My attitudes, to be exact! In case anyone was speculating about the posting gap, I have neither vanished nor quit veganism. I am less of an activist than I was, although I was going that way when I set this blog up.
My commitment to veganism hasn't changed, but my circumstances have and hence the ways in which I relate to veganism have adapted.
Until a little over a year ago, I was in a relationship with a person who was what might be called a professional vegan, as in he was employed by an organisation which exists to promote veganism. So in addition to my own vegan friends I also spent a lot of time with the vegans he worked with. As a person who was just re-stablising as a vegan, this was a mixed blessing. On the one hand I had it affirmed to me time and again that I was right to be vegan, and this was good in that it strengthened my resolve, especially at times when I did have to argue my case. It also meant that most of the cafes I ended up in would at least be vegetarian and have some sort of vegan selection, that if we went to the pub someone would always know which beers were ok, and generally that the people around me had some level of vegan intuition without being prompted. On the other hand, it meant being around people whose definitions of what a vegan did beyond the very basics and what got prioritised varied wildly. There was also a bit of point-scoring from some (although by no means all! or even most...) quarters. At any rate, 'vegan' was part of my identity there as a sort of default setting, and sometimes the grounds on which people communicated with me.
For a few months after that relationship ended, I was single and became a bit of a health fanatic. I don't mean in any way to make this sound like a bad thing - I needed something to focus on, and had been very ill for a long time that time the year before, so trying to up the percentage of raw food and learn about proper nutrition was useful. This was the best time for promoting veganism, due to a combination of factors. I was affirming my own belief, unrelated to who I may have been going out with, which meant that people took me a bit more seriously. I was working long days, which mean *always* taking at least one meal to work with me. As a result I was often whipping tasty food out of my bag in a crowded break room, which obviously led to questions about what I was eating. I would discuss the 'whys' of my veganism if it came up, but the 'hows' (ie the practicality of having a tasty, healthy varied and yet reasonably cheap diet while working long hours at multiple jobs!) tended to be seen by most people as the main issue.
For a little under a year I've been in my current relationship. The person in question may well be 'the one'. However, he is 'just' a vegetarian and not with any moral basis to his decision, so I have had to explain veganism. He has one vegan friend other than me, and that person lives in America. My personal life involves a lot more outreach than it used to, just to make sure he and I can eat together! So far it seems to be working. He respects me for sticking to my principles even though he doesn't share them. It does mean, however, that the outward face of my veganism is a lot more orientated to showing how a vegan can live a 'normal' life, whatever the baseline might be there. Again, I will give the whys if anyone asks, but often people are more interested in the 'hows'.
My life is not a constant round of vegan advocacy as it may have been a few years ago. My time and energy is limited - I am finishing a PhD and working multiple part-time jobs at any given time, and am too knackered to do much some days. But I think that merely being vegan - and doing it 'properly' rather than giving in and eating something non-vegan to avoid being an 'inconvenience', preferring to make suggestions about what you can eat, how you will make up for it later and alternative places to go for food next time - leads to some extent to a certain base level of advocacy being necessary.
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Vegan MoFo introduction
Hi to anyone who finds this via the Post-Punk Kitchen's Vegan Month of Food page.
Who am I? I have one or two different names on the internet, so stick with the one you know. I'm currently in the last year of a PhD in political theory, subsidising my vegan food habit by teaching first years. I'm 28 and live in England. I love PPK and hate Skinny Bitch. I went vegan for animal rights reasons, but am coincidentally getting interested in eating more healthily due to having spent the last two winters being constantly ill. I also tend to like ducks better than humans: if you are a non-duck reading this, don't take that personally. My hobbies are knitting, cooking, reading murder mysteries and watching anime.
What will you find here?
*Quite a lot of food-diary type stuff, I have to admit. If you're new to veganism or to working in a place that has all of sod in terms of vegan options in the canteen you may find it useful. I've made it a sort of policy to bring in a packed lunch every day, and as this is still a fairly exciting development for me I tend to blog about it.
