Friday 30 January 2009

'Uncontroversial' vegan food

I'm not, I must admit, 100% happy with generating a discussion - on a regular basis - just by eating. Fair enough, it can act as a form of outreach, and g_d knows I've been doing little else along those lines lately. And of course it gives me, in principle at least, a chance to make other people think about what they're eating. On the other hand, sometimes I want to be able to feed myself and others without having to discuss, justify, judge or explicitly change the subject. You know, like a 'normal' person. On that score, I'm still trying to walk the line of what exactly to feed non-vegans/non-vegetarians should one or (in this case) more wind up in my house of an evening. Obviously buying *non*-vegan food is out of the question. And asking people to bring food would lead to having non-vegan leftovers around the house, not being much use, or else I'd have to pressure vegetarian overnight guest to take stuff home on the train. So anyway, I've been putting a bit of thought into what exactly to provide.

The first question was what to rule out. Actual chunks of vegan cheese might have been going a bit far. Really obvious fake meat didn't seem like a great idea either. I figured Redwood's deli sausages might be ok, though - out of all vegetarian sausages, they are the best to have cold. Anyway, I'll try putting them out.

So what else is there?
-Crisps - three large bags of the things, can't remember which brand but it was on special offer at Tescos and is in the Animal Free Shopper, so that should narrow it down.
-Hummous - home-made in a large quantity. I soaked, boiled and froze the chickpeas a couple of weeks ago, so last night I just had to take them out of the freezer, defrost them in boiling water and bash them up with a potato masher. (This being a zero-blender household until I earn a whole lot more...) I then added a bit of cold water (for texture), the juice of three quarters of a lime, a few cloves of garlic grated on the small-hole bit of the cheese grater that I normally don't use because vegan cheese gets stuck in it, and a small amount of olive oil.
-Pizza. This gets made tonight barring any disasters. Of course there's the vegan cheese vs no cheese question - think I'll make some of each.
-Bread - haven't got this yet, but I'm figuring a baguette and a packet of pittas will do.
-Couscous - probably won't do it this time, but if I get a rush of last-minute rsvps I can make some salad fairly quickly. Avoiding it for now because it would involve giving people plates, which would then involve washing the plates... yeah, being lazy!

Then, I'd rather like to have an evening that doesn't focus on talking about food!

2 comments:

Kris said...

Some of my own favourite things to feed omnis, (that they won't screw their nose up at because it's "weird vegan food"!) are salsa or guacamole dips, homemade soup with bread or rolls, and pasta in a tomato-based sause, or risotto.

Anonymous said...

I'd have thought the most important issue is not what kind of food it is, but whether you're good at making it.

In your case this is obviously a long list! In my case it usually means pizza.