I Can't Believe It's Vegan!

A tip o' the hat to the All Animal Life blog for this one.

So you wanna be a vegan, because 1) it's better for the environment 2) it's morally "correct" and 3) it's healthier. But what can you eat? Are you doomed to a life of wheatgrass and alfalfa sprouts?

Heck no! The folks at PETA have compiled a handy list of vegan-friendly products that can be found at your local supermarket. That's right, kids - you can save the world and yourself and still enjoy Cracker Jacks, Cocoa Puffs and KoolAid.

Take a stroll through your local grocery store, check some ingredients, and you'll see what we mean. You may even be surprised to find that a few of your favorite indulgences happen to be vegan! For example, did you know that Pepperidge Farm Turnovers, Murray Butter Cookies, and Cracker Jacks are all vegan? They may not all be "health foods," but they are great for the taste buds! Just remember, one cannot live on Goldenberg Peanut Chews alone.

There is also an abundance of chips, dips, cookies, candies, frozen pies, soups, and other mouth-watering items by mainstream food manufacturers that are also vegan.

I will give PETA the benefit of the doubt here and assume that this list is intended to seduce SAD-eating non-vegans into seeing that a vegan diet can be...fun! You don't have to eat nothing but soy "meat" and kidney beans. You can keep your Pop Tarts! Froot Loops! Tater Tots!

Awesome. If I ever ate any of that shite, I'd sign right up.

Course, I am a tad curious as to how eating any of these foods helps the environment. I mean, can you get 100 Mile Cap'n Crunch? Keebler Fudge Pops that aren't manufactured in a large, pollution-pumping plant? Betty Crocker Hash Browns made using fresh, local ingredients sourced from small, sustainable family farms? And how does eating mass-produced processed food help the soil, air, water? If we all ate like this, pollution etc from factory farming operations would certainly decrease (though we'd still have all that methane from rice paddies to worry about) - but wouldn't we just be replacing one issue with another?

Well, at least we wouldn't be killing any animals. Except during large-scale crop production, of course. And unless you count human beings as animals, in which case they'd be dropping like flies after a few decades.

About 25% of us would suffer metabolic syndrome/insulin resistance, so would step lightly out of the population via diabetes and its associated conditions. Anywhere from 1 in 22 to 1 in 4 of us would be stricken with the more than 150 medical conditions that result from gluten intolerance, and get to spend our lives on medication to treat, among other things: thyroid disease; colitis; Crohn's; arthritis; lupus; gallbladder disease; depression; ataxia; migraines; schitzophrenia; Addison's disease and multiple sclerosis.

If the only criteria for selecting a food item is whether or not it's vegan, then that criteria is sorely misguided. Apparently, it's fine by PETA. My concern is that young people, researching veganism, will read this list and stock up. On it's website, PETA does warn that "you can't be healthy if you eat nothing but junk food" - unfortunately, their version of healthy food still causes trouble for a whole lotta people, even if it's whole grain and organic.

If PETA could admit that people can be and in fact are very healthy on a diet that includes meat (which, if they really read the science from the late 1800's onwards, they would HAVE to concede) and based their position on moral grounds, I'd have no problem with that. Morality is, after all, subjective. If you feel that it's "wrong" to eat animals, then don't eat them (and take your vitamins). But to take the science that suits your beliefs and ignore the rest is, in my opinion, immoral.

If they would read, say, Good Calories Bad Calories, for example, and actually LOOK at the work that has been done (and ignored by the mainstream) for literally centuries, or examine the paleoanthropological evidence regarding human diet, PETA could do some good to both the general public and it's members. They have no problem, for the most part, embracing "alternative", non-mainstream information - and Taubes' book is a huge eye-opener as far as information suppression by the mainstream goes. Instead, they create websites like Atkins Exposed, which recycles the same old myths that those of us who've actually read the literature and the studies (from both sides) know to be false.

And now, they're promoting factory-made, highly packaged and processed, trucked-all-over-the-country-to-get-to-you junk food. Way to go, guys.

What I Ate On My Summer Vacation

I was absent from the blogosphere for most of last month, and I have a good reason: I am co-producing/directing a documentary and there was much work to be done. My partner and I spent a week in DC at George Washington University doing some filming. It was a great time, and I'll absolutely return to do some sightseeing. But oh, the food. The food. I hadn't truly realized how good I have it working from home until I was faced with mass-produced dormitory food...food catered to the needs of a predominantly vegetarian/vegan crowd.

Egads. Talk about a carb fest. It was noodle and rice-a-palooza. Nothing like being a low-carbing gluten/soy intolerant gal at a vegan buffet. About all I could eat were the napkins.

