Tha's okay. I make lamb!

At dinner the other day, my sister-in-law asked me how many different diets I've tried to put myself and/or my family on in the last several years. Daltonboy almost choked on his food. I'm sure that was a coincidence. My answer: about 100. In my defense, I believe each one has mostly built on the last, except for my brief foray into Body for Life, which was a mistake. And now I'll introduce my latest.

Going vegan.*

Sort of.

My friend Holly is forcing me to read The China Study, by which I mean that she recommended it and promised I'd like it. I knew about this book and had been avoiding it for a long time, because I don't want to be convinced of the evils of animal protein. I like animal protein. It's tasty. Lola used to have this t-shirt:

I agree with that wholeheartedly. Big fan of a juicy steak here.

Anyway, I started reading this book, somewhat grudgingly. Before the end of the introduction, I was pretty much sold. So I put it to the family. You be the judge of whether or not I handled it well.

Me: After I'm done with this book I'm reading, we're going vegan.

Lola: WHAT??????

Daltonboy: Uhhhhh . . .

Me: Come on! It'll be awesome.

Daltonboy: I don't know about that.

Lola: I don't want to go vegan!

Me: Okay, we don't have to go totally vegan. We'll just cut way, way back on animal proteins.

Daltonboy: You already did. We're already vegetarians.

Me: Seriously. I cook a vegetarian meal three times a week. You call that being vegetarian?

Daltonboy: Yes!!

Me: Okay, well, I'll ease us into mostly vegan meals, with a nice meaty meal once in a while.

Daltonboy: It just seems like a slippery slope to me.

Me: A slippery slope to what?

Daltonboy: Raw vegan. And I'm not doing that.

Me: Come on! Do you really think I'd go raw vegan? Give me a little credit here.

In retrospect, from their point of view, there's pretty much nothing I wouldn't do. So to be fair, it's a valid fear.

Daltonboy: Weeeell . . .

Me: I promise not to go raw vegan. How's that? Because I don't even like that food. For me the slippery slope tends more to going back to eating all meat all the time.

Daltonboy: sigh!

Me: It'll be delicious. I promise.

The up side is that the word of "divorce" never crossed his lips, but daltonboy did say that he'd be eating at Dickie's BBQ Pit most nights from now on. Honestly, I thought it would be better received. After all, he has been concerned about the properties of certain foods and how they affect a specific health condition, and meat was one of the first things on his list that should be avoided. But he seemed to skip that line item and conveniently moved down to the part that said he should eat white bread instead of whole wheat. That wasn't a difficult sacrifice at all! Too bad bread is now taboo, since it's made with eggs. Mwahahahahaha!!! Maybe I'll get a loaf of french bread once in a while. Throw him a bone. (Made from petrified tofu, of course.)

So now every time we sit down to the table there's this look in his eye, like he's worried that I'm going to have him eating beans for every meal (I've joked about this--no one laughs). But Lola seems to be mostly convinced. She can eat all the peanut butter she wants, and so far I've made some delicious stuff. Egg rolls, broccoli curry udon, and cashew vegetable korma are all on the menu this week. I've found an awesome vegan chef that makes mouth-watering dishes and posts recipes on her blog, and have decided that one of my latest needs is to own every one of her books. But maybe I'll wait a while and see how this whole thing pans out. If I'm going to abandon it for something new in a few months, I don't want to invest a lot in cookbooks. If it works, though, I plan to be the most irreverent vegan on the planet. Because have you ever noticed that a lot of people that espouse those ideologies are pretty passionate (which is fine) and humorless (not fine)? And let's face it: no matter how good it might be for you, all that hippie craziness is hilarious.

*Vegans eat no animal products of any kind, which means no dairy products, no lard, no deep fried pork rinds . . . it's a hard, hard life.