“Have you tasted this? OMG.”
One of the biggest ways to fight climate change is actually a personal climate step – to eat lower on the food chain, avoiding meat and other animal products. The climate think-tank Project Drawdown has found that switcing to a plant-based diet is usually in the top five of the best climate solutions, along with wind power, to fight climate change, <a href=”>https://www.drawdown.org/sectors/food-agriculture-land-use>https://www.drawdown.org/sectors/food-agriculture-land-use</a>.
So what’s perhaps the biggest barrier to eating vegan food especially? Probably a lack of familiarity. Many people may see vegan ingredients or dishes in the grocery store, and they can’t bring themselves to buy something they may not like, especially in financially tight times. Or they may have trouble choosing among all those plant milks – how does one keep them all straight?
The start of the party – brave souls step forth. Most are clustered around the milks, and the snowcone machine.
How about throwing a vegan-ingredient tasting party?
We often talk in the CSteps Facebook forum about actions that can help you eat more vegetarian meals (which are plant-based + dairy), vegan food (no animal products whatsoever), and the range in between. But this particular action is about helping your friends, family, and even neighborhood eat lower on the chain, making even MORE of a climate impact.
One of our senior editors threw this party with two friends, and that is a picture of the actual invitation drafted by one.
Here’s what a vegan-ingredient tasting party can consist of:
First – a selection of different types of ingredients for folks to just, well, taste. To know what to focus on with her friends, she did a survey beforehand on what friends wanted to try – the answer: the milks, cheeses, of course, bean dishes, and some faux meats. Not the Impossible or Beyond Beef burgers – many knew about these already; instead they wanted to try the seitans v. tempahs, and mushroom-based meatballs.
The second is a selection of some dishes to show the actual tasty possibilities. So friends also brought dishes to make it a vegan potluck as well. As she held it in her backyard due to COVID, she was able to invite the neighborhood. It was wonderfully successful, with friends, neighbors, and even some vegan enthusiasts hearing about it through the grapevine and bringing dishes.
The third component was supposed to be a cooking demonstration, as it was requested beforehand that partiers wanted to learn how to cook tofu! That didn’t work at our editor’s party, because the tofu-cooker was having too much fun talking to folks to actually cook.
Handy Hints:
• Pair up several co-hosts to pull off more variety. Try for at least one of you to be a long-time vegan, to know the tricks of the food markets.
• Have a tasting contest for the milks, definitely, and maybe some of the cheeses (the latter can get expensive.) Note, as many of these faux dairy products are made with nuts, make sure everyone knows what they are drinking, and eating in advance – and label!
• Some milks to try: flax, almond, macadamia nut, oat, soy, pea milk, coconut, hemp, and cashew. And there are many faux cheeses out there made with almonds or cashews.
• Have people write down their preference, then share the information online afterwards.
• Have some foods out on the table that people may also not realize are actually vegan – peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (a favorite in the United States), for instance, made everyone laugh at our editor’s party. A snow-cone machine (checked out from the local tool library) was also a big hit.
• Consider having a tofu or other cooking demonstration.
• If you have a solar oven, get it out at the same time! Grill some of those incredible vegan sausages!
• If you can hold this party in a place like your front or even backyard, where you would be comfortable with strangers coming, consider putting the party invite on the neighborhood list-serve – expanding your reach. Many will not come, but they will see the term ‘vegan’ become associated with the phrase “what coolness.”
• Approach a local community group for help with buying the ingredients; ask them to become co-sponsors of this neighborhood event.
• Consider putting out some vegan cookbooks for folks to leaf through, including <a = href’ https://www.smallplanet.org/diet-for-a-small-planet><Diet for a Small Planet,</a> plus some non-scary pamphlets, such as how to avoid climate-impacting soybeans versus environmentally friendly soybeans. Don’t include pamphlets that will turn people’s stomachs. The goal of this particular event is to focus on vegan=enjoyment.
• Perhaps even approach some local vegan restaurants to donate some ingredients and/or dishes.
• Pass around a non-dairy cheese and cracker board or a similar board to take introduce these foods for for snacking.
•And perhaps combine it for another event. A porch festival for bands was in my neighborhood, and I had the pleasure of getting chosen for a great singer. It drew a crowd, we took around a cheese plate, and folks were invited for more tasty dishes in the backyard.
One table of tasty dishes. Before the BPJ sandwiches arrived.
• Relax, enjoy, and share the tasting results and some pics afterwards!
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P.S. We won’t be sharing the results of the milk-tasting here, but several were remarked on as wonderful, and “I can’t tell this from [dairy] milk.” There was also one milk called “essence of rope.” We’ll leave it for you all to figure out which was that one.
This party was created with the support of DC Voters for Animals (https://dcvfa.com/), Green Neighbors DC (www.greenneighborsdc.org), and Jodi of the Neighborgoods.com.