Uhh, we don't really do that.

Being an ethivore in the DC area was not always easy. Going out with friends was usually the hardest, but it seemed like most restaurants had at least one vegetarian option. I am finding that this is not the case in St. Louis! There is a Midwest ethos here that a meal is not a meal without a hunk of meat. (Not only that, but nonmeat side items are often flavored with meat!)

I met a former professor and friend for lunch a few weeks back, and, by virtue of what’s near my work, we wound up eating at one of those home-style chain restaurants. (I would tell you which one, but I honestly can’t remember… those places all seem the same to me!) There was nothing meatless on the lunch menu, so I ordered a cranberry chicken salad without the chicken. Imagine my surprise when it arrived with bacon! (I guess I hadn’t read the description carefully enough… but, honestly, who puts bacon on a salad with fruit, nuts, and chicken?) I wish the waitress had warned me!

In another example, my husband and I recently took his sister out to dinner. They wanted to go to T.G.I.Friday's. After looking through the menu four times, I found one item without meat. You guessed it: a salad (to which you were really supposed to add chicken at extra cost). When the waiter came to the table and my husband asked him if he had any suggestions for a vegetarian, the waiter looked at us like we had just landed on this planet, and then muttered, “uhh, we don’t really do that.”

I am sure there are some restaurants around here that are more vegetarian-friendly… someone please help me find them!

 Enough about eating out. Nothing compares to fresh-picked vegetables! My mother-in-law has a fantastic green thumb, and we have been the beneficiaries of her garden since arriving back in town.  These delicious tomatoes came from her backyard.

Recipe: Piñon Stuffing for Thanksgiving

I am getting excited for Thanksgiving on Thursday!  Looking forward to seeing family and friends, and enjoying my dad's wonderful cooking.  Dad agreed to share his recipe for one of the dishes I look forward to every year- his fantastic holiday stuffing.  Now you too can make it part of your Thanksgiving spread!

Piñon Stuffing
By Jim Madison

Ingredients
2 or three bunches of scallions, thinly sliced
2 sticks of butter (or margarine for vegan option)
2 teaspoons tarragon (crush it after you measure, or use four tsp. fresh chopped)
1 teaspoon savory
1 bunch Italian parsley (enough to make 1 cup chopped)
1/2 cup pine nuts
12 to 14 cups fresh bread crumbs (or about 10 to 12 cups dried crumbs)
A couple of sticks celery, thinly sliced

Directions
Melt the butter in a large pan and sauté the scallions until they are limp but not crispy or brown. Add the celery and spices and sauté briefly. Pour the mixture over the bread crumbs, stirring to coat evenly. (If you use dry crumbs, add water first to rehydrate them before pouring the butter and seasonings on.)  Stir in the pine nuts.

Put some of the stuffing in the turkey just before baking and bake the rest for an hour or so in a separate covered pan.

Pass around the table and enjoy!

Recipe: Blue Ribbon Cornbread

For this week's recipe,  I'm recommending you to Kosher Blog's post on Dana Sly's Blue Ribbon Vegan Cornbread.  This Iowa State Fair award-winning recipe uses ground flax seeds instead of eggs to thicken and bind the ingredients.  Flax seeds are high in omega-3 fatty acids and fiber, and Mayo Clinic reports that they “can help reduce total blood cholesterol and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels — and, as a result, may help reduce the risk of heart disease.” 

For this recipe, I bought a bag of whole flax seeds (they store better whole- keep in fridge or freezer), and ground them with a mortar and pestle.  (You can also use a spice or coffee grinder if you have one.)  I also followed one reviewer's suggestion and added 1 Tbsp of apple cider vinegar to the soy milk to make “buttermilk,” and 1/4 cup of corn kernels to make a hearty, chunky cornbread.  The result was moist and delicious, definitely one of the best cornbreads I've had.  Try it for yourself and tell me what you think!

To substitute ground flax seeds for eggs in other baked goods, follow the ratio of 1 Tbsp ground flax seed and 3 Tbsp water per one large egg in the recipe.

