My mom loves Gordon Ramsay. It all started when we watched some episodes of his US version of Kitchen Nightmares at her house. They were free on On Demand, and we didn’t have anything else to watch. She liked it a lot, so we made a DVD with more episodes. Then we gave her Hell’s Kitchen. And she LOVES it. She mentions it all the time, and then we kind of get into it, because I’m conflicted about him.

On the one hand, I liked Kitchen Nightmares in the UK quite a bit. And I can admit that I liked the season of Hell’s Kitchen we watched when we lived in Vegas (but not enough to watch any more….the contestants are just too insipid). I agree with my mom that he actually comes off as pretty big-hearted. Yes, he can be abrasive, but I think he truly wants to help those restaurateurs and chefs in those failing restaurants, not for his own glory, but because he values the trade and craft.

On the other hand, upon becoming a vegan, I’ve really noticed the deriding and dismissive attitude toward vegetarians and vegans that prevails in the “food world.” I guess I would call myself a foodie, I certainly knew how to pronounce just about all the foods on this list, and I’ve eaten plenty of decadent stuff (nearly all made from body parts and/or excretions/secretions of animals). So I’ve been exposed, both before becoming vegan and after, to the extreme condescension (and often overt hostility) with which people who choose not to eat animals are treated. And somewhere along the way, I got that impression of Gordon Ramsay, for good reason.

However, he just recently went on Ellen (an amazing representative for at least a few despised groups), and he seemed positively giddy in his nervousness…so much so that he cut himself. (He kept repeating “I haven’t cut myself this bad in ten years!”) And he prepared an entirely vegan stirfry, with no snark or crappy comments. In addition, he’s recently indicated (after learning about industrial agriculture involving pigs) that he can see why people could go vegetarian or vegan “instantly.”

Anyway, after looking into it further, I’m definitely softening my stance on Gordon Ramsay. If even he can be convinced to at least acknowledge that people have a compelling reason to make this change, and he can honor it as a valid way of living that merits his respect (which I think he did by going on US television and enthusiastically cooking a vegan meal), then there’s hope. There is hope.

It’s funny how when you start a new creative endeavor, you feel a lot of pressure. Maybe it’s just me, but I always have that sense of pressure, like people are waiting, and that I must perform according to what I said I was going to do, or I will be failing.

But I suspect the reality is that there’s no such pressure. No one is waiting with bated breath for the pearls of wisdom that will flow from my fingers through this keyboard into this computer to be “uploaded.”

As I alluded to before, I’m not sure about the direction to take my own posts, or, to be honest, the necessity of this blog. Our Vegan Odyssey sounds so big and important, and like I mentioned, I just want to live.

Here’s how I’ve been living as a non-ovo/non-lacto vegetarian:

     I have to be careful on errand days because it’s not easy to find something to eat after we’ve been out for hours and we still have more errands to do. There’s no good vegan quick snack/drive-through/restaurant choices. Oh, the reason I have to be careful is that I become an insane crabmonster if I get too hungry. So, yes, planning ahead is critical. Since we’re doing some exercising at the beginning of errands, we are trying to get into the habit of bringing nuts in the car. That’s a good food to eat after exercise, and it’s enough calories etc to hold me over until we get done with errands. That, and our errands usually (for some reason ;) ) put us in the position to buy these. Srsly good.

None of the above was any different when I was eating animals (I have always become an insane crabmonster if I go too long without eating), except that back then I could get a Wendy’s Double Stack or a bag of Cheetos from the gas station and think I was feeding myself.

     Our church is starting some Lenten Small Groups. Since I love our church and I love small groups, I’m very excited about this prospect. But when Pastor Judy announced the groups, she talked about how the groups would include a meal of a “simple soup.” She proposed (and wisely so, in my opinion) that people might be more likely to come if there’s food. For a nonvegan me, that prospect raises no concerns whatsoever. But for me now, I have to speak up and ask her for something. I have to ask that even the concept of vegan soups be considered in this endeavor. And that’s not an easy thing to ask. I don’t want to make “special” requests in a situation like this! But I have to speak up, right?

