Vegan Cheese, Milk and Egg Substitutes (Banana Almond Nog), Cars and Animal Sanctuary

[Guest guest]

Vegan Cheese:

About 20 years ago, I came up with a vegan sesame cheese that is very easy to

make and has endless ways to use it: 1 cup raw sesame tahini; 1/4 to 1/3 cup

lemon and/or lime juice, pulp and/or whole fruit puree; 5 cloves garlic smooshed

or finely chopped; salt or another source of saltiness (soy sauce, tamari, miso,

bragg's liquid aminos) to taste. Mix this with a fork until the tahini stiffens.

You can add olives, pimentos, green chilis, walnuts, and/or a gazillion other

possibilities. I use this cheese to coat steamed vegetables for fillings for

wraps or enchiladas and to make vegan macaroni and cheese dishes. Kids like this

kind of macaroni and cheese with chopped tomatoes and vegan weiners. Kids will

pick up the bitter of the citrus rind after a few bites, so the citrus juice

only version of the cheese is best if you have picky eaters. One of my favorite

meals is this cheese on steamed collards or chard with chopped fresh tomatoes

and walnuts, eating this with a nice whole-grain

toasted bread and a stout. This cheese with smooshed garbanzo beans, a little

olive oil, some cilantro and/or coriander, perhaps adjusted with a little

garbanzo cooking water, makes hummous. This cheese with chopped roasted

eggplant, a little olive oil, some cilantro and/or coriander, perhaps a little

liquid hickory smoke makes baba ganouj. This is best if you can cut the eggplant

in half, put olive oil on the cut faces, and grill over charcoal and sweet fruit

wood, like apple, cherry or pear wood, and then include some of the blackened

faces in your baba ganouj. The sesame cheese when cut half and half with

fork-smooshed tofu makes a nice layer in a vegan lasagna, or a pasta-less

equivalent using chard or kale instead of noodles. This sesame cheese and tofu

mix sets up nice when baked and it's not possible to tell it apart from a dairy

cheese mix.

 

Banana Almond Nog:

A few years ago, I came up with a substitute for egg nog that is very nice: 8 to

10 frozen bananas (I get the fully ripe ones in large quantity when I find them

on sale, then peel them, put them in plastic freezer storage bags, and freeze

them for future use in cakes, pancakes, and smoothies); 1 cup or 1/2 pound of

raw almond butter. Put these in a gallon container and add just enough water to

allow you to blend them completely with a hand blender. Then add enough water to

make a gallon and blend again. Add nutmeg to taste. This doesn't keep well, but

it's so good, it's easy to drink it up, especially if you have a gathering.

 

I find that the bananas work well as an egg substitute in many cases. In my

vegan pancakes, I use half dry ingredients, half wet ingredients, and then the

bananas have the right consistency to mix in without having to adjust the wet

and dry balance. This by eye strategy works in making banana bread too, so I can

just mix things together without a recipe on hand and come up with something

really good, fresh and warm. Back to the pancakes, powdered soy milk is a good

addition to the dry ingredients. Between the smootness and the moisture of the

bananas, and the lecithin of the soy, most of what eggs do for pancakes is

accounted for.

 

Cars:

Cars are not 100% vegan, as I understand, since the rubber in tires is made with

animal products. This brings up the topic of the difficulty of being 100% vegan.

How far can we go in making sure the agriculture we get our plant-based foods

from isn't harming animals? Can we walk without smooshing some poor ant or

breathing in some poor fly? This shouldn't discourage us from the vegan ideal,

but it should keep us from having a holier-than-thou attitude. As Walt Kelly

would say it, we must realize with a sad and wonderful joy that we're all in

this struggle together. We should be positive about how far we've come, even if

we see that there is some ways farther to go. I have proposed that we think of

veganism as an ideal towards which all people who care about animals are taking

steps, even if they're going so far as to kill animals out of necessity, but do

it with respect. I think that such a way of thinking about veganism can keep us

more positive and do much more to promote it, and

in this way increasing the ability of all of us to be more vegan.

 

Animal sanctuaries often pose this kind of dilemma for vegans. I have worked

with chickens and turkeys in sanctuary, and they naturally lay eggs that

something has to be done with. The chickens were specially bred for egg laying,

so they had a problem with laying so many eggs that their bones became very

brittle. The turkeys were bred to be overweight, so they too had a vulnerability

to having broken bones too. Part of the solution for this was to cook the eggs,

both chicken and turkey, and feed it back to them.

 

The chickens had a sympathetic thing going on: when one hen layed an egg, some

of the others would take turns and lay eggs in the same spot. One day I went out

there, and the wind had blown the door closed. One of the hens was in a panic

needing to get in and lay an egg, and some of the other hens were in a

sympathetic fluster with her. I opened the door, and the group rushed in. The

hen that needed to lay her egg rushed to the nest with her company, but one of

the hens stopped at me and pressed her head against my leg, as if to say thank

you. I will never forget that moment. They were beautiful complex creatures who

loved to run around the yard, scratching for treats, and taking dust baths. When

let out in the morning (they were put inside at night to protect them from owls

and other creatures), they would run with the same joy as children going out for

recess. It is a terrible thing that such beings are typically crammed into

crowded cages...

 

Peace....