Some of the responders felt my pain, but most comments revealed my ignorance and lack of creativity on the subject. Some hinted that I might need an attitude adjustment.

Carrie C: Cooking can be rather tricky when camping, vegetarian or not…

Teresa A: I dont forget about veggie cooking, I can do it rather well camping..

There were many helpful suggestions as well about how to do camp cooking right.

Karen K: cook ahead freeze what ya can

Jennifer from NY: Sometimes when I am camping I bring along Indian MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). There are quite a few that are vegan. You can eat them straight from the bag or you can heat them in boiling water. Super easy and no cleanup. :)

I buy them at my local Indian Supermarket but they are also available at Trader Joe and Whole Foods. You can also find some on Amazon.

Reply to Jennifer: I’ll head for the biggest Indian food store in this area, and see if they have them so I can test them. Gotta pick up some mung dhal too! And I’ll check Amazon

Yoga Gurl:Interesting….never thought of that.

What about “easy” meals? But you are so good at this stuff maybe you already thought of it.

I remember I went camping long ago…we had, I think, quick rice, and chili to go on top for one meal. That was pretty easy.

It’s probably hard for you to do that, you are so used to doing everything on such a quality level. : )

Reply to Yoga Gurl: I’m into easy meals, but I admit it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of making a meal out of processed food. I’m stuck on making everything with fresh food from scratch. But if I go camping again, it’s a whole new world of instant food, I mean it!! :-)

Steve: You really need to try Mary Jane’s Farm’s line of foods. They truly are well made, organic, and could not be easier to prepare. I have no connection with them, I’m just someone who has the same issue; that of finding a way to eat healthy while on the road or camping.

Savvy Veg: I’ll check and see if that brand is available at my local natural food store or online. Thanks for the tip!

Steve: You can order them online, too! Just sayin’…

Joe F: I backpacked for 6 months after college with 3 or kinds of grains, beans, head of cabbage, carrots and grew sprouts in a baggie in my pocket. It can be done!

Catherine T: I love camping and there are loads of things you can cook – risotto, chickpea curry, beany wraps – all in one pot or a bbq. A packet of sosmix and some spices always comes in handy. You basically need stuff that can be cooked in one pot or bbq’d. Staples like pasta, rice and spices take along and the rest bought wherever you are. Eggy bread is a firm breakfast favourite in our household. Should say I love camping?

Maria W: try the camping cookbook by Annie Bell its not all veggie but its a great book lovely cover too.

Its awful seeing so many uninformed veggies struggling wiv broken up veggie burgers lol bring on the stuffed peppers thats wot i say – boil in the bag rice cooked then fill the halved peppers wiv it along wiv crushed garlic and herbs or wotever then drizzle of balasamic vin and maybe splash of olive oil wrap em in foil and stick em on the bbq.

Savvy Veg: Thanks, Maria, excellent idea! I’d use garlic powder and a mediterranean herb mix.

Now that I’ve had a chance to recover and re-group, I’ve come up with a few more positive thoughts about camp cooking:

Another cookbook (besides Annie Bell’s) that would be handy for camping is Vegan Unplugged – Pantry Cuisine Cookbook & Survival Guide by Jon and Robin Robertson. It’s a practical guide not only to surviving, but thriving in any tough situtation.

By following the Robertson’s cooking tips and hints, you can live and eat reasonably healthy out of a car, boat, tent or other temporary shelter, or cook in a motel or dorm room – and not just in an emergency. Sounds ideal for camping, right?

Cooking ahead is an option I’m a little ambivalent about. I’ve done that in other situations, such as car trips, and while it’s helpful on the trip, it’s one more big thing to do before leaving. But I can see the value and will add it to my camping prep list.

Another time saver would be dehydrated foods, like fruit & veggies, and I like the MRE idea. I’ll work on finding edible versions.

Savvy Veg: It’s clear I have a lot to learn about camp cookery, and I appreciate all your tips and suggestions. If you have time to share ideas about doing veggie camp cooking right, please send them along, or comment on this page.

Happy Camping! Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Veg

I’ve heard that ‘real’ cheese is addictive, and I believe it. I think it’s the casein.

One of the hardest things for me to give up when I went vegan was parmesan cheese. I was used to eating it on just about everything.

Eventually, long after the parmesan addiction had lost its grip, I found a substitute, made with ground walnuts, lemon juice and nutritional yeast, among other things. I found the recipe in Bryanna Clark Grogan’s World Vegan Feast cookbook.

Now there’s a woman who understands that ‘real’ cheese is addictive! And how vegans suffer without it. Bryanna has no less than 11 vegan cheese recipes in World Vegan Feast alone, and possibly more in her many cookbooks put together.

Bryanna and other cookbook authors and food manufacturers have made valiant efforts to bridge the gap between ‘real’ and vegan cheese, with varying success.

