Day Fourteen: Vegan for a day

I am a lover of food and drink, and I enjoy all of nature's bountiful produce with appreciation for the yummy morsels found therein and the clever cooks throughout history who have discovered winning combinations and magical ways of preparing meals (who first fried an egg??!) I am well aware of life-choices such as vegetarianism and veganism and fruitarianism (is that a real one, or just something made up from Notting Hill?) but I have never felt the need to embrace such a diet, and have no qualms eating anything, as long as it is actually edible. I feel sorry for those who do live by such rules, I feel sorry for their taste buds because of what they miss out on, and I feel sorry for their tummies because of what they miss out on a Sunday afternoon, trying and failing to digest a huge Sunday roast with all the trimmings.

But I was also quite keen to give yesterday's challenge a go. Keen, that is, until it dawned on me just how hard being a vegan is (and by 'hard' I mean annoying, bothersome and expensive.) My understanding is that a vegan eats anything that doesn't derive from an animal, so in a nutshell (you could eat that), no fish, no meat, no dairy. Easy enough....or so I thought. 

We spent a fair amount of time planning and preparing for this gastronomical mission, to ensure that we had enough suitable foods in the house. One of our conversations went something like this:

Tom: So I can't have cereal for breakfast, because I can't have milk. What am I going to have?

Me: Toast?

Tom: No because I can't have butter. 

Me: You could have toast without butter? 

Tom: Are you an idiot?

Fair point. So Tom ended up breakfasting on what can safely be described as the only possible alternative to toast or cereal - hash browns, baked beans and fried bread. I had the left over baked beans on toast. So far, so yummy - being a vegan is easy, and tastier than normal! 

You can imagine how our conversation about lunch went, bearing in mind the suggestions made earlier concerning toast without butter. So we dined on pasta with tomato sauce and mixed Mediterranean vegetables. Again, so far so yummy. And then for tea I made a Sicilian aubergine stew which you can see here:

It tasted much better than it looked and I think we will eat it again as part of our normal non-vegan food exploits. 

For the main meals, then, my conclusion is that veganism isn't that bad. (However, that is because we only did it for one day. Any longer than that and I would be craving bacon, drooling every time I saw roast beef, dreaming about a ham sandwich, and, well, I would just eat some meat.) No, like I said, the main meals weren't the problem. The problems began with tea. 

I bought a whole carton of soya milk, just so that I could have a cup of tea. That is silly. It makes tea taste different, and it's expensive. Also, how often in the day does an average person fancy a bit of cheese, and just head to the fridge and nibble a little bit off the edge of the block? Yes, probably about 5 or 6 times, and so that's 5 or 6 times you have to quash your desires and eat something boring instead like an apple or a breadstick. Maybe for you it's not cheese, it's chocolate. Well the same applies. Yesterday I had a bit of a mare of a day, and felt stressed and irritated and on the verge of tears all day, and so chocolate, cheese and tea were the three things I needed the most, and the only one I could have was odd tasting tea. I am convinced that had I been able to indulge in these delicacies as freely as I desired, my mood would have lifted.

In conclusion then, I have realised something by carrying out this challenge: my happiness and comfort appears to be directly and intrinsically linked to my consumption of cheese, chocolate and tea. From henceforth, I will valiantly proclaim their virtues to all peoples I meet, especially those of the vegan persuasion, and never again will I deny myself any of these three simple pleasures. Thank you, silly, nonsensical veganism for opening my eyes; thank you, wonderful, joy-enducing cheese, chocolate and tea, for being you.