The word vegan has only been around since 1944.
It's made up of the first three and last two letters of vegetarian, which the person who coined the word said represented "the beginning and end of vegetarian".
And yet....
I didn't really want to say the word "vegan".
I kept trying to talk my way around this issue, trying to avoid a minor stigma.
Looking at the spread in the kitchen of my friend Sarah, I say, "Aw, I'm giving up cheese this month."
"Oh, is butter ok?" she asks. "I used some in the dessert."
"No, actually, I'm giving up all dairy....and, uh, eggs too."
I was sad that night, because Sarah is a great cook and...
I really miss cheese.
This video from the hilarious Hannah Hart of My Drunk Kitchen pretty much sums up my feelings. Fake cheese just doesn't cut it. At one point I was desperate and picked up a small $8 pie made with daiya "cheese," a substitute made with tapioca flour and vegetable oil. Its big selling point is that it "melts and stretches". Dreaming big here.
Vegan pizza can be decent — heck, better than decent.
The Roman Candle has this pizza called the Vegan Destroyer with pine nuts and olives and fresh basil and red pepper puree. It's lower in fat than the cheesy fare but just as delicious.
However....
A vegan diet isn't automatically slimming.
I used to joke that if I gave up cheese I would drop 10 pounds immediately, har har.
That might work if it weren't for that fact that....
The Willy Street Coop has amazing vegan chocolate chip cookies.
I was going to take a picture of them but then I scarfed them down. So here's a picture of the bag:
Restrictions made me both more adventurous and more boring.
I think I've cooked with coconut milk more in the last month than in the entire last year. On the other hand, I also had apples with peanut butter every other day.
It's easy to get annoyed with the restrictions, because...
It's hard to be a perfect vegan.
I knowingly put honey in one dish, which is dubious, vegan-wise. There was a tiny bit of whey in our margarine. I thought I also cheated by using a sauce with a trace of lactic acid. However, it turns out that lactic acid is actually derived from corn or beet sugar and not from lactose.
But it's ok to be less than perfect, because....
All I can really aim for is harm reduction.
For instance, agriculture kills untold numbers of insects and alters untold acres of land, but it's not feasible to return to gathering and scavenging on a large scale. I think if we can eat less from animals and more from plants grown locally, it's good enough for now.
And full disclosure -- the greasy late-night slice of feta and spinach pizza I had the day after the challenge ended was truly fantastic.