Blueberry Truffles

Sometimes it seems that people (myself included) think that being vegan is tantamount to giving up all the enjoyable, delicious foods that non-vegans eat.  Is it true that to be vegan, I have to be virtuous and deprived?

I struggle with the idea that to be vegan I have to sacrifice taste, enjoyment and indulgence.  This idea leads to an unhealthy swinging routine of eating all “good” foods (veggies, whole grains, beans) while my husband and son chomp on their meat and cheese and then sneaking behind my own back to binge on cheese. 

The problem for me is that I don’t want to be vegan because I don’t like animal foods.  In fact, I quite enjoy them.  I just have found that the more I learn about animals, including their emotional lives and the impact of their farming on the environment, the less I want to eat them or their products. 

So how do I stop these binges?  I think there are multiple reasons which I hope to reflect on in future posts.  One reason is indulgence, feeling “treated” and comforted by food.   To address this I have been trying to find vegan “treats” that leave me satisfied.

Enter blueberry truffles.  I created these for Thanksgiving dessert.  YUM.  They are amazingly delicious.  I love them.  I love the fact that a vegan indulgence can be so delicious.  When I was creating this recipe I looked at vegan and non-vegan truffles.  All call for chocolate, cream and the non-vegan ones, butter.  I think that the secret to making good truffles is a good quality, yummy chocolate, as it’s by far the main ingredient, so make sure to get one that you enjoy.  I initially used Green and Blacks, but realized it has milk, so in later trials used Camino, which does not.

Blueberry Truffles

¼ cup dried blueberries, divided

¼ cup soy creamer

5 oz chocolate

1 t Earth Balance “butter” (optional)

3 T almonds, finely ground

Soak 2 T dried blueberries in the soy creamer for 3 – 4 hours.  Puree mixture and warm to just above room temperature.  Gently melt the chocolate (most recipes recommend a double boiler, I don’t have one, so use a 30% setting on my microwave and stir about every 45 seconds).  Add the cream mixture, remaining blueberries and butter.  Stir until mixture reaches a smooth consistency.  Refrigerate for 1 – 2 hours.  Place ground almonds on a small plate.  Use a Tablespoon measure to scoop out the chocolate when it’s firm and shape balls with your hands.  Roll each ball in the ground almonds to coat.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Makes about 15 truffles. 

Vegan (Mostly) Thanksgiving

Lately I’ve been thinking about the difference between abundance and excess.  Thanksgiving seems to be a perfect holiday to write about these thoughts as the day is marked so thoroughly by both.

I want to live abundantly, with abundant joy and giving, grateful for all the many blessings in my life.  Fall is a wonderful time to celebrate the abundance that our Earth still provides.  I was astonished, for example, by the 15 pounds of potatoes, boxes of tomatoes and many other vegetables that my small community garden plot produced this year.  I am also constantly amazed at the abundance of generosity, kindness and love that the people in my life give so freely.

This is, in my mind, very different from the excess that so marks our culture.  Excess seems to be more about fear than celebration and hoarding than gratitude.  It’s about taking too much, more than my own need, whether in the form of overeating, overspending or other “over”ings.  I have noticed a lot of excess in my own life and am working to transform it. 

This Thanksgiving, as I sat down with my beloved family for a delicious meal, I reflected on the abundance in my life and remembered hearing somewhere once that the best prayer one can say is, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And what did we eat?  The centerpiece of the meal was a beautiful lentil stuffed pumpkin with sides of roasted potatoes, roasted veggies, quinoa salad and, for those who wanted some, chicken.  It was important to me that the chicken be a small side dish and that the meal be centered on plant based foods and I think we succeeded, there was far more excitement about how good roasted Brussels sprouts are than about the chicken.  (In a future blog I’ll talk more about my journey in living with a meat eater, but for now, here is one of the recipes.)

Lentil Stuffed Squash

I wanted to create a loaf-like stuffing for the pumpkin, something that was delicious and substantial.  This stuffing is inspired by tangines, Moroccan stews.

• 1 squash suitable for stuffing about 8 inches diameter (I used one that looked like a pumpkin, but I’m not entirely sure what kind it was)
• 1/2 c French lentils
• 1/2 c black lentils
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/4 t cloves
• 2 – 3 bay leaves
• 1 t Ras El  Hanout
• 1/4 t Marash Chiles
• 1/2 stock cube
• 8 dried apricots, diced
• 2 thick slices Spelt bread
• 2 T oil
• 1 onion
• 1 cup celery
• 3-5 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup ground almonds

Combine lentils, spices, stock cube and apricots in a pot with 2 1/2 cups water, bring to a simmer for 20 minutes.  Toast bread slices and make bread crumbs in food processor.  Fry onions, garlic and celery in oil until softened and translucent.  Drain lentils and remove bay leaves.  Add about 2/3 of onion and lentil mixture and all the almonds to bread crumbs in the processor and puree.  Mix the remaining lentils and onions into the stuffing and stuff the pumpkin.  Put squash in casserole dish and add about 2 cm water to bottom of dish.  Cover with lid or tin foil.  Cook for 2 – 2 1/2 hours at 350, until sides of squash are easily pierced with a fork.

