Spring Greens!!!

The root contribution in our CSA box. Fire Cider Vinegar and Sea Sprinkles from Tallwoman Tonics.

Hello again! I am excited because today I was able to pick up a special CSA box of spring greens. There will be a feast tonight!

There are a lot of hidden and not-so-hidden gems on this part of the coast. My mate and I have enjoyed the community and the variety of skills that people bring to this area. I believe this is the key to surviving and thriving on the coast.
I had the pleasure recently of attending a local Herbal Skills Share group. I have long had an interest in herbs, wildcrafting, and natural dyeing. I had a strong feeling that I needed to get back to that practice and immediately found the Herbal Skills Share group. We spent the meeting talking about coltsfoot and enjoyed a cup of nettle tea and a sampling of coltsfoot tea. I have a new plant to add to my knowledge-base now, and a couple of new people.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting with Vivi of Tallwoman Tonics. Our local herbalist. We discussed the wonderful internet potential of sharing herbal lore and I was treated to a cup of homegrown Tulsi tea while sitting in front of a large window overlooking one of the beautifully stunning views our area has to offer.
I am putting a link to Vivi's blog on the local resources list on my side-bar. She is excited about the blogging potential. I am looking forward to seeing what she adds to it.
Tonight we will be having left over homemade pizza, vegan and gluten free, a huge salad of fresh spring greens, and a quick saute of kale and beet greens with red onion and seasoned with Tallwoman Tonics Fire Cider Vinegar. Yum!!!
Yours in veggies, -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

CSA is Back!



©2012, R.L. Delight, The Beginning, 6"x6" oil on panel. http://www.rldelight.com.

It has been a long winter and I am hungry for greens. Thankfully our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)  will be starting up again on Saturday! This wild coastal area continues to shape the way I eat. During the winter abundant vegetables are hard to come by and expensive. A lot of vegan goodies that are available in the cities are not available here. In fact, we find ourselves ordering hard to find food and sundries online. Eventually, I hope to be able to grow much of my own vegetables.
Overall, I feel the process has been a good one for me. My diet has been simplified to very basic and nutritious food. As for eating out at restaurants, I have yet to find anything that is equal or better to what I can make at home. Finding vegan, and now gluten free, continues to be a challenge.
Time to cook can also be a challenge! In addition to vegan and gluten free, I strive to eat a high raw diet. I live in a very cold and damp climate and find it challenging to stay warm on a 100% raw diet. I find it easier to eat mostly raw. I am a busy artist and find the extra planning and organizing to eat nutritiously a challenge. With that in mind I decided to set aside some time to organize a series of menus and shopping lists. I am planning to publish some of that here on this blog which has not been very active to this point. Hopefully others will find the information useful. It will be an interesting adventure to develop the menus and will help me out time-wise.
If anyone has any thoughts on that topic, please do leave a comment. I would love to hear ideas and requests at this point.
More to come soon! -Renee

Beginning Anew

Hello, it has been quite a while. I had to do a bit of re-thinking on where I wanted this blog to go. There are so many wonderful Vegan blogs out there dealing with delicious food and many of the issues as well. I knew I would not have the time and interest to compete with all the great information they provide. I want this blog to be more about a vegan lifestyle on the Northern Oregon Coast.
There is not a lot of resources here for a vegan, nor a lot of vegans here. After living here for over a year, I am just now starting to meet a vegan or two. We are planning to get together for mutual support and community.
My quest to find vegan and vegan friendly restaurants has not been exactly successful. The establishments that do serve vegan options offer up the usual fare of bean burritos, veggie burger (if you are lucky to find a vegan one), and hummus platters, are few and far between. Perhaps we can change that eventually.
Fortunately, during the growing season, I have access to plenty of beautiful, fresh, and locally grown food. We joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm and received weekly boxes of veggies and a bit of fruit, all grown here on the Oregon coast. The picture above is of the final box of the season. We ate well this summer. Alas, the local growing season has ended and now I am hard pressed to find a variety of good vegetables. Eventually I plan to grow my own but, until then, I need to find a good source.
It has been a good year. We have plugged into this small beach community and have grown to love it. The natural beauty and wild weather complete the picture. We have decided to settle here in spite of the challenges and are now doing our best to find a way to make a living. I am working on my art career and will have more to post about that later.
I have more to post on life here and have a lot more to look forward to writing about. I will let this blog grow organically so patience may be needed. I will post again in a week, give or take a day or so. Until then, -Renee

Snow at the Beach!

It has been busy around here! I have some news but this biggest event here on the coast has been the snow. Earlier this week we had 2" of snow fall overnight followed by record breaking cold. On the morning of the snow fall, I grabbed the camera and headed down to the beach before breakfast. I took a lot of pictures and will share these two:

As winter settles in, I am finding it even more challenging to find some of the basics I need to make a variety of delicious, healthy vegan meals. Oh, one can always find beans and rice but if my timing is not right at the stores, fresh greens and items like tempeh and tofu are sometimes not available. I did one of my stocking up trips up to Astoria (about 45 miles north along a windy coastal road) and didn't come back with a whole lot. The co-op was out of tofu, and my favorite jasmine tea. I decided I need to take a few things into my own hands. I started researching making my own tempeh, tofu, and water kefir. I found a wonderful website that has information, videos, and supplies to order called Cultures for Health. They are not a completely vegan site but do have the cultures needed to make these vegan staples. I would also like to try making my own Kombucha. I ordered cultures for tempeh, two kinds to see which I prefer, water kefir grains, and tofu making supplies. I got the soybeans to start a batch of tempeh tomorrow and will have reports on my progress for all three as I go. I have never made any of these things before but wanted to give it a try. It would be nice to be somewhat independent from the stores. I am looking into what I can do for veggies. We have joined a CSA but that does not start up until May! Seems a long way away from here. I, like so many others, am ready for spring.
I will post the results of my first attempt at making tempeh soon!
-Renee

