Three Vegan Cheeses

"Are you a..um...healthy vegan?"

I was recently asked this question by my surgeon during my initial appointment with her.
It is a good question. Fortunately, I could answer "Yes! I am a whole foods vegan." However, I know that just because one is vegan doesn't mean one eats healthily. I mean, Oreo cookies are vegan ( and no, I don't eat them)!  It did get me to thinking though so hang on tight, here we go...

Slowly, ever so slowly, I am climbing back into blogging. It has been a challenging past few months. I have posted some of the details on my art blog so will not go into them here. I will just say that I am here and I am on the road to healing body and heart. 

I have a bit of downtime on my healing journey and am re-evaluating several aspects of my life. One of those aspects is my eating. I do pretty well in the food department but, there is always room for improvement. I have decided to get a bit radical and cut out nearly all, if not all, processed or packaged food. Funny how that is a radical act these days, not so in the past when a household produced and made nearly all of their food.
So, what does cutting out package/process foods look like? It sounds so simple, just don't buy it! I suspect it will be more difficult than it sounds. I have to admit, I don't really have too far to go so it will not be a huge leap for me but, that last little bit might be challenging. The only processed food I currently eat is a handful of condiments, store bought tofu, organic brown rice cakes and rice noodles, and the occasional bit of chocolate.
I keep organic canned beans on hand for emergency/disaster preparedness. They are occasionally cycled into food prep to keep them up to date. We live in a rugged area on the Northern Oregon Coast and our town is big on being prepared for the inevitability of being cut off. 
I don't have my own garden yet. We currently rent and the yard is landscaped. I do have a few containers of herbs and veggies. I would like to find a way to grow more.
Living in a somewhat isolated area, much of my food is purchased in bulk at a food co-op about an hours drive away or by mail-order. A few things are purchased from our town's natural food store and veggies are purchased in the summer from a farmer's market and CSA.
So, I am going to be blogging about this journey. I am really not sure what it will look like yet but I am sure there will be surprises along the way. The first step will be to take an honest survey on what I currently use and have on hand and what I will need to make myself. That will be in my next post.
In the meantime, I  have three vegan nut cheeses in the process of being made. I am using the Artisan Vegan Cheese cookbook as my guide. I have made some of these before and really loved them. I don't really like the packaged vegan cheeses available in the stores, they don't seem to agree with my digestion. I made a quinoa rejuvelac as a culturing agent. Here are the fermenting cheeses:

Top cheese, sharp cheddar, bottom right, gruyere, bottom left, cashew chevre.

There still are a few steps to make to complete the cheeses once they have fermented but they won't take long. I have made the cheddar and chevre before. This is my first try with the gruyere. All are made with a cashew nut base. I will show the finished cheeses when they are done.
I have a shopping trip planned for Monday so I will need to get that pantry survey done tomorrow. I would be interested in hearing from any of  you who have taken steps, no matter how tiny, toward reducing your processed and packaged food intake. 
To your health!
-Renee

Starving for Veggies

Let's try this again. As anyone reading this blog can tell, I have had a challenging time finding a good focus for this blog. There are so very many excellent vegan blogs out there to read and I have neither the time nor interest to compete with them so I will stay focused on my little niche of being vegan on the Northern Oregon Coast.
To add to the challenge of being vegan, I have also gone gluten free for over a year now. Going vegan was easy for me, going gluten free has been...painful and unfortunately necessary. I love my bread and I have had to kiss good bye any of the quick and easy vegan meat substitutes. I didn't eat many of them but it was nice having a quick and tasty meal available for those days when cooking time was short.
I have given up on the restaurants around here. They are not plentiful to begin with and the only two that had vegan and gluten free options made me ill. Food poisoning. My guess is the lack of demand for vegan and gluten free menu items may have led to less than fresh ingredients and cross contamination with animal products.
So, having accepted that, I have embarked on making my own in spite of a very, very busy life. Thankfully this book came out and I purchased it as soon as it did:

I made my own rejuvelac from quinoa and made my first cheese, a chevre from cashews. It was a success! I made another batch of rejuvelac to make another cheese but I let it ferment too long so I will have to start over. I would like to try one from millet.
The only drawback to making my own is the time. You have to sprout the grains, ferment them, and then ferment the cheese. It doesn't take a lot of effort, just time. I will start another batch and report.
I also have this book:

Sourdough bread has always been my favorite, a nice rich whole grain organic sourdough bread. I miss it the most. I made one loaf that was heavenly a while ago. I used kefir (water kefir) as specified in the book. However, I don't like kefir, it is too sweet for me and my grains languished because I didn't use it up fast enough. I thought I would try the rejuvelac instead of kefir. I don't need to purchase special grains for rejuvelac. This will be another report.
So, here we are in winter, soon to be spring. Those of you who live in more populated areas have no idea how hard it can be to find good winter veggies in small isolated communities. I am hoping one day to have enough space and land to grow all my own veggies. In the mean time, my greens and veggie eating gets cut back further than I would like. I will have to try sprouts but a salad made solely of sprouts is not appealing to me.
Here is what we eat at the moment: A lot of beans and grains, some tofu, root vegetables (mostly potatoes), basic fruit, and whatever greens I can get ahold of. I would like to triple the amount we get at the moment. I also make flat bread from chickpea flour and spices. It is OK for now.
I will sign up for the spring CSA session. Last year we signed up for all four seasons. I found there was too much waste on my part. There seemed to be an over abundance of veggies I really don't like (very few, but still) and not enough of those I do like. I still have squash sitting around. I like squash in moderation but not out the wazoo.
That is my progress report from now. I will be posting about the cheese and bread making as well as other vegan, gluten free, plastic free, environmental things as they come up. Promise!
-Renee