Fake out!

As you'll notice with most of the food posted on this blog, we have a tendency to use "fake" veggie versions of real dairy or meat products. Some vegans call them "analogs" of fake meats, faux meats, whatever. There also appears to be some amount of controversy in the vegan community as to the relative merit of these products.

There are some vegans who are adamately against any meat analog - saying the taste and/or texture is "too real" and therfore, gross. (If you want gross, check out Hufu. Seriously gross.) There is also the argument of why we eat something that is a vegan-appropriate substitute for the exact thing we're trying to avoid. And I'm sure that if some hardcore vegan stumbled across this site, I'd catch hell for not being vegan "enough" as we still eat fish. But our diet isn't for anyone else, it's only for ourselves and our health (saving the cute furry animals and being kind to Mother Earth in the process) so I can't pay any attention to this sort of argument. In fact, if that ever where to happen, I'd have to laugh - if a vegan is showing compassion to the Earth by only eating a plant based diet, why be so critical of people who are working to accomplish the same thing?

Anyway, I can only speak for myself when I say that being vegan and vegetarian is a process. While I would love to instantly know how to prepare a well-balanced entirely plant based meal, I don't. But I'm learning. In the meantime, I'll use subs for things I used to use all the time. Hence the popularity in our kitchen of the vegan spread, soy milk, egg replacer, Silk soy creamer, Tofutti soy sour cream and the like. Using the fake meat products only expands the repetoire of what we can eat, and it's an easy way to get James the protein he needs to rebuild from the chemo.

Though now that taco's are out due to their spiciness, I gotta figure out a new way to use the Smart Ground!