You might as well live*

I'm all for diversity in how we approach animal rights/vegan advocacy - to a great extent each person or group of people can be most effective doing what works for them. It isn't a one size fits all thing. Also, I can accept that it isn't all bunny-hugging and flowers and unicorns farting rainbows and crapping candyfloss** - if you let yourself dwell on the animal cruelty angle, even to the extent of motivating yourself to act or informing yourself so you can inform others, it can get downright depressing, and dealing with certain people's reactions can be demoralising and make you wonder whether you will EVER get anywhere. Trust me, I've been there, I'm not glossing over that. I feel that these are necessary disclaimers, because the other day, via a question on my Formspring,*** I came across an approach that in my view takes that latter point too far and is beyond what I can remotely get behind. The basic premise was that veganism isn't a zero-harm lifestyle, nothing is in fact, and that animal rights will never be accepted by most of the population - and hence, the best thing animal rights advocates can do is commit suicide.

That's right, commit suicide in the name of human extinction, as this is the only viable way to help animals. Now, human extinction isn't a new concept - but for the most part it's limited to not creating more humans. Controversial, sure, but at the end of the day breeding or not breeding is not such a drastic decision as deciding to no longer live.

Now, I suspect there may be other issues at play here. Certainly I have known of animal rights activists who have committed suicide, for reasons related to the ones listed above. But they weren't killing themselves 'for the animals'. Being depressed at the state of the world in general and people's treatment of animals in particular, to the point of wanting to leave the world, is not the same as dying for the animals, and I'd suspect the friends of the people concerned would realise that. I'm not going to criticise those people. At the end of the day, taking your own life is a personal decision - certainly it can have negative effects on those around you, but at the end of the day it is your business. Advocating suicide TO OTHERS as the ONLY way to help animals, however - that, I feel I can have an opinion on. And that opinion, quite frankly, is that it sucks. Pushing these ideas to a movement with a high proportion of young people (including teenagers going through the normal adolescent crap and often having to defend veganism to hostile family members and friends) and fragile people is quite frankly irresponsible. To get a bit personal for a minute, if I'd seen the website in question at 17 Veganicity might not have come to exist because I'd have been dead for a decade and not doing a whole lot for animals in that time.

And that's another thing. How does removing the animal rights advocates from the world make said world better for animals? I will admit that the vegan lifestyle isn't zero-harm, because such a thing is pretty much impossible. All you can do is minimise the harm you do. Even if we're being strictly instrumentalist, isn't it better to hang on and promote animal rights than to leave? Then there's the question of whether we should be instrumentalist about our lives - I'd argue not. If someone genuinely believes that the lives of their own species, including or especially those members who are actively trying to improve things, have no value whatsoever - there is a lot going on there and none of it pleasant.

Also, having this sort of thing around as anything other than really obvious satire does absolutely nothing for the public's perception of veganism and animal rights. Seriously - 'changing your lifestyle and promoting change to others is pointless so DIE!!!' - such a great message to send out. I can see how that would convince people to do, well, anything other than just keep on eating meat and dairy, using animal tested products, etcetera ad nauseum, because cutting these things out will have no effect. Can you read the sarcasm in that sentence? And it promotes the idea that veganism is either a sign or a cause of being unbalanced - there's enough of that anyway without animal rights advocates joining in.

I would like to believe the website I saw was satire, but unfortunately I have encountered a few people in real life promoting that sort of attitude - and was lucky not to get too far caught up in it. All I can say is, if you are having suicidal thoughts and someone tells you you should go through with it because that will do more good for animals/the environment/other people than staying alive - please get as far away from that person as soon as possible.

Fluffy-bunny posting will be resumed shortly...






*Dorothy Parker
**Probably just as well given the subsequent dilemma about whether vegans can eat the candyfloss a unicorn happily deposited on the living room floor
***Currently underused, feel free to change that

Tagine-ious!

I'm guessing that some folk out there like to imagine that, as an outreach-y sort of vegan, I make a habit of inviting non-vegan friends over and berating them about their choices over three courses of raw tofu and twigs. And some of these folk will encounter just such a setup for the first half hour or so of being in the house, because there is a lot of fun to be had in confirming prejudices.* For the less judgemental type, i.e. most of my friends and pretty much anyone I would voluntarily opt to spend the evening with, I'm more likely to dish up some tasty food, answer questions on veganism if they come up, and defer heavier conversations on the topic to an arena where there isn't alcohol.**

Anyway, this brings me to last night's dinner. This is a pretty massive quantity of tagine - dinner for three last night, lunch for two later today, and two margarine tubs full just went in the freezer.

Olive oil
2 medium red onions, chopped small
5 medium garlic cloves, crushed
3 large sweet potatoes, chopped large
1 large carrot, chopped large
450g pre-soaked dried apricots
2 x 240g tins of chickpeas, drained
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 x 500g carton passata (the tomatoes and passata are probably interchangeable, your mileage may vary about whether you like chunks of tomato or not)
1 x medium aubergine, roasted in segements with salt and olive oil then chopped a bit smaller. (optional)
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground coriander
1tsp tumeric

Heat the olive oil in a pan. Turn the heat down to medium before it gets too crackly. Cook the onions and garlic for a bit, then add sweet potatoes, carrot, apricots, chickpeas, aubergine and spices. Stir around for a bit until the spices are evenly distributed. Turn the heat up and add the passata and tomatoes. You may also need to add some water. When it starts bubbling, turn the heat down and stick the pan lid on. Simmer for an hour or so. (Perfect if you're having guests and want something you can leave while getting yourself ready!) Serve with couscous and flatbreads, or pittas if you want bread without washing a mixing bowl.




*I should come clean and admit to never having done this. And sadly I've now exposed it as a prank so can't do it to anyone who might have read my blog.
**And probably not lunchtime in the canteen. Environments where food is a major factor aren't the best place to have vegan/non-vegan dialogue, as when people are eating they tend to be easily put on the defensive about what they are eating.

Flatbreads

Yesterday I made a bit of a snap decision to go to a Scottish Vegans potluck hosted by this lady. That left me with the morning to make something. Once I'd decided that, choosing what to make was the easy part - we have a colleague coming to dinner this evening and I was going to make tagine and flatbreads, so I ended up doing the flatbreads a day early. (Which also makes today more relaxed since I've already got a stack of bread and no mixing bowl to wash today - that's my least favourite part of making bread, it ruins my nails and almost always means throwing out a kitchen sponge afterwards! Anyone fancy a bit of washing up in exchange for bread?)

Since this is something I haven't made before, I had to do a bit of 'net searching to find an initial recipe. Luckily they all seem to be basically vegan, so no need for substitutions. Here's the basic recipe - one of Allegra McEvedy's for the food geeks out there. I had wanted spicy bread, so adapted the recipe a bit by adding a heaped tablespoon of tumeric, the same of dried coriander leaves and a couple of sprinklings of cinnamon. I should also admit that I used a sachet of fast action yeast - I've never got the hang of the other sort, which is sad and something I want to remedy when I have the time and energy. But the recipe does work if you 'cheat'!.

The Grasshopper has Landed

New post up at Vegan Grasshopper - The Joy of Pot! On the uses of a decent-sized stockpot in making veganism easy.

Chocolate/cherry/chilli cupcakes

I wasn't sure these qualified as bloggable, but since they went down pretty well at last night's potluck (apart from inadvertantly poisoning a friend with a chilli allergy I didn't know he had - sorry again!) here's the story.

I used this recipe as a base, but since it is for a large cake with none of the ingredients listed in the post title some adapting had to be done.

First change: I used double quantity, because I wanted enough cakes for the potluck and to have some to eat at home.
Second change: adding chocolate. I replaced an ounce of flour per quantity with cocoa powder, i.e. 16oz flour and 2oz cocoa.
Third change: adding chilli. I put in two teaspoons of cayenne pepper, one per quantity. Halve this if you want a milder kick. Leave it out if you just want chocolate and cherries. Anyway, the chilli went in with the dry ingredients.
Fourth change: adding cherries. I put six tablespoons of cherry conserve (posh jam) in with the custard.
Fifth change: baking time. Cupcakes would be incinerated in the time the recipe suggests - I got them out of the oven after 20 minutes.

