I haven’t been keeping up the blog very well lately because
I have been trying to limit internet time in favor of getting that overwhelming
to-do list actually done. Finding balance is a tough task, in life as in eating
as in blogging. But I’m doing my best to keep learning, and move past the bad
days that don’t quite go as planned.
I’ve been really pleased with my progress in figuring out
the lunch dilemma. I’ve become pretty adept at looking at leftover ingredients
in my fridge and figuring out what goes with what.
Example 1: for a recent dinner, I had made herbed polenta
cutlets with a mushroom ragout. I had some leftover herbed polenta that hadn’t
yet been cut or fried. I also had a tomato that I grabbed at the farmers market
three days prior, despite my lack of planned use for it, wooed by it’s
purple-red beauty and Jefferson’s Monticello farm heritage. The basil in my
garden was in need of harvest, I noticed while watering, and the spinach was
bolting and had met the end of its very short spring season. So I gathered the
leaves from the garden and cut them into a chiffonade (leaves stacked, rolled
up like a cigar, and sliced thin), sliced the tomato, and tossed them together
with a little olive oil and balsamic. I took the polenta, fried it up in a pan
(I didn’t bother with cutting or crusting it), scooted it to the side, and
briefly warmed up the tomato mixture next to it. An easy gourmet lunch! I was
really proud.
Example 2: I had cooked up plenty of brown rice, since one
of our staple dishes around here has become Thai pineapple fried rice and it’s
best with rice that’s several days refrigerated. Still, I had a ton. (I think I
cooked about 8 cups.) I also had a cilantro chutney I’d whipped up for a fun,
experimental behlpuri Indian date night in, a red bell pepper that was on it’s
way out, and half a can of black beans in a Pyrex. So in a skillet I threw some
oil, rice, the beans, the pepper diced up, several spoonfuls of the chutney
(Indian, but I figured hey, cilantro is cilantro and it’ll probably work great
in Mexican inspired beans and rice!), and a handful of frozen corn for good
measure. It took me about 5 minutes to heat up, and I had a great meal from
leftovers and bought-on-a-whim ‘food with no purpose’ that would have ended up
in the garbage in my past life.
I’m finding that in life as in interior decorating, you can’t
worry about coordinating everything. You have to know yourself well enough to
know what you really like, and trust that it will all come together with a
little care and attention applied.
And I’ve been learning to keep things I like ready made in
the fridge. I have a pot of Cajun-style red beans and rice on the stove right
now; to be kept in the fridge, ready to feed us several reheated lunches on
demand. I try to always have my black bean ‘dragon’ dip or some kind of hummus
in the fridge, making sandwiches or veggie/fruit/olive/cracker/dip ‘antipasto’
lunches really easy to pull out as well. This usually requires just 20-30
minutes one day a week or so and my very beloved Kitchen Aid food processor.
I’ve been feeling deprived a lot less often, now that I’m learning a new way to
approach lunch.
And this brings me to further thoughts on deprivation. As
I’ve been focusing on really learning what I especially enjoy eating, I’ve
never looked forward to my meals more. I’ve tried more new foods and fantastic
flavors since deciding to completely cut out animal foods than I ever could
have imagined. I am overwhelmed by the sheer number of new meal ideas that
excite me, and it seems like nearly every night I’m trying something for the
first time.
Yet on a recent visit with a non-veg friend of Matt’s, I
answered several questions that reminded me exactly what the word “vegan” would
have brought to mind as recently as two years ago—complete and total
deprivation, bland and boring food, and most inevitably, all of the delicious
things I “wouldn’t be allowed” to eat anymore.
“I could never, ever. Ugh!” would have been my basic
response if you’d asked me back then. Thankfully, our friend was much more
thoughtful and curious than I would have been.
“So, what do you snack on during the day when you’re
hungry?” he asked.
“Probably a lot of the same stuff you do,” I replied.
“Veggies, dip, fruit, chips, salsa, crackers, peanut butter. Nut bars, sunflower
seeds, popcorn. Dark chocolate. Sometimes Oreos. With peanut butter if it’s a
really bad day.”
