And you, bitch, aren't getting enough leafy greens

I really can't figure out why people have trouble with me being vegan, but here we go again... from the "Are you sure you're getting enough {insert nutrient here}?" files:

I was at work the other day and I broke a nail on something. I went into the back to clip the jagged edge off so that, sensibly enough, I wouldn't catch it again on something and cause more damage. I should also note that (a) it was a cool day, (b) my hands were cold from the morning's ride in (4 degrees is chilly to ride in and I didn't have my winter gear on) and (c) it was ONE.BROKEN.NAIL.

So anyway, I pop into the back to get into my backpack to get my multi-tool thingee to clip the nail. I make the mistake of commenting to the women sitting around the desk in the back room, "Hmm, my nail seems brittle."

It, umm, broke, after all.

Immediately there's a Greek freaking chorus.

Ooo woooooo ooohhh!
WARNING VEGAN!
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
YOU'RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH....
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
VITAMIN B! COLLAGEN! PROTEIN! VITAMIN C!
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
WAIT, ISN'T THAT THE ONE FOR SCURVY?
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
ARE YOU SURE?
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
PRETTY SURE.
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
OH. SORRY.
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
STILL...THIS VEGAN LIFESTYLE!
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
IT CAN'T BE HEALTHY! YOU BROKE A NAIL!
Ooo woooooo ooohh!
(gnashing, wailing, grinding of teeth and beating of breast)

It's always the sweaty fast-food-burger-munching carnivores who express such dismay at my diet. Of course, when your vegetable intake for the day consists of Doritos ("Hey! That's corn, right there! Corn!"), I can understand how you would be concerned that I may be missing out on an essential nutrient. Thanks for your concern, but my nail will be fine. How's your cholesterol, btw?

Vegan Cookies

Dreena Burton is amazing.

We've got one of her books and another on the way and so far she's been a big fat 10 out of 10 on every scale. Every savory item from the books and blog has been delicious. Yes, we've modified the recipes, but we're both good cooks and that's what cooks do.

That being said, before tonight I kind of smugly held the belief that while vegan savory cooking is all fine and dandy, it's essentially impossible to make good vegan sweet kitchen items.

You see, I'm a red-seal chef trained by a German Master pastry chef. When I learned to make cakes and cookies and sweetbreads and desserts, there was never ever any mention at all of dairy-free alternatives. The very idea would have been laughed out of the bakery. We used to make 30lbs of puff pastry at a go. Each day we'd go through 40 or 50 dozen eggs -- at least.

When I look over sweets in most vegan books I think the following (in no particular order):

• I have neither flax meal, arrowroot powder, agar essence nor ground tetrapanax papyriferus;
• I don't want to use En-er-g fake egg things;
• Why would you even bother to eat a cookie that doesn't have chocolate?;

and,

• Oh boy: another bland cornstarch pudding.

Thus I was skeptical, I confess, but I was craving cookies and so I found something that looked like a real recipe in her book Eat, Drink and Be Vegan.

Turns out that her Chocolate Chunk Spice Cookies are good. She calls for barley flour but I don't have such high-falutin' things so I used wholemeal oat flour. Moisture comes from a mix of maple syrup and oil, yielding a nicely moist cookie with a nicely short crumb. Heavily spiced with 1 1/4tsp of cinnamon for 1c flour (and more of other spices), which both of us liked but more timid palates might find overbearing.

The instructions to cook the cookies were a little OCD -- exactly 11 minutes in the oven (no longer!); cool on parchment exactly 1 minute (no longer!), transfer to cooling rack for 12 minutes exactly (no longer!)... but with more than a hint of Hob-Nobs mixed with Hagen-Daz Mexican Chocolate ice cream, I'm willing to embrace the paranoia.

I hate beets

I have always hated the fresh-from-the-grave taste of beets, and virtually the only flaw possessed by my darling wife is a fanatical devotion to the self-same vegetable.

You can see where this is leading.

Ever since we've been together my wife has insisted that beets are, in fact, food. Despite my best efforts, she has continued to eat them -- sometimes two or three times a week. Aside from the farty-weasel taste of kohlrabi, beets are the only vegetable I refuse to eat.