The recipe in question is one of my favourites, precisely because it is so plain - it can be adapted all sorts of ways and still work, or it can be dished up plain with icing, which is what I did for my boy's last birthday. (Making it was easy enough, getting it from one county to another was more perilous...)

Big basic balti

It's all go chez Duck at the moment, we both have stinking colds and, just to make it more fun, an appointment that means going out around the time I'd normally start to cook and coming home just after we normally start to eat. So I decided that a nice balti (literal translation - bucket, refers to slinging anything to hand in a cooking pot with random spices, or any curry that doesn't have a proper name) would be the thing. It can sit around while we're out, so the vegetables can absorb the spices - curry generally is the one thing I've found that benefits from being left hanging around.

So here goes;
-Sunflower oil
-Two large onions
-Cumin seeds
-Half a dozen garlic cloves
-Six medium potatoes
-Four large carrots
-A handful of green fine beans
-A tin of chickpeas
-Dashes of coriander powder, tumeric, ginger, cayenne pepper (SMALL dash) and paprika

Cook the onion and garlic in the oil until they soften
Add the cumin seeds and cook until they crackle
Chop and stir in all the veg, then the chickpeas, then add the spices
Add water until everything is covered, simmer until the veg is soft. Then leave standing for ages if the need takes you! I'm hoping this will do for tomorrow's lunch as well...

Help, there's a vegan coming for dinner!

Interesting and generally positive article about cooking for vegan dinner guests.

(Thanks Mylene)

Meat-free Mondays

Meat-free Monday didn't really have much impact on me, as my days had all been meat-free days for quite some time when it was invented. It was most recently brought into my consciousness by Vegansaurus' Meatless Monday Unicorn, a sarky character who demonstrates that booze, narcotics and a slightly evil sense of humour can be vegan. I like. My feelings about meat-free Mondays are a bit more complicated, and I waver between thinking it is a pretty ace idea to wondering whether it can achieve more than making people eat cheese and eggs for one day and meat the other six.

The good:
-It brings veg*n issues to people's attention
-It reduces overall meat consumption
-It can be made vegan rather than just meatless, depending on who takes the initiative and supplies the recipes. So if nothing else it is a useful thing for vegans to get involved with.
-It can showcase how great vegan food is, inspiring those who already have niggling doubts about eating animals to go vegan
-It can be used as a forum to promote veganism, if done in the right way

The bad:
-Many workplaces and so on will just go with the cheese omlette option, so from an animal rights perspective it isn't a whole lot better than the usual fare
-If the food provided is bad, it will skew people's perceptions and put them further off being vegetarian or vegan
-It diverts energy away from vegan campaigning
-It is often promoted in a way that posits it as an end-point, so people will see it as 'enough' and not feel inspired to go further

So I guess the answer here is that it depends on how meat-free Monday is gone about, who takes the initiative and how much leeway that person has if they're starting from the right point. But it's still a bit of a thorny one.

What do you think?

Too Vegan To Function

No, not me, although I would find that description amusing if it came from someone I wasn't too annoyed with otherwise. I was randomly flicking through people's links (because just occasionally I take a night off from kicking arse and do aimless web-surfing for a bit) and came across Too Vegan To Function, a gem of a blog with detailed advice on being vegan in a variety of situations. It hasn't been updated for a while, but that doesn't diminish what is there.

Chilli beanburgers

We often end up having burger-based meals, just out of convenience, so today I thought I'd have a(nother) go at making my own - mainly for variety but also because I feel that they are healthier because I can monitor what goes in them. So here goes:

Half a mug of white rice, boiled in a lot of water for half an hour or so.
1 standard tin red kidney beans
2 small onions, chopped finely
Half a red pepper, chopped finely
2 teaspoons potato flour - probably optional but I think it helps a lot with the binding.
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 a teaspoon each of cayenne pepper and cumin

Saute the onions and pepper in a small sunflower oil until they soften.
Mix the rice, beans and spices together and mash with the potato masher. (all high-tech around here!)
Stir the pepper and onions in, make sure it is thoroughly mixed.
Leave it all to cool (unless you'd already left the rice for a bit!) then shape into six patties. Bake for 30-40 minutes, turning at least once.

I like this recipe because it uses cheap, basic ingredients that can be bought and stored easily. (At a pinch the onions and peppers could be left out, but they do make it a lot nicer) It does involve a lot more prep than whipping store-bought burgers from freezer to oven, but the beauty of it is you can make extra burgers to freeze for another time.

Spicy lentil and vegetable bake

This was part of the Sunday roast we just had, and I thought it up to finish the dhal that was left over from our lunchtime curry extravaganza. (Three curries that I'd made extra quantities of last night, plus dhal and rice, plus samosas, bhajis and poppadums - I don't fill up easily but this meal managed it!) I should warn you that it makes last week's cupcakes look like miracles of structural integrity - not a good one to make if you want something to tip out onto a plate and slice neatly! It is, however, a good thing if you like lentils and vegetables and want some protein as part of a roast dinner. ;)

Ingredients
-Half a milk pan* of some 'plain' dhal - ie without any added veg, just lentils and spices - the instructions for which can be found here.
-Two red onions, chopped
-Half a large courgette, chopped
-Two sticks of celery, chopped
-Two cloves of garlic, smashed up with the back of a spoon

Saute the veg and garlic on medium heat in sunflower oil. When cooked, mix with the lentils. Pour into a loaf tin - I used a silicone one that matches my cupcake trays, but whatever floats your boat. Bake in the oven at 200C for about half an hour. I put some Tofutti cheese slices on top for the last five minutes it was in the oven. This is totally optional but it did take things one more degree of seperation from the curry we had before.

This made decent portions for two people, when served with roast potatoes and mashed root veg.



*I'm well aware of the irony, but that's what the smallest saucepans tend to be sold as, and it's a useful guide since I didn't weigh or measure the dhal in any other way. Sorry, too busy getting dinner in the oven. :P

On noses and tails

Thanks (I think) to a member of my uni's vegan/vegetarian group, my attention was brought to this article on an environmentalist website. (Warning: gross dead animal pics and slaughter talk) The subject is nose-to-tail eating, the uber-carnist practice of making 'use' of the whole dead animal instead of the more culturally acceptable bits.

You know what? I think that IF people are going to eat meat, they should do it this way. IF you're going to eat an animal's arse cheek, maybe the rectum shouldn't squick you out as much. IF you want to eat a dead animal, then maybe you should be up for doing the killing and butchering rather than paying for someone else to do it. The ifs are all there. My issue with this article and others like it is that I don't give these ifs much credence.

This article in particular glosses over a lot. If we leave aside the dubious comment about hunter-gatherer societies - who may, according to some scientists, have been more about the foraging than the hunting when it comes to day-to-day eating - there's still a fair bit to go on. For example, 'many of us environmentally conscious consumers need or crave animal protein'. 'Need' is a bit strong, for a start. And let's conflate need with cravings, while we're about it, and elevate the latter to the level of the former. This means we don't have to be even vaguely critical about giving in to these cravings - because, after all, they're a need. And that, ducklings and grasshoppers, is the only justification given by the article for eating meat in the first place.

Let's switch focus here. The problem isn't that meat-eaters are being too fussy about which bits they eat - the problem is that animals and animal derivatives are still considered part of a normal diet at all. Finding newer and possibly yuckier loopholes is not a solution.

Mylene, Miss Manners and vegan visitors

After making my post on helping out your vegan friends, I've started to notice other vegan bloggers commenting on this issue.

Mylene at My Face Is On Fire has made several good posts on the topic:
Communication!
What Would Miss Manners Say?
Reinforcing Misconceptions: When Non-Vegans Weigh In On Being Vegan

Each post is a little goldmine of suggestions for vegans and non-vegans alike on handling potentially awkward situations!

