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Part I: Caryn discusses some of the questions that came up during last week’s Food Revolution Summit, including concerns about canola oil. She goes into detail about the garbanzo bean regarding its versatility as a whole food, as a flour and now as aquafaba.
Part II: Leinana Two Moons, Baconish
Leinana Two Moons is the author of the blog Vegan Good Things. Her writing and photography have appeared in LAIKA and VegNews magazines. A longtime vegan, she is dedicated to creating recipes that are satisfying enough to please anyone, vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, or hardcore carnivore alike. She is active in the NYC vegan community and lives in Long Island City, NY with her husband and two children, who are all vegan. Baconish is her first cookbook.
TRANSCRIPTION PART I:
Caryn Hartglass: Hello everybody. I’m Caryn Hartglass. You’re listening to It’s All About Food. Thank you, thank you so much for joining me today as you do when you do. I so appreciate it. And I know you’re there; I can feel you. It really makes a difference to know I’m not talking out to nobody, but I know there are many of you out there. I hear from you, and I’m very grateful that we’re all in this together—this crazy world that we’re living in—making it better for what we get on our plates. Because not only is it about food, and it is all about food and what we put on our plates, but we all know how connected it is to all life on earth—not just human life, not animal life, plant life, life that we haven’t even been able to perceive or discover yet. There are so many mysteries out there.
I wanted to first talk about the Food Revolution Summit, which I discussed a little bit last week. We were in the middle of it—this nine-day extravaganza, talking about our food system, just like we do here on It’s All About Food—but the difference is it was done in a very concentrated dose with some really wonderful people. John and Ocean Robbins as the hosts of this program. John, of course, who is a wonderful leader and got many of us on this path to plant-based eating, vegan eating, and thinking about the connection between food, with our health, with the environment, with the treatment of animals. The summit was really amazing. It’s over now—it ended on Sunday—and for those of you who missed it or for those of you who only were able to catch a little bit of it, you do have the opportunity to hear it all. It’s not free anymore, but you can purchase the Empowerment Package, and if you have missed it, and you are curious about it, this is a great, concentrated, all-in-one-place package with interviews with some amazing people. I recommend it. And there are bonuses that you get if you get the Empowerment Package. If you’re interested in just taking a look at it, you can go to my website—www.responsibleeatingandliving.com. On the right, there’s a link to the Food Revolution Summit Empowerment Package. You can check that out.
Now as I mentioned last week, there was a bit of confusion because not all of the speakers were preaching the same gospel, and that left a lot of people with questions and concerns, and I tried to answer them as best I could on the forum that we had for the Food Revolution Network. But still there are a lot of open issues, and I tried to address that last week. I wanted to cover some other questions that came up from the summit. And one of them had to do with the recipes that I was providing. I gave one new recipe each day of the summit, and in two recipes, I think, where the vegetables were sautéed or there was a need for some sort of oil, I recommended using organic canola oil, and the recipes said canola oil, but there’s a little asterisk that recommended using non-GMO varieties, and we recommend organic canola oil. Now that got a lot of comments, and some of them were not very nice. People were like up in arms; they couldn’t believe we were recommending using canola oil, and you may have heard all of the horrible things about canola oil on the Internet. Some of it isn’t true, and the things that may not be good about canola oil are related to the GMO version. And basic organic canola oil—the kind that was around before it became genetically modified and not organic varieties—is, in general, for an oil, an okay oil to use. The thing that people get confused about is that organic canola oil—the original canola oil that was created in the early seventies—is a variety of rapeseed that was crossbred. It was not done in methods that would require it to be related to GMO—was not genetically altered at the DNA level. It’s been crossbred as farmers have been doing for as long as I know humanity’s been around, we’ve been trying to improve plants. And there was an improvement made on the rapeseed varieties to reduce the amount of erucic acid in it, which was found to cause problems. This was—rapeseed oil was used quite a bit for centuries in Europe, in India, China, and Japan. And then this erucic acid was discovered and found to be problematic, and also cooking at high temperatures with this particular unrefined rapeseed oil is related to an increased risk of lung cancer because this high-temperature oil can give off chemicals that cause mutations in cells, and so this earlier version of rapeseed oil is not a healthy oil, but the crossbred version—canola oil—that came out in the early seventies is a relatively good oil.
