The Vegg Vegan Egg Yolk is a 100% plant-based egg yolk replacement used to make vegan omelets and a variety of other vegan foods that are usually made with eggs. I've been interested in trying it, for a while,  and recently came across a good deal on VeganCuts, The Vegg Combo Pack, which consisted of a can of The Vegg Vegan Egg Yolk and The Vegg cookbook.

I wanted to see what it was like, without a bunch of extra stuff to hide the taste, so I decided to try a basic omelette. When I first opened the can, I noticed the texture was almost exactly like nutritional yeast - which makes sense, because that's the base of it - and it did have a distinct egg smell, which comes from the black salt. I have a jar of Kala Namak (black salt), that I've been using it my tofu scrambles, to give it an "eggier" taste so I knew that's where the smell came from.

The only omelet recipe I found involved tofu, so I decided to use the crepe recipe instead. Cutting the crepe recipe in half, I made an omelette. It's basically The Vegg powder, flour, soy milk and butter. Now, I don't know if the batter was suppose to be thick but, when I did it, it was very thick so next time I'm going to use more water or soy to thin it out a bit more.

It definitely looked like an omelet, but it wasn't as eggy as I would have liked but I can see how it would probably taste really good mixed with some peppers, onions, garlic, spinach and maybe a little extra black salt - which I think that I'm going to try to make, tonight, for dinner.

Overall, I was happy with the results. There are plenty of recipes, on the website, so I'll definitely be checking those out.

I subscribe to the list of free and discounted Kindle books from Pixel of Ink. Yesterday, they had "Paris Letters" by Janice MacLeod for $2.99 and since I saw the word "Paris" of course I had to check it out. One of the reviewer's on Amazon described it as: "A memoir, a travel log, a romance, a self-help guide, all rolled into one exquisite and delicate confection." Right up my alley! I was sold.

Little did I know that it also included a tid-bit about one of my other passions - veganism! Granted, the author doesn't stay vegan - at least up to what I've read so far - but it was nice that she gave it a little shout out and even acknowledged that going vegan actually saved her money!

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(Chapter 5: Cut Down on Groceries. Starts on page 37 of the Kindle Edition)

"And then came the vegan thing. I never really thought much about veganism or vegetarianism beyond my mother and aunts huffing at having to make a vegetarian lasagna because a few of my veggie cousins were coming by for dinner . Then after the dinner, when everyone had left, someone would wonder aloud if vegetarianism was a healthy choice. How can you feed your children on a vegetarian diet, for heaven’s sake? How can you possibly feel satisfied without a decent piece of meat? That’s just it. Films and books were coming out about factory farming, and I became aghast at how there are hardly any decent pieces of meat left. Factory farming made up 99 percent of the meat in our grocery stores. To find that 1 percent of meat that came from animals that had a good life and a humane death was so difficult that I threw up my hands. The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone provided me with all the logic I needed to become vegan. I want to be healthy. I want to be kind to the planet. And I could do them both just by not eating meat? I bought into the kindness factor. Sign me up.

Turns out saving the planet didn’t cost near as much as ruining it. After deciding to go the veggie route, I saw I could save a lot of money, which was appealing if I were to ever quit my job and hit the road. Without the dairy and meat in my diet, my grocery bill was halved. Did I mourn the loss of burgers? Nah. Did I mourn the loss of cheese? You betcha. Great big sobbing mourning about not getting to have melted cheese slathered all over and oozing out of everything. Science has proven that cheese is actually addictive. The primary protein in milk is casein, which gives that satisfied reverie we cheesists feel on a soul level. I was a happy cheese addict. But I knew if I took out the meat from my diet, I’d overdo the cheese. I know me. I know what I’m capable of. My path to veganism had to be paved with oatmeal. I thought veganism would be hard when I went out to eat. Not so. I discovered that in California, all restaurants must have at least one vegetarian meal on the menu. I started appreciating the limited options. I remembered what I learned from clearing out my closets: There is a certain freedom in not having so many choices. And my body didn’t seem to mind one way or another if it had meat. I was already tired and miserable all the time. I was still pretty much tired and miserable as a vegan, except now I had a glimmer of hope that it could actually be possible to save enough money to buy myself a year or two of freedom from my advertising job. And that little nugget of hope was more delicious than a chicken nugget any day of the week."
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Also, reading that reminded me that Alicia Silverstone should pay me a commission for the amount of books I sold for her at Farm Sanctuary's "Celebration FOR the Turkeys" in NYC a couple years back. I kept pointing out the recipe for peanut butter cups and we sold out of her book within an hour or so! The other people at the Merch Table were very impressed with my selling skills :)