Cheese = Ugly

Aaaaaaugh this review has been a long time coming. And it's an ugly one - so ugly. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Galaxy Nutritional Foods' Veggie Slices. They are thick. They are orange. They are jiggly. And they are nasty. They are also part of the reason why I am now a vegetarian rather than a vegan.

Let me take you back eight years or so, when I was a fledgling, newly-hatched little veggie warrior. When I stopped eating meat, I went balls-out and became a full-on vegan, rather than easing my way into vegetarianism. No milk products, no egg products, nothing. And I was woefully underprepared. I started having crazy cravings for cheese, any kind of cheese, even those Kraft singles that I never liked to begin with. Having found soy milk and other soy products to be tolerable, I thought soy cheese would be okay too. And I noticed that pretty much every grocery store across Ontario - even crappy ones that didn't have so much as a veggie dog in their coolers - carried some of Galaxy's products.

Giving their cheese a quick once-over, it seemed innocuous enough. At the time of my first purchase (side note - 12 slices usually cost $4 0r $5 Canadian), I unfortunately didn't know as much about hidden animal ingredients as I do now, and had no clue that this soy cheese contains casein, a non-vegan milk protein. To be honest, I always thought to myself, "Why the hell would anyone who doesn't object to the use of milk want to buy soy cheese? And why would a company manufacturing non-milk cheese use a milk ingredient in it?" I realize now that non-veg*ns who are lactose intolerant might want to buy soy cheese, but I'm still not completely sure why Galaxy puts casein in this stuff. And apparently they do make a true vegan cheese now, but it's nowhere near as widely available as this one... I've actually never seen it at any grocery store, only online. Weird.

Aaaanyway - in addition to the cheese having questionable ingredients, it tastes really freaking gross. The slices admittedly look much like Kraft cheese slices, all woobly and orange and stuff (which is nasty in and of itself), but the similarities end there. Not that Kraft slices are awesome or anything, but at least they melt and taste moderately cheesy. The Galaxy slices never really melt. I found this strange, given that the package says something about them having a "gourmet melt". What does that even mean?! Maybe it's a euphemism for, "Yes, you can get them warm, but that's about it." Don't bother trying to make a grilled cheese with them... you'll be hard-pressed to get the bread to stick together, seriously. And if you do what I did, which is to throw down your spatula and say, "Screw it, I'm eating this toasted bread with weird orange sh*t loosely placed in the middle anyway," do yourself a favour and have a trash can nearby. You do not want to punish yourself by taking more than one experimental bite. Hell, I'm writing this to tell you not to even take that first bite! Just say no.

Since I've typically had no other soy cheese options available, I will admit I bought this crap more than once - always motivated by cheese-craving-induced insanity. Then I found out it wasn't vegan anyway, and got kind of angry. And thennnn I thought, "Why am I making myself so unhappy?" I know there are a lot of people out there who won't necessarily agree with me on this, and your opinion is valid, but over time I came to decide that I don't really object morally to the consumption of animal milk anyway; when created responsibly, no one has to suffer or die for it. So I chucked Galaxy's slices out the window and haven't looked back.

Product and nutritional info: http://www.galaxyfoods.com/galaxy-products/soy-cheese/veggie-2/veggie-slices/

Cordon Verde = Ugly

As I mentioned in the earlier programming note, I recently relocated to Brazil. And not just anywhere in Brazil, but the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, which is renowned for its churrasco (Brazilian barbecue). Sooo I am really out of my element here in the state capital of Porto Alegre, deep in cow-land, and am often looked at a little funny when I ask for things sem carne (without meat). But I am managing! Surprisingly, wonderfully, there is a small veggie scene here with a few great restaurants and some soy products at the grocery stores.

So far, unfortunately, the availability of said soy products has been sporadic at best. I once found veggie dogs at one grocery store, but haven't seen them there since. Sometimes the stores stock veggie burgers, sometimes they don't. But one company that always seems to have at least a veg*n product or two available at every grocery store is Perdigão.

Perdigão doesn't just make vegetarian products; they also make a range of meat products and frozen entrées, which I believe are more popular here than are their veggie options. But no matter - I am glad they offer animal-free options at all! So I was passing by their rather large section of frozen goods one day when the words proteína de soja (soy protein) jumped out at me. They were on a box of a product called Cordon Verde Vegetal ("Vegetable Cordon Green" instead of "Cordon Bleu" - cute).

The ingredients listed included no animal products whatsoever - nice! - and a decent amount of protein/etc., so I grabbed the box and headed on my merry way. Once home, I followed the microwave instructions for preparing an individual portion. The listed cooking time seemed kind of lengthy for one small filet, but I figured Perdigão knew their stuff better than I would, so I did exactly as told.

Aaaand the cordon verde came out terrible. Oh so very terrible. The crumbly breaded exterior had now hardened into firm little pebbles. It took a good steak knife and a few Portuguese curse words to cut through the filet, and when I finally managed it, the gooey, creamy interior that I had expected turned out to have dried out completely. (Remember that scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, where they cut open in the turkey and a sort of dry cough of smoke puffs out? It was like that.) The sauce apparently disappeared and became part of one grey sandy mass. But I was not to be defeated! I sawed through my little cordon verde and ground my teeth through at least five or six bites. (And then I gave up.)

