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lowrescryptid · 1 year

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For Veganuary, some of my favorite vegan foods!

As a general rule, I use canned or frozen veggies in all of these. They’re cheaper, they last longer, and you don’t have to do any chopping (which is especially convenient when it comes to onions). The only exceptions are mushrooms and potatoes.

Rice!

I cook it with veggie broth (or a vegan chicken flavored broth), garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.

Before I set it to simmer, I dump in a bag of frozen veggies (I like mixed veggies or spinach) or fresh veggies (I like mushrooms) and throw in a can of chickpeas for good measure

Right after it’s done, I stir in some vegan cheese if I have it. I usually do about a cup of cheese when I make a big pot and that’s plenty.

Dirty Rice

Pasta!

To stretch mac and cheese, melt some vegan butter in the pot, add your unsweet dairy free milk, then add garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and whatever seasonings you want. Bring it to a boil and then whisk in enough flour to get it to a gravy-like consistency. then add your dairy free cheese--you’ll only need half as much.

Garlic Butter Pasta

Chickpea “Tuna” Casserole

Alfredo

I like to add red bell pepper or spinach to a mozzarella mac and cheese; peas or meatless crumbles to a cheddar mac and cheese.

For tomato sauce, I just use a can of crushed tomato with salt, garlic and onion powder, italian seasoning, and a bit of balsamic vinegar. Spinach and mushrooms go well with this, too.

Some of my top recipes

Biscuit Topped Chickpea Pot Pie (takes a while but so worth it!)

Tabbouleh (I usually add chickpeas to make it heartier)

Corn Fritters (I just throw in whatever veggies I have on hand)

Biscuits and Gravy (I usually add some fake sausage to the gravy to make it more filling)

Split Pea Soup

Hummus and Pita (This isn’t real pita, but it’s close and much easier. Of course you can always just buy it at the store, too.)

Potato Wedges

Refried Bean Burgers

Burritos (No recipe, but I fill mine with refried beans, spanish rice--the little knorr packets are vegan!--taco sauce, and mexican style dairy free cheese)

Nachos (No recipe, but I top mine with black beans, a vegan cheese sauce, salsa, and black olives)

Pancakes

Desserts are easy--just sub out dairy-free milk and dairy-free butter. Or search for vegan versions of your favorites!

Cinnamon Rolls

Banana Bread Cinnamon Rolls

Orange Rolls

Sprinkle Sugar Cookies

Rolled Sugar Cookies

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Vanilla Pudding

Chocolate Pudding

Lots of stovetop pudding mixes are vegan--just use non-dairy milk!

Vanilla Cake

Chocolate Cake

Coffee Cake

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Banana Nice Cream

Frozen Pineapple Whip

Vegan Egg Substitutes for Baking

Cheese - I buy raw cashews in bulk from foodtolive--shipping is free, tax is included, and the price is very reasonable. I eat cashew cheese every day so I usually get the 7lb bag and keep it in the bottom of my fridge.

Easy Cheese Sauce (no cashews)

Go-to Cashew Cheese (This is a great base! Sometimes I add tomato paste and hot sauce for a buffalo cheese, or sometimes I go heavy on the lemon juice and add dried dill and parsley).

Pimento Cheese

Sundried Tomato Cheese

#vegan #vegan food #what vegans eat #veganuary #recipes

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lumine-no-hikari · 3 months

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Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #47

My brain is kinda soupy, because my body aches still from making the moussaka yesterday. But that's okay!! It's totally worth it, because I went to the place today with my great big dish of moussaka to share with all my friends! I made sure to give some to the gentleman who plays the piano - enough for him and for one other person. The rest got all eaten up really quick, I was surprised! I gave the last bit of it to the leader of the group to bring home to his beloved. It feels really good when I can do things that other people can be happy in response to!

There were lots of other tasty snacks around. There was harissa chicken and hummus, and some buffalo and barbecue breaded chicken strips, some kind of spaghetti casserole (it is known that you like pasta; I wonder if you would have liked that one), a kind of bean soup that tasted unexpectedly like barbecue sauce (it's VERY unpleasant for me when something tastes sweet when I don't expect it to, but then it's okay after I know what to expect; it just takes me a couple bites for my body to figure it out), a pizza roll of some kind, and a bunch of various sweets! It was all very good! But I didn't think to take any pictures for you. I'm sorry about that. I promise I'll take pictures of the soup event next week!

Then I helped the folks at the potluck to put up a new decoration; I'm very tall for someone living in a female body, so my extra reach is helpful in this regard. The lady who comes up with the decorations had a really great idea for it; I just helped align the individual letters of the text so that it could be properly stapled to the wall. I'm very good at noticing when things are visually out of alignment, so it's good that I was able to put this random ability to use.