My partner fared no better than I. She can't eat wheat, dairy or refined sugar, and has a host of other GI issues. She doesn't control carbs, but she (like me) needs her meat, dammit. The first night we were overjoyed to see chicken wings. We gorged, and then hoarded a bunch just in case. Good thing too - the next day lunch was some sort of noodle dish. I actually made a meal of peas and salad, with copius amounts of Italian dressing to add some fat and tide me over. For dinner, I ate leftover chicken wings and more salad. I then proceeded to inflate like a gigantic parade balloon. Who the hell knows why? I am guessing the salad dressing was primarily soybean oil. Fantastic.

Luckily, we discovered a Safeway within walking distance. I lived on salami, proscuitto and melon, rotisserie chicken, macadamia nuts, hummus, baby carrots and corn chips, and dark chocolate. Our camera guy was superfantasticallyawesome enough to hit up a Trader Joe's and bring us other supplies. I am now convinced that Canada's biggest problem is that we have no Trader Joe's. I miss it. I keep thinking about it. It's painful.



We did get a couple of good meals in, thankfully. One night we found a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese place called The Little China Cafe. Normally I don't bother with Chinese anymore because of my gluten issues, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and eat whatever I could. I had my trusty Triumph dining cards, and I showed the Chinese one to both owners. They were interested, and went to great lengths to understand what I needed. We ended up with two amazing dishes: beef with green peppers and onions, and Happy Family, a dish of shrimp, scallops, chicken, pork, beef, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, snow peas and napa. Both are normally served in a brown sauce, but the chef left out the soy and made a delicious white sauce instead. My fears that Chinese food without soy sauce would be bland and pathetic were unfounded - it was delicious. I will now be hitting Toronto's Chinatown with renewed vigor, like King Leonidus hit Xerxes. Tummah! Prepare for Moo Shi!



Our last evening found us weary wandering around Geogetown, craving meat. We collapsed in to the window seat at Red Ginger. I ordered a glass of Spanish Cabernet Sauvingnon and practically snorted it. There's something about a long week of shooting in soupy, mucky heat that makes a girl just wanna get drunk. I held back - the menu was intoxicating enough. Meat, meat, and more meat. My partner ordered Walnut Crusted Duck Breast with Quinoa Pumpkin Salad and Blood Orange Chipotle Sauce; I, heeding the call of my entire digestive system, chose the NY. Strip Steak, Shiitake Mushroom, Vidalia Onions and Spinach with Three Herb Chimichurri. A million other items called to me, but my body craved rare beef. The chef served our table personally (okay...he served all the ladies only tables), and brought us a surprise starter: Jamaican Jerk Chicken Lollipops with Potatoes, Vidalia Onions and Fried Cabbage Hash. Good thing too, because I was about ready to eat my own hair. I'd love to write a rave review of the dishes, and they were absolutely fantastic, but I was so desperate and protein-deprived and tired and crabby and half-drunk at the time that I have no recollection of the details. I did, however, take a picture of the main course:

I do recall that it was juicy, tender, and beefalicious. It vastly improved my mood.

So what did I learn from all of this? That I am spoiled working from home, because I can eat whatever I want. That travelling may prove a challenge for me nutritionally. And that I'd better learn how to make pemmican, so I always have something good to eat.

Note: people have asked me why the dorm meals were primarily vegan/vegetarian. We were filming at a training week for young environmentalists/social activists, and the myth that meatless eating means eco-friendly eating is still alive and well. Apparently, it's okay to eat the products of Big Ag and chug Coke along with your Boca burger...but that's for another post.

At Live and...well...?

A few weeks ago, I agreed to have dinner at a Toronto hot spot: Live Organic Food Bar. I made a bit of a fuss about it. Okay, at first I flatly refused to go. Why would I, someone who has never turned down a restaurant meal in my life, cross my arms and get all snitty-like about going out to eat? Well I'll tell ya. And I'm a tad ashamed of myself.

Live specializes in raw vegan fare. There. I said it. Happy?

I do not like veganism. I don't. As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time reading about and researching food and nutrition, I can't hear about veganism without cringing at the total lack of scientific-based evidence for its health benefits. Nor can I ignore the fact that there's a great deal of total crap tossed around in vegan circles as fact (personal favorite: meat sits and putrefies in your colon for 3 days/6 months/20 years/forever). Furthermore, I wince when someone tells me how 'natural' it is to eat vegan, but then can't explain why nutrients like Vitamin B12 only exist in animal foods, or why no successful (meaning reproductively) thriving vegan societies have ever been discovered. I want to pat them on the bum and send them off to Anthropology 101.

