Colombian Black Bean Soup photo by Hannah Kaminsky

Hannah Kaminsky shares several delicious black bean-based vegan recipes in the latest issue of Vegan Journal. Enjoy Colombian Black Bean Soup, Mole Enchiladas, Black Bean Chipotle Chile, Loaded Spanish Sweet Potatoes, and Tex-Mex Pasta Salad.

Read the entire article here: https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2023issue3/2023_issue3_modern_classics.php

To subscribe to Vegan Journal in the USA, see: https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php

Photo from Spicy Moon

Finally had a chance to dine at Spicy Moon’s East Village location in New York City. Their vegan Szechuan Chinese food is absolutely delicious! If you’re into spicy dishes, this restaurant is definitely worth a try. We enjoyed Dan Dan Noodles and Scallion Style Mixed Vegetable with Bean Curd. The food was perfectly cooked and beautifully presented.

There are 3 locations for Spicy Moon in New York City. Information can be found here: https://www.spicymoonnyc.com/

By Priscila Camargo Reis, VRG intern from Brazil

Santos is a mid-sized city on the coast of São Paulo County, in Brazil. It is beautiful, flat, with a good bicycle route, and is where some people who worked hard in the overwhelming city of São Paulo and earned a lot of money, choose to live their retired life. For that reason and due to being a touristic place, it is hard to live there, since for those living on a typical Brazilian income it is an extremely expensive city.

As a result, the vegan restaurants also will have a bitter price (be expensive). In Brazil veganism is still not very popular and is usually thought of being only for higher income people. I don’t have a high purchasing power yet, but my belly doesn’t care about this. And something my stomach discovered is that vegan restaurants from Santo don’t have a bitter taste, but the opposite. The  vegan restaurants are delicious and there are several of them around the city. From my point of view, it is a good number of vegan businesses for a city the size of Santos, since the majority of cities that size have hardly any vegan options.

The restaurant I patronized most -and which bankrupted me a little bit- is called Master Veggie. It is very well located, in a central region and it is open from 11 am to 11 pm, from Tuesday to Sunday. It is a small place, stripped-down style, with super friendly, attentive and helpful attendants, and it also has a small grocery store offering vegan food. Actually, Master Veggie is a burger shop, but they also serve lunch and dinner a la carte. You can eat there, take away, or ask for delivery.

The hamburgers are tasty, a good size, and not just soy-based. But the so called salty snacks, despite being wonderfully delicious, are too small for their price, except for the onions rings, which are a good size. There are vegan milkshakes. Although there is no freshly made juice (something that Brazilians are blessed with finding everywhere), they do have kombucha! Master Veggie serves desserts and vegan ice cream, too.

The first dish I tried was a lunch plate. A “PF” is how it’s called. Parmigiana, consisted of white rice, salad (tomatoes, lettuce, and a seed mix), French fries, and one veggie meat (selected from about ten options) with nut cheese and homemade sauce. When I’ve been sad, a chocolate milkshake and French fries were my comfort food.

Every time I traveled, I ordered one of their hamburgers. I’ve tried at least three different types, including a very new one made of onion rings. Usually I used to order a bean burger (we can choose the protein) and the sauces were all tasty.

I said good bye with a lunch, too, to close the cycle. I’ve ordered The “saladão” (big salad), that an assistant told me was the  biggest deity of the place. It followed the standard of beautiful, yummy, and nutritious. However, it was much more light than the other options. It included leafy green mix, carrot, tomatoes, purple onion, mini (and cute) tofu cubes, lemon, bitter sweet sauce, salty granola (did you know this exists?), and more than ten veggie meat options to be chosen, covered by melted nut cheese. I still can feel this dish in my mouth.

So, if you visit Santos, Brazil, it is worthy doing a gastronomic tour to this restaurant/snack bar. And, please, be sure to purchase frozen jackfruit (jaca) meat. You will surely be surprised how the Brazilians managed to turn a fruit into shredded fowl. Bon apétit.

For more info, visit https://www.facebook.com/masterveggiebr/

When traveling in the United States and looking for restaurants, go to https://www.vrg.org/restaurant/index.php

Each issue of Vegan Journal contains a column called Vegan Action where we feature an individual promoting veganism through their profession or other community activity. In the latest issue we feature Katya Galbis, LD.

