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:

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

“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.

You don’t have to look very hard online to find gory images or video footage of unfathomable things happening to animals.  These images may, in some cases push people over the line to become vegan at a time when they are receptive. But we have observed that even when faced with violent and graphic images or footage, most people are able to quickly rationalise their continued consumption and use of animals. Some of the reasons for this are as follows.

It is natural to want to believe that you are not supporting horrendous activities. Sometimes footage comes from unknown sources. This leads to an assumption that it’s come from a far-off place. People are quick to rationalise that there are laws or regulations that protect animals “at home”.  It is easier to believe terrible things only happen overseas and that things must be different and “better” locally.

It’s natural to try to find and believe information that supports your current view.  Often graphic and violent footage comes to light through undercover investigations. Regulatory bodies are quick to respond after an exposé and assure us that a facility has been shut down, staff have been reprimanded or removed, or there was some other anomaly that has since been rectified. This can make it easy to think that issues are not widespread, or that the upsetting incident was an aberration, a once-off, and everywhere else is okay.

In any case, a big problem with graphic and violent imagery is that it leads vegans and non-vegans alike down a path of focussing on a certain activity or species. This shifts the focus of advocacy to treatment and welfare rather than use.

There is no “good” way to exploit sentient beings who can never understand why they are being exploited or give informed consent. A focus on better treatment and welfare can leave people under an impression that it is acceptable to exploit animals if it is done in a “better way”.

We don’t want to get bogged down in conversations about “animal cruelty”, bigger cages or banning certain farming practices for example. In other words, we don’t want to get bogged down discussing matters of animal welfare. This is because animals have the right to not be used as human property, period. Whether that is for food, clothing, entertainment or any other use. This is an important distinction between animal rights and animal welfare. When we focus on animal welfare, we are unwittingly condoning animal use.

These are a few important reasons why we don’t use graphic imagery on our pages. It’s been a long while between blog posts, so we’ll be working on getting more writing done as well as having some guest bloggers contribute to the page. Thanks for reading and supporting the page, it means a lot!

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.

Gift giving and sharing a meal are ways in which we may connect or show those around us how much we care. As a vegan, this can be a bit of an emotional minefield, if you allow it to be.

Here are our top tips for Christmas:

1.            Host your own vegan Christmas

For the past four years we have hosted our own vegan Christmas at home. We invite friends and family (both vegan and non-vegan). Some years there’s been lots of people, some years a couple. Every year, it is relaxing, fun and enjoyable. We make loads of “traditional” Christmas food – all vegan of course!

2.            BYO delicious vegan food to share

Hosting Christmas may not be for you.  If you’re heading to a non-vegan gathering, take along a couple of delicious vegan dishes. This is your insurance policy to having a full tummy of guaranteed vegan food. It is also a great conversation starter and advocacy opportunity. If our experiences are anything to go by, everyone is always interested in the delicious food we bring. It always gets eaten – and not all by us! We love hearing non-vegans say how delicious our vegan food is! Best of all you avoid being a “hangry” vegan and reinforcing the old stereotype of the angry vegan with nothing to eat.

Some ideas of dishes to take along:
• Pasta bake/salad
• Potato bake/salad
• A big tray of roast veggies (doesn’t get much easier) – pack some vegan friendly gravy powder too!
• Coleslaw or other salad

If you have a sweet tooth you may like throw a dessert in your cache too. There are several vegan friendly Christmas puddings available here in Australia. Check out your local vegan options or whip up your favourite dessert.

Other easy things we often bring along to gatherings include vegan friendly crisps/nibbles and vegan friendly wine.

If you are concerned about offending a well meaning host, have a chat with them in advance. Let them know that you would love to contribute to the day by bringing along some dishes to share. Showing up to the party with food to share, drinks and a big smile is usually met with great enthusiasm!

3.            Pitch your gift ideas ahead of time

Don’t wait for Christmas day to receive a pile of non-vegan gifts. Although you may not be able to predict everyone who is likely to give you a gift, when it comes to family and close friends, it’s often possible to have a chat in advance about gift giving.

