Beer Here
I'm a guy. And on Sunday's I become the typical American Guy. I like to sit around and watch football on TV with my friends, drinking beer.
You can imagine my dismay when I read that beer may not be entirely vegan!@!##$%!%! I was looking through Vegetarian Sourcebook
Beers: As a general rule, traditional, cask-conditioned beers ('real ales') are usually clarified (cleared) with isinglass finings. Isinglass is a very pure form of gelatin obtained from the air bladders of some freshwater fishes, especially the sturgeon. The addition of the finings speeds up a process which would otherwise occur naturally. Keg, canned, beer-sphere, and some bottled beers are usually filtered without the use of animal substances. Lagers are generally chill-filtered but a few may involve the use of isinglass. The only possibly animal-derived ingredient used in the production of keg beers is E471. Animal-derived finings continue to be used in all Guinness- and Bass-produced beers.
HORRORS!!!!! I love Guinness.
Further down the page, I came across their vegan recommendations:
Vegan Products: Beers/lagers - Whitbread Kaltenberg Pils, Heineken Export Lager, Labatt Blue Lager, Labatt Ice Lager, Scottish Courage, Beck's Bier (keg, bottle), Budweiser (keg, can, bottle), Coors Extra Gold (keg, can, bottle) Holsten Pils (keg, can, bottle), Grolsch (keg, 450 ml swingtop bottle - not the 250ml/275 ml bottles or 500ml cans).
That put a frown on my face. I'm not sure how comprehensive that list is. One of these days I'll have to get around to contacting my favorite vendors (Sam Adams, and Pete's Wicked Ales) to see what they have to say for themselves.
I never gave beer a thought. How could it not be vegan? Hops, Barley, Malt... Water... no animal products there. Some days this vegan thing feels much more complicated than I anticipated it would be.
Pepperoni Pizza
Do you remember Bagel Bites? Little frozen pizza on a bagel? I never actually had any, but the jingle is till floating around the back of my brain.
As a vegan, I wrote off pizza. Not without regret mind you. But being a native New Yorker (even though I now live in LA, I'm still a native New Yorker at heart), I've probably had enough pizza to last a lifetime, at least for the non-New Yorker.
For dinner last night, Jane made us mini pizzas , and now I'm singing the old Bagel Bites TV jingle, "Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at suppertime. When you have pizza on a pita, you can have pizza anytime..." Excuse the poetic license. We didn't even have our pizza on a pita, it was a tortilla, but hey.
I wouldn't call this gourmet food. But if you have a kid to feed.... Jane used whole wheat tortillas topped with tomato sauce, Yves Vegan Pepperoni, and vegan mozzarella cheese, oregano and a drizzling of olive oil. The cheese sort of melted, but not before the exposed tortilla began crisping. Overall, not a gourmet meal, but a quick tasty dinner. Served with a large green salad, of course.
Sausage and Peppers
Here's a quick and easy weekend lunch idea... a sausage and pepper hoagie (or submarine, sub, wedge, hero, sandwich....). OK, it's not what I used to have as a meat eating child. And I'm not wholly convinced that someone who had an authentic sausage and pepper hoagie the day before would really love this. But for us vegans...
Jane "steam-fried" the peppers and onions. A technique she read about in Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes
Jane used Yves Sweet Italian Sausages (a vegan product of course) and served it all up on some fresh La Brea bread. Yummy. A perfect accompaniment for the football game.
Spanakopita
We've been vegans for a little over three months now. Since we're old dogs (in our 40s), it's been a bit of a challenge to change our way of thinking about what a meal should be, and that's been harder on Jane than on me, since she prepares most of what we eat.
To date, most of the recipes Jane has tried have been more than reasonable and there have even been a few that have been outright delicious. But nothing has come close to what she made for dinner last night. We had spanakopita, greek spinach pie, and it was restaurant quality food. And I don't mean Denny's! The recipe was out of Ann Gentry's Real Food Daily Cookbook
This will be the dish Jane prepares for non-vegan company. You have to get this cookbook!
Comment
I received an email comment on the blog yesterday :
I HATE to break it to you but I have been vegan for a while now and I am still 100 pounds overweight. Oh well, at least I don’t eat innocent animals--J
The only reply I can make is that this blog is a chronicle of my vegan experiences (and Jane's too). We've lost weight over the past three months. Admittedly I've lost more weight than Jane has, which frustrates her a bit. But we're losing weight because we're eating more fruits and vegetables instead of processed food, just like most nutritionists would advise. Another big contributor to our weight loss is that we're generally having cut up fruit for dessert instead of some high calorie dessert Jane woild have baked; Jane used to love to bake. Our diet has changed to be more healthful and clearly less calorie-intensive, as we are actually consuming more food than before. And I'm sure a grilled portobello mushroom has far fewer calories than Chicken Parmesan!
So J, I'm sorry your experience hasn't been as rewarding mine and Jane's has been so far. But I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I'm just excited about my experiences and I want to share how easy it has been for me.
And maybe this will inspire others to make choices that will be less harmful to our environment and more compassionate to our fellow creatures on this planet. (Proselytizing over.)
You’re Feeding Me a Mushroom For Dinner?
I almost got killed last night. Well, not literally, but it could have been close.
