Politics

Amok Mama: Embracing veganity

Jacinta Nandi is embracing veganity but she has to use all her eggs and milk and Panir-Käse up first

So, guess what? I’ve decided to become vegan, but very, very, very slowly. I’m going to do it very sloooooooooooooooooooooowly and without stressing myself out one little bit. I still have loads of eggs and butter and Panir-Käse to use up from before Christmas and the eggs are even Bodenhaltung eggs (I’d sent my son to Lidl and stupidly said he could keep the change and so he bought the cheapest eggs he could find so he would have more money for chocolates and sweeties, the little imp, so Bodenhaltung eggs it was). So I am easing myself in slowly and just cooking and eating vegan recipes but using all my eggs up and soon I am going to go PROPERLY VEGAN. But I am shitting myself. I’m especially worried about the tea. Tea with milk. I have to drink tea with milk in it – I am from England, after all – and tea with soya milk in it tastes kind of woody, doesn’t it? Woody with a hint of vomit. So you know. I’m in the Übergangsphase is what I’m saying.

I told my German friend Luise about my veganistic dilemma. 

“I want to become a vegan,” I said.

“Do you?” She asked, somewhat surprised. “I don’t think I could be a vegan. A vegetarian, for sure – to be honest, that would be quite easy. I could be vegetarian. But a vegan? No more cheese? No more yoghurt? No more omelettes?”

“No more omelettes,” I repeated, sighing sadly. “But, Lu, it’s not the omelettes. It’s the tea. Tea with milk. I love having a cup of PG Tips with milk in the morning. My whole body floods with relief. I can feel the lovely tea flowing through my veins, flooding me with relief and calm and normalness. I can literally feel every single blood cell relaxing as it gets filled up with the delicious yummy milky tea. And tea with soya milk in it tastes kind of like wooden vomit, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” she said.

“It isn’t?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Drink your tea with orange juice in it instead. It tastes exactly the same.”

I looked at her, totally aghast. Fuck me with a screwdriver, I thought, I really do know some sick bastards. I really fucking do. I am also, for example, friends with a gay bloke who once had sex with a kind of Nazi-type person and they kind of did a weird Nazi role-play-type-thing, but orange juice in your tea, that really takes the biscuit. That’s just really disgusting and wrong.

So wish me luck with my veganity, people. I am going to need it. The book that inspired me to go vegan was Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows by Melissa Joy. You should all read it, although you will have to become vegan afterwards and put orange juice in your fucking tea, so maybe you shouldn’t. It is, as they say, a real eye-opener. Really it should be sold in aluminium foil with the words TRIGGER WARNING stamped all over it. There’s a bit about a piglet getting its eye carved out which I literally never want to read again for the rest of my life – it has upset me as much as that film about the Roma in Hungary that won the Berlinale a few years back. The whole book is just really upsetting and when I had finished it I just put it down and knew she was right and that I had always known it was true: we’re not meant to eat meat and animal products like we have been doing. We’re not. It’s not meant to be. I will probably only last as a vegan for two weeks, I admit that – but that doesn’t mean that we’re meant to eat meat like this, because we’re blatantly not.

So, wish me luck, people! I’m trying my best. I’m going to try my best. I’m literally crapping myself but also quite happy and excited. Look at these delicious burgers I am slowly working my way through. Wish me luck! And post me your yummy vegan recipes and tips about milk for tea substitutes and burger binding materials down below. I’m such a beginner. I need all the help I can get, basically.