Butter Pecan Soy Ice Cream

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Story ID:	674
Written by:	Suzana Margaret Megles
Story type:	Local History
Location:	Madison Wisconsin USA
Year:	1983
Person:	Suzana

Yesterday, I went to the Bin - our neighborhood health store. As I am a vegan (no meat,
dairy,or animal products), I was delighted
to spy a new flavor-BUTTER PECAN SOY ICE
CREAM among the 5 which are usually carried.
You may be scratching your head and
wondering -so what? Well, for me it is
a big deal because the last time I ate
Butter Pecan Ice Cream was probably 1983.

I had become an ethical vegetarian in 1978
and one spring Saturday in 1983 I found myself with others of like mind on a bus which would take us to Madison, WI to protest the cruel treatment of the captive inhahitants of its PRIMATE CENTER.

In conversation on the bus ride lumbering
through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois one topic was food and I was asked if I ate cheese. Yes, I said I did. Did I know that cheese was made with a coagulant from the stomach enzyme of
either a calf or a pig? I was quite stunned by this information. I thought I had covered all the "bases" by becoming an ethical vegetarian and clearly I had not. The next immediate and unequivocal determination - I am now VEGAN -right then and there on that bus.

It was interesting to say the least to taste
the vegan cheeses which I believe were being
pioneered at that time. Some tasted more like
cardboard, but that did not deter me from my
resolution. Today I am able to purchase soy
cream cheese, soy sour cream, soy ice cream,
soy cheddar cheese, faux sandwich "meats" and many more vegan offerings though making my own dishes like stuffed peppers with mushrooms is better than buying the faux "meats" which are processed just like their meat counterparts.

Maybe now you can understand why yesterday
I made 2 cones with generous scoops of the delcious Butter Pecan Soy Ice Cream. It's been a long while since I savored that taste but then maybe its a good thing. I noticed that for each serving there were 7 grams of fat! (The other flavors had 3). Of course the reason was the added pecans.

No, I prabably won't be buying too many quarts of that flavor because "they" say we shouldn't have more than 30 grams of fat daily. Yesterday in one fell swoop I expended 14! Am I sorry I indulged - no way Joze! And I will savor the rest of the quart in the same way.

So that ride to Madison was memorable in
two ways. My lifestyle re eating was forever
changed. What remained the same was my commitment to caring for all of God's creatures who are suffering at the hands of man. The
picture of that litte chimp brutalized in research was probably the picture all of us saw before our memorable bus ride to Madison.

In Madison, many of us will remember walking
in a mock funeral procession commemorating the lives of the innocent primates snuffed out by research. I know some readers will feel its justified. Many of us believe that cruelty is never justified.

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