It's hard to believe that it was a week ago today-- Mardi Gras-- that I was gorging myself on cheese and yogurt because the following day I was to give up eating all animal products. As I've talked about before, I've been a vegetarian for a few consecutive years now. I've tried going vegan once before. It was, what I called at the time, a week of joyless eating. I tried to give up not only animal products but vegan products that were analogous to their meat or dairy counterparts. This time I am allowing myself the occasional luxury of indulging in things like vegan sausage, chicken and cheese.
I really had to do a lot of thinking about why I was going vegan-- part of it had to do with the sacrifice for Lent. Although I am no longer a practicing Catholic, I think that the spirit of some traditions are universal and some really important lessons can be learned through them. By doing without you can learn a lot about one's basic needs and meditate on positive things like gratitude and thanksgiving.
But back to the topic of fake meat. I have a friend who is absolutely appalled by the idea of vegetarian versions of meat products. He would say, "If you want to eat meat, eat MEAT!" For a while I was in agreement. That makes sense, right? I knew that eating meat wasn't for me-- I'm disgusted by industrial farming practices and I am hopeful that dedication to a plant-based diet can prevent illness and disease. With heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and cancer in my family medical history, I'll take all the help I can get! But based on what my meat-eating friend said and how vehemently he said it, I still avoided a lot of vegetarian and vegan products that were plant-based meat rip-offs. Looking back I realize that is just silly. It's smart to eat them in moderation because they are of course still processed foods, but if eating fake sausage can bring some joy to my otherwise joyless eating, why the hell not?!
I started thinking about all this yesterday after grabbing a quick pre-fab lunch from the salad bar at Whole Foods. I had been assisting a glass artist down at the American Craft Council show at the Baltimore Convention Center- I had to get up early and by the time I finished I was famished. Whole Foods in Harbor East is not too far from the Convention CEnter which is in the Inner Harbor so I hoofed it over there to grab some grub while my husband came to meet me. I was kind of in a hurry because I knew he would be there soon and there was a sense of panic and pandemonium in the air because most of Harbor East was in the midst of a power outage- the supermarket had actually just lost and regained power so I totally had that "get in, get out" mentality, too. I just too a scoop or two of some of each of the prepared foods that was labeled "vegan". I definitely made sure to double check that each item was without a doubt labeled "vegan" before I took some.
When I got home I was delighted by a dish called Vegan Curry Chicken Salad. It was great-- creamy texture, soft penne, raisins or currants and chicken. "Chicken". At first I was totally sure it was fake chicken. But the more I ate the less sure I became. The flavor and texture was so chicken-like. I found myself dissecting it. I convinced myself that it was some kind of really amazing fake meat. Then I psyched myself out and panicked because it was just so real tasting. I had to kind of do a self-evaluation because after having been a vegetarian for as long as I have been you can kind of tell when you have just unknowingly eaten a small bit of meat. I didn't have any of that "heavy" feeling... I still couldn't stomach the last two bites, though.
I had to get to the bottom of that amazing mock meat. I did a bunch of research online and found that it was most likely a product called "Beyond Meat". Other vegan bloggers had evidently had the same experience as me. Either that or they had been privy to the rumors of market testing in Southern California and trekked from Whole Foods to Whole Foods in the hopes of finding Beyond Meat in their prepared Vegan Curry Chicken Salad.
A follow-up visit to Whole Foods today confirmed that the "chicken" in my curry salad was in fact the "Beyond Meat" product. I'm sure I will be enjoying it again in the future! I have found couple of copy-cat recipes written by bloggers because as far as I could tell, Whole Foods is not being forthcoming with divulging their Vegan Curry Chicken Salad recipe because at almost $10/lb. that stuff is solid gold I'm sure!
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