The most reasonable conclusion would be that I simply overcooked the product, no? It would seem that I simply had to adjust my cooking time! After all, from what I could taste of it, there was nothing overtly offensive about the flavouring. So I later grabbed another one, microwaved for about half the listed time, and hoped for the best. No dice. The cordon verde was admittedly much more moist this time, but the texture was still very strange, the sauce was generally indistinguishable from the veggie-meat, and the flavour was salty-bland at best.

So... Will I buy this again? I wish I could say no, but given my quasi-limited options at the moment, I might not have a choice! At least it was vegan, affordable, and mostly nutritious. Maybe if I cover it in some ketchup it'll be more bearable. I'll let you know.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.perdigao.com.br/comidadeverdade/_produtosDetalhes.cfm?produto=120

Burger = Ugly

So this is the first of what I expect will be several veggie burger reviews. I say this because the standard veg*n option at most restaurants is a burger. (And if they don't have veggie burgers, you end up with a salad, right? Although at one restaurant all they were able to offer me was a plate of boiled cauliflower and carrots. I'm not even joking.) How A&W managed to screw up a simple burger so badly with their Swiss Veggie Deluxe is beyond me, but they did it!

I think the key to a good veggie burger is to keep it simple. Just because I'm a vegetarian doesn't mean that I have completely different taste buds from an omnivore! If A&W had just dressed the patty with a piece of cheddar cheese, and put it on a normal freaking bun, I wouldn't have had much of a problem. No, the portobello and soy patty isn't fantastic, but it isn't all that different from what you usually get.

The real issue is everything they do after cooking the patty. They put it on a dense whole wheat bun (I'm eating at A&W, people! Don't bother trying to health me up. Give me that soft white bun and leave me alone), splooge a thin/runny ranch sauce alllllll over the patty (why ranch??), add a pungent slice of swiss cheese, and top it off with pickles for an added (gross) bonus.

The end result is really quite revolting. The ranch sauce was so plentiful that it soaked through the bun and made the patty fall apart. I'm not great with condiments as it is, and ended up gagging and throwing most of the burger away and eating too many fries to compensate.

There actually came a later day when the only food option nearby was A&W, so with a sigh I decided to order the burger again. This time, I told the cashier that I only wanted the veggie patty with a piece of cheddar cheese on a white bun. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "I don't understand, that's not what the burger is." I very slowly repeated myself and explained as nicely as possible that I find the dressing/etc. gross. She said, "Well, you're not getting the actual swiss deluxe then." I said that this was fine. When my food was ready, I unwrapped the burger and found that it was still on a whole wheat bun, and still had the swiss cheese, but at least the sauce wasn't there. So it was still quasi-nasty, but at least it held together while I ate it.

In terms of how good/bad this is for you nutritionally... it appears that there is a buttload of sodium in it, but it also has a fair amount of protein and iron, so that's nice. Keep in mind that, even without the cheese (good luck getting the cashier/cook to leave it off!), the burger is vegetarian and not vegan. As a sidenote - I tried but for the life of me could not find a picture of this piece of crap. Maybe the marketing people know just how ugly it really is.

Product and nutrition info: http://www.aw.ca/foodfacts.nsf/listbyref_new/Burgers-15

Homemade Marshmallows = Ugly

(Yes, that is an entirely accurate artist's rendering of the marshmallows, and no they did not deserve an actual photograph. Now on to the review. Shush.)

Before I went veggie, I didn't realize just how many foods have gelatin in them. I mean, there was the obvious Jell-o, but other than that I really didn't think about it. In addition, I didn't know that gelatin was such a gross, carcass-filled thing. For those of you who may not know already, gelatin is a glutinous substance that is the result of boiling ligaments, bones, skin, and other leftover parts of dead animals in water. I can't imagine who thought to do this for the first time, and who then decided to use the globby muck to make things like jelly and candy, but they must have been one crazy mofo (Bill Cosby, was that you?!).

Sooo it may have been my lovely veggie friend (see earlier posts) who clued me in, or it may have been some of the books I read before becoming a vegetarian, but luckily I learned quickly about the horrors of gelatin and cut that poop out of my diet right away. Sadly getting rid of gelatin also meant getting rid of Skittles, Starburst, most brands of gummy candy, most yogurts, marshmallows, and more. I happened to become a vegetarian on a beautiful summer day, smack-dab in the middle of prime camping season. And at the time, that meant no roasted marshmallows or s'mores for me - boooo. I found a company online that makes vegan marshmallows (I did eventually purchase these and I promise to review them at some point), but they take kind of a long time to ship and I was in a hurry. So. I looked up a few recipes... Most of them were pretty much the same, with ingredients including sugar, salt, vanilla, water, corn syrup, cornstarch, and most importantly agar (basically the vegan equivalent of gelatin).

