skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The other day I received a Twitter direct message from someone who who wanted to feed me. I suggested coffee because I am filled with an ungodly amount of pride.
Eva Darling is kind of like a cartoon character that got bored with all the sparkles and zany sound-effects so she decided to step out of the 2D world and into ours. She’s as fun to stare at as an episode of Jem! and conversations with her make you feel like you’ve gotten into a tickle-fight. Her real name is Eva Darling. In brief, she didn’t have to feed me to make me like her.
But she did. And oh, how she did. My plan to meet up at a coffee shop and discuss her vegetarianism and thereby avoid any sort of soup kitchen-esque handout backfired. Eva showed up with a woven tote bag boasting, poorly translated from Chinese, “Alternative Living: No more killing Be healthy and loving.” (It also had a cartoon hen saying, “We Pray for You.” No joke.) Inside of the bag was a jar of carrot apple curry soup, homemade tofu jerky, wakame seaweed salad, a bag of Have’A corn chips, Seitenbacher Veggie-Burger-Mix #2, Dave’s Killer Bread Peace Bomb, a Bumble bar, Seitenbacher Vampire’s Lunch, and a mango the size of my ego. There were also hot pink hair extensions, but I think they’re both inedible and probably not vegan.
I will start by saying that the soup was hands down the best soup I have ever consumed. Better than the (vegan) spinach wonton soup from gobo in New York. Better than Amy’s (vegan) organic alphabet soup. Better than my mother’s chicken noodle. (Sorry, mom.) Eva’s soup kicked all soups asses and knocked them out cold. In fact, I ate it cold, out of the little jar she’d packed it in. Scroll to the bottom of this posting for the recipe.
I first had Dave’s Killer Bread at Paradox Café, a vegan diner down the block from my house. Dave’s loaves look like bird food but taste like heaven. The Peace Bomb, which I guess is a hippie’s version of a baguette, was just as good as Dave’s Good Seed bread, though all bread products, when toasted, make me crave eggs over easy or turkey with honey mustard. Don’t judge me for my barbaric cravings, I’m just being honest. Cigarettes are gross and the tobacco industry is inherently evil, but that doesn’t mean that once you quit smoking you stop craving a nic fix. Same goes for animal products. "Come to where the flavor is..."
The mango proved to be a bit of a physical challenge, only because I couldn’t figure out how to approach it, as I had never before been in the presence of a mango that large. My roommate (not the vegan one) washed dishes while eying me with trepidation as I took the largest knife from the drawer and approached the fruit like Annie Wilkes to Paul Sheldon. It then quickly evolved into a scene from the cutting room floor of 9 ½ Weeks, where I basically was up to my elbows in mango pulp and juice, grinning in a way that I think was only rivaled in the back seat of a Jeep back in 1998. “You look like one of those little monkeys eating that, one of those little monkeys with the fire-red asses,” the non-vegan roommate said. And with that he vacated the kitchen, leaving me, my butcher knife, and Eva’s darling mango to make bliss among the clean dishes.
The tofu jerky and the wakame salad were both snacks that remedied my usual mid-afternoon salt-n-sweet craving when washed down with some diet soda. Tonight I’m going to try to make the veggie burgers as well as figure out why they’re number two. (Eva’s guess, “Veggie-Burger-Mix #1 was recalled because it made everyone who ate it grow dreadlocks and buy VW busses.”) I’m saving the Vampire’s Lunch (“Gummi Fruits Made With Real Fruit Juice”) and the chips for a night when I’ll make Eva guacamole and then clean her entire apartment, wash her sexy van, and launder, iron, and fold her whole wardrobe out of gratitude. If being vegan means getting food like this from girls like that then I will subscribe to “Alternative Living” permanently.
Big thanks to Eva Darling, who allowed me to smear my adoration for her all over this blog and providing the recipe for the soup to end all soups:
Recipe for Curried Carrot Apple Soup
2T olive or coconut oil
1 onion, chopped
5 med sized carrots, cut into chunks
1 clove minced garlic
1 apple, peeled, cored, cut into chunks
2 med sized potatoes, peeled, cut into chunks
1t fresh ginger, peeled & minced
2T curry powder
5 cups water or stock
1/2 lemon, juiced
Salt & pepper to taste
In soup pot, heat oil on medium heat. Add onion and cook for 3 minutes. Add everything else except lemon juice and water/stock. Com until carrots are bright orange and spices become aromatic. Add water/stock and bring to a boil. Cook until veggies are soft. Purée with a blender. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Adjust consistency with water/stock. Serve!
First of all, I must share that I have chewed lemon gum and it is bad. However, lemon gum (named something irritatingly enthusiastic such as Lemon Zing! or Lemon Blast! or Lemon Dude You're Harshing My Mellow) was the only Wrigley's brand gum up at the corner store in NoPo. So vegan lemon misnomer gum it was.
I know this is a case of WPP*. For what it's worth, I'm aware.
Also, I skated to Whole Foods tonight in the hope of eating something halfway decent after making a few dollars by assisting a friend of mine with a casting. I figured that I should celebrate the weekend and my second month's sobriety with something delicious and vegan that would make me feel like I'm giving back to the world and supporting good logo design.
The total? $6.19. The items: one (1) can of organic refried pinto beans and three (3) apples.
I am not kidding.
Now, before y'all get to thinking that I'm a whiny girl who just likes to complain -- which I am, really -- I will say in my defense that I have been shopping at tiny markets and independent vendors as per the wholly appreciated suggestions of some of you. But it was nice out and I wanted to ride around a bit. Then I realized it was nearly ten and I was lost and...With fifteen minutes before the shop closed I had to just grab what I could and get out, there was no extra time to be wasted pondering the brand of hummus or if I had enough cash for granola. I hate subjecting clerks to an extra ten minutes of waiting around for douchebag shoppers to finish up, so I pretended I was in Supermarket Sweep and got the hell out.
