The Vegans Have Landed

Recently, I went to a permaculture association camping weekend, attended by many of the vegan persuasion, and catered entirely with plant based foods : this community is keen to show that a righteous life is one where no being has to suffer to feed another. While I understand where they are coming from, I found it interesting but wasn’t in the end convinced away from my meat and dairy eating ways.

Now, I have some experience of being vegan : it was a long time ago, in a house share in Norwich, where everyone else was vegan, and indeed, quite often freegan, back in the day when bakeries and supermarkets didn’t even think of locking their bins. It was fun :  there’s nothing so boring as having unlimited availability and funds to cook with : the challenge of culinary creativity lies in making something good with whatever you’ve got, rather than having to get all the right ingredients. Its why I make pesto with easy to grow rocket and cheap sunflower seeds, rather than hothoused Basil and imported pine nuts. It’s why I like foraging and growing my own : supermarkets, with their infinite reach have taken the fun out of exotic ingredients from far flung places, so that local ingredients, especially ones that are free, are paradoxically the rarest and most valued.

Even now I still make the occasional vegan meal : Quorn Chili, pastas all’arabbiata, Chi Vruoccoli, and con Ceci, Pesto doesn’t really need cheese: salads with grains and hoummous.

But now we get to the But : vegan food should be animal free and proud of it : no apologies should be made for  the ‘lack’ of protein, flavour or anything else, and above all, no vegan food or ingredient should be a version or substitute of an animal one. So: as a vegan I learnt to make shoyu seeds as a delicious sprinkle to add to salads, and grain based dishes, to add protein, healthy fats, texture and flavour to dishes which won’t be getting any cheese on top.

Vegan cheese  and meat exist : these are made in Switzerland :

but I am confused that the way these highly ethical foods are presented is like sausages and pate : highly processed and packaged and resembling artificially rendered meat, which is surely the worst food the world of meat can offer, rather than the best. What is it that vegans seem to be missing in their diet? Processed paste?

We were proudly offered Soya Dream instead of custard, and ate beans and greens and beetroot as Chili and Curry with sticky brown unsalted rice.  Honestly, there’s just no need : nowadays you can get brown Basmati, which is nutritionally whole, but doesn’t stick together, and you can make curries with squash, coconut and nuts that are so delicious and fragrant no-one will care there’s no animal in it even if they notice. This is how you win people over, vegans : by giving them a Vegan Horse of food so delicious they can’t claim that giving up meat is a loss. Not death by beans.

Of course meat eaters are annoying as well : in the west we have become so used to our habits of wasteful abundance, that most of the food produced is thrown away before we even buy it.

People who love the anonymous pink, red or white slab and balk at eating anything that looks like an animal that was once alive : trotters, tongue, wings, tail and most internal organs, and anything with a face. In my veg box trials, I have been interested to note the variety of different meat on offer : my favourite so far has been Farm Direct, for offering whole wild rabbit, for a mere £5.50 a pop. It arrived de-skinned and without a head ( thank heavens, because although I believe that you should kill what you eat, and waste nothing, I am fairly near the beginning of this process, and generally go out of my way not to kill anything at all if I can possibly avoid it) for that £5.50, I made Rabbit goujons, rabbit stew, rabbit stock for risotto and gravy, and my cats ate the meat that went into the stock. I was going to eat the internal organs that were still there, but in the end, only managed the liver ( you have to take these things slowly) and the heart, lungs and kidney went into the stock.

The rabbit had lived a free life in Essex, eating greens and living a natural life until it was shot, which for my money, is worth so much more than even organic free range chicken, at more than twice the price. This is the food that our ancestors would have eaten : huge amounts of roots and greens, with a few seasonal morsels of meat and cheese every now and then. Very little processing, no food miles, humane and tasty. Given a choice between this and a tofu burger, made from imported processed soya, I feel that consciously chosen meat is the better choice.