Last Blog

This is it, the final blog entry for this blog.

My 40 days as a pseudo-vegan ended yesterday when I was able to spread butter on my toast (admittedly cashew butter was rather yummy on the toast) for breakfast and I was able to eat roast pheasant with my parents. So time to look back at the time and consider the successes and failures.

I think the ultimate failure was that I was not a very strict vegan, partly because being a pure vegan anywhere is bloody difficult. It wasn't just that in the traditional meat-free European recipes cheese and butter were sometimes essential, but it's also that I love cakes, which always contain milk and eggs. And when I eat pancakes (which I should have cut off) whipped cream is always an accompaniment. And how can you enjoy being a vegan if you can't eat ice cream?

The other big failure was that this blog didn't exactly get tons of attention. The main problem, I believe, is that I don't really hang around the foodie crowd much, and this is the kind of thing they would be interested in more than anyone else.

BUT I did succeed in widening my own cooking palette and providing ideas for recipes to other people. My biggest success I can point to is my brother. He has to eat meat all the time (so he says) so meat is almost always featured in his cooking and pork pie is an essential feature in his lunches. Even he was intrigued by some of my recipes.

Also, did the diet make me feel any different? Not really. Although I did notice that with the absence of meat I started desiring more spicey foods, and more of my food was coloured red or brown. That was until my yearning for green food sprouted.

Knowing a vegan makes life inconvenient

The above title is inspired by something IGN's Podcast Beyond host Colin Moriarty said back in Autumn: he said that a vegan diet is very exclusive. He said this when recounting a story of meeting his best friend, who would soon be getting married and became a vegan for health reasons. While Colin acknowledged that the health benefits were obvious and was proud of his friend for his achievement, it was not easy finding a restaurant to eat out at.

Mind you, the USA's food industry appears to have not learned the lesson the UK has: have vegetarian/vegan options on your menu, or lose customers and face bankruptcy. I remember when I was in the US, how difficult it was for my vegetarian friends to find food in outlets, despite the masses of such people living in the US today. When I went out on Friday night with my best friend, we really didn't need to be so careful when picking our restaurant; we just walked in and I stared at the vegetarian options.

But this leads to the time I've experienced with my parents in these final few days. While my dad was supportive of my endeavour, my mum had no comment (as usual), but I didn't experience any negativity. No, the reason why these final few days were interesting for me was that my mum deals with the food provision in the household and she's not the most flexible when it comes to sudden or drastic changes. While we have had some non-meat-eating guests in the past, we...actually don't know very many vegans or vegetarians. And we always had fore-warning so their needs could be planned for.

In this instance, I had brought home my own supply of soy milk, all the way from Ostrava, making it easier for all involved as I'm assuming mum doesn't know where to look for such things. The other reason is that I had barely used the litre carton and didn't want it wasted. The day I arrived in London, dad was working at home so he picked me up and asked me to survey the food stocks, in case we needed to do a spontaneous shopping trip. Well, as I would be out of the house Friday evening, that was the perfect opportunity for mum to cook some meat pies. Wednesday evening I cooked some spaghetti, Thursday evening I cooked a stir-fry with Thai sweet chili sauce.

You can pretty much spot the resolution of this problem: in order to avoid cooking something I won't be able to eat, I just cook for everyone else. Except Saturday. Saturday is the one evening when we have chips with something, either fish, burgers or fried eggs. It's always some sort of animal product. I suggested I cook something else, to avoid this conundrum of what to have with my chips, but mum is fully aware of my love for Asian food. Her suggestion was to find some prepared vegetable spring rolls to cook up with my chips. That was genius and I agreed. But she couldn't find any. So sticking with the Asian snacks, I was overjoyed to discover she had bought a packet of Thai vegetable sacks. 10 of them, all for me! :D