Broccoli Rising and Hate Knows Where you Live
As Huff Post’s Meatless Monday columnist, I regularly got feedback from anonymous angry readers who had too much free time. Their comments came every week for years. I considered my column to be a public service, giving people original weekly vegan recipes, informing how our food choices impact us and the planet, and giving people a safe space to bleed off bad energy. Maybe without ranting at me, they’d have done something worse.
That something worse came in the mail last week, a handwritten envelope addressed to me, no sender name, and a bogus return address. Inside was a slip of paper with my name on it and two pamphlets. Was it hate mail? I’m calling it that. But the legal definition is slippery. Was it offensive and unsettling? Absolutely. It was meant to be.
I could summon some Zen and say the sender didn’t realize his/her/their actions were abusive and even illegal. Well, then, pamphlet-sender, let me enlighten you. What you did was wrong. No one has the right to track me down where I live and attack me for being who I am. No one has the right to make anyone feel threatened, afraid, targeted.
I don’t know why bad energy — okay, let’s call it hate — has increased globally, exponentially over the past few years, but it has. It can be the bomb that goes off somewhere, anywhere, the slur or shove from a stranger on the street, or even the anonymous envelope delivered right to your door. They’re all rooted in it. It can leave us feeling helpless, hopeless. Don’t give hate that power.
I was tempted to shrug off the whole incident — what’s a toxic message in the grand scheme of things? But silently swallowing someone else’s hatred isn’t healthy or delicious. Stand up to it. I did.
Contact the police if you feel threatened
File a report with the Anti-Defamation League. Human Rights Campaign or other resource
Tell your family and friends
Even so, I still stubbornly cling to José Andrés’s belief that we don’t need more walls — or weapons — we need longer tables. The whole idea behind my book Feeding the Hungry Ghost came from the Asian concept of hungry ghosts, spirits so hungry and needy in life, they haunt you beyond the grave. They can be quieted and calmed by prayer and food offerings. The same trick works for us. Give us care and attention and nourishing food, and it calms our craziness. It feeds us. Wouldn’t it be magical if it works? So however we see the world, let’s sit down and eat — together.
This brings me — somehow — to pimento cheese. As food writer and historian Dr. Cynthia Greenlee writes in her aptly-entitled essay, “Pimento-cracy”, “Pimento cheese crosses boundaries promiscuously.” It’s something for all of us. And with my recipe, that includes vegans.
Fiercely associated with the South, the origins of pimento cheese can be traced to New York. It’s been dismissed as trash food — the cheese can be Velveeta — but pimento cheese can go high, as a filling for tea sandwiches served on white bread sans crust for ladies who lunch. Being made of mayonnaise, cheese, and pimento, it’s two-thirds horrible for you. Everyone loves it.
Pimento cheese wasn’t big in our household when I was a kid. We had all the components — cheddar, mayonnaise, and pimentos — but who’d think to put them together? And why would you mush mayonnaise into grated cheese anyway? Add it to the long list of things I don’t understand.
What I do understand — pimento cheese is kitchen alchemy. It turns odd bits of cheese you might otherwise throw out into something creamy, retro chic, and entirely edible. Wasted food only ramps up climate change, breaking down and turning into methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
Mitigating climate change and clever kitchen ideas are, I hope, concepts we can all get behind, however we see the world. Otherwise, for something which has three ingredients (two of which aren’t vegan), pimento cheese gets mighty contentious.
Do you make it with cream cheese?
Can you use roasted red pepper instead of pimento?
Do you put the extra i in pimento?
For me, the answer is no, no, and no. But can you make killer plantbased pimento cheese? The answer is yes.
The original recipe has evolved over time, and so have vegan versions:
My recipe has a few more ingredients than the original, but all ingredients are available and accessible. It’s
whole food plantbased
oil-free
soy-free
gluten-free
and as any maker of pimento cheese, vegan or otherwise will tell you, my recipe’s the best.
Broccoli Confidential subscribers can find the recipe for vegan pimento cheese at the end of the newsletter. If you haven’t upgraded your subscription yet you can do it now!
Serve with raw vegetables, use as a sandwich filling, or for an elevated vegan pimento cheese experience, serve with my cat head biscuits. Cat heads biscuits, another southern specialty, are big (cat-head-sized, if you’re into hyperbole). Mine bake up tall, tender, and cat-free. C’mon, they’re vegan.