“An ancient food, tofu originated in China about 2,000 years ago. While the details of its discovery are uncertain, legend has it that it was discovered by accident when when a Chinese cook added nigari seaweed to a pot of soy milk, causing it to curdle, and the result was tofu. Tofu was introduced into Japan in the 8th century where it was known as “okabe” until the 15th century, though it didn’t gain widespread popularity in Japan until the 17th century.
Tofu’s rise in the West mirrored the increasing interest in healthier foods. First gaining attention during the 1960s, tofu has been skyrocketing in popularity ever since research began to reveal the many significant benefits of this delicious legume-based food.”
Colleen Patrick-Goudrea, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
I really fell in love with tofu when I was living in Japan. The Japanese do to tofu what the French do to wine. Handmade tofu is an art form passed down through generations. People will travel just to eat a particular region’s speciality tofu. It’s not just the base ingredient, but what is done with it.
A page from the 1782 Edo cookbook Tofu Hyakuchin (One Hundred Unique Types of Tofu)Studio hand coloured 19th century photograph of a tofu seller.(c) Japan Centre
A sign of how incredible good tofu can be is Hiyayakko – fresh, soft tofu chilled and served with grated ginger, katsuobushi, shallots and soy sauce.  The tofu is so delicate and distinctive you can eat it as a centrepiece dish. Although, now I’m vegan I would do without the katsuobushi.
“And because a mammal can not lactate without being pregnant (and subsequently giving birth), it’s important to point out that the offspring of a dairy cow (or goat or sheep) is merely incidental; he or she is simply the consequence of a pregnancy that is required to keep the animal lactating. Every year, 800, 000 male calves are born to dairy cows in the U.S. are slaughtered and sold as “veal” – all for a product that is definitely not necessary for humans to consume.”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
A mammal’s breast milk is for her young, growing baby. There is no way you can take her milk ‘humanely’. It doesn’t matter if it is a factory farm, a small hobby farm or an organic farm. It all involves unnecessary cruelty and exploitation.
It is a very simply equation. Human milk is for human babies. Rat milk is for baby rats. Cows milk is for baby calves. Sheep’s milk is for lambs. The only way you can get drinkable quantities of milk from a mother is to take away her baby. This is what happens with all dairy production. The cow is forcibly made pregnant, which causes her body to start doing what female mammals do. Then, at birth, the baby becomes competition for the breast-milk we want to make cheese, ice cream or to froth up our lattes. Calves, especially the males, are simply by-products of the highly profitable dairy industry; many of the female calves become replacements for their mothers on the milking machines.
The New Zealand economy depends on dairy exports; as evidenced by the ubiquitous dairy farms we are surrounded by.
So that’s the bad news. We can’t continue to consume dairy. The dairy industry, dependant as it is on cruelty and exploitation, has to go. I live in the Waikato, where we are surrounded by dairy farms. Most of us owe our livelihoods either directly or indirectly to the dairy industry. Getting rid of the dairy industry would mean restructuring our economic base and using the region’s rich volcanic soils to grow something other than grass to feed cows. Unfortunately, the local dairy co-op, Fonterra, is now a multi-billion dollar international corporation, and over 90% of the milk produced here is exported. Fonterra now also run or contract dairy farms and milk production plants in other countries, especially China.
The good news, however, is plant-based milk. Anything you would use animal breast-milk for can be replaced with a plant-based version. Personally, I love the taste of almond milk, but it is more expensive than soy. So, now I use soy milk for anything where the flavour won’t be noticeable, and almond when it will. Â A litre of Anchor cows milk is around $2.70 a litre. Soy milk prices vary, but a litre of Signature (home-brand) organic soy is about $2.90 and Vita Soy regular $3.00 or Sanatorium regular $3.40. Â Almond milk is usually, depending on brand, around $3.80 – $4.00 a litre.
I use coconut milk or cream when I want the thickness (fat), as in a curry. Coconut is delicious, thick, has a very distinctive flavour and helps ‘soften’ spicy food. Colleen has a great suggestion, if you want the flavour of coconut without the fat just add a few drops of coconut essence to another plant milk.
