A "little slip"?

I've occasionally heard vegans and vegetarians talk about having "a little slip," or sometimes a major one, if they jump off the vegan or vegetarian bandwagon temporarily and indulge in the land of dairy or even carnivorous delights before going back to usual plant-based culinary pursuits.

Usually, this pronouncement of having a "slip" is done with a fair amount of guilt. It's as though being a vegan or vegetarian is a full-time religion that one simply must pursue to perfection, no matter what deprivations must occur to be successful. And if one fails, self-flagellation must occur. Right?

Well, not so fast, I think. Now, I'm all for having a conscience, and I'm certainly aware that eating a healthy diet is necessary. I'm also all for being vegan or vegetarian if that's what your body needs and it's important to you. And yes, I do think that even those people who decide they must continue to eat meat can probably cut back pretty substantially and therefore save both our animal friends and the environment a lot of grief, even if they can't give it up altogether.

But what is it with the guilt, already? Do we have to define an occasional dabble in dairy or even meat as failure if we decide to pursue a veggie lifestyle? I don't think so; I've said before that I don't think we know everything about the human body or what it needs, so maybe an occasional craving like that is just a means to make sure we get something we need. Or maybe it's just that you have a sudden craving for meat or dairy after X years of not having it.

So, why not indulge -- without the guilt? Chances are it's something that's going to happen only occasionally anyway, unless you decide one day that a completely veggie lifestyle isn't for you anymore. People have been known to change on that, too.

Regardless, though, it really is true that most veggies (full or part-time) are conscientious about food choices, as well as the impact they have on the environment and on the animal population. That really does put us ahead of the crowd, to my thinking. And that careful sense of responsibility we carry with us should be enough to assuage the guilt for an occasional "slip," if it happens.

Can you be a vegetarian or vegan if you don't like vegetables?

I can go in on my blog site and look at keywords people are using to search with when they find my blog (whether they're actually looking for me or not), and it gives me ideas sometimes on what I can write about. One particular keyword search I saw recently asked something to the effect of, "Can you be vegan if you don't like vegetables?"

Yes, you probably can be, but here's the thing; you'll have to eat the vegetables anyway, because you can't be a HEALTHY vegan and not eat vegetables. (Really, though, you can't be a healthy omnivore, either, and not eat vegetables.)

Now, I realize people really, truly do have aversions to particular foods for what are probably valid health reasons. For example, I really, truly can't stomach meat. It makes me ill to both smell it and to try to digest it. My particular physiological makeup not only does just fine without meat, but it does better without it than it does with it.

Can the same be true of vegetables? Maybe for a specific vegetable, but what I'd ask the person who doesn't like vegetables in general is whether or not he or she has really tried to eat them; I ate meat, for example, for 18 years before I became a vegetarian, and during that whole time I ate meat, I didn't quite feel right but I thought you had to eat meat to be healthy. Once I removed the meat from my diet, presto. I instantly felt better.

Age has something to do with it

One of the reasons vegetables can taste bitter to younger people especially is because as we get older, tastebuds develop and get more mature so that you begin to like flavors you didn't previously; for example, a lot of vegetables have both bitter and "astringent" flavors to them that often take a bit of tastebud maturity to really begin to like. So if you're a young person and you don't like vegetables, wait a bit. As you get older, it's likely that you will like at least some vegetables, and you should always give things another try every few years to see if your taste buds have changed, assuming you're not actually allergic to them. (I love most vegetables, but two I still can't stomach despite trying to get used to them are brussels sprouts and rutabaga; I do give them a taste every couple of years, though.)

Lots of choice, so lots of things to experiment with when it comes to vegetables

With meat, you've only got what are probably four main choices of meat (poultry, fish, beef, and pork). So if you don't like meat, you're pretty much out of luck when it comes to choices. With vegetables, though, you've got lots and lots of different choices; if you don't like one type of vegetable, you've still got lots of choices to try. Chances are, you'll find at least five or six vegetables you really do like if you give it an honest shot. You can put those in your diet first, and slowly expand out from there as your palate gets used to the taste of vegetables.

Masking the flavor healthfully

If you really can't stand the taste of vegetables at least at first, there is a way to mask the flavor healthfully (no butter or excess salt). Put just a drop or two of stevia in them to give them a bit of a sweet flavor that's healthy. Not a lot, just a drop or two, then mix very thoroughly (stevia is VERY sweet when undiluted). It will give you time to adjust to the taste so that you can stop using it once you've learned to appreciate the taste of vegetables. (And of course, you can always make sure you get a couple of servings of fresh fruit a day right off the bat even if you don't like vegetables at first.)

If a vegetable dislike sticks with you

If a particular vegetable you're trying still doesn't taste good to you after you've given it a fair try (assuming you don't already know you're allergic to it and therefore shouldn't try it at all), I honestly do think your body's trying to tell you something and that you shouldn't have it. I think our bodies are smarter than we are about a lot of things and really do know when something isn't good for us if we listen to them. That said, though, there are still a lot of choices available to you that you should try even if you find you don't like a particular kind of vegetable. Happy eating!

More on eating for about a dollar a day, "lazy vegan" style

Yesterday, I posted that I ate comfortably and well on a little more than a dollar a day without having to cook much. I can do that because I buy only whole ingredients (except for an occasional treat), cook from scratch, and only eat nutritious foods, for the most part (no junk food). I also use crock-pots and a bread machine to make most of my meals so that I don't spend a lot of time cooking. And, I bulk cook and freeze a lot so that I can cook two or three days a month if that and then spend the rest of the month eating the results without having to do any other cooking.