Dr. Dean Ornish—and you’re probably familiar with him. He’s done a lot of great research on cardiovascular disease and, more recently, prostate cancer, and he’s another one of the people in the forefront of promoting a plant-based diet because of its great characteristics in reducing risk of heart disease and then later in reducing the risk of prostate cancer or at least turning the symptoms of prostate cancer around. He pointed out in an article in Reader’s Digest where he pointed out that canola oil has been used much more than olive oil in the Mediterranean, and this may be one of the reasons why there’s benefits to the Mediterranean diet—maybe it’s not olive oil; maybe it’s canola oil. And there was a study done also showing the benefits of canola oil over olive oil. And canola oil is more stable for cooking than olive oil or hemp or flaxseed. So when we cook, and when we put recipes out that require a little oil, we recommend organic canola oil.
What surprises me, though, is when people make comments. I don’t know what it is since the Internet has come about, or maybe it’s part of the evolution of our generations, but people are not polite. They’ll just say the nastiest things and act as if they know everything, and people were just saying they couldn’t believe there was canola oil in the recipes, and I can’t believe it, and what are you people doing, and don’t you know any better, and then we would try and inform people where we were coming from and why we did what we did. So I’m at peace with using organic canola oil. We’ve talked about oil a lot on this program, and again I don’t think oil is a nutritious food per se. It’s something that should be used very sparingly. I prefer to get my fats from whole foods. Raw nuts and seeds. Avocado and coconut. And whenever I can eliminate oil from a recipe, I do so. I’m even trying to go back to—a lot of the recipes we have at www.responsibleeatingandliving.com—the baked-goods recipes—and whenever I can, I’ve gone from using a vegan butter like Earth Balance, trying to substitute it with oils and then going and substituting that with like a nut butter instead and making the recipes always delicious but more healthful whenever possible. So when I have a chance to revisit recipes, I like to do that.
The next thing was the Healthy World Burger. I think I mentioned it last week. So I came up with these nine recipes, and the one recipe that I am the most excited about is our Healthy World Burger, and I posted it at www.responsibleeatingandliving.com a few days ago. This is—drumroll please—this is the best veggie burger I’ve ever had. The best. It’s good for you. It’s delicious, nutritious. It’s not made with any isolated soy proteins like the kind of veggie burgers you can find in the store. Also unlike the kind of veggie burgers you find in the store, it’s not mushy, soft. It has a nice chew. What I like about it is a lot of things but one of the things is we use some ancient grains in the recipe. Black rice, red rice, and turanicum, and you can use brown rice if you have a gluten intolerance because turanicum is an earlier ancient wheat variety, and it has gluten in it. But this is an incredible recipe. You can find it at www.responsibleeatingandliving.com. I don’t think it’s very difficult to make, and I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think.
If you were listening to the Food Revolution Summit last week, and you had some questions that weren’t answered, hey, this might be a good time to ask me, and I will do my very best to get you an answer: you can e-mail me at info@realmeals.org, info@realmeals.org.
There’s this restaurant that I love in my neighborhood. It’s called Green Zenphony. I may have spoken about it before. I live in Queens, New York, and Queens is a really fascinating place. There are a gazillion languages spoken in Queens. I’m not sure if there are more languages spoken here than anywhere else, but I heard at one time that was true. I’m not sure if it’s still true. And as a result, there are many restaurants with lots of ethnic cuisines all over the place. But we don’t have a lot of vegan restaurants, though there are a few, but Manhattan really wins out in that department. For a long time, I was wanting something convenient in my neighborhood, and we had a restaurant come around couple of years ago called Simple Veggie, which I talked about a lot. We even did a little film about Simple Veggie; it was great. But the owner for one reason or another didn’t want to stick with it, and Green Zenphony moved in, and whoa, I’m so happy with Green Zenphony! It’s really a lovely lovely restaurant. And we were there a few days ago. We’ve been working really hard. Okay, we work hard all the time, but we’ve been working extra hard, and we had pushed pushed pushed and did a lot of cooking and recipe photography like a week or two ago, and as a result, we kind of have not been doing as much cooking. Just kind of taking it easy. And as a result, we’ve been at Green Zenphony a little more often than normal. A few times a week rather than once or twice a month. I discovered they have some fresh-pressed juices there. You know I’m big on green juice, and I like to have a green juice every day. I hadn’t had my green juice, and they have a red cabbage juice with lemon on their menu, and I had it. Really loved it. It was a really nice change from my green juice, but red cabbage is also a potent anti-cancer food loaded with all kinds of good things. And I thought okay, I can have this in place of my green juice. You might try it. Just juicing red cabbage, adding a little lemon. Lovely lovely drink. It’s not bitter. It has a little sweetness. I think the red—whatever the red, whatever the red coloring is (some sort of carotenoid or something)—adds a sweetness to the juice. Try it out.
