Vegan? Locavore? Both? Neither? A discussion on ethical eating.

I know, it's been a very, very long time. Here is the truth: I've started eating a few local nonvegan foods, and I've been a little nervous about posting. My friend Gene was in town last week. He was one of my friends from church, a fellow vegan who helped with the vegan cooking class. He prompted to me start thinking about why I don't post, since he always read and frequently commented on the blog back when it was active.

Taking the Menu for the Future class last year was a great experience. I encourage anyone who's interested to get involved with that or any of the other discussion courses offered by Northwest Earth Institute. The class did talk about the hazards of factory farming, the resources consumed by raising livestock, the pollution, etc, and the necessity of eating lower on the food chain. However, it also talked about the benefits of eating local. And that's kind of the rub for me.

I believe as strongly as ever that eating lower on the food chain is the more ethical choice for a lot of environmental reasons. I also believe that animals, even animals you keep for food purposes, even animals you kill and eat, should be treated with kindness and allowed plenty of space and healthy food. If a person kills an animal, it should be done as humanely as possible and with reverence for the sacrifice the animal is making.

When it comes down to it, which food is the more ethical choice: a pineapple or an egg? Let's say you're a girl living in Arkansas. The pineapple is grown using cheap borderline slave labor and flown halfway around the world using dirty oil. The egg is raised a few blocks away by a friend at a community garden that serves as an outdoor classroom, teaching urban kids about sustainable farming. That one is pretty easy.

Now which one is a more ethical choice, the pineapple or a locally raised chicken? The chicken was pasture raised and spent its life running around and eating bugs and grass and playing with other chickens. When it was killed, it was done in a way that minimized the animal's suffering. To me, the line is blurry. Who would I rather be? The chicken, who enjoys life and loses it prematurely, or the man working for pennies in the unrelenting heat growing the pineapple? The woman who died in the desert for the oil it took to transport the pineapple? Her children? It's way more complicated than just not eating or using animal products, for me.

Gene and I both agreed: in a sense, veganism is easy. (I know a lot of people who would be shocked to hear it!) You can make one choice, draw a line in the sand, and know that most of the time your choices will be the most ethical under the circumstances. In terms of Kohlberg's moral hierarchy, I think choosing veganism is akin to choosing a system of laws that already exists, like choosing a religion that most closely matches your beliefs and becoming an adherent of that faith. It's a great way to simplify the process, and I am absolutely not criticizing it. I admire and respect vegans, vegetarians, pescetarians, locavores, anyone who takes the time to make a conscious choice about what they put in their body based on ethical concerns.

I just think for me the question has become more complex, for now. Jay is in the kitchen right now making breakfast: local eggs, local blueberry jam, and local 8 grain vegan bread. We still use the smart balance lightand the unsweetened silk. We still check the label for sneaky bits of whey. We still make our own ice cream with mimicreme. In fact, after Gene and I finished talking about this, we wandered into the kitchen and I heated up a meal of local purple hull peas (seasoned with vegan bacon salt and vegetable broth) and cornbread (veganomicon recipe). Most of the food I eat is still vegan.

I'm not going to lie, though. It's been nice to have eggs in the morning, or local raw milk colby on my pizza, or even meat, occasionally. And I guess that's the point. I've always been a vegan with a lot of exceptions, so I suppose this is one more. As to whether I have the right to the term vegan, my friends understand the complexity of my relationship with food, and understand that it's shorthand I use with strangers whom I don't feel need to know the depths of this issue.

It's not that I'm never going to eat another pineapple again, either. But when I do, it will be like meat: with as much concern as possible for how it got to my table, with the knowledge that it's a very occasional treat. For now, that's where I want to be and the choice with which I'm most comfortable.

Hot Soup and Rich Beer

It's one of those random cold days after it should be well into spring. Tomorrow I'll be lolling about on a sunny hillside, sprawling on blankets, laughing with friends, and snacking on hummus and flatbread. Today, however, it was seriously time for some soup. This is just water with some broth cubes dropped in, frozen spinach, frozen peas, penne, sauteed onions, and a few spices. I have also been loving the new Paradise Porter from Diamond Bear Brewing Company. It's a weird name, but a good beer.

Homemade Ginger Vanilla Ice Cream

Holy crap. Ever since little Evan did a post about ice cream made with Mimic-creme, I've been wanting to try it out. They have it here at the Drug Emporium, an enormous Walgreen's type store with a secret health food store in the back called Vitamins Plus. I always forget it's there until someone reminds me, but they have a ton of selection and better prices than Whole Foods and Kroger.

So I picked up some Mimiccreme thinking I would try Evan's method, only to discover than when your refrigerator has a ice maker, you don't own ice cube trays. On Monday, when it was supposed to be a state holiday, I stopped by work just to check my e-mail only to find out that we were supposed to be there anyway only no one told me. I felt like that imaginary time in jr. high, when everyone changed the time of the party and conveniently forgot to tell the smelly kid. I am the smelly kid.

So I was stuck at work, feeling sorry for myself, and decided to buy an ice cream maker. It's the grown up version of "fuck this, I want some ice cream." The feeling passed, and I didn't end up buying one, mainly because there were too many choices and I've never used one before. That night, however, we had a couple of Couchsurfers coming back to Vermont from California, and as we were pulling out of the driveway to hit the grocery store, Jay spied something in the back of their car. "Is that an ice cream maker?" It, indeed, was. After dinner, they brought it in and made ice cream. It was magical.

