Vegan Home Cooks

Check out our new home [email protected] and subscribe!

We're a discord community Come join us and share what you're making.

If if doesn't appear in your instance press the search button and search [email protected] and it should show up then and you can subscribe to federate with the community and have the posts come to your instance.

Squidriot made the pancakes 💘

Roach made an awesome Lentil loaf:

Battletoads made tofu sticks with stuffing and mash:

Bee made some miso soup:

Gomb made mushroom alfredo with whole wheat pasta:

I made taco mac:

Bee made ratatouille (ve)gratin:

Getty made some awesome looking fried tofu, potatoes and chickpeas:

Curtis made work-day stew:

Bulba had a salad:

DT made some actually amazing looking pizza with fresh milled hard white wheat sourdough crust, alongside aged maple cashew cheese, cranberries, caramelized red onions, dates, garlic, and diced figs drizzled with sweet chili date reduction:

Mmori made Ochazuke:

Kwf made grilled tofu with sourdough:

Join the Discord and come chat with us about what we are cooking!

We moved from lemmy.world to our own instance search and join /c/[email protected]

Also check out /c/[email protected] for more traditional link aggregator type recipe links and blogs. Since this is very new if you can't see it on your instance please search for it and subscribe to cache it!

Cover pic is battletoads Big couscous, tofu, vegetables

a literal train made Pissaladière

train also made cannaloni

Rileyann made chickpeas and tomato sauce

meeseh made random soup

luther made curry which was served over rice

kwf made tacos

juggalo made beans and potatoes

kwf made vegetables and sauce

gomb made scramble and maafe

curtis made some afternoon oats

db made some lentils and tortills

Gomb's lentil quesadillas

Please subscribe by going to search of your own instance and searching [email protected] and our sister community [email protected] and subscribe on your instance.

The way federation works is that no one will see the posts from a remote community until at least one person on the local instance subscribes so if you would like the content in your subscribed tab or think someone on your instance would like the posts please press the join button!

If you haven't seen us around in a while please subscribe to !homecooks[email protected] we have our own (possibly the first?) vegan focused Lemmy instance.

Join the discord to see what the Vegan Come Cooks are up to!

Meesh made Seitan bourguignon

db made some tofu broccoli

getty coming in with lentil soup and kale

getty again with the peanut noodles, I made this one too

rileyann made delicious slop

Bulbasaur made rainbow noods

fala declared it is asparagus time, with tates and hummus

Bulba made kimbop, 👑

arcane potato made some really good brown rice and lentils at work

I made pancakes with chocolate bean sauce

alphor made koshari, the ultimate food

We're moving to our own instance!

Please search [email protected] on your own instance and subscribe, this is important to getting the posts to show up on all instances. Thank you!

Thank you Ruud and the team at lemmy.world for everything!

The awesome thing about open source is getting to roll your own. Everyone on lemmy.world will be able to see the posts and participate as normal except the main cache will be hosted somewhere else.

I'm nervous to close down this and move but I think it will be a lot of fun.

See you on the flip side!

In a spirit of adventure I tried tofu skins the other day. Searching through the numerous options at our large Asian market, it looked like we found one that didn't have the California lead advisory statement on the package - but later found one buried in the fine print.

We ate them anyway, and really like them, but wonder why they have lead. Internet searches so far haven't yielded any answers.

Does anyone here know why they contain lead?

PS / TIL: tofu skins apparently are not be confused with tofu curls.

Finally sprung for the 12lb bag because we love these things. I usually make buffalo soy curls and throw them on a salad or mac and cheese, or make lemon "chicken" orzo with them, but I'm open to other suggestions from anyone else who likes them since I have enough for about the next decade.

TL;DR: Please search and subscribe to [email protected] on your instance to cache it on your instance so we can get visibility. We're moving to our own hosting. Thanks for everything Ruud!

I'm excited to announce some big changes for our Vegan Home Cooks. As many of you know, Lemmy has been our platform of choice and we are hosted on the largest Lemmy instance lemmy.world. However, it's time for us to evolve and move to our own instance. Let me explain why.

Lemmy.world, while a significant player in the Lemmy universe, has diverged in its vision and management from what we seek in a platform. The admins there have different political and operational views that don't align with our goals. This is no slight against them; it's just a matter of different paths.

It's important to recognize that Lemmy is, at its heart, a passion project. Developed by talented individuals driven by their ideals rather than corporate goals, it operates on a scale that's more hobbyist than mass-market. This has its charms, but it also means that development isn't as rapid as one might expect in a more commercial environment.

The thing is, this approach works for many in the Lemmy community. The developers, supported by donations, have been content with this pace and scale. Even major instances have been okay with this grassroots, community-oriented approach. For a platform born out of a communal ethos rather than a corporate one, this isn't surprising.

However, things started shifting when Reddit made some API changes. Suddenly, Lemmy was thrust into the spotlight as a potential drop-in replacement for Reddit. This influx of users, many with expectations shaped by the slick efficiency of corporate tech, put an unprecedented strain on the platform and its developers. Imagine, a small, community-funded team suddenly dealing with the demands of 50,000 new users. It was a clash of cultures and expectations.

Lemmy.world stepped up during this influx. Run by volunteers, they took a more corporate approach to manage the surge. Their rapid growth brought them under the spotlight, attracting both hackers who exposed major flaws and users who demanded rapid scaling and development.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. There's a growing rift between the Lemmy developers and the team at lemmy.world. The developers, whose political views differ significantly from many in the Western tech sphere, run lemmy.ml with a distinct set of principles. The arrival of a large number of new users, many with different viewpoints, led to tensions and even bans.

This situation has led to a split within the community. A group of developers, frustrated with the direction and pace of Lemmy, are creating Sublinks – a Lemmy-compatible platform. Their plan? To eventually replace Lemmy, particularly on large instances like lemmy.world, effectively outmoding the original platform.

So, where does this leave us? We've been observing these developments and have concluded that the best way forward for our community is to establish our own Lemmy instance. This move will allow us to build a space that aligns with our values and needs, free from the external pressures and conflicts affecting the larger Lemmy ecosystem.

This is a big step, but it's one that opens up exciting opportunities. We'll have more control over our platform's direction and be able to create an environment that truly reflects our community's spirit and needs. Please search and subscribe to [email protected] on your instance to cache it on your instance so we can get visibility. We're moving to our own hosting. Thanks for everything @[email protected], you and your team have been a gracious host.

And here they are ready for action

A rich tvp filling with garlic mash, and i made a mushroom gravy to go with it. There's about a block and a half of vegan butter across the filling, mash, and gravy, so definitely not the healthiest of recipes. Delicious though.

More photos of the pizza being made: https://imgur.com/a/npeE1e8

based on this recipe (not intended as an endorsement):

https://www.eatfigsnotpigs.com/chicken-caesar-salad-pizza-vegan/

toppings:

• herbed compound butter (fresh parsley, minced garlic, oregano)
• tomato slices
• red onion slices
• mozz.
• breaded and fried tofu (as a kind of chkn)
• caesar salad dressing (mayo, cashew cream, mustard, capers, parm, lemon juice)
• lettuce
• parm
• bacon bits (used this recipe)

Chopped mushrooms, onion & spinach. Mixed that in a bowl with one of those microwavable golden rice packets, plus vegetable oil, salt, garlic powder, & smoked paprika. Stuck it all into the peppers, and into the oven. Didn't bother with pre cooking any of the ingredients or anything (obviously the rice is pre cooked in the pack.)

It came out really tasty. The smoked paprika gave the peppers that barbecued type flavour which I love.

This is probably my favourite ramen dish. It's so rich and unctuous. I need to make more smokey chilli oil as I'm out and it's not quite the same with chilli crisp

A delectable assortment of vegetables interspersed in the finest rice noodles. The noodles are coated with a heaping spoon of 100% peanuts peanut butter, a giant glug of soy sauce and a sprinkling of my favorite hot paste.

How it tasted? Smokin!

Turned out really good. The TVP works great for the texture.

I used almost half a bottle of wine, otherwise pretty basic bolognese with TVP grounds.

The Endless Torment of the ‘Recipe?’ Guy

A rampant internet comment that just won’t die shows how recipes, and the people who develop them, are undervalued.

By Tejal Rao Sept. 13, 2022

Picture him, scrolling Instagram. He slows down for a flash-lit image of pasta on someone’s crowded, linen-draped dining table. For a sunlit reel of chickpeas and olive oil breaking down into a golden pulp. For a bubbling pot of oxtail.

He might not plan to cook these dishes — in fact, he probably doesn’t — but each post makes his thumbs tingle. Instinctively, impulsively, he begins to type:

recipe? recipe?! recipe??!

You could say that recipe guys represent a major area of growth for reply guys. And anyone can become a recipe guy: You just have to believe that every time you see an image of food, you’re also owed a recipe, then insist on it. Cooks and recipe developers who share their food on social media can ignore it, or at least try to, but the nagging chorus of “recipe?!” is present, and it’s reshaping social content in real time.

“Social media was this way to be spontaneous and low-key and casual, but at some point, when I shared parts of my personal life, people started to expect a professionally tested recipe, too,” said Nik Sharma, a Los Angeles cookbook writer and photographer (who also contributes to The New York Times).

Developing recipes is work, and it takes time. Mr. Sharma never intended to create them for home-cooked dishes he posted informally — say, a quick dinner of fried rice with ketchup he made after a busy day shooting cooking videos and writing his newsletter. He also didn’t want to come across as rude to commenters, or to let them down.

“The easiest thing was to go, OK, I’m just not going to post what I eat, unless I’m working on the recipe,” Mr. Sharma said.

He keeps his off-duty cooking private now, drawing a line between what’s personal and professional — a challenging exercise for food writers, since the two areas continuously overlap.

Is it work, for example, when you cook dinner for your parents? The recipe developer Pierce Abernathy started sharing the meals he made for himself and his family during the pandemic, when he moved back in with his parents. He produced practical cooking videos on Instagram, filled with visual reference points and raw cooking sounds, and included the whole recipe just below in the caption.

“The goal is to build an audience — the core of my business and how I make money is around engagement and numbers,” Mr. Abernathy said. “But I don’t want it to be a restrictive environment where I can’t be myself.” Like many social-first recipe developers, he plans to start publishing recipes on his own website soon, to monetize and own his content, and worries about how his audience will respond to that change. Will they have the resolve to leave the post, to go out and find the recipe?

Though he occasionally shares ideas and techniques without detailed recipes, like a clean-out-the-fridge salad he made recently before heading to the airport, and images entirely unrelated to food, Mr. Abernathy finds that most posts that don’t include recipes can be a source of tension.

“And when you do get those comments,” he said, “it feels a little demoralizing and dehumanizing.” On his show, “The One Recipe,” the food editor Jesse Sparks interviews guests about the recipes they make time and time again — the keepers. “Recipes can be seemingly so simple when they’re audience-facing,” he said, “and in some ways, it’s a success that people forget how much work is going on behind the scenes.” “But so many people get caught up in the immediate satisfaction of seeing a tangible product or good without grappling with how much time and resources and effort go into it.”

Mr. Sparks interviews cooks who work at publications, as part of big teams, as well as those who are solely responsible for all of the shopping, testing, styling, shooting, editing and web production. In each case, the development process may be a little different, but the labor involved is usually immense and out of view — or ignored.

“It all boils down to people needing to remember there’s a person on the other side of the screen who deserves space and support, time and rest,” Mr. Sparks said. Lucia Lee, a middle-school teacher in Brookline, Mass., posts photos of kimchi jjigae and seared mackerel to Instagram: neatly framed, overhead shots of simple, well-lit plates. She started her account as an archive of her home cooking, and celebrates the romantic possibilities of her favorite ingredients and techniques, often with loose, narrative recipes and notes on who grew the food, or whose original recipe served as inspiration.

Ms. Lee is often under pressure, in comments and direct messages, to offer more detail and more structured recipes, and her instinct is to jump in and be helpful. But posting is a creative outlet for her. “I respond sometimes, if people are polite — a ‘please’ and a ‘thank you’ really go a long way,” Ms. Lee said. “But this isn’t my job, I can’t just pump out recipes for you.” In many ways, “recipe?!” is a familiar online demand that has flourished on social media. Every few months, for years now, a small but vocal group on the internet agrees that the people who share recipes and the stories behind them should just get to the recipe.

They usually blame food bloggers for taking search engine optimization too far, or for plain old long-windedness and vanity. They demand that free recipes appear online without ads, introductions, process shots, context or stories. Without any trace of the people behind them. This unreasonable request has become a damaging cliché, a way of demonetizing the work and dismissing the writers — particularly women who write about cooking for their families.

An animated Maritsa Patrinos comic, published on BuzzFeed in 2018, illustrated the early mood: A cheerful young man scrolls through a post about a “delicious lasagna recipe,” and wastes away to a skeleton before he can reach it. In the years since, that comic has become darkly self-referential — it may as well be about the get-to-the-recipe conversation itself. It never ends. In the last few months, though, I’ve come to think of “recipe?!” on social media, and of all its brash, insulting little iterations, as the last possible stage of this conversation, a kind of de-evolution with nowhere left to go.

It’s a way of treating the people who share their cooking online entirely as products. But I think it’s also a way of becoming a bit less human. Of becoming more like compulsive web extensions, our only mission to scan, to want, to send the same command out into the void, over and over again, on our sad and infinite loops:

recipe? recipe?! recipe?!!