When Hayley first asked if I would participate in her vegan challenge my immediate reaction was “no, too difficult, I live with a committed carnivore who views most vegetables with suspicion and can’t face cooking two different meals”. But I decided to offer a rather pathetic two vegan meals (minimum two courses). After all, how hard could it be?
Amongst my large collection of cookery books (~ 800) I have a reasonable number on vegetarian food, but only one vegan book. And I have never cooked anything from it. A flick through its pages reminded me why. It’s full of recipes with substitute cream, substitute milk, etc. Why? I have no problem with people choosing not to eat certain foods, but real issues with those who then find a manufactured substitute for a perfectly good natural product (have you ever read the list of ingredients on a tub of magarine?). And why would you ever want to eat soya chunks?
The popular conception of vegetarian food is that it’s all “lentils and nut roasts” but actually, unless you go on an Asian route, there’s a very heavy reliance on dairy products – albeit it often in small amounts. Still I managed to find several interesting things to eat and swapping oil for butter in a couple of my favourite recipes seemed to work. Surprisingly, I found desserts the most difficult. If you want something other than fruits, then often either an egg or diary products are involved. I intended to experiment with rice pudding made with coconut milk, but ran out of time. I will do this one day, because it should work from a taste point of view.
So, final tally – I cooked four and a half vegan meals in February (the half was a main course only). I also had 5 “accidental” vegan breakfasts – days when, for example, I just decided I wanted peanut butter on my toast instead of my usual cheese.
So has it made a difference? Well it’s always good to occasionally stop and think why you do what you do. Will I go vegan? Never! Did I enjoy the vegan food I ate? Mostly! But then I was quite careful what I cooked – but filo brushed with oil is just not as good as filo brushed with butter. And it was more of a faff than just bunging a chop in the oven. Will I eat vegan again? Yes, but not deliberately. Sometimes a good meal just happens to be vegan. Will I eat less meat in the future? A tough call, but probably not (see my first sentence). Do I care about animal welfare? Of course, why wouldn’t you? We all should want our food to come from happy animals. I’m probably more concerned about eating fish than meat. After all, aside from the odd hare or pigeon, we probably rarely eat wild meat/poultry (game like pheasant is usually “managed” if not actually farmed), but we are raiding the seas in a questionable way.
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Monday 1 March 2010
Day 1/Day 29
Made it! Its March. How's everyone feeling? First day of spring (and its sunny!), plus you can go find that hamburger...
Feeling slightly confused actually, had coffee (and porridge) with soya milk this morning, mainly because its all I had in the fridge, and not quite sure what to do now. This month has shown me that, for me, its been suprisingly easy to go vegan (provided you're in an environment where you've got enough control over what you're eating - so travelling would be tricky).
I don't want to stay vegan - and I don't want to stay vegetarian either (I think). But I do want to not go back to having meat every day, and to be much more concious of where that meat comes from. I think that someone who eats occasional meat or fish alongside an environmentally consicous diet with still be roughly equivalent, environmental impact-wise, with a middle-of-the-road vegetarian. Plus for me, eating locally sourced meat or cheese products will help me to not buy imported tofu/bean burgers or other options, just because there is that much more choice available from local foods.
I've found out I like tofu, and dates and vegan sushi (and happily, haven't completely gone off hoummous), and that vegan cheese is an evil that should be shunned by all.
I hope you've all had fun this month - let me know how it went and I'll send out another survey shortly (along with the results from the last one...). I'll be still posting over the next few weeks, reporting on any new developments and whether I do honestly run to the nearest MacDonald's as soon as I leave the house.
love,
Hayley
Feeling slightly confused actually, had coffee (and porridge) with soya milk this morning, mainly because its all I had in the fridge, and not quite sure what to do now. This month has shown me that, for me, its been suprisingly easy to go vegan (provided you're in an environment where you've got enough control over what you're eating - so travelling would be tricky).
I don't want to stay vegan - and I don't want to stay vegetarian either (I think). But I do want to not go back to having meat every day, and to be much more concious of where that meat comes from. I think that someone who eats occasional meat or fish alongside an environmentally consicous diet with still be roughly equivalent, environmental impact-wise, with a middle-of-the-road vegetarian. Plus for me, eating locally sourced meat or cheese products will help me to not buy imported tofu/bean burgers or other options, just because there is that much more choice available from local foods.
I've found out I like tofu, and dates and vegan sushi (and happily, haven't completely gone off hoummous), and that vegan cheese is an evil that should be shunned by all.