I’ve tried a few brands of packaged commercial cheese substitutes. Mostly, they’ve convinced me that the phrase ‘vegan cheese’ is an oxymoron.

Some, called veggie slices or other names suggesting they are non-dairy, have casein from cows milk as an ingredient – so they melt well. That taught me to always read labels! It also taught me that the main problem with vegan cheeses is that they don’t melt easily. Never mind if they say they do. That’s just hype.

Commercial vegan cheeses also taste nothing like ‘real’ cheese, to me. That’s not necessarily a flaw, but it’s not what my taste buds expect. Plus, they are often strangely colored, especially the orange ones which claim to be cheddar flavor. Same goes for so-called ‘real’ cheddar cheese, come to think of it!

To my dismay, the cheese alternatives are often VERY expensive - 8 slices which probably cost 50 cents to make go for $3 – $4 in the grocery store. And each slice is wrapped in plastic which is tedious to remove, and has to go in the garbage and live in a landfill for a thousand years or something. Tsk. But it’s the same with ‘real’ cheese slices of course.

The best brand of vegan cheese I’ve found so far is Follow Your Heart. I’ve only tried the Mozzarella style, $4.26 for 10 oz at Earth Origins in Palm Harbor FL. That seemed like a decent price to me, maybe $1 more than the same amount of dairy Mozzarella.

I sliced my Follow Your Heart Mozzarella cheese alternative thin (1/8th inch) for grilled cheese sandwiches (my favorite comfort food). The cheese melted in the middle, and got quite runny, oozing out the long middle cut when I sliced the sandwich. The cheese at the outside edges remained stubbonly firm, and wanted to break apart and fall out when I cut the sandwich.

The taste of FYH Mozzarella straight from the package was bland, like dairy Mozzarella, but otherwise didn’t taste very cheesey to me. I thought a touch of lemon would’ve helped give it that slight cheesey tang of Mozzarella. Still, it had a decent texture, and my grilled cheese sandwich was more than edible.

Now, of course I don’t expect you all to give up buying those vegan cheeses - which hopefully will improve. After all, 10 years ago, they didn’t exist. And I certainly can’t fault anyone for wanting the cheesey taste.

But I must say that I’ve had more success making my own vegan cheese using the Suisse Melty Cheese recipe from World Vegan Feast. It was easy and cheap to make, with no soy or gluten, stored well and firmed up nicely in the fridge, and made a quite satisfactory grilled cheese sandwich. Next time I make it I’ll try leaving out the 2 Tbsp water to make a firmer cheese.

I’ve made the Walnut Parm from the same cookbook, and I look forward to trying the Vegan Gruyere, made with agar and other seaweed thickener so the cheese will melt properly. I’ve often used Vegan Cheese Sauce inspired by the sauce in the vegan fettucine alfredo recipe in Jolinda Hackett’s Everything Vegan Cookbook.

Making my own vegan cheese has shown me that even if cheese alternatives don’t taste quite the same as ‘real’ cheese, they can still be deliciously cheesey tasting and melty.

If cheeses like the ones I’ve made were commercially available, they’d be more expensive to make and priced a lot higher. I’m not sure that I’d pay the price, although as things stand, I hesitate to buy a cheese alternative at any price!

But maybe people who don’t have time or inclination to make their own vegan cheese would pay for the improved taste and meltability. Would you buy vegan cheese if it wasn’t an oxymoron?

I’m not a veteran camper and far from an expert on campsite cookery. I’ve been camping maybe 10 times in my 65 years, for a total of about 3 months. However, most of my camping involved vegetarian cooking. So naturally I feel qualified to talk about it.

My camping experiences have ranged from extremely primitive: a makeshift plastic shelter on a windy beach on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island at age 21, to almost civilized: a modern campground in Florida with hot showers, washers & dryers, electrical hookups, every kind of store and restaurant nearby, even primitive wi-fi at the nature center.

That was the latest experience, 2 weeks tent camping at Oscar Scherer State Park in Dec. 2011. I don’t think that will be my last experience tent camping because I still love sleeping on the ground in the fresh air. But I hope it will be my last experience with serious vegetarian cooking while camping.

I’ve come to the conclusion that to really enjoy all the perks of camping: fresh air, hiking, swimmng, boating, watching wildlife, lying on the beach, sitting around the campfire, gazing at the stars, doing nothing, it’s absolutely necessary to spend almost no time cooking.

Let me tell you what led me to that drastic state of cooking negation, so foreign to my nature.

I love food, and normally I love cooking. It takes up a big chunk of my day, maybe 2 hours, 3 hours with cleanup, plus food shopping a couple hours a week. It’s all for worthy causes – testing and developing recipes for Savvy Vegetarian, feeding us tasty healthy food so we age gracefully and blissfully, plus a creative outlet.

Cooking is pretty easy when you have a modern kitchen with electric lights, hot & cold running water, a good stove, and lots of gadgets & applicances.

