glitches

Checking in

So it's been over two months and I'm still on the vegan train.  Right now we're in Berkeley, visiting friends and family and for the first time I'm seriously contemplating knowingly straying from the vegan path.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Tonight we're planning on getting some delicious Indian food from a restaurant I used to visit when we lived here.  The food at this place is so good, I seriously daydream about it when I'm not here.  Not to be missed, so amazing, so delicious.  I have elevated this food to another level.  You'd think I would do that about Chez Panisse or one of the other fancy-pants restaurants which seem to be every other block in this town, but no.  The restaurant I would give up all my values for is a little indian restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  At least, it was in the middle of nowhere a million years ago when we lived here.  Now, I'm not sure what it is like over there.  All I know is we're going to pick up dinner there tonight and I'm sorely tempted to bag the vegan for a night so I can bask in the glory of the most amazing samosas, the aloo tikki chaat, the yummy yummy food. 

I would do it, but there are two things holding me back.  1) What does it mean to be vegan if I bag it every time I'm tempted by a delicious meal?  2) Sweets is already giving me a hard time, I don't want him to think that I'm a fair-weather vegan. 

The sweets thing is a whole other post, so all I want to say about it here is that he's not taking to this change with much enthusiasm.  In fact, he's fairly derisive about the whole thing.  This, coming from a person who was vegetarian most of his life.

But is it okay to bag it for a once-in-a-lifetime meal?  I've already said that I would not force the vegan issue when we go to tribal events in oklahoma, so obviously I'm flexible.  How strict do I have to be in order to say I'm vegan?  Is it stupid to fret this much over what will amount to a small amount of dairy (yogurt and ghee, mostly)?  Especially since I find myself eating hidden dairy all the time in breads and other wheat-based products?  Oh, blarg.

slips and starts

So i have to confess two non-vegan meals.  Actually, I got pretty sloppy while on vacation and ended up eating non-vegan chips for two days straight (they were really good and rhyme with tostitos lime flavor).  And we went out to a restaurant where there were basically no vegan options so I ordered pasta puttanesca and picked out the anchovies.  And then there was the non-vegan baguette that was good.  And last night I had Asian-inspired dumplings but stupidly didn't think of looking at the ingredients list on the egg-roll wrappers until we were out of filling to learn that there was egg in the wrappers.  The whole constant vigilance thing with a vegan diet is kind of hard to maintain, especially while on vacation. 

But now I'm back home and I'm promising to go back to whole vegan, vigilant vegan, and empowered to order off-menu items vegan.  The thing was, none of the non-vegan things even came close to scratching any sort of regular-food craving itch.  If I wanted cheese, milk on my tortilla chips wouldn't really do it.  If I wanted eggs, won ton wrappers are not the first place I'd look.  And as for anchovies?  I might as well just have carried around a salt lick.