Being vegan is hard!

Or so people tell me. Many of them probably haven't actually given it a shot. They just say some variation of the above. I also hear nonsense like "being vegan means sacrificing" or "I could never do that" fairly often and it's only been a couple months. Perhaps I'm being unfair when I call the latter "nonsense"--I'm sure they know what they can and can't do better than me. Nonetheless, I am very suspicious of the truth of that statement when I hear it, so when someone says it all I hear is them reinforcing their resolve to continue eating animal products by repeating justifications of their supporting frivolous abuse and slaughter. Or perhaps they're just reminding me of their boundaries out of concern that I'll cross them by saying more about the unsavory aspects of their food sources than they're comfortable hearing.

Writing this in a blog post feels like kind of a passive-aggressive move to me. I probably won't post it on Tumblr to lower the chances of anyone who has said this to me reading this. If that didn't work, hello and nothing personal, this is just how I feel and I try not to hurt your feelings too much by actually talking about this sort of thing around you (or maybe by the time you read this I'll have made an ass of myself in front of you and if I did, sorry.) That's a collective/ambiguous "you", by the way, not you personally. Anyway.

I suppose it could be worse--I haven't run into any outright hostility yet. Most people are supportive as long as I don't show any signs of expecting them to do it, too. I'm not naive enough to expect them all to go vegan just because I am, but I do think they should, and I'm not going to say otherwise (although it is their own choice that they have to make themselves--that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion about what choice they should make. An irrelevant opinion, but it exists nonetheless and it won't change.) I wouldn't care as much if so many people being omnivores didn't limit my food choices in some circumstances because omnivores are the ones being catered to. I'm vegan mainly because I think keeping and slaughtering livestock (especially on an industrial scale) is wrong, but I go out of my way to wash my hands of it for the sake of my own peace of mind--it might make a difference, but one person changing their habits won't make the factory farms disappear.

Anyway. Veganism itself is not hard, at least not in my experience and at least not the dietary aspect of it, which seems to be what most people insist is so hard (you can look through my previous posts if you'd like to see examples of the mental circles I've been running around in because of the wool and leather I bought pre-vegan.) It isn't that there isn't tons of delicious vegan-friendly food out there--it's just that it's neglected in favor of omnivorous recipes. Since omnivores can eat vegan food without violating their principles and the reverse is not true, I find this extremely irritating and profoundly unfair. Not that most people have any reason to care about that--it's just an explanation for how I react to omnivorous eating habits. If it seems like I resent them, it's because I do, even if the people who possess them are lovely. Not saying any of them should go vegan to make me happy--I know that will probably just make them resent me if their hearts aren't in it, and I don't want that. Just venting, I guess.

SUGAR--

Christmas is nearly over as I write this, and I do not have a sore throat or (much of a) headache. Context matters here, I guess (although I'm sure you can guess without me telling you.) My family has this tendency to really load up on sweets over the holidays (even past the amount we can conceivably stuff our faces with over Christmas assuming we don't care about the consequences later.) When there are sweets around, my usual reaction is to eat them until they're gone. Because sweets are delicious in any quantity (actually, no, but I forget this easily XD.) However, when those sweets contain animal products (which most of the baked things do), it suddenly becomes super easy for me to not eat them (although Mom's sugar cookies are slightly tempting--perhaps next year I'll make my own batch.)

Regardless of how much I like a variety of sweets (or think I do), my favorite thing is actually Chex mix (which is easy to make vegan, especially when my parents usually make two batches anyway.) This year, I also started a new tradition--gingerbread bats! The Lady of the Manners posted her recipe, and her professed love of super spicy cookies was enough to convince me to try it out (unfortunately, I do not have a bat-shaped cookie cutter, so I cut them out by hand until I got sick of that and just started making stars. Next year there will be more bats >D.) I substituted a flax egg and Earth Balance buttery sticks for the eggs and butter in the recipe and they were delicious (although not as spicy as I hoped--another thing to work on next year.)

I also started making tangine from a recipe my mom found online, which everyone enjoyed. There was some tension over the meals between me and my mom because she wanted me to cook separate vegan dishes and I wanted her to adapt a couple of her usual recipes, but I've found that since I don't eat much anyway, I'm pretty satisfied with tangine and stuff from the relish tray. (Perhaps I'll make some gravy and biscuits for Thanksgiving next year--we'll see.)

So. Hooray for new traditions and not having a sore throat. Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it, and happy holidays to everyone else.

Why stories?

