displaced.vegan

If I have any readers left I’d just like to say, thanks for sticking it out. :)

Yes, I’m still vegan.  But no, I have not really been cooking anything noteworthy of late.  A lot of my time in the kitchen has been spent eating accidentally or incidentally vegan food items.  My desire to cook has been pretty low, which is odd for me.  I like to be in the kitchen making a mess.  But  I think the real cause of my lack of kitchen time has to do with the fact that I have a reverse sleeping schedule from my parents, whose house I live in.  And since they are on the ground floor near the kitchen, when I finally get around to wanting to cook a meal around midnight or later, they are already in bed. So I’ve just been grabbing whatever is convenient.

After housesitting for a few days, my sleep schedule has shifted.  People don’t pay me to watch their empty house when they are away for no reason.  My responsibilities are almost exclusively to look after pets.  But with my standard schedule I am asleep when the animals are to be fed.  So in the process of caring for pets on a schedule conflicting with my own for a week, my sleeping schedule is almost “normal.”  Which means that until my body resets itself to strange hours, I should be able to be in the kitchen more.  Thus more cooking posts.

I’ve also bought a few products of late that I’d like to talk about and as soon as I find the microSD adapter card I’ll upload pictures and try to get a coherent post together.

So please look forward to future posts of substance and thank you for reading.

In my local supermarket there are only two holiday turkey substitutes: Tofurky & Field Roast.  For Thanksgiving this last year I bought the small Tofurky.  As laziness would have it, I didn’t cook it for Thanksgiving.  But a few days later when I was housesitting I brought my Tofurky with me and cooked it there.  And then for Christmas I decided to give the Field Roast product a try.

Now, let me say, I like Tofurky.  But I think a lot of the variation in people’s taste experience is in the preparation.  So it can be a hit or miss ordeal.  Unfortunately, it is cost prohibitive to purchase Tofurky with the sole intention of experimenting until you get it just how you like it.

Field Roast’s Celebration Feast is smaller than even the small Tofurky log, but unless you are feeding a large vegan family then it shouldn’t matter.  Field Roast is DELICIOUS no matter how you might cook it.  It’s savory and the stuffing is yummilicious.  It’s uncanny in that the method they use to prepare it makes it outwardly resemble actual meat.  I had to look at the label several times to reassure myself that is was in fact Vegan. Of all the pictures that I am sure I have taken, this picture of the cut up Field Roast is all I can manage to find:

In my opinion, Field Roast’s Celebration Feast is the BEST of the two options.  But the journey doesn’t end there.  I have an out of print cookbook that has a recipe for creating your own un-turkey.  And I think I have just about everything I need.  So in the very near future I will be doing some experimentation with that.  Stay tuned!

I am fortunate enough to have Vital Wheat Gluten in my grocery store of choice. But were I not, I guess I would have to make my own gluten-y goodness. Gluten is a protein of sorts that exists in wheat. When you overwork wheat you work up the gluten. That is why you don’t overmix batters. If you did, you would have too much gluten and the end product would be chewy. For the fake meat seitan, this is a good thing. The chewiness of gluten creates a meaty texture.

I recently picked up a used copy of the now out of print ‘The Now & Zen Epicure’ which has many many wonderful recipes in it. And it also has instructions for making your own gluten-y dough in place of that made with Vital Wheat Gluten. I’m sure you can find this elsewhere, but here, poorly transcribed for the lazy is the Homemade Gluten recipe:

3 lbs (or more) high gluten whole wheat flour
3 cups (or more) water

The author notes that regular whole wheat flour will not work and tells you to ask for a good bread making flour.? I learned from Alton Brown that bread machine flour? is very high in gluten.

This “recipe” calls for 3lbs of flour, but if your bowl will hold more then add more.? The gist is that it takes the same amount of work so you might as well do as much as you can while you’re at it.

Place all your flour in your large bowl and mix in your water to form a very firm dough and allow it to rest for at least an hour.? Then move your bowl to your sink.? You’ll probably be here for a while.

Fill your bowl with water and start massaging your dough.? As the water washes out the starch it will begin to turn white.? Discard this water and replace, repeating this process over and over again.? THe author suggests 10-15 minutes.? Your dough should start to shrink as the bran and starch wash away and at some point it may seem to be falling apart.? Don’t fear, that part is expected.

“When it looks like you have a giant wad of well-chewed bubble gum, you have transformed flour into raw gluten.”

this will yield a rather bland gluten dough which will be dependent upon your cooking method for adding flavor.? And this book has several cooking suggestions that I will share in the future as I try them.? For now, that’s all you get.

