The Bitch is Back

     So I am on day 3 of my raw food challenge. And while it started off with good intentions and a fridge full of produce, it’s rough going. Read it…and weep.

Day 1

             I actually started out with dinner and luckily for me, I happen to like salad. A lot.  But because I was not so cruel as to make my husband and child go through the raw diet, I prepared some pasta for them as well as a giant salad for the three of us.

            You would think that preparing a salad would be pretty easy from the rawist point of view. Wrong. While the vegetable component was fairly simple, the dressing was not. Our go-to salad dressing had a problem and the name of the problem was balsamic vinegar.

            Vinegar is a fairly simple: it’s just the byproduct of wine or alcohol making when the yeast involved in fermenting wine eat up all the sugar and convert it to carbon dioxide and acetic acid, aka, vinegar. But unlike most vinegars, which are not cooked in any way, balsamic vinegar is based on the cooked must of the white Trebbiano grape then left to age (usually in oak casks).

            Yup. Balsamic is cooked. But no problem! I just replaced the balsamic with red wine vinegar. But in my dressing, I usually also put a pinch of sugar to balance out the vinegar. Guess what. Commercial sugar, either cane or beet, is out-it’s based upon the processing of boiled raw beet or cane juice so it can crystallize. So, out with the sugar and in with the honey. Olive oil? Luckily, that was OK. But salt? Commercial salt is also made with high amounts of heat. Luckily, I had some super-pricey French salt that was naturally evaporated by the sun.

            Normally, salad dressing takes me 3 minutes to do. Thanks to reading and researching every single ingredient in my usually simple salad dressing, it took me 20. I was NOT amused. If it weren’t for the glass of wine (thankfully, NOT cooked), I would just said, “Screw this.” But after my booze, my cooler, rational head prevailed and told me not to quit. After all, I am doing this in the name of science!

Day 2

             I usually don’t make breakfast. My husband does that. But before you have this romantic dreams of breakfast in bed or a whirling dervish of cooking activity, the breakfast I get is the “Continental[1]” kind: toast, coffee, butter and jam. If we’re really fancy, we bring out the yogurt.

            As you can see from my usual breakfast, I was entering a rawist minefield. Bread is baked. Coffee uses roasted beans and boiled water. Butter, while potentially acceptable for rawists, is a problem because all the milk here is pasteurized before being churned. And jam? Always cooked and it already had sugar in it, which made it double problematic.

            What did I do? Well cereal is out – that came out of cooked grains. I had some meusli running around. After a quick check of the ingredients, it looked acceptable, but no yogurt, milk or in fact any dairy product was acceptable. Before I started getting worried I would have to choke down some breakfast, I looked in the pantry and saw some soy milk. Saved! Until I realized that to make soy milk, the beans are boiled and then pressed the make the milk.

            In the end, I ate my muesli raw with a piece of fruit. Wasn’t so bad. And not having coffee? Well, I guess I could just do some tea with some hot tap water. I don’t really need the milk for tea, so I was OK.

            Two hours later, I’m not such a happy camper. Lack of caffeine has set in and despite 3 cups of black tea, I have the headache from hell. I want my coffee. I want my coffee NOW!!!

            Out of desperation, I decide to consult several raw food books and see if there is any way to get my coffee fix. The short and the long answer? NO. Out comes the advil.

             Luckily for the raw diet, I don’t eat lunch (mainly due to the fact that as a writer, I really don’t spend any energy except for getting cups of coffee…which I no longer can drink). I snack on some carrots and an apple. I want a yogurt, but that’s not happening. I’ve prepared another salad for dinner, this time with some nuts and raisins (which, according to the Raw Food Nazis, is ok).  Kid and hubby get some roast chicken. I try to inhale extra calories from the smell.

Day 3

            After a hearty breakfast of some more muesli and fruit, I realize my stash of fresh fruits and vegetables is disappearing…fast. I make a trip to the grocery store thinking I could get some nut milks, some more produce and nuts and olives as snack items to tide me over the stomach rumblies.

            I find my goods and I come home. But I realize, I’m exhausted. And I still have a headache. I think it’s a lack of protein, so I munch on some more nuts and drink buckets full of water and some juice. No luck. It’s time to use my lifeline. I call my vegan friend, who seems to have all information on diet and nutrition.

            Bad news. According to him, the reason why I tired, grumpy and headachy is because all the “toxins” are leaching from my body. If all the toxins leaving my body were causing me so much pain, then maybe I should have stuck with keeping the toxins in my body.  At least I wouldn’t be so bitchy.

            He recommends that I take a B vitamin supplement and a D vitamin supplement. He also recommends that I start “soaking” raw grains to get something that resembled a cooked starch, which then gets me thinking about rice. I can do without bread for eons, but rice? Someone is going to take away my Asian cred if I can’t get my rice. God damn it…now I want rice.

