Hungry for Dinner

I'm at work. It's 5:38pm and I am hungry. It's the kind of hungry that demands attention: 'FEED ME! FEED ME NOW!!!!' it shouts in a way that only I can hear. Thursdays and Fridays, I work at My Beloved's company and am therefore reliant upon him to decide when we get to leave. At present he is tapping away furiously trying to fix some morsel of code or another, while I am increasingly obsessed with morsels of a wholly different nature.

For dinner tonight I am planning to make some un-KFC. Some cruelty-free fried chicken - CFFC? - with the tofu I liberated from the freezer this morning. Of all the possible junk foods of my pre-vegan days, fried chicken is the one I would confess to missing. It is not the chicken flesh I miss - that thought is appalling to me now - but the crispy, salty, spiced coating. So last night I froze 1lb of extra-firm tofu (which should now be thawed now) as I've heard that this is a neat trick to make tofu more chewy. Using cayenne, black pepper, oregano, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, pehaps a little paprika, and some cornstarch and breadcrumbs, I am hoping to approximate the 'KFC' coating and dish it up with a hearty serving of sauteed vegetables - peppers, onions, baby corncobs, broccoli, peas, carrots and parsnips. OK, so 'extra-crispy chicken thighs and fries' it is not, but a healthier solution it is - for me and for the animals!

Watch this space: if the un-KFC experiment turns out well (fingers crossed!) I will post pictures as soon as possible!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Vegan-Eyes

I went to the supermarket this afternoon to collect a few staples for the coming week: apples and bananas for my lunch at work; peppers, onions, celery, squash etc for dinners....I also threw in some chickpeas, a bag of dried great northern (white) beans - presently soaking so that I can cook them tomorrow - and a few other general bits and pieces. Lately I really find it difficult to browse and enjoy thinking up meals on the fly as I have started to be really bothered by the smell.

I had never noticed it before but grocery stores that sell meat and fish...Smell. Really. Bad.

Truly bad.

So I now rush past the counter displays of butchered carcasses and of fish with their unseeing eyes, averting my own eyes and trying not to breathe in the stench. I guess it makes the trip quicker anyhow, now that I don't linger so long....

Anyway, at the checkout a woman and her young son stood in line behind me. He was maybe 7 or 8 years old and had the crucial job of holding her credit card and store loyalty card while she unloaded her groceries onto the belt. Pack after pack appeared of shrink-wrapped cow flesh, ground up turkeys, frozen pizza topped with chickens, sealed bags of machine-expressed, ready-spiced potato 'fries', a gallon of cheap full-fat cow milk...you get the idea. Omitted from her cart were vegetables, fruits, grains, breads...anything wholesome and sustaining. Just an orgy of the Pre-Processed and the Putrefying.

I looked at her son standing next to me at the belt and wondered what he'd look like in 20 years time. And I felt incredibly sad.

'Sausage' Rolls Recipe now available!

I've had a few inquiries about the awesome sausage rolls I made with GimmeLean, a soy product with the taste and texture of sausage meat. So I've written up a recipe and published it in the 'Eat Me!' section (see right sidebar), courtesy of the Scribed publishing service!

Yes, friends, through the wonders of freebie web publishing, you too can enjoy this perennially favourite Brit comfort food - without any of our porcine friends coming to harm.

Live well and Stay Vegan, Friends!