I hope you've all had fun this month - let me know how it went and I'll send out another survey shortly (along with the results from the last one...). I'll be still posting over the next few weeks, reporting on any new developments and whether I do honestly run to the nearest MacDonald's as soon as I leave the house.
love,
Hayley
Day 24: Take the carnivores to the veggie cafe
We had our Distingiushed Annual Lecture series lecture again on Wednesday, where all my course is strongly encouraged (well, its compulsory really) to turn up. These are usually great lectures, and also offer the opportunity, since they finish around 7.30pm after the speaker has finished getting grilled, to go out for a sociable drink or food.
So, last night we managed to persuasade around 15 of us to go to the vegetarian restuarant opposite King's College - the Rainbow Cafe. I think I mentioned it earlier (vegan cakes wonderful, vegan cheese not so good), and we had a very nice meal indeed, with even the non-veg people feeling happily full. My favourite part though was how a particular person, haven't not realised the restaurant was vegetarian until we arrived and feeling slightly dismayed at that point, then had a meal that he was very impressed with - large and colourful. As long as the food is nice enough, evidence seems to have shown that people don't miss the odd piece of meat. That's my theory.
So, last night we managed to persuasade around 15 of us to go to the vegetarian restuarant opposite King's College - the Rainbow Cafe. I think I mentioned it earlier (vegan cakes wonderful, vegan cheese not so good), and we had a very nice meal indeed, with even the non-veg people feeling happily full. My favourite part though was how a particular person, haven't not realised the restaurant was vegetarian until we arrived and feeling slightly dismayed at that point, then had a meal that he was very impressed with - large and colourful. As long as the food is nice enough, evidence seems to have shown that people don't miss the odd piece of meat. That's my theory.
Monday 22 February 2010
Guardian articles on factory farming...
I can see light at the end of the long, dark February tunnel, and I had been thinking about what's going to happen to my diet next month - and thinking how much more convenient it is to pick up some chicken or beef for dinner rather than thinking about beans and tofu. However, I just read both of these articles from today's Guardian:
Chickens:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/22/jonathan-safran-foer-factory-farming
Cows:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/22/jonathan-safran-foer-cows-beef
Hmmmmm.
p.s. there's now a little sign up in the Engineering Faculty canteen "soya milk available, please ask". Awwww.
Chickens:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/22/jonathan-safran-foer-factory-farming
Cows:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/22/jonathan-safran-foer-cows-beef
Hmmmmm.
p.s. there's now a little sign up in the Engineering Faculty canteen "soya milk available, please ask". Awwww.
Sunday 21 February 2010
Haste makes waste
Hello Friends,
I am bad at planning, this leads to bad veggie outcomes:
In the interest of integrity and my own guilty conscience, I have to admit that I hate some meat the past week. (Insert: boo's, hisses, and throwing of tomatoes or hunks of cow flesh for my non-vegetarian haters)
1. I flew to San Francisco, CA for a week and forgot to pre-book vegetarian. The choice was throw the chicken piece away or eat it, I ate it. Second meal I had a choice with no meat, I took it. The really shitty chicken was not at all enjoyable, so I couldn't decide if I felt worse because of that (breaking the vegetarian thing for the worst meal ever, Virgin Atlantic is not all that great) or better (I didn't enjoy breaking the veggie thing).
2. In San Fran, I was at an amazing restaurant with my parents and brother that is owned by the husband of my former boss...it is awesome, you have to go when in the Bay Area, and you have to make reservations as well as it is only opened on the weekend and can only hold maybe 20 people max. Anyway, the point was it's hard to order the eggplant parm when you have the option of his specialty creole crawfish pasta, seafood etouffee, grilled Hawaiian fish that he has flown in daily from a fisherman friend there, or you get the picture (disclaimer: I see he is doing an exotic mushroom risotto this week, but I promise that wasn't an option when I was there---menu changes every week). Knowing the Hawaiian fish might be hard to justify, I went with his standard creole crawfish pasta. It was exquisite.
This brings me to the part where I suck at planning...
3. I came back to find that I forgot to use up my mushrooms and tomatoes before I left. So I threw away a whole pack of both as mold was growing on the mushrooms and the tomatoes looked pretty awful. That got me thinking that throwing away food may be worse than eating meat. This website has some useful facts and figures: http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com (If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road.)
The whole rotten food thing brings me to point 4....
