Welcome to the vegan vortex

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

We’re three weeks into our vegan cleanse and I thought it would be a good point to update you on what we’ve been eating. Full post-date wrap-up to come next week, but to give you a snapshot, here goes….

Fake cheese and lots of it. Not Velveeta of course. Treeline nut cheese has a faintly acidic taste, but overall it isn’t too bad. I have yet to try the White Alder that I bought after seeing a rave write-up in Food & Wine magazine, but will crack open that package this week.

Assuming that any vegan worth his or her salt eats plenty of salad, we jumped on the bandwagon and have been eating our greens. This was the best use for nut cheese so far; a little goes a long way and you don’t have to give up creamy salad dressings. Loved this version with butter lettuce and pomegranate seeds.

As you might have read in this post, I’ve been trying desperately to get my hands on anything that resembles steak, from mushrooms to eggplants, to big fat slices of cauliflower. Meat love dies hard.

Hummus has taken over as a major food group – my favorite combo being with tomatoes and pickled onions. So now instead of 3PM dairy bloat, I have a pregnant belly from too many legumes. Either that or somebody hasn’t told me something…

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Pierogi love

Monday, January 20, 2014

It was 1990 in Banff, Alberta, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies when I had my first kiss. I remember it vividly. The Banff Mountain Ski Academy was hosting our team for a set of races at Nakiska. We’d be racing the same downhill course that had been used for the Women’s Olympics just two years before. I was terrified.

But I was turning 15, that tender age when you morph from innocent kid into hormonal teenager. Boys were a good distraction, and there was a kid on our team who stood out. He was strong and confident, cocky even. I was downright attracted. What girl wouldn’t be? At least in the early teenage years, when the concept of boy-girl attraction is so new. The nice guys were a blip in my rearview mirror.

With a few days to kill before the race, we arrived in Banff ready to eat, sleep and train. We bunked up with our hosts and settled into our new schedule.

And then it happened. Out of nowhere, the kid started to flirt. I must have spun around in surprise. He hadn’t spoken a word to me all season long. But here he was, trying to make me laugh. I welcomed the attention. I had a huge crush on him after all.

So, one night after a Polish-themed dinner, we crept upstairs. With the smell of ski wax and the sound of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon filling the air, we kissed. It should have been an incredible moment, but it wasn’t. I expected romance and here was this guy, groping like he was searching for something.

Fortunately, I’d fallen in love with something else that night: pierogies.

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100 new foods

Satsuma oranges

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Satsuma oranges were all the rage in our house around Christmas when we were going overboard on all things citrus, from tangerines to mandarin oranges. And Satsuma oranges might just be the prettiest of the bunch with their beautiful green stems. It beats me why we waited so long to try them as part of our challenge, but I’m glad that we finally did. We didn’t get any earth-shattering reactions from the kids, but still a fun fruit to explore.

ME: What is this called?

LAUREN: An orange!

ME: Yeah, but it’s a special kind of orange. Have you ever seen an orange with the leaves still attached? See? The leaves are still attached.

EMMA: It looks like cranberry juice.

ME: We did an orange a long time ago.

LAUREN: But it was much bigger.

ME: Yeah, it was bigger and it kind of had a funny shape didn’t it?

LAUREN: Yeah. The ugly orange.

ME: Lauren you have such a good memory.

EMMA: It’s kind of like orange juice.

ME: OK, so be careful, I don’t want you guys to poke yourselves with the stem. These are special oranges and you find them in the grocery store with the stems attached. I don’t know why they still have the stems attached, but let’s see what it looks like on the inside.

(cutting)

LAUREN: It kind of looks like a clementine.

ME: It does look like a clementine. Smell it.

LAUREN: It smells a little different when it’s open. This smells a little lighter and clementines smell a little darker.

ME: What does it taste like?

LAUREN: It tastes like kind of sour, and kind of sweet. A little more sour and sweeter than a real orange. Because it can’t taste the same.

SAM: It tastes like sweet potatoes.

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NYC

Liberty Science Center

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Last weekend we visited the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. Although it’s not one of the museums on everyone’s Must See list when they visit New York, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Rodney thought it would be funny to dress up as a 6’6” elf for our visit.

