You're A Vegan, What Do You Eat (Part 2)

I forgot to mention in my last YAVWDYE post that Rob is now a vegan too.  He made the switch sometime during the summer.  June, I think.  I get the feeling that it really wasn't that much of a change for him.  He was effectively vegan anyway-- for years, he hasn't had milk or eggs (unless they were baked in something) and he generally eats what I cook for dinner.  Which is vegan.  

I asked him recently how it had been going for him, and I can't remember our conversation exactly, but I  think he said it was surprisingly easy.  One of his main reservations that kept him from going full-on vegan for so long was pizza.  How in the world was he going to get along without that?  But I guess it wasn't as hard as he'd thought.  Plus, I really think that after you become vegan (or make any dietary change), you create new eating patterns, and those become your new normal.  You go a while without eating melted cheese, and you stop thinking about it.  A different set of foods become your staples, and your tastes change.  Honestly, I do not even regard cheese (particularly in melted form) as an edible substance, but maybe that has more to do with hyperemesis than with being a vegan, per se.  I am not actually a huge animal-rights activist (recall: I hate cows); one of the major reasons I am vegan is so that there is not any chance I will ever, ever throw up dairy again. *Shudder.*

This all being said, we sometimes eat vegan pizza.

 

A picture of our pizza before I cooked it.  I forgot to take a picture afterwards.

 

For the crust, I use a recipe no-yeast pizza dough-- not because I am opposed to yeast, more simply because I never have any of it on hand.  Also, the recipe I found (first hit when you Google "no yeast pizza dough") is incredibly easy.  2-1/4 cups flour, 2-3/4 tsp baking powder, 1tsp salt. Mix that together and then add about 1 cup of water and 1tsp olive oil.  Stir it up, knead for a couple minutes, and then roll it out into a circle.

I guess it sounds kind of labor intensive, but really, it is very fast.

Then I top it with tomato sauce (usually I end up making pizza when we have leftover pasta sauce that I want to get rid of) and whatever vegetables we have on hand.  In this picture, I used red and yellow bell peppers and red onions (a food I had about a 3-year hyperemetic aversion to, and now can almost sort of eat again).

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Sidenote: Once over the summer, I made us vegan pizza and nearly severed my left pinky finger trying to open the pop-top can of Kalamata olives pictured below.  It was the kind of thing where I definitely should have gone to the ER and gotten stitches, but I didn't because I hate hospitals and also because it seemed too complicated what with William to take care of and all. It eventually stopped bleeding and began to heal, but now 5 months later, it is still surprisingly tender to the touch.

After I regained consciousness, I took a picture of the offending can.  Needless to say, I have not attempted to put Kalamata olives on any subsequent pizzas.

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For "cheese," the going thing among vegans these days is Daiya. And the important thing to remember about Daiya is that a little goes a long way.  I'm not a huge fan in general of vegan products that try to approximate a non-vegan thing, but I guess as far as cheese goes, this is about the best you can ask for.  I like it okay enough on pizza, but I am not going to sit around and eat it out of the bag.

There are several different varieties of Daiya "cheese," including a Mozzarella flavor (which doesn't actually taste like Mozzarella) that would probably work on pizza a lot better than the Pepper Jack variety I used on this particular occasion.  But Pepper Jack was what we had, so I made it work.

I also added freshly grated pepper to the top of the whole thing.  That is something Rob invented, or maybe Monical's.  Whichever.  Rob really likes pizza that way.

The end result was… decent.  I've never been a huge pizza fan myself.  Honest to god.  Ask Amy.  In truth, my aversion to melted cheese pre-dates hyperemesis and probably goes back to at least May of 1998.  As a vegan, I can handle non-dairy pizzas on rare occasions, but I am certainly not going around looking for a cheese-like product that actually tastes, looks, or makes me gag like cheese does.  So this is okay.  Also, the crust is really, really good.  And the important part was that this time, nobody almost sliced her finger off.

Thanks for reading.