Veganism So Far
One of the main changes away from my default lifestyle for this eight weeks has been following a strict vegan diet. For those unfamiliar with the term, vegan is distinct from vegetarian in that all animal products are avoided, even those that don’t kill the animals such as eggs, milk and honey. Environmentally the motivation for being vegan is similar to the motivation for being vegetarian. In general, it takes much more energy to produce milk or egg calories then it does to produce vegetable or fruit calories. Though being vegan seems quite limiting, it has actually only been frustrating or awkward once or twice in the three weeks thus far.
I’m taking a class that involves a weekly dinner at a rotating set of professor’s houses, and on the first week I decided to go to the dinner and just eat what I could. Unfortunately, it’s not necessarily clear what the contents of any particular dish are. I had a suspiciously creamy hummus as well as a very tasty mushroom pesto. Both dishes could’ve had had some small amount of dairy in them, especially the pesto, which I’m pretty sure in retrospect had some Parmesan cheese. In these situations I don’t want to tell the host that I’m being vegan because I don’t want to be a burden on someone who is being so gracious to host a large group. Since that dinner I’ve just eaten before the class at home in order to avoid any trouble.
I’ve only been out to eat once, to meet up with some friends at Pizza Port. I called ahead to Pizza Port and confirmed that their sauce and dough were both vegan and then just ordered a pizza without cheese and with tons of tasty veggies.
The vast majority of my eating has been home cooking, and it’s in this domain that I have really been enjoying myself. There’s one recipe that I love and have been using all the time that I thought might be fun to share with the readers of this blog. I got the recipe out of a book by Mollie Katzen called The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without that my mom got me for Christmas. I’ve now made several dishes out of the book and I can recommend it highly. Here’s the recipe (at least my slightly modified version of it):
Arugula Pecan Pesto
Put 4 packed cups of arugula, 1 cup of pecans, 2 teaspoons lemon juice and a pinch of salt into a food processor and blend. Once a portion of the items have blended, push the unblended material on top to the side and add 2 tablespoons of golden raisins down near the blades. Cap the food processor and slowly dribble 6 tablespoons of olive oil through the cap while continuing to blend. In my experience the golden raisins cause the processor to kick a little bit, helping items that haven’t yet migrated down to the blades get blended. You might want to stop at some point and push anything that splattered on the sides back down towards the blades. Once the mixture is fully blended, put the pesto into a container with a top and enjoy either on pasta or with bread. If you live in the San Diego area, I particularly recommend thin slices of the Seedy Sourdough baguette from Bread and Cie bakery in Hillcrest (they sell it baked fresh daily at Whole Foods).
Here’s a shot of the arugula pecan pesto in action for a recent lunch, along with some Seedy Sourdough as well as some strawberries and an orange from my CSA box. Very colorful!
