July 4, 2007
On grilling out veggie style
If you’re like me, you’re making the rounds at various barbecues during this Fourth of July holiday. Although this is a perfect opportunity to have your occasional foray into meat eating if you’re a part-timer or dabbler, veggies have to give it a little more thought.
If you’re a lazy vegan like me, you probably just pop into your grocery and snag a pack of veggie burgers or “Not Dogs” to take along so you can grill out along with your meat-eating comrades. Just slap them on the grill and then slather with fixings as usual. (If you don’t want juices from meat-based burgers to “contaminate” yours, wrap them individually in tin foil first or have the host do yours first, before the others.)
If you’re a little more creative, try a tofu-based shish kebab; take it with and have your host grill it for you. (You’ll likely have meat-eating friends salivating over your plate if you do this, too.) Simply prepare a block of tofu for grilling by freezing solid, thawing completely, then rinsing. Squeeze the water out, then cube the tofu into kebab-sized pieces. Skewer with veggies like onion, green pepper, cherry tomatoes, and fresh mushrooms, then sear on the grill. Delish.
If you’re vegetarian and can eat dairy and/or eggs, you don’t have to do anything special to get your fill, unless you want to. There are likely plenty of potato salad and bean-based dishes that pack a protein punch, and vegans, too, can indulge in vegetarian baked beans even if the potato or macaroni salad is off limits.
If you’re the host, you can be a vegetarian’s delight and provide the veggie burgers, hummus, etc., for those who want them. For guests who eat meat, ask them to bring their own (unless you know what to buy) and grill it themselves. (I’ve never trusted my own meat-cooking skills on the grill, since I never do it; better to leave that to experienced folks.) They’ll be happy to do so. And you as the host can rustle up a spread any veggie’d be proud of. You might just surprise a few meat-eating friends, too.
June 29, 2007
Getting along in a non-veggie world: “Eat before you go”
Let’s face it, we veggies are in the minority when it comes to society in most parts of the US, if not other parts of the world. Whether you’re a lazy vegan like me or are a bit more stringent in your views, it usually comes to pass that at some point, you’re going to be in a situation where you’re flying solo as a veggie; some of your comrades probably won’t even know that “vegetarianism” does not embrace chicken as a food (ever have someone say, “Oh, you don’t eat meat? Okay. Well, we have chicken. Do you eat chicken?” Um …).
Most of the time, family and friends are probably perfectly willing to prepare something special or you can bring your own, but if you’re at a company gathering or someplace you can’t check ahead to make sure you can get something substantial for dinner, eat before you go (at least for me, half a baked potato and some canned green beans just won’t fly for an entire evening). Not so much that you’re stuffed full and not at all hungry, but enough so that if all you’re going to get is some lettuce, you’re fine until you get home and can finish filling up. That way, you can eat your salad without wanting to rudely devour the wax fruit on the table, and even enjoy the evening without worrying that you’ll faint from hunger.
June 22, 2007
Are you really vegan (or should you be) if you crave a lot of fake “meat”?
Back when I became vegan more than 20 years ago, Vegetarian Times had articles in it all the time about what it “really” meant to be a vegan, asking questions like, “If you think meat is so terrible, then why do you even want the ‘pretend’ stuff?” There were kind of two camps: the “purists,” who thought it was silly and made one a bit of a traitor to squash soy-based, artificially flavored, ultra-processed gelatinous mush into the shapes of the very “dead animal” foods one purported to disdain, and the folks who just wanted guilt-free burgers as close to the real thing as possible without having to think of the poor dead cow who might otherwise have sacrificed its life for that burger.
I have to admit, this has never been a particular quandary for me. I never liked meat (actually, it made me rather ill) and was very relieved to find out that I didn’t have to have it. So eating an artificially flavored soy-based substitute has never held particular attraction and I’m fine with unadulterated beans and rice, tomato-y cabbage stirfries with chickpeas, that sort of thing, with an occasional nod to fake burgers and whatnot if I’m going to a cookout (never have been able to find a burger recipe that’ll hold together on a grill).
