The VeganAbler

09/01/2025

MILESTONE BIRTHDAY WISHES

On January 9th I enter a new decade of my life. It is also the day, 11 years ago, that I stopped eating animals. For my birthday this year I've decided to forgo gifts and instead focus on raising funds for Go Dharmic, a cause near and dear to my heart. I believe that supporting their mission is the best way to celebrate and share the joy I've experienced through my work with them.

My journey with Go Dharmic started almost one year ago. when I was presented with the incredible honour of joining the organization to head up their US operations.

Working for Go Dharmic has been an incredibly rewarding experience, having the opportunity every day to carry out our mission to Love All Feed All Serve All. Witnessing the direct impact of our work on the lives of others has been deeply moving. Whether its feeding nourishing vegan meals to those suffering from food insecurity, to planting mangrove trees to fight climate change and protect the environment from biodiversity loss , every contribution, no matter the size, will help them continue their vital work and make a lasting difference in the lives of those in need.

This work has taught me invaluable lessons about compassion, empathy, and the power of collective action. It has instilled in me a deep sense of purpose and a desire to contribute to a better world. I believe that everyone has the capacity to make a positive impact, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this meaningful work.

I invite you to join me in supporting Go Dharmic. Together, we can create a brighter future for ALL beings on this planet.

16/10/2024

Yuval Noah Harari has his thumb on the pulse on everything The VeganAbler Collective is about -- understanding instinctual eating, shaping our youth to global awareness, the power of stories shaped by communities, collective wisdom (and stupidity?!), future trends and crises, and owning and leveraging humanity's "superpower" through precarious modern transformations.

The VeganAbler Collective is for anyone who already is changing the world through food, or wants to. Let's build a meaningful community that prepares for the imminent tidal wave of veganism! 🌊🌱

Are we in the midst of World War III? What's the role of fiction in human evolution? Why do we tend to overconsume food?Big or small, every detail in our beh...

13/10/2024

The The New York Times said it back in 2019 -- if you won't be vegan, "at least respect their efforts to build a sustainable future."

Where is your head at in 2024?

This was inspired by Sailesh Rao's most recent blog which mentioned this NYT article while reacting to the WWF (the one without Hulk Hogan) making the right conclusion in their recent report about agricultural impacts but making the erroneous judgement that every country should be like India...who export their bovine flesh and chain their identity to a perpetually growing dairy industry.

https://climatehealers.org/blog/a-plea-for-courage-at-the-world-wildlife-fund/

Vegans are to food emissions as cyclists are to fossil fuels. If you can't/won't curb the harms of your consumption at least provide the maturity to acknowledge those who do and resist schoolyard bully instincts to diminish them.

08/10/2024

Sweet Potato Mac and Cheese

The irony is not lost on us that we have praised Murielle Banackissa’s commitment to the movement which emphasizes that our food deserves our time and attention…and then we devoted a few hours poring over her to determine which would require the least shopping, prep, and cooking time. Sweet Potato Mac and Cheese was a winner, as it promised 15 minutes from start to finish and all ingredients on hand.

Even more startling was that it called for pre-cooked sweet potato, and included a note that one could give the hapless root vegetable 🥔🔪a dozen stab wounds with a fork and nuke ☢️ it for five minutes in a microwave!

Our bemusement aside, this recipe served the purpose of a last-minute meal on a day where the household was passive-aggressively challenging someone else to step up to make dinner.

It was a savory hit, especially surprising since two of the diners professed to dislike sweet potato. Sriracha was on hand for those who wanted a spicier bite, and we can imagine future variations of this which load on paprika or chili powder.

The natural comparison was made to our house recipe for vegan mac and cheese sauce, derived from the website veggieonapenny.com, which relies on ¼ cup of olive oil for a much richer mouthfeel (and less healthy result 😏). When the recipe said to adjust salt and nutritional yeast to taste, we doubled their quantities.😳 Still, there was an appreciation for the intended flavors (much heavier on the garlic than ours) that makes this a good recipe for on-the-fly management of the (fat/sugar/salt) to either eat healthier or increase the appeal.

will be at the International Vegan Film Festival where the cook book competition winners will be announced -- will you?