Oh hi. It's been how long? I'm still alive. It's only been a month that so wasn't necessary whatever. Anyway. I kind of fell off the blog in the last month or so of my semester, but now I'm on break, so no more excuses. I've kept track of the amount of posts I've missed (I intended to post every Monday and Thursday... *cough*...) and hope to make them up at this point. We'll see. I've got projects planned (but who knows if they'll get done), so there's some post fodder.

This last semester was probably the biggest workload I've ever faced, and I definitely questioned the point of a lot of things that are emphasized in my department--or really I questioned the point of literary analysis. That class was pretty much my pet peeve of the semester even though the professor and the discussions were awesome and the pieces we studied were decently interesting. You see, I'm not really interested in analyzing literature for the sake of analyzing it, and this class really reminded me why. I think it's good to know how to analyze and to what ends people have analyzed things, but unless I have a reason besides getting a grade, I can't help but find my heart isn't in it when I have to pretend to be objective. "The text made me feel x because the author did x" is way more compelling to me than "x thing the author did means x and that's significant because x". Literary impact and interpretation are highly subjective, so why should I bother trying to write objectively about it, or even write about it at all if it doesn't touch me?

That said, most of the stuff we read does touch me to some degree (although the stressful conditions imposed by the schedule we study them by is not very conducive to me putting out quality product regarding said material.) Not a lot, though, just in a "yeah! that makes sense" kind of way. What I like, I like because I recognize and can relate to it. There's the "so what?". If I go any further, I'll just be talking about myself, not the text. I like it because I see myself in it.

That said, I think literature does more than just make us readers feel lonely. It also helps us understand ourselves and our surroundings better because it shapes and reflects the values of the society we live in. If we analyze our reactions and what about a text makes us react that way, it teaches us about ourselves, the people around us, and what factors shape the ways we think and perceive. It's one big mirror/camera that records more than we can ever hold in our hearts and minds at once.

Not that making us feel less lonely isn't important. In doing so, we grow to care about the characters we read about, which I think is also important. In fact, perhaps it wouldn't be inaccurate to think of the ability to give a fuck as a muscle that needs exercising in order to keep functioning--and caring about fictional characters helps exercise that muscle so we're better equipped to use it in real life. At the same time, it can also validate things we see in ourselves but not in other real people because they're too personal. It seems silly, but humans seem to really thrive on validation from other humans. But when everyone is too scared they're the only one that does something or feels some way about something, none of those feelings get validated even if they're common, and we become basket cases who hide ourselves away because we're sure people will think we're weird. Fiction becomes a safe place to talk about these things where they don't implicate real people (or at least, provide said real people with plenty of plausible deniability), but at the same time, we know it comes from people. So it still works as social validation--which makes it easier to care about our own well-being. More flexing of the care-muscle, in short. And that's why fiction is important?

... at any rate. I've got a thing to polish. Maybe I'll have another draft done before the break's up. And maybe one day it will be fit for the general public to view, and someone will read it and obsess over my characters as much as I do and we'll both feel slightly less lonely.

Clothing As Self-Expression

... is really important to me. I mean, I mostly think about how the way I look makes *me* feel when I put together outfits. But at the same time (in a more abstract sense), having a wardrobe that reflects my life offline and my values is also important. And I don't mean catchy slogans or stuff advertising charities/causes or whatever. That's a bit much for me. I'd rather have the history of the garment itself say something about me. Cue overly-imaginative floundering over vintage stuff in 3... 2...

No, that's actually not what I mean, either. I buy used as a way to reduce my contribution to the morbid amounts of waste generated by consumer society. I also don't like to fund countries that send their factories to countries with lax labor laws allowing them to not maintain their facilities and expose their employees to all kinds of dangerous shit without getting in trouble--not that none of my clothing comes from there, though. That's a bit much for my budget (and honestly, even if it wasn't, I'm a cheapass when it comes to clothes that aren't custom made for me or coincidentally perfect as-manufactured >__>). Buying things new in general means an additional contribution to the monster that is the industrial economy. Not that buying things used doesn't do that at all, but at least then the money stays local and/or supports a good cause besides making shitloads of money because money. And even if there isn't some extra cause like housing/feeding people who need the help, if it's from a person/business that primarily sells used, it at least goes to a business that most likely removes more things from the waste stream than it adds.

So, ideally my clothes reflect a distaste for the industrial economy and the colossal amounts of waste and unnecessary suffering that go with it, if only to myself since for all most people know I bought it all new. This is not what is always reflected in what I wear because of the occasional lapse or just because I still have stuff that's from when I was a teenager and still in the process of figuring out clothes (not that I'm not still figuring out clothes--I've just done more of it since then o__o.) I've also recently decided to start phasing leather and wool things out, which will take awhile since boots are expensive (I'll be buying them new since I want them to last and most non-leather boots that I find secondhand are crap, but they're all from countries that manufacture things within the U.K., so not too horrible.) Slightly more noticeable, but still not that apparent (especially since the boots will still look like leather and because sweaters look like sweaters.)