Some suggestions include:
• no gifts
• donation to your favourite vegan run animal sanctuary
• your favourite vegan sweets/chocolate
• your favourite vegan wine

4.            Leave the angst at home

If you have made the decision to head along to a non-vegan Christmas celebration, do yourself a favour and leave anger or hostility at home. We know it can be difficult to be around loved ones while they consume the flesh and secretions of sentient beings. Chances are you have had many conversations about veganism with them in the past. You might be wondering how they can continue to consume animals. There are great opportunities for advocacy at Christmas time, but avoid heated arguments. Share your delicious vegan food, share the message of animal rights with a calm and rational approach and, of course share the joy and the positivity that is veganism!

By bringing your vegan food, sharing a positive vegan message, and not living up to the stereotypes of the angry and argumentative vegan, you are changing the dialogue about veganism. Be patient with your family/friends who are yet to understand veganism and remember:

The last thing other animals need is another reason not to care about them. How we act towards other people can provide just such a reason. Being rude or judgmental [sic] doesn’t help any nonhuman. A coping technique I use (to quell my impatience, when I feel it bubbling-up in my throat) is to think of the people who ask questions I’ve been asked hundreds of times as mirrors. Yes, I think of them as mirrors. When I look at them, in other words, what I see is a reflection of who I used to be.

Like them, there was a time when I didn’t know how other animals were being treated.

Like them, there was a time when I knew but didn’t care.

Like them, there was a time when I knew and cared but not enough to change how I was living.

Like them, there was a time when I was . . . them!

That’s what I try to remind myself. I don’t want to come across as self righteous or arrogant. That would give the questioner another reason not to care about other animals, and I don’t want to do that—I don’t want to be that reason.

Tom Regan – via ARzone 20 May 2011 Full interview can be found here.

We hope that these tips help you have a joyous holiday season! If you have any questions, comments or feedback, get in touch with us via email or any of our social media pages.

Much love from the Happy Vegan Living team x

Thank you so much for clicking the link to read this – it means a lot! We’ll try to keep it short and sweet as we know time is precious.

Whether you are vegan or not, we hope that you enjoy the Happy Vegan Living community.

We are 100% volunteer run, so we do this in our “spare” time (ha! What is that?) between working full time, and generally living life. We won’t ever ask for donations to run the page, and we want you to know that. Your company is enough for us .

We find people assume we must be activists or health buffs or gluten free (what’s with that?). Online it can be quite a minefield of graphic images and heated arguments. To make matters worse, there is also a lot of confusing information about what veganism really is.  Not to mention vegans arguing with vegans making it hard for newcomers.

We can’t help but wonder, is this helping animals? Is this helping vegans? Is this helping people to become vegan?

Cue Happy Vegan Living.  

As the name suggests, we are Happy, we are Vegans, and at the time of publishing, we are Living .

We have created this space for both vegans and for people thinking of going vegan that is positive and friendly.  As we mentioned above, this is a community, not a business. We share ethical vegan education, (always minus the graphic imagery), recipes and vegan businesses and events.

You’ll see the words “easy” and “quick” on our recipes (we work full time remember!). We do apologise in advance for our bad food pics. The meals we post are our meals, if a photo is standing between us and eating, the photo is going to lose each time! In saying that, we think our recipes are actually pretty good, so we do hope you give them a go and enjoy them.

Supporting vegan/100% plant-based business and events is important to us. Please know that we do not receive any “kick-backs” or freebies from the businesses we share. Sometimes we will have visited as paying customers, and others we have become aware of online. If you know of or run a vegan business or event you would like us to share on our pages, we would love to hear about it.

This is a space we have created for you, so if there are other things you want to see on the page, please get in touch with us. 

Thanks for reading our first blog post! Love it? Hate it? Don’t care? Let us know anyway – contact us via our social pages or by emailing contact@happyveganliving.com

Serves: 6 
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 8 cups vegetable stock  
• 2 tbsp of soy or tamari sauce  
• 1 tbsp of finely grated fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp of white miso paste
• 1 tsp sriracha or more to taste
• 3 large cloves crushed
• 3-6 dried shiitake mushrooms
• ½ red onion finely sliced
• Greens of your choice – you cannot use too much greens so use as much as you like – remember that greens usually reduce down in volume significantly
• 1 -2 cup mushrooms sliced (you can use regular button mushrooms or Asian stir fry mushroom mix if you like)
• 1 block tofu (optional)
• Noodles of your choice cooked per package instructions and drained (we use Ramen noodles, udon noodles etc)

TOPPINGS: Fresh Chili, shallots, coriander, lemon/lime wedge

Method

1. Add water, stock, soy sauce, ginger, miso, sriracha and garlic to a large pot and bring to a boil. If you have time boil it for ten mins or so to let the flavours really get in there but it isn’t necessary.
2. Add, onion, mushrooms and greens to pot and cook for 5 minutes (overcooking isn’t the end of the world but your greens will basically disintegrate).
3. Carefully add the tofu and noodles* and cook for an additional three minutes.
4. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed. Ladle soup into bowls and add optional toppings.

