My vegan diet is now in its third month. No sense of hardship as long as I mix everything with chilli and garlic. I’ve had lapses in restaurants when there didn’t seem anything, my way, to eat. Not wanting to sit like a spectre, I’ve gone for a bit of fish or mussels with the pasta.

I prefer to eat as I go. My current passion is hummus: a can of chick peas – organic, ça va sans dire – a glob of tahini, garlic – too much, olive oil and lemon juice. Shove it all in the blender and indulge with pitta bread or broccoli florets. Best eaten in the garden, particularly if the weather’s bad. And now I buy the almost very best olive oil and balsamic vinegar – transforming agents for any chomping crop.

I’m not like my hero J.M.Coetzee who says he’s no desire to put dismembered bits of the corpses of creatures in his mouth. (I paraphrase, his words were both more eloquent and startling.) I can still dream of lamb stew with onions and creamy mashed potato. But I’m tired of living with the division between what I think and what I do. I don’t want anything to die or suffer to feed me and I entirely dislike how we treat animals. So that’s why I’m on the bean wagon.

Morning coffee was a difficult adjustment. In another life my fetishistic rite was to heat the milk to precisely the right temperature. Now I drink a tiny cup – thin white porcelain - of black arabica. It’s the size and sight of the cup that makes it ok.

Tip of the day: before your morning cold shower and birch twig flagellation, put a drop or two of rosewater in your porridge made with tap water. Sing ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ as you stir in fruit and nuts and lace with honey. Live for ever and let live, I say.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 11:40 am and is filed under At home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.