Every year, millions of people around the world celebrate Easter by hunting for brightly colored eggs and goody baskets filled with chocolate bunnies and other sweet treats.
But Easter is no picnic for chickens on egg farms, who suffer tremendously so that we can enjoy our eggs.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. This year, why not plan a compassionate, egg-free Easter celebration that gives everyone, including chickens, a reason to celebrate?
Earlier this month I posted some Easter crafts ideas to enjoy with your family in preparation for Easter. Below you’ll find inspiration for egg-free dishes to prepare during this wonderful holiday, and beyond.
Egg-Free Recipe Ideas
Let’s start with some deserts. These deserts are so healthy, so you can have them for breakfast or snack (although, it’s probably better not to do it on a regular basis 😉 ).
Carrot Cake Recipe #1
This vegan take on a carrot cake hits the spot. The recipe below makes two cakes about 1″ in height, and as such is designed for stacking. Make the full recipe for a two-layer carrot cake. Alternatively, you can halve it, make it in an 8×8″ pan, and slice and stack the resulting square into 6 or so pieces. Find the recipe here.
Carrot Cake Recipe #2
Another carrot cake recipe for you (this one is with tofu). I found it in the Tofu 1-2-3 cookbook by Meribeth Abrams and I decided to give it a try. It turned out very tasty. Get the recipe here.
Chocolate Peanut Butter and Coconut Cups
These Chocolate Peanut Butter and Coconut Cups are great not just for Valentine’s day. Find out how to make them here.
Fruits (& Other Goodies) Dipped in Home Made Caramel Sauce
You will never believe how good this caramel is when it actually only has one ingredient. It is a vegan honey just made from apples. Now you don’t have to go without your caramel any longer. You can use it as a honey substitute, as a syrup that you control the thickness of, instead of unhealthy corn syrup. It is also much cheaper than buying expensive healthy sweeteners such as maple syrup or agave nectar. As this recipe only contains apples, it is perfect for a number of diets including vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, paleo, unprocessed and most healthy diets. Best of all this recipe is refined sugar free so you know that all this sticky goodness comes straight from the healthy apple. You can use it to dip fruits in it, pour it over pancakes, vegan ice cream and other goodies. Find the recipe here.
Egg-Free Pancakes
This is one of the first egg-free pancake recipes that I tried. At first, it takes some research to find out what substitutes to use in what situations. Right now, it’s become a second nature – I don’t have to think about it any more. It’s truly easy to skip the eggs in most recipes, once you learn about substituting eggs in baking and cooking. Check out this egg-free pancakes recipe here.
Vegetable Fritatta
This is such as festive dish, which is also great for using up produce that needs be used asap: it will handle a large assortment of veggies. Adding the sriracha chili sauce finishes it off nicely…it really does the trick. Read more and get the recipe for this vegetable fritatta.
Veggie-Tofu Scramble
If you think of tofu scramble as a bland, boring dish, and a sad substitute for an egg-scramble; you’ll be pleasantly surprised. This veggie-tofu scramble recipe is by no means bland, bursting with flavor and aroma. You may be reluctant to try tofu (buy only GMO-free, organic), but with this recipe you won’t miss eggs, I promise! Get the recipe here.
Mixed Vegetable Salad with Egg-Less Mayo
This mixed vegetable salad is a staple served by Polish families around the globe for any of the holidays (including Easter), birthday parties, name-day parties, and other gatherings. Traditionally it’s made with eggs and vegetables are smothered in egg-based mayonnaise, so even though it’s called a vegetable salad, make no mistake, it’s not a low-calorie/low-cholesterol salad dish that you should be eating on a daily basis. So, here is my healthy, veganized, egg-free version of this dish – check out this mixed vegetable salad with egg-free mayo.
Cream of Asparagus Soup with Crispy Roasted Shallots
Soups provide an easy way for me to get a bunch of vegetables and nutrition without a lot of added calories and be totally satisfied after one bowl. They’re also incredibly tasty and comforting, not to mention this soup is simple and elegant, and totally perfect for this time of year! Find the recipe here.
Rustic Asparagus Quinoa Tart
Gluten free vegan cooking & baking – wow, you have to be some kind of super hero to conquer that one. Come to find out, like with most things you just need to be open, aware and willing to try new techniques. Thy this rustic asparagus quinoa tart here.
