Veganism isn’t natural…
Hi friends,
Truly, TGIF!!!!
🥰 27 Dogs Who Will Make You Say, ‘Draw Me Like One of Your Frenchies’
I’m not always excited about eating leftovers, so I typically try to find ways to make them feel new again. I rounded up a few of my favorite techniques for turning this into that, like roasted veggie pizzas and french fry breakfast tacos.
We vegans often hear meat-eaters make the following blunder as if it were checkmate: “Humans are naturally omnivores.” Imagine, for a moment, if I were caught lying, cheating, or attacking another human, and responded with, “Humans naturally [insert unethical act here].” The truth is, living as nature intended is not merely unhealthy; it is also patently immoral. If we calibrate our moral compass towards the lives of early Homo sapiens, we will doom ourselves to backward movement across the moral map. When we ask what is natural, we merely look back over our shoulders; if we want to look forward, we need to ask what is right.
— Macken Murphy, Veganism Isn’t Natural
Arabella explored whether the packaged vegan tuna game can compare to the old classic canned chickpeas. I will not spoil the result, but y’all know how we feel about garbonzos here.
Marla shared the 7 biggest worries she had about veganism, all of which turned out to be NBD. This post is full of great resources for new vegans, so if you’re early on your vegan journey I recommend bookmarking all of the links she shares!
Melissa Matthews is new to Tenderly, and her first post is about decolonizing your food with plant-based cuisine — and she shares two creative recipes for coconut salad and walnut stir-fry.
Hooray, there’s a new Vegans of Color interview with Veggie Mijas founder Amy Quichiz:
I started realizing how [animal agriculture] — meat production, factories, environmental racism — all affected people of color specifically. And I started to be more passionate about veganism through my experiences, and the experiences of other folks of color. I think that’s when I truly became more food justice oriented, rather than just supporting veganism.
Just because you’re not eating animals doesn’t mean your food doesn’t contribute to their exploitation. Rachel Lewis Curry introduced us to the The Macaques Who Carry Thailand’s Coconut Industry.
Larisa loves Italian cuisine so much that she shared with us all of the authentic Italian dishes that can be made naturally vegan. Now may not be the best time for travel, but you can take a tour of Italy from home by starting at the dinner table. 🍝
A QUICK GINGER SCALLION SAUCE TO REVIVE SIMPLE DISHES — by Gitanjali Bhattacharjee
In the early days of sheltering in place, I was determined to make the best of living and working from home. I designed a gym-free exercise routine, downloaded a meditation app, and decided to improve my eating and spending habits by cooking for myself. I made detailed shopping lists based on vegetable-heavy recipes and treated my once-in-ten-day trips to the grocery store as missions rather than meanders.
But by the eighth week of sheltering in place, I had deleted the meditation app and grown weary of preparing every meal and snack for myself. I found myself reverting to simple, efficient dishes — canned beans mixed with diced tomatoes and red onion, rice and dal, avocado toast. Though the resulting fare was filling and nutritious, the familiar flavors bored me. I missed the frisson of looking forward to my next meal.
Hoping to rekindle my short-lived culinary passion without too much effort, I began researching simple sauces. As a novice at sauce making, I was thrilled to find Francis Lam’s four-ingredient, ten-minute ginger scallion sauce at The Splendid Table.
Though I had the ginger, scallions, and salt in Lam’s recipe, I didn’t have peanut oil to hand. Rather than make an extra trip to the grocery store, I substituted half a cup of toasted sesame oil for the one cup of peanut oil in Lam’s recipe. The result is an incredibly moreish sauce. The combination of ginger and scallions is punchy and bright, and the toasted sesame oil adds richness, umami, and a deeper smoky flavor.
Since I whipped up my first batch, I’ve been looking for excuses to incorporate this sauce at every meal. It’s delicious mixed with plain rice, as a dressing for chickpea or cannellini salads, as an extra layer on avocado toast, as a dipping sauce for fried tofu, and as a drizzle over roasted vegetables. I expect it would shine as a condiment for fries or as a dressing for noodles, too.
Lam’s recipe is flexible in more ways than one. To get a thinner sauce suitable for dipping, use more oil. Using half a cup of oil, as I typically do, will result in a viscous, almost spreadable sauce. And if you don’t have a food processor, mince the ginger and scallions using a sharp knife. Refrigerate a batch of this sauce for up to three weeks — though I’ll be surprised if you can make it last that long.
Ingredients
- 2 ounces peeled ginger (about a 3-inch piece), cut into ½ -inch nuggets
- 6 ounces scallions (1 large bunch), roots removed and roughly chopped to 2-inch lengths
- 2 teaspoons salt, or more to taste
- ½ cup to 1 cup toasted sesame oil
Instructions
1. Mince the ginger using a food processor, stopping before it turns to a paste — a few short whirls should suffice. Scrape the minced ginger into a heatproof bowl large enough to comfortably hold the amount of oil you plan to use.
2. Chop the scallions using the food processor until they are roughly the same size as the minced ginger. Transfer them to the same bowl.
3. Add more salt than seems wise to the scallions and ginger, and stir to combine. The mixture should taste a little too salty.
4. Warm the toasted sesame oil in a saucepan over medium heat. When the oil begins to smoke, carefully pour it into the bowl containing the scallions and ginger. Stir gently. Let the sauce cool to room temperature before enjoying.
TENDERLY REC ROOM
On Fridays, we tell you about things we like
“I reluctantly turned on my oven this week to make chocolate chip cookies and I have to admit these were totally worth it. I used this recipe for vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies, with a few adjustments; I used vegan butter instead of coconut oil and chopped the chocolate into slightly smaller pieces than recommended in the recipe. Pro tip: use these cookies to make a mini ice cream sandwich!” — Arabella
“Funny, because I was also craving cookies recently but instead of making them I lazily (but enthusiastically) ordered them from Maya’s Cookies, a Black woman owned vegan cookie shop from San Diego, California. I got two hefty boxes of cookies yesterday and I’m a happy customer — the big sprinkley sugar cookies remind me perfectly of being ‘old enough to go around with just your friends at the mall’ years old and splurging on Great American Cookies or whatever you local mall cookie store equivalent might be... ANYWAY — good cookies.” — Summer Anne
“One of my dogs, Maude, is a heeler mix who is very smart, people-pleasing, and very easily bored. She loves doing tricks for treats, and she knows so many that I started running out of ideas for new ones. I heard about a dog ‘training’ (I like to think of it more as… collaborating) app called Puppr and it’s been great — there’s super clear video of different tricks and you can keep track of your pup’s progress. If you have a dog who loves learning new things as much as Maude does, try it out!” — Summer Anne
“If you’re like me and you’re not a huge kombucha fan, I implore you to give Forage Kombucha a chance. This perfect summer drink comes in raspberry, ginger, peach, tropical, and blackberry grape flavors that are super refreshing and delicious. My personal fave is the raspberry flavor, in fact I’m drinking one right now!” — Arabella
“I have a standing Friday night Zoom appointment with some of my dearest friends, and we’ve started playing a game that has made things extra fun. One person makes a Google Form with a few fun questions — what’s your ideal cocktail, what’s a non-sexual thing you find sexy, what kind of animal will you be reincarnated as, etc — and then presents the answers anonymously to the group on our call. Then we go in rounds of guessing who wrote what, while laughing and learning more about each other along the way. It provides some much needed structure on a Zoom with 10+ people and if you love your friends, it’s way more fun than a more generic game.” — Summer Anne
LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH
More than words…
From 27 Photos That Celebrate the Powerful Bond Between Children and Animals; photo by Andrea Martin
