BBQ Chickpeas

Nope...you don't need to fill up the propane tank...there isn't a BBQ involved with this one...not even BBQ sauce!

I got this recipe from PETA, I think. I know it off by heart, easy peasy, so I'm not sure what recipe book it's in...off the top of my head.

ingredients

2 cups pasta sauce

1/8 cup molasses, to taste, perhaps a tad more

1 small onion finely chopped

1 can chick peas (garbanzo beans), drained, rinsed

method

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix all of the ingredients together.

3. Lightly spray oil the sides and bottom of a casserole dish.

4. Put the mixture in the casserole dish and cover.

5. Bake for an hour.

This is great as a side dish served with a baked potato or on a bed of rice. I make this one quite a bit. Very easy. Tasty.

Read the Labels

When my husband and I began our veggie way of living we didn't know much about the foods we were eating. At the time there wasn't much in the way of vegetarian foods available in Brantford. I worked in Hamilton/Ancaster at the time and we soon discovered a store in Hamilton called Goodness Me! This store still exists, one on the mountain, the other downtown Hamilton. I've not been in the one downtown. The one on the mountain is on Upper Gage. They carry a variety of foods including organic fruits and vegetables. The store is not vegan or vegetarian as it does sell dairy and meat products. It does, however, carry vegan and vegetarian food items as well as cruelty free products. One of the first purchases we made at Goodness Me! was a copy of Food Lover's Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst. Google Goodness Me! for other store locations. Another great store to check out is WholeFoods in Oakville - it can be a little pricey but has a great deli and a assortment of vegetarian and vegan foods and products.

Food Lover's Companion - The version I have is an older publication from the one pictured here on my blog. I noticed that Chapters in the Meadowlands in Ancaster carries it. You can also purchase it online.

The books purports to be contain comprehensive definitions of over 3000 food, wine and culinary terms. It delivers.

When you read a food label some animal products are easy to identify. Others....not so much. I had a conversion today with a guy I know who thought that all margarine was dairy free. Not so! Most margarines contain whey. That's where this handy dandy book comes in. Whey comes from milk. Fleishman's and Earth Balance (see natural food section) are dairy free.

Book excerpt:

whey (HWAY; WAY) The watery liquid that separates from the solids (curds) in cheesemaking.

If you want to be vegan, knowing what's in your food is half the battle. Once you get a hang of it you start to know what foods might contain animal products. This helps when out at restaurants or when you're a dinner guest in someone's home.

Read labels often. Even if it's a product you've purchased before. Companies sometimes change their ingredients.

As a vegan, I also don't eat honey. That's for the bees. They make it 'cause they need it. Look for honey in breads, crackers, cereals...

Strangely enough, dill pickle chips often contain animal products (modified milk ingredients) and roast chicken flavoured chips do not. Go figure.

Ingredients/foods to remember:

albumen = egg white

albumin = protein from egg white

lactose = milk sugar

gelatin = protein derived from beef/veal bones, cartilage, tendons and other tissue

lard = pig fat

If you don't have this reference guide...always check out ingredients by using Google or you can look them up on the dictionary site of www.m-w.com. Educate yourself. You'd be amazed at some of the stuff we put in our mouths without even looking at a label!

Yes, many of us like jelly deserts like Jello. Jello contains gelatin (see above). Every now and again I come across a vegan version of this giggly food. It's better than eating the results of boiled animal bones.

Many vegan products in the natural foods section of the store contain organic ingredients and none of these things with long names that you couldn't possibly pronounce or even begin to know what they are!

You don't have to shop in just the natural food section, though. Have a look about the whole store. I find, sometimes, that the less expensive a product is, the less likely it is to contain animals products - see cookies for instance!

Speaking of cookies -when I bake I use an egg replacer. It's a powder that contains things like guar gum and corn starch. The brand I use is Paneriso's Kingsmill Egg Replacer. Baked goods often contain eggs as an ingredient to hold everything together. This powder does the trick. I can use this powder in any baked good recipe...cookies, banana bread, cake...With Paneriso's you just mix 1 tsp of the replacer with 2 tbsp of water...that's it...that's your 'egg'. Another egg replacer is soy lecithin but I find that it can change the flavour of your final product and it's kinda gooey to deal with.

I'm not a vegetarian for health reasons. That's why I'm not super skinny. That's also why these recipes are what they are - comfort foods! I do it for the animals. I come second. I tell ya though, when I became a vegan, man oh man, did I feel better! I recommend it to anyone!

Vegan Stuffed Jumbo Shells

This is a family favourite. It's pretty easy to make too!

ingredients

20-25 cooked jumbo shells (drain, rinse in cold water)
oil
1 small onion finely chopped
1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms
1 pkg (1.5 cups) finely chopped veggie chicken strips
1 pkg tofu, sliced into small cubes (optional)
1/2 cup tofu sour cream (homemade or Tofutti's Sour Supreme)
Italiano Seasoning
2 cups broccoli florets, chopped small
pasta sauce

method

1. Heat the oil in a pan. Fry together the onion and broccoli until softened. Add mushrooms and veggie chicken, tofu (if desired). Heat through.

