You're A Betch

Don and I have recently started eating mostly vegan at home.  This dietary change is in response to many things…Our slowing metabolism as we march inevitably toward middle age.  The desire to live as long and healthfully as possible to be present to our children (who thus far are all vowing to never move out!).  Our desire to keep taking steps to be better stewards of our environment so our kids don’t hate us, since they will be living with us forever.  The superiority we feel over the rest of humanity after completing a 72 hour kale fast.

However, we have also tried very hard not to let too many people know about it so we don’t become “those vegan friends.”  Those vegan friends are ok in my home state of California, but are less welcome even in this more liberal enclave of the Midwest.  I don’t talk about eating vegan unless being queried by someone in the alternative milks and cheeses sections of the grocery store, and even then it is only under duress (excuse me, does this stuff really melt and stretch like real cheese?  Really?  Look me in the eyes..does it?!)  Also, we still eat meat, under Section 1, Subsection A, of our Hospitality Clause (built into our marriage contract).  Did you invite us over for dinner?  Awesome, we will eat whatever you want to make!  Are we out at a fancy dinner?  Yeah, and I am ordering the skate wing (those bastards killed Steve Erwin, I will eat every one of them I can find!).  Is it Mardi Gras?  You bet your spicy andouille sausage filled gumbo it is!  So you see, it is a little difficult and confusing to talk about dietary choices.  I guess instead of being “those vegan friends” we are really, actually, those “what are they eating again right now?” friends.

Except, wait!  Apparently those “what are they eating again right now?” friends have started a movement in our post-millennial world.  This style of living and eating has a name now!  I can finally label myself accordingly and stop confusing everyone!  

Or not.  

Unfortunately for us all, saying that name makes my butthole clench up because it is so bougie and privileged.  Here, I’ll whisper it: flexitarian.  Ugh.  I have to get my free NPR tote bag out of my invisible L. L. Bean backpack of white privilege to vomit a nice zippy Albariño into every time I say that word out loud.

I mean, essentially it is a good thing.  Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.  Thank you Michael Pollan.  The problem with the whole system is how expensive it is to follow through on these decisions, and how privileged it is to be able to make that decision in the first place.  

Which brings me to the subject of oat milk.  And how much I love it.  Somewhat shamefully.  Until as recently as three months ago I did not see a need to explore the variety of dairy free milks with which we are assaulted on a near daily basis.  Half and half was good enough for me for my daily coffee, whole milk for my girls and for cooking, and then as much yogurt and cheese as my toddler would agree to ingest because she refuses to drink milk altogether.  But what is the need for an alternative milk when we were not vegan and no one was lactose or dairy intolerant?  

And then I got punished for making Don do a Whole 30 last year…oh, I mean…we made the mutual decision to eat vegan for thirty days…  Now I am up to my eyeballs in alternative milks because I have been slowly trying all the alternative dairy, alternative meat, alternative delicious things before eschewing them one by one as being hideous, unpalatable, over processed, and not real food in general.  Beyond meats and actually really meltable cashew cheeses and veganaise.  No.  Just no.  Maybe if I came at these particular items after a 30 day juice fast they would be delicious and not textural abominations, but right now….no.  All except for you, my delicious oat milk.  Of course I wasn’t talking about you.

Which is why I am here today to confess to you all that I have officially become an oat milk betch.  

Turmeric oat milk tea betch.  Matcha orange blossom honey oat milk latte betch.  Warm oat milk with spiced honey betch.  Talk to you about oat milk in line at the café betch.  Buying a carton of oat milk and two oat milk lattes while letting my toddler run screaming around the most hipster cafe in South Bend betch (shout out to you Dory Mitros for saving this betchs day earlier this week!).

Oat-ly! Barista Blend Oat Milk.  I just like it better.  It tastes nutty, rich and creamy without the sour tang of dairy in my coffee.  It doesn’t have that thinness that often accompanies almond or other nut milks (honestly I could brew my coffee with almond milk and still not be able to tell that I had put in any at all). 

 I.  Just.  Like.  It.

And that, my friends, is the whole point really.  At this point in my life I am getting close to rounding the base on the big 40, and I have started realizing that life it much too short not to embrace your inner betch.  In the winter I am a hot oat milk latte with spiced honey while wearing my muck boots and fjallraven parka over a long sleeved t-shirt betch.  In the summer I am an iced coffee with oat milk in a mason jar while wearing my rothy’s and one of my 30 open cardigans over a v-necked shirt with a small hole near the hem betch.

But I’m still not going to call myself a flexitarian.