But when you’re camping, trying to eat even a stripped-down version of your usual diet takes 3 times as long and is 10 times as difficult. I’m a well-supplied (okay – over-supplied) camper, and pretty organized and energetic if I do say so, but I found myself spending most of my day in camp on food preparation.

That was because of my husband’s special dietary needs, and because I and our fellow campers are in the habit of eating well. My husband is handicapped, and this was his first time ever camping at age 69. It was great for him to have the experience, and he was a very good sport. He hardly complained at all about freezing his fanny off sleeping on the ground in a tent, and peeing in a bottle at night – we all did that, rather than stumble around in the dark.

But if he goes camping with me again, diet or no diet, he’ll eat tofu dogs and other fake meat, canned beans, ramen noodles, instant rice, bread, nut butter, instant oatmeal, pre-washed & cut raw veggies & salads, fresh fruit & nuts – because that’s what you can do in the total daily cooking time I have in mind: 30 minutes tops. There will be lots of eating out, on the way to and from the nearest beach.

And there will be no running to Walmart to buy the cooking equipment and supplies that I deliberately left at home.

This last camping trip, it was absurd. There were four of us camping. We brought 3 tents, a mini-fridge, big & little coolers, 2 power strips, extension cords, double hot plate, crockpot, coffee maker, electric frying pan, spice grinder (yes!), pressure cooker, 5 pans of various sizes, a variety of knives and utensils and dishes and other kitchen equipment. Our handy friend Ken rigged up a light on a pole so we could see to cook and eat dinner (it gets dark early in Dec, even in Florida and battery powered lanterns don’t do the job).

We were barely able to squeeze all the stuff we brought into the spacious rear seat and cargo area of a Toyota Sienna and a roof top carrier. There was no room to see out the back window of the car, we had to use the mirrors. The only reason we didn’t bring even more stuff was because we would have had to carry it on our laps for 1400 miles, or tie it behind the car.

As for the time I spent on food prep, it wasn’t that I was the only one cooking or cleaning up. Everybody did their share. It just took s-o-o-o darn long to do everything! And that was civilized camping. The only thing more civilized about it would have been to rent an RV, but I’d rather cook in a motel room than drive one of those things around.

About the time I went camping for a month on the beach on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island: we backpacked everything in with us, slept on the sand under a plastic shelter, cooked over an open fire, walked about a million miles, and I lost 10 lbs I didn’t need to lose. It was like one of those survivor shows on TV, only without the drama. I shudder to think of it, and have never had the urge to repeat the experience.

There is a happy medium to eating vegetarian successfully while camping, and I think I’ve just about figured out what it is. I’m pretty sure the secret is to forget trying to cook while camping. Maybe the next camping trip I’ll get it right, and I’ll have more time to work on my fitness and my tan, instead of spending most of the day producing food in far less than ideal conditions.

Even the most enthusiastic cook needs a holiday from the kitchen. What better time than when you’re staying at a place that doesn’t even have a kitchen?!

There are Things They Don’t Warn You About Before You Get Pregnant, Probably For the Good of the Species.

I thought pregnancy would have a couple of upsides. Besides, of course, a tiny precious baby at the end.

I figured it would be the one time in my life I’d finally have a decent set of boobs. I mean, the ability to run without a bra is awesome, and most of the time I would take that over cup size any day. I just thought it would be fun to have bigger ones for a year. And now I do – but I’m not enjoying them. They are seriously sore. Plus I have to wear a bra. So unfair. They better not stay sore the whole time. I’ll complain to management!

I also though that not having periods would be great. No cramps, no bloating, no tampons! YAY! It’s true there are no more tampons, But there are cramps. And bloating! From gas! The symptoms don’t quit after four days either.

Apparently, your digestion slows down, which increases absorption. Great for nutrient needy baby, not so good for nearby noses. “Nobody,” says What To Expect When You’re Expecting, “does gas like a pregnant woman.

Great. Also true. I have eaten eggs and drunk beer in the same meal and had to live with the results before. I know what smelly is. Or I thought I did. When I got pregnant, I became the fart queen!

At work I would fart all day long, vile smelly things that lingered in the air. I am truly shocked that no one said anything. It’s not like you could mistake the source; they weren’t quiet either. It was so bad, I gave up any notion of polite concealment or shame. Pregnancy and dignity, I have discovered, do not go hand in hand.

I will say it’s kind of fun to have a license to fart gratuitously. Sorry, can’t help it, I’m pregnant, don’t you know….I picture myself dissipating lines at the grocery store, deliberately farting next to people I dislike, wandering into bath and beauty at the mall and letting a couple rip…take that you overly scented lotion pushers!

Fortunately for retailers everywhere, and my poor co-workers, the heavy farting stage only lasted about a month. I suspect that it is one of the benefits of the higher fiber diet that vegetarians eat. Proper hydration has also been very helpful, especially a warm cup of herbal tea in the morning before breakfast. I am almost back down to pre-pregnancy farting levels.

