A Sample E/Q/D Vegan Dinner

So, this is a pic of our dinner last night. I thought it might be a good idea to show you an example of what a vegan meal might look like. We've made some more complex meals, but this one was quick - probably less than 20 minutes start to scarf - and I was stuffed (not in the British sense) when finished. Ergo, today's blog title: E/Q/D - Easy, Quick and Delicious!

The "burger" is a Morning Star Farms product made primarily of black beans and whole wheat and has a nice slightly-charred meaty flavor. I picked up a package in the frozen food case at Costco. The cheese is some kind of soy stuff - not fabulous, but a nice addition of cheese-like flavor and some texture richness. You can find this kind of thing at most larger grocery stores. The bun is a pre-sliced, whole grain product that's less than a half inch thick made by Orowheat. They're called Sandwich Thins Naturals and we got ours at Safeway. With some red onion, natural mustard and dab of ketchup (catchup or catsup if you prefer - what the heck's the difference?), it stands as a reasonable representation of a hamburger. I imagine a "real vegan" would sneer at our attraction to a meal - even if it IS vegan - that tries to mimic a meat-based standard. Fortunately, there are no "real vegans" here in our home so we just ate and enjoyed the concoction, free of judgement and guilt.

The salad is the result of LG's sprout activities. She buys organic seeds and uses her "sprouter" to turn the mung, lentil and other seeds into crunchy, fat little baby plants. Infantplanticide is NOT a crime. They're very tasty little infants and our salads are made of three types of sprouts, with a dab of salad dressing made from water and air...possibly some other stuff too, but not much.

The mug contains pumpkin coconut curry soup. It's a combination of canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling), our home made curry powder, coconut milk (we used the "light" version, but it's way better with whole coconut milk), a little pink sea salt and a bit of almond milk to thin it to the desired consistency. It was pretty spicy, since our curry has quite a bit of chili powder in it...good for us, though. The only cooking required is to bring it to a momentary simmer.

The burger was the primary volume element of this meal, and it was surprisingly good. The salad and soup, though, are the real nutrition champs. By the time we finished our meals, both LG and I were plenty full (closely approaching "sated") and felt comfortable all the way to bed time.

Since we're less than half way through our 4 week commitment on the Engine 2 Diet, it's too soon to say how intense and lengthy my vegan adventure will be. At this point, the things I miss most are red wine, a periodic draught of whisky/whiskey and olive oil. Butter and sugar have moved to a back shelf in the lust-pantry of my brain - now THAT surprises me. At this point, I have a kind of take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward meat/chicken/fish. I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I won't salivate while passing a bakery/doughnut shop; nor will I likely experience the reported cooking-meat-odor-nausea "real vegans" talk about. All those things have been part of my life for nearly 62 years and I still ponder them with kind thoughts.

So, not much humor here today, perhaps I'll catch up with that element tomorrow.

Happy, happy, joy, joy to you!