*Stuff about the difficulties of being vegan and how to get around them. I don't always find it easy in termtime, and am open about that in the hope that anyone reading this will see that 1) you aren't a failure if you have these issues and 2) they aren't insurmountable.
*Commentary on vegan products. Be warned, this is fairly UK-centric as it is nearly a decade since I've been in another country long enough to seek out specialist vegan stuff rather than just finding some nice bread and non-cheesy salad to eke out over a few days. Incidentally, I don't rely on these products even at home - they are somewhat overpriced, overprocessed and over here - but they have their uses.
*Veganism for people with very little money and less time. This is me and also most of the people I first learned veganism from.
*The gory details of my sprouting experiments - my windowsill is currently occupied by a sieve of lentils and a tray of chickpeas. In particular, expect to hear trumpets when I actually manage to produce something edible.
*What happens when I get around to making stock from the various bits of vegetable matter I've been collecting for the purpose. (Hopefully what happens is I have vegetable stock that tastes nice and is a lot cheaper than the buillion powder I normally buy. I have a feeling this may take more than one attempt though. Any tips are welcome!)
*And a whole lot of other stuff that I can't think of right now but may think of when my department's induction period is over and life is vaguely normal!
Food-centric posts made during October will be tagged 'vegan mofo', so they are easy to find. All the tags for this blog are displayed at the bottom of the sidebar, so feel free to explore.
Who am I? I have one or two different names on the internet, so stick with the one you know. I'm currently in the last year of a PhD in political theory, subsidising my vegan food habit by teaching first years. I'm 28 and live in England. I love PPK and hate Skinny Bitch. I went vegan for animal rights reasons, but am coincidentally getting interested in eating more healthily due to having spent the last two winters being constantly ill. I also tend to like ducks better than humans: if you are a non-duck reading this, don't take that personally. My hobbies are knitting, cooking, reading murder mysteries and watching anime.
What will you find here?
*Quite a lot of food-diary type stuff, I have to admit. If you're new to veganism or to working in a place that has all of sod in terms of vegan options in the canteen you may find it useful. I've made it a sort of policy to bring in a packed lunch every day, and as this is still a fairly exciting development for me I tend to blog about it.
*Stuff about the difficulties of being vegan and how to get around them. I don't always find it easy in termtime, and am open about that in the hope that anyone reading this will see that 1) you aren't a failure if you have these issues and 2) they aren't insurmountable.
*Commentary on vegan products. Be warned, this is fairly UK-centric as it is nearly a decade since I've been in another country long enough to seek out specialist vegan stuff rather than just finding some nice bread and non-cheesy salad to eke out over a few days. Incidentally, I don't rely on these products even at home - they are somewhat overpriced, overprocessed and over here - but they have their uses.
*Veganism for people with very little money and less time. This is me and also most of the people I first learned veganism from.
*The gory details of my sprouting experiments - my windowsill is currently occupied by a sieve of lentils and a tray of chickpeas. In particular, expect to hear trumpets when I actually manage to produce something edible.
*What happens when I get around to making stock from the various bits of vegetable matter I've been collecting for the purpose. (Hopefully what happens is I have vegetable stock that tastes nice and is a lot cheaper than the buillion powder I normally buy. I have a feeling this may take more than one attempt though. Any tips are welcome!)
*And a whole lot of other stuff that I can't think of right now but may think of when my department's induction period is over and life is vaguely normal!
Food-centric posts made during October will be tagged 'vegan mofo', so they are easy to find. All the tags for this blog are displayed at the bottom of the sidebar, so feel free to explore.
Monday, 15 September 2008
Time off for bad behaviour
My moderately long-distance partner visited this past weekend, this being the first time we'd seen each other in a while for various reasons. It was a good weekend in many ways, some of which I don't feel like sharing on the internet. (For anyone who is still holding out for rude stuff on this blog, get a life or a new search engine...) A couple of things are worth noting, though, from a vegan point of view.
On Friday, I made moussaka for the first time ever.