Erzatsz lunch

We're at the stage of kind of needing to go grocery shopping, but having enough food in the house to make it not worth the effort. What we lack, however, is ingredients which obviously fit together and provide an equally obvious meal. Instead, today's meal came from a selection of somewhat random items, all of which need to be used up. It tasted good, anyway!

Cauliflower cheese
Half a cauliflower - cut into smallish pieces, place in a greased dish, bake for the time it takes to make the sauce.
The sauce is the slightly faffy bit. Melt a couple of tablespoons of margarine - start on a high temperature but turn down when it actually starts to melt, otherwise it'll separate instead. Take the melted margarine off the heat and stir in three or four tbsp of cornflour until you have a smooth paste. Slowly stir in soy milk until you have a liquid with no lumps. Put back on a high heat and stir constantly until it thickens. Add grated cheezly - I think I had a little under half a block. Stir until that melts.
Pour the sauce over the cauliflower, sprinkle peppers and tomato on top if you feel like it. Bake for half an hour or so, until brown on top.

Tapas potatoes
Cut three or four smallish potatoes into little chunks. Mix in a couple of crushed garlic cloves, large sprinkling of paprika, small sprinkling of cayenne pepper. Douse in olive oil, place in oven at 200C for 50 mins.

Flavored couscous
Half-fill a bowl with couscous. Add coriander and mint, squeeze on the juice of half a lemon or lime. Fill the bowl with boiling water and leave to stand for 10mins or so.

Cupcaking and scale fail

Today I used my friend Chrissy's carrot cake recipe - linked from here as 'Carrot cake large', which downloads as a word document - to make cupcakes. It makes 48, in case anyone was wondering. The recipe can be halved or quartered, but I needed that many cakes!

It made me miss Chrissy. She and I worked more events together than I can count, ran a bakery together at the Big Green Gathering one year, and worked together on the school dinner project. (I still have nightmares about the WISP nutritional analysis software, but the food prep bit was fun)

I also realised very quickly that I am out of the habit of doing an inventory before I start - meaning I'm low on nice sugar (you'll see the really aggravating bit about that in a minute!) and sunflower oil. Nevermind. I have plenty of cake and that's a good thing.

The most annoying, aggravating, want-to-throw-the-whole-lot-through-a-window bit of the process involved the needle getting stuck on my rather cheap and crappy scales. (It's only quite recently that I've owned scales, and I rarely use them even now, so these will usually do) I put in waaaay more sugar than intended and had to scoop some out and segregate it from the main supply - no way to I want to risk getting flour in my tea! I probably didn't get quite enough out, sorry if you're at the potluck tomorrow and go home with toothache. Blame the scales...

What the cupcakes have in sugar, they lack in structural integrity - several have disintegrated in the process of getting them out of the tray. Of course I HAVE to eat those ones rather than inflicting them on anyone else!

A quick note: the recipe is for a large cake cooked in an ex-army mess tin, so the listed baking time is loooong. Cupcakes will be incinerated if left for that long - I think mine got 25-30 minutes. Maybe a few minutes longer would have stopped them falling apart, but they certainly don't need an hour.

Milk in strange places

Today when I went to the supermarket I thought I'd get a treat for my rescue calf.* He's been such a good boy putting up with life in an upper floor flat while we try to find another home for him - he's even learned to use the toilet like a big boy so we don't have to deal with cow pies all over the floor. I'm not convinced that his music tastes are entirely healthy - Cows With Guns has been playing on continuous loop all day, but hey, he's nearly a teenager and he has some demons to exorcise from his early life.**

So back to my shopping trip. I was browsing the aisles wondering what I could get for Che,*** when my eyes lit upon a packet of salt-and-pepper cashew nuts. Yes, I thought, that'll make a nice change. How lovely that they have his natural staple food in...

You guessed it - for some reason, beyond my comprehension since nobody is likely to feed the product to a baby calf, Tesco have decided it is a great idea to put milk powder and milk sugar in all their flavoured cashew nuts. Annoying...



*In case anyone out there doesn't get satire, I am neither keeping a calf in my flat nor advocating that others do so.
**The point behind this satire is that calves, especially those of the male variety, are treated like crap by the dairy industry. That's one of many reasons to be vegan rather than vegetarian.
***Listen to the song already

Vegans, oppression, food and whine

It doesn't seem unusual these days to hear 'vegans say they're an oppressed group but they aren't' repeated as part of some anti-vegan mantra. Maybe it's just that the vegans I hang out with these days are sensible types, but I haven't *actually* heard that many vegans pleading oppression - but then I suspect that the critics either know whiner vegans than I do, or have more overactive imaginations on the subject, or maybe both. I can accept that whiny vegans exist. Anyone can be vegan, anyone can be whiny, accepting that there can be some crossover doesn't mean admitting to any causal element or even a widespread correlation. I can also imagine that some people's attitudes might induce whininess in any vegans in the surrounding area!

Let's get one thing clear, I don't see vegans in general as an oppressed group. This is not to deny that many vegans are on the receiving end of oppressive behaviour at an individual level - intolerance, food sabotage, even physical threat and assault, connected to their veganism, I've been there a number of times. Of course the stakes are raised if you're also an activist. However, not being able to get a decent choice of food when eating out is not being oppressed. Your colleague or roommate forgetting you don't take milk in your coffee isn't oppression, unless s/he persistently puts milk in there on purpose - and you have the option of not accepting that person's offer of a drink if that's the case! Being followed around by the police outside of a protest situation, getting your emails read and your phone tapped *is* oppressive - but a risk you take when getting involved in certain types of activism. (getting that response for merely being a vegan would certainly be oppression, but it is also highly unlikely - although some in the government might like it to happen, I doubt they could afford to put it into practice!)

On the other hand, I don't think vegans in general *are* more focussed on their own 'oppression' (in the form of not having enough choice in a cafe, people forgetting they take their coffee black, etc) than on that of the animals.

However, there is a 'third' hand there, because vegans are just so damn badass that we can grow extra limbs when necessary.* ;) And on that hand, vegans tend to want there to be more vegans - from an animal rights perspective, that has to be a good thing. One way to ensure that more people become vegan is to make veganism easier to do, and lobbying for more and better choices of food - especially in work and college canteens, but also in resturants and cafes - is one way to do that. As a fairly seasoned vegan, if I go in a cafe and can't eat anything I will be put off that cafe. A newer and less sure vegan might be put off veganism.

There's nothing wrong, then, with making an issue of the lack of vegan choices in a cafe. It's best to do this in a polite, friendly way, especially if the people concerned seem interested. (sometimes there's no point and all you can do is drink your black coffee, eat your apple and plain crisps and write it off to experience) Offering recipes is good, especially if we're talking cake. (Veggies have a selection of vegan recipes, including cakes, designed for mass catering.) On the other hand, acting like a whiny martyr suffering for a cause** is likely to put people off veganism before they investigate the wider world. At least find existing vegan friends to complain to rather than the newbie you're supposed to be helping to make the change! If you genuinely feel like that, you may be an ex-vegan in the making, which is *not* a good way to be for you or for the animals - get some new recipes and a bit of perspective before you put yourself off...


*I wish I had this ability, it would make straining a large pan of pasta or stirring multiple curries so much easier...
**I've probably done my fair share of this, the excuse being that I was a teenager the first time I went vegan and didn't know better. Now is probably a good time to apologise to anyone who was on the receiving end!

More housekeeping

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Impure puttanesca

Since the name 'puttanesca' has certain interesting connotations, I don't feel too bad about messing with its purity. The traditional recipe involves anchovies, so a true purist would throw their hands up in horror at what I just made. That's their problem. ;) If you want a vegan puttanesca that hasn't been messed with quite so much, try this. It was the recipe I had in mind when buying the olives and capers the other day, but when I came to make it tonight I couldn't resist the allure of vegetables that need using up. And impurity turned out to taste good...