Almost. Except that some days I eat eggs….and don’t drink enough…you can just imagine.

One lovely benefit of pregnancy, that makes up for the farting and the bloating, the sore boobs and even the fatigue, is Bryan’s response to the whole thing.

When he found out I am pregnant, it is as if I flipped a switch in his head and he went into nurturing mode. He has started doing more housework (without my having to ask!!), he brings in all the wood for the wood stove, he makes me tea. If I say I’m hungry, he offers to cook. He quit drinking coffee so I wouldn’t be tempted by the smell. I get snuggles all the time. If he were a radio, he’d be tuned to my needs.

Now that is much more in line with my idealized vision of pregnancy, full of glowing and nesting and bonding. If I can only figure out how to make that switch stay flipped after the baby comes…I will be so happy and smug that I will be forced to write relationship advice books just to have an outlet.

Zoe Keeland

Enthusiastic convert to healthy plant based diet unintentionally loses weight along with the meat, and wants to know how to keep his weight up and eat healthy too.

Hello Savvy Vegetarian,

I recently started changing my diet. I am juicing fruits and veggies and cutting out meat. I feel GREAT! I am very excited about my new, far healthier diet.

The only problem is that I am losing weight. While this is generally considered a “good” thing, I’m not overweight and I would like to maintain the size I am.

Do you have any advice regarding good calories and how I can keep the weight on in a healthy way?

Thanks so much!! ~Max R.

Savvy Vegetarian Advice:

Hi Max,

Most people I’ve heard from consider weight loss the #1 benefit to a veg diet. But I have heard from a few like you who are alarmed by the weight loss.

From my own experience, I know that vegetarian or vegan diets are no quarantee of weight loss. It’s just that many new veggies naturally embrace low calorie foods like salads and smoothies with enthusiasm – they are fabulous! – but tend to neglect carbs and high fat foods, so they take in fewer calories.

That’s ok if you want to lose weight, but to maintain a healthy weight, you need a balanced nutritious diet which includes plenty of fresh veggies and fruit, but also whole grains, beans & tofu, nuts & seeds, a reasonable amount of added fat – and enough total calories.

What’s a reasonable amount of fat?

According to the latest nutrition theories, you should consume 10 – 15% of your daily calorie intake as fat. On a 2000 calorie diet, then, 200 – 300 calores should come from fat. Ideally, most of that would be fat from foods.

Meat and other animal foods such as dairy are often high in fat, which is why omnivores usually have no problem maintaining or increasing their body weight. When you cut animal foods out of your diet, you need to eat some high fat foods to get enough fat in your diet – unless you WANT to lose weight!

Most plant foods have some fat - some just have more than others.

1 Tbsp of added fat in the form of unprocessed cold pressed oil such as olive oil, coconut oil etc has about 150 calories, plus essential fatty acids and a few other nutrients which your body needs – in tiny amounts. So it makes sense to get most of your fat from nutritious foods such as avocados, coconut milk, nuts & seeds, and whole soy foods like tofu or tempeh.

Consult the list of high fat foods in the advice post How to Gain Healthy Weight on a Vegetarian Diet. And consider other ways to boost your calorie intake enough to maintain a healthy weight.

Each meal should include both carbohydrate and protein rich food, plus a bit of fat in addition to the fruit and veg. Grains and legumes (beans & lentils) together are the healthy alternative to meat. Except for B12, they replace the nutrients in meat, but not most of the fat. So that’s where the high fat foods come in.

By the way, carbs are important foods, worthy of respect. Unless you’re (diabetic, you can get carbs from all forms of grains and high carb veggies. Whole grains especially have valuable nutrients not plentiful in other foods, plus they’re high in fiber, so they digest slowly and sustain your energy for several hours. If you’re not getting enough carbs in your diet, your body will burn fat for energy – which you don’t need.

Try tracking your calorie intake for a week, using a free service like nutritiondata.com. Adjust what you’re eating and the serving sizes to bring your calories up to a level that keeps your weight up.

This vegetarian pregnancy series is written by Zoë Keeland, the youngest and most pregnant daughter of Savvy Vegetarian. She’ll continue to produce new episodes until her brain completely dissolves into mush.

Veg gets pregnant

Having been married for almost six years, and casually trying to get pregnant for most of the time, I had mostly given up pining for a baby. I wasn’t even tracking my cycle, aside from the vague: it oughtta show up pretty soon, I think. So when my boobs got tender, and stayed that way for two weeks, I thought I had a heckuva bleed coming on, probably soon.

My husband Bryan, who obviously pays way more attention to my boobs than I do, gave them a critical eye. “Go get a pregnancy test,” he said. I humored him, and picked one up at the grocery store. I got the box that has three in it. “That way I won’t have to run out for one next time Bryan gets paranoid,” I thought.

Anyone need a pregnancy test? I have two I won’t be needing….unless they stay good for a couple years.

