My dad on IM:
you wouldn’t do well, there isn’t much respect for vegans here
I learned that China has a national pork reserve
in deep frozen caves, like our national oil reserve
they keep adding to it, doomsday pork
they love their pork
the students all rush up and ask me to draw pigs for them
I ask why always pigs?
They say, we think pigs are funny.
(and tasty)
Apparently the FBI is currently looking for paid informants to infiltrate that hot bed of political action… the vegan potluck! This actually sounds like a dream job, except for the whole “only getting paid upon someone’s arrest” thing. (But I’m wondering how the freaking feds are finding these potlucks when I’m stuck home, cupcake-less.)
Anyway, I really think this plan needs some reworking. I guess the Bush administration isn’t (yet) tracking SuperVegan — those guys really aren’t kidding when they say all they do is eat and gossip.
If you know me, you probably know I now have consistent access to cable television programming for the first time in about six years and that this means I’ve been introduced to the Food Network in all of its bloody glory. As Amy Sedaris says, “when you’re alone and high in the night,” you can switch back and forth between the Food Network and the medical shows with the box on mute and everything looks just about the same. (But I’m also kind of convinced that watching has improved my seriously sub-par vegetable chopping time significantly.)
This also, of course, means I’ve been introduced to RayRay, that ever-grinning reminder of our continued march as a culture toward the lowest common denominator. (Not to mention those recipes take at least an hour.)
Now, I find Anthony Bourdain as repugnant as any of y’all, but I just had to block quote this for posterity…
Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”
That is all.
image courtesy of the one and only Dave Warwak.
As a journalist, I’m not ashamed to admit that crazy vegans make for really fun news stories. But as a vegan, I sometimes have trouble reading past the headlines.
For the last few weeks I’ve watched the drama around school teacher and loudly proclaimed vegan Dave Warwak play out in Google News. In a soy nutshell (if you, too, winced at those headlines): Warwak, 44, went on a personal mission to convert the students in his art classes at Wisconsin’s Fox River Grove Middle School to veganism. As soon as the news hit the papes, Warwak was fired.
I don’t doubt that Warwak meant well. He just went vegan(gelical) in January, he’s used to molding impressionable young minds, and he probably thought he was doing the right thing. Tactless proselytizing looks much better from the inside–just like for religious teachers who’ve similarly been fired for leading prayers in class.
It’s not totally the media’s fault for characterizing people such as Warwak and the countless irresponsible “vegan” parents as vegan first and crazy second: that’s how they portray themselves. And when the vegan community stays quiet in implicit support it only makes it easier for the next crazy vegan to run with their unfounded moral righteousness. Even worse when they’re loud, misinformed and on the offensive defensive.
Vegans across the country have taken up Warwak’s “cause”–the same Warwak who just crashed the middle school homecoming parade, and handed out cards that said Santa Claus “is a lie,” and, “‘Naming a rock, a banana, does not make it food.’” Clearly he teaches art, not English.
Yet Warwak champions are popping up everywhere, from PETA (“Sound the alarm!”), to Meetup.org groups in Chicago, to Manhattan activist-bloggers.
Take Elaine Vigneault, for example.
“It’s yet another example of how vegans are painted as ‘crazy’ and our ideas are not taken seriously,” she writes. Unfortunately for Elaine, a lot of us are crazy: bat-shit, balls-to-the-wall, all-out freaking crazy. And the less that reasonable vegans differentiate themselves from the crazies, the more the entire world will go on believing that we are humorless ascetics.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, however, the humorless ascetics appear to be winning. Elaine says vegans “should be rude and obnoxious,” because we are the enlightened, and should spread our wisdom among the evil-doing masses. Well, that’s basically what she says. “Needlessly killing millions of animals is far beyond rude and obnoxious… And people who do it, people who promote it, and people who buy it deserve a little dose of the uncomfortable, rude reality.”
I guess that’s why not a lot of religious extremists hold teaching positions in public American schools, right? Because the uncomfortable, rude reality is just too tempting? Elaine claims Mr. Warwak didn’t have “some vegan cult he was recruiting for,” but when this kind of obnoxious attitude prevails, and the preaching continues, and converting the damned and absolving them of their sins is priority #1, that’s not truly the case. It just gives people more reason to block out, marginalize, alienate and fire the crazy.
