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The Ocassional Vegan Look Inside Flipbook PDF
The Occasional Vegan is a collection of 70 simple, affordable and delicious recipes, suitable for newcomers and long-tim
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Contents Introduction My voyage into veganism What is this book? How to use this book
9 11 17
The recipes The working week Something for the weekend Highdays and holidays Comfort food and childhood favourites
39 89 121 155
Conversion charts Diolch! Index
188 190 191
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Introduction ‘There is no love sincerer than the love of food’ – George Bernard Shaw
My voyage into veganism
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My voyage into veganism
his is a vegan cookbook, but really it’s the story of my love of cooking and eating. Unlike many cooks and writers, I’m not posh. I’m from a pretty humble background and when I was growing up, my mum was a single parent with a full-time job who put dinner on the table every night. Mum started my love affair with food and in this book, I recreate some of my favourite childhood meals from when I was growing up in Wales during the 1990s. I’ve always loved food and feel sorry for people who don’t seem to like it. Eating should be a joy. Perhaps that’s a privileged thing to say, but for me flavours and feelings go hand in hand and food is tied up in so many of our formative experiences. Food is there during our most memorable rites of passage. For me, the smell of burgers brings back memories of student barbeques, drunk on cheap rosé.Tucking into a Chinese takeaway takes me back to Saturday night sleepovers as a teenager. For many of us, a meal is a memory – and sometimes a friend, too. I think about food a lot and like most people, my days are punctuated by mealtimes. From childhood, to adolescence, through school and university, boyfriends and break ups, mealtimes have always been a constant for me. I grew up without a dad so my mum had to be mother and father to my sisters and me. It wasn’t quite kitchen sink drama but it wasn’t all sugar and spice either. Life wasn’t perfect but a lot of Mum’s love and nurture was expressed through her cooking. I can picture it now: bubbling saucepans, music blaring, Mum’s terrible dancing. Money was tight but we ate adventurously and with gusto. Mum always made sure that there was a decent dinner on the table and bought the best ingredients she could afford. Holding down a full-time job meant that Mum didn’t always have time to cook, though. Some of my favourite food memories include snuggling up with spoonfuls of Heinz tomato soup and buttered white bread and stirring Sacla pesto into deep bowls of spaghetti. While other kids tucked into Birds Eye potato waffles, Mum’s interest in food meant that we tucked into vast amounts of houmous and pesto when they hit the supermarkets in the 1990s. As a chubby kid at the cusp of adolescence, I used food as a comfort blanket. I wasn’t very cool at school: although academically adequate, I was terrible at sport and I was shy and gawky. I wasn’t unpopular but food was my best friend. I ate
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My voyage into veganism
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through the events of the late nineties: Tony Blair’s triumphant Labour Party, Princess Diana’s death, Girl Power, fear of the Millennium Bug. When I wasn’t at school, I spent my time with my head in a book or glued to the screen as celebrity cooks like Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver burst onto the scene. The foodies I saw on TV and in books were mostly posh, unlike me, but they definitely spoke my language as they whipped up a casserole or crème brûlée; it was proper comfort viewing. So how did I get here? How does such a big eater end up eating what many think of as rabbit food? It started, as many things do, at the end of a chapter in my life. At the tail end of my twenties, I reached a crossroads. I was facing the big 3-0, had broken up with a long-term boyfriend and was wondering what the hell to do with my life. Although I enjoyed my job at a charity, I knew it wasn’t ‘the one’. I was a bit lost, I guess. In the year that I turned thirty, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right kept niggling at me; I needed a change. Veganism was in the news and I realised that I’d been turning a blind eye to the plight of animals, not just the ones killed for their meat but also the horrific conditions of the dairy and poultry industry. I was a fully-fledged omnivore but I knew it was time to act. Never one to do things by halves, I decided to go cold turkey and become vegan. My friends and family scoffed at the idea.You’ll never keep it up, they told me. I was the girl who ate the fat off bacon, the chicken skin, had extra butter on her toast.Yes, I ate everything. I’ve always had what Mum called a ‘healthy appetite’. I will eat under all circumstances, whether I’m glad, mad or sad. I’ve done my fair share of comfort eating: bread and white carbs after arguments with my mum and a liquid diet of soup, wine and gin in times of heartbreak. There have been times when food has been more foe than friend. If I felt bored or lonely, I’d head straight for the biscuit barrel. That initial burst of dopamine soon descended into dread. Sometimes it got to the point where I was sick of eating but a slave to food. I was constantly thinking about what I should and shouldn’t eat, counting calories, and starting and stopping diets. Eating a plant-based diet has brought a certain peace to my body and mind because it makes sense to me. This is the story of my voyage into veganism. I love my food more than ever these days. I’m a home cook, not a professional chef, but I’m passionate about inspiring others to eat well, simply, cheaply and above all, creatively, and that’s why I’ve written this book. My recipes are all easy to make and many are inspired by the food my mother cooked for me as a child; this is proper home cooking and I promise you that you’ll want seconds.
