In the United States, Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for all the good things in our lives.
We gather with family and friends, enjoy a big meal, and maybe watch football. But what about the food?
What are some of the best dishes to enjoy on Thanksgiving? If you’re looking for some Thanksgiving foods that start with R, here are a few of our favorites:

1. Roasted Potatoes

Roasted potatoes are the first on our list of thanksgiving Foods that start with r. There are many different ways to cook potatoes, but one of the most popular methods is to roast them.
Roasting potatoes is a quick and easy way to create a delicious side dish or snack. And since potatoes are such a versatile food, they can be roasted in various ways to suit any taste.
So what are the best techniques for roasting potatoes? We've got a few tips to help you get started.
First, you'll want to choose the right type of potato. Second, you'll need to preheat your oven and prepare your baking sheet.
And finally, you'll want to season your potatoes before roasting. With these tips in mind, you'll be well on your way to making the perfect roasted potatoes. So go ahead and give it a try!

2. Red Wine

Red wine is also one of the Thanksgiving Foods that start with r. It is often considered a sophisticated drink to be enjoyed with a meal. But did you know that red wine can actually enhance the flavor of your food?
That's right - red wine can be used as an ingredient in your cooking to add depth and flavor to your dishes.
So how does it work? When red wine is cooked, the tannins and other compounds are broken down, which helps release the flavor compounds in the wine. This can add a complex and robust flavor to your food.
If you're interested in trying it, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you'll want to use a dry red wine for cooking.
This means avoiding sweet wines like Port or Sherry. Second, you'll want to cook with a red wine you enjoy drinking.

3. Ravioli

Ravioli is a type of pasta that has been around for centuries. The first mention of ravioli dates back to the 14th century, and it is believed that pasta was invented in Italy.
Ravioli is made by rolling out a thin dough sheet and cutting it into small squares. Each square is filled with a small amount of filling, such as cheese or meat. The ravioli are then cooked in boiling water until it is tender.
There are many different types of ravioli, and the fillings can vary depending on the region where it is made.
Some of the most popular ravioli fillings in Italy include cheese, spinach, and meat. In the United States, ravioli is often made with various types of meat.

4. Ratatouille

Ratatouille is a French dish that typically consists of eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, and garlic, all cooked in olive oil.
It can be served as a side dish or as a main course and is often served with rice or bread.
Ratatouille is a healthy and flavorful dish that is perfect for summertime. It is light and refreshing but still filling and satisfying.
Plus, it is easy to make - you only need a little time and some basic ingredients.
We highly recommend giving ratatouille a shot if you're looking for a new dish to try this summer. It's sure to become a new favorite in your household.

5. Raspberries

Raspberries are next on our list of thanksgiving Foods that start with r. It is a delicious and nutritious fruit that can be enjoyed fresh, frozen, or canned.
They are an excellent source of Vitamin C and fiber, and they also contain a compound called ellagitannins, which have powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
There are many different ways to enjoy raspberries. You can eat them on their own, add them to a smoothie or yogurt, or use them in baking.
Raspberries can also be made into jam, jelly, or syrup. If you are interested in growing your own raspberries, they can be grown in most areas of the country.
Raspberries are generally easy to care for and can be harvested from June to October.

6. Rarebit

Rarebit is a quick and easy dish that is perfect for a light lunch or snack. It is typically made with cheese, beer, or ale and is served on toast.
Rarebit is thought to have originated in Wales, and the name is derived from the Welsh word for cheese, "caws pobi.
The dish became popular in England in the 18th century, and there are many different regional variations of it.
Today, rarebit is enjoyed worldwide and can be easily made at home with just a few ingredients.
If you're looking for Thanksgiving foods that start with r a new recipe to try, give rarebit a try - you'll be glad you did!

7. Rapini

Rapini, also known as broccoli rabe, is a leafy green vegetable with small clusters of green flowers. It is related to the turnip and has a slightly bitter taste.
Rapini is a nutrient-rich vegetable that is high in vitamins A, C, and K. It also contains calcium, iron, and magnesium.
Rapini is a versatile vegetable that can be used in various dishes. It can be sautéed, stir-fried, or used in soup.
It pairs well with other vegetables, meats, and cheeses. Rapini can also be eaten raw, in salads or sandwiches.
Rapini is a great option if you're looking for a nutrient-rich vegetable to add to your diet. It is versatile, easy to prepare, and has various health benefits as thanksgiving foods that start with r.

8. Ramen

Ramen is a Japanese noodle soup dish that has recently gained popularity. It typically consists of wheat noodles in a broth made from pork, chicken, or beef and is often topped with assorted vegetables and meats.
Ramen is a relatively simple dish to make, but there are a few things to keep in mind to make a delicious bowl of noodles.
First, the noodles should be cooked al dente, as they will continue to cook in the broth.
Second, the broth should be rich and flavorful, and third, the toppings should be fresh and complementary to the broth.
You can easily make a delicious bowl of ramen at home with a few simple tips. So why not try it next time you're ready for hearty and comforting thanksgiving foods that start with r?

9. Raita

Raita is a popular Indian dish with yogurt, vegetables, and spices. It is often served as a side dish or a condiment and can be made with various vegetables.
The most common vegetables in raita are tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. Other vegetables that are sometimes used include peas, potatoes, and carrots. Raita can also be made with fruit, such as mangoes or bananas.
The yogurt in raita helps to cool and refresh the palate, while the spices add flavor and depth. Raita is a simple dish to make, but it can be a great addition to any meal.

10. Raisins

A raisin is a dried grape. Raisins are produced in many regions of the world and can be eaten either fresh or dried. Raisins are a good source of vitamins and minerals, including iron, potassium, and fiber.
They can also help to prevent certain health conditions, such as high blood pressure and anemia.
Many different types of raisins thanksgiving Foods that start with r, including Thompson Seedless, Black Corinth, and Muscat. Raisins can be used in various recipes, including cakes, cookies, and trail mix.

11. Radish

Radishes are a type of root vegetable that are typically red, white, or pink in color. They have a crisp texture and a slightly spicy flavor and are often used in salads or as garnish.
Radishes are a good source of vitamins C and B6 and potassium and magnesium. They also contain antioxidants that can help protect against certain diseases.
Radishes can be eaten raw, cooked, or pickled. They can also be used in various recipes, such as roasted radish dishes, stir-fries, or soups.

12. Red Kitten Spinach

Red kitten spinach is a type of baby spinach that is characterized by its deep red leaves. It is a popular ingredient in salads and smoothies and is grown in many countries worldwide.
Red kitten spinach is a good source of several nutrients, including vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium.
It also contains a compound called nitrates, which has been shown to improve blood flow and help reduce blood pressure.
So if you're looking for nutritious and delicious Thanksgiving Foods that start with r to add color to your diet, try red kitten spinach!

13. Rice

Rice is next on our list of thanksgiving Foods that start with r. It is a food that is consumed by millions of people around the world daily. It is a staple in many cultures and has been a part of the human diet for centuries.
Rice is a grain that is cultivated in many different parts of the world. It is a versatile grain that can be used in various dishes.
Rice can be cooked in different ways, such as boiled, steamed, or baked. It can also be eaten raw.
There are many benefits to eating rice. Rice is a good source of complex carbohydrates, which are an important part of a healthy diet.
It is also a good source of vitamins and minerals. Rice is low in fat and calories, and it is a good source of fiber.

14. Roasted Turkey

A classic roasted turkey is the perfect centerpiece for your holiday table, but it can also be a bit daunting to prepare.
However, with a little planning and some simple tips, you can roast a delicious turkey that will impress your family and friends.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when preparing your turkey thanksgiving foods that start with r:

• Choose the right size turkey. A good rule of thumb is to allow 1 pound of turkey per person.
• Make sure your turkey is thawed. A frozen turkey will take much longer to cook and may not roast evenly.
• Season your turkey with a simple rub of salt, pepper, and herbs.
• Place your turkey in a roasting pan breast side up.
• Roast your turkey at a moderate temperature, 325-350 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Use a meat

15. Rye

Rye is a cereal grain that is most commonly used to produce bread and alcohol.
It is a hearty grain that is high in fiber and protein, making it a popular choice for those looking for a nutritious option.
Rye is also known for its distinct flavor, which has been described as earthy and nutty. Rye is a versatile grain that can be used in various recipes.
It can be cooked and eaten as porridge or used as flour for baking. Rye bread is a popular option, as it is hearty and filling.
Rye can also be used in soups, stews, and casseroles. If you are looking for new grain thanksgiving Foods that start with r to add to your diet, consider rye.
With its distinct flavor and nutritional value, it is sure to become a favorite in no time.

16. Russet Potato

The Russet potato is a type of potato that is commonly used in many different dishes.
This potato has brown skin and white flesh. It is a popular choice for baking, frying, and mashed potatoes.
Regarding nutrition, the Russet potato is a good source of vitamins and minerals. It is also a good source of fiber. This potato can be a healthy addition to any diet.
The Russet potato is a good choice if you are looking for a versatile potato that can be used in many different dishes.
This potato has brown skin and white flesh. It is a popular choice for baking, frying, and mashed potatoes.

17. Risotto

Risotto is a traditional Italian dish that is made with rice, broth, and other ingredients. It is a very popular dish and is often served as a main course.
Risotto is usually made with short-grain rice, such as Arborio or Carnaroli. The rice is cooked in broth until it is creamy and tender.
Risotto can be made with different kinds of broth, such as chicken, beef, or vegetable.
There are many different ways to make risotto, and it can be flavored with different ingredients, such as cheese, vegetables, or seafood. Risotto is a versatile dish that can be made to suit any taste.

18. Reuben Sandwich

The Reuben sandwich is a classic American sandwich made with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and thousand island dressing on rye bread. It's a delicious and hearty sandwich that's perfect for a quick lunch or a hearty dinner.
While the Reuben sandwich is a delicious and classic sandwich, it's also a bit of a mystery. The origin of the sandwich is unknown, but there are several theories.
One theory suggests that the sandwich was invented by a Jewish deli owner in New York City in the early 1900s.
Another theory suggests that a Nebraska man in the 1920s invented the sandwich.
Whatever the sandwich's origin, one thing is for sure - the Reuben sandwich is a delicious and iconic sandwich that has stood the test of time.
Reuben sandwich is the best If you're looking for a delicious and hearty sandwich, thanksgiving Foods that start with r.

19. Rigatoni

Rigatoni is a type of pasta that originates from the Italian region of Lombardy. It is made from durum wheat flour and water, and its name comes from the word "rigato," which means "ridged" in Italian.
Rigatoni pasta is typically ridged on one side and smooth on the other. Rigatoni pasta is traditionally used in Italian dishes such as "allaarbonara" and "al pesto.
Rigatoni can also be used in various other dishes, such as pasta salads, soups, and casseroles.
Rigatoni is a great option if you're looking for hearty and filling thanksgiving Foods that start with r meal.
It pairs well with various sauces and can be made ahead of time, making it a great meal for busy weeknights.

20. Ricotta Cheese

Ricotta cheese is an Italian cheese made from sheep’s milk. It is a soft, white cheese with a slightly grainy texture. Ricotta cheese is used in a variety of dishes, both sweet and savory.
In sweet dishes, ricotta is often used as a filling for desserts such as cannoli and cheesecake.
It can also be used as a topping for pancakes or waffles. Savory dishes such as lasagna and stuffed shells also often include ricotta cheese.
Ricotta cheese is high in protein and calcium and is a good source of vitamins A and B12. It is also low in fat and sodium.
Ricotta cheese is a versatile cheese that can be used in various dishes.

21. Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is also on our list of thanksgiving Foods that start with r, which has been around for centuries.
It is made with just a few simple ingredients - rice, milk, sugar, and spices - and can be easily adapted to fit any Dietary restriction.
While rice pudding is traditionally made with white rice, you can also use brown rice, wild rice, or even sushi rice.
The type of milk you use is also up to you. While many people use cow's milk, you can also use almond milk, coconut milk, or other non-dairy milk.
Rice pudding is a versatile and delicious dish that everyone can enjoy. So next time you're looking for a comforting dessert, give rice pudding a try.

22. Retsina

Lastly, Retsina is a resinated white wine that is popular in Greece. It is made by adding pine resin to the wine during fermentation.
This gives the wine a unique flavor that is often described as piney or resin-like.
Retsina is typically made with the native Greek grape varieties Assyrtiko, Athiri, and Rhoditis; it can also be made with other grape varieties.
Retsina is a versatile wine that can be enjoyed with various dishes. It pairs well with grilled meats and vegetables and traditional Greek dishes such as Souvlaki and Gyro.
Retsina can also be enjoyed on its own as an aperitif or after-dinner drink. So if you're looking for a unique wine to try, be sure to give Retsina a try.
Conclusion
In conclusion, our blog has helped a list of varieties of Thanksgiving foods, starting with R.
While there are many other delicious Thanksgiving dishes, these are some of the most popular and iconic in our blog post.
So if you're looking for a great Thanksgiving meal, be sure to include some of these delicious thanksgiving foods that start with "R" dishes.

Welcome to our guide on delicious baby eggplant recipes! Whether you're a seasoned chef or just starting out in the kitchen, we've got you covered with a variety of mouthwatering recipes that showcase the versatility of this amazing vegetable. Baby eggplants are not only packed with flavor, but they also offer a unique texture that can elevate any dish.
Found this article here.
From roasted and grilled to stuffed and pickled, there are endless possibilities when it comes to cooking with baby eggplants. Their natural sweetness and tender texture make them a perfect ingredient for a wide range of recipes, from appetizers and side dishes to main courses and even snacks.
In this guide, we'll explore different cooking methods and flavor combinations to help you unlock the full potential of baby eggplants in your culinary adventures. Get ready to tantalize your taste buds and impress your family and friends with these delicious baby eggplant recipes!
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Key Takeaways:

• Baby eggplants are versatile vegetables that can be used in a variety of dishes.
• Cooking methods include roasting, grilling, sautéing, stuffing, and pickling.
• Flavor combinations like garlic, herbs, tomatoes, feta, and curry can enhance the taste of baby eggplants.
• Baby eggplant recipes are suitable for various dietary preferences, including vegetarian and vegan options.
• With their natural sweetness and unique texture, baby eggplants are a delicious addition to any meal.

Roasted Baby Eggplant with Crispy Garlic and Herbs

Roasted Baby Eggplant with Crispy Garlic and Herbs is a simple and vibrant recipe that can be made with any variety of eggplant. Sliced eggplant is combined with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and herbs, then roasted to perfection. This dish is a great side dish or appetizer and can be enjoyed in various ways. The marinade adds a tangy flavor, while the crispy garlic adds a delightful crunch. It's a must-try recipe for any eggplant lover.
If you're looking for a delicious and healthy way to enjoy roasted baby eggplant, then this recipe is for you. The combination of flavors from the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and herbs perfectly complements the natural sweetness of the eggplant. Plus, roasting the eggplant brings out its rich and smoky flavors, adding depth to the dish.

Ingredients

• 4 baby eggplants
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs (such as parsley, basil, or thyme)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
2. Wash the baby eggplants and trim off the stems.
3. Slice the eggplants in half lengthwise.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, minced garlic, chopped herbs, salt, and pepper.
5. Brush the cut side of each eggplant half with the marinade.
6. Place the eggplants on a baking sheet, cut side up.
7. Roast in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until the eggplants are tender and golden brown.
8. While the eggplants are roasting, heat a small skillet over medium heat.
9. Add a drizzle of olive oil and the minced garlic to the skillet.
10. Cook the garlic until it becomes crispy and golden brown, stirring frequently to prevent burning.
11. Remove the skillet from heat and transfer the crispy garlic to a paper towel-lined plate to drain excess oil.
12. Once the eggplants are roasted, remove them from the oven and let them cool slightly.
13. Sprinkle the crispy garlic over the roasted eggplants.
14. Serve the roasted baby eggplant with crispy garlic and herbs as a side dish or appetizer. Enjoy!

Roasted Baby Eggplant with Crispy Garlic and Herbs is a simple yet satisfying dish that showcases the wonderful flavors of baby eggplant. The roasted eggplants become tender and caramelized, while the crispy garlic adds a delightful crunch. The fresh herbs bring a burst of freshness to each bite. Whether you serve it as a side dish, appetizer, or even as a main course, this recipe is sure to impress both your taste buds and your guests.