            Seeing that I am starting to hit the desperation point for food, I start looking into all the recipes that for rawists. What? I could have pasta and or a sandwich? Yay! Until I saw the ingredient and equipment list. Someone didn’t tell me in the Raw Food Newsletter that I would have to invest a small fortune in a dehydrator, a juicer, a seed sprouter, chia seeds[2], psyllium husks,[3] dulse[4] galore. I tried looking around e-bay for a cheap dehydrator. Cheap being 170 dollars I didn’t have. Seed sprouters – uh, not available at the grocery store.  Needless to say, I didn’t have any psyllium husks, chia seeds or dulse.

            Back to eating another salad. Or maybe not. I realized that there were a bunch of proteins I could eat that were not “cooked.” I live in Scandinavia…there’s pickled herring galore! Also, there’s gravlax! But of course, there’s a catch. Both herring and gravlax are traditionally eaten with bread, mainly to counteract to saltiness. No bread, therefore, just salt. I tried making a little ssam like gravlax burrito. SOL. Too Salty.

Ten cups of water later, I’m still thirsty and hungry. Try an extra bowl of raw oatmeal with almond milk to quell the hunger. Not working. I’m just going to bed. I’m going to have to find a solution because I’m starting to get really annoyed with this diet. But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Too…tired…to…think…about…food…again.

---

[1] I’ve always been really curious as to why this breakfast has been called a “continental” breakfast. Granted, this is the standard of breakfast for most across continental Europe (Even the French don’t eat a croissant everyday…it’s a occasional thing. You are more likely to see the French eat a baguette with butter.)  But who decided that coffee and toast was the purview of the “Continent”? Hmmm.

[2] Yes, this is the same stuff from “Chi-chi-chi-chia” Head. Apparently, chia seeds are a “superfood” containing a large amount of Omega-3 fatty acids (like the kind you get in fish).

[3] This is the same stuff that’s in Metamucil. The one problem you don’t have going on a raw diet is fiber….

[4] Dulse (Palmaria palmate) is a red seaweed found on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It’s primarily used as a thickening agent (carrangeen) for food products.

Space, The Final Frontier

            I didn’t think I could do it, but I managed to feed several vegetarians and vegans on a Fourth of July without any of them going hungry. Vegetarian food is not that particularly difficult for me to do – but vegan – that’s a whole other story.

            Over the course of our seemingly unpatriotic Fourth of July party with vegan hot dogs and beet salad (no potato salad – it has eggs), we had a long discussion over the serious lack of vegan food options. Restaurants, with the exception of some ethnic restaurants (Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants seem to do OK), are pretty lame at giving vegan eaters something decent to eat.[1] There are a bunch of cookbooks, but after a while, you really get tired of eating endless variations on legume “something” or stir-fried “anything.” And many rely upon really obscure ingredients (Cashew milk? Barley syrup? ) and have even worse names (personal favorites – Mom’s Neatloaf, The Pigs are Safe in the Barn, and Dragonfly’s Bulk Dry Uncheese Mix). As someone who cooks, I realize the challenge of vegan cooking. So much of the flavor of foods is related to the specific chemical composition found in animal products. For example, the savory je ne sais quois of meat is due to the presence of glutamates (related to monosodium glutamate, or MSG - aka the mother of all Chinese food). But glutamates are not just present in meat – lots of foods have it. Mushrooms, cheese, and miso are just some of the examples of foods with high glutamate content. Add miso, and voila! Tastes like meat.

            If it could only be that simple. It’s not just a challenge of finding ingredients to work with; it’s the challenge of changing cooking techniques to adjust to the lack of animal products. For example, most French sauces use prodigious amounts of butter (in fact, I can’t think of a single classical sauce that doesn’t use it). Butter’s emulsifying properties are absolutely critical as the base for these sauces. Vegetable oil won’t cut it. Eggs are critical for most types of “-aise”: mayonnaise, hollandaise, béarnaise. Other sauces need some type of meat stock, not only for flavor, but also for the gelatin formed in the cooking process (critical for all aspics). Baking without butter or eggs almost impossible (butter for fat and eggs as a leveaner). Many Southeast Asian food cultures depend upon fish sauce as an ingredient and a condiment (critical for umami). And East Asian cultures rely heavily upon fish or fish products to flavor soups, stocks and even kimchee (there’s either fish sauce or salted shrimp/krill in it). And for all you chocolate junkies, look carefully. Only dark chocolate contains no milk solids.

            In my attempt to cater to all my vegan friends, I tried swapping various vegan-friendly ingredients for traditional ingredients. Nut/seed butters for butter. Vegetable stock for meat stock. Vegetable oil for pastries. Agar agar for gelatin. Kombu, kombu, kombu. They were all miserable failures on all possible levels: taste, texture, appearance. And my intestines starting hurting from all the fiber.