A couple weeks back we made our weekly trek to the farmer's market to stock up on local provisions for the week. King Arthur (or King Edward... I can't ever remember, and don't really care) corn was available and so we bought a half-doz. On the way back to the bus we stopped at London Drugs to pick up something and the cashier noticed the the ears sticking out of one of our fuck-you-we're-environmental reusable shopping bags. She commented, we chatted, and I mentioned that I really like throwing ears on the BBQ.

"Oh," she said. "Have you ever had barbecued beets?"

Umm, no, of course I hadn't, but I swear my wife's little ears perked up at the combination of her two favorite words: beets and barbecue.

{She comments that, in fact, barbecue isn't one of her favorite words. As above, don't care.}

"Oooh, let's try that," says she."Oooh, let's not," says he.

So being the dominant one in the relationship, we promptly go home. And I heat up the grill for her barbecued beets.

Which -- goddammit -- turn out to be incredible.


Like, candy from the garden incredible.

So I made 'em again. And again.

Easy peasy, too, and you're really going to like them with yellow chiogga beets.

I cut them in half, toss them in a drop of olive oil, and throw them cut side down on the grill. When they're sufficiently marked, flip 'em onto their skin sides and finish 'em off on low/medium. Once you can pierce them with a fork they're done, and then all you do is sprinkle a little sea salt avec fines herbes after dousing them in more olive or or softened Earth Balance.

You infidels may use butter instead of EB. If you're extremely odd, or was born into an incestuous farm family, you may eat the skins. I am not, was not, and so don't.

I still hate kohlrabi, though.

Why Are You Vegan?

Is a question I get a lot of these days. My buddy Sean sent me an email to ask me this question, and while I was writing a response I realized that it would be a good post.

So here it is.

You ask me, Sean, why I'm a vegan. Well, you know that I'm an argumentative bastard, so let's turn it around a bit.

We both know that some meat is dangerous to eat. We know that meat harbours diseases. We know that it's cruel to factory farm animals.

We know that eating a vegetable-based diet is healthier, cheaper and promotes weight loss. It may also prevent heart disease, stroke, some cancers and diabetes.

The obvious question, then, is this: Why aren't you vegan?

Okay, that was a bit snotty and a bit disingenuous, too, because really I don't care very much about all that stuff.

I suspect that every food source is potentially fatal to you: look at all the cases of e coli poisoning in spinach and vegetables every year. Soda can kill you -- and not just because it'll rot your teeth and harden your arteries. So I'm not a vegan because meat is inherently more dangerous for you.

A poorly organized diet, whether vegan or not, can be just as unhealthy as a meat-based one. We all know fat vegetarians (mac and cheese is vegetarian, after all), and besides, booze is vegan, unless you're one of those weirdos who count microbes as sentient (and, umm, I don't). So I'm not vegan because a vegan diet is inherently healthier.

Cheaper? Have you seen the price of raw almonds lately? We spent nearly $60 on raw cashews and almonds for a month's worth of nut milks. Organic stuff is pricey, too. Eating well costs a great deal, whether you opt for ooh-la-la steak or fresh organic berries. So I'm not a vegan because it's cheaper.

I like animals, sure, but I'm not an activist by any means and I think some farms -- like the good kinds Michael Pollan writes about in The Omnivore's Dilemma -- are well-managed places where animals are treated humanely and slaughtered mercifully. And, honestly, I still wear leather. And I am owned by two willful cats -- something a true animal activist would find abhorrent. So I'm not a vegan for the animal rights part of it.

So why am I a vegan?

Because I can afford to be, and still eat well, and others in the world can't even afford to eat.

I have worked in orphanages and shanty-town schools in Uganda where the children are fed barely-palatable gruel each day -- and for some it is the only thing they will eat.

I have lived with people in China who stretch 200gr of meat to feed a family of 6 or 8 -- twice. And that's only when they can afford to get the meat.

