Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Faking It

At a Scottish festival this summer, I was tempted by a can of vegan haggis. It ended up going home with me ... even though I already had at least two recipes for vegan haggis in cookbooks at home. There’s something irresistible to me about the idea of veganizing such a veg-unfriendly dish. (For those not familiar with it, my dictionary describes haggis as – and readers with delicate sensibilities may wish to skip the next line - “a Scottish dish made of the lungs, heart, etc., of a sheep or calf, mixed with suet, seasoning, and oatmeal and boiled in the animal’s stomach.")

Vegetarians seem to have two schools of thought about such “meat” products as vegan haggis. Some dislike them. For some, it’s simply that the flavor or texture isn’t appealing. In that case, there’s no sense arguing with taste.

Others have more philosophical objections to faux meats, and here, controversy can bloom. The reasons have some merit. Why try to imitate meat, some wonder, when the vegetable kingdom offers so much to enjoy? Others are squeamish about them – they feel so strongly opposed to the cruelty inherent in meat production that they don’t even want imitations of it. And, there is the concern that it gives ammunition to militant carnivores, who can argue that vegetarians face such privation that they must turn to pallid imitations to be able to bear their austere diet. “I could never be a vegetarian,” they say. “And why even try? – Even the vegetarians crave meat!”

Still, I’m a fan of these fakes. Tony Weston, the creator of one of those vegan haggis recipes mentioned above, states the case succinctly in his Taigh Na Mara Cookbook. “If something tastes good and it’s not caused harm to anyone or anything in its production then I can find no logical reason to deprive yourself of another flavour in an extensive range of healthy flesh-free alternatives,” he writes.

And I’ve found that faux meats can be a way to introduce friends to the vegetarian lifestyle and show them that it can be as comfortingly familiar as they could wish. One of my favorite dishes of all time is Munro’s “Chickenly” Pot Pie, which uses Smart Menu “Chick’n Srips” from Lightlife in the filling. Recently, an omnivorous friend declared “I want to be a vegan!” after a few bites of this pie.

What side of the faux-meat divide do you find yourself on?

Friday, December 15, 2006

California Fresh Buffet

One of my favorite veggie-friendly restaurants is California Fresh Buffet at 1370 Peters Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem. The restaurant is run by the Center for Purposeful Living, and all of its profits go to charities. About 85 percent of its workers are volunteers. It’s open for dinner only Mondays through Saturdays, and for lunch only on Sundays.

But let’s talk about the food, which is always excellent and, as the name implies, fresh. I always leave feeling stuffed, but a healthy kind of stuffed—full, but not weighed down by grease. Their salad bar is, in my opinion, by far the best in town and includes marinated tofu, which workers will stir-fry for you in your preference of a variety of seasonings. The garlic-and-herb seasoning is fabulous!

There are always many vegetarian options, such as soup, black-bean casserole, pizza, pasta, “Sloppy Pauls” (a vegetarian version of Sloppy Joes) and plenty of vegetables. And, of course, there’s an array of wonderful desserts.

Each night of the week features a different culinary theme, and one section of their hot bar is devoted to foods with that theme. There are always vegetarian theme entrees. (I’m especially fond of the mushroom-and-spinah torte on Mondays and the Greek spinach pie on Thursdays.) The themes are: Italian (Monday); Caribbean/Cajun (Tuesday); Asian (Wednesday); European (Thursday); Mexican (Friday); Oriental (Saturday). Sunday brunch features breakfast items, such as quiche, sweet-potato pancakes and made-to-order omelets.

Vegan buffet items are marked, as are heart-healthy items—CFB is a participant in Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center’s Heart Center Dining Program. And if you go in on your birthday, you’ll get a free meal! (And sung to by the workers—just a note of warning if that sort of thing embarrasses you.)

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Tasty accents

One of the joys of being vegetarian is trying foods that aren’t usually encountered in the Standard American Diet. If you’re a little hesitant, though, condiments are a good place to begin - you can start with a little, on just a bite of food, to see if you like it.

If it doesn’t suit you, it’s not like an entire entree or side-dish that you have to make your way through. And if you do like a new condiment, you can invent all sorts of ways to use it. Here’s a quick introduction to three out-of-the-ordinary condiments that have become staples in my pantry:

Umeboshi – This Japanese pickled plum (the fruit of Prunus mume, a.k.a. the Japanese apricot tree) is tart and salty, and adds a tantalizing “twang” to almost any savory dish. You can find whole umeboshi or umeboshi paste at natural foods stores. A very thin layer of the paste spread on corn on the cob is tastier, neater and less fattening than butter. Ume vinegar – the plum-pickling liquid – has the same tart effect and is handy to use. Whenever a soup tastes a little “flat,” a dash of ume vinegar will pick it right up. Or sprinkle it on sauteed vegetables in place of salt. It is salty, but adds another taste dimension as well.

