My "vegan curious" status continues - although I still swear I will never give up eggs, cheese or crustaceans.
For a long time I have been wondering about a decent vegan mince replacement. Quorn is too soft and pretty tasteless; textured vegetable protein is still around, but not as much as it used to be, and it's OK but I'm curious to try other types.
After watching some Youtube suggestions, and given my wife is away and I bear any possible digestive issues alone, I tried using a combination of dried (but soaked) shiitake mushrooms, walnuts (also soaked for a while), and a block of high protein firm tofu. These were all ground up in a food processor, and while I thought the ingredients meant it was more expensive than beef mince, as it turned out I didn't use all of the mushrooms and walnuts. So I would say the total cost of the ingredients used was perhaps $13 dollars, but I ended up with enough for about 6 or 7 meals.
(It was also flavoured with some dark soy, onion powder, some chilli powder and dried oregano. The lesson I learned from some Youtuber was to not overly flavour it, so that you can add other seasonings for different types of meals. You don't want it full of cumin, for example, if you are using it in a pasta sauce.)
So, how did it go? Pretty good, actually! By itself it smelt good, and I did use it in 3 or 4 different styles of meals, all pretty successful and filling. The only thing I would say is that to fry it, being full of reconstituted dried mushrooms, it did tend to suck up the olive oil pretty readily, and I think using it in a non stick frying pan works best. The shiitake mushrooms give a bit of a meaty bite, and I love their flavour generally. I assume the walnuts are good for me, in moderation, and the tofu was there for protein. (Maybe not that much per meal, but better than the suggestions that were only walnuts and shiitake.)
I will probably make it again in future. It did cause some gas, but it was bearable!
3 comments:
if God wanted us to be vegans he would not have given us red wine
I still drank some red with my vegan bolognese...
Veganism is not a diet but really a form of fasting. If you have no issue with eggs, butter, cheese and some shellfish just expand their use. If an old guy wants testosterone he should eat more egg yolks then someone who’s on the weight lifting team.
Think seriously about the following compromise. Bone broth and organ meats, or bone broth WITH organ meat doesn’t drive the slaughter. We can see that with their very reasonable price as compared to muscle meat. Old guys can’t get too much bone broth.
But anyway I agree the current industrial slaughter mode is unacceptable. So good on you and all that. But if you want to be a healthy old guy you need to eat mostly carnivore foods. In any way you judge to be ethical.
Contrary to the physics you have learned, biology practices nuclear fission and fusion. For example plants CREATE magnesium and animals DESTROY magnesium at the nuclear level. Therefore a carnivore may get sick if he eats only muscle meat with animals that aren’t grass finished. He will be low on magnesium. Old guys cannot afford to be low on magnesium.
The ethical answer would be for us to grow high magnesium forage. So much so that eggs and dairy products were high in magnesium. You can get magnesium from organ meat in your bone broth or from leafy greens. But the leafy greens contain plant toxins. Some shellfish may be high in magnesium and AI can answer that for you.
Yes indeed the physics you believe in is bullshit and so the above is for your consideration in forming what can be an excellent and ethical diet.
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