Vegans

  Vegan 'clam' chowder Total time: 1 hour, 35 minutes, plus overnight soaking time for the cashews Servings: 12 Note: This recipe calls for a commercial stove-top smoker; a heavy-duty roasting pan with a rack and lid can be substituted. This recipe uses small hardwood hickory chips or shavings; the chips are available at select cooking stores and are widely available online. Kombu (dried seaweed) is available at Asian markets and well-stocked supermarkets.

Tal Ronnen catered the vegan wedding for Ellen DeGeneres and wife Portia de Rossi. Casino mogul Steve Wynn tapped him to add vegan dishes to the menus at all 22 restaurants at the luxurious Wynn and Encore resorts in Vegas. Former McDonald's executives invited him onboard to help launch a chain of healthful fast-food restaurants later this year. And when Oprah decided to try the vegan thing, Tal was her guide. (She calls him the best vegan chef in America.) But here's the real secret behind his ascension to first-name-only status as a vegan rock-star chef: He thinks like a meat eater.

If you were looking to build the next great restaurant chain, surely you'd start with a burger. Or some delicious, oily chicken. Or deli sandwiches. No one has ever made it big in America with veggie burgers and vegan brownies. Then again, Americans have never been fatter, nor have the trumpets of moderation ever been sounded so loudly. Movies and books lecture the country about laying off the fat and salt, and packaged-food companies have been changing their recipes in response to consumer requests and to anticipate new government dietary guidelines that call for more healthful eating.

Seitan Wellington, it's what's for dinner this holiday season. At least it is if you're vegan, interested in becoming vegan, trying to balance your meat-heavy diet or just hanging around in the Spork Foods kitchen. Founded four years ago by sisters Heather and Jenny Goldberg, Spork Foods is a vegan food company that teaches cooking classes and revamps pantries with vegan and organic diet options. And just in time for the food-saturated holiday season, the sisters, in conjunction with an independent film collective called Open Road Films, have launched an online series of cooking classes in order to teach their vegan techniques to as many people ?

If you pass Karen Dawn's house in Pacific Palisades, you might see in her frontyard behind a white picket fence her elderly pit bull, Paula ? and two 5-month-old turkeys, Ellen and Portia. The fowl may not be the usual pet choice. But at a time of year when it is the usual food choice for millions of holiday dinners, vegans and animal welfare advocates try to raise consciousness about the slaughter by hosting meat-free dinners and events. FOR THE RECORD: Thankful turkeys: In the Nov. 24 LATExtra section, an article about two turkeys saved from slaughter by an animal advocate and invited to her Thanksgiving dinner was accompanied by a photo credited to Los Angeles Times staff photographer Brian van der Brug.

I currently follow a strict vegetarian diet and consume no animal products at all. Since vitamin B-12 is missing from the vegan diet, I wonder how many micrograms of it I should take. I've seen B-12 pills of up to 1,500 micrograms each in my food co-op, but the daily requirement is just 3 micrograms. Vitamin B-12 deficiency is far more common than most people realize. Vegans (who eat no eggs, dairy or other animal products) are frequently lacking in this essential nutrient.

This recipe from registered dietitian Lisa Gibson provides protein, fiber, iron and vitamin C, and can be easily added to the couple's culinary repertoire: Note: this recipe has not been tested. Swiss chard with cannellini beans (Serves four) 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 to 2 medium onions, sliced thin 4 cloves garlic, crushed 1/2 cup vegetable broth 8 cups chopped Swiss chard leaves (remove and discard the long center stem before chopping)

Every so often, we take a candid look at the private dietary lives of people whose food choices need a makeover. Up this week: the kitchen and dining habits of 22-year-old Jessica Watson and her boyfriend, 31-year-old Todd Preboski. She's a vegan; he eats fish but no other animal-based foods. Such diets may conjure up images of fresh vegetables and fruits, nuts, tofu and whole grains. But a lack of time and planning have cornered the couple into relying too often on Taco Bell burritos, protein bars and potato chips.

Victual voyeurism reaches staggering heights at Mooi, the new raw and vegan restaurant that opened two weeks ago in Echo Park's historic Jensen's Rec Center. Order a plate of orange jackfruit chicken over rice and within seconds of the dish's arrival, you'll feel eyes on you. Lots of them. A diner or two might even approach and ask what you're eating. Five or six others, having taken in the contents of your plate with more than a glancing curiosity will then train the cold digital eye of a camera or iPhone on their own meals.

By the end of next year, the Transportation Security Administration hopes to have nearly 1,000 full-body scanners to screen passengers at airports across the country. Two are already operational at Los Angeles International Airport. But a group of doctors and professors from UC San Francisco are raising new concerns about the safety of the technology in one type of full-body scanner built by Torrance-based Rapiscan Inc. To reveal weapons hidden under a traveler's clothes, the scanner relies on "backscatter technology," which uses the ricochets from low-level X-rays to create what looks like a nude image of the person.