You have to give people a reason to take your ideas seriously, especially if you’re challenging their entire paradigm. I don’t know one vegan who chose “the lifestyle” because they saw a disgusting PETA video or were yelled at for wearing leather. Making friends and influencing people is not about breaking them down. This isn’t a debate about animal rights or veganism: it’s about being a responsible, non-crazy adult.
And it’s also about not taking yourself so seriously. Because really, I for one think Warwak, PETA, Vigneault and the rest of the gang are hilarious.
Today marks the one year anniversary of my veganism (and on World Vegetarian Day, no less). So far it’s been a mostly positive experience. I’ve honed my cupcake craft, plus I haven’t gained any canola-oil-and-sugar weight, which I think counts as a win. And I even had a sweet run of it there as the managing editor of a rather vanguard vegan blog. Vegan, it turns out (somewhat to my surprise, I admit), is not a bad thing to be.
But one year and one day ago, an overpriced party at an overrated vegetarian restaurant in Fort Greene nearly convinced me otherwise.
The “Vegan Buddies” party seemed like a good enough deal. Olivia promised to set me up with a hot (vegan) guy, my friends were going, and there would be food: a Sunday afternoon trifecta.
I didn’t put much thought into the “Vegan” part of “Vegan Buddies”–how the sermons would go for a girl in vegetarian purgatory.
The VB project, the now-abandoned lovechild of UK animal rights organization Viva!, was meant to match up vegans with non-vegans to make the “transition” to veganism easier on the latter. Unfortunately for them, the organizers had drank a little too much of the Kool-Aid just prior. I guess that’s why they preferred guests to pay in advance.
It was preaching to the choir and a handful of heretics, with a 9-to-1 vegan to non-vegan ratio. Add to that a blood red nametag (peace-loving avocado green for the vegans, obvs) and unrelenting dogma: “wannabes” and “mentors,” “epiphanies” and “truth.” I thought I was being harsh when I told the kid sitting next to me with the green name tag that it reminded me of an AA meeting.
“I think it’s like Scientology,” he said, right after a reference to “taking it to the next level!” It was unclear if he meant that to be a positive commentary, so I didn’t ask.
But I’d already decided to “take it to the next level” weeks earlier. I’d filtered the milk out of my diet, started a label-reading habit and had a last ceremonious (and still enticing) grilled gouda sandwich. Lucky for Viva!, too, or else I might’ve run screaming down DeKalb (or been burned at the stake).
A few months later, buddy-less and at peak this-diet-is-blatantly-inconvenient-and-I-desperately-need-winter-boots crisis time, I came across the Vegan Buddies MySpace page, and their recent blog post. “We now have more than 500 friends here on Myspace, if every person directs one friend to the Vegan Buddies Project, we could ‘convert’ hundreds of peope [sic].”
It reminded me how I’m vegan despite vegan preachers like the VBs and hard-liners like the Vegan Freaks crew and Gary Francione. I’m not interested in converting the lost lambs, rating an individual’s veganism on a scale of murderer to absolved of all life-long sins, or rescuing every feral cat on the streets of Brooklyn. And I have enough writerly ego to think that maybe this makes my veganism even better than yours! If not, it at least has kept my parents from being totally creeped out so far.
So welcome to The Reluctant Vegan. I don’t like PeTA, I never saw “Meet Your Meat,” I don’t have any of the T-shirts and I think the best way to “convert” anyone is to make them cupcakes.
But I do really like Sheese.
Sorry, folks, I’ve just been distracted by other pursuits. But I’ll be back very shortly with tales of transcontinental air transit, kitchen-related injuries by way of indulgent desserts, New York art shows, sketchbook follies and general hard-knock stories about being a Crown Heights, Brooklyn freelancing shut-in. See, so much to come! For now, though, I’ll leave you with these gooey tiramisu cupcakes from VCTOW.
1. Follow the directions from the Vegan Family Cookbook, cutting the sugar by half.
2. Preheat oven to 500, despite directions stating 425.
3. Get in the shower.
4. Realize six minutes later that you preheated the oven to 500, despite directions stating 425.
5. Jump out of shower, soapy and wet, and rush to kitchen, nearly slipping and falling in hallway.
6. Reset oven to 425.
7. Run back to shower.
8. Return to kitchen in time to remove muffins, only to find them not done.
9. Bake muffins for twice recommended time.
10. End product: photogenic but overly-chewy muffins.
11. Enjoy?
I’ll be taking a break from cooking while traveling in Europe with the fam this week. Try not to burn anything without me.
