A Very Vegan Problem

 “The question is not how far. The question is, do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far is as needed?” – Il Duce (The Boondock Saints)

The “problem” with being vegan, as I see it, is the continual education. It’s not that I mind reading, learning or even the knowledge itself, but the more I learn about what I am doing and eating the less I can plead ignorance. I was already guilty of this to some degree. I knew certain little factoids that those “pushy vegans” like to throw in other peoples’ faces. For instance, I knew that the human digestive tract was not meant to handle bovine milk, and that upwards of 75% of the population was lactose intolerant. Yet, I drank milk in mass quantities. I knew that animal products were the primary sources of saturated fat and cholesterol, but I still ate cheeseburgers and steaks.

The standards that my food had to meet a couple of weeks ago were extremely low in comparison to what I can eat now. I primarily focused on if it was too sugary/fatty/greasy/high in calories, and then weighed that against how much I really cared at that exact moment. A cheeseburger and large order of fries could be the best or worst thing to eat, in my mind, strictly dependent upon how hungry and apathetic I happened to be.

Now, I have to keep vigilant, and read all of my labels. Things that I so recently thought of as “safe” are now all suspect. Just the other morning, I decided to make some toaster waffles for myself. I had just woken up, and was flying on autopilot. Imagine my surprise when Angi smacked my freshly popped breakfast out of my hand. “Did you check those to see if they were okay”, she asked. I gave her my best uncomprehending gaze as I tried to absorb her meaning. Seeing that I was not quite with it, yet, she pulled the box out of the freezer, and pointed to the words on the front. “Eggo Buttermilk Waffles…So?”, I mumbled. It took me several additional seconds to realize that there was nothing vegan about that combination of words. I was just glad she had caught me in time.

So, now my “problem” grows with every new factoid I learn, and my diet becomes a little more restrictive. My question, I guess, is when does this spill over into my lifestyle, in general? I’ve already gone from a meat-and-cheese conservative who considered vegetarians to be left-wing, instinct-denying nutjobs to becoming vegan, myself. I still don’t have a pro-animal view with non-food products, but how long will it be before I am purging my house of leather and wool? How far does this go? I’m excited to find out.

Fixing Little Hang-Ups By the Dozen

I finally took the plunge yesterday, and committed myself to eating a strictly vegan diet. I have spent the last two weeks building up to this, and I am feeling really good about the switch. I stopped drinking milk a couple of months ago, and the obvious sources of meat and dairy have been almost non-existent in my diet for over a week. The big things are easy to avoid: Milk? Check. Meat? No problemo. Cheese? Easily done! Cookies? …damnit, really?

I had made it part of my daily routine to take a break about 3/4s of the way through my work day. Without fail, I would get myself a moist, delicious  and fresh-baked cookie from the hospital cafeteria. I knew it wasn’t vegan. I knew it would have to go eventually, but I love cookies. It was such a simple pleasure, and I looked forward to it all day. I could eat vegan day-in and day-out, but my cookie ritual stood as a stubborn obstacle on my path.

Then, along came Angi, my girlfriend, to the rescue. She whipped me up a batch of chocolate chip cookies from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s “Vegan With a Vengeance“. I was still skeptical of vegan baked goods after eating one of the cookies while they were fresh from the oven, but I was pretty sure they were amazing after nearly a half-dozen. With a total time of only half an hour, the recipe produces about three dozen cookies which is way more than I could should eat in an entire week of cookie breaks.

The last obstacle has been eliminated, and I no longer have any lame excuses. I am now eating right, and here are the cookies that helped me do it.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Servings: 36

Ingredients:

• 1 cup margarine , at room temp
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or vegan carob chips)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream the margarine and sugar with a hand mixer until fluffy. Add the molasses and vanilla and incorporate. Add the dry ingredients to this mixture and mix until a dough forms. Fold the chocolate chips into the dough.
3. Roll dough into 1 inch balls or drop by tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until mildly browned. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes. Then transfer to cooling racks, cool and enjoy!

Am I Becoming a Vegan for the Wrong Reasons?

I have been doing some light research to further educate myself on veganism in general. I was mildly shocked to discover that some people consider what I am doing to be a tad controversial. Media and society have already polarized nearly anyone who has an opinion of vegans. Simultaneously praised and vilified, vegans are often percieved either as benevolent, altruistic idealists or pretentious hipsters. Being vegan is so rarely portrayed as a “normal” part of life, and not a big deal. Unless, of course, the “hipster vegan” says so to illustrate how much of a big deal it really is. Yet, this isn’t what shocked me. I was surprised to read that there are people who believe that being a vegan is good, but that it is possible to become one for the wrong reasons. Usually, these reasons consist of health and vanity (read: losing weight). These are, coincidentally, my two primary movitivatoins for becoming vegan.