The whole vegan thing has kind of inspired me to be more vigilant about my luxury spending in general--out of the few things I don't buy used, I don't want any of it to be made in countries with substandard labor laws, and I'd prefer it to come from small (or at least exemplary, like Patagonia?) businesses when practical (pretty easy for binders and socks assuming Underworks is as small as I think it is, not so much for briefs--those come from American Apparel for now.) I've been pretty relaxed about this kind of thing before, but I want to be more rigid about it in the future and not buy anything new unless it's something high quality that I'll be using a lot (boots... underwear... coats... maybe a couple Alchemy Gothic pieces? -__-;) that is made in a country with acceptable labor laws and is not made with animal products. And I don't want to do that very often at all because there's still the impact of manufacturing new stuff to think about.

Going through the outfit photos/selfies I have from the past several years, I'm not really able to find many outfits that satisfy that (though there are an awful lot that come close except for the wool beret and leather shoes.) Most of the few photos that could work are from the waist up, or photos where I'm not fully dressed. Here's one where pretty much everything seems to fit--nothing is made with animal products to my knowledge and all of it save the necklace (which came from a seller at a renaissance festival--not sure where it was made) was bought secondhand. I genuinely can't recall for sure what I was wearing under the skirt, but I'm leaning towards socks (rather than my wool tights.)

Useful Dead Things

So I found an awesome overnight bag/suitcase type thing at a vintage store that's the perfect size for my laptop and other school things. AND it's floral with a black background and it goes with pretty much everything I own =D. And the cat enjoys sitting on it, too (she seemed a little creeped out by the leather bag, but still obligated to at least try to make it smell like her o__o.) Trouble is the handle broke--it's being fixed right now, but in the mean time I'm back to using the leather bag (which in comparison with the suitcase is not only made of dead cow but also a touch too small -__-.)

I've still got the fate of my wool and leather stuff running around the back of my head, though I'm not worrying about it like I was before. I'm planning to replace the belts when I can, and my docs are starting to get really worn out anyway, so I'll probably need another pair of boots soon. I'm thinking I'll keep the docs and the above-mentioned leather bag as back-ups (and I'll explain why that's acceptable to me... further down o__o.) That leaves the wool. Finding a jacket has been difficult (sizing and style already made it hard, looks like wool is the deal-breaker as far as me not having to commission a jacket from scratch goes XD.) The sweaters and tights I will replace as they wear out or when I can afford to replace them, whichever happens first. The wool dress pants (and leftover fabric that will be made into a vest when I can afford it) are not going anywhere--if I could go back in time and tell myself to pick something that didn't come from an animal, I would, but I can't, and they're tailor-made to fit me and should last me my life if I don't get signficantly bigger/smaller and I take care of them, so getting rid of them would be extremely wasteful.

Which brings me back to the factor that lead to me keeping around my leather shoes/bag as back-ups. The idea is that it's better to keep the useful dead things around than it is to waste them (which I'm afraid is what would happen if I donated them, since both are a bit beat-up), as long as I'm not relying on them. And the not-relying on them thing is pretty much for show--not that I think anyone is watching, but whatever. I realize that this puts me outside the definition of vegan, at least if you ask some people, but I don't really care. The word isn't the point, but it is a handy shortcut to getting people to understand that I don't want to consume/buy any animal products at all.

The other reason for getting rid of it was the side effect of perpetuating the idea that it's acceptable to kill/abuse animals for the products we can make from them (by wearing them in public.) Which is part of why I'm going to any effort to get rid of them at all, but I still think that wasting something is worse. As long as I don't buy any more, I'll be okay with myself.

Fashion Is Evil

But we love being evil so it's okay >D. (Don't worry, I'm using "evil" facetiously here. Unless that worries you.)

Or maybe I mean style. I think style is what I mean. Aesthetics, not trends. It pleases me ever so much, and yet it's also incredibly indulgent and rather impractical. I don't exactly shirk my responsibilities for fashion or anything like that. And I try not to support companies that use unjust means to produce their product like forcing their employees to work in dangerous/poorly-maintained surroundings (not to mention unreasonably long/frequent shifts) and using toxic chemicals in the production of the garments and killing/abusing animals. Not like I can afford to buy much of those new--better to buy everything used and wash my hands of the suffering that made the clothes I wear daily. They're clean if my money didn't go to the selfish assholes who only care about maximizing their profits, right?