Now, the next thing I want to talk about. I want to, I want to sing my praises to the humble chickpea. The chickpea, which is also known as a garbanzo bean. In French, we used to call it—or they still call it—the pois chiche. And in Middle East, it is known as hummus—hummus—with a [hard aspirate h] sound. Hummus. And that’s where we got hummus from, the chickpea spread that is traditionally made with olive oil, lemon juice, sesame tahini butter, and salt. We call it hummus, but really hummus means chickpeas. All right. I want to sing the praises of the chickpea. So I just mentioned hummus, and the lovely thing about hummus is that for vegetarians and vegans, it today seems to be a guaranteed dish that you can find at parties and events when you’re concerned about if there will be anything to eat. We always like to joke and say at least there will be hummus. It may not be the best hummus; unfortunately, today it’s usually purchased from that company Sabra, which I don’t recommend ever because Sabra—not only do they not use olive oil, they use soybean oil, and it’s likely that that soybean oil is genetically modified. It is not a traditional hummus. If you read the ingredients, you will see they are not very good. Hummus should be made with chickpeas, and even if you get a bean spread made with another bean, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be made with soybean oil, especially not genetically modified. And the store-bought brands tend to have preservatives, too much salt, and they take a really good delicious healthy food and make it not so.
That’s the beginning of chickpeas, but there’s more amazing things about chickpeas. And we are starting to learn more about chickpeas. So one of the things I’ve talked about a lot is chickpea flour. If you grind up the dried chickpea into a flour, it becomes this miracle flour that is easy to use; we make crepes from chickpea flour. You can find on www.responsibleeatingandliving.com all of our chickpea crepes, and I’ll say crepe/omelette because we use it also for omelette-like recipes. You just mix it with water, and you put it in an oiled frying pan—and we like to use organic canola oil, by the way, when we oil our pans. It makes the easiest crepe or pancake. You can make it a little thicker by adding different things to it—vegetables and onions—and make wonderful omelettes. Add some vegan cheese to it or cashew cream or something, and it’s just rich and luscious. Chickpea flour is amazing. We have some frittata recipes, and chickpea flour is often in our batter bases, because it nicely holds things together, in a way, like eggs do. And I keep thinking about how different this world would have been if we had started with the chickpea as the base of many foods instead of an egg.
And now you may have heard about aquafaba…aquafaba. Aquafaba is the name given to the liquid that chickpeas are sitting in. So when you soak and cook chickpeas to make them soft, and you get them in a can, or you cook them yourself, the water that is there with the chickpeas that thickens and is a little slimy actually; you can whip it like egg whites, and it becomes meringue. There’s a huge movement—there’s a Facebook page for aquafaba, there is all this excitement around it. People are doing things with this chickpea liquid that has never been done before, and what they are doing is replacing egg whites. This is phenomenal. Now I’ve never been a fan of meringue or meringue-like desserts, but there are many recipes out there that call for them, and now people are making them with this aquafaba. And it’s fabulous. The reason why I mention it is because the New York Times just featured an article about aquafaba and the guy that got it started and the frenzy that’s all around it. And now even Sir Kensington, the company that makes a lot of condiments, they’ve now jumped on the bandwagon of vegan mayonnaise products. We’ve talked a lot about vegan mayonnaise over the last few years. And they now have one that they are offering to the public, and it contains aquafaba. And that’s how they got their vegan mayonnaise to do whatever it was they wanted it do and have the flavor that they wanted it to have. Aquafaba. It’s just incredible how we have chickpea flour that can make these wonderful crepes without eggs and frittatas without eggs, and now we have aquafaba, and people are starting to use it not only to make meringue products, macarons, and are using it in baked goods to make a softer, moister crumb. It’s spectacular. And here is something—I love it because it was a waste product. People were throwing it away. In fact, I was reading in that New York Times article, there’s a company that makes hummus—hummus—in upstate New York, and they were indeed throwing away their chickpea water—the aquafaba—and now they have a buyer for it. Sir Kensington is connected with them to make their vegan mayo with aquafaba. So there is a really lovely happy ending or happy beginning with this spectacular product.
I don’t know, does anybody have a problem with chickpeas? Are there any chickpea allergies? I’m sure some people can’t eat chickpeas, but I think for the most part it is a food that has fed people for a very long time. It’s very very popular in the Middle East. Even just eating chickpeas in things. Chickpea in soups and chickpea in stews, put chickpeas on salads. They’re very satisfying, they’re very nutritious. This is I think my new favorite in terms of food. You know we used to talk about the incredible edible egg, that it was a complete whatever, and now I think it’s chickpeas. Chickpeas should take that position because it’s very nutritious, and you can do so many amazing things with it. That’s my praise for the simple chickpea. Thank you for listening.
