Vegan Georgia on the Road: Mississippi Trip Pt. 2

Well, I didn't quite reach my goal of finishing up talking about my now-ancient vacation back in April/May.  Life kind of just got really crazy in the last two weeks.  Not just a little, but A LOT.  Something that has been brewing for a while finally became real, and there has been a lot for John and I to discuss.  It has to do with my job, and I can't say a lot about it here (not that I really want to; my blog is about my life outside work, and that is the way I like it), but suffice it to say, I'm going to be going through a large change within the next few months.  I will be leaving my current job at the end of July due to a reorganization (my choice, although it might not have been if I waited for a few months), and it's very likely that we will be relocating as well.  More on that as it develops.

But instead of focusing on the future, I'm going to share what I did in the past.  Specifically, my visit to my grandmother on Easter this year.  My grandmother has always loved to cook big dinners for family visits on holidays, but she has had some health issues recently and many of us have gotten dietary restrictions, it's become a lot harder to feed us all.  Since my mom and I were going vegan, we decided to bring our own food for the Easter get-together.  We brought a green salad with goddess dressing, Hoppin' John salad, and a lemon pie.  I was having a crazy craving for lemon pie, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make a satisfactory vegan version, since the one I used to make was definitely egg- and dairy-laden, but it was a case of Fatfree Vegan to the rescue.  I adapted this recipe, making it a little bit less fat free by using Earth Balance in my graham cracker crust and lite coconut milk to create a sweet drizzle.  The taste was just what I was looking for!  It made a perfect light spring/summer dessert.

Beyond the great meal that we had, we also got the chance to visit with my grandmother, aunt, uncle and my cousin's daughter for the entire afternoon.  The dishes that we brought also opened up a really interesting conversation about food, and it turns out the rest of the family is pretty interested in eating more healthfully as well.  We talked a lot about saturated fat, and about how my grandparents' longevity (my grandfather died at 95 and my grandmother will be 90 in December) and my grandmother's relatively good health into old age is probably attributable to diet.  My grandmother in particular was a vegetarian for all intents and purposes for a number of years due to stomach problems, and she, unlike many others of her age, has not had to deal with extreme heart disease and other diet-related issues that plague most of the population.

I'll leave you with this picture of three generations.  Yes, that is my hot mom on the left, looking like my slightly older sister, and that is my awesome grandma in the middle!  More to come soon, as I still haven't even gotten to the New Orleans part yet.

Easy Lunch Ideas for Working Vegans

This is the second part of my meal plans based on the awesome development of my mom and stepdad adopting a primarily plant-based diet.  See my breakfast post here: Vegan Breakfasts

I love lunch.  I am one of those people that needs to have a real lunch every day.  That doesn't mean I want to down a calorie-bomb sandwich necessarily, and it doesn't exclude things like soup or salad.  But when I see someone eating a bag of Fritos or sadly trying to make eating a yogurt last thirty minutes, I just feel depressed.  That being said, I am always running late in the morning, and like many working people, I only have half an hour to prepare and eat my lunch, and that is on a slow day.  I am fortunate to work in a place where I have a microwave, toaster, and refrigerator at my disposal, and I definitely take advantage of that.  For those people who aren't as fortunate, I expect lunch can be a much more difficult meal to deal with.  My mom, who I'm providing ideas for, is in basically the same situation as me, except she gets a full lunch hour.  She is busy, so speed of preparation is of the essence, and also like me, she wants a meal she can look forward to all morning that will keep her going through the afternoon when five o'clock seems way too far away.  Up front I will say, these ideas aren't going to blow the doors off of how you think about lunch.  I am going to talk a lot about salad, soup, and sandwiches.  But since I went through it for my mom, I wanted to share it on the blog as well, in the hope that it might be interesting for other folks as well. 

Tofu "Egg" Salad Sandwich

1.  Salads

• Start with a whole lot of greens and then go crazy with vegetables.  Add whatever you like best, or whatever seasonal items looked great at the grocery store.  My favorite salad ingredients include carrots, onions, radishes, snowpeas, bell peppers, avocado and tomatoes.  (Other people would probably add cucumbers and celery to that list as well, but I hate them and I refuse to support cucumbers unless they have done the right thing and become pickles.)  Add nuts or seeds for crunchy texture and healthy whole-food fat.  Add beans (chickpeas are great!) or baked tofu/crumbled tempeh/soy chick'n for a protein boost.  When it comes to dressing, homemade beats storebought every time.  Maple syrup and mustard with pepper and garlic powder is a simple, quick and tasty honey mustard sub with no oil.  Flavored vinegars make a good dressing on their own, and silken tofu is a good base to make creamy dressings.

