Something Old and Something New: Ode to Veganism

On changes, evolutions, origins of my meat-free plate, and a thank you to veganism.

From Tampopo (1985), for its cinematic beauty and because I feel like her right now after writing this.

Quick housekeeping: My god, it’s been a long while. Thank you for still being here. Things might change around here to keep me going more sustainably, hope you’ll stick around as I figure things out.

*made this one audible for ya’ll!

I was around 15 or 16 years-old the first time I went vegan. Just a wee highschooler who had read “Skinny Bitch” in efforts to encourage a rampant eating disorder, but instead, had her world ripped right open to the truth of factory farming in the United States. 

Hey, everyone has their pipelines, this was mine. 

I’d scour my local Trader Joe’s in early aughts black run-down Xhilaration flats from Target for soy-based products to replace most dairy products with, taking home their blocks of soy-based cheese and spreadable Tofutti cream cheese. Before oat milk, I’d stock up on cartons of rice and soy milk. This lasted about three months before I realized it was too expensive for me to upkeep on a fast food hourly salary. Plus––my younger siblings kept secretly snacking on my vegan substitutions, and my mom didn’t exactly tailor my diet choices to meals in our home. The former makes me laugh now, because I’d get so annoyed. But in my second vegan run, I’ve been the opposite, eager for them to try any and all of my vegan products and home-made goods, maybe annoyingly so. The latter also makes me laugh now, and has just become the story of how I learned to cook. A blessing in disguise. I’d saute sliced button mushrooms and half moon zucchinis, and pair that with a wonky steamed white rice. The mushrooms and zucchini would be soggy, poor technique and overcrowding was to blame, but I’d eventually learn. 

So, I couldn’t make it as a vegan at first and settled on being vegetarian. This was far more sustainable for a highschooler with shit kitchen skills working minimum wage. My options were vast, bean and cheese burritos and potato and egg burritos were my lifeline, it was fairly easy to maintain. I was vegetarian about 7 years until I started working at my first “farm-to-table” restaurant––where suddenly the culinary world started to open up and call me in. 

As someone who was genetically pre-destined, so-to-speak, to eat meatless from a young age––I tried many times to go vegetarian before reading Skinny Bitch––I had your typical meat-aversions. Menudo was off the table, I’d never dream of eating organs––unless my mom lied and said they were chicken, and I never ate head-meat, or cow’s tongue. None of that piqued my interest, not even a little. I was as square as it came with my meat consumption. So when I worked at that farm-to-table gastropub, two ideas began to tickle in the back of my mind. The first, was this novel and vague idea of food writing. The second was: what if I took a meat sabbatical and tried all the meat things I skipped out on all these years? Seemed like a gourmand thing to do. 

It took a long while, but eventually the idea swelled and became my next phase in life. I started with fish, and quickly started eating meat like no time had passed. The only difference being, as a post-vegetarian meat-eater, I had to quietly silence the shame that whispered in the back of my mind, the guilt. 

It wasn’t meant to last forever, and so it didn’t. I worked to try to go back to being vegetarian, but after some failed attempts, and one vegan challenge later, along with Marcel’s support (my partner), we both went vegan cold turkey. Our last meat meal was a carne asada torta from a place in Tijuana called “Tortas Wash Mobile” that used ciabatta instead of bolillo for breakfast, and that same night, we were eating a vegan dinner. We watched documentaries, and read as much as possible to prepare ourselves for the shift. But what actually did it was watching Okja, the movie about a girl who raised a large pig as part of a corporate ploy to later sell their meat. Though the film is fiction, it reveals a lot of truth about factory farming. It also reminds the viewer that somewhere down the line, we’ve made an agreement that cows, pigs, and chickens deserve that pain and suffering. Or at least, the agreement that it’s justified, or okay, that they’re just food and not beings with rights to lives of their own. The movie underscores that humans are capable of making a connection with any animal, like we do with dogs and cats. Like Marcel and I do with Blue. So why had we reduced creatures we grow to consider family only to sustenance?

As the credits rolled, Marcel exclaimed we should go all the way, and go vegan. I resisted at first––I had just started Food Hound, my culinary blog, and was in the throws of my gourmand education. And what I picked up at the time was gourmands love their animal products. The weirder, the better. Hell, if you could stuff meat inside of meat––it seemed that was the pinnacle of taste. 

