Recipe by Nadia Fragnito

Enjoy these nourishing walnut meatballs with pasta or crusty bread for a hearty Italian meal that will impress the whole family.

Serves: 6 
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

Walnut Polpette

• 2 cups walnuts
• 2 slices seeded bread (or your favourite bread)
• 1 tablespoon vegan ‘beef’ style stock powder
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
• ¼ cup water
• handful of fresh parsley
• several generous dashes of liquid smoke (optional)

Pomodoro Sugo

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
• 700g tomato passata
• 1 teaspoon salt
• few basil leaves (optional)

Method

Walnut Polpette

Into a blender or food processor, pulse walnuts and bread briefly.

Add remaining ingredients except the water and process until it begins to resemble mince. Now with the blender still running, add the water. The mixture should now be moist and malleable.

Roll the mixture into balls the size of a walnut shell (or slightly larger if you like) and place on an oven tray lined with baking paper.

Bake in a preheated 180C oven for 25 minutes. Turning over carefully half way through.

Meanwhile, make the pomodoro sauce.

Pomodoro sugo

In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over a low-medium heat and add the garlic. Allow the garlic to infused for 1-2 minutes, stirring often, ensuring it doesn’t brown.

Stir through the passata, salt and basil leaves. Cover and simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Once out of the oven, stir the polpette gently through the tomato sugo and simmer on low for a few minutes so the balls soak up some of the liquid.

Remove from the heat and stir through your favourite pasta or enjoy on their own as a side or starter along with fresh crusty bread for dipping.

NOTE: This dish can easily be made gluten free – just replace with slices of your favourite gluten free bread/breadcrumbs.

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

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“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Mark Twain

The notion of using other animals is ingrained in our collective consciousness and speciesist culture. It’s drilled into us from an early age, and it is present in all of societies institutions. Indeed, animal use runs so deep that many well-meaning people fail to question the injustices of animal use, even though it’s ubiquitous.  I submit, I never knew what it felt like not to use other animals because using animals was a part of my identity; it was an integral part of who I believed I was. Before I started living vegan, I had lots of reasons to keep on doing what I was doing: “Where do I get my protein? We need to eat animals to survive; Living vegan is too hard, too expensive” and so on. 

In hindsight, the best justification I had for using other animals was because I believed it was necessary for human health. However, after I considered the totality of the evidence, I realised that a plant-based diet was more than adequate for individuals in all stages of the life cycle.¹ Despite this realisation, I continued to justify the unjustifiable. It wasn’t until one day, as I was about to jump down that rabbit hole of excuses again (no offense rabbits!) when I asked myself: Do you want to be that person anymore? Do you want to be someone that tries to justify the needless breeding, using, and killing of other sentient beings? A voice inside me answered: No, I don’t. I was left with a simple choice, do I continue brutalising others for my benefit, or do I pull the plug on these injustices? Naturally, I had no other option but to live vegan immediately. 

Once I internalised the ethical position – once I knew that my non-vegan choices created victims, there was no turning back. When I reflect on that whole experience of going from non-vegan one second to vegan the next, I realised the only person stopping me from living vegan was me and my ballooning ego. From that same experience, I also learned that I was selfish, wilfully ignorant, and I just wanted to be right no matter how irrational my arguments against veganism were. 

If you believe other animals are worthy of moral consideration, please take a minute to pause, reflect, and question your behaviour: “Do my actions (using animals) align with my values (moral concern for animals)?” If you find that you are living in misalignment with your core beliefs, come into congruence; come into alignment with who you are. And to do that means living vegan. 

It might just be the best decision you will ever make. 

By Alan

We hope you enjoyed our guest blog. If you have any feedback or if you’d like to become a Happy Vegan Living contributor – contact us via our social pages or on our Contact Us page.

Recipe by Nadia Fragnito

You won’t need that dairy version anymore – a block of tofu, a few flavourful additions and you can create your very own creamy dreamy alternative.

Ingredients

• 250g firm tofu
• 1/4 cup full-fat soy milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons of vinegar or lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• extra generous glug of olive oil

to serve: cracked black pepper and drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Method

​Add all ingredients to a food processor. Process until it reaches a ricotta consistency, smooth but with a touch of graininess. While the blender is running, add a dash more soy milk for extra creaminess.

For an authentic looking ricotta, press into a ricotta cheese mould, wrap and leave in the fridge for 3 hours to overnight. When ready to serve unmould onto a plate, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with black pepper.

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

If you would like to become a Happy Vegan Living recipe contributor – contact us via our social pages or on our Contact Us page.

I had hiked well over 50km of Petra, which barely touched the sides, absorbing everything I could in the little time I had. The feel of the sand, which is heavy yet fine, the touch of the dry air on the skin and in my lungs, the smoothness of the ancient carved stones. Imagining the early Nabateans creating and carving the “Lost City”, one of the world’s most ingenious architectural sites. Seeing the city bear the marks of geographical, cultural and religious changes, through historical conquering and mother nature. The very essence of Petra talks to you intimately, independently, and on that beautifully clear warm morning, sitting on that ancient rock I felt this.

With each inhale we absorb the story of life and death on earth, the idea that we are inhaling history’s exhalations is thrilling to me. The implications are wild, I am sitting at The Monastery, a childhood dream. I’ve inhaled the breath of the Nabatean who carved the final pillar, and that of my young self – saying the word Petra, the breath of my children when they took their first. I’ve inhaled the last breath of my beautiful Nana Bess, that of Hilary and Tenzing, Caesar, a podium finisher, a moon walker, A Byzantine merchant and every breath there was, including the breath of all sentient creatures. We are inseparable you and me. It has been said that a breath taken when present is a compression of time and space, and I felt that.

A month after that November morning the world was hearing whisperings of an unknown illness. Literally what can happen in the blink of an eye? Covid-19 can. Here we are in June and globally our individual landscapes have changed in an unprecedented and alarming manner. Our future choices will forever be affected. There is light though, and it’s begging to reach the tunnel but the light, it needs for us to make better choices.

The incredibly esteemed, beautiful late poet, Mary Oliver has coined a stunningly, solid question that is more relevant today than it’s ever been.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”.

Surely we should be roused to act on pure fact, that is, if we want to continue to see the world, to be inspired by nature, to feel the smoothness of ancient carved stones, to see our loved ones, to move freely, to stand close to someone, to not put our front line workers in an unprecedented firing line. And that pure fact is that animal exploitation leads to human catastrophe.

Slaughterhouses, live animal markets, animal agriculture, historically, these industries are responsible for many devastating disease outbreaks. Obeying the #Stayathome policy saved lives. But if we want to save more lives in the future, we need to truly understand the power our purchasing choices have.

Do we purchase to support industries that historically create all zoonotic diseases and we permanently live with staying at home or do we choose to use our purchasing power in a way that allows for a magnificent answer to Mary Oliver’s question?

Our choices make us inseparable and I feel that, today the world feels that. What I hope to do, one day, on an adventure, is to take that future breath, the one that is a compression of time and space, with an inhalation that is abundant with exhales that are born out of choices made with love and compassion.

Written by Barbarah White

We hope you enjoyed our first guest blog. If you have any feedback or if you’d like to become a Happy Vegan Living contributor – contact us via our social pages or on our Contact Us page.