            While trying to find a way to alleviate the ensuing panic attack I was having at the thought of starving a bunch of pale, under-nourished historians of science, I realized I had it all wrong. Trying to make vegan food taste like non-vegan food was an exercise in futility. Vegan food will never taste like meat because IT’S NOT MEAT and never was meant to be. I had to go back to first principles: vegetables qua vegetables. What is the nature of the vegetable? To be a vegetable – not tofurkey, not veganaise or any other non-vegan wanna-be. 

            I went back to the kitchen and I re-discovered a whole bunch of recipes that were vegan, but never had the label of being “vegan.” And they all taste fantastic and they have no crazy delusions of being an animal product. Many of them come from traditionally vegan traditions, such as Buddhism or Hinduism, but many are them are based upon traditional Western culinary cannons, such as ancient Rome and Greece.

            So as an occasional series, I am going to do some of those great recipes that are vegan in name only. They taste great. Elsie the cow and Charlie Tuna will thank you.

Tabouli with Quinoa

            Quinoa is the new spelt that was the new wheat. Or in fashion terms – it’s the new black. It gained in popularity after a NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) study touted it’s nutritional value: “This ‘new’ crop, rich in protein and with desirable proportions of important amino acids, may provide greater versatility in meeting the needs of humans on long-term space missions.”[2] So instead of having Tang and the Smithsonian’s pasta-and-meatballs in a bag, NASA scientists think that quinoa is the food of the future.

            But as we historians like to always joke, it’s older than that. The pre-Columbian Andean and Incan societies (modern day Bolivia and Peru) ate quinoa in vast quantities. And in Bolivian highlands, they still do.[3]

            Contrary to its grain like appearance, quinoa is not a true grain, like that of wheat, barley or rye, which are related to the grass family. They are chenopods and are related to beets and spinach (if you look at quinoa leaves, they resemble spinach leaves in shape and taste). But the real treasure lies in the seeds. Quinoa is almost nature’s perfect food: it is a complete protein source (has a balanced set of amino acids, unlike many other plants), is gluten-free, easy to digest and has lots of fiber. What NASA had reported was known by the Bolivians for eons – it really is one of the world’s most complete foods.

            And it’s really easy to work with. Its versaltlity is astounding. Quinoa can be ground into flour for gluten-free breads. It can be used like any grain – as a starch, in salad, in stews. Bolivians grind the grains and make it into a nutritious smoothie of sorts (with apple juice, sugar and cinnamon).  Here I use it instead of bulgur for tabouli. Yes, it isn’t “authentic” but it makes for a great cold meal on a hot day. And considering how cheaply one can buy fresh herbs and decent tomatoes during the summer, it really makes an easy summer meal, with the addition of some hummus and pita. And even the pickiest of your vegan friends will eat it – because it’s so damn good.

2 large bunches of fresh mint (doesn’t matter what kind), minced

2 large bunches of fresh flat leaf parsley (curly is OK, but flat leaf is better), minced

1 bunch of scallions, finely chopped

2 c. quinoa (white, red or black are all fine)

3 ripe tomatoes, diced

1/2 c. extra virgin olive oil

2 lemons, zested and juiced

large pinch of salt (to taste)

1/2 tsp. ground cumin

1/4 tsp. smoked paprika

pinch of ground chipotle pepper

1.     In a large pot, take 2 cups of quinoa and 3 1/2 cups of water. Place over high heat until boiling, and then turn the heat to low and cover until quinoa is cooked through, about 20 minutes (quinoa is done when the “tails” come out). Set aside and cool.

2.     In a small bowl, add olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt, cumin, paprika, chipotle pepper and whisk to blend. Toss with quinoa.

Add mint, parsley, scallions, and tomatoes to quinoa. Toss to blend. Set aside for at least 1/2 hour to let the flavors meld. Season with more salt if needed. If not serving immediately, store in refrigerator no more than 2 days. Serve room temperature or cold.

---

[1] High end dining – we’re talking Michelin starred restaurants – are fairly good at dealing with vegan requests. The only exceptions I can think of it the omkase menu at LA’s Urasawa and at any of the Momofuku restaurants (Ma Peche, Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssam Bar, etc.) I guess the logic is that if you are paying 200 dollars a person for dinner, you might as well get anything you damn please – including a vegan dinner.

[2] Greg Schlick and David L. Bubenheim. “Quinoa: An Emerging ‘New’ Crop with Potential for CELSS,” NASA Technical Paper 3422, November 1993: 1.

[3] The popularity of quinoa has been cause for some concern for those interested in food culture preservation and history. After the Spanish conquest of Incan territory, the Conquistadores discouraged the cultivation of quinoa, as it was a symbol of pagan, “Indian” rituals and practices. But now, quinoa’s popularity as a “superfood” has boosted the economies and living standards of rural farmers in the Andean highlands. However, this comes at a price. The increasing demand for quinoa, especially by health-conscious Westerners, has evaporated the local market for the grain: it is simply too expensive for Bolivians for everyday consumption. The Conquistadores have come back again – now in corporate form. See  https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html?pagewanted=all