As I've mentioned before, Jane is the cook in our household. I get home from work after 7pm, so she usually has dinner just about plated up as I'm walking thru the door. (Yes, I know I am spoiled -- but hey, at least I appreciate it!) We accomplish this feat with the use of "modern technology. I usually email Jane to let her know when I'm leaving and will often call her when I'm at the 10 minute mark (on my hands-free cel phone -- In our house, we do not condone driving with a phone pressed up to your ear!).
I used to ask Jane what was for dinner, but I'm not allowed to do that anymore. And if I ask, the response is "Dinner!" In case you are wondering, the reason I'm no longer allowed to ask is that once or twice, when I heard the reply to my query, I commented on the dinner which was being lovingly prepared for me. The comment was less than positive, and along the lines of "I would rather have pizza" or some equally distressing-to-the-chef statement. So now I'm no longer allowed to ask. It saves us both a little stress and anxiety, and usually I'm happy enough with what I'm being served.
So last night, when I walked into the kitchen and saw the beautiful grains 
Jane had on the side of the plate, I was looking forward to whatever the main course was, and then I saw it, a giant mushroom (Portobello). I couldn't help myself, and blurted out "You're feeding me a mushroom for dinner?" Really, you could just see Jane dreaming of bashing in my skull with the skillet she held in her hand.
But damn that mushroom was good! And now I have to figure out how to get out of the doghouse!
Our First Clunker
So far we've been fairly pleased with our vegan diet. The products have been mostly good. The recipes we've tried have, for the most part, been things we'd make again. Although I didn't love the peach cobbler, and there was a cabbage salad that we won't be making ever again, we haven't run across anything that we've found inedible or completely unpalatable... until now.
One of our vegan cookbooks suggests Umeboshi Paste, which is a Japanese pickled plum puree, makes for a really wonderful alternative to butter on your corn on the cob. Since we had always loved corn on the cob dripping with butter and a sprinkling of salt in our pre-vegan days, we figured this would be a great vegan replacement.
WRONG!!! It's horrible. It's tart and tangy and overwhelmingly salty, and we only used the tiniest bit to taste. I'm sure there are people who love this stuff, but it won't be making it over the threshold to our home again. Ick. It's a shame too, because this little container was just under $9 at our local Whole Foods.
There’s Some Weird Stuff In My Kitchen
These days there are some weird things in my cupboards. I was going to make myself some oatmeal for my breakfast yesterday morning, actually I did. But before I got around to making it, I had one of those "what the #$@#%! this?" moments. I reached into the cabinet to grab hold of the oatmeal container and this package of Textured Vegetable Protein was staring me in the face (actually, it was unopened at the time).
Just bizarre. I asked Jane if we were having other astronaut food as it reminded me of the astronaut food I'd heard of: freeze dried ice cream, tang crystals, etc. Needless to say I was not looking forward to consuming this stuff.
Then we had spaghetti for dinner and I commented to Jane that the ground soy product was good in our pasta sauce. She had an odd look on her face and when I asked her about it she laughed and told me that was the TVP. I don't know how it tastes in other recipes, but it's pretty good with pasta and tomato sauce.
3 Months In
Today is our 3-month Vegan Anniversary. We started this journey on 07/07/07. It's been an interesting journey. To date, I've lost 15 pounds without any other attempts at losing weight. That's right - no exercise. Jane's lost 5 pounds. That's really exciting. We're not thinking about what we're putting in our mouths from a "diet" perspective, so we're not feeling deprived. Maybe we should bottle this stuff!
There have been the occasional bumps in the road for Jane. She's the cook and has had to learn how to change her thinking when it comes to "what's for dinner." And our staples have had to be re-learned. But we live in southern California, and have some really great year-round farmer's markets, so getting our hands on good fresh produce has never been a problem.
Our biggest issues have involved eating out. We've found that quite a few restaurants don't have anything on the menu for a vegan to eat. But we've found a few vegan friendly restaurants and when we're out with our non-vegan friends or associates we've gravitated towards Italian food. It makes for invisible vegan eating. We don't need to explain our dietary choices to anyone because there is always the option of pasta (whole wheat, of course) with marinara sauce and grilled vegetables. No one looks at you cross-eyed if you skip the cheese. Easy. We just hope Grassroots re-opens soon (they are closed due to fire damage).
Anyway, after three months we both feel fine. There's been no difference in our energy levels and we believe we're healthier. We'll actually be reporting on that in a future post. We've got our annual medical check-ups coming up in late November so we'll see if our new way of life has some hidden benefits as well as the obvious one of weight loss. We expect to be reporting good things.
Bacon and Eggs — Vegan Style
No, we haven't slipped. We're still happily doing the vegan thing, not that you could necessarily tell from this photo. Looks like the real thing, eh?
Last night I was feeling a little unwell and I asked Jane to make me some comfort food. We'd just had pasta so that was out. Jane decided we'd try an old standby from our non-vegan days. Of course, she converted everything to fit our vegan lifestyle. She made a tofu scramble and we had Lite Line's Smart Bacon along with Alternative Bagels (low calorie, low carb, vegan friendly), Tofutti Cream Cheese, cherry tomatoes from our local farmer's market, sliced red onion, and a large green salad.
Verdict: Yummy. This dish needs to make it into the rotation. The tofu scramble tasted better than scrambled eggs and the smart bacon passed Jane's test. I couldn't believe it! How could scrambled tofu taste better than scrambled eggs?! Wow!
