Yesterday, for dinner, we made the
https://www.veganricha.com/2018/01/peanut-butter-cauliflower-bowl-with-roasted-carrots.htmlI think the peanut sauce needs 1/3 less flour, and 2x more water. Other than that, the flavor balance was delicious.
+1 to Meadow Lark's "don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
May I share personal story about this? (WARNING- skip if you don't want to read about the systematic cruelty inherent in our animal ag food supply)
In the journey to where I am now, I've traipsed/trudged through the 3 chair-legs of veganism - health, environment and ethics. For my whole life I've felt a slight discord between not wanting to eat animals, and yet eating them. I've always thought drinking cows milk was weird. Even so, I poured 2% on my cereal. In retrospect, I used the three Ns (coined by Melanie Joy) to support my cognitive dissonance:
"natural, normal, necessary."We came to WFPB/veganism first through health, then the environment, and lastly, the ethics. Through it all, I questioned the
normalcy of eating animals. I recognized that an appeal to
nature is a logical fallacy (e.g. rape is natural, does that make it right?). I came to learn that nutritionally, animal products are not at all
necessary.
As I researched more and more, I retained a notion that 'ethics' were the least of my reasons for being vegan. Perhaps it was because they set in last? Or, perhaps, it was because ethics seem to be the least socially acceptable reasons of the three. You start talking ethics, and carnists, with bellies full of bacon or butter or beef, feel personally attacked. But talk about health or the environment, and most are a little more willing to hear you out.
Even after watching Earthlings, Dairy is Scary (Erin Janus), Lucent, Land of Hope and Glory, Gary Yourofsky, Earthling Ed, James Aspey, etc. Even after all discomforting, heart-breaking revelations uncovered in my journey, I still clung to the idea that I was vegan first for health and environment.
It was when we ate at an Indian restaurant with friends that I realized how wrong I was. I'd made it clear (nicely) to the waiter that we wanted no dairy in our food. He signaled that he understood, guiding us toward some dishes and away from others. We ate merrily, avoiding the one dairy dish on the table that our vegetarian (not vegan) friends had ordered. I loved the benghan bartha (sp?) so ordered another dish of it for take away, reminding the waiter that we wanted no dairy.
At home, I opened our benghan bharta and found it was clearer, more red, than what we'd eaten in the restaurant. It didn't have milk/cream/yogurt in it. The dish at the restaurant had dairy. And we'd eaten it.
What happened next was a surprise to me. I was beyond angry. I was livid. I stewed in it, silently. For hours! I couldn't get over it. I even cried a little. I knew better than to rage-text about it to my friends, or worse, call the restaurant. So I just sat and thought about how I never want to be a part of the brutal dairy industry, and felt the anger of being suckered back into it. It's not normal. It's unnecessary. And I don't want to support rape, infanticide, nor 1-2 day old calves being stripped from their mothers only to never see them again. ~95% of dairy calves are taken from their mothers within two days (~63% within 24 hrs). In the words of Erin Janus, this happens because, referring to the milk, "That shit's ours."
After eating at that Indian restaurant, I was a part of this brutality again, and I was fucking beside myself. I was devastated. I went to bed angry, and woke up, well, still angry, but it was a little softer at that point.
The thing that got me back to being okay was exactly the phrase that Meadow Lark wrote: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
We live in a society where consuming dairy is not only normalized, but our government encourages consuming three servings a day. Dairy is an industry built on brutal enslavement. Even if we can imagine some sort of humane treatment of animals on small-scale farms somewhere in the world, the reality is that the $4 gallon of milk at Whole Foods Market is from a factory farm where the cows live for 4-5 years, fully enslaved, losing their precious babies after every forced, anal-fisted pregnancy. Then, as thanks for all their suffering, they're sent to slaughter in their young adolescence.
This new reality of mine is full of challenges. But the phrase 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good' is handy to remember. That and 'be the change you wish to see.'
I hope that wasn't TMI. If anyone wants sources for any of the statements I made, I'll be happy to provide them.
Time to make split-pea soup now.