06/10/2024

As we mentioned before, in judging the International Vegan Film Festival's cook book contest we haven't served the book Fermenter: Dry Fermentation for Vegan Fare justice as we have resisted indoctrination into the "fermenter culture" (pun not intended, but anticipated) wherein we would source the nifty spores and specialized gear...but a sit down with this book tempts one to adopt that identity. We are sheepish 🐑to admit that we selected Chef Aaron Adams' simpler and time-sensitive recipes to try out (though we did read about koji beets and growing one's own tempeh burgers with fascination!).

For those who have worked in a kitchen, "Hot behind!" is what one says when moving a pot or pan from the stove on a path behind someone else (if carrying knives or edged tools the call is "Sharp behind!"). Aaron confesses that he can't resist responding "Thanks!" as if "hot behind" were a compliment rather than a warning. The double meaning becomes a triple meaning now that his hot sauce recipe bears the same name.

Andrew's garden didn't have enough habañeros to raid, so we went looking for cayenne peppers in the grocery store (Ethan's preferred pepper sauce), but discovered that fresh cayenne are typically rare in Toronto grocery stores. We found red Thai peppers which look similar, if somewhat shorter - and therefore less heat, right?😏 (Wrong - after we were already committed we discovered the upper end of cayenne peppers is about 50,000 scoville rating, whereas Thai peppers are 100,000, or 11 times the heat of a jalapeño.)

Fermenter guides one through the various tools, terms, and techniques of a fermenter, including followers (we used plastic wrap) and weights (we put $4 worth of 50¢ pieces into a container and put that in a zip-lock baggie on top of the plastic wrap). Covered with a breathable cloth we fermented the peppers in brine and two cloves of garlic for two weeks.

Blending it up (with its own brine, some vinegar, and thickened with 1/4 tsp Xanthan gum) we found a few victims to taste test. Perhaps it would be worth a sidebar for this recipe to share techniques of dampening the heat when the capsaicin blows your cap off. Adding 4 Tbsp each of water, vinegar, lime juice and agave syrup we filled the first bottle at nearly full strength and then diluted the hot sauce with a LOT of capers and their vinegar (we have an inadvisably enormous giant jar of them from COSTCO). After blending more xandthan gum into what might be called hot caper sauce we filled another bottle labeled "medium" and continued to dilute the rest with mayonnaise and sauerkraut juice left over from our first batch of Ruby Kraut (our next recipe from Fermenter...stay tuned!).

The cook book competition winners will be announced at the International Vegan Film Festival on November 16 in Toronto. will be there!

04/10/2024

Billie Eilish pinned her favorite restaurants and shared it with her fans as a suggestion of or places where they can dine before or after concerts in their city. As for a , Tenon Veggie is in our top three (two? one?!)

We haven't been to Hawker Restaurant -- would love to hear from someone who has!

153 places - http://BillieEilish.lnk.to/google-tour Adopting a plant-based diet is one of the most impactful ways you can help heal our planet. Here are some great local plant-based options when you come to my shows. - Billie

03/10/2024

All-Green Gnocchi with Vegan Pesto, from Savoring: Meaningful Vegan Recipes from Across Oceans by Murielle Banackissa

We were cat-sitting for Ray's brother who has an impressive backyard garden of vegetables and herbs. We had dug up some potatoes and roasted them in foil before a harvest of fresh sweet basil inspired me to do this recipe. It wouldn’t matter that the recipe calls for boiling the potatoes…right?

Ironically, our mixture with roasted potatoes somehow ended up being more moist than the recipe anticipated (you’d think it would be dryer than if they were boiled!). After adding the two cups of flour it was very sticky, for which Murielle recommends “add more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it is no longer sticking to your hands.” Well, we must have added almost three cups more flour, a tablespoon at a time, before it reached a workable consistency! (Perhaps because they were new potatoes from the garden?)

The result, however, was fantastic (though we assume that if another attempt required less flour they may end up softer and more potato-ey). It’s definitely a recipe that we would do again, as we’ve always got h**p hearts on hand, and, while in season, a nearby garden with fresh basil.

We are undecided on what should look. Kelly uses Murielle’s process for creating the gnocchi pieces – rolling it into a 1” thick log, cutting it into 1” long “square little pillow” or optionally “rolling it between your hands.” We used what Ray feel is the traditional way, to press the piece flat with a fork and roll it into a squat, ridged tube. (The effect of the green spinach makes it look even more like a fat, juicy grub! Best not to say so at the dinner table…)

We had marked 34 recipes in the table of contents and we intend to pursue more of Murielle’s offerings, especially the ones that reflect her Russian-Ukrainian background. Also excited to try the Watermelon “Tuna,” Quebec Meatless Pie (will use real maple syrup, we promise!) and of course the Smoky Sweet Potato Mac and Cheese.

is a judge for the competition, the awards for which will be announced at the International Vegan Film Festival in Toronto on November 16 -- we'll be there!

