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Fire up the grill...
The other night my freelance boss and mentor met me for dinner at a vegan restaurant.
She wore a full-length golden Russian sable fur coat.
Needless to say, in true passive-aggressive, non-confrontational Portland fashion someone spilled a drink on the collar of the pelt when I took her up to the bar and introduced her to the owners. Not red wine, not beer, but ice and a lemon, the dregs from a water glass. It was evidently a “militant” vegan on their way out the door, one who knew that they would not survive getting into an actual heated dialog with a blonde bombshell who not only totes a jacket made of small, carnivorous mammals but also wears diamonds the size of human kidneys in her earlobes.
I would like to express to this person, whoever you are, that your action embarrassed me and made me want to kill and eat your pet. You’re not going to gain any new sympathizers to your cause by behaving in such a spineless manner. The next time you see someone wearing something you find despicable, eating something you find inhumane, or behaving in a way that you find objectionable say something. That’s how we roll in cities like New York. It’s called being direct. It will make cynics like me start respecting vegans as opposed to mocking them. I was mortified that someone I respect, even if I don’t fully align myself with their fashion choices, was treated in such a way in an establishment that I considered to be “my” turf. I wanted to show how fantastic vegans are in only the way a new convert could. Instead I wound up backpedaling awkwardly, unsure of who was right or wrong.
Also, you have poor aim.
All of this said, I am still - yes, still! - not eating meat, dairy, eggs, or pizza. (I don’t like pizza. That has not changed.) I tried to have my CoffeeMate once but was wracked with the kind of nausea rivaled only by senior citizens eating day-old lobster salad on their first Royal Caribbean cruise. I still have the odd craving for rotisserie chicken or Yoplait yogurt but I really don’t miss any of my omnivorous munchies. That and Eva Darling nearly got me to propose to her after making me tofu scramble, fresh baked foccacia, roasted vegetables, and dark chocolate covered strawberries for brunch the other day. I’m actually eating better than I was before I went all-plant, and I feel better. I still have had to take two pregnancy tests just to make sure I’m not vegan eating for two, but my energy level is up and I’m feeling stronger. Maybe that’s more due to bike riding, skateboarding, and the warm weather making hot, tattooed Portland residents strip down to their light-cotton vintage duds. I hear a skateboard outside now, right on cue. Just got whiplash looking out the window.
I'm continuing with Jerk Ethic, and I’ve also decided that my next blog will be another exploration in something I shit-talk and yet don‘t fully understand.
I’m thinking Wicca.
Well, I made it through the month as a vegan and I’m emerging pretty unscathed, though I will admit to a pregnancy scare 'cause my period took the month off in protest, likely due to my sudden drop in weight and unrelated spike in stress-level. Of course the fear of having a flaxseed/spelt bun in the oven led to the purchase of a home pregnancy test, the creation and marketing of such I'm sure was somehow linked to animal exploitation and countless tests on tabby kittens.
I haven't broken through the plant only dietary restriction finish line yet, though I have the feeling I will tomorrow with something as seemingly benign as my still beloved and dearly missed French Vanilla CoffeeMate. The conclusion I've come to, if I can be pompous enough to pretend that I've come to any conclusion from this experiment, is that food, in this societies, serves a much more varied list of functions than in other places in the world. While some cultures break bread to share in tradition or, you know, not starve, here in America (or maybe I should say in a predominately educated, largely white, mid-sized city such as Portland) a diet becomes a fashion statement, a political remark, and an accessory.
I will admit that it was fun at times to have been contrary and difficult when it came to food choices these past few weeks, and usually this was due more in part to the company I was in, or the level of attractiveness that the waiter or waitress possessed. But because the decision to cut out animal products stemmed mainly from a desire to step up my game when it came to talking shit while thrift store shopping or waiting in line for a Diet Coke at some hipster-filled bar, I learned the details regarding the various avenues that led "natural" vegans to their path only after I started to play Jenga with my own personal food pyramid. This means that I did get an education along with that Whole Foods 365 White Corn chip on my shoulder.
For example, I wouldn't have known that calves to be used as veal have their movement wholly restricted by neck shackles, or that a chicken slaughter line can decimate up to 8,400 chickens per hour, if I had simply scoffed at my roommate's revulsion towards chicken flavored ramen or my well-coiffed friend‘s pallor when seeing veal upon a local restaurant menu. I wouldn't have felt such serious adoration and respect for chef Brian Hill, the staff at Food Fight grocery, or John Janulis who co-owns the Bye and Bye, if I didn‘t know how fucking difficult it is to find vegan gum or that purchasing vegan lip balm is pretty much as easy as acquiring a PhD in acquired physics. I would have judged vegans with a broad, and yet ignorant, brushstroke. And, sure, the skinny-jeans wearing masses who seem to embrace a dietary restriction simply to stand out from the omnivorous (and mainly less privileged) global population will still my wrath and hear my venomous snorts at the checkout counter of New Seasons. But I've learned that sometimes the function of privilege, education, and the luxury of not dying from malnutrition can be used towards making a statement that all living things are equal. It’s the application of our dumb dietary luck of being born in this country that can illustrate the unfortunate fact that ignorance to the ridiculous bounty we’re able to access every day breeds the problem. If every person, and every vegan, used their brains along with their mouths we might be able to slowly devour the system that leads to cruelty, consumerism without compassion, and over-consumption in the first place.
I still have a lot to say on the topic of food as a means of giving comfort, but I’ll save that for another day. I ate a burrito this evening that fell so heavily in my stomach, they could have felt Anaheim chili aftershocks as far away as Klamath Falls. Vegan food comas are as exhausting as their sinew strewn nemeses.
Stay tuned for my next culinary adventure, where I only eat black pudding for the entire month of June.
Just kidding.
(Here's the link to Vegan Action, a pretty badass site.)
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/
