Eating for Ethics

An experiment

You can find my previous posts on cooking and eating here, here, and here!

In March, I had a very mundane dream. In my dream, I was talking to Clover, and I told her that I was going to go vegan. In the morning, I awoke and I made breakfast: avocado toast with bacon. It was delicious. All morning, I thought about the dream. Later that day, I made the dream a reality: I decided (and informed Clover) that I was going to go vegan.

For context, I had never before even been a vegetarian. From the beginning, this plan had caveats. I knew that when I went home for Passover about a month later, I would want to eat my mom’s chicken soup with matzoh balls (probably my all-time favorite food). I also decided that I wouldn’t sweat it too much if I consumed small amounts of egg or dairy when out and about in the world. I have Celiac disease and have to eat a gluten free diet; cooking vegan and gluten free at home is not really too difficult for me, but it’s a pretty restrictive combo when it comes to eating outside of my own house. My goal was not perfection, but drastically reducing my consumption of animal-based foods.

Although my choice to change my diet was immediately provoked by a dream and one morning spent considering it, I’d been considering the idea for awhile somewhat passively. I’d read this essay by Clementine Morrigan that pushed me to take more seriously the suffering of animals under factory farm conditions. She points out that animal food eaters (who don’t, like, live on a homestead where they’re controlling the conditions under which their meat, eggs, and dairy are produced) essentially must maintain a state of dissociation regarding the origins of the food they eat, and she urges us to combat this dissociation. Specifically, she writes about taking ayahuasca and seeing a vision of the eyes of a cow, and regarding the cow’s spirit, selfhood, and preciousness. I have looked into the eyes of a cow; I have absolutely no doubt that cows are capable of a great depth of feeling and cognition. I have no doubt of their capacity to feel love and joy, and to suffer.

Knowing this and still eating beef from Aldi, then, requires some dissociation. I came to realize that a few things were standing in the way of me making dietary changes to be in better alignment with my ethics. The first, which is very common, is that I’m used to eating a diet with animal foods in it and I really enjoy eating a lot of those foods. I love cooking, I love eating, I value pleasure, and a great deal of the foods that have long been my favorites have meat and/or dairy in them. The second, a more practical concern, is that being gluten free is non-optional for me, and being committed to a fully gluten free and vegan diet really is quite restrictive. It would mean there would be a lot of places I simply couldn’t eat (and many more where I would only be able to eat something unappealing/not pleasurable), and it would require more planning and less spontaneity around food.

The third thing was a mindset issue. I realized that it was easy for me to get hung up on “never again” scenarios. Would I NEVER AGAIN eat braised sliced beef noodle soup at Nan Zhou? Would I NEVER AGAIN order cheese enchiladas from Los Gallos? What about making a whole roast chicken with cabbage to eat with Clover? What about getting a gelati at John’s Water Ice in the summer? FUCK!!

I realized that focusing on these never-again scenarios was unhelpful, as it constrained my choices in the present via my fear about feeling constrained in the future. It was better to focus instead on what choices I wanted to make about food today, now, with the knowledge that my future self will also have the freedom to do the same.

Lastly, it was important to me to consider how my decisions about this were potentially shaped by diet culture. I’ve written here about my struggles to reject the diet voice within and to achieve body acceptance (still a work in progress!), and I won’t pretend that those voices weren’t somewhat in my ear as I was thinking this through. I will say, however, that choosing to explore veganism actually wound up feeling like it went against some of the more powerful diet culture messaging of the moment. Diet culture seems to swing between the pendulums of low fat and low carb, and right now it’s definitely on the low carb/keto/paleo/no processed foods etc. end of the spectrum. These messages have definitely made their way into my thinking about food and what constitutes a “healthy” diet. I decided that, in addition to ramping up my consumption of beans, lentils, and tofu in lieu of meat and eggs, I would also try out some replacement foods like soyrizo and vegan butter and sour cream (although I avoided palm oil-based products for ethical reasons). Even though, duh, I eat plenty of highly processed foods all the time already, these replacement foods made diet culture alarm bells go off in my head, but I decided that it was worth trying them to see if they would help bring ease or pleasure to a vegan diet.

My body definitely went through a bit of an adjustment period. I had some unpleasant digestive issues for the first two weeks or so, probably related to an increase in dietary fiber, which a quick Reddit search revealed is not uncommon for new vegans. I also found that for the first week or two I had to intentionally eat a bit more than usual, or else I found myself hit by intense hunger a couple hours after eating - basically, getting and staying full was a little more difficult.

I quickly realized that it was important for me to make sure to have a variety of vegan snacks and treats on hand at home - things that made eating vegan feel fun and pleasurable. For me, this includes rice crackers and BDS-compliant hummus (both of which I have strong feelings about, namely that they are best purchased at Trader Joe’s), apples/bananas and peanut butter, tortilla chips and salsa/guac, dolmas, olives, and avocados. I also found myself buying and eating more fruit than usual. I am going to share some meals that I made below, accompanied by some terrible food photography! But first, a few words about where this experiment has taken me.

After a few weeks of sticking very closely (though again not 100% perfectly) to a vegan diet, the wheels started to fall off during a busy week where I was both starting a new job and putting on a Val’s event. At my new restaurant job, where I work twice a week, we’re given a staff meal at the beginning of shift, and, TLDR, there’s no way I’m getting a gluten free AND vegan staff meal there. My choices were eating at home before work (and getting hungry during my shift because I last ate an hour earlier than I would’ve at staff meal) or compromising on what I eat there, and I basically immediately decided to compromise. Then we had a Val’s 4/20 event and I got stoned and ate two hot dogs. Womp. Then, as I had planned, I ate meat at my parents’ Passover seder (and it was delicious). After all that, when we got home to Philly, I felt like it was time to get real with myself about what I was doing here. My feelings about the ethics of animal factory farming had not changed, but I had quickly slipped into a mentality of exception-making that made me both feel guilty and pleasurably sneaky - not how I want to feel about food!!!

