Got vegan?

Got Vegan?

I have decided not to tell people about the bet. People I don’t know, that is. I want to know what it feels like to be sneered at by carnivores the way I normally sneer at vegans. So when asking for vegan food, I don’t jump into “it’s for a bet, I really eat meat, loads of it”…instead, I just let it wash over them.  I want to be judged and rejected by people I would normally judge and reject.

So far society has let me down. No ridicule, no anger, no meat-eaters beating me over the head with gnawed shin bones. People are always polite and apologetic. Or sometimes just confused. I imagine that the true intent behind their standard apology is kind of:

“No, sorry. Sorry you are so lame.”

Country people have produced the best responses. Still always polite, but funny. A girl at the Powerhouse in Armidale told me not only did the hotel have no vegan, but nowhere in the entire town had vegan. That was on day one, so I was half worried that while I was in my room eating the emergency can of baked beans I brought with me, she would call her brother who would grab a couple of their cousins and come round later to go to work on me with a star picket and an old axe handle.

Further into the bet, I am getting more self-righteous about my fake veganism. To add to the impact, I always put my glasses on, not sure why. The more old-school the bloke behind the counter, the more I need to confess my dirty little vegan secret. A 150kg tattooed BP manager, who I asked:

“Do you have any vegan ice-creams?”

He answered slowly and cautiously:

“Nah mate”

...then looked at me as if I had just told him I own a bar in Darlinghurst called Beef.

I’ve never used the phrase “ok I’ll just have water” so many times in my life. Short compilation (my secret camera work needs work):

 

I get more grief from my intransigent 7 year old son. When I explained the "vegan for a month" bet to him, his first question was

“But what are you going to put in the smoker?”

(he helped me build a meat smoker last year, for bacon and ribs and smoked turkey beef jerky and... joy really, pure unadulterated carnivorous joy.)

“Well I guess I will smoke vegetables in there”

and he laughed in my face.

(He wanted Captain America, I preferred more traditional red-neck iconology, the General Lee) 

When my little sisters boyfriend bought me a vegan cookbook for Christmas, he sat on the couch in silence while he went over it page by page, then announced loudly:

“Dad there's not a single thing in that whole book that I would eat.”

To prove him wrong, the other night I slipped a vegan hamburger patty into his hamburger, made of beans or lentils or tofu or whatever (it was great), and then I snuck off while he tucked in. About ten minutes later he came into the office, two thirds of the burger in his belly, and held the rest up to my face and, angrily:

“Dad… WHAT is in this burger???”

“Just burger stuff…”

“It’s VEGAN isn’t it?!??! You’re not cooking for me EVER AGAIN” 

He was uppercase mad.

It seems society in general is a lot more tolerant than I expected. My son however, still dirty about that vegeburger.

I am yet to feel any side effects. I am never hungry, I am not losing weight, and am not tired or weak. I thought there would be a mild depression associated with the meat withdrawals (not wonder-if-in-that-chair-I-could-still-get-my-toe-to-reach-the-shotgun-trigger sad) but just a general low feeling.

I got so much pleasure from preparing meat and cooking with meat, that I thought it's absence would get me down. But coming up with new ways to make edible the previously inedible, is probably filling that void. Migrating my meat prep techniques and flavours over to vegetables, is probably more accurate. The last smoker project was bourbon and molasses apple-smoked almonds. Yes they were awesome. Yes I would prefer that sentence ended with "ribs". I have been feeding the flavoured almonds through my meat grinder to use them to spice other foods. But mainly because I feel better about feeding something through my meat grinder.

Todays disappointing discoveries: honey and Worcestshire sauce are both non-vegan.

I have been getting sucked in to the marketing of a lot of this crap:

 

Which is fine, as long as you are not expecting pepperoni. You really need to lower your expectations when eating fake meat vegan food. Even the names annoy me. It's not turkey, it sure as hell isn't pepperoni, it’s just tofu, so stop combining your crap vegan word with a cool meat word to make a new word. Stupidiots.