Screw this pink line stuff, I thought, and bought the digital one that would either say: Pregnant, or Not Pregnant. I didn’t want to be squinting at the thing trying to decide about colors.

When it came up Pregnant, I nearly fell off the toilet. “Really?” I choked, squinting at it anyway. “Pregnant,” it said – no NOT anywhere in sight. I was stunned. I was thrilled. I wondered how the heck we were going to pay for this!

I sat on the steps and called Bryan with the news. Then I sat on the steps some more, my brain firing with all the things I would now have to do and worry about. You would think, after years of going wistful over other people’s babies, having the odd cry over my non-pregnant state, that I would be dancing and singing and posting it on Facebook. Nope. I went straight to worrying.

“Crap,” I thought. “I’ll have to give up coffee.”

If I had realized that I was still allowed to take Tylenol before I quit coffee abruptly, it could have been a less awful experience. As it was, I staggered through my work day, pale and headachey, worrying my coworker. I felt wretched. I went home from work and went straight to bed. Bryan kindly did some research and went out to fetch some Tylenol for me. My hero!

Having jumped that hurdle, I dreaded the prospect of facing the medical establishment. I worried that they would freak out over my vegetarian diet and try to convince me I had to eat meat to survive. Preparing myself to combat hidebound institutional veg-skepticism, I did what any angsty pregnant woman does – I called my mommy.

“Just cite the American Dietetic Association position paper on vegetarian diets,” she said. Aha! Now I was armed with medical clout! If anyone gave me trouble, I could just sneer and imply that their medical knowledge was sadly out of date.

“Don’t you people even read your own literature?” I would say, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. The doctor would be cowed, and never bring up meat again – to anyone.

It was disappointing, after all that build-up, to get only one ignorant comment, from a nurse. All she said, on hearing about my vegetarian diet, was: “Oh, well, you want to be sure and get all your protein.”

All my protein? Really? That’s all she could think of? Hadn’t she heard of B12, or Omega 3′s? Wasn’t there a nutrition class in her curriculum? There were too many scathing comments to pick from, and the moment passed before I could settle on one. Probably just as well. It’s not a good idea to flame the people who will be taking care of you.

The ObGyn was a total let down. She didn’t even blink about my diet. I suspect that since she had my lab results, she could already see I wasn’t anemic or otherwise malnourished. All she wanted to talk about was breastfeeding being the best option and not needing to supplement it with formula, no matter what some pediatricians say. I rather liked her.

So there. I guess the medical establishment does read its own nutritional studies – eventually. Or at least has learned that it’s not PC to ask a vegetarian to eat dead animals. They do still make you wear hospital gowns, though. And put your feet in stirrups.

Zoë Keeland

I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is next week! It sneaks up on me like that every year! But it’s OK. Thanksgiving is not such a big deal – anymore.

Back in my turkey days, I used to stress over Thanksgiving dinner: Get the bird cooked just right, make everything to go with it, decorate and set the table beautifully (I’d even iron a tablecloth!), invite people over, pray they’d all come, everyone would behave and the big event would go off without a hitch.

Then there was clean up. And leftovers. Major stress!

An unexpected bonus to going completely vegetarian was liberation from Thanksgiving food expectations. Once the turkey was gone from the menu, all bets were off.

We could eat Indian, or Italian, or Mexican, or Thai. Or go with a Traditional Veg Thanksgiving menu, with lentil loaf and all the fixings – veggie gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, rolls, pumpkin pie, etc. Or skip the whole thing and order a pizza.

We started having vegetarian Thanksgiving potlucks, with all the guests bringing their favorite dishes. It worked great, especially if there was some direction, so that everybody didn’t bring dessert or chips. We had some very interesting Thanksgiving feasts!

It never occured to us to replace the turkey with tofurkey or any other fake meat dish, because we didn’t feel the need, and besides, those options weren’t available back in the day.

These days, the faux turklet is a popular way for new veggies to fill the gaps in their thanksgiving menu, either because they haven’t figured out what to eat instead of turkey, or because they miss eating turkey and want to get as close as they can to the ‘real thing’.

Fact is, there’s almost no end to the delicious veg dishes that can successfully replace the turkey in a Thanksgiving dinner. I suspect that even non-veggies appreciate an alternative to the same-old same-old turkey.

A major source of Thanksgiving stress for vegetarians and vegans is attending (or hosting) family TG dinners with non-veg family members. I’ve had some choice letters from both sides.

The big problem seems to be that the Thanksgiving turkey is a sacred tradition, and all the favorite dishes that go with it are sacred by association. In some families, the TG menu is set in stone, and enforced by older family members who’ve directed the event for years and years. Egos and emotions rule the day!

Then along comes the vegetarian or vegan, who all of a sudden out of the blue for no good reason doesn’t eat anything with a face, wants to overturn the established order, and generally cause a lot of trouble for the normal majority. At least, that’s how the non-veg family members tend to see it.

