Thursday, March 1, 2018

Perfect Vegan Pizza

I used to watch a lot of vegan YouTubers. Now I can count on one hand the number that I watch. So many vegan YouTubers get on my last nerve for many reasons. But the biggest reason I stopped watching so many is that I find them completely unrelatable. They seem to have these perfect lives, eating the perfect vegan diet with all organic food and it's just too much. And I'm very wary of people who make claims about how vegans never get sick, or the vegan diet makes you age in reverse, or if you eat the right vegan foods the weight will fall off. And it's pointless to watch recipe videos with ingredients I can't afford. So, I say all of that to say there still are a few relatable vegan Youtubers that I love to watch. I was watching one of them yesterday, and he inspired the delicious pizza I made for dinner. His name is Josef Lincoln and if you've never watched his videos you should! He does a lot of dollar store challenges and eats on a budget most of the time. But he also eats out and splurges now and again so if you're not on a dollar tree budget there's stuff for you too! He takes road trips and recently moved from the east coast to the west coast, LA to be exact. He actually came through SLC recently!! I think I hadn't discovered him yet because I would have tried to stalk him for sure! I seriously cannot recommend his channel enough! He did a hilarious video where he was going to eat like a perfect vegan for a week. Like the vegans I can't relate to. He was eating nothing but whole foods, no fake meats or cheeses, no oil and all of that. It was pretty funny and spoiler alert he didn't make it the whole week. And the video inspired me to make my perfect vegan whole foods pizza for dinner.
I whipped up a homemade cashew cheese with soaked cashews, lemon juice, tahini, salt and pepper and of course nooch.
Here is my pizza before going in the oven. I made a crust out of oat flour, and then added homemade pizza sauce, some cashew cheese, shredded Brussels sprouts, garlic, green onion an sliced green olives.
An here it is fresh out of the oven. This was one of my favorite pizzas I've made recently. I've been experimenting with a few different gluten free crusts, and I think the oatmeal crust is my favorite so far. An luckily for me it's also the cheapest! I just mixed oat flour with enough water to make a dough and kneaded it for maybe a minute and rolled it out. It was pretty pliable and easy to work with. And it was a nice texture after baking.
Kanye snuggling on Afro's belly last night. I really can't blame her because Afro has one of the most delicious floofy bellies ever!





9 comments:

  1. I agree with you on many of the YouTubers...sigh...

    I will check out the one you mentioned, tho! I have been looking for a few new ones!

    The pizza looks amazing, btw!

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    1. I know you love No Egg Craig an Josef is very similar. A little more sarcastic but really positive like Craig.

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  2. I don't watch too many vegan vlogs on YouTube. Occasionally, I watch Vegan Zombie, Cheap Lazy Vegan (I think you'd like her) and Avant Garde Vegan (you probably would not like him), but nobody with any regularity. I'm drawn to grocery hauls and weekly meal preps mostly. I guess that's why I like your grocery haul blog posts. Yeah - I'm that person who's always peering into other people's grocery carts at the market.

    All that said, I really do enjoy looking at gorgeous food photography on the more "professional" vegan blogs. Even if it's stuff I'd never attempt to make, the beautiful, mouth-watering photos are very inspirational and aspirational. I suppose that's the appeal of the more hoity-toity vlogs as well - the aspirational element.

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    1. I love Vegan Zombie and also Cheap Lazy Vegan. I love grocery hauls and pantry tours. And also what I eat. I guess I'm a food voyeur!I don't mind professional food photography and even fancy ingredients as much as I min people selling the perfect life in a hazy dreamy cloud of veganism.

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  3. I'm also with you on the Vegan YouTubers. Their diets are unattainable (especially if YouTube is their job… I don't have all day to stay home and cook perfect meals - that's nice for you if you can but for those of us that work outside the home it's not really possible) and it really bugs me that people make all of these unsubstantiated claims regarding health, aging etc. I also think a lot of them promote disordered eating which also really upsets me. I agree with Blake, I think you'd like Cheap Lazy Vegan and I like Lauren Toyota but the book promotion has been a bit much for me lately.

    All that said, your pizza looks absolutely freaking delicious! I'm glad the oat flour worked out and it looks so hearty and perfect. I've never tried pizza with cashew cheese but I think I definitely should!

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    1. I love Cheap Lazy vegan. I love Lauren Toyota too, but I've had to step back because of the heavy book promotion.
      Cashew cheese is sooooo good on pizza!! You definitely should try it!

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  4. I looooveeeeeee your cats! They're so cute!
    Other than that adorable goodness, your pizza looks incredible. I also agree with you about finding relatable vegans. You brought along some very important discussions that I want to discuss, especially seeing as it's Women's History Month.

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  5. That perfect vegan lifestyle bleeds into everything! Blogs, youtube, instagram, and facebook groups. Seriously, I read so many comments like "I could never in good conscience give my kid an oreo/tofu/fake meat/whatever, I wish I could" I can't help but think this person must be giving their kid something with it and not knowing (like soy by-products, or someone else giving their kids junk food) or this person has no hobbies outside of cooking in the kitchen all day.

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  6. That floofy belleh looks like a good place to snuggle in the cold!
    I much prefer block or instagram formats, so I rarely watch YouTube videos. But I definitely know what you mean about the 'perfect vegans' out there. If people want to live their life like that, that is super great, but they shouldn't shame people for choosing other paths. It makes it seem like we can never do enough, and it makes non-vegans think that veganism is just way too hard.

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