2. Add Italiano seasoning to taste. PREHEAT the oven to 350 degrees.

3. Remove this mixture from the pan and place into a large bowl. Add the tofu sour cream and mix well.

4. Put a thin layer of pasta sauce on the bottom of your baking dish.

5. Start stuffing the mixture into the shells with a spoon.

6. Place the stuffed shells into the baking dish.

7. Pour more pasta sauce over the shells. It doesn't need to be a lot, you just need to cover the exposed pasta, otherwise it will get dry and hard in the oven.

8. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Sometimes I find that my shells bust apart while cooking. I end up with too much of the stuffing mixture. The other day this happened to me. I cooked up some spiral pasta. Once it was drained and rinsed, I added the leftover stuffing and some pasta sauce. I put it in the fridge. The next day, for lunch, we reheated this new casserole and it was tasty yum!

Serve this meal up with a lovely warmed bread and a large garden salad!

Vegan Shepherd's Pie

I got this recipe from:

http://yvesveggie.ca/index.php/recipes#shepherds_pie

ingredients

1.5 lbs of potatoes, peeled and chopped

2 tbsp margarine

2 tsp canola oil

1 pkg Yves Veggie Ground Round

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp flour

1 cup vegetable stock

1 cup combined frozen peas/carrots/corn

method

1. Cook potatoes in boiling water until tender, drain and mash with margarine

2. Over medium heat fry in oil: Ground Round, garlic for about 5 minutes. Add flour, stir and cook for about another minute.

3. Add vegetable stock and bring to a boil.

4. Add mixed vegetables.

5. Spread mixture in a suitable vessel (like an 8"x8" casserole).

6. Spread the mashed potatoes on top.

7. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until bubbly around the edges.

I sometimes add diced onions and sliced mushrooms.

Note that once it cooks the potatoes seem to explode (get really puffy) and the veggie meat/vegetable mixture seems to shrink.

Vegan Living

A book by Beverly Lynn Bennett and Ray Sammartano called The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Living is a great reference. It contains all of the information I've learned over the years since I became a vegan. I purchased the book to have as a quick reference guide for when I get inundated with questions about my diet choice.

The format makes it really easy to read. It's not longwinded. The book is set up in the typical Idiot's Guide format.

The book is set up in 7 parts. Each part contains chapters. Here are the part titles:

1 - Compassion for All

2 - Clearing Up the Misconceptions

3 - A Vegan Survival Guide

4 - Veggin' It: Tips for Maintaining a Vegan Lifestyle

5 - Substitution Is the Mother of Invention

6 - Vegan Food for the Soul

7 - Vegan Lifestyle Choices

This book contains recipes. Nutrition info. Animal info.

From the book:

Is Vegan Living for You?

If you're wondering if living a vegan lifestyle might be for you, ask yourself the following questions:

- do you love animals?

- do you oppose the use of animals in entertainment?

- do you feel sad seeing animals in pet store windows?

- do you sometimes find eating meat or dairy unappetizing?

- do you find yourself gravitating toward the veggie side dishes on your place first?

- does your leather coat ever suddenly seem unappealing?

- do you have any health concerns that may be diet-related?

- do you suffer from any food allergies or sensitivites?

- does the knowledge that your lotion or mascara was tested on an animal make you think twice about using it?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you could be a potential vegan in the making, and this book is certainly for you.

One of the questions that I get asked all the time is "Where do you get your protein?" In general, North Americans eat far too much protein. Diets high in protein affect calcium absorption which can lead to osteoporosis.

The thing is...even if you aren't vegan 24/7 you can make a difference. Try being vegetarian for a day. Then a couple of days...then maybe try vegan. The lives you can save by being vegan for one day a week is incredible. Imagine what you can do for the animals and the earth if you really put your mind to it!

Check this book out. I first read it by borrowing it from the Brantford Public Library. It was such a good reference that I bought it on-line.

Thanking the Monkey- Rethinking The Way We Treat Animals

Karen Dawn put together an amazing book titled Thanking the Monkey, Rethinking The Way We Treat Animals.


The great thing about this book is it's format. Very easy to read. Lots of pictures and cartoons for those of us who like that sort of thing!


For a taste, here are the chapter titles:


one - welcome to the world of animal rights
two - slaves to love
three - all the world's a cage
four - fashion victims
five - desconstructing dinner
six - animals anonymous
seven - the greenies
eight - compassion in action


You can find the author, Karen Dawn, on http://www.facebook.com/. Take a looky loo at http://www.thankingthemonkey.com/. This book can be purchased online or even at Chapters in Ancaster (providing it's not sold out!).