Ingredients (Four servings - two for Friday night, one for my dinner after Gothling went home on Sunday, one to experiment with freezing stuff that has cheese sauce on):
-One aubergine (this is maybe the one thing that can't be substituted! Except maybe with sheets of lasagna, but that would still be a completely different meal)
-One packet of Redwood's cheating mince (would have been cheaper to use Realeat frozen mince or any brand of dried soy*, but this meal was meant to be a bit special.)
-One onion (red, but a white one would work just as well), chopped
-Two large carrots, chopped (could grate them if you have more than one grater or fancy washing the thing before doing the cheese sauce)
-About half a dozen mushrooms, chopped
-Enough sunflower oil to cook the above ingredients in
-Two tablespoons olive oil for the aubergines
-Black pepper, paprika and some dried mixed herbs.
-Quarter of a large tube of tomato puree (about 50g) (you may like to use less, I suspect I may generally go overboard with this, not least because it looks like pretty red knitting yarn when spurted around the pan)
-Half a block of Redwood's mozarella (any vegan cheese would do though - probably any brand, be it hard or cream or powder - but this happened to be what was in my fridge approaching its use-by date)
-One tablespoon each of margarine and cornflour
-Enough soymilk to make a fairly thick sauce
Equipment used
-Wok (or large saucepan you don't mind cooking stuff in oil in)
-Small saucepan
-Baking tray
-Cheese grater
-Knife
-Two wooden spoons and a spatula
-Roll of greasproof paper (no, I did not use the whole thing! Jeez!)
-Large, fairly shallow ovenproof dish
Method
-Slice the aubergine (slices about a centimetre thick)
-Place the slices on a baking tray or the grill pan (I was using an oven where the grill doesn't have a separate compartment), drizzled with olive oil. Grill until both sides of each slice are streaked with brown.
-Heat some oil in the wok. Add the mince and vegetables, and stir these together for a bit.
-Add the tomato puree, then pour in some warm water until the presence of liquid becomes obvious. Stir well and allow to simmer.
-While it is doing so, you will probably have time to get on with some other things around the house. (I didn't have much choice since they needed doing!) But what you absolutely NEED to do at this point is make the cheese sauce. To do this,
-Grate the cheese, if you're using the hard variety.
-Melt the margarine. Start it off at the highest notch on your stove, then turn the heat down when it starts to melt.
-Mix in the cornflour until all the margarine is absorbed.
-Add soymilk. Sauce should be fairly runny at this stage.
-Turn up the heat, stir the sauce CONSTANTLY. DON'T EVEN LOOK AWAY FOR A SECOND. EVEN IF YOUR NEIGHBOURS ARE SCRAMBLING AROUND ON THEIR ROOF. (Oh, is that just me?) Keep stirring until it starts to thicken.
-Add the cheese. Stir some more until it melts. If it gets too thick to be stirred easily, add more soymilk. (or water if you've run out of milk. It happens.) At this point, take it off the heat.
-Turn the oven on to 180 degrees centigrade/celsius.
-By this point, the liquid in the mince/vegetable component should be absorbed or evaporated and the aubergine slices should be nice and brown. Now is the time to put it all together!
-Take a large but fairly shallow ceramic dish. Spoon in a layer of filling, then place a layer of aubergine slices over the top. Repeat once. (but don't rinse yet) Top the whole thing with the cheese sauce, making sure some goes down the sides.
-Place the dish on a baking tray (makes it easier to handle later). Put it in the by now preheated oven, and leave it there for about half an hour. It's ready when the top is brown.
On Saturday we went for a very long walk involving dipping into the many and varied alternative/vintage/goth/totally random tat shops on Mansfield Road, and then doing some duck-spotting along the canal towpath. Between these two installments of walking, we stopped off at Dotty's cafe to fill up on sugar and caffiene. Dotty's doesn't have a website (yet?), but a map can be found here and the details are on Vegan Nottingham. It is basically a 50's-themed vegetarian cafe with the normal sort of food you'd expect plus a varying range of vegan cupcakes. In the evening we went to Sumac for some more food and vegan beer.
*Also, I hate using dry/rehydrated soy mince in the oven, as it re-dehydrates rather easily unless you drown it in liquid. I had a nasty experience with that when suffering from a throat infection and penicillin-induced vomiting, meaning that it scratched my throat on the way down and the way up. Delightful.
