Here’s a post about a veganish salad I made in Olathe Kansas, with ingredients from the Whole Foods in Brookside Kansas Missouri USA.
The salad is the Asian inspired salad kit from the Whole Foods in Brookside, it was the only salad kit out of about a dozen that I saw there, which seem to be completely free of animal products. The same thing is true when I go looking for salad kits in San Francisco California USA. Nearly all of the salad kids are going to have dairy products or honey or eggs in the salad dressing. What’s more, most of them will have cheese, at least, and some of them will have hard boiled eggs, chicken, bacon, or ham, or other meats mixed in there.
I also included the micro broccoli and micro rainbow mix from the Brookside Whole Foods, along with sliced up leftovers of the Quorn meatless Turkey roast. I was thinking this was an all vegan salad, but … while writing this, I remembered that the Quorn meatless turkey roast actually has egg whites and dairy products in the ingredients. Likely it was a 99% plus vegan salad, if you go by volume. Definitely it was “big picture vegan,” meaning: no obvious animal products.
This was such a tasty salad. I had it for lunch. I was going to drive 90 minutes each way or three hours round-trip to go meet up with some friends and go to a small town Christmas parade, so I needed some food before I left.
Here in the USA, there’s a lot of “poor me” going on, people in the Midwest, for example, complaining that they don’t have any vegan options available because of where they live. “Oh poor me, I can’t eat vegetarian meals because I don’t have lots of vegan or vegetarian options like what you’ve got out there in California.”
Or or you have the opppsite, some kind of don’t tread on me, PRIDE thing: people who say “Well, this is Missouri, WE like to eat meat. so if you want vegetarian options, you’re out of luck.”
It’s pretty bizarre because of course, there are lots of people born and raised in Missouri as vegans or vegetarians. They are vegetarian restaurants in Missouri run by people who are vegetarian. One person told me something like this, even though her own daughter, living in Kansas City Missouri, was Vegetarian and was already in her mid-20s. The woman clearly knew that her daughter existed and was a vegetarian.
Also, the “poor me” people don’t realize that in California, it’s actually pretty uncommon to find vegan or vegetarian options unless you’re talking about something like cheese pizza. Go to any McDonald’s or Kentucky fried chicken or Jack in the box and you’re pretty much out of luck unless you want french fries. Of course, the french fries at McDonald’s aren’t vegetarian either. McDonald’s doesn’t make special vegetarian french fries for its restaurants “out in California.” LOL
There are certain things like mangoes, which I have found to be very hard to find in good condition in Kansas City and which are quite easy to find, here in the San Francisco mission district. Why that is, I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that in other parts of California you’re also out of luck when looking for a good mango. That being said, I doubt that mangoes are more commonly eaten by Vegans and Vegetarians versus meat eaters. People have this bizarre convoluted idea that Vegans and Vegetarians are all over the place out here in California but really, they aren’t.
Anyway, my point is that here in San Francisco California USA, where I normally am, it’s actually not mainstream or easy to get vegan and vegetarian options. You have to know where to go. You have to go to specific places because the mainstream regular places do not cater to Vegans or Vegetarians at all unless you’re just looking for something like cheese pizza.
You know that Britney Spears song from a long time ago, work bitch? Yes, if you want good food, and if you want it to be vegan and/or vegetarian food which is far from the mainstream, wherever you go in the USA, you gotta work for it. It’s not just going to fall into your lap.
This lunch I made for myself, before going to the parade in small town Missouri, was freaking fantastic, but I had to take the effort to go to a grocery store, buy the food (it was EXPENSIVE), and bring it with me and pack it up to the various places where I was going to be visiting and staying overnight. Then I was taking up space in the refrigerator and they didn’t always have a lot of space in the refrigerator wherever I was going. Yes, it would’ve been easier to just go with the flow and eat whatever other people were eating instead of bringing my own stuff.
Like the song says, “you gotta work, bitch.” It’s for real! Don’t expect that all of these good things to fall in your lap. You have to set things up and plan for it and make it happen. Even then, you might get derailed along the way and it doesn’t happen. Oh well! But it’s not going to happen at all unless you try.
By the way, my food was expensive for grocery store food, but it was a lot cheaper than eating out at a restaurant. I know a lot of people who go for takeout and eat out at restaurants all the time, but I don’t do that very much because I’d rather get quick and easy food like this from the grocery store which is expensive for grocery store food but a lot cheaper than eating out and actually less effort for me than eating out because I can just keep it in the refrigerator and make it whenever I need it rather than having to go somewhere.
Yes, a lot of people do meal delivery services for take out from restaurants, so they don’t have to leave the house, I don’t do those because they are very expensive and like I said, it’s just as easy for me to buy convenience foods from the grocery store; then I don’t even have to wait for a delivery person to drop the food off for me.
And … my point about saying “you gotta work, bitch,” isn’t to “shame people” into doing more work. The whole thing about “ish” is that you can do whatever you want, make life as easy for you as you want. My point is that if you are sitting there saying “Poor me, these other people have mostly vegan salads, and I don’t,” just remember: they had to pay extra money for it, they had to spend extra time, put in extra effort, etc, generally speaking, to get it. Until vegan/vegetarian food becomes mainstream in the USA, people in the USA don’t have a cake walk finding vegan/vegetarian foods all the time. Sure, sometimes a vegan/vegetarian option is easier and cheaper, but not consistently. In fact, from my experience, generally speaking in the USA, the opposite is true.
So yes, I do eat nearly all vegan/vegetarian food 365 days out of the year, and yes, I do work for it. The kind of food I want to eat (vegan food that is at least “big picture vegan”) doesn’t just fall into my lap.
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