That said, we do have some things in common. I believe, as they do, that all life is sacred and that animals should be treated humanely. I also happen to think that eating them is okay - in fact, it's the natural order of things. But whatever. I agree to disagree, I don't seek to argue with them. I did my time as a vegetarian, and I know all the arguments. I know the results for me were horrific. I know I feel better on a more natural human diet. See, I'm not even sticking in links to prove my point - that's how detached and evolved I am about the whole issue.

Except for when I was invited to Live, of course. Then I stuck out my chest and went on about why I wasn't going to go and spend good money to eat somewhere when I'd just be hungry again an hour later. How there'd be little there I could eat, most likely. And so on, and so forth. Totally petulant and superior.

Then I found out they had nut cheese. I don't much care what form cheese comes in - I'll eat it (Eye cheese being the one exception to this rule). So I said okey dokey, and off I went to Live.

We sat in the back patio, so as to enjoy the deafening roar of the trains that thundered past every few minutes. I was impressed by the picnic tables - they have padded seats, presumably because most vegans have little bony asses that make sitting on benches extremely painful (Tracy, stop it!). Our server was super-nice, and we bonded over kombucha brewing tales. More about kombucha in another post. So far, so good.

The menu changes seasonally, a fact that impressed me to no end, and not everything was raw. There were three specials that had a little help from the stove: the Harmony Roll, some macrobiotic brown rice sushi thing, the Radical Falafel, their ayurvedic dish, and a "Comfort Food" dish of black beans and coconut rice. I kept my tummy-eye on the falafel option.

The rest of the menu was raw, and luckily allowed for a sampler plate of all four entrees because I couldn't have made up my mind between two of them otherwise. The raw zucchini spaghetti with raw marinara sauce and sprouted walnut and sunflower seed "neatballs" ? Or Dhali Baba Pizza, a sprouted buckwheat crust topped with baba ganoush AND spinach pesto, marinated fennel, red peppers and leeks and boasting - gasp - cashew "feta" cheese? All four of us ordered samplers, with a Radical Falafel and Comfort Food to share. We'd totally covered our culinary bases. The gals ordered juices, but I stuck to water. I was saving for a long-lost favorite: a chai latte with almond milk. Oh, how I miss my Second Cup chai lattes! If I could do/would do soy milk, I'd have one every day and weep for the glory of it. One pal let me sip away at her coconut water, a drink that I adore even though the taste is ever-so-slightly reminiscent of armpit.

We sit, we sip, we scream to be heard over the trains. And we wait. Everyone is going insane over the smells wafting out from the open kitchen window, where I have a great view of the chef's arm and jumbo rice cooker. Every so often, he sticks his head out the window and talks to one of the servers. I like this closeness to the kitchen. I feel like I'm at a friend's place. A friend who takes an inordinately long time to not-cook dinner. I'm in no hurry though. My friends are all starving, drooling over the heavy curry scent (do I detect raisins?) that hangs over our table like the boughs of a sandalwood tree. I'm too busy pondering how closed-minded I was about the place initially, just because I don't agree with the politics. I wonder too about the hierarchies we impose on everything, including nature. Why is it alright to kill and eat plants? After all though many obviously want to be eaten so as to propagate themselves (eat the tomato, shit out the seeds, new tomato life begins, life is a wonderland etc), many of them put up some major defenses against predation and, I'd wager, are pretty pissed about their inclusion in our salads and casseroles. So why are their lives less important than the lives of animals? And if humans fare better on a diet that includes animal protein, why is it that our lives are less important also?

Finally, the food arrives. The falafel, by far, looks the tastiest so I delve in. The falafel itself is alright, a tad bland unless dipped in the tahini sauce, but the wrapper - oh! A chickpea pancake, light and fluffy as a cloud. I'd have gladly given back the rest of my dinner and eaten a stack of those babies as is. But there's four of us and one of them, so I limit myself to two bites and turn my attention to my sampler.

The lump with a hump in the top left corner is, after some investigation, determined to be the Bohemian 'Wrap'sody: kale, tomato and avocado wrapped in a flax-herb thing with Kalamata spread, a root veggie chip and sunflower seed-caper dipping sauce. With all of the ingredients, you'd think it would taste of something. Evidently, all of these foods together actually form some sort of flavour black hole, leaving nothing behind but texture and crap that falls all over the place. I eat it, of course.