Nutritional Yeast – This comes as golden powder or flakes, and has a mild flavor that is cheesy and nutty. It’s high in protein and B vitamins; and some types (but not all) are fortified with Vitamin B12, which is important in vegetarian diets.

There are so many uses for this: It can be sprinkled on top of spaghetti in place of Parmesan cheese. You can make garlic toast to go with the spaghetti by spreading margarine on bread, and sprinkling on garlic powder or chopped garlic, and nutritional yeast, and broiling in the oven. You can also make tasty popcorn by spraying the popped corn with soy sauce or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos and tossing with nutritional yeast. Or you can stir some into vegetable broth or gravy for an almost “chickeny” flavor.

Note that nutritional yeast it is not the same as brewers yeast or the active yeast used in baking. You won’t be happy if you use those where you should be using nutritional yeast.

Sea vegetables – Sea vegetables come in many forms, from the sheets of nori that you may have seen wrapped around sushi; to dried fronds of wakame, dulse, hijiki, kombu and so on; to ready-to-eat sea-vegetable salad.... But perhaps the easiest way to get to know them is with the powdered “sea sprinkles” that are now available. They look like little salt-shakers, and because they come from the sea they can add a salty flavor with the bonus that you’re eating less sodium and more minerals. I don’t find them quite as versatile as umeboshi or nutritional yeast but they can add a welcome touch to soups, salads and vegetables.

What are some of your vegetarian favorite flavor-boosters?

Friday, December 08, 2006

Fast-food vegetarian

Eating while traveling can be a bit of a pain for vegetarians. Most of us, at one time or another, have been driving on the interstate for hours when our stomach starts to growl. Then it’s time to look for a quick place to grab a bite to eat—but what is there for vegetarians to eat amid all those Golden Arches and other fast-food restaurants?

My quick-stop eatery of choice is Subway or Quizno’s. It’s generally fairly easy to find a Subway when you’re traveling, even if it’s somewhere unfamiliar. Just get off the highway at a busy exit and look for a strip mall. My favorite thing to get at Subway is a vegetable-patty sub—it’s really good! The drawback is that it’s not offered at all Subways. You can also get a veggie-delight sub or a veggie salad. Quizno’s has a fancier veggie sub, whose ingredients include guacamole.

Q’doba is also another good choice. I love their grilled-vegetable burrito (I usually get it “naked” in a bowl) and grilled-vegetable taco salad. They’re not quite as easy to find as Subways, though.

Wendy’s will also do in a pinch, for a light meal of a baked potato and garden side salad. They used to have a large garden salad that I was very fond of and ate quite a lot, but unfortunately they no longer offer it. This was a huge blow to me! I also remember when they had the pitas years ago—they had an awesome vegetarian one. I hate that they seem to have gotten LESS veg-friendly over the past few years.

Another solution I’ve found is to find a mall and head to their food court. There will generally be someplace there where you can get a veggie sub or slice of veggie pizza.

Fazoli’s is a fast-food Italian restaurant where you can get cheese pizza, a cheese-and-tomato panini or pasta with marinara or alfredo sauce. They’re not very easy to find, however, with a lot fewer locations that McDonald’s or Burger King.

Speaking of Burger King, they offer a veggie burger (as does Backyard Burgers), but I confess that I’ve never tried it. I just don’t “trust” a veggie burger from a fast-food hamburger restaurant—I really don’t want one grilled on the same grill as the hamburger patties. I applaud them for at least making a token effort, and you could always ask them to microwave it instead, but I’d rather go elsewhere. Though I suppose I’d get it if it were the only restaurant for miles and I was REALLY hungry.

What do you do for meals when you’re traveling? And do you trust the veggie fare at fast-food restaurants like Burger King?

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

More from Asheville

After Cassandra’s post about Asheville, a couple of friends and I made a day trip there to visit Rosetta’s Kitchen. And we were glad we did.

The restaurant is tiny and very casual. You place your order at the counter, and afterward you bus your own table. But it’s attractive, with a garden mural and lots of plants and windows. And the food - Well, it will take several repeat visits to do justice to the varied menu, which is all vegetarian, with many vegan choices.

I tried the Mini Favorite, a comfort-food meal of peanut-butter baked tofu, sauteed kale, and mashed potatoes and incredibly tasty gravy. “Mini” is a misnomer, however; I couldn’t finish my plate. All the portions are generous.

