Rewriting the book on vegan junk food

January 10, 2008

SIRI AGRELL

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

January 9, 2008 at 9:34 AM EST

It may come as a shock to most foodies that a book promoting hard-core veganism has sold more than 850,000 copies. But Skinny Bitch, by authors Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman, became a publishing phenomenon after its 2005 release and has now spawned a cookbook, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, which hit shelves in December. The Globe and Mail spoke with Ms. Freedman about meat substitutes, vegan junk food and Skinny Bastards.

Your first book was quite explicit in telling readers what they shouldn't eat, namely anything that comes from animals. Why do a cookbook?

The first book didn't have any recipes, just eating plans and menus. But we've been getting literally thousands of e-mails from people asking us for a cookbook, who want to know how to stick to this kind of lifestyle, and we felt like we wanted to give readers the tools to make this transition.

But there are already a lot of vegan cookbooks out there.

I think people just want to hear it in our voice and in our style. There are amazing vegan cookbooks out there like Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World ... but unfortunately, veganism does have this terrible rap, and everybody assumes you're either a militant crazy radical spray-painting people's fur coats or that you have hairy armpits and dreadlocks. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

You and Ms. Barnouin didn't actually write these recipes, right?

We're not professional cooks, we're professional eaters. So our publisher hired a consultant. Half of the recipes are things that we make all the time, but we don't have anal-retentive scientific measurements for all these things. And the other half are things that we hadn't had in a long time because we didn't know how to make it without certain ingredients, and the chef working with us figured it out.

A lot of the recipes - Shepherd's Pie, Sloppy Joes - are traditionally meat-heavy dishes. Do you feel conflicted eating something that looks and tastes like meat?

No. People always ask, why do vegetarians eat all these fake meats?

Because we like meat - it tastes great. We're not a bunch of weirdos, the only thing that separates vegetarians from meat eaters is that we don't want animals to be tortured and slaughtered so that we can eat them.

But do you worry about encouraging people to rely so heavily on processed meat substitutes?

I think this cookbook is more for people who are just transitioning or who are curious and want to try vegetarian cooking than for die-hard vegans. I don't eat as many fake meat products as I did when I first transitioned 14 years ago. But I would not have survived, I would still be eating meat right now if not for all the fake meats.

Some of the recipes are introduced with phrases like, "Just like Mom used to make - minus the pieces of decomposing, rotting chicken carcass." Isn't it dangerous to promote nausea in a cookbook?

It's certainly not something that comes up in every recipe: There may be two or three things about dead animals, the rest are just silly or funny.

By the time the food is made and they're sitting down to eat I don't think they're going to be thinking about dead, rotting, decomposing chicken flesh. Especially since they're not going to be eating it.

Some people have called the recipes vegan junk food.

I definitely think there are some yummy, fun, vegan junk food recipes in there, but that's certainly not all there is. We have an entire chapter dedicated to healthy staple meals. There's a salad section. I think it's a balance.

There is also a lot of salt.

Salt is not a big deal. Salt becomes a problem when you're buying a lot of packaged, processed, canned foods that are high in sodium. When you're cooking and you put salt on something, that's not the salt you need to be freaked out about.

So what's the next book we can expect?

The next one we thought would be for men. We feel like a lot of men are not going to read a book called Skinny Bitch. It might be Skinny Bastard. We're toying with a bunch of different titles.

*****

'Chicken' Noodle Soup

What you need

1 tablespoon refined coconut oil

1 carrot, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4-inch slices

1 celery stalk, cut into 1/4-inch

slices

1/2 onion, cut into 1/2-inch dice

4 ounces white or cremini mushrooms, cut into 1/4-inch slices

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon curry powder

1 bay leaf

8 cups vegan "chicken" stock (hot water mixed with vegan bouillon according to package directions)

2 teaspoons Bragg's Liquid Aminos (or 1 1/4 teaspoons tamari or soy sauce)

8 ounces vegan "chicken" strips or chunks (if frozen, no need to thaw)

4 ounces whole wheat or brown rice pasta

What you do

Heat the coconut oil in a four- to six-quart stock pot over medium heat. Add the carrot, celery and onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp tender, about two minutes. Add the mushrooms, salt, pepper and curry powder and cook until the mushrooms

release their juices, about two minutes.

Stir in the stock, Bragg's Liquid Aminos and bay leaf. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Add the chicken and pasta. When the soup returns to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Cook until the pasta is tender (time will depend on type of pasta). Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Makes about 9 cups

From Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, published by Running Press.

Peter H

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