THE VEGAN CAKE OFCOURSE INTERVIEW

Sue Belfitt is 52 years of age. She’s been a vegan for almost 30 years. Her partner Gavin, also vegan, has been vegan for almost 30 years. She is the mother of 3 healthy boys, and spent 13 years living in rural NSW with a group of other vegans. She grew fruit and veggies veganically there as well as raising children, making tofu and tempeh and became involved in veganic catering, sweet delights being her specialty. Now living in South East Queensland her cooking forays are limited to a week long camp for home educated children and writing recipes for Vegan Voice and Everyday Health magazine. She Belfitt is co-author of a marvellous Australian vegan cookbook called Vegan Cake Ofcourse. David Horton speaks with her for the Abolitionist-Online.

Does being vegan mean getting into food preparation? What are the best ways vegans can handle the kitchen side of things?

At the present time there is so much commercial vegan food available that wasn’t there when Gavin and I started on this path. We had no choice about being into food preparation. Although that’s not quite correct the food preparation came into it because we always had other people eating with us. So we had to make an impression on these standard fare friends who ate with us. So I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary. I think the key is to become aware of all the possibilities that are out there and then make your choices. My favourite meal is salad picked fresh out of my garden. How much preparation does that require!

What I do feel is imperative is acquiring knowledge from others to help in the development of your vegan direction. Educating yourself with a basic understanding of nutrition is also important.

In your own family, how has it been for you both, bringing up the boys as vegans, as babies in the first two years (breast feeding?) and then later on with the social pressures from non-vegan friends?

Being vegan means you have to know what you’re talking about when you are inevitably asked those in depth probing questions. So being informed is vitally important on a social level as well as on a personal level.

In my own family being vegan has thrown its share of hurdles. When I was pregnant with my first child I was subjected to a lot of professional intimidation.

I realize now that personal power has been and still is very important in my life and I do not relinquish it for anyone so I read as much vegan childbearing information I could, and I dared to question what I was being told.

To be was born with all his bits and pieces in perfect working order, as were my two other boys. Over a 10 year period I was pregnant or breastfeeding for nine of those years. I thrived, as did the children. When the boys were little we lived in a small rural community where our vegan lifestyle was embraced. We lived with other vegans. People wanted to know about and were truly interested in our life choices. If the boys visited anywhere or went to parties there was always vegan food for them, they were informed if there was non-vegan food on offer, they were not ostracized or ridiculed at all. Best of all the North coast of N.S.W. provided us with a quantity of dedicated vegans, a very mixed bag from all walks of life and with many different dietary habits, all the right ingredients for an eclectic group and they showed our children that there were others out there like them and that there were lots of ways to be vegan.

Here we established Terania Soyfoods, providing freshly made tofu and tempeh and other soy products for the local and wider community. I was involved with fund raising for the local pre school and I helped organise the catering, providing suppers and the like, all vegan. The boys grew up included in everything their parents did.

A few years ago we moved from the country to Toowoomba. Life there has been a very different experience. Here we live outside the community almost as fringe dwellers. People here are too narrow minded to consider an alternative diet and those few who do broach the subject seem personally threatened by our choices. I am always baffled by this response.

After nearly 30 years of being a vegan I will talk freely to people who are genuinely interested and open to vegan ethics. But I refuse to banter with those with closed minds.

How have the boys’ attitudes to food and cooking been? How have they developed their own ethics as vegans?

From an early age the older two boys started to cook and really took to it. Before we moved to suburbia they were cooking the family dinner 4 nights a week as well as baking biscuits for a local café where I provided all the sweet goodies. I introduced them to sprout growing when they expressed a wish to earn their own money, and all three have made money (lots of it) from growing and selling sunflower, buckwheat and wheat grass sprouts. My youngest now cooks dinner 1 night a week and otherwise cooks when he feels inclined.

The boys are now 23, 20 and 15. The 20 year old eats anything but the other 2 are still natural vegans. These boys have been brought up with this lifestyle as the norm. They are compassionate, caring and sensitive people, with a strong inner sense of who they are. Even the 20 year old acknowledges what a great lifestyle he had as a child and knows he was much healthier as a vegan both physically and emotionally. I have noticed with interest that they don’t flaunt their veganism, to them it is normal not something that needs constantly defending and, as they have all been home educated the peer pressure aspect was absent in those teenage years, this has left them positive and strong in their convictions.

How has it been for you in relation to your wider family and friends? How have others handled you being a vegan? Do they talk to you about it or avoid the subject … or just confine their questions to food and recipes?

Interestingly both Gavin’s and my family have accepted our lifestyle choice and as years have passed they actually know something about the vegan diet although that doesn’t mean any of them understand the philosophy behind it.

With our extended family the majority of them are either vegans or vegetarians and the ones that aren’t have listened and heard our reasons for doing and eating what we do and have accepted us for who we truly are. We have wonderful discussions with these people. They never avoid the topic, which is more likely to happen in the broader community.

Just recently I was entertaining some friends who were passing through Toowoomba. These are long time friends and they had their 24 year old son with them who said that when he was younger he never liked the food we ate but as a young adult he really enjoyed vegan food. I am still pondering the whys to that one. Also I have noticed over time that sometimes if vegan fare is not labelled as such you can have a very different response from your guests. That’s the political aspect I guess.

