Grist experiment: Vegan for a month

Just finished Elizabeth Kwak-Hefferan's insightful piece, "What I learned from a month of eating vegan."  Her analysis can be summed up as, "I didn't transform into a vegan at the end of one month, but I am more vegan than I was to begin with."  I think that astutely vibes my own experience with veganism, which me and the Old Man tried back in the wild and wacky Aughts, when our son, Dude Junior (DJ), was about 6 months old.  I was all caught up in a frenzy of ethical eating and thought it would help me and the OM improve our health and possibly drop some pounds.  There was one problem; my father-in-law, God love him, doesn't cotton to hippy-dippy stuff like veganism and neither of us had the reproductive organs to tell the g-rents we were keeping vegan.  So, we ended up being weekend carnivores, where we would be vegan during the week and then eat delicious, delicious meat at Sunday dinners at their house.  Not really a recipe for conscious eating (haha, I made a food joke).

I'm glad we tried it and now I know the basics of cooking and baking for vegans (although, some vegans will not even eat "vegan" food at potlucks because they are very strict, and need to make sure all of the ingredients are ethically made).  I also have a problem with cheese, like, I cannot stop eating it.

Ideologically, I also have problems with the wool/leather conundrum.  If you do not want to wear leather and wool because it exploits animals for their pelts, that's fine, but I think it's okay to wear leather and wool purchased second-hand.  And, as Ms. Kwak-Hefferan pointed out (and I will point out that I have not made fun of her name ONCE), is getting eggs from your neighbor's yard-cooped chickens such an exploitation?  If you decide not to try veganism for a month like the author of the Grist piece, or five minutes like I did, at least think about where your meat is coming from.

Got the photo from Sandra, "Vegetable Monster."