4. So it is Sunday and since the UK has some crazy law about making sure everyone is completely inconvenienced on Sunday, groceries stores (e.g. my local Sainsburry's) are only open from 11am to 5pm for instance. I wake up at 9am, too early to go shopping for the day so I start working at my computer...day passes....make some phone calls....pretty soon it is 5:15pm I realize I haven't eaten since breakfast (bowl of cereal with roommates milk--don't tell him), and am now starving. Also given point 3, everything I had that wasn't dry or canned is rotten or used before I left. So I mix together some lentils, kidney beans, onions, and started cooking....OK I also have to admit that I have been keeping weird hours lately, only had lunch on Saturday followed by beer for dinner and late night chips.....so I was feeling bad and more and more hungry....I spied the canned tuna I bought over a month ago. Well I assume you know what happened. I ate another animal, but do fish have feelings? The can said it was caught by pole and line and apparently tuna like it better when they die that way instead of being caught in a huge net :). OK so I need to look up carbon footprints for Tuna and for Crawfish, cause I really enjoy eating seafood.
Just bought: The unnatural history of the sea By Callum Roberts on Amazon to make myself do something about all this.
Cheers,
CpO
I am bad at planning, this leads to bad veggie outcomes:
In the interest of integrity and my own guilty conscience, I have to admit that I hate some meat the past week. (Insert: boo's, hisses, and throwing of tomatoes or hunks of cow flesh for my non-vegetarian haters)
1. I flew to San Francisco, CA for a week and forgot to pre-book vegetarian. The choice was throw the chicken piece away or eat it, I ate it. Second meal I had a choice with no meat, I took it. The really shitty chicken was not at all enjoyable, so I couldn't decide if I felt worse because of that (breaking the vegetarian thing for the worst meal ever, Virgin Atlantic is not all that great) or better (I didn't enjoy breaking the veggie thing).
2. In San Fran, I was at an amazing restaurant with my parents and brother that is owned by the husband of my former boss...it is awesome, you have to go when in the Bay Area, and you have to make reservations as well as it is only opened on the weekend and can only hold maybe 20 people max. Anyway, the point was it's hard to order the eggplant parm when you have the option of his specialty creole crawfish pasta, seafood etouffee, grilled Hawaiian fish that he has flown in daily from a fisherman friend there, or you get the picture (disclaimer: I see he is doing an exotic mushroom risotto this week, but I promise that wasn't an option when I was there---menu changes every week). Knowing the Hawaiian fish might be hard to justify, I went with his standard creole crawfish pasta. It was exquisite.
This brings me to the part where I suck at planning...
3. I came back to find that I forgot to use up my mushrooms and tomatoes before I left. So I threw away a whole pack of both as mold was growing on the mushrooms and the tomatoes looked pretty awful. That got me thinking that throwing away food may be worse than eating meat. This website has some useful facts and figures: http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com (If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road.)
The whole rotten food thing brings me to point 4....
4. So it is Sunday and since the UK has some crazy law about making sure everyone is completely inconvenienced on Sunday, groceries stores (e.g. my local Sainsburry's) are only open from 11am to 5pm for instance. I wake up at 9am, too early to go shopping for the day so I start working at my computer...day passes....make some phone calls....pretty soon it is 5:15pm I realize I haven't eaten since breakfast (bowl of cereal with roommates milk--don't tell him), and am now starving. Also given point 3, everything I had that wasn't dry or canned is rotten or used before I left. So I mix together some lentils, kidney beans, onions, and started cooking....OK I also have to admit that I have been keeping weird hours lately, only had lunch on Saturday followed by beer for dinner and late night chips.....so I was feeling bad and more and more hungry....I spied the canned tuna I bought over a month ago. Well I assume you know what happened. I ate another animal, but do fish have feelings? The can said it was caught by pole and line and apparently tuna like it better when they die that way instead of being caught in a huge net :). OK so I need to look up carbon footprints for Tuna and for Crawfish, cause I really enjoy eating seafood.
Just bought: The unnatural history of the sea By Callum Roberts on Amazon to make myself do something about all this.
Cheers,
CpO
Wednesday 17 February 2010
Day 16: Mmmmm waffle
I must apologise for uselessness on a number of levels. Firstly, lack of posting (went on holiday, hooray), and secondly, for breaking vegan-ness and knowingly and deliberately eating a very lovely chocolately waffle whilst on said holiday. I suppose at least it wasn't a kebab.
