If a vegan friend visited you today, what could you make for them?

I set myself a little challenge today, and this is what happened.

I raided the garden and found favas and coriander and thought I'd attempt some sort of hummus or guacamole type dip.



Liberated from their shells.



I've been experimenting with raw hummus, but when I'd tried mushing up raw favas I wasn't impressed. So I boiled them for a few minutes. They mashed up beautifully!



Then I added chopped tomato and onion, lemon juice, coriander and olive oil, with a few drops of piri-piri drizzled over the top.



The finished dish. "Favamole" with a salad made from lettuce, chard, red russian kale, fennel, parsley, coriander, green onion, mustard, mustard flowers and nasturtium flowers, drizzled with olive oil.



What could you come up with?

I must admit when I read the title I thought "hummus "
But I would have followed it up with Cold tea cake for afters ( no eggs -marge, tea ,dried fruit, flour +bicarb , sugar or honey and spices ) or a "pain de piece "

David

Looks delicious! I'd call round for some but Portugal is rather a long way away I have been running a course in Puglia is Southern Italy at the NuArc EcoEducation Centre run by my good friends Niki and Andy, they have been knocking up the most amazing Mediterranean vegan cuisine from simple ingredients including fresh chicory, beans, tomatoes, olives, lemons, dried mushrooms and more. I got lots of ideas for volume 2 of my book No close up photos of the food but here we all are enjoying a wonderful vegan community meal of soup and salad!

If a vegan friend needed lunch in an hour, and I didn't have time to go to the store...

First thing that I'd do is offer her a huge glass of strong wine: My own vintage made from Concord grapes. Hopefully that would dis-inhibit her enough to not notice or care that I didn't burn out the cast-iron pots to make sure that no hint of a residue of bacon lingers in the pans even after normal washing.

I'm about to cook a batch of hash-browned potatoes. I could substitute coconut oil for the bacon fat that is currently in the pan. We could eat on the lawn to avoid the smell of bacon that currently fills the house.

We could eat the lambsquarters that are currently cooking on the stove, or the asparagus that my daddy picked on Friday.

We could make a soup or stew from fresh or bottled vegetables. The soups could be tomato based, tomatillo based, or squash based. If I had a day's notice I could have included hominy and beans in the soup. Or made fresh tortillas from masa harina.

She could eat the bread or cookies that are sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to spoil because I consider wheat to be poisonous to humans. They are here only because someone gave them to the family, and my grandmother taught me not to waste "food", so I can't throw them away, and I can't give them away, because it's wrong to poison other people... (But I can let them go bad... How's that for irony?) However there's no food here that I think would make a suitable vegan sandwich...

We could drink grape or apricot juice.

There are plenty of pickles.

Nothing as interesting and beautiful as your dish. That's a work of art right there.

Honestly, they would probably starve in my house. We eat meat, and a lot of eggs and a ton of all kinds of cheese.

My first thought was potato soup but I make it with cream, bacon, and cheese so that won't work.
I have baked beans but they were made with a ham bone and ham pieces.
Vegans are hard.
I guess I could make up a salad with purslane, dandelions, (herb) chives, and stinging nettle from my yard. Oh and pineapple weed. But that might taste weird with everything else.
I have greenhouse tomatoes from the greenhouse up the street (I'm in a weird area of town with commercial-size veggie greenhouses all over the place).
hmmm, maybe some carrot, celery, and cucumber with it.
I'd have to run to the greenhouse for leafy greens.
Not sure about dressings, I usually use salt and pepper.
Everyone else in the house likes a dip but it usually has some form of bacon in it. lol

David Livingston wrote:I must admit when I read the title I thought "hummus "

Just to clarify - Hummus is not the same as humus... Both are wonderful and sustaining, the latter however does not taste so good with falafels and salsa

Graham Burnett wrote: I got lots of ideas for volume 2 of my book

Volume 2? What else is going in volume 2? Inquiring minds want to know...

I'm often perplexed by the notion that it is hard to cook for a vegan as eat everything carnivores eat with the exception of about 10-15 items .. so we eat what you eat !! Easy peasy lemon squeezy !! Also, I never expect anyone I visit to provide a meal as I know it is hard for them to imagine .. so we always being our own or eat before we show up ... as we are 3% of the population so no worries mate !

Oohhh, i just made a walnut meat sundried tomato taco filling. This would be great with it.

