Before I get into everything, I just want to say that you don't have to be vegan to eat my food! It is super tasty, and all my non-vegan friends love it. If you find recipes you like, great! Have a meatless, eggless and dairy free meal. Every little bit helps the animals and the environment. Hopefully you'll find enough recipes that you like to have several meatless meals a week, or even in one day! Maybe one day you'll take a step and try to be vegan for a month or longer. However, if you are someone who could "never give up steak" or "can't live without cheese," I won't make you. Just try not to eat it every single day.
Let me tell you a bit about myself, and how I came to be here today:
I became vegetarian about two years ago, and vegan around a year ago. I wanted to become vegan initially because I watched the documentary Forks Over Knives and discovered how horrible eating animal flesh and secretions is for your body. Once I switched to the vegan diet, I found it difficult at first. So, I tried to educate myself on the ethical reasons to be vegan. I figured, if I have some gruesome factory farm images in my head while I look at a burger I won't want to eat it as much and it won't be a matter of will keeping me from wolfing it down.
Then I discovered The Joyful Vegan podcast with Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Just her vocabulary and manner of speaking about animals made my whole mind rewire itself. I wasn't denying myself beef and chicken, I was saving cows and chickens from a horrible fate. If you say "I don't eat chicken" people imagine a cooked chicken breast on a plate. If you say "I don't eat chickens" they imagine a group of live chickens pecking around. It's amazing the impact words can have.
Recently, I watched the documentary Cowspiracy as well. It was also a huge eye opener that makes me want to eat animals and their secretions even less. The impact animal agriculture has on our planet is astonishing! I highly recommend this documentary. It showed me that my choice to not eat animal products is also helping to save our planet. The amount of resources (water, grain, land) used to factory farm animals is astonishing. Let me throw some stats at you:
Growing food for livestock uses 56% of the water supply in the US. 1000 gallons of water are needed to make 1 gallon of milk. 2500 gallons of water are needed to make 1 pound of beef. Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of the Amazon rainforest distruction. 1.5 acres of land can produce 37,000 lbs of plant based food. That same amount of land can only make 375 lbs of meat. For those who think fish is the solution: scientists estimate that as many as 650,000 whales, dolphins and seals are killed each year by fishing vessels. 40-50 million sharks have been killed in fishing lines and nets. All of this info is cited, and the sources are available on cowspiracy.com/facts
Ok, spiel done. I just wanted to tell you the reasons I personally decided to live this live of compassion, and let you know where I got my information if you would like to learn more about it as well. I'll tell you, it does make it a lot easier to know all of this which makes me not want animal products, rather than just forcing myself to not eat them without any ethical reasons behind it.
Now to the fun stuff! As part of becoming vegan, I had to learn how to adjust recipes and get creative so that I could continue my passion for cooking and baking. I learned about a lot of new (well, new to me) foods and found some new favorites. Nutritional yeast anyone? Mmm.
I bought some vegan cookbooks and followed recipes very carefully to begin with, but once I got the gist of how these new foods and products work I was able to get more creative and make my own recipes. This blog is mainly just so I can share my recipes with everyone, and prove that a vegan diet is Not Just Rabbit Food. I have shared most of these foods with my friends and family who are NOT vegan, and they all loved them and said that if they could eat like this every day they could be vegan. I promise, to everyone who says "I could never give up meat" as well as people like my sister who say "I could never give up cheese!" I will show you that it really isn't as hard as you think, and once you get into some tasty vegan goodness you'll never miss (and never want!) dairy cheese or meat again. All the animal, the environment, and your health will thank you!
Now for one of the recipes I use the most, since it is an ingredient in a lot of my other recipes:
Almond Milk
All you need for this recipe is almonds and water, a blender, a nut bag or cheese cloth, and a container to put the finished milk in.
A word on blenders: I highly recommend having a really good quality blender. It is an investment that you will thank yourself for all the time. My blendtec blender is used on a daily basis. I got mine used on ebay for a very good price (around $350 for an industrial blender from a smoothie shop that usually goes for around $1200). Vitamix is another really great brand of blender. Neither of them is the prettiest blender to have on your counter, but they're really worth the price!
When I make nut milk, I like using a large wide mouth jar. I use the ring to hold the nut bag in place when I pour, then squeeze the milk into the jar so it can't spray around everywhere. It's also convenient to shake the jar to remix the water and almondy goodness, since it will separate a bit in the fridge.
Ok, to the recipe:
Almond Milk
Ingredients:
1 cup raw UNSALTED almonds
3 cups water, plus more to thin it to the consistency you want
Optional add ins:
2 tsp vanilla
3-4 medjool dates (grind and strain with almonds) for a caramel flavor and extra sweetness
powder or liquid stevia, to taste
cinnamon
cocoa powder
1. If you don't have a high powered blender, soak the almonds in some water for a half hour to soften them. If you do have a high powered blender you can just toss them right in the blender with the water.
2. Blend the almonds and water. It will turn white and look rather grainy. I let mine sit for a couple minutes so the ground up almond bits can mingle with the water to make it super creamy.
3. Pour the mixture through a nut bag or cheese cloth into a bowl or large jar. I like to use this bag and strain into a large wide mouth jar, since when you squeeze the milk through the bag it likes to spray in every direction.
4. Thin the milk to whatever consistency you like. It will be somewhere between the consistency of cream and whole milk when you strain it, so if you prefer 2%, 1% or skim milk you can just add more water and stir it in. I like the jar method, so it is easy to just shake it in.
5. Add any flavors you want. I usually just leave mine unsweetened and with no vanilla, since I use it for recipes that would taste odd with sweet milk (like my red pepper pasta sauce).
Oh! Don't throw that almond meal left in the bag away! You can spread it on a cookie sheet and bake it for a couple hours at around 300 degrees and once it is dry blend it again to get almond meal to bake with. I use mine primarily for my almond croissants. What I like to do is toss that wet almond meal from the nut bag right into a plastic bag and freeze it. Then each time I make almond milk I add to the freezer bag until I have enough meal to completely cover my baking sheet. That way I don't have to bake it each time I make almond milk.
This milk will keep for around 4-5 days in the fridge. I usually end up making a bit more than a liter, but the amount you make depends on how much you thin it out. I like mine a little thicker than 2% milk.
