#vegans gonna hate

[alreadyadored]

I tried soy milk for the first time today and it tasted exactly the same way I imagined it would taste. Not ok. Bruuuh

[bunnyvictorious]

Dear Martha: Going Vegan

So, Martha!  Vegan for a day!*

Round these hallowed halls, Marthalady, you'd be big news today if anybody knew.  {Undergraduates don't spend a lot of time watching your television show, but I promise they'd approve.  Going vegan is such a college rage.}

Now that being said, I realize I just alienated about a hundred readers.  At least.

Including my brother, Danny.  Who may or may not be a vegan.  Or a vegetarian with bacon days.  Or something.

All you vegan readers, Ra for you.  Seriously.  I'm always impressed by things requiring so much sacrifice and commitment, and trust me, either you never had great meat, or you aren't aware of the sacrifice involved.  I think it's laudable when done right.  When you tell me you're a vegan and you're wearing leather soled shoes, I will probably ask if you ever read Gizmodo.

Or if you ever use any of the above materials.  

That being said, I  have some friends who are vegan and who are totally baller about it and are more eco-friendly than the founder of Greenpeace could ever fathom you being.  [Truth: you don't have to go shoeless anymore. You can now wear Tom's!  Just not the glitter ones, because if you read the detailing, the above list makes it sort of not-count.]

Anyway, I do have plenty of friends who are vegan and ra-for-them.  I'm glad you even got a Martha show on the subject.  Do any of you spend your time watching a show that frequently addresses how to get your Thanksgiving Turkey the perfect golden brown and still moist?  Or the proper instructions for putting up DIY wallpaper on your cement walls? Or the thousand-uses-of-emery-boards?

I mean, come on.  If anyone could do something with emery boards, Martha, it would be you.

There were three recipes in today's episode, and the one pictured above is the only one I found even moderately acceptable too.  

It's parsley leaves with pine nuts, olives, and orange dressing.  Admittedly, the idea of a parsley salad is kind of throwing me.  Parsley is a garnish! is on repeat through my head.  But you know what?  I'm always left with tons of parsley at the end of the summer, so this year, I promise to not just garnish extra much, I promise to actually try it.  I'm not, however, going to the market to buy a big thing of parsley because then what on earth am I going to do with all that leftover parsley in my frigid-aire!

I'm going to leave the recipes there because the fruit and nut bars didn't involve sweetened condensed milk (which I deem a necessity) and the bourguignon was seitan-based and honestly, lady, I've only found one vegan recipe I really like, ever:

It's a salad dressing.  It involves lemon, pepper, firm tofu, and garlic all blended up with some cilantro.  It's insanely delicious... on top of grilled chicken in the summer.

Also it's maddeningly delicious if you add in some cream cheese.

Let's keep in mind who you're dealing with here.

But!  This show had some awesome parts I want to highlight: First...

Cute farm animals!

Yes, this day of no meat and - worse - NO CHEESE or eggs or yogurt or CHEESE - is saved by... cute baby farm animals!

So, there's this place called Farm Sanctuary that does awesome things for animals who had not-so-awesome things done to them.  Like they got left at auction because they weren't sold and weren't gonna.  Or they had a broken leg or a busted uterus and were of no good to the bossman and got tossed into a dempsty-dumpster (they say this is possible; I, for one, can't imagine throwing a cow into a dempsty-dumpster at all).  But anyway, they come to the rescue and save these precious things and then they get to romp and play and be adorable farm animals on a farm!

And they even have names!  Clearly no one's eating these.  Because you can never name something you eat.  But she was the runt of the litter, so she was never going to be eaten anyways.  Now she's adorable non-bacon on a farm. Yay Petunia!

This is Romeo.  He's no longer a park goose.  Now he's a farm goose.  I want to gobble him up in the non-eating sense he's just so cute.  

This is Noel.  Some a$$hole was driving his car upstate and got pulled over by a cop and then, in the ticket-writing process, the cop heard what he sounded like was a baby crying... from the trunk.  Noel had been hog-tied and left in there without food or water (and animals defecate either way, idiot driver) and without any air besides the normal trunk air (which is just horrible) and the cops saved her and now she's munching on hey!  Don't worry Noel.  I won't make you a curry.  Because you have a name.

Enough of the cute animals... on to cute glitter projects!

Glitter.  Wall.  Art.  I'm sorry Billiam, I warn you in advance: our kids' walls will have glitter art on it.  At least the girls.  And maybe a cowboy boot in a boys's room?  Maybe? Maybe?  Maybe you'll be gone on deployment and it'll just happen while you're gone and then it'll be there and it'll be like how I'm painting black beauty pale blue.  Or pink.   {Not really; he'd kill me.**}

Anyway, I think this is brillig.  Only I'm not sure what it has to do with Vegan Day  unless we're glittering veggies on the wall.  And not like roasted broccoli with butter and parm on top.  Like... here, here's a cauliflower.  A glittery, sparkly cauliflower.  And some chard.  But not the zucchini.  It didn't put in the effort.

But this seems like a pretty harmless, awesome sparkle craft.  So I'm all for it.  I just hope that your glue - like Elmer's - is cruelty-free and... vegan.

I'm writing this eating some chicken and cottage cheese, just for the record.  With some non-organic carrots and snap peas.  I'm poor.  That stuff's more expensive, seriously.  

But Vegans, don't hate... I *do* try to eat local.  So there's that.***

Love,

RBBV 

* Where "day" means episode because, realistically, that's all you promised.  And if you got off the show and thought hey! I'll do this! Ra for you.  If you got off the air and said GIMME SOME BACON, well, lady, between us? All is forgiven.  Even those faberge easter eggs.  Which are awfully hard to forgive.

** Seriously maybe...

*** Very local.  The venison we ate all winter long is, um, exceptionally local to Billiam.  And I know it was living a very good life.  Before he shot it.