1 cup of walnuts, or other oily seed, nut mixture
8-10 reconstituted sundried tomatoes
Cummin, paparika, chillie powder to taste, and a tiny pinch of cinnamon or clove.

Blend until ground meat texture, and extra oil or coconut oil if too dry for your liking.

This is a raw recipie, i decided to warm it up, while making the rest of the fixings, that was a mistake, the texture is much better as is.

I haven't tried yet, but i assume this could be made to mock any loose sausage type meat.

I served mine with corn quinoa rounds, spicey pickled radish greens and root slaw, and an avacado guacamole. Cacao molè. And tons lime and cilantro.
And maybe some rum was consumed. (Cinco de mayo feast)

Almost all of the ingredients where pantry items, and the radish, carrots and fennel greens were volunteers from last years garden. The lime and avacado were the only two "exotic" ingredients. Something sour, and Burra's bean-a-mole could replace that.

Ps, iam a meat eater, and i plan on making this again.

Burra Maluca wrote:

Graham Burnett wrote: I got lots of ideas for volume 2 of my book

Volume 2? What else is going in volume 2? Inquiring minds want to know...

No volume 2 planned at the moment Burra, it took me long enough to write the first one! But one day, who knows?

What I'm having for lunch today is toasted whole wheat pita bread from the store, served with a sort of salsa-guacamole consisting of an avocado, several chopped tomatoes, some chopped onion, some cilantro, a diced Jalapeño pepper, some garlic powder, and salt. The only thing from my garden at this season is the cilantro, although I could easily make it with my own green onions or chives (and often do) plus I could dig up some garlic out of season in a pinch. I am very much looking forward to my first tomatoes.

If my vegan-ish friends were coming, I'd probably make a fancy salad of pea shoots, young radish seed pods, and other assorted garden greens (including tiny volunteer lambsquarters). I wouldn't put my Walmart tomatoes in that salad; they are crunchy and flavorless and unfit for it. My go-to salad dressing is a mixture of orange juice and mustard plus onions, garlic, and spices. And they would otherwise probably happily eat whatever large-pot meal I have leftover in my fridge. (Today it's lentils cooked with onions and garlic and celery and spices.)

A fresh bowl of dewberries, roasted asparagus and onions from the garden with the end of last fall's pecans toasted and crumbled on top, a wild salad with vinegar and oil from the pantry, sauerkraut or fermented ginger carrots, nopales, homemade wine, lentils, beans, and/or rice if we count store-bought stuff...if they'd been here a couple weeks ago, they could have had loquats from our tree for dessert.

I officially propose a permies cook book! Such tastey great ideas! Who's on board?

In answer to Burra's question, if they didn't call first, it'd be a dinner reservation at one of the many fine dining establishments in this tourist town.

With advanced notice, I have worked out a great posole recipe. We make it and a pork version for our fall apple tasting party. But that takes 2 days at least if I nixtamalize my own corn, which I would if I liked you and you let me know you were coming.

Any number of things...

At the most basic, I have home canned spaghetti sauce in the garage, dry pasta in the pantry, and could whip us up a nice herb focaccia to go on the side.

I cooked a big pot of beans the other day and still have a fridge full, so those could be seasoned up and served with rice, or, if we have more time, I could make some corn tortillas and offer bean taquitos or enchiladas.

We've got winter squash still, add some onions and garlic and some frozen veg broth, puree and we'd have a nice soup.

I make my own seitan pretty regularly, so that's an option if gluten isn't off the table. It's good enough to eat on its own with a side of veg, but I could also dice it and toss it into a fried rice, or bread it and sauce it "Seitan Parmesan" style (nutritional yeast sprinkles sub for parm).

Oooh! Or if I want to impress, I'd do cashews fried in a crispy cornstarch batter and tossed in a sweet black bean sauce - honey-sweetened if that's okay with the vegan in question, corn or maple syrup if not.

And this is all without even touching on deserts.

I love cooking for my vegan friends. It's a great excuse to think a little beyond my usual repertoire. Limitations encourage good design, right?