Therefore, I don’t really know the experience of craving meat and thus needing a fake meat substitute to satisfy that craving. However, I suspect that if I did, I’d have a touch of the real thing now and then instead of lots of the fake thing.
First of all, I think it would likely be a healthier option; as I’ve said previously, I think we’re all just a bit different and need different things, so if we crave just a touch of meat, are we doing ourselves any favors by ignoring it? I’m not saying you should go ahead and just give yourself over every night to a 16-oz. porterhouse; that’s not healthy for anyone (as our burgeoning waistlines can attest), but just a touch now and then.
Second of all, I think we might very well be doing the environment a favor by doing the occasional nod to meat vs. eating lots of processed, overly packaged fake meat. It takes a lot of energy and resources to super-process and then package soy into the stuff that looks like meat. It takes a lot of energy to produce the meat itself, too, but I’d still think the resources are fewer for the meat you’d eat a bit of once a week versus the soy stuff you eat a lot of every day in the attempt to squelch cravings.
Certainly, the animal cruelty of the meat industry is enough to make anyone with even a hint of compassion want to turn away from it forever, physical needs notwithstanding. For myself, I’ve had no trouble doing that, since I already had an aversion to meat even before I found out the true conditions therein. Even so, I can still somewhat identify with the struggles vegans who still crave meat face when they try to avoid it, because I have my own guilty tugs when I pluck my kits’ chicken wings out of the freezer to thaw for their dinner. But I do it anyway, because I think it’s best for them. So I’d wonder whether we should all do ourselves the same favor, if we need it, and give our energies to changing the meat industry instead of perhaps wasting them trying to “willpower” ourselves into complete veganism, if it’s unnatural to us.
Are you really vegan (or should you be) if you crave a lot of fake “meat”?
Back when I became vegan more than 20 years ago, Vegetarian Times had articles in it all the time about what it “really” meant to be a vegan, asking questions like, “If you think meat is so terrible, then why do you even want the ‘pretend’ stuff?” There were kind of two camps: the “purists,” who thought it was silly and made one a bit of a traitor to squash soy-based, artificially flavored, ultra-processed gelatinous mush into the shapes of the very “dead animal” foods one purported to disdain, and the folks who just wanted guilt-free burgers as close to the real thing as possible without having to think of the poor dead cow who might otherwise have sacrificed its life for that burger.
I have to admit, this has never been a particular quandary for me. I never liked meat (actually, it made me rather ill) and was very relieved to find out that I didn’t have to have it. So eating an artificially flavored soy-based substitute has never held particular attraction and I’m fine with unadulterated beans and rice, tomato-y cabbage stirfries with chickpeas, that sort of thing, with an occasional nod to fake burgers and whatnot if I’m going to a cookout (never have been able to find a burger recipe that’ll hold together on a grill).
Therefore, I don’t really know the experience of craving meat and thus needing a fake meat substitute to satisfy that craving. However, I suspect that if I did, I’d have a touch of the real thing now and then instead of lots of the fake thing.
First of all, I think it would likely be a healthier option; as I’ve said previously, I think we’re all just a bit different and need different things, so if we crave just a touch of meat, are we doing ourselves any favors by ignoring it? I’m not saying you should go ahead and just give yourself over every night to a 16-oz. porterhouse; that’s not healthy for anyone (as our burgeoning waistlines can attest), but just a touch now and then.
Second of all, I think we might very well be doing the environment a favor by doing the occasional nod to meat vs. eating lots of processed, overly packaged fake meat. It takes a lot of energy and resources to super-process and then package soy into the stuff that looks like meat. It takes a lot of energy to produce the meat itself, too, but I’d still think the resources are fewer for the meat you’d eat a bit of once a week versus the soy stuff you eat a lot of every day in the attempt to squelch cravings.
Certainly, the animal cruelty of the meat industry is enough to make anyone with even a hint of compassion want to turn away from it forever, physical needs notwithstanding. For myself, I’ve had no trouble doing that, since I already had an aversion to meat even before I found out the true conditions therein. Even so, I can still somewhat identify with the struggles vegans who still crave meat face when they try to avoid it, because I have my own guilty tugs when I pluck my kits’ chicken wings out of the freezer to thaw for their dinner. But I do it anyway, because I think it’s best for them. So I’d wonder whether we should all do ourselves the same favor, if we need it, and give our energies to changing the meat industry instead of perhaps wasting them trying to “willpower” ourselves into complete veganism, if it’s unnatural to us.