Convenience Food Independence

When we first moved to the coast I was really spoiled. I lived in two places with the best food co-ops I have ever shopped at. I could get just about any type of vegan convenience food to be found. I have always eaten mostly whole foods and cook from scratch but, there were a few convenience items that crept in. I really didn't notice until we moved to the coast where it is really hard to find much of the convenience foods that I enjoyed. I can only find the very basic in tofu and tempeh. I still haven't found a decent source for mochi which I enjoyed occasionally. I would keep a package or two of Gardein in the freezer for those nights when I needed something quick to make. I also really like the Field Sausage smoked apple sage flavor of vegan sausage.
Some of this I can find between here and the food co-op 45 miles up the road but not all. I cannot find a source for fresh daikon radish either and boy do I miss it. I will have to grow my own. If I was really really desperate, I could mail order many of these items but there have been two things that have refined the way I eat here on the coast in addition to the scarcity of resources.
I recently went on a 21 day cleanse diet. The only things I had to take out (from a long list of foods) was gluten and sugar. It was hard at first but I started looking into more raw foods for sweet treats without sugar and gluten. This has been a wonderful revelation for me. I don't think I would like to be 100% raw due to the fact I live in a cold gray climate and get too chilled without warm food but I do want to be "rawish". I am nearly finished with the cleanse, just three more days. I feel better physically. It isn't as dramatic for me as taking out dairy was. When I removed dairy from my diet over three years ago (and thus becoming vegan) I felt dramatically better health-wise. It turned out that I was down right allergic to dairy and the allergy was getting worse. Removing gluten and sugar has given a more subtle result. I feel lighter and cleaner. I love where it has taken me food-wise as well so I think for now, I will remain gluten and sugar free. My sweet tooth is more than satisfied with the treats that use dates or occasionally, agave for sweetening.
The second event that has changed the way I am eating and thinking about food is the plastic pollution I see on the beach. I walk the beach every day and always see bits of plastic in the high tide line, not to mention all kinds of objects. I started looking into the plastic pollution and have found several sites which I will be putting in my links list. One sight is called My Plastic Free Life and has a challenge to document your plastic usage. I took the challenge and have just finished week four. I thought I did pretty good but when I started documenting it, I was surprised to see how much I use in spite of cooking from scratch and buying in bulk. All those convenience foods listed above? Guess what! They all come wrapped in plastic. I started looking for alternatives. I found tofu in bulk at my local food co-op. One problem though, they run out and I am not close enough to go back anytime soon. I don't really eat a lot of tofu but it is good to have. The other thing I found was a way to make my own tempeh. I could make tofu too. I want to try it as I have never found tempeh in anything other than plastic bags.
I have also invested in a food dehydrator. Something I have wanted to do for years. Here it is:

I have been going crazy making all kinds of raw flatbreads, crackers, and

 Kale chips! These are "cheddar cheese" flavored. Oh my, they are highly addictive too. Once the farmer's markets start back up I will be getting produce to process for the winter using the dehydrator, canning, and stocking the freezer. I am finding all kinds of recipes for making my own convenience type foods using healthier whole foods as well.
The bottom line? I am eating even better than before and finding all kinds of new food paths to explore. Life is good!
Next post I want to highlight some of the wonderful vegan and plastic pollution blogs I read. It has been a busy month but I will be getting to that in a few days.
Here is to good, healthy, delicious, vegan food.
-Renee

Up the Coast

We are so fortunate to live in a little town that is sandwiched between two beautiful state parks. The other day the weather and tides were right for a little jaunt to one of our favorite spots, Hug Point. When the tides are low the beach and cliffs are quite dramatic. Here is a small taste:

Last week, I stopped in Seaside to get a haircut and then headed up to Astoria to shop at the food co-op. I found at least one possible vegan friendly restaurant in Seaside but will need to check it out further. I was happy to get to the co-op and stock up.
I recently purchased Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet and read it with great interest. It is not just a diet but a lifestyle, the best kind. She also had a 21 day cleanse at the back of the book. I decided to do the cleanse and incorporate some of the other aspects of the lifestyle. Meditation is one of those aspects. I used to meditate but fell out of the habit when my life became chaotic. It has been a bit more of a challenge to bring it back. I am working on it. The only dietary things I needed to eliminate in the 21 day cleanse was gluten and sugar. I have been wanting to abstain from gluten to see if that is a factor in my health and this is a good opportunity.
It has been a week so far. The only thing that I really haven't been able to do is the juicing. My body and bloodsugar just can't take such a hit. I have decided to do green smoothies instead of green juice. I also cannot do an all day juice fast as suggested. I am not totally concerned about that. I will be happy just taking out the gluten and sugar. I am eating more veggies than ever and have been adding more raw vegan dishes to my diet. At this point I don't want to go completely raw but I am happy to add more delicious and healthy raw meals to my diet.
I recently purchase Raw for Dessert by Jennifer Cornbleet. I love using dates as a sweetener. The desserts are rich and a little goes a long way. I also checked out from our local library Ani's Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. I love the pates and cheezes. Again, I eat these things sparingly and include lots of fresh raw veggies and pure water. I also drink jasmine green tea and have for the past 30 years.
Additional changes I would like to make would be to add more sea vegetables. I am not a big fan at this time but have managed to gradually expand my palate so I am thinking to push it a bit with the sea veggies.
I will continue in my quest to find vegan friendly restaurants on the coast. I have used Happy Cow in the past to find places and would like to contribute to the list. By the way, Happy Cow is a wonderful resource to use!
I have a trip planned to go south on the coast. We shall see what I can find. I'll be back soon!
-Renee