Friday, June 25, 2010

Another quick meal

So last night I went to shop for a bathing suit for the beach trip we will take in a week or so.  I got home late and was hungry so I decided to "sweep the kitchen" and make a hodgepodge of Vegan goodness.

What you see here is some leftover angel hair pasta (3 oz only! that stuff is HIGH in calories), the last of my kale, half a zucchini, some peppers, half a white onion, and half loaf of homemade seitan I made and froze a couple of weeks ago.

This concoction was all thrown into the stir fry pan and in 10 minutes I was eatin'!

With the exception of the ingredients to make the seitan, all of this was found at local grocery stores!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Two New Meals This Week

Two new meals this week.

The first "meal" was from Father's Day.  Megan (www.veganrunningmom.com) told me she was making homemade pizza and I got the notion that I wanted some pizza too.  First I had to find out if the crust at WalMart was vegan.  A quick glance at PETA's "I Can't Believe Its Vegan" website told me that Pillsbury Pizza Dough was Vegan.  So I hopped over to WalMart and bought some mushrooms, an onion, and some pizza sauce along with the dough.  My recent trip to Whole Foods allowed me to stock up on Mozzarella and Cheddar Vegan Cheese from Daiya.

This was easy as pie!  Spread out the dough, add the sauce, add the cheese, pre-cook the onions and mushrooms, and send to the oven for about 10 minutes.  This is what I got:

My wife loved it. MY KID loved it! Hudson ate all of he section I gave him!  NICE!




The next dish I made on Monday.  I had no plan really and was pressed for time.  We had a lot going on, so I scrambled into the fridge to see what I had.  I had just prepared a fresh batch of Quinoa for salad topper this week, so I drew upon that.  I also found some Kale at WalMart that looked like it had been harvested in this calendar year.  So I decided to use that.  I thawed some of the homemade seitan that I had prepared a couple of weeks ago.  I added a little spicy BBQ sauce to the seitan, whipped up some onions and mushrooms (can ya tell I like mushrooms and onions?) and here is what I got.  This is all WalMart, as was the pizza, with the exception of Daiya cheese.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Hey Morningstar, WTF?

So when I went vegetarian, one of the first things I did as a way of filling the gap between meat and meatless was to purchase Morningstar grillers, veggie burgers, and black bean burgers.  I was not Vegan then, so ingredients weren't a priority as much as going meatless was in my Veganarian state.  So when I needed a break from prepping veggies or was just in a burger kind of mood, I turned to the products of Morningstar, readily available from each of my two grocery stores.  Mind you, this is all I have.  Two stores and limited options in terms of ready-to-eat processed vegan food.  Should that stuff be a staple in our every day Vegan diet? Of course not. But they are handy in a pinch.

It wasn't until shortly before going Vegan that I discovered that my beloved veggie products from Morningstar had milk in them. YES! That's right, MILK!  What!?  Milk? OMG WTH?  Why, Morningstar, did you see the need to put milk products in something designed for folks on a meatless diet, whether it be vegetarian or vegan?

So what's a southern vegan to do?  Yup! I have it! I recalled seeing some Boca Burgers at the other grocery store. So today after work, I hopped on down there to get a Boca burger for dinner. See, I was kinda tired and looking for a quick meal to satisfy those hunger pangs and that was of minimal effort. It is, after all, Friday.  Time to rest up after a work week.  So, I make my way to the frozen food aisle, spy the familiar red Boca container, reach down triumphantly for the box, and...WHAAAAAA?????, mushroom mozzarella Boca burgers? Mozzarella? As in mozzarella, the cheese!?  OMG WTH???

Et tu, Boca???  I thought Boca was the "original vegan burger"?  What's this dairy cheese crap doing in MY Vegan burger.  As Capt. Kirk so eloquently put it in Start Trek II:  "khhaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnn!"

So, what does a southern Vegan do in the face of overwhelming odds against his having a vegan burger tonight?  Yup. You guessed it, he buys squash, onions, zucchini, and quinoa and makes a better dinner.

Take that Boca!  Take that Morningstar!


P.S. Oh, and next time I want a burger, I'm making Southwestern Tofu Burgers from the "Vegan Table" cookbook.  Those things ROCK!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The Taste of Addiction

Here is a nice article from the Sydney Morning Herald about the addictive nature of processed food.

The Taste of Addiction

Friday, June 11, 2010

Couple of meal pics from last week

This is homemade seitan, on Lavash bread with sauteed onions, mushrooms, peppers, and Daiya cheese

This is caramelized tempeh, with quinoa, and sauteed onions, peppers, and kale 

Lavash Bread Pizza



Last weekend after a trip to Whole Foods, I made some Lavash Bread pizza.  Now this is a slight departure from my "WalMart Vegan" theme, but a dude just HAS to go to Whole Foods every now and then!

Love the Lavash bread and cant wait to make caramelized tempeh shawarmas again with it (see the wonderful recipe book Vegan Table available at Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Compassionate Cooks website.  

All I did was take half a piece of the lavash bread, slather a tablespoon of tomato paste on it, add some onions, mushrooms and peppers, and then some Daiya cheese (holy moley is this stuff good!), popped it in the toaster oven, and voila! pizza.  Very low in calories and very tasty too!


Sunday, June 6, 2010

The UN Report and Thomas Malthus

I'm a historian by trade, and it occurred to me that this UN Report recommending a Vegan lifestyle in order to ease the drain on world resrouces might have some historical context.  So I started thinking about how I could do that for you, and the name Thomas Malthus popped into my head. Malthus was a British scholar and reverend who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  He published some controversial (then) stuff on popoulation and demographics.


His demographic assertions were in a work called "An Essay on the Principle of Poulation." He asserted (WAY oversimplified here) that the population would someday overcome the Earth's ability to sustain it.  In essence, we would outgrow our planet.  He wrote: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man"


Isn't that what this report is saying in a way?  That our incessant need for animal products is creating a drain on world resources to feed and grow those animals to provide that food for the population that we are actually damaging the planet's ability to sustain us? 



Friday, June 4, 2010

Go Vegan or Lose your World

The UN has published a report recommending a transition to a Vegan diet to ease the drain on world resources.

Here is the UN REPORT in full

And here is a Manchester Guardian article summarizing.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Quick, Easy, and Available at WalMart!

Okay, so I got busy this afternoon and found myself too hungry to think about something fancier (as if I ever do anything fancy). So, I took some old stand-by ingredients: mushrooms and green onions, and sauteed them with a 1/4 cup of quinoa, then added some curry powder, then crumbled in a Boca burger.  What I got was this:

All totaled, this plate full of food was about 390 calories!