This Crazy Vegan Life

HAPPY NEW YEAR crazy vegans! And to all nonvegan readers as well. I hope you enjoyed saying goodbye to 2008 and are looking forward to a healthy and happy 2009. I am looking forward to continuing to provide you with healthy vegan recipes this year, and I hope that you, like me, have resolved to commit or recommit to be the healthiest and best vegan crusader you can be.

I was contacted awhile back by a publishing rep and asked to review Christina Pirello’s new book, This Crazy Vegan Life. So this first post of the new year will contain my thoughts about her book, as well as several recipe reviews. (My compensation for this review was a copy of the book.)

I very much enjoyed reading This Crazy Vegan Life and I highly recommend it to practicing vegans, new vegans, and nonvegans. If you are not familiar with Christina, perhaps you are familiar with her PBS show and website, Christina Cooks. Christina was diagnosed with leukemia and given 3 months to live – 25 years ago. She attributes her health and healing to a vegan macrobiotic diet and lifestyle.

The first half of the book deals with the principles of veganism, including health and nutrition, animal compassion, and environmental issues. We vegans know that meat, dairy, eggs, and processed foods are cruel to our bodies, animals, and the environment. But I learned a lot from the in depth descriptions of how and why this is so. For example, even though I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about vegan nutrition, I was fascinated to read about the process of digestion and the toll nonvegan foods take on our bodies. Christina’s goal is to arm you with all the information and personal testimony she has to get you to commit, with no more excuses, to living a healthy vegan lifestyle so you can feel great about your body and your lifestyle choices. As she stated in the introduction (and I feel her pain!), “As a teacher/advocate of healthy vegan cooking I agonize over the fact that many people listen to what I say and agree that it makes sense. But there is a huge disconnect between hearing, understanding – and doing.”

The book also gives plenty of emphasis to the “criminal” ways of our food industry. Advertisers, lobbyists, and researchers dupe the public into eating their junk foods in huge portions. Corporate manufacturers contaminate and genetically modify our foods while marketers tell us it’s helpful for our health and the world’s food supply.

In the second part of the book, Christina shares her philosophy about food and eating and provides a list of kitchen staples and over 100 vegan recipes. She tells you not only what to eat, but why, when, and how to eat. Two points she reiterates are (1) you truly are what you eat; and (2) it’s the calories that count; you must expend more calories than you consume in order to lose weight – period. She asks you to commit to her eating plan for 21 days to break your dependence on unhealthy foods and reintroduce your numbed tastebuds to the wonderful, delicate flavors of natural foods. She also says 21 days on her plan can turn around a lifetime of unhealthy habits. She includes a nice chapter of 12 exercises with photos to get you moving. One of my favorite passages from the book is “Take a good, hard look at what you ask of your body each and every day and then think about what you do for it in return.”

I will admit that I have tried some recipes from the Christina Cooks website and was disappointed with the lack of flavor, so I was skeptical about the recipes in this book. I made a main dish, side dish, and soup, and to my surprise I was absolutely thrilled with the outcome.

First up – Cauliflower in Spiced Tomato Sauce




I loved that I got to prepare a whole cauliflower again, and the tomato sauce was fabulous! To serve it, I cut it like pie.

Next, Roasted Winter Squash with Basil. I used an acorn squash and left the skin on. I normally don’t like my squash sweet, but this had just a teaspoon of sweetener and I loved it. It was really delicious.

The soup I made is what Christina calls a home remedy broth designed to dissolve hardened fat deposits that lie deep in your organs and jumpstart weight loss. I didn’t expect it to be noteworthy, so I didn’t take a picture. But this 5-ingredient remedy took mere minutes to prepare and honestly is one of the tastiest things I’ve ever had.

The last thing I made was a treat. Christina says her sweetener of choice is erythritol, and even though it sounds like a chemical, it is completely natural made from plant sugars. I was completely unfamiliar with this substance, and I’m not really sure how I feel about it. I bought a bag of Z Sweet. 300 grams, which I believe is 1-1/2 cups, for $8.00. There are 60 calories in the whole bag. Current research deems it completely safe as it is absorbed into the bloodstream and quickly excreted. It does not cause cavities. It does not raise blood sugar and is therefore safe for diabetics. It looks like this:

Apparently erythritol will make your baked goods grainy, so to overcome this, Christina’s recipes have you boil it with other ingredients to dissolve it before mixing it with your dry ingredients. Two problems I had with that – first, it’s an extra step and an extra pot to dirty, and second, you have to wait for the boiled mixture to cool before mixing it with your dry ingredients or else it melts your chocolate chips, as I discovered when adding them to the Mini Pumpkin Cupcakes recipe. (The recipe didn't call for the chips; I just wanted chocolate.)

I baked them in a disposable tin, so you are only seeing their tops. They really baked up beautifully and they were not overly sweet, just like I like them. The texture was fine and the flavor was nice. I have enough Z Sweet to try out a few more recipes. In the meantime, I would love to hear from any of you who have used this sweetener.

To sum up, I highly recommend This Crazy Vegan Life for great insight into the vegan lifestyle provided by an experienced, passionate, and healthy vegan author. I also recommend it for great recipes. I have many bookmarked that I can’t wait to try.

If you want to see Amazon’s review, read it here.

Now, since it is New Year’s Day and I adhere to the tradition of eating blackeyed peas for good luck, I made Chipotle Blackeyed Peas from Get It Ripe! to have for dinner tonight.

I’ve got a nice bunch of kale to serve with them, and I’m going to eat as many as I can for extra good luck in 2009! I'm such a crazy vegan....