Change

Today is the second day of consciously choosing a vegan diet. It was a sudden conversion. I've been a vegetarian before. I'm a natural. I refuse to handle raw poultry and I don't particularly like handling uncooked meat. But if you served it to me on platter all cooked up, I could usually forget about the origins. I say, usually, because if the slightest imperfection was found, I would get all freaked out.

After a couple of sporadic but committed years as a vegetarian, I would end up caving in out of laziness and fear of carbs. I rationalized I needed my protein, rather than take time to prep a meal out of quinoa. I would buy mystical organic grains and flours and then watch them get dusty and expire. In other words, I, Mary Addison Hackett, rarely have taken the time to prep and cook interesting meals on a daily basis. It's embarrassing, but when your spouse is a foodie and likes to do all the cooking, it's easy to be a slacker.

I was confessing the above to a pescatarian friend, who recommended the vegetarian cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. This prompted me to stop at my local bookstore where I came across the book, Skinny Bitch. Another friend had raved about some recipes in the companion book, but thinking it was the most asinine title I'd ever heard, I dismissed it immediately. Two days ago, I bought it and read it cover to cover in maybe an hour.

The next day I was a vegan. It's not like I've been under a rock and hadn't known or heard about all the wonderful things going on out of my eyesight, but for some reason reading about it in a blatantly sensational style got my attention. The authors claim that the title was just a way to catch attention and sell books. I still think the title sucks, but if you need a kick in the pants to give up cokes, diet cokes, caffeine, sugar, meat, dairy etc, it's a good read.

Yesterday I had soymilk in my coffee instead of cream. I ate fruit for breakfast and a soycheese bean burrito for lunch. An out of town guest came over for dinner and I prepared quinoa patties and an edamame and corn salad. Tracking down some ingredients, stocking up on new staples and cooking took a little more time, but it was tasty and I felt better.

I still use hydrofluorocarbons and turps in the studio, wear leather and contribute to the downfall of our planet in other ways, but it's a step.