I had no idea that eating a lot of animal products is the absolute worst of all the destructive things we humans do to endanger our beautiful planet Earth – worse even than oil burning and coal mining. See ***Notes below. So I’ve begun keeping my eyes open for ways to get more of my protein from plant-based foods.
When a spokesperson for Crack’d contacted me and offered to send me a sample, I had to find out: Could it actually taste like scrambled eggs? It came in handy recloseable squeeze pouches that keep a week in the refrigerator and can even be frozen. The paste is designed to look like and be cooked to taste like scrambled eggs. And compared to other vegan egg options, this one can actually be used in baking, though I haven’t tried that yet.
It took me three tries to get the paste cooked to my taste, but now I’m ready to tell you about Crack’d, the new environment-friendly egg substitute from the United Kingdom. Are you looking for small ways you can save our planet? What we eat is a bigger factor than you can imagine. Read on for more.
Astonishingly, there’s hardly any fat in this new product. Each egg equivalent is only 25 calories. Now, the pea protein from which it is made does provide only 2g of protein per 1-oz., one-egg-equivalent serving, compared to a large egg’s 6g. But the low-fat, environmental friendliness of this product could be just enough of an incentive to get us non-vegans on board. No doubt, the convenience is a draw. An equally important incentive is, of course, taste.
On my first two attempts at scrambling Crack’d, I used the same approach I’ve always used for scrambling eggs – I like ‘em soft, so that’s how I decided when to pull the substitute out of the pan. The first time, I was nervous. Added some green chilies to it in case I wasn’t 100% on the taste/texture. It tasted ok, but I wasn’t crazy about the kind-of-gooey mouthfeel. Next attempt I tried seasoning with fresh dill and eating with late-summer tomato slices. Again, ok, but the mouthfeel still felt wrong.
So I re-read the directions. Thought, Hey, I bet I’m taking them off the fire too soon! So this morning I heated up a teaspoon of olive oil, threw in some leftover cooked chopped spinach to heat up, then gave my pouch a big squeeze. Let it sit (as instructed) to cook a bit before doing anything. Then I started breaking it up, salted it a bit, and kept breaking it up and cooking for another two whole minutes. Okay, that’s better – a saucer of scrambled “eggs” with spinach, complete with (nearly) real-egg mouthfeel. But honestly, I still wasn’t super enthusiastic.
Read another review on the website theveganreview.com that did even more testing. They agreed the scrambled egg taste was a bit lacking. But they said the Crack’d “egg” did a great job in baking – cakes, cookies, brownies, etc. – and in pancakes.
If you’re looking for a small thing you can do for mother Earth, get yourself a few pouches of Crack’d and make a dessert or some pancakes with ‘em. Scroll down on the home page for some Crack’d recipe ideas. They ship them to you in a little foam cooler you can re-use for food or pet food – or as a handy foot rest. “ )
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***Notes
A video the other day on The Daily Show (on YouTube) interviewed Michael Grunwald, author of a new book called We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate. I already knew that producing meat was very hard on the planet, but I didn’t realize how badly our reliance on it is destroying our life-giving rainforests. Cattle ranching is the single most inefficient way to produce food. Cutting forests down to create pastures for them, and all that grain we grow for them is mainly about feeding animals, not people.
The statistics are shocking. “Every year since 2000, the world has been losing about 20,000 square miles of forest,” according to Earth.org. While I know chickens/eggs don’t have the same impact as porterhouse steaks et al., we gotta start somewhere. Here’s a review of another good book on this topic, We Are the Weather: Saving the Earth Begins at Breakfast, by Jonathan Safran Foer.
