Bean Day!

Before I "went vegan," my mom and I used to cook together frequently.  I would go to her house and we'd make a HUGE batch of something - cannelloni, lasagna, some kind of chicken, minestrone, you name it - and we'd portion it out, freeze it, and I'd take a bunch home!  It was fabulous - time with mom, delicious food, and a stocked freezer, what more could I want?  When I decided to stop eating animal products, I was kind of sad that we wouldn't really have this tradition anymore.  But then I realized, why couldn't we?
I had a bean dilemma that I needed her advice on anyways... We were going through a lot of beans with our new diet.  A LOT of beans!  Our local produce stand sold 3 or 4 types of dried beans for only $1.29 a pound, so I knew that dry beans were the way to go financially - a can of low-sodium beans is usually around $1, so I'd be saving a lot in the long run by using dry beans!  But I'm not one of those people who plans meals.  I usually cook a few times a week, and live on leftovers the rest of the time.  I go grocery shopping to buy what I'm in the mood for, and sometimes I wake up wanting something completely different than I thought I did yesterday, so planning meals usually ends up in lots of wasted food at my house.  I envy those who are able to plan weekly menus!  I'm more of a scavenger in my own kitchen!  So dry beans pose a problem - I have to soak them overnight and then they take a few hours to cook!  Not exactly convenient.  So I thought of my mom and our big cooking fests, and asked her if she wanted to do a bean day!
Aaron and I went to the produce stand and got 4 gallon-sized ziploc bags full of beans... we don't do things small!  I soaked all the beans overnight and then transported them to mom's house.

We used mom's giant stock pot for the garbanzos, since they have the shortest cooking time, and we split all the black beans into batches for the pressure cooker - only 20 minutes a batch!  All together, it took more time to portion the beans and wait for them to cool than it did to actually cook them!

Now I have a freezer full of beans and I always keep some of each kind in the fridge to be handy whenever I want or need them - for bean burgers, hummus, falafel, to add to salads, chili, stew, soups, pasta, black bean brownies, chick pea "cookie dough," or other endless applications!

 Here's one of my favorite bean recipes:

Texas Caviar
1 can (or equivalent) of each of the following:
                      black beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, black-eyed peas, sweet corn
1 red and one green pepper, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 can olives, diced (I like kalamata for an extra saltiness)
2 cans diced tomatoes
1/4-1/2 cup minced fresh parsley or cilantro
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup vinegar of your choice
1/4 cup sugar

Mix together all beans and veggies in a large bowl.  In a small saucepan, combine oil, vinegar, and sugar.  Heat til sugar is dissolved, oil and vinegar seem to be mixing, and it is almost boiling.  Pour over the veggies and let sit for 10 minutes.  Stir, let sit for 10 more minutes.  Drain excess liquid out, and put salad in the fridge.
Serve with tortilla chips, or eat with a spoon.  You can also use as a salad topping, or add cooked pasta for a yummy pasta salad :)

There's Nothing Like Pancakes on Sunday...

I figured it would be fitting for my first shared recipe to be my favorite new discovery... Banana Pancakes!!  Now, I've had pancakes with banana before, but none like this!  

I have to say when I began my vegan transition, I was worried about baking.  I come from the school of butter is better and was hesitant to try "egg substitute."  I found this recipe HERE, from a great blog The Minimalist Baker, and immediately needed to try it.  I made one batch and split it between my husband and I, and almost immediately started whipping up a second batch for us to split as well.  These weren't just your ordinary pancakes - they were better than any I'd had before.  Maybe it was my newly refined vegan palette talking, but I will never make another pancake recipe, as long as my kitchen has all of these ingredients!!  And, by the way, none of the ingredients are that crazy - I had them all in my kitchen to begin with!

I varied from the original recipe a bit by not making the streusel.  I'm a pancake minimalist, I guess, and served them with just a bit of Grade B Maple Syrup.  I also added frozen blueberries because I had them on hand, and who doesn't love blueberries in their pancakes?!