2.  Soups

• Non-dairy milks and pureed vegetables make great bases for creamy soups.  Real milk and cream are easy to replace, so you aren't missing anything.
• Vegetable broth-based soups with veggies and noodles
• Bean or lentil soups

3.  Sandwiches:  I am a sandwich girl through and through.  I usually start my lunch plan with a sandwich and build around it.  These are very minimalist suggestions, easily elevated or simplified by choice of bread, condiments, etc.

• Tempeh BLT = awesome. 
• Hummus and veggie sandwich
• Baked tofu sandwich with veggies
• Vegan "tuna" salad (recipe here: click for deliciousness )
• Vegan "egg" salad
• Grilled cheeze or simple quesadillas
• Veggie "lunchmeat" (if you're into that sort of thing, and sometimes I am)
• PB&J or a variation

4.  Dinner Leftovers:  I don't usually have leftovers, because I live with a guy who doesn't really eat all day, so usually what I cook for dinner gets eaten.  But I will sometimes cook a simple second dinner just to create leftovers for lunch, if I have the time and stovetop space.

• Pasta with sauce (could run the gamut from marinara to mac & cheeze)
• Rice and beans
• Chili
• Stew
• Stir fry vegetables with rice
• Burritos
• Baked potatoes (cook a few extra the night before and eat with your favorite toppings.  Ideas would include:  broccoli & cheeze sauce, vegan sour cream and veggie bacon, chili, salsa.)

5.  Snack Plates:  This is not something I do much on weekdays; I tend to go for it more as a light lunch on weekends when I have eaten a bigger breakfast, but it could definitely be a work lunch too. 

• Dips:  Black bean salsa dip (simply a can of beans and a jar of salsa mixed up in the food processor); Hummus; Mexican layered dip (refried beans, vegan sour cream, guac and salsa)
• Things to dip:  Crudites, pita, tortilla chips

Vegan "Meat" and Potatoes

When I think about it, I have to say that it is nothing short of a miracle that John and I became vegans and stayed that way for any amount of time.  With me, the biggest issue was dairy products--the more unhealthy, the better was my philosophy.  I loved cheese and ice cream, and even after knowing how much better I felt without them, and after knowing how many problems I had to go through in my detox process, I craved them for a long time.

For John, the problem is a little bit different.  It's not just a certain food that he "misses" or craves.  It's more like the idea of hearty comfort food-style dinners, which for him have always been based around meat and starch.  Even now when I ask John if he has any requests or suggestions for dinner, he asks for something like meat and potatoes.  He's always asking for chicken parmesan and potatoes, or meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  He has been working non-stop with acting jobs lately, so when he asked for something meat and potatoes this time, I turned to Vegan Comfort Food by Alicia Simpson to find a way to fulfill that request.  I used both the meatloaf recipe and the mushroom gravy recipe, adapted out some of the oil in the meatloaf, and made a delicious, fairly healthy, extremely filling comfort food meal.

The "meat"loaf is made out of TVP, and the green beans are canned (which is the only way I like them, since I grew up eating), but there is hardly any added fat in this meal, aside from the gravy, which is roux-based.  Most importantly, John loved it.  It made him feel like he wasn't missing anything at all.  Vegan eating does not have to be about what is not on your plate, and I think that is something that people who haven't tried it don't realize.  I certainly didn't!  I've said it a million times, and I'll say it a million more--I knew nothing about food before I left animal products behind, and becoming vegan is the best decision I ever made!

Vegan Georgia on the Road: Mississippi Trip Part 1

Hi everyone!  It's been a while.  I went on vacation and then ended up somehow missing out on May entirely, it seems.  I am always the kind of person who needs a vacation after the vacation, and this time was no different.  We had such a great time on our visit down south, and we got to spend a ton of time with friends and family, but by the time we got back to Massachusetts, I was pooped!  Also, when we got home, spring was in full swing, and my allergies knocked me out.  I'm not normally such a sickly person, but I guess the freakish weather (from the crazy snow over the winter, to the pollen explosion, to tornadoes last week) is affecting me this year.  The allergies turned into bronchitis and I just didn't feel like thinking or talking about food for quite a while.  But I'm back now, and I think I'm ready to return from hiatus for at least a little while.  I am going to be working with Worcester Shakespeare Company again this year, and that makes my summer a lot busier.  I love it, but the time commitment doesn't leave me time for much else!

