"Please, sir, I want some more...but I don't if it contains gelatin."

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.