By Josh Fernandez, Guest Blogger

Halfway through my Starbucks Protein Bistro Box I realized I was eating an egg. A giant hardboiled egg. “Nope,” I thought. “That’s probably not vegan.”

Hello. My name is Joshua Fernandez and I am new here.

So far, the hardest part of being a vegan is eating vegan food. Yes, that sounds really stupid when I write it down, but it’s true. My first week as a vegan was a series of half-eaten mouthfuls of food and mad dashes to the trashcan.

My office-mates probably thought I was suffering from bulimia because I kept running to the bathroom to spit out my lunch.

“Wait,” I’d say into the bowels of the faculty garbage bin. “Was that granola bar vegan?!”

It turns out it wasn’t vegan. At all.

Because milk chocolate chips aren’t vegan. Because they contain milk.

Neither is cheddar cheese. Because it contains cheese.

Yes, old school vegans are probably reading this and muttering, “Psssht, what a stupid newbie.”

But I don’t care. I am determined to get this right.

I love animals. And I don’t want to contribute to their suffering, only to my own, which is why I have sworn off the most delicious foods on earth. Well, there’s only one delicious food on earth, and that’s cheese pizza (goodbye, my old lover. I’ll see you in hell.)

One of the reasons I swore off cheese pizza and became a vegan has a lot to do with my friend Toni. We were on our way back from a friend’s house. The trip took about an hour. At that point, I was a happy pescatarian and felt morally superior to most people on Earth for my choice to not eat chicken or beef. I only occasionally ate fish. But Toni started telling me this horrific tale about what farmers do to the chickens that are too old to lay eggs. I don’t want to go into the gross details of the story, but let’s just say it involved live chickens, a big metal vat and fire.

That image stuck out in my head, shattering my vegetarian comfort into a million tiny pieces that I would never be able to reassemble. Even though I tried. Desperately. I’m really good at rationalizing and lying to myself. When I was a vegetarian I had successfully convinced myself that fish was a plant.

“I can find the farms that treat their chickens with dignity and respect!” I said.

The thing is I’m waaaaay too lazy to seek out compassionate chicken farmers. For someone like me, it’s easier to assume that they are all heartless murderers with a lust for dead chickens.

Another problem with veganism is that I’m a marathoner, sometimes clocking in at about 60 miles per week, and I told myself that if I only eat plant-based food I would most likely keel over on mile 25.

I haven’t actually tested that theory yet, but I will find out on December 6, when I run my first marathon as a vegan. And mark my words: If that happens, on my death bed I will write another blog post for Vegan Outreach, entitled, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE, BUTCHER A COW AND EAT IT IMMEDIATELY.”

I’m kidding.

I have this other friend, Dave, who is a vegan and he runs ultramarathons. Sometimes he only eats fruit, which he calls fruitarian, a word that my spell check doesn’t even recognize. Most humans don’t even recognize that word. I don’t even think it’s a word. Maybe Dave isn’t even real. Like he’s just some hallucination I’m having from being so protein deficient.

But that, of course, is another misconception. I get all the protein I need from beans, avocados, fruits and nuts. I’m actually gaining
weight because I eat burritos filled with black beans, potatoes, spinach, onions, garlic, avocados and cashew cheese about 700 times a week.

I suck at being a vegan. I really do. I tried to make vegan lasagna and at once burned and overcooked it while forgetting half of the ingredients. A better name for that dish would be “Black, floppy noodles with some crusty red crap on top.”

Sometimes I feel so hungry and lazy that I’ll just lick almond butter off a spoon for lunch.

Also, I’m sort of a poser. I mean, sure, I love animals and I don’t want them to suffer, but I really want to be a vegan because I want to wear vegan themed clothing. Like, who doesn’t want to wear a shirt of a carrot riding a bike that says, “Go Vegan”?

I also want to be a vegan because people keep telling me not to be a vegan. If there’s one consistent motivator, it’s people telling me I can’t do things. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why I got kicked out of high school.

Anyway, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have a network of good vegan friends who are helping me—inspiring me to live cruelty-free.

As I sit here in my office, waiting for a student to come into my office hour, I’m writing this blog post and sipping my
–Wait, is this coffee vegan?!

*runs to bathroom*

*regurgitates latte into trash can*

Review by Josie Moody, Office Manager

Project Animal Farm by Sonia Faruqi is not an easy read, but it is an important one. It is painfully and necessarily graphic. There’s no way to sugarcoat the subject matter, and that’s why it is so powerful.

Project Animal Farm is a project Faruqi set about unintentionally after she lost her position as an Investment Banker during the American recession. After lots of reading during her time off, she decided to put her free time to good use by volunteering on an organic dairy farm in Canada. After reaching out to dozens of farms, only one agreed to take her on as a volunteer, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Rudely awakened from her fantasy of what life on a modern farm would be like, Faruqi is disturbed by the mistreatment of the animals at these operations and the apathy of the humans who work there. She then uses her connections and experience at the dairy farm to investigate if this is an isolated incident, or a widespread practice.

Unfortunately she finds the same horrors at the chicken, pork, turkey and veal operations she subsequently visits. By the books end, she has explored agribusiness in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. I have read books, visited websites and seen footage that exposes what happens on factory farms over the past four years, and was distressed to learn of more torturous practices she uncovers in this book that I had been previously unaware of.

