When I first made the transition to the vegan diet I discovered something about myself that I wasn’t aware of. I had turned into a “Philadelphian.”
As I write this, we are approaching the three-year anniversary of my move down to Pennsylvania. Up until that point, I had never lived anywhere except Connecticut and certainly had never tried a cheese steak. It took me a few months to try one upon moving down here – it was finally my boyfriend who exposed me to the wonders of a cheese steak on my first trip to the Old Town Tavern in Perkasie, PA. Amazingly, you could buy a cheese steak, a side of old bay French fries, and a Yuengling for five dollars. Of course, the quality of the cheese steak left something to be desired, but at that price, we definitely went back for more on numerous occasions (it was the chicken cheese steak that got me hooked). If “you are what you eat,” then this is what turned me into a Philadelphian.
When I made the transition to a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, my boyfriend was very scared that we wouldn’t be able to eat together anymore. One of the solutions he came up with to address this was the seitan cheese steak. This became a Friday night ritual; garlicky seitan with sautéed mushrooms, onions, and peppers drowned in melted Havarti on a baguette. Say what? This was bliss. Bliss, I tell you. And these weren’t small, lady-like cheese steaks either. This was the kind of cheese steak that required napping afterwards.
When I made my next dietary transition, this time to veganism, I knew I would miss this cheese steak ritual but I didn’t realize how much. It became my mission to re-create (or at least discover) a vegan version of this Philadelphian delight. It didn’t go well initially. I found several recipes for vegan cheeze sauce and went to work. My first attempt was unpleasantly memorable. Seriously, that cheese steak was the worst I had ever tasted. But the experience taught me a lot about myself. I didn’t eat just one serving of cheese steak – let’s just say I ate until I was in pain. As I was chomping in misery (both from the taste and the pain I was putting myself in) I wondered why I was engaging in this behavior. Was I waiting for the next bite to taste better? Was I in denial that all my efforts and research yielded such a sorry excuse for a meal? Or was I just a binge eater?
I thought that if I removed my “problem” foods (specifically, buffalo wings and just about anything with cheese or sour cream), my binge eating would stop. The issue should have been the trigger foods right? If I eliminated these, my drive to mindlessly overindulge should be a thing of the past – or so I thought. This pivotal evening with those embarrassing cheese
steaks made it clear that it wasn’t the specific foods that were a problem – unfortunately, it didn’t clear up exactly what the problem was.
Fortunately, I did finally discover a way to eat vegan cheese steaks enjoyably. I learned, from The Vegan Zombie, how to make my own seitan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURmF-7O9-k). Since I’m not really a fan of Daiya or any other processed vegan cheese, I eventually found a cheeze sauce from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook that worked well (used in the cookbook for Mac & Cheeze, but works great on a steak instead - http://veganyumyum.com/2009/01/mac-cheeze-take-2/). Combine these with sautéed onions, Poblano peppers, and mushrooms, on a Trader Joe’s Ciabatta (the kind you bake yourself) with a slather of Vegannaise and you’ve got yourself a real masterpiece. The kind of food you can rationalize binging on.