I have decided that, after this experiment, I am going to stick to eating a pescatarian diet, and eat at least one vegan meal per day. This feels, to me, like a materially significant reduction of my consumption of animal food products that doesn’t feel overly restrictive, and will be realistic for my current lifestyle. I’m glad I tried out a month of veganism!! And it feels good to be making decisions for my life that are rooted in principle. Recommend.

Anyway, here is some of what I ate during my month of veganism - all things that I will continue to eat as I continue to avoid meat and reduce eggs/dairy in my daily food habits! Alright, get ready for some VERY unprofesh food photos.

First, I ate a lot of burrito bowl type meals. Here is one such meal below. Roasted sweet potato, store bought guac, leftover tofu that was coated in cornmeal and spices and baked, homemade mango salsa, and black beans cooked with onion and cumin. Mango salsa truly fucks, especially when the small yellow mangos (often sold as honey mangos or champagne mangos) are in season. Chopped mango, red onion, cilantro/jalapeno if you have it, lime juice, salt, dusting of cayenne. That’s it.

Another bowl meal here. Soyrizo, broccolini, cherry tomatoes, and garlic, sautéed in the cast iron, eaten over polenta. Delicious and very fast.

Another soyrizo-based meal, lol. This time, as part of a potato hash with onions and spinach, and a lil scoop of guac on the side.

I ate a lot of tofu scramble breakfasts during the first couple weeks of the month, before it got warm out and I switched to smoothies. I do feel that I have kind of perfected my tofu scramble game. Sauté onion, garlic, other veggies of choice (here shiitake mushrooms and greens) until everything’s browned and the onions are a little jammy, then add pressed firm tofu (tbh I just squeeze it over the sink with my hands) crumbled into large chunks by hand. Dust liberally with curry powder and some salt. Don’t stir too often as it cooks, as you want the tofu to brown and crisp a little on the bottom. I’ll never forget the first time I saw someone make a tofu scramble - it was some German girl at Harkness Coop at Oberlin, IYKYK. She was making a late night meal - tofu scrambled with lots of cherry tomatoes and turmeric. I thought she was so sophisticated. Somehow, her tofu scramble, which I saw but did not taste, remains the blueprint for me.

Here we have a loaded vegan taco. Refried beans on the bottom (from a can, nothin fancy), topped with mango salsa, avocado, black olives, hot sauce, vegan sour cream, and shredded cabbage/carrots. This was accompanied by a bowl of more of all of the above with some rice - I remember preparing this meal while being VERY hungry and unable to choose between tacos and a rice bowl.

Okay, the below meal actually SLAPPED. Looking at this picture, I want to eat it again right now. Roasted broccoli, sauerkraut (homemade and given to us by our friend Joyce! delicious!), and LENTILS, which I am loving so much lately. These are just brown lentils cooked in vegetable broth. To me, this is very delicious.

Gotta have treats! I messed around with some vegan Ben and Jerry’s but it didn’t quite hit. This is Talenti strawberry sorbet with (nondairy) chocolate chips and it really did the trick. Again, looking at this, I want some rn.

Talk about food that tastes amazing and photographs horribly. This is a Thai green curry with tofu, oyster mushrooms, and Thai eggplant, which I get at one of South Philly’s several Vietnamese grocery stores. To make green curry, I sauté diced onion, garlic, and ginger, and then add canned green curry paste and sauté a little longer. Add coconut milk and a pinch of sugar and let it cook down a little, then add your ingredients in and cook until they seem done. I believe that for this I roasted the mushrooms and tofu a bit first, but the eggplants I just cooked right in the sauce. SO good. Would have been even better with some Thai basil as well.

This is my smoothie of the moment. Frozen mango and peaches, vegan vanilla protein powder (I only use a half scoop because otherwise it’s too sweet!), peanut butter, flax, spinach, a chunk of ginger if I remember, water. IMO using milk (dairy or alt) in smoothies dulls the taste of the other ingredients - water in smoothies for life. This is currently breakfast on repeat, and I’m not sick of her yet!

This is a peanut noodle salad, originally made to share with Lola for a picnic dinner in Dickenson Square Park on one of the first warm days, and then eaten again as a leftover in bed, as pictured below. Rice noodles, wood ear mushrooms, shredded cabbage and carrot, I forget what else, dressed in a peanut sauce made of peanut butter, soy sauce, chili garlic sauce, sesame oil, water, and lime juice whisked together. Topped below with some raw tofu, which I personally really like.

And lastly, another rice noodle meal that was VERY GOOD. This one was based vaguely off of a rice dish that I remember my friend Alie’s mom making when I was a kid. I made a pesto-esque sauce of cilantro, spinach, garlic, cashews, lime juice, and a de-seeded japaleno blended with some water. Then I tossed it with cooked rice noodles, plus tofu and cherry tomatoes that had been roasted in the oven. Topped with more roasted salted cashews. This was delicious and I will absolutely be making it again. Eaten with Lola and Clover alongside some salad, while watching Point Break.

And that’s all, folks! Let me know in the comments if you have any *favorite vegan recipes,* particularly things that are summery and/or have a grilling component!