Writes Faruqi, “I found that the pattern of factory farming everywhere follows the trajectory of the United States. Chickens and egg-laying hens are confined and commoditized first, followed by pigs, then by cows. It’s as if the industry starts with animals it considers least sentient first, then works its way up the ladder.”

At the end of the book she concludes,“The agriculture industry claims to be strong and healthy, but upon inspection one finds that he is not a vigorous young man bursting with life, but a paranoid and senile old man who lives in terror that any encounter with outsiders will spell his death.”

If you’re interested in reading it, you can buy it here: http://amzn.to/1Ygu5IU

By Toni Okamoto

Michelle and I snagged my family’s Costco card so we could show you all the vegan options they offer! As you can see in the video below, they have TONS of stuff! Everything from a wide selection of non-dairy milks, to animal crackers, Hodo Soy products, frozen foods, and much more.

Different Costco locations carry different products, but the Sacramento one was fantastic! Let us know in the comments below the best scores you’ve found!

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By Cynthia King, Guest Blogger and VO Supporter

How thrilling–more vegan food joints in New York! Terri‘s third location in Midtown East is a breath of fresh air–currently under some standard-issue NYC scaffolding. I went with my son on Wednesday last week, their second day up and running. The place was bright and bustling and the staff was warm and welcoming.

I dug right in to an amazing Kale Superfood salad, which was bursting with fresh kale, avocado, sweet potato, quinoa, chickpeas, and a thick yummy lemon tahini dressing. It was huge, filling, and delicious!

My son thoroughly enjoyed his Breakfast Scramble wrap, which was filled with scrambled tofu, Italian “sausage,” and Daiya Cheddar Style Shreds (he had them hold the spinach and hot sauce). He described the tofu as savory and fluffy–similar to the one at another of our regular vegan haunts, Champs in Brooklyn. The “sausage” was flavorful and the Daiya added great texture and taste.

We also tried the Protein Bowl and Southwestern salad, and they were both scrumptious. There was an assortment of cookies, brownies, and other vegan treats. We had Banana Walnut Bread for dessert, which was deliciously moist and sweet.

We look forward to returning soon for their famous Butterfinger Shake and Breakfast Slam. Being vegan is so simple, and with more incredible places like Terri’s to satisfy anyone’s appetite, there’s no reason for anyone to not go vegan! Remember, “Peace begins on our plates.”

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By Toni Okamoto

Oh my goodness! This place is amazing! The Butcher’s Son is the newest all-vegan restaurant in Berkeley, CA. They have a delicious house-made mozzarella, and it is absolutely perfect served fresh on the Caprese sandwich or on the Fried Mozzarella and Meatball sandwich.

Watch the video above for a sneak peek inside!

 

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By Toni Okamoto

Michelle Cehn from World of Vegan and I have started a new series called “What I Eat Vegan in a Day!” Episodes will usually contain quick meals that are easy to throw together, as well as what we order when we go out for food. In this episode, we start our morning at an all-vegan coffee shop in Oakland, CA called Timeless, and for lunch we made a Jackfruit Noodle Soup from the Vegan Outreach blog. We finished the day eating a vegetable soup from our favorite Japanese restaurant Cha-Ya, and of course we couldn’t forget dessert … heavenly Divvies cookies!

This particular video was made on a busy day where we ate out for two meals, but we plan on doing a lot more of these types of videos while we’re cooking in the kitchen!

Hope you find this series helpful and inspirational! As always, if you have any questions about vegan food, feel free to shoot me an e-mail: [email protected]!

This semester, Rachel Shippee has handed out 7,974 booklets at 15 different schools, and John Deetjen has traveled to 36 different campuses, handing out 5,480 booklets!

Above are John and Rachel after handing out 960 booklets at Northern Illinois University on April 11, which marked an Adopt a College milestone for Rachel:

We had a tough time with the wind and cold, so we tried leafleting inside the student union; it wasn’t very busy there but it’s a good option during extreme weather. They have tables set up too, which worked perfect for us.

Students here are always really nice and interested in the information.

Despite the weather, I was thrilled to hit my goal of 200K leaflets handed out! Hopefully many more to come.

On April 9, Rachel, John, and fellow activist Kevin Cooney (above) leafleted Wizard World Comic Con in Madison, WI:

Kevin, Rachel and I had a great day of activism in Madison! We reached 894 people with Vegan Outreach booklets at Comic Con and drew this for the #veganchalkchallenge!

Rachel, John, and Kevin traveled to Canada in January and joined John Sakars, Alex Greenwood, Anita Krajnc, and other activists at a Toronto Pig Save vigil outside a slaughterhouse in Burlington, Ontario (above). John reports:

During the time that we were there, we saw four full transport trucks with pigs. Talk about a moving and activism-motivational experience!

I leafleted cars that were stopped at the stoplight…people seemed very receptive and curious to learn why we were out there!

On February 17, John teamed with Thomas Goodman and first-time leafleter Amanda McCrary at the University of Wisconsin (above):

Huge day of veganizing Milwaukee! This crew reached 2,377 people with Vegan Outreach leaflets at UW Milwaukee and an additional 262 students at Riverside University High School! One student told us that getting a VO booklet is what made her and her family go vegan!

You can help more students and their families go vegan by taking part in VO’s Team Vegan campaign! Register for your own fundraising page and post a profile pic by May 20, and a generous donor will seed your campaign with $100! You can also help Rachel and other team members reach their fundraising goals, or make a donation to the general fund. All contributions up to $200,000 will be matched, inspiring twice as many people to go vegan and sparing twice as many animals from suffering!