Thirty years ago this month I went vegan, so for all of August I’ll be blogging about my experiences having a plant-based lifestyle for the past three decades.
Cooking my own meals came slowly to me. It wasn’t something I did when I still lived with my parents, since my mother insisted on being the one to feed her sons. Once I was in college I relied on the school’s cafeteria or quick meals I could microwave. After graduation I still relied mostly on microwaveable meals and foods that came premade in boxes.
Just because I was eating plant-based foods, which were becoming more readily available as the years went on, didn’t necessarily mean I was eating very healthy. There’s plenty of junk food out there that doesn’t contain meat or dairy, and most sugars are vegan.
It wasn’t until my son was born that I decided I needed to buckle down and teach myself how to cook. I wanted to give him homemade dinners like I used to have, not primarily frozen foods or stuff out of boxes.* I wanted him to have memories of things only his parent could make, and when he finally leaves the house years down the road he’ll hopefully have a yearning for things I made for him.
*I’m not knocking frozen foods or premade meals, as they’re still used quite often in our house when we need to eat quickly, or we’re too tired to cook something from scratch.
It was a very slow process, full of trials and lots of errors. Many things turned out inedible, much to my discouragement. My wife has texture sensitivities to most anything that isn’t meat or bread, so I couldn’t even test my cooking on the only other adult in the house. And, for reasons known only to the cruel universe itself, whenever I tried to cook something for my extended family it turned out to be the very worst version of the thing I was trying to make. Everything was turning out terrible despite my best efforts, and I was getting frustrated.
My first victory came from an unexpectedly simple recipe that has become a weekly staple in our house. One can of black beans poured into a small pot, juice and all. Add approximately 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of minced garlic (I use the pre-minced kind for time), a half-teaspoon each of coriander, cumin, and chili powder. Heat over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes while you cook a cup of rice. When the rice is done, combine. Boom. Tasty beans and rice.
All it took was one victory to get me feeling like I could really do this.
I remembered a recipe I made up in college for a stew made of potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, and black beans that’s a big hit in the cold winter months.
I put together a recipe for a potatoes, chickpeas, and broccoli cooked in a curry coconut milk over rice that my son loves.
I modified a chickpea burrito recipe that, while my son grew tired of it to the point of tantrums, when I served it to my friends at a group potluck every single one of them went back for seconds.
After some experimentation I came up with a decent recipe for red lentils and rice, which is more of a side-dish but I’m counting it.
And most recently, I was able to cook collard greens correctly after several failed attempts. I am now completely hooked on these hardy leafy greens, and my son will eat them with some rice and (meatless) chicken.
I like to think that because I worked hard on feeding him homemade and seasoned vegetable dishes that my son chose, completely on his own, to become vegetarian. My wife would attempt to feed him meat dishes she would sometimes cook, but he always seemed to dislike them. Whether it’s because of my due diligence or he subconsciously wants to be like his dad, I’m very proud that I had a hand in influencing my son to be mostly plant-based in his diet.
Cooking may have come late to me in these thirty years as a vegan, but I’m glad to have embraced it later instead of never.