Meat Yuckstitutes.

Hello Hello!

Last post, I talked a little about vegan/vegetarian diets. This time, I would like to share my opinion on vegetarian imitation meats, or any vegetarian/vegan product that is sold to imitate something that isn't veg-friendly. As you can probably already tell, I am not a fan.

First, there is the problem that no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be able to reproduce meat with vegetables. Not gon' happen. This is instantly problematic because people who are used to eating meat are not going to like the alternative, discouraging a meat-free diet.

There is also the fact that a lot of these products commonly found in your grocery store are not that healthy anyway. Many of them are high in fat, sodium, and are extremely refined, even though they have a vegetarian label on them. They are also commonly made with soy, a product that has gained a notorious reputation as of late, for a plethora of health and environmental reasons. For information on the problems associated with soy - check this out.

Another problem that I have with the imitation of meat products and the tendency to utilize meat-free ingredients to make meat dishes, is that it places limitations on the creativity of the chef. Vegetarian ingredients open up a whole new world of possibilities, they don't simply exist to imitate meat. It's really difficult to find good vegetarian recipes that aren't simply vegetarian burgers, steaks, etc. A really good resource for innovative, fresh recipes are raw food recipes. I recently bought a cookbook called Eat Raw, Eat Well. Every recipe I have tried so far has been so completely different than anything else I have cooked, and really tasty.

A final, disturbing fact for vegetarians is that choosing to purchase imitation meat or cooking veggie meats is basically admitting that they really need meat. It is saying that you are suffering so hard through your vegetarianism that you can't live without a burger.

I can't emphasize enough how rewarding it is to make your own food rather than buying it premade from a grocery store!

-Brett

Cookies!!!

Hey Guys,

Sorry it's been so long since the last post. It's been really hard trying to find time and motivation since I started working full time. Not that I'm complaining, my job rocks!

Recently before we moved, Evan and I decided to transition into a vegan diet. I celebrated my 5 year vegetarian anniversary this February :D and am ready to take it a little further. I don't mean to preach, but cutting meat out of your diet is one of the most effective things you can do to help save the environment! Livestock are responsible for more greenhouse gases than anything else in the world. There are also tons and tons of stats on the health benefits of vegans/vegetarians over their meat-eating brethren. Not to mention human and animal rights issues, food poisoning debacles, artificial hormones...

I've been thinking about how weird it is that we drink other animals' milk a lot lately. And the fact that we do it as adults! Think about how weird it would be if someone you knew told you they had human breast milk every morning with their cereal. Ew. And you don't normally see other animals drinking inter-species milk.

As a kid, I drank a lot of milk. probably around 3-4 big glasses a day, and this carried on until recently, when I started to look for milk replacements such as almond milk. Now that I rarely drink milk, whenever  I do, I feel sick within half an hour. Now I realize that I just never really noticed that I was feeling like that all the time before, and just assuming it was normal. Cutting milk out of my diet was a really natural step for me, especially with so many substitutes.

Eggs are yet another product of the livestock industry that I don't want to be a part of anymore. Chickens are farmed in outrageous conditions, which you only need look to Food Inc. to discover. Countless other Youtube videos for animal cruelty will show you the same thing.

I know a lot of people are scared of veganism, because they think that there's nothing left to eat at that point. Wrong! The key to vegan eating is cooking your own food. You can learn to modify almost any recipe to be vegan, as long as it's not meat-based, like steak. Here is an example of a recipe that I modified to be completely vegan!

Original Recipe: My Favourite Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 
  
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 
  
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 
  
• 2 eggs
• 
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 
  
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 
  
• 3 cups quick-cooking oats
• 
  
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 
  
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Modified Recipe:

1/2 cup margarine

1/4 cup apple sauce

1/4 cup unrefined coconut oil

1 cup brown sugar

1 banana

a bunch of vanilla (who measures?)

1 1/4 cups multigrain or brown flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup porridge oats (a mix of whole oats, steel cut oats, flax bran and a bunch of other stuff)

1 cup quinoa

as many chocolate chips (vegan ones!) as you like!

1/3 cup of vegan cocoa

This is just an example of what you can do, there are so many different ingredients you can swap in/out!

Don't take my word for it! Thanks for reading,

Brett