The Meat and Potatoes Vegan

I used to be a real meat-and-potatoes person. Now I'm just potatoes.

When I launched myself into a plant-based, whole foods diet in April, it felt like jumping off a cliff, abandoning my friendly staple foods, fearful because I needed to learn a whole new way of eating. Like a toddler in a non-childproof house, all my psyche heard for weeks was "No. No. No. No! Get off that! Don't touch that! Get out of there." I entered upon what was for me a very steep learning curve.

I used to be an excellent cook for things like chicken and dumplings. Your basic meat and potatoes fare. So I started checking out vegan cookbooks in the library: The Asian Vegan, The Vegan Mediterranean Diet, Vegans Go to School, that sort of thing. My library fines have gone way up as I stare at the lists of ingredients in bafflement. There are literally hundreds of cooking ingredients I have never heard of, new staples in each type of cuisine that I really have no idea where to obtain.

My husband is a lifelong vegetarian and his favorite food is rice and lentils. I haven't even seen that in a cookbook. It's too easy.

I just mainly shop at Fred Meyer. About five hundred square feet in the corner of Fred Meyers is devoted to health foods, right next to the produce section, where I buy ninety percent of the foods I eat. I can get whole wheat bread without that horrible caramel coloring or raisin juice that is often used to give bread a uniform fake brown color and unpleasant flavor. I can get all you can eat nuts, seeds, dried fruits, quinoa, oats, and so forth from the bins. I can get freshly ground peanut butter and Mori-Nu tofu and Silk plain soy milk in aseptic packaging.

But I don't know where to get all these weird foods. I guess I'll learn, like I've learned everything else, step by step. In the meantime, there's always rice and lentils. And potatoes.