Back in the day, I used to ridicule vegans and vegetarians for being freaks when it came to eating. Their strict rules for food consumption seemed absolutely idiotic to me. I felt like half the reason people went vegan/vegetarian was to get attention they weren’t normally getting in their daily lives. You’d try to go to a nice restaurant with a group of friends, and some vegan/vegetarian in the group would always have to make things difficult by saying they couldn’t eat anything on the menu except a piece of lettuce… or a hamburger without the hamburger. It got pretty annoying to hear, and you wished these picky eaters would just go along with the group already and stop trying to be so friggin’ different.
And oh, the guilt trips that it would give you. Here you’d be, trying to enjoy your tasty one-foot high Carl’s Jr. Monster burger by shoving that greasy, gloppy mess into your mouth like a glutton, and your veg friend here would be picking away at a plate of French fries all quiet and humble. You felt as if you friend was some starving kid from Ethiopia, and here you were stealing all the food away from her/him. So you’d feel like crap, and you couldn’t enjoy that burger you had been waiting all week to devour. It sucked.
So here I am now, on the other side of the fence, playing for Team Veg. And I can now say that I understand what it feels like to be in a vegan’s shoes (non-leather, of course). Last night, my housemate invited me to stay at his parents’ home since our house was without electricity and heat. His parents were so nice to me, but they kept offering me foods containing meat and dairy ingredients, and I had to politely decline every time. They looked at me like I was some freak, and I felt so bad for putting them in this awkward position. I just crawled off to the guest bedroom and ate my bag of raisins all alone.
So now I finally understand. Veganism isn’t about trying to get attention. Quite frankly, most vegans would prefer no attention at all if it was possible. Veganism is definitely more of a spiritual thing… a belief system that some people hold very strongly like a religion. And it’s definitely something that vegan/vegetarians shouldn’t be ashamed of, and omnivores/carnivores should be more accepting of.
All right…now for today’s list of vegan foods consumed:
For breakfast, I was pretty much screwed since my host parents’ home was basically the Hickory Farms sausage and cheese wagon at the mall. So I ate an orange, an apple and some peanut butter. Then for lunch, I was back at my cold, non-electrified house, eating anything I could scrounge up: granola, hummus, orange juice, etc. I finally broke down, pulled out the Weber grill, threw in some dry campfire wood from the trunk of my car, and heated up a pot of Trader Joe's Butternut Apple Soup and some veggie hot dogs made by Morningstar. Surprisingly, these veggie dogs actually DID taste like regular hot dogs. But if you had blindfolded me, I would have probably told you that I was chewing on a bicycle tire.
For dinner, I lit up the Weber again and threw on some leftover rice and two Boca Burgers. They smelled and tasted pretty close to the real thing. Since I couldn't use standard hamburger buns, I used pita bread instead and stacked onions, ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce and tomatoes inside my fake hamburgers. Mmmm mmmmm!!! Tasty! It was food improvisation at its finest, and I for once was proud to be an honorary vegan.
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