I eat things like seitan stroganoff with soy sour cream (YUMMMM) and seitan “beef” stew with lots of starchy veggies and vegan gravy (topped with sweet peas!). They are so much better for me, nutrition-wise, then the recipes of my mum’s that I’m basing them off. But, I STILL feel “bad” and “naughty” when I eat them. Even when they are organic, vegan, and full of whole grains. The hell?

With that social programming (and a skinny, diet obsessed mom!), you just can’t win. But I’m getting better and felt about 10% less guilt the last time I heaped my plate with seitan, mushrooms, onions, and soy sour cream sauce over whole wheat noodles. And that’s a step in the right direction. :)

Also, the poster who was tearing up over rice and beans reminded me of another time I had just moved. I moved to the UK for school and was terribly homesick for the first month. I streached my student budget to get fresh lettuce and balsamic vinegar. That night I ate a salad that made me cry because it tasted like I was home in California.

So right! And I’m glad I’m not alone in occasionally being driven to tears by restaurants. I don’t have a good reason like an allergy, though.

This particular pizza place hasn’t changed the recipe since I was a kid, they don’t deliver and it’s just exactly what I want every once in a while. It feels like home and it was so nice to have that as an acceptable food from my mom, like “I’ll be there at 1 and we’re probably not having dinner until 5ish, so pizza would be nice so we’re not crabby and deprived and we can enjoy it together.”

Love you, mom.

Other comfort foods:

Pasta with Sunday gravy
Soft shell crabs
Meatloaf
Kielbasa and sauerkraut
Nilla wafers and jello

When I’m sick all I can ever think of is Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup and Gatorade. It’s like my body wants as much salt as it can possibly ingest in a short period of time.

But knowing that I can get totally reliable food, food where I know what it tastes like and I know it’s available, food with no surprises — that’s very comforting to me.

This is emphatically the most important thing to me when it comes to food. I have severe nut/soy allergies and I tend to get a little panicky when presented with something unfamilliar, to the point of occasionally leaving restaurants in tears, whether from lack of information from or confidence in the staff or my own paranoia. Comfort is about a lack of stress from food, even if that sometimes makes it a little boring by other peoples’ standards.

I think that equating comfort food with “bad” food is a travesty. I may have had my issues with emotional eating, but emotionless eating doesn’t seem like a good idea, either….

We stopped at a local bakery on the way to my in-laws on Saturday and I got 2 lovely plain cake donuts (no glaze–a pox on glazed cake donuts IMO; though cinnamon sugar is OK but not necessary) to have with my coffee. I think I could eat this breakfast every day for a very long time without getting tired of it. Yummy.

I might need to start another photo project just of fat vegans.

i’m so into it! though i think last time i weighed myself i fell into the ‘normal’ range, which is so incredibly weird, but i totally don’t fit the skinny vegan stereotype, my thighs still flap in the breeze and whatnot. whatever yo, vegan cookies for the win.

anyway, my comfort foods tend to fluctuate, depending on where i am, why i need comfort, and what my body’s asking for at the moment. right now it’s ginger kombucha, some ricemilk chocolate, and a plain old veggie sandwich. after i got my wrist tattoo touched up (aka most painful experience ever), i had a fauxbeef-veggie stirfry thing and the most amazing chocolate-caramel cake creation ever from the vegan thai place down the street. when i got hopelessly lost trying to visit a friend a few cities away and ended up walking miles in the wrong direction, i turned around and got some phenomenal sweet and sour fried ‘chicken’ and ate it under a tree. toast with earth balance and nutritional yeast is a staple, as is apples and peanut butter, bagels and hummus, and my never ending quest for perfect falafel.

perhaps ironically, veganism has actually really helped me eat more intuitively/feel less ‘guilty’ anout eating what i actually want to and feel good about…i can’t really explain it well without sounding silly, but figured it was worth mentioning, just cos veganism gets a bad rap sometimes for being about ‘purity’ or ‘cos it’ll keep you thin’ and all that fucked up stuff