I eat vegan about 75% of the time, so it would pretty much be what we normally eat without much adjustment. I always have a huge salad with fermented vegetables, nuts, chia, hemp, flax seeds. Then we have a few vegetable dishes, usually whatever's in season. My wife the vegan is less scared of grain/carb/wheat than I am and she is avoiding all animal, so it's just a bit different and in some ways easier to cook for her. I have to put extra vegies and olive oil in a pasta dish or anything grain carb like.
John S
PDX OR

My go to lunch dish is a quinoa chickpea salad with a sweet vinegar dressing, julienned root veggies, and olives. Add a small garden salad and some fresh fruit and you have a winner in looks and taste in my book!
-Douglas Nelson

I've curry base and a can of coconut cream sitting there, so I guess just make a nice curry, only instead of diced beef or lamb or the fish in the freezer, a few more bits of pumpkin and carrot and other veges to fill out the bulk that the meat would otherwise occupy.

Or roast veges with steamed greens.

As I live in Australia I'm perhaps more likely than most to think Asian food (whether Vegan or not).

Stir fry tastes great as onions garlic ginger and chilli form a great flavour base. I always have mushrooms and usually tofu so just add other fresh vegies or if necessary canned baby corn bamboo shoots etc.

Second line of thought is Indian, I might need more lead time as I tend to use a long simmer cook method. Dried ingredients like daal, and chick peas are always available. I use spices and herbs to make my curries but curry bases can be a quick alternative (read label first!!)

Make sure you use oil not butter or ghee to fry with, avoid fish, or oyster sauce and you will keep your Vegan friend happy. Coconut cream or milk are great if you want a creamy style of curry.

I don't' think a vegan friend would want to visit my farm, let alone eat here. I could scrape something up; probably something made out my chicken's feed, dandelion greens, nettles, and other various weeds and cattail type stuff. If they were totaly purist, they wouldn't want to eat my veggies as they are grown in my winter animal corrals.

If it were winter, they would have to settle for some kind of corn and bean stuffed winter squash, but I would have the dickens of a time trying to make something without some kind of animal product in it and all my cast iron is probably contaminated by the pig fat I use for cooking and seasoning them. I guess there is always macaroni and tomato soup, sourkrout and bean soup and things of that nature along with lots of canned and pickled veggies. Egyptian Koshri should work pretty well; yummy when served with lemon sauce. I could use dehydrated onions in place of fried onions as well for the Koshri topping.

I don't use vegetable, coconut or olive oils so it makes things a bit tricky if animal fats are disallowed.

If they live here (Andalucía, Spain), I'd make them some thing non-Spanish like a curry or chinese. If they are not from here I'd make some of the vegetarian dishes from the area like lentils with veggies (carrots, green beans, onions, garlic, smoked paprika), a veggie paella, garbanzos with spinach and peppers, Russian salad, etc. many Spanish dishes can be made with or without meat - very obvious that people have been inventive and used what they had at hand (and never eating a calorie doing it), they can be made with lard or olive oil etc.

I don't find it hard to cook vegan food at all - I wouldn't want to be vegan, but we eat vegan quite often because I prioritize buying meat from free range animals over having meat every day, and my son is allergic to milk and eggs - so vegetarian here is vegan. Actually vegan is what we have in the pantry when we don't have any meat - our pantry if full of beans, lentils, seeds, canned veggies, poppadums, dried mushrooms, rice, couscous etc. etc. - I can always whip out something vegan, even when I "don't have anything" as my husband would say

Lets see.... hmmmm I have mustard greens, sugar snap peas, onions, garlic scapes, collard greens, broccoli, swiss chard, basil all in the garden ready to harvest. I also have a few celery stalks I could sacrifice early. So I am thinking a stir fry with fresh veggies from the garden in a bit of olive oil and some dried spices I prepared last year.

Doesn't seem too hard. Heck, I could even eat them raw in a salad if it was a raw vegan. Or a green smoothie with some bananas and mango added.

If the vegan came later in the season I might be able to add carrots peppers tomatoes okra sweet corn cucumbers summer squash eggplant and fresh herbs like tarragon mint dill cilantro etc.

Nothing hard about fixing a meal for a vegan.

Pineapple-ade, made fresh prior to arrival
Sliced cucumber with lime juice and Sea salt, as a starter
Cucumber sushi with a flower petal salad, as an appetizer
Spicy stir fried veggies with pine nuts, as a main dish

After lunch when the garden tour is over.
Salsa and tortilla chips, as a snack
Ginger tea with pine nuts, Served hot.
sliced apples with caramel, as a dessert.

Today's menu would consist of boiled sweet corn.

A stir fry containing amaranth, beets, turnips, garlic, onions, and carrots.