Then the last thing I wanted to mention, sing praises for, I think I mentioned last week I got my new delivery of dried mushrooms from Fungus Among Us. Have you tried them? This is the best way, I think, to get your mushrooms. Now mushrooms—in fact, I remember a long time ago everybody thought there’s nothing nutritious about mushrooms, and yet we have learned that mushrooms are a nutritional powerhouse with anti-cancer fighting properties. I like to call mushrooms natural chemotherapy with no bad side effects. We should have mushrooms every day, and the question is how can you eat mushrooms every day deliciously, and I buy organic dried mushrooms. I get them from Fungus Among Us. It’s really economical because you can get these mushrooms that you don’t normally see in the stores all the time, and you can get them and have them all the time dried, and then when you’re ready, you just rehydrate them, and I just can’t get enough of them. So we’ve been, for example, having mashed potatoes the last couple of nights, and who doesn’t love mashed potatoes. I just rehydrate these mushrooms, and I’ve got this great mushroom topping for the top of my mashed potatoes. And I’m very very happy. Yes, I am. If you go to www.whatveganseat.com, which is our daily blog talking about what we’ve been eating every day, you’ll see how I’ve been using these mushrooms. They’re great. When I can’t think of what to make or what to do, and I have a little hunger, I make this really quick broth. Hot water on top of the dried mushrooms. I might add a little miso stirred into it. And there is a nutritious, really quick, wonderful soup. It kind of puts a stop in my hunger until I’m ready to sit down and have a really nice meal.
So let’s take a little break, and when we get back, we’re going to be talking about a very popular food called bacon. We’ll be right back.
Transcribed by Kris McCoy, 12/3/2016
TRANSCRIPTION PART II:
Caryn Hartglass: Hey everybody! We are back and how are you doing today? It’s May, it’s May, the lovely, lovely month of May. Ah and I’m waiting here in New York for some warm weather to hit but right now it’s still hanging pretty cool, but I know I should enjoy this weather because soon it’s going to be hot and humid, right? And we’ll be complaining about that. Okay, so, we’re going to have some fun now because we’re going to be talking about delicious food that people love to eat and all of the ramifications around it and why I’m so excited about the 21st century because it’s all about acknowledging embracing the foods people love and figuring out how to make them with plant ingredients because many of the foods people love come from animals and many of us are concerned about the treatment of animals and a long time ago I got into this scene because I didn’t think we should be killing any sentient beings and I stop eating animals and then learned about how eating animals is bad for our health and bad for the environment and the 20th century now seems to be all about coming up with foods, traditional foods that people love to eat and removing the animal from it and replacing it with plant. Now some of that is done with some serious processing and manipulation using artificial means artificial synthetic ingredients along with the plant ingredients to get a certain texture and then other times it’s just with simple natural ingredients that we can get a similar feeling, flavor, mouth feel to replace foods that we love and we’ve talked about the plant milks and the plant based cheeses and the meat analogs. We talked about vegan mayonnaise and as I was mentioning before the egg products that we’re learning how to replace so we don’t have to use the egg. Well how about bacon? And that’s what we’re going to be talking about now with Leinana Two Moons who has a new cookbook out called Baconish. She is the author of the blog Vegan Good Things and her writing and photography have appeared in LAIKA and VegNews magazines. She’s a long time vegan and is dedicated to creating recipes that are satisfying enough to please anyone vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian or hardcore carnivore alike and she’s active in the New York City vegan community, lives in Long Island city with her husband and two children who are all vegan. Welcome to It’s All About Food, Leinana.
Leinana Two Moons: Hi, great to be here. Thank you.
Caryn Hartglass: So, before we get into your wonderful cookbook and your wonderful recipes, let’s talk a little bit about you which is, I read a little bit about you in your introduction. I always like to know what to know what everybody’s story is so what was your motivation behind becoming vegan?