-Three mushrooms
-Two smallish red peppers
-A few green (French?) beans
-Two or three cloves of garlic, crushed
-A dozen or so olives, cut in half
-Two teaspoons of capers
-A standard tin of tomatoes
-Olive oil
-Chilli flakes
-Cayenne pepper
-Paprika

Heat the olive oil on high (it should cover the bottom of the pan) and add the chilli flakes. Turn it down.
Cook the mushrooms in olive oil over a medium heat. (I NEVER EVER want to bite into a raw mushroom in any situation that has an alternative other than starvation - hence the mushrooms always go in first!) Mushrooms can be a bit absorbent, add extra oil if necessary.
Add the peppers and green beans, then the garlic, olives and capers. It's fine, nay great, if some of the liquid from these things gets in.
Stir in the tomatoes, a small amount of cayenne pepper (half a teaspoon or so) and a larger (maybe a teaspoon) amount of paprika. Rinse out the tomato can with clean cold water and add that to the contents of the pan.
Simmer for 40 minutes or so. If it seems a bit too runny add tomato puree to thicken.

This made four servings (two each for two people) with a decent quantity of fusilli.

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Garlicky bean sauce

We had this with pasta, I guess it could go with other things too though. I'm getting quite into making pasta sauces from scratch rather than using a jar. This is because I realised that pasta used to be one of my favourite foods, whereas now it just seems like a make-do meal if there's nothing else to hand. So this is me reclaiming my pasta!

Take one tin of haricot, cannelini or blackeyed beans, tip into a roasting tin.
Squash three or four cloves of garlic and scatter the bits around the roasting tin. Splash the whole lot with olive oil. Put the tin and its contents in the oven on 200C for 20 minutes or so.

Chop a couple of handfuls of green beans and an onion (I usually use red ones) and cook in olive oil for about 10 mins at medium heat. (Olive oil can go yucky at higher temperatures, although NOT poisonous as some have claimed) Add the contents of the roasting tin. Add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste (your mileage may vary on this one) then enough hot water to cover everything. Bring to the boil then simmer for about half an hour. Add more water if necessary.

Because I've recently become a fan of aioli, I added some vegan mayo - maybe two tablespoons - during the last five minutes before serving. I think this improved the texture and taste a bit, but it is a completely optional part of the recipe!

Blending in smoothly

This weekend I've finally started to make use of the smoothie blender I've had since October. It would probably have been useful to get the extra vitamin C in the winter, but sadly I didn't have a lot of time or energy to fiddle with a new piece of kit until now. Also, there's more fruit around at this time of year!

Smoothies so far;
-Peach and banana (this was the maiden voyage, based on what was most easily available)
-Banana and peanut butter with some cocoa powder

Smoothies to try:
-Pineapple and banana, maybe with a bit of coconut
-Peach and raspberry
-Strawberry and banana

I've been mostly making these smoothies with soy milk, although it could be done with orange juice. I've also had a go at making almond milk:

-Bash up 100g of almonds with a rolling pin. (this blender is probably not strong enough to deal with whole nuts)
-Soak them in 500ml water (and in this case a couple of splashes of vanilla extract) for half an hour or so
-Add a dollop or two of maple syrup or agave nectar, and blend
-Filter with a narrow mesh sieve.

This left me with 500ml of liquid and a cup full of almond mush to enhance future smoothies or maybe go in biscuits. Personally I felt the need to add extra maple syrup to the milk before drinking a glass of it, but your mileage may vary.

For the vegan in your life and the life in your vegan

I have no idea whether anyone reading this blog fits the demographic I have in mind - those who aren't vegan, may or may not be interested in veganism for themselves, but have one or more vegan friends they want to do stuff with without hassle. (Of course if you're vegan and agree with this list it could be something to refer your friends to!)

Anyway, here are a few hints for being a friend to a vegan:
-Give their favourite cafe a try - if someone has been vegan for any length of time they will have some good ideas of where to go.
-If you're going for a meal, be prepared to check the menus of a few different places - there are some really good vegan options out there, but sometimes they need looking for.
-Vegan food is food everyone can eat, vegetarian food is food *almost* anyone can eat, so don't get too scared by the prospect of going in a vegan or vegetarian cafe.
-Likewise, don't be scared if your vegan friend invites you over to dinner. You can guess that at least we don't bite. Of course I can't guarantee that they are a good cook, but veganism certainly doesn't guarantee that they are not!
-You may have questions about the whys and hows of veganism, especially if this friend is the first vegan you've got to know well. It is fine to ask questions. Try to do it constructively and not get upset at the answers. Mealtimes aren't the best place for these discussions. Dialogue is cool, a fight isn't.
-If you're cooking at home, you don't have to make everything vegan (although you may like to) - however your friend might feel singled out if they are limited to a plate of lettuce. The 'net is full of vegan recipe sites - you can find a few in the sidebar here. There are a fair few recipe ideas on this blog, just click the tag marked 'food'. You may also find Activeg's Special Guests useful. The Co-op is the best UK supermarket for labelling of vegan alcohol, followed by Sainsbury's - Tesco is ok but you have to make do by spotting vegetarian wines that don't list egg or milk as allergens. (NB if you aren't the one who cooks in your house, let your significant other/roommate/parent know ahead of time that there will be a vegan there, I have a dear friend who sprung this on his wife a couple of hours before I was due...)
-New vegans can sometimes be a bit like newborn vampires in their enthusiasm for vegangelising, this is generally motivated by genuine compassion for animals and a desire for a better world, so try not to let it get to you. Although if you do feel inspired to go vegan, that's a very good thing indeed. ;)

Parsnip curry, a nice surprise

We bought a large bag of short-dated parsnips the other day, too many to roast for one Sunday dinner, so they needed using up. I'm not quite sure whose idea parsnip curry was initially, I'm happier about claiming it having happily eaten a couple of helpings, on the other hand I should probably give the significant other credit if it is due. I've never made or seen a recipe for parsnip curry before, so it took a bit of thinking about - I figured mild and creamy would work best. This was a relatively small meal - we stretched it out to two helpings each but that was with extra rice and poppadums (and a naan bread for the one of us who isn't vegan - the Co-op do vegan ones but I hadn't had time to go there, they aren't my favourite thing anyway though).

Start with what appears (from checking the label and what is left in the bag) to be three quarters of a kilo of parsnips. You might like to do more if you don't have any extras around. Peel and chop the parsnips and boil for 20 mins or so.

Strain the parsnips in a colander. Heat some margarine (or veg ghee if you can get it) in the bottom of the saucepan, briefly cook a sprinkling of coriander and cardomom seeds in this, add two or three crushed garlic cloves (less if you aren't keen, more if you love it or have a vampire infestation in your house). Stir the parsnips back in after a few seconds. Add a tablespoon or two of ground cumin.

Crush or grate a sachet or so of creamed coconut (you could probably use a tin of coconut milk if you have it, the creamed stuff keeps better and is cheaper though) over the parsnips and stir in. Add warm water (obviously not if you used coconut milk!) and stir in until the coconut dissolves and everything is covered. Simmer for half an hour or so.

Why You Don't Need Meat and other stories

I will own up and say that I was the teensiest bit wrong in the last post, when I stated that Vegan Freak was the first book I'd come across that combined the why and the how of not eating animals. Only the teensiest bit though. Peter Cox's Why You Don't Need Meat rocks the whole combination of why and how, of goriness with nutrition info, of tips on coexistence with the omnis in your life and exhortations to stand your ground... You get the idea. What it does not rock, iirc (my copy is in a different country from me so I can't check for sure) is the vegan angle. I think it hints that veganism would be an ideal, but it also stops short of recommending it and includes dairy, eggs and so on in the nutrition bit. It may also be a bit dated by now, I got the original edition in paperback nearly twenty years ago. It did the job for what I needed back then though!

