Airplanes and airports

As vegans, we know there are some times in our life and in our travels when it will be more difficult to find food that is vegan and also satisfying. For example: wedding are never good (please leave me a comment if you've been to a wedding and have been served something other than plain vegetables with or without rice).
It was on my vacation last year that I got the delicious airplane treats pictured here. I was never so happy to see plain chips and Oreo cookies! Some airplane treats can be vegan, but with labels often in a foreign language I admint I have spent more than few minutes staring at a list of ingredients trying to remember how to translate both "egg" and "milk".
I always bring snacks with me, but it can be disheartening to see everyone around you eating hot food (even if it is airplane food, it's still hot!). Flight attendants have sometimes taken pity on me and brought two breakfast trays so I could at least get two buns and two tiny bowls of fruit. There's nothing like being hungry  while dashing across a terminal to your flight or, worse, stuck a few thousand feet above ground. Sympathetic flight attendants, I salute you!

Post-Prandial Parisian Conversion

Veganized chèvre chaud I made after my Paris vacation

It might come as a surprise that visiting Paris made me vegan, but it did: I went to Paris a vegetarian and left as a vegan.
I don't know if things have changed, but in 2008, restaurants in Paris were not entirely happy to serve a vegetarian. A couple of the things I ordered that listed vegetarian ingredients on the menu came with ham as well. Probably half of any menu included both cheese and ham. If you stood still too long in Paris, you would turn around to find you had ham and cheese sprinkled on you. Which meant as vegetarian, most of meals were pretty cheese-heavy.
After almost two weeks in Paris, I was getting pretty sick of cheese. At the same time, I was reading Skinny Bitch--because, well, it was 2008 and that book was still everywhere, despite its own problematic moments. But I also had it because I was ready to go vegan. So when at the end of my Paris vacation I was literally sick of cheese, it was timely. When I arrived back home, I was still sick of cheese, and I never ate dairy or eggs again.
However, I really missed chèvre chaud, which one of the few vegetarian French dishes I could eat while in Paris.I really enjoyed it while I was there, and it was a simple dish--greens and simple dressing topped with goat cheese melted on a toasted slice of baguette. But since my transition ti vegan food was rocky--I didn't buy a vegan cookbook for probably six month after I started eated vegan--it took me a while to discover vegan cheese. When I finally did, I was delighted! Cashew cheese, are you kidding me?? IT went on everything, and I could find eat the chèvre chaud I missed, this time deliciously topped with cashew cheese.

World-changing avocado

My first trip to New York was awesome. Firstly, it's like vegan mecca. I hear a lot of places are like this;
Portland, for example, is supposed to be filled with delicious vegan food. And I suspect my hoemtown, Toronto, would impress many a vegan who came to visit, with our many delicious vegan restos. But way back in 2010, I was delighted to find a city with so many delicious vegan and vegetarian places to eat, including the breakfast joint of my dreams, 'Snice.
This delicious breakfast was in the restaurant in the main floor of the hotel I stayed at. The hotel is The Jane, and the restaurant is called Cafe Gitane. It is vaguely retro-Moroccan-themed, and I read a review recently that called it overpriced. But I was really impressed--it had all the breakfast staples an mnivore expected, so my friend could enjoy herself as well, and I had a solid 4 or 5 breakfast options, way up from usual choice of, um, dry toast.
The dish that really blew me away was the, um, toast. Avocado on toast, actually, which I was so impressed with that I actually took a photo. It was beautifully presented, of course--much better than the green smudge I normally make myself--and served on whole-grain bread with fresh lime juice, a drizzle of olive oil and chili pepper flakes.
I now make this dish ALL THE TIME. If I can find ripe avocados I snatch them up and and devour them, guilt-free, for as many meals as I can before losing my ripe avocados to the Brown Spots of Doom. I recommend you do, before the Brown Spots set in and wreck your delicious travel-nostalgia breakfast. 

The worst meal I ever ate

I'm going to start off my VeganMofo (belatedly) of travel food with The Worst Meal I Ever Ate, so I can get it over with and talk about delicious food from now on.
Admittedly, so I exaggerate a bit: it was bad but didn't kill me, and I'm fortunate enough to have enough to eat in a world where many don't, so maybe this is more like The First-World Worst Meal I Ever Ate. Or given that I have had some pretty bad meals before, I could call this The Worst Meal I Ever Ate Consider How Much It Cost.
This meal was one of many on a riverboat during a Rhine River cruise I was on in June. It was not my first choice of vacation, but I went because my dad cancelled and my mom asked me if I wanted to go instead. And it started in Amsterdam, so of course I was in! And despite the reassurances we got from the cruise company, they really didn't know what to feed me.
The dinner is question looks decent, but the piped decorative mashed potato on top was the best part. It also had roasted sweet potato wedges (not bad, but by then I'd had them for three dinners in a row), fried cubed tofu (second time in a row) and mixed vegetables. Not, as you may expect, hand-cut, fancy mixed vegetables that one might find on a fancy European river cruise, but the kind you find in a bag in the freezer. And when the waiter set it down on the table in front of me, someone at my table said, "Aren't those the vegetables from lunch?"
So I ate the entire bread basket for dinner, again.

