Vegan Without Cruelty [to non-vegans]

It’s a recycled email post and for that I apologize. We’ve been talking about Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable Miracle, Community Supported Agriculture, kids and husbands who won’t eat what we fix when we try to do something healthier for our bodies, our karma and our planet, and how you balance nutrition with reasonable convenience for a busy family with doing what’s right for our environment and local farmers and our budget.

But the email covers a lot of my thoughts about the whole vegan thing. It means a lot to me but I try not to be a Nazi… more below.

Haha, I was so happy J forwarded these emails right away, because I am so excited about Community Supported Agriculture, and I love the frontier-like challenge of eating what is actually local and in season, and so, well…

Butternut squash? I can see how to make a wonderful creamy soup or ravioli with dairy and white wheat flour (another item I try so hard to steer clear of, but it is so hard when I LOVE to bake!).
 
But I can’t imagine, you know, squash without lots of stuff to, well, take away the taste. I used to LOVE to make crookneck squash casserole– you know, with lots of butter, cheese, and ritz crackers on top? Not exactly vegan, but very country. I’m not sure how to approach squash, now. My mom breaded and fried squash and zucchini. I guess that’s an option. I sure thought it was nasty, growing up, though. It probably still is. But all those idiot grownups loved it. NASTY!
 
M, I’m sorry your husband isn’t more supportive. I know you already have to put up with a lot as a lifelong vegetarian.
 
 I am so lucky that way, not bragging, just saying very humbly that eating and enjoying together as a family means a lot to me, and it wouldn’t be much fun if my husband wasn’t so good about eating ethnic food– Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Indian, we’re even branching into Ethiopian now– all lend themselves to vegan and don’t necessarily  have to have weird tofu/soy/analog ingredients. I have a lot to be grateful for.

And… I cheat, too. We eat a considerable amount of Taco Bell, Papa John’s, and Brusters, and I can’t turn down Kim’s Macaroni and Cheese or Costco cake, whenever I can get C to get me one! I don’t believe in wasting food– especially if it was prepared or offered with love. When spending time with people I care about that’s more important to me than being strictly vegan.
 
Vegan cooking– not just vegan, but tasty and nourishing and complete vegan meals that anyone can enjoy, that are not a compromise or a step down from a ‘real’ meal– that is my passion, so for me it is easy and worthwhile, but it’s also a lot of work and our culture makes it so hard!! Even if I don’t use animal products, I am perfectly fine with y’all using them, because i know you are just as concerned about health and quality and what really constitutes nutrition and your children’s wellbeing and how our eating habits effect the earth and our karma and our local economy.

My latest thoughts on that, though, are in the book Farm Sanctuary. I do hope we can make our way toward an animal free diet eventually. But then I think of never, ever having another bite of ham, or Thanksgiving turkey again… I don’t know. I don’t want it in my daily life, but to never, ever, ever have another Big Mac?
 
I met with an old lady friend this week, a local author and old school democrat, in with all the Civil Rights heroes in town…  She has so many wonderful stories, she has hooked me up with introductions with so many neat people, and I love her so much. She’d dropped out of sight for a while, she’s sick of being hard of hearing and having to navigate that with hearing people, she moved around town several times after losing her place when they closed the Standard Club to develop the golf course into a ‘gated community’… she lost her aged mother after years of having to care for her pretty intensively… She has landed on her feet and I went to see her in her new (old) place on Saturday (where she lived from age 14 til she married)– the place looked so lovely and ladylike, just like her, and she fixed me a chicken salad sandwich and damn right I ate it. I didn’t say a damn word. I love her that much! I felt sick for a day or two, but it was worth it.  It’s the first time I ate meat since Kim’s baby shower! Those ham and cream cheese rollups were just too good. 
 
My husband wishes I would go organic/cruelty free dairy– if I would do that, he says he’d go vegetarian. I still feel a bit bad though about using animal products– not sure how I’ll resolve that– by being sure that I find a cruelty free egg farm and a cruelty free dairy farm I guess– talk about jumping through my ass!

But even those places eventually send their animals for slaughter, I think… and the toll on the environment… I still struggle with the idea that we aren’t baby cows, too. I dunno. And I do feel that agriculture on a local scale, plant or animal, is soooo much better for the environment as well as for the animals and our own bodies, that if anything will push me over the edge Community Supported Agriculture will.  
 
As far as the kid/kids, I just committed to what I wanted to serve, and went for it. I do the cooking. You eat or be hungry. It’s a challenge to me to find yummy things to eat that aren’t too weird that kids will still like.
 
I wish I could find where I read this statistic, but kids have to taste something like 100 or 1000 times before they begin to like it. And I remember– I hated EVERY SINGLE THING my mom cooked when I was growing up, except tacos, spaghetti, my granny’s quail pot pies made while my grandpa was still raising hunting dogs and bird hunting (mmm, mmm! just don’t break your tooth on a stray piece of buckshot!) and empanadas. Oh, Gawd, she used to actually put spaghetti sauce on spaghetti squash. Disgusting!  

She had to hide a lot of stuff in jell-o to get me to eat it. Now when I think of how jell-o is made–eeeyech!  
I hated onions. I hated mustard. I hated anything salty. I hated legumes of any sort, or anything that actually required chewing, like raw apples or carrot, or anything sour like vinegary dressings. My mom got so mad!!  I hated veggies.

I tell my kids that all the time– I still hate them but at some point you have to make the decision to eat what is right for your body and your brain / emotional /spiritual development. I mostly still hate veggies but you can hide them in flavorful, stickto-your-ribs vegan cooking and still get the nutrition– I LOVE MY FOOD PROCESSOR!. And now I love mustard, love vinegary dressings, olive oil on pasta with veggies and white wine… I don’t see me headed for a raw food diet any time soon though.
 
I read several pediatrician’s opinions that kids eat when they’re hungry, and they’ll be okay if they don’t want to eat what you serve, and aside from some truly healthy alternatives you can feel good about — I tell my stepkids they can have unlimited fruit, for example, all day long– if they don’t like it too bad, kitchen’s closed!  
 
So I tell my five year old, you don’t have to like it, but you do have to taste it. If I know something is truly gross for a little kid, I only require tasting… if I know it’s not gross– I make some perfectly acceptable pastas and sauces and veggie burgers on some darn good homemade rolls– I set a goal, like, five bites if you want your ice cream, or whatever. Someday… she’ll be more comfortable with those choices, and if not– well when she’s paying the bills she can eat all the spaghettios with franks she wants, but maybe I will have postponed leukemia or cancer for a little longer, anyway. 
 
I’m trying to find ways to communicate that, yes, okay, it’s a bit of extra work but it doesn’t have to be a total miserable impossibility for normal people and it doesn’t require perfectionism to be a success or to be enjoyable and worthwhile.
 
I can’t wait for our Animal Vegetable Miracle discussion! Or CSA/Slow Food supper, or whatever!