I used to write about food….
This site used to be about vegan food and being vegan. From 2008 to 2016, I wrote and published weekly. I enjoyed creating and sharing recipes, eating at and writing about restaurants, exploring in words and in life how food could bring people together. I ended up finding a community of vegans that I had not known prior to my writing, and I saw how writing and sharing could lead to connection and change.
I stopped writing and publishing regularly on this site in 2019 but decided to leave it up, unpublishing many articles about restaurants that no longer existed, thinking someday I might return to writing here again. And now at last I have decided to do just that. But I can no longer write about food, at least not in the way that I once did.
I believe there is a certain kind of trauma caused by witnessing violence and brutality inflicted upon people, animals, and the earth while also being unable to stop it; that there is trauma in witnessing human-caused suffering, starvation, brutality, and displacement, in knowing that the systems and structures that we benefit from are enabling unfathomable horrors on others, horrors that show no clear sign of ending.
This trauma does not compare to the experiences of the people who are living through and dying from the physical embodied reality of what we are witnessing, but I believe that to try and go about our daily lives and not acknowledge or try to stop what is happening, or to act as though any of this is normal (or acceptable, or moral, or justifiable) causes profound harm.
I am forever changed by the U.S.-supported genocide of Palestinians, and so doing whatever I can to help end it while also trying to support the people who are trying to survive the genocide is my primary focus. Over the past fifteen months I have learned much, and I have also sought different places and ways to use my voice, and to to amplify the voices of Palestinians who have been forced to endure unimaginable horrors while also trying to communicate with the world all that is happening. I have listened and written and spoken. I have shared things in person and online–in letters and articles; through writing and messages, emails and tweets. And now, at last, I am returning to this old place of mine, this place where for many years I once wrote about vegan food cooking, vegan values, and being vegan in Bellingham.
But writing about the pleasures and joy of food, or about the benefits of integrating my values and ethics with what I cook and eat, all while Palestinians are being intentionally starved (with the full support of our government) is not something I will do. I have removed my old posts, including the recipes I once shared, and I won't be posting any food pictures anywhere online.
I am changing the scope of this site but keeping the name the same because for me, it still fits. And in some way aligns with the goals I had when I first started writing, when I decided to try to explore how sharing and writing could lead to community, connection, and change.
And I am still a vegan in Bellingham, with the same principles, beliefs, and compassion as when I first created this site so many years ago. And if you are reading this now, I hope you will consider what I will be sharing, and that it will compel you to speak and to act. And that you will come back again.