Two Yummy Salads

After months of waiting, Veggie Burgers Every Which Way by Lukas Volger is available from my library.  I’m not disappointed, he really seems to get veggie burgers.  For me homemade veggie burgers symbolize everything great about veganism and vegetarianism.  While meat burgers are often just a slab of meat, veggie burgers are made from an eclectic collection of ingredients, and can have an infinite variety of textures, flavours and ingredients.  Once you get away from the meat, there’s so much to work with!  Like most vegan cooking, creating delicious burgers inspires me to be creative, play with food and marvel at all the amazing ways plants can be prepared.

I was inspired reading through this book this afternoon and made a recipe that I had all the ingredients on hand for, “Seeded Edamame Burgers with Brown Rice and Apples.”  Now that’s a mouthful of a recipe name!  These delicious burgers had an Asian flavour, so I decided to make an Asian-influenced roasted corn salad to go with and was craving kale so made a massaged kale salad to boot.  All in all, a colourful, yummy meal! 

Here are my two salad recipes:

Asian Roasted Corn Salad

• Kernels from 3 ears of corn
• 1 Finely diced red pepper
• 1 Finely diced carrot
• 1 t Toasted sesame oil
• 1 t Rice vinegar
• 1 t Tamari soy sauce
• 1/2 t Chinese 5 spice
• 1/2 t Ground ginger
• 1 Clove garlic, crushed

Preheat oven to 400.  Mix corn, peppers and carrot .  Whisk remaining ingredients in a small bowl.  Toss corn mixture with dressing.  Adjust seasonings to taste.  Roast for 30 – 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes until corn becomes slightly chewy.

Massaged Kale Salad

If you’ve never had a massaged kale salad, you’re in for a treat.  While raw kale is usually too tough to eat, when it’s massage with salt and oil the cell walls break down and make it tender.  I always feel light and energetic when eating it.  I’ve seen various versions in a number of vegan and raw cookbooks and this is my variation.  This version is a “Kitchen Sink” version, using whatever I had on hand, yummy!

• 1/2 c Arame
• 1 Bunch Black or Dinosaur Kale
• 1 T Hemp oil
• 1/2 t Sea salt
• 1 T Lime juice
• 1 T Balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 Avocado
• 1/2 Carrot, grated
• 1 small Kohlrabi bulb, grated
• 1 c Sunflower sprouts

Put arame into a small bowl and pour boiling water over to cover.  Set aside.  Remove kale stems and slice in small strips.  Put kale, oil, salt, juice and vinegar in a salad bowl.  With clean hands massage the mixture for 3 –5 minutes until it becomes bright green and is reduced in volume by half.  Add remaining ingredients and toss to combine.

Worth It?

Well, I’m finished with all those peaches.  I made some ginger peach muffins and froze the rest.  It took three nights of being up past midnight, peeling and chopping to get them all away for winter.  And I have to admit that at the end of the third night, I was starting to ask myself, “Is this really worth it?” 

Today I made sprouted grain bread.  As I was grinding my sprouted wheat, kneading the bread and cleaning up all the equipment, I asked myself that same question. 

While being vegan doesn’t mean that you have to make your own bread or process your own food, for me it is an extension of being an environmentalist and as such, it’s important to me to eat food that is whole, local and real.  But I’m also a normal person, a mom and soon to be going back to work.  So where do I draw the line?

I think that the most important questions to ask myself are, “Do I really want to and enjoy this?”  Life’s too short be a martyr in the kitchen, or anywhere else.  I personally enjoy baking as long as I have the time.

After that, I think I need to ask myself, “What is the alternative?”  In the case of the bread, I usually buy Silver Hills Organic Sprouted breads.  More and more often lately, I’ve been looking up the websites of the products that I buy a lot, trying to learn more about how they’re made and the impact they may have.

Silver Hills looks like a decent company and I don’t mind supporting them, but their website doesn’t say where the bread is made or where their ingredients are sourced from, something I’ve been thinking a lot more about.

When I baked bread today the flour was  from a town about 45 minutes south of my home as were the wheat kernels.  The other ingredients were from further afield, but all in all, making the bread myself seems to be more local and use less fossil fuels. 

The third thing I thought about was cost, and when I figured it all out, making my own bread costs about half of buying it in the store. 

So on balance, I think it is worth it.  Even more, I think it’s worth it to ask these questions, to pay attention to our food, how it’s made and where it comes from. 

If you’re interested in making your own whole grain bread, my bread bible is Peter Reinhart’s, Whole Grain Breads.  The method is a bit complicated at first, but the bread is so amazingly delicious that it’s worth the effort – I guess that’s a forth factor, taste!