M. Suzanne Terry

Much of my life and many of my life decisions seem to revolve around food.

Every new year, I have at least one food-related resolution.  Sometimes, it’s to try new recipes (or a hundred).  This year, it’s to embrace my love of feeding people (i.e., do it more often).

I became a Pampered Chef consultant primarily to get a discount on cooking paraphernalia.

My favorite memoirs are foodie memoirs.  I have a specific portion of a bookshelf dedicated solely to this genre.

My favorite memories take place in a kitchen or around a table (if you count my coffee table, where most meals eaten and shared throughout my adult life have taken place).

When I am planning a vacation, I base decisions on where and what we will be eating.

When people ask what I am planning to do on the weekend (or ask what I did), I hear, “What are you having for dinner this weekend?”

Food, particularly as it relates to people, how it affects them, and the stories they tell about it, is important to me.

I am going vegan for Lent.  I have been moving toward a more vegan lifestyle for a while.  And I think that Lent will be a good time to give it a real test run.

I have many reasons and thoughts on this.  I am hoping to share some of them throughout the season.  Confession – part of my reason for doing it during Lent is cowardice.  I’m not even vegan yet – I’m vegan…ish – and people already give me so much crap about it.  It really makes them angry.  I don’t understand.  I’m not asking THEM to go vegan (although when they complain of health problems, such as high blood pressure and asthma, I’m tempted to draw certain parallels). Still they lecture me.

But when they hear that it’s something I’m doing for Lent, they suspend their judgments long enough to actually listen to me tell them why.  I’m not sure if it’s the thought that it’s temporary or for God that wins them over, but I’ll take it.   Forty days of why.

I’m not promising to stay vegan after Easter.  It’s a possibility, though.  The evidence in favor of it is overwhelming, and when personal experience and evidence collide, habit’s voice gets weaker and weaker.