Always cook with a buddy - or seven, if your kitchen and buddies will allow it. This means for better times all around: someone to run to the store when the yeast is found dead (tragic), someone to
watch TV while the dough is rising, someone to cook the spinach and make sure you don’t put too much olive oil on the rolled crust, someone to grate cheese and slice tomatoes and wave magazines frantically at the beeping smoke alarm, someone to test the center of the dough for crustiness and provide moral support when it seems to be taking three times as long to cook as it should, someone to take the pan out of the oven so you don’t burn your hand or set another pot holder on fire and then someone to tell you that it really does taste quite good and could you imagine doing all this without any of us? Impossible. You’d have been killed. And the alarm would still be going off.
If you are like me, however, post-pizza time you are stuck with a freezer full of a really tasty spinach, tomato and mushroom pie cut into awkward pieces to fit into a mustard-yellow tupperware the size of a hubcap. I guess heaven is no other people.
Ouch.
Dough: 2 tsp yeast + .25 c warm water + 1 tsp sugar, foam 10 minutes. Sift 3 c flour + 1 tsp salt + spices of choice. Combine and + 1.25 c warm water. Knead with floured hands. Let rise 60 minutes. Knead again, roll out onto floured pan.
Top: with too much olive oil + four sliced roma tomatoes + 10 ounces spinach sauteed in olive oil with 4 cloves garlic + 1 c sliced mushrooms + half package grated cheese. Cook at 450 as long as you can stand or until it burns beyond edibility.
Enjoy alone.
Just kidding! Burritos are actually an American-born product, a streamlined to-go snack created in the 1840s in the Southwest: meat wrapped in a flour tortilla. My meatless version is a tastier take on this classic Southwest sandwich.
Just kidding! Burritos aren’t sandwiches after all! Or are they…? Via Dictionary.com:
sand·wich, n.
1. Two or more slices of bread with a filling such as meat or cheese placed between them.
2. A partly split long or round roll containing a filling.
3. One slice of bread covered with a filling.
tor·til·la, n.
A thin disk of unleavened bread made from masa or wheat flour and baked on a hot surface.
Thus burrito = sandwich according to internet dictiomonarians + me. Now that this matter is settled with a simple equation, let me continue with the eats.
1. Fry up some firm tofu + turmeric in oil. Don’t get the turmeric on your shirt because it will stain yellow and you will look like an idiot who got turmeric on their shirt, and no one wants that.
2. Fry up some cut up potatoes + onion + bell pepper in oil. Don’t burn your hand on the pan and then disregard the burn because you’re trying to act tough even though it hurts like hell and it’s red and blistering because that’s some second degree shit, there, man, and that’s not cool at all.
3. Fry up some fakin bacons in oil. Be careful. I stress this with italics.
4. Toast a whole wheat tortilla on the stove burner. When this invariably sets off your smoke alarm, wave at it frantically with a crappy Spin magazine. Discard this in paper recycling when finished. Thanks, Spin!
5. Chop tomato and slice bits from enormous Reed avocado.
6. On plate, bottom to top: tortilla, tofu, potatoes, bacons, tomato, avocado, sweet pea sprouts, tofu sour cream, tiny sombrero.
So as you can tell from those cookies, I’m not so great at the cooking thing. And things haven’t so much improved, despite much practice (another round of biscuit cookies, and a mushy apple “crisp.” I assure you all these things taste fabulous, (and you should not judge a dessert by its crust) but they still look like they were made by kindergarteners. Which is why I have returned to my first love of sandwiches.
This is the sandwich I made today. It was really hard to eat. They usually are. I suggest wrapping the bottom half in foil or paper napkin/towel so as to not spill the contents on your lap, since you’re clearly not doing laundry very often lately.
1. Toast bagel. (I used whole wheat - pumpernickel, poppy or sesame would also be tasty with this). 
2. Fry up three to four pieces of facons with some olive oil until browned and crispy.
3. On one half of bagel: spread about 1/4 of a Reed avocado, top with one piece lettuce, two slices tomato, and a handful of snow pea sprouts.
4. Other half: a thick squirt of Miso Mayo (vegenaise/spicy mustard would also be acceptable) and the bacon strips.
5. Smash together.
6. Have a way difficult time eating.
7. Feel uncomfortably full.
This sandwich will taste even better if eaten while listening to George Allen’s concession speech. Mmm, I love the smell of pseudo-democracy in the afternoon.