You start by mashing a banana (all of our bananas are usually in the freezer for smoothies, so I nuked one for 30 seconds which made it very easy to mash!)  Mix it up with a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp baking powder.  Add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I don't think this is too important so don't worry if you don't have it or forget like I sometimes do!)  1 Tbsp ground flaxseed meal and 2 Tbsp water and let it hang out for a minute.  If you're not vegan and don't happen to keep flaxseed meal in your fridge, here's where you would use an egg!
Then you add 1 Tbsp of fat (the original recipe calls for melted margarine, but I used olive oil because my husband was feeling anti-margarine) and 1/2 cup of your choice of non-dairy milk.  I usually use almond milk, since I make my own (lightbulb! I'll do a post about it soon!) but I've used soymilk when I'm in a pinch.  Once it's combined, add 1/2 cup flour.  The first time I made it all I had was all-purpose unbleached, but my lovely mom got me some awesome King Arthur whole wheat blends so I've been playing with those lately and they make the pancakes very filling and just as delicious!
Let the batter rest for about 5 minutes - this is when I usually turn on the stove to get the pan nice and hot.  This is also when you can add your extras - frozen berries, nuts, chocolate chips, let your imagination run wild!

 I always use my 1/4 c measuring cup to measure the flour in the last step, and then I keep it out to use for measuring batter into the pan. 














If you have a griddle, cooking will go much faster, but I'm pretty bad at managing multiple pancakes at one time so I stick to a small saute pan and cook them one at a time!

Finally, as I mentioned before, I top them with just a drizzle of Grade B Maple Syrup (don't ask me why, but it's the best - once you try B you'll never go back to A!)

Here's the recipe once more :)

• 1 ripe banana, mashed (if you're in a rush, freeze and thaw the banana)
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt
• ½ tsp pure vanilla extract (optional)
• 1 Tbsp flaxseed meal 
• 2 Tbsp water
• 1 Tbsp fat - melted margarine or oil
• ½ cup non-dairy milk
• ½ cup flour (whole wheat is the best, of course!)
• add-ins of your choice - berries, nuts, chocolate chips, etc

Mash the banana and add the baking soda, baking powder, salt, and vanilla.  Add in the flaxseed meal and water and let it sit for a minute.  Add the fat and milk, and once blended add in the flour.  Add in any extras and let the batter sit for 5 minutes while your pan or griddle heats up.  Drop batter by about 1/4 c onto the pan, and flip when the edges look cooked and the bubbles in the middle stop.  Top with extra fruit, or the syrup of your choice, and Enjoy!  No need to thank me :)

Vegan? Why?

If you had asked me a year ago, hell, even 4 months ago, if I ever saw myself becoming a vegetarian or vegan, I would have laughed.  I love meat!  I grew up eating meat at practically every meal - definitely dinner, almost always lunch, and sometimes breakfast.  My husband, Aaron, is super fit and ate a TON of chicken, since it's packed with protein and we've always been told that in order to be fit and healthy, you need protein!  We even bought Whey Isolate Protein Powder by the 10 lb bag!  I'm talking a dog food-sized bag of chocolate protein powder that we would go through in about 6 months.  For Hannukah this year, my parents bought a Sams-sized flat of chicken breasts, grilled them, and packaged them in twos for our freezer. 
In October, I even posted this photo on facebook of my meal prep for the month:

We ate a LOT of chicken.  

