Being a (vegan) food snob

I realized a few months ago, that my problem when ordering in restaurants is not that I'm vegan, is that's I'm a food snob. I expect to eat a good meal every single time I'm at a restaurant, and when I don't, I pissed right off. If you can't figure out how to make something delicious without bacon in it, or cheese, or beef stock, you shouldn't be cooking for a living. If you've never expanded your palate beyond meat-and-potatoes meals, then you shouldn't be in a position where you are expected to create dishes for veg*ns on the spot. But it happens all the time: I ask for something vegan, am told the chef will make something special for me, and end up with pasta and red sauce. Or salad and french fries. Becuase if you're at a place where they can't even be bothered to have one vegan item on the menu, the management doesn't care about your business and the chef sure doesn't give a crap about making you a decent meal. I think omnivores make the assumption that vegan don't actually like delicious food; as if someone who cuts out so many "delicious" things from their diet can't possibly care about flavour. When I was at a work event on the weekend and they forgot to prepare my vegan dish, I was trying to avoid the vegan pizza. Vegan pizza usually means the same sub-par crust, without the fat and flavour that usually compensates for the horribleness of the other ingredients, instead with whatever sad vegetables they could find, whether or not they should ever be on a pizza (eggplant? please!). But when I caved and ordered the pizza, mostly due to a lack of other options, I was pleasantly surprised. The tomatoes were ripe, the onions were perfectly cooked, and the crust was both crisp and chewy. That my friends, is how you do a vegan dish--don't forget that food should always be delicious.

#fuckyeahveganpizza

Don't put this pizza on a folding table--it's so full of toppings the table may collapse. #youvebeenwarned

(Partially) Illustrated Things I can Always Eat.

I asked a colleague out for lunch last week. She said, "I was going to suggest sushi but you just had some on Friday." First of all--good memory on her, no? Secondly, I can have sushi anytime.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, midnight snack, post workout...I hope you get what I'm saying. There are a few things like that--if someone asked, "How about this for dinner, again?" I would say, hell yeah! So for my first post of VeganMoFo 2012, here is my very informative list, of (Partially) Illustrated Things I can Always Eat.

Sushi, obviously
The elegance of Japanese food is inherently appealing. The focus on the aesthetics is so different from the meat-potatoes-veg dinners so many of us grew up with. Hallelujah for that! And plus we get to use chopsticks, which is how I measured when I became a fully-formed city girl.

Pizza
Generally speaking, I have to make it myself. So I do. If I am especially disciplined, I will make a pizza and take it to work with me for a couple days' worth of lunch, health-ified with a salad on the side. Sex is like pizza, right? I can't remember how exactly, but it sounds right.

Dumplings
They're tiny and varied, they're stuffed with things, and they come with sauces. If dumplings aren't on your list of OMNoms, you must have been born without taste buds.

Grilled Cheese
Since going vegan, grilled cheese wasn't a popular item on my menu rotation. But then there was Daiya; and I discovered my panini press makes grilled cheese extra awesome. (It's all the extra space for crispy-ness that the panini press makes.) Now there is now going back. 

French toast
This has much the same appeal as grilled cheese--it's fried and it's carbs, so gimmeh! Only with French toast, it's not the gooey cheeze that make it extra nom-worthy, it's the stuff you eat it with--fruit, fruit sauce, maple syrup, icing sugar, or completing the full-on hot-breakfast trifecta of hash browns and meatless sausage/bacon. Weekends are made for this, people.

Falafel
Another food that builds on the basic fried carbs, falafel kicks it up a notch. Not only do you have the fried falafel balls and the pita, some food genius decided that contrasting this with cool, crisp parsley and adding some tahini for depth of flavour would take this food to a whole new level. And it did. 

Mexican

There is something about the flavour palate and the often vegan-ness of Mexican-style food that I can't get enough of. And seriously, anything I can add avocados to has my heart. Furthermore, chipotle peppers are the perfect addition of heat, and leave me teary with delicious joy--and a burning tongue.