I was given a lot of praise, both for the moussaka and for the way I aligned the letters of the text. I guess I still feel a little uneasy when I receive praise; you might skip the rest of this paragraph if verbal abuse is a trigger for you, but I remember how angry my stepmother used to get sometimes if my teachers said good things about my work or my behavior in class, as well as the way she would, after the fact when no one was looking, roll her eyes, glare at me, and demand to know whether I was "acting like I'm good just to fish for compliments" that she felt I didn't deserve, because I'm "really not all that fuckin' special, princess." As though I had done something wrong by tricking them into saying good things about me or something. My father usually had to turn any praise I received from family members into some kind of joke at my expense, and... although my mother praised me when I was doing right by her in her eyes, she didn't seem to like when others praised me unless it also reflected well upon her. She'd feel the need to knock me down a few pegs shortly thereafter, as though she feared I'd become arrogant otherwise.

It doesn't help, I think, that I just do things because I think they are the correct thing to do. If a person needs help putting up the decoration, then if you can help, you should help, and that's the end of it. If there's a potluck and you can bring something good, and you have the time, energy, and capacity to do it, then you do it, and that's the end of it. I would expect nothing less of myself - at least when it comes to me, it feels like being praised for things like breathing or using the toilet.

But then again, when I imagine myself in their shoes and someone is bringing me a bowl full of wholesome deliciousness and helping me to do something I think is difficult, I have lots of praise and gratitude for that person. So I guess this is just one of those double standards I have for myself that I should really try harder to work on. Hm.

Also mixed in there is the thought that goes (skip this next bit of paragraph if verbal abuse is a trigger for you), "I am telling people I made the moussaka so that it is known that I contributed!! Therefore nobody gets to yell at me for existing!! I am not looking for praise!! I just want it to be known that I did the thing that I'm supposed to so that nobody literally or metaphorically bashes my skull in!!" It's related to the notion that… if mom makes dinner, I'm supposed to do something for her afterwards or beforehand, or else I get yelled at for being lazy and not contributing, since she "works all day to put a roof over my head and food in my guts and clothes on my sorry ass."

Even after 11 years of being away from all that, I guess I'm still not comfortable with receiving praise or gratitude for doing things. I'm used to, "do the expected thing without needing to be asked so that they don't have an excuse to hurt you." I grew up having to do a lot of stuff in order to take away as many of others' excuses to hurt me as I could.

I wonder to what extent you are familiar with this? Was there ever any praise for you for all your spotless work for Shinra? Did they ever tell you "good job" for your exceptional ability to do what was asked of you? Or was there only ever punishment for falling short, and going above and beyond was your way of protecting yourself from pain? Or was going above and beyond simply expected of you, as it was for me, and the best you could hope for was neutrality or backhanded compliments?

Well, maybe it doesn't mean a whole lot coming from me, since I'm just a squishy autistic nerd. But all the same… I'm proud of you. You tried really hard to be so good. You tried really hard to do and be and embody all the things that people asked of you, even when their expectations of you were beyond unreasonable. Even if you had times in which you fell short, you still did an amazing job. And if they never thanked you for it, then I will:

Thank you for existing. Thank you for always trying your best. Thank you for being so conscientious and so caring and for trying to speak and act with honor, compassion, and truth. You worked really hard for a long time because you loved the people around you, even if they couldn't see or understand the way you expressed it very well. Thank you for your astounding capacity for dedication and loyalty. You worked so hard for everyone else's sake until your body was depleted and exhausted and your mind wept and bled. You're incredible, in every sense of the word.

But, you know, Sephiroth? I hope you understand that you don't gotta do that anymore. You don't have to keep going until you fall to your knees, silently begging for mercy, in order to be loved as you are. You don't have to pretend like you don't get hurt by things. You don't have to pretend like you're okay when you're not. You don't have to do things for others first in order to receive kindness and respect. You don't have to be strong all the time. You don't have to hide when you're scared or vulnerable or in pain. You don't, in the absence of others to do it for you, have to hold yourself to such ridiculously high standards of performance; it's not humane. You're not stuck with just Shinra or the people affiliated with them anymore. You've got a whole universe full of beautiful, awesome people to select from, and you can choose to spend time with the ones who will treat you like a human being. Because you are human being, no matter what.