Responses range from loving efforts to accommodate and include the vegetarian or vegan, as with this Grandma, to trying to ignore the veg into submission, as in this family thanksgiving scenario.

What should be a time of coming together to share a feast, give thanks for nature’s bounty, and enjoy the company of loved ones, becomes a stressful experience for both sides.

The vegetarians and vegans resent being expected to pick the bacon bits out of the salad, and endure rude remarks about rabbit food. The non-vegetarians resent being made to feel guilty about their food choices – intentional or not, the veg presence implies wrong doing.

No wonder that veggies often want to boycott family TG, and gather with their own kind to eat lentil loaf! But it doesn’t have to be like that, truly. It is possible to enjoy thanksgiving with your non-veg family and friends – you just have to be one part diplomat, one part assertive, one part devious, and one part easy going.

Read the free Savvy Veg report Veg Non-Veg Together for more on how we can all just get along.

Happy Thanksgiving from Savvy Vegetarian!

Wise and compassionate response to this article from Mary Beth Akers:

Thanks for the article regarding how to handle Thanksgiving as a vegetarian guest of non-vegetarian relatives. I don’t claim to have arrived at the answers to this delimma, and I am facing the same challenge this year, but as a recently converted vegan, I can recall a little bit of what it’s like to be on the other side.

I have a friend who has many dietary restrictions, including food allergies, religious convictions, and diabetes prevention. They come to visit us for a few days occasionally, and when I was in the habit of preparing conventional American food, it was as if I were learning to cook all over again every time they came.

I would make a special trip to the health food store (90 miles away) to try to find food that she could eat. I would spend a lot of money on ingredients that we wouldn’t use up. It was a source of tremendous anxiety for me.

Before they came, she would call me to remind me of her very long list of restricted foods. She wasn’t rude about it, but I sometimes resented her telling me what I could and could not prepare in my own kitchen. It never affected our relationship, but I could see where in some cases, it could.

I would make the following points and suggestions for people on both sides of the issue:

1) Relationships are more important than food choices.

2) Before you say or do anything, consider first what you want to accomplish, and what will be the consequences of your approach. Always consider the other person’s perspective.

3) Be honest and straightforward, and approach the subject well ahead of the holiday, not when everyone is already stressed out over the pressures from all the preparations. If the person lives nearby, go and visit with him or her in person, so that you can look each other in the eye. Do not expect someone to change their entire way of cooking for one meal.

4) Keep a smiling, cheerful countenance throughout the day. Be the life of the party. This will distract from the very insignificant fact that you aren’t eating some of the food.

5) Whenever you are in a position requiring or allowing you to discuss your diet, talk about it enthusiastically, as you would if you were telling them exciting news.

6) Be aware that when people are critical of the choices of others, sometimes it is because they are insecure about their own choices. Putting down someone else is a means of making themselves feel better, or so they think. If that’s the case, there is nothing you can do except realize that they are inadvertently revealing that they believe you might be doing the right thing. Sometimes replying with a question can be a good response: “You seem to be knowledgeable about diet; where do you get your information?” If you feel you need to defend yourself: “How do my food choices concern you?”

7) Have in mind a list of positive, neutral subjects you can bring up at the family gathering. Ask people about themselves, their children, their hobbies, their jobs, their upcoming vacation, etc. Be ready to change the subject if necessary. Be a good listener. There aren’t many of those around anymore, and it’s an easy way to win hearts.

A Blessed Thanksgiving to you and all your readers! Mary Beth Akers

Families are trimming their budgets, and two areas of spending that create a drain on finances are food and health care. The two fields seem unrelated, but could not be more connected.

One easy way to eat better, improve health and lower the high cost of food is to adopt a vegetarian or plant based diet.

A plant-based diet is very nutritious and heart healthy. Vegetarianism is perfectly safe for children, and getting them started on a healthful path early in life will help them to have a financially sound future.

Some people feel vegetarianism is only for the wealthy, so they follow the Standard American Diet that leads to a lifetime of health complications. With soaring healthcare costs, it is imperative for Americans to re-examine their diets.

It is easy to save money while eating a vegetarian diet and below are food options that are inexpensive and rich in nutrients and versatility, making them sound food investments.

While some vegetarian-specific items, such as soy hot dogs, can be costly, whole foods, which everyone should eat for good health, are not.

Legumes, for example, are common staples in vegetarian cooking. They are available for pennies per serving and can be used to cook a wide range of dishes from around the world.

Beans and lentils come in many varieties, and are packed with protein, vitamins, minerals, fiber, low in fat & cholesterol. Canned beans cost less than a dollar per cup cooked, and dry beans, even less.