Karen is currently working on another book and I am eager to read it once it's published.

Let's Talk Turkey

With Thanksgiving approaching this weekend I can't help but think about the cruelty to turkeys everywhere. If you're ever driving along the 403 from Brantford to Ancaster you might see the wild turkeys in the fields and forests that line that stretch of highway. They are the big, dark, long-necked beings hanging out in a group. Sadly, the great majority of turkeys do not live this wild existence...thanks to man.

The excerpt below is from http://www.farmsanctuary.com/:

Record numbers of chickens and turkeys are being raised and killed for meat in the U.S. every year. Nearly ten billion chickens and over a quarter billion turkeys are hatched in the U.S. annually. These birds are typically crowded by the thousands into huge, factory-like warehouses where they can barely move. Each chicken is given less than half a square foot of space, while turkeys are each given less than three square feet. Shortly after hatching, both chickens and turkeys have the ends of their beaks cut off, and turkeys also have the ends of their toes clipped off. These mutilations are performed without anesthesia, ostensibly to reduce injuries that result when stressed birds are driven to fighting.

While driving in the country on a lovely Sunday you might find a field occupied by a herd of cows or sheep. When is the last time you saw turkeys? Did you know that the turkeys that humans consume aren't those pretty brown ones depicted on the thanksgiving holiday serviettes? Nope. The ones people eat are white. Do you know why? Humans decided that they didn't want to eat freckled flesh so they genetically altered the turkeys. Turkeys also need to be artificially inseminated in order for farmers to have them reproduce because they've been altered to grow quickly...the males simply are so heavy that if they were to mount the females they could crush them or break their legs because of their weight.

Turkeys are amazing animals. I've had the privilege of visiting animal sanctuaries and have spent time loving the turkeys. They really like attention and like to be petted. The males tend to show off their plumage. Also, the colours on their heads is fantastic when they strut around!

Don't be fooled by the term free range either. The laws are so lax that it's easy to label foods as free range. Groups like Farm Sanctuary are reviewing laws such as these in the United States. They are working towards changing the laws....whatever it takes until people stop eating animals. Eating animals is unhealthy, not just for us, but for the environment. Farm Sanctuary has recently recruited assistance in Canada to review our laws in order to work towards a better life for our food animals.


I would never condone the eating of animals. I know that the recipes which I have posted so far are vegan versions of what some might call traditional North American meals, but that's because these recipes can be used as a stepping stone, a way to move away from eating animals.


I am vegan for the protection of the animals. By choosing this diet I am helping the animals, myself and the environment.

I was raised as a meat eater. I am 43 years old. I became vegan at about 26 years of age. Yes, I am healthy. I have no protein worries. My iron level is fine.

A couple of good, easy reads:


The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Living by Beverly Lynn Bennett and Ray Sammartano


Thanking the Monkey by Karen Dawn


This thanksgiving, my family (including non vegetarian family members who will be joining us) will partake in a home cooked vegan dinner. We will have Tofurky, peas, mashed potatoes, stuffing, mushroom gravy, maybe a squash and vegan pumpkin pie for dessert.

TOFURKY

The wonderful folks at Turtle Island Foods in Oregon, USA produce a seitan (vital wheat gluten) turkey roast. The Tofurky is like a turkey roll filled with a wild rice stuffing. You can purchase the roast on it's own or it is also sold in a box as a 'feast' with dumplings, gravy and wish stix. You will find Tofurky not only at natural food stores in the frozen section, but also, in Brantford, at Zehrs and Metro (formerly A&P). Check out the natural foods sections of these grocery stores. Instructions on how to cook the Tofurky are on the package. Don't fret if you can't get the 'feast' because there is a recipe for mushroon gravy on the side of the 'roast' box. We just buy the 'roast' as we find the dumplings to be a bit heavy. We make our own gravy or I have seen Tofurky Mushroom Gravy at Goodness Me in Hamilton. The cooking instructions shown on the box are for an oven cooked roast. Even though the box says not to cook the Tofurky in the microwave, it is doable. When we camp on Thanksgiving weekend we take a 'roast' with us. We don't have an oven in our tent trailer, but we do have a microwave. Using instructions obtained from http://www.tofurky.com/ we learned that it's easy to cook the 'roast' in the microwave when an oven isn't available. We simply slice the thawed roast and arrange it on a microwave safe plate. We pour gravy over the top. Cover with a microwave safe lid and cook on high for about 2 minutes. Voila!


As far as the pumpkin pie goes....I make it just like anyone would, but instead of using a dairy product, I use Silk's soy creamer available at Zehrs and Metro (A&P). My husband likes to use it in his tea sometimes. I also use it in my veggie chicken pot pie - recipe already on this site. By the way, my pie crust doesn't have lard...I use all vegetable shortening.

Turtle Island Foods makes other seitan delights...look for them at your grocer too!