Look into my "I's"

While I enjoyed writing the six-part Lenten series on vegan principles, I am glad it is over. Each entry required a lot of time, thought, and emotional energy as I paused to consider how I am living out each of the values of ahimsa. This reinforced but also challenged my convictions.

The week of "I is for INTEGRITY" was especially humbling as I found myself tripping over hypocrisy in my "non-vegan" life (way outside the realm of this blog). Caught in "the act", I was forced to face my blind spots and some inconsistencies in a few value-based choices. This revelation caused me to begin questioning the integrity in my "vegan life", especially the exceptions in my vegan diet. Do my "vegan exceptions" discredit my integrity and thus, mar my character? May be the time had come to eliminate all exceptions and fully live "animal free" in consistent integrity as a vegan. I needed to at least try.

As I have blogged, my exceptions are:
1. Dining out
2. Indian buffets
3. The "celebration dessert"
And of course... 4. Chocolate cake

During Lent, I dined out with my parent's for my mom's birthday. At the restaurant, I intentionally asked the wait staff to make my meal vegan. While Caesar salad was the standard for the restaurant, our server prepped a special salad for me with oil and vinegar. However, the "vegan pasta" I requested came with cheese sprinkled all over the top. I explained to her that "vegan" includes "no cheese", but rather than asking her to take it back, and thus wasting the food, I decided to keep it and tried to scrape off the melted cheese to no avail. I ended up eating the meal, but did not enjoy it as my intentional attempt to eat vegan while dining out failed.

Over Lent, I also went out with some friends, and each time, rather than dine at an Indian buffet, which typically serves North Indian cuisine, I intentionally requested we try South Indian cuisine, which tends to be vegan-friendly. I visited two different places: Annapoorna in San Mateo, and Dasaprakash in Santa Clara. In both instances, I specifically asked for vegan substitutions. Learning from the dining experience with my parents, and reading in a vegan resource about the need to be very specific, I explained to the wait staff what not to include in my thali. The server said he would switch out the curries, and in both restaurants, everything was delicious, though the food at Dasaprakash tended to feel "oiler". As I become more familiar with Southern Indian food, I hope to check these places out again and review them. Let me know if you'd like to check them out with me!

As a cake was cut at one celebration during Lent, I was asked point blank by the hostess, "You do eat this, don't you?" Not wanting to offend, I said, "Sure", and was handed a piece. As I headed to the kitchen to get soy milk to go with the basic white cake (which I really didn't want to eat), I soon discovered that other guests were choosing not to take a slice = "I'm too full." "I'm on a diet." I stood there with my cake thinking, "I'm on a diet too - a vegan diet. Why didn't I just say, 'No, but thank you'?"

During Lent, I also began playing around with my vegan chocolate cake recipe. I also began creating a few new recipes, which I will post in the coming weeks. I am discovering that I enjoy experimenting with vegan dishes, and learning about food. How to enhance chocolate flavors in vegan desserts is one current curiosity.

While I was able to uphold my vegan integrity in a few situations during Lent, I did "totally screw up", or at least, I felt like I had failed in others - all because of something I chose to eat! There were moments I felt really guilty, like I had been caught in some great trespass. I want to honor the Creator through my lifestyle, choices, and integrity, but there I am eating cake, which I didn't want, didn't need, but felt forced to take. Guilt.

In one of his sermons, 13th century Franciscan Anthony of Padua said,
"Do you want to carry God in your heart everyday? Look constantly at yourself. Where your eye is, there is your heart. Keep your eyes fixed constantly on yourself. I mention three items: your heart, your eye, yourself. God is in your heart, your heart is in your eye, your eye is in you. So, if you are looking at yourself, you are looking at God in you. Do you want to have God in your heart everyday? Then, be what God has created you to be. Do not look for another I in yourself. Do not try to be anything other than what God created you to be, and you will constantly have God in your heart." (emphasis added)

When guilt-ridden, I know that I am looking for the "other I in myself." The "other I" is "the perfect vegan", "the perfect Jesus follower", "the perfect student", "the perfect employee", "the perfect friend", "the perfect adult child of my parents". There is an ideal I have of myself, and when I do not live up to this ideal, I feel like a failure. My vegan "other I" wants me to feel bad about my blind spots, my exceptions, my lapses in judgment.

I might know of God's grace intellectually, but I'm stilling growing in my knowledge of God's grace experientially. The God I trust is the God of grace, the God who showed the full extent of divine love through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which we remembered just last week during Easter. I trust that God looks at me with love and compassion, especially as I strive to make the best vegan choices I can as I choose to gaze upon all that God has made with the same love and compassion God has for me. I am learning to live each day in that love, in that grace.

