Pretty Much Totally Unrelated To Traveling.

Please to enjoy unrelated photo of this pig I embroidered on a hanky.I've been getting a little excited, much to my surprise, about recipes for home-made vegan cheeses. I think I'm missing my vegan homies in Sydney, who always ALWAYS made it worth my while to go to the extra effort of cooking vegan (especially if what was being cooked was delicious vegan baked goods). I am enjoying a brief fantasy of returning triumphantly home at some point to prepare a vegan pizza with vegan mozzarella cheese on top THAT MELTS. I haven't attempted any of these vegan cheese recipes yet, but I'm gonna, in the next few days. I need a challenge (cracks knuckles). A culinary challenge.

I was casting my mind back today, trying to pinpoint when I went vegetarian. I remember being in the US in 2005, and eating meat there (and oh boy, I suspect that the American relationship to meat was the beginning of the end of my relationship to meat). I think I can remember the moment, actually: not so long after I came home from the US, I flew to Perth to visit a friend. We got dinner at a dining hall in a nightclub district. I got some kind of duck soup (I used to really like duck). It was fucking revolting. I thought I am done with eating animals. And I'm pretty sure that was it. The moment I went from gently disparaging vegetarians at every turn, to being a vegetarian.

But I'm kind of one of THOSE vegetarians. I wear leather. I eat eggs (although, less and less often). I use composted animal shit in my vegetable garden. I eat cheeses made with calf rennet, sometimes. Once, I went fishing with my ex-girlfriend, and we caught some yabbies, and I ate some (which appealed much more strongly to my sustainable-living, know-where-your-food-comes-from ethic than driving 40km to buy a packet of soy sausages made with ingredients sourced from fuckknowswhere). I'm less of a all meat is always totally disgusting vegetarian and more of hey, I don't need to eat meat to live, so as a general rule I won't! vegetarian.

The puritanism and (self-and-other-) judgment of striving for ethical dietary perfection annoys me (and "bad" food vs "good" food sounds sometimes an awful lot too much likethe normalised body-hatred of a woman chastising herself for eating a chocolate bar). It irritates some portion of my brain that wants to point out the ridiculousness of logical extremes (I use milk on my tomato plants to combat fungal disease without recourse to heavy-metal-based fungicides: does that make my tomatoes non-vegan-friendly? What about those tomatoes at the supermarket, shipped from fuckknowswhere and grown with petrochemical fertilisers?). But the other side of that annoys me too: I do not agree with all the tenets of veganism, so I cast it all aside as ridiculous. Or, I occasionally like to eat bacon, so I see no point in trying to limit my meat consumption.

Vegatarianism has meant, for me, eating and cooking way more interesting food than a meat-based diet. Veganism is a food nerd's DREAM, full of fascinating and delightful substitutions and food processes (making brownies by first making a white sauce! No, really! It's amazing! SO much more intriguing procedurally than just blending some flour, sugar, cocoa, butter & eggs). And, vegan cheese! Made from nuts & tofu! Allegedly, types of vegan cheese that melt. Learning to make dairy cheese was food-nerd heaven, too. I am happily looking forward to occupying the entire spectrum of cheese-making nerdery.