Jean-Claude van Randy - Two Dollar Radio Guide to Vegan Cooking: The Yellow Edition

My Uncle Gary used to say while I was stuffing my face, Randall, food doesnt just happen. Thirty-three years later and I can tell you this with absolute certainty and the conviction of my office: my Uncle Gary was right. Food begins as seeds in gardens. Nurtured by the elements, it then grows to sustain life. Our lives. Food is cosmic, if cosmic meant something more tethered to earth. My Uncle Gary never said it, but I would also posit here, now, publicly, but also in my forthcoming TED talk that food is a story.

And that is the story of the farmers who harvested the vegetables, the delivery truck drivers who disseminated (not a dirty word) those vegetables, the chefs who prepared those vegetables into delectable (also not a dirty word) meals, and the diners fortunate enough to savor those meals. It is the story of life. Their lives. However, we dont have time for any of that here. This is the story of myself and my good friend, Speed Dog. How we made a menu of delectable (see note above about not a dirty word), mouth-watering vegan food and how it ruled.

This is also the story behind the stories about how those menu items were named, thereby crowning them with mythic status. We serve many of these dishes (or have served many of these dishes) at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, a bookstore and plant-based watering hole in scenic Columbus, Ohio. Vive la revolution, Jean-Claude van Randy Handwritten on a coarse piece of utility paper in a remote cabin outside of Zion, November 6, 2019.Editors Note About Accessibility of the Recipes The editors would like to acknowledge that not everyone has an industrial-sized kitchen at their disposal with hard-to-find spices and rare ingredients. The goal with the recipes presented in this Guide to Vegan Cooking, was to make them accessible for cheffing in a home kitchen. Editors Note on Point of View In obtaining a consistency amongst the stories contained in this Guide to Vegan Cooking, Speed Dog relayed his account of events by writing in the first-person point of view, while Randy offered his by Dictaphone audiocassette in the third-person. To assemble the stories and diverging view points, we hired a non-partisan court stenographer with very credible references.

What remains is a third-person recounting. Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
PLATO If I go to a dance and I dont sit down, I am dangerous.
CONROY SMITH, DANGEROUS A Note About How Good Cheeze Is A common lamentation amongst vegans and those looking to make the leap to a vegan diet is how hard it is to give up cheese. Same! One of the first challenges Randy and Speed Dog set for themselves their Mount Everest, so to speak was to craft dairy-free cheeses. After a seared eyebrow, more than one sleepless nights, a blender upgrade, and a bruised trachea resulting from a hot yoga mishap, thus was born