Vegan Cooking & Cookbooks discussion

The recipes in this book look really good, and the reviews are glowing. The author is an ethical vegan; however, she includes honey in some of her recipes. She supports non-industrial harvesting of honey from well-cared for bees. This is a problem for many vegans, including me. Still, I think I will take the book home and try out at least some of the main dishes.

I wrote a long post about this book when it came out but after receiving two rather angry private messages within 10 minutes of each other, I deleted it.

I'll just say this: I don't like the author's rude, condescending tone at all. It also doesn't thrill me when a vegetarian* writes a book targeting "the rest of us" (who are the rest of us?) and then throws out a list of ingredients such as butter essence and Accent, which she apparently believes are necessary to make vegan food edible.

"Butter essence smells so dreadful -- like movie popcorn butter squared -- that you'll reel backward the first time you smell it."

"'[Accent] also known as MSG, or 'the devil ingredient that made me think I was having a stroke in a Chinese restaurant that time.' I'm happy -- or sorry, if you're a hypochondriac -- to say that there's no evidence that MSG is harmful [............] and vegans need every weapon they can add to the arsenal."

The list continues with citric acid, deodorized cocoa butter, liquid smoke, powdered soy milk, Soy Curls, soy lecithin granules and powder, Gimme Lean sausage, xanthan gum, and TSP. (Seemingly unaware that TVP and TVC are just trademarked brand names for the TSP produced by Archer Daniels Midland, she erroneously snarks, "...formerly TSP until Certain People started worrying about soy.")

I do use some of those ingredients on occasion, but contrary to the author's idea that anyone who takes issue with her "actually pretty basic" list is just a whiny newbie who's too lazy and scared to step outside the box, I've been vegan for well over 20 years and have never once felt that my food has suffered for lack of her self-acknowledged "dreadful" butter essence.

*Page 11 — "I wish I were a vegan instead of a vegetarian who eats a lot of vegan food."

LJean wrote: "I wrote a long post about this book when it came out but after receiving two rather angry private messages within 10 minutes of each other, I deleted it.

I'll just say this: I don't like the auth..."

LJean, I read through the book more, and I must say I agree with everything you've said. The same thoughts came up for me.

I thought I was being a bit harsh, but since I already had it out, I looked through it a bit more last night and, yeah, it was just as annoying as the first time around!

Bold text and italics courtesy of the book:

"I will say, though, that certain vegan foods want us to hate them."

"There's something called — truth! — 'Dr. Cow's Aged Cashew Cheese with Blue-Green Algae.' And tempeh, which is a stiff patty made from fermented soybeans which are 'sewn' together by fungal filaments. Don't worry if your tempeh has black or gray spots! That's just spores. You can eat them fine."

I mean, seriously? Acting like a grossed-out 12-year-old mean girl making fun of what the Indonesian kid is eating for lunch is just unbecoming of a 60-year-old woman who should know better.

It saddens me that a book targeting people who wish to go vegan — or at the very least, people who were open to picking up a book with "vegan" in the title — are being met with such a negative message about vegan food from an author who does her best to denigrate it at every turn.

Don wrote: "She write humor and perhaps she meant to be funny and sarcastic? Perhaps she wasn't successful."

Well, yes, she was trying to be funny, but we look to vegan cookbooks as one of the few places to be supported, and her humor was misplaced and hypocritical.

LJean wrote: "I thought I was being a bit harsh, but since I already had it out, I looked through it a bit more last night and, yeah, it was just as annoying as the first time around!

Bold text and italics cour..."

Anyone can make fun of any food, but to make fun of tempeh as though it's a complicated new fad rather than support it as the simple and very available ancient staple it is while promoting that weird "butter" is hypocritical.