* If you are making a big batch of this soup for yourself to have later meals DO NOT add the noodles as when you refrigerate the soup for later – the noodles will continue to absorb the soup and become too squashy. Just pop the cooked noodles in the bottom of your bowl and pour the hot soup over them when you serve yourself so that you have nice soup and cando fresh noodles when you go to have leftovers.

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

* The nutritional information provided above is to be used as a guide only and your meal may differ

Serves: 10
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes (2 hours including chilling)

Ingredients

• 2 sheets of vegan friendly puff pastry
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup vegan friendly custard powder  

• ¾ cup corn flour
• 4 cups of your favourite plant-based milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 60 grams of Nuttelex or vegan butter substitute/margarine

Icing Ingredients

• 2 cups of icing sugar (sifted)
• 1 teaspoon Nuttelex
• Passion fruit pulp (about 1 passion fruit) – we keep a tin in the pantry for impromptu vanilla slice *alternatively if you don’t have passion fruit use 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
• 1 – 2 teaspoons of water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 C. Place the puff pastry sheets on lined oven trays. Prick with a fork and bake for 10-15 minutes at 200C or until lightly browning on top. When you remove them from the oven flatten them if they are too “puffy” with a clean tea towel as you want them flat for the slice.
2. Mix the caster sugar, cornflour and custard powder in a saucepan. Gradually add milk, whisking continually to ensure no lumps form.
3. Add the Nuttelex/ vegan butter mixing continuously until the custard is thick over medium / high heat.
4. Remove from stove top and add the vanilla.
5. Let everything cool slightly. Place in a 22 cm square tin, first the pastry, then spread the custard evenly over the first sheet of pastry then place the second sheet of pastry on top. Place in the refrigerator.
6. Once completely cool, make the icing and ice the slice

Icing

Place icing sugar, Nuttelex (vegan butter) and passion fruit pulp in a bowl and mix. Add small amounts of water at a time until you have a medium textured spreadable icing. Spread evenly over the top of the cool slice. Only cut the slice when completely cool.

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

This recipe is adapted from: https://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/vanilla-slice-l1483.html

We haven’t tried it yet but it could make a great 24h snack served with vegan ice cream…

Serves: 3 (2 pancakes per serve)
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 cup of rolled oats
• 1 tsp of bicarbonate (baking) soda
• 1 tsp of cinnamon powder (substitute nutmeg if preferred)
• 1 scoop of vegan protein powder (we used White Wolf Nutrition Vanilla – you could definitely experiment here with different flavours for your pancakes)
• 1 medium banana
• 1 cup of your favourite mylk (we use Pure Harvest Activated Almond Milk)

Note – depending on the protein powder you use, as well as the sweetness of your banana, you can optionally add 1 tbsp of sweetener such as coconut sugar, agave etc. However,we do not use additional sweetener.

Method

1. Simply blend all items in your high-powered blender until it creates a smooth batter
2. Prepare a pan with a light spray of oil and heat to medium-high heat. Measure out 1/3 of a cup of batter (this makes one pancake) and add the batter to the hot pan
3. The pancake is ready to flip when there are bubbles forming on the batter. But be warned, if your pan is too hot you can get bubbles too early and your pancake will then be difficult to flip!
4. Once you have navigated flipping the pancake, cook the other side for a couple of minutes. Again, if your pan is too hot you can get a brown outer with an under cooked middle. Every stove top is different so have a play with getting the right temp and timing for flipping your pancakes

Serve with berries or other fruit, maple syrup or your favourite vegan yoghurt for a delicious but guilt free breakfast or snack.

They will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days if you don’t eat them before then (you will).

Nutritional Guide

Amount per serving:

This recipe is adapted from: http://www.littlewellnesscorner.com/recipe/easy-healthy-vegan-protein-pancakes/