One of the best things about the trip to visit my family was helping my mom learn about being vegan.  Before we even went home from the airport, we visited a number of grocery stores to stock up and go over the basics.  It was great!  I was also very pleasantly surprised to note that while the health food store in Jackson, Mississippi, is stocked as well as could be expected, the "regular" grocery store has a great deal of vegan-friendly food (like dairy substitutes) as well.  In fact, it's better than my local non-health food store, because there are vegan cheeses available!  So she could potentially have one-stop shopping, which is an advantage over what I have here in Worcester.  It's also good, since she actually lives about 1.5 hours away from Jackson.  She has been shopping there anyway though, just because the prices and selection is so much better, and she's down there for work fairly often.

The first night, my mom requested that I make a dish I had made when she and I met for a weekend trip to St. Simon's Island, Georgia, when I had just been vegan for a few months. We stayed in a small vacation cottage, and bought groceries and made our own food, which is what I generally like to do for longer trips.  We didn't have pantry items though, so I had to buy everything we were going to need, which calls for simplicity in the recipe choice.  I made bean tacos, and it turns out my mom has been talking about them to my stepdad ever since, so they wanted me to reprise that recipe for them at home.  I changed it up a little, since I could, and it was even better than it had been the first time I made it.

Three Bean Chili Tacos        

Corn tortillas

Chili filling:

One onion, diced

One red bell pepper, diced

One green bell pepper, diced

Two cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes

One can pinto beans

One can black beans

One can red kidney beans

1/2 cup TVP (optional)

Chile powder, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, cumin, & salt to taste

Toppings:

Shredded green cabbage

Diced tomato

Fresh cilantro, chopped

Salsa

                                                                                  Vegan cheese (optional)

Begin by preparing chili filling.  Saute onion & pepper in cooking spray or water over medium heat.

I may teaching my mom something about cooking vegan, but she still has the superior knife skills.  Check out that dice!

In a separate stock pot, add tomatoes and beans with liquid from cans.  Bring to a simmer. Add spices, and onion/pepper mixture.  Simmer for 30 minutes.  Add TVP and cover to rehydrate.  

In the meantime, heat tortillas according to package directions, and prepare toppings. When TVP is fully rehydrated (at least five minutes), build tacos as desired, using a slotted spoon for the chili.

It's been quite a while since I wrote down a recipe, so I apologize if I missed anything.  I'm much more of a suggester than a demander when it comes to recipes anyway, so feel free to adjust and adapt as you wish.

As you can see, I've named this post "Part 1."  There is plenty more to tell about my trip, so stay tuned!  I've set a goal to finish recapping my Mississippi/Louisiana adventure by the end of the week.  I hope you all had a wonderful month of May, and I'm glad to be back with you for June!

Vacation, YAY!

Hi Bloggy buddies,

I just wanted to drop in and say that I probably won't be around for at least a week and a half, which sadly is not that big of a deal since I haven't been blogging much lately.  But this time, I have a good reason, because I am going to Mississippi to visit my family for a little over a week.  I'm going to see my dad, sisters, nieces, nephew(s? May only see one of them, sniffles), and assorted other relatives, go to New Orleans for Jazz Fest and coincidentally see my college BFF who is down there for a teachers' conference, and I will also get to help my mom buy groceries and give her the lowdown with some hands-on vegan cooking tips, which I am totally psyched about, like the big nerd I am.  And I'm not sure if I'll have access to a computer or if I'd want to use it even if I did :)

Have a great rest of April, and I'll see you back here in May.

~Georgia

Worcester VegFest 2011

Today was the second annual Worcester VegFest at Worcester State University.  John and I went fairly early, saw a few friends, ate some food, took a break from the (significant) crowd, and then went back for a little more food and a cooking demo by Terry Hope Romero.  

There were three levels where activities were taking place, and when we arrived around 12:30, the whole place was hopping.  We made our way into the second level and immediately grabbed a couple of small bowls of vegan chili, which was provided by the university, and took a seat to assess the rest of the offerings.  

It was free and was also served with some brown rice, but I didn't have any because I wanted to save room for the many other food options that were available.    While we were eating, my friend Pam ran into us with her family in tow, and let us know there was falafel on the first level, which is of course important information for me to have.  We scarfed the rest of the chili down and decided to brave the extremely crowded first level.

It was a decidedly un-vegan-like cattle call downstairs.  We did manage to get a couple of falafel patties (minus the not-vegan tzatziki sauce), and they were unfortunately kind of cold.  They were made by Falafel Republic, and I had actually bought them in a package before at a local health food store.  I would have to say that to my discerning falafel-loving palate, they were just okay, but considering the crowd, I think we were pretty lucky to even get them at all.  Seriously, I think there were a lot of people who showed up just for the free food, and not as much for the vegetarianness of it all, and it started to wear thin on both John and me pretty quickly.  

