Dani's Dirt

Making the decision to become vegan probably seems like a lifestyle change just for the person involved, right? I mean, I certainly thought so. However this past week has shown me just how much drastically changing my diet effects all those in my life.

Despite being southern and heavily involved in agriculture, I wasn’t raised in a “meat and potatoes only” family. Never say you don’t like something until you’ve tried it, has always been my parents motto, and it’s something I’ve tried to live by. (Case and point: Project Vegan)

I live an hour away from my parents, but because that’s “close” to “anything” around Middle-of-Corn, Kansas, I show up for dinner once, sometimes twice a week.

Mondays are my busiest day of the week, hands down. Add in the fact I had a 3 a.m. wake up call in order to get My Someone to the Tulsa airport by 6 a.m., by the time I left work at 5:30 I was exhausted, to say the least.

Thankfully, my mom called to let me know she was making stir-fry, and I was more than welcome to join if I didn’t want to cook. “I’ll make sure everything else is vegan, and you can just pick out the chicken,” she said. Yesterday I mentioned how awesome my mom was this past weekend by adjusting family dinners so that I would have something to eat. For those of you who may be thinking my mother is the type to cater to everyone’s needs when it comes to meals, you can just back that train up. Growing up I heard, I’m not a short-order cook. If you have a problem with what I put in front of you, then you can make your own dinner. <= One of the reasons I love that woman.

With all that being said, I’m blessed with an extremely supportive family, while they were very confused about WHY I was doing this project at first, they have been nothing but encouraging the entire time.

So anyways… I show up for dinner last night.

Along with vegan-friendly vegetable stir-fry, Mom made Kale chips. The whole thought behind those weirded me out, but they were actually really good, and then in order to complete the Asian cuisine dinner, she took away the forks and handed out chopsticks. Have I mentioned lately my mother is awesome?!

Cooking vegan for myself is one thing. I know exactly what is being put into my meals, having someone else cook for me made me wary. My mom patiently listened as I bombarded her with ingredient questions, and answered “I read every single label, I even made sure there was no refined sugar in anything.” She had also went as far as to cook the chicken separately, and keep it in a separate bowl so that my food would be 100% vegan.

As you can tell that’s a lot of work from a non-vegan just to make my life a little easier, thanks mom and dad (who contributed by making my coffee vegan this morning, “this looks funny,” he said.).

I’m feeling a little like a vegan diva these days.

Speaking of vegan diva. Apparently I was a bear this past weekend. Stress of work combined with the final hoorah of my withdrawal symptoms made me (according to the people I love) “snappy,” “intense” and not “my usual happy self.”

Like a colorful band-aid to a small scrape, my sister and brother-in-law were determined to make everything in my life return to butterflies and unicorn poop. After hours of researching, list-making and shopping, I came home to find a “Vegan Survival Kit,” they assembled.

That’s right vegan beer and junk food, and to replace my one-week-lost-love, my cowboy boots, a metal sign that says “If the boot fits, buy every color,” which pretty much says my name all over it.

My family is the coolest. Just saying.

Be sure and follow my vegan compadre, David, over at Farming America. He’s going to be dealing with trying to be vegan while on the road and in rural America this week, and for those of you on Twitter check us out at #DandDgovegan.

Thursday I’m going to be answering a lot of the questions I’ve received from people during this experiment, so if you have one you’d like me to answer be sure and either comment below or shoot me an email!

Till next time!