According to Colleen, rice milk is the thinnest and if you want a thicker milk use oat, almond or soy. Also, plant milks are generally fortified with B12 and vitamin D.
Colleen includes a recipe for home-made almond milk.
“Although there are some wonderful commercial brands available, there’s truly nothing like homemade, and you need no special equipment. For coffee drinkers, this is an ideal creamer and froths up beautifully when making lattes.”
Cutting Out the Middle Cow and Getting Calcium Directly from the Source
“From a very young age, we have been sold the idea that cow’s milk is an essential and healthful food for humans to consume, lauded for all the calcium it contains”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
For years it nagged away at the back of my mind; I really should learn to like milk because I probably needed more calcium. It wasn’t healthy not to drink milk. As a child, I didn’t like milk. I loved cheese. I loved butter and cream. I just didn’t like milk, not even when you loaded it up with strawberry flavoured sugar. And in this milk guzzling country, I was an anomaly.
Milk guzzling nation. Milk was seen as so essential to good nutrition we used to hand it out free to children for three decades. Fortunately, the programme was discontinued the year I was born. (c) The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
Several years ago when I smashed up my shoulder after a fall, the doctor was concerned I might have fragile bones because the extent of the shattering seemed way out of proportion to the accident (I fell over trying to speed walk – I know, don’t ask!!). I went for a bone scan. It was all good, but even then the specialist asked me about calcium intake and suggested I consume more milk.
“Even non-bakers suffer from the misconception that baked goods require chicken’s eggs, cow’s milk and dairy based butter. The fact is, to create delicious, decadent, successful baked goods, you do not need animal products at all. What you need is:
Day 14 is a short chapter, but it has several delicious-looking, straightforward vegan baking recipes, and I want to make all of them. Â Colleen has written a book, The Joy of Vegan Baking, for more information.
Colleen introduces three ways to do whatever it is that the eggs are doing in your baking.
1. To lighten or rise: 1 tablespoon of vinegar: 1 teaspoon of baking soda
2. To bind: 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed: 3 tablespoons of water
3. Commercial egg replacer/powder and water (made from potato starch)
Flaxseed ground – 1 tablespoon mixed with 3 tablespoons of water and left to thicken for half a minute is excellent in everything from pancake batter to cakes and biscuits instead of eggs.
I haven’t used the commercial product, so I can’t speak to them, but the other two options work really well, I especially love the flaxseed. It is cheap, much cheaper than eggs anyway. It is super easy. I just keep the flaxseed in the fridge and grind when I need them with a spice grinder I keep on the bench. If I did more baking I would probably grind up more at a time. Then, I mix the ground seed with water with a small whisk at the same time as I am getting the pans and ingredients prepared, so the ‘eggs’ are ready (thickened) when I need them.
This recipe isn’t in the 30 Day Vegan Challenge, but it is super easy, cheap and quick to put together. It is from the website veganbaking,net, which is an awesome site put together by professional bakers and full of advice, recipes and explanations of why things work the way they do in baking.
If you use this recipe, I would recommend using the coffee instead of the water as it really does give a ‘deeper’ flavour. I also add a couple of handfuls of finely chopped dark vegan chocolate.
Discovering There is Life After (Dairy-based) Cheese
” … of course you can live without cheese.”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
Yes, you can absolutely live without cheese, and nobody could have been more surprised by that than me! Â Before I went vegan, it loomed on my path, blocking my movement forward, a life without cheese. Â Could I voluntarily give up something I loved so much? Â I didn’t even eat that much of it, or so I thought.
It was one of the original motivators behind putting a time limit on being vegan, my ‘vegan experiment’. The anxiety around making a complete commitment was too overwhelming. I’m not sure now what I was even clinging to, but at the time I couldn’t psychologically walk away from foods like cheese forever. However, I could stop eating them for a designated period of time. So, I did.
Day 12, Colleen makes the case that what we really mean when we say we crave animals as food is that we crave “fat, salt, flavour, texture and familiarity”. This seems like an odd claim at first, and I am still not sure it is 100% right. Eggs taste like eggs. Meat tastes like meat. You know this when you first go vegan, and then you forget. But there is definitely something to Colleen’s argument. A craving is not a taste.
