Call any vegetable, pick up your phone
Think of a vegetable, lonely at home
Call any vegetable, and the chances are good,
That a vegetable will respond to you.
-Frank Zappa, “Call Any Vegetable,” from Kill Ugly Radio
During a long interview with the delightful vegan cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz, I remember her characterizing my job as, “making a living off the blood of the innocents.” She wasn’t being uncivil, in fact she wore a wry kind of smile as she said it, but the phrase has stuck with me.
Maybe I do make my living off the blood of the innocents, but I do not begrudge vegans for attempting to repair my seeming moral shortcomings by removing themselves from a meat-based food system. You know what? I love livestock. I love livestock enough that I might even consider not eating it. However, I also love the way livestock tastes, and as yet, the scales are weighed more heavily towards “eating.” Barbaric? Probably.
The fact is, I’ve considered going vegan, and I might make that choice someday. But for now, both my livelihood and diet preferences are stronger than any subconscious guilt I might have about eating a chicken.
I know, however, there are plenty of people out there who are on the fence. They’ve come to the conclusion that their morality is not aligned with their diet and would like to go vegan. Try Vegan PDX would like those people to know that there are people who will help them make the transition.
This Saturday, August 15th, marks the beginning of the second annual Try Vegan Week here in Portland. For the next eight days various vegan businesses and organizations will hold workshops, cooking classes, and entertainment events geared toward welcoming people into the animal-product-free lifestyle.
“A lot of organizations focus on ‘Why Vegan?'” says David Agranoff, one of the organizers behind Try Vegan PDX. “Our organization is more focused on ‘How Vegan?'” To that end, along with the cooking classes and lectures there will also be a focus on nutrition and fitness.
“It’s easy to be vegan and subsist on cupcakes and baked goods in this town,” says Agranoff, “But we want to focus on health too.”
Perhaps most helpful to people trying to navigate their brand new cruelty-free existence is a mentoring program set up by Try Vegan PDX. Those interested in making the switch can sign up on-line to get connected with an experienced vegan who will help the “veg-curious” in areas of cooking, shopping, dining out, and making acquaintances in the vegan community.
The week of events culminates with a Vegan Prom at the Report Lounge, next Saturday, August 22nd. Tickets for the prom, along with a full list of events can be found at the Try Vegan PDX website.
To celebrate the beginning of Try Vegan Week, I’m giving away a package of three vegan cookbooks: The brand new Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Veganomicon by Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, and Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry.
The giveaway is open only to new vegans (I’ll just have to trust you on that). Email me with “New Vegan” in the subject line and I will pick a random winner by the end of the day. Good luck! And remember what Frank Zappa says: “No one will know, if you don’t want to let them know/No one will know, ‘less it’s you that might tell them so/Call and they’ll come to you covered with dew/Vegetables dream, of responding to you.”
PAC, your beer month seemed to go rather well.
Why aren’t you doing the Vegan Week? Review some vegan restaurants or something.
DO IT! IT’LL BE AWESOME!
#moremeatforme
PAC, if you do try a week of Vegan, you will honestly break my heart. Stop being a pussy and go out and kill something, then eat it. You are a man for chrissakes, not a sallow-livered self-righteous sack full of vinegar for eradicating vaginal odor. What do you think poultry eats given half a chance to run “free range.”
Having raised, slaughtered and eaten pigs, chickens, ducks and sheep, I can tell you it’s anything but barbaric. You raise an animal, care for it, give it a nice life for a year and then kill it swiftly and eat it. That’s what humans do.
But, sure, if you don’t like killing animals, I can see going vegetarian. I go for a week or two without meat every couple months or so, to save money, and it’s a fine way to live. But veganism is just cruel. If you don’t milk cows, they end up in terrible pain, with swollen, sometimes infected udders. Whether you like it or not, we’ve evolved a symbiotic relationship with milk cows. What are we supposed to do—just release them all to the Great Plains to duke it out with the buffalo? Slaughter them en masse? Build some sort of enormous zoo?
That said, Nick Zukin’s vegan month has been interesting to watch. Maybe you should give it a try.
ExtraMSG went vegan for a month and is chronicling it over @ Portlandfood.org
http://www.portlandfood.org/index.php?show…
The whole reason tasty treats like cows and chickens even survive is because we keep them alive. Cows don’t exactly reproduce or grow very quickly (ask just about any cattle farmer on that issue) and chickens are stupid. I know, my friends had a couple pet chickens (we’re Cuban, remember) in his backyard. Both would probably not fare especially well in the wild if we didn’t raise them and eat them.
I’m all about Michael Pollan’s seven words to eat by: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly veggies.” The right attitude should be to connect to smaller, local farms and eat less meat, not cut it out of your diet altogether. If it’s a health issue, too much soy is just as bad if not worse than too much meat (there’s been a number of independent studies done on this) and honestly anything in excess is going to be bad for you.
Go try the vegan thing for a while PAC but do us a favor and stay true to those who aren’t self-righteous pricks with hidden eating disorders. Stupid vegans.
thanks for this article! Try Vegan PDX appreciates it!
Why not try just going vegetarian instead? Granted, it doesn’t give you the indie-cred of a having VEGAN embroidered on your hemp belt with an anarchy symbol for the A. Girls will not fuck you because of it. But it’s far easier to sustain for any meaningful length of time. Especially if you’re used to eating meat, and you like eating meat.
Of the people I’ve known that have gone vegan, all are now eating meat again. The vegetarians are still mostly vegetarians.
Vegans do good, but entirely miss the point. The problem isn’t with animal slaughter, it’s with how we raise and slaughter animals.