Avocado
Do I really need to explain this one? If anything with avocados has my heart, then avocados themselves must be amazeballs. It's like this: if movies with Ryan Reynolds are inherently awesome, then Ryan Reynolds himself must be awesome squared. Hard to argue with my impeccable logic, right?
Avocados are smooth and creamy and go well with everything. If you're not convinced, look at the picture and try not to imagine how tasty that is.

Hummus

Humans have four basic needs: air, water, food, shelter. This being the 20th century, we can add Facebook and funny photos of cats if we wanted the list to be truly accurate. Vegans can add hummus to the list of necessities. How many sad, hungry vegan, lost and forlorn--on the road or at an event--has found that delicious saviour, hummus, and become instantly rejuvenated? Hummus is a vegan food that can be found so many places now that it frequently saves us from "just the salad". And thank hummus for that!

Vegan pizza FTW!

I made some pizza and took it to a friend's as munchies for a clothing swap tonight. I ran out of time to make anything else, so when I was making pizza last night, I eventually realized that two crusts came in the package--so fine, I'll just make two!

When the hostess asked what I brought, I said, "Vegan pizza." She said, "That's great!" We re-heated it in the oven, then I cut it into inch-wide slices and put it out.
It went over very well. I was actually expecting to apologize for the pizza--cheese is one of those things that people say they can't live without. So I wasn't sure vegan cheese would cut it. But the hostess said it was fantastic; I heard someone proudly saying, "It's totally vegan pizza!"; another guest said she didn't realize it was non-dairy cheese until I mentioned it; someone else even authorised me to describe the yummy food noises she was making as "orgasmic". Yes, organic noises over vegan pizza!
Unfortunately, the pizza pictured is not the pizza I brought. I took a picture with the camera phone, but now it doesn't seem to exist and...I don't want to talk about it. (My smart phone has never before been so cruel...)
The pizza I took to the party was ridiculously simple; it takes about 10 minutes to assemble. I use Shasha  spelt pizza crusts, which handily come two in a package. Instead of tomato sauce, I used store-bought tapenade over the crusts. As with all packaged food, check the ingredients to make sure it's vegan! You can also use store-bought pesto, bruschetta, etc... Anything with flavour will do the trick. Top with mozzarella-style vegan cheese and heat in a 350-degree oven until is melted to your preference. Then take to a friends and impress the hell out of everyone there!

Vegan Holy Grail

The vegan Holy Grail is the quest for good cheese-like foods. Everything else is readily available: soy/almond/rice milk, soy yogurt, chick'n patties, bean/soy sausage, even marshmallows... If there's an animal-product product that you're craving a vegan version of, chances are you can find it. Many are at the grocery store, some are at your health food store, and rarely you need to go to a specialty store or order online.

But vegan cheese is something else.

I have bought vegan cheese. The only time I have liked it was when I used the vegan cheese-slice type for grilled cheeze sandwiches. Yes, it's good. But you can't really taste the middle part of grilled cheeze, or even grilled cheese, for that matter--it mostly serves as a gooey texture contrast sandwiched (see what I did there? boo-yeah!) between two slices of fried bread. So it served its purpose in the grilled cheeze--gooey middle layer, check!

Other vegan cheese has proven more challenging. I am told that there are definitely yummy, melty, satisfying pizza-topping cheezes out there. The two I bought were both supposed to melt but didn't, had a slightly rubbery texture, and took away from the food more than added to it. I have pretty much given up my search and accepted lovingly-made pizza topped with olive oil, herbs and assorted veggie items. It's still delicious, it just doesn't have that gooey, melty texture I sometimes have a hankering for.

I can, however, get my cheeze fix taken care of in other ways. For example, vegan mac'n'cheese. Nutritional yeast provides the cheesy flavour, and as a carb-a-riffic pasta dish it was truly satisfying. It's now a favourite!