On Friday, I made moussaka for the first time ever.
Ingredients (Four servings - two for Friday night, one for my dinner after Gothling went home on Sunday, one to experiment with freezing stuff that has cheese sauce on):
-One aubergine (this is maybe the one thing that can't be substituted! Except maybe with sheets of lasagna, but that would still be a completely different meal)
-One packet of Redwood's cheating mince (would have been cheaper to use Realeat frozen mince or any brand of dried soy*, but this meal was meant to be a bit special.)
-One onion (red, but a white one would work just as well), chopped
-Two large carrots, chopped (could grate them if you have more than one grater or fancy washing the thing before doing the cheese sauce)
-About half a dozen mushrooms, chopped
-Enough sunflower oil to cook the above ingredients in
-Two tablespoons olive oil for the aubergines
-Black pepper, paprika and some dried mixed herbs.
-Quarter of a large tube of tomato puree (about 50g) (you may like to use less, I suspect I may generally go overboard with this, not least because it looks like pretty red knitting yarn when spurted around the pan)
-Half a block of Redwood's mozarella (any vegan cheese would do though - probably any brand, be it hard or cream or powder - but this happened to be what was in my fridge approaching its use-by date)
-One tablespoon each of margarine and cornflour
-Enough soymilk to make a fairly thick sauce
Equipment used
-Wok (or large saucepan you don't mind cooking stuff in oil in)
-Small saucepan
-Baking tray
-Cheese grater
-Knife
-Two wooden spoons and a spatula
-Roll of greasproof paper (no, I did not use the whole thing! Jeez!)
-Large, fairly shallow ovenproof dish
Method
-Slice the aubergine (slices about a centimetre thick)
-Place the slices on a baking tray or the grill pan (I was using an oven where the grill doesn't have a separate compartment), drizzled with olive oil. Grill until both sides of each slice are streaked with brown.
-Heat some oil in the wok. Add the mince and vegetables, and stir these together for a bit.
-Add the tomato puree, then pour in some warm water until the presence of liquid becomes obvious. Stir well and allow to simmer.
-While it is doing so, you will probably have time to get on with some other things around the house. (I didn't have much choice since they needed doing!) But what you absolutely NEED to do at this point is make the cheese sauce. To do this,
-Grate the cheese, if you're using the hard variety.
-Melt the margarine. Start it off at the highest notch on your stove, then turn the heat down when it starts to melt.
-Mix in the cornflour until all the margarine is absorbed.
-Add soymilk. Sauce should be fairly runny at this stage.
-Turn up the heat, stir the sauce CONSTANTLY. DON'T EVEN LOOK AWAY FOR A SECOND. EVEN IF YOUR NEIGHBOURS ARE SCRAMBLING AROUND ON THEIR ROOF. (Oh, is that just me?) Keep stirring until it starts to thicken.
-Add the cheese. Stir some more until it melts. If it gets too thick to be stirred easily, add more soymilk. (or water if you've run out of milk. It happens.) At this point, take it off the heat.
-Turn the oven on to 180 degrees centigrade/celsius.
-By this point, the liquid in the mince/vegetable component should be absorbed or evaporated and the aubergine slices should be nice and brown. Now is the time to put it all together!
-Take a large but fairly shallow ceramic dish. Spoon in a layer of filling, then place a layer of aubergine slices over the top. Repeat once. (but don't rinse yet) Top the whole thing with the cheese sauce, making sure some goes down the sides.
-Place the dish on a baking tray (makes it easier to handle later). Put it in the by now preheated oven, and leave it there for about half an hour. It's ready when the top is brown.
On Saturday we went for a very long walk involving dipping into the many and varied alternative/vintage/goth/totally random tat shops on Mansfield Road, and then doing some duck-spotting along the canal towpath. Between these two installments of walking, we stopped off at Dotty's cafe to fill up on sugar and caffiene. Dotty's doesn't have a website (yet?), but a map can be found here and the details are on Vegan Nottingham. It is basically a 50's-themed vegetarian cafe with the normal sort of food you'd expect plus a varying range of vegan cupcakes. In the evening we went to Sumac for some more food and vegan beer.
