For some reason, I watched Meet Your Meat. I may or may not have watched it before and I’d surely seen similar footage a dozen times since I went vegetarian. But something about this viewing on this night was different. I finished the short video and declared to myself (my wife hadn’t returned home from work yet), “I’m done. No more messing around. I’m vegan now.” And I never looked back.

I’ve been vegan now for longer than I was vegetarian. That feels significant. I think it’s because the only regret I have is that I didn’t go vegan sooner, that I messed around for so long, avoiding the commitment.

Over those five years, my outlook on things has changed significantly. I’ve become much more aware of how connected our exploitation of animals is to our exploitation and mistreatment of humans and the environment. My views on the role of animal welfare activism have changed. Most certainly, my tastes have changed and I’m eating and enjoying foods I wouldn’t have touched ten years ago. My relationship with animals (of all species) has changed. I’ve made some of the most incredible friends and acquaintances in “the movement,” people that inspire me with their words and actions every single day. I have an amazing family, including a daughter we’ve raised vegan from birth. And though I still have days where I feel cynical and hopeless about the way things are, most of the time I’m filled with hope, knowing that even if we don’t completely eliminate the use of animals in my lifetime, there are a lot of good people out there and things are changing.

Five years isn’t long in the grand scheme of things, I realize, but I know I’ll never go back. There’s lots to be done and five years is just a start.

As the Roots Radics said: forwards ever, backwards never.

(Also, happy 5-year veganversary to Lindsay at Vegan Chai, who remembers every year that we went vegan on the same day. This year, it’s my turn to remember!)

I have a bunch of longer posts lined up to get things back into gear, but let me just start you with an amusing dream I had the other night.

I was hanging out at Food Fight chatting with some folks there about how I was thinking about moving to Portland (in real life, I’m not, but if I were moving to the west coast, it would be my first choice). Then all of a sudden, Chad comes over and drops an almost cartoonishly large ham hock in my lap. I almost jump out of my seat, but then realize that, of course, it was a giant vegan ham hock. A mock hock, if you will.

Hey, they carry vegan haggis, so it could happen!

(via failblog)

He proceeded to make me feel bad about my cooking before I turned the conversation by asking him who his favorite vegan cookbook authors were.

“I like… Oprah.” I stared at him, confused. “Oprah… Chandra Moskowitz. Her books are really good.”

Maybe this means we’ll see Oprah giving away free samples of Cast Iron seitan to her audience in 2009?

This is one of those videos that you can’t watch without your blood pressure rising. Gov. Palin’s patented cocky attitude combined with painful irony starts right from the start, where she describes how running for office is “brutal” at the very moment that a turkey behind her, on camera, is being slaughtered. Blood covers the machinery and ground and a few seconds later, the limp-bodied turkey is carried off-camera.

Then, another turkey is brought in, struggling as she’s slaughtered. Gov. Palin spouts off about how “neat” it is to be able to “promote a local business” because “you need to be able to have a little levity in this job.”

She adds, “[It's nice to] participate in something that isn’t so… heavy-handed politics that invites criticism. Certainly we’ll invite criticism for even doing this, too.” Gee, you think?

Gov. Palin ends with, “But at least this was fun.”

Absolutely sickening.

(Thanks to Alex for the tip-off.)

Sorry I’ve gone missing in recent weeks. Things will pick up here again soon, so hang tight.

… Ryan

Anyway, if you’re going to be there and want to meet up for a few minutes, let me know.

First up is an episode of Hell’s Kitchen from a few weeks ago where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, who’s always viewed vegetarians as an annoyance (though not to the degree of Anthony Bourdain), decided to test the competing chefs on their palates. He tells them to try a bunch of dishes and identify what’s missing from each. Most of them are looking for small ingredients like a spice here or there, but what’s missing in each dish is the meat. It’s pretty amazing how these chefs are fooled by mock meat:

Ramsey seems distraught by their inability to identify mock meat, but me? I was cheering.

Then, last week on the always-terrible Wife Swap, an artist from Arizona went to live with a motorbiking family who subsisted on fast food. Though the vegetarian angle was (mercifully) limited in this episode, when she enforced the rule where her host family had to eat vegetarian for a week, the father of the clan rebelled by going into town to get hamburgers on the very first morning. He taunted cows as he rode past them (on a horse because he’d been banned by the woman from using gas-powered vehicles), chomping away on his burger. He came off as quite the jerk.

The latter isn’t exactly the way I like to see vegetarianism portrayed in popular culuture, but the Hell’s Kitchen example shows that meat substitutes have come a long, long way.

Lastly, here’s a behind-the-scenes clip from a past season of Hell’s Kitchen that shows that maybe Gordon Ramsey doesn’t despise vegetarians as much as I thought. Check out how seriously he takes serving vegetarian risotto that was accidentally cooked in chicken stock:

Hope my US readers had a good Memorial Day.

Lio (April 30, 2008)

(If you’re having trouble seeing it, click the “wide” button at the upper right corner of the page.)

Popeye was strong. He ate spinach.

Who was the one that ate all the hamburgers?

Wimpy.

My point has been made, no?

Here’s an idea: stop using prayers (also seen amongst some as “respecting the animal”) as an excuse to just stop buying leather handbags.  Is it really that hard?

Next up…

This one actually made me a little queasy.  I’m sure Carol Adams would have something to say about this one.

And they weren’t mine.

The mind reels!