It's really easy to cook this way, but you don't necessarily have to do it exactly the way I do it to be successful at it. I bulk cook and freeze most things, but you don't have to; a small crock-pot and a bread machine are still going to get you some really decent meals very cheaply even if you have to do it more often than two or three days a month, for very little work. I can bulk cook and freeze far ahead because I have a 13 cubic foot freezer (bought specifically for this purpose), but I realize a lot of folks aren't going to have that.

Recipes

I've been asked to post some recipes and shopping tips, and instead of reposting everything here, I'll just direct you to my website. Again, that's at:

http://home.earthlink.net/~kimcof/lazyvegan.htm

It's not very well organized right now because I originally started writing the content there as a newsletter; I just posted back issues of the newsletter in chronological order on the website so that people who didn't have them could go get them. Every issue has a recipe, cooking tips, shopping tips, etc., but if you're looking for something specific, it's a little hard to find it the way things are organized right now. I will reorganize the site so that cooking tips, shopping tips, the grocery lists, and all of those things are easy to access from the blog itself.

Some tips on "lazy cooking and shopping"

For brevity, though, I'll just outline a couple of things I do here so that I can eat for what amounts to a little bit more than a dollar a day now.

· I shop once a month, which forces me to really think about what I'm going to be buying and stay within a budget. (You can buy fresh, hardy fruits and vegetables that keep and frozen fruits and vegetables for variety, which means you don't have to be running out to the store every minute; that can cause you to spend more.)

· I basically buy the same ingredients as staples month-to-month, but have learned to make different recipes from them.

· I bulk shop at a local stock up store (here, it's Aldi) for nonperishable things like canned goods, coffee, generic koolaid, etc., every three or four months. They're about half the price of the local grocery store even for its sale prices. Then I just hit the local grocery store for items that won't keep long term.

· I have perhaps a dozen entrée recipes that I can just throw together and then freeze, plus a favorite bread recipe and several healthy dessert recipes that I work with most of the time. I don't get bored easily when it comes to food, so having a relatively limited menu works for me; you could spice it up for yourself if you need more variety than I do.

Finally, my "master shopping list" is on the Lazy Vegan website here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~kimcof/mastershoplist.html

It has all the ingredients I purchase and just keep in the pantry, fridge and freezer all the time to make the meals I always have on hand. When I made the list, I also included blanks for folks to put in things they need that I don't (like meat if they don't happen to be vegan or vegetarian).

That should get you started if you're interested in giving this a try, and again, I'll try to get the website organized this week so that you can find recipes and other tips more easily than you can now.

Best,
Kim

Can you really eat on a dollar a day and NOT be hungry?

With the economy slumping, we're all looking for ways to tighten our belts. A recent widely publicized blog had a young couple trying to eat on a dollar a day each to see what it was like and to bring attention to hunger. (Admirably, they donated proceeds from the publicity and from the difference in their food budget to charity.)

But one of the things I noticed about what they did was that even when they were trying to eat cheaply, they used at least some refined, processed foods, things like fresh strawberries, tofu "turkey," and so on. Those are pretty expensive foods when you're trying to eat cheaply. And they drank Tang, which is a pretty pricey drink for what it is, that's mostly water and sugar. Myself, I drink water or generic koolaid I buy from a store called Aldi, and I sweeten it with stevia. It costs me about $0.10 to make two quarts of koolaid that way.

Using inexpensive, whole foods to cook from scratch

Now, I've been a "lazy vegan" for 25 years, and I've been doing most of my own from scratch cooking for about a dollar a day since about 1995, when I really rolled up my sleeves and got down to work learning how to use a crockpot and bread machine. Actually, from about 1995 to about 2005, I really did eat on a dollar a day (and not starving or dieting at all) or a little less, without even trying.

Not quite a dollar a day, but close

For about the past … say, three years, I haven't been able to quite squeak by on a dollar a day. It's more like $1.20 a day. Food prices have gone up substantially and I'm not willing to be really hungry (nor is it healthy to do so) or to cut back unless I really, really have to.

The point of this is, though, you really don't have to starve or go hungry to eat on about a dollar a day or a little more -- and you don't have to dumpster dive like "freegans" do unless you want to.

You do have to do most of your cooking from scratch and cook from healthy, whole ingredients instead of from prepared foods. Prepared foods are what cost you money, and that includes so-called "fake meat" for us vegans. Stick with whole, "can't get any simpler" ingredients like beans, whole-wheat flour (make your own bread by using a bread machine) and other whole grains like brown rice, fresh in season veggies and frozen veggies, fresh and frozen fruits without sugar added, some meat if you need it, and so on.

I've posted about it here before, but I've got a website at http://home.earthlink.net/~kimcof/lazyvegan.htm that I started before I started this blog; really, this blog replaced it. There are some simple recipes there to get you started, tips on using a crockpot and bread machine to make most of your meals for you, and a basic explanation of the "lazy vegan" lifestyle as it relates to cooking. It's vegan-based, but I've tried to include substitution tips for people who eat meat too.

I personally hate to cook and do everything I can to avoid it, but using a crockpot and bread machine lets me eat as though I bought all my meals ready made without the expense, and not much more work. And it's healthier, too, since I can control the ingredients in what I eat.