Sliced up tomatoes and cucumbers served as a salad.

And a bottle of dry white Interlaken wine.

If a vegan friend came to visit I would probably make them incredibly uncomfortable by way of my uncontrollable urge to consume things like bacon:) Sorry for the nasty post yesterday, trying to raise 3 kids in a world where so many people have lost their minds in regards to what food is, how it should be made and what causes disease has proven to be a stressful endeavor. Having to pack a lunch for my son because it's acceptable to feed kids white pasta, bagels and hot dogs is annoying at best. I very much agree with the idea that factory mega farming of animals is wrong and needs to end asap.

This is now a little out of context. An earlier post was edited.
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I don't think that the buying power of vegans would be enough to make much of a shift in commercial meat production.

 As vegetarians,  they are not contributing to the problem and I don't see how they could be expected to help solve it.

 The question was." what would you feed your vegan friend, not "how would you reeducate them."

Popcorn with olive oil smoked sea salt and smoked paprika. Big half foraged half garden salad. Roasted new potatoes with fresh pesto, blue coco pole beans and Kentucky wonder beans sauteed in a hot pan with sunflower oil, salt and garlic. Homemade blueberry sorbet.

Vegans are hard to feed, I'd hope that they'd bring their own lunch. Otherwise, the only things from the yard right now are kale and bananas. Guess they could eat that. Kale, parsley, a few tomatoes, onions, oil and vinegar. All that's vegan, isn't it? There's bread, that's whole wheat flour, yeast, water and olive oil. All those are allowable to vegans, aren't they? Although it's baked, can they eat cooked things?

If they can eat cooked things, then there's always rice with things on it or we could make oatmeal with molasses and raisins.

We have a pair of vegetarians who visit us occasionally and I've quit trying to figure out what to feed them. We take them past the grocery, the farmer's market and the Korean take out when we pick them up from the airport and let them gather their own groceries. One of them will eat eggs after she's ascertained that our hens are "happy", the other one won't eat eggs but will eat cheese but doesn't have to inspect any goats before she does so that's easier. Far as I can see, neither one of them eats all that many actual vegetables, though.

Some vegan friends visited from the other coast last week. We made foil dinners.

I worked at a summer camp in my teens/early 20s, and we used to make foil dinners all the time. Vegan versions are really fun. We started by pulling some carrots and parsnips from the garden so they could get the real farm experience. We chopped them, and potatoes, celeriac, shredded kale, and seitan, which we usually have on hand, having been vegans ourselves previously. Everyone gets to choose which spices and sauces they want to add, and a big dollop of earth balance margarine, which we keep in the freezer in the event that some vegans show up. The whole thing gets wrapped in foil, and much like a paper airplane contest, everyone folds theirs differently in hopes of identifying it and to see what configuration works best.

Then the foil dinners go on the coals of a fire, and we relax and enjoy our company while they cook. The best part is that without meat, it doesn't matter if you undercook it. That's part of the fun.

We also made a dessert foil dinner that had sliced apples, dark chocolate (no milk) and some vegan marshmallows, which were also on hand, and seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg. Our dinner companions seemed to really enjoy themselves, and then we spent most of the rest of the evening talking about community building

Pumpkin and lentil soup seems just thing for today!



Cobwebs are optional...

makis (sushi rolls) with cucumber and roasted sesame seed ... maybe fermented veggies in them.

daal... indian red lentil soup. fry ginger, garlic and onions in veggie oil... add water (no salt yet) and red lentils. cook for somewhat 30 mins. add other veggies at the right time (carrots, bell peppers etc.).... add sea-salt, vegan broth powder, miso, soy sauce or something ... purree it with stick-blender-mixer-kinda-thing. season it with indian spices. some ppl add raisins

optional: get a saucepan with lid... fry mustard seed in oil until they pop ... and some whole cumin... maybe add indian powdered spices later

chapatis (flat bread from flour, water and salt) roasted in a heavy pan... use a rolled up linnen towel to press them down, they ll inflate then. turn 2-3 times ... it takes practice but it s awesome. one could use veggie oil to fry em or add curry powder to the dough.

a good vegan ingredient is peanut-paste (not butter, that sweet bread spread thing). it s used in some african dishes.


i tried a week without meat lately. it changed my diet to some part, i eat less meat after that..... maybe some people would find it helpfull to just try a vegan-week. just to explore and get to know some alternatives


blesses
tobias

HA! Makes me think of the time, around 1965, when our family hosted a Chinese missionary family for a couple of days. When my mom found out they were vegetarians she promptly made midwestern US green bean casserole AND Jello with canned pineapple.