World hunger is a big problem, and it's going to get worse. An acre of land dedicated to raising cattle produces about 165lbs of usable meat. It consumes 20,000 litres of water to do this. That same acre can produce about 20,000lbs of potatoes -- or 32,000lbs of grain -- while using less than half the amount water.

I am a member of the most affluent society. If I am part of a movement that reduces the demand for high-cost (in terms of land use) foodstuffs, then maybe more lower-cost foodstuffs will be available to help feed those who desperately need it.

And that, Sean, is the reason that I'm a vegan.

Hating Non-Cream Cream

There is no great vegan alternative to cream in coffee. None.

Okay, okay, yon vegan hordes: before you start sending your poorly written hemp-scented cruelty-free death threats to my in-box, allow me a few 'graphs to speak my mind.

Plain and simple: I love coffee. I like espresso, sure, but I would give it up in a heartbeat if I had to choose between it and coffee. I used to drink it black, or black with sugar, but I really just prefer it with a hit of coffee cream. I know, I know... I'm not a purist, and the cool kids with the designer eyeglasses sneer down their perfect noses at me. Screw 'em.

Anyway, the transition from omnivore to vegetarian wasn't really that hard for me. I never really disliked meat, but I have a long-standing love of tofu, vegetables and grains. I also really like cheese, eggs and dairy. Therein lies the problem, of course, because the vegan police kind of frown on you actually eating animal products when you join The Movement, despite the fact that you really only need a little tiny drop of cream in your coffee.... even just in the morning, and then the rest of the day you'll drink herbal tea? ... please? ...no?

Dammit.

So I've tried the alternatives.

* Soy Cream stuff: too many ingredients, tastes like thick soy milk, which in turn makes coffee taste like hot farty bean juice.


* Soy Milk: see above, with the added result that you need more to lighten your coffee, hence the coffee gets colder AND tastes like farty bean juice.

and, last (and least)

* Rice Milk: seriously: how is this at all "milk"? Thin and cruel like an anorexic sociopath in a pastry shop, you might as well add thinned-out white glue to coffee.

So I decided that I would try the world of nut milks. My mother-in-law bought me a vegan cookbook for my most recent birthday (and thanks, BTW, to those of you who forgot to send even a measly birthday email; I hope you get zits inside your noses) and so I decided to test a few recipes.

Basically a nut milk is made by soaking your choice of raw nut (in our case, cashew and almond) in water overnight. You then drain the water and put the swollen grub-like nuts into Mr. Blender with some water and whiz away. If you have a nice blender, you'll get a smooth white liquid that you can drink as is. If you have a cheap-o blender that you bought to replace the one you burned out fifteen years ago during that Pina Colada phase, you'll get a sediment-y liquid that you have to strain through cheesecloth.

Either way, you'll get a fairly neutral cream-like liquid that works swimmingly for morning oatmeal and sauces, but fails spectacularly in coffee.

The reason, I think, is because any texture at all in coffee is simply not acceptable, especially at the beginning of the cup.

If you've spent a while dunking a (cruelty-free, egg-less, dairy-free... oh god, let's just take it for granted, shall we? Else we'll be here all night...) biscotti into a glass of Vin Santo, you expect to find a few soggy crumbs in your glass (and thus your mouth) afterward.

If, however, you take your first sip of a cup of coffee and get a mouth-feel that's anything less than clear, your brain immediately thinks "Uh-oh, grounds in the cup," or "Uh-oh, someone's been dunking a (c-f, e-l, d-f) cookie in this cup," or "Uh-oh, this cup wasn't washed very well," or "Uh-oh, my wife is trying to poison me," or what have you.

Anyway, this is the big problem for me, and this will be a continuing source of sorrow. I'm willing to try anything, I guess, but I don't know where to go from here. I thought of buying commercial almond milk and then trying to reduce it down to a better consistency but I'm leery of the preservatives in the industrial stuff and I'm cheap. I won't use powdered creamer stuff -- might as well put talcum powder in your coffee as far as I'm concerned -- and any of the liquid non-dairy creamers are just flavoured petroleum by-products.

So I dunno.

What I do know, though, is that 18% coffee cream is really good in coffee. And I miss it.