Sick and poor soup/Swamp soup

So, I am sick. It came on suddenly last night. I was fine, though tired because I have barely been sleeping, and then it hurt to swallow, and then I had the chills and I bundled up and turned the heat all the way up and was still shivering, and my nose was stuffy and I couldn’t breathe. I imagine that my immune system doesn’t really appreciate what I’ve been eating for the past two weeks or so– mostly bread. And jam. And sometimes rice or an apple. Today I have the house to myself until the afternoon, which means I get to use the kitchen. I wanted soup. Ridiculously healthy soup to somehow make up for my horrible diet of late. And also ridiculously cheap soup because I’m pretty fucking poor right now. It turned out pretty awesome, though it looks kind of like a swamp.

So here is the recipe, if you want to call it that. This is not the most exciting thing I’ve ever made but it is warm and tasty and good for you.

I started by sauteeing three shallots (already in the house– would have used onions otherwise since they are a lot cheaper), coarsely chopped, in olive oil and then adding five cloves of garlic (also already in the house), also coarsely chopped. When those were nice and brown I added about a liter of water and two vegetable boullion cubes (99 cents for the package). When the cubes dissolved I added about half a cup of chunky tomato sauce (package was 99 cents, had to buy it for the kid’s lunch today so it wasn’t actually my money), though I would probably just use a half a can of crushed tomatoes if I made it again. Then I threw in two carrots (20 cents) chopped into coins, and some spices– cumin, coriander, dried red chiles, a little bit of cinnamon and a few shakes of curry powder (also already in the house). Let that cook for a while, then added a can of kidney beans (29 cents) and a block of frozen baby spinach (49 cents). Cooked it until the spinach was thawed (I could have cooked the spinach first and then put it in but I hate making extra dirty dishes). Then I ate it.

Yes, groceries in Germany are really cheap, so it would probably cost more in a lot of places, but it would still be pretty damn cheap, I think.

By the way, in case there was any doubt, the frozen spinach was definitely vegan! It said so right on the package.

Ok, you probably can’t read that.  I should have zoomed in more.

I was so determined to post every day

But I’m sick, leave me alone.

Emergen-C is vegan food, right? It’s pretty awesome.

My vegan story, more or less

I have never seen Earthlings, Meet Your Meat, Peaceable Kingdom or any movies like that (but if you’re not vegan yet I’ll still tell you that you should watch them).  I can’t tell you offhand the exact dimensions of an average battery cage, though I know for sure that they suck a lot.  I never had a vegan epiphany moment, really.  It’s actually pretty embarrassing how long I spent knowing that I should go vegan before I actually just cut out the cheese and yogurt.  My long road to veganism began when I was nine or ten years old.  My cousin Ben, who was three years older, became a vegetarian.  My brother, who was a big fan of meat, thought it was ridiculous, but I thought it was so cool and alternative.  But I liked chicken and tuna, so I decided that I would just stop eating mammals.  I think there was actually a short time when I was still eating ham and bacon just because I liked them so much but I cut that out pretty quick.  My cousin Emma decided at the same time to stop eating mammals but I’m pretty sure she was back to eating hamburgers a week later.

So, for the last years of elementary school and all of middle school I was “semi-vegetarian” or “pico-pollo vegetarian” or “omnivore who eschews a few kinds of meats and shouldn’t be using the label of vegetarian ever, damn it,” whatever you want to call it.  Then when I was 13 my dad gave up meat, except for fish, for Lent.  No, my family isn’t Catholic, we’re actually Quaker, but my dad had spiritual reasons for doing it or something.  I joined in just to see what it would be like to be vegetarian for 40 days, again, except for fish.  It was fine.  My parents are good cooks and we always ate a lot of pasta and beans and grains and veggies, because those foods are healthier and because we were really broke, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.  So I cut out chicken, and decided I might as well cut out fish too.  I didn’t want to be a huge burden on my parents at first, so I said something like, I know you guys use things like chicken broth sometimes, and that’s not a big deal to me.  Then suddenly I realized that chicken broth was really gross so I was like, actually, why don’t you just use veggie broth?  So they did and it wasn’t a big deal.