     Valentine’s Day is this weekend. Here’s something brief I wrote about VDay back in aught-six. So Pants and I are trying to figure out what to do, and, frankly, I think it’s up to him. But guess what….where we spend the day and evening is influenced by whether we think we’ll be able to find something decent to eat for lunch or dinner. From now on until forever, this will be a consideration when we make plans. Makes spontaneity kind of difficult.

All this means this: I’m not changing back. I don’t regret my choices for even one second. My reasons and reality outweigh (by a huge proportion) my inconvenience. But I can’t help constantly wishing the world was more friendly to this choice. And I can’t help praying for the day it will be. I don’t care if it’s Vatmeat, the Pills of Nutritional Completeness, or something that we haven’t even conceived of yet. I just wish there was as little suffering as possible caused by humanity vis-a-vis diet. I’m not starry-eyed, I know that even plant agriculture causes suffering. But I truly believe the world could thrive on a plant-based diet, and I wish I could see that in my lifetime.

We belong to a local CSA, so we get a box of produce every week. We used to pick it up on Mondays when we did errands, but doing errands on Monday was making me go crazy because it started the week at a too-frantic pace. So, we changed our pickup day to Wednesday, now errands are Wednesday (which includes grocery shopping), so meal planning is Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. (To be honest, it’s usually right before we need to get going!)

See what we do? We plan our meals for the week after we know what’s coming in the produce box (the list posted online at the beginning of the week), but before we do our grocery shopping. It was like a revelation, this meal planning concept. I had no idea how much stress it would relieve! Before we start our lists, we do a quick pantry/fridge inventory to see what we can make from what we have, and then we buy staples and any recipe necessities.

Here’s a tiny sample of this week’s planning:

We have a tube of pre-made organic polenta. I know polenta is very simple to make (it’s cornmeal and water, maybe a little salt), and one day I will definitely make a batch, but until then, the little vacuum packed tubes are a good size for the two of us. I really love polenta, and could probably eat one of those tubes myself, but I won’t. This time. Anyway, I remembered last night that we have this polenta, and I want to have it, so I carefully and scientifically evaluated what would be the most nutritionally optimizing foods to eat with it. Just kidding, I just picked something at random that I knew we had in the fridge: a pound of mixed greens already cleaned and prepared!! So, here’s the meal that will make: braised greens with pine nuts and sliced olives over pan-toasted polenta slabs. Slabs doesn’t sound all that appetizing, now you know why I’m not a cookbook author.

How will this delectable meal be prepared?

Have all this stuff ready before you start (note: all measurements are approximate — Here’s the truth: use what you like. Pants loves onions, so ours would have more onion. Some might want it more salty or less salty, so adjust the soy sauce. Or eliminate it and use salt if you don’t like that soy sauce flavor! I would probably use more garlic because I like it a lot. Want walnuts and no olives? Great! Want green olives and ripe olives? Great! Try stuff, see what you like! You could make it more Italian by adding chopped tomatoes. You could make it Southern by subtracting the nuts and olives, upping the vinegar and adding sugar or maple syrup, maybe a little liquid smoke and tabasco. Don’t be scared! Go crazy!):

1/2c - 1c chopped white/yellow onion
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
for braising the greens:
     1c water or broth to which you’ve added:
          2t soy sauce
          2t acid (lemon juice or vinegar)
3/4c pine nuts (raw or toasted, your preference)
3/4c chopped kalamata olives (pre-pitted)
add’l small amount of liquid or fat to brown onions/garlic

In a tall pot (like a stock pot) brown some garlic and onions. You can brown them in oil/earth balance/water/broth. Whatever you like. Since we did some McDougalling (extremely low fat vegan), we unlearned some habits like starting every dish with oil. In my opinion, some foods really need to be browned in fat (potatoes & polenta, to name two) but onions and garlic do not. You’d be surprised at what little flavor that fat at the beginning is actually adding! I literally can’t tell the difference in a dish where the aromatics (onion, garlic, celery, carrot, etc) have been started in water or broth vs oil. And since in this dish I know there’s some good veg fat in the nuts and in the olives, I won’t cook with oil except to grill up the polenta.

