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Taking on Anthony Bourdain
2008-04-25 22:26:00
I should hate Anthony Bourdain. He hates me—or would, if I ever met him and the subject of my eating habits came up. In his book Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain writes that “Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” He also calls vegans a “Hezbollah-like splinter faction.” So, yeah, we’re not exactly on the same wave-length when it comes to food, to put it mildly. Yet I still find myself somewhat amused by his persistent bad attitude, chain-smoking crankiness and penchant for oh-so-witty insults. (He once told a contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef that his lobster had “the consistency of doll head.") Of course, this amusement is no doubt helped because I only see him occasionally on television. I’m sure continued exposure would wear away my amused tolerance quite quickly. A new vegan blog has sprung up in response to Bourdain’s ...
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Eating for the Earth
2008-04-22 23:33:00
Today is Earth Day, so it’s a good time to consider again just how very environmentally friendly it is to go veg. FARM (the Farm Animal Rights Movement) has a campaign called “Stop Global Warming … One Bite at a Time” with a Web site at www.coolyourdiet.org that provides a convenient place to learn such facts as: * “Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles”; * “Animal waste and feed cropland dump more pollutants into our waterways than all other human activities combined”; * “Meat-based diets require 10-20 times as much land as plant-based diets.” In addition to pointing out the problem, FARM makes the solution easy by providing starter kits and other information that make it simple and healthy to go veg. Most vegetarian groups make such information readily available. But, puzzlingly, many environmental groups do not. PETA takes a humorous approach to this by urging people to “Of...
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Green gatherings
2008-04-18 12:42:00
Saturday is the Piedmont Environmental Alliance’s third Earth Day Fair. There will be talks, tastings, merchants, demonstrations and a lot of other good stuff. I went last year and enjoyed it immensely. You can read more about the day’s lineup here. Among the guests will be Wanda Urbanska of PBS TV’s Simple Living and singer Martha Bassett. Right now they’re calling for showers on Saturday—I hope they hold off! The actual Earth Day is Tuesday. If you’d like to do something special to mark the day, Earth911.org has a list of suggestions, as does Durham’s city page. You can also get an evironmental tip of the day via e-mail from the EPA. This handy site lets you search for Earth Day events within 5 to 250 miles of your home. (The link will show you events within 100 miles of Winston-Salem—hover over the bottom for links to subsequent pages.) Earth Day also marks the day when Whole Foods is aiming to rid all its checkout lanes of pl...
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Coffee Silk, Coffee Milk
2008-04-16 00:33:00
A thwarted journey and a friend’s obsession got me thinking about coffee milk recently. Until Skybus abruptly folded its wings, Tim, Cass and I planned to go to Rhode Island. There were other places on the itinerary, too. But my literary idol H.P. “I am Providence” Lovecraft identified so strongly with his hometown and state that it was all Rhode Island to my mind…. And Rhode Island loves its coffee milk, so much that in 1993 it made it the official state drink. Just what is coffee milk? Quahog.org has the answer: “Coffee milk is simply milk mixed with coffee syrup.” This excellent Web site on all things Rhode Island also has a detailed history of coffee milk, suggestions for mail-order sources of coffee syrup, and a recipe for people who want to make their own coffee syrup at home. All it takes is coffee, water and sugar. Put your coffee syrup in soymilk, and it’s suitable for vegans. But the coffee-milk connection lay dormant in my...
More About: Milk , Silk

Carb-Conscious Guacamole
2008-04-11 19:24:00
To help me out with my diet, Julie loaned me her copy of Robin Robertson’s Carb -Conscious Vegetarian. It includes a fabulous guacamole recipe that’s lower in fat and carbs, and higher in protein, than a typical guacamole—the secret is that it replaces some of the avocado with edamame. It’s not as creamy as guacamole usually is, understandably, but it’s still extremely tasty. I highly recommend it. Robin Robertson’s Guacamole 1 c. fresh or frozen shelled edamame, cooked 1 small ripe avocado, pitted and peeled 1 4 oz. can chopped green chiles drained (I omitted this) 2 t. fresh lime juice 1 T. finely chopped onion 1 t. chopped garlic 1/8 t. ground cumin Salt and freshly ground black pepper Chopped cilantro (I added this to the recipe) In a food processor or blender, combine the edamame, avocado, chiles and lime juice. Process until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse to blend in, leaving some texture. Serve with raw veget...