That changed in February.  A lot.
We've always tried to be healthy - you can see our juicer in the photo behind the mountain of raw meat.  After watching the documentary Fat Sick and Nearly Dead on Netflix December 2011, we got it and started juicing.  That waxed and waned, mostly because it was such a hassle to clean, and you had to juice so much to get a full glass.  My morning juice would usually be a cucumber, 4-5 carrots, an apple, an inch chunk of ginger, and 2-3 oranges.  That would get me about 20 oz of juice.  Not cheap, right?  
Well, this year we got some money from Aaron's parents for Christmas and decided to use it toward a Vitamix.  This thing is amazing.  I've always coveted one, but they're pretty expensive, and I didn't have the last bit of information about it that was the missing piece of the puzzle.  It is the easiest thing in the world to clean.  You fill it up about halfway with water, 2 drops of soap, and turn it on for about 30 seconds.  Then rinse, and you're done!  I was sold.  Even after only having it a month I felt comfortable saying it's one of the best purchases I've ever made.  Since we got it, I've been making green smoothies for breakfast almost every day.  Remember all the fruit/veg I listed for the juicer?  In the vitamix, I'll use 1/2 cucumber, 1/2 banana, 1 orange and a bunch of spinach and get as much or more juice than I got with the juicer!  Incredible!  Our produce stand hauls last twice as long, plus we make our own peanut butter (with JUST peanuts, no oil or salt or sugar!), we make soups, sauces, hummus... you name it, this bad boy will make it easier!

So, needless to say, I've been having much more veggies and less meat, just by virtue of the Vitamix.  Now let's take it another step:

I was discussing the virtues of the vitamix with a coworker who also has one, and we got to talking about food in general - preservatives, additives, etc.  I'm a big fan of the documentary "Food, Inc." (also on Netflix) and shared with my coworker that after I watched that I definitely changed the way I look at meat and eggs, and I've definitely changed my eating and purchasing habits.  For example, the doc goes into detail about how chickens in the livestock industry are raised in complete darkness, growing from chick to adult in about 9 weeks, thanks to all the hormones they're injected with.  They cram as many as will fit into a small barn, where many will die from being trampled, not being able to get away because their bones haven't caught up to their muscle growth and their legs can't hold up their body weight.  Egg-laying chickens are kept in very small cages, just big enough for their bodies, and are also kept in darkness most of the time, except for when they are stimulated to lay eggs, at which point bright lights are shone in their eyes, causing them to stress out and drop eggs.  If they die in their little cages, it could be weeks before someone comes around to remove the body.  
So once I saw this and learned more, I payed the extra for better eggs.  I knew that "free range" only meant that each chicken gets about 3 square feet of space, instead of one, but I felt a little bit better about that.  I avoided Purdue or Tyson, knowing that they were forcing small farmers to change the way they raised chickens to be more productive instead of humane. 
Food, Inc also talks about beef - the unnatural ways cows are raised and the amount of processing the meat goes through... after watching that, I hardly ever bought beef anymore, especially ground beef (which is processed with bleach and any red "blood" you see in the packaging is food coloring to make you feel better about eating it."  
I felt like these small changes were making a difference.  Maybe they were... But I will admit I chose to be ignorant about a lot of it.  We didn't have a lot of disposable income, and the better stuff cost a lot more!  I was still buying into the protein story and believed I needed meat every day, so I often chose was right for my wallet, instead of my conscious.  