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What is this book? A s we all know, the last couple of years have seen a huge rise in the number of people who choose a vegan lifestyle, whether that’s full-time or just mindfully cutting back on animal produce. If you’re either of these people or if you simply love food, this book is for you. Veganism is having a moment, perhaps because we are a lot more conscious about animal welfare and about mitigating climate change. At the last count, there were over half a million vegans in the UK – that’s an increase of 350% in the last ten years – and people are enjoying the benefits: it’s kinder to animals and the environment, and it’s also gentler on your body – and your wallet. This book takes a holistic approach to eating well. Eating a diet of plants and grains is good for your physical and mental wellbeing and also helps to look after the wider world. Going vegan means ditching meat and fish, as vegetarians do, and also eggs, dairy and honey – but that doesn’t mean giving up on flavoursome food. If you’re vegan, you’re probably reading this because you’re keen to try some new recipes. If you’re curious about this way of eating, then welcome! Keep reading because I’m not here to convert you to veganism. Eating a plant-based diet is something that you can do part-time or one day a week, if you want to, and this book will help you create simple, nourishing and delicious meals using inexpensive ingredients. Prepare to be excited about eating and to get creative in the kitchen. In this book, you’ll find meals for every occasion, whether that’s a quick weeknight supper, a leisurely weekend brunch, or something for a special celebration. I will show you that a plant-based diet (whether that’s as a fully-fledged vegan or by simply following this lifestyle one or two days a week) can make you healthy and happy – and that you really can have your cake and eat it.
So, why should you try eating vegan? There are some real benefits to eating this way and these are just some of them.
What is this book?
• It’s delicious – and you won’t get bored. Eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables as well as a multitude of grains, pulses and nuts will inspire you to be a lot more creative in the kitchen. I must make it clear that these recipes do not try to replicate meaty meals; they are tasty dishes in their own right. It’s a real shame that we don’t value vegetables and I hope that these recipes make you think differently about them. One of my favourite meals is cauliflower roasted in a little olive oil and some cumin seeds and lemon zest with wilted greens, brown rice, a generous squeeze of lemon juice and a smattering of toasted flaked almonds. Now that’s luxury for you.
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• It’s cheap, and easier than ever before. As well as improving your health, it will save you money. This book shows you what to buy and where to shop to get the best ingredients you can afford. If done properly, going vegan (or eating less animal produce) is easy on the wallet so let’s debunk the myth that eating well comes at a cost. • It’s kinder to your body – be that your skin, digestion, weight, or energy levels. There’s no way to sugar the pill: too much meat is bad for our bodies. As well as making your digestion sluggish, it’s a carcinogenic. A study of 500,000 people by the National Cancer Institute found that those who ate the most red meat daily were 30% more likely to die of any cause during a ten-year period than those who ate the least amount. I’m not telling you to stop eating meat, but you might want to think about cutting down.
What is this book?
• It’s kinder to animals. Let’s not beat around the bush here: many of us turn a blind eye, not only to the cruelty of the meat industry, but also to the suffering of animals bred for eggs and dairy. Every week in the UK, 3,000 male calves are taken away days after birth, and are either shot or exported alive to mainland European countries where they are kept in small pens to produce veal flesh. You can imagine the heartache their mothers go through and they can often be heard calling for their calves for days afterwards. That’s just one part of their miserable lives because after their calves have been taken away from them, mother cows are hooked up, two or more times a day, to milking machines. They’re then impregnated by artificial insemination every year and so the cycle repeats itself. These cows usually only live for five years (the average lifespan is twenty years) because they’re so worn out from this inflicted cruelty.When they are killed, their bodies are often in such a sorry state that they can only be used for ground meat and pet food.
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• Let’s not forget the 40 million day-old chicks who are killed each year, and yes, that includes those from organic farms. Male chicks are of no use for egg or meat production, and almost immediately after hatching, they are thrown into an industrial grinder while still alive or gassed to death. Their mothers don’t fare much better. Regardless of whether they’re in free range (where as many as nine birds can occupy one square metre of floor space) or caged farming systems, hens lead an existence of pain and suffering throughout their shortened lives. All commercial hens are sent to slaughter after around one year’s egg production despite having a natural life span of seven years.