Then there's the issue of my stomach. It hurts. And not in the normal Void Where Prohibited sort of way, or in the way that would make me a good body double for an Exorcist revival, no. We're talking the kind of hurt that has only been rivalled by that afternoon in the fourth grade when Jonathan Peltzer punched me in the stomach 'cause he thought I stole the kickball. (It was in the bushes, wasn't it, jackass?) It's like a piranha in a plastic bag. It's like every hipster cliche and overused iconic image (ninja, narwhal, unicorn, pirate, Beirut) were all thrown into a cage match located where my diaphragm and colon should be. I eat because my brain calculates that I should. Then it hurts more. Then it hurts less. And by that time the brain calculator is tallying up the hours saying, "It's called breakfast, fucker." So apples, which I adore eating and therefore are worth any pain, and refried beans, which taste like paste and make me feel full and are usually cheap and can be used in the preparation of burritos, seemed like wise choices. Untrue. Now I see why even Mercedes driving, Chanel wearing yacht club patrons refer to the Whole Foods on Long Island as "Whole Paycheck." (Insert lock-jawed laughter through a Botoxed gob here.) I don't have a paycheck. But apparently I have a new hole in the form of an ulcer.
Later, far from the Whole Highway Robbery, a couple spoke to me in impassioned tones about the benefits of farming your own vegetables here in Portland. They gave me the names of two books and instructed me about what I should start out trying to not kill (fava beans, carrots, and basil.) Considering that I'm the girl who murdered a cactus that was bought at Ikea, I bet that if I attempt to use a green thumb to thumb my nose at vegans the potential for comedy and embarrassment is high.
One member of this couple also told me that when he was a vegetarian, he was coerced into tasting pork-laden canapes and other meaty bites for his old job as a server for a hoity-toity restaurant in California. He immediately started having nightmares about pigs talking to him. The pigs would be standing on their hind legs chatting him up, confronting him about his recent meanderings off of the path, and then they would turn around and expose their bloody, mauled ribcages. He had night-terrors over his food choices. Last night I had a dream that I was descending an unending flight of stairs while using an umbrella to shield me from a downpour of soybeans. Can't quite tell what it means, other than that I should try drinking some warm soymilk before bedtime.
I have a week of this month left. If anyone wants to take me out for my first non-vegan meal on May 1st, I'm game. Just be creative and let me know what you think we should ingest. And, yes, I'll probably blog about it.
* White People's Problems
The following is an actual conversation between me and my friend Danielle who lives in New York.
Dani and I were in the same class in the screenwriting department at NYU Tisch, back in 1999 when we were young and hungry. Now she’s employed and living the diploma-born dream in the big city while I have more crows’ feet and the same dress size that I had way back when, only without any extra junk in the trunk from stolen bottles of Zima and late night pancake runs to the Waverly Diner. Our friendship - cultivated through East Coast cynicism and biting wit - has prevailed.
Oh, I should add, Danielle is an omnivore.
* * * *
Dani: Hey, I ate at a vegan restaurant last night. Moby's place
Ainsley: Teany? Did you like it?
Dani: Yeah, Teany. Yeah, it was great.
Ainsley: What did you eat?
Dani: I had mac and cheese with bacon, soy bacon. I’m actually not sure if some things are vegetarian and others vegan. Like maybe my cheese was real, but I’m not sure.
Ainsley: Ok. Ok, this is good. This is research. What were the outward signs that it was vegan? And why did you eat there?
Dani: Outward signs? Skinny model types smoking outside. And a spaceship. I don't know. I ate there 'cause my friend told me it was really good and another guy at work's girlfriend told me the same thing. They're both vegetarians. I also wanted a cupcake from Babycakes and it’s right near there so I thought it would be a good plan. It was a whole wholesome night.
Ainsley: Yeah, being vegan's good for you. When you're not only eating canned refried beans and Cream of Wheat, hold the cream.
Dani: You‘re not vegan, you‘re crazy with an anorexic wallet. We ended up having red velvet cake at Moby's. Babycakes was closed when we got there.
Ainsley: How was the red velvet? (Is velvet a vegan material?) Vegan cake is usually good, especially if it's made by tattooed boys who restore classic cars. Yum.
Dani: It was ok, but not as good as Babycakes. It had that slightly stale quality. Like paste.
Ainsley: Oh. the moisture issue. Yeah.
Dani: I really liked eating there. If vegan was made that easy for me all the time I’d do it. I think it's noble, I just don’t have the patience, time, energy, money, what-have-you. They also had good drinks. And the place is comfortable and not irritatingly vegan like most places I’ve been. The people are not obnoxious.
Ainsley: What constitutes irritatingly vegan? I know irritating vegans, but irritatingly vegan? What do you mean?
Dani: I don't know, I can't put my finger on it exactly. For example, there's a place in my hood called Quantum Leap...
Ainsley: Ah, Scott Bakula. That's one small step for an herbivore, but one giant leap for a cattle rancher...
Dani: ...Which is your typical West Village vegan/vegetarian joint. It is awful. Only people who really can't eat normal food will eat there. And the waiters are weird.
Ainsley: What do you mean by weird?
Dani: I could do impressions of them if I were in person. Like, one of them wears a floppy hat and gets right up in your face every time she has to ask you something. If you ask her a question she looks upward for so long it looks like she is getting the answer out of her hat. And she talks really low and whispery, which is I guess why she needs to be up in your face.
Ainsley: Wow.
Dani: I keep trying to shout at her before she actually gets to the table.
Ainsley: Maybe she's hearing impaired or something.
Dani: Also, the places are usually grimy and Moby's is fresh and sparkly. It doesn't look like they are shunning all things yummy inside. And there are bottles of "Seventh Generation" cleaner everywhere, which I liked. I like knowing that the restaurant I'm eating in gets cleaned every now and then.
Ainsley: He showed you the cleaner? Was Moby there plugging his new album or saving the pandas?
Dani: No, it was just out on the counter. And, no, Moby wasn’t there but it kind of makes you feel like you’re seeing Moby without actually seeing him. Moby imitators everywhere or something. It's Mobyesque. Simple, new age, bald, shiny.