So I start to read about vegetarianism on the internet, and discover that these vegan people aren’t actually as crazy as I always thought they were.  Turns out, animals get treated pretty badly whether they’re used for meat or milk or eggs, plus if you’re buying milk and eggs you’re still supporting the meat industry.  Plus milk is really bad for you and all this stuff is bad for the environment.  So I think, huh, I should be vegan, but it sounds really hard.  Maybe when I’m older.   I start experimenting with vegan recipes, I make nooch-based mac and cheeze but put non-vegan Morningstar hot dog slices in it, I see what happens if I just leave the egg out of my muffins, I see if enchiladas are any good without cheese…

Then I moved to Idaho and I met Kate.  She was just vegetarian when I met her, but she went vegan a few months later.  We cooked together and talked about animal rights issues and I kept on saying that I wanted to go vegan too.  I even made jokes that kind of make me cringe now, like “I was vegan for an hour this morning until I ate some yogurt!”  My parents bought me the book Vegan Planet for Christmas that year.  Then, when I went back to Portland over winter break I got the zine Please Don’t Feed the Bears.  I woke up on New Year’s Day and decided that I was vegan now.  I didn’t plan for it to happen on New Year’s but at least my veganniversary is easy to remember.  This was 2005, when I was 17, by the way.  I told you it took me a long time.

I’m sorry, I can’t even think about food today.

I am starving. I have less than one euro and the family that I live with has not gone shopping in ages. There is seriously nothing that I can eat here except toast. Ok, I guess I can write about toast…

My mom makes bread all the time. Big whole wheat sourdough loaves, usually. When I was little I would beg for store-bought bread because it was such a treat, all squishy and fluffy and square, just like normal kids ate (except maybe normal kids really ate white bread and we certainly never had any of that in our house). Of course, now I realize that I was an idiot. When I make my own bread it’s generally in a loaf pan, because no matter what my mother says it is difficult to construct a proper sandwich with many of the breads she makes. But it does work well for toast. My mother’s bread, toasted, with Earth Balance and orange marmalade is a pretty perfect breakfast. It’s one of the reasons why I’m really excited to be going home.

Coming soon on this blog…

Right now what I can write about is kind of limited, since I don’t exactly have a kitchen that I can use most of the time, and I have absolutely no money.  So sorry if this blog gets kind of boring.  I’m running out of ideas already.  However, when I get back to Portland (which is soon!) I have so many things that I’m going to write about.  Here’s a quick preview.

• Original recipes and family recipes.  I have the most kickass recipe for biscuits, ever.  I haven’t really decided whether I should put it on the internet or not.  It’s a bit of a moral dilemma.  Share the biscuity goodness or protect the family secret?  There will probably also be a chili tutorial.
• Cookzine reviews!  I’ve already placed holds on all the vegan cookzines in the library and I’m going to review them all.  Plus when I actually have money I can buy some as well.
• PDX restaurant reviews.  Oh my god I am so excited about having vegan restaurants in the area again.  I have a deep love of food from carts, so there will probably be a lot of that.

For now, though, I’ll continue to ramble on about stuff.  Hopefully I can think of four more topics.  If you have any ideas let me know.

Pizza and lonely awkward vegans

Above: Vegan pizza. Ew! Gross! Wait, what?

In college, every single club uses free food as a bribe to get people to come to their meetings. This means that the average omni college students will frequently find him or herself at a meeting of, say, Italian Club or Geography Club just because he or she saw a flier that said “Club meeting! Free pizza!” even though he or she doesn’t actually know any Italian and Geography Club sounds like the most boring thing ever. I guess all this free food is convenient, because sometimes when you’re in college you really want something that didn’t come from the cafeteria but all you have is a quarter and some pocket lint and bottle caps. However, I like to think of my veganism as sort of a super power in cases like these– I can resist Geography Club meetings with no effort at all. Is it really worth sitting through that for one slice of greasy pizza anyway? Maybe you could just grab the pizza and run but I went to school in the Midwest and everyone is too polite there.

But not eating normal pizza can also get really awkward. People are always mystified by the girl who doesn’t want a slice, especially when it’s free, because what kind of person turns down free food? At my old job (phonathon, woo) we used to get pizza sometimes because sometimes we had to work when the cafeteria was open for dinner, but of course, I had to figure out something else to eat.