Recipe: Quinoa and Black Beans

If you haven't cooked with quinoa before, this is a great recipe to try it out!  Quinoa is a small, very protein-rich grain, full of good vitamins and minerals.  It can be substituted for rice or couscous in many recipes, and has a slightly nutty flavor.  Before cooking, quinoa should be soaked for about 30 minutes to an hour to remove saponin, which can make it bitter and harder to digest.  (Some people prefer not to soak quinoa or to soak it for much longer periods, but I've found 30 minutes to an hour to be a good balance.)  You'll probably need a mesh strainer to drain the rinse water after, because the grains are so small.

Uncooked quinoa

Ingredients
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
3/4 cup uncooked quinoa, soaked and drained
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste
1 cup frozen corn kernels
2/3 cup cooked black beans (or 16 ounce can, rinsed and drained)
1 (16 ounce) can crushed or diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Directions
• Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and garlic, and saute until lightly browned.
• Mix quinoa into the saucepan and cover with vegetable broth. Season with cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, and chili powder. Bring the mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes.
• Stir frozen corn into the saucepan, and continue to simmer about 5 minutes until heated through. Mix in the black beans and tomatoes. Garnish with cilantro if desired.

This recipe is good hot or cold, and leftovers make great lunches.  I hope you enjoy!

Food and Friends

Eating is a very social behavior.  Sitting down at the table with your family, going out to dinner with friends, munching snacks at an office or class party… It can be hard to strike a balance between your food ideals and social mores.  So how do you balance the desire to eat as ethically as possible with the possibility of offending others who might feel judged or insulted if you don’t eat what they’re eating or serving?

This is a question that I’m still trying to resolve in my own life, but I do have a few tips.  The first thing I learned was that it is best to be upfront about any dietary restrictions you are going to try to maintain around other people.  For example, when eating with people I don’t know that well, I tend to identify myself as a vegetarian.  This is an easily understandable term to most people and usually precludes a lengthy philosophical discussion.  Identifying this way lets me hold on to a core value in my food choices while allowing me to enjoy going out to eat.  (Most restaurants have some vegetarian options, especially if you can encourage the group to go for Asian or Middle Eastern cuisines.)

However, since “vegetarian” doesn’t really adequately represent my food philosophy, I try to be more open with family and friends with whom I feel comfortable.  People who know you well are less likely to hear your ideals as confrontational or judgmental.  I’ve found people to be genuinely interested and very accommodating when I explain my personal choices regarding food.  Parents, in-laws, and friends have cooked meals for me with meat or seafood that they’ve thoughtfully selected to be environment and animal-friendly.  My parents have told me that my exploration of the ethics of food has caused them to become more informed and aware of their food choices as well.

In the end, balancing food and friends is all about compromise.  Food is supposed to nourish and sustain life, and, to my way of thinking, you can’t make food about negation and deprivation, something that cuts you off from your social circles.  Find the solution that makes you most comfortable, and invite those close to you to learn about your personal choices.  You can have your cake and eat it, too.

Navigating the Vegetarian Kitchen

When I first declared myself a vegetarian (before transitioning to ethivore), I had to figure out how to change my cooking to exclude meat.  I had never been a huge meat eater anyway, but I found out, in trying not to eat any meat, that I really loved and relied on chicken in my kitchen.

My first solution to my quandary was to start buying soy and textured vegetable protein (TVP) meat analogs from the freezer section of our grocery store.  We ate “chik’n” nuggets, and soy burgers, or used crumbled versions of these products in traditional meat recipes.  I felt good about cutting out the meat.  But, as I started learning more about the environmental and health costs of our food choices, I began to question the wisdom of eating meat analogs rather than meat all the time.  For instance, MorningStar Chik’n nuggets have a list of 50 ingredients, including several additives that I can’t even pronounce let alone know what they are.  And just 4 nuggets contain 25% of the recommended daily value of sodium!  Boca Burgers have a slightly shorter, but no more decipherable, ingredient list.  When I thought about all the steps in the industrial agricultural food chain that it took to transform those soybeans from their natural state into something that looks and tastes (somewhat) like meat… I knew that I was defeating one of the purposes I had in becoming vegetarian.  I wanted to lessen my impact on the environment.  And I wanted to be healthy doing it!