*Also, I hate using dry/rehydrated soy mince in the oven, as it re-dehydrates rather easily unless you drown it in liquid. I had a nasty experience with that when suffering from a throat infection and penicillin-induced vomiting, meaning that it scratched my throat on the way down and the way up. Delightful.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Misplaced blame
Girl admitted to hospital - vegan diet blamed. Now, while I'm willing to believe that the parents in this case are messing up somewhere, I don't see why the default assumption has to be that the vegan diet is to blame. In every similar case so far, there has been some other factor - usually that the parents are cranks in some other way. (Hey, I'm not denying that veganism does attract this sort of person - but they don't represent the majority of us, ok?) For example, the family (maybe more than one - sadly, plenty exist) who rely on the 'power of prayer' to fix illnesses rather than taking their kids to the doctor. Or the mother who thought breastfeeding wasn't vegan - come on, you think a demographic containing a large number of crunchy granola types would really accept that as a norm?
Why am I so dubious? You may be thinking at this point that it is a knee-jerk response (rather like that of the doctor blaming veganism rather than looking any further?) from someone who will defend veganism at all costs. And you may worry about the future of my potential children. That is entirely your problem, since I'm unlikely to have any in the near future anyway.
But you know what? Although I don't have children, I do have a fair bit of knowledge here. I know enough people who have raised healthy vegetarian or vegan children to know that the diet isn't intrinsically a problem. (Some of their parents aren't even people I like, let alone carry a torch for - the point is that their kids are physically healthy.) I even know a smattering of life veg/ans of various stripes who have, amazingly if the press is to be believed, actually reached adulthood with no more than the average number of health problems.
Then there is my own experience. While not a life veg/an, I have been either vegetarian or vegan since well before puberty. If you ask me whether the change in diet affects a girl's periods, I won't be able to answer. (Yes, I do have them. And sometimes take iron supplements during them. Just like my omni friends, in fact.) I went pescatarian at age nine (being a child with no vegetarian relatives might be construed as one of the few good excuses for this), vegetarian at maybe 10 or 11, was vegan consistently from 14-20, slipped up and went back to being vegetarian for a bit, went vegan again in my early 20s. I do not have the spine of an 80-year old. I get back pain when doing heavy lifting, for sure, but am fairly confident that this isn't a specifically vegan trait. I am above average height for a female in England (5'8") and possibly slightly overweight. I have obviously female breasts for the first time in my life, probably because the soy content in my diet has gone up. I get more than my fair share of throat and chest infections - brought on by stress and living in a polluted city - but no other health problems. I take no daily vitamin supplement - just massive doses of vitamin c to ward off freshers' flu each year and iron for maybe one period in five. (Btw, I have heard from certain quarters that 'real vegans don't have periods' - this is neither typical nor healthy, and the people in question can jam it up their non-bleeding parts and get a sodding life.) I get my ID checked for alcohol purchases way more often than my 'young persons' railcard (I'm a mature student) gets checked closely on the train. I sometimes have the mouth of a thirteen-year old. I have spent my entire life listening to doom-laden predictions about my future health, none of which have come true.
Finally, there is the question of why exactly the press doesn't seem as keen to cover the health problems of children raised on junk food. Or if they do they blame it on external factors, never parental choice. There does seem to be a concerted anti-vegan trend in the media, and it does rather make life difficult for the majority of us who aren't like that.
Why am I so dubious? You may be thinking at this point that it is a knee-jerk response (rather like that of the doctor blaming veganism rather than looking any further?) from someone who will defend veganism at all costs. And you may worry about the future of my potential children. That is entirely your problem, since I'm unlikely to have any in the near future anyway.
But you know what? Although I don't have children, I do have a fair bit of knowledge here. I know enough people who have raised healthy vegetarian or vegan children to know that the diet isn't intrinsically a problem. (Some of their parents aren't even people I like, let alone carry a torch for - the point is that their kids are physically healthy.) I even know a smattering of life veg/ans of various stripes who have, amazingly if the press is to be believed, actually reached adulthood with no more than the average number of health problems.