Of course, people could just get one cheeseless pizza, provided that they ensured that the crust was vegan first. But omnis are so skeptical of pizza without cheese. Numerous people have told me that they think cheeseless pizza sounds gross, and they can’t possibly imagine a non-vegan eating it. In high school we used to order pizzas for editor meetings for the newspaper, and there were two vegans on staff (my awesome friend Kate and I). Once this girl Lacey said that it just didn’t make sense to get a whole vegan pizza when only two of us would eat it, like there was something stopping other people from eating it, and also, I’m your fucking editor-in-chief, don’t talk back to me. I don’t get it. First, ask any Italian what they think. Italy is awesome because cheeseless pizza is just something that is already on the menu. When I was in Italy (for all of two hours) I opted for the pasta but I could have just ordered pizza, and not had to explain that I didn’t want cheese, which was good because the waiter and I did not have any common languages. Second, ok, it’s bread, tomato sauce (or other sauce if you’re feeling creative), and, uh, whatever you want. That sounds pretty good to me. The pizza at the top of the entry had potato, red onion, olives, sundried tomatoes, garlic and roasted red peppers and it was unbelievably awesome. I also think that pizza is one of the only acceptable uses for Follow Your Heart cheese. Here is a tiny bad picture of a misshapen yet delicious pizza covered with FYH. Melted to perfection, by the way (which can be a challenge).

This one also has potatoes, because potatoes on pizza are awesome. I have no idea why all the pizza chains haven’t realized this yet. Usually when I have some FYH (shit’s expensive and not easy to find, or at least it wasn’t when I lived in Idaho and Wisconsin) I make some pineapple pizza right away because pineapple pizza is the best kind. Don’t even try to argue. The problem is that pizza with just sauce and pineapple seems kind of lonely so it’s a good application of fake cheese.

The great thing about pizza is that it’s actually really easy to make. Yeah, I know, there’s yeast and stuff, and kneading, and you have to wait for it to rise, and I’m not normally a patient person either, but if you just think ahead a little bit, you’re fine. Then you can make extra dough, stick it in the freezer, and the next time you want pizza it’s easy as pie (haha). Lately I’ve been using the crust recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance and it’s really good, though I also like the crust from a book my mom has called Pizza, Pasta, Panini.

Of course, if you’re a lazy mofo lots of pizza places have vegan crusts already. If you have an amazing friend who you pull all-nighters with perhaps you can order a pizza with green olives and garlic, hold the cheese, at 2 am and eat it while you write papers that are due the next day.

Yeah, that’s pizza crust in my hand. There’s a picture that shows the whole pizza but I look disgusting in it. Vanity before practicality.

Said friend is the most vegan-friendly omni I know. I’ve brainwashed her pretty well. She fully admits that cheeseless pizza pretty much tastes like normal pizza, it just doesn’t stay hot as long. You know why? Because that shitty mozzerella they use at most cheap pizza chains doesn’t even taste like anything! It tastes like grease! Just get some olives on your pizza because you need some salt on it somewhere and you’re going to be fine!  You can even sprinkle nooch (nutritional yeast for the uninitiated) on it and it’s even more awesome. Then you can finish that damn philosophy paper and go to sleep at 6 am with a stomach ache because you just ate half a damn pizza. But imagine how much worse that stomach ache would have been if the pizza had cheese. Vegan pizza wins again.

Veganism in Germany

People constantly ask me if it’s hard, or even possible, to be vegan in Germany. It’s a silly question to ask someone who went vegan when she lived in a small town in Idaho. Right now I live in a town of around 25,000 people. It has two health food stores and an Asian market. My town in Idaho didn’t have either of these things. My biggest problems with getting vegan food have been because of the language barrier and because I live with a family, not on my own, and I think those would be problems anywhere. There are actually some amazing vegan products available here that are pretty hard to get in America. If you’re ever in Germany, buy these things in bulk:

Chocoreale—the aforementioned vegan Nutella. I’ve only had the hazelnut kind that is actually like Nutella, but there is also a dark chocolate kind, and Duo, which is dark chocolate and white chocolate swirl. Rapunzel also makes a chocolate spread, but I don’t think they have a hazelnut kind.

Tartex. I know it sounds like a type of toothpaste, but it’s actually a spread. I’ve only had the paprika (bell pepper) variety, but it was pretty good. Actually, the first time I had it was kind of a letdown, and then I found myself craving more, and then I really liked it. There are also a ton of other vegan spreads here, and I have yet to sample them all. German bread is awesome, so I am glad there is good stuff to put on it.