I'm not sure what exactly the rules for either vegans or paleos are, but if what I recall is correct, I'd make this rice, lentil, and potato dish flavored with onions, black pepper, red pepper, paprika, turmeric, ginger, garlic, and cumin, and I guess use coconut oil instead of the 2 tablespoons of butter I usually use. But I don't have any friends period. xD

Roasted squash and cauliflower, mashed potatos with sauteed lake and onions with sauerkraut.

Vegan key lime pie, pumpkin pie and cranberry pecan oatmeal cookies

I would make nut gravy.

 Everything taste better when smothered in gravy.

 I use equal parts walnuts, mixed nuts and sunflower seeds. All are chopped up in a blender with water. Lots of soya sauce ( Bragg soya sauce,  is the best one I know of) along with curry powder and and Italian seasoning mix, goes into the blender.

 Heat the mixture until it boils and then thicken as you would any other gravy.

 This product can be spread on potatoes, rice, lentils or on any bland mush that the more hard core crowd is fond of.

I have introduced it to a few vegetarians who liked it.
.......
This gravy was born out of necessity. About a month ago, I boiled up a mixture of potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots. Then it was discovered that there was no meat in the house, for the gravy. It's my new favorite dish. 

I tried a batch containing coconut and pumpkin seeds. The dry ingredients can be browned with oil, in a frying pan, prior to blending. This gives a more meat like flavor.
......
Edit
 I just Googled nut gravy, and it turns out that I am not the first one to do this. Several recipes describe laborious processes, that dirty lots of dishes.

 I'm sticking with my version.

 Blend, boil, thicken.

Today, my vegan friend could eat the same thing I am eating: Baked Buttercup squash seasoned with coconut oil and salt. That was yesterday's menu too, and tomorrow's, and all this week's... I might cook maxima's tomorrow, and butternuts the day after, but they will all be some sort of squash or other.

I think buttercup squash is my favorite! Flavorful, smooth not stringy, dense not soggy, mmmm.

In my recent post, it's sauteed onions with kale, not lake! Silly phone.

The thought of nut gravy makes me want to make one of those lentil nut "meat" loaves. I'm not vegan now but when I was I got some recipes down.

If my vegan friend came over today I might make a pear upside-down cake with coconut oil in place of butter, ground flax seed in place of eggs and a mashed banana in for the yumminess.

What a brilliant thread and beautiful examples! We don't very often accommodate special diets (besides Paul's and my already odd/special diet) though we do make exceptions to accommodate some folks.

Vegetables - mostly, I change from sautéing veg in lard, bacon grease, butter or tallow to sautéing in coconut oil. Loads of folks still sauté in olive oil, though I don't like to because the smoke point is so low with olive oil - I've heard that's not a good idea.

Desserts - I also use coconut oil in place of butter in desserts (crisps or crumbles), biscuits and scones - and it works beautifully! If we're looking at something more cake or cookie-like, I go vegan with Ener G Egg Replacer, mostly because it lasts forever and I've had it on hand for reasons I now forget. (These grain-carb things we make to feed large groups - *not* generally what Paul and I eat.) Fruit compotes in the crockpot are super easy - always far tastier with a splash of wine.

Sauces & dressings - we tend to make all our own vinaigrettes, usually olive oil, vinegar, honey and seasonings (including garlic) changed up for different flavor profiles. Though if I know a vegan will be eating, we use brown rice syrup or coconut syrup in place of honey. Or, better yet, we love us some robust tahini (goddess style) dressing around here. A simple peanut sauce is a happy thing, too.

Main dishes - when we have curry (soup), spaghetti or chilli, we either leave the meat out to add separately (again doing any sauce saute in coconut oil at the start) or have two pots. Sometimes we have both meat and/or beans to add in separately since Paul and I also mostly avoid legumes. A friend gave me an absolutely fantastic cashew chili recipe that has also been a hit around here and now has my mouth watering in memory.

When I've adjusted ingredients in just these few ways, at least the side dishes and dessert are vegan friendly. Worst case scenario, if I haven't had time to soak and cook some legumes or make something more main-dish-like separate from the meat, I almost always have raw nuts and seeds in the freezer.