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s funny, you always think
of “vegan” as this thing that’s so different and really hard to do.”
Later, as we were prepping dinner together in his kitchen he
said, “You know, when I think about ‘going vegan’ the first thing I think about
is all the things I wouldn’t be able to eat anymore, and it just seems like too
much. I don’t think about the things I can
eat!” He gestured to all of the food surrounding us on the counter.
“I know,” I said. “Trust me, I felt exactly the same way! I
don’t think I ever could have done it cold turkey. Some people can, and that’s
great, but first I had to learn how much I really still enjoyed food and
cooking without meat in it, and how much I did not miss meat. Then when I
decided to give up dairy [the holy grail; which it seems I may have an allergy
to] and eggs, I found myself trying yet more new foods and exciting flavors
that made the whole thing feel more like an adventure than an exercise in
deprivation.” (I said a bunch of things that added up to that, anyway. I think it's pretty obvious that is not EXACTLY what I said. :) )
And that’s the key: try to add more plant-based recipes to
your life first; don’t think “I am eliminating meat, cheese and eggs; things I
grew up with that my parents made me, things that are the basis for Granny’s
potluck recipes and the soup I ate when I was pregnant with Janie and couldn’t
keep anything else down.” You’re asking to fail when you put too much pressure
on yourself, too soon. Instead, designate one day a week ‘All Plant Day” and
look in cookbooks and online for plant-based recipes that sound yummy to you.
Pull them out on your designated day, and try them! Enjoy new flavors and foods
you’ve never heard of before!
And try not to think in terms of “not allowed” but rather, “what else is there
that might work?” I will cheerfully admit that sometimes I fail at being 100%
vegan. I’m a beginner yet at this.
And while the idea of eating flesh food has, over time (I
used to crave pepperoni like you wouldn’t believe, and sometimes drunkenly
indulge), become nauseating to me, eating milk or butter buried in a sauce or
pastry is much more difficult to resist. Hypocritical though I know it is. When
I’m PMSing, sometimes I’m just desperate for a Kraft American cheese grilled
cheese on white bread. I found a vegan substitute, but it didn’t cut it. I
found another one to try that supposedly tastes more like the real Kraft, but
if it doesn’t cut it either and I really can’t resist it one day every few
months, I won’t. It isn’t a good thing, but it’s a much better thing than
saying “Vegan is too hard!” and giving up altogether. And just the other day I
caved to my craving for vegetarian-but-not-vegan Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Sure,
I feel inconsistent and guilty. But the truth is, I am anyway, whether I feel
that way or not. I’d rather feel like I still have a lot of work to do to be
perfect than to feel vastly superior to everybody else.
Secret: the “vegan police” don’t actually exist. Nobody’s
going to pull in and arrest you for giving in to your Ben and Jerry’s craving
or deciding you’ll drink the milk at your dad’s house because he’s a wonderful
dairy farmer who loves his cows and respects their right to live to die of old
age. Outside of the movie Scott Pilgrim, the vegan police don’t exist, I promise.
What does exist, unfortunately, everywhere in life including
among plant-based eaters, are mean, judgmental people. These are the only
people who are truly deprived: deprived of kindness, grace, growth, and the
truth about themselves and their neighbors. I try not to refer to myself as ‘vegan’
in public because these kinds of people are very puritanical in doctrine and
defensive of their label. I don’t want to be associated with them anyway. I’m
plant-based, or an herbivore, or an animal food avoider, but I’m not a pure
VEGAN (or pure anything else, for that matter).
We are all inconsistent; that is not a reason to be
consistently cruel and thoughtless. In fact, I find my spiritual awareness is
heightened by the humbling recognition of my own inconsistency. Don’t let your
absolute certainty that your addiction to frozen yogurt is too deeply cemented
in your soul to ever give it up convince you that there is no point in reducing
your animal foods at all. This is just false.
I’ll close with this thought from author Isaac Beshevis
Singer, recently shared with me by a new local veg friend: “A vegetarian is an
inconsistent person. If a mosquito is biting me, I swat it. But it is better to
be an inconsistent vegetarian than to not be a vegetarian.” Amen to that.