So, now your onions and garlic are soft and translucent. (PROTIP: start with your onions, give them about a half-minute headstart on your garlic…that helps the garlic not scorch. If things are getting scorchy, add a little more liquid or fat.)

Next, stuff all your cleaned/trimmed/chopped greens in the pot. The heat should be low to medium-low. A pound of greens may look like a lot, but it will cook way down, so far down that you’ll probably wish you had more greens! Pour over the liquid you prepared and give everything a stir. Cover.

Cook on low to med-low heat, stirring occasionally. Keep an eye on them to make sure the liquid hasn’t cooked out since the greens can scorch if that happens. If you’re worried, add more. Test and taste the greens for tenderness and flavor. When you like the flavor and texture, stir in the pine nuts and olives, turn off the heat, and cover to keep warm.

After stirring in the additions to the greens, I’ll pull out that tube o’ polenta and cut it open. It’s packed in water, so if you try one, cut it over the sink. I’m going to slice it lengthwise into planks about 1/2 inch thick. Maybe we’ll get 6 planks or so. I’ll brown them in olive oil until they crisp on one side (maybe 2-3 minutes?) turn and brown the other side. I’m not really trying to fry them, just get some nice browning on the surface. The inside will be creamy and soft. Plate the polenta in a shallow bowl, spoon the greens (with some of the liquid, if you like) over top. Salt & pepper to taste.

Regarding cooking greens like kale, collard, mustard, chard, turnip greens, beet greens: Here is my confession, my shame. There have been cooking greens available nearly every week in our CSA since we moved here. For most of that time (until last fall, I would say) we subbed them out for something else. We were scared of greens and didn’t know what to do with them and I wasn’t sure I even liked them. I honestly don’t know what happened, we just ate them a few times, tried some recipes (some real recipes) with them and KA-BLAOWAM!! Now I LOOOOVE greens. I actually crave them. I want to eat them twice/thrice weekly. We have them in stir-frys. We have them with beans. We have them with grains. We have them braised like this. I would eat this on toast or rice or even savory oatmeal. The other day I made kale chips (massaged ripped up kale with a little oil and too much salt and baked on low heat until they were crispy). I got the salt amount all wrong, so each one was like a crazy crispy Green Salt Bomb. I still ate them, they were awesome.

So, that’s a small slice of our planning and an example of what we eat. That dish is planned for Sunday. We planned out one week’s worth of dishes, including today. One day (Thursday) is a lunch, since we go to my mom’s for dinner every Thursday. For lunch that day we’re having BLTs on lavash bread (a flatbread that’s thin like a flour tortilla, but more hearty, like a pita). Uh….bacon? Yes….tempeh bacon! Yum!!

I’ve been struggling with myself about how to write what I want here. I want to be authentic, to speak in my “real” voice. But (as I mentioned before) I’m afraid my real voice about this stuff isn’t a very nice voice.

So I’ve been trying to think about who I’d like to have read this. I know people who know and support us are reading this (hi friends), but as far as anyone else — if we ever get a wider audience — it will be people who are already trying to have lifestyle that seeks to cause as little suffering as possible to anyone. I wasn’t in the habit of reading vegetarian or vegan blogs when I was eating animals, so I tend to doubt that people committed to that practice are necessarily searching for vegan blogs to read, right?