I’ve recently been feeling achy and lethargic like when I had mono as a teen. And then a handful of days ago I broke out all over my face. I haven’t had any breakouts since going vegan except for hormonal reasons. And even then, they breakouts have been very mild. I’ve also been coughing quite a bit and my asthma has been acting up. This leads me to believe that some dairy has made it’s way into my diet somehow. But while I’m fairly certain that dairy is the culprit behind the resurgence in my asthma, I think something more sinister is responsible for the lethargy, aches, itching, etc.

My brother recently learned that he has a dairy and wheat intolerance. He probably has the same sugar problem that my mother (and probably I) have. But none of this will change what he eats. My brother is the type of person who refuses to be bullied by his body. He’ll eat what he wants and show his body who is boss. But this got me wondering if maybe I have a wheat/gluten intolerance. Many food allergies go relatively unnoticed, only surfacing when we get too much of the foods our bodies can’t tolerate. And in eliminating dairy and meat from my diet I have been substituting a lot with soy and wheat products. So if I have a latent allergy, now would be the time for it to surface.

For those of us without health insurance, finding out what your food allergies might be is difficult. But if you have inexplicable migraines, lethargy, aches and pains and are lucky enough to have health insurance you should ask your doctor to do a blood test for allergens. The scratch test they do it good for severe allergies, but probably won’t catch mild allergies that still cause you distress. If your Insurance provider will cover it, I recommend it.

If you don’t have health insurance then the most common way to prove a food allergy is through an elimination diet. But I’m far too lazy for that. So I guess at this point I am just gonna hope and what passes for “pray” that I’m not allergic to wheat. I can handle a soy allergy. It would be a bitch since so many things contain soy, but I can find new beverage and “cheese” alternatives that aren’t soy based. But I’m going to have a hard to finding un-meats that are gluten free. And there is the bread and pasta problem. Wheat is in everything. It’s actually a wonder that more people aren’t gluten-intolerant, considering how much is in out regular diets. Although maybe more people are. We have a lot of unexplained symptoms and poor health in our society which I am am pretty certain can be traced back to what we ingest.

Hopefully when I get back home from housesitting and have more control over my diet I’ll be able to sort this out. Because I was just starting to get the hang of this Vegan thing. I don’t need a food allergy to make life difficult.

I haven’t been cooking much in the past several days. I’ve been eating pretty much what is on hand. I think this might have something to do with the subconscious knowledge of what a hassle the upcoming food “holiday” was going to be.
I often bow out of large family gatherings, preferring my own company to the complex drama of multi-family get-togethers. But I’ve been trying to force myself to be more social in the past couple years. Not because I have a desire to change my personality, but because success in life hinges on the ability to at least feign social tolerance. And like with most things in life, family is the proving ground.
As a result of attempting to hide less from my extended family I have silently agreed to attend Angstgiving at my cousins’ house. Silently because I voiced no objection. Implied acquiescents through omission is my slacker way of hefting the blame off my shoulders. I never agreed to it, so I’m not at fault for any travesty that results. I know. I’m a slacker.
What has all this to do with cooking? Well, obviously Thanksgiving is a huge food holiday. But I could count the vegans in attendance this year on one finger. My finger. My middle finger. I’m flipping myself off. Which is awkward unless you happen to have a mirror, which I do. So, it seems, the work that is usually avoided in the kitchen by going to someone else’s house for Angstgiving is not something I have escaped.
I bought a small Tofurky Roast a few days back and it has been silently mocking me from the cold recesses of my darkened freezer. Well, tonight I took it out to place in my fridge and read the cooking instructions. It certainly isn’t as difficult as cooking a Turkey, but it’s not something I actually want to do. I don’t have a problem with Tofurky. I don’t think it’s horrible. The last time I had it though was a handful of years ago, and I did not find the citrus-y baste very appealing. SO this year I’ve been looking around for other basting suggestions. But aside from the “main” dish I also need to make sides for myself. It’s far too late in the game to call up my cousin (as I should have long ago) and told him and his wife that I am vegan. The hassle of them veganizing what sides they can is just too much to ask. So instead, I’ll be making my own sides. There won’t be much. I have never been a Thanksgiving overeater. So I’ll probably just make a couple simple sides. And that will be the end of it.
Yule (Christmas) will be tofurky free. I think I’ll try my own tofu roast, which may sound gross the my meat-eating friends, but is far less bland than they think. Or I’ll justdo what I should have done for Angstgiving and make a pizza. It’s not too late, you know…