Spring Slaw
“There is something about coleslaw that always reminds me of Easter. This past Sunday I was thinking about coleslaw and really wanted a big bowl of it. I made this colorful shredded salad that tasted so freakin good I ate the entire recipe in one sitting. If you don’t already have a family member who makes a rockin coleslaw for the holidays, bring this one. You can start a tradition with this spring slaw recipe ;).
Seitan Mushroom Roast
Feast on a sumptuous seitan mushroom roast that is juicy and full of flavor with flecks of crimini mushrooms. Covered in Miso Mushroom Gravy, this meal is really satisfying. Find it here.
Pierogis
Last, but not least, a recipe for pierogis! Pierogis are a popular dish at Polish homes during Easter, Christmas, and other holidays. I usually buy them read-made from a Polish store (there are many of them in NJ/NY). But here is the recipe for you, if you’d like to try them. The recipe comes from the Vegan Brunch cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. As Isa says, “Toothsome, warm, soft and smothered in caramelized onions – yep, that’s the stuff! This is one of those time-consuming recipes that will change your life. If you make them once and know what to expect, the next time you make them won’t be such a big deal. Because the ingredients are so simple and unadulterated, choose good quality, organic potatoes whose flavor packs the most punch. Make filling and dough a night in advance, then all you have to do in the morning is boil pierogis and make the caramelized onions.” Read more.
What’s Up With Eggs
Most people have no idea how eggs are connected to cruelty. And if anybody has an idea about factory farming, they rarely make the connection between dairy and eggs, because they think the animals aren’t being killed.
People think that eggs are an innocent byproduct of chickens, and hens are just running around on the open pastures, and come back to a big red barn at night to lay their eggs. The fact is, over 95 percent of eggs sold in the United states come from birds confined in wire battery cages so small they can hardly move. These cages are lined up in rows, stacked up on each other, inside huge windowless warehouses. These birds are not able walk, spread their wings, roost, or engage in any natural behaviors during their entire life. They are virtually egg laying machines who are sick, abused, and often starved.
After all their hard work, these birds end up so spent that the meat can only be used to make soup, chicken pies, and pet food. The rest of the hens are in such a bad shape by the end that they are beaten to death, gassed, or thrown live into wood chippers.
What happens to male chicks?
Have you ever wondered what happens to all the male chicks on the egg farms? You may think they are used for meat. But that’s not what happens. What happens with all the male chicks at these facilities is truly horrific.
Males are not useful to the egg factories, since males don’t lay eggs and the egg laying breed will not grow large fast enough to be profitable for meat so they are deemed a byproduct by the egg industry. This means, they are disposed of within the first two days of hatching. Either they are thrown into dumpsters full of other baby chicks, left to suffocate, or they are put, live, through meat grinders to be fed to other livestock.
The “Mercy for Animals” investigation in the largest hatchery for egg laying chickens discovered that these male chicks are thrown into grinding machines while they are still alive. This is the fate of over 200 million male chicks every single year.
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/photos/factory-farming/eggs/
What about organic or free-range eggs?
Some people who are aware of this still want to eat eggs so they buy eggs that they think are cruelty free. According to “Mercy for Animals” – in most cases we are being fooled. There are a lot of labels that are thrown around regarding eggs. The most common is “United Egg Producers Certified,” which is on about 90% of eggs. This is a trade organization that represents 95 percent of factory farmers. They are PR organization to a large extent. If you see that label on an egg carton, it’s essentially a mark of cruelty. This means that these eggs come from an egg factory farm, where chickens are kept in cages where they cannot even spread their wings.
The other labels that you will see are “Cage Free” and “Free Range.” These mean that these birds are not kept in cages, but usually in tens of thousands of birds are kept in windowless warehouses where these birds are very intensively confined and cannot engage in many of their natural behaviors. They are not given access to the outdoors, and the male chicks are still killed because they are not profitable. Birds have their beaks cut with a hot blade to prevent them from pecking with other birds in these overcrowded conditions. So “cage free” doesn’t mean cruelty-free.
So let’s just eliminate eggs from our diet – it really is that simple.
Learn More About Various Egg Replacements
There is no hard and fast rule about egg substitutes — you have to experiment to see what you like and what works for you. Sometimes one works great in one recipe, but not in another. Sometimes, when I think that the recipe needs the protein of the egg for structure, I will use pureed tofu, with or without egg replacer. It’s really a matter of experience and judgment and experimentation.
Source: veganmainstream.com
