Plant Proud!

At age 19, I was mocking vegetarians and calling them stupid and pompous. So how did I get to this point?

After moving into my own apartment for the first time (and having my own personal kitchen!) going into my junior year of college, I began cooking and buying my own groceries. Because I was broke and didn’t know how to cook, meat rarely made it on my plate. In fact, I was afraid of raw meat: I didn’t want to touch it, or mess it up and poison myself. For the first time in my life, meatless was my norm, and it didn’t bother me.

Around the same time, I read several books by Michael Pollan, who introduced me to the environmental issues of factory farming, as well as giving compelling evidence that the American diet of daily and excessive meat consumption was contributing to our country’s health epidemic. Considering I was experiencing a range of health issues at the time (IBS, depression, weight gain, possibly PCOS), I was all ears.

So in January 2011, I decided to adopt the “flexitarian” diet, which I was going to enforce by allowing myself no more than one meal of meat a day.  I generally saved meat for social occasions, and I actually only had it a few times a week.

Flexitarianism (and its more recent incarnations, reducetarianism and VB6) has been mocked and criticized as being noncommittal or half-assed, but I praise it. It was a beautiful gateway for me and helped me recognize the consequences of eating meat, as well as how easy it was to live without it. After several days of being purely meatless, and often vegan, having a pulled pork sandwich or a slice of lasagna sent my body into torment.

In less than a year of practicing “flexitarianism,” I made the full switch to vegetarianism. It began as a month-long trial, but it felt so “right” that I decided to stick with it. I spent two years as a vegetarian (no beef, pork, chicken, or fish!) and almost vegan. I would eat mostly vegan at home (with the exception of honey, or naan that contained egg), but go vegetarian when eating out.

In September of 2013, I finally committed to being vegan. It started with health and environment motivations, but the ethical reasons slowly grew. I now consider myself a “plant-based ethical vegan.” Yes, you can simultaneously be an ethical vegan and also focus on whole foods and your health, and don’t let anyone tell you it has to be one or the other.

Why is there honey in your recipes?

For starters, many of my recipes were created when I was still a vegetarian. Second of all, honey was one of the last things I “gave up” as a vegan. You might even see me defend my use of honey in a few posts. I’m human! I evolve!

So what do you eat?!

First of all, no, I don’t ONLY eat oatmeal (but I do eat a lot of it).

Favorite meals:

• Avocado on a toasted English muffin with sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, and red pepper flakes
• Potato hash with lots of veggies
• Stir fry with air-fried tofu and lots of veggies
• Tofu scramble with lots of veggies (notice a trend?)
• Pasta with sauteed zucchini, chickpeas or red lentils, and spicy marinara
• Happy Herbivore’s mac & cheese with either soy chorizo or buffalo cauliflower
• Happy Herbivore’s pad thai with broccoli