After some reflection, it’s what felt right, even in a world that didn’t seem to agree, or didn’t care to cater. Something I learned almost immediately about going vegan, was that I shouldn’t dwell much on what I was leaving behind, instead I should embrace all that was to come. Beautiful life perspective, come to think of it. For anyone who has followed my work, this was the portal opening. I dove head first into all things plant-based, became an ardent fan of farmer’s markets, of fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds. Eventually it felt divine to be nourishing myself this way. And to my surprise, I found a sense of belonging, clicking more naturally with folks who were similarly aligned. 

When I started going vegan again, I remember thinking to myself at some point I’d be vegetarian. I hoped I’d be able to find some idyllic relationship with that kind of symbiosis when I got older. I imagined myself with a blooming garden, and farm-fresh egg frittatas sizzling in cast iron pans. Plus, I was always a sucker for cheese. (Of course, it’s worthwhile to mention here that procuring eggs or dairy from farm animals in captivity is not idyllic, however there are more sustainable and less cruel methods of doing so.) But vegan just felt right and exciting at the time, and it was some form of justice for my younger self who tried but couldn’t. 

I write this today as someone who must write about veganism in past tense. And also, as someone who owes a great deal to veganism, how it’s changed my life, given me purpose and perspective. I was vegan during a time where we saw the diet and lifestyle go mainstream. And during a time where cooking the cuisine felt entirely freeing. Because as a collective, vegans were in some part, just making it up as we went. And in large part, it was a homecoming to all the Indigenous plant-based recipes that had existed many many many years ahead of the vegan movement that I formed part of in the early teens and 20s, and for the ones beyond. Simply put, I wouldn’t be who I am today without it, nor would my work. It gave me a lens that forever shaped my worldview, in food, culture, and history. It opened doors and windows that otherwise would never have materialized had it not been for that. 

A very delicious, very vegetarian sopa de tortilla from Paradero in Todos Santos, 2024.

It’s been admittedly very difficult to make this shift both in theory and practice. I loved nothing more than to subsist entirely off plants. I loved being a “rabbit.” (This, of course, doesn’t mean veganism is free from criticism, either.) But as I confronted some recent health struggles and bodily changes, my plate was the first in review. And please, read this part carefully: this isn’t to knock the diet, it was just the right thing for me and my body to do. I understand ditching veganism comes with larger implications and stigmas, especially when influencers have made the term synonymous with extreme dieting. Such was not the case for me, and is not for many vegans. Veganism is a lifestyle that molds the plate and beyond. What it’s not is, juice cleanses, fruit-only diets, and salad challenges. 

I’ve long had confounded feelings about no longer being in the exclusive vegans-only club. Where exactly would that leave me? How would my vegan friends think of me? For now I’ll say, it leaves me in a place where it feels good to finally get it off my chest. 

I’m introducing local eggs and sheeps cheese to my diet at home, but I’m not yet a full-fledged slapping-cow-butter-on-my-toast or a making-mozzarella-quesadillas vegetarian yet. And, I like the idea of sticking to developing structurally vegan recipes. However, I am liking the ring of vegetarian. Something about it feels wholesomely and tragically human (“to err is human”). And maybe, I am that older person I had imagined once. Albeit, I’m younger than I envisioned, the garden is smaller, and the eggs are blue-shelled and hard boiled from a chicken named America (because, let’s be real here, I’m still getting used to their flavor). But, in all honesty I’m liking eating cheese again, and finding comfort in the idea that I’ll approach this new “era” with all the tools veganism has gifted me. Read the labels, ask the questions, do your research. Take care of yourself. Do your best. And lastly, enjoy it all while you still can.  

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(Bonus content: A short list for good measure)
Top 6 foods I’m excited to try/have again:

1. Omurice
2. Pão de queijo
3. Tamal de rajas (cheese and poblano pepper tamal)
4. Fresh fruit tart (and other pastries, like Victoria sponge cake!)
5. Quesillo quesadilla with squash blossom
6. A local or sustainably-sourced cheese board