Kale: The Vegan Hair Shirt

Since I started a website for Adventist Potluck Vegetarian cuisine (stuff you can make on Friday

Kale - The "Holiness" Church of Cabbages

and take to church for potluck on Sabbath and reheat and it still tastes good), I have been the periodic target of militant vegans. These radical vegetarians find my use of eggs, cheese, milk, wheat gluten, soy products and cream of mushroom soup offensive.  Also my lack of outrage over GMOs and my failure to insist on organic products, seems to rankle as well.

Why is it that every time you try to make things nice for folk, there's always someone who comes along who wants to put a hair shirt on it. For those of you unfamiliar with medieval monastic practices, supposedly celibate monks of the middle and dark ages used to believe in a quasi-sexual practice call "mortifying the flesh".  Basically they would cut themselves, whip themselves with cute little whips, starve themselves and generally get naked and hurt themselves in some titillating fashion. Let's face it, monasteries were kind of like asylums for sado-masochists in many cases. They did some good, but there was an awful lot of really disturbing behavior behind those walls, one of which was the hair shirt. A hair shirt was an animal skin worn inside out so the hair was next to the skin. It poked you, made you itch unbearably, and kept the fleas close to you.

Haystacks are way better than hair shirts.

The point of all this self-induced pain was supposedly for the purpose of getting yourself right before God. I cannot imagine, though, how God could look down on a 58 year-old portly naked man slapping himself across his own buttocks with a rawhide whip and think "Now there's a guy who's really right with me!" There's always a human kind of vanity that says, I can do you one better and takes pride in its ability to suffer more than others.  They believe that this earns them special status with God or at least bragging rights for being holier than everyone else.

My favorite Vege-meal: Barbecued Tender-Bits

I believe along with my fellow Adventists that the body is the temple of the Lord and that we ought to take care of it. That's why Adventists pay attention to keeping up our bodies in good shape. Statistically, our lifestyle gives us an extra six or seven years more than typical Americans. We believe our brains are a conduit to God and that if we keep it reasonably healthy we can draw closer to him. It's also a good way to avoid heart attacks and cancer too by happy chance. So we follow scripture-based health practices like avoiding certain kinds of foods, we believe in exercise, and we have a quite ambitious medical work that we support worldwide. 

That said, most of us tend to be vegetarians, or at least what I call "mostly lacto-ovo vegetarians with an occasional tuna sandwich".  My website "The Potluck Vegetarian" is dedicated to the sort of Adventist potluck dinners I grew up with. The food is unique and quite delicious. Adventists invented The Haystack, for instance. It's basically I giant Tex-Mex salad consisting of either Fritos or Tortilla chips (there are minor theological differences as to which is the correct base for haystacks). Atop the corn chip base you then pile, Ranch Style Beans and/or Vegeburger, lettuce, tomatoes and cheddar cheese, maybe some sour cream, Ranch or Catalina salad dressing and a smattering of olives. Other ingredients are added or subtracted depending on the local culture. In Hawaii some churches make haystacks with pineapple in them. I tried that and it's really good. Adventism is a mission-intensive faith and so there are literally thousands of local versions of the haystack around the world. This happened because it's easy to make them for potluck and will feed hundreds on a giant pot of beans and a dozen heads of lettuce.  

King Ranch Vegetarian Chicken (uses mushroom soup)

The standard SDA casserole base is cream of mushroom soup. Used in various oatmeal patty recipes and grain-protein dishes, mushroom soup has been the go-to wet-base for potluck casseroles for decades. Cheese, melted over enchilada casseroles, lasagna, and other tasty reheatable casseroles has long been a standard protein source for Adventists, especially since most cheese is now made with vegetable rennet rather than the traditional pig-based rennet. Anyway, Adventist cooks like my beloved grandmother have come up with thousands of amazing dishes you can make on a Friday and serve on Saturday after church when everyone gathers for potluck - the Adventist version of a feast. And they all use a fairly basic set of ingredients that Adventist keep in their cupboards. She used to make a peanut butter loaf that was amazing.

