Vegan diet

[Curt]

Has anyone here tried going vegan.   I eat vegan for the most part when I cook at home. Still learning. Having fun with it. 

[Shyheels]

Vegetarian, yes, but I love my cheese far to much even to try vegan

[Steve63130]

I'm kind of an opportunivore.

Steve

[Sydheel]

I have a simple theory or 2 on this

1. Cows eat grass. I eat cows. Im therefore only eating processed grass, Therefore im almost vegetarian

or

2. Dental charts clearly say i have teeth designed for cutting and tearing, therefore i was designed to eat and chew meat. (As an aside i lost this argument with parents a long time ago when i suggested that using cutlery was making my cutting teeth redundant)

hehehe

[Thighbootguy]

13 hours ago, Sydheel said:

2. Dental charts clearly say i have teeth designed for cutting and tearing, therefore i was designed to eat and chew meat. (As an aside i lost this argument with parents a long time ago when i suggested that using cutlery was making my cutting teeth redundant)

Some times parents are a lot smarter than we think.

[meganiwish]

Similar to Shyheels above, I like my meat and fish too much, but some of my favourite things are vegan.  There's a Tuscan bean soup with rice and cabbage, or ribolitta https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ribolitta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=azrnV-qWB6fS8AejuqK4DA  The Spanish espinacas https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=espinacas&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=7zrnV567MafS8AejuqK4DA#q=espinacas+con+garbanzos is a classic.  I used to sell spinach and chick pea pasties, which were vegan and very popular.

[Shyheels]

That sounds good. One of my main beefs about vegan or vegetarian food (sorry, I couldn't resist) is that it is too often bland. I have a good recipe for vegetarian sweet potato chilli that I love to make and eat, though.

[meganiwish]

It occurs to me that vegans might lack pastry.  You can make it with oil, thusly.  First you take some flour and mix it to a firm dough with oil, just enough for it to come together.  It takes less than you'd think.  Trial and error.  It should feel like butter out of the fridge for an hour  Depending on what you want, you can lighten it with a little baking powder.  For a quiche type thing I'd miss it out, but for a pasty or a pie top I'd recommend it.  Then you make a flour and water dough.  You wrap the second dough around the first and roll it out.  Then you fold it into three like putting a letter into an envelope.  Repeat six times.  You won't get mil feuille, but you'll get agreeably flaky pastry.  Shyheels's sweet potato chilli as a filling would make a pasty that made a country walk something to remember.  Get his recipe off him, make the pasties and head for the hills.  Eat them in front of a good view.

[CPB]

I'm with Sydheel. The thought of not being able to chuck a nice piece of cow or lamb onto a braai & have some beers with friends is just too horrendous to contemplate. Almost as bad as cleaning out the closest of all my feminine clothing   .The closest that I come to a completely vegetarian meal is blue cheese pasta.

[northshoreguy1981]

I eat according to a vegan diet. There are plenty of yummy things to eat!

Vegan food isn't all about emulating meat (although there are some excellent mock meats and non-dairy cheeses out there).

[Shyheels]

I quite like a lot of vegetarian food, but you're  never going to get a really good ripe non-dairy Camembert or pungent roquefort...  

[swedeheeler]

Cow eats grass. Grass makes cow grow. I eat cow. 

[Shyheels]

Silly. Eat grass instead. Grow big and strong like bull. 

[meganiwish]

13 hours ago, northshoreguy1981 said:

I eat according to a vegan diet. There are plenty of yummy things to eat!

Vegan food isn't all about emulating meat (although there are some excellent mock meats and non-dairy cheeses out there).

Which is why I recommend my oil pastry as a pasty with Shyheel's sweet potato chilli to fill.  Totally vegan, totally yummy and not pretending to be meat.  It's a good pastry that, wrapped around beef skirt, onions, potatoes and swede, makes a good Cornish pasty.  As long as you're on the right side of the Dart.