The Pad Thai Kitchen Style that one of my companions ordered was delicious, too – the “sweet & spicy peanut-apricot sauce” described on the menu was a perfect complement to wide noodles with vegetables, sprouts and cilantro. The third dish we tried - The Mountain – featured layers of brown rice and sauteed kale topped with crispy fried tempeh and a tahini Korean barbecue sauce.

If you’d like to find out more, visit www.rosettaskitchen.com. There are two entrances to the restaurant, from 16 N. Lexington Ave. and 111 Broadway.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Asheville

Asheville is a lot more than just the Biltmore House. In my opinion, Asheville is the most vegetarian-friendly city in North Carolina. For a town its size (only about 70,000 residents), it has a surprising number of vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. The town itself is cute and eclectic, downtown is great fun to walk around, and the atmosphere is definitely more open to a veg lifestyle than most small Southern towns. It makes a great day trip. Whenever I visit, I always wish that Winston-Salem was that veg-friendly! Local vegetarians have a Web site—ashevilleveg.com—and offer a VegDiscount card that provides savings at area businesses. What a great idea!

My favorite vegetarian restaurant in Asheville—and one of my favorites anywhere—is Laughing Seed Cafe, on Wall Street downtown. I’m especially fond of their Harmony Bowl, a delicious mixture of organic brown rice, pinto beans, tofu and steamed vegetables in a sesame ginger sauce. Other enticing options include wild mushroom enchiladas, curried tempeh napoleon and a Sloppy Joe sandwich. They also offer some decadent mixed drinks—the Black Orchid is to-die-for. And the restaurant is beautiful, too, with a lovely rain-forest mural to set the mood. (Just a heads-up: It’s closed on Tuesdays.)

Have you discovered a favorite place in Asheville? Or anywhere else in the state, for that matter? I always enjoy visiting new towns, and if I can get a great vegetarian meal there, so much the better!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Quick and easy

A carnivorous but open-minded friend, wanting a healthy meal after a lunch he described as “a wad of meat and cheese,” asked me: “What can I make for supper out of a block of tofu?”
After some discussion, we settled on barbecue-baked tofu. What could be simpler? Slather your favorite barbecue sauce on thin slices of tofu, and bake it. He wanted more details, though. So here goes....

You’ll need:

A pound of firm or extra-firm tofu. Use the kind that comes in a water-filled tub in the refrigerator section of most grocery stores – not the silken kind that comes in little shelf-stable bricks.
A cup or so of your favorite barbecue sauce.
A baking sheet.
Foil or parchment paper.
An oven.

It’s nice if the tofu is gently pressed for 15 minutes or more to drain more liquid from it. The easiest way to do it is to use two dinner plates. Set one plate in the sink, set the block of tofu on top, put the second plate on top of that, and top it with some weight. A phone book and some canned goods work well – you want enough weight to press out the liquid, but not enough to crush the tofu. Although this step will improve the texture of the baked tofu, it is not essential.

Meanwhile, cover the baking sheet with foil or parchment paper for easy cleanup.

Once the tofu is drained to your satisfaction, slice it crosswise into slabs about a half-inch thick.

Cover all sides of the tofu with barbecue sauce, and lay the slices on the baking sheet. Bake at 325 degrees for about an hour, until the sauce has baked in. (This part is flexible; you could increase the heat and bake for a shorter time, too. Actually, all the parts are flexible; you could use different sauces on the tofu. Experiment and enjoy!)

Another easy-bake tofu dish I really like is adapted from the recipe for Crisped Creamy Tofu in Carol Adams’ book Living Among Meat Eaters. We’re up to four ingredients now, but it’s still simple. Drain and slice a pound of tofu as described above, and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Mix 1/4 cup light miso with 2 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate. Spread this mixture on top of the tofu slices. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon (or more to taste) sesame seeds, or finely chopped nuts or seeds of your choice. Preheat the oven to 475 and bake tofu for 8 to 10 minutes, until golden brown.

Here are a few more suggestions for making a quick meal out of a block of tofu: Add small cubes to soup (silken tofu is especially tasty this way); cube tofu and use in a stir-fry with your favorite vegetables and sauce; make scrambled tofu and have breakfast for supper.

With the holiday season of overindulgence and limited time upon us, we could all use more ideas for quick, healthy meals. What would you do to make a simple supper out of a block of tofu?

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

How sweet it is

The best part of Thanksgiving, of course, is the gathering of family and friends. Our group is usually small - this year it will be Mom, Dad, my sister Shari, Rusty the springer spaniel, and me – but we are always happy to be able to spend the time together.

The next best part is the sweet-potato pie. That is perhaps the only constant in the ever-changing Harris holiday-meal lineup. My Mom can make a fine sweet potato pie, but these days my Dad usually does the honors, using his mother’s recipe. Usually he’ll make two pies, one with shredded coconut, and one plain.