I guess that should make it clear to me that the strange burden I am carrying of having to convince anyone is something I can put down. I wish this was a Q&A so that I could honestly and compassionately answer questions asked in good faith about the realities of living as a vegan in a non-vegan world. But no one has those questions, at least not for me, that I can tell. Plus, what am I going to say? Research it yourself, the same as I did! Try this, that, or the other thing, ingredient, or practice. This odyssey is entirely personal and you’ll never truly get how possible it is until you try it for yourself.

Contrariwise, another struggle I’m experiencing is that I just want to live, you know? I am a normal person, I live a normal life. It happens to be in a long skinny house, with a job that allows me to stay home all day, a distinct lack of television commercials, and no meat, milk, eggs, or cheese. Other than all that, it’s normal! I do laundry, drink coffee, get confused about computer problems, get irritated at pets who vomit and at husbands who forget stuff. I want my clothes to look cute, my parents to accept me, and to have lots of fun instead of having no fun.

Ah, I’m rambling. I’m just processing out loud, it’s something I do. Maybe it’s too many blogs for me. Maybe it’s too much compartmentalization. I don’t know. I like having my other blog to write poetry and what not, except as soon as I think of it as “for that,” then I stay away like it has the haitchone. I love this new blog because all I was thinking about and talking about for months before we started it was veganism. Now, I just kind of wish it was the norm. For me and for everyone. Requiring no defense or explanation. Oh, that it could just be understood that to kill a living, feeling, thinking, loving being so that we can eat her is a relic of our barbaric history. Quaint and gross, like the ripping out of hearts on the altars for human sacrifice in Tenochtitlan.

I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do what I can. — Edward Everett Hale

I feel like I started out ahead of the game when we started this odyssey, because I already felt that eating meat and dairy was very unhealthy for humans. We had done a lot of research into optimum nutrition during our attempt at a raw diet, and so I was familiar with the concepts of what is “missing” from a vegan diet since it was discussed at some length in that community. Since, by all appearances, people eating raw are usually or mostly doing it for their health, there wasn’t much tone of defensiveness or hostility in the discussion. Everyone just wanted to know what is best in human nutrition, and how do we get it? And since everyone doing it pretty much believed that eating raw is the pinnacle of superior nutrition, no one was accused of sacrificing their health for “animals,” which is one of the ways vegans are ridiculed and/or dismissed.

I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just that the tone of the conversation is different. For example, let’s say you’re discussing calcium in a raw forum. Your discussion will probably revolve around which leafy green has the most calcium bang for the buck, and there will probably not be anyone explaining that trying to get calcium from dairy may be inefficient because your body is pulling calcium from your bones in order to balance its ph. (The research suggests that animal protein makes the body too acidic). It’s just understood that you can get better calcium and osteoporosis protection from a plant-based diet, so what plants/nuts/seeds in what combination are optimum? (Protip: we get ours from regular consumption of sesame seeds and tahini, leafy greens like spinach, kale, collards, mustard greens, chard, and legumes like garbanzos and other beans….we eat all of those on a weekly-to-daily basis.)

But what I found out back then, trying to learn about optimum nutrition, is that it’s difficult to find information that makes sense. For some reason, there’s so much contradiction and very little consensus. And what consensus there is has been formed, informed, paid for, and provided by the meat and dairy industry. There’s a disconnect in what we’re being told and what we’re being sold, and it’s confounding. And finally, there’s the misinformation… myths and unsupported nutritional advice being perpetuated by everyone, from medical professionals to people on message boards and blogs. It is daunting. (p.s. The italics are a hint to follow up on any of this yourself, don’t ever take my word for it. The choices I make based on what I’ve been able to glean are not set in stone. I’m not trying to be pure, I’m trying to cause the least amount of suffering possible.)

However, I know people can be concerned about vegan nutrition, especially those macro and micro nutrients that we’re used to getting from meat and dairy. So, here’s what I’ve learned about B12, one of eight known B vitamins.