ENTER THE MILITANT VEGANS! These dour, and usually unhappy people inevitably intrude upon the scene of potluck celebrations and commence to criticizing the vegan orthodoxy of everything in sight. If you use lettuce in the salad, they'll stand over the bowl and loudly enough to be heard at the far end of the hall, announce that lettuce has no nutrients and that you should have used kale!

Kale, I believe, is the vegan version of the hair shirt.

I've tried kale just to make 'em happy.  I firmly believe that there is a reason God made so kale so rare that it's expensive. It tastes bad. I'm sure some caterpillar somewhere loves the stuff and turns into a beautiful butterfly after eating it, but to me it tastes like dirt on an oak leaf.  And I know what oak leaves taste like. I lived most of my formative years in the tops of North Texas oak trees.

Non-Vegan Cottage Cheese Loaf

The Vegans have so far told me not to eat cheese, milk, sugar, cream of mushroom soup, wheat gluten, wheat flour, soy products of any kind,  avocados, bananas or any form of flour that doesn't cost $4.50 a pound. And do NOT let them get started on GMOs! Pretty much anything that tastes good is off the table with these guys. And don't believe them when they tell you something they made that is organic, non-GMO, high-fiber and vegan and brought to potluck is just delicious. Don't taste it unless you are prepared to tell an untruth when they say, "Isn't that just delicious?"  One hates to tell them the dish they slaved over for 13 hours tastes like a plywood and sand sandwich.

Militant Vegans do like the idea of raw kale and carrots and other RAW foods. I capitalized it because when they say RAW foods, it comes out like a kind of roar - imagine charging Mongolian hordes and you kind of get the sound.  But even their favorite RAW foods are not safe.  Recently I saw carrots blasted as unhealthy by one of these Super Vegans.  Apparently someone like me shredded carrots, sauteed them in olive oil (not the expensive kind) and made a sweet base for a spaghetti sauce. It's quite delicious by the way. Probably why it received the Super Vegan curse.

I believe in being healthy so far as you can. I believe God intended for us to enjoy food or he wouldn't have made it taste so good.  Remember he promised us a land of Milk and Honey - both animal products by the way. My principle is that if I can eat something that no animal had to die to provide, then, I'm probably okay with God on that.

One of my favorite Harry Miller creations.

As to Dr. Harry Miller's brilliant use of soy and wheat gluten (something he learned when he was a mission doctor in China), I heartily approve. Lots of his meat substitutes get used in the dishes I post on the potluck vegetarian. Atlantic Natural foods still makes some of Dr. Miller's vegetarian meat substitutes. They even make Vegan versions of some things if your offended by milk and eggs in the ingredient list.  Some of the older non-vegan types are still my favorites over the new gluten free versions. I don't have ciliac disease and don't have a problem with gluten. It's a wonderful plant-based protein source.

As to the kale-eaters who jump on my website to criticize my straying from Vegan purity, I usually don't approve their posts. I think potlucks should be celebratory feasts and should not be haunted by gaunt spindly figures dressed in black and gray who will come to the table and tell you stories about how unhealthy they were till they started eating kale-based organic, non-GMO food and six weeks later passed a cancerous tumor they'd had for years. I can do without that mental picture, thank you and I've had it happen to me many times, so I'm not making this stuff up. There really are people like this out there. And to those of you non-militant Vegans, I'm not talking about you. This is about your fanatic friends. You know who they are. They're like Ron Paul Libertarians only holier than them.

So, I say celebrate the bounty God has provided. Avocado is virtually the perfect food. Bananas are full of nice healthy potassium and soy and wheat gluten is God's gift to Chinese and vegetarian cuisine. In addition, I can tell you from experience that cows are quite proud of their many tasty cheese products. And drop by The Potluck Vegetarian for some ideas for you next church potluck or, for that matter, for Sunday brunch at your house. I think you'll enjoy the joyful version of vegetarianism.

Just saying.

Tom King
© 2016

Getting Old is Actually Kind of Fun?

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Wheat gluten "steaks" simmering in broth.

As I've gotten older, I've decided to do some things differently.  For one thing, we've almost entirely stopped buying meat of any kind and gone almost entirely vegetarian. It means more cooking time, but I find I enjoy cooking.  Who knew meal prep could be this much fun?