We made our way around the "track," as it were, and ended up buying a veggie patty and veggie roti from the One Love Cafe table.  One Love is a vegan-friendly restaurant right here in Worcester that we ate at recently but I have yet to review.  The food was nicely curry-ish with cauliflower, carrots, and green beans, and was thankfully able to be eaten out of hand, since tables were scarce.     

Veggie Roti in waxed paper

Veggie patty

John attempting to enjoy his veggie patty without elbowing someone in the head (on accident.  Or not.)

At the other end of the room from One Love, there was a very busy table for X's and O's Bakery from the Albany, NY area.  I bought a brownie and got John a chocolate chip cookie from them.  I had bought a few things from X's and O's when I had to go to Albany for work before (vegan twinkies, woot!), so I was pretty happy to enjoy more of their sugary deliciousness.

My super-fudgy brownie

After escaping from the first level, we did a quick walkthrough of the third level to see what was there.  Peace o' Pie of Boston was there, but we have had their food before and were also thinking about pacing ourselves, so we decided to leave for an hour and then come back in time to grab some vegan soft serve and catch Terry Hope Romero's demo.

When we got back, we jumped in the looooooooong line in front of the Like No Udder dairy-free ice cream truck.  Understandably, there had pretty much been an all-day run on the business, so the machine needed to take a short break, but we stuck around to wait for it, since we had half an hour until the cooking demo.  It took almost that whole time, but holy wow, it was worth it!

John's chocolate/vanilla twist and my vanilla with a cone

They also usually do shakes, and usually serve the ice cream in the cone, but their poor machine was getting stretched to the limit.  The folks working there were really nice and apologetic about the wait, but they really didn't need to be.  I'm sure that there will be at least one time this summer when I drive to Providence to stalk the Like No Udder truck. Soft serve ice cream is something I have been missing pretty desperately!

We made our way into the building again and buzzed up to the conference area on the third level to get seats for the cooking demo.  Terry Hope Romero talked vegan-ness, cooked Seitan Potato Tacos from Viva Vegan! and answered a ton of questions, and was generally very sweet, funny, and all-around awesome.  

My semi-terrible picture of Terry Hope Romero

After the demo we decided to do one last run-through to make sure we felt like we saw everything we wanted to see and decided to hit the road.  It was about 4 PM, and things had calmed down significantly, and many of the tables had shut down for the day.  It started out rainy and kind of gross today, but by the time we left, it was beautiful and sunny.  

Me in my only message t-shirt with my new short hair*

Overall, it was a really good experience to visit VegFest.  I will say that what we ate was only a small portion of the food that was available at VegFest, so they definitely had the food covered, which I think had been a problem last year.  Our biggest issue was the crowd, which was extremely out of hand when we first arrived.  With the number of people who came, it would have been better to hold the event in an auditorium or even outdoors, but I know that the kind of preparation that would go into selecting a venue and coordinating is a Herculean task, and VegWorcester did an excellent job with their limited resources.   So I will quit making a fuss, because the vendors (both of food and of information -- there were tons of tables with information about various vegan-like causes) were very high-quality, and drawing a massive crowd is a really good thing, because it means more people are being exposed to the vegan lifestyle.  The event definitely reminded me that it's a very good time to be vegan, because it's becoming a lot harder to dismiss it as a passing fad.

I have SO MUCH to blog about, so I'll hopefully get on at least once more this week to share a restaurant review at the very least, but starting with my visit to Mississippi/Louisiana next week, things are shaping up for a very busy summer.  It seems strange to be thinking about summer with temperatures still hanging out in the 40's, but the older I get, the more I realize that time really sneaks up on ya.  Enjoy your week!

*I went and cut 18 inches of hair off my head and didn't even blog about it for two weeks.  

Calling all Northeast Vegans....

Just dropping in to let everyone know about an exciting event that's coming to Worcester next weekend.  On Sunday, April 17, from 12 PM to 5 PM, at Worcester State University, VegWorcester is hosting Worcester VegFest 2011.  It's a free festival celebrating vegan-ness.  Free vegan food, live music, speakers (including a cooking demo and book-signing by Terry Hope Romero -- awesome!!), as well as a change to meet and mingle with like-minded folks from central Mass and elsewhere.

More detailed information and directions are available on the event website:  Worcester VegFest 2011.  There was even a blurb about the festival in this week's email newsletter from VegNews, yay Worcester!  It should be a great time; I'm totally there and I hope that some of you might be as well.  Happy Saturday!