Vegan Diet Guy

My family back home in the States kept asking how I would celebrate my birthday this year.

I replied that my girlfriend was going to cook me a dinner of Cauliflower Mushroom Marranca and Kale with Cashew Cream Sauce from FatFreeVegan, but I guess somehow cauliflower and kale didn’t sound festive enough, because they persisted in inquiring about my birthday plans.

In recent years, due to long working hours, it had become increasingly rare to celebrate my birthday on my birthday (let alone find time for a relaxing meal anytime), so I would celebrate a little here and there, whenever I could over the course of what became “birthday week”. Usually, this added up to an excess of rich foods and alcohol, and extra weight that had to be exercised off.

Prior to becoming vegan, I would usually request my favorite comfort foods such as stewed lamb shanks, coq au vin (chicken cooked in wine),  or spanakopita for special occasions. Now, I still celebrate with rare foods (kale was unknown here in Japan until recently) and new methods of cooking (or even raw dishes).

People frequently ask me if vegans are allowed to drink alcohol. (more…)

A certain bakery makes a lemon cake with a perfect balance of sweetness, tartness, and softness. This undeniable “wow” factor is attested by their repeat customers, many who purchase lemon cakes as gifts.

Their secret lemon cake recipe took untold hours of development and tweaking. As you would expect, it contains lots of fresh lemons. Unfortunately, the cake is also loaded with eggs and butter and copious amount of sugar.

Putting aside sugar for later, my primary mission was to demonstrate it is possible to make a heavenly lemon cake “cruelty-free” (without eggs or dairy products). I assumed a pioneering vegan baker must surely have done it already…

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Whoever said that making sourdough is like raising a child wasn’t kidding.

I’ve been eternally time-starved since discovering Bryanna’s recipe for sourdough starter, always looking for novel ways to use my growing treasure.

I confess that until making sourdough culture or “wild yeast” myself, I didn’t understand the difference between it and conventional baking yeast, other than the taste, which many people prefer. It turns out sourdough has all kinds of health benefits, too, including ease of digestion, greater nutrition, regulating blood sugar, and longer shelf-life.

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Although you wouldn’t know it from the dictionary, there are millions of things to cook on the barbeque besides meat, chicken, and fish.  And I don’t just mean fresh vegetables, although lovingly barbequed vegetables can be a gourmet meal unto themselves.

A gas grill may not have the same charm as charcoal or wood barbeques, but there’s still something magical about cooking and eating outdoors, especially at night under a starry sky. No complaints about easy clean up, afterward, too.

So, with a let up in the rainy season, and a fresh tank of gas in the grill, I decided it was time to grill my first pizza.

I just threw my pizza stones on the gas grill, and turned it to the highest heat for about a half-hour. While waiting, I rolled out the dough and cut up all the veggie toppings, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, capers, bell peppers, as well as grated cheddar and mozzarella-style Teese.

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Natto is an acquired taste for anyone. Even in Japan, aversion to the smelly, sticky fermented soybeans is so strong that foreign residents who like natto are often said to be “more Japanese than Japanese”.

Although relatively unknown outside Japan, for those on a vegan diet natto is a taste worth acquiring, because it’s really healthy: a probiotic rich in vitamins, especially B-12–which vegans often require dietary supplements in order to ensure they’re getting an ample supply.

Long before becoming vegan, I was eating natto stuffed into sushi hand-rolls, called “natto temaki” in Japanese. Wrapped in a sheet of nori, topped with a mound of sliced green onions and doused in wasabi soy-sauce, the aroma and texture of the natto is barely discernible (for a neophyte natto-eater, this is a blessing). You may even be able to find natto rolls in N. American sushi bars.

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Fast Tube by Casper

Unless it’s every night that another U.S. celebrity talks about going vegan, it sure was a coincidence I happened to see Mike Tyson on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” yesterday.

When I visited the States last November, I caught Janet Jackson on Leno discussing her “on again off again” vegan diet and favorite vegan restaurants, and then Craig Ferguson poking fun at World Vegan Day.

This time around–jet-lagged after being back just 3 days–I was just about to sleep when the late night host announced Tyson would be his next guest. Tyson adopted a vegan diet last May, and (although any reason for giving up meat is a good one) I was curious if the boxer would be discussing what triggered his decision.

