Confessions of a Chegan

When I was a little kid, I hated cheese. In fact, one of my most vivid memories is of trying to flush a Kraft Cheese Single down the toilet when I was four.

I took one bite of the slick, oily stuff and decided it needed to go. Only the flimsy, artificially bright yellow slice wouldn’t go down the dang toilet! My crime was discovered. And I declared myself a cheese hater from then on.

Until I tried real cheese 20 years later. Then I fell in love. Both with cheese, and the guy who introduced it to me. Yep, we’re now married and the love affair with cheese continues.

Except for this month (and a short stint at veganism that we’ll get to in a moment). My Anything For 30 Challenge this month was to go vegan. Which for me is essentially going without cheese.

You see, this is not my first time dabbling in the vegan lifestyle.

At the beginning of 2010, I went vegan for about four months. At first, it was great. I adapted quite easily to soy creamer in my coffee. Learned how to bake vegan cupcakes.

I even threw a party with an all-vegan menu and no one noticed. I was pretty sure I could rock the vegan lifestyle for there on out.

Then I tried vegan cheese. All my grandiose hippie dreams of being a bona fide veganista came crashing down.

I don’t care what Alicia Silverstone tells you. Unlike butter, eggs, milk and even ice cream, there is NO substitute for cheese. Vegan cheese sucks.

Shortly after this discovery, I immediately declared myself a chegan. That is, a vegan who has thrown in the towel on crappy substitutes and indulges in cheese. In other words, a cheating vegan.

But not in October.

Or, at least, I tried.

It went great for the first week. Then pizza reared its ugly head.

It was a Friday. I was hanging with friends and everyone was ordering pizza.

It’s damn hard to be the odd person out on a pizza party, let me tell you.

I have no problemo eating a salad if everyone else is gorging themselves on steak, BBQ or possibly even lasagna. But for some reason, turning down pizza is torture.

So, I decided to cheat a little. Just this once.

I paid for it.

I snuck a piece of cheese pizza and gobbled it down greedily. Only to discover as it slid down my throat that it was in fact, pepperoi pizza. Instant cheating vegan karma!

I felt horrible in more ways than one. My conscience burned with guilt, my belly rumbled as it attempted to digest meat (for the first time in many moons) and my mouth tasted like Ocar Meyer bologna. Ugh.

After this bad cheating experience, you’d think I’d have hurled myself back onto the cheese-less wagon and hung on for dear life.

You would be wrong. Dead wrong.

To be continued …