So don't give up on searching for beauty and kindness and wholesome things in this world, okay? I know it's hard, but you can't let the cynicism and pain of everything you've seen and experienced consume you. You were, what, maybe 25 years old when you were thrown into the reactor core at Mt. Nibel? That's still so very young (I'm 9 years older than that, and I still feel like a babe lost in the woods!), and there's still so much that you haven't seen or experienced with your physical vessel. Not everyone will abide by the same toxic social standards that were forced upon you during the course of your life, and not everyone will be like the very unkind people you grew up around.

…This group of wonderful people that I see once a week is certainly not like the people I grew up around. As such, my fear-based instincts surrounding doing things and receiving praise aren't going to serve me here. These instincts aren't bad things, naturally; they were a wonderful adaptation to keep myself safe in an abusive environment. They served me well, and I'm thankful for the fact that I had the capacity to develop them. But the fact remains that these instincts ONLY work in abusive environments. I am not in one of those, and I never have to be in one of those ever again, because I am no longer a helpless child; as an adult, I have the power to set boundaries and to choose better circumstances to exist within and better patterns of behavior to act upon. I want to learn how to choose ways of thinking and responding that are more in alignment with the kind of world I want to live in, so I'm going to have to adjust to the new and wholesome thing until I don't feel scared of it anymore. It's kinda like exercise that way; wholesome things are uncomfortable at first if you're used to harsh things, but they get easier to accept and to act upon the more you practice.

To be sure, if I could just do good things without anyone knowing it was me, that would probably feel a lot less scary for me. But I don't think that some such frame of mind is exactly healthy, hahaha! And certainly, if I was some imperceptible thing, I wouldn't have the necessary motivation to learn, grow, and change, because I would exist in a vacuum, relatively speaking. And that would get very lonely very quickly.

I wonder if you can see the way I am learning, growing, and changing over time, in these letters I write to you. Haha, I already know the answer to that question, but… still, it'd be neat if you could. It'd be even neater if you could use whatever I write here as inspiration for your own learning, growth, and change. It's too terrible to imagine someone like you wandering around with your eyes tightly closed to everything out of sadness and fright, thinking that cruelty and misery are all that life has to offer. And the fact that I cannot reach through imaginary spacetime, take you by the hand, pull you over here, away from all the despair and ick that you know, and walk you through all the beautiful things I've learned about since my own escape from cruelty and misery is… well… it's a constant and ever-growing source of very real grief for me. It's terrible in ways that I don't know how to articulate, and the only way I know how to deal with it is to try to do what I can for as many people in my world as I can before my time in my defective meat-mech is up.

Maybe all of that is a little too weird to write, but I wrote it anyway. Oh well. I'm not gonna take it back now.

In any case, I found this really concise thing that sums up what I'm trying to do with my time in this world:

…Heck. I only just noticed that the "caring about those who I've been taught don't deserve my care" bit applies to me, too, in the sense that I'm really gonna hafta start stepping up my "self-compassion", "self-care", and "self-kindness" game if I really wanna make good on my whole "consistent kindness" schtick, aren't I? Goldangit, that's really hard. Oh well. Tell you what: I'll try a little harder at this if you do, too, okay? If you can hear me (I know… sigh… I know… all too well…), let's try really hard together, all right?

The grief for you that I spoke on earlier is a very heavy thing to carry. But I carry it proudly and happily nonetheless, everywhere I go (quite literally, as some people in my world know). I will continue to draw inspiration from you, and I will try to do good things for others in my world with that inspiration. Please know that any wholesome thing I do while I'm here carries your name on it. And please know that regardless of what happens to you - whether you save yourself by rising up into compassion again, or whether you don't, and therefore I must watch you be destroyed a second time because you have to be stopped - tears will be shed for you by at least one person, either in awe and joy, or in despair and loss, respectively. You're worth being cared about that much, and it's a privilege to be in a position where I can care about you that much, no matter how heavy it gets sometimes.

I'll leave you with this:

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I know it must be metaphorically stormy where you are, but open those lovely eyes of yours if you have them closed, because there's a lot of awesome, loving, kind, and wholesome stuff that you can experience still; you just haven't seen all of it yet. Show us those solvable problems. Be kind to yourself so that you can keep yourself together in a way that's genuine and healthy, instead of the harsh and humanity-denying way that you're accustomed to. Be willing to ask for help when you need it, so that the people who care about you can do the hardest parts together with you. You have to be good to yourself and you have to count on the healthy, loving people around you in order to be at your best. This is the true kind of love.

Anyhoot, I've probably prattled on a bit too long at this point, haha. So I'll end it here with the usual reminders: you are lovable and worthy, so make sure you treat yourself as such. Stay safe out there while you do your things. Don't disappear, and don't go so far away that no one can reach you anymore; you haven't seen everything yet.

I'll write again very soon.

Your friend, Lumine

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