The Psychic Vegan Cookbook

By Henrietta Flores and Cory Mac a'Ghobhainn

It has never been easier to cook vegan, and you don’t even need to be psychic to do it. This all-plant-based cookbook is a tie-in with the Mason Braithwaite paranormal mystery series and contains some of the plucky LA psychic’s favorite dishes.

The sixty recipes are straightforward and focus on everyday Southwestern cooking. Si

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dagmar Miura
• Release date: Jun 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781942267690

Henrietta Flores

Henrietta has worked in a variety of roles in journalism and publishing, through the industries' tribulations and contractions. Henrietta lives in California with a spoiled dog and a serious Scrabble addiction.

Book preview

The Psychic Vegan Cookbook

The Psychic Vegan Cookbook

Henrietta Flores

Photographs by Cory Mac a’Ghobhainn

Introduction

First up, I’m not psychic. The title of the book relates to the protagonist of the Mason Braithwaite Paranormal Mystery Series. He’s a charming ethical vegan who makes his living as a psychic investigator. Because he’s not much of a cook, and also because he’s actually a fictional character, I took on the task of relating recipes for some of the food described in the book series, along with other everyday staples for contemporary cooks, including a couple of my personal favorites.

None of the dishes in this book are especially intricate, and most of the ingredients are easy to obtain. Some of the more esoteric items might not be available in a local grocery store but can easily be obtained online.

I hope you get some inspiration in these pages for your personal vegan journey!

About the Mason Braithwaite Paranormal Mystery Series

Vegan food is a big part of the Mason series, to the point that some readers said, I wish there was a cookbook. Psychic investigator Mason has a great living arrangement, with his boyfriend, Ned, an ethical vegan who’s passionate about vegan cooking, and their roommate, the folk singer Peggy Pregnant, a renaissance woman with mad kitchen chops.

No one is ever quite sure whether Mason gets results with actual psychic power or his more mundane flatfooting, but fueled by caffeine and great vegan cuisine, navigating the rarified heights and gritty depths of Los Angeles on his trusty bicycle, the disheveled redhead manages to resolve some intractable mysteries. The body count stays comfortably at zero in Mason’s work as he pursues crooked CEOs, grifters, and identity thieves, hunts for treasure, and tangles with strippers, aliens, Freemasons, and paranormal entities. His tools are his psychic intuition, time travel, and the odd séance, and when things go awry Ned and Peggy are usually around to help pick up the pieces.

Read more about the series at mason.dagmarmiura.com.

Los Angeles

About Veganism

Animal Welfare

If you’re already committed to eating vegan, skip ahead, there’s nothing new for you here. If you’re thinking about it but aren’t quite there, the best reason to go vegan is simple: making the choice not to eat animal products reduces the suffering of sentient creatures. You can find a stunning amount of information online about animal welfare, and the science is clear: the more we learn about animals—that they use reasoning, hold grudges, have friendships—the fewer differences we find between our species and others. It doesn’t only apply to primates, or even to mammals: octopuses have repeatedly been observed using tools and even pranking their prey, and dozens of species of birds use reasoning as well as tools. Our understanding of our fellow creatures is evolving. One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin shocked the world by suggesting we were even related to other animals rather than being specially placed on this planet by a supernatural entity. When tool use was discovered among chimpanzees in the last century, at first many biologists refused to believe it.

My vision of an ideal future is that using animals as part of our food supply will become a shameful historical curiosity, like killing people in religious ceremonies, conducting medical experiments on prison inmates, or enslaving other people. That won’t happen in my lifetime, but going vegan is definitely a commitment to being on the right side of history. Any vegan can tell you that nothing feels as liberating or as reaffirming as knowing that you’ve helped reduce suffering in the world.

A final note on this topic: food marketers would have us believe that animal products can somehow be cruelty-free. This is often implied by terms like free-range, cage-free, hormone-free, and natural. It’s a bald-faced lie: there is no way to produce meat, dairy, and eggs that isn’t torture for the animal.

Environmental Impact

Simply put, our society’s level of consumption is not sustainable. Most people are aware of this, but the mainstream frames it in terms of our use of fossil fuels. Not as many are aware of the destructive impact of eating animals and animal products. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture—that’s more than all the driving, shipping, trucking, and airplane travel we do, which accounts for 13 percent.

Half the water we use in California goes to producing meat and dairy products, so it always made me scratch my head during the drought when people would do things like shower with a bucket to collect water for their houseplants or let their lawns die, but then go chow down on a cheeseburger or frozen yogurt. One thousand gallons of water are required to produce a gallon of cow’s milk; 477 gallons of water are used to produce a pound of eggs—the list goes on. Going vegan will instantly and dramatically reduce your carbon footprint and your consumption of other resources, and far more effectively than switching to LED bulbs or buying that electric car. Cowspiracy has an extensive list of these statistics and the scientific studies that reveal them.

Nutrition

The healthiest way to eat is incredibly simple: vegan food, not including processed foods. The 2011 film Forks Over Knives explains the health