You will often see agar and carageenan in vegetarian products that have jelly-ish (not to be confused with jelly-fish! teehee) properties. It was difficult to find agar at a store nearby. I ended up coming across it at a small vegetarian shop in downtown Ottawa, and it was very expensive - about $10 Canadian for a package that was roughly half the size of a small bag of chocolate chips. It was a clear plastic package and the agar looked like tiny translucent white flakes. Luckily you only need very small amounts in most recipes, so at least the purchase wasn't entirely uneconomical.

I swear on all things holy that I followed the recipe instructions to the best of my ability - and I'm not a bad cook! I dutifully soaked a couple of teaspoons of agar in cold water for a while, and meanwhile cooked the other ingredients in a pan on the stove up to what I THOUGHT was the required "firmball stage" (118 degrees Celsius or 244 degrees Fahrenheit). You apparently need to stick a candy thermometer into the mixture to test this. I couldn't find one and therefore tried to use a meat thermometer, which was clearly idiotic since it didn't measure high enough. Supposedly something has reached the firmball stage when you can drop some of it into a glass of water and it forms little balls? I don't know. I guess it was beyond me.

From my understanding, my mixture never reached the firmball point, or maybe just went way past it, because at that temperature you are supposed to pour it over your agar-water mixture and then blend it together with a hand-mixer, and then it will turn into a fluffy white substance, which you pour into a pan, dust with cornstarch, and let sit overnight. It never became puffy and white. It was a greyish, brownish, sticky muck. I loaded it up with cornstarch in a vain attempt to hide its hideousness, but that just made it worse. I tried to cut it into marshmallow shapes, but imagine trying to cut shapes out of something akin to Vaseline. It ain't gonna happen.

Amazingly, dumbfoundingly, the muck tasted a lot like real marshmallows. I don't know why or how. But I couldn't bring myself to eat more than a tablespoon or two. It was too much. And the pan was a royal pain in the arse to clean when I finally got around to it. Ugh. Factoring in the price, the time, the effort, and the insanely disappointing final product, I would say it's a terrible idea to try to make these again. Look at that picture, kids! Look at it and then look at a real marshmallow. Exactly.

Manicotti = Ugly

It had to happen sooner or later. Eat Italian Manicotti is the first of the uglies.

I actually really like the idea and effort behind Eat Italian's product line. Their website and product packaging are styled nicely too. I am guessing the available range of quality gluten-free products is somewhat limited, and this company has attempted to create something convenient (their line consists entirely of frozen entrées), healthy, and tasty that can be enjoyed by people with gluten issues. Sadly the tasty part isn't really there, but I'm sure they tried.

I am not one of said people who cannot eat gluten. I just happened to stumble across the manicotti while with a friend/co-worker at the local grocery store on our lunch break (yes, I have a real job, *sigh*). This particular store has a decent healthy foods section, including a freezer full of organic and vegetarian dinners, so I thought I might find something yummy and satisfying that would be better for me than the large box of wedge fries (cooked in vegetable oil, don't worry!) that was calling my name from the deli.

TV dinners generally seem pretty much the same to me: a small amount of pasta or rice, some sauce, and some other ingredient to liven things up. Pop that business in the microwave and - *ding!* - five minutes later you have a soggy, lukewarm mush that tastes faintly of cardboard. But I have found some that are at least a little better than others (including Amy's rice bowls, which I will have to review sometime), so I try to keep an open mind. I saw the Eat Italian dinners in the above-noted freezer and asked my friend what he thought. They were expensive (about $7 Canadian), but he agreed that the pictures on the boxes looked nice enough, so we checked to see if any of them were vegetarian. It turned out that three of the five varieties were, so I grabbed the nearest one (the manicotti) and headed to the cash.

Kids, I can't stress strongly enough how very different the actual product was from what I expected. Judging from the picture, I thought I would be getting a couple of thick, creamy, cheese-filled pasta rolls with a few dollops of tomato sauce added for good measure. Maybe this was naïve of me? Je ne sais pas. Before cooking, the stuff did look terrible but I didn't think much of it because most TV dinners are like that. After cooking, however, it looked even worse. I could barely distinguish the pasta rolls from the rest of the glop. The cheesy filling must have splooged out and then lost itself in the tomato sauce. And oh, the tomato sauce! The tomato sauce, the tomato sauce, the tomato sauce. There was just so much of it. It was almost overflowing out of the container. I do not have the steadiest hand in the world and of course ended up with a few orangey-red splatters on my white cotton dress (sidenote - after washing, I think I can still kind of see the splatters... booo). It was the most watery tomato sauce I have ever encountered.

I believe that was the main problem. That damn sauce - which comprised the bulk of the product - was so watery that the whole meal had little to no taste. And what taste it DID have was poo. The pasta (wherever the hell it went to) may as well have been non-existent. And don't even ask about the cheese. I thiiiink it ended up being the grainy little chunks spread out through the tomato-water, but that may have been something else.

Being the deal-seeking girl that I am (hey, those student loans don't pay themselves off!), I was honestly a little pissed that I spent so much on this meal, especially since I gave up trying to eat it about halfway through. I could have gotten three boxes of wedge fries for that price!

Product and nutrition info: http://www.eatitalian.ca/manicotti-instructions.html