02/10/2024

's next venture into the cook book Savoring: Meaningful Vegan Recipes from Across Oceans by Murielle Banackissa (an entry in the International Vegan Film Festival's cook book competition) was another vegan kitchen lifeline from the Scrumptious Sauces, Cream, and Toppings chapter: Nut-Free Ricotta.

The simplest recipe for ingredients (soy milk. Vinegar, salt), it perhaps is also the most temperamental. We greatly appreciate Murielle’s advice in the recipe's margin to avoid multitasking! Each of her recipes is limited to one or two pages but we felt that this recipe required a bit more space for advice and troubleshooting in the case that your results do not match the description (as happened in our first attempt).

To get the soy milk to curdle, the “magic moment” to add the vinegar and salt is at 185ºF (85ºC in the rest of the world…as a Canadian Murielle bends to accommodate the American preference for Imperial measurements, but when it comes to boiling it’s good to approximate how close to 100ºC we need to act).

We set our stove to full and watched my thermometer rise, and added the salt and vinegar at the correct moment…and the milk boiled over onto the stove. Were we supposed to remove from the heat, or were we better off having the stove set to ¾ full temperature in the first place? The recipe didn’t say, only to “Cook for an additional 2 minutes, stirring often to prevent the mixture from boiling over.”

Though there was some initial signs of curdling, but the results were simply hot soy milk that just poured through the cheese cloth, far from what the book described. Was our mixture ruined? Was it a problem that I was using sweetened soy milk?

We tried heating the same soy milk again, adding another ½ tsp of salt and “1 tbsp + 1 ½ tsp white vinegar” (isn’t that much easier expressed as 1 ½ tbsp?) when it reached the right temperature, and it still didn’t work. Murielle pointed out that “adding in an acidic element causes the soy milk’s protein and fat to separate from the liquid” – maybe we had compromised that reaction when we overboiled, and this soy milk was “ruined.”

We consulted the Internet on this point, and while we didn’t find any advice on second attempts at curdling soy milk, we did discover other soy ricotta recipes that called for three tablespoons of vinegar. We tried a third time, adding two more tablespoons of vinegar to the mixture (which already contained two)...and it worked! There also was no vinegar taste, and it wasn’t at all salty (but a bit sweet, since we used sweetened soy milk).

Perhaps we are expecting too much handholding, and while Murielle provided many helpful tips (don’t use plant-based milk other than soy, use nonreactive containers and utensils) this is the kind of chemistry experiment where a few photos of the process would have helped us greatly.

The ricotta was great on a tomato-based pasta dish, perfect for stuffing pasta shells, and was versatile on crackers with olives and capers. We suspect if it was a bit saltier it would work as a substitute for feta on a Greek salad.

We'll try this recipe again as soon as we have soy milk in the house -- We're sure it will answer some of our first-timer ricotta questions. From her recipes that called for ricotta in Murielle's suggests Herby Mushroom and Ricotta Toast, Stewed Blackberries and Lemon Ricotta Toast (photo shown by on Instagram), and Ricotta and Spinach Phyllo Cups. 😋

The winners of the cook book competition will be announced on November 16 at the International Vegan Film Festival in Toronto. We'll be there!

01/10/2024

's Film Freeway review for the vegan cook book competition, in conjunction with the International Vegan Film Festival on November 16 -- we'll be there!

Fermenter: Dry Vegetarian for Vegan Fare does not conform to the typical cook book format -- fermentation is a cultural phenomenon into which Aaron Adams and Liz Crain set out to recruit the reader. The experience is somewhat like hanging out with surfers before you've ever waxed up a board.

As such, it is difficult to match the contents of Fermenter to the competition's judgment criteria, especially in categories like "Ingredients: Easy to find? Affordable?" No, koji and tempeh spores, methylcellulose HV, and vegan collagen sausage casings are not to be found at my local grocery. The festival's book distribution to judges risks a lot by dropping this book in a random lap as the "buy in" to fermentation culture (see what I did there?) is a heavy prerequisite.

As it turns out, Ray Kowalchuk got into kombucha brewing and sauerkraut fermenting last year so we weren't starting from scratch. Still, he chose recipes that didn't require mail-order spores, and while that is perhaps a rational way to ease into the complexities of this book, it does feel like a cop-out when the most emblematic recipes are not being evaluated.