We put in about a cup of liquid per person, which ended up being some Mimiccreme and some soy milk. Then we added a little bit of vanilla, some ground ginger, and (in a stroke of brilliance) ground up chunks of candied ginger. We added some extra sugar, too, but the result came out too sweet, so I think in the future I'll taste it and keep it more creamy and less sweet. The ice cream maker the girls had was a Rival brand that one of them had picked up at a thrift store for $5. It had an inner container for the creamy mixture and an outer container for the ice and salt. They used a whole canister of table salt and layered it with the ice until it filled up, then plugged in the machine that magically made the ice cream.

I think the whole thing took about 45 minutes. I am buying an ice cream maker.

Pumpkin Pudding

Jay, god love him, has issues with recipes. In that he doesn't use them. Whoever's reading this might be thinking, "But, Maggie, you don't really use recipes either. You're always changing things or throwing things together." This is true, but I have several cookbooks, and the internet, and I look at recipes a lot. I look at other food blogs; I look at random cooking sites; I watch videos from everyday dish and food network. I have a lot of contact with recipes, and even though I almost never follow one to the letter, I generally use them to get an idea about proportions of ingredients, or what flavors might best complement each other.

When I say Jay doesn't use recipes, I mean he really refuses to even look at them. And in terms of complaints about boyfriends, I know this one is minor, but it's super dooper annoying because it can be so wasteful. I'm sure I don't have to remind you all of the pumpkin pie failure soup. There was also the bread that resembled a bowling ball, at least in texture.

The only upshot here is that he lives with two additional people who can generally rescue his unfortunate baking mishaps. The credit on this one goes to John. Jay tried to make pumpkin muffins. Who makes muffins without looking at a recipe? Jay does. They came out really dense and wet, but not altogether inedible. They just needed a little something extra. John made an orange maple syrup sauce and poured it over the top of them, turning them into delicious individual pumpkin bread pudding delights.

BBQ Tempeh and Lemon Dill Coleslaw

This is kind of awesome. John made a special bbq sauce with orange juice and rind, brown sugar, ketchup, and vinegar and poured it over some prefab garden vegetable tempeh. Then he baked it with some sauteed onions and peppers, and I made some creamy lemon dill coleslaw.

The coleslaw was just half a head of cabbage, sliced, mixed with some vegenaise, salt, pepper, dill, celery seed, and lemon juice. I like it really lemony so I used the juice from a whole lemon, and just enough vegenaise to moisten it. The lemon coleslaw and the orange bbq sauce made a nice pair, but I wish I'd done something kind of Asian-inspired, like ginger and lime coleslaw. Maybe next time.

Peach Cobbler

What? Stop looking at me that way. There has been weather and we've been cleaning the house and here I am with more food love for you.

This is a peach cobbler. I bought an enormous bag of frozen peaches from my local food co-op and I needed to use it. I was feeling sad about the winter and wishing I'd saved more lovely summer and fall fruit, and then all of a sudden there it was, like a beacon: ginormous bag of frozen peaches! I decided cobber was the way to go because it's so easy.

This one was made with flour and a five grain cereal blend and some baking soda and some soy milk and oil. Basically a rough biscuit dough. I put the peaches in a casserole dish, dumped a cup or so of sugar on top, and then spread the dough around. I baked it at 350 until the dough spread out and firmed up and looked dry. It was delicious and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Speaking of which, I posted something on facebook last week about the sausage apple stuffing and a friend posted a comment with something like "Sausage?! Was it vegan sausage?!" And I responded with this:

"Yeah, I actually am talking about vegan sausage. I dispensed with the superfluous words like soy or fake or vegan when describing my food a while ago. I just expect people who know me to assume, correctly, that I mean the vegan version of whatever I'm talking about."

If anyone reads this, what do you think about that? Do you generally modify the words when talking about your food? I just find it cumbersome and unnecessary. Thoughts?

Also, I added a tag. It's "local." I'm going to go back and stick it on a few previous entries.

Fettuccine Bolognese

I'm calling this a fettuccine bolognese. I'm not really sure what a proper bolognese is, but m-w.com tells me it's a tomato sauce flavored with meat. Well, this is a tomato sauce, and it's flavored with fake meat, so that's close enough.

I made my basic marinara, with onions and garlic, a can of crushed tomatoes, a bay leaf, some red wine, salt, pepper, and a bunch of Italian spices. Then I stuck a couple of Tofurkey Italian sausages in the food processor, ground them up, and added them to the sauce.

I know this isn't terribly exciting, but it was terribly delicious, and it's the easiest way I've found to make a really "meaty" pasta sauce.

I'm going to be playing a lot of catch up this week, I have posts ready to go about the following foods: pumpkin pudding, peach cobbler, homemade bread, bbq tempeh and coleslaw, spaghetti bolognese, aloo ghobi, and (coming up tonight) vegetable samosas.

Stuffed Squash and Sausage Stuffing

My roommate John had a birthday today. We had leftover biscuits and cornbread in the freezer, and a few leftover pancakes from breakfast. John had been wanting stuffing. Easy.

I crumbled up the bread products in a casserole dish, sauteed some sausage, diced apple, minced onion, and chopped fresh sage in a skillet, then mixed all that together and poured vegetable broth over the whole thing. I baked it at 350 for a while, until it looked done, maybe 25 minutes or so.

The squash was pretty easy, too. I sliced them in half, brushed them with olive oil, and baked them until they were sweet and mushy. I cooked some red chard, onions, and garlic in a pan with some nutritional yeast and other spices (I have no idea what I put in there, maybe some Cavendar's?) and dropped a spoonful in the middle of each one. Finally, I topped them with shredded mozarella teese. When John tasted the filling, he asked if it could be his boyfriend. This was an awesome birthday meal.