Before all that, though, let me make it clear: we take a supplement for B12. It seems a common misconception that the only source of B12 is meat and dairy, but there are factors that make B12 supplementation a good idea for all people, including vegans.

The following info comes from wikipedia. The article has citations for further research.

• B12 comes from bacteria. It can only be biosynthesized by bacteria.

• The term B12 may be properly used to refer to cyanocobalamin, the principal B12 form used for foods and in nutritional supplements.

• The total amount of vitamin B12 stored in body is about 2,000-5,000 micrograms in adults. Around 50% of this is stored in the liver.

• Due to the extremely efficient enterohepatic circulation of B12, the liver can store several years’ worth of vitamin B12; therefore, nutritional deficiency of this vitamin is rare. How fast B12 levels change depends on the balance between how much B12 is obtained from the diet, how much is secreted and how much is absorbed. B12 deficiency may arise in a year if initial stores are low and genetic factors unfavourable or may not appear for decades.

• Vitamin B12 is found in foods that come from animals, including fish and shellfish, meat (especially liver), poultry, eggs, milk, and milk products.

• Ultimately, animals must obtain it directly or indirectly (meaning supplementation) from bacteria, and these bacteria may inhabit a section of the gut which is posterior to the section where B12 is absorbed. Thus, herbivorous animals (who are ruminants: cows, goats, sheep) must either obtain B12 from bacteria in their rumens, or (if fermenting plant material in the hindgut) by reingestion of cecotrope feces.

• Eggs are often mentioned as a good B12 source, but they also contain a factor that blocks absorption.

• While lacto-ovo vegetarians usually get enough B12 through consuming dairy products, vegans will lack B12 unless they consume multivitamin supplements or B12-fortified foods. Examples of fortified foods include fortified breakfast cereals, fortified soy products, and fortified energy bars. According to the UK Vegan Society, the present consensus is that any B12 present in plant foods is likely to be unavailable to humans because B12 analogues can compete with B12 and inhibit metabolism.

• Vitamin B12 is provided as a supplement in many processed foods, and is also available in vitamin pill form, including multi-vitamins. Vitamin B12 can be supplemented in healthy subjects also by liquid, transdermal patch, nasal spray, or injection and is available singly or in combination with other supplements.

• The sublingual route, in which B12 is presumably or supposedly absorbed more directly under the tongue, has not proven to be necessary or helpful.

• The Dietary Reference Intake for an adult ranges from 2-3 micrograms per day. Vitamin B12 is believed to be safe when used orally in amounts that do not exceed the recommended dietary allowance.

• The Vegan Society, the Vegetarian Resource Group, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, among others, recommend that vegans either consistently eat foods fortified with B12 or take a daily or weekly B12 supplement.

• Fortified breakfast cereals are a particularly valuable source of vitamin B12 for vegetarians and vegans. In addition, (omnivore) adults age 51 and older are recommended to consume B12 fortified food or supplements to meet the RDA, because they are a population at an increased risk of deficiency.

OK, WHEW. So, knowing all that, I am comfortable and confident that I can safely supplement and store sufficient B12 on a vegan diet, and that I’d probably want to supplement even if I were eating meat and dairy, because I’m not sure I’d want to entrust the animal production industry to guarantee I’d get adequate B12 from their products. And finally, that I’d have to start supplementing in about 10 years anyway, no matter what way I eat!

I’m not an ass, honest. I’m just passionate. I’m very aware that I was a full-on meat eater not that long ago. Even when I knew better.

I know that if it’s to be anyone’s path, it will happen for that someone when it is time for it to happen.

I’m not trying to force vegan food down someone’s throat. I’m not trying to punish anyone with images of the horrors done to animals.