Grilled Baby Eggplant Salad with Tomato and Feta

Looking for a refreshing and flavorful way to enjoy baby eggplant? Try this delicious Grilled Baby Eggplant Salad with Tomato and Feta. The smoky flavor of the grilled baby eggplant perfectly complements the juicy tomatoes and tangy feta cheese, creating a harmonious balance of flavors in every bite.
To make this salad, start by grilling the baby eggplants until they are tender and slightly charred. This gives them a wonderful smoky flavor that enhances their natural sweetness. Then, slice the grilled eggplants and combine them with fresh tomatoes and crumbled feta cheese in a bowl.
The combination of the grilled baby eggplant, juicy tomatoes, and tangy feta cheese creates a vibrant and satisfying salad. The contrasting textures and flavors make every bite a delightful experience.
Pro tip: If you want to add an extra burst of flavor, drizzle the salad with a simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt and pepper. The acidity of the lemon juice will brighten up the flavors and tie everything together.
This salad is perfect for a light lunch or as a side dish for grilled meats. It's a healthy and delicious way to enjoy baby eggplant and incorporate more vegetables into your diet. Plus, it's quick and easy to make, making it a great option for busy weeknights or backyard barbecues.
So go ahead and give this Grilled Baby Eggplant Salad with Tomato and Feta a try. It's a simple yet satisfying dish that will impress your taste buds and leave you craving for more.
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Stuffed Baby Eggplant Curry

Delve into a world of bold and exotic flavors with our Stuffed Baby Eggplant Curry. This flavorful and aromatic dish combines the succulent taste of tender baby eggplants with the rich and complex flavors of a curry. Prepared by stuffing the eggplants with a spiced filling and then cooking them in a delectable curry sauce, this dish is a delightful fusion of textures and tastes.
The stuffed baby eggplants absorb all the flavors of the spices, making each bite a burst of sensory delight. The combination of the soft and creamy eggplant, the robust and aromatic curry sauce, and the tantalizing blend of spices is sure to captivate your taste buds.
For added visual appeal and flavor, garnish your Stuffed Baby Eggplant Curry with fresh cilantro leaves and a sprinkle of toasted nigella seeds. The vibrant colors and aromatic aromas will enhance your dining experience and impress your guests.
Enjoy this delightful curry as a main dish with a side of fragrant basmati rice or indulge in the traditional accompaniment of warm and fluffy naan bread. The aromatic flavors and comforting textures of this dish make it a perfect choice for a vegetarian or vegan meal.
Expand your culinary repertoire with our Stuffed Baby Eggplant Curry and savor the extraordinary combination of stuffed baby eggplants and curry flavors. Discover the magic of this dish and bring a burst of bold flavors to your dining table.

Sauteed Baby Eggplant with Garlic and Herbs

Sauteed Baby Eggplant with Garlic and Herbs is a quick and easy recipe that allows the natural flavors of baby eggplant to shine. These tender and flavorful eggplants are sauteed with fresh garlic and aromatic herbs, creating a delightful dish that is both satisfying and versatile.
Begin by slicing the baby eggplants into thin rounds. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and add the eggplant slices. Cook them until they turn golden brown and become soft. As they saute, the delightful aroma of garlic fills the kitchen, enhancing the overall experience of this dish.
To elevate the flavors, add minced garlic to the skillet and saute for an additional minute. The garlic infuses its aromatic essence into the eggplant, intensifying the taste. Sprinkle in a combination of your favorite fresh herbs, such as basil, parsley, or thyme. These herbs add a burst of freshness, enhancing the natural flavors of the baby eggplant.
Serve the sauteed baby eggplant as a delicious side dish, allowing its flavors to complement your main course. Alternatively, use it as a flavorful topping for pasta dishes or rice bowls. The tender and fragrant sauteed baby eggplant adds a unique touch to any meal, creating a satisfying and wholesome experience.
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Marinated Baby Eggplant Skewers with Mediterranean Flavors

If you're searching for a tasty and colorful appetizer or side dish, look no further than Marinated Baby Eggplant Skewers with Mediterranean Flavors. These skewers are a perfect addition to your next party or gathering, offering a delightful combination of marinated baby eggplant, tangy Mediterranean flavors, and beautiful presentation.
The star of this dish is the marinated baby eggplant. These small, tender eggplants are marinated in a flavorful mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and a blend of Mediterranean herbs. The marinade infuses the eggplants with tangy and aromatic notes, perfectly complementing their natural sweetness.
Once marinated, the baby eggplants are threaded onto skewers, creating a visually appealing presentation. The skewers are then grilled to perfection, resulting in tender eggplant with a slight char and smoky flavor.
When served, these marinated baby eggplant skewers are sure to impress. The combination of flavors and textures, along with the vibrant colors, makes them a standout dish at any event. The tangy marinade and Mediterranean herbs add a burst of freshness, making these skewers a delightful treat for your taste buds.
Pair these skewers with a refreshing tzatziki sauce or serve them alongside other Mediterranean-inspired dishes for a complete and cohesive menu. The versatility of these skewers makes them suitable as both a delightful appetizer or a satisfying side dish.
So, the next time you're looking for an appetizer or side dish that is sure to impress, give Marinated Baby Eggplant Skewers with Mediterranean Flavors a try. Your guests will be delighted by the combination of flavors and the beautiful presentation. Enjoy the vibrant colors and taste the essence of the Mediterranean with every bite!

Baby Eggplant Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Spinach

Baby Eggplant Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Spinach is a hearty and satisfying dish. The combination of tender roasted baby eggplants, sweet roasted tomatoes, sautéed spinach, and al dente pasta creates a comforting and flavorful meal.
The baby eggplants are roasted until they become irresistibly creamy and caramelized, adding a rich and luscious texture to the pasta. The roasted tomatoes bring a burst of tangy and sweet flavors, balancing the dish perfectly. Meanwhile, the sautéed spinach adds a vibrant touch of green and a nutritional boost.
Whether you're preparing a quick weeknight dinner or hosting a special occasion, this baby eggplant pasta is a versatile option that will impress your guests and satisfy your cravings. The combination of flavors and textures in this dish will have you coming back for seconds.
Try baby eggplant pasta with roasted tomatoes and spinach for a satisfying and delicious meal that celebrates the unique flavors of these versatile vegetables.

Spiced Baby Eggplant Curry with Chickpeas

Indulge in the irresistible flavors of Spiced Baby Eggplant Curry with Chickpeas. This delectable and hearty curry dish features tender baby eggplants simmered in a spiced tomato-based sauce, harmoniously infused with aromatic spices. The addition of protein-packed chickpeas adds a satisfying element to the dish, making it a perfect choice for a vegetarian or vegan meal.
The combination of the spiced baby eggplant and the richly flavored curry sauce creates a symphony of tastes and textures that will tantalize your taste buds. The sweetness of the baby eggplant is beautifully enhanced by the robust spices, creating a delightful balance of flavors in every bite.
To add a touch of visual appeal to the dish, garnish it with freshly chopped cilantro or a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds. The vibrant colors and fragrant aromas of this curry will make it the centerpiece of your dining experience.
For a complete and satisfying meal, serve the Spiced Baby Eggplant Curry with Chickpeas alongside fluffy steamed rice or warm, pillowy naan bread. The subtle heat from the spices combined with the creamy texture of the chickpeas and the tender baby eggplant will transport your taste buds on a culinary journey to remember.

Experience the divine flavors of this Spiced Baby Eggplant Curry with Chickpeas:

Ingredients:

• 6 baby eggplants, halved lengthwise
• 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-inch piece of ginger, grated
• 2 tablespoons curry powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional, for extra heat)
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh cilantro or toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions:

1. In a large pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic, and ginger. Sauté for 5 minutes or until the onions are translucent.
2. Stir in the curry powder, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (if desired), and cook for another minute until fragrant.
3. Add the baby eggplants to the pan, cut side down, and cook for 3 minutes, or until lightly browned.
4. Pour in the diced tomatoes and vegetable broth, and season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine.
5. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until the baby eggplants are tender.
6. Add the chickpeas to the pan and cook for an additional 5 minutes, allowing the flavors to meld together.
7. Remove from heat and let the curry sit for a few minutes to further develop the flavors.
8. Garnish with fresh cilantro or toasted sesame seeds.
9. Serve the Spiced Baby Eggplant Curry with Chickpeas with steamed rice or naan bread.

With its rich flavors and wholesome ingredients, this Spiced Baby Eggplant Curry with Chickpeas is sure to become a favorite in your home. Enjoy the warmth and comfort of this delicious dish as you savor each and every bite.

Pickled Baby Eggplant for Tangy and Crunchy Flavor

Pickled Baby Eggplant is a delightful and easy way to savor the flavors of baby eggplant all year round. Through the pickling process, these tender baby eggplants are transformed into tangy and crunchy bites that add a burst of flavor to any dish.
Imagine biting into a pickled baby eggplant and experiencing the tangy notes that dance across your taste buds. The natural sweetness of the eggplant is beautifully balanced with the tanginess of the pickling brine, creating a harmonious and mouthwatering combination. The result is a tangy and crunchy snack that will leave you craving more.
These pickled baby eggplants are incredibly versatile. They can be enjoyed on their own as a flavorful and satisfying snack, or used as a tangy and crunchy topping for sandwiches, salads, or charcuterie boards. The possibilities are endless!
When it comes to pickling baby eggplants, the process is straightforward. The baby eggplants are carefully sliced or left whole and then immersed in a flavorful brine, typically made with vinegar, water, salt, and a selection of herbs and spices. The pickling brine infuses the eggplants with its tangy essence, while also preserving their crunchiness.

The Tangy and Crunchy Essence of Pickled Baby Eggplant

One of the advantages of pickled baby eggplants is their ability to retain their natural crunchiness. The unique texture of the pickled eggplant enhances the overall eating experience, providing a satisfying bite that is both crisp and creamy.
Moreover, the tanginess of pickled baby eggplant complements a wide range of flavors. Its acidity balances rich and savory dishes, adding a refreshing and tangy component. The pickled baby eggplant adds a bright contrast to grilled meats, hearty sandwiches, or even creamy dips.
To add a visual element to this enticing description, here's an image showcasing some mouthwatering pickled baby eggplants:
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When you bring pickled baby eggplant to the table, you're not only introducing a tangy crunch, but also a hint of complexity that elevates any dish. So, why not try pickled baby eggplant and discover the incredible flavor combinations you can create while still savoring its natural tangy and crunchy essence.

Conclusion

Baby eggplant recipes offer a wide range of flavors and cooking methods to explore. Whether you prefer the smoky goodness of roasted baby eggplants or the tangy crunch of pickled ones, there is a baby eggplant recipe for everyone. These versatile vegetables can be grilled, stuffed, sautéed, or transformed into delicious curries and salads.
For those who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, baby eggplants can be a great addition to your meal repertoire. They are packed with nutrients and can be a satisfying and flavorful substitute for meat in various dishes. With their natural sweetness and unique texture, baby eggplants add a depth of flavor and complexity to any recipe.
So why not give these recipes a try and discover the incredible flavors and possibilities of baby eggplants? Whether you're looking to incorporate more vegetables into your diet or simply want to enjoy the deliciousness of eggplants, there is no shortage of ways to savor the goodness of baby eggplants.

FAQ

What are some popular baby eggplant recipes?

Some popular baby eggplant recipes include roasted baby eggplant with crispy garlic and herbs, grilled baby eggplant salad with tomato and feta, stuffed baby eggplant curry, sauteed baby eggplant with garlic and herbs, marinated baby eggplant skewers with Mediterranean flavors, baby eggplant pasta with roasted tomatoes and spinach, spiced baby eggplant curry with chickpeas, and pickled baby eggplant.

How do I make roasted baby eggplant with crispy garlic and herbs?

To make roasted baby eggplant with crispy garlic and herbs, slice the eggplant and combine it with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and herbs. Roast the eggplant in the oven until it is tender and crispy. This dish can be enjoyed as a side dish or appetizer.

What is the recipe for grilled baby eggplant salad with tomato and feta?

The recipe for grilled baby eggplant salad with tomato and feta involves grilling the baby eggplant to add a smoky flavor. The grilled eggplant is then combined with juicy tomatoes and tangy feta cheese to create a refreshing and flavorful salad. It can be served as a light lunch or as a side dish for grilled meats.

How can I make stuffed baby eggplant curry?

To make stuffed baby eggplant curry, you will need to stuff the baby eggplants with a spiced filling and cook them in a flavorful curry sauce. This dish is known for its bold and exotic flavors, and it pairs well with rice or naan bread.

What is the recipe for sauteed baby eggplant with garlic and herbs?

The recipe for sauteed baby eggplant with garlic and herbs is a quick and easy option. Simply saute the baby eggplant with garlic and herbs until it is tender and fragrant. This dish can be enjoyed as a side dish or used as a topping for pasta or rice.

How do I make marinated baby eggplant skewers with Mediterranean flavors?

To make marinated baby eggplant skewers with Mediterranean flavors, marinate the baby eggplants in a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and Mediterranean herbs. Grill the marinated eggplants on skewers until they are cooked to perfection. These skewers make for a tasty and colorful appetizer or side dish.

What is the recipe for baby eggplant pasta with roasted tomatoes and spinach?

The recipe for baby eggplant pasta with roasted tomatoes and spinach involves roasting the baby eggplants until they are tender. The roasted eggplants are then combined with roasted tomatoes, sautéed spinach, and pasta to create a hearty and satisfying dish.

How can I make spiced baby eggplant curry with chickpeas?

To make spiced baby eggplant curry with chickpeas, simmer the baby eggplants in a spiced tomato-based sauce along with chickpeas. The result is a flavorful and satisfying curry dish that is perfect for vegetarians or vegans. Serve it with rice or naan bread for a complete and satisfying meal.

How do I make pickled baby eggplant for a tangy and crunchy flavor?

To make pickled baby eggplant, pickle the baby eggplants in a tangy and flavorful brine. The pickled eggplants will have a crunchy and tangy flavor, and can be enjoyed on their own or used as a topping for sandwiches, salads, or charcuterie boards.

Are there any other baby eggplant recipes I should try?

There are many other baby eggplant recipes you can try, such as baby eggplant and tomato salad, braised baby eggplant, baby eggplant caprese, baby eggplant ratatouille, baby eggplant fritters, baby eggplant and mozzarella stacks, and baby eggplant bruschetta. Experiment with different flavors and cooking methods to discover new and exciting ways to enjoy baby eggplants.

Happy almost-Turkey Day all,
In my holy quest for my own signature lasagna I have hit a snag. Though mostly successful, with the peasantry and nobility and invading hordes singing the praises of the flavor, it is missing what I find very satisfying in a great lasagna: Structure. It falls flat. I should have taken pictures.
My love is a vegetarian, the rest of her family (and myself) are not. And so when we make lasagna it's only fair we make a meat and a meat-free. I of course make the meat free. So far I have made two, and they were universally praised but both times the lack of thick sauce (I am guessing) made it very thin between layers, a bit sloppy, and deflatey.
So I am at a loss. I've got my flavor technique down and don't want to change it too much but I want that big fat layer cake feel a great lasagna has that makes it such a substantial mouthful and centerpiece of the plate.
So that suggestions go the right way the current flavor profile is fresh, bright and very tomatoey with herbs, garlic and onion. Instead of bechamel I use ricotta. I was considering adding eggplant to bolster the structure and I can't imagine anyone objecting after it's cooked but the lady has voiced displeasure at the idea.

1. When it comes to grilling, the Argentinians have perfected the art of capturing the authentic flavors of their cuisine. At the heart of their grilling tradition is the Argentinian wood grill, a culinary tool that has been passed down through generations. Let's delve into the world of the Argentinian wood grill and discover the secrets behind its unique ability to elevate the taste of grilled food.

The Argentinian wood grill, commonly known as a parrilla, is more than just a cooking apparatus. It is a cultural emblem deeply rooted in the country's history and traditions. In Argentina, grilling is a way of life, and the parrilla is considered the centerpiece of any gathering or celebration. It's not just about cooking food; it's about bringing people together and enjoying the communal experience of sharing a meal.

One of the key elements that sets the Argentinian wood grill apart is the fuel it uses. Instead of relying on gas or charcoal, the parrilla relies on hardwood, such as quebracho or mesquite, to infuse the food with a distinct smoky flavor. The choice of wood is crucial, as it imparts unique aromas and adds complexity to the taste of the grilled items. Each type of wood contributes its own character to the final result, creating a sensory experience that is hard to replicate.

The grilling technique employed on an Argentinian wood grill is also a defining factor in the quest for authentic flavors. Unlike other grilling methods that rely on high heat and fast cooking, the parrilla encourages a slower and more patient approach. The grillmaster carefully tends to the fire, adjusting the heat and rearranging the embers to achieve the perfect temperature for each cut of meat or vegetable. This process allows the flavors to develop slowly, resulting in tender, juicy, and incredibly flavorful dishes.