When I decided that I needed to get away from relying on meat analogs, I found myself back at square one.  How do I put nutritionally balanced, tasty food on the table when I am so busy with grad school, work, and life?  Fortunately, I found some great cookbooks and nutritional advice along the way.  (I’ll be featuring some cookbooks in future posts, so check back for suggestions and recipes!)  I found that the most helpful cookbooks divided main dishes into categories like “pasta,” “beans/ peas/ lentils,” and “grains.”  This is great because it allows you to think outside the meat-potato-vegetable paradigm.  Plus, legumes and whole grains are great sources of vegetable protein.  I also found that in recipes where meat is not the main event but just another ingredient, it’s usually fairly easy to substitute beans, tofu, or mushrooms.

Here are some easy supper ideas:

• Open-face vegetable sandwich made with vegetables cooked on the grill or under the broiler, heaped onto sliced whole-grain bread with melted cheese
• Whole-wheat couscous with a quick stir-fry of some combination of vegetables, topped with cashews or other nuts or seeds (or, if you want to get a little fancy, serve in a half squash or a bell pepper)
• Quinoa pilaf or salad- Quinoa is protein-rich and makes a good substitute for rice or other grains
• Artichoke and spinach lasagna (or other casserole dishes) you can make ahead and freeze
• Bean tacos or enchiladas
• Rice and beans or lentils

I’ll be posting more tips and recipes in the future.  Leave feedback or suggestions, or share your own story or helpful hints in the comments box!

What-a-vore?

About a year and a half ago, I read Rethinking the Meat Guzzler in the New York Times and decided it was time for a change.  I, of course, had had a brush with vegetarianism in college, after reading Peter Singer in one of my philosophy classes and watching a video of cruel factory farm practices.  However, I never quite got to the point of acting on my discomfort.  But something was different this time, and my moment of dissonance prompted me to write the "Eating Animals" post reproduced below.  After writing this as a note on Facebook, many of my friends responded with encouragement and suggestions.

So, that was the beginning of my journey.  Since that time, I’ve been continually trying to define exactly what my commitment means.  Is eating eggs okay when the laying hens have just as bad or arguably worse lives than the chickens raised for meat?  What are the implications of eating tofu "chicken" nuggets and TVP "beef" crumbles every night?  As I’ve tried to answer these and so many more questions for myself, I’ve come to understand myself as what I’m calling an “ethivore” rather than a traditional vegetarian.

For me (at this point at least) this means:

• I rarely eat any meat or seafood at all.
• When I do, I assure that the animal in question was raised/ caught and slaughtered in a way that was humane and not overly harmful to the natural environment.
• I don’t eat red meat at all.
• I don’t generally eat eggs if I can avoid it, but I will still eat things baked by others that contain eggs (for reasons I will blog about later). When I buy eggs myself, I make sure they’re cage-free.  I’ve also been experimenting with vegan baking.
• I also try to be mindful of other ethical considerations when I choose food: Was it grown or raised without pesticides, genetic modification, growth hormones, or excessive antibiotics?  Was it grown locally? With fair treatment of farm labor? Bought at a fair price? Packaged minimally and in reusable or recyclable materials? This is a lot to think about, and I’m still trying to improve my awareness and decision-making in these areas.

As I write this blog, I’ll be expanding on these ideas and the implications of everyday food choices, as well as sharing some of the ways that I try to make it easy and delicious to follow my heart.  If you have a similar story, resources to share, or particular question for me, please respond in the comments section!

Thanks,

Megan

Eating Animals

I have decided that it is out of sheer laziness and an unwillingness to seriously consider the implications for action of my beliefs that I have never made a commitment to go completely vegetarian before. I know the arguments made on both sides inside and out, and for me this decision is based on (1) the horribly unethical treatment of animals in feed lots and cage farms around the country, (2) the devastating environmental impacts of said lots/farms, and (3) the fact that so much agricultural land that could be used to grow food crops is used for animal feed (meaning far less food production per acre of agricultural land). As someone who puts spiders outside rather than kill them and who worries about the environment and the underfed global poor, I cannot justify playing a part in the system of animal consumption as it stands in this country. It is unacceptable for me to eat meat simply because it is more convenient. So, I am making a commitment right now to try to bring my actions in line with my beliefs. I hope if you are reading this note, you will offer me support, encouragement, and any resources you may have to make this transition easier. Thank you, friends!