Fall in love with tofu, all over again

Tofu is a vegan staple. It has been around so long we take it for granted. Unlike newer foods some of us may still be discovering ("OMG, have you tried kale/tempeh/quinoa yet?? It's SO AMAZING!"), everyone knows about tofu. If there's a vegan option at a restaurant, it often includes tofu (probably because it's a stir-fry).
So we take it for granted: "Yeah, I use tofu, I know what to make with it, why try something different, I've cooked it a million times."
NO. Trust me, try this recipe: General Tao's tofu. I have no idea how fucking cornstarch turns tofu into a crispy fried delicious morsel, but it does. And it's easy! You can use your own favourite Asian-style sauce, like I did, and it takes maybe half an hour (longer if you don't have the rice made already), most of which is waiting for the tofu to brown . However it's so simple you'll want it everyday.
Confession: I made it for dinner last weekend, and then I ate it for breakfast AND lunch the next day too. Because once again I'm smitten.

Tamales are awesome, papusas are awesomer

Have you ever made tamales? They're a lot of frickin' work.  Make the dough, soak the corn husks, make the filling, spread the dough in the husk, add the right amount of stuffing, close the husk, tie it up. And then cook it. Phew! Are you tired yet?? Tamales are so much work people get together and make tamales assembly-line style.
But I have a secret for you: papusas are like tamales, but faster. All the ingredients are the same, but you spend less time fiddling with husks. Instead you make a little circle on your palm, add the filling, then form into a filling. And you fry them instead of steaming.  The ones pictured are with black bean and sweet potato filling (and store-bought salsa). Delicious! I got the recipe from Viva Vegan, which is also an awesomer cookbook. Enjoy your papusas, my vegans!

Lay off the Tofurkey

People tell me all the time, "Someone told me one time they don't like eating fake meats. And they were probably vegetarian once, so it must apply to you too!" Seriously, I must hear this a couple times a month. Even a close friend of mine says she doesn't like fake meat--it's so long since she ate meat or chicken that the fake stuff weirds her out. (But she still eats fish, so I'm not sure how she's feel about the fake fish at that awesome Chinese place that has a vegan version of every kind of animal flesh ever eaten.)
But the short answer is: nope, I love me some fake meats. You'll have to pry the Gardein from my cold, dead fingers. You take something that is vaguely shaped like a "chicken finger", bread it and fry it, and I'll dip that in some sauce and chow down before you can say "meat analog". I readily confess to craving chicken wings regularly. I don't miss chicken wings themselves--let's face it, they are weird and gross even to those who eat meat. What I miss about them is the wings themselves, it's the sauce and the fried goodness and the fact that you can get them everywhere--grocery store, pub, and a dozen places in between. It's the convenience dammit! And the same goes for Gardein, and veggie dogs, and Tofurkey--which I, according to the tradition of my people (vegans, not Canadians), had as Thanksgiving leftovers this morning, with bread and the included gravy. Analog meats are one of the few vegan "convenience" foods, that you can heat up and enjoy. Unlike the other 95% of the meals that I eat, which are hand-prepared by yours truly.
So lay off the Tofurkey. You're eating the original, which is nasty, cruel and shortens your life--don't question me for eating a version which is cruelty-free, convenient and just as delicious.

Simply delicious

Sometimes we try really really hard. We re-read and edit an email to our bosses ten times, we check our hair and outfit even when the object of our affection thinks we're gorgeous, we worry our homes aren't nice enough, big enough or clean enough to host anyone except our cats. And our the interwebs, that pressure goes up. "Look, here's a pic of the pizza I made. But the toppings are from the farmer's market and the flour is heirloom and local and I ground it myself using an artisanal mortar and pestle handmade made by a vegan unicorn!"
I do that sometimes. Well, not a unicorn's mortar and pestle, but we do what we can to make our food interesting, special, and noteworthy before sharing it with the world (or our 17 followers on Tumblr). But food, as all things, is sometimes better when it's simple. Simple pleasures are there for the taking every day: a purring cat in your lap, a silly laugh with a friend, a great bike ride or a run on a beautiful autumn day. We don't have to go all-out for our food either. So when I found myself without a lunch planned for the next day at work--and determined not to spend money on a mediocre lunch--I put some chickpeas to soak, went through my fridge and cupboards, and planned to-buy items for the next day's lunch. What I didn't have on hand, I bought from the grocery store around the corner from my office. And lunch was simple and delicious: flat bread and hummus, and a satisfying salad of arugula, chickpeas, quinoa and white mushrooms with basic Italian dressing. It's not a five-course menu carried in on the wings of vegan fairies, but it was a great lunch.