One of the most famous dishes prepared on an Argentinian wood grill is the asado, a traditional barbecue feast. The asado showcases the diversity of flavors that can be achieved using this unique grilling technique. Various cuts of meat, such as ribeye, short ribs, and sausages, are seasoned with simple yet flavorful marinades or just salt and pepper. The meat is then placed on the grill, allowing it to slowly cook over the wood fire. The result is succulent, smoky meat with a perfect balance of charred edges and juicy tenderness.

Aside from meat, the Argentinian wood grill is also well-suited for grilling vegetables. Grilled vegetables, such as bell peppers, zucchini, and eggplant, take on a delightful smokiness that enhances their natural sweetness. The parrilla allows these vegetables to retain their texture while infusing them with irresistible flavors. Grilled provoleta, a dish made with melted provolone cheese, is another popular choice that showcases the versatility of the Argentinian wood grill.

To truly unleash the authentic flavors of the Argentinian wood grill, the cooking process is accompanied by a few additional elements. Chimichurri, a vibrant and herbaceous sauce made from parsley, garlic, vinegar, and oil, is a staple condiment that enhances the flavors of grilled meats. It provides a fresh and tangy contrast to the smoky richness of the grilled dishes. Additionally, Argentinians often pair their grilled feasts with robust red wines, such as Malbec, to complement the bold flavors and create a harmonious culinary experience.

Exploring the Argentinian wood grill is not just about cooking techniques or ingredients; it's about embracing a cultural tradition that celebrates the joy of sharing food with loved ones. It's a reminder that great food is not just about taste but also about the stories, customs, and connections that it fosters. So, fire up the parrilla, gather your friends and family, and embark on a journey to unleash the authentic flavors of Argentina through the art of grilling on a wood fire.

https://fuegos.co.nz/
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One of my goals for this year is to eat more plant-based and vegetarian dishes, especially for dinner. So far I've had a lot of fun making new recipes and vegetarian versions of my favorite dishes.
There's just one problem. So many of the recipes I've found require mushrooms.
And I HATE mushrooms.
I've tried all the regular substitutions (Zucchini, Eggplant, Squash) but it always makes the final dish taste a little off. It would be so much easier to find a good savory vegetarian dinner dish that didn't require fungi, but it seems to be hard to track those down.
I'm specifically looking for savory, mushroom-free dinner dishes that would be great for a main course. Can you guys point me in the right direction?
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Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who has already contributed! I've got a ton of great ideas and I'm so grateful for the suggestions I've been given!
However, since I'm seeing some confusion in the responses, I just wanted to clear some things up:

• I'm looking for your personal recommendations. I know that there are some great veggie food resources out there. I've waded through most of them. I know how to use Google to find a recipe. But Google rankings can be fudged, and even the BBC food experts don't always know what they're talking about. (See Hershel Patel trying to make fried rice.) I'm looking for a great go-to that you personally would use if a fungi hater was joining you for dinner.
• Actual recipes are extremely appreciated. There are thousands of great curry recipes online but I'm looking for the one that makes your heart sing!
• GoodHumansBad said that I needed to be a bit more specific with my ask, so here's exactly what I'm looking for: I'm specifically looking for something savory that could be the centerpiece of a nice, weekend, sit-down meal. Something that could take the place of a nice pork tenderloin or a roast chicken in an old-school Sunday roast. Also, if I'm allowed to get picky, it should also be something that young kids and older relatives wouldn't complain about. (So as much as I love spicy and flavorful dishes, suggestions for milder options would be very much appreciated here.)

Thank you so much for the suggestions you've already made! Please keep them coming!

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extra-tight, extra-toasty, extra-virgin, extraconcentrated, extract, extracted, extracting, extraction, extracts, extraordinarily, extraordinary, extras

I already posted about our spring wedding, and wanted to recap our hometown reception in case it's useful for anyone having or considering an event like this. We also self-catered and staffed.

Background/Purpose:

We had our big wedding ceremony + reception in the spring (invited 162, 117 attended) in the city where my husband and I, as well as most of his family live. Our wedding had about 70% out of town guests. My mom has a fairly large group of friends located in my hometown and decided that instead of inviting them to our out-of-town wedding, she would host a post-wedding reception for them. The thinking was:

• It was local to them so less of a burden to attend (both financially and in terms of COVID risk, many of her friends are very cautious with their travel behavior)
• She could invite more friends to the reception than she could have to the wedding, and more would actually attend

So here we go!
Invited: 32 (all local except me, DH, and 3 other immediate family)
Attended: 29
Timing: 7 weeks after our wedding, 6-9pm on a Saturday

Invitations:

Mailed the week of our wedding, so 7 weeks in advance. Wording was "please join us for a reception honoring the marriage of Bride and Groom"

Venue:

Rented the clubhouse in my mom's residential community. It has a nice setting overlooking a pond, fits 70 people, has a small parking lot and a small kitchen. Also came with tables and chairs. $125 to rent and we were responsible for all setup and cleanup.

Food:

My mom cooked. 30 servings of a chicken recipe, 12 servings of eggplant parmesan, rice, salad, and fruit salad. She prepped the eggplant and chicken the day before and made everything else the day off. She used 3 ovens to cook it all (hers and two friends)

Drinks:

Red and White Wine, Sparkling wine and Sparkling apple cider, soda, LaCroix, all from Costco. We had a self-serve drink table

Cake:

2 cakes that each had 16 servings. One chocolate, one vanilla. Bought from local bakeries

Decoflatware:

We had 8 tables of 4, a drinks table, cake table & buffet table. Plastic tablecloths, plastic plates which were reused from a previous party (and washed again afterwards), plastic cups and silverware, paper napkins. Mom bought $15 worth of flowers from a grocery store and divided them into various bud vases and water glasses she already had for the centerpieces. We also displayed a few framed portraits from our wedding.

Attire:

I wore a short white dress from Lulus that I had also worn to my bridal shower + the white shoes from my wedding. My husband wore a normal button down and khakis.

Etiquette notes:

I was really insistent on a few things:
-No overlap of guests list from the wedding guests except for immediate family. I didn't want guests there talking about the wedding in front of people who weren't invited.
-My mom wanted to display a slideshow of all our wedding photos. I nixed this and only displayed 4 framed photos (couple and immediate family portraits), so guests could see my dress, etc. I didn't want to show off a bunch of photos of a party they weren't invited to.
-We put "no gifts please" on the invitation, which most people heeded.

Schedule:

Morning: finish cooking
4-5pm: setup tables, move decor (5 people)
5-5:30: get dressed
5:30-6 finish setup, move food from apartment to the clubhouse
6-6:40: guests arrive and mingling, drinking
6:40: dinner served
7:30: champagne/apple cider toast. (Just a few quick words from my mom and a quick thank you from me)
7:35: cake cutting
9:00: event ends
9-10: breakdown/cleanup

Costs:

I don't know all the details but my mom estimates $600 total (venue, groceries, drinks, cakes, linens/glasses and decor)

Advice for self-catering:

FOOD. Our food was delicious, plentiful and hot. Definitely pick dishes you can prep the day before, and think about oven space and number of baking dishes you'll need. We used the oven in the venue's kitchen to keep dishes warm
HELPERS. It would not have been possible to self-staff this without family and some of the guests offering to help out. Have a plan and assign people who volunteer specific tasks. We had:

• 2 people bake food in their ovens and transport it to venue
• 5 family members setting up (moving tables, tablecloths, setting tables). We had to carry everything 100 yards from my mom's place to the clubhouse
• 2 people helping serve the food
• 2 people helping pour champagne
• my husband and I served cake and champagne
• probably 10 ppl cleaning up? Including washing dishes, vacuuming, packing leftovers

What we could have done better:

MUSIC: we had nothing. It would have been nice to set up a small speaker to play some background music.
PHOTOGRAPHY: I wish we had designated a family member to take some cell phone pictures. Some guests took some but we lost track of who took what.
Overall I think it went well and the guests were happy to be included and enjoyed the food, drinks and getting to talk to me and my husband.

Link to gallery: https://imgur.com/a/UJZd9un
Listing in chronological order of purchase:

• Dresses--(3) dresses, mostly from DB. =$1300
• (1) dress altered = $150
• Suit from local store = $300
• Venue, an old school house = $1000 for the ENTIRE weekend
• Food was a whole smoked pig and sides = $1200
• Cake and cupcakes (yes we got both!) = $500
• Napkins, cutlery, tablecloths, etc = $700
• Grazing table with Costco cheese/fruit = $200 and it was so worth it
• His ring = $1200
• My ring = $500
• Champagne and wine got discounted through a friend who works at Total Wine = $100
• Photographer is a friend of ours and did bridals + day of = $500
• Florist is also a friend of ours and we don't have the invoice yet but suspect cost to be ~ $1500
• Day of Coordinator was also the Florist, and didn't charge us for the DOC service = $0
• I'm not sure how much the favors costed in total, but I just count that as something I contributed. They were small ceramic trinket dishes I made in my spare time. Total cost is probably like a couple hundred (made about 70 of those bad boys) but I'm not really sure.

Total to make this happen: $9,150
Donated from my sweet mom: -$2000
My brother bought us the cake and grazing table as his present: -$700
Donated from my amazing coworkers: -$800
Cash from card gifts: -$2000ish
So that left us with each spending approximately $1800 out of pocket
​
The best parts of the day:

• Everyone absolutely loved the party favors! I had got some previous negative feedback on those in this subreddit, but everyone snapped them up
• The aesthetics of the event were on point. The centerpieces, small details, and everything was exactly how I had hoped it would end up
• It was absolutely magical having my mom's side of family there and the vibes were just so calm and on point from them. I think it really helped us bond. And my husband fell in love with that side of the family and keeps talking about going to WI to visit them hahah
• We had probably over 75 people show up! It was a good size crowd. Sent invites to about 120 folks but many of those who couldn't make it were out of state. Everyone local to the event showed up
• Mandating a group photo was a great idea--Don't love the idea of guest books so this was in lieu of that
• We have a few close friends that are vegan/vegetarian. I made them a mushroom and pea risotto, and smoked jackfruit with a vegan sauce so it tasted like the smoked barbecue everyone else had. And smoked eggplant steaks. They reported back that it was good!

The worst parts:

• There was the infamous Tableclothgate of 2022. We had paid a local cleaners to press the tablecloths and then when we got them back to the venue to lay out, they were so creased it was apparent they never even pressed the. So DAY OF, we had like 3 of our friends and us with irons just going to town. They did end up refunding the cost after the fact
• Someone accidentally locked the room that had everyone's clothes, camera equipment, and the rest of the dresses in them. We had to call maintenance and wait about 2 hours before it was opened
• The DOC was feeling a little under the weather I think--He cut all of our entrance songs down to like 30 second snippets, and didn't put out enough chairs for everyone to be able to sit. Not sure what was going on but I'm still glad we had him to help organize things like the group photo
• The mic on the officiant was cutting in and out REALLY BAD. I can't even bring this up to my husband or he gets a little angry because the guy operating the equipment should have tested it prior. I didn't get upset at the time because I figured the only people who really needed to hear (me and husband) could hear it
• Quite a few people ended up getting COVID after the wedding. Myself included. The calls started coming in around Tuesday (wedding was on Saturday) and we still can't figure out who started it. It was also an indoooutdoor wedding with a lot of folks vaccinated. Just glad our parents didn't get it! Kind of felt like something would happen, so I had been pre-dosing with elderberry and zinc a few days prior, through the wedding, and days after and it still did NOT help me not get sick or reduce the severity. Honestly covid has really sucked.

