How we care and why it matters

How do we show the ones we love that we care? How do we show care to family? Friends? Total strangers? In what ways is care demonstrated to those around us?

I know that my focus tends to be on food. Food is foundational to us all; without it, there is no more us. But for people who don’t care much about food – or who don’t even like eating – such demonstrations border on incomprehensible. They may even come across as not caring, or openly hostile.

Preparatory School

I see thumbnails for meal prep videos all the time. Many containers of colourful ingredients, carefully arrayed. And nearly every time, I think to myself that that looks like way too much work.

Back when we did Whole30, I was having some trouble wrapping my head around meal planning. Partly, this was because I don’t like locking myself into having a certain dish on a certain day. What if I get to Tuesday and I don’t want whatever the plan says I’m to eat that day? If I don’t have that thing, it throws the whole plan right off the rails. I won’t have the right leftovers to make meals for the rest of the week. It’s kind of a nightmare.

That’s when I came across this more loosely prescribed meal plan. It involves ingredient prep instead of meal prep. There are certain things that are prepared the same way, week over week, then there’s a big pot of something or other that’s eaten over several days. It’s habit building, and doesn’t involve copious amounts of research on a constant hunt for novelty.

So, let me walk you through how I’ve folded this style of preparation into my weekly routine.

Lend a helping hand

Vegans have a bad rap, and it’s not entirely undeserved. There is a vocal minority in the movement that gets presented as the self-appointed public face, representing all vegans. With a tendency towards being hard-line militants, who condemn non-vegans as murderers and disparage other vegans for being not vegan enough, they give us all a bad name. People like these are what took me so long to even consider going vegan, let alone having the audacity to refer to myself as vegan.

A Bit of Tough Love

There’s a somewhat common hurdle I’ve heard discussed that I’d like to address. It’s important to keep in mind that when I speak of this, I am using the context of my relationship and my past experience to frame my opinion on this subject. In other words, this is how I roll. Regardless of how well it works for me, or how well I think it could work for others, every situation will have different needs.

That said, I think it’s time for a little tough love. In particular, when it comes to folks who say something like, “Well, I’d like to go more meatless, but my spouse/kids won’t like it, or eat it, or will go on strike opposing it, etc.”

The Privilege of Nothing

There’s a thing I sometimes trick myself into thinking. It’s false, and more than a little self-satisfied, and it is this: I’ve just made a whole meal out of nothing.

Spoiler alert: I did no such thing.

In fact, I did the opposite of a thing. I neglected to go grocery shopping, because that’s something I can do sometimes. I buy so much food that I have enough leftover to last a week’s-worth of suppers for two adults. Even now, I have a freezer full of vegan ‘meats’ and some nuts, a pantry full of beans, grains and canned tomatoes, some onions and garlic, plus all the potable water I can stomach. If I couldn’t make some sort of supper from that, I’d be hard pressed to call myself a cook of any stripe!

The potential failings of prescriptive advice

Being prescriptive is something I want to avoid on this blog. I have a bad habit of wanting to fix, or to provide advice based on my experience. This comes from a good place. If I’ve found certain stumbling blocks and can help others avoid tripping up by providing a warning, that’s surely a worthwhile enterprise.

That’s when we turn back to our old friend privilege. Individual situations dictate what will and won’t work. What works for me and my life won’t necessarily be replicable by someone whose situation is significantly different. And for someone like myself, those differences will often be lurking in the forest of unquestioned privilege.

And I am not alone.