That’s actually one of my Christmas gifts to him. A perfectly slouchy hipster hat from Urban Outfitters. Rodney has taken to calling himself Harry Styles when he wears it, but if I were to give people a multiple choice test, the answer would most likely be B or C. Am I right?

Besides Rodney’s experimental hat, there was so much to explore at the Science Center. First up was the suspended Rubik’s cube, which is visible from every floor. Although impressive in size, it gave me vivid flashbacks to the 80s when I stood at 4’9” with crimped bangs and jelly bracelets and would launch the cube across our living room in frustration.

As to be expected, the Bob the Builder exhibit was a hit. Emma convinced me that although she’s on the young side, she’s ready for drivers’ ed. Which would be convenient since Rodney has suggested that I take my backseat driving tendencies to the next level by installing a secondary set of brakes into the car.

We explored the Energy Quest exhibit and learned about the Earth’s natural resources, from wind and solar to nuclear power. But the favorite exhibit of the day was Our Hudson Home where we checked out all of the creatures that live in the Hudson River. The big draw was the tank of horrendously ugly bearded fish.

To be honest, I’m not sure whether the fish are inherently ugly or just seem angry because they now live in a small dark tank in the middle of Jersey. But whatever the reason, we loved them.

Other animals included turtles and fake birds.

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Fake steak

Monday, January 13, 2014

I must be a carnivore at heart because this week it was all about meatless meat. And I’m not talking about little veggie crumbles that look like meat. I’m talking about steak-style food. Thick cut, the kind of food that needs a serrated knife. There’s a reason I go by the nickname “the meat chef” in our house.

In early 2012, Bon Appetit magazine published an issue that featured a full-fledged cauliflower steak. Until that point I’d only seen cauliflower cut into dainty florets. But here was a cauliflower, unapologetic in its manliness, chest bulging, mustache intact, ready to ride its Harley into the sunset.

In other words: cut into slabs, seared, roasted, and drizzled with a hearty dressing.

And it was one of those life-changing moments. The kind of moment where you realize that by God, vegetables can be impressive. Cut them like they’re supposed to be cut, not into tiny little pieces, but into great big beautiful slices, and there you have it: a vegetable main that can win over the heartiest of appetites.

The problem is that I’d never actually experimented with prepping my veggies like this. No need, I had steak! And so I continued….trimming and slicing my way through my vegetable prep, primping and glazing them with a touch of soy here, a dash of cumin seed there.

But now that I’m vegan for a whole month, nothing is holding me back. By default, veggies need to be the main event. Veggies, start your engines, it’s road trip time. Here are a few fake steak recipes that scratched my steak itch last week.

1. Cauliflower steak

I dug up the old Bon Appetit cauliflower recipe for some inspiration and got to work. I followed the same basic principle, roasting and searing it for a crisp exterior and soft but still-toothsome interior. And I updated the dressing, going for a Mediterranean style, with capers, olives, pickled onions, and a combination of olive oil + red wine vinegar.

The surprise result was that cauliflower does masquerade well as steak. It was meaty, rich, filling, but didn’t result in the gut buster feeling that so often accompanies meat.

Steak rating: 3.5 stars

2. Mushroom sandwich

My step dad is a huge cheesesteak lover, and by proxy, I’ve become a bit of a steak sandwich lover myself. Although I’ve never had his favorite version from Rothman’s in NYC, I’ve smoked out my apartment on more than one occasion charring the perfect strip to wedge between slices of bread.

With the deep freeze temps that have rocked the NorthEast last week, I was in the mood for something hearty. A steak sandwich came to mind but my cursed (excuse me, cleansing) vegan diet was getting in the way.

So I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, splashed some water on my face, and told myself: “self: you can do it, figure this out.”

I headed over to Forager’s market where I bought a mountain of mushrooms, a head of garlic and a fresh baguette. Because if there’s any vegetable that can pass as steak, it’s mushrooms. Which is possibly why they’re such a great combo: you’re basically allowing yourself to eat twice the amount of steak in your sandwich, minus the guilt.

Just cut the mushrooms into big meaty pieces, give them a good sear in plenty of olive oil and you’re on the fast track to steak heaven…So steaky that I almost forgot that I wasn’t eating real steak.

Steak rating: 4.5 stars