Alpro and Provamel soy puddings. I have a pack of Alpro vanilla right now because it’s available at the supermarket a block away from my house, but my favorite is the Provamel Moka. I like Zen Soy but this stuff is better, cheaper and available all over the place.

Ritter Sport bars, marzipan and peppermint flavor. Yeah, you can get them in America, at Target and some other places, I think, but at the Norma here I can get them for 69 cents. Beat that.

Germany also has soymilk in weird flavors, like tropical. That was actually really gross. There is also tofu in jars, which is both gross and overpriced, but I still find it amusing.

My secret love affair with peanut butter

Above: Peanut butter banana cupcakes, with some margarita ones thrown in for good measure. Aww yeah.

Peanut butter is really normal, right? If you’re American, you have probably had approximately a bajillion peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in your lifetime. They’re so ubiquitous that we can just say PB&J. No need for real words! And of course, the amazing thing is that peanut butter is vegan, and when people say “You’re vegan? What do you eat?” you can say, you know, normal stuff, like peanut butter sandwiches, vegetables, shit like that. Then you can mention that Oreos are vegan and just boggle their minds, which is pretty great.

And then you move to Europe. Or, I moved to Europe. Germany to be exact. And I moved in with a family who have a pretty normal German diet (lots of potatoes and cold cuts and who knows what else) and they do not eat peanut butter. It’s not like peanut butter is completely unheard of in Germany. It’s available in grocery stores, next to the wide array of chocolate spreads. But as far as I can tell, Germans are grossed out by every way that I can possibly think of to eat peanut butter, so I have no idea how the Germans who actually buy it use it.

Here are some ways that I like to eat peanut butter:

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

Peanut butter and banana sandwiches

Peanut butter and agave nectar sandwiches (messiest meal ever)

Peanut butter spread on quartered apples

Carrot sticks dipped in peanut butter

Peanut butter spread on a tortilla

Peanut butter off a spoon

Peanut butter cookies

Peanut butter cake/cupcakes

Peanut sauce on noodles

Ants on a log (celery, peanut butter, raisins)

Peanut butter on a spoon with raisins on top

Peanut butter on Wasa crispbread

Peanut butter on various other types of crackers

Squares of dark chocolate dipped into peanut butter

Chocolate peanut butter ice cream

Peanut butter filled pretzels, or normal pretzels dipped in peanut butter

Peanut butter on toast

Basically, I fucking love peanut butter. And I am living with a family who thinks that’s really weird. They actually think that everything I eat is weird– brown rice, beans, quinoa, soy milk, I don’t know what else. I’ve actually become really self-conscious about eating or making food in front of them. Once I was spreading peanut butter on apples in the kitchen and the mother came in and said “Peanut butter on apples?” and I was annoyed. Yes, I am overly sensitive, I know that. I am in every other aspect of my life too! Anyway, I started sneaking peanut butter. Well, it was more like, I would put peanut butter on two pieces of toast, and grab a banana and bring it back to my room and make a peanut butter and banana sandwich (possibly my favorite application of the holy paste) because I didn’t want to hear “Peanut butter and banana? Seriously?”

But in seven short days I will be back in America, land of the free (as well as land of Big Macs and George Bush…oh well, nobody’s perfect), home of the peanut butter and banana sandwich. I could not be happier.

But you know what’s also good on a sandwich with bananas? Vegan nutella, also known as Chocoreale. Which I can get here but not in the States. Shit.

Hello world!

Yes, I’m keeping the original wordpress subject. It’s cute.

I didn’t actually think I would ever start a vegan food blog. It makes no sense. What could I possibly add to the world of vegan blogs? Sure, I know my way around the kitchen, but I don’t even have a kitchen at the moment (though in 7 days I will be back in Portland and I’ll have my parents’ kitchen, which will be awesome). My camera is a crappy Kodak Easyshare one and my photos look like complete shit next to, say, Lolo’s. I do not have an amazing cookbook coming out like Lolo or Joanna do. But I like making stuff, and I like eating stuff. And, it’s November! What does that mean? Well, it’s NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which I have attempted twice and failed at twice. But it’s also…

Image made by Katie.

Basically, the idea is that you write about vegan food every day of November. Unfortunately, it’s already November 2 so I’ve already failed. But from here on out, every day! Except for the day when I am flying from Germany to Oregon, I’m going to be kind of busy then.