Struggling to stay awake through endless commercials, Tyson finally came on to plug “The Hangover Part 2”.  Fortunately for me, within a minute, the conversation turned to his vegan diet.  Looking remarkably fit, Tyson mentioned that he had lost 130-140 pounds since becoming vegan.

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While many of us took our own mother’s cooking for granted while growing up, eating over a friend’s house provided our first taste of exotic foods, even those from just across state lines.

My best friend’s mother from West Virginia served navy bean soup on top of a piece of buttermilk cornbread topped by a pat of butter. Thirty years passed before it occurred to me to bake cornbread instead of having my usual whole wheat pasta or brown rice with soup. And who needs buttermilk when you can make a vegan buttermilk using soymilk and vinegar or lemon juice?

After trying several recipes, Post Punk Kitchen’s still reigns as my favorite, although I replace white flour with whole wheat pastry flour and reduce oil and sweetener, too.  This time, I ran short of whole wheat flour and partially substituted with Bob’s Gluten Free all-purpose baking flour. Though a little chewier than usual, it came nice and crispy, especially after cooling and re-toasting. (more…)

Ethical vegans may object to those who adopt a vegan diet vegan for health reasons alone and other incremental measures toward veganism espoused by popular media.

Rather than expecting carnivores to give up their Western diet habits overnight, “Veganist”, the latest book by Kathy Freston, health and wellness expert and author of “Quantum Wellness”, encourages people to “lean into” the vegan lifestyle.

According to Freston, who became vegan 7 years ago, “Taking small, manageable steps toward the changes we want to achieve has a more profound effect than trying to radically alter any one behavior.” As an example, she cites how she first gave up dairy products, then gradually became vegan by giving up eating one animal at-a-time.

Freston goes on to discuss the benefits of vegan eating including effortless weight loss, reversal of disease, environmental responsibility, and spiritual awakening. “These are just a few of the ten profound changes that can be achieved through a gentle switch in food choices.”

For those who discovered vegan diets as adults and took months or years to completely give up eating animal products, it makes sense that the greatest potential for change is in our daily actions: (more…)

You often see high profile vegan coaches and chefs coming clean about how they have fallen off the wagon: If they’re raw vegans, they may have eaten something cooked, while those on a vegan diet may have eaten something containing animal products.

Adopting a vegan diet made me extremely conscious of what I eat, so eating non nutrient-rich plant-based foods, or even healthy ones to excess–is also falling off the wagon for me.

After using an online meal planning system for a few months to ensure I was getting enough nutrition from plant foods alone, I became much more aware of the size of the portions I should be eating, too.

For example, in the past, I would eat much of a 1lb bag of nuts (chips, popcorn, etc.) by the handful–out of stress or while distracted–without realizing that a “proper” serving size was a single handful, or around 2 oz. (56g). Not long ago, I thought people who weighed their meals were a little whacky, but  now I use my kitchen scale often to keep me on track. At least I don’t carry it around with me, or I’d really be off my trolley.

Recently, I stumbled upon “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” by Brian Wansink, PhD, which described an experiment demonstrating how movie-goers ate more popcorn if served in a bigger bag, regardless of whether it tasted good or not. (more…)

Everyone (at least everyone who’s seen a tub of Quaker Oats) knows oatmeal is good for your heart. Now, if only everyone understood the most effective way to reduce cholesterol and dramatically improve your health is–plain and simple–by eliminating animal products from your diet.

In Honolulu airport recently, I glimpsed a large sign outside Starbucks with a photo of a bowl of oatmeal. Later, an article in January’s Entrepreneur Magazine confirmed the trend: While Starbucks in U.S. has offered oatmeal since 2008, more quick-serve restaurants–including, of all places, McDonalds–plan to offer healthier options, such as fiber rich and whole-grain oatmeal, to meet calorie and labeling requirements of federal healthcare reform.

Although eating oatmeal for breakfast is a far cry from everyone adopting a vegan diet, influential restaurant chains offering oatmeal (hopefully not laden with dairy products, sugar or chemical preservatives) can only help to make people more aware of health benefits of plant-based foods. (more…)