Ainsley: Somewhat pretentious yet simultaneously irresistible. Lucky. God, I miss New York. Hey, can I write about this?
Dani: I'll give you all my memories and you can claim them because I am not writing a vegan blog.
Ainsley: You mean you're not starving in the name of art. You're just making money and eating a vegan meal and not documenting your slow descent into a duodenal ulcer.
Dani: Something like that.
Ainsley: Thanks.
Dani: Also what was cool, I wanted a regular lemonade and they only had all these lavender lemonades and whatnot. So I asked for one and the waiter said he would try to make it for me and wouldn’t charge me.
Ainsley: Lavender. The stuff my mom puts in her underwear drawer to make sure the moths don't eat her skivvies.
Dani: Yeah, I didn't want that. I wanted regular lemonade...
Ainsley: Lemonade flavored lemonade.
Dani: …So the waiter tried to make it for me and it tasted great, very natural. So cute. The place is also pretty cheap, about $10 to $12 for an entree.
Ainsley: That's about how much I'd expect it to be. Got to fund the synthesizers.
Dani: I wonder how they make soy bacon.
Ainsley: Soy pigs.
Dani: Like, how many ingredients does it take to achieve the flavor of bacon without bacon? That can't be healthy. But they couldn't do the dish without the not-bacon-bacon, which is interesting. If you're a vegetarian you expect to go to a regular restaurant and get your dish sans bacon, but if you are a meat-eater and don't want fake bacon, you can't get it without.
Ainsley: Bacon’s gross anyway.
Dani: Can you picture people sitting up there with different bottles mixing together going, "Taste like bacon yet?" Like, there are people in white coats standing around with test tubes in some secret testing facility or something. "Is it lemon plus guarana plus wheat plus leaves...?"
Ainsley: And Moby with a mortar and pestle. Maybe the magic ingredients are, like, crushed walrus tusks. And mermaid scales. Or just salt.
Dani: It's funny you mention that. I felt healthy when I left except my fingers were swollen. There must have been a lot of salt.
Ainsley: Yikes.
Dani: Yeah. like a bowl of nachos and giant margarita's worth. I get that sometimes, usually after I eat Chinese food. There are two restaurants here where I know I can eat the vegan food and be ok.
Ainsley: The vegan food?
Dani: Yeah. The vegan food. I can eat it and be fine, but only at these two places.
Ainsley: And by fine you mean not swell?
Dani: No, I mean, like feel one-hundred percent healthy after. I guess you never know what's in some of that stuff. Do you think it's because you they generally put too much other crap in it to make it taste good?
Ainsley: I think they put too much crap in to make it taste like other crap.
Dani: Yes. well if they're going to be putting that much crap in it, I might as well stick to my usual crap that tastes better.
Ainsley: I think I'm irritatingly vegan. To my colon.
Dani: Probably.
Woke up in a foul mood that was only enhanced by the business related venture to Pine State Biscuits where I could not eat a goddamn thing. I realized that I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in three to four days and that I basically feel achy, crankier than usual, and kind of like I’m being perpetually held underwater. It’s uncomfortable. For me and everyone around me.
I'm not saying that any of this has to do with being vegan but the fact that my diet has been reduced to canned beans, Corn Flakes, and soy milk for almost a week now is the only change to my lifestyle that I could identify.
Let me make it clear that veganism and financial strife are equal culprits here. Consider them partners in crime, crimes against my personal sense of humanity.
Being a natural born complainer, an avid worrier, and a bit of a hypochondriac, I went to the greatest source for medical information and personal evaluation that I could think of, WebMD’s Symptom Checker application.
Over the years that I've used this nifty tool I’ve had Gout, lumbar spinal stenosis, and bipolar disorder, all of which have magically cleared up. I figured that these days my symptoms are more “general” than specific to any one (or eight) parts of my body so I clicked on the provided list as follows:
Gender, female. Age, 25-34.
General Symptoms:
Body aches or pains
Coarse hair (I did dye it recently but I noticed that texturally it’s been a little different and visually it’s been more unsightly than I‘m comfortable with.)
Dislikes change in daily routine (This is a persistent symptom.)
Distorted body image (Half the time I think I look like Beth Ditto, the other half the time I think I look like a prepubescent boy. One of these images is incorrect. Or both.)
Dizziness
Easy bruising
Excessive crying (I wanted to ask what they meant by “Excessive” but for simplicity’s sake I just clicked it.)
Fatigue
Fearful (This is what the ATM says when I ask for a balance inquiry. WebMD should also have a symptom option for “Fucking Broke As a Joke.”)
Feeling faint
Food cravings
Hunger
Inability to care for self (Again, a persistent symptom.)
Joint aches
Poor personal hygiene (I wanted to chose this only because of the hair issue. And the clothes from high-school that I’m still wearing. And the fact that I’ve been “borrowing” my roomates’ soap, razors, Q-Tips, and body lotion that smells like a man wearing cologne in a pine forest. Delightful to the senses, especially since all feminine smelling products, at this point, make me want to eat them. Anyway, I didn‘t select this symptom. No “real“ vegan would.)
Reduced productivity at work (“Reduced work where productivity might be present or compromised” is the technical symptom but whatever.)
Restlessness and irritability
Restrictive dieting (Yes.)
Short attention span
Short stature (This was an option I didn’t click on because I’ve had it forever but I thought it was a funny optional symptom just the same.)
Socially withdrawn
Now here was a tricky one: Weight loss (intentional) followed by the option of Weight loss (unintentional)
I only know I’ve lost weight because my belt now requires an additional notch and because I actually like the way I look naked. I chose the later, though, because the purpose of going vegan wasn’t to look like a high-school cheerleader. Then WebMD asked me another little riddle: Was this weight loss Sudden, Gradual, or I Don’t Know. I chose “I Don’t Know.”
The list of possible diagnoses was extensive. I could be suffering from any number of conditions, including but not limited to depression; PMS; exercise or physical activity which I did not realize were medical conditions; flu; malnutrition; bulimia (the oral intake has been minimal but the exporting has been nil, therefore I don‘t think this is something for me to worry about); dementia associated with a head injury; MS; Lyme disease; anxiety; and my personal favorite, syphilis.