Food and Drink in Barovia: a Culinary and Agriculture Guide, Including Sample Menus for Blue Water Inn and the DinneWedding Feast with Count Strahd
What can characters eat and drink in Barovia? What kinds of crops or livestock can grow in that area? Is there beer or ale? That’s a very important question for some players. Is it possible to grow crops in a cloudy climate—will the ingredients for making beer even grow there? What can I find on the menu at the Blue Water Inn and at Count Strahd’s feasts? These are questions that come up periodically in the Reddit/Discord. Many people want to include handouts of menus for the inns and also for Count Strahd’s famous dinner. Others want to know if beer or ale can be found in Barovia. Some of us foodies even cook up dishes to serve at game sessions to add atmosphere (Whoopie pies are great for dream pies, by the way). I’ve done a lot of gardening, canning, and cooking over the years, and I grew up with some Eastern European cuisine. In addition, I’ve done some cooking of medieval/Renaissance recipes. So, I thought I’d share some information with everyone.
I wrote this in parts so that you can skip to the information you want. First, there is a discussion of what likely can grow or be raised in Barovia. After a brief discussion on the wine vs. beer issue, we move on to Transylvanian/Barovian cuisine with links to recipes if you’d like to try your hand at recreating some Romanian dishes. Finally, I’ve included a sample menu for Count Strahd’s dinner and/or the wedding feast with Lady Ireena. I plan on having a ‘wedding feast’ for my players to kick off the Castle Ravenloft battle, although it probably won’t involve six courses.
Note: if you do cook for your party, make sure to ask everyone who will be eating about any food allergies. You don’t want to ruin everyone’s night dealing with an allergic reaction. See this wonderful site for more food allergy information.
Part 1: Agriculture
Farms, Groceries, Butchers, and Other Shops
If you’ve looked at the module maps for any length of time, you know that farmland doesn’t show up. However, gardens and livestock are mentioned in Krezk, and Vallaki has the Arasek stockyard. In a town the size of Vallaki or even Barovia village, there would have to be enough farmland to support the population. So, let’s just assume there’s farmland surrounding the towns for raising livestock, growing crops, and keeping beehives.
Let’s also assume that every home has a personal garden where families would grow vegetables, herbs, and fruit and keep chicken coops for eggs and meat. Farmers might have a fortified farmhouse and barn to keep their families and livestock safe, or they might leave town in the morning to go to the farmlands and then return to town in the evening. You could even highlight the dangers for farmers staying out too late in the fields and getting hunted by werewolves, zombies, and assorted other nasties. Perhaps you might add in a small side quest to go rescue some farmers who were caught in the fields after sundown.
Vallaki would have at least one bakery, butcher shop, grocery, and mill. Baron Vargas’ weekly festivals would be a handy place for a weekly farmer’s market, too. Krezk is more like a commune, so people might get together every few days or a week to trade goods with each other.
Growing zones and climate
First, let’s talk about Barovian climate, because that determines what can grow or not grow. That tells us what’s most likely to be used for cooking as a result. Barovia is loosely based on Eastern Europe, and more specifically, the Transylvania region in central Romania, home to Dracula’s castle. So, I looked up a garden zone map for the country. I expected it to be fairly cold, and I was surprised to see that the coldest it gets is zone 5a in the mountains, with most of Transylvania being zone 6 and even a small area as warm as zone 7a. I’ve gardened myself in places that ranged from zone 5 (northern Great Lakes) to zone 8 (Deep South) over the years. There are a lot of fruits, grains, and vegetables that will grow beautifully in zone 5 and 6. Barovia doesn’t have any direct sunlight, but that doesn’t mean there’s heavy shade all the time. You can get sufficient sunlight from light cloud cover to grow a number of crops that can handle some shade. I also came across an article on life in the Transylvania region, and that described some information on what the farmers in that region grow and raise.
Grains
In Romania, people grow grain crops like grass for hay, wheat, corn (both for fresh corn and for making cornmeal), barley, rye, oats, millet, and even some rice. Most of these crops need full sun to produce the best yields, but they can grow in light shade. Wheat, corn, barley, rye, oats, and rice can be ground up into flours to use for making bread and other baked goods. Barley and rye can be used for making beer. While CoS is focused on wine and doesn’t really mention beer or ale, brewing those drinks is possible, so you can feel free to include them if you’d like.
Livestock and game animals
Transylvanians also raise cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens in order to have eggs, milk, cream, butter, cheese, and meat for eating. Ham, bacon, and sausage can be made from pork. Veal and lamb are also meat options. These seem like entirely reasonable items to have in Barovia. Barovians obviously also eat wolf meat. The wolves have to feed on something, and in the wild, that would most likely be deer and rabbits, so we can add those meats to the Barovian diet if we want. Ducks and geese are also raised in Romania. Since Barovia also has several rivers and lakes, fresh water fish would be available as well. Smoked and salt-cured meats and dry-cured sausages were common prior to refrigeration, since meats preserved this way don’t need to be refrigerated.
Fruits and vegetables
The article on edibles that grow in shade mentioned that plants grown for their leaves, stems, and buds are most tolerant of shade. These include salad greens like leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, Swiss chard, collard, purslane, borage, sorrel, and mustard greens. Other vegetables can grow in lower sunlight, like peas, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. Beets, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, horseradish, onions, garlic, carrots, leeks, and parsnips can grow in part shade. Mushrooms will grow very well in woodland areas, and so I would expect to see those in Barovian recipes, too. All of these grains and vegetables can grow in zone 5 nicely. Other vegetables common in Transylvania include potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers (sweet and chili, including varieties to make paprika), green beans, beans for drying (e.g. black, kidney, navy, pinto, and cannellini beans), lentils, artichokes, asparagus, celery, celeriac, fennel, zucchini and other summer squash, cucumbers, scallions, and winter squash.
Since refrigeration and freezing wasn’t possible in pre-industrial settings due to lack of electricity, people would often preserve some vegetables in root cellars, e.g. carrots, onions, potatoes, parsnips, beets, winter squash, turnips, rutabagas. What couldn’t be stored in root cellars was either eaten immediately or preserved in some way. Preservation methods included dehydration, canning, pickling, and storing in oil or lard. (Note: if you ever want to learn how to can and preserve your own food, do NOT depend on old cookbooks. Go to a reputable site like the National Center for Home Food Preservation. You can make yourself critically ill with incorrectly-preserved food.)
A number of berries can grow in Zone 5 and part shade, including raspberries, blackberries, bilberries, blueberries, elderberries, serviceberries, gooseberries, lingonberries, alpine strawberries, and mulberries. Common fruit trees and plants in Transylvania include apples, crabapples, pears, apricots, plums, cherries, grapes (for table and wine), hardy figs, rhubarb, and even some hardier varieties of peaches. Quince and watermelon also grow in this region. Many of these can be dried and stored for use over the winter, like raisins, currants, cherries, plums, figs, and so on. Fruit also was and still is preserved in alcohol or cooked up into jams, jellies, and preserves.
Nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, seasonings, and sweeteners
Nuts and seeds are common, so you’ll see foods that include walnuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, chestnuts, sunflower seeds, and poppy seeds. Pistachios are used in Romanian cooking but are imported. Sunflower seeds and some nuts can also be pressed to create sunflower or nut oils for cooking.
Common herbs, seasonings, and spices in this cuisine include caraway, coriander, cardamom, thyme, dill, marjoram, garlic, mustard seed, bay leaves, horseradish root, fennel, nutmeg, cloves, peppercorns, mint, chicory, anise, cinnamon, saffron, basil, parsley, chives, savory, juniper berries, rosemary, sage, capers, and tarragon.
Verjuice (sour juice from unripe grapes or crabapples) and vinegar were used to make dishes sour or for pickling foods. Rosewater was used to add a unique flavor to dishes.
For sweeteners and desserts: sugar beets can be used to make sugar, and honey can be used as an alternative to sugar. Fruit-based desserts are common.
When I checked out a translation of a 17th century Romanian cookbook, I saw that there were a number of items available like cinnamon or citrus fruit that weren’t grown in that area (at least outside of a hothouse) but were obtained through trade. No doubt, Count Strahd would be able to obtain just about anything he liked via the Vistani, who could travel in and out of Barovia at any time.
Part 2: Is There Beer in Barovia?
Romania is apparently the sixth-largest producer of wine in Europe. The Romanian national drink is tuica, a drink made from fermented plum juice mixed with distilled alcohol. Palinca is a stronger version of tuica found in Transylvania. So, Romanians tend to be wine drinkers more than beer drinkers. And of course, since the extended Martikov family owns both the winery and Blue Water Inn, it makes sense for Urwin and Danika to promote the family business by serving their wine at the inn. Or maybe Chris Perkins just really likes wine a lot. And let’s face it—Count Strahd looks cooler at the dinner table with a goblet of blood red wine (or just blood) than with a stein of beer.
While the Barovian climate won’t support coffee and tea plants well, I would not be surprised if Count Strahd sent the Vistani out into other lands to go get some coffee beans and tea leaves and bring them back to his demi-plane. No Evil Overlord should ever have to go without his morning coffee.
Since hops, barley, rye, wheat, and potatoes can grow in Barovia, it’s possible to have drinks like beer, ale, vodka, and whiskey. Since the Martikovs have the magic gems that make their grapevines produce prolifically, wine is still going to be the predominant alcoholic drink in Barovia. Very unusual beverages would have to be imported by the Vistani, so I doubt they’d be readily available to anyone but Count Strahd and other wealthy nobles. You could make a side quest out of obtaining an unusual drink from a brewer or distiller as a gift for Count Strahd’s wedding or for a dinner at Baron Vargas’ or Lady Wachter’s homes.
Part 3: Cuisine
Romanian and Transylvanian cuisine tells us indirectly what people grow as the ingredients for those dishes. Traditional recipes are usually based on what people had easily available—either they grew/raised the food themselves or could buy the items at a local market. There are some suggested dishes here, here and here. Romanian food uses a lot of fish, chicken, eggs, cheese, onions, peppers, cornmeal, smoked or cured meat, tomatoes, eggplant, root vegetables like carrots and beets, and vegetables that grow or keep well in cooler climates, like peas, cabbage, spinach, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and winter squash. Pickled items are common because that was one of the more reliable ways of preserving food when refrigeration wasn’t available. Stone fruit, berry, and nut-based sweets and desserts are also a feature.
Like every European country, bread is a staple and can be found at every meal. Mamaliga (a polenta or cornmeal mush type dish), potatoes in various forms, cheeses, and/or sausages can also be found on Romanian tables.
For breakfast: Transylvanians and Barovians might have hot oatmeal or porridge, mamaliga, eggs, sausage, cheese, eggplant salad, some stewed or fresh fruit, zacusca (eggplant chutney-type spread) on sliced bread, coffee, or tea.
For lunch or dinner: Romanian cuisine includes sarmale (cabbage rolls), stuffed bell peppers, paprikas (a beef or pork or chicken stew with onions, peppers, and a lot of paprika), stews with vegetables and meats, roast chicken, pork, lamb or beef, sauerkraut, sausages, potatoes in various forms, beef salad, and ciorba. Ciorba is basically soup—sometimes savory, sometimes sour, and can be beef, chicken, fish, tripe, meatballs, mushrooms, or plain vegetable, sometimes with noodles, beans, dumplings, and so on. Fresh or pickled vegetables are daily menu options. Beet soup is also common. On warmer days, grilled fish, meat, and vegetables might be served. Sauces are frequently sour cream-based and may be seasoned with dill or other herbs and spices.
Desserts include papanasi (a cheese and semolina doughnut, fried and then covered in sweetened sour cream and jam), fresh fruit, apricot tart, or cozonac (a sweet brioche bread filled with walnut or poppy seed paste), and palacsinta (sweet crepes filled with nuts, poppy seed filling, fruit jam, or sweet cottage cheese, fried, and sprinkled with sugar), plum dumplings, and fruit pies.
When entertaining, one thing that was fairly common in large, medieval and Renaissance feasts was a ‘subtlety’ or ‘entremet’. Subtleties and entremets were basically “illusion foods:” non-food items made to look like food, or foods made to look like non-food or other food items. For example, making bread in the shape of a bat and using black or dark-colored fruit leather as wings would be a subtlety. Making a papier-mâché boar’s head, placing that over a roast chicken, and then serving the dish is a subtlety. These were meant to entertain the diners and add a little theater to the feast. I included some ideas for subtleties for the Count Strahd wedding feast. Now, I won’t be serving this menu to my players, because I’d like to spend the afternoon gaming with them instead of cooking a six-course meal. However, it’ll give you some ideas for your own feast if you do decide to cook something. You can certainly copy the menu for a handout for your players when you run your dinner, too.
If you’re short on time and you still want to host a small feast/dinner, pick up a rotisserie chicken and fresh rolls or a baguette, boil some egg noodles and toss that with butter and basil, heat up some beets, cook some peeled baby carrots and drizzle with honey and cinnamon, and for dessert, serve sliced apples, pears, and grapes and/or a fruit tart. Go for cheesecake if you want to get really fancy, or bat cookies with black sugar sprinkles if you want to go for the campy vibe.
Part 4: Suggested Menus
Expanded Menus at Blue Water Inn:
(Feel free to add in the meal prices for your game.)
Breakfast:

• Fresh rye bread and butter
• Sliced cheese
• Scrambled eggs
• Sausage links
• Mamaliga (cornmeal porridge)
• Fruit compote
• Coffee or tea

Lunch and Dinner:

• Fresh rye bread served with butter and zacusca
• Sliced cold meats and cheeses for sandwiches
• Sliced tomatoes (in season)
• Hot Beet Soup
• Wolf steak
• Chicken Paprikash
• Mashed potatoes
• Honeyed carrots
• Apple crisp
• Fresh plums, pears, and grapes
• Wine

​
Feast with Count Strahd:
Course 1:
Platters of cold sliced meats
Platters of sliced cheeses
Vegetable crudités with eggplant dip, hummus, artichoke dip, roasted red pepper dip, and tzatziki sauce
Deviled eggs
Spinach salad with fresh sliced strawberries and toasted almonds with a poppy seed dressing
Thin toasts spread with zacusca, smoked salmon, or roe
Subtlety: Bread rolls shaped like birds and covered in blackberry jam and poppy seeds to look like ravens
White wine
​
Course 2:
Chilled cucumbers in dilled sour cream
Grilled lemon shrimp with capers
Lentil ciorba (soup)
Mamaliga
Zucchini fritters
Slices of cheese-rye bread
Subtlety: Herbed butters molded into the coat of arms of the Count of Barovia, one per diner, and a sugar paste centerpiece of a wolf pack.
White wine
​
Course 3:
Stuffed mushrooms
Herb-roasted chicken
Sarmales (stuffed cabbage rolls)
Boiled potatoes with dill
Hot pickled beets
Tarragon Brioche bread and butter
Subtlety: Centerpiece of a flock of meringue swans floating on a ‘pond’ made of aspic
White wine
​
Course 4:
Marinated olive and cheese ring
Pork Paprikash
Green and wax beans in oregano dressing
Buttered egg noodles
Baked butternut squash with apples, brown sugar, and nutmeg
Pumpernickel swirled bread with caraway cream cheese spread
Subtlety: centerpiece of bread baked in the shape of a dragon, covered in bay leaf and artichoke “scales” with a thin strip of red pepper as a tongue and halved stuffed black olives or blueberries for eyes
Red wine
​
Course 5:
Onion-feta pastry
Rosemary-pepper roast beef
Scalloped potatoes
Boiled baby carrots with thyme
Roast acorn squash halves with lingonberry (or cranberry)-brown sugar-butter filling
Crescent rolls and herbed butter
Subtlety: centerpiece of a replica of Castle Ravenloft built from blocks of shortbread held together with a thin layer of icing (note: this might be a fun way for the party to find out about the castle layout)
Red wine
​
Course 6:
Fresh fruit and cheese platter
Sugared almonds
Pears poached in tuica brandy sauce
Chocolate-dipped strawberries with gold leaf accents
Blueberry and/or plum papanasi
Apricot kuchen with vanilla custard
Poppy seed roll with icing
Ricotta cheesecake with raspberry topping
Chocolate torte with cherry filling and ganache icing
Wedding cake
Subtlety: Sugar paste centerpiece, finely detailed, of Count Strahd and Lady Ireena in wedding garb in Ravenloft chapel, and smaller marzipan copies, one pair per diner, presented on plates of edible flowers
Red and white wines, Champagne du Stomp, tuica
​
Poftă bună!

“I suppose they are trying to teach us about camp food.” Xoco carefully eyed the meal, poking at it with a fork as the low hum of a busy dining hall echoed all around them. “I should have known lessons would start immediately.”
Zyn stared at the jungle troll across the five person table currently seating three, his concerned frown growing. “Xoco...what did camping look like to you?”
“Oh it was wonderful! My aunt and uncle and the servants would all go- Isak what’s wrong?” It was Xoco’s turn to grow ever more concerned as she noticed the human staring down his meal and weeping, with Zyn looking over at her mention. “It may be somewhat simple but-”
Isak completely and utterly failed to hold back the tears as he looked over the grilled fish topped with roasted coconut on a bed of sauteed greens with a side of roasted sweet potatoes and fried plantains. “It’s...it’s beautiful...is...is this just a special welcome feast or-”
“Uhh no all the meals are like this, you okay?” Zyn slowly reached out a hand, quickly pulling it back as Isak dug in and started scarfing down his meal. The tears did not stop.
“It’s...it’s just as delicious as it looks!” He said in between bites of fish and greens.
Xoco blushed a deep green. “Oh! I didn’t mean to...this is good to you?”
“It’s incredible!” Isak said as he washed another mouthful down with a goblet of coconut water. Zyn stabbed at a bit of fish, nodding after biting into it. “Gonna have to agree with Isak here, I could get used to this!”
Nelli eyed the food from her place around Xoco’s neck as Xoco tried to hide her shame in Nelli’s feathers. Quickly finding this ineffective, she forced herself to speak. “I...I’m sorry. I did not mean to look down on anyone I just thought...what meals are you normally accustomed to?”
Ozzy gave a happy squeak as Zyn fed him a morsel of fish before responding. “Not this. This is fine dining where I’m from!”
Xoco winced.
Isak took another long drink of coconut water before taking a deep breath, remembering that manners were a thing. “Uh...you know, stew. Like with eggplant and zucchini and rice...chicken if things were going well. All of that in a stew.”
“Hey that doesn’t sound half bad.” Zyn said with a smile between bites.
Isak pushed a bit of sweet potato around his plate. “It was...hearty?”
Xoco winced harder, then horror set in as she realized how rude she was being in regards to the wealth of her newfound friends. “Well that all sounds...wonderful!”
The two boys stared at the troll girl with raised eyebrows.
“I am realizing how sheltered I was…” Xoco pouted as she finally took a fork full of fish and greens. Her own eyebrow shot up. “Hmmm, not bad.”
Isak sighed. “Hey uh...don’t worry about it. Just a different upbringing! Right Zyn?”
Zyn was caught off guard, offering a quick nod and unsure smile.
“See? Same for me! I just had…heartier cuisine growing up. And you just happened to have a cuisine as great as you are!” Isak said with a smile bearing plenty of teeth.
The drow shoved another fork of food in his mouth as he stared at the round wooden table, feeling sympathetic agony for his friend yet unable to look on.
“You should try the sweet potato!” Isak speared a slice of the orange vegetable, holding it up to demonstrate and take a bite. “It’s good!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” A shout rang out from nearby as a plate clattered to the ground and a lizardfolk student leapt at Isak before anyone knew what was happening.
Except Vidal, who caught the young lizardfolk in his hands to leave him helplessly dangling in the air. Despite being immobilized, the young lizard lad still reached and grabbed at Isak’s fork.
“Shall I dispose of the interloper, Master Isak?” Vidal asked.
This only encouraged the lizardfolk to try harder to reach out to grab the fork away. “No! He is in grave danger! Sweet potato is poisonous to humans!”
Isak, Zyn, and Xoco were all still so stunned by the random outburst that they only finally noticed many of the nearby tables all staring at the scene.
“Uh, no Vidal. No disposing of other students. Just set him down.” Isak blinked a few times, starting to wither under all the attention. “And no, I’ve had sweet potato before. Still alive.”
The dark green lizardfolk stopped making ineffectual grabbing motions at the fork of sweet potato as his eyes went wide. Vidal set him down on his feet once more but still loomed over him as a warning.
“....really? You’re sure it was sweet potato? Because I swear I had heard...well, now I feel silly.” The lizardfolk coughed into his hand as his yellow eyes stared at the ground.
Isak sighed. “No, I love sweet potato. See?” He ate the sweet potato slice that had been awkwardly sitting on his fork for what felt like an eternity now.
The lizardfolk flinched as he saw him eat it, then squinted hard as he narrowed his eyes at the sight. “It appears I was very wrong then. Apologies uhh...well my name is Tonauac, and yours is…?”
“Isak.” He held out a hand to the lizardfolk, who flinched once more and took a step back and into Vidal.
Isak frowned until Xoco nudged him. “Handshakes aren’t really a thing back home when all the original peoples of Aztlan have claws.” She said with a flourish of her own black talons.
The human quickly withdrew his hand with a nervous laugh. “Well, call it even on the cultural misunderstandings?”
Tonauac gave a sharp, toothy grin while standing tall once more. “Of course! If I am to be mindful of others’ health then I must take every opportunity I can to learn! I shall leave you now, as I have no doubt caused enough distress. Humans, trolls, and drow alike all hate increased attention!”
And with that, the wiry lizard was slinking off and collecting his previously spilled plate as he went.
“Well that was something alright.” Zyn shook his head, avoiding the stares that were finally losing interest as he focused on his meal.
Xoco tried to relax a bit, finding her shoulders still stiff as Nelli’s puffed up feathers helped her hide a bit in the floof. She finally took a bite of sweet potato and voiced her approval. “I can admit when I am wrong, and I was very wrong.”
“Hey don’t worry, you just didn’t know! Like I didn’t know about the claws thing!” He pointed to her hands. “Which are intense...in a good way! Good...because we’re here to learn!”
Zyn kicked his friend under the table but stuck to eating as the human flailed about.
“Speaking of, what do you make of Vidal’s newest symbol?” Isak deflected onto the stalwart rock man still keeping a watch for any further overzealous flying students.
Xoco took another bite, leaning closer to Vidal. “Hmmm, I made the mistake of thinking dinner would be boring and I left my journal at the dorm. But I think there might be some small similarity to the previous symbol? Did you discover any more forms?”
Isak shook his head. “No, but we discovered that air isn’t a form. So I hope you appreciate me blowing on Vidal’s hand with all my might to see if we could activate a flying rock man.”
The troll girl laughed at the mental image, even Nelli tilting her head in apparent amusement. “It is good to know. Do you know why that element is left out?”
“I have to be careful with stray tears...still from very valid happiness...so my guess was that it’s a safety measure so I don’t have to worry about breathing on him too hard.” Isak savored a final bite of fish, feeling rather bittersweet about said safety feature.
“Also, he only changes forms for Isak! We tried that in the dorm. No ice Vidal...yet.” Zyn said with narrowed gaze at Isak.
Isak put his hand and defensive fork up. “Trust me I’m just as eager to see Ice Vidal, so I’ll be more than happy to have you help me with learning a frost spell.”
Xoco put a hand to her chin. “Tears worked for water which would mean that the source of the element presented does not need to be magical, correct? Unless human tears are magic?”
Zyn and Xoco alike both leaned in, suddenly very eager to know the answer. Isak scowled. “No they are not.”
“Hmm, well in that case could you take some fire to Vidal for Fire Rocks?” Xoco started sounding even happier at the prospect, even Zyn perking up while chewing through a mouthful of food.
“Huh...yeah I suppose I could use a spark of storm magic to light something on fire and then use that! But it would probably be a bad idea to have a rock man engulfed in flames inside.” Isak grew more and more focused, thinking of the possibilities.
Xoco nodded before giving a weak smile. “I meant just using the candle.” She said pointing to the candle lit centerpiece at the table. “But good resourceful thinking!”
“Oh.” Isak felt his face grow a slight shade of red. “Yeah that works too.”
As he reached for the candle, Zyn quickly blocked his hand with his own. “As cool as that would be, and as much as I am looking forward to seeing how cool it is, maybe not a great idea to have an actively burning large rock man in the dining hall?”
Isak and Xoco both got similar looks of disappointment followed by silent acceptance that the drow was right.
Xoco held up a finger. “But what if-”
“If I have to be the responsible one any longer I might die, please don’t kill me.” Zyn pleaded, pained resignation clear in his red eyes.
The jungle troll grumbled before stuffing her face with more food.
“You know...we’re allowed on the beach at night, so long as we don’t go into the water. So that would be a good place to test out a bit of fire without worrying about burning anything down, right Zyn?” Isak said while munching on sweet potato.
Zyn put a hand to his chin. “Yeah that sounds safe- wait, how dare you make me continue being so responsible!”
Just as he went to give a light punch to his friend’s shoulder, the grinding of rock on rock as Vidal moved a step closer had him pulling his punch into a vague gesture accompanied by a nervous smile to the rock man.
“Pssst, Isak. You gotta let him know that I’m not actually trying to hurt you. Just, you know. Hurt you in a friendly way.” Zyn said as the tiniest bead of sweat made it down his forehead while Ozzy hid behind his neck.
Isak grinned. “Hmmm nah, this is way too amusing.”
Xoco almost choked on her food as she laughed, even Nelli letting out a small squeak in approval. The trio finished their meals in silence, eager to head down to the beach. As they dumped their plates in a bin at the kitchen counter they passed by Tonauac waving to them.
“Apologies for earlier. Again.” He said, clearly still feeling bad. “I want to be a healer, so I strive to look out for my fellow student and keep them from harm! Or! Heal them up if harm is unavoidable! My current healing abilities are limited but I digress!”
His smile was broad, turning to confusion as the trio avoided all eye contact and looked off to anywhere but the lizardfolk currently hitting them with so much guilt.
“...did I say something wrong?” Tonauac’s smile had completely faded into a frown by the time Isak could wave him off.
“So we just...so Vidal here-” He pointed to the rock man. “He can change elements. So we were going to go try that with fire. On the beach where there’s only sand.”
“It’s in the pursuit of knowledge!” Xoco waved her arms about while forcing a smile. “You see, the symbol on his chest changes and it’s in a language I don’t know and-”
“Can I go with you? Good go have a healer on hand!” Tonauac asked, smile returning
Zyn shrugged and Isak waved him onward with a sigh. “Come on.”
(I happened to get into such a groove of writing this chapter, and wrote so much, that I needed to divide it up. It also means you get a chapter of this story before that other new story I'm writing. I hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think.)

