The Stumbles of a New Vegan

I don’t know why I felt the need to try to make a cheeseless, vegan mac & “cheese”. I mean, honestly, I am not even craving dairy yet. You would think I would save such desperate measures for the point at which I actually was really craving dairy, cheesy goodness. But no. I decided to ruin a perfectly nice Saturday evening with a Vegan Baked Mac & “Cheese” recipe, and I am not sure I will ever recover.

I found the recipe on Randomgirl.com about 1/4 of the way down (just Ctrl-F and search “Baked Mac and Cheese.”) The recipe begins with the sentiment, “This isn’t dried out the way some baked Mac and Cheese is… it’s really juicy and tasty.” This sentence just makes me think that the blog writer has been vegan so long that she has lost all touch of what real mac & cheese is supposed to taste like. Tasty it was not.

I wish you could smell this through the computer, so you could suffer like I have.

I gave my husband a spoonful, without informing him that he was my guinea pig. What, you think I was going to try this dish first knowing what went into it? Anyway, he wretched his head back in disgust and I offered him some canned chili for dinner instead, which he gratefully accepted.

I doused mine in salt and pepper, thinking surely I could make this work. I couldn’t. It is made with a lot of nutritional yeast. Nutritional yeast is supposed to give it a “nutty, cheesy, or creamy” flavor. I cannot convey just how gross the overwhelmingly yeasty flavor of this Mac & “Cheese” is.

"Mom, what the hell is that?"

Considering I had a HUGE baking dish full of this stuff, I thought I should test it on the dog as a last resort before throwing it all away. Unfortunately, even Giovanni did not approve of the nutty, cheesy, creamy flavor of nutritional yeast.

My dinner experiment in it's new home.

I am not one to waste food, but there was honestly no other choice. I will say that this dish has worked wonders for my commitment to veganism, though. Now I have absolutely zero desire to eat anything that even slightly resembles cheese.

Tofutti Cuties Save the Day!

To make myself feel better about my kitchen disaster, I ate a delicious Tofutti Cutie “Ice Cream” Sandwich. These things are so delicious and chocolatey, they actually do taste like the real thing.

I think tomorrow night I will be a little bit less adventurous. I am thinking some lentils and spinach, perhaps.

I went grocery shopping on January 1st, 2010. I normally shop at Trader Joe’s these days for their vegan friendly food at a low, reasonable prices. However, on January 1st, 2010, they were understandably closed early and I did not make it in time. I instead wound up stopping at a Savemart.

Since I was not able to get the normally diverse and interesting foods I have been trying at Trader Joe’s (tempeh, vegan cheezes, wild rices, raw soybeans, tahini sauce, etc) I figured the only way I could be experimental was to get some produce I had never cooked with before. Two of these items were Collard Greens and what I thought were Leeks.

Regarding the Collard Greens, I have officially mastered the most delicious spinach fried in garlic and oil that I can eat for days and days. Needless to say, I have been having it very often. Recently, while reading The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone (a book I didn’t particularly like, but provided some good stuff I didn’t previously know) I learned that spinach was consider a nightshade food and Alicia does not think we should fill up on these too often. Apparently some people agree. This quote is snagged from The World’s Healthiest Foods:

“Potatoes, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, tamarios, pepinos, pimentos, paprika, cayenne, and Tabasco sauce are classified as nightshade foods. A particular group of substances in these foods, called alkaloids, can impact nerve-muscle function and digestive function in animals and humans, and may also be able to compromise joint function.”

I obviously won’t cut it out of my diet but I suppose there is no harm in limiting it. So I tried Collard Greens. But I wanted quick Collard Greens, which the traditional ones are not. Traditionally, they appear to be boiled with ham hock for hours and hours. I decided to cook them in a way similar to the way I do spinach.

Collard Greens and Onions

Ingredients

• 1 bushel Collard Greens, washed, de-stemmed, and torn into pieces
• 1/2 white onion, chopped
• 1/2 green onion, chopped
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced
• Enough Oil (I used Grapeseed Oil) to coat the bottom of your pan or wok
• Salt & Pepper to taste, I use Coarse Ground Sea Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper

Intructions

1. Coat bottom of wok with oil, generously. Add Salt & Pepper to oil.
2. Dump in garlic and onions and set heat to medium.
3. Once the onion and garlic are softened a bit and sizzling, toss in your Collard Greens.
4. Let cook for about 5-10 minutes, depending on how tender/soft your greens were to start with.
5. Serve!

This dish is so easy for a weeknight and I think I may even prefer it to spinach. It is a bit meatier and the flavor is a bit richer. It will definitely become a regular in our household.

Now, for my less successful dish.

Question: Is this an a) leek or b) white carrot?

Answer: White Carrot. Okay, don’t make fun of me. I never actually saw an image of a leek. I have never knowingly eaten a leek. But after reading about them in The Kind Diet I wanted to try a leek. So there I was at Savemart looking for Leeks. I saw the word “Leek,” looked down, and my eyes met this vegetable. Oh, leeks look just like carrots without pigment!

I bought two, came home, looked up recipes including leeks on my favorite recipe site, Recipezaar, and got to work. I loosely based my recipe on one that I can no longer find for some reason, but basically you just toss leeks, apples, salt, pepper and vegan margarine (Earth’s Best is my choice) into a pan and cook them up until tender, but not too soft.  I didn’t fully read the article because I planned on quickly frying it all up anyway – I just needed complimentary flavors to cook it in.

So here is the funny part. I take my “Leek” and think, Gosh, this sure looks like a carrot. I clean it like a carrot, using my vegetable peeler on the outside and cutting it into thin circles. I pick up a piece and smell it and think, Gosh, this smells just like a carrot. I decide Leeks must surely be part of the carrot family.

As it is frying up, I run to my computer and google “Leeks.” The pictures look nothing like this vegetable I have. I scroll down and none of the images look like my vegetable. I read a description. They are part of the same family as onion and garlic. What? Yeah, this is obviously not a leek. I guess I’ll have to experiment with leeks another time.

White Carrots and Apples

To it’s credit, it turned out alright. Not bad, but I doubt I’ll make it again. At least it didn’t go to waste. I think next time I will research my new, exciting vegetables before I get dead set on trying it, so I know what the heck it is.

I’ll have to try leeks another time.