Other possible menu options included “Acute stress reaction” and the phenomenally scary Sarcoidosis.
According to WebMD’s Acute Stress Reaction: Symptoms and Treatment page
“We all find ways of coping with stress. Coping mechanisms may or may not be effective or harmless.
Positive coping responses:
Listening to music
Playing with a pet
Laughing or crying
Going out with a friend (shopping, movie, dining)
Taking a bath or shower
Writing, painting, or other creative activity
Praying or going to church
Exercising or getting outdoors to enjoy nature
Discussing situations with a spouse or close friend
Gardening or making home repairs
Practicing deep breathing, meditation, or muscle relaxation
Negative coping responses:
Criticizing yourself (negative self-talk)
Driving fast in a car
Chewing your fingernails
Becoming aggressive or violent (hitting someone, throwing or kicking)
I would like a coping mechanism that doesn’t include things I do not have (ie, money, a car, a bathtub, religion) and yet is not harmful to animals, people, or vegans.
I would also like to know if any of my symptoms could be attributed to skateboarding, caffeine intake, and abject poverty? My assumption is yes, but I’m no licensed scientician.
Biscuits
Gravy
Biscuits and gravy
A plate
Butter
Buttered biscuit
Paper napkin
Assorted metal cutlery
Jelly that has been touched by knife to spread butter on biscuit A ramekin of jam
Last night I went out to dinner, a business dinner. You would think that the most bizarre part of the evening, other than the fact that I was out to a business dinner and yet am unemployed, would have been the couple who used the single-stall bathroom for a different sort of unhygienic relief ahead of me, but no. To me the most outlandish occurrence was that my choice of appetizer was limited to…grilled bread.
Let me be clear and explain two extremely important things. One, I am not complaining. Especially in light of this article that my boyfriend sent me regarding food choices in Haiti (“It’s vegan,” he meekly insisted with a smile that illuminated the fact that there is still a ways for us to fall down the economic ladder) I would not complain about being taken out on somebody else’s dime, even if my food choices were reduced to a complimentary bread basket left upon the table.
Two, this restaurant was what we refer to as “a classy joint” if, like me, you’re from Long Island. It had all the elements of swankiness that I believe fine eating establishments require: cloth napkins, intrusive floral arrangements, candles, and attractive yet inattentive wait staff. TGIFridays it was not.
However, when it came to ordering, I had decided that the vaguely worded side dish of “vegetables” could sub in as a vegan appetizer. In my game of menu Tetris there was only one option I could consider vegan and that was my entrée, a salad, hold the blue cheese. My dinner companion made it a point to jokingly mention to the waiter that she was not vegan, unlike me. The server turned to me saying in a voice that truly reflected the nadir of humanity that (understandably) accompanies all food service jobs:
“The vegetables are sautéed in a little bit of butter.”
That left me to ashamedly reply, “Oh, no worries, I’ll just have bread. Could I have a bit of, um, olive oil and balsamic vinegar with that?”
A dish of three slices of bread with impeccable grill marks arrived with a tiny ramekin of EVOO and vinegar. I consumed them rapidly, thinking, “Jesus, this is Portland, you’d think they’d have a vegan option.”
Holy shit, I’ve become one of them. The entitled, privileged, snot-nosed vegans that I so reviled. Okay, maybe snot-nosed is pushing it a bit far, but a month ago I would have openly mocked anybody who shied away from the opportunity to consume an appetizer just because of what it was cooked with. Now, however, I have information like this on hand to steer me away from inadvertently making a choice that would be difficult to live with. For example, cows naturally produce sixteen pounds of milk a day to feed their young, dairy cows are fed antibiotics and hormones to increase this production to a nearly perpetual fifty pounds a day. I don’t want to eat antibiotics unless I’ve got some bad juju going on in my body that needs fixing. I don’t want to have any hormones all up in my piece either until I’m having hot flashes or my future senior beau is popping little blue pills to keep me smiling and satisfied. I don’t feel good being indirectly responsible for some living thing being kept in inhumane conditions like a concrete cage. If I didn’t cause my mother to get mastitis why the heck should I force an animal to? It might just be a “little bit of butter” but the implications to me suddenly are huge.
Yes, I wrote that it would be difficult to live with ordering a dish cooked with butter in a restaurant that I, if traveling alone, could not afford. Yes, I know what that sounds like. But if I were suffering from any lactose intolerance, Crohn’s disease, or food allergy it would be acceptable, right? Being conscious of food choices seems to be something designated only for those who have to be. And I suddenly find myself feeling like that’s all of us, until the price of a television exceeds my yearly wage.
Being poor and being vegan don't go together like almond butter and gelatin-free jam.
Unless you count skipping meals out of necessity as a successful vegan diet, it is very, very tough to turn your last $15.00 into a week's worth of animal-free sundry items.
What’s worse is that being vegan, unlike being poor, means you have to turn down loads of free, delicious food. Case in point, Noah and Angela’s biscuits and sausage gravy.
“Want to come over for biscuits?”
Yes. Yes, I would. I would also like to know why biscuits seem to be plaguing me like some sort of lard-and-butter-based telltale heart throbbing with warm gravy.
Instead of being able to indulge in (free) homemade biscuits fresh from the oven smothered in (free) sausage and cream gravy I had to bring my own bag of whole wheat mini pitas and coat them in fig jam (made with pectin, not gelatin) that Noah had in the fridge. The jam was delicious. The pitaettes tasted like what I imagine the tongues of my Converse taste like when they're dried by a blast of exhaust from a passing bus.
Not being able to shop for poor person staples such as pizza bagels, chicken flavored ramen, and Jell-O has limited my pantry to beans. And refried beans. Kidney beans. Some 57 cent "red" beans. Butter beans. And vegetable broth. To cook the beans in.
Being hungry makes me blindly angry.
But being vegan shouldn’t make me hungry. Or angry.