“I suppose they are trying to teach us about camp food.” Xoco carefully eyed the meal, poking at it with a fork as the low hum of a busy dining hall echoed all around them. “I should have known lessons would start immediately.”
Zyn stared at the jungle troll across the five person table currently seating three, his concerned frown growing. “Xoco...what did camping look like to you?”
“Oh it was wonderful! My aunt and uncle and the servants would all go- Isak what’s wrong?” It was Xoco’s turn to grow ever more concerned as she noticed the human staring down his meal and weeping, with Zyn looking over at her mention. “It may be somewhat simple but-”
Isak completely and utterly failed to hold back the tears as he looked over the grilled fish topped with roasted coconut on a bed of sauteed greens with a side of roasted sweet potatoes and fried plantains. “It’s...it’s beautiful...is...is this just a special welcome feast or-”
“Uhh no all the meals are like this, you okay?” Zyn slowly reached out a hand, quickly pulling it back as Isak dug in and started scarfing down his meal. The tears did not stop.
“It’s...it’s just as delicious as it looks!” He said in between bites of fish and greens.
Xoco blushed a deep green. “Oh! I didn’t mean to...this is good to you?”
“It’s incredible!” Isak said as he washed another mouthful down with a goblet of coconut water. Zyn stabbed at a bit of fish, nodding after biting into it. “Gonna have to agree with Isak here, I could get used to this!”
Nelli eyed the food from her place around Xoco’s neck as Xoco tried to hide her shame in Nelli’s feathers. Quickly finding this ineffective, she forced herself to speak. “I...I’m sorry. I did not mean to look down on anyone I just thought...what meals are you normally accustomed to?”
Ozzy gave a happy squeak as Zyn fed him a morsel of fish before responding. “Not this. This is fine dining where I’m from!”
Xoco winced.
Isak took another long drink of coconut water before taking a deep breath, remembering that manners were a thing. “Uh...you know, stew. Like with eggplant and zucchini and rice...chicken if things were going well. All of that in a stew.”
“Hey that doesn’t sound half bad.” Zyn said with a smile between bites.
Isak pushed a bit of sweet potato around his plate. “It was...hearty?”
Xoco winced harder, then horror set in as she realized how rude she was being in regards to the wealth of her newfound friends. “Well that all sounds...wonderful!”
The two boys stared at the troll girl with raised eyebrows.
“I am realizing how sheltered I was…” Xoco pouted as she finally took a fork full of fish and greens. Her own eyebrow shot up. “Hmmm, not bad.”
Isak sighed. “Hey uh...don’t worry about it. Just a different upbringing! Right Zyn?”
Zyn was caught off guard, offering a quick nod and unsure smile.
“See? Same for me! I just had…heartier cuisine growing up. And you just happened to have a cuisine as great as you are!” Isak said with a smile bearing plenty of teeth.
The drow shoved another fork of food in his mouth as he stared at the round wooden table, feeling sympathetic agony for his friend yet unable to look on.
“You should try the sweet potato!” Isak speared a slice of the orange vegetable, holding it up to demonstrate and take a bite. “It’s good!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” A shout rang out from nearby as a plate clattered to the ground and a lizardfolk student leapt at Isak before anyone knew what was happening.
Except Vidal, who caught the young lizardfolk in his hands to leave him helplessly dangling in the air. Despite being immobilized, the young lizard lad still reached and grabbed at Isak’s fork.
“Shall I dispose of the interloper, Master Isak?” Vidal asked.
This only encouraged the lizardfolk to try harder to reach out to grab the fork away. “No! He is in grave danger! Sweet potato is poisonous to humans!”
Isak, Zyn, and Xoco were all still so stunned by the random outburst that they only finally noticed many of the nearby tables all staring at the scene.
“Uh, no Vidal. No disposing of other students. Just set him down.” Isak blinked a few times, starting to wither under all the attention. “And no, I’ve had sweet potato before. Still alive.”
The lizardfolk of pale green with black markings stopped making ineffectual grabbing motions at the fork of sweet potato as his eyes went wide. Vidal set him down on his feet once more but still loomed over him as a warning.
“....really? You’re sure it was sweet potato? Because I swear I had heard...well, now I feel silly.” The lizardfolk coughed into his hand as his yellow eyes stared at the ground.
Isak sighed. “No, I love sweet potato. See?” He ate the sweet potato slice that had been awkwardly sitting on his fork for what felt like an eternity now.
The lizardfolk flinched as he saw him eat it, then squinted hard as he narrowed his eyes at the sight. “It appears I was very wrong then. Apologies uhh...well my name is Tonauac, and yours is…?”
“Isak.” He held out a hand to the lizardfolk, who flinched once more and took a step back and into Vidal.
Isak frowned until Xoco nudged him. “Handshakes aren’t really a thing back home when all the original peoples of Aztlan have claws.” She said with a flourish of her own black talons.
The human quickly withdrew his hand with a nervous laugh. “Well, call it even on the cultural misunderstandings?”
Tonauac gave a sharp, toothy grin while standing tall once more. “Of course! If I am to be mindful of others’ health then I must take every opportunity I can to learn! I shall leave you now, as I have no doubt caused enough distress. Humans, trolls, and drow alike all hate increased attention!”
And with that, the wiry lizard was slinking off and collecting his previously spilled plate as he went.
“Well that was something alright.” Zyn shook his head, avoiding the stares that were finally losing interest as he focused on his meal.
Xoco tried to relax a bit, finding her shoulders still stiff as Nelli’s puffed up feathers helped her hide a bit in the floof. She finally took a bite of sweet potato and voiced her approval. “I can admit when I am wrong, and I was very wrong.”
“Hey don’t worry, you just didn’t know! Like I didn’t know about the claws thing!” He pointed to her hands. “Which are intense...in a good way! Good...because we’re here to learn!”
Zyn kicked his friend under the table but stuck to eating as the human flailed about.
“Speaking of, what do you make of Vidal’s newest symbol?” Isak deflected onto the stalwart rock man still keeping a watch for any further overzealous flying students.
Xoco took another bite, leaning closer to Vidal. “Hmmm, I made the mistake of thinking dinner would be boring and I left my journal at the dorm. But I think there might be some small similarity to the previous symbol? Did you discover any more forms?”
Isak shook his head. “No, but we discovered that air isn’t a form. So I hope you appreciate me blowing on Vidal’s hand with all my might to see if we could activate a flying rock man.”
The troll girl laughed at the mental image, even Nelli tilting her head in apparent amusement. “It is good to know. Do you know why that element is left out?”
“I have to be careful with stray tears...still from very valid happiness...so my guess was that it’s a safety measure so I don’t have to worry about breathing on him too hard.” Isak savored a final bite of fish, feeling rather bittersweet about said safety feature.
“Also, he only changes forms for Isak! We tried that in the dorm. No ice Vidal...yet.” Zyn said with narrowed gaze at Isak.
Isak put his hand and defensive fork up. “Trust me I’m just as eager to see Ice Vidal, so I’ll be more than happy to have you help me with learning a frost spell.”
Xoco put a hand to her chin. “Tears worked for water which would mean that the source of the element presented does not need to be magical, correct? Unless human tears are magic?”
Zyn and Xoco alike both leaned in, suddenly very eager to know the answer. Isak scowled. “No they are not.”
“Hmm, well in that case could you take some fire to Vidal for Fire Rocks?” Xoco started sounding even happier at the prospect, even Zyn perking up while chewing through a mouthful of food.
“Huh...yeah I suppose I could use a spark of storm magic to light something on fire and then use that! But it would probably be a bad idea to have a rock man engulfed in flames inside.” Isak grew more and more focused, thinking of the possibilities.
Xoco nodded before giving a weak smile. “I meant just using the candle.” She said pointing to the candle lit centerpiece at the table. “But good resourceful thinking!”
“Oh.” Isak felt his face grow a slight shade of red. “Yeah that works too.”
As he reached for the candle, Zyn quickly blocked his hand with his own. “As cool as that would be, and as much as I am looking forward to seeing how cool it is, maybe not a great idea to have an actively burning large rock man in the dining hall?”
Isak and Xoco both got similar looks of disappointment followed by silent acceptance that the drow was right.
Xoco held up a finger. “But what if-”
“If I have to be the responsible one any longer I might die, please don’t kill me.” Zyn pleaded, pained resignation clear in his red eyes.
The jungle troll grumbled before stuffing her face with more food.
“You know...we’re allowed on the beach at night, so long as we don’t go into the water. So that would be a good place to test out a bit of fire without worrying about burning anything down, right Zyn?” Isak said while munching on sweet potato.
Zyn put a hand to his chin. “Yeah that sounds safe- wait, how dare you make me continue being so responsible!”
Just as he went to give a light punch to his friend’s shoulder, the grinding of rock on rock as Vidal moved a step closer had him pulling his punch into a vague gesture accompanied by a nervous smile to the rock man.
“Pssst, Isak. You gotta let him know that I’m not actually trying to hurt you. Just, you know. Hurt you in a friendly way.” Zyn said as the tiniest bead of sweat made it down his forehead while Ozzy hid behind his neck.
Isak grinned. “Hmmm nah, this is way too amusing.”
Xoco almost choked on her food as she laughed, even Nelli letting out a small squeak in approval. The trio finished their meals in silence, eager to head down to the beach. As they dumped their plates in a bin at the kitchen counter they passed by Tonauac waving to them.
“Apologies for earlier. Again.” He said, clearly still feeling bad. “I want to be a healer, so I strive to look out for my fellow student and keep them from harm! Or! Heal them up if harm is unavoidable! My current healing abilities are limited but I digress!”
His smile was broad, turning to confusion as the trio avoided all eye contact and looked off to anywhere but the lizardfolk currently hitting them with so much guilt.
“...did I say something wrong?” Tonauac’s smile had completely faded into a frown by the time Isak could wave him off.
“So we just...so Vidal here-” He pointed to the rock man. “He can change elements. So we were going to go try that with fire. On the beach where there’s only sand.”
“It’s in the pursuit of knowledge!” Xoco waved her arms about while forcing a smile. “You see, the symbol on his chest changes and it’s in a language I don’t know and-”
“Can I go with you? Good go have a healer on hand!” Tonauac asked, smile returning
Zyn shrugged and Isak waved him onward with a sigh. “Come on.”
(I happened to get into such a groove of writing this chapter, and wrote so much, that I needed to divide it up. It also means you get a chapter of this story before that other new story I'm writing. I hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think.)
<< Chapter 3 Chapter 5 >>

