With the Click of a Mouse

I've managed to spend at least 20 days not eating animal products of any kind. I wondered if I would feel sad about missing chicken fingers, hamburgers, and smothered pork chops but I find I'm fine about giving up those foods.Not that there aren't days that I won't gaze longingly at a cheese display at the supermarket:

I have found some benefits to not shopping for animal-based foods:

• Shopping trips take a little less time. For example, I don't spend a lot of time in the Deli, Seafood, Meat, or Dairy sections of the local grocery store. I find myself trolling the produce area a lot more, which is a bonus.
• I'm finally getting the nutrients that I've lacked all these years. When I first met my husband, I was eating things like Toaster Scramblers; delicious pastries filled with cheese, bacon and eggs. I have replaced these former breakfast habits with oatmeal with flax! Holy shit, I never thought I'd say that.
• I don't have to prepare and cook meat any more. I was never confident with cooking meat safely. I'm very obsessed with cross-contamination and temperatures and then storing the left overs safely, that it gave me a panic attack to prepare chicken. 

These are obviously small concern that effect the most neurotic of beginner vegans. I'm sure there are other benefits to my abstaining from animal-based foods, most of them health, environmental and moral related.

Another way that I'm protesting, this month is through Change.org. I've been reading, researching and signing a few petitions that people have put together. So far I've "asked" a NY town not to give the go ahead on building a puppy-mill. I've also "asked" Petland to stop selling animals.

Am I satisfied with my protest? I don't know. It's really easy to click "SIGN" and go on to the next petition. If I were feeling really charitable, I could sign my name to hundreds of petitions in one night. I have to read and research them, though, which can slow things down considerably

I don't doubt the effect that Change.org has on the world. There are petitions on the homepage that have succeeded in making awesome change. Because of a young lady's petition, the Bank of America $5 banking fee was dropped. That's fantastic pressure from the little man and a great grassroots way to make change happen.

I might need to look further into this. . .