The VegNews Scandal

Short version; VegNews is a vegan magazine, which has recently been found to have been using non-vegan stock photos for their recipes.  This was revealed on QuarryGirl and has caused a huge blowout on Twitter, which began with lots of people talking about how they were going to cancel their subscription and is now at the point where everyone is telling everyone else to calm down.

Pictured: Random selection of #VegNews comments.  Paraphrased:  "Calm the fuck down, y'all!"

I can kind of see why it makes people uneasy.  You could interpret it as, vegan food does not look as yummilicious as omnivore food.  Or, perhaps you could be suspicious, and believe that VegNews has been making non-vegan food, taking photos of it, and passing it off as omnivore food, or that the pictures were only created for this purpose.

The explanation, I gather, is simpler.  There are few stock photos of vegan food, and it's cheaper to use stock photos than make your own, if you're a large publication.  Or, at least, that's the explanation they offer in their apology.

(I believe it; that's a lot of time and effort to put out, just to play a practical joke on the vegan community).

Personally, while my reaction was 'ick', I guess this comes under my second-hand rule (I will buy fabrics that I'm unsure are vegan if they're second-hand), so I'm morally okay with it in that sense.

At least one person has pointed out that vegans often eat mock meats or cheeses, so it's hypocritical to be angry with VegNews over this.  I feel that this is a totally different issue, and I'm also very sick of hearing that point made by omnivores (never heard it from a vegan before - first time for everything!).  I did not give up meat and dairy products because I didn't like the taste, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Those first few days would have been so much easier if I had.

The only way that applies in this situation is if you think VegNews was trying to get people to salivate over pictures of meat.  Like porn.  Which they were not, because that would be silly.  Dead bodies are not sexy (to, y'know, most people).

That said, I don't VegNews had a very good excuse for what they did.  But, the issue isn't "omg, they killed a picture of meat!".  That's a vacuous, unintelligent argument.  It's more about honesty.  For a start, I'm concerned about the fact that they weren't actually making the recipes themselves, if they're going to be recommending them to other vegans.  Other people are concerned with the trust issues involved in showing pictures of meat next to vegan recipes.

Personally, I never read VegNews, so I don't feel personally betrayed or insulted, as many seem to.  I guess it's not really my place to say what other people's opinion should be.

RaVeganous

So, I just changed the name of this blog from Vegan2011 to Raveganous.

Originally, this blog was intended to chart my year of veganism (2011).  It also had quite a nice little rhyme to it (if you pronounced it twenty-eleven).

However, the blog isn't about that any more.  A name with the year in it will date very quickly, so I wanted to pick something else.  I wanted something which instantly indicated 'vegan', but preferably without using the word 'vegan' (like the Happy Herbivore managed to do).  That proved tricky.

I also wanted the name to be catchy, and something personal to me.  I did think of Krav Vegan, or some variation of it, but I don't often talk about Krav Maga, or even sports nutrition.  I eat more calories on days when I work out more, and up my protein content by a proportionate amount, sometimes with a hemp smoothie - that's the extent of my sports nutrition.

I have a love of classic British and English food, but I don't always focus on those, and anyway British Vegan is taken.  I'm lazy, but the Lazy Vegan is also taken.  So, I just went with a portmanteau of my surname, ravenous, and vegan.  Simples!

Have a mildly artistic picture of Anthony and I, and my Ridiculous Sunhat (love that hat).

Kali's Seitan Sausages

This is a recipe I made up all by myself, so I'm quite proud, and will cry if anyone copies it without credit and linkage.

Ingredients
(Makes 8)

• 1 400ml Tin of Cannellini Beans
• 2 Medium Mushrooms
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Tomato Puree
• 1 Tablespoon Garlic Puree
• 1/2 Tablespoon Onion Salt
• Other Seasonings; All Spice, Mace, Cumin, Pepper, Chilli Powder.  A dash of each.
• 200ml Vegetable Stock (I used one Oxo vegetarian stock cube)
• 1 1/2 Cups Vital Wheat Gluten

1. Put everything except the Vital Wheat Gluten into a blender, and blend till smooth.  Taste, and add more seasoning if necessary.
2. Mix with the Vital Wheat Gluten to form a dough.  Scoop out quarter cupfuls of dough, form into sausages, and wrap in tinfoil.
3. Steam for forty minutes.  You can do this in a vegetable steamer (which is all I have, to be honest), just swap the layers around halfway through.  The seitan will swell, and press against the foil.
4. Unwrap from the tinfoil, and allow to cool and dry out slightly.  The seitan is cooked, and can be eaten as is, but can also be cooked further - for instance, grill it, and put it on a bun.

I love this recipe, and not just because I invented it.  The sausages are low-fat, and good to snack on and make sandwiches with (which I do often, because they're very high in protein).  I baked some of the last batch into bread rolls, like bagel dogs.

I'd never heard of bagel dogs before I started reading Fed Up With Lunch, but Mrs Q was given some a couple of times.  She seemed to assume that everyone knew what they were, so didn't include an explanation.  I gather that they're sausages baked into bread, which seemed like a good idea to me, if the bread and sausages were homemade and delicious.  So I made some for that picnic Anthony and I had.  They were yummy, and so filling.

With this batch, I'm going to make pork pies.  I've never done that, even as an omnivore, so it'll be a fun experiment.  I'm planning an English themed picnic for the Royal Wedding Day, and pork pies seem quintessentially English to me.

I'm not an ardent Royalist.  I wish William and Kate well, but I'm not particularly interested in them.  I just love British food, and themed picnics - it means I challenge myself more to come up with interesting foods.

I could also make some sausage rolls.  That'd be fun.

According to MFPs recipe calculator, each of these sausages contains 143 calories, 10g of carbs, 20g of protein, 3g of fat, and 1g of sugar.