(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!

On-hand salad

You know those days, when you feel like you have nothing to eat, and you're really hungry? And you poke through your fridge and make whatever you can find? Well, sometimes you end up with delicious things, such as tomato-kale-chickpea salad, with the only dressing I had in the fridge (also delicious). I give you, on-hand salad: it was perfect!

Baked mac and cheese with Daiya

I made vegan baked mac and cheese yesterday. (Apparently, my logic goes: feeling sick? Don't wanna eat? Make comfort food!) And I regretted not trying this before. I tried a different vegan version once or twice, but it wasn't nearly as good. The Daiya vegan cheese made the difference. Nom! You can find the recipe on daiyafoods.com.

Hot and sour soup, you are wise

We know that ordering vegan food can be challenging when we're eating with omnivores. We often have to eat at places with few vegan options, but we also don't want to cause a fuss, or make it seem like eating vegan is "difficult", but we don't just want to eat the salad either. So when I ordered delivery for dinner on New Year's Day with my family, I was expecting to have to compromise--a lot. But we agreed to get Chinese food, went online, and found a good Chinese food restaurant nearby that not only seemed authentic, it also listed all the vegetarian dishes. Bingo! My family got to order a few things for themselves, and I ordered "bean curd and vegetables" with steamed rice--and a small vegetarian hot and sour soup, for kicks. And we were all happy!
The soup was an afterthought--"Have I had hot-and-sour since I went vegan? I don't remember. I should have some!"--but I couldn't resist, since it was so clearly labelled and I knew I could eat it. It was delicious! I haven't had that many hot and sour soups, and those I have had have been very light--mostly broth with a few thinly-sliced pieces of cabbage, carrot and celery, if memory serves--but this was almost a meal. It was so packed full of veggie and tofu goodness I had to take a picture for sharing. I kinda want to go back there just for the soup.
But it reminded me of a few Things Vegans Should Remember:
--ethnic food is your friend! Since so many cuisines around the world developed with limited availability of meat, their menus often have vegetarian or even vegan options.
--try new things! It can be easy to eat the same things over and over again (when I go out for lunch I usually either eat from 1 of 2 regular lunch places) but when we try new things, we can be pleasantly surprised.
And one thing I should remember:
--I am spoiled! I live in a time when there are more and more vegan items available every day. Today I saw a posting about vegan "egg yolk". Yowza! I also live in a city with an incredible diversity of veg entrees, veg restaurants, and ethnic foods. I rarely have to eat "just the salad". I'm pretty lucky. thank you for the lessons, hot and sour soup! You are so wise.

You are Every Vegan

As vegans, we often feel the need to explain our beliefs, our food, our health and nutrition, and even all the one-off examples people tell us about. You know, that friend who used to be vegan but then all her bones started melting so she had to eat rare steak laced with Skele-Grow immediately to save her life. Because we are often the only vegan they know, we are therefore also Every Vegan--so we feel the need to be ambassador for veganism. All the time. Every day. Even when we're tired or cranky or hungry because the only thing the restaurant can provide us is green salad and dry baked potato. So when we cook for non-vegans, we feel pressure to make an amazing meal, lest the next day they're saying, "Yeah, we had weird vegan food last night. It was horrible! Dry and tasteless--it needed bacon." Because if they did say that, I might have to hurt them--which wouldn't reflect well on me as Ambassador for Veganism. So when I made dinner for 9 of my relatives over Christmas, I was feeling the pressure. Which I shouldn't--I can only do my best and then it's out of my hands. But luckily they it got very good reviews. The choice of dish may have helped. I picked Leek and Bean Cassoulet, from Veganomicon. It's deliciously warming and filling and comfort food-y, and it has biscuits on top. Who doesn't love stuff with biscuits on top?!? Even my anti-vegetable brother liked it. Make it for sharing with the non-vegans in your life. That way, when they meet another vegan, this time they'll say, "Oh yeah, I have a vegan friend. She made amazing cassoulet this one time!" And Every Vegan will thank you.