Then there is my own experience. While not a life veg/an, I have been either vegetarian or vegan since well before puberty. If you ask me whether the change in diet affects a girl's periods, I won't be able to answer. (Yes, I do have them. And sometimes take iron supplements during them. Just like my omni friends, in fact.) I went pescatarian at age nine (being a child with no vegetarian relatives might be construed as one of the few good excuses for this), vegetarian at maybe 10 or 11, was vegan consistently from 14-20, slipped up and went back to being vegetarian for a bit, went vegan again in my early 20s. I do not have the spine of an 80-year old. I get back pain when doing heavy lifting, for sure, but am fairly confident that this isn't a specifically vegan trait. I am above average height for a female in England (5'8") and possibly slightly overweight. I have obviously female breasts for the first time in my life, probably because the soy content in my diet has gone up. I get more than my fair share of throat and chest infections - brought on by stress and living in a polluted city - but no other health problems. I take no daily vitamin supplement - just massive doses of vitamin c to ward off freshers' flu each year and iron for maybe one period in five. (Btw, I have heard from certain quarters that 'real vegans don't have periods' - this is neither typical nor healthy, and the people in question can jam it up their non-bleeding parts and get a sodding life.) I get my ID checked for alcohol purchases way more often than my 'young persons' railcard (I'm a mature student) gets checked closely on the train. I sometimes have the mouth of a thirteen-year old. I have spent my entire life listening to doom-laden predictions about my future health, none of which have come true.
Finally, there is the question of why exactly the press doesn't seem as keen to cover the health problems of children raised on junk food. Or if they do they blame it on external factors, never parental choice. There does seem to be a concerted anti-vegan trend in the media, and it does rather make life difficult for the majority of us who aren't like that.
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Where I stand
Well, since I'm giving advice, I should probably explain where it comes from. Just to fend off anyone who reads this and thinks 'hey, that doesn't apply to me!' So, a few things:
- I am in a medium-distance relationship (with a vegan) and don't have children.
- I have been vegetarian since well before puberty.
- My first inroads into veganism happened as a teenager. (My parents were and are omnis)
- I've never been thin and probably never will be
As such
- Most of the significant relationships in my life have been developed as a vegetarian or a vegan. Hence, I have zero insight into how becoming a vegetarian or vegan affects existing friendships.
- I don't know if cutting out animal products has an effect on periods, skin condition or anything else related to physical maturation. I have never had a period as a meat-eater.
- I learned to cook as a very young vegan living with my parents. The main change in my life was having to make more of my own meals rather than eating what was put in front of me. So I don't know what it is like to cook for yourself as an omnivore for several years and then veganise. (I do, however, quite enjoy taking meat recipes and adapting them - so if you send me one i'll have a go with it. That's a serious offer, although it may take a while for me to get round to doing anything.)
- If you're after using veganism only or mainly as a method for weight loss, please go somewhere else for your sake and mine. And please find a healthy somewhere else, and take Skinny Bitch with a pinch of (pun completely intended) salt if you must insist on using it at all.
Having said that, I certainly do know about being and staying vegan in a whole range of circumstances. And I know about the joy of carrying food around for lunch and having salad dressing and curry sauce leaking over one's teaching materials and a whole lot of other fun stuff like that. So, y'know, swings and roundabouts...
- I am in a medium-distance relationship (with a vegan) and don't have children.
- I have been vegetarian since well before puberty.
- My first inroads into veganism happened as a teenager. (My parents were and are omnis)
- I've never been thin and probably never will be
As such
- Most of the significant relationships in my life have been developed as a vegetarian or a vegan. Hence, I have zero insight into how becoming a vegetarian or vegan affects existing friendships.
- I don't know if cutting out animal products has an effect on periods, skin condition or anything else related to physical maturation. I have never had a period as a meat-eater.
