Breakfast with Gloria

You can learn a lot about a person from the foods they eat.

I’m in Durham, North Carolina, having breakfast with my cousin Gloria. She’s brought me to a farm-to-table concept restaurant “where omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, plant-based diets and gluten-free diets” can sit down together and share a meal. At least, that’s what their website says. As a vegan, I’ll usually check out a restaurant’s menu before visiting. Gloria discovered this particular restaurant while searching online herself for a place that would accommodate both our diets. Not that Gloria is vegan. She’s not even a vegetarian and gluten is one of her best friends. Instead, Gloria is, as she puts it, an unapologetic meat eater — as are both my sons, even if one of them actively denies it.

On the one hand, Liam, my 15-year-old, is an exemplary omnivore. He doesn’t care if his dinner was raised by its mother or picked from a vine or manufactured in a factory or certified kosher (we’re Jewish). He will happily cram all manner of edibles into his big teenaged piehole, chew, and swallow — everything from a hearty slab of juicy beef brisket, smoky and fall-apart tender, which melts on your tongue, to fistfuls of processed veggie nuggets, microwaved and paired with a side of artificially-flavoured ketchup potato chips. He’s easily satisfied and never complains.

On the other hand, Liam’s delectation for all things digestible lends itself to the consumption of more questionable delicacies. This includes a used urinal cake, which was kicked about the junior high school boys’ bathroom before eventually settling into a corner to collect a week’s worth of dirt and dust. Still, I should point out that Liam only ate the urinal cake on a dare — and even then, he admits only to licking it.

Liam’s 13-year-old brother, DJ, on the other hand, has cultivated a more discerning palette, particularly with regard to eating animals. That’s because DJ is a vegetarian. Rather, DJ claims to be a vegetarian because southern-style chicken — brined in buttermilk, dredged and coated in an eggy batter, then deep-fried to a golden, crispy crunch — is his number one pick at mealtime. Just thinking about it causes saliva to drip from his mouth. In fact, DJ will devour an entire plateful of chicken, joyfully and wholeheartedly, until each sliver of flesh has been chomped, nibbled, and sucked free from every bone. Additional culinary favourites he enjoys include shrimp, pepperoni pizza, and bacon cheeseburgers. None of these items are vegetarian — or kosher for that matter.

Ironically, DJ usually asserts his vegetarianism just before sinking his incisors into something that once had a face — although sometimes he’ll wait until afterward. Like, for example, the occasion when he was invited to dinner at his friend Ethan’s house. As soon as DJ had scarfed down a heaping serving of meatloaf (which contained ground pork), he informed Ethan’s mother that he practiced a strictly meat-free lifestyle. I know this because, directly following the incident, she called and told me about it. She felt terrible for serving a dish that violated my youngest son’s stringent dietary observance. But for DJ, I explained to her, claiming to be a vegetarian is far more important than actually being one. I chuckled and smiled. She sighed with relief. Life was good — though, admittedly, I was a bit upset that DJ ate pork.

In reality, our family is fairly relaxed when it comes to personal eating preferences — genuine or otherwise — and that’s probably due to our individual and varied diets. While Liam will eat practically anything that crosses his plate — or, presumably, crawls out from beneath it — and DJ the “vegetarian” has yet to meet a farm animal he doesn’t want in his belly, my husband, Les, is gluten-intolerant and an especially picky eater. A few of his dietary restrictions include: wheat, rye, barley, avocado, mango, olives, capers, pickles, sauerkraut and any other fermented vegetable, mushrooms, eggplant, raw tomatoes (except for salsa), shallots, cream cheese, sour cream, bleu cheese, or any other soft or “stinky” cheese, mustard, mayonnaise, fish, shellfish, chicken, turkey, duck, lamb, pork (except bacon, naturally), and any meat that’s served while still attached to a bone. Les also shuns all salad dressings, sauces, and gravies, as well as savoury courses that incorporate a sweet or fruity ingredient, such as a pasta dish finished off with a squeeze of fresh lemon or oven-roasted chicken with red grapes — which, by the way, has always sounded exceptionally delicious to me. Nonetheless, this isn’t to say that Les refuses to try or retry different kinds of foods. Since we were married ten years ago, he will now eat onions — just as long as they’re grilled or fried, not raw.

As for myself, as I’ve already mentioned, I’m a vegan. Except, technically, I’m not.

I don’t mean I’m “not a vegan” in the same sense that DJ isn’t a vegetarian. Strictly speaking, however, veganism doesn’t allow for the human use of any type of food, product, or practice that derives from or involves an animal. This includes animal products such as milk from a cow, an egg from a chicken, or honey from a bee—and yes, insects are considered animals. It also means that wool, silk, and leather are listed on the no-no list too, as well as most cosmetics, horseback riding, and scientific research that utilizes animal experimentation. I, on the other hand, add half a tablespoon of honey to my overnight oats and have been known to add a drop or two of cream to my coffee if caught in a bind.

I commit other infractions too.

I try to ensure my makeup and toiletries don’t contain animal ingredients and aren’t tested on animals, but I slather Dove antiperspirant under my arms because it’s the only deodorant I've found that controls my stink and doesn’t make my pits break out. The new winter jacket I purchased last year was constructed out of synthetic materials and is specifically labeled “vegan” and “cruelty-free,” but I also own a pair of Blundstones, a popular brand of leather boots that are standard-issue, winter footwear in the Canadian coastal province where I reside. And, while I’ll carefully scoop up a bee that’s flown into our house, gently carry it outside, and release it back into the wild, I’ll slap at a bloodthirsty mosquito with reckless abandon. I even have a reputation among family and friends for sliding on and off the vegan bandwagon every couple of months to indulge in a slice of cheese pizza or the occasional, all-beef (albeit kosher) hot dog.

So, maybe I’m not as much a vegan as I am a hypocrite. But I want to be a vegan and I try to be a vegan because I don’t want to be responsible for something dying just because I think it tastes yummy or looks chic when I slip it on. I don’t want to cause anything to feel pain or discomfort. I don’t want to take a life.

I believe that every living thing, including plants, has a soul — and not some mystical spirit that sits around in one’s body, disjointedly, and then floats off to heaven once you drop dead. Rather, a spark, a life force, that thing which, inarguably, goes dull, fades, then shuts off completely when someone or something you love dies. Like, for instance, when my 20-year-old orange tabby — who was riddled with arthritis and couldn’t shit inside his litter box anymore — was murdered. I mean, I know the actual term is “euthanized,” but, honestly, isn’t it the same thing? This was the cat who annoyed me as much as he made me happy, who’d stuck by me while I was still living as a guy and even after I came out as a woman. He never judged, and he always trusted me to do right by him. That’s why, even as the veterinarian inserted the needle and sent pentobarbital coursing through his veins, he continued to purr happily, cradled in my arms, never suspecting a thing.

More than a year later, I still try to convince myself that my cat was too worn out by age and sickness to comfortably survive the 27-hour drive from Wisconsin to Nova Scotia that my family endured because, collectively, we were too trans, too Black, too Latino, too disabled, and too Jewish to continue living in the United States of America. To think otherwise would be unforgivable.

That’s why I want to be vegan. If I’m not strong enough, physically or emotionally, to kill something myself, then I certainly shouldn’t eat it or wear it. Besides, let’s talk about my breakfast with Gloria.

'Breakfast with Gloria' © 2018 Leith Angel