Guilt, I believe, comes from judgment based upon the verdict of a final result. Grace, on the other hand, comes from the assurance that all of life is a process as we carry God in our heart each day. As Anthony of Padua affirms, if I continually look at myself, I am looking at God in my heart. God created me as I am and blessed me with the gift of each day. As I carefully consider the choices I make, I do not need to "feel guity" because I live in grace, God's grace, even with my blind spots, even with lapses of integrity, even with my vegan exceptions.

For the love of chocolate cake

With the start of the new year, I officially passed the 6 month marker in my vegan journey. My decision to begin down this path was not motivated out of "necessity" (aka "poor health") but a desire to live in compassionate care for all that God has made. Every dining decision thus represents my commitment to live in harmony with creation. There are times my decisions reflect that commitment better than others. I call those non-vegan decisions my "exceptions". They are the handrails I initially placed along the edge of my planet-friendly plan.

While my exceptions are "non-vegan" indulgences, they do fall in the realm of a vegetarian diet as they are foods, which contain animal products like eggs, milk, butter, honey, and yogurt. I have 4 exceptions:
1. Dining out because (as I blogged last month) I don't like being the "high maintenance one" who comes with a laundry list of questions about what is in a vegetarian entry and how it is prepared.
2. Indian buffets because of the ghee (butter), cream, and other dairy additions in the dishes, especially my favorite, Saag Paneer. (I do however stay away from the meat entrees.)
3. The "celebration dessert" because when at a special occasion, like a birthday, it seems rude not to partake of the special dessert that has been prepared. And of course...
4. Chocolate cake because I developed a craving for it after losing weight, and now love indulging in a slice with a glass of cold (once cow, now soy) milk.

With holiday celebrations, travels to see family, dinners out, and other events with the obligatory cake, I've unfortunately made more "exception" decisions in the past few weeks than I've made in the past few months. In other words, I've had quite a few slices of chocolate cake.

I don't consider myself a "chocolate cake snob", because I will always give a piece a try (or a second try - we're talking Tower Cafe in Sacramento). However, I do have my preferences when it comes to the "perfect" chocolate cake. And when I say "cake", it also includes cupcakes, brownies, and other chocolate baked good.

My taste buds appreciate a dark, moist, subtly bittersweet chocolate cake, which is rich, but not overly dense, topped with a dark chocolate frosting which complements the simple beauty of the cake because it is the cake, not the frosting, that should be the star. I don't ask for much in my chocolate cake, really. Unfortunately, I have only tasted a few that measure up to my standards.

Though a friend has an excellent recipe from her sister, my favorite homemade chocolate cake was created by my godkids' aunt, who cut down the sugar in a recipe she had, played with some ingredients, adding yogurt for moisture. The cake is in a word, beautiful. Though she will often use store bought frosting, she once melted ganache chocolate for a homemade frosting. Oh my Jesus. It was beyond words. It was absolutely heavenly. One reason why chocolate cake is my exception.

When it comes to restaurant or store-made favorites, I have few, if any. Unfortunately, most restaurants have very little to blog about in terms of a good chocolate cake, and nearly all do not offer soy milk to accompany it. While some restaurants serve an excellent lava cake, most have a drier chocolate cake which is covered with a too sweet frosting, or a fruit filling which I do not like and will scrape off. (For me, it's really all about the chocolate.) If I had to choose a favorite restaurant chocolate cake, however, it would be the 6 layer Chocolate Chocolate Cake at Salt Grass Steak House (located primarily in the south and in Texas).

All the chocolate cakes I've really enjoyed have been "vegetarian", until this past Christmas. While all the other chocolate baked goods that have met my exacting standards have used animal products (eggs, milk, butter, cream, or yogurt), my cousin gave me a variety of VEGAN chocolate baked goods. It was THE best gift I received this year. Though my cousin bought them at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, they were made by Black China Bakery.

The vegan chocolate cupcake and brownies were simply excellent, beautiful -- dark, rich, moist, not overly sweet - heavenly - everything that I ask for in my chocolate baked goods, and more, in that no animals were exploited for my chocolate pleasure!

As I savor the last bites of my last vegan brownie and wash it all down with a glass of cold soy milk, I am rather sad as I finish up this blog. I am not sure when I will indulge in vegan chocolate baked goods again. Sigh. Too bad there's no home delivery up here in the mountains.