Vegan-ness has so far been ok mainly, and I think that has mostly been because I haven't minded it too much. However, spending 5 days in Amsterdam felt like this challenge lark was more of a sacrifice than it has been to date (especially with cereal bars, falafal and chips as the staple diet items). There were two main issues here:
1) We were eating out a lot in restaurants with very limited and fairly unappealing vegan options
2) I (slightly) resented the fact that I was taking time off and spending money to have a holiday, and that eating vegan food was making my holiday a bit more difficult.
Extending this thought to making changes in general - its easy to make a change when the difficulties aren't too challenging. When things become a little harder you can really see if you care enough to make the effort (...and I do suspect think that many vegetarians and vegans don't really have a particular desire to eat animals or animal products. There will be some, but how many vegetarians do you know who would really really want a nice rare bit of steak?).
So I think its important to consider changes in context for specific people. I went to conflict management training a couple of weeks back and they really hammered home how you really just can't understand how things feel to different people (for example, how saying "I know how you feel" in a conflict has the potential to very much irritate the person on the receiving end). So maybe more credit should be given to those (like Milos), who are finding this really difficult, but making an awesome effort.
Went to a lovely Japanese vegan restaurant near King's Cross station in London last night - one of the nicest meals I've had in months and you would even notice there's no meat - and it wasn't only me who thought this - with admission from the slightly suprised avowed meat-eater: "I'm glad you are a temporary vegan otherwise I would never ever have gone to that restaurant and it was really nice".
And I have to quote from their menu (we should get them to do the food for our final course dinner - the department would love this - 2 "sustainables" in as many sentences...):
If anyone has a spare hour at King's Cross I highly recommend hunting them down (see http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/669017)
Next post will be less rambly and more scientific.
I must apologise for uselessness on a number of levels. Firstly, lack of posting (went on holiday, hooray), and secondly, for breaking vegan-ness and knowingly and deliberately eating a very lovely chocolately waffle whilst on said holiday. I suppose at least it wasn't a kebab.
Vegan-ness has so far been ok mainly, and I think that has mostly been because I haven't minded it too much. However, spending 5 days in Amsterdam felt like this challenge lark was more of a sacrifice than it has been to date (especially with cereal bars, falafal and chips as the staple diet items). There were two main issues here:
1) We were eating out a lot in restaurants with very limited and fairly unappealing vegan options
2) I (slightly) resented the fact that I was taking time off and spending money to have a holiday, and that eating vegan food was making my holiday a bit more difficult.
Extending this thought to making changes in general - its easy to make a change when the difficulties aren't too challenging. When things become a little harder you can really see if you care enough to make the effort (...and I do suspect think that many vegetarians and vegans don't really have a particular desire to eat animals or animal products. There will be some, but how many vegetarians do you know who would really really want a nice rare bit of steak?).
So I think its important to consider changes in context for specific people. I went to conflict management training a couple of weeks back and they really hammered home how you really just can't understand how things feel to different people (for example, how saying "I know how you feel" in a conflict has the potential to very much irritate the person on the receiving end). So maybe more credit should be given to those (like Milos), who are finding this really difficult, but making an awesome effort.
Went to a lovely Japanese vegan restaurant near King's Cross station in London last night - one of the nicest meals I've had in months and you would even notice there's no meat - and it wasn't only me who thought this - with admission from the slightly suprised avowed meat-eater: "I'm glad you are a temporary vegan otherwise I would never ever have gone to that restaurant and it was really nice".
And I have to quote from their menu (we should get them to do the food for our final course dinner - the department would love this - 2 "sustainables" in as many sentences...):
"...the Itadaki-zen restaurant was born from the need to provide a source of food which integrates into a cycle of sustainability. The goal is to reach a state in which the restaurant can self-produce methods which are themselves sustainable for the wider ecosystem..."
If anyone has a spare hour at King's Cross I highly recommend hunting them down (see http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/669017)
Next post will be less rambly and more scientific.
Wednesday 10 February 2010
Day 10: Cheese, Wine and Carbon Trading
Two slightly distressing things occurred since I last posted:
1) I tried vegan cheese. It was absolutely vile. To be fair, it was a cheese sauce rather than solid "cheese", but it was not nice.
2) In a crowded London bar, clutching Fran's drinks crib sheet in my hot hand, it emerged that the bar didn't sell any beer or cider (didn't even try wine) that was vegan-safe. So I went for the safe option - vodka and juice. London prices mean that this is not a sustainable option for anyone's bank balance (it must have been almost £7), and I believe is highly unfairly discriminating against vegans.