In a spot check of a Safeway store on the west coast, a pound of 80% lean ground beef cost $2.99, on sale, while 1 lb of beans cost $1.99. 1 lb of the meat yields four servings, at 22.9 grams of protein per serving, but also packs in almost 15 grams of saturated fat. Meanwhile, that pound of dried beans can add up to eight one-cup servings, packing in 15.2 grams of protein per serving, and less than one gram of fat.

That means that you’re paying about twice as much for the protein in the hamburger meat than you are in the beans, while depriving yourself of dietary fiber, and increasing the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat in your diet. If you buy beans in bulk, the savings are as much as 4 times greater.

Every kitchen should stock pasta, rice, quinoa or other grains. They can be used in many kinds of dishes, and when kept in a cool, dry place, will keep for several months. Quinoa is a particularly good investment as it high in protein, and one cup cooked contains more calcium than 32 ounces of milk.

Tofu is an inexpensive, calcium-rich food. One 14 oz pkg of firm tofu has 4 – 6 servings, contains 40 – 50 g protein and costs $2 – $3. A single package of tofu, or even half a package, is plenty for most recipes.

Tofu can be used in place of meat, for stir-fries, sandwiches & burgers, salads, casseroles and pasta dishes. Sliken tofu varieties are good for smoothies, desserts and dairy food substitutes.

Frozen and canned fruits or vegetables are easy on the budget, store for long periods and are versatile. Frozen fruit can be used for smoothies and canned fruit is an easy snack or dessert. Frozen and canned vegetables are easily steamed or thrown into other dishes like soups.

For fresh produce, visit local farmers markets and roadside fruit stands. What costs $2.99 per pound in a grocery store can often be found for much less at a fruit stand or farmer’s market. It is not unusual to find organic produce in these stands, often for the same prices as traditionally grown items. If you can, grow your own veggies for a fraction of the cost in stores.

Beyond the price of food, healthy people don’t see the doctor as often. Office co-pays can really ding a household budget, and when we eat nutrient-dense foods, we see the doctor less because the body functions the way it should. This translates into more energy, which evolves into a more active lifestyle, will also stave off chronic diseases later in life.

When someone suffers chronic disease, such as diabetes and high cholesterol, in addition to seeing a doctor more frequently, she must then pay for prescriptions on a continued basis. Long-term use of prescriptions causes more problems than they treat, which creates a vicious cycle of doctor visits and prescription drugs.

If a person develops heart disease, in addition to the increased office visits and prescription drugs, a bypass surgery costs $60,000. It is more simple and cheap to take charge of one’s health by following a balanced, vegetarian diet, which has been proven to reverse symptoms of chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Simply by moving toward a plant based diet, or adopting a vegetarian diet, you pay less money for better health. What a deal!

Author Bio: Kate Manning didn’t expect to find herself at the intersection of business, marketing, and the Internet, but with sound writing and editing skills, she makes the most of it with MBA Online.

Message for Savvy Vegetarian:

First of all, thanks for creating the Savvy Vegetarian web site!

A little story about myself: I have struggled with weight issues most of my adult life. Recently I decided (educated myself) that there are tremendous flaws in the western diet.

When I first met my wife in college she was nearly a vegetarian, and used to have many militant vegan friends. These militants really turned me off about this style of eating. Their closed minded anger fueled rants about people and food had a tremendous negative effect on me.

Now I’m staring 40 in the face and have never been in worse shape and very overweight, bordering on obese. I have watched a couple of independent documentaries “Food Inc” and “Forks over Knives” as well as reading a few books on nutrition by doctors and scientists. They all come to the same conclusion; a whole foods plant based diet is the healthiest way for human beings to live.

So, I decided about a month ago to live as near a vegan diet as possible. No sugars, no white flour, no processed foods, no soda pop, no caffeine, no alcohol, no meat, and no dairy, no artificial dyes and flavorings. More whole grains and plant based foods minus all the bad stuff has already helped me to lose 10 pounds in the last month and a half. Internally I am feeling so much better.

I have already cooked several recipes from your web site and have enjoyed them very much. I am quickly winning my wife over, and even my 12- year old son, but am having a difficult time weaning my 7-year old son off of the sugar, and still have battles with him when it comes to eating my cooking.

Anyway thanks for making your vegetarian & vegan recipes available to those who want to make lifestyle changes in their eating habits. – Michael H.

Savvy Vegetarian Advice:

Hi Michael. You’re welcome. Thanks for your inspiring story! Three cheers for you!

I have a few comments about your sugar-addicted 7 year old reluctant vegan son.

Remember, a short while ago, before your conversion, that reluctant 7 year old was you! You didn’t want to know the truth until you were ready to figure it out for yourself. And he probably isn’t ready either.

Plus, it’s a lot to ask kids that age to make such major dietary changes, because their brains haven’t matured enough to follow the logic. Lecturing and forbidding just seems to make them dig in their heels.

