My Vegan Life

Article first published as My Vegan Life on Blogcritics.

I recently started writing for BlogCritics and began my series of posts there with a little information about me and my vegan life. I’ve had a couple of questions from readers of my blog about veganism, so I thought I would share this with you all as well. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Hello. I’m Marly. I’m a vegan. For any members of my family who may be reading this post, it’s pronounced VEE-ghun. I have had several people (yes, in my family, but others too) who’ve asked me what the heck that means. Here’s the short and simple answer: it means I do my best to eat food that does not include any type of animal products. I also do my best to avoid purchasing things (like purses) that are made of animal products.

It’s nearly impossible to avoid all animal products. The book Vegan Freak points out how animal products are even in automobile tires and I don’t plan to give up driving my car any time soon. Rather, I try to aim for a more middle-of-the-road approach to my vegan life.

That’s an interesting statement. Vegan and middle-of-the-road are not often two descriptors that you see in the same sentence. Just on face value alone vegans are outliers. It’s a way of life for me, so I don’t think about it…until I meet someone who has no idea what a vegan is. I get the same blank stare as I describe my vegan life to virgin ears. The conversation usually goes something like this:

“You don’t eat any meat?”

“No, I don’t eat meat.”

“Not even chicken?”

“No, I don’t eat chicken.”

“Fish?”

“No. No fish. Nothing with a face.”

“Whoa. And you don’t drink milk?”

“That’s right.”

“Ice cream?”

“Nope. No ice cream.”

“Eggs?”

“Sorry, no, I don’t eat eggs either.”

“Whoa. That’s so strange. What DO you eat?”

Usually there’s some exchange here about nuts and twigs. I do eat almonds, cashews and other various nuts. And I drink kukicha twig tea. Sounds exciting, I know.

We live in Kansas City, Missouri, the heart of beef country. BBQ is king. Steak houses are on every corner (almost). There are some restaurants where you can’t even order a side of a vegetable without some kind of meat in it.

For me, it was easy to give all that up, but there were two things that weren’t quite so easy: milk chocolate and pizza. How could I live without them? Well, I’m pleased to tell you that it really wasn’t that bad. Once I switched to dark chocolate, milk chocolate didn’t even taste good to me anymore. Seriously. I can stand next to an entire bowl full of peanut butter M&Ms (I like to consider those my namesake) and still not be tempted. And once we found some tasty alternatives to milk-based cheese, we began making our own (and very tasty) vegan pizzas.

In fact, there are several restaurants in this little cow town that caters to vegans, including pizza joints. We cook a lot, but we frequent these vegan-friendly joints too. And we haven’t eschewed all comfort foods either. Oreo cookies are in the category of “accidentally” vegan and we do have those from time to time.

I don’t proselytize about veganism. I choose rather to share some of my favorite vegan recipes on Namely Marly. If someone’s interested in learning more, I’m happy to talk with them about veganism, but I’m not going to pound them over the head about it. My philosophy is that we all could benefit from having more whole-food based, vegetarian meals, but veryone has different approaches to how they get there. I watched a video of Graham Hill on TED recently where he described his week-day vegetarian plan. He’s vegetarian Monday-Friday, but then eats whatever he wants on weekends. It’s all about finding what works for you.