Unfortunately being poor makes me both.
Being poor and vegan makes me famished, pissed off, and nearly an anarchist.
I don’t like to think that making healthy, cruelty-free choices should cost any more than it does to eat greasy, gristle-laden fast food, but it does. One of my vitriolic arguments from my omnivorous days was how difficult it was to eat fresh fruits and vegetables on a middle-to-lower class paycheck. The obesity epidemic might spurn a lot of national marketing efforts but I really think that the government could better spend its money lowering the cost of produce and vegetable-based protein. Fast food isn't just fast, it's cheap. The majority of Americans who consume that murderous* crap aren't doing so because they're in a hurry, they're doing so because they can't afford to eat anything else. Vegan and vegetarian dry goods, and especially fresh fruits and vegetables, should be readily available to those who aren’t able to simply purchase a hybrid S.U.V. that can usher them to and from Whole Foods as though “going green” is some sort of temporary feel-goodery. Being healthy isn’t a trend like UGG boots and iPhones, but it’s nearly as expensive.
Which sucks, currently.
* When I say "murderous" I don't just mean to animals.
“Do you like it, Mike?”
He grimaced at the burrito the same way he’d grimaced at the menu.
“I, um, I like some of the stuff in it. Guacamole. The cilantro.”
When cilantro is on the list of preferred components of an entrée a meal is not going well. I dragged my friends Mike and Mary to Blossoming Lotus, a vegan eatery located in the Pearl District. Lotus is pretty much exactly what I thought of when I thought of vegans at all prior to relocating to Portland. Hippies. An adjacent yoga studio. A fountain and some music with chimes for décor. Of course all it took for me to fall in love with the place was a bowl of vegan chocolate-mint soft serve. That was back in October. I’m not lying when I tell you that I missed the soft-serve on the right coast. I missed vegan dessert. I dreamt about it.
I should explain that Mike is a carnivore. A rigid one. He’s one of those guys who thinks that bacon-wrapped tenderloin bites paired with a side of venison is a legitimate meal. He has admitted that if he eats a salad it requires a gimmick, such as blue cheese, candied walnuts, or Craisins. When I had originally suggested Lotus it was because it was close to his job. He had chortled in response. A vegan restaurant, really? A whole restaurant serving vegan food?
I was only able to get him to agree to going in light of my month-long experiment. Mary would act as a buffer. The neutral pH strip of the meal, if you will.
She had an Indian bowl, and I went with my usual Monk’s bowl, ginger dressing on the side. Mike chose the black bean burrito after muttering, “They really shouldn’t put the word barbecue on this menu. It’s just wrong.”
The waitress had explained that tempeh was fermented soybeans and grains pressed into a mostly firm patty. Mike had not been sold. He read through the menu thoroughly and while I’d like to believe that it was because he was trying to absorb the broad scope of the experience chances are it was because each dish, to him, read either like the equivalent of eating a broken bottle or drinking a few snifters worth of bleach. I had suggested a sandwich because it would be the closest thing to what he would normally consume. But no. There were too many greens involved. My sometime cynicism seemed downright sunshine and rainbows compared to my friend’s seething contempt for all things plant-based.
“Cashew crème?” There was a snort. “Cashew crème. Okay.” Eye rolling.
It’s true that you can figure out your stance in an argument by having it challenged. I hadn’t expected my friends to enjoy the meal, which is wrong of me, I know. In fact, I invited a staunch meat eater to Blossoming Lotus for my own philistine amusement, perhaps in direct response the events of this morning, when I was taken to watch the biscuits I have so been craving get consumed by a non-vegan as I sat and sipped my black coffee between lukewarm mouthfuls of drool. But tonight instead of merely sitting back with a smug smile and watching two omnivores squirm over dinner at the vegan cafe I found myself passionately discussing the benefits of eating locally (something his lady agreed with whole-heartedly) and pointing out how a plant based diet could reduce the impending food crisis according to what I read today in the New York Times.
I’m enjoying being a vegan. I repeat, I am enjoying being a vegan.
Most of the time.
“I like this. I could eat this every night,” was Mary’s reaction to the bowl. She seemed incredulous.
“Really?” Mike asked, equally as shocked, although perhaps for different reasons.
“Well, did you hate it?” I asked of his three-quarters consumed burrito.
Silence.
“You ate it,” Mary observed.
“I was hungry.”
“So you would eat it versus not eating anything. It wasn’t as bad as something bad,” I pointed out.
“It was on par with something bad,” Mike replied.
My vitriol towards vegans apparently has abated. I’m not beating them by joining them. In fact, this attempt at bitterness Botox had backfired. I was feeling a bit, well, defensive. The discussion of bridging the gap between consumption and creation of food had sent vegan pride coursing through my veins along with the Darjeeling tea. I could be self-righteous and enjoy my steamed kale. The only rotisserie I’m craving is the slow burn of carnivorous doubts being spun over the flame of herbilicious purpose! Or, um, maybe I just dig being self-righteous.
I responded to his snarky comments and disdain with the revelation that maybe, just maybe, I would continue on this plant path at the end of the month. He suggested a venture to Ruths Chris’ Steakhouse to celebrate my eventual departure after I was, as he put it, “off the wagon.”
I think I’m off of the ground chuck wagon permanently, Mike. Hope you enjoyed that burrito. You could have offered me a bite.
Blossoming Lotus (rules)
925 NW Davis, Portland OR 97209
While I haven’t been able to fully wean myself off of my pseudo-sweet white powder I’ve found a solution that at least helps me to sleep better at night, and that is Splenda piracy. Every addict can't go cold turkey. So instead of paying for the artificial sweetener I pilfer it from any coffee station I can, and if it's at a Starbucks I will do so flippantly and enthusiastically. This way I feel less like I’m directly part of the problem and I'm fulfilling a still-kicking wannabe anarchist punk high-school fantasy of damning "the man." Sure, I’m ingesting animal innards - albeit indirectly - but I’m not lining the insides of any white lab coat pockets in the process either. Moreover if I can steal Splenda from cafes where the behind-the-counter cuties are mistreated, well, then all the better. I’m kind of like Robin Hood, only less Loxley, more herb tea. Unsweetened herb tea, eventually.