Leinana Two Moons: Ah, for going vegan in the first place, well, I actually married a vegan man. He had been vegan for a very, very long time. You know when we got married he had already been vegan for probably 20 years. At that point and you know when we got married I still ate dairy and I ate fish and seafood so I wasn’t eating all kinds of meat, but I definitely was not vegan at that point and you know the great thing about him was that he was never preachy or pushy about it. He was just a great example of what a vegan could be. Super healthy has plenty of energy you know looks much younger than his years and I’m the only one who cooks in the house hold so you know I would only cook vegan at home just to make things easier but you know when we would go out I would still you know have cheese or fish or some things once in a while and really just sort of slowly without really meaning to I started eating more and more vegan and I started noticing that the fewer animal products I ate the better I felt and you know health issues that I’ve had really as long as I can remember my whole life long started to disappear and it was really clearly linked to the change in my diet and so that started happening and then you know as I read more and more and learned more and more about being vegan and about you not cutting out those last few animal products that I was still you know eating at the time you know I started to come to it on my own and I really felt like it was my decision in the end that I came to the decision on my own and really the last step was one night we watched a movie Earthlings, I don’t know if you’ve seen it.
Caryn Hartglass: Sure.
Leinana Two Moons: It’s a pretty intense, powerful film and after I watched Earthlings that was it. I said, you know, not only am I not eating anymore animal products but that’s when I also, I stopped buying you know I stopped wearing leather, I stopped buying, you know, any animal products they’ve been in my clothing and accessories and it was from that point that I really declared myself vegan.
Caryn Hartglass: I appreciate you telling us this story and what I love about it is it’s not a unique story it’s something that I think resonates with all humans that when we are in a safe place and we’re shown what life can be like and when we discover eating plant foods and eliminating animal foods when we just feel like we never felt before we feel better all the problems go away it’s an incredible discovery it’s a discovery that is available for everyone.
Leinana Two Moons: Right.
Caryn Hartglass: And the best, and I love your husband for this because the best way to share this message is to share it with someone you love and especially someone you’re in a relationship with. That’s the best way to create new vegans other than bearing them yourself.
Leinana Two Moons: Well, we’ve made two more vegans as well, so [laughter]
Caryn Hartglass: So, thank you and thank him for that. Now this thing that’s going on with bacon and I mean bacon from pigs it’s, I don’t understand it, it’s crazy but we see a lot of it going on with social media these people that are just obsessed with bacon and professing their obsession with bacon and they don’t seem to be affected at all by the cruelty connected to it. How do you feel about that?
Leinana Two Moons: Yeah, I mean, people are really into bacon and it’s weird to me because, you know, I remember eating bacon sometimes growing up, I mean, we would have bacon once in a while but it wasn’t a thing like it’s a thing now where people are so into bacon, you know, and this whole sort of cultural mania around bacon and I understand it tastes good, I mean, there are actual reasons why, you know, animal based bacon tastes good it has to do with the combinations like all the flavor molecules and how they combine and I’m not versed on all the scientific reasons, but it does taste good it has all of the money savory flavors that hit all the right spots on your taste runs so I get it tastes good, but you know when you think about all the other you know things that surround animal base bacon the cruelty how terrible it is for your health how the World Health Organization has declared that it is undeniably linked to more than one type of cancer you know and the environmental destruction in just seems like as you know just because something tastes good is it really worth all of that is it really worth all of the other things that go with it? And to me obviously the answer is no.
Caryn Hartglass: No, especially when as you’ve demonstrated in this very lovely cookbook, how we can, how we can get I think what’s most appealing about bacon is the sweet, salty, smoky fatty whatever it is umami flavors make it so appealing and we can do that with so many different foods and I think make, here’s what I want, and your book is the beginning of it, not only Baconish but the word bacon should change, should evolve and not mean from pigs
Leinana Two Moons: Absolutely.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, it should mean foods that have these flavors that salt, sweet, smoky and those should all be the new bacon.
Leinana Two Moons: Absolutely, I’m so with you on that because I mean even people who eat you know pig based bacon it’s not you know and their craving bacon it’s not that they just relish the fact of having a dead pig on their plate, you know, it’s all those flavors that you just described it’s the smoky, the salty, the savory, the crispy, the crunchy, you know, all of those flavors, those combinations, that’s what it bacon is that’s what comes to mind when you hear the word bacon and so I wanted to really show people that you can capture those flavors you can still have all of those delicious bacony flavors but you can do those, you can make those with plant based ingredients and it’s so much better for you and so when you say the word bacon that’s what I want to come to mind I want it to mean you know all of those flavors the smoky, and the savory and the sweet and salty but with all of these new possibilities that we have, you know all these new ways of making bacon with vegetable based ingredients.
Caryn Hartglass: And it’s yummy.
Leinana Two Moons: [Laughter] It is.
Caryn Hartglass: Now, we have to make a disclaimer here. Okay? This is not the healthiest eating.
