[Warning: Due to a run-in with a kitchen knife while making dinner (I'm fine, folks, the only thing badly hurt is my pride) and lack of sleep after my first day of summer quarter, my o.c.d. internal spell-checker has been given the week off. Enjoy.]
Lately I've been looking for some inspiration for vegan recipes. I'm not vegan, or even vegetarian. I like meat. I like chicken, beef, fish, pork, lamb, goat—yes, goat, and it's delicious!—turkey, quail, duck, and many other animals that humans have domesticated in order to slaughter and serve with a sprig of parsley. BUT! I do occasionally like to focus on vegetables, sometimes because I don't feel like eating meat, but mostly because veggies just taste good (but lately I think it's because I've been forgetting to take my vitamins.) So, sometimes I will eat a vegetarian or even vegan meal, and I often enjoy it. However, there have been some issues that I think I'd like to address myself:
1. Peanuts on my noodles or salad is not cute. Don't get me wrong, I love peanut butter. I even occasionally like to demolish a whole bag of salted roasted peanuts with friends. But I have never in my life enjoyed peanuts as a garnish, which is part of why I don't like most Thai food found in the U.S.
2. Tahini and Peanut Butter are not the only "binding" ingredients available. Why do most vegan recipes call for tahini or peanut butter to either flavor or bind the other ingredients? Why not ground flax seed or other egg alternatives? Because again, I like peanut butter, but not that much!
3. Presentation isn't just for carnivores. I've seen some beautifully presented dishes in my life, some of them without meat. But come on! I was perusing a website earlier and saw some "food porn" that actually made my stomach turn! But not because of the ingredients, but the pictures! The brown rice looked like it had been cemented together with some kind of fake mayonnaise, then covered with some sort of brownish legume and pressed into an unappetizing brick. Ick! And Field roast? Don't even get me started.
4. Ever heard of "variety is the spice of life"? There are more substances and flavors out there than tamari, tempeh, ginger, samosas, smoothies, hummus, carob, tahini, peanut butter, and Indian food (though I LOVE Saag Paneer and many other Indian dishes!)
5. If you refuse to eat meat, then why would you eat something that resembles meat? Faux fish? Tofurky at Thanksgiving? Field roast made to look like roast beef? WTF?!? If you're not going to eat the real thing for moral reasons, then why are you trying to trick yourself into believing that you're eating the real thing? (Thoug, on a flavor level, Quorn's chickn nuggets are fantastic.)
6. EAT SOMETHING, DAMMIT! You need more things to eat for lunch than four tiny rolls of fake balogna wrapped around a few slices of fake cheese, a few gherkins, fake cheetos, carrot sticks, and celery with fake cream cheese and raisins. Your body will be screaming FEED ME by 3pm. It's not healthy! And, I don't know about anyone else, but when I see a vegan that looks emaciated because of their [poor] choice of diet, I want to strap them to a chair and force a cheeseburger down their throat, hence my favorite phrase for too-skinny people: EAT A F-ING CHEESEBURGER!
I have started eating and relishing vegan and vegetarian foods this past week, and have many times before. I even hope to someday open my own Vegan, Vegetarian, and Omnivore-friendly yarn café, where I'll serve delicious vegetarian, vegan, and carnivorous meals. But I'm not talking about the stereotypical veg. meals. Yes, tofu is an excellent substance, and I do enjoy eating it raw with green onions, soy sauce and grated ginger (yum!), or stir fried with vegetables and a good Asian sauce, both very simple and very satisfying. But sometimes I can't stand dishes with tofu, especially when it's smoked or over-seasoned. Also, I love potatoes, but I don't want them to be the main feature in my meals, and I can't stand cauliflower, so of course I don't want that to even be present.
I think that what I'm trying to say is, concerning vegan food, I'm bored.
But I plan to change that. Over the next few years, I'm going to do a bit of culinary experimentation, a food alchemy, if you will. Any ideas or hints you wish to share (or even funny/tragic/advisory stories) will be happily accepted and given credit for.
In other words, if your tips or recipe is used to inspire the creation of, say, a new kind of cupcake, it shall be named for you, like if Liz gives a recipe for a rum-soaked key-lime pie, it could be transformed into a lime and rum glazed lime cupcake called Lizzie's Lime Rickey... Oh, that sounds good... I'll get right on it!