While recipes for sweet potato pies often use eggs and milk, it is not difficult to make them vegan. A good recipe for vegan sweet potato pie, from the Los Angeles restaurant Real Food Daily, is available online at http://www.vegparadise.com/otherbirds311.html.

You have to scroll down a bit to get to the pie recipe, but pay attention as you go. The other recipes from Real Food on the same page could make an entire vegetarian Thanksgiving feast: Red Bean, Squash and Okra Stew; Skillet Corn Bread With Scallion Butter; and Garlicky Greens.

Type “vegan sweet potato pie” into any search engine to find many more choices.

The sweet-potato pie tradition comes naturally to a North Carolina family. Our state produces more sweet potatoes than any other state in the U.S. And the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission is happy to share ideas on how to use this bounty at its Web site, www.ncsweetpotatoes.com.

Its featured recipe right now is for Curried Roasted Sweet Potatoes, a Weight Watchers recipe that promises to “Revamp your traditional thinking about sweet potatoes during the holidays.” The recipe happens to be vegan, simple and healthy too.

Whatever traditions you enjoy, may your Thanksgiving be joyful and abundant!

Sunday, November 19, 2006

A veggie list

Today marks the “official” beginning of the holiday-shopping season. Here are a few items that might be good for the vegetarians on your gift list—or that you might want to put on your own list for Santa!

A wok: Stir-frying is a low-fat, quick way to cook. Chop up some veggies and stir-fry with some seitan and sauce, and voila! A carbon-steel wok seems to be the most-preferred kind. And make sure it’s a flat-bottom one.

A vegetable steamer: Either an electric one, a bamboo one that can be used with a wok, or a steamer basket that goes inside a large pot. Great for cooking vegetables in a low-fat way. A bamboo steamer is perfect for making steamed, filled dumplings.

A subscription to Vegetarian Times or VegNews.

Cookbooks: I have a confession to make: I’m a cookbook-aholic. I own far more cookbooks than is necessary, but I’m of the mind that you can never have too many cookbooks—unless you run out of shelf space, as I have done! Here are a few suggestions:
*Any of the 11 cookbooks put out by Moosewood Restaurant, a restaurant in Ithaca, N.Y., known for its healthy, natural-food cuisine. I have (and use a lot) Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites, which won a James Beard Award in 1997.
*Another cookbook I use a lot (and which was a gift from my co-blogger, Julie) is Passionate Vegetarian, by the interestingly-named Crescent Dragonwagon.
*The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein. I haven’t bought this one yet, but I have my eye on it. I love Mediterrean cooking, so I really do need a cookbook devoted to it. Plus, the Mediterranean diet is a very healthy one.

The Bountiful Container, by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey. This is one of my favorite gardening books, and even though its focus is on container gardening, it has a lot of really good general information. There are pages devoted to individual vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers, detailing different varieties and how to plant and harvest them. It also includes some intriguing recipes for using up your bounty. (Who knew you could make Begonia Sorbet?)

A fun T-shirt that advertises the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, such as Don’t Have a Cow, Man, Seitan Worshipper or I :Heart: Tofu.

Do you have any good gift ideas for vegetarians, or is there something veggie-related you’re hoping to get?

Friday, November 17, 2006

Thanksgiving

UPDATE:
I just found out that the Triangle Vegetarian Society has a big annual Thanksgiving feast in Durham on the 23rd. What a spread! You can read more about it or make reservations here.

It’s shocking to me that Thanksgiving is less than a week away. For most Americans—and for me for most of my life—the holiday centered around eating a big, juicy turkey. But since I gave up poultry, that’s no longer a part of my Thanksgiving. Instead, I fix a Tofurky or a Veat “chicken” breast, and I’ve found that I don’t really miss the meat—especially with all the yummy side dishes, like my Mom’s sweet-potato casserole (no marshmallows), mashed potatoes, stuffing (being careful to get a kind that doesn’t contain chicken fat or stock), creamed corn, green beans, rolls and dessert. I’m always stuffed afterward and ready to partake of that other Thanksgiving tradition: lying on the sofa and watching TV!

The Web site GentleThanksgiving.org is encouraging Americans to celebrate nature’s bounty in a wholesome, noncarnivorous way. They provide recipes, suggestions for ways you can help spread the message, on online form to order a free veg kit and a list of events (unfortunately, no public dinners in North Carolina).

Here are some other places to find vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes:
VegWeb
International Vegetarian Union
PETA
VegKitchen
Animal Advocacy

What are some of your noncarnivorous Thanksgiving favorites or traditions?