Leinana Two Moons: [Laughter]. I mentioned in the beginning it’s sort of like you know I have two kids who watch Sesame Street sometimes and Cookie Monster says like cookies are sometimes food. So, you know even though vegan bacon is far healthier than an animal based bacon, I’m not claiming that this is health food per say, so a sometimes food. I don’t expect you to eat the entire batch of bacon at one sitting.
Caryn Hartglass: [Laughter]. Even though you want to and you probably will.
Leinana Two Moons: [Laughter]. At least without drinking lots of water with it, but you know it is totally cholesterol free because it’s vegan, you know, I would say, lower in fat. There’s still a sodium issue but, you know, you just have to, everything in moderation.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. There probably, I think in a lot of your recipes there’s a lot of good nutrition especially from the tempeh and then the tofu for those people who aren’t gluten intolerant seitan is a great source of protein. There’s a lot of goodness, but you know, it’s a funny thing in this food world when we’re promoting something there are, I was talking about this earlier, when people make comments to things that you put out there are many people that get angry so quickly and have so many negative things to say about something and we have to be careful all the time. “Oh, you know, you’re putting out this vegan recipe, but it has this and it has that and it’s not really healthy.”
Leinana Two Moons: I would like to just remind people it’s a cookbook about bacon. [Laughter]. So, yes, it is vegan bacon and it’s better for you but you’re still picking up a cookbook about bacon which means that you’re probably not opposed to a little bit of indulgence, right. [Laughter]. So,
Caryn Hartglass: No, I think this is great and, I just always like to make these disclaimers.
Leinana Two Moons: Yes.
Caryn Hartglass: For those that need to hear them, but there are some wonderful, wonderful recipes in here.
Leinana Two Moons: Thank you.
Caryn Hartglass: And to satisfy all kinds of cravings. So, for those that are curious let’s talk about how many ways you can make bacon without the animal.
Leinana Two Moons: Well, I think it’s ten, eleven different ways of making the actual bacons and the bases of those are seitan and tofu and tempeh, coconut, eggplant a couple different mushroom bacons, carrots and even roasted chickpeas and, oh, I have a recipe for the baconish bits, little bacon bits, that are great to sprinkle on everything and I even have a few bonus recipes that are not bacon, but are pig friendly like a seitan ham, a pineapple glazed seitan ham, a spicy chorizo, and a couple other goodies.
Caryn Hartglass: Yes and I have to include these things because it’s my show, I can say whatever I want, but, that’s what I love about this show. [Laughter]. Is, I have this spiritual thing, I don’t know how else to explain it, but many, many years ago I’ve been vegan for 28 years and vegetarian longer and I was in a hotel at a, one of these basic buffet hotel breakfasts, nothing amazing. There were handful of chafing dishes out covered and I remember wondering what was in the chafing dishes. Usually there are eggs. Potatoes in another and in another one there’s typically bacon. Without opening them, I pass by them and I could hear the screams of pigs going to slaughter and it’s a very powerful memory that I have carried with me. It’s something that I always have to kind of cork or stop because it brings up tremendous emotion on what’s going on in the cruelty in the world, but that’s what I hear those things when I smell bacon. So let’s please eliminate the animal from the bacon and rejoice from all of the wonderful bacons that we can make and you’re doing that here. We make a, we like to make a lot of tempeh bacon here at home, but I have to confess that I have not made coconut bacon which, I mean, how many thousands of the people have been raving to about your coconut bacon?
Leinana Two Moons: It’s [laughter], the coconut bacon. You have to make it. It’s the one recipe, you know, in my book; it’s dearest to my heart. I love the coconut bacon so much and it really, it was really the recipe that kind of started the whole idea for this book in the first place. So, and it’s you know the coconut bacon is so it’s such a perfect bacon because it absorbs the marinade so well that you know the marinade’s like tamari or soy sauce if you want and a little bit of maple syrup and some liquid smoke and it there just there’s so much flavor packed into those little flakes and then the really genius part of the coconut is that coconut has that natural fattiness to it.
Caryn Hartglass: Natural sweet fattiness.
Leinana Two Moons: Totally, totally it’s so perfect and it crisps up so well in the oven so it’s like crispy and kind of fatty, chewy at the same time with all those good flavors in it. It’s just the best. Just make the coconut bacon, make yourself a simple BLT just some good bread, tomato, lettuce and some, you know, vegenaise or just mayo whatever you prefer and it’s the best BLT ever.
