Vegan Memories

I've been listening to clips from Walt Mink's "Bareback Ride," an album that I used to own when I first moved to Columbus, on the amazon website. When that first clip started, I swear I could smell my old apartment, the first and only one I've ever had all to myself. What did it smell like? Like hippie cleansers: I would wash the floors with Dr. Bronners (did I spell that right?) all-purpose soap, whose label was covered in slightly unnerving new-age christian truisms in tiny lettering. To that I would add a variety of essential oils and herbs for spiritual protection and purity: menthol for sexual restraint, cedar and lavendar for protection, vetiver to inspire feelings of love. I'd wash the floors by getting on my hands and knees, the way my mother did it, the way the hare krsna's did it when I lived with them, and the way that seems most natural to me. I try to use the mop-type thing that my current roommate owns, and I can never figure out what it is that I'm supposed to do with it. I'd wash the walls too, at my old apartment. My place wasn't always clean, but when it was clean it was really clean.

I was a vegan then, and so I'd have to be cooking constantly: it's really hard to go out and get real vegan food take out, unless you want to eat ethiopian food every day, and even that is of dubious vegan-ness. I'd cook large pots of chickpeas with potatoes and tomatoes, which I'd bring to work everyday in a tuperware container. I'd get hearty, whole-wheat, yeast-free bread, with it's tangy sour flavour and chewy goodness, and sop up the chile-spiced tomato sauce with that. Or else I'd eat lentil soup, or black bean soup, or tofu strips marinated in soy sauce and brown rice vinegar, coated and with nutritional yeast and fried crisp to make the best sandwhich filling ever.

My favorite thing to make was biscuits. I'd make whole wheat biscuits that were decadant, so soft of the inside, which just a little bit of crispiness on the outside. I'd snatch one immediately when it was done cooking, slather it with margarine and a heaping helping of 100% fruit spread ('cause I didn't eat refined sugars at that time either) and put the warm, sweet doughiness into my mouth when it was still too hot. It would fill my stomach better than anything else I made, and I'd eat three or four in one sitting. I don't think I have the recipe for them any more. Anyway, now that I'm used to having plenty of dairy in my biscuits (never homemade anymore: always at a restaurant) I don't think I would find the vegan ones to be so decadant.

You know, I was really miserable during that time of my life. My mental illness seemed worse then than it ever did before. Still, there were some things that were really good, and that I wouldn't mind having back again.