June 20, 2007
Vegan is as vegan does … and then there are our pets
Okay, here’s a conundrum I bet any pet owning, animal loving vegan or vegetarian goes through. If you’re like me, you live a life as free as possible of animal products, do the vegan diet, keep a watch on animal cruelty and try to avoid products that do animal testing, etc. You just don’t want to support that kind of thing, so you don’t. You’re feeling pretty proud of yourself for your anti-cruelty, anti-meat position. Yep, doing just fine. Until …
“Meow.” Your beloved feline baby wants dinner, so you reach into the closet for some Meow Mix, or get a can of food out of the cupboard.
Stop. Now, think about this for a minute. Just *where* do you think this stuff comes from? Pressed tofu and dried carrots? Nope, folks, it’s MEAT (or more accurately the leftover junk thereof euphemistically called “byproducts” on the label), that nasty stuff you thought you’d so carefully (and maybe with just a touch of superiority) excised from your life. Well, think again.
Plain and simple, even if you’re vegan in your own diet, if you’ve got a pet, you’re not entirely so (unless you want to cram Fido or Fluff into a diet so unnatural to them as a species that you’ll actually have to feed them supplements to try to keep them alive, never mind truly healthy). You have to buy pet food (or make your own). Therefore, you are a meat consumer, whether you like it or not.
Now, I’d do anything for my babies. I am, after all, an animal loving vegan. My babies are animals … and so are the poor chickens and cows, et al, *they* eat. It is in part because of this continual tug between values that I will always be a lazy vegan. I cannot judge someone else’s desire or need for some meat in their diet while I lecture them on the evils of meat, *and* hold my nose while I boil chicken for my kits’ dinner at the same time. I’m just not that ambidextrous, nor do I want to be.
June 9, 2007
More on what it means to be a “lazy” vegan
When it comes to being a “lazy” vegan, I’m not just talking about cooking. Certainly, I love being a “lazy” vegan in part because I can have a positive impact on a lot of things without even trying. I love the positive impact it has on the environment (without my even trying), love that it’s a cheap, nutritious, and simple way to eat so that it doesn’t strain my budget (again, without my even trying), but it’s not just that. I’m also talking about being “lazy,” or more appropriately, laid back, really, about my vegan lifestyle. In other words, I don’t necessarily think everyone should be a vegan.
<Gasp.> “What’s that?” you say. Yep, I don’t. See, just like I think I need to be a vegan to be my healthiest, I think some people need just a little meat. I do think we eat too much of it (in America, at least), and we could do ourselves, the environment, and the animals themselves a big favor if we ate less of it. We also need to change our commercial meat production practices in a major way, to make them much more humane to the animals and to the environment (it couldn’t hurt the nutritional content of the meat, either, if the animals aren’t stressed out and shot up with antibiotics, among other things). But dispense with it entirely? Nope.
The other thing is, I’m not completely vegan in my lifestyle, and I’m willing to bet that most vegans aren’t. If you’re vegan, you’re probably scrupulous about your own diet. Maybe you also shun leather, honey, etc. But if you’re an animal lover and have a cat especially, you probably use at least some meat in Fluffy’s diet, be it through commercial food or by cooking your own, which means you’re an “indirect” consumer of the meat industry. I give a little of both kinds of food to my girls. The only way to make cats non-carnivores is by artificial means, and I just don’t think that’s healthy. (Dogs are omnivores and can be healthy with a carefully constructed vegetarian diet, although it’s not natural to them to do so.)
So if you’re a vegan and want to lecture your meat-eating neighbor on the evils of meat, take a deep breath and think about it for a minute before you do. If your beloved kitty can chow down on the Fancy Feast you provided (or on homemade food lovingly prepared by you), then in my opinion your neighbor has a right to his own meat-based “chow,” too.