Caryn Hartglass: So, I also have not made any kind mushroom bacon and you have a trumpet mushroom bacon and a shiitake mushroom. I’m thinking that the mushroom bacon is probably another really good one because of the natural texture that it comes with that chew. It could make a really great bacon.
Leinana Two Moons: Yes, exactly, the texture is fantastic and I love the mushroom bacons also. They’re perfect for people who are just, you know, beginning or, you know, just making their first vegan bacon recipes because, you know, they’re so easy to make this so easy to work with and because mushrooms are packed full of the umami flavors already. They take very temporary little to transform them into good little baconish morsels. You know, just a little bit.
Caryn Hartglass: [Laughter]. Morsels. Yeah.
Leinana Two Moons: You don’t have to add a whole lot to them so that they’re really great really easy and super delicious, too.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay. Earlier in the program, I was singing my praise of chickpeas to have off the New York Times article that was talking about aquafaba.
Leinana Two Moons: Right, yes, I saw that.
Caryn Hartglass: And I think your cookbook is the first one that I thumbed through that mentions aquafaba and uses it so yeah for you!
Leinana Two Moons: Oh, yes. I think, I mean it’s the first cookbook that I personally know of that have really features a lot of aquafaba recipes and then and as you probably know there’s a whole book, a whole cookbook for aquafaba recipes coming out this fall that’s going to be really, really amazing, but yes, I use it in a lot of my recipes. It’s on my egg replacer of choice and all of the baked goods and I even use it in the ice cream recipes.
Caryn Hartglass: I saw that. Fascinating.
Leinana Two Moons: It’s a really miraculous ingredient.
Caryn Hartglass: It is and now for those of you who have a short term memory, I was talking about it in the first part of the program, aquafaba is the water that comes out of the can when you get a can of chickpeas or if you cook it yourself it’s that thick water that is associated with the cooked chickpeas and it can be a whipped into a miraculous frenzy like egg whites.
Leinana Two Moons: Yes.
Caryn Hartglass: I’m just thinking that if there was any kind of planned purpose for planet earth and all life on earth, I think the chickpeas are really here to do an incredible amount of things that I think that we are just beginning to scratch the surface of. So I was talking earlier about the aquafaba and also talking about the chickpea flour and you have your omelets recipes in here, too.
Leinana Two Moons: Yes. Yes.
Caryn Hartglass: Aren’t chickpeas the most amazing thing?
Leinana Two Moons: They are. They’re so versatile. They can be used in so many different ways. I mean, chickpea flour I know is used a lot in Indian cooking actually and it’s really nice, it has a sort of a natural almost eggy kind of flavor to it and it thickens well and it’s really, it’s really a neat ingredient that I’d like to start using more, but yes, I use it in my omelets recipe actually.
Caryn Hartglass: Right, yeah, we’re using it more and more and I guess I have to start. I’ve got to take the aquafaba plunge. [Laughter].
Leinana Two Moons: Me, too, it’s so easy and use the aquafaba and then make chickpea bacon with the chickpeas.
Caryn Hartglass: [Laughter]. No waste.
Leinana Two Moons: No waste.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I’m wondering though, okay, now I’m just kind of being spontaneous here. People talk about rinsing beans when you cook beans because the water itself can have some of those proteins that give us gas. Has anybody talked about gas from aquafaba? [Laughter].
Leinana Two Moons: [Laughter]. I do not know honestly I mean I’ve used aquafaba in a lot of different ways like I told you even in ice creams and…
Caryn Hartglass: You haven’t had a problem?
Leinana Two Moons: … making meringues. I haven’t noticed any difference any extra activity. But you know the Facebook page if there has been any discussion about that and aquafaba it will certainly be on their Facebook page.
Caryn Hartglass: Right. I haven’t seen it. I just was just thinking about that right now and I shared it with everyone. Yes, okay, so I’m just doing a quick last thumb through here what pops up that I want to mention everything looks really lovely Elvis cupcakes for example. [Laughter].
Leinana Two Moons: This makes a few appearances in the book his peanut butter, banana and bacon combo.
Caryn Hartglass: And do you have a special affinity for Elvis?
Leinana Two Moons: I mean honestly not so much for Elvis himself I mean I like Elvis but it’s really more that I love, I also love peanut butter, bacon and bananas together. [Laughter]. I mean, peanut, you know, I don’t know about you, but I grew up eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
Caryn Hartglass: Oh, I eat them all the time.
Leinana Two Moons: When you add that little salty, crispy element with the bacon, you know any kind of vegan bacon like coconut bacon especially it’s just so perfect together.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay, let’s briefly talk about having to vegan children now they’re not teenagers yet and we have to check back with you later. [Laughter]. But, how are they with the food that you give them?