I feel a little bad grabbing handfuls of the stuff and shoving them into my sweatshirt pouch but, hey. Save the beagles. And my breakfast.
As a sidebar, my at home food diary (read: the cheap eats section of my diet) has become a bit inconsistent. In short, it’s a mother’s nightmare: a bag of frozen soybeans, dried fruit, a can of kidney beans, an under-ripe banana. Of course I eat like a vegan emperor when I'm willing to spend money. All you have to do is throw a stone(r) and you’ll hit at least one animal-free dining establishment on any given block, especially in the southeast section of town where I reside. A vegan burrito means that there has to be at least one Abe Lincoln handed over, which is further justification of my pocketing of the packets. Tomorrow I’m reducing my breakfast intake from 12-15 packets to a modest eight. I wasn’t kidding when I called myself an addict. It shall be seen if breakfast becomes as dreaded as a walk past a churrasco.
Current List of Things That I Miss Eating:
sushi
rotisserie chicken
biscuits (still)
raw human flesh
food
I knew it was too easy.
Ask anyone who knows me well, or any one night stand who has bought me breakfast: the food item that I consume most regularly is not a food item. It's a condiment.
Back when I was in college I lost ten pounds when I gave up drinking and white sugar. It was effortless. One day I was drinking Malibu rum mixed with Vanilla Coke and eating cupcakes, a month later a more svelte, less vomit-speckled me had lost her fake ID and was lacing her cappuccinos with a new, hip artificial sweetener called Splenda.
Fast forward out of the nineties, I have been on and off the binge drinking wagon since that month but I've maintained the Splenda addiction, coating everything from fresh fruit to cereal to the inside of countless coffee cups with what looks like fine grade cocaine. I use so much of the stuff that back on Long Island people would balk on line behind me at Dunkin' Donuts, loudly exclaiming that I used "a lotta dat stuff!" Yes. Yes, I do. My standard answer was that I didn't smoke cigarettes, and therefore I needed to have a vice. At least twelve of those yellow packets come standard in every one of my handbags, backpacks, and pairs of pants with large enough pockets. This always fell more on the side of being just another one of my neurotic quirks than a serious problem.
Until now.
I haven't received any definite confirmation on this fact but it looks as though Splenda, for all of its superpowers and its sunshiney slogan, is not vegan. Talk about a bitter pill.
Here's a fast fact for those of you who haven't been researching this stuff on quite the same level of ferocity as I have, refined white sugar is filtered through bone char. Splenda is made from sugar (filtered through bone char) so it tastes like sugar (that has been filtered through bone char.) Not vegan.
Again, none of this has been confirmed. And I haven't stopped using it. But going on a weekend vacation without a yellow box in tow is a Sisyphisian task to me. To give it up for a month? Preposterous. For real.
Yes, I know it's potentially lethal, according to some nutsos who use the internets. Yes, I know it's man-made and therefore probably not good for you. But until I went vegan I was able to write all of mumbo-jumbo off as easily as I dismiss that cult that what's his face and that chick from Dawson's belong to. Easy as fat-free, calorie-free, animal-product free pie.
After a few Google searches I found this post, albeit a slightly dated one, on veganforum.com:
"Splenda is "sucralose". Sucralose is produced by chlorinating sugar. This involves chemically changing the structure of the sugar molecules by substituting three chlorine atoms for three hydroxyl groups. Being that the sugar used by the chemists who manufacture this toxin do not make use of organic sugar, it is processed through bone char, making it neither a vegan or even a vegetarian product. Additionally, it was tested on thousands of animals before it was put out on the market, since only a handful of human studies have actually been conducted in a short period of time..."
Prior to my foray into taking the shit or the talking out of my union of both, I was, and still am, against animal testing. It bothers me. I don't like the idea of my shampoo being poured in a rabbit's eyes just to make sure that I don't start wincing if my pro-vitamin enhanced lather trickles into my peepers. Additionally, I fucking hate fur. I repeat, I fucking hate fur, and have since I was a child. It's barbaric, it's ugly, and if you're going to wear a pelt at least go out and kill and skin the animal with your bare (manicured) hands. Do you hear me, Beyonce? That shit is gross.
Anyway, I try my best to veer away from products that are tested on animals, but of course if I don't hear that critters are being injected or doused with my lipstick, lube, or libations I am ignorant to how much I'm a part of the problem. I know that's no excuse. Even if it's complete bullshit put up by anarchists on hippie-dippy green sites - or whatever - I've still read that marmosets, rabbits, mice, rats, and beagles - yes, beagles, like Snoopy - were used in the testing phase of Splenda by Huntingdon Life Sciences for Tate and Lyle along with the aid of McNeil Specialty Products (which is a division of Johnson and Johnson.) Even if it's complete crap I don't feel comfortable with something I put in my body being associated with this kind of cruelty until I'm told point-blank by someone I trust that it's fiction.
But I still haven't thrown out the box. There's further proof of my hypocrisy, in all of its unsweetened glory.
So now what do I do? Finish the box? Throw it out? If I do forgo the Splenda I'll be left with literally one thing that I actually actively enjoy eating (cereal with soymilk) and I will be one pissed off little girl. But now every time I look at the yellow packets I imagine animal bones and tiny Pomeranian puppies being forced to consume enough Corn Flakes coated in white powder until their little fluffy bodies go into a diabetic coma.
I have to investigate this further but so far all sources say start using agave syrup. Agave comes from a cactus that also is used to make tequila. This wouldn't be cheating on my sobriety now, would it? Now if only they would make a calorie-free sweetener that would get me fucked up and help me dance...
VeganForum Main Page
Another place where I got some info
(The letters of the word "vegan" can be found in the word "evangelist.")
*
When I was in college I dated a girl from Queens. Let’s call her Sarah. Sarah was a few months younger than me and worked in an animal shelter. She liked playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, drinking hard cider, and herpetology. She thought that books were “stupid” and that your and you’re were the same word. She was nice.