[Chorlini]

Plants are living creatures too. Just because they don't make noise doesn't mean they don't react to stimuli. Because animals look cuddly and make noises we kid ourselves that eating only plants does not make us monsters. If they could plants would disagree. In the end everything eats each other in some form.

They will have to make me give up eating meat at gun point. It's just too damn tasty. I can do without lots of things. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I try not to drink soft drinks, I avoid sweets wherever possible, but meat? NEVER!!!

Because the universe has a perverse sense of humor a lot of the women I meet and am attracted too turn out to be vegetarian. If there's such a thing as reincarnation I'll probably return as a pig or chicken.

[Shyheels]

I love a glass of red - I figure grapes must surely count as one of my five a day. Same with chocolate since the cacao pod is also technically considered to be a fruit.  I take my healthy diet as I find it.

[meganiwish]

Now, I've oft wondered that.  When the British Navy did experiments about scurvy, cider was one of the things they tried.  It wasn't the best, but it did have a positive effect, so I assume that cider and wine must count the same as fruit juice.  I've had loads more than five today and I've never felt happier.

[CPB]

On ‎2016‎/‎10‎/‎20 at 4:10 PM, Chorlini said:

Plants are living creatures too. Just because they don't make noise doesn't mean they don't react to stimuli. Because animals look cuddly and make noises we kid ourselves that eating only plants does not make us monsters. If they could plants would disagree. In the end everything eats each other in some form.

 

I've often wondered about that. Just because plants don't scream or show pain, does that mean that they don't suffer or react to stimuli or situations. I was still in school - feels like a life time ago - and they did a documentary on healthy Kudu that were dying in the Kruger National Park. They had no diseases or infections, parasites & all their organs were working. They only found out the answer when they did tests on the stomach contents. After the first Kudu had taken a bite the plants reacted by changing the chemical composition of their leaves, which resulted in them becoming poisonous. The Kudu then eating second, third, etc were being poisoned. I can't remember what they did to fix the problem, but if this doesn't prove that plants are intelligent & react to stimuli & suffer as animals do nothing will.

On ‎2016‎/‎10‎/‎21 at 3:16 AM, meganiwish said:

Now, I've oft wondered that.  When the British Navy did experiments about scurvy, cider was one of the things they tried.  It wasn't the best, but it did have a positive effect, so I assume that cider and wine must count the same as fruit juice.  I've had loads more than five today and I've never felt happier.

Now that's my kind of reasoning

[meganiwish]

Indeed, Chorlini makes the point well.  The claim is made by fruitarians (yes, they exist) that plants want us to eat the fruit.  No they don't.  It's just a fact that life will eat itself, much like pop will.  We can only live because something else dies, otherwise we'd be shoulder to shoulder and knee deep in pigs, chickens and ancestors.  There are some grand vegan recipes out there.  Enjoy them, but don't expect them to make you morally superior.

[Shyheels]

It's called the food chain. Best to be at or near the top.

[swedeheeler]

Eat or be eaten

[meganiwish]

Eventually you'll be eaten anyway.  You know, eating disorders are to be expected in humans.  You can trace it back at least as far as Genesis.  No other animal has a guilt relationship with food.  This is what's meant by the sorrow that comes from partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  It is only we who understand mortality, and that we live off the death of others.  To be sure, it's a dreadful realisation.  A couple of books in and Leviticus is full of rules about how to eat.  I wouldn't be so bold as to say that there are no societies with no food taboos, but I bet there aren't any.  Just being in a state of knowledge can be enough to make you question your right, and you didn't even ask to be here.  There's nothing you can do to change the rules of nature, so enjoy your bacon sandwich, and try to ensure that no-one was unnecessarily unkind to the pig in a way it would have noticed.

On the plus side, if you want your species to  flourish, you could do worse than be tasty to humans.  We won't see chickens, cows, wheat or rice go extinct before us.