Two views: we have the pure, healthy, even raw food vegans; we have the more attractive but less healthy (sugar, oil/margarine, processed food) vegans. Where do you stand on these two different approaches?

Vegan nutrition is such a diverse topic and I don’t think it matters what style of vegan diet you follow as long as you have done your homework and find what works for you. Being vegan is what counts.

I would like to mention here about the children and how when Tobe and Jake were growing up there was very limited sugar in their diets until they were about 8 but after Otis was born he was introduced to sugar at a much earlier age. The difference between his behaviour and the earlier two boys was extreme. I really understood about sugar rushes with him and I was so glad I had been so strict with the older two. It seemed that their digestion was that much more settled before they had sugar introduced into their diet that their reaction was nowhere near the extremes we experienced with Otis.

There have been times when I have eaten just raw food or fruit, times when I have stuck to real foods (non processed food) and times when I haven’t. But for a long time now my favourite meal is a salad picked from the garden with a freshly made dressing.

Can you give us an example of a quick-to-prepare, tasty savoury dish.

Tofu in Macadamia Sauce:

Place ½cup macadamia paste in a small saucepan.

Stir in about 200ml coconut cream.

Add the juice of ½ lemon or lime and 1 Tbs vinegar.

Heat on low until it thickens. If it is too thick add some water or if too thin

stir in 1dsp tomato paste

While this is heating cut up a small block of tofu into 1 cm cubes.

Add this to the sauce.

Season to taste.

Simmer till hot and serve over freshly cooked long grain brown rice with sprouts.

Can you give us an example recipe, which involves an unusual method of dealing with food.

Jackfruit Curry probably fits this description.

Using an unripe jackfruit you peel and discard the fibrous inside using only the seed pods. This is a very messy and sticky process and the knife and your hands need to be well oiled.

The seeds are removed and the pods are parboiled in water.

Now you proceed with the curry.

Sauté a thinly sliced onion in a little oil after a few minutes add some thin strips of coloured capsicums.

Stir in 2 cloves crushed garlic, 2cm piece of ginger grated, 1 stalk lemongrass sliced thinly, 4 Kaffir lime leaves, 2 sliced red chillies and ½ tsp turmeric.

Allow to sizzle for a few minutes then add 2 cans of coconut cream and 250ml water. Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour until the sauce is very thick.

Add the sliced cooked jackfruit seed pods and allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve over long grain brown rice.

Would you say something about your own history of catering, including your period in commercial tempeh production.

Personally my vegan lifestyle has evolved over time and when opportunities have presented themselves it was at a time when I was ready and capable of undertaking them.

This has been the case for all my culinary exploits.

When we were living in Terania Creek in 1988 Terania Soyfoods was established with a core group of 5 vegans. Gavin and I had been making our own tofu for a while at that stage and with limited equipment we started to supply the local community. We had a stall at The Channon markets and that was our publicity. We grilled marinated tofu on sticks and served it with a huge salad, sprouts and peanut sauce on banana leaves it was very successful.

As we earned we bought bigger and better equipment and also started making tempeh. That was very popular too. If you have eaten fresh tempeh you will know why.

We sent that as far away as Sydney. Gavin developed a very popular presscake tempeh made with okara, brown rice and hijiki seaweed. Still a favourite today.

I also make peanut tempeh which has been a great hit too.

Gavin and I kept Terania Soyfoods going until 2001. I am still given a hard time for leaving when I run into old customers, apparently we spoilt them with the high tasty quality of the tofu and tempeh!

Our vegan co workers in Terania Soyfoods took on a café in Lismore and I was asked to do cakes and slices etc. They had a wonderful big commercial oven and I really enjoyed working in that kitchen and my culinary journey had taken another big step.

From this I began a long association with Colette a wonderful French chef. We worked together on many occasions including a women’s festival in Lismore and the Maleny folk festival. Colette had lots of experience and expertise and I learned an awful lot from her.

She spent sometime developing bushfood recipes for a local company and I would make her okara and bush pepper tempeh for her catering ventures. She developed a wonderful Davidsons’ plum chutney which we would serve with slabs of peanut tempeh very yummy!

She took over the running of The Channon Tea House and I was employed to prepare the vegetables and the vegetarian (read vegan) part of the menu for the restaurant which was open on the weekends. I was provided with my own table on which to work which was kept vegan friendly. I made black velvet puddings with chocolate sauce which were very popular.

Very few of the clientele knew they were eating a vegan dish. The upside of this was that Colette always had vegan fare on the Tea House menu. Tobe used to make chocolate coated macadamias for her, and we also made macadamia shortbread which was on the counter all the time. So any vegans eating there were always pleasantly surprised.

After Colette sold the Tea House I was approached by a guy from Nimbin who had heard of my cooking by word of mouth and he wanted me to supply him with some cakes for a stall he had at the Nimbin Markets. Cruisy I thought!

He took over The Cave Café not long after that and I supplied him with all the cakes and sweet things for the café. My work load became so intense that I commandeered the older boys into making biscuits. Tobe made Anzacs and Jake made Melting Moments. They supplied huge jars full twice a week!

I made standard fare cakes full of sugar but there was always gluten free and sugar free options. Again these cakes were never labelled ‘vegan’ but there was always an ingredient list available. I met a lot of impressed diners there and often I was bombarded with requests to hand over my recipes. I clearly remember the boys hoping for something which didn’t pass my quality control so they would have the chance to try something because at home I was fairly strict over their sugar intake.