There were a few books that got me through as a newbie vegetarian and vegan. The first, which appears to be out of print but available secondhand through Amazon, is the Teenage Vegetarian Survival Guide by Anouchka Grose (went for a while by Grose Forrester). This contains tips about veganism, but mostly is about the wrongs of eating meat. The case for veganism was largely put to me firstly by current events - this was during the heyday of live calf exports following on the tail of controversy about battery farming kicked off by one Mrs Currie - and by fiction. I was rather solitary as a young person and books were my connection with the outside world. The most impressive of these in my opinion was Jean Ure's Who Says Animals Don't Have Rights which also goes into ideas such as direct action and how far to go in the name of a cause.

The best books I've had on animal rights have been Campaign Against Cruelty by Alex Bourke and Ronny Worsey and (the original UK paperback of) Ingrid Newkirk's Save the Animals! The former deals with starting campaigns and forming groups, the latter with tips for what you can do in your everyday life. When I left PETA they sent me a copy of the new, improved edition, personally I didn't find it quite so inspiring as the older one for some reason. That could just be me though. When I review makeup and skincare I often point out that your skin chemistry and colouring is likely to be different, the same goes for your reaction to any given book.

And the worst, hmm. There was a book called Commonsense Vegetarianism that appeared in my parents' house at some stage, which may have had some sensible advice in but largely seemed to be scaremongering about how careful you have to be. It was seriously anti-vegan. Nice and all that my folks were making the effort to read up on it, but I wish they'd found a more positive source - suffice it to say it would have been less hassle for everyone. Then there was another teenage fiction book, Burning Issues, can't be bothered to look up the author here but the gist of it is that animal activists are all psychos or dupes. It was also incredibly frustrating that the main character didn't show a sign of being vegetarian, let alone vegan. Then there's Skinny Bitch, I've talked about that before right at the start of this blog. Suffice it to say here that conflating ethical veganism with dieting doesn't strike me as a good idea and I will never be down with 'lov[ing] the empty feeling in your stomach'.

What were your most (and least) inspiring reads when going vegan?

Thoughts on Vegan Freak

Vegan Freak by Bob and Jenna Torres is the first 'new' vegan book I've read in quite a while, the combination of very little money, regular access to the internet and already knowing the basic facts has meant I haven't really made much effort to seek such things out. But - several years late - I decided I'd see what the fuss was about.

I have to admit I wasn't expecting to like this one as much as I did. I used to hang out on the Vegan Freak forums (there's a link in my sidebar) and didn't have a hugely happy experience there. There were a lot of cool people, but also quite a few who, well, I'm sure they're good people and their hearts are in the right place but we did not take the same approach to vegan advocacy or practice. In any other forum people get dissed for getting drunk, eating cheese and needing hand-holding. In that one admitting to making and feeling repentant about a mistake got the same reaction. Many new vegans need advice on getting their significant other on side, if they asked for that there you could guarantee multiple 'dump him/her' type responses. (Disclaimer, I was either single or dating a vegan at that point, so I'm not being sore from getting this response myself) I'd recommend it to an existing vegan or a new one with a thick skin, not to anyone easily offended. Personally I have my doubts about that sort of approach, even in terms of its effectiveness as a means to encourage people to go vegan. (Ok, being entirely fair, I also stopped hanging out there as much because a regular had an avatar that referenced one of my few phobias, that's nobody's issue but mine.)

In the light of this, the book was a pleasant surprise. Sure it pushed the hard line on veganism, but that's a good thing when done in a constructive way. The Torres' gave a lot of measured advice on how to talk about veganism in what contexts - don't preach or get gory over dinner with omni family, talk about it calmly another time, stick to your guns *without* creating a major row. (I know, and Bob and Jenna may also know, that not everyone can do this - there will be some contexts where no approach will entirely avoid aggro - I'm afraid the only solution there is probably to stick it out until the problem starts to fade. Eventually it will. Or if the aggressor isn't in your immediate family or your favourite person evah apart from this they might fade out instead.) There is a bit of goriness, just to fill the reader in (or provide a reminder of) why to go vegan, but the focus is generally on how/why it is wrong to *use* animals rather than why particularly egregious abuses are wrong. (We all know the latter anyway, you can eat meat four times a day and still think some things are wrong, so it isn't always the best hook to use for veganism specifically) There's a lot on why people become ex-vegans, which I found useful in trying to understand the most recent crop, and also how to avoid becoming one yourself.

There are a lot of books out there on either why or how to go vegan. This is probably the best I've seen at combining the two.

Finding other vegans

Going and staying vegan can be rather daunting if you don't know any other vegans, if the vegetarians in your social group (assuming there are any) are already seen as scary militants (particularly if they don't like that position being challenged by someone doing more!), if you mostly know 'vegans' who cheat regularly using tenuous excuses, if you love your friends dearly but feel the absence of that particular common factor... you get the idea. It can be positively isolating if the people you hang out with are openly hostile and threatened by the prospect of eating anywhere that even has a vegan option - I hope that's the case for waaaay fewer people than it was in the past, but I hear enough stories that suggest the phenomenon hasn't died out quite yet. Anyway, more friends is always a good thing right? And I can say from experience that having more vegan friends makes it a whole lot easier to be vegan yourself. So here's some places to start looking!

There are vegan Meetup groups across the world, just type in your post/zip code to see where your nearest one is. I'd never used Meetup until my last big move, it's been a great way to get to know people.

If you don't quite feel like turning up to a cafe to meet a bunch of people you don't (yet) know - or don't have a local group - you can gear yourself up by getting to know other vegans online. My favourite places are Vegan Lounge and Vegan Forum.

The Vegan Society and ActiVeg both maintain databases of local groups and contacts. The Veggies Directory, meanwhile, is a treasure trove for all things vegan, animal rights, etc that you might want or need to look up.

And of course you can comment here, click through to other blogs, and maybe start your own... ;)

Packed lunch and dinner

Tomorrow I have a fairly long (although largely quiet) day at work, so I have to take in enough food to keep me going all day! Lunch is two homemade herby brown rolls with half a slice each of Tofutti plastic cheddar (because vegans can eat crap too...) and salsa (left over from nachos yesterday). I'm thinking I might add some carrot sticks, and also buy a small bar of plain chocolate from the campus shop for dessert. (Iron AND caffiene, what more do I need?) Dinner is the final installment of the last post. I mixed the leftover barbecue tofu with roast vegetables for dinner today, and made sure that there were leftovers of *that* so I could mix them with tofu for a portable evening meal.

I've no idea about the vegan-friendliness of the food outlets on campus, they look ok on the surface but I've always taken my own food in to save money. Taking your own can seem like a bit of a faff and adds extra weight to what you have to carry around (I miss having a desk to leave stuff on!), but it does guarantee that you'll have not just vegan food but vegan food you actually like (and don't have to pay over the odds or queue for).

The gift that goes on giving

For lunch yesterday we had vegetable and tofu skewers. Apologies for the lack of photos, still having bandwidth issues that makes uploading them a massive liability. The vegetable content included tomatoes, mushrooms, courgettes and red peppers. The tofu (after dry-frying for AGES, if we had a tumble dryer I'd be tempted to put it in that!) was done in a slightly improvised barbecue marinade:

-Enough sunflower oil to cover the tofu pieces
-Three or four cloves of garlic, peeled and bashed to pieces with the knife handle. (You can extract the flavour more efficiently as it breaks the cellular structure in a way that cutting with a blade doesn't - I have a favourite knife for the purpose!)
-Tablespoon or so of maple syrup
-Dash of soy sauce (yes these two ingredients sound WEIRD together, but it worked)
-Chilli powder (the one I used has cumin in as well as chilli - I've only sussed this out recently!)
-Paprika

I left the tofu in the marinade for an hour or so while getting on with other important tasks such as drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Amazingly, despite the battering it went through in the attempt to shift the water out, the pieces held together when skewered. We had two skewers each with couscous and bean salad.

The leftover marinade proved useful when making chilli for dinner - I used some of the excess flavoured oil for frying the soy mince, onions, peppers and so on, and scooped some of the garlic in for good measure. We still have some tofu left as well, so I'm planning on doing that with roast vegetables for dinner today. The leftover chilli is going to be the basis of pasta sauce for lunch.

