Why Going Vegan Forces You to Eat Good Quality Non-Processed Foods

Ever seen a cheeseless pizza? Here's one with an arugula pesto base, roasted red peppers, kalamata olives, and red onions. Yep, there's NO cheese. Do I miss cheese? Yes, to be honest, of course I miss it. The casein in cheese is addictive, and it's like asking a recovering alcoholic if they miss drinking beer or ex-smokers missing cigarettes. Why do you think so many of us love cheese? Cheese on pizza is one of the best tasting things you can eat, so yes, I miss it. But I do not want to support the dairy industry, so there you go. I don't have much of a problem buying cheese from small, local farms who use raw milk, but there ain't anything like that here, so we tend not to have it in the fridge. When it was in the fridge, I would eat loads of it, couldn't stop, I say! 

Actually, once you decide to stop supporting the massive meat and dairy industry, you have to learn what foods you can eat instead. I mean, once you cut out meat, there goes most of your options that you are used to eating: hamburgers, tacos, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken or beef enchiladas, pepperoni pizza, philly-cheese steaks--it's all very tasty, of course. I'm not going to sit here and lie and say meat doesn't taste good. Up until recently, I have been eating it my entire life (though I'd only eat ground round when I was a kid. That and corn dogs.) And then you cut out dairy and holy shit, now you're really screwed: no more ice-cream, butter, sour cream, milkshakes, cheese burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, yogurt, milk with your cereal. And you've also cut out eggs, so there goes the scrambled eggs, not to mention everything you make with eggs: cookies, cakes, pies, crepes, souffles. What the hell are you supposed to eat? 

This is the salad we had with the pizza: beans, tomato, and corn dressed in a red wine vinegar dressing. It was amazing and I had two big servings. 

For dessert, we made mango sorbet. The mangoes we had were pretty far gone, even too soft to eat, so we made this sorbet right here on top of our dryer (we're redoing our kitchen, so that's why we're in the basement.) 

Vegans have to be super-creative with what they eat. You can of course eat veggie dogs, veggie burgers, soy ice cream and soy cheese, but these products are usually heavily processed--too much soy anyway, and depending on the product, it's GM soy. Many of these products have also been bought by the big boys: Kellog's owns MorningStar, for example. Kellog's also owns Kashi, which I am not happy about at all. I use to be a big Kashi supporter. Not any more. Hot dogs are pretty gross, so why would I want to eat a vegetarian version of them? Yves veggie dogs are about as processed as we go, but those are for the kids. I don't like them, they taste like rubber! Yves is owned by Hain Celestial Group, and so far, this company seems pretty cool as far as big food companies go. Their MaraNatha nut-butters are amazing.  And soy cheese is just disgusting. I'm not crazy about Daiya either. 

Vegans shouldn't worry themselves over eating so many meat-analogues. We don't need to plan menus that are trying to imitate a very Western, utterly boring, conventional diet, such as the good ol' meat and potatoes. That's why it's called comfort food. Comfortable is boring and safe, which is why kids love it so much. Kids have very sensitive taste buds, which is exactly why they don't like foods with strong, intense flavors. As we get older, our taste buds get extremely dull and so we seek out flavor with a vengeance, eating anything we can get our mouths on. Vegetarians can eat loads of cheese and milk and butter and ice cream, so you can be a very unhealthy vegetarian and eat very plain foods. Vegans can go with this, too, or they can stretch their horizons, and will have to, fast, if they don't want to eat so much processed soy in their diets and get bored eating the same "crackers." (That's an Eddie Murphy reference.) Vegans are forced to find creative ways to eat good quality, non-processed food. Let the adventures of Veggie Daddy continue...