The Omnivorous Vegan

Like most Americans, I can’t ever imagine myself becoming vegan. My reasons probably have less to do with bacon, and more with eggs and dairy. I just see animal products and their byproducts as a sensible use of resources.

Admittedly, I know almost nothing about the realities of farming. But I do have some lovely romanticized notions about it. Largely these come from the popular food culture commentators of our day.

A common refrain is that backyard chickens are a fantastic way to turn food scraps into eggs. And on certain terrain where pasture will grow but crops will not thrive, cows, sheep, and goats can graze and provide us with their milk for butter and cheese.

Of course there is the dark side of dairy, which involves the young animals that would otherwise be receiving their mother’s milk. I mentioned this to Little Miss Fussy once and she welled up with tears. And while my own mother would surely disagree with me, I think it’s important to be transparent about where food comes from.

This issue of transparency isn’t mine alone. And I have a feeling that it’s the driving force behind the trend of more omnivores eating vegan.

There seems to be a race to the bottom in the production of large scale meat and dairy. And it’s driven largely by corporate greed and a lack of government oversight. The farmers are the ones who seem to be caught in the middle. But in the end we all suffer.

So now we have a two tiered food system.

We have the stuff that’s cheap and mass produced. Where it comes from is anyone’s guess. Perhaps two cuts of meat have been glued together to form a steak. Maybe it’s been tenderized by nearly invisible needles which have pushed surface bacteria into the center of a steak. That single tube of hamburger meat could contain bits of hundreds of cows from multiple countries.

Thankfully, we also have the good stuff. I love my unhomogenized milk that’s produced from a single herd of local grassfed Jersey cows. But the price per gallon of that stuff is out of reach for most people, unless they started making significant sacrifices to their overall standard of living. And these kinds of better ingredients aren’t widely available when eating at restaurants. Or maybe a restaurant will print a farm’s name on the menu, but no longer buy from that great small producer.

Ask the small producers. That happens all the time.

So people have started to opt out. They’re sick of it. And I don’t blame them. I think there are a lot of people like me out there who don’t fundamentally have a moral problem with eating meat. However, they see the way sentient creatures can be treated on large farms. They’ve seen the lakes of manure, and the impossibly large barns which house an almost inconceivable number of animals. They see the price of a pound of chicken and wonder how it can be less than a pound of onions.

And then they see the vegan hamburger. It’s reasonably priced. It takes a familiar form to the food they know. And good ones are pretty damn tasty. And look over there, it’s a vegan chicken wing. Sure, it’s fried seitan, but it’s slathered in spicy sauce, and it scratches the itch of something hot, crisp, and fiery. They go great with beer, which is was pretty much why anyone ever decided to eat chicken wings in the first place.

Heck, a lot of things I make are accidentally vegan. And I can see transitioning into a form of cooking at home where I cook mostly vegan with an occasional bit of small-farm dairy or eggs added to supplement the meal. It’s not that ideologically dissimilar to cooking mostly vegetarian with meat being used as a flavoring agent, instead of putting it in the center of the plate.

I’m thrilled that All Over Albany has a new vegan food correspondent. Her name is Cristin Steding, and she now has her own tag over on AOA. My favorite local website will soon be celebrating its eighth birthday. These are always great parties, where you can meet all kinds of interesting people.

In the past I’ve gone with at least the name of one person I want to meet. This year, Cristin is at the top of my list. So she better be there. And I hear a rumor that Ric Orlando is going to be making his seitan wings too, which is exciting because I’ve been meaning to try those for years.

If you’re able to score a ticket to the party, make sure to swing by and say hi.