Incidentally, if you want to get chilli powder that is JUST crushed dried chillis (without anything added), the only brand I've found so far is Julian Graves - available in Holland and Barrett. Alternatively I've been using chilli flakes - Schwartz I think - which look like fish food but work well. Of course I tend to add cumin seeds anyway, being a contrary sort of duck.

On another note, I downloaded the kindle edition of Vegan Freak yesterday, liking it so far, watch this space...

Tips for a drunk vegan (eating isn't cheating!)

A frequent bugbear of longer-standing vegans hanging out in unmoderated online spaces is the new-ish vegan who posts about how they wound up eating cheese (or 'worse') when drunk. Now, it is annoying when someone does this (especially repeatedly) then asks for sympathy - dude, unless someone tricked you into eating it, you are not the victim here! On the other hand, I've often thought that getting too harsh might put a newbie off trying again to stay vegan. If someone tries again, makes a few mistakes in their first year or so then stays vegan their whole life, it's better than being perfect for a couple of months then burning out and becoming an ex-vegan. They may be like me and become an ex-ex-vegan, but that has its own problems. And it is my ex-ex-vegan phase that I'm drawing from here - during that phase, I did occasionally get drunk and eat cheese, usually pizza. I didn't need my hand held, I did (as it turned out) need my hayfever meds due to mild throat swelling - yeah that improves a hangover no end - but I did come up with a practical strategy for not doing that anymore. So here goes:

Drink with vegans (mine's a Sam Smith's wheatbeer if you're offering) - then the temptation won't be there.
Drink with non-vegans who respect your veganism - then the only problem is your willpower not peer pressure.
Eat properly before you go out - something with fat and carbs to absorb the booze.
If you're going to a house party, take vegan pizza. Vegan pizza is always a good thing. Make sure there's enough in case other people eat it too. (there's a high chance they will!) Couscous and rice salads are also good alcohol absorbers.
Hang out in pubs where you can get something to eat, even if it is just chips or plain crisps. This will put something fatty and carby into the liquid contents of your stomach.
Eventually, your brain will reset itself into thinking non-vegan stuff isn't food. This takes longer than one evening, hence the tips.

Bottoms up... ;)

PS yes I am posting about booze before I have breakfast. Your point is?

Iron Vegan #1 - masala chickpeas

So the other day I alluded to feeling a bit run-down. Given recent events in the vegan blogosphere I wouldn't blame you for suspecting that was a lead-up to an ex-vegan epic of meatgasms and frantic scrabbling for why veganism was suddenly teh evul despite everything I've said before. Sadly for the ex-vegan contingent who seem to be actively recruiting, that isn't the case. What I actually did was a) wake up with leg cramps, which are a sign of low iron (I always get them during that speshul female time, but not usually in the rest of the month) and b) take a tablet*, google vegan sources of iron to refresh my memory on what foods would be good, and make a concerted effort to cook and eat those foods. Anyway, here's today's lunch - this was for two with minimal seconds when served with couscous:

8 tomatoes, cut into 8ths.
1 normal tin chickpeas
6 blocks of frozen spinach
oil
black onion seeds, fennel seeds
garam masala, cumin, mint

Heat the oil in a frying pan. When hot, add and briefly fry the seeds. Add the tomatoes. Put the spinach in the microwave (6 minutes), add the chickpeas and the ground spices. When the microwave chimes, take the spinach out, pull it apart a bit or cut with scissors and add to the mix. Leave to stand for a while - at least the time it takes to get couscous or rice sorted.

*Yes, I take supplements. I don't see this as letting the side down - I've known many meat-eaters who do the same, especially women taking iron.

Blog-and-run

I haven't posted many photos lately, due to issues with my internet connection (bandwidth disappears twice as fast as it used to without uploading pictures!) and with the amount of time I currently have for posting. However, when I do post pictures of food, they are generally ones I have taken of the food I eat, mostly homemade with a few bought products thrown in for good measure. Some look great, some look a bit less great - there's a limit to how beautiful a pan full of lentils can look, however much the person taking the photo might be drooling. ;) All, however, are vegan. If I have to qualify that, I'll say that I'm usually pretty good at censoring my other half's jar of honey out of the photo, but apologise in advance if it does ever sneak in. Pictures of food pertain to the food mentioned in the post. I don't use stock photos. (believe me, you do not want to look at my attempts at making stock, the last lot turned GREY, how gross is that?) So there is no risk here of meat being passed off as vegan food, and I would prefer that everyone extend that courtesy. Having said that, VegNews have at least apologised and promised not to do it again, so this is probably the last you'll hear from me on the subject!

And now a question for anyone still reading - what are your favourite vegan foods when you're feeling low and want a little more energy? I'm coming to the conclusion that I can't overdose on plain chocolate *every* time I have one of those days...

Why I love dumplings

Reason 1: They taste good. Which should be enough on it's own, but isn't the full story.

Reason 2: They provide a bit of a fat and carbs injection into a vegetable and bean stew which would otherwise be short on those things. (I happen to see fat and carbs as a necessary part of nutrition rather than OMGDOOM :P)

Reason 3: They are deceptively easy to make. The basic formula is twice as much (white, self-raising) flour as (vegetable - Atora Light is the most common UK brand) suet with just enough water to hold the stuff together.

Reason 4: On the other hand, it is easy to add things to the basic formula to make your dumplings more interesting. Today's have dried chilli flakes and coriander; last week's involved a bit of added maize flour.

Reason 5: They bulk out today's portions of stew and help to ensure that there is enough left over for lunch tomorrow.

Reason 6: They qualify as an energy-saving measure, since they make an insulating layer over the top of the stockpot, meaning that I can have the stove at a lower temperature and still keep everything underneath simmering away.

Omni-watching #1, feathers flying

Ok, this is a recap of an old episode, but for some reason it was in my mind today. There may be more posts along those lines soon.

I have to admit that I rather enjoy the Channel 4 show Come Dine With Me, especially the omnibus edition where you see everyone's party one after the other. Yes this is probably mildly hypocritical since the meals involved are rarely vegan. You do get the odd vegetarian or vegan, some of them even win or get close to it. (others are somewhat annoying, but this goes for many of the omni guests too so who cares) I like it when there's a cool, interesting person refusing to eat animals, raising some of the issues in a non-obnoxious way, and producing something impressive for their party. This strikes me as a great way to get the message beyond the vegan bubble. (For the episodes with no vegetarians/vegans, I just enjoy watching the people and seeing how they interact with each other, and occasionally I take note of what spices they're using and think about what I could replace the meat in certain dishes with.) Anyway, justifying my viewing habits wasn't really the point of this post!

One of the more memorable episodes involved a three-bird roast. I won't go into the gory details of what this is, you can probably imagine, and to be honest I found the idea rather horrible. Not, however, the most offensive way humans have come up with to consume other species' mortal remains. The point here is that one of the omni guests on the show was quite openly horrified by what was being dished up - 'It's a BIRD IN A BIRD IN A BIRD', she squawked, making rather a fuss. I understand why omnis have these squicks, why some don't want to eat baby lambs but don't share the same feelings about what are fundamentally somewhat overgrown baby chickens, and so on ad nauseum. This doesn't mean I won't point out the inconsistency if someone is being loud and obnoxious over not consuming one species when they eat all others - why are you worrying about those three lives, and not about the many other animals you have eaten? Anyway, long story short, she continued to rant and rave over the bird-in-a-bird-in-a-bird (ok, I lied the teensiest bit about not sharing the gory details) for the rest of the arc. Then, at the final party, she was happily eating lamb and conversation turned to the creature's provenance. The host from the Night of the Three Birds couldn't resist a jibe, along the lines of 'and now it's DEAD, on YOUR PLATE'. For some reason people seemed to think she was being mean. Personally, although she had cooked a rather offensive dish including the corpse of one of my favourite animals, I could completely see her point.

