth and animal friendly cooking with flair, flavor and tons of taste.
In The Conscious Cook, we get to see what the new face of Vegan cuisine looks and tastes like. There are no bland, boring or dull dishes here, only rich, savory and satisfying dishes.
Before I became a vegetarian I had this fear that I’d get easily bored with the cuisine. I also had a sense that the faux meats where horrible. I was wrong on both. Granted, the psuedo-saugage, veggie burgers and other veg-meats have made great strides. So much so that I’ve dined at veggie restaurants where you’d never know you were eating chicken or beef if you weren’t paying attention.
This is a great cookbook. It’s full of photos, information and dynamic recipes. The layout is clean and fresh. Designwise, this is one of my favorite cookbooks ever.
How To Eat Responsibly
Wendell Berry, one of the great voices of American sustainability, agriculture, food and culture has this advice on how to eat responsibly. The following can be found in his essay, “The Pleasures of Eating” where he also writes famously that “eating is an agricultural act.”
Indeed it is. So, then how do we eat responsibly?
- Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer, Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will he fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.
- Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and household. This should enable you to eat more cheaply, and it will give you a measure of “quality control”: you will have some reliable knowledge of what has been added to the food you eat.
- Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The idea that every locality should be, as much as possible, the source of its own food makes several kinds of sense. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and to influence,
- Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. All the reasons listed for the previous suggestion apply here. In addition, by such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers. and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers.
- Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions?
- Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.
- Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.
I find Berry’s writings and ideas to be for the most part beautiful. His thoughts on food and the merits of local, sustainable agriculture rings true with me. And while to follow these suggestions is a challenge in our convenience obsessed society, making the effort is well worth the price of participation.
Damn You Starbucks and Your Java Chip Ice Cream
My obession with ice cream is no secret to people who know me. It’s a product of my years growing up in Wisconsin where there’s an ice cream or custard stand on every corner (There’s a bar on the other corners, but that’s a different story).
The other day, while at Starbucks, they were giving away free sample size containers of Starbucks Java Chip ice cream along with a coupon. There was a long line so I took a container and begrudgingly tried it. What was I thinking? I’ve always deliberately steared clear of all types of coffee ice creams because the combination of my two biggest vices, coffee and ice cream, only promised to be much like crack for me. I was right. The Starbucks Java Chip ice cream is rich, creamy and has a subtle coffee flavor that matches perfectly with the chocolate chips. In other words: Damn. Damn, damn, damn, shit, hell, son-of-a-bitch and yum.
I now have a pint of Java Chip ice cream in my freezer and I caught myself having a spoonful this morning with my coffee. This is an ominous sign. I fear things could get out of hand as Java Chip ice cream gets rationalized as a legitimate dinner option. A perfectly acceptable lunch selection and course, good for snacking on around the clock. I won’t even get into the milkshake potential. That’ll have to be for an entirely different post.
And now, I must go, the container is calling.
Things Progressing Nicely At The Taqueria
Now we’re getting somewhere. I’ve been back to the Taqueria a few times in the recent weeks and it seems like I am well on my way to being a regular. To me this is great news, because I am bound and determined to get in good with the guys at the tiny gem that is Taqueria Mi Casita near my house.
On my last visit, after ordering my usual: two tacos al pastor, one taco de carnitas and a glass of horchata, the waiter actually talked to me. Here’s how the conversation unfolded:
“Te encantan tacos, verdad?” he asked. Which was true.
So I said, “Si, me encantan. Especialmente los tacos aqui. Estan muy buenos.”
“Claro,” he replied.
Can you believe that? It’s like I’m a regular now. Holy shit. So after that, after getting my tacos and horchata and eating, after getting my bill and paying, as I’m walking out the door, the old man on the grill says, “Nos vemos, amigo.”
Amigo. He called me amigo. It was at that point that I truly new that I was on the verge of getting in good with the guys at the Taqeuria. From here it’s just a matter of time before I’m getting invites to gatherings and quinceañeras where I’ll get to eat pozole and carne en su jugo, while drinking mezcal and micheladas. Que barbaro, estoy super contento con todo. If you know what I mean.
Conchas, Conchas, Conchas
If you’ve never ventured into a Mexican Panaderia, I urge you to do so. I guarantee the discoveries you’ll make will change you forever. In fact, once you’ve tried some of the stuff you’ve discovered, you’ll wonder how you’ve gotten through life up until now without them. Pan dulces, Mexican sweet breads, come in many shapes, sizes and flavors and they have colorful names like conchas (shells), novias (girlfriends), orejas (ears) and cuernitos (little horns).
If you hit your local Panaderia at the right time, you can get the breads while they’re still warm. Get to know the baker and learn a little Spanish and you’re on your way to pastry heaven. I find myself stumbling into the Panaderia near my house on frequent Saturdays, always sure to get there just when they come out of the oven so Domingo, the baker, can load me up still hot conchas and cuernitos. Once I get home (if they make it home) I always eat my pan dulce with chocolate caliente (Mexican hot chocolate). Again, if you’ve never had Mexican hot chocolate, you haven’t lived. So, if you’re reading this, stop now and find a panaderia. You won’t be sorry.