Food for thought
2008-04-08 21:02:00
Add another one to the list of reasons to prefer organic, seasonal food: A recent opinion piece in the New York Times, “Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?” presents sobering information on the danger that our love of out-of-season fruits and vegetables poses for songbirds. The author, biologist Bridget Stutchbury, makes the point that pesticide use in Latin America has increased fivefold since the 1980s, to feed the growing demand in North America and Europe for fresh produce during the winter. In too many cases, migratory birds are the victims - “A single application of a highly toxic pesticide to a field can kill seven to 25 songbirds per acre.” Declining populations of many birds may be linked to the use of pesticides in their winter homes. But happily, there are steps consumers can take to make their shopping list more bird-friendly. Buying only organic coffee and bananas are important moves. And, “When it comes to nontraditional Latin Am...
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Faux meat saves the world!
2008-03-31 21:45:00
Vegetarian themes turn up in the darndest places. Today I’ve been researching the “Angels of Mons,” which supposedly saved an outnumbered English force from destruction during a World War I battle. That research led me to Arthur Machen’s short story ”The Bowmen,” which sparked the legend, and which prominently features a vegetarian restaurant. In this story, first published in September 1914, about a month after the Battle of Mons, an outnumbered English force faces advancing German forces. Suddenly, one of the English soldiers remembers “a queer vegetarian restaurant in London where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue, with the motto, Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius - May St. George be a present help to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and other useless things, and now, ...
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Vegetarians on TV
2008-03-28 19:01:00
The Web site Fancast has put up a list of television’s best and worst shows in the treatment and portrayal of animals. The list was compiled by Beverly Kaskey, the senior director of the Hollywood branch of the Humane Society of the United States. There are some interesting choices on there. The list got me thinking about vegetarian characters on TV shows, and I realized I could think of only a couple. Lisa from “The Simpsons” is the one that first sprung to mind. Angela on “The Office” is another (she’s also a huge cat lover). But beyond those, I couldn’t think of any currently on the air. Phoebe was a vegetarian on “Friends.” In the Australian Outback season of “Survivor,” Kimmie being a vegetarian caused drama in the camp and also during one of their unfortunate gross-food challenges. (She wouldn’t eat the first item she was supposed to because it was a mammal, so the other team chose her to represent her t...
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Counter Cultures
2008-03-25 22:28:00
My kitchen is overrun this week with fermentation experiments. Now, just like Tom T. Hall, “I like beer” … but that’s not what I’m talking about here. No, this is the little crock filled with salted cabbage that looks to be well on its way to becoming sauerkraut. And the jar of soy milk that unfortunately doesn’t seem as inclined to turn into yogurt as it should be. And the glass of sprout-soaking water that may soon bubble into rejuvelac. (The sprouts themselves are doing well on top of the fridge, serenely growing above all the ferment on the counters below.) The book that inspired all this is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. I had been eyeing it for years - it was published in 2003 - and finally picked it up last week. Katz has an inspiring zeal for his subject. As he says in the introduction: “For me, fermentation is a health regimen, a gourmet art, a multicultural adventure, a form of activism, and a spiritual path, all rolled ...
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Cutting out the carbs
2008-03-21 18:27:00
I need to lose some weight, and I think I’m going to try the South Beach Diet. This is a lower-carb diet, though less restrictive on carbs than the meat-athon that is the Atkins Diet. I know my diet is far too heavy on carbs—pasta, bread, cookies, fruit. This seems to be a common problem with many vegetarians, as we often substitute starches for the meats in meals. This is especially an issue when dining out. I simply don’t eat enough tofu and tempeh and beans, although I do eat them a fair amount. Phase One of the South Beach Diet, which lasts two weeks unless you decide to stay on it longer, calls for the elimination of all carbs and starches (even fruit). Some carbs are added back in for Phase Two, and yet more for Phase Three. That Phase One is going to be a challenge for me, because I do love my sweets and all carbs, really. I’ve been looking up recipes using beans and tofu. I’m curious if any you vegetarian readers have tried the South Beach...
