I have now been vegan for over 50 hours, and I've already been offered several tasty things I can't eat. I think that's going to be the hardest part of this whole vegan "adventure." When someone brings cookies to work, I can't have any. When a student offers me homemade baklava, I had to turn it down. Today there were sugar cookies and donuts and chocolate cookies all available at work, and I munched on my carrot sticks, consoling myself by trying to muster up some feeling of superiority. My superiority's pretty thin, however, since I've only been vegan for two and a half days and I don't think your diet is a good reason to feel superior to anyone anyway. Vegans are better people in my mind, just more dedicated to an ideal most of us don't feel passionately about.
The only other hiccup in my vegan paradise has been the lack of chocolate and readily available dessert. I've found a way around part of this problem by resurrecting a favorite dessert from childhood: cinnamon toast. I can't use butter, so I slather my vegan bread (I had to go to two stores to find vegan bread! Stop putting honey in every single loaf people! You're starving me!) with a little olive oil, then generously pour on the sugar, and then add a few dashes of ground cinnamon. Pop it into the toaster oven for a few seconds and presto! Dessert!
The inability to eat 99% percent of what people bring to share makes me feel both sad and guilty, however. What do I do for the end of year faculty luncheon? Pack my own sandwich and drink the soda? What if I get asked on a date? Do I explain that I can't eat anything, and offer to make him dinner? Gandhi used to pack his own food or just go hungry if there was no food available that he didn't consider immoral/unwise to eat. Since my veganism has only a dash of morality behind it, I find the prospect of watching all my coworkers eat while going hungry, or making a first date suddenly very awkward and giving him the impression I'm a rabid hippie.
On the flip side, the inability to eat 99% of processed food means that I'm going to be eating a whole lot more homemade items. It's easy to make vegan bread, mustard, dessert, and meals. It's a pain to buy them. It surprised me to find out that there were a lot of animal products that weren't dairy or meat in most foods you pick up off the shelf. Riboflavin, for example, is in just about everything and is usually derived from animals. Carmine Red is made from crushed up beetles.
Other than hunting for vegan bread and refusing food others offer me, I've enjoyed my first three days of being vegan. I'm looking forward to the next 37 days of dietary adventure.
6 comments:
I can offer no solace for the social eating thing. But there are several good vegan places to eat in SLC that would suffice for dates, should that come up. Also it will force your date to think of something more interesting than Applebees, because several Indian or Asian places have some veg options. There's also a vegan cupcake place somewhere around here, that you could take to work potlucks so you have things to eat that are sweet.
So I give you this site: http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2010/02/raw-vegan-chocolate-mousse-how-food.html
from a google I just did. I assume you google enough as is. But I googled because I once had this 3 ingredient chocolate mousse that was great. I think it was tofu, cocoa powder and sugar. Then it was served with strawberries. Very good. If tofu is vegan, than it's good to go with most things (veggie stir fry?!~ yummmm).
Kudos on your vegan journey. I have a few food challenges I how to accomplish: vegetarian month, crock pot month, etc. I look forward to following you (via blog) on this adventure. Good luck and good speed.
Whole Foods (is there one in Utah county?) has vegan baked things like cookies and brownies (both of which I have tried and are delightful). Also, Harmon's grocery stores have in-house artisan bread bakers that use the old European style (as in flour, yeast, water, salt); it's terrific bread, but will go stale in about 2-3 days. There are a lot of raw food cookbooks out there too, which use vegan ingredents. One of my favoriate places to test cook books is by checking them out from the library, then I decide if I like them enough to buy them. This is a great time of year to go vegan- so much wonderful produce! Enjoy those farmer's markets; I have the whole summer off and plan on hitting the SLC market every Sat.; you should come with me sometimes if you are around :).
Wait, do vegans eat yeast?
I'm sure there are some purist vegans out there who don't eat yeast, but I'm going to.
Thanks for the links and suggestions everyone. Yesterday I also discovered that mint oreos are supposedly vegan, so what more could I ask for in life?
Hahahahah! For some reason, you CRACK ME UP!:') OH.... Don't take it personally, I love people who make me laugh. Thanks for your comments!
~Sandee Beech
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