After I broke up with her she decided to become a New York City Police Officer. Yes, there was some time that lapsed between our bust up and her decision to enter law enforcement but I still like to say that I drive women to use guns. This is also why I stay in touch with most of the ladies I have knocked boots with, I like to monitor their use of weapons. Needless to say, Sarah and I were still communicating, albeit on a strained level, when she entered the academy.
This is where I learned how cults are formed.
In order to become a police officer you are basically stripped down in a manner that likely resembles diluted Army training. The physical demands are insane. The verbal abuse is the kind that can singe the eyebrows off of your mother‘s face. Sleeping becomes as rare and precious of an experience as finding large bills on the street. Any sexy piercing that you once had that your ladyfriends enjoyed playing with are removed. They reduce you to a softened, malleable oversized embryo with the external features of your previous self and then they build you back up to their industry specific standards.
Sarah and I are no longer in touch.
What does this have to do with veganism? Everything. Over the past two days or so I’ve rounded a sharp corner. At first I believed this was due to hunger, which is sort of like the police academy for my digestive system. I’ve become so glycemically nutso that if you told me that aliens had landed and were shopping at Pioneer Place I would respond that someone should tell them that there is a sale going on at Claire‘s. Just feed me some yogurt. Please.
There are a few people who have become my sergeants in this training regimen, the leaders of this cult of animal free living, the Billy Grahams and Jimmy Swaggarts to my heathen, rotisserie chicken devouring soul. One of these individuals took on a nearly mafia don type of role yesterday, making phone calls and leading me into a conversation so rigorously intellectual and overwhelming that I walked away from it feeling like I had shattered a parietal bone.
Up until this point I have felt a bit like an average idiot who wandered into a Fundamentalist Church just because they thought that shoplifting is “kinda lame.” Well, I’ve been indoctrinated. A little. Praise and malaise share several letters.
This particular apostle talked a bit about the overlap between the straightedge movement and veganism. I was one of those scrappy preteens dying their hair with Manic Panic and sneaking off to go and see Vision of Disorder and Black Train Jack at the Wetlands. I drew big “X”s on my hands every day in the eighth grade. I was never, ever invited to parties, not just ‘cause I was the weird girl but because I was the weird girl who would start smashing full beer bottles in the driveway. (Also the Dave Matthews album that had been in the CD player was suddenly irreparably marred, only to be replaced by Sick of It All’s Scratch the Surface.) Over the course of one conversation the vegan movement stopped being about emo, PBR loving hipsters and started echoing back to something lost but still cherished by me. It was less artifice, more in-your-face. Could veganism really be old school badass?
Not allowing me to sit back and savor my nostalgia, this tattooed Joel Osteen busted out a quote:
If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian.*
There is truth to this. I don’t like the idea of being removed from what I’m eating. I don’t like the idea of hurting things. I certainly couldn’t hunt, nor would I if it were the only way for me to have poultry or meat in my diet. I’ve gone fishing. I’ve thrown back a lot of old socks and some kelp. If it had been something that moved and gaped, well, maybe this little experiment of mine would have been initiated years ago, back when I had steel-toed Doc Martins and my cynicism hadn’t calcified into the bitter, nihilistic ball-turret that rests in the pit of my omnivorous stomach.
My enlightenment wasn’t just through rhetoric. I have found an answer to my question about whether or not any gum is vegan. The answer is Wrigley's. Juicy Fruit is vegan, as are Corn Flakes (thank God…vegan God) and Bac-Os.
The website that I was steered towards is put up by PETA and has several lists of foods I can and will continue to eat guilt-free.
http://www.peta.org/accidentallyVegan/
The giddy, youthful joy I felt the first time I heard Gorilla Biscuits is alive and well. I can get passionate about this month and drop the snarkyness, at least a tiny bit. (Okay, I admit, I won’t drop it, but I’ll stop white-knuckling it.) I finally understand what bothers me about veganism, and it isn’t the vegans. It’s the same as it was in grade school, in high-school, at the first Vans Warped Tour. It’s why I hated MTV. It’s why I didn’t drink until college.
I hate poseurs.
I also hate groups, or rather, I hate the idea of blindly supporting a cause or subscribing to a way of life merely to be a part of a subculture or counterculture movement. All the same, it can rightly be argued that the straightedge kids I rolled with back in the day were just doing the same thing only in a more subverted (and fun) manner; there are only a very, very small number of them left that haven’t gone the way of the bong, the bar, and the broads. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fuck is as high-maintenance as not munching on animal fragments. There’s a reason why trends come and trends go and my view of them hasn‘t changed. Like Ernie Parada sung, “I’d rather not be a part of your arsenal.”
* Quote said by Linda McCartney
I woke up to the most beautiful day of my residence in Portland thus far. Birds? Chirping. Sun? Actually shining. Roommates? All but The Vegan One sleeping. It was going to be a good morning.
Breakfast is important to me. I’d say that it falls somewhere between dry socks and breathing on my personally assigned level of importance. Without breakfast I have been known to overuse sayings such as, "I will cut a bitch," and to literally cry if I'm prevented from my morning consumption. My fervor for cereal with skim milk washed down with two cups of coffee and a helluva lot of Splenda (on everything) has been labeled OCD or batshit crazy by nearly everyone who has had the misfortune of seeing me in the morning, my mother included. If you value your genitalia you will not drink, move, or otherwise fuck with my skim milk. Or, as of this month, my Vitasoy milk. Same goes for my CoffeeMate.
One of the weird things that goes on in my head is the way that small things excite me. This seemingly asinine enthusiasm for minutiae has only been increased with my sobriety. Buying a new bottle of shampoo is enough to bring me to the edge of smug laughter. Non-fat French vanilla flavored CoffeeMate has been a perpetual bottle of bliss since my discovery of it on Long Island a mere year and a half ago. CoffeeMate is the elevation of breakfast. I am serious. It’s also the elevation of the workday, when I have one.
