Category Archives: Vegan Food

One of the things most helpful to new vegans is the way that transition foods help to ease our journey. The term transition foods refers to fake meats, such as veggie burgers, breakfast patties, and not dogs. These foods are helpful when entertaining omnivores, and useful as convenience foods during the shift to more healthful eating. For many vegans they are the mainstays of their diet. We don’t recommend this because they are still processed foods, but we definitely consider them superior alternatives to the animal products that they seek to emulate.

Many companies that offer vegetarian versions of these foods could easily veganize them by removing the eggs and dairy. The technology has long existed to do so, and why they haven’t yet chosen to is beyond me. Since veganism has been so prominently in the public eye of late, this may be the perfect time to encourage them to take that step.

Two companies that have a strong supermarket presence immediately come to mind: Morningstar Farms and Quorn. Both offer vegetarian convenience foods, and both are widely available in mainstream supermarkets throughout the US. Morningstar already offers several vegan products but many of its most popular items (such as the breakfast sausage patties) still contain animal ingredients. Quorn has eggs in almost all of their products and therefore loses any vegan market share, and therefore many vegan dollars that might otherwise go their way.

If we let them know that we are out here, and that they lose money every single day that these foods aren’t vegan, then maybe they will come around. They both have easy comment forms on their contact pages that are just waiting for the vegan landslide to push them over the edge.

Here are the links:

Quorn: http://www.quorn.us/Contact/
Morninstar Farms: http://morningstarfarms.com/contact_us.aspx

Go get ‘em!

Just a few years ago I didn’t know any vegans. As a matter of fact, when I became a vegan, I was the first vegan I ever knew.  My closest friend, Maria, became vegan at the same time, so we were each the first vegan that the other had ever met. I’ve met hundreds of vegans since then, but I continue to be aware that the word vegan is a relatively new introduction to the modern lexicon. So much so, that many people still don’t really know what it means, and others have no knowledge that we even exist. Every now and then I still run someone who has never heard the word.

The companies who take the time and energy to make things easier for vegans (and as a byproduct of so doing get the word out there) deserve our thanks. Food companies, like Amy’s, who puts the word “vegan” at the beginning of the ingredient list on all of their animal product free offerings are doing us a great favor. They are exposing more people to the word and they are making it easier for new vegans who often feel that they have a daunting task ahead of them. I learned, as most vegans do, that the perceived difficulty is actually much greater than the reality, but in the beginning, little things like vegan friendly labeling are a great source of comfort, and even now they are helpful and appreciated.

The following is a list of companies that clearly label their products that are vegan. I would like to publicly thank them and encourage others to voice their support as well.  They are pioneers. Hopefully, someday, all vegan products will clearly be labeled as such, but for now these are the ones that are a step ahead.

Amy’s Kitchen
PO Box 449
Petaluma, CA 94953
amys.com

Fantastic Food, Inc.
Napa, CA 94558
www.fantasticfoods.com
800-288-1089

Simply Asia
PO Box 13242
Berkeley, CA 94712-4242
simplyasia.net 

Smart Balance
Heart Beat Foods
PO Box 397
Cresskill, NJ 07626-0397
www.smartbalance.com

Tasty Bite
Preferred Brands International
PO Box 3487
Stamford, CT 06901
www.tastybite.com

Thai Kitchen
Epicurean International, Inc.
PO Box 13242
Berkeley, CA 94712-4242
thaikitchen.com

Another thing that we can do is to encourage these and other companies, to make more of their vegetarian products suitable for vegans. In one move they’d get us, and the people who are sensitive to eggs and dairy too. Who wouldn’t want a bigger market share?

Take a moment to call or write, and let your voice be heard.

The Holistic Holiday at Sea (Taste of Health Cruise) was a great experience for us once again. This was our second time and we already plan to do it again next year. It is an unmatched opportunity to enjoy memorable vegan cuisine, see informative lectures from world class experts, exercise your mind and body, visit new places, and meet interesting and inspirational people.

One evening at dinner we were sitting with Dr. Neal Barnard of PCRM and Christy Morgan, The Blissful Chef, having a conversation about the various ideas and tactics that the vegan community uses to spread it’s message. There is a level of dissent that can be troubling at times, and Christy in her blissful wisdom likened the players to the spokes of a wheel. They may not all line up perfectly, but they are unified in trying to accomplish the same goal. Moving things forward. Creating progress. We may have different ways of getting there, but we are getting there.

T. Colin Campbell, in one of his lectures, expressed optimism that we may now have reached the tipping point - and I wholeheartedly agree. We are so much further ahead of where we were just a few short years ago. Our message is reaching people, and whether we choose to stress health, compassion, religion, or the environment, the end result is the same. The more we influence others to adopt a plant-based diet, the better off we all are. The synergistic benefits of a vegan diet are potentially world changing. We may be idealist, optimists, cynics, or critics in our approaches, but we can all agree that our goal is a better world, one that may soon be within reach.

Let’s keep that wheel turning and we’ll get there someday.

