Getting More Emotional

Being vegan in a world that isn't, is tough, more days than I choose to admit. I knew that when I made the commitment to be vegan 100% it was going to mean I would have a lot of conversations with people. I expected it specifically when dining out, but my attitude was to be in the mode of teaching and being positive, so I thought I was prepared. Every menu I looked at that has no vegan options, one option or I have only a work around by combining things to make an actual meal with calories and protein had me less and less excited about going out to eat. I have tried to think of it as a teaching experience as most of the waitstaff and kitchen staff have no idea what is vegan and what is not, so that part of this adventure is in a small part fulfilling. Still, being surrounded by plates with animal on it knowing it suffered a horrible life and a horrible death, adds to the sadness about eating out even though my own plate is cruelty free.

My April Vegan Data

In April, I found this app https://vegancalculator.app that calculates both vegan and vegetarian lifestyle savings and seeing the impact of my choices gave me a real boost. Even 1 day is impactful and I had renewed hope. If everyone changed out 1 meal a day, over the course of a year, that is 365 meals. A small choice becomes a bigger impact.

This was the first calculator I found with a vegetarian option and so I put in my data for that. It is important to see how even just not eating meat is so impactful. At the time I wanted to cut out dairy, but was still figuring out how to change decades of meal preparation and dining, so did what I could and was eating about 95% vegan the past six years, so that skews the numbers up even more. It is satisfying to see how even that small change I made, I was still making a difference.

With two shops that have entirely vegan menu items in communities with no other totally vegan options, we fill a need and that is fulfilling. However, it has been a struggle post-COVID as prices of everything have risen so exponentially, and I am struggling to keep from feeling deflated when it is hard to see impactful change in my community looking at our day-to-day sales. The boosts come when a family from out of town visits and tells me how thankful they are to have a place they can trust to get a vegan meal and when our regulars stop in for lunch or dinner. Then, this week I had my first person bring up our Herbivorous Butcher pastrami sandwich and said they couldn't eat it because it wasn't animal based. It is our top selling sandwich at both locations and folks rave about it - practically cry if we run out and yet this one person's distaste, hit me so hard I was frustrated the rest of the day.

Milk Chart

My own personal social media feed is full of animal rights posts, environmental posts and some of that is encouraging and yet a lot of it shows the horrible plight of the animals people use and abuse for food and other things people say they can't live without and I my heart aches. I am heartbroken for the animals, for the environment and also for the humans who think they are or are truly stuck in a system that is so powerful they can't get out of it.

With so many affordable choices now in every grocery store, it is easy to cut out scary dairy.

Mother's Day Baby

This Mother's Day, thinking about my own motherhood, I deeply empathized with all the farm animal mothers who never got to nurse their babies, mothers who had their babies ripped away from them right after birth never to see them again. I was again frustrated thinking about what I can as one person can do about it. So I did what is available to me and posted a few things online as a reminder to people that their choices impact life. I got brave and posted a few videos on our Instagram showing the terrible things that happen in factory farms and by factory butchers. It is so easy for people to get lulled into a sense of naivety of how horribly animals are treated from birth to death when they purchase animal items in the grocery store or dine out at a restaurant and never have to see the horrors of their choices. I care, so how can I know what is happening and remain silent? I can't. So I am getting more brave and also more emotional as the days and weeks pass. I know I need to be a witness and also crusade to end these practices because they are wrong on every level and for every reason.