While I was talking to the coworker and I brought up "Food, Inc," she asked if I had watched "Forks Over Knives."  I hadn't, but I saw it in the Netflix queue and had heard others talking about it.  She said "watch it.  watch it tonight."  So I did!
I now highly recommend this documentary to everyone!  It focuses on 2 Drs (one PhD, one MD) who have spent their lives studying the same basic principle - we are what we eat.  One Dr noticed on a trip to the Philippines that many of the poorer families had healthier children than the affluent families, whose children had a shockingly high rate of liver cancer.  He suspected a link to their diet, since the affluent families could afford to eat meat daily.  He found a study that backed him up, where they fed test rats diets of either 5% casein or 20% casein, after being exposed to a known carcinogen.  The rats who were in the 5% group had a significantly lower amount of cancerous tumors.  They even did a test where they changed the rats diets and it showed that when the rats went from 20% to 5% their cancer stopped growing and in some cases went away!  They then did a huge study in China, looking at the rates of different types of cancer in all the different counties and compared it to the diets of the locals in those counties.  It was pretty obvious that there was a link between diet and cancer, and a lot of it had to do with the consumption of meat and dairy!
The whole time I was watching I was captivated, but I knew I'd never be able to convince Aaron... he was an athlete, he needed protein!  He has twice as much muscle mass as I do, and he got that way eating a high protein diet.  Then, the documentary showed an MMA fighter, Mac Danzig.  He looked pretty good - same body type as Aaron... and he was totally vegan.  Basically, the documentary explains that we've all been programmed to believe animal protein is the only kind, or at least the best kind.  In reality, we don't need that much protein, but meat is calorically dense when compared to vegetables, so our primitive minds crave it.  In the cave man days, we didn't know when our next meal was going to be, so we ate whatever had the most calories to fuel us as long as possible.  Nowadays, we know when our next meal is, but our brain still functions this way.  Vegetables and fruits (a plant-based diet) has more than enough protein than we need, as long as we eat a good variety.  
I immediately told Aaron about what I had learned.  As I expected, he was skeptical but agreed to watch it.  The next day, he was texting me every 10 minutes about the information he was finding that backed up the documentary completely.  He was worried about the increased amount of soy in a vegan diet, so he did some research and found nothing wrong with soy itself - only in highly processed soy isolates or concentrates!  Makes sense - you take a good thing and process it to the high heavens, and guess what?   It's now bad for you!!
The next night we decided to look for more on Netflix, and we found a documentary called "Vegucated."  The description just said it was about 3 meat-eating New Yorkers who agreed to go vegan for 6 weeks for an experiment.  Sounded perfect!  
The beginning was fantastic - it was like they were reading our minds.  Are all vegans dirty hippies?  Did we have to live on a commune and make our own soap and clothes?  No!  The main character in the storyline sounded a lot like us!
Then it got into the details of how animals are treated in the livestock industry.  Like I said before, I knew a lot of it, but I chose to be ignorant.  The information and images in this documentary were not things I could ignore anymore.  I already had the beginnings of the change in me and this was the nail in the coffin.  I can't eat pork anymore after seeing farmers castrating baby pigs with their bare hands, kicking an injured piglet away after it got caught in the gate mechanism and was dying, or shooting one between the eyes with a bolt gun, as it tried to run away.  I won't be able to drink milk without thinking of the cows who are forced to be pregnant their entire lives so they produce milk, but as soon as the baby is born they drag it away so it never gets to bond with its mother, but instead will either be killed for veal or raised to live the same fate.  I cannot continue to eat chicken without thinking of the baby chicks being sorted and thrown around like nothing - the "lucky" females being put in boxes to be shipped to egg farms, and the boys being killed because they can't lay eggs or be used for meat.  They either put them in plastic bags to suffocate and dump them with the trash, or put them in the grinder to be used as feed for other animals... alive.  That image will never leave me.  
What really bothered me was the people doing these things.  A few months ago, there was a story on the local news about a man who put 4 kittens in plastic bags and put them in the freezer to die.  Thankfully, someone found them and called the authorities - 3 survived and were adopted thanks to the local SPCA.  But what I couldn't get over and what puts a knot in my stomach even now, was the thought that a human being was physically capable of doing that to a helpless, defenseless baby kitten who just wanted to be loved.  I cannot imagine having those eyes looking back at me as I seal up the bag and close the freezer door.  Just like that, I cannot comprehend how so many farmers around the country do these horrific things to these animals every day.  How you could treat the cutest baby piglets and chicks like that makes me feel sick. 





I thought it would be harder than it actually is... the only real hard part I've found is talking to people about it.  Many of my friends have been pretty confused when I share the news with them, and I don't want to be that stereotype who pushes my beliefs on others.  I chose to be ignorant for a while and I have to respect other people's decisions to do the same - especially if I'm going to continue my friendships with them!!  I've always hated religious groups who try to push their beliefs on me, so I can't start doing that to my friends... but it's so tough because I feel so passionate about it and when you're excited about a new chapter in your life, what do you want to do?  Share it with your friends!  

I needed an outlet to share my thoughts and get my passion out, so I figured a blog would be a good way to go!  I visit vegan blogs frequently to find tips and recipes, so why not start my own?  I don't know if anyone will read it but me, but that's just fine...