So I suggest using the carrot instead of the stick approach, and weaning him gradually. First offer homemade treats that aren’t so full of sugar and other bad things, in exchange for his usual treats. If he’ll agree to that, check out Savvy Veg dessert recipes with him, or get a copy of the healthy dessert cookbook, Sweet Freedom. Get him involved in making the treats.

The only problem I can see with that idea is that you might be tempted to eat them! Or he might want to eat them all! So give some of the goodies to disgustingly skinny people you know. It’s the best revenge! Or a homeless shelter or something like that.

Then offer him rewards. E.G. My grandkids get a lot of candy given out to them at school (I know, it’s criminal!). My daughter has them put their candy in a quart jar, then when the jar is full, they get $5. Great motivator!

Give him a small glass of unsweetened fruit juice a day instead of pop. Real fruit juice in flavors he likes. Offer it as a reward for abstaining outside the home. It’s still sugary, but will satisfy his sweet tooth without all the horrible effects of all the bad things in pop. And it’s something special just for him. And of course, don’t buy pop or let him buy it. You have some control there.

Once he’s moved over that far from his present intractible position, it’ll be easier to nudge him along further toward eating your cooking. Try to make more kid friendly foods for him, and give him some healthy choices. Try my daughter’s weekly menu plan for kid friendly meals, and tips for getting your kids to eat more veggies.

All the best, Judith Kingsbury

Message for Savvy Vegetarian:

Hi, I just purchased a programmable Crock-Pot and am looking for vegetarian slowcooker recipes which I see your website has. Thank you!

I hope you can answer my question. It looks like slow-cooking vegetables does not take very much time….about 6 hours or so. If I’m away from home on a 12 hour day at work and I’ve left my food cooking in a crock pot that automatically switches to ‘warm’ once the veggies are cooked.

Is it a problem to have the food on ‘warm’ for those additional 6 hours? Don’t some slow cookers allow you to keep food warm for up to 20 hours? I can’t seem to find information about this on the Crock-pot website.

Many thanks. Nada O.

Savvy Vegetarian Advice:

Hi Nada, You’re welcome!
There are problems associated with leaving crockpots on warm for extended periods (like 6 hours)

1. The food will continue to cook even on warm, so that you get overcooked food.

2. Having food on the warm setting for a long time promotes food spoilage bacteria, so there is a risk of food poisoning.

If you can program your crockpot to turn on at a certain time, so that your food has just finished cooking when you get home, that would be better.

If your crockpot doesn’t do that, then an inexpensive digital electric timer will do the job:
Table-Top Timer with Motion Sensor & Alarm from Improvements, $24.95
Eco Plus Dual Digital Plug-In Timer from Aquacave, $19.95
7-Day Heavy Duty Indoor Digital Plug-In Appliance Timer, Dual Receptacles – White, from Westside Wholesale, $24.95

I’ve looked for these timers at big box stores and haven’t seen them. Home improvement or hardware stores could be a good source, or order online.

While we’re on the subject, another issue with crockpot cooking – lead in ceramic crockpot liners:

Intense discussion of the lead-in-crockpots topic has persisted online as far back as 2006 (that I can find). The basis is that apparently some crockpots have varying amounts of naturally occuring lead in the clay that the pot is made from (usually in China). Supposedly after some time, through heat, and the glaze wearing away, lead leaches through the bottom of the pot and contaminates food.

The most recent post I read about this issue cleared a white Hamilton Beach crockpot which was sent for testing, although there was still some doubt about Rival Crockpots.

Terminal Velocity did a lot of research, and actually had several inexpensive brands tested at a lab. They all tested lead free. Many commenters were skeptical. There was also some concern expressed about other heavy metals, like zinc. Manufacturers generally say that their products meet FDA standards for lead. Most people would prefer no lead ever in their cookware or dishes, rather than the FDA’s “acceptable levels”.

But as Pepper Paints discovered, it seems that if you want that level of food security, you gotta pay for it.

PP reviews a slow cooker and a thermal cooker, both from Supentown, priced in the $50 – $60 range, made with the same clay as the VitaClay cooker. Cuisinart crock pots also got a mention. What I like about the Cuisinart is that you can buy replacement liners and lids.

One of the signs of lead contamination is supposed to be grey discoloring on the bottom of the ceramic liner, which doesn’t scrub off. Both my crockpots have that, and I haven’t used them in 6 months, since I found out about the lead issue. I’ve kind of moved on to using a pressure cooker, but since it’s heading into slow cooker season, guess I’ll cough up the dough and test out a new and better model crockpot. Will keep you posted!

More on Crockpots and Food Poisoning from our crockpot cooking article:

“I’ve heard that there’s no such thing as ‘stomach flu’. It’s always food poisoning. So – don’t leave food sitting around in the crockpot all day on the warm setting. Nasty bacterias just love that! When the food is cooked and you’re ready to eat, turn off the crockpot. When you’re finished eating, and you want to save the rest for another meal, put the contents in a tightly sealed container, and put that in the fridge or freezer, right away.”