Leinana Two Moons: You know they are, my son is four, my daughter is two. They are both in the super picky phases right now. You know, the thing about vegan kids says that they are just as picky and as vegetable averse as other kids. They don’t magically eat more vegetables than other kids. It can be challenging, but, you know, I think in probably the same way that all parents are challenged with picky preschoolers. They love, you know, their favorite is mac n’ cheese, of course. They love my mac n’ cheese, but they love it even more when I get that Amy’s frozen mac n’ cheese. [Laughter].
Caryn Hartglass: Oh wow! What is it about packaged food that kids love?
Leinana Two Moons: I don’t know. It’s Ben’s favorite thing, but you know they have, you know, my son especially is really, really difficult right now that the vegetables, so, we rely a lot on smoothies like green smoothies. He helps, you know, fortunately he’ll drink smoothies, so we’ll put, plenty of spinach or greens into that and he’ll drink it, he just, he acts like I’m trying to poison him if I put it on his plate. We eat a lot of tofu, a lot of rice, and pasta and I try to sneak as many vegetables in, you know, as I can. They love fruit, snacking on fruit.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, kids love fruit.
Leinana Two Moons: Yeah, that kind of thing. It’s not without its challenges for sure, but they’re super healthy and happy and thriving and I’ve never doubted that you know being vegan and raising them vegan is the right decision.
Caryn Hartglass: I love to hear that. Now you live in Long Island city which isn’t far from me in Forest Hills
Leinana Two Moons: I do. Yes.
Caryn Hartglass: And I was talking earlier about Queens and how it’s really an incredible place for all kinds of ethnic cuisine.
Leinana Two Moons: Yes.
Caryn Hartglass: I don’t know if you’ve been to the one in my neighborhood Greens Zenphony which is Rego Park.
Leinana Two Moons: Not yet, no. We
Caryn Hartglass: It’s like a favorite.
Leinana Two Moons: Yeah, I’ve got to write that down so I remember to go. We just moved, I mean we only moved from Brooklyn it wasn’t that far, but we just moved to Long Island City in December so I really have to check out all the Queens vegan spots and all that
Caryn Hartglass: Astoria’s got a few. Does Long Island city have anything vegan?
Leinana Two Moons: No. It really does not. There are a couple of places where you can kind of get vegan options, but it’s not great for vegan restaurants I have to say. We were very spoiled in Brooklyn.
Caryn Hartglass: Well, you’ll have to open one.
Leinana Two Moons: [Laughter]. A couple of people have mentioned that to me. Somebody needs to open one over here for sure like can’t we get the you know the Blossom or the Terry people over here? [Laughter].
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I think it’s time.
Leinana Two Moons: Yeah.
Caryn Hartglass: Absolutely, well, I want to thank you so much for joining me and for writing Baconish.
Leinana Two Moons: Thank you so much.
Caryn Hartglass: This is really a fun, great book.
Leinana Two Moons: Thank you so much for having me.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay. Thank you for joining me and take care.
Leinana Two Moons: Bye bye.
Caryn Hartglass: Bye bye. We have just two minutes left and I wanted to take a moment. If you’ve been to Responsibleeatingandliving.com, you may have noticed on the homepage that they’re suppose saying goodbye to Broccoli Rob. Broccoli rob was Robert Poe. A lovely man. A great musician. I interviewed him on this program three years ago and he passed away on Thursday and he unfortunately had a very aggressive stomach cancer and he tried really, really hard to beat it and he wasn’t successful unfortunately and we are all very sad to see you go. I invite you to read my brief post and listen to the interview that I had with him a few years ago. Keep his voice alive. He has a website Robertpoemusic.com and you can hear some of his wonderful songs and his very rich lovely, lovely baritone voice. Before we go I want to play the song that he played in the progressive radio network studio about eating greens and it’s called Around for You. I’m going to sign off wishing you a very delicious week and listen to Robert Poe’s Around for You. [Music Guitar]. “I’m eating my greens and no more candy to me cause you’re sweet enough it’s true. I’m getting strong. I want to live with you long. I wanna be around for you. You are my reason for this good eating and working out everyday. They choose concoctions to rid my toxins. Baby I’ve changed my ways. I’m eatin my greens and getting hard and lean. Something everybody should do. I wanna be strong. Yes, I wanna live real long. I wanna be around for you. I wanna be around for you. Yes, I wanna be around for you.”
Transcribed by Nanette Gadyi 6/28/2016