i know a lot of vegans who have been vegan for ten, twenty, thirty years. it requires a lot of commitment and dedication at first, but once you've done it for a few years, it becomes second nature the same way being vegetarian or eating meat seems.
for me personally, i had a really difficult time making the transition from being vegetarian to being vegan (compounded by the fact that i had a difficult time with becoming a vegetarian, compounded by extreme untreated anorexia & other eating disorders), but i ended up working part-time for several years at a vegan restaurant, where i ate most of my meals, and had vegan roommates who cooked a lot and made sure i always had something to eat.
once my vegan roommates moved out and i stopped working at the restaurant, i ate extremely poorly. my own fault for being an idiot (in case you're wondering, steamed spinach & pasta w/marinara sauce for supper every single night, and green salad & soy yogurt for lunch every day is not a healthy diet; who knew?) but i ended up getting sick quite a lot in a four month period, and also feeling resentful of the (self-imposed!!) restrictions on what i could eat, and backsliding into the extreme disordered eating behavior. (plus, at this point in my life, i was switching up my psych meds a lot, which wreaked havoc with my taste buds and sense of fullness after eating, etc.)
eventually, i ended up going back to being ovo-lacto vegetarian because it was easier and made me feel better. (i broke my veg in the middle of the jet blue terminal in the jfk airport at, like, six in the morning one day; i was leaving for a business trip, staring longingly at the dunkin' donuts kiosk when i suddenly realized that i could have a fucking doughnut if i wanted one. that first bite of the powdered sugar-covered chocolate frosting-filled doughnut to this day remains one of my all time favorite memories.)
the ethics of veganism were -- still are! -- important to me, but i had to put my health (mental, mostly, but physical too!) before all of that. so probably i am not the best person to give you information on long term veganism.
buuuuut, for whatever it is worth, like i said, i have a lot of friends who have made a long term commitment to veganism who are really happy and healthy and cook a lot of really delicious food. one of my friends specializes in making candy analogs -- back in, like, 2004, she made a vegan twix bar. it was incredible!
.....separately, you might be extremely disappointed with vegan mornay sauce, because vegan cheese in large amounts is pretty gross. i never got used to it or ate it in any quantity. but the restaurant where i worked made several different types of cheez sauces -- none of which were a traditional mornay. for one we used rice cheese; for the other we used nutritional yeast (which is pretty good, esp on popcorn).
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ninetydegrees
warning: could be triggery for eating disorder issues
on 2010-05-04 06:48 am (UTC)for me personally, i had a really difficult time making the transition from being vegetarian to being vegan (compounded by the fact that i had a difficult time with becoming a vegetarian, compounded by extreme untreated anorexia & other eating disorders), but i ended up working part-time for several years at a vegan restaurant, where i ate most of my meals, and had vegan roommates who cooked a lot and made sure i always had something to eat.
once my vegan roommates moved out and i stopped working at the restaurant, i ate extremely poorly. my own fault for being an idiot (in case you're wondering, steamed spinach & pasta w/marinara sauce for supper every single night, and green salad & soy yogurt for lunch every day is not a healthy diet; who knew?) but i ended up getting sick quite a lot in a four month period, and also feeling resentful of the (self-imposed!!) restrictions on what i could eat, and backsliding into the extreme disordered eating behavior. (plus, at this point in my life, i was switching up my psych meds a lot, which wreaked havoc with my taste buds and sense of fullness after eating, etc.)
eventually, i ended up going back to being ovo-lacto vegetarian because it was easier and made me feel better. (i broke my veg in the middle of the jet blue terminal in the jfk airport at, like, six in the morning one day; i was leaving for a business trip, staring longingly at the dunkin' donuts kiosk when i suddenly realized that i could have a fucking doughnut if i wanted one. that first bite of the powdered sugar-covered chocolate frosting-filled doughnut to this day remains one of my all time favorite memories.)
the ethics of veganism were -- still are! -- important to me, but i had to put my health (mental, mostly, but physical too!) before all of that. so probably i am not the best person to give you information on long term veganism.
buuuuut, for whatever it is worth, like i said, i have a lot of friends who have made a long term commitment to veganism who are really happy and healthy and cook a lot of really delicious food. one of my friends specializes in making candy analogs -- back in, like, 2004, she made a vegan twix bar. it was incredible!
.....separately, you might be extremely disappointed with vegan mornay sauce, because vegan cheese in large amounts is pretty gross. i never got used to it or ate it in any quantity. but the restaurant where i worked made several different types of cheez sauces -- none of which were a traditional mornay. for one we used rice cheese; for the other we used nutritional yeast (which is pretty good, esp on popcorn).
i suggest that instead of diving right into vegan mornay, try this recipe for a nutritional yeast-based sauce from the post punk kitchen.