As I said before, I can understand favouring some species, maybe having a special affinity with certain animals (with me it is ducks) and finding some animal products more offensive than others. I first went vegetarian at the ripe old age of nine or ten after realising where little baa-lambs went, and indeed my first step was to not eat lamb. What confuses me is when people feel these stirrings and somehow it doesn't trigger them to look at the bigger picture and just consider that all animals might be worthy of the same compassion and the same outrage...

Online vegan shopping

I'm doing this one first because clearly mail order takes time, especially at 'busy' times. Many vegetarian, vegan and anti-vivisection organisations have their own online shops, which have the added bonus of raising funds for their work. For a wide range of vegan products (including loads of chocolate!) it is worth a visit to VeganStore. I have to admit that I've never shopped with them online, but I have visited their stalls at events and been impressed by what was probably a fraction of their full range of stock.

Veganicity in December!

Sorry for the lack of food blogging in the second half of November. Guess I'm not so cut out to be a prolific blogger! I still have many food pics to share with you, and hope to do that at various points. However, I'm switching tack a bit this month to look at some of the options out there for vegan holiday gifts. This isn't necessarily my wishlist (I have to say that as my other half reads this blog...), nor a comprehensive list, and the focus is on the specifically vegan rather than the accidentally vegan. It will also not be a daily feature, as I have a massive pile of coursework marking followed by my PhD viva (thesis defence for Stateside readers) on December 13. Nonetheless, I will *try* to drag myself away from these fun things and write some blog posts that are more interesting than this one...

I realise that there has been some buzzing lately about certain prominent 'vegan' bloggers dropping the veganism. I don't want to get into personal insults regarding people I don't know (I didn't even read either person's blog on a regular basis). However, I do find it sad that these people are padding out their personal health reasons for quitting veganism (however convincing or otherwise these may be) with universal condemnation of veganism as a whole and what strikes me as a lot of straw-grasping 'revelations' about how they suddenly realised carnism occupied the moral high ground. Yes, there are problems with seeing veganism as a miracle cure, but most of us (I hope) can see this without needing to hear about ex-vegans' meatgasms as a wake-up call!

On a more cheerful note, I have finally finished the first stripe of my blanket - this is being made as a succession of extra-large scarves which will be sewn together. I'll need to pick up the pace since Stirling is already ankle-deep in snow!

Oh, and I am filled with envy for the friends who have vegan chocolate advent calendars, where do you get these things folks?

Sugar and spice biscuits

I made these to take to the Glasgow Vegans potluck last night. I have yet to adjust to actually owning cookbooks, so this was done without an official recipe.

Dough in the bowl - the white stuff is flour to make it easier to shape individual biscuits. This mix involves about half a bowl of white self-raising flour, enough margarine to make 'breadcrumbs' when rubbed into the flour, a fairly obscene amount of muscavado sugar (the sticky dark brown stuff) and - as the name suggests - a fair bit of spice. This time round I used mostly ginger, but also cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Getting it to the right consistency (sticking together but not runny) took about a mug and a half of water. This is also a good time to turn the oven on to preheat - 180 centigrade/celsius is my usual go-to temperature for such things.

The next step - after mixing the dough and flouring up it and your hands - is to shape the biscuits. This can be done by rolling it out on the table, but since I don't have any cookie cutters at the moment there wasn't much point. I just scooped out small lumps, rolled them into more-or-less neat balls, and squashed these to make something resembling a conventional biscuit shape. The mixture filled a large baking tray and two small ones. Then, predictably, I put them in the oven to bake.

After about 20 minutes (long enough to clean up the mess, haha) this was what came out. They puffed up enough to get mistaken for scones but tasted pretty good - my boy can testify to this! The little brown studded bits are lumps of sugar that didn't get broken up properly when mixing, I like them but your mileage may vary.

Chilli

This was another date night meal, one which took a lot less effort than juggling four curries! Hence, more opportunities to stop and snap photos...

An onion and two peppers (one red and one orange, your preferences may vary) in the wok (yes, I make chilli in my wok) being cooked in hot oil.

The beans go in - one tin red kidney, one tin black-eyed. This is also where I add the chilli powder (maybe two teaspoons) and a pinch of paprika.

One tin of tomatoes, plus some water swilled around the tin to get the last bits.

Cornbread dough - I replaced about half the white flour in a normal mix with maize flour, and added some polenta instead of wholemeal flour. The more orangey one also has a bit of chilli powder in.

Cornbread fresh from the oven!

Nachos with mozarella cheezly, salsa and refried beans. This was our starter.

A bowl of chilli with rice!

Curry - a closer look

The other week I posted pictures from our last curry night, leading a certain person to suggest that we had another one soon. I thought that actually sounded like quite a good idea. So, here are the closeups that I didn't do last time!

Yellow rice, with cardamom seeds and cashew nuts. The yellow comes from turmeric - sometimes I use a bit of saffron, but this is more expensive and less strongly coloured.

Carrots, cauliflower and pepper in coconut sauce. I can't remember what spices went in this one.

Chickpeas with tomato, onion, fresh mint and garam masala

Daal. Sorry about the mankiness of this picture, I swear it tasted better! This was the faffiest of the four things I made that night. I made it nice and thick by boiling the lentils with minimal quantities of water, stirring constantly and adding more water as needed (read: as needed to stop it sticking to the bottom of the pan and ripping the non-stick off...) I 'fried' some cumin seeds and coriander in very hot margarine to get the flavour out: this took three attempts as I kept burning the seeds, they really only need to be on the heat a couple of seconds!

All the pans on the stove. The 'veg only' on the green saucepan dates back to when I lived in a shared house with people who needed reminding not to cook meat in my pans. The blue ones don't have this on because I lived alone when I bought them.

Of course, any single one of these can be made on its own or with plain rice! Sometimes having a few things can make it more fun though. Also, we had enough leftovers to make up the next day's lunch with minimal faff.

Bread

I started making bread nearly a year ago, when I realised that wanting toast wasn't the best reason for making a trip to the shop when I didn't need anything else! I had a few early experiments involving beer, but ended up buying yeast and trying to make bread fairly regularly. My boyfriend is addicted to the stuff, which provides added impetus.

Loaves prior to going in the oven. This is mainly white with a bit of wholemeal flour and some seed mix.

And after coming out of the oven!

Making my own bread wasn't really motivated by veganism, as there is plenty of choice with shop-bought bread. Price-wise, it probably works out more expensive than Tesco Value sliced white, but I've calculated that it is cheaper than buying quality bread ready made. I make my bread by hand, hence the slightly uneven shape (that could be sorted by buying loaf tins, but why should I? My mother also makes her own bread, so I grew up with sandwiches this shape!). A breadmaking machine may simplify some things but is also a bit of a financial outlay, especially if you aren't sure how much use you'll get out of it. Incidentally, you can also get decent bread from quite cheap flour - some of the lighter, crustier loaves I've made have involved Tesco Value white flour, albeit with a dash of wholemeal. If I have to buy discount brands (which I do fairly often) then better to get the raw ingredients rather than the finished product!

Another Thursday lunchtime

My lunch yesterday:
-Half a tin of mixed bean salad
-50g or so of wholewheat couscous
-1 large carrot cut into sticks
-A banana

I think I should have incorporated ricecakes or a flapjack or something else extra and carby, because I was hungry enough to have to buy a packet of crisps in a hurry later.

New sidebar

My sidebar now contains a blogroll called 'vegan blogs I read'. These are the blogs I feel the need to check every day or two for updates, rather than an exhaustive list!

Tofu scrambler

We don't have this as often as we used to, purely because tofu seems to be more expensive and/or harder to find the further north you get. (anyone want to confirm or deny?) Nonetheless, it is possible to get locally-made tofu - with a cool name on it, no less! - so this is one that comes out occasionally.

The empty packet

The crumbled tofu in a bowl. This particular brand crumbles easily after being pressed with kitchen paper to get the water out. You'll have to imagine me doing that, as the boy wasn't available for photographic assistant duties.

Crumbled tofu sprinkled with chilli, cumin and tumeric. Horseradish is the best flavouring to use but I haven't been able to locate any here yet.

