About

About the tasty food in this tasty blog…

The recipes in this blog will be gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and totally animal ingredient-free… and yes, this includes honey! A bee is an animal – look it up! Where animals are contained, controlled, and used in production, there is always room for exploitation to occur. We do not limit our compassion to the size of an animal or our estimation of its intelligence. Bee farming – like any animal farming – also causes considerable damage to ecosystems, the environment, and other insect colonies or native animals. There are plenty of other sugar sources that are much lower allergens and that taste a lot better, and/or are much better for cooking, such as maple syrup, agave nectar, golden syrup, molasses, palm sugar, fructose, brown sugar, raw sugar, etc. The better/best alternative to honey is agave nectar, which has some antiseptic properties and is up to 92% fructose (fruit sugar) and has a lower GI rating than all other sugars on the market. Additionally, agave is often cheaper than honey! There are also non-sugar sweeteners around that are derived from herbs, such as stevia… So what do we eat? Apart from sweet things? There are 7,000 edible plants in the world… so a few of those. Yep. We just skip the few that contain gluten! And I don’t much care for capsicum or dandelion greens, either.

I went vegan in 2005 and gluten-free at the beginning of 2007 when my partner was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance. Cutting wheat out has been beneficial to my health as well! Gluten-free digestion is easier digestion. However, initially we went vegan for the health of the animals, not for ourselves. We are ethical eaters first, and healthy eaters second! So if you spy a sugar-laden, fat-laden cake sneaking in amongst our healthy recipes, that’s why – it’s not all about health! We have also introduced some more “raw food” into our diet as of early 2008.

We do not use wheat flour, plain flour, or cous cous as they contain gluten. Rolled oats are shipped and stored with wheat, and cross-contamination occurs, so rolled oats are not usually considered strictly gluten-free (although we occasionally use them). Oat groats or steel-cut oats (non-rolled oats) are often free of contamination. Spelt is a low gluten flour, but is expensive and not worth the money or gluten hassle. In Australia, many products sold as “cornflour” or “cornstarch” are wheat-derived and contain gluten, so these products are not suitable, nor are any others that contain wheat or gluten ingredients as a thickener, eg. many processed foods and sauces and seitan (gluten-based vegetarian meats).

We do use: maize/corn flour, maize/corn starch, potato flour/starch, tapioca, arrowroot, chickpea/besan flour, soy, rice flours, quinoa, buckwheat, non-wheat pastas and noodles, amaranth, millet, oat groats, and much, much more!

We occasionally use low-gluten foods, such as: spelt, and rolled oats.

We don’t use: wheat flour, white flour, wheaten cornstarch, baking powder containing gluten, icing/confectioners sugar containing gluten, cous cous, white or wheat pasta, etc.

Being gluten-free can be a hassle if you eat a lot of processed foods, but we don’t, so it hasn’t proved very difficult. The trickiest part is baking breads, cookies, and cakes! But – like when we transitioned to a vegan diet – we are discovering that our diet became more varied rather than more restricted, and the toughest challenge lies in eating-out!… although with more and more cafes and restaurants catering to vegan and gluten-free diets, it is getting easier by the day.

We buy organic fruit and vegetables, and some other packaged organic ingredients. This has also contributed to improving our health and reducing the effect of allergies, almost as much as going vegan did a few years ago. This is why we sometimes enjoy a bit of spelt or oats without repercussions. We order most of our groceries online from local producers, and have found that our grocery bill has decreased rather than become more expensive. Organic produce doesn’t have to break your budget!

I hope you enjoy the recipes, and find them useful. If you have any gluten-free vegan recipes of your own, please send them to me. I’d love to try them!

If you want more info on what this Aussie vegan eats on a daily basis, check out my soundbite-style Twitter blog: twitter.com/veganza – if you notice anything that sounds yummy on there, leave a comment here, and I’ll post the recipe for you!

About Us!

I’m a writer, occasional academic, and photographer. My gluten-intolerant partner is a software and microelectronics engineer/programmer/computer geekling. We have several adopted non-human vegan children, cats, rats, mice, & tropical fish. I’ve adopted many, many rodents over the years. Alas, their lifespan is miserably short, although a vegan diet adds another year or two & considerably improves their health, while a raw vegan diet seems to make the tendency towards mammary tumours (in rats) disappear completely… Have I mentioned that vegan food is awesome?

We grow some herbs and chilli peppers in pots on the balcony, and occasionally tomatoes and zucchinis, too. Sometimes we go rockclimbing. Sometimes we watch nerdy TV or films or cool arthouse stuff. Sometimes we pester our friends and feed them awesome food until they go vegan, too. Good times. Animal-suffering-free good times, even. We are getting married in 2008 and having a vegan wedding reception at a fancy restaurant on the river. YUM. Have I mentioned that vegan food is awesome?

We are atheist-leaning Buddhists of the non-religious variety. We prefer the form of Buddhism that is only a religion for tax purposes. In the west, it’s called a philosophy rather than a religion. In the east, it’s called life: putting compassion and rational thought into action and living it, not just espousing a set of “beliefs” that some person in a cape told you to hold dear. I’m also into Vipassana meditation and yoga, too, but I’m not a damn dirty hippy. Stop calling me that. Geez. And, yes, vegan food is still awesome.

Other relevant links:

• Why Vegan?
• Raw Food
• FAQ
• Contact & Comment Policy