Descent to Veganism
How an Ordinary Omnivore Was Tempted By the Vegan Lifestyle
I am an unabashed omnivore. That is to say, I’ll eat almost anything that won’t eat me. If it’s properly prepared I may even eat things that will eat me.
I have no particular argument with people that eat vegetables, I do so myself in proper relationship with the food pyramid. They have never seemed to harm me in any particular way and some of them are quite tasty.
I was raised on a farm. Yeah, I’m that kid in your class that knew exactly where babies and pork chops come from. No mystery in the life cycle for me. I’ve been eating meat as long as I’ve been eating.
In my younger days I didn’t have a care about my diet and what I ate, so long as there was plenty of it. For the first half of my life I was an athlete in training and needed a high calorie, high protein diet just to maintain my playing weight. In fact, I didn’t really hit my weight until I was in my early 30s.
For the second half of my life I have been somewhat less active, and actually had to start watching my weight sometime in my late 30s. I made all the right choices: I drank light beer and limited myself to no more than 10 cheeseburgers per week. I fluffed out the food pyramid by eating pizzas with vegetables on them. I ran 30 miles per week.
That all came crashing down on me just after I turned 40. I had a new less active job and promptly puffed up to somewhere north of 300 lbs. I gave up alcohol completely and started eating with more sanity and discretion. By my 42nd birthday I was under 230 lbs. Life was good.
Fast forward to my 62nd birthday. I had suffered a career ending back injury and a major medicine change. I was living a life of enforced sloth and feeding myself well. I got back to 300 lbs. My weight started limiting my life, including my ability to ride a motorcycle for long distances.
I embraced a low carb diet. In 6 months I was back to 230 lbs and feeling good. I started modifying the diet to include more carbs and for protection ate more meat. Lots of red meat. Yes, the cheeseburgers were back in my life. I made them myself, and loved it.
Until I got back over 280 lbs. This time I was bound and determined to eat a more plant based diet. I started on the Mediterranean diet and began losing the weight in a slow and steady fashion.
Vegan is hard.
I don’t mean that the vegetables are necessarily hard, I mean it is hard to be a Vegan in the modern world.
You might guess there is a backstory here. There are a couple of young people I know that are Vegan and militant. Just for being allowed around them I have to try stuff that I really don’t want to try.
One of my friends lives on a remote exotic Island. Heaven on earth for most people. She routinely publishes Vegan recipes that are tasty looking and actually good for me. I tried a couple of the recipes and liked them and told her so. The next thing I know is I am being pressured to test a certain variety of Vegan Burger because it just isn’t available in Paradise where she lives.
How Hard Can It Be?
It’s vegetables. We are surrounded by them. The world is literally awash with vegetables.
It turns out you can’t just chomp on vegetables. You need tools. Now that’s something I can get with, tools.
Image Source: The Author I phone 6S
This photo is not a piece of medieval torture equipment, though I have no doubt that is where it’s genesis is. It’s a hand spiralizer that is available on Amazon and is utterly necessary to one of the recipes that I wanted to try.
The Best Pasta, she said. Turns out it really doesn’t have any relationship to pasta in my lexicon. It’s zucchini. Not noodles, zucchini. Served cold. But you need the spiralizer to make zucchini look like noodles. So I bought the thing and it came without one word of instruction. Except the warning printed on the plastic bag in six languages. Not one word.
It cost me 3 zucchini to get something that looked sorta like noodles. Being the waste not want not sort that I am, I ate the first two mistakes. OK, they weren’t really mistakes, the damn thing works, the first two just didn’t look much like noodles. Looks are apparently important in Veganville.
So. I have the noodles. Sort of. Now it’s time to make the sauce. Food Processor? I don’t need no stinking food processor, I’ll use a blender.
Amazon Next Day. Food Processor.
I’m getting very close to $300 into my plate of healthy spaghetti. And I haven’t gotten it in my mouth yet.
Did I mention spices? Not just any spices, but exotic stuff I’d never heard of. That my local market doesn’t carry. I’m not exactly spice bereft here. I have at least 7 kinds of peppers. Not to mention Salt AND Black Pepper. Who knew?
It’s off to town to the one and only place in the county that might possibly have what I need. 40 miles round trip but I can save some time because that place is the only one in the county for the burgers that I promised to try.
No, I don’t have any pictures. I typically do not take pictures of what I am about to eat. Particularly stuff that I have made. Use your imagination, it was beautiful. OK. Maybe not beautiful in the classic sense of the word. Probably not in any sense of the word.
It was, as a matter of just pure fact very edible. Probably not $300 worth, but just mighty tasty if I do say so myself. I actually liked it to the point that I am really looking forward to testing those burgers today.
The Downside
Of course there is a downside. I may have slightly overstated the cost. I actually do have a food processor and am relatively competent in the kitchen. I didn’t need many spices. But there is a distinct downside.
You see, I am 66 years old. I really have in my mind that I want to be utterly used up when I die. If I don’t impale myself on a Buick Bumper with my motorcycle I might die healthy if I follow this sort of diet. What a tragic waste that would be.
Besides, do you have any idea how many pork chops I could buy for $300? How much BACON?
My thanks to @heart-to-heart for a wonderful recipe. It’s not the only one I’ve tried from her.
Authored by: @bigtom13
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