The mound in the bottom left turns out to be Rat-A-Tat Primavera: ratatouille over cauliflower "rice" with balsamic reduction and garlic sesame "bread". I am familiar with cauliflower rice, as it's a common low-carber recipe. Ours is cooked, however. This is not, and it has the mouthfeel of...well, crumbled up cauliflower. Normally I am a ratatouille fan, because I love the gentle medley of flavours and colour; this just tastes of balsamic vinegar and something else I can't place so simply refer to as Ick. One bite, and I'm done.

I turn my attention to the zucchini pasta dish, and wow...I am blown away. Okay, maybe not blown...I am gently breezed. Again, as a low-carber and gluten-free-gal, I am familiar with using zucchini as noodles. But the marinara sauce is electric. It wakes my mouth right up, commanding attention like a little veggie Patton. Zesty, fun...a little bit lusty, even. Even the "neatball" is yummy, not too nutty with a nice, chewy texture. I make little noises and nod as I eat, wishing I'd ordered a whole plate.

But I still have the pizza to go...which I save until after I sample the black bean/coconut rice dish. I spoon some into my mouth, and a little piece of my soul immediately dies of boredom. I wonder if the coconut and the chef got into a labour dispute, because the coconut appears to be on strike in this dish. I am not a huge rice fan at the best of times, but until that moment I hadn't realized it was possible to make rice blander than it already is. Quite bewildering.

On to the pizza, with its cashew "feta" cheese! I am so excited. So, so excited. Until I try to bite through the buckwheat crust. Apparently, one needs to be a beaver in order to gnaw through it. I dump the toppings, break off a piece, and use it as a scoop. Perhaps it's because I've been off grains for so long, but the crust tastes like a fencepost. I can also detect a hint of cardboard box, if I concentrate. I forgo the crust and just eat the toppings, which have barely managed to survive marination torture in Ick. I can't get a hold of the "feta" to save my bloody life. But it's only three little bites, and I eat it.

The salad becomes my high point. The "caesar" dressing, made from gluten-free miso, olive oil, lemon, dates and garlic, is DIVINE and finds me swooshing coated lettuce around in my mouth, trying to figure out measurements so I can recreate this at home. This, with the neatball thing, would have made a nice light (very light) dinner.

On to dessert! There's a pretty large selection at Live, all dairy, gluten and sugar free and, since it's also raw, soy free. I'd imagine egg free as well, since it's a vegan place, though they don't advertise them as such even though they mention the dairy thing. Anyway, we decide to split a piece of mint chocolate cake - how French Women Don't can we get - and I order my beloved chai latte. A friend orders a chai hot chocolate. I am salivating.

The cake looks fantabulistically awesome. I have to row my fork through it, it's so sense and chewy. Unfortunately, it's the sweetest sugar free anything I've ever experienced. I am actually shocked by it. I suck rather than chew my piece to keep it clear of my teeth, which are aching just from the vibes. Obviously the cake is sweetened, I believe with agave nectar, so I'm not sure what they mean by sugar free - granulated sugar, I suppose. The taste is nice, very much like an After Eight, but I can't do more than three small bites before I feel insulin shock approaching. I retreat instead to my latte - nice, refreshing, and nothing at all like Second Cup because this is REAL chai, not flavoured syrup. It's good, but I wish almond milk could somehow get creamier. I really miss that mouthfeel.

Sounds like I hated the place - actually, I was impressed. Anyone with specific food issues and/or preferences has to be creative, and the folks at Live certainly are that. It was exciting to see food assembled with such respect and, dare I say, art. It was easy to order, because everything is gluten-free. Pretty much anyone with food allergies could eat here. Food chemical intolerances, digestive issues, carb tolerance problems, diabetes...I'd think twice. The staff were fantastic and very interested in getting feedback about all the dishes, something I thought was a cut above - they actually relay the feedback to the chef, who tweaks and twiddles with the food based on customer reaction. It's nice to feel like your opinion is valued and acted upon. And again, the atmosphere was relaxing, comfortable and unpretentious. If you enjoy trains (which I do).

So would I go back? Yeah. My friends had all eaten there before, and said that this particular visit was the worst the food has been. Must've been my putrefied meat energy. Lasagne is going to be on the ever-changing menu next month, and I'm dying to know how they do it. What are the noodles? How's the "cheese"? Then I can steal their ideas and improve on them for my own tastes. But would I go regularly? No. Sometimes? Yes.

And I wasn't hungry afterwards. Course, that could have been due to the large Beef Cobb Salad I made and ate about three hours before dinner. Organic bacon, steak, avocado, egg, tomato, watercress, mixed herbs, romaine, and a homemade Italian dressing - lots of protein, natural fats and bioavailable vitamins, low carb. Can't really top that for a healthy meal...in my stubborn opinion, anyway.