But two nice things have balanced them out:
1) In the engineering canteen today, merrily helping myself to the free coffee (there's free morning coffee in Engineering, apparently someone left it to the department in his will, since engineers need caffeine to do useful things), the lovely lady in the canteen approached, and asked if I was the "soya milk girl". Last week, I had enquired about soya milk since they don't stock it, and they thought it might be possible - but they had remember, and were very happy about it. So if anyone's using the canteen, just request the soya milk! (its hiding in the fridge so as not to confuse people)
2) A few more people have joined in now as well, which is really nice. General morale seems fairly high, particularly once you take Milos out of the equation...(sorry). Fran's mother and sister are taking part, and also Florence's friend Katy, who I then coincidentally met in a pub, and she informed me that the health shop does chocolate vegan spread. Small things.
My last post looked at how changing your diet could save enough carbon to be on an equivalent scale to taking international flights. This is still true, but thinking about it further, it makes me feel a little unconfortable - that by reducing your impact in one area, you're effectively "free" to increase it in another. The morality of this has been an argument used against carbon trading schemes, and this website, cheatneutral.com (whilst a little bit irritating) highlights this point.
There's been quite a bit of discussion over why wine isn't actually vegan. So...as you might expect, its because many wines are made using animal-derived ingredients to assist in the wine processing. Mostly, these ingredients are filtered out of the wine before its sold, but the use of animal ingredients in the creation make them "unsuitable for vegans". Typically these ingredients are used as processing aids in the filtration part of the winemaking process to help remove solid impurities (e.g. grape skins, stems, pips), to remove the yeast used in the fermentation process or to adjust the tannin levels. The most common animal ingredients used are isinglass (a very pure form of gelatine from sturgeon fish bladders), gelatine (extract from boiled cow's or pig's hooves and sinews), egg whites (or albumin) and caseins (a protein from milk). Also very occasionally blood has been used as an additive, but this was declared illegal for use in European wines in the aftermath of the outbreak of BSE (mad cow disease).
(thanks to Vegan Wine Guide FAQ, http://vegans.frommars.org/wine/faq.php)
1) I tried vegan cheese. It was absolutely vile. To be fair, it was a cheese sauce rather than solid "cheese", but it was not nice.
2) In a crowded London bar, clutching Fran's drinks crib sheet in my hot hand, it emerged that the bar didn't sell any beer or cider (didn't even try wine) that was vegan-safe. So I went for the safe option - vodka and juice. London prices mean that this is not a sustainable option for anyone's bank balance (it must have been almost £7), and I believe is highly unfairly discriminating against vegans.
But two nice things have balanced them out:
1) In the engineering canteen today, merrily helping myself to the free coffee (there's free morning coffee in Engineering, apparently someone left it to the department in his will, since engineers need caffeine to do useful things), the lovely lady in the canteen approached, and asked if I was the "soya milk girl". Last week, I had enquired about soya milk since they don't stock it, and they thought it might be possible - but they had remember, and were very happy about it. So if anyone's using the canteen, just request the soya milk! (its hiding in the fridge so as not to confuse people)
2) A few more people have joined in now as well, which is really nice. General morale seems fairly high, particularly once you take Milos out of the equation...(sorry). Fran's mother and sister are taking part, and also Florence's friend Katy, who I then coincidentally met in a pub, and she informed me that the health shop does chocolate vegan spread. Small things.
My last post looked at how changing your diet could save enough carbon to be on an equivalent scale to taking international flights. This is still true, but thinking about it further, it makes me feel a little unconfortable - that by reducing your impact in one area, you're effectively "free" to increase it in another. The morality of this has been an argument used against carbon trading schemes, and this website, cheatneutral.com (whilst a little bit irritating) highlights this point.
There's been quite a bit of discussion over why wine isn't actually vegan. So...as you might expect, its because many wines are made using animal-derived ingredients to assist in the wine processing. Mostly, these ingredients are filtered out of the wine before its sold, but the use of animal ingredients in the creation make them "unsuitable for vegans". Typically these ingredients are used as processing aids in the filtration part of the winemaking process to help remove solid impurities (e.g. grape skins, stems, pips), to remove the yeast used in the fermentation process or to adjust the tannin levels. The most common animal ingredients used are isinglass (a very pure form of gelatine from sturgeon fish bladders), gelatine (extract from boiled cow's or pig's hooves and sinews), egg whites (or albumin) and caseins (a protein from milk). Also very occasionally blood has been used as an additive, but this was declared illegal for use in European wines in the aftermath of the outbreak of BSE (mad cow disease).
(thanks to Vegan Wine Guide FAQ, http://vegans.frommars.org/wine/faq.php)
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