TLDR: it started and ended with the scale at the doctor’s office ... but now I can see my toes. —-
Go ahead, soak in the schadenfreude of imagining the scene where I collapse into a plump pile of tears and then promptly postmates a bucket of fried chicken to console myself.
To his credit, he did wrap it nicely and put a bow on it. The look on his face as I opened it was like the poor soul in a movie who has to defuse a bomb by guessing if they should clip the red or blue wire with a few seconds until it explodes, killing the entire Disney universe. He may have taken a deep breath and closed his eyes as he handed it over. Yelling ensued.
But... it wasn’t directed at him. It was me yelling at the damn inadequate instructions to connect the “smart scale” to the wifi. This involved me first trying to remember the wifi password. Passwords are the worst. Turns out, it was Bluetooth, but calling their help line is a story for another day.
Spouse breathed sigh of relief that I had been serious when I asked for a fancy new scale for my birthday and it wasn’t some trap like, “Is Gisele Bundchen prettier than me?” (he says no, liar) or “Is my lasagne better than your mother’s?” (point of fact: it is.) Sorry, folks, this ain’t a sob story — you can put away the popcorn.
I stepped on that new fancy scale: 179 lbs. 66 pounds lost with 6 more to go. At 5’11”, that’s a 25 BMI. 10 months of sane, slow weight loss with CICO. I’m built like a Valkyrie, so the top-end of the BMI scale works for me... and I can actually say: I’m not fat, I’m just big boned!
What has changed with the weight loss:
I can see my toes! ALL. OF. THEM. My feet are still ugly AF, but a 1/2 size smaller. Fun fact: feet also lose weight. These troll honkers still require I shop in the jumbo ladies foot section, but whatever. I can see them because my stomach is no longer my most “prominent” feature.
I get cold easier. The seal blubber I had before really did keep away the chill. But, damnit, I look cute in my sleek little jackets and slim-fit henleys. Actually looking forward to summer weather that doesn’t involve me trying to convince myself that a muumuu really flatters my back fat rolls.
No more hiding at the back of group photos... or begging people not to put them on Facebook. About a week ago somebody posted a series of candid photos that caught me from every angle. My biggest gripe was the the tag on my shirt was sticking out... but nobody could see it said size M. Oh, the vanity.
Less makeup and a fierce shorter haircut: I was fooling myself that somehow my longer hair “balanced out” my rotund stomach. Turns out that -5” of hair looks great with -10” off my waist. I’ve got cheekbones Kim Kardashian would envy, no contouring required. These sharp puppies get unexpected amounts of compliments. Plus, I have rediscovered my collarbone and shoulder-blades. Many years ago, I read a Jennifer Weiner book where the character loses a bunch of weight and wakes up one morning to find a hard lump on her hip. She thinks it’s cancer until she realizes that the hard lump is the same on both sides... they were hipbones. It was like that.
My intimate life. I’ll just say this: bumpin’ uglies with a bunch of extra weight was an exercise in getting winded with the lights off. My husband followed suit with his own weight loss — between the two of us, we’ve lost 110 pounds — and we enjoy our own bodies and each other’s much, much more.
What hasn’t changed:
I still look like a soup chicken in skinny jeans. Maybe more like one suited for coq au vin rather than plump centerpiece roast. Wide hips with slim legs will do that to a girl. Alas, losing weight doesn’t fix everything. But I’ve got that hot lower back muscle ridge thing going for me, so it’s a fair trade.
Everything hurts. But that’s a function of landing a glorious and hard-earned spot on nationally competitive rowing crew “Team Badass”. 5-6 days a week I spend 90 min testing the theory that the human body can simultaneously endure a hardcore cardio AND resistance training workout requiring a laser focused mind. Never felt more like a badass in my life. A year ago, I felt like a badass while wolfing down massive 1,000+ calorie burritos after a lighter workout because, you know, I “needed” the fuel. Packed on about 10 lbs of “muscle” from that logic. The aphorism that you win the weight battle in the kitchen and not the gym: truth. What doesn’t hurt anymore is my knees whenever I needed to haul my ass off the couch, or my ring finger after trying to lube up and jam my wedding band on only to watch it turn fifty shades of reduced blood flow.
I still argue with the Nurse Pratchett at the doctor’s office about my weight. A few days ago at my checkup, their scale showed 183, and I wanted credit for that 4 pounds! No dice. But it was late afternoon... I just drank a bunch of water so I could pee in a cup, was wearing jeans, a winter coat, and boots. Fine, I’ll show her at the next appointment. Last year’s checkup? I tried taking my sandals off thinking I’d magically drop 40 pound on the spot. Upside of my checkup: no more blood-pressure medication needed.
I have nothing to wear. she whines This time it’s because EVERYTHING in my closet is too big. Even my previously smallest jeans — the aspirational ones you keep with the glimmer of hope you’ll ever be able to pull up over your knees again — are baggy. And those fuckers were expensive. Kinda mad about that. Also... I’m a size 8-10, medium — and I’ve discovered finding shit that fits properly off the rack is still impossible. At least now I can say it’s an inventory problem without the little voice in the back of my head speaking the hard truth of, Sorry, Toots, it’s actually because you’re eggplant-shaped. And not the svelte Japanese variety.
I eat whatever I want, as much as I want ...HOWEVER, I’m under no illusions about the consequences of calories (~1700/day to lose, maintenance is next). I still have “hungry” days — especially when I’m PMSing. If I want a giant steak and mashed potatoes... I go for it. Rather than popping a couple alka seltzer’s afterwards and grabbing my sweatpants, I stay in my jeans and go easy on the calories for the next few days. Like a rational person. Like my life-long slender friends do.
So, if you’re still with me... a huge thanks for the support of this group. Gave me the info about CICO, MFP, and an outlet to do something i had never done before: use a sense of humor to tackle the emotional side of weight loss. I’d be lost (and still fat) without you.

Budget Breakdown for a 60 person backyard wedding:
Edited to add photos:https://imgur.com/a/atIMsqu
Chapel rental: $425 – we got married at the University of Virginia Chapel, which is $350 for Alumni, then I think we paid for parking spaces and a/v equipment too
Taco Truck: $700 – We had a local taco truck serve pork, chicken and bean tacos. They set up a tent and cooked and served the food on site (not from their truck, the tent set up was easier with our backyard layout). This was $10 per person for 3 tacos each. They brought all the delicious toppings, and they were even making handmade tortillas on site, which guests loved.
Afghan Food: $275 – We also love afghan food from a local place, so we had them bring quabuli palow (a lamb and rice dish), borani badenjan (eggplant dish) and bread. This was dropped off in aluminum pans, and I had chafing dishes (borrowed from my parents) already set up. People just loved the afghan food and so many guests told me how good it was!
Cheese and meat table: $200 – I love cheese and charcuterie, so I wanted to have the biggest cheese tray ever at my wedding. I went to Costco and went nuts buying cheese and meats and crackers. I also supplemented with a few things, like fig spread and marcona almonds, that I bought at Trader Joes. I rounded up all the white and wood serving trays/cheese boards from my parents and sisters, and set them all out on the table, then had my DOC put the food out on them.
Desserts $40 – My sister made a 2 tier naked iced spice cake, which was so so delicious. I also picked up macarons and mini lemon cakes at Costco and put them out on trays on the dessert table.
Wine: $337 – I purchased box wine from a local winery (Michael Shaps for anyone in Va). We live in the middle of wine country, and Michael Shaps is one of my favorites. My crowd is very much a wine drinking crowd, and I didn’t want to serve wine for the sake of having wine, I wanted it to be good wine. We joined the wine club (free, you just commit to quarterly purchases) to get 20% off the wine. That brought the boxes down to $32 each, which is a good deal considering regular retail for his bottles are $20+, and each box was 4 bottles. The boxes were also great because we had a self-serve bar, so no one needed to constantly open new bottles of wine.
Beer: $150 – I bought two 30 packs of bud light from Costco, then six 18 packs of craft beer and cider from wegmans. This was all self-serve from a canoe filled with ice in the yard. I returned one case of BL, and had lots of craft beer left over.
Other beverages: $40 – I set up a Keurig station with coffee and hot chocolate, plus had some sodas and la croix.
Plates/cups/etc: $270 – I bought palm leaf plates, silver colored disposable silverware, and plastic stemless wine glasses. I also bought cocktail napkins with our names on them.
Koozies: $56 – 75 personalized Koozies from fastkoozie.com
Blankets: $70 – I bought 25 blankets from Ikea because I was worried people would get cold.
Photographer: $900 – 3 hours with one photographer for ceremony, family pics after, and about an hour of the reception.
Rentals: $788 for a 20x40 pole tent, six 6 foot round tables, 5 cocktail tables, four 6 foot long tables, and 65 folding white chairs. This included delivery and set up. The rental company was Central Va Rentals, and they were great to work with, but their inventory has seen better days. The tent was pretty beat up and had lots of patches with white duct tape, and the tables and chairs had seen better days, but oh well.
Band: $850 – The band was wonderful, and were friends of friends. I was a little hesitant to spend this much on a tight budget, but it really made a backyard wedding feel more like a special event.
Day of Coordinator: $300+$50 tip. - I definitely didn’t want to have to do too much on my wedding day so a day of coordinator was essential. I found her through a local facebook group, and she did a great job.
Flowers: $95 – I ordered 15 bunches of eucalyptus @ $3 each from Trader joes, then just grabbed whatever other flowers looked pretty when I picked them up the Thursday before my wedding. This was plenty of eucalyptus for 11 little wreath centerpieces, my big bouquet, flower crowns for me and my 2 sisters, a couple boutonierres, and 4 vase arrangements. I was very set on having a big beautiful bouquet, and I have a friend who is great with flowers who agreed to make it for me the morning of my wedding. Trader Joes was great, and they even gave me buckets with water in them to transport my flowers home.
Other décor: $100 – this is approximate. I spent $16 on a 25 pack of assorted sola flowers which I used to make 6 boutonierres, 3 corsages, and a collar for my dog. My mom bought black oil lanterns and grapevine wreaths from hobby lobby for the tables. We just tucked the eucalyptus into the wreaths and put a lantern in the middle, it looked great and provided extra light. The lanterns were like $5 each and she got 5, I’m not sure about the price of the wreaths but I think they were just a couple dollars. I also bought some battery operated tea lights from amazon and saved my Oui glass yogurt jars and put those on the cocktail tables.
Porta potty: $135 – this was a bit of a last minute decision. We have 3 bathrooms in our house and thought we’d be fine, but then we figured we’d get one just in case. This was just a standard blue potty which I know people are against, but it was fine and more convenient for guests who didn’t want to go up the steps to our back door.
Dress: $275+ $308 for alterations. I bought a dress from a shop (Church Street Bridal in Lynchburg Va) run by a womens shelter. They get dresses donated from Kleinfelds and other bridal shops. My dress was a 2 piece Watters dress, plus a Maggie Sottero topper. I had to get it hemmed, and the topper was way too big so that had to be taken in.
Invitations: $20 for envelopes + around $30 for stamps. A friend screen printed my invitations with gold ink on forest green paper and I loved them. We did online RSVP’s through Zola, which I thought worked well but some people still had trouble.
Programs: $25 from Vistaprint. I designed these mainly because I thought it would be a good way to disseminate reception information to guests. I put info about parking, food, etc on the back of the program.
Rehearsal dinner: $180 - we ordered a bunch of fried chicken and sides and took it to a brewery who reserved a big table for us. We just opened a tab and bought everyone’s beers.
Officiant: Free, he was my husband’s professor in law school who is now a friend of ours, and he did an amazing job on the ceremony. We both went on international trips separately for work right after the wedding, so we bought him some fun goodies as a thank you.
Tablecloths: borrowed from friends/family. A friend had ten 120” round table clothes which worked for the 6 foot tables plus the cocktail tables. My mom had various rectangular and round table clothes which we used on the other tables. It wasn’t perfect and I had to use 2 on some tables, but it was fine.
Hair and makeup: I did it myself! I went to Macys and had the sweetest girl do my makeup and I loved the look. I did buy about $100 worth of makeup that day, but it was all stuff I needed anyways so I don’t include that in the total. I was totally pleased with the way it looked, the only downside was it would have been nice to just sit there and sip a mimosa while someone else did it, but I don’t know if that downside is worth the $200+ price to have a makeup/hair person.
I see a lot of posts on here about a backyard wedding being more expensive than a venue, but I think we were able to save money this way. While it required a lot of coordination, I thought it was actually easier in some ways to have it in the back yard. I didn’t have to worry about transporting anything to the venue. Everything I ordered for the wedding I labeled and put in the basement, so it was quick to set everything up. It was also helpful that the tent was set up Thursday morning, so I was able to set up the tables and chairs in advance. There was no rain forecast the days before, so I set up the tablecloths and some other stuff Thursday and Friday as well. We are obsessed with our dog, but she is a little weird, so having it at home meant we could include her, but she could also retreat upstairs to her safe space.
I decided very early on that some things about weddings just seemed too stressful, so I wasn’t going to deal with that. Seating assignments, expensive plated dinners, traditional ceremony things like all the dances, wedding parties, etc all just seemed unnecessary. I just wanted people to have food and drinks and a good time.
We live in the city and have limited street parking, but we were able to use a local business’s parking lot for the wedding. Without this, it would have just been street parking so we were going to encourage people to carpool.
I was getting very nervous about the weather leading up to the wedding – first the cold, then the rain. Blankets weren’t originally part of the plan, but that was easier and cheaper than a tent heater. We also have a firepit in our backyard, so we made a fire and the late night crew hung around that.
I borrowed a LOT of stuff. I borrowed platters, baskets, the keurig, string lights, a cooler, chafing dishes, beverage dispensers, and a canoe for the beers. I kept everything white, clear glass, or wood to keep it cohesive. I even borrowed my veil and some extra makeup from one of my besties who got married last month! I ended up making a google doc with all the things I was borrowing and sent it to the people who were loaning things so they didn’t forget anything.
We buried a bottle of bourbon one month before our wedding day to keep the rain away. It worked! It was also fun when we dug it up at the reception and shared it.
Things that were a surprise/unexpected:
We had a lot of last minute cancelations.
Our tent was apparently supposed to be inspected by the fire department. This was the tent rental company’s job to set this up, and a neighbor (every neighborhood has that one old bitty!) called the city to complain. The fire marshall showed up at 10am Friday morning, but he was super nice and inspected it right then, and gave me his card in case any other questions came up.
People’s attire was all over the place, but no one seemed out of place! Take note, those of you who stress about dress codes! We put “dressy casual” on the website, and I stressed that this was outdoors so please dress weather appropriate. We had people in cocktail dresses, sweaters with pants, suits, and even a tux. Everyone looked great!
NO ONE pays attention to the wedding website!!!! This is actually mostly just my family, but I about lost it with them asking me constant questions. I probably said “look at the wedding website” 100 times Friday and Saturday. I took the time to put all the addresses and parking info on the site, and anytime we went anywhere they asked me where it was, how do you get there, where can I park, etc.
Things I loved:
My bouquet! My trader joes flowers were beautiful, and I am so lucky to have a talented friend that put together the most beautiful bouquet for me.
While I didn’t have a bridal party, I had close friends and family get ready with me at the air bnb my family was staying at. It was relaxed and fun.
This was a very DIY affair, and I recruited the help of my family (parents + 2 sisters) for a lot of set up. I had a spreadsheet with tasks assigned, so instead of spending a lot of time telling people what to do, I told them to look at the spreadsheet, complete a task, then cross it off. I also set noon as the “quit time” for me on the wedding day. Anything that wasn’t done by noon was thrown in the fuck it bucket.
The chapel is on a busy college campus, and I actually loved all the random strangers shouting out congratulations. It made me feel so special haha!
The ceremony script was written just for this occasion - we didn’t follow any sort of template. Our officiant was awesome, he wrote such a good ceremony. It was personal, a little bit funny, had a few nods to a traditional wedding ceremony, and was just 100 percent what I wanted. We wrote our own vows, which I was hesitant about, but I am really glad we did.
A few things that were less than perfect:
The sound at the chapel was kind of weird. Our officiant had a mic on, but there was an echo or something.
My cheese/meat table was not perfectly executed. This was left up to the DOC, and I planned to put post-its where I wanted everything to go, but ran out of time so this didn’t get done. It was fine though, people had plenty of meat and cheese.
I made these poles for string lights by setting a metal pole in a flower pot of quickcrete, and they seemed really heavy and steady, but when we went to put lights from them they tipped too easily, so I didn’t have the backyard covered in string lights light I had envisioned.
We invited 99 people, some of which we knew probably wouldn’t come. It was tough to pare the guest list down even to that, and there were people I wanted to invite that we couldn’t. With the last minute cancelations and people who came to the ceremony but not the reception, we ended up with about 60. I know there’s nothing you can do about it, but had I known I would have invited a few more people that I really wanted to.

Hi everyone, I'm back with another post in my series about Into the Breach mechanics. Today, everything you knew and didn't know about the final mission at the Volcanic Hive!

The Volcanic Hive.

After you save the second corporate island, you get the opportunity to face the Vek head on at the Volcanic Hive. You can choose to go there immediately, or wait until you have saved 3 or 4 corporate islands, to increase your score.
Once you arrive at the hive, your mechs immediately jump into action, so remember to install your spare reactor cores before you do so! The final mission is a two-parter, and it has some particularities that set it apart from regular missions.

• On normal and hard difficulties, the Vek population cap is increased to 7, instead of the usual 6.
• Instead of civilian buildings, R.S.T. corp provides you with Power Pylons. Since there are no civilians living inside the pylons, your final score is not penalyzed if some of them get destroyed.
• There is an unique Psion species, the Psion Tyrant.
• The Psion Tyrant never appears on the first turn. It always emerges from the ground, and is extra likely to spawn on the second turn, compared to other Vek.
• The Vek species list is fixed: Fireflies, Hornets, Scarabs, Scorpions, Crabs, Beetles, Diggers, and Blobbers
  • This is the only place where Scarabs and Crabs can appear side by side.
  • You will never encounter Leapers, Spiders, Burrowers, and Centipedes at the hive.

