Rice and beans with fresh salsa. Pretty boring, but I'm a fan of anything the consistency of gravy poured over rice so you'll hear no complaints from me. The beans are just pinto beans cooked in water and salt with a pinch of cayenne and oregano, drained and mashed, with some of the reserved cooking liquid stirred back to achieve desired consistency. The rice is long grain cooked with a tablespoon of tomato paste and two bay leaves. The salsa is chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, juice of half a lime, and salt to taste. Tada! Vegan Mexican meal that everyone can enjoy. Tomorrow we'll probably do something with the leftovers.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Accidentally Vegan
For two people who both love meat/seafood, we do eat vegetarian for most of each week. It's cheaper and healthier, we figure. But it's rare that we actually end up eating a vegan meal, which is what happened tonight.
Rice and beans with fresh salsa. Pretty boring, but I'm a fan of anything the consistency of gravy poured over rice so you'll hear no complaints from me. The beans are just pinto beans cooked in water and salt with a pinch of cayenne and oregano, drained and mashed, with some of the reserved cooking liquid stirred back to achieve desired consistency. The rice is long grain cooked with a tablespoon of tomato paste and two bay leaves. The salsa is chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, juice of half a lime, and salt to taste. Tada! Vegan Mexican meal that everyone can enjoy. Tomorrow we'll probably do something with the leftovers.
Rice and beans with fresh salsa. Pretty boring, but I'm a fan of anything the consistency of gravy poured over rice so you'll hear no complaints from me. The beans are just pinto beans cooked in water and salt with a pinch of cayenne and oregano, drained and mashed, with some of the reserved cooking liquid stirred back to achieve desired consistency. The rice is long grain cooked with a tablespoon of tomato paste and two bay leaves. The salsa is chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, juice of half a lime, and salt to taste. Tada! Vegan Mexican meal that everyone can enjoy. Tomorrow we'll probably do something with the leftovers.
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10 comments:
Vegan? NOOOOOOOOOO...You guys are falling into the dark side of the culinary world...
Oh boy. Get a grip. Scroll down and see what I ate yesterday.
I'm merely pointing out that a lot of delicious meals happen to be vegan. Indian food, for example, is just as delicious vegan as meat-packed. So is Thai curry, Chinese yang chun ("plain boring") noodles, or szechuan mung bean noodles. A lot of possibly fatty, delicious things are vegetarian too: mac n' cheese, eggplant parmesan, deep fried stinky tofu, kimchi, nachos...
People would be healthier and the planet would be in less peril if we all realized there are plenty of dishes we all like (or should like) to eat that don't contain meat. If I can not eat meat most of the week, anyone can. Even firefighters in Texas can (Google Engine 2 Cookbook).
PS. It takes more culinary skill to make vegetarian food taste good. That's why most people associate vegetarian food with grossness. But if you ever eat a good meal at a Buddhist temple or in someone's traditinoally vegetarian home, you can be really blown away by how amazingly flavorful and satisfying the food is.
Oh, I was just kidding... but I do find veganism extreme...
I hate boring veggie meals. It does take more to make a flavorful decent vegetarian meal. I do miss meat sometimes, but as long as the veggie items are interesting and delicious, having meat all the time becomes less important.
How is veganism extreme? Whole grains, rice, beans, oils, fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices - these are and have been the building blocks of many people's diets (especially in agrarian societies) for most of history. Dairy and meat are great and I eat them, but if I had to go vegan I'd hardly starve. It's only recently that the average joe could afford to eat as many animal-derived products as he wanted.
Plus, coconut milk is just as deliciously decadent and "unhealthy" (note that I don't really believe it's unhealthy, just that as a high-fat product many would classify it as such) as any meat or dairy product.
I am speaking from the point of view of someone whose family starved most of the 20th century, ok maybe just my mom's side. My g-ma was a single mom and due to the government's policy in China at the time, she had to turn her harvest over to the government and had nothing for her family. My g-ma went through so much just so that her children would have a better life including a better diet. So from my pov, it seems odd that people would voluntarily restrict their diet (but maybe it makes sense from the uber consumption American point of view). Anyhoo, don't know if it make senses, but that's just how I feel.
People have all kinds of personal reasons for eating or not eating things, but the way I see it is that if you step back and just think objectively about the food pyramid, all the things that we should be eating the most of (at the bottom) are more or less vegan. So while veganism seems restrictive, when I really think about it, the things that are vegan are the things we should be eating the most of anyway. Any kind of diet can be a poor diet if you don't eat the right things. So the kind of vegan or vegetarian diet I am guessing your grandmother was on (not much produce, mostly grains) is entirely different to me from a "vegan" diet with lots of legumes, fresh produce, and plant-derived fats. The latter is basically what vegetarian Indian people eat, minus the yogurt and ghee, and everybody likes Indian food, right?
People have all kinds of personal reasons for eating or not eating things, but the way I see it is that if you step back and just think objectively about the food pyramid, all the things that we should be eating the most of (at the bottom) are more or less vegan. So while veganism seems restrictive, when I really think about it, the things that are vegan are the things we should be eating the most of anyway. Any kind of diet can be a poor diet if you don't eat the right things. So the kind of vegan or vegetarian diet I am guessing your grandmother was on (not much produce, mostly grains) is entirely different to me from a "vegan" diet with lots of legumes, fresh produce, and plant-derived fats. The latter is basically what vegetarian Indian people eat, minus the yogurt and ghee, and everybody likes Indian food, right?
I like Peggy's food.
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