Vegan Recipes and Plant Based Cooking

All this talk of the food stamp challenge got me thinking. Gweneth Paltrow's fail was pretty amusing. Some journalists got in on the act too and just plain embarrassed themselves. To be fair, if you live in California, it's probably impossible to live healthy on $31 per week for food. California is incredibly expensive. You could live on crap food at that price, but fresh or healthy is off the table. But pretty much everywhere else that is a luxurious allotment of food monies. And I live in a pretty expensive area. The Jersey shore is not known for its low cost of living. Our food prices are pretty substantial. Evenso, I think $29-$31 per week is more than ample. That is if you don't eat meat. That's the trick. Fresh produce is affordable, in vegetable form, not so much in the fruit variety. The bitter irony being that for most people the food stamp challenge is just regular, everyday life. With or without public assistance, most of us have to live on a tight food budge...

I received an email from light life. This is a rare occurance. Apparently they've come out with a new line of refrigerated meatless burgers. Which is music to my ears and lips. One is fortified with quinoia. Which is great, but I'm allergic. The other is black bean based. Which I love. Black beans are an aweseome meat replacer. There are few things in life I love more than a great meantless burger. There's something so satisfying about making/comsuming a patty that defies the typcial dead animal protocol. The root of it is the sandwich. It doesn't need to be a dead thing. It just needs to be delicious. ANd that's easily accomplished through other means. The fact is, good veggie patties are trickier to create, but far more rewarding. Any asshole can throw together a typical hamburger. Big whoop. But it takes an attist to assemble a crave worthy veggie patty. And crave worthy they are with the right ingredients and topppings. Meat is easy to make good. It takes a r...