Handmade Garlic Italian-Spiced Chips

Props to Slimming World for this one!

Sometimes, you just need a big, old-fashioned, chip-butty.  Thick white bread (or at least 50-50!), spread with sunflower oil margarine, and hot, thick, salty, vinegary chips.  Pure, classic, British, starchy, stick-to-the-ribs, comfort food.

Sometimes, you want something starchy and comforting, but slightly exotic.  I like to add a bit of a twist, by spicing the chips liberally with Schwartz Garlic Italian pre-mixed spice.


Ingredients
(to serve 1)

• 1 Potato (approx 150g-200g)
• Sunflower Oil Spray (I use Fry-Light)
• Seasonings - salt, vinegar, pepper, etc.  I used a pre-mixed Garlic Italian spice.

1. Peel the potato, and cut into chips.  Boil in salted water for four minutes, and drain.  Pat dry with kitchen towel.
2. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 9 (240 degrees centigrade).  When the potatoes have dried for ten minutes, return them to the dry pan, put the lid on, and shake it like a polaroid picture.  This will improve the texture of the chips.
3. Place in an oven dish sprayed with fry light, and give 'em another spritz (I generally use seven or eight spritzes total).  If you're using extra spices, spice liberally at this point.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes, shaking them up every so often so they cook evenly.

I find that, with the Garlic Italian spiced chips, a tablespoon of french dressing makes a great dip.

According to MFPs recipe calculator, this comes out to about 160 calories, with 35g of carbs, 4g of protein, 1g of fat, and 2g of sugar.  This will vary depending on the size of the potato.  Those figures are based on about 170g of potato, with 8 sprays of oil. For contrast, a similar portion of deep-fried chips would be over 400 calories, according to this source.

Graze

So, a few days ago, I got my Graze box, which I mentioned a few posts ago.  It was a lovely day, so I took myself off into town, with my ridiculous sunhat, my graze box, and some apples, to have an impromptu picnic in Pigeon Park.

Just to recap; Graze is a company that will send you a box of snacks, for £3.49 a box, each with four things in it.  You can set them to come every week or every fortnight, order boxes on a whim, or push back deliveries to a better time.  You can also bring them forward, but you do need to give a bit of notice - about two days, if I recall correctly.


All the snacks are healthy, natural things, like nuts, and dried fruit or berries.  All the food is vegetarian, and there's an option you can click on to veto ('bin') all non-vegan options (and yes, honey is not-vegan, as far as they're concerned).  You can see the full range here.

Generally, you can get your first box half price, but you can get the first one free and the second one half price by using the code 14Y9DGY (if you use the link above, it should already be filled in).

In my free box, I got Bakewell Tart (almonds, dried cranberries, and cherry-infused raisins), Jaffa Cake (dark chocolate buttons, roasted hazelnuts, and orange-infused raisins), Love Mix (dried cherries, dried goji berries - which I'd never tried before - and dried apricots), and Eldorado (dried cranberries, hazelnuts, and dark chocolate-coated cocoa beans).

I like almonds and dried cranberries, and the cherry infused raisins were gorgeous.  I liked Jaffa Cake a lot more than I expected, considering I never really liked jaffa cakes as an omni.  Mouthfuls of dark chocolate, roasted hazelnuts, and orange-infused raisins are absolutely wonderful.  SO yummy, like wow.

I've made a rule to try everything I'm capable of eating (since I used to be fussy, and I'm always working on breaking that!).   You can rate items, before or after you receive them, as bin (never send), like, try, or love, and you can set your options to focus on trying items, or on just getting items you like or love.  I'm not rating items (except the non-vegan ones as 'bin', obviously) until after I've actually eaten them.  It worked pretty well - I might have avoided jaffa cake, if it had been up to me.  I might even have avoided Eldorado (which I will get to shortly).

It was in this spirit that I tried Love Mix.  I'm not the biggest fan of dried apricots - I find them too chewy - and, it turns out, I'm not too fond of goji berries either.  Good to know though, right?  It was good, it just wasn't quite to my taste.

Ridiculous Sunhat and big smile!

Eldorado, on the other hand...

To be honest, I was a bit nervous about trying it.  For some reason, I kept thinking of coffee beans, instead of cocoa beans, which didn't help.  I kind of thought it would be really bitter, like some 70% cocoa solid chocolate bars.

I was wrong though.  The dark chocolate is lush, and the cocoa beans...oh wow, they were all crispy, and chocolatey, and YUM.  Like chocolate squared.  And the cranberries and hazelnuts didn't go down too badly, either.

I'm really looking forward to my next Graze box.

Full English Breakfast

...only not quite, because I really wanted to include mushrooms, but we were out of them.

That's a large slice of Tiger Bloomer toast with vitalite, vegan sausages, Rachel Wilkerson's sweet potato hash browns, homemade baked beans, and tomatoes baked in the oven with a spritz of oil.  You can thank Gizzi Erskine for that last one.  I'd have cooked the mushrooms the same way, if we'd had any.

The vegan sausages are my own recipe.  I made a batch last week, and they're really good.  I'm planning to use the same recipe to make vegan pork pies, along with some extra spices and maybe vitalite or sunflower oil for the extra fat content (they're traditionally made with lard, so still an improvement!).

This was my reward for three straight hours of Krav Maga yesterday.  It was great fun, but my knees have yet to forgive me.  And my arm looks like this, but that's more to do with the three hours I did earlier in the week.

Experimentation

I have made experimental vegan sausages, with my own vegan recipe, which taste delicious.  And I've made a dark chocolate caramel ice cream, which is also absolutely yummy.  I will tell you all about them as soon as my assignment is done.

An actual recipe for the ice cream might have to wait till I remake it though - I've got a few things to fix.