Last night’s vegan Oscar party was a success. The four and a half vegans present managed to sufficiently wow the ten omnivores with our food and charm. Hopefully they agree. I know they liked the food at least. It was also exciting seeing two famous vegetarians  (Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin) hosting the Academy Awards and vegan Woody Harrelson as a nominee. Maybe I pointed that out a little too fervently every time Woody appeared on screen but I couldn’t help myself. 

Parties like this are a great way to get together with friends and promote vegan cuisine in a very positive fun way. No preaching required. Just serve great food and answer any related questions that come up. Someone will always ask. The men talked about health quite a bit and the women discussed issues related to best documentary winner, The Cove, such as the rampant mislabeling of dolphin flesh as fish to fool consumers. Pretty egregious, mislabeling a mammal as a fish – not just a different species but different biological class entirely. Several of us also expressed our enthusiam for Food, Inc., The Cove’s very worthy contender. It was a hard call between the two. I was glad to see one of them win, and happy that they both got some well deserved exposure as a result of their nominations.

Several of our guests were kind enough to contribute to the menu, which consisted of Paula’s delectable hummus, Betsy’s amazing baked tofu – served with peanut sauce, and her mockamole (made with edamame) which is so good I could eat it every single day, Gary brought Quesadilla’s that were a big hit and an apple pie that I was very impressed with. He said the recipe was from The Conscious Cook. What a great book. Every recipe I’ve tried from it has been a winner.

We served back eyed pea and corn salad, spring rolls with spicy cherry sauce, potato skins with salsa, sour cream, and corn relish and a variety of crackers, crudités and other dips. Our son, Benjamin even made his first catering contribution ever. “Benjamin’s Delight” was celery stuffed with vegan cream cheese and olives. Perfect as a passed appetizer, with Benjamin doing the passing. He also helped me roll the truffles (aka Mignardises) in a variety of coatings – raspberry sugar, toasted coconut, and ground walnut with cinnamon. Benjamin later volunteered serving them to the guests, naturally taking a few for himself along the way. Judging by the number of seconds requested they went over well. That recipe will now be a staple. It is found in both The Best of Vegan Cooking and Great Chefs Cook Vegan. So easy, that I will never use another truffle recipe again. I also served the Happy Herbivore’s black bean brownies but we added peanut butter icing for a little extra drama.

At the end of the evening we tallied the ballots and gave out prizes for the most accurate predictions. The winners received AMC, Regal Cinema, and Blockbuster gift cards, as well as copies of The Future of Food.
I can’t resist an opportunity for activism. Even if it comes in a gift bag.

When we travel we try to always find out if there are local vegan eateries, and we often go out of our way to dine at them. We consider it both a joy and an adventure. So when we returned last week from Ecuador, where – in Quito at least – it appeared that every vegan restaurant in the city was either closed for Carnival or shut down for remodeling (a phrase that usually indicates closed forever despite its claim) we were already salivating at the thought of visiting one of our favorite places in Miami on the way home. We landed, went through customs, checked into the hotel to drop our bags off and since the room wasn’t ready headed straight there.

Om Garden is the kind of place that you may not notice from the street but you never forget once you’ve been there. The food is creative and delicious and you always run into interesting, friendly people, including the owner and staff. Dining there made us doubly happy to be back in the US. We love to travel but we also always love coming home. Especially when you find a place that serves raw broccoli capable of making you swoon. We don’t even like raw broccoli, but Om Garden’s broccoli salad is transcendent. It defies the laws of flavor and physics simultaneously.

Many of our culinary finds abroad have been equally delightful, such as the wonderful surfer owned Natural High Cafe in Puerto Rico and the gastronomic wonder of Joia in Milan, Italy where they even serve a vegan green egg. Check out their amazing cookbook to see for yourself, but you’ll have to buy it there – since it’s not available online. Closer to home we stumbled across Lovin’ Spoonfuls in Tucson Arizona when we were in town for the Gem & Mineral Show. They serve delicious food that you can actually even order online from BuyKind and have delivered right to your door almost anywhere in the USA. All of BuyKind’s featured restaurants have great food and it’s brilliant the way they package and send it.

We want to support these places because we enjoy them and we need to support them because otherwise they could go the way of a wonderful vegan restaurant that we discovered in Paris, La Victoire Supreme de Coeur (Supreme Victory of the Heart). It has been replaced with another ubiquitous Parisian foie gras tribute cafe. Both the food and the ambiance were incredible. Dining there was a pleasure for all of the senses, and yet, it failed…

It is a sad loss, but one that will continue to happen if we don’t do everything in our power to support and endorse the businesses that deserve our patronage. So go to vegan restaurants and stores whenever and wherever you can. What better way to honor the memory of  La Victoire Supreme de Coeur than to try and create the supreme victory of the heart that they dreamed of. Enjoy delicious new flavors and encounter like minded people, while also receiving the satisfaction of knowing that your support is helping to perpetuate businesses that are striving to make our world a better place – with both kinder and healthier hearts.