I just want to tell my truth. I just want to speak for the animals because they can’t speak for themselves. I just want to open someone’s eyes to the truth, to make that lightbulb go “klink” like it did for me. As I mentioned, I have ideas about why it’s so hard to stop believing we need to eat animals. And it’s hard. I have considered what I think are great explanations for why we think we need only concentrated protein and calcium and vitamin D (and to a lesser extent, B12) to live, which, coincidentally, are pretty much the only real nutrients in animal flesh or fluids. I’ve made great leaps in my appreciation of food, real food, that my body recognizes as food…leaps that were impossible to make when I was eating animals.

But I’m starting to realize that I want to share all of this for one reason…wait, there are many “causes,” many “reasons” to be a vegan, that’s not what I mean. What compels me to share is this: I was set free. I’m set free. I didn’t even know I wasn’t free, until I became so. The joy and beauty and freedom and lightness and abundance — no one ever told me about those things being possible by becoming someone who doesn’t eat animals.

Being a vegan seemed like a puritanical sacrifice, one that a truly “good” person would undertake (lie back and think of the chickens). But that’s not how it is. I’m one of the most selfish persons I’ve ever met. If this way of being didn’t make me feel better than I did before, I couldn’t sustain it. I mean, yes, I feel for the sick people, and the drugged immigrants, and those living with polluted groundwater, and for the animals, the poor sad animals whose lives are a platonic ideal of brutality and suffering. But I don’t know if I could keep it up if my soul was suffering instead of rejoicing. But it is. Rejoicing. I’m set free.

I can barely watch this video. Keep in mind that poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits) and fish are exempted from the “humane slaughter” act, which is, itself, shockingly impotent. They are exempted from the requirements that they be handled in life and in death in anything close to a humane fashion. Not that the animals who are “covered” by the “humane slaughter” act get slaughtered very nicely, either.

When we eat animals, we’re paying those “farmers” and other “workers” in this video to do those things to animals. They do it for us, so we can eat the cut up bodies.

I’ll admit it up front, I am the Bad Cop of this blog. I will probably be the Mean Mom who ends up sounding hard and unforgiving. I don’t mean to be this way, but I am kind of a stern person in real life. My normal relaxed facial expression makes people think I’m angry or contemptuous. I don’t smile much, I guess. I can be lectury bordering on hectoring, and I suffer fools poorly. I lack humility, but can at least, after all this time, admit when I’m wrong, and apologize when I’ve hurt someone. I used to not be able to do that. So I have hopes for my personal growth, that I will some day be the warm and comforting force I long to be in the lives of others — instead of the unflinching voice of rational critique that lacks all compassion and empathy.

So how, you might wonder, did I decide to become a vegan for….MORAL reasons? How did my heart swell and break for the animals waiting for me to eat them? Why did I weep and weep in my grieving over all the animals I’ve already eaten? I guess I don’t know, I’m mysterious. Alls I know is that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t be complicit in mass torture and slaughter of innocents. And that’s what it is. Let’s not kid ourselves. The facts are out there. The anecdotes are out there. The videos, the eyewitness accounts, the company reports, the worker confessions, they’re out there. I’m not making this up. Therefore (here comes the Bad Cop) I will not be sugar-coating any of my posts. I don’t know how to speak the truth and not sound harsh, because I feel harsh about this topic. I feel like shaking and slapping people. I wish I could go back and time and shake and slap my own foolish rationalizing intellectually dishonest sleeping self.

I am convinced that there is no need for humans to eat animals or their fluids or secretions. No need. I guess I can respect people who acknowledge that though they know the truth, they simply prefer to continue paying others to kill and prepare the bodies of animals for personal gustatory pleasure. But I have a harder time respecting people who swear that there is a need or requirement for human animals to eat other animals, their fluids, or their secretions. I get frustrated because I believe it is absolutely not true. Whether it was true in prehistoric times of famine does not apply today. We are not cavemen, and the quantity and condition of the animals we choose to eat today, in this country, cannot reasonably be compared to whatever had to happen thousands of years ago.

In future posts I’ll go into why I think we believe we need to eat animals. But I have to start unwavering on this point. We do not need to.