Meatless Monday: Vegans on My Mind, a Continuing Saga

Eggless Cinnamon Apple Coffee Cake

I have been reflecting on vegans quite a bit over the past year. This Summer’s egg recall had me considering for the first time what it would mean to go without eggs. In October I spent time with my college roommate who is trending toward veganism. And last month I had the task of preparing vegan-friendly dishes for the holiday feast.


I have some experience with tofu. I do know how to make both a tofu scramble which is a passable substitute for scrambled eggs and a pretty tasty eggless egg salad. And I have a great repertoire of recipes for legumes. While it is not too difficult for me to come up with a vegan main course, it is rather hard for me to refrain from adding a generous sprinkle of cheese to top off a dish of rice and beans. 

Still, by far my biggest vegan challenge falls in the realm of desserts. I have learned how to make a flaky pie crust using canola oil. I have discovered articles and lists, such as this detailed one from PETA, about what to substitute for eggs in baked goods. But the articles all advise that it is much easier to substitute for 1 or 2 eggs than it is to substitute for more. There doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to make an eggless meringue or angel food cake. Bananas, applesauce, and tofu all have their place, but sometimes the recipe calls for “egg replacer.” In my October post about the egg recall, I promised to look into such products and to report back.

Here is what I found. There are two readily available products marketed as “egg replacer.” Each has a shelf life about a year with no refrigeration required. PETA references one called Ener-G Egg Replacer, which is free of gluten, wheat, casein, dairy, yeast, egg, soy and nuts but  does contain some multisyllabic ingredients as well as potato starch. I opted to purchase the second — Bob’s Red Mill All Natural Egg Replacer — for my experiment, since I was already a fan of Bob’s whole wheat pastry flour. Bob’s products are milled in the Northwest using old stone grinding equipment. This egg replacer contains whole soy flour, wheat gluten, corn syrup solids, and algin (from algae). The instructions on the package (which I trusted based on an earlier success with Bob’s recipe for carrot cake on the pastry flour bag) called for mixing 1 tablespoon of egg replacer with 3 tablespoons of water for each whole egg to be replaced.

I started small, with a simple recipe for a Cinnamon Apple Coffee Cake. The recipe called for a small amount of milk, 1 egg, and some melted shortening to accompany the dry ingredients in the batter, and 2 tablespoons of butter in the streusel topping. I substituted canola oil for the shortening and the egg replacer for the egg, but I didn’t monkey with the rest—this time. The result is pictured. It was delicious. If anything, it tasted even better than usual. With some 63 tablespoons remaining in my 16 oz. bag of egg replacer, plenty more experiments will follow. Next up is to make this cake with soy milk and vegan-friendly margarine. If it works I’ll publish the recipe. All I need is time…

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Not Quite the Last Weekend in August Updates

Even the most intrepid blogger needs a break now and then. I took one and have returned rested, refreshed, and full of new ideas. You will probably hear of an adventure or two in the coming days. But, for now, here are the updates for AUGUST!

Our solar fan is turning away, helping us to stay cool during the unseasonably warm late summer days whenever they come around (Cooling with the Sun: 9/1).

Shark sightings continued to plague Cape Cod swimmers (Times Are Strange: 7/16). One was tagged off the coast of Truro on August 23, and sighting of what turned out to be a harmless basking shark forced swimmers out of the waters of Nauset Beach on August 27. But hurricanes and riptides have become the more serious threat.

A manatee was spotted at the Clinton Marina. And, for the first time ever, we had to stop our car on Farnam Drive in East Rock Park to let a doe and fawn stroll across the road. Deer sightings have traditionally been much more common on the west side of town.

Shooting of woodchucks (Woodchuck Wednesday: 6/16) has returned in Beaver Hills; apparently the traps were not a complete success. But a pair of pantyhose, stuffed with rags which had been liberally doused with fox urine, and then tossed into the hole under a porch in the Berkshires, has driven at least one woodchuck to seek a new residence.

Recycling left, trash on the right

The new trash/recycling program in which a newly-delivered small (48 gallon) brown toter becomes the trash container and the old trash toter (larger and blue) becomes the recycling container, began in New Haven’s Westville and Beaver Hills neighborhoods on August 23 (Weekend Updates 8/1). So far, at least on one street, it seems to be working. You can read more about it in the Independent.

Other News:

A second oil platform caught on fire off the Louisiana coast on September 2. The fire was quickly extinguished, all the workers were safely rescued, and the initial reports of an oil leak proved unfounded. The FDA would like us to believe that Gulf seafood is safe to eat, but not everyone agrees. The safety of the dispersants used to break up the spill remains the big question for many. A commercial fisherman was quoted asking in Time: "If I put fish in a barrel of water and poured oil and Dove detergent over that and mixed it up, would you eat that fish?"

The massive egg recall is the new poster child for the risks to humans posed by factory farming. You can read more about the risks to chickens here.

New Haven’s newest and greenest apartment building, 360 State Street, opened on August 1. It has many Green features, including a 400 kilowatt fuel cell which combines hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to produce electricity, heat and pure water. The largest residential installation of this type in the world, 360 State's fuel cell will generate
most of the building's energy needs.

August Birthdays:

Blogger, the Google product that allows me to publish ontheroadtogreenness turned 11 on August 31, and my blog turned a year old on August 14. This is my 72nd post. Thank you all for reading, commenting, making suggestions, and sharing with your friends over the past year. Having a blog has changed my life.