As time when on, I found myself grabbing carne asada a lot less frequently. I was getting meatless options at restaurants with my friends and having them hold the cheese. But I still wasn’t ready to call myself vegetarian or vegan. I had my last pieces of meat on a trip back to Minnesota for my birthday in May 2014. I ordered a pork sandwich on the first day of the trip – and it tasted terrible. I mean, I’m sure it was fine and 90% of the country would have enjoyed it, but to me it tasted of death and decay. The rest of the trip I stayed vegetarian until my last day. I had a fried fish sandwich from a local diner because I made up my mind that I couldn’t eat anymore land animals after that pork sandwich, but fish was probably still cool. Again, the sandwich was awful (though I think this time almost everyone would have agreed with me on that one). I don’t even know why I finished it, but I did. That awful fish sandwich was the last bit of animal flesh that I put into my body. I don’t know if it was the knowledge I now couldn’t ignore, a change to my taste buds, or a combination. Six weeks later I willingly consumed my last bit of animal product, as they also necessitate slaughter and other practices I never wanted to partake in again. It was cheese pizza during a beerfest and the next day I told myself that that was it. (Check out http://humanefacts.org/ for more info on the problem with animal products like dairy and eggs and the "humane" label.) From that point forward I was officially vegan (though I still had trouble telling people I was… I didn’t want that to become my identity). After some early skepticism, my friends have happily ordered the vegan pizza when I was around, have raved about the food I’ve made, and one has even since gone meatless.

Why don’t you live within the moral boundaries you already have set up for yourself?

That was the basic question that changed my life for the better. Before I went vegan, I would tell you I loved animals (all animals!). I had a cat and a dog that I doted over way too much (and still do). I loved going out in nature and seeing all the animals enjoying their domain. Hell, I even loved seeing cows and chickens in pastures just living their lives. That question, though, kept creeping back into my thoughts. Before I was vegan, I’d get upset when I heard about restaurants serving dog, if a cow or pig escaped from a slaughterhouse I cheered for it to make it to freedom, and I felt that animal sanctuaries were a great thing (taking in neglected animals from factory farms so they can live the rest of their lives in peace – what’s not to love about that!). But beef and pork and chicken still made it onto my plate. The animals I saw in the pasture, the ones escaping the slaughterhouse, or the ones being rescued and brought to the animal sanctuary… those weren’t the animals on my plate. The animals on my plate were a number, a nameless creature that was simply “livestock.” It was just a product that was kept alive for as short a time as possible. It wasn’t my dog, my cat, the chickens I saw in people’s yards, the cows in a pasture on someone’s hobby farm. That’s what I told myself. I think that’s what everyone tells themselves.