- I learned to cook as a very young vegan living with my parents. The main change in my life was having to make more of my own meals rather than eating what was put in front of me. So I don't know what it is like to cook for yourself as an omnivore for several years and then veganise. (I do, however, quite enjoy taking meat recipes and adapting them - so if you send me one i'll have a go with it. That's a serious offer, although it may take a while for me to get round to doing anything.)
- If you're after using veganism only or mainly as a method for weight loss, please go somewhere else for your sake and mine. And please find a healthy somewhere else, and take Skinny Bitch with a pinch of (pun completely intended) salt if you must insist on using it at all.
Having said that, I certainly do know about being and staying vegan in a whole range of circumstances. And I know about the joy of carrying food around for lunch and having salad dressing and curry sauce leaking over one's teaching materials and a whole lot of other fun stuff like that. So, y'know, swings and roundabouts...
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Why vegan?
I'll be open about this from the start - my reason for being vegan is 100% linked to animal rights. No other factor is capable of motivating me to stick to a decision which, lets face it, makes my day-to-day life that tiny bit more complicated. (I know it may violate some kind of party line to admit that, but there you go) Moral status for me is all about sentience - that's people, animals, birds, fish, hell I even extend it to molluscs, but not plants. I see preserving the environment as something which is done for the benefit of people, animals, birds, fish, etc, and future generations thereof, rather than for its own sake. Arguments that a vegan diet is *healthier* than either eating meat (which it wouldn't occur to me to do anyway, I've been vegetarian for sixteen years. That's since before puberty. And being lacto-veg is convenient as anything in England.) or just being vegetarian have very little impact. The authors of Skinny Bitch would most likely faint (especially when fasting, nu?) if they could see either my figure or some of what goes down my throat. Anyway, in my current circumstances, a *healthy* vegan diet depends a lot on making time to cook a proper dinner, make packed lunch and eat a proper breakfast before leaving the house in the morning. This doesn't always happen. The one health factor in the whole thing is a slight milk allergy - ie I won't die from ingesting dairy, but my throat will swell and get incredibly painful - and that only happened because I stopped eating the stuff in the first place.
Not killing animals, however, strikes me as a pretty damn good reason to put in the necessary effort. The baseline here is that, short of a pure survival situation probably involving roadkill rather than a live animal (because that is *totally* likely to happen), I'm a vegetarian and will stay that way for a whole lot more than the foreseeable future. That doesn't feel like a bold statement. Furthermore, I wouldn't (hypothetically) feel able to protest with any level of credibility about any other instances of animal abuse were I going home from the demo and eating beef or chicken. And, because milk and eggs are inextricably linked to the beef and chicken industries, being vegan strikes me as the logical conclusion of vegetarianism. (I do, however, eat bacteria. The sort of bacteria that inhabit Alpro probiotic soy yogurt are likely to be the sort which are at their happiest in human intestines. The sad thing is that *someone* is likely to ask this question if not pre-empted...) Being vegan is harder than being vegetarian, because I don't have the same 'yuk' reaction to milk as to meat. The pus factor can produce that reaction *if* I think about it hard enough, but it isn't automatic. It's the difference between a video being set to record a programme versus having to hit the record button in response to the first bar of the theme tune and remember to turn it off later. I can look at a block of cheese without feeling sick and smell it without having to leave the room (the effect bacon often has). So it is something which involves a bit of effort, the need to remind myself what happened to the calf the milk in that cheese sandwich in the canteen was meant for.
So, that's my rationale for being vegan. Now, about the other potential reasons. I may appear disparaging of these, but to be perfectly blunt, if someone is vegan I don't care why. I'm happy. Unless you leave me loads of comments to the effect that animal rights is a pile of shit, in which case there are ducks I can bribe to leave just that in your shoes, keyboard and saucepan. In normal circumstances, I don't see it as particuarly constructive to fight about this particular issue.
