Vegetarianism

Celebrity chef John Mountain made headlines last week for banning vegans from his restaurant, Fyre, citing “mental health reasons,” reportedly because a vegan customer complained about Fyre’s lack of plant-based menu options. Meanwhile, a vegan landlord in New York City forbids tenants from cooking meat in his $5,750-a-month apartments. What’s the deal with vegans? Are they all self-obsessed, birdseed-eating eco-warriors who are only able to wash down “cheese” made of arrowroot with a massive dose of ego? Or are they disciplined, clean-living champions whose commitment to the cause merits our admiration and imitation? Had you asked me my opinion of vegans a few years ago, I would have scoffed and made a soy boy joke.

Heidi Swanson started her vegetarian food blog, 101 Cookbooks, in 2003. At the time, the Atkins Diet was sweeping the nation, even as schoolchildren still learned the carb-heavy Food Pyramid. It would take another year for a landmark study to link high-fructose corn syrup to the obesity epidemic, and another fifteen for the FDA to ban trans fats. Back then, granola was for tree-huggers, like organic produce, Whole Foods Markets and the Pacific Northwest. Times have changed. These days, everyone outside the Lion Diet community agrees that a plant-based diet is best, preferably free of hormones and artificial sweeteners. 101 Cookbooks is still active and popular, if less countercultural than at its inception.

My jar of vegan flaczki has been eyeing me for the last four months. It sits in my fridge, large, round and imposing, filled with a lumpy gray mixture. Flaczki is tripe soup, a traditional Polish concoction of broth, herbs, spices, vegetables and guts. Poles adore the stuff. It is warming and hearty. An unimpressed friend once described it as ‘elastic-band stew’. My vegan flaczki contains mushrooms instead of tripe. I bought it for a lark. My Polish friends thought it funny that a modern, progressive twist was being put on a firmly traditional dish. I am a vegetarian, but every time I think about eating my vegan flaczki, I think again. Traditional Polish food is warm, rich and meaty. Roulada, for example, is a meat roll stuffed with, among other things, more meat.