From Puppies to Milkshakes to Vegan, Oh My!

My journey to eating a plant-based diet.

Reading time: About 4 minutes.

Happy New Year!

In January of 1998, as another new year unfolded, my husband and I packed our silver Honda Civic and made the 18-hour drive from our home in downtown Minneapolis to the small town of Slidell, Louisiana. It was winter and dreary the whole way there—we even encountered an ice storm! But the mission ahead lit our path. At the end of our journey, we would meet our newest family member, a feather-furred 10-week-old Maltese puppy we named Parka. He warmed and brightened our lives for 14 years.

Don’t let the court jester costume throw you. Parka did not suffer fools lightly.

Back at home, with the sparky, spunky Parka enriching my life, I started seeing other animals through a different lens. My view of chickens, pigs, fish, and cows shifted. I came to see them as living beings with eyes that looked at me like Parka’s did. His life depended on my kindness and compassion. So did theirs. Before long, I could no longer distinguish between the value of his life and the value of theirs. I would not eat him, I reasoned, so I would not eat them. I decided to become a vegetarian.

Even before Parka, I had considered eating a vegetarian diet. Meat never sat well in my stomach. It roiled in my tummy and gave me gas that I struggled to hold in around others. I had never made the leap, though, because it seemed too overwhelming. What would I eat? Where would I get my protein?

My co-worker Diane had the answers. She was smart, thoughtful, and had the same eccentric sense of humor I did, and she had been a vegetarian for years. We often ate lunch together at our workplace cafeteria, so I watched and learned. She made it look easy—peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, and milkshakes. Sure, this wasn’t the healthiest way to eat, but we were in our 20s, and that was food I had grown up eating. It was normal food, food I could understand. So, I jumped in with both feet and never looked back.

Two decades later, my awareness of and empathy for animal welfare had expanded to consider how animals are industrialized for their milk and eggs. By this time, my husband and I were eating much healthier—Mike had lost over 100 pounds with Weight Watchers and exercise, and I lost 20 pounds the same way. In 2016, we decided to go vegan. This time, it was much easier because I had already learned enough about how to eat without meat that shifting from milk, eggs, and cheese was a…um…piece of cake. (No pun intended. Okay. Maybe a little bit of pun intended.)

My husband and I before weight loss and after.

A lot has changed for vegans and vegetarians since I took my first steps into eating without meat. Many familiar foods have been veganized, like delicious plant-based milk, melty vegan cheeses, and hearty animal-free meats. Protein is easy to come by in various forms—not just beans, tofu, and peanut butter. Still, many of my loved ones have shared their confusion about what I eat. When I hear their questions, I recall how I felt when I became a vegetarian. Back then, it seemed like some other kind of food, something too hard to do and beyond my grasp.

All of the food pictured above is vegan.

In honor of those loved ones who have shown kindness and interest in how I eat, I invite you to join me over the next few weeks for my Veganuary series. Veganuary is an annual, month-long celebration of eating a plant-based diet. Vegans worldwide encourage each other and support those curious about eating animal-free. Even if you don’t plan on becoming vegan yourself, you may have someone in your life who eats this way. Learning more about it helps them feel seen and valued. For anyone curious about what it means to eat vegan, I aim to be Diane to your curiosities. I want to take the mystery out of eating a plant-based diet and demonstrate that vegan food is food we all know and love.

Tune in next week as I discuss foods in your kitchen that you may not know are vegan.

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