It is not easy to be a vegan. In a round-about sort of way, that's why I do it. The easy food choices are frequently not the healthiest for you nor the world you live in. Inverting the stereotype, I was anemic before I went full-herbivore. Back in college, in the days of grilled cheese sandwiches, and quesadillas, and plain cheese pizza, the Red Cross stopped accepting my blood. But now, and for the last decade or so, that I have been making these tough choices, learning how to pronounce the names of exotic grains, where to find really good vegetables, and how to make my own soy milk, am I not only feeling great, but also raising a child that is consistently at the 90-95% in his physical development and an all-around model of health.
In The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking, you include a great list of egg replacers. I particularly like that you explain each one a bit so that the reader has the knowledge to set out and veganize their old favorites. I love books that teach you how to cook for yourself rather than just offering you a collection of recipes. In a lot of ways, I think you achieve that here. But in a desert island sort of scenario, you are forced to pick just one egg replacer. What is it?
Between the two of us, we have accumulated more vegan cookbooks than you will find in most bookstores and libraries, and we agree with you that the best ones help to expand your culinary knowledge with practical tips, techniques, and trivia, in addition to expanding your arsenal of recipes!
Replacing eggs in recipes is a constant challenge for vegans. Certain ingredients work in one recipe better than in another, such as flax seeds and starches in baked goods, or nut butter or tomato paste in binding together savory items. So if we were stuck on a deserted island and could only have one type of egg replacer at our disposal, it would be tofu because it can be used in both sweet and savory dishes. In sweet treats, once blended, it can bind and add moisture to baked goods like cakes, breads, brownies, and cookies, or blended further with additional ingredients to make a creamy pudding, pie filling, or cheesecake. Alternatively, it can be crumbled to make a tofu scramble, vegan fried rice, mock egg salad, or chopped as a garnish for salads like a hardboiled egg.
I really like your vegan cheese sauce mix. It has good flavor, and it's so nice to have on hand for last minute mac 'n cheese. What is your favorite meal for a hectic week night?
First off, we are so glad that you like our Vegan Cheese Sauce Mix recipe from the Cheese and Dairy Alternatives chapter. As many people have a hard time giving up cheese when they go vegan, we felt that it was important to include recipes for making your own replacement products. As this recipe is made with dry ingredients only, it can be easily stored and then transformed into a sauce for topping pasta, pizza, sandwiches, casseroles, and vegetables, or if you’re feeling really rushed (or lazy), just sprinkle it over your meal to give it extra flavor.
Being short on time is definitely the #1 reason people give for not eating more healthy meals. Our fast meal suggestion features some of our favorite comfort foods: beans, grains, and greens. If we are making dinner together, Beverly often whips up a batch of cornbread and quinoa to go with this meal while Ray prepares the beans and greens. If it’s a solo effort, one person can easily prepare a batch of their favorite grains and sauté up some onions, peppers, garlic, kale or collards with pinto or red beans within thirty minutes.
Also, to help make things easier on ourselves, we always keep the fixings for a great fresh vegetable salad on hand. Once or twice a week, Beverly shreds beets, cuts up cucumbers, radishes, broccoli, zucchini, or whatever we have on hand, and puts then in individual containers. Then in a larger container she tosses together roughly chopped Swiss chard, red cabbage, carrots, and celery. This way we can always have a huge salad, which is one of our favorite things to eat. We can also use these items to make quick wraps with either hummus or other bean spread, or vegan cheese and meatless deli-style slices. Or we open a can of vegan chili and spoon it over our individual salads with some crushed tortilla chips for an easy taco salad.
On the other hand, sometimes, of course, we want to cook to impress. Say, you're having a presidential candidate over for dinner. What will you make? (And please, by all means, don't forget dessert.)
Good question! Beverly has actually had several of her dishes served to a presidential candidate--Rep. Dennis Kucinich (he is vegan!)--when he was a customer at a vegetarian restaurant that she worked for in Berea, Ohio. So if we were fortunate enough to have him and his wife, or someone else over that we wanted to truly impress with our vegan culinary creations, we might go with a Mexican fiesta-themed meal.
