I’ve always been easily impressed, and even keener to make an impression. At school, I used to sit in classes holding a pen in my left hand so that the teachers would think I was in possession of the enhanced mathematical/artistic/general intelligence capacities or whatever other super powers left-handed people are supposed to harness. Several years later (I gave up on the pen idea after I realised it made taking lecture notes a bit too cumbersome) and with all media churning out stories about trendy diets, it’s not too surprising that the not-so-young-yet-ever-so-impressionable me is, once again, trying to look hip, aware, different, and – drumroll – vegan.

Scrolling away at the seemingly endless vegan blogs (dissertation… what dissertation?), I, too, wanted beautiful skin, trendy avocado-soy-quinoa-edamame dishes, and good karma, all along frolicking with the cows at King’s backs! (And before anyone gets offended, I did do my research and believe in the underlying ethical and environmental issues in using animals as commodities.)

I missed the Veganuary bandwagon, so in early Easter term I embarked onto my vegan experiment without the protection of a named month. Even if I haven’t become the love child of Mother Theresa and Afrodite yet, my independent experimenting has taught me a lesson or two. 

Apple juice clarified with isinglass, a.k.a. fish bladder, tattoo inks made from charcoal produced by burning animal bones, red food colouring made from crushed beetles… the life of a vegan can strike the uninitiated as a minefield, but I was off to a flowing start. Only days into my experiment, I had found true love in soy-coconut yoghurt (which has the same fat levels as fat-free dairy yoghurt but is oh-so-creamy – I’m not being paid for saying this, promise!) and had taken to prancing around my kitchen, cooking packed lunches of almonds, dried fruit, and grains and beaming with culinary awareness and overall enlightenment.

My new procrastination habits soon filled my browsing history with links to banana pancakes, milk-free brownies, and avocado smoothies, and when I discovered whipped cream whipped up from chickpea juices, I was convinced I could go vegan overnight for life. The cows at King’s were waiting for me.

But the bliss only lasted for the day or so I stayed in the safe confines of my house. When at the faculty buttery, all options apart from one sorry wrap are non-vegan: the temptation to relapse into a normal vegetarian is great; and don’t get me started on the notorious cheese cravings… Nutritional yeast on pizza just doesn’t sound quite as appetising as buffalo mozzarella.

The ultimate test, however, came in the form of The Formal. Ticking the vegan box on the booking form, I was asking myself if I would be joining the lactose- and gluten-intolerant among us, faced with an eternity of fruit salads for dessert, or worse, the legions of vegans posting photos of plain bananas offered as chocolate cake replacements.

After munching through a starter of butternut squash risotto and a main of – I kid you not – a big chunk of butternut squash with a side of smaller chunks of butternut squash, I was bracing myself for a butternut squash based fruit salad. But, lo and behold, the three-layered trifle served to everyone else was replaced by a bona fide one-layer trifle. No cream, no chocolate mousse, just raspberries jellified without gelatin: part of me wanted to make a point about how ‘vegan’ is not synonymous with ‘boring’, but my gratitude for the absence of butternut squash kept me quiet.

Emerging into the outside world of butteries and formals, I had embraced the vegan imperative: cook for yourself, pre-plan everything, or be prepared for endless variations of butternut squash.

However, while I found I could overcome all of the above with some extra willpower and better dedication to the vegan cause (wishful thinking? Most likely.), the real struggle was the reactions I got when I had to come out of the vegan-experiment closet. The looks I’ve got mentioning the V-word have ranged from the daintier deer-in-the-headlights expression to the more robust effect of people looking like they're being hunted down by Godzilla.

Now I’m used to answering the why question about being vegetarian, but with veganism the ‘But why’ is whispered with whole new levels of disbelief; being vegetarian is accepted with the occasional shrug and ‘I need meat to lift weights’ comment, but veganism just isn’t swallowed that easily. People seem to take great pleasure in insisting on telling me what I’d no longer be able to eat should my experiment become a life choice: ‘But you can’t have refined sugars!’ Err, no, where’s the animal in glucose? ‘You can only eat raw food!’ Geez, cooking makes plant-based food non-plant-based!

So, thank you, dear veganism, for teaching me so much about food and other people. I still coat my pasta in good old dairy parmesan and cover my cakes in non-chickpea based crème chantilly, but I think I’ll stick to my mission of minimising the amount animal-based foods in my diet: saving animals and shocking people, what’s not to like?

@vickanschmickan