How Thinking Like a Vegan Can Get You Through This Quarantine

The secret skills you learn as a vegan are perfectly suited to this moment

If you clicked on this, you’re very brave. Most people would probably scroll on with the assumption that I was going to lecture them about eating animals. Nah. I’ll do that another time assuming there is still a habitable planet after the dust settles from our current zoonotic pandemic. Though if you were really in the mood for a good scolding about animal ag, you can certainly find some on my platform to whet your appetite. For now, though, my goal is to let you know how thinking like a vegan can help you access skills for navigating this quarantine with more ease. Any future ones, too!

How so? Well, until vegans can exist on righteous indignation and simmering rage alone — we’re working on it — we will just continue leaning on the very habits that helped us to thrive as herbivores in a meat-eating world. It just so happens that these practices are also good for navigating a quarantine. Who knew? There are so many benefits to being vegan, during and not during a quarantine, but one thing it will not help you with is needing less toilet paper, if that is a concern, because, you know, all that fiber in the diet, but you’re likely going to have more pleasant bathroom experiences, even if you are still needing to ration your squares.

How could thinking like a vegan help you to get through this quarantine? Let me count the ways…

We are the blender wizards

Vegans know how to make wacky but altogether delicious things in our blenders, yielding recipes that are greater than the sum of their parts. We can make a delectable cheesy sauce out of the most humble of ingredients: carrots, onions, and potatoes. We can make ice cream out of frozen bananas and frozen fruit. Even grains can go into the blender and come out completely transformed, into things like pancake batter. How can you get bored with your food supplies when you have a blender and the willingness to transmogrify them? By the way, you don’t need an expensive high-speed blender, though they are a great kitchen implement. Blending a little longer with a regular blender should yield smooth results, and soaking ingredients like cashews also helps.

Open your mind

Along similar lines, we’re open-minded because we’ve had to learn to be adaptive in this profoundly non-vegan world. Beef doesn’t have to be ground up cows; it could be seitan, also known as wheat gluten, which originated in China and was first written about in the 6th century. Chicken could actually be tofu; eggs can be chickpea flour; milk can be made out of hazelnuts, almonds, or oats, to name a few. The number of plant-based replacements goes on and on, many not requiring expensive prepared foods that may be hard to source during a quarantine but simple pantry or refrigerated staples. Many of us went vegan before there were tasty and convenient renditions of what they were replacing, so we just opened our minds and said, “OK, this is our new meat, cheese, and eggs.” If you shift your attitude to appreciate the taste of things as they are, not expecting them to be exact replicas, it will be a lot easier to adapt. Now is not the time for being a spoiled brat about things, people! We’re under quarantine.

Resourcefulness wins the day

The vegan community discovered — and quickly shared with the world — that the chickpea water we were pouring down the drain was actually liquid gold. Enterprising and resourceful vegans unlocked egg white capabilities in humble bean water, since renamed and rebranded as the much more appealing aquafaba, to be able to expand beyond previous limitations, especially with regard to baked goods. Our resourcefulness is not limited to aquafaba, of course: That attitude of exploration and creativity has led us to explore the creamy versatility of the cashew, how freezing and thawing tofu results in a meatier texture, and the magical properties of nutritional yeast, to name a few. Do food innovators have to be vegan? No, but an open-minded attitude of experimentation and a resourceful spirit certainly can be found in abundance in the vegan world, which is always helpful during a time of unpredictability.

Hunger mind games

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Vegans of a certain, um, vintage, have an anxiety borne through experience that at any time, there will not be food available. Hunger pangs at weddings, dry granola bars on road trips, plates of plain baked potatoes at the office’s annual meal at a steakhouse: They’ve all left us a little nervous about going hungry and left scars on our fragile psyches. The upshot is that many of us maintain pretty well-stocked pantries (and purses, and glove boxes…) just out of habit. We’re not hoarders, mind you, but we are prepared. I know for myself, if I don’t have chickpeas on hand, I start to get twitchy. Same with ripe bananas. Develop the habit of making sure you’ve got your foundational staples on hand and you’re bringing a winning vegan mindset to this quarantine. If nothing else, hummus is always within reach.

Altruism as motivator

Yeah, this is going to sound smug, but I think living as a vegan gets you in the mindset of trying to act for the greater good rather than opting for convenience or habit. If your heart is with a cause, it makes it very easy to consider others through how we live our lives. Vegans are trained to try to reduce harm and live with compassion. In other words, we are probably not the stockpilers you need to be worried about in your community.

Back to basics

A lot of us who went vegan before cruelty-free household cleaners were readily available approached cleaning like our Depression-era forebears: We just needed vinegar, baking soda, castile soap, and a little elbow grease. Many of us never got out of the habit. (Hey, remember that bit about resourcefulness? Orange peels + vinegar + about 30 days in a sealed container = a deliciously citrus-scented household cleaner.) These everyday products are thrifty, usually easy to find, and effective.

Loosen the grip of habit

Even though nobody wished for this, now that common animal-based ingredients are in short supply, it is a great time to untangle the stranglehold dairy has on your palate, especially in the form of cheese. It’s said that three-to-four weeks is what is needed to create new practices. Look at this time as a free “reset,” the kind people pay the big bucks for, to give your palate the clean break it needs from cheese. If nothing else, you will be able to emerge from the quarantine with a new accomplishment!

We’ve got this thing. Now I’m off to marinate some tofu.

Marla Rose is co-founding partner of VeganStreet.com and VeganStreetMedia.com.