Naturally, we would start off with warm tortilla chips with homemade salsa and guacamole for dipping, and a large pitcher of margaritas. Followed by a salad made with baby mixed greens, orange segments, thin slices of red onion, seasoned and toasted pumpkin seeds, spicy radish sprouts, and topped with a creamy orange juice and avocado oil dressing.
Our entree would be a dish we call Tortilla Torta, which is assembled kind of like lasagna but made with Mexican-inspired ingredients. The layers are made with corn tortillas, mashed seasoned beans, a sautéed vegetable medley of onions, peppers, corn, zucchini, and summer squash, and three different sauces (salsa verde, red chile, and vegan cheese sauce). Alongside would be a quinoa pilaf with red and jalapeno peppers, greens onions, seasoned toasted pumpkin seeds, and cilantro.
For dessert, a Mexican chocolate cake consisting of two layers of dark chocolate cake flavored with a little cinnamon and cayenne, with a mocha and cinnamon buttercream as the filling and frosting, and decorations of toasted sliced almonds and coconut curls, and dark chocolate shavings.
I understand that this is your third published book, your second in the Complete Idiot's Guide series. Publishing one book, let alone three, is a feat that I imagine a lot of food blog frequenters fantasize about. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are?
Beverly has a culinary arts degree and has worked as a chef and baker in many restaurants and natural foods stores. Ray put his degree in philosophy and sociology, and his savvy computer skills, to good use by developing vegan-themed websites, including my own site, The Vegan Chef (www.veganchef.com). These websites helped us network and share ideas and information with other like-minded people, in addition to showcasing some of the vegan recipes that we had developed together and separately. As we were among the first wave of vegans expressing themselves via the Web, our websites became quite popular and definitely helped to open up many doors for us. We later self-published an e-cookbook and Beverly became a columnist with VegNews, and eventually, offers began coming in for cooking demos, speaking engagements, and interviews, as did opportunities to contribute pieces to magazines, newsletters, websites, and books.
We eventually attracted the interest of two publishers to write vegan-related books. We are very proud to be the first authors for a mainstream self-help book series to discuss the ins-and-outs of veganism and show people how easy it is to eat and live as vegans. Beverly is equally proud of her recently released solo project--Vegan Bites: Recipes for Singles--published by Book Publishing Company, which is one of the oldest and most respected publishers of vegan and vegetarian books, as many of their books have educated and influenced her writing and recipe development.
And finally, being a vegan is not always easy, but this book is filled with all sorts of little tips and tricks to make it more so. Give us one way to make the transition to a vegan diet easier.
To easily transition to eating a vegan diet, we recommend that people start out by taking baby steps. Start by replacing dairy products with non-dairy alternatives, such as cow’s milk with soy, rice, oat, nut, or hemp milk on your cereal, in your favorite recipes, and even by the glass. You can also do this with margarine, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, and ice cream as most grocery and natural foods stores sell a wide variety of vegan non-dairy alternatives for these items as well. Then move on to cutting out meat, chicken, or fish from one meal or from one entire day’s worth of meals, then increase it to several meals or days per week, and so forth, until you completely eliminate animal-based foods. Freely experiment with your favorite dishes using vegan plant-based ingredients instead, like beans, mushrooms, tofu, tempeh, seitan, or prepackaged meatless alternative products (found in the refrigerated or freezer section of most stores) like veggie burgers, roasts or logs, hot dogs, sausages, chicken-free nuggets or patties, deli-style slices, crumbles, or strips.
Again, thank you so much, Beverly and Ray, for sharing your expertise. And You, don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win your own copy of the book. Though, of course, as with all the Idiot Guide books, they're awfully reasonably priced, so you can probably just buy a copy. And also, we're all winners, because I'll be sharing a recipe from the book with you tomorrow. Stay tuned!
