Vegan Super Hero

It always sends a little zip of happiness through my body when I make a food dish for a shindig/get together and after everyone has eaten it (or someone asks about it) I say, “Oh, and it’s vegan.” And then I hear, “No way!” “Seriously?” “This is too good to be vegan.” Sometimes, this makes me feel like a vegan super hero. Like I should be saving the city at dinner time, one plate at a time, with delicious vegan food that they wouldn’t be able to tell was animal-free unless they knew. My unitard and cape would be animal friendly, too, of course.

                The thing is, I’m not even a very good cook. It’s not like I sit in the kitchen for hours, crafting over a bubbling cauldron, adding super secret vegan deliciousness into every morsel. I have a four month old and a hungry Funk at home. My time in the kitchen is usually limited and with my extremely slow knife skills, the time for cooking can get pretty short. And I don’t buy into the whole “if you can read, you can cook” thing because, quite frankly, this is the girl who (pre-veganism) burnt break and bake cookies. Break and bake. And burn.

                It really is all about practice. The more I cook, the better it gets. Did I ever think I could make chile cornmeal crusted tofu and it would be easy? Hell no. But that’s what we had for dinner a few nights ago. A huge step up from the watered down, too much oil, with lilting vegetable tofu I was making a year ago.

                There seems to be this misconception that all us vegans eat are bamboo shoots, grass, and some seeds. This is a fallacy. Vegan food is delicious. Just ask my friend over at Idle Hands Baking Company. Or ask Funk about my blueberry fudge brownies. Chili and lime rubbed tofu, shepherdess pie, chipotle bean burgers… all vegan, all delicious, all the time. And now I sound like a cheesy commercial.

                But seriously, vegan food gets a bad wrap when not only is it delicious, it’s animal friendly, earth friendly, and when prepared right, ridiculously healthy. Different health problems I had ranging from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (gross, I know) to fatigue to yo-yo weight gaining are all gone with the elimination of meat and dairy. It’s a whole new body, and not, may I add, in that ultra-sickly skinny looking way (Trust me. If I looked malnourished my Nana would drug me, drag me to a hospital, and tube feed me until I was nice and plump), but in a healthy, my body is functioning properly, kind of way.

                So, maybe I need to make one day a week a vegan day on my blog where I post food porn of the recipe I made that night and/or other vegan adventures and elicit vegan challenges to the interwebs world. Whaddya think? I can put on my super hero mask and channel Superman. After all, he is a vegetarian.