Going herbivore

Oh yeah, so this is actually a pretty major and possibly even relevant thing to blog about. At midsummer (that is… wow, three months ago already!) I made a pledge to go vegan for a year. As part of the annual promise of Blackout Sabbath to change something in my way of living in order to make the world a better place, and, well, as a challenge to myself. FOR SCIENCE, sort of. If I can manage a year without eating animal products, I may or may not keep it up in the future as well. We’ll see how it goes.

So far it’s going quite well. I obviously haven’t starved to death, and the cravings for cheese and milk and stuff isn’t as overwhelming as I had imagined. Now I’m also forced to actually learn how to cook properly, which is something I have practically detested and avoided as well as I have could before. And actually, the food I cook is slowly turning towards “quite tasty” rather than “barely edible” the more I practice. I’m even starting to like cooking a bit.

To help with the learning (as if living with a vegan who’s a genius in the kitchen isn’t enough) I have bought my very first cook-book. I actually own about a dozen cook-books, all of them given to me from my mother, with the best intentions I’m sure. I’ve actually tried a few of the recipes over the years, but I haven’t really felt the motivation to learn how to cook anything more advanced than pancakes (and I’m damn good at making pancakes, ask anyone who know me! And what is this silly talk about eating pancakes three times a week is too much?), when I seem to invent new ways to fail (in often both spectacular and messy fashions) in the kitchen every time I try to follow a recipe. 

Anyway, now I have acquired a vegan cook-book with the most awesome name ever: The Veganomicon.

So far I’ve tried about ten recipes, and they’re easy enough to follow that I haven’t screwed up anything too bad, and very tasty. It contains recipes of all kinds, really. From waffles with bananas and walnuts in them to soups and breads and stews and stir-fries and curries and salads and ice cream and sauces and tons of other stuff, none of which seems insanely complicated, even for a food-dyslectic like me. The fun thing about vegan food (at least the way it is presented in this book) is that it takes inspiration from all over the world, and creates delicious cross-breeds of foods I would never have imagined combining, using everything from vegetables of all kinds to beans, tofu, seitan, grains and other edible things that grow. A major plus is the witty way in which the book is written. A minus is that the bloody americans insist on using silly units like “cups” and “ounces” and so forth. Hello, heard of SI units, anyone? C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it!

I look forward to familiarize myself further with this book, and hopefully eventually acquiring some well-needed cooking skills. There are over 250 recipes in the book, so it’ll keep me occupied for a while! I’ve also bought a book on the art of baking vegan cookies, but cookies deserve their own post (if not their own category), so that is a subject for another time!

Darn. All this food-talk has made me hungry. Time to feed!

Winterdragon