Read the entire article here: https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2023issue3/2023_issue3_vegan_action.php

To subscribe to Vegan Journal in the USA, see: https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php

Vegan frozen fruit bars and pops come in a variety of flavors. In the latest issue of Vegan Journal we review organic vegan pops and bars and list calories, total sugar, added sugar, and saturated fat (if any).

Read the entire article here: https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2023issue3/2023_issue3_vegan_organics.php

To subscribe to Vegan Journal in the USA, see: https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php

Kadai Tofu photo from Ahimsa

If you happen to be in New York City, you might want to visit Ahimsa. This vegetarian restaurant clearly marks all their vegan options and offers a separate Jain menu as well. You can dine on both northern and southern Indian cuisine including dosas, vegan curries, and more. We sampled a Masala Dosa, Kadai Tofu (a tofu dish in tomato sauce with spices), and Palak Tofu (a tofu dish with spinach and spices). The dishes were all good. More information on Ahimsa can be found here: https://ahimsanyc.com/

Mary’s Gone Crackers now offers Plant-Based Cheddar and Plant-Based Cheese & Herb Crackers. Read our review in the latest issue of Vegan Journal here: https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2023issue3/2023_issue3_veggie_bits.php

To subscribe to Vegan Journal in the USA, see: https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php

People generally think of sweet dishes when chocolate is featured; however, chocolate is often used in savory recipes. Debra Daniels-Zeller’s previous VRG Journal article called The Savory Side of Chocolate features these vegan dishes: Chocolate Balsamic Vinaigrette; Slow-Simmered Black-Eyed Peas and Corn in Barbecue Sauce; Black Bean and Yam Enchiladas Infused with Chocolate; Sweet and Smoky Barbecue Sauce with a Hint of Chocolate; Baked Tempeh in Sweet and Smoky Barbecue Sauce; Chocolate Mole; Chocolate-Infused Shepherd’s Pie; and Chocolate Sweet Potato Drop Biscuits. Debra also describes the various varieties of dark chocolate.

To subscribe to Vegan Journal in the USA, see: https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php

Every issue of Vegan Journal includes reviews of new vegan books we especially like. In the latest edition read about The Everyday Vegan Cheat Sheet by Hannah Kaminsky here: https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2023issue3/2023_issue3_book_reviews.php

To subscribe to Vegan Journal in the USA, see: https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php

By Jeanne Yacoubou, MS

In our recent article on the carbon footprints of vegan vs. meat pizza, we relied on the average carbon emissions – expressed as kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents – associated with the production of each pizza component, whether it be broccoli or bacon. These values were based in large part on the 2018 article by Poore & Nemecek titled Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers.

Using estimates based on averages was the easiest way to deal with huge amounts of data from more than 38,000 farms in 119 countries. We cannot fault the investigators for choosing this way to present their findings.

However, a closer look at the data reveals major differences from farm to farm. We created a table that shows the wide variations – and which leads us to draw a few important conclusions that our pizza calculations don’t reveal. These numbers refer to the kilograms of CO_2eq emitted per 100 grams of protein. The median (middle value in a range) is in the last column. This table is based on the graphical analysis by Our World in Data:

The major general conclusion from this table is that all four plant proteins – even when their production yields comparatively higher emissions than more efficient methods of producing them – are generally associated with fewer carbon emissions than animal proteins produced by the lowest-emitting (most efficient) method. This is true all over the world considering all food production systems.

Based on this conclusion, we see that even “sustainable” meat (produced with the fewest carbon emissions) is not as carbon-friendly as even the least efficiently produced plant proteins in every case except two (chicken vs. nuts or tofu). “Sustainable” meat is certainly never carbon-friendlier than the most efficiently produced plant proteins.

We also learn from this table that:

1. In the case of high efficiency production (second column), dairy cheese has a higher carbon footprint than chicken and the same as pork.
2. The trees nuts grow on often absorb more carbon emissions than nut production creates, resulting in nuts’ negative carbon footprint.