It even has the nerve to challenge the mother of all mothers to a battle. Nestlé says, “CoffeeMate. Dozens of Ways to Enjoy Coffee. Let’s see milk do that!” It threatens. It’s brash and not made with anything remotely natural. It’s commonly associated with women named Linda who have acrylic tips, drive Miatas, and chew gum during their shift at the salon.
I adore it. I practically bleed it. It’s like marshmallow’s tears. Or better.
Why I decided that today, my second vegan morning, where everything feels right, especially refraining from killing things for food or fun, to check the goddamn ingredients list on my heaven-sent non-dairy creamer is beyond me. I had asked this question to the blue bottle before.
Is it vegan?
It says non-dairy. That, prior to yesterday, was enough.
CoffeeMate, the non-dairy creamer, contains casein. What is casein, you ask. My response would ,as it is to most things, “Wikipedia that shit.”
“Casein (from Latin caseus "cheese") is the predominant phosphoprotein (aS1, aS2, ß) that account for nearly 80% of proteins in milk and cheese.”
Or, as it says on the bottle, a milk derivative.
I repeat, the non-dairy creamer. Has. A. Milk-derivative. In it.
Not vegan. Not even close.
Why is it in there? To improve the consistency of the stuff. Basically it’s like an emulsifier, from what I gleaned through several internet searches that were eventually derailed by porn. (You can take the meat out of the meat and potatoes but I am still an All ‘Merican, red-blooded gal.) Casein is something added to other stuff to solve any textural woes.
But it’s not just a hellion of breakfast destruction, oh no. Not only is it used in non-dairy products such as veggie slices and cheese singles, in part ‘cause it gets all good ‘n melty, but casein is used to make adhesives, protective coatings, and plastic products (“such as for knife handles and knitting needles”) while also being a post-workout supplement for bodybuilders. Yes, hipster, your knitting needles might be working in direct opposition to your veganism. Now go and knit your ennui a sweater.
Needless to say, I did not throw out the CoffeeMate. Rather, it’s resting for a month on our refrigerator door. Considering that it doesn’t expire until May 8th (yes, of this year, it’s artificial but it ain’t Cher) I figure I can lust after it every morning as I reach for the soy milk.
I did not check the ingredients list on my Corn Flakes. Don’t tell me. Until tomorrow I just don’t want to know.
Postscript
List of Things I Suddenly Miss Since I Went Vegan (Yesterday)
Yoplait
CoffeeMate (duh)
Eggs
Pine State Biscuits. Yes, I only had them once. No, I never missed them before, even though their awesomeness cannot be denied. For whatever reason, though, I have wanted a warm biscuit in the worst way since yesterday morning. Considering I live down the block from the joint it is going to be a long, dreary month exercising breakfast restraint.
(Pine State Biscuits, 3640 SE Belmont Street.)
Ingredients: Sugar, Corn Syrup, Gelatin, Potassium Sorbate, Blue #1, Carnauba Wax. Gluten Free.
An open kiss on the mouth goes to the first person who was able to identify what my last non-vegan food item was.
The answer?
Yup. At 12:15 this morning (sorry, I was late, busy savoring other pleasures of the flesh, heh heh) I opened up a pack of marshmallow Peeps. Blue bunny Peeps, to be exact, costing a whopping twelve cents from Fred Meyer. That list of ingredients may resemble the ingestion potential of an unlit candle but it also contains gelatin, decidedly not vegan.
I looked up why after suddenly being struck with the blind hope that I could survive for a month on pharmacy Easter candy clearance specials. Turns out that gelatin is made from taking the connective skin, cartilage, and bone of animals and bringing it all up to a robust simmer. Delicious for stews and also, obviously, candy. Think of that the next time you pop a Peep in your piehole. You are actually eating parts of a chicken. Or cow. Or pig.
Circle of Life. Or, I guess, rectangular cardboard packaging shrink wrapped in plastic of life.
"Going vegan in Portland is kind of like cheating," a wise man once said. How true. For day one of this odyssey I decided to forgo any actual cooking in my stove-free kitchen (don't ask, we have a hot plate, it's cool) and enjoy a late breakfast, aka brunch, at a local vegan diner, while for dinner I went to my favorite NoPo vegan eatery for a bowl of tofu, spicy collard greens, and brown rice. The first twenty-four of this adventure has been a plantastic breeze.
Do I feel any different? No. Was I any more hungry than usual? Decidedly no. In fact, breakfast left me feeling like I was lugging around some extra junk in my trunk, and by junk I mean hemp, tapestries, hand-thrown pottery, and patchouli incense, not an actual deer chucked in the flatbed of my proverbial 4X4 Chevy. It turns out that vegan bread does what non-vegan bread does: make me feel fat and sleepy. A new mystery came out of my early meal, however, and that is the question of what the fuck is in vegan sausage? It is damn tasty. Not in a way that would make me mistake it for actual sausage, but delicious nonetheless.
The irony here is that I loathe actual links. So go figure, being vegan actually broadened my culinary horizon. Take that, “restrictive” “diet.”
Dinner, as always, was like an orgasm for my tongue. Highest props I can give go to the Bye and Bye. In truth it's one of the original reasons why I moved to this town, and likely it will be one of the things that keeps me here, regardless of whether or not I can make it through this month without slipping and digesting something that blinked.
(The Bye and Bye: 1011 NE Alberta Street, corner of 10th)
The only difference I can say that I notice is that being a vegan is a lot like learning a new language, it requires asking seemingly stupid questions, irritating your unlearned friends, and quickly developing a noticeable chip on your shoulder. I felt pretty elite as I scanned the ingredients list to my cranberry flavored Emergen-C. Now I just need to Google whether or not tapioca maltodextrin and cysteine hydrochloride are vegan. Considering they sound like something I would put in my car in order to winterize it my guess would be no.
Potential for being a Peep professional? http://jerkethic.tumblr.com/
Big thanks to Eva Darling, who allowed me to smear my adoration for her all over this blog and providing the recipe for the soup to end all soups:
