zenpawn

The results of our informal poll are in:

So, let’s see… How to interpret?

First of all, the aye’s have it. Our little collective is eager for this to come to fruition! And although there is a camel hump in the calorie limit picture, I think we owe it to those seeking the high nutrient to calorie ratios of CRON to serve as an example. Incidentally, the recipes in the first edition easily meet this goal, so I know it’s possible:

The other clear winner was soy.

Now, for the tough ones. This is where I reveal I didn’t vote yet, in case I needed to break a tie. And a tie we certainly have on the gluten-free question. Here are my thoughts.

This was a weird one. Early on, “Yes” was the definitive leader. This made me happy, as both myself and VDL are gluten free. Then, suddenly, toward the end, the “No” votes shot up into a dead heat. My plea is that we do make it GF. Many people are plain ‘ole allergic or otherwise reactive to the stuff. They want to know how to obtain adequate protein intake on vegan CRON without resorting to seitan (once a favorite of mine for this purpose). Surely baked goods aren’t the issue here, right?

The raw vote is pretty close as well. Of course, you know in which direction I’m inclined. Maybe we can toss this one about more?

Also, I realize I forgot to ask about low fat or sodium. I think I just assumed, since that’s how it’s done around these parts. If you need any help converting a recipe, just let me know.

In the meantime, I am now accepting submissions. Please send your favorite vegan CR-friendly recipes to cron-recipes at vegandonelight dot com. If you’d like to include a bio, your story, your website, pictures (of the food and/or you), etc., that would be great too! If you have the numbers, go ahead and submit those as well. Otherwise, don’t worry, I’ll crunch them.

(As an aside, I recently negotiated a special coupon for my readers for 10% off their orders at Old Will Knott Scales. Simply enter the code VEGANDONELIGHT at checkout. They even made a personalized image for us, over there in the right margin. Sweet!)

I am delighted to see from the comments and through the society email lists how many vegans and even raw foodists are practicing Calorie Restriction with Optimum Nutrition!

In light of this, I have been bandying around the idea of creating a 2nd cookbook (or uncookbook, as the case may be) of vegan CRON recipes. This one, however, would be a collaborative effort.

I’m envisioning a compilation of personal favorites from readers of this blog. The basic requirements are only that they be originals of your own creation, “CRON-friendly” and, of course, vegan (even if you don’t eat this way all the time, surely you have some meals or snacks that qualify).

It would also be great to include a little biographical information on each contributor. For example, how long have you been practicing? How’d you get into it? Etc..

So, what do you say?! Does this sound like something in which you’d be interested? Those whose recipes make the book would be given a free copy, and I plan to set up a single-member affiliate program for the CRS, such that they receive 10% of sales.

This calls for some polls!

The polls are now closed. See the results in the next post.

A short and sweet post here as time is of the essence. I want to bring to your attention a very important presentation which VegSource is making available online for the next seven days only. (After that, it’s going into their DVDs of this year’s best lectures from the Healthy Lifestyle Expo.)

In this 80-minute slide show by Jeff Novick from the Pritikin Center, he speaks clearly and with humor about the tricks of the trade in food labeling. As a former Kraft Foods account manager, he should know! You’ll definitely want to

to learn how to really read those labels! And if you’ve ever struggled to explain how deceptively dangerous processed foods are to your friends and family, just send them to this talk, and let Jeff do the work.