Sometimes I feel like it's a bit frivolous to have so much clothing--like they're just more possessions weighing me down instead of things that genuinely make me happy, although they often really do improve my mood even if it's a piece I've had for years. But every once in awhile I start to forget that and contemplate purging my wardrobe to the point of refining it into a kind of killer black uniform full of black turtlenecks and boots. Then I think of how long it took to amass what I have and it seems like getting rid of it would be such a waste, even if I somehow managed to not miss it.

I do so love getting the details of an outfit coordinated just right, which of course takes a variety of garments and accessories so I can keep doing it over again. And I love the decadence. Really decadence is a symptom of everything that's wrong with industrial society--but the undead vampires and resin dollies of lolita and the gloriously hollow, glitter-encrusted creatures of '70s glam are so intoxicatingly pretty. And if you can make everything in your life pretty, why should anything else matter?

Kitchen Adventures

I'm finding that most things I eat normally have a vegan alternative (hooray treading a path tread by many conscientious internet users before me =D.) I've been tweaking some of my recipes and also trying out new ones, and here's where I'm at.

Muffins were pretty easy. I substitute canola oil for one egg and the apple sauce I use to flavor the muffins (this page has really been helpful for working around eggs in recipes), and since these are things I eat as fuel throughout the day when I'm at school instead of as a treat, I also use whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, which also works out pretty well. Here's my recipe (as adapted from a Moosewood recipe):

Wet Ingredients:

3/4 cup Vegetable oil (1 cup if blueberry muffins)

3/4 cup Brown sugar

1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups Flour (unbleached all-purpose or whole wheat)

2 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

Dash (opt) Cinnamon

Special Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups Apple sauce or mashed banana

1 1/2 cups Nuts (and/or chocolate chips)

OR

1 1/2 cups Blueberries

1. Preheat at 350 F.

2. Mix wet ingredients together.

3. Gradually mix in dry ingredients.

4. Mix in fruit.

5. Mix in nuts.

6. Put cooking spray in muffin tin.

7. Put batter in muffin tin.

8. Put muffin tin in oven for ~19 minutes.

9. Remove and test done-ness with knife.

Another thing I adapted was the "vanishing" oatmeal cookies recipe on the inside of the lids on cans of Quaker oats:

1/2 cup (1 stick) + 6 tbsp. Butter*, softened

3/4 cup Firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup Granulated sugar

1/2 cup Vegetable oil

1 tsp. Vanilla

1 1/2 cup All-purpose flour

1 tsp. Baking soda

1 tsp. Ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. Salt

3 cups Rolled oats

1 cup Raisins or chocolate chips (or some other kind of dried fruit, possibly chopped up)

1. Heat oven to 350 F (175 C). In large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of electric mixer until creamy.

2. Add vegetable oil and vanilla; beat well.

3. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well.

4. Add oats and raisins, mix well.

5. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

6. Bake 8 to 10 actually more like 10-15 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

*and by butter I actually mean Earth Balance butter or some other kind of vegan substitute.

The scones took a few tries (I don't have a picture of them, unfortunately). I've been using this recipe, but they were turning out a bit denser without the cow milk. When I tried putting in almond paste (a by-product from making home-made almond milk) in place of the optional sultanas in the recipe, however, it worked out quite well. I also substituted canola oil for the egg wash (or you can just leave it off), Earth Balance buttery sticks for the butter, and almond milk for the cow milk.

That brings me to almond milk. You can totally get that at most grocery stores, but I've found I prefer the flavor (nuttier) and texture (smoother) of homemade almond milk, which is pretty simple to make (though a bit messy with my parents' food processor that barely holds the water and almonds this recipe calls for, and just time consuming enough that I don't always have time to make it as often as I'd like). You can flavor it yourself and alter the thickness--I haven't tried flavorings besides chocolate, mint, and vanilla yet with this, but if macarons can be made with almond flour and come in as many delicious flavors as they do, I figure more flavors than one might think could work with almond milk.

One thing that's really becoming apparent to me is how we treat dairy flavor as a neutral/default taste for products that call for milk, but that's not because it actually is, it's just what we're used to. That said, some options don't go so well with certain flavorings (*coughgreenteaflavoredcoconuticecreamcough*). But I figure that's like how people don't generally put tabasco sauce or pomegranate juice in milk (... right? o__o). Things like almond milk aren't a nutty substitute that doesn't quite taste like cow milk--they're just different options.

Not that I'll be able to persuade my family of that come Thanksgiving. If I want to eat, I'll actually have to do a lot of my own cooking this year (to share, of course, but I'm guessing it won't be too popular between the cow-milk mashed potatoes and turkey and cheesy things.) We'll see how that goes o__o.