What do you want more than the taste of butter? Why did you originally go vegan?
If you find yourself craving animal products, what are you going to do? Â This is where the question becomes – What do I really want?
Obviously, everyone goes vegan for a reason. I think the key is to tap back into that reason, to remind yourself of the motivation. Â I expected cravings to be a problem when I first went vegan. Ironically, the opposite was true. I was revolted by foods only a few weeks ago I had loved.
“It’s not the fault of “being vegan” that makes it challenging to find nutrient-dense food on the road. The problem is that as individuals and as a society, we have not made eating well a priority – whether we are at home or travelling.
The truth is that eating vegan on the road is easy in most places and a little challenging in others. It’s just a matter of knowing what to look for and taking the time to prepare.
…
No matter how hard I try, when I travel, I accept that I’ll be eating less optimally than when I’m home, but I do try to follow some guidelines to make travelling as pleasant as possible.”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
Stop at the Shell Station. Want a hot meal? I don’t like your vegan chances, especially if you want to eat something healthy.
Any stop at a petrol station clearly shows how, as a society, we value convenience over eating well, especially on the road.
When travelling Colleen has three fundamental pieces of advice that make a lot of sense:
Come prepared.
Do some research.
Ask for what you want – in advance, if possible.
She provides lots of tips and anecdotes for achieving all three.
Popcorn: Make your own and divide the batch up into little bags or containers. I make popcorn with an air popper. spritz on a little oil from a spray-oil can, and toss with salt, cumin, chili powder, and nutritional yeast. If it’s for the little ones skip the chilli powder.
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
Day 10 – great ideas for any time you need to pack a lunch.
Day 10 is similar to Day 8 – a wonderful collection of ideas designed to suit a wide range of tastes and lifestyles, only instead of breakfast it’s a packed lunch, or really any time you have to pack food to go.
At my workplace we have a full kitchen with a fridge, microwave, sink, bench space and even a few appliances like a toaster and panni press. There is a cupboard with dishes and utensils. This increases the range of food I can take for lunch.
However, Day 10 assumes you don’t have any of that, you just need to pack and eat. The ideas are organised into three categories – sandwiches, salads and snacks.
“If I’m eating at a table where non-vegan food is being served (and everyone knows I’m vegan), invariably someone will apologise for eating the chicken’s leg or hamburger they’re about to bite into. Instead of lying and saying, “It’s okay” or reacting indignantly I usually say – with a smile – something like, “Don’t apologise to me. Apologise to the chickens.” It enables me to speak the truth without shaming them, but it also sets a lighter tone.”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
Getting comfortable eating out and talking about being vegan in social situations where people are consuming animals is a process, and I am still not quite there yet.
I am now reasonably okay ordering in cafes and restaurants. It has taken a few goes to figure it out. I completely agree with Colleen’s advice that you need to be specific; the word ‘vegan’ is too ambiguous. It is more effective to ask questions like, “What type of stock was it cooked in?”, Â “Is it made with eggs?” “Can you leave out the cheese?”
“The best thing we can do is choose the most nutrient dense foods that are high in fibre and low in calories. … By eating nutrient dense food you create a solid foundation on which the rest of your day can be built.”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, 30 Day Vegan Challenge
Eat breakfast.
Physiologically  it’s important. You haven’t eaten for hours. Your blood sugar is low; your metabolism has slowed down; you need food to get going.
In my early adult years I was terrible about regular eating. I skipped breakfast most of the time. Â I wouldn’t feel like eating in the morning, probably because I was eating most of my food late at night. During the day I had no regular eating schedule.
“An ancient food, tofu originated in China about 2,000 years ago. While the details of its discovery are uncertain, legend has it that it was discovered by accident when when a Chinese cook added nigari seaweed to a pot of soy milk, causing it to curdle, and the result was tofu. Tofu was introduced into Japan in the 8th century where it was known as “okabe” until the 15th century, though it didn’t gain widespread popularity in Japan until the 17th century.
Crash Test Vegan 