The dificulty of the final mission scales with the number of islands you have completed. If you have defeated 2 corporate islands, the Vek-selection algorithm acts as if you were in island #3. If you have completed 3 or 4 islands, the amount of rare vek and alphas in the final island is similar to what you would find on island #4. That said, the increase in the vek population limit significantly increases the danger. The larger variety of rare vek species (4 instead of two 2) also means that you are less likely to reach the species spawning limit for rare vek before the end of the mission.

First Phase (Volcano)

In the first half of the final mission, your goal is to stablish a beachhead at the volcanic island. As soon as you arrive, you are immedeatly greeted by the Vek. The starting set of enemies varies according to difficulty, but does not depend on how many corporate islands you have saved before. The numbers for easy difficulty are similar to a normal island mission and the numbers for hard difficulty are similar to those for a corporate tower defense mission. However, the normal difficulty always starts with 3 regular vek, despite 4+ being common late in the game.

Difficulty	Starting enemies
Easy	3 regular Vek
Normal	3 regular Vek
Hard	3 regular Vek + 1 boss Vek

The boss Vek that appears on hard difficulty can be a Firefly, Hornet, or Scorpion.

The volcano

The centerpiece of this mission is the volcano at the top of the screen. There are four turns, and the volcano alternates between spewing lava and launching fireballs at the air.
But did you notice that this is not just a regular volcano, but a Super Volcano? Seriously, check the tooltip!
The volcano behaves as if it were a 2x2 set of mountain tiles except that it is effectively indestructible. Many times per second, the game repairs any damage that is done to the volcano, and updates the mouseover tooltip so that it says "Super Volcano" instead of "Mountain".
The drawing of the volcano seems to be placed on its bottom corner (G7). If you hit that tile with an artillery attack the whole volcano bounces a bit!

The lava

In the first and third turns, the volcano spews a river of lava 4 tiles long. In one of the rounds, the river of lava starts from the F7 square, and in the other the river starts from the G6 tile. The game randomly chooses which starting point to use first. The lava path is mostly random. It avoids flowing into buildings, mountains, and pre-existing lava tiles but other than that there is a 50/50 chance that each of its 3 steps will go towards the SW or SE direction.

The fireballs

In the second and fourth turns, the volcano randomly throws 4 fireballs into the field. As you would expect, the lacement of the fireballs is random. The only rules are that there is always one fireball per quadrant of the map, and that fireballs are never fired at the edges of the map, or at buildings.

Phase Two (Caverns)

In the second phase of the final mission, you fight the vek at the heart of the hive. The objective is to protect the Renfield bomb while it primes. On easy and normal difficulties, the starting set of Vek is more challenging than phase one.

Difficulty	Starting enemies
Easy	2 regular Vek + 1 boss vek
Normal	3 regular Vek + 1 boss vek
Hard	3 regular Vek + 1 boss Vek

This time, the boss Vek can be either a Firefly, a Hornet, or a Beetle.
One subtle difference is that the scorpion boss never appears in this half of the mission. Additionally, the soft cap on the number of regular scorpions that can be spawned is lowered to 1, down from the usual number of 3. You will usually see one scorpion but rarely will you see a second one.

The Caverns

The main set of environmental threats in the second half of the mission are falling rocks and tentacles. The falling rocks instantly kill any vek or mech that gets caught under them, and if they fall into lava they convert that tile into a regular ground tile. Be careful if you have a flying mech, as the falling rock icon can be a bit hard to see on top of lava. The tentacles also instantly kill anything they touch, and they leave behind a lava tile in their wake.
There are always lots of deadly tiles throughout this mission but the game makes sure to never directly threaten the Renfield bomb. The game does this by removing the bomb tile from the list of tiles that are are going to be attacked by rocks or tentacles, which means that sometimes you might see one less falling rock than you would expect.
You might also notice that as the mission progresses, lava and tentacles start appearing from cracks in the background walls. It is a small detail but it definitely helps to set the right mood.

Turn zero

In this mission, you don't choose where to deploy your mechs. At the start of the mission, your mechs and the Renfield bomb are randomly placed in a 2x2 patterns, in the 5E, 5F, 6E, and 6F tiles.
There is a 50% chance that there will be a vek currently standing there, which gets crushed by the Renfield bomb. If the bomb crushes an unique enemy like a blobber then that means you got very lucky. The crushed vek counts still counts towards the species and alphaness limits in the vek-generation algorithm so if an unique vek gets crushed you won't see it again!

Turn one

On this turn, four consecutive sets of rocks fall from the ceiling, crushing anything in their way. The game uses the same algorithm as the volcano fireballs. It places one falling rock per map quarter, avoiding buildings and map edges.
By the way, this "quarters" algorithm is also used for placing placing teleporter pads in the Detritus Corp island and for lightning storms in the R.S.T island.

Turn two

In this turn, tentacles attack the tiles where your mechs are currently standing, so move out of the way ASAP!
I think this might be the reason why there is usually no more than one scorpion in this phase of the mission, and why there are no leapers or spiders to be seen. Having multiple webbed mechs in this turn could end the run!
One interesting thing about this turn is that if the tentacles destroy a ground tile where a vek is spawning from, that Vek never gets to spawn. Unlike a regular mission, blocking a spawn in the first turn can be a very powerful move. Additionally, the Vek that didn't manage to erupt from the ground still counts towards the species limits in the vek-spawning algorithm. This is particularly relevant for the Psion, which is specially likely to try to spawn in the second turn. If it get eaten by tentacles, you will never see it for the rest of the mission.

Turn three

In this turn, more rocks fall from the ceiling, this time all at once.
The rocks fall in a 3x3 square, centered in a lava tile. Usually this will be one of the holes opened up by a tentacle in the previous turn. Rocks will fall in all the lava tiles in the 3x3 square. If the total of lava tiles is less than 6, they also fall in surrounding ground tiles, to bring the total up to six.
Most of the time, there will be 6 falling rocks in total, but 5 is also possible if the game cancels a rock that would fall on the bomb.

Turn 4

In this turn, a long line of tentacles appears in the ground, forming a path that connects two opposite side of the map.
The randomizer selects two endpoints among the middle 4 rows or columns in the map and places tentacles in the shortest path between these points, walking around mountains and pylons. If this shortest path ends with a straight line of 3 or more tiles that are parallel to the wall, the algorithm removes one or more tentacles from the end until there are is at most a 2 tentacles touching each wall.

Destroying the Renfield bomb

If your Renfield bomb gets destroyed by any reason, Ms. Kern will give you a backup and the turn counter goes up by 2, as is shown in this album. It doesn't just reset back to 4 turns, as you might have expected at first.
If the mission is delayed in this manner, the environmental hazards cycle back from the start. So after the line of tentacles on turn 4, turn 5 behaves similarly to turn 1 and so on.
The backup Renfield bombs are randomly dropped inside the 4x4 set of tiles in the center of the map. In theory they can also be dropped near the edges if none of the 16 tiles in the center are safe but I'm not sure if that is even possible in practice.

Questions to ask ourselves

Finally, I'll end with some questions for the audience

1. Where are all the Leapers, Spiders, Burrowers, and Centipedes hiding? Could they be chilling in a different Beach Resort Hive instead of the Volcanic one?
   
2. Is there a way to destroy the Super Volcano or to get a mech inside it? This tantalizing possibility reminds me of the Eggplant runs in Spelunky.
   
3. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a weapon that lets you deploy a Renfield bomb in the field? Most of the time we are tasked with protecting the bomb or its prototypes but blowing them up is a lot of fun!
   
4. What is the deal with the timers for the backup Renfield bombs? The backup bomb can have a shorter timer than the first one so could that mean that Ms. Kern already started priming it ahead of time, because she assumed that we would inevitably fail?
   
5. In theory it should be possible to prolong phase 2 of the final mission indefinitely, by intentionally destroying the Renfield bombs. How high do you think you would be able to get the turn counter before you run out of power grid?
   

The Experiences of a Vegan Working in the Cruise Ship Industry
​
Eric Freedman,
Musician
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To anyone reading this, whether you work are a cruise ship employee or administrator, a guest, or just a concerned and interested individual, I would like to extend my deepest thanks. I am writing to discuss my some of my concerns and hopes related to my job and to my life. I only ask that you stay with me until the final page. It was not easy for me to write about these experiences, just as it isn’t easy for me to live through them, which I do every day. The subject matter will be uncomfortable at times, but it is very important to me that I communicate this with absolute clarity, and it means a great deal to me that you have taken the time to hear me out. Imagine four musicians chatting with each other before a rehearsal. Four of them had recently spent time with each other over a steak dinner. The fifth was a strict vegetarian and did not attend, partly because of the expected lack of menu options for him, and partly because of feelings of deep discomfort at having to watch his friends take part in an act he finds deeply unethical. The other musicians start talking about how much they enjoyed their steak, and one of them starts laughing loudly and says how much he loved the taste of the veal. Everybody involved has freedom of speech, and the right to say what they think, but for the veal-eater to express that thought, the vegetarian, who is already uncomfortable, has to go into a deep emotional despair. Things like this are a trigger for him. I put the question to you, in a situation like this, whose concerns deserve the greatest weight? For the last four years, around the time i joined the cruise industry and shortly before, I have tried to live my life free from cruelty to animals. I managed to get a vegan diet up and running (no small feat for a picky eater like me, who used to eat copious amounts of cheese), I made sure my wardrobe was free from things like wool and fleece, and learned as much as I could about vegan nutrition to make sure my health was secure. I knew that when I joined cruise ships, there would be no assurance of any vegan food, but I thought perhaps, somehow, I would find a way to get through it. After all, even vegans have a right to seek better work opportunities and I was determined to let no one hold me back. The person who joined his first ship those four years ago was new to veganism, hopeful, and knew very little about the world at large. Four years later, that person has now seen much of the world, and is considerably more knowledgable, but the hopefulness has turned to defeatism, stress, anger and despair. In a rational world, it should be easy to avoid needlessly harming others, and hard to get away with it. Both the legal systems of free countries and the policies of large companies should have an easy path for those who want to withdraw their participation from anything involving animal cruelty, whether it be food or clothing, furniture, bath products or anything else. Instead, those individuals face an uphill struggle. I have to go it alone, largely procuring my own food, totally at the mercy of whatever the local grocery stores have available on a given day, in a given country, and at the mercy of whatever ship security will allow me to bring on board. Finding things like cruelty-free shampoo and soap, and more and other necessities (including much needed dietary supplements) is even more of a challenge, as these things are not widely available in many cruise ship destinations. The vegan lifestyle itself is not challenging. Fruits and vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and seeds are available almost anywhere. Vegan recipes are easily available online, and most foods not normally thought of as vegan can be made that way with small alterations. It isn’t challenging … when there is support. But it has been proven to me day after day that the hardest thing about avoiding animal cruelty is dealing with other people. It’s people, with their greed and their apathy, and their fear of the unknown, that are the reason I have to work several times harder then everyone else to get adequate food, to enjoy my leisure time, to participate in social gatherings, and to live my life with a clear conscience. It’s people that make casually hurtful remarks about me for doing these things, who offer little to no help in response to my concerns and confront me with a thousand little indignities every day. It’s because of people that I can’t walk more than ten feet in any part of the world without seeing an example of some mistreated animal or another that might send me into a downward emotional spiral at any moment, and it’s people that deny me any truly safe space into which I might retreat. It is very difficult for someone who isn’t a vegan to understand what it’s like going through life like this. I can only compare it to the indignities faced by people with disabilities, in their quest to participate as much as possible in what society has to offer. Many countries and companies have laws in place to guarantee disabled people these rights, but with my situation those policy changes never materialize. My disability, it seems, is that I have a conscience. I have a conscience about animals and I’m surrounded by people who don’t, and they’re the ones that set the policies. This has to change. I cannot maintain my health or my sanity any longer in this environment. It is hell on earth. I can’t keep going through life in a constant state of despair and stress, and an inability to get through to people, with nothing to look forward to but more of the same. The time has come for ship policies to change, for the cruise industry to take active steps in making their facilities cruelty-free and friendlier to the people who are trying to withdraw their participation from a culture of violence towards animals. I know how this can be done; many of my suggestions can be implemented immediately, others are more long term goals. But this can, and must, be acomplished. 

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During my first couple of years on ships with my first company, I learned the basics. The food in the crew mess was notoriously anti-vegan. For breakfast there was mostly just sausage, bacon and eggs. The selection of fruit was limited and often unusually dry. Oatmeal was off limits because it’s prepared with dairy. Even the breakfast cereal was out of bounds because it had Vitamin D3, which is derived from sheep’s wool. For lunch and dinner you’d be lucky if your only options were white rice and french fries, assuming of course that the fries were fried in oil rather than animal fat, which isn’t told to you beforehand. There’s bread, but as with all the other food, it wasn’t explained to you what the ingredients are, and many breads contain dairy, eggs or animal fats. The mashed potatoes contained dairy. And there would be some mixed vegetables and a salad bar near the end of the line; perhaps the chefs believed that vegetarians/vegans only eat salads and steamed broccoli all the time, and that that would be enough to satisfy them. For each port, I check [happycow.net](https://happycow.net) to see if there are any vegan restaurants available. There hardly ever are, especially in the poorer parts of the world, but there might be places that are vegetarian friendly. More often than not, if I can’t find a place like that, I’ll walk around, glancing at menus from nearby restaurants, constantly weighing my options until I find a place that has a few items that are vegan by accident. Ninety-five percent of the time I’ll find a pizzeria and order a pizza with garlic and no cheese, and after the waiter triple checks to make sure that’s what I really want, half the time it comes back overcooked. I often find that when I check with the serving people if my item of choice has any animal ingredients, they themselves don’t even know, the disinformation is so ubiquitous. Because the selection of fruit on the ship was limited and of unreliable quality, I would usually search for a smoothie shop in port. These are not always available, and at the time I wasn’t allowed to bring fresh fruits and vegetables on ships. I would go for days and sometimes months eating nothing in that food group except for orange and apple juice. Fruit smoothies were sometimes available in the crew bar, but not always, and again with a limited selection Each visit to the port often usually ends with a trip to the grocery store. Without the ability to bring fruits and vegetables on board, I would get as much prepackaged food as possible, things like hummus, soy milk, vegan bread and cookies, and whatever sauce was available. However, with the limitations on fruits and vegetables, I basically had no choice but to live off of junk food. If the mess options were too limited on a given day, i’d stock up on Oreos, Skittles, and corn chips and juice, the only vegan options in the crew stores because they were vegan by accident. Sometimes I would hear things like “Try \[this dish\], they don’t use a lot of dairy”, which to a vegan is about as helpful as saying “eat this, it has fewer toenails in it than all the other options”. Indeed, some of the vegetarian dishes are labelled as such, but never, ever in all my time on ships have I seen food labelled as vegan. I also faced several needless inconveniences. Once in a while there would be a crew barbecue and the entire mess would be shut down. I would be unable to have lunch specifically because everyone else wanted meat. Many people would say, I should come anyway, they might have veggie burgers or some side vegetables. I don’t know why people think that that represents fairness or respect, but even if it were true, I would still be expected to have fun in a social setting that glorifies animal murder for entertainment, and so “having fun” would be impossible at any rate. Often I would have no choice but to grab the least objectionable item I could find and pray that it really was vegan Or there would be an ice cream social that I couldn’t attend because there was no vegan ice cream. One time during dinner, a coworker once said to the table “You know what’s the funniest thing in the world? The look on a vegan’s face when he realizes there’s meat in his food!”. Another crew member agreed with him. Everyone else at the table was silent, knowing that I was vegan and waiting for the other shoe to drop. When they finally looked at my plate and realized i was vegan, they were quick to backtrack (“well, a lot of my friends are vegan, etc., etc.). What would happen if someone made a similar remark about a gay person, and then tried to distance themselves by saying it’s OK because they have gay friends. What if they did it at a time when gay people had no workplace protections or support system, just as vegan employees today have no support system at their place of work. When people say things like this in a situation where discrimination is real, its stops being a joke and starts representing a real threat. Those jokes become part of a climate of bullying, harm and neglect. I met two other vegans during my time with that company, one had been doing it for years, had figured things out, and had to go to the same ridiculous extremes that I did. We both knew that animal products are slipped into most of the food, even when it makes no sense. Nobody needs milk or eggs to be in bread or desserts, not even the people who eat them, as long as it tastes good. But the two of us felt powerless to change anything, so we simply adapted to the inconveniences. The second vegan was new to ships and a bit rattled as to the lack of options and assistance. I told her about the chips and Oreos. One of my roommates toward the final week of my contract said he was seriously considering going vegan after seeing some documentaries but didn’t know how to start or how to take the plunge. Another crew member told me she was vegan on land, but due to the limited options on ships, had to switch to vegetarianism. I have since head this from several other crew members, including people who didn’t feel they could pull off vegetarianism on ships and had to start eating meat or fish again. I am attaching a facebook conversation from cruise ship employees on this very subject for those who don’t believe me. Yet another member of the entertainment staff who was lactose-intolerant volunteered to represent the entertainment division on the food committee. He promised me that he would try to get ingredients labelling on the food and ensure that the vegan options were properly marked. I have no doubt he tried his hardest, as he had similar inconveniences weeding out the options that contained dairy. But he couldn’t even accomplish something as simple as that. The food and beverage department wouldn’t even extend that simple gesture to people like us. It sent the message that vegans aren’t important enough to helped. 