You think desert tribes would last for one week without animal protein? Not every climate is amenable to big fluffy veggies and unlimited amounts of cheap soy products motored in from all parts of the world.
Dead goats can, and do, save nations.
can there be a mention of the word “vegan” without an onslaught of bs comments? obviously not
As per usual, ratio of touchy “preemptive strike” oh-those-fucking-vegans comments to “preachy pussy douchebag” vegan comments is massively disproportionate in favor of the former. The word “vegan” is like a strawman siren for people with something to prove (what, no one can tell–but they feel it with a burning passion, clearly).
I’ve been vegan for fourteen years, and I honestly couldn’t give half a shit if somebody wants to eat animals–I don’t think it’s “wrong” or “unnatural,” just that the way we’re doing it in America is generally beyond repair and that it’s simplest and most affordable to just abstain than to try to seek out non-antibiotics-and-corn-based meat. But there are countless ways to contribute to the betterment of mankind, and if food ethics isn’t for you, that’s fine with me and 99% of us horrible vegans. For every schmuck whose misguided priorities lead him to shout like a psychopath outside of the fur shop by my house instead of doing some good for somebody, there are hundreds of vegans who just want to enjoy the food they enjoy, want to do a little good, and find veganism a reasonably simple, maintainable way of living ethically–but for whom it’s a personal thing, not a religious crusade. Do what you want, I’ll do what I want, and fortunately in this town there’s room for both and everything in between. Surely there are more important things to rail against than some people who don’t eat just what you eat, right?
Meat-eaters get so defensive and attack vegans in such a transparent way. Just try for a awhile you’ll find it’s not that scary.
“Vegans do good, but entirely miss the point. The problem isn’t with animal slaughter, it’s with how we raise and slaughter animals.”
Annie you miss the point. Try Vegan Week PDX not Try Vegan Week Desert. Secondly the problem for me is animal slaughter, I live in Portland. I have access to food that does not require massive amounts of wasted water/grain and even better does not require the suffering and murder of animals. We don’t need to raise and slaughter anything to survive in this climate/culture. The choice of compassion is fruits,grains and vegetables.
A nation could be saved by humanely raising and slaughtering human children in human veal incubators as well. You don’t have to make that choice living here. You don’t have to eat animals. You can always choose compassion over killing it’s up to you. The whole point of Try Vegan Week is not to force people. It’s to help them choose compassion if it’s in their hearts.
if you can’t find it in your heart to choose a less violent diet, we can’t do anything about it.
-David Agranoff/ Try Vegan PDX.
David, people like you is exactly what prevents people like me from becoming vegan (and I’m on the fence). It’s militant vegans trying to tell me that anything less than their exteme is wrong that turns me off. The slaughter of animals is perfectly natural, it happens in nature, that’s what “natural” means. Our nation’s factory farming practices are unnatural and abhorrent, and I do my best to not support it with my dollars. But you’re implying that nothing less than veganism is compassionate, and that’s not only wrong, but counterproductive to your end goals.
Seriously, I came in here looking for more information on trying this out. I don’t think I will now, simply because the person behind it chooses to be so intolerant.
Does it really matter that much to you what someone else eats? Why do we need to try vegan? Likewise why who gives a shit that vegans don’t eat meat? More roast beef, pulled pork, thanksgiving turkeys and hamburgers for us omnivores!
Sure animals are innocent but they’re also yummy.
TAGE SAVAGE
@meatman. Would it be barbaric if it was a dog or cat or horse? Because you know some people do what you do with “livestock” to those other animals.
Veganism is a privilege for developed western nations, and a generally misguided effort. Indigenous peoples throughout the development of human history would eat whatever is available. If nuts, fruits or vegetables were unavailable due to weather or the seasons, not a single hungry native group would abstain from eating meat because it requires killing the animal. Of course it does, it’s the way the world works. Everything is eating everything else. Even plants eat meat in some cases, and your rotting vegan carcass will feed the hungry worms and maggots below the earth.
Of course capitalism produces unnecessary suffering trying to slaughter as many animals as possible in a workday, but that doesn’t mean that the basic practice of eating meat should be eliminated. To think that bees are somehow suffering laboriously in their slave task of producing honey for us is absurd. It would be better to rebel against the industrialized production of food in general or the unsustainable nature of capitalistic affairs, but not against eating anything that has something to do with an animal. I’m pretty sure that if Bessie the family cow was milked in your barn a few times a week it would actually result in a net positive for the cow regarding its ‘utility calculus’, and not the other way around. You are doing the cow a favor, it’s udder hurts, please milk it…and if you object to drinking the milk, then throw it out on the ground and feed the animals that will gladly oblige to following their nature as intended much better than you seem able to do.
One of the best aspects of Portland communities, imo, is the scale on which people are informed and caring enough to desire the best for the environment and our collective health. There are many ideas on the best ways to achieve this and on exactly how the dietary components of a utopia would look. It seems several of the commentators here are swimming in the “why vegan” (or why localvore, or why organic, or why small foods, etc.). Check out http://www.vegforlife.org for the basics, or better yet, the reading lists and especially the podcast at http://www.compassionatecooks.com for highly factual and fair, well presented information on these issues.
Try Vegan PDX, while welcoming to all, was created for those who already understand some of the reasons living vegan can be such a positive thing, and are struggling with the next-step questions, such as, “Can I do it?” “Does it have to be all or nothing? (No!)/Could I just try vegetarian first? (Yes!)” “Is it expensive, difficult, inconvenient…?” “What do I order at the steakhouse in the midwest?” They help pair the curious with the experienced – both of whom are much more diverse groups than I might have assumed before I participated last year.
I encourage anyone who’s curious and understands the difference between debate and attack, to check out this group or NW Veg.