Tom Turkey and Rammy Kin sitting on my fabric cabinet.
I was born and grew up in a small town. Life was quiet and relaxed overall, the cattle ranchers and other farmers held onto their western roots. Every Labor Day weekend they hold the “world famous” county fair, parade, and rodeo. It was one of the candidates for being Washington State's capitol, with a college that is now Central Washington University, and even the Governor's castle until a fire burnt down a large portion of the town in 1889.
Being a country girl isn't about what you do, its about who you are. It has taken me a lot of years to realize that fact, because I have never lived on a farm. My mother was a student at the university to build a future for herself and her four children, working, and taking care of her mother who lived at one of the local nursing homes. My three older siblings were born in the larger town where I now live, but I was born in my beloved home town. I think my mom was never quite sure what to make of her tomboy little girl who went around chewing on twigs, running barefoot whenever she could, and digging up earthworms because they were cute. Eventually she started calling me an "Ellensburger" on occasion because I was more like the country folk in town than her citified self knew what to do with.
Over twenty years have passed since then, sixteen of those years I have lived in an overwhelming larger city that is slowly taking over the surrounding hills. There were acres of orchards when we first moved here, now I think there are two very small ones. Two weeks ago when my husband and I were heading home on the city bus the driver commented to another passenger that he could deal with a lot of kinds of weather, just as long as the wind didn’t blow. As simple as that was, it shocked me to the core. I had just been thinking of how nice it was to have a real breeze for the first time that I recall this year. It was comfortable and felt really nice. Most people who move to Ellensburg quickly comment on the wind, mostly because its hard to ignore. I remember walking home from school when I was twelve and the wind was blowing enough that I could significantly lean into it and not fall over. I have never been a skinny person and it almost knocked me over a few times in that walk. Needless to say I thought it was great fun (although a bit cold) and still makes me giggle.
Being in the country to me evokes the feeling of wide open spaces, blue skies that stretch to the mountains that hardly poke up in the distance. It’s a type of freedom, of spirit and heart, happiness and the feeling of being home. When I’m there, I never want to be anywhere else in the world. Sometimes over the years I’ve worried that somehow the country part of me would be overtaken by the city girl. But from what my heart says it is as alive and well as it has always been.
I am a relatively new vegan (less than six months now) but I had been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for a little over three years. I finally made the shift because of multiple allergies that I was so tired of being paranoid of eating the wrong things and ending up with hives, or just extremely uncomfortable. I’m happy and excited to have a small arsenal of pure vegan cookbooks filling my shelves to learn new techniques from, discover new strange ingredients, and enjoy food that I had never even heard of in my cattle ranching hometown. I’ve gone through the phase that I think most of us do once we chose a meat-free diet of buying lots of prepackaged foods resembling familiar meals. My country girl brain is tired of spending too much and feeling like nothing has really changed after eating faux chicken sandwiches for a week, although I actually haven’t done that in quite a few months. At the same time it is hard not to feel like most vegan recipes use huge ingredient lists of often rather ‘fancy’ stuff, almost like having five star dinning at home without the bonus of it being made for you. Personally, I like simple foods, not bland food however, a pantry that is stocked and organized, a full freezer that I actually know what’s in it. I love convenience foods but hate the price tags and the numerous preservatives. Hey, I don’t want to be mummified while I’m still living!
My mother knows I love her a lot, but she’s the hardest on me about being vegan. I know she thinks she’s just gently teasing me, but I get royally tired of her thinking I simply eat weird foods. On the plus side however, she’s the first to want to try whatever I’ll let her and tells me if she likes it or not. Now if I could just get her to quit calling it ‘vague-en’ (it’s only vague to you mom…)
"Its Ellensburg, its Ellensburg, its Ellensburg Washington! A pretty little city in the center of the state, its Ellensburg Washington!"
So sit for a spell and see what vegan comfort foods are brewing in my kitchen!
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