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Vegetarian literature
2008-03-18 23:05:00
It’s great to read books about the why and how of vegetarian and vegan living - nonfiction books on animal rights, health and vegetarian cookery - but what if you have a yen for more literary vegetarian literature? At least a few giants of world literature have been vegetarians - playwright George Bernard Shaw, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and novelists Leo Tolstoy and Isaac Bashevis Singer come to mind quickly. There are no doubt more - readers, please let me know if you have any favorites (authors or specific books with a vegetarian theme) that I didn’t think to mention. Of the four on the top of my head, I am least familiar with Singer, a Nobel Prize winning author. An article from Satya magazine, still available online here, has enlightening discussion of the importance that vegetarianism had for Singer, and recommends: “If you are unfamiliar with Singer’s fiction, pick up Enemies: A Love Story, The Penitent, and Meshugah, all of which are vegetarian-th...
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Dining in the raw
2008-03-11 23:13:00
Raw food seems to be a trend within the vegetarian community. Books and magazine articles are being published to explain the whys and hows of raw dining. And restaurants are springing up to feed the trend. So it was exciting on a recent vacation in St. Augustine, Fl., to visit The Present Moment Cafe, a raw-food, vegan restaurant. The restaurant is a quiet little oasis, where a stained-glass mural in shades of green screens the view of the busy street outside. Tables come with carafes of water dressed up with slices of lemon and cucumber. And the menu comes with enough tempting choices to make ordering just one meal a challenge. I finally settled on the Viva Burrito - a “dehydrated tortilla filled with pine nut-chili and walnut pate, guacamole, coconut sour cream and Jalapeno vinaigrette.” Tim tried the Tacos of Life, a similar dish featuring “Pine nut-chili and walnut puree, fresh salsa, guacamole in 2 romaine shells with Coconut Sour Cream and Jalapeno vinaig...
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Hutch & Harris
2008-03-07 18:49:00
The newest restaurant on the downtown dining scene is Hutch & Harris , at 424 W. 4th Street across from Cat’s Corner, in a spot that has seen a bit of a revolving door of eateries over the years. I’m happy to report that this one has some very nice and different-from-the-usual vegetarian offerings. On my first visit, I had the Moosewood Middle Eastern Salad—tabouli salad over a cannellini-bean cake with a yogurt-tahini dressing—which I found yummy, particularly the dressing. I would have liked a second bean cake to make it a bit heartier, though. Julie had the dish on a later visit, and felt that the tabouli salad on her plate was bland and perhaps missing the lemon juice that usually gives it a nice kick. It tasted fine when I had it, so maybe the second time was a kitchen oops. On my second visit, I had a Bayaldi sandwich—roasted eggplant, portobello mushroom and zucchini with red bell pepper coulis, chevre and olive-pinenut tapenade, served in...

No groceries in the house
2008-03-04 22:24:00
It has been a joke in my family for years. One day my dad declared, “There’s no groceries in the house!” despite the fridge, cabinets and shelves overflowing with food. Turns out, he really meant, “There’s no peanut butter in the house!” Peanut-butter sandwiches are such a staple in his diet that to him, a house with no peanut butter might as well contain no groceries at all. Most of us have something like that, though—The things we’re always using up, and that go right back on the shopping list once they’re gone. If those magic ingredients are on our shelves, we feel we can survive. If they are missing, we fear we’ll be going hungry, no matter how much else is on the shelves. You can see that anytime there is a chance of snow. Store shelves are stripped bare of bread and milk as people lay in their stock. For me, the magic ingredients include brown rice, miso and frozen mixed berries. Oh, yes, and beer! And the cats...
More About: House , Groceries , The House

Seeing Through the Fence
2008-02-29 19:16:00
In case you missed yesterday’s relish, there will be a showing of the documentary Seeing Through the Fence at the Werehouse tonight at 8:30. The film, by vegan activist Eleni Vlachos, explores factory farms and slaughterhouses, as well as examining the contradiction between how much we love our pets and other animals and yet continue to eat meat. The film also shows Vlachos’ path to becoming a vegan and her family’s issues with her decision. You can read more about Vlachos and the film here.