Cooked scrambler in a wok. I fried the tofu mixture with a bit of margarine to start with, then added soy milk to give it a more scrambled-egg-like texture. Sometimes I add some vegan mayo (Plamil or Granose, would recommend the former for this as the latter is more like salad cream), but this is strictly optional.

I'm sure you'd love to see a picture of my boy in his dressing gown eating tofu scrambler and looking appreciative, but I'll spare him that one. For now. ;)

Casserole

This is a bit of a regular around here - in fact, it is a week or so since I took these pictures, and I have another one in the oven as I write.

The basics: veg over dried stuff!

The raw veg - potato, parsnip, swede, carrot and tomato (I forgot the onion until after taking pics!) - sprinkled with pepper and paprika. I vary the vegetable content and spices each time. I think this one also has pearl barley and lentils under the veg. Today's offering has dried soup mix in.


Gravy - this can just be Bisto powder with water, but sometimes I add tomato puree or yeast extract for extra flavour.

Veg soaked in gravy, ready to go in the oven. I normally put it in at about 180 centigrade/celsius, and it needs an hour to an hour and a half to cook everything through. Not fast, but fairly low maintenance in that it doesn't need anything doing to it during this time!

Seedy

Pumpkin seeds, the by-product of both cooking with pumpkins and making halloween lanterns. They've been washed and dried and are about to go in the oven...












And here they are after half an hour or so! We've been snacking on them a bit, but most are going to be used for making bread...

Gap in posting!

Thursdays are my 'busy' day, my schedule runs from 9-630 and five hours of that time is spent directly in the classroom. I get an hour for lunch, and what I eat in that hour has to keep me going potentially from 1-9pm, so I tend to put a lot in there... This week it was:

• Sandwiches (on homemade bread, more about that later) with herb pate
• A Linda McCartney sausage roll
• A small bag of carrot and yellow pepper sticks
• A piece of homemade apple and pumpkin pie, again more about that later
• A packet of plain crisps from the vending machine

This is a bit of a mixture of pure carbs and vitamin content, of fast and slow energy, which is what I need!

Curry night!

This is a more complicated meal than I'd normally make, but it was part of a 'date night' with my boyfriend. Of course each of the curries can also be made individually.

The whole plateful - spinach and chickpea, lentil dhal, bombay potatoes (a bit mushier than I'd intended) and yellow rice with sultanas.












The (slightly messy) table, showing vegan raita (made with Provamel yoghurt), poppadums and mango chutney.

Happy World Vegan Day!

So, I'm back. The reason for my absence is down to a couple of major events - submitting my PhD thesis and moving from Nottingham, England to Stirling, Scotland within the space of a week - and the aftermath: settling in in a new flat in a town I've visited once in less-than-perfect circumstances, adjusting to a new routine, going from living alone to cohabiting, planning new classes, trying to write articles to publish (ok, I'm doing that right now but procrastinating on blogspot...) - you get the general idea. I didn't consciously choose World Vegan Day to make a comeback, but it seems fairly appropriate. Although I haven't officially signed up for Vegan MoFo, I like the sentiments behind it, so this month I will be trying to keep up some kind of routine in order to show exactly what vegans eat and why (except for one of the meals pictured in this post) it isn't that scary!

So, without further ado, my halloween menu

Beetroot soup for lunch - looks gory enough but is in fact completely vegan!













Sunday dinner consisting of roast potatoes, parsnip and pumpkin, swede and carrot mash and stuffed peppers topped with cheezley. Not especially 'scary' but since Halloween was on a Sunday this year I thought it would work...

The price of being single

So apparently one of the disadvantages of being single/living alone is that you can't bulk-buy food. Not true! I'm not single now, but am in the last month of a three-year stretch living on my own. I was single for about three or four months of that time. The periods on either side of that have been spent in distance relationships. I've always bulk-bought food whenever I could, although for some things it depends on being able to get a lift from the shop.

Here's a list of stuff that can be bulk-bought in a small household:
-Tinned food - baked beans and tomatoes at least, these often come in multipacks or catering tins (if you have a freezer to keep the remainder of an opened tin)
-Dried beans/chickpeas - either store them dried and boil when needed or (more economically) boil a whole packet (or two if you have a big enough pan) and freeze what you aren't using that day or the next
-Pearl barley, on the same principle as above
-Lentils
-Rice and pasta
-Couscous and quinoa, if you have a weigh-and-save type shop around that sells these things
-Flour (but watch for damp and mites!)
-Spices

And also a whole load of non-edible (well, I don't see them as edible!) things like loo roll and dishwashing liquid.

I know this isn't strictly a vegan issue, but it does at least highlight that being a vegan doesn't cost a bomb!

The thinking vegan?

I came across this in the Guardian this morning. Now, I'm quite thrilled that veganism is getting any coverage in a mainstream newspaper from a vegan perspective, in particular coverage that is not about health scares or 'pushiness' or for that matter 'terrorism'/'extremism'. But I have to say parts of it make me wonder.

Now this first bit, I can understand:
I stare because I'm fascinated by the fact that these intelligent, thinking people actually eat the flesh of dead animals. This seems to be the point at which their ethics vanish. They recycle, eschew the use of cars, buy fair-trade coffee and bananas, use environmentally friendly detergent. But when it comes to the moral and environmental issue of meat consumption, their desire for food they enjoy the taste of, the sensual pleasure it gives them, overrides any ethical considerations.
I have, after all, been there many times - including with vegetarians who eat dairy and eggs. I can respect that you (anyone reading this who isn't vegan) might hold different opinions and make different choices to me. This isn't a boundless capacity - there are points where respect and even tolerance stop - but if you are actually friends with me then you are unlikely to have reached the boundary. However, if you are a friend or anything more than a casual acquaintance, you are likely to have a pretty good idea of where we disagree. So you know that I am at the very least curious about where your ethical standpoints come from.

This gave me more pause for thought:
Now, I avoid having meals at the homes of my meat-eating friends. I'm uncomfortable with the hassle that feeding me causes them, and the inevitable awkward conversations about food. I wouldn't express my real views, as I know I would offend them. I could never tell them that their lack of conscience about what they eat creates a barrier between us. Or that it means we will never be quite as close as we could be.
I don't think I've ever turned down an invite on this basis, although I may have been denied a few. I'm not secretive about being a vegan, so anyone who invites me over is likely to be doing so in the knowledge that there are certain things I don't eat. Over the years several non-vegan friends have risen to the challenge and done a bloody good job of it. Furthermore, on many occasions said non-vegans and their other guests have also eaten vegan or vegetarian food and, unless they are better bullshit artists than I give them credit for, seemed to rather like it. Oh, and there are also times I have had non-vegan dinner guests, given them vegan food because hey that's what I cook, and had more compliments than complaints.

I can understand, certainly, why this vegan and others might have issues eating at non-vegan friends' houses. If you don't have intimate knowledge of people's domestic habits, you might not know for sure how careful or otherwise they have been about avoiding cross-contamination. This boils down, no pun intended, to the relationship you have with the people in question beyond the vegan issue - the friends I mention above are all people I trust not to cross-contaminate, play stupid pranks and so on. (Including the guy who sees my meat avoidance as a good thing in the context of a tapas bar, as there is more left for him) There is an element of shyness to overcome about saying 'by the way I'm a vegan', maybe having to explain why you made that choice as well as the more prosaic details of what you do and don't eat. Sometimes it seems easier to say no. But being open about your choices (maybe not preachy in this context) and practical about what you do and don't eat, offering suggestions if necessary, is the best way to calm potential panic about feeding a vegan. (As a thought experiment, I have asked myself what I would need in order to deal with a guest with significant allergies - I'd want them to name some favourite meals, be specific about what I need to avoid, and preferably not cloud the issue too much with other factors) It occurs to me that avoiding interaction with non-vegans just fixes the idea that vegans are 'weird' and antisocial, that our food is strange and inedible to anyone else - whereas accepting these interactions, with the challenges involved, could go some way to normalising veganism in people's minds.