Day 28: Still Vegan, and first approaches to Veganomicon

More or less just a quick update. I am still going strong on the vegan side, and can hardly believe it’s been a month already. I am also thinking more and more about keeping it up after easter, i.e. after the end of lent. It will of course be much harder not living alone (and just cooking for myself) over the summer, so we will see.

I also tried out the first recipe from my new Veganomicon . It was the Cauliflower and Mushroom Potpie with Olive Biscuit Crust. So, so good! I am ashamed to say I almost ate the whole thing in one go. At the end, I found myself panically stuffing the leftovers into the freezer to stop myself from eating everything. For a picture and the complete recipe, check out TofuCrossing.
Basically, it is a potpie of lots of vegetables, tossed into an amazingly creamy sauce, topped with a salty biscuit layer with olives. So. Good. And trust me, although it takes a bit of work, it is totally worth it. The creamy sauce makes for a perfect comfort food in a cold night, or any night really. Yum…
Re: the veganomicon, I found a couple of great sites that help . I love just browsing through the book, but have found quite a few of the recipes to be slightly intimidating to the fresh vegans like me. After having tried the potpie, I am much more optimistic since every little step was explained so well even a very inexperienced cook like me can manage perfectly well. Still, these blogs help figure out where to start in this massive book of vegan goodness:

• VegWeb offers reviews of almost every recipe in the book, given by many different people
• VegMuffinMancooks his way through the book and posts the results in the blog
• CookingForAVeganLover gives a list of people’s favourite recipes from the book.

Also, today I am starting revision for final exams: a whole 5 weeks early! Actually, I will start to revise right now. I mean, now. Yes.

Day 18: An unamerican, pot smoking, skinny-as-fuck college hippy

Spring break has finally arrived, so I should have some time now to sleep, read, try out recipes from my new Veganomicon book that finally arrived and generally do enjoyable things.

That was the plan, but town is dead empty and I am bored. It’s not even 7pm yet, and I’ve already managed to watch 2 and 1/2 movies (the 1/2 one was really only about a 1/16th of the movie, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. Although I enjoyed the book, I just couldn’t watch…)

I then randomly ended up on urbandictionary.com and searched for a definition of veganism, or a vegan. Apart from the boring, obvious definitions, I found some hilarious ones and wanted to share with everyone.

These are a couple of highlights:

A vegan is:

Usually a college hippy or a pompous Hollywood celebrity. They love to point out their diet is so health even though they’re 5’11” and weight 100lbs.
They tend to get appalled or preachy if you so much mention that you eat meat.

And also:

…a pot smoking liberal, living in a drug induced fantacy world where eating meat is wrong. To hell with the fact that meat has been eaten since the dawn of time by carnivores of all types. These people are dangerous, and must committed to a mental institution before they ruin the country. 

Not to forget:

Annoying skinny fucks who refuse to eat meat or any other other animal by product.

And of course, ‘terrorists’ had to be in there:

the epicenter of the internet. terrorists. rogues. rampant with heroin use, barfights, and bands so noisy only a mother could love them.

..Of course:

Someone who slaughters and kills fruits, and vegetables.

Lastly, my personal favourite:

A person who dosen’t consume animal products. They are unamerican, probably communist, and in the case of the male vegan most likely a homosexual.

I actually laughed out loud at some of these. It is great to see people’s stereotypes condensed in such a snappy form. Mix some 19th century attitudes in with some Republican propaganda (surely, anyone who is different has to be pot-smoking, terrorist-communist breed) and a couple of horrifying spelling and grammar mistakes: perfect recipe.
Luckily, I have yet to meet such ‘criticism’ in person – although who knows what goes on in people’s heads anyway…
Have a good day, everyone 😉