Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Vegan point scoring

I made the famous vegan loaf for a work morning tea today, and it was gone before the official start! I think that he first contributing factor to the popularity is that I actually cooked something - a lot of the ladies in the section gave a shocked look when word got around that 'Enny cooked! She baked a loaf!'. The second contributing factor was that it was vegan - a lot of people wanted to know what it was made of, how is made without eggs and milk, and is it healthy? The final contributing factor was probably that it was dissapearing fast... 12 pieces for 50 people! I had totally figured I'd be eating half a loaf for lunch, and The Hun was very dissapointed to hear I wouldn't be bringing any home after he came home last night to the smell of it baking in the kitchen.

It also lead to another potential vegan conversion! A guy at work who has moved down from Queensland has been asking me questions AND making suggestion for vegan food, as his culture (Serbian?) goes through fasting periods where no animal products (excluding seafood!) are consumed. He doesn't know why seafood is okay either. Anyway, he indicated that he loved the loaf AND that he had some questions about becoming vegan - he's putting together an email to send me. I am SO excited! That will be one work convesrsion, I count Deb as my internet conversion, I've been in email conversation with one of my martial arts students gym customers (we're planning a breakfast meetup!) and one of my martial arts students is halfway there (though young, and not allowed to become vegan until she is 18, according to her parents).

The young student forwarded me a note the other day that a friend of hers had posted on Facebook and received over 100 comments. Basically, a young girl had indicated all veg*ns are ghey and that they were endagering the human race because if everyone was veg*n we'd have a population of weak, iron deficient palies that would die out.  From there, a whole lot of intelligent debate followed (and a whole lot of caps and typos and exclamation marks) and it was really empowering to see that there are young people becoming educated at such an early age on their impact in the world and the results of their actions. It was also infuriating to see that same girl that started the conversation state that she'd happily string an animal on a hook to watch it bleed, then get really upset when people starting personally attacking her. It is terribly sad to see the level of ignorance that some people have, the level of disrespect they have for living creatures, and the disgusting level that people will go to to 'fit in'. Then again, when I was omni I never would have considered becoming vegan - I considered myself a meatatarian (mind you, I would NEVER have even considered joking about torturing animals) and I honestly didn't understand the connectin between the animals that I claimed to love, and 'meat'.

It's similar to a conversation I've had with some friends over the past week or so - two of my friends are considering getting laying hens, and eating them after a year or two. They don't understand why I  get so upset during the argument, and they don't believe that I would actually steal their hens from them were they to plan ahead to murder them. Their response is that they won't tell me before they do, but it will be a very upsetting day when it happens, if it happens. I already know how it will play out in my head, so I hope they were only saying it to rile me, similar to how I hope they were only riling me saying they would do the same with a pig, or the other friend that said he happily shoots roos and rabbits. I would steal the hens, and I would do my very most to steal the pig as well. Otherwise, I don't know how I could begin to overlook that the friends that I love are the same people that murdered the creatures they had raised and loved (ignorant the inherent cruelty in purchasing hens in the first place). To me, the fact that they wouldn't do the same to a cat or a dog, that they would be jailed for doing the same to a cat or a dog, should make them realised that through the eyes of their morals and through the eyes of the law, they are commiting an act of cruelty.

There's no real point to this post, just that as it seems that things are looking up, things are also looking down. Just different levels of intensity I guess.

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