Ginger beer wasn't a stretch from brewing booch. The Ruby Kraut was a hit with the family (even with two who said they don't like cabbage or beets!) and we are still trying to tame his take on the Hot Behind Hot Sauce (the red Thai peppers LOOK like cayenne but are double the scoville rating!).

I don't think I'll ever be fermenting my own tempeh burgers but Ray is certainly going to return to this volume for a new challenge...maybe he'll eventually own a koji spore shaker.

Fermenter is a fabulous read, and we learned a lot, even in the process of trying to find the most accessible recipes with ingredients on hand. The adventurous, no-wrong-answers tone of the author (it seems to be entirely in Aaron's first person perspective as he shares real world context for each recipe, technique, and concept) is contagious and I wish Toronto wasn't so far away from Fermented, his restaurant in Portland, Oregon, so we can taste his creations without the hard work and patience!

Stay tuned - our photographic journey of these vegan cook book recipes (Ruby Kraut, Hot Behind Hot Sauce, Ginger Beer) are coming up!

And if you're within reach of Toronto on November 16 be sure to attend the International Vegan Film Festival and see if the cookbooks we reviewed win awards!

27/09/2024

ATTENTION NOOCH LOVERS! (Like, we've been known to eat a dry teaspoonful...) 😋

As promised, we are sharing our experiences and photos as judged cook books for competition.

To get warmed up with Murielle Banackissa's book *Savoring: Meaningful Vegan Recipes from Across Oceans* we went deep into the last chapter, "Scrumptious Sauces, Cream, and Toppings" and simply combined the ingredients to the recipe for Tamari, Balsamic Vinegar, and Nutritional Yeast Sauce (which we immediately shortened to the obvious hook for vegans, “Nooch Sauce”). Stirred with a fork, this blend of the usual suspects of sauces is both very familiar and unique. We didn’t have dijon on hand and substituted the regular French’s prepared mustard, and used soy sauce instead of tamari.

(Speaking of French, knowing that Murielle is a resident of Quebec tempts me to deny that we used pancake syrup instead of opening the can of real (as shown) for the sake of one teaspoon. Does that spoil the experience? We're sure any Montrealer would insist it does!)

We found the blend of oil, sugar, salt, vinegar, tahini, and garlic made a sauce that can be used anywhere – we drenched some rotini in it and served it with roasted cherry tomatoes, drizzled some on crackers with cucumber and capers, and used it to lubricate a kale and roasted vegetable tortilla wrap.

We have since made sauce from memory and varying the ingredients creates an experience with nuanced differences (once with agave syrup..still haven’t opened the can of maple!).

More from Savoring coming up!

27/09/2024

was a judge for the International Vegan Film Festival in the past and was given some to judge for their competition. One of them was Savoring: Meaningful Vegan Recipes From Across Oceans by Murielle Banackissa, and while we only made four of the recipes before judging it was an intensive process to read the early chapters and tag all of the recipes that, for one reason or another, stood out as candidates to try. We don't know how the overall judging process works, but for our part, we have recommended this cookbook as a competitor for an award.

Discovering that Murielle grew up in the Congo with a Russian-Ukrainian background and now lives in Montreal we knew that there would be some unconventional fusion in her cookbook. Perhaps an accumulation of these ethnic approaches to cooking has compelled her to imbue food with the greatest respect we can give it – our time, to source ingredients and prepare it. Focusing on and rejecting the common promise of quick-and-easy, Murielle says we must “appreciate food more [and practice] the radical act of love for ourselves and others,” an essential observation that is amplified in a vegan cookbook which overturns the notion that food is too important to “limit” oneself, your family, and your guests…our relationship with meaningful eating is much more important than that.

Murielle has taken the trouble too identify recipes that are , /seed-free, require extra prep, or are customizable. This was handy as we are avoiding gluten of late due to non-celiac sensitivities. This helped with our recipe selection as I used PostIt notes to identify all the best candidates on the Contents page and tabbed all the gluten-free recipe pages with a “GF.”

We will be posting the photos of our recipes and describing the heights of our successes -- and a few stumbles along the way. Stay tuned, and be sure to share!

27/10/2023

Join me this Saturday 3 pm EST with as I show you how to prepare two delicious WFPB seafood dishes that are sure to delight your tastebuds!