I didn’t start becoming a vegan to save the world. I will be the first to admit that I am doing this for very selfish reasons. I want to live healthier, and I want to lose weight. To be fair, that’s not why I started, at all. I started quite accidentally, and have embraced the change for those reasons. That being said, I don’t lose any sleep at night about animal cruelty, I don’t fully embrace the notion that meat/leather/fur/milk is murder, and I haven’t freed any of my enslaved animal brethren, yet. Do these things make me a bad person? Probably. Do they make me a bad vegan-in-transition? Many would say yes.

Does it really matter for what reason a person becomes a vegan, though? There are, I believe, silly reasons (emulating a celebrity comes to mind), but if the end result is a healthier individual where does the problem lie? Some would say that the vegan who is strictly concerned with their health is missing larger, more important issues such as the animal suffering inherent in industrial farming. They think that the “health-vegan” is more likely to use non-food animal products, and then back-slide to eating animal products occasionally or when convenient. I have no argument with the first part, but what follows seems, to me, to be specious logic.

While I don’t share the same bleeding heart views as some of the more “activist” type vegans, that is not to say that I think they’re completely wrong, either. Any person who becomes a vegan will have some positive impact, but that doesn’t mean that we all need to be hardcore, rally-attending activists to be agents of change. Not every person in a church pew is an evangelical, and not everyone in a company is going to be on the board of directors. You’ll have your movers and shakers, and the others who are just doing their part. Personally, if doing my part makes me healthier, then what other reason do I need to do the right thing?

I am not a Vegan (an apology)

“It’s not the daily increase, but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” – Bruce Lee

I am not a vegan. I have spent my entire life immersed in a world of meat, eggs, cheese and milk. I have actively ridiculed vegetarians and vegans for their “silly choices.” When my oldest son was introduced to vegetarianism by his mother he attempted to convince me that “meat is murder.” I agreed with him. I retorted that meat was indeed murder. “Tasty, tasty murder.” I was so far from vegan that I would have entire meals that consisted only of meat, a good breakfast could consist of five or six scrambled eggs with cheese, and I drank milk almost by the gallon.

Something began to change for me a couple of months ago. My weight had risen to an all-time high, and I forced myself to begin eliminating “bad foods” from my daily diet. I also began working in the surgery department of a hospital that performs around 300 open heart surgeries per year. I would watch patients come in, and wonder what behaviors led them to this point. How could I keep myself off of the operating table? What, if anything, could I change now to lose weight, lower my cholesterol and improve my quality of life decades down the road? Amidst my growing obsession with my weight and health something wonderful happened. I fell in love.

I became involved with a woman who had been living the vegan lifestyle for quite some time. I’m not sure quite what I expected would happen  when our diets collided, but she had already set rules in place. 1. Being vegan was a personal choice for her, 2. She would never ask, coerce or force me to be vegan and 3. She would still prepare vegan fare for me, if I asked. I liked that she wasn’t preachy about her dietary choice, and I was becoming increasingly intrigued as to how a meatless, dairy-free meal could possibly be palatable.

The first vegan dish she prepared for me was a pretty simple spaghetti. It was tasty, and I took the leftovers to work with me the next day for lunch. This became a pattern over the next couple of days. I would have a protein bar and  some fruit for breakfast, last night’s leftovers for lunch, and be treated to a new vegan dish for dinner. It took me almost a week to realize what was happening. I had a my protein bar and a cookie (a shameful, mid-shift ritual at work), but everything else I had been eating was 100% vegan. Even stranger, to me, was that I hadn’t missed anything. I hadn’t had any strange cravings for meat, or any sprints to the refrigerator for a tall glass of milk. I had accidentally begun walking a path that I had so recently considered unthinkable, and I had indeed done so without coercion or force. I didn’t even complain.

Now, I am, arguably, 2/3s vegan. I don’t know if such a thing can be measured that way, but I don’t care. I guess the point is that I am in transition. I am working to carefully weed out the unnecessary portions of my diet. If I can stop eating meat and dairy, and not miss it, then great. If I can help someone who is stumbling down the same path that I am, then even better. If I, as a meat-loving, milk-guzzling monster, can do this, then anyone can. What I can’t do is go back to my unhealthy ways. I just don’t want readers to get the wrong idea from my title. I’m not a vegan…yet.