Category Archives: Vegan Mofo ’11

On Vegan Parenting – So Many Options

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Parenting is a challenge.  If anyone has ever told you that it isn’t, then he/she was either delusional or a liar.  There are so many decisions to be made, and few of them are simple.   It starts even before birth, when choices about prenatal testing, natural childbirth, labor anesthesia, circumcision, and breastfeeding are just a few of the issues faced by parents.  Once the child is born, the list continues to grow (cloth or disposable, co-sleep or not, stroller or babywrap,  immunize or don’t) and becomes even more complex.

As food is a rather vital part of living (if you want to continue doing that), choices eventually must be made about what/how to feed little junior.  For the vegan parent, this means electing whether to raise the child as vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore.

This choice is more complicated than it may seem on the surface.  Pediatricians and family members will want to weigh in on the decision.  If the parents have a similar diet, they might more easily select to raise baby in that same way.  But, if they have dietary differences (vegetarian and vegan, vegan and omnivore, etc.), there might need to be some negotiation.  Presence of older children in the home, and what sort of diet they  have, is also an issue.  And then childcare must be considered.  If the baby will be regularly cared for by a relative, friend, or paid carer with a very different diet, that might be an issue.

In the VeganAsana household, 4 of the six children arrived pre-vegetarianism.  2 arrived post-vegetarian, but pre-vegan.  Mr. VA is an omnivore.  So, all of our children have been presented with an omnivore diet, with a heavy emphasis on vegetarian and vegan options and meals.  In a week of dinners, I cook more than half vegetarian/vegan and the remainder omni.

This option, along with ongoing education about nutrition, the farm industry, and the origins of food items, has allowed our children to make their own decisions about diet.  At this point, two are vegans, one is a vegetarian, and three are omnivores.  It has worked fine for us.  I can’t say that I would be sad if I never had to prepare another non-vegan food dish, but until the time when everyone in the house is old enough to cook for him/herself, I will keep doing it.  I also wouldn’t say that it’s the “best” way to handle things, but in a mixed diet marriage, it is a reasonable option.

Vegan Mashed Potato Soup

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We are big fans of potato soup in the VeganAsana house, but we prefer the potatoes to be mashed, so that the soup is really thick and rich.  Since I‘m currently obsessed with the pressure cooker, I decided to work on making it that way.  Here was the end result!

5 lb potatoes peeled and diced
3 stalks celery diced
1 sweet onion diced
3 cups diced carrots
2 T olive oil
7-8 cups vegetable broth
1 cups unsweetened soy milk
4 cloves minced garlic optional
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Add olive oil and onion to the bottom of the cooker and cook on medium heat until the onions begin to carmelize.  Add the potatoes, celery, and broth.  Place the carrots in a small stainless or glass bowl and place on top of the potatoes.  Add several T of water to the carrot bowl.  Close lid and bring to high pressure.  Maintain at high pressure for 5 minutes and then remove from heat and allow pressure to dissipate naturally.   Remove lid, remove bowl of carrots (carefully!).  Using an immersion blender, or mashing by hand, gently mash potatoes to texture desired.  Add cooked carrots, nutritional yeast, soy milk, salt, and pepper and stir.  Return to stove (without lid) and heat on low, stirring often, for a few moments.  Serve with a salad and some bread.

(sorry for the lack of an “after” picture – mashed potato soup doesn’t photograph well)

Yes, I Do Have a Diet. No, I’m not Dieting.

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(This is a slightly reworked post from Sept 2009, but it seemed appropriate to VeganMoFo)

To steal an opening from 82% of my public speaking students: Webster’s Dictionary (or Wikipedia) defines diet as “food and drink regularly provided or consumed.”  So, this means that however you eat, whatever your patterns are, that is your diet.  If you mostly eat orange food from a box/bag/carton/jar (kraft mac n’ cheese, cheetos, oj, cheese whiz, queso dip, doritos) then you have an orange diet.  If you primarily eat fruits and vegetables in their natural form, then you have a raw food diet.  If you do not eat any animal products, you have a vegan diet, and so on.

But, that’s not how we tend to think about “diet,” as a quick check of Google indicates.  When we think about or talk about diet, we tend to be focusing on the issue of weight loss.   I don’t know how this became the default definition of the word diet, but it seems to be.  If someone tells people that he/she is on a raw food diet or a juice diet, the first response is frequently, “Why? You don’t need to lose any weight,” or “Have you lost much weight?”  Whether the individual “needs” to lose any weight is neither here nor there.  Why is the assumption that an eating plan is designed to promote weight loss?  I’m sure, somehow, this has to do with our increasing girth in much of the western world, combined with an obsession with slimness.

Regardless of how the situation arose, I think it is problematic that all of our attention to “diet” tends to revolve around weight loss or restriction.  When we focus on diet/dieting as a weight loss tool or a refusal of particular food, our awareness is automatically drawn to what we cannot have.  So, when someone undertakes a low carb diet to lose weight, the focus is on eliminating carbs (bread, fruit, pasta, etc.) from the diet, not on what is eaten (vegetables, proteins, dairy).  This isn’t a very efficient way to change behavior for the better.

Put a small child in a room with a desk or a dresser and make a big deal of telling him/her not to open the drawer and then stand quietly outside and see how long it takes for the drawer to be opened.  Go ahead and pick a kid; I’ll wait.  Chances are decent that the drawer will be opened.  Why?  Well, some psychologists/philosophers/sociologists/etc., like Gregory Bateson, would tell us that humans think in terms of what we are “not” doing, and that, in fact, the only way to think about not doing something is to imagine doing it.  So, when you tell that small child not to open the drawer, you leave him or her imagining what might happen if the drawer is opened and the desire to do so just increases.

It’s much the same with “dieting” in the restriction sense.  As soon as you are told, or tell yourself, that you cannot have XYZ food, you spend a lot of time in your day thinking about not having that food, and thereby thinking about having it.  So, a low calorie diet becomes a day spent thinking, “I won’t eat a cookie.  I won’t eat a cookie.  I won’t eat a cookie… cookie… cookie… cookie,” and eventually, there you are with your hand in the cookie jar.  And then once you’ve already “messed up” your “diet” for the day by breaking the rule about what not to eat, you might as well go ahead and have 3 cookies, or 5, or 10.  How many people have you heard say, “I could never be a vegan, because I couldn’t give up cheese.”  The first thought is of loss and restriction.  And yes, it would be very hard to give up cheese if you spent the day considering how much you wished to have a slice of cheddar.

It’s much more useful to think about what we will/should eat.  Instead of thinking, “I can’t have a nacho plate for lunch,” you think “I’m going to make a huge salad with field greens, walnuts, cranberries, apples, and a raspberry vinaigrette for lunch.  Mmmmm.”  Now the focus shifts to what you are going to eat and how good and good for you it is going to be.  It’s a much healthier and happier way to approach food.  We are humans and we need to eat for survival (duh), but moreover, food tastes good to us (I don’t know if it works this way for cows, but I’m pretty sure it does for dogs).   It’s much nicer to think about all of the good (and good for us) things we can have instead of thinking about what we can’t have.

If we, as a culture, could adopt a view of diet that focused more on building a delicious and nutritious eating plan, and less on labeling some food as “bad” and some as “good” and then eliminating items based on their “badness,” we would be happier with ourselves and our meals.  We would likely feel better emotionally, and physically.  And, who knows, we might just lose a few pounds  ; )