People become vegetarians for a lot of reasons.  Some hope to lose weight of to improve their health or live longer.  Others do it because the whole idea of eating living creatures is repugnant to them.  Some do it in order to feel morally superior to others.  Some believe it will help save the planet.

I do it for several reasons, not the least of which is my religion.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve evidently lived on fruits and vegetables.  Later God pitched them out of the garden and said here's some grain (carbohydrates).  Try this.  Then, at the flood He designated clean and unclean beasts and told Noah he could barbecue the extra clean ones during the voyage.  The human lifespan dropped precipitously after that. So I figure it's healthier to eat the plants.

But probably an even bigger reason for it is that I like vegetarian food.  I grew up eating both vegetarian food and meat dishes. My Mom and my Grandmother made wonderful dishes like peanut butter loaf, cottage cheese loaf and vegetarian hot dogs and hamburgers. We mixed it up with the real thing too and for economic reasons, I did eat rather a lot of baloney sandwiches as a kid.

To this day, I'm not terribly fussy to cook for, though as a practicing Adventist, I leave pork and shrimp and stuff like that alone.  If we're visiting or away from home, we eat what we're offered and don't demand others cater to our weird dietary restrictions. We feel that would be rude, but we are up front about being semi-vegetarians.

I'm doing more of the cooking now that I'm semi-retired and only working 12 to 14 hour days and since, I'm cooking, I can exercise my preference for vegetarian food over meat. It's safer, healthier and I like it better. Adventists as a group tend to live longer than other Americans by about 6 to 10 years according to some studies.  I figure it's the lifestyle - a lifestyle that includes an emphasis on vegetarianism and eating a good diet.

Don't get me wrong, I do like pie, especially the fruity ones that aren't too sweet and homemade ice cream is a weakness of mine. And I have to take my Sweet Baboo down for a steak once in a while or she gets cranky, but all in all it wasn't a hard thing for us to do.  We've always eaten lots of vegetables and vegetarian foods, and there are all kinds of vegetarian substitutes for meat.  You can order stuff made from tofu, soybeans, wheat gluten and other plant proteins and many of them like vege-dogs, artificial scallops, bacon and buffalo wings aren't bad. You used to have to buy them from SDA suppliers like your state's Adventist Book Center, but now you can order vege-burger and vege-chicken at Amazon.com. 

Also, if you don't mind a bit of work, a largely lacto-ovo vegetarian diet can be less expensive than buying steaks, fryers and chops. This week I made some gluten steaks out of wheat and white flour, some chicken seasoning and ten minutes or so of kneading by hand (my KitchenAid Mixer does the lion's share of the initial kneading of the dough).  I'll be posting a recipe soon at my Hubpages site with photographs and directions for making your own wheat gluten.  I'll put up the link here when it's done.

This summer I plan to go to some of those little pick-it-yourself fruit and vegetable farms they have up here in Washington and get some bushels of fruit and veggies to can for the winter.  We have a pressure cooker and I'm going to buy a bunch of those great old-fashioned Mason Jars.  Not only will we have good food prepared by ourselves without a lot of chemical ingredients, but we are also going to have some lovely decorative jars of stuff in our pantry this year if all goes well.  And we should have some very pleasant meals this winter. 

I've discovered that getting old gives you an appreciation for hand-made things, whether food or decorations for your house or even well-made kitchen tools. I'm collecting stuff for my kitchen the way I've been collecting tools for my workshop.

They say that in your 50s and 60s your right brain - the creative half of your mind - begins to grow again for the first time since you were a teenager.  It's kind of fun. Turns out the tools and telescope parts and all those unpainted toy soldiers I collected all those years may get turned into something after all.

Except for the arthritis, I'm enjoying getting to the age where I'm well-seasoned.  And even the arthritis yields itself to some creative solutions I've been trying out lately. I find I rather like ice packs and hot and cold fomentations to my joints.  And the exploration of herbal remedies has been like a treasure hunt.  That's how I found out that Aloe Vera juice and capsules help my knees work better.

How much fun is that?



- Tom