Documenting our vegan journey

One of the benefits of a weekly personal blog is that it acts as a kind of online diary, so it’s easy to go through the entries and track progress. On the one hand, it feels as if we have been vegan forever, but on the other hand, we’re well aware that we were meat-eaters for a long time and that we’re relatively new to the vegan lifestyle. It is one of our greatest regrets. But, I’m never really sure when the change occurred. I never thought to actually note down the date, if there was one, not realising what a life-changing move it would be.

Looking back, in January 2016 I described ourselves as ‘low profile vegetarians’ or vegetarien à la maison, and I was bemoaning the fact that France was 20 years behind. Things have improved since then, and we don’t care about upsetting the carnies any more. Of course, I did follow a virtually vegetarian diet back in the late 1990s, and even did courses at the Vegetarian Society Cookery School, but as I’ve since read, vegetarianism is not vegan, and does not enable you to make the same mental connections. No wonder, then, that I eventually returned to eating some meat, even if not on the scale of many carnies.

We moved to France permanently in 2013 and initially tried to embrace the local culture, eating out at cheap relais and shopping on the markets. But this was short-lived. I was posting vegetarian recipes back in September 2015, and even when we lived in the UK we did not eat a great deal of meat, certainly not every day. Looking back, I can’t understand why we didn’t make the connections. Well, actually I can understand – I wrote about it a few weeks ago. The last time I posted a recipe containing meat was July 2016 when we were travelling in Spain. We’ll be going again soon, so it will be interesting to see how things have changed. It looks like the seeds of veganism were planted much earlier in the year. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when, but by August 2016 I was making vegan pesto, had tracked down quinoa and we’d tried tofu.

By October 2016 we’d totally eliminated dairy products from our diet, leaving just eggs (free range, from our neighbour). By the 2017 New Year we were pretty much vegan, and I was looking at expanding it into other lifestyle areas. Although I was still using free-range eggs for Twilight baking. In fact, this year, 2019, was the first year that I made all of their open day cakes with vegan recipes.

On 23 July 2017 the blog title recorded, “Going Vegan; the final push”. Why? We’d just watched ‘What the Health’. Since then, we’ve watched many more vegan documentaries, I’ve read The China Study a couple of times, and I’m steadily building a vegan library. I’ve also done an online vegan nutrition course and, of course, developed the Vivez Vegan website. We’e come a long way and now every decision e make, about eating, purchases or activities, is viewed from the perspective of veganism.  It’s good to look back on the journey, so I’m counting 23 July 2017 as our vegan birthday ~ we’ve made two full years so far. There’s no turning back now. As John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution, says, “Once you know, you can never forget.”