The Nobody Has Died Cookbook: Vegan Recipes and Meal Ideas

By Barry Pomeroy

I never cook with a recipe. More often, I have no idea how a dish will taste until it’s done, and by then I have moved on to the next project. Sometimes I’m not even sure that I can duplicate the recipe, or remember each ingredient and their order. I have memorable dishes which I didn’t track and therefore only remain as a flavour, such as the rich biscuit cake I made for camping and cutting trails when I was volunteering in the Canadian winter and the avocado green curry which my friend Colleen fondly recalls. Although the flavour remains, the rich sensation of raisins and dates and molasses and the order and amounts of ingredients are long forgotten. Other dishes suffer from a lack of ingredients, such as Tofu Surprise, which is not really the same without the spicy olive juice that is no longer available.
Although I occasionally record what ingredients I have combined to make a dish, I normally view them as ephemera. That has changed with this project. Acting on the delight of my various guests, I have decided to collect my recipes and concoctions for all to enjoy. Since I never read recipes, and am making my own cook book without outside influence, this collection is inevitably idiosyncratic. For example, I have organized the recipes by their cooking method instead of type of dish, and interspersed small essays which refer—by times loosely—to food and food production.
I mean for the book to be an examination of the cookbook genre, as well as a text savoured as an exercise in writing even while people try making the dishes. I hope that people will modify my recipes to make their own creations and that my recipes will come back, changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Pomeroy
• Release date: Jan 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990314087

Barry Pomeroy

Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

Book preview

Dishes cooked in the oven versus the slow cooker have an environmental as well as culinary impact. Any dish that can be made in the slow cooker can be oven-baked in a casserole dish or baking pan, but the crockpot is better environmentally in terms of saving electricity (in winter cooking also heats the house so the energy is used twice), and requires less attention. With the two methods interchangeable, at least in terms of food taste, I have included them in the same category. Those who do not have a slow cooker can take advantage of their oven to accomplish the same task, and a large covered canning pot with a smaller pot inside it can be used in the same way, although the cook runs the danger of melting the bottom of the pot if it is placed directly on the burner without fluid inside.

Giving up Pants

According to Biss there is a certain threshold that someone passes before they realize that they are no longer going to worry about what they wear. After many years working on the project, they finally decide that they will no longer keep buying jeans of larger sizes or poke holes in their belt. They buy a few pairs of sweat pants—what Biss calls giving-up pants—and then wear them outside the home.

Everyone has comfortable pants they wear inside the home, such as pajamas or sweat pants, but an entirely different message is delivered when they are worn outside the home. You are declaring to the world, Biss claims, that you will no longer be attempting to fit into jeans. You have given up, and you are now going to wear giving-up pants everywhere you go.

Thai Red Curry Pumpkin

The Thai Red Curry Pumpkin is one of the easiest dishes to make, for it is cooked in a crockpot. The ingredients are chopped and then added to the dish without attention to a particular cooking order and that saves time and attention. Then the dish is cooked for a few hours or until the smell fills the entire house (such measurements are based on a three-bedroom house so do not burn your dish waiting for your mansion to fill with cooking smells).

1.5 cup (350 ml) of fresh mushrooms

1 cup (240 ml) of onions

3 cups (700 ml) of pumpkin

1 cup (240 ml), or three small potatoes

1.5 cup (350 ml) of carrots

1.5 tablespoon (22 ml) of garlic

1 block (350 g) of tofu

1 large tin (796 ml) of whole tomatoes

1 small tin (156 ml) of tomato paste

1.5 cup (350 ml) of broccoli

.75 cup (175 ml) of green onion

2 tablespoons (30 ml) of Thai red curry paste

1 tablespoon (15 ml) of dried sweet basil

1 tablespoon (15 ml) of dried oregano

.5 teaspoon (2.5 ml) of ground sage

1 tablespoon (15 ml) of ground ginger

1.5 tablespoon (22 ml) of chopped ginger

.3 cup (80 ml) of juice from the artichoke heart bottle

.3 cup (80 ml) of juice from the banana pepper bottle

When I last made this recipe it was early fall, and the potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, and green tomatoes came from my garden. I piled the ingredients into the slow cooker, added some fluids, and waited at least five hours. It took some time for the cooker to bring the food up to temperature, but once it did, and it was nearly done, I unplugged the cooker and went to bed. By the next morning, everything was cooked and the pot was still slightly warm. That might be more of a testament to the amount of food and a well-insulated pot than a statement about the warmth of my house, however. Although this dish can be served with rice, or eaten with roti, it can also be eaten as a dish on its own.

Covid Summer Produce

Because of the Covid summer I wasn’t sure if I was going to leave the city, so I dug up my yard and planted pumpkin, spaghetti squash, carrots, green beans, potatoes, rhubarb, raspberries, swiss chard, kale, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, lemon basil, and chick peas. I have several large pumpkins left over from a crop of fourteen, although I have nearly eaten—in three cases given away—the sixteen squash. Because of this cornucopia, I have been making squash bread and pumpkin apple crumble.

Such plenitude meant that my recipes of this year are necessarily slanted toward fresh and organic produce. I do not know for sure if anything toxic has ever been sprayed on my back yard, for the former owner of the house was a flower enthusiast who cultivated a distaste for weeds, but I used no pesticides or herbicides on or around my food. Slugs were a problem this year, as they always are, so I used diatomaceous earth twice, but I mostly employed slug traps made from a mixture of water (1 cup or 250 ml), yeast (1.5 teaspoon or 7 ml), and sugar (2 tablespoons or 30 ml). I’m told that beer also attracts them. As my friend Lindsey said when we talked about attracting slugs: Once they smell that beer, they just come running. Their alacrity and lack of impulse control meant I could relocate the slugs to the back alley, where I left them to sort out their own transport.

Although I normally cook with fresh produce, this summer’s production meant I was cooking huge meals and making a variety of dishes. That led to a renewed interest in cooking where I had hitherto been more utilitarian.

Coconut Green Curry Pumpkin

This dish is similar to the Thai Red Curry Pumpkin, in both its ease of production and lengthy ingredient list, although it is a sweeter dish and not quite as spicy.

2 cups (500 ml) of fresh mushrooms

1 cup (250 ml) of onions

5 cups (1250 ml) of pumpkin

1 block (350 g) of firm tofu diced

1 block (350 g) of medium tofu shredded

2 cups (500 ml) of broccoli, or one head

1 packet (141 g) of dried coconut milk

8 (192 g) torn-apart dates

1 child’s handful (25 g) of raisins

1.5 tablespoon (22 ml) of garlic

2 tablespoons (30 ml) of Thai green curry paste

4 tablespoons (60 ml) of cooking soy sauce

.5 cup (125 ml) of peanut butter

1 tablespoon (15 ml) of peanut oil

1 tablespoon (15 ml) of dried sweet basil

.5 teaspoon (2.5 ml) of fennel seed

1.5 tablespoon (22 ml) of chopped ginger

2 tablespoons (30 ml) of molasses

1.5 cup (350 ml) of water

Like other crockpot (crackpot?) meals, the green curry is quite forgiving as to the order of ingredients. It will need to be stirred several times through the cooking process to mix the tastes, but the ingredients can be added as the cook wishes.