Not killing animals, however, strikes me as a pretty damn good reason to put in the necessary effort. The baseline here is that, short of a pure survival situation probably involving roadkill rather than a live animal (because that is *totally* likely to happen), I'm a vegetarian and will stay that way for a whole lot more than the foreseeable future. That doesn't feel like a bold statement. Furthermore, I wouldn't (hypothetically) feel able to protest with any level of credibility about any other instances of animal abuse were I going home from the demo and eating beef or chicken. And, because milk and eggs are inextricably linked to the beef and chicken industries, being vegan strikes me as the logical conclusion of vegetarianism. (I do, however, eat bacteria. The sort of bacteria that inhabit Alpro probiotic soy yogurt are likely to be the sort which are at their happiest in human intestines. The sad thing is that *someone* is likely to ask this question if not pre-empted...) Being vegan is harder than being vegetarian, because I don't have the same 'yuk' reaction to milk as to meat. The pus factor can produce that reaction *if* I think about it hard enough, but it isn't automatic. It's the difference between a video being set to record a programme versus having to hit the record button in response to the first bar of the theme tune and remember to turn it off later. I can look at a block of cheese without feeling sick and smell it without having to leave the room (the effect bacon often has). So it is something which involves a bit of effort, the need to remind myself what happened to the calf the milk in that cheese sandwich in the canteen was meant for.
So, that's my rationale for being vegan. Now, about the other potential reasons. I may appear disparaging of these, but to be perfectly blunt, if someone is vegan I don't care why. I'm happy. Unless you leave me loads of comments to the effect that animal rights is a pile of shit, in which case there are ducks I can bribe to leave just that in your shoes, keyboard and saucepan. In normal circumstances, I don't see it as particuarly constructive to fight about this particular issue.
Introduction
Firstly, lest anyone think different, it is *my* veganicity being increased - I was a vegan for ages, have gone back to being a vegetarian a few times, and have been slowly re-veganising for about a year. I slip up sometimes, but make the effort not to. I don't intend to use this blog to 'preach' at anyone, although if anyone *does* go vegetarian or vegan as a result of reading something I've written or linked to then I will obviously be delighted. I don't, however, kid myself that I am one of those cool people whose example automatically gets followed.
Beyond that, I don't know quite how much of a personal introduction I need to make since for the time being the existence of this blog will only be revealed to people who kind of know me. At any rate, my (screen) name is Nella - if you know my real name, that's cool unless you're some kind of stalker type, but keep it to yourself in cyberspace or my ducks will come and shit in your computer. I live in England, but the duckshit proviso also applies to my exact location. I'm 26 and in the later stages of a PhD in political theory. It doesn't relate to animal rights or veganism, fyi. I also teach first year undergraduates a fairly standard theory curriculum -Plato to Rawls via folks like Hobbes, Locke and Burke. I like knitting - a post on vegan yarn will appear here at some point - and ducks. I'm sort of a semi-retired goth, although I don't usually wear elaborate eyeliner to teach seminars. I have ten piercings. I make a pretty ace scrambled tofu and vegan cheese sauce. I've had a few health issues over the past year and have reduced my involvement in activism as a result, so online promotion of veganism and an improvement in my own practice of it seem like a happy medium.
So, shalom and welcome to what may or may not be the 'fun kind' of veganism!
Beyond that, I don't know quite how much of a personal introduction I need to make since for the time being the existence of this blog will only be revealed to people who kind of know me. At any rate, my (screen) name is Nella - if you know my real name, that's cool unless you're some kind of stalker type, but keep it to yourself in cyberspace or my ducks will come and shit in your computer. I live in England, but the duckshit proviso also applies to my exact location. I'm 26 and in the later stages of a PhD in political theory. It doesn't relate to animal rights or veganism, fyi. I also teach first year undergraduates a fairly standard theory curriculum -Plato to Rawls via folks like Hobbes, Locke and Burke. I like knitting - a post on vegan yarn will appear here at some point - and ducks. I'm sort of a semi-retired goth, although I don't usually wear elaborate eyeliner to teach seminars. I have ten piercings. I make a pretty ace scrambled tofu and vegan cheese sauce. I've had a few health issues over the past year and have reduced my involvement in activism as a result, so online promotion of veganism and an improvement in my own practice of it seem like a happy medium.
So, shalom and welcome to what may or may not be the 'fun kind' of veganism!
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