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​

 I came out of my final contract with that company with the conclusion that is was impossible to be both vegan and healthy simultaneously on ships. For that and various other reasons, I spent a year out of work. One thing that doesn’t get talked about often enough is how difficult it is to find vegan jobs. I can’t be employed as a waiter in most restaurants because it would put me in the position of having to serve people meat and dairy. The few jobs available in vegan restaurants fill up quickly. If I were to be employed as a receptionist, I might occasionally have to prepare or order food for the other employees which puts me in the same difficult position. I am only really qualified to be a musician, and the work that we get often involves playing for dinners and parties, which almost always involves serenading people as they eat meat. There’s just no escape. As with my leisure time, there is nowhere I can go for a job that is free of the cruelty. And so, unsurprisingly, during the first half of that year, I fell into a deep depression. I stopped cleaning up after myself, I bathed at irregular intervals. I spent most of my time watching television and sleeping. It became harder and harder to see my family as serious human beings anymore, as every time I brought up the subject of animal cruelty, their arguments, which all boiled down to an unwillingness to give up their favorite foods and the belief that it was ok to slaughter animals because they were different, became feeble and tiresome to me, as well as soul crushing. My parents would occasionally take me to lunch and order vegan food for themselves in an effort to cheer me up, but by then it seemed like a half-hearted gesture, we both knew that they would be eating meat and/or dairy a few hours later, and the same number of animals would have been abused and killed for their benefit. The last time I spoke to my mother was just after Hurricane Irma and it ended in a fight. By the time I left them to move to another country, I didn’t even say goodbye to any of my family. It was easy, like blocking spam mail. Worst of all, in my most depressive moments, I would even lose the taste for food. And so, even with my already limited food options, I couldn’t enjoy what I ate. Talk about insult added to injury. I had every classic symptom of depression aside from suicidal tendencies. I spent the last few months of that year in Melbourne, where I faced all the same obstacles, with the added inconvenience of having to see horse-drawn carriages every day. In the 21st century. Really. Do people think horses like to do this kind of thing in their free time? Or do people not realize this is slavery? Within a few months I had run out of money and credit, and had no choice but to live in a flat share. The one thing at the time that was keeping me going was that i could at least carve out a safe-space in the privacy of an apartment. I was miserable and life was still tough, but I had at least that protection. Now, I had to live with five other people with a shared kitchen, where everybody cooked meat all the time. I couldn’t afford therapy. I had no privacy at all, not even a curtain around my bed. There was no place I could be free from the smell of cooked meat. I couldn’t walk down the street without seeing slabs of meat hanging from a storefront or furs in a clothing store or more people passing by in horse-drawn carriages. There was no one I met that I could fully relate to. I couldn’t escape through movies and television, as even the protagonists are shown to eat meat with no reflection on their character. I went from feeling hopeless and powerless and drifting through life, to eventually feeling nothing at all, except a vague numbness and a sense of feeling dirty. Within a month, I wouldn’t even be able to afford groceries. There was nowhere to go, simply nowhere, not even the refuge of my own mind, to be free of the cruelty. There was no escape. Except one. This is what drives people to consider suicide. At the moment when helplessness becomes absolute and all hope of a better life becomes extinguished, when life becomes a hell on earth, it occurs to people, there is a way to escape. You can be free of it by dying. And so, after holding out for a year, maybe longer if I’m completely honest, my depression finally became suicidal. I would have been dead within a week, if I hadn’t joined an animal rights march down the street from where I lived. After feeling like I was alone in a big, frightening world, the sight and realization that there were enough vegans to hold up traffic for a few hours lifted my spirits considerably. When there is support, genuine support, magic like that can happen. 

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If you’re still reading at this point, thank you. The worst of it is over. 

​

It’s still pretty bad, though. 

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​

I took a job with a different cruise line in order to pay off my debts. When asked during the medical exam, I lied about my depression, as being jobless on top of everything else would risk exacerbating my condition and make it impossible to maintain my veganism. I feel more comfortable talking about this now, as I am one month away from being debt-free after almost a year. Knowing what I had in store for me, I brought a blender on board, and was determined to bring fruits and vegetables in from the outside so that I could make my own smoothies. At that point I didn’t care if I was breaking company policy, it was a matter of health and survival. It transpires that with this second cruise line, the policies on having fruits and vegetables in the cabins are slightly more relaxed than on other ships, but I couldn’t risk losing my job at this point, so every time we had a cabin inspection, I would hide my produce and my blender in a locked closet or under the bed. This is typical for many crew members trying to hide a few small perishable healthy foods, but i had to hide basically my entire food supply twice a week. What does it say about the policies of an industry that there should be a culture of secrecy around crew members who just want to eat healthier? Being a small ship, the crew mess in this ship had fewer options than I was used to. There was basically nothing I could eat except rice, and fries, and pasta if i was lucky (if the pasta comes pre-prepared with meat sauce, i’m out of luck). My first day on board my supervisor, realizing my situation, asked the chefs to prepare for me a vegan plate. The look on their faces was one of grim pity. We both knew there was nothing. It took them three days to come back with that plate. “Don’t worry”, I said jokingly to my supervisor, who was bewildered that everyone kept passing off the responsibility to someone else, “I could always eat tomorrow”. On the third day they came back with a plate of wilted broccoli and eggplant. Another case of people thinking that vegans only eat vegetables. This is typical. Most people don’t quite know what veganism is. If the chefs do happen to know what veganism is, they still don’t know what vegans require nutritionally (bean dishes, for example, are a staple for any healthy vegan diet, and yet there are hardly ever any vegan bean dishes available for the crew). Moreover, hardly any chef know what vegans enjoy. It never occurs to them that vegans might like to eat bread, and desserts, or that they might prefer to eat their greens mixed into a smoothie rather than in the form of a salad, or that vegans might not like mock meat and veggie patties and might prefer a more natural-looking alternative, like bean or lentil burgers, or felafel and hummus. Once again, there are no ingredients lists at the point where the food is served, and no vegan labelling. There is perhaps one vegetarian option per meal, and not to put too fine a point on this, but you can’t call something an option if there’s only one. Unless it’s an option between eating or skipping a meal. Depending on my working hours and the opening hours of the mess, there is usually a limited amount of time to eat, and if i had to personally ask for the ingredients in everything, i’d have no time left to eat. But at least this time I was prepared. The moment I got a cash advance, I started making supermarket trips. I made my own fruit/vegetable smoothies (usually in my cabin, at the advice of my supervisor, who didn’t want me to attract too much attention from the safety officer). I bought all my own groceries, this time including beans and whole grain bread. I got through my first contract with this ship without relying on their food at all. Ironically, I was eating healthier than any other crew member. Again, what does that say about the food/beverage policies, if ensuring your nutrition means procuring all your own food and preparing everything yourself. Eventually I learned how to cook dried beans and brown rice in the microwave. I can even make cake in the microwave. If anyone in the food and beverage department argues that they don’t have the resources or the manpower to make vegan breads and desserts, let alone other foods, take me to the nearest microwave and I will utterly disprove that notion in a matter of minutes. After I do, you should ask yourself why a full team of professional chefs with a fully stocked kitchen can’t accomplish what one individual can do with a microwave and a blender every…single…day, day in and day out, for months at a time. 

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In the course of my work on ships, as a vegan, I am constantly faced with various other dilemmas outside of food. Do i set up the insect trap in my quarters as instructed, or do i “forget” to take the plastic lining off and reward that plucky, rarely seen ant that has the fortitude to climb that far down into the ship? Should I go to a restaurant or grocery store, where some of my money will be diverted to the sale and production of animal products, I do I go to a fully vegan restaurant even if the options are crappy? Should I sit on the leather couch in the club like the rest of the band, or do I just stand the entire time and risk looking eccentric or stuck-up and preachy? How do I deal with a similar problem when the piano bench is made of leather. Is the piano bench even made of leather, or is it fake? How do I tell the guest performer violinist that I don’t appreciate things like horse hair or leather in their musical instruments, and that I don’t feel comfortable enabling that at all? What do I tell my coworkers to explain why I refuse to bring down their late night meals for them, and will they even understand when I give them my honest answer? Do I mention to them that I haven’t been able to have a meal with anyone without animosity for years, particularly if they keep talking about their love of meat, ever since I stopped having dinners with my family? Do they understand? Can they understand? Can anyone who hasn’t lived my life ever really understand why these things are important to me, or do I risk ripping open old wounds every time I have to explain myself? And once again, is there a single one of the above-mentioned issues that isn’t the result of people and polices being needlessly harmful? Does anyone really need the couches to be made of leather, even non-vegans? Is that the only way to imply a luxury cruise experience? Then there are the moments that are not so much dilemmas as they are outright indignities. Is the only way to deal with rats spreading disease on ship to kill, not just the parasite, but the rats? After all, musicians are a famously mangy people. I had an infectious disease once on a ship, but the medical center’s first thought was not to kill me in order to spare the crew. Perhaps the idea of killing rodents comes from the belief that they’re just a nameless, faceless, intractable force, rather than individuals with personalities and the ability to feel pain and suffering. That because they’re different from us, that must make them inferior, and that because they’re inferior, that makes them more disposable than tissue paper. What other shitty behavior have I experienced regarding animals on my last few cruises. Let’s see, there’s the ever looming presence of fur coats and rugs hanging from storefronts in Alaska. How about that cafe in Wrangell whose menu includes a “People Eating Tasty Animals” burger (a reference to P.E.T.A., People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the famous animal rights group). How about being required to attend a lecture on micro-plastic, where the environmental officer expressed his desire to keep ocean waters safe for fish, because if we don’t, that will get in the way of his plans to kill them properly to make sushi for his family. How about after four days on the ship having depleted my groceries, I complain to the assistant cruise director about a last minute switch in my on-board duties, and having to hear him say he will need a better reason to give the higher-ups than “just a trip to the grocery store” (again, it’s my lifeline, people). How about my sixth contract, where at one point half the band was vegetarian, but hardly any of the food in the mess was. I had known the guitarist on that ship from a previous company. He used to be upbeat. By the time I saw him again, he had since become vegetarian, and he looked miserable, particularly during meals. I knew what was in store for him. What would you expect me to tell him? Or anyone else that wants to take the leap in order to help animals but feels that their workplace situation is too bleak to pull it off? How about the short fill I had with a third company, the strictest of the three, where my blender was confiscated, as was all of my soy milk, which was the only reliable source of vegan calcium available to me during a long ocean crossing, and where I went mostly without fruit and green vegetables for 3 weeks. How about the three occasions where I was flat broke when I started a contract and had to survive on fries and white rice for a week. How about Klemtu where, If i take the late shift, I have to help point the guests in the direction of a bunch of fish that were killed especially for them, and then hear the cruise director wax poetically about it for a solid minute at the before the guest entertainer comes on. How about the epicurean event, where they serve meat and fish (the real Epicurus was in fact a vegetarian, and his philosophy specifically preaches against overindulgence. Everyone gets this wrong). How about the training videos exhorting us to “always do the right thing”, which I haven’t been able to watch with a straight face, ever. How about just a few days ago, when upon seeing me eating the last bit of bread I had on reserve, a crew member from the wait staff waved some chicken at me and asked if I wanted some “proper food”. I have so many objections to that one I don’t even know where to begin, not the least of which is that he didn’t even realize he was being malicious. He really did feel sorry for me, and he really was raised to believe that waving part of a murder victim in my face would cheer me up. How about when a guest drops dead of a heart attack in the middle of a cruise, and the thought occurs to me and nobody else, that this person could have been saved if the ship hadn’t served him the meat and cheese he had undoubtedly been eating all his life. Or the realization that we live in a world where people kill animals to produce foods that will eventually kill them, through heart disease or cancer, roasting the planet to death in the process (animal agriculture is responsible for 15% of man-made green house gas emissions). And heaven forbid I should have to play background music for a lunch in the restaurant, or an diner themed event, where burgers, hotdogs, and seafood are centerpieces of the event, which puts me in the position of serenading people while they commit an atrocity. I don’t want to abandon my duties. I’m not lazy. Normally I like my job. But I have to live with my conscience, and every time I play at one of these things, I feel like I’m playing the fiddle while Rome is burning. 

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I’m nearly done. Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that the current policies on cruise ships is insufficient to accommodate the needs and concerns of those who object to animal cruelty. Perhaps you already knew that, but hadn’t fully appreciated the emotional toll it takes on those people. Perhaps I’m am doing my own industry a disservice by airing out my dirty laundry in public, but you need to know. As do they. You need to know what it’s like. Nobody should be subjected to man-made policies that force them to choose between their job, their health, and their ethics on a daily basis with no real help. That is a nightmare choice, it is undignified, it is avoidable, and it is wrong. I hope I’ve also convinced you that such policies have an unavoidable emotional cost. Every time i face a reminder that I am not treated fairly as an employee, every time I have to work that much harder to avoid exploiting animals, while everyone else can do it straight away and with ease, and have that wish not only allowed but facilitated by their place of work and every level of society, every time a coworker, many of whom would be repulsed by homophobia and ethnic prejudice, turn out to be unashamedly vocal racists with respect to cows and chickens and pigs, when there is no one to admire, when there is no hope in sight… every time something like that happens, and the rules and policies that could be used to help improve things are callous and silent, it pushes me just a little bit closer to contemplating suicide again. I am not the only one going through these problems. Here’s the link to an article related to the growing number of vegans and their stuggles in workplace environments and the social impediments to their otherwise worthy life choices: ([https://www.vice.com/en\_au/article/3k9n9y/vegans-are-traumatised-and-need-help-says-vegan-psychologist](https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/3k9n9y/vegans-are-traumatised-and-need-help-says-vegan-psychologist)) 

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What can I say? I should probably be in therapy, but even doing that would reinforce the stereotype that vegans are mentally unstable (another thing I’ve heard in conversation when the speaker thought there were no vegans within earshot). I could just as easily ask you why 98% of the world isn’t currently in therapy over their inability to break free of their recreational animal murder habit? My only cause for therapy is my anger and despair and having to share the world with them, an anger which I maintain is rational and and based on real problems, not merely perceived ones. If asked to undergo treatment, I would tell a therapist all the same things I’m telling you now, and any attempts to “fix” me, without addressing the social and policy causes that trigger my depression, and without restoring my faith in humanity, won’t fix a damn thing. Vegans are growing in number. This isn’t a fad diet, it’s based on an issue of civil rights, of justice. And injustice can’t last forever. More and more people will want to become less shitty to animals over time, and you will need to put measures in place before that happens, because even If I lose my job over my inability to fit in with an environment hostile to people like me, there will only be more people like me to replace me, and the issue will only become more serious. How much would it cost ships to have smoothie stands available during meals, to ensure guests and crew can ensure enough fruit and green vegetables in their diet, even for the pickiest of eaters, relatively quickly and painlessly? How much would it cost to list the food ingredients at the point at which it is served, so that people know what they’re putting into their bodies. How much would it cost to make the pasta vegan and the sauces too, or to keep the sauces on the side? What would it cost to made ALL the breads and desserts vegan, given that non-vegans don’t care what those foods are made from as long as they like the taste? How much would it cost to have brown rice instead of the less-nutritious, processed white rice, or to use less saturated fats and oils in cooking, and how much money would you save on meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and health insurance if you crowded out those foods with the healthier alternatives? What harm would it do to have a fully vegan meal at least once a week for the crew to dispel some of the myths and insecurities regarding what vegan food is and what it could be? How much effort would it take to go march straight into that cafe in Wrangell, with the offensive name for one of their burgers, and tell them that this kind of mean-spiritedness is unacceptable, and that if they don’t change it, you will take your business elsewhere. And what is there left to say about people’s right to speak their minds? In the example I used earlier about the musicians at the rehearsal, of course the one who bragged about the veal has the right to speak his mind. He has the right to demand that other individuals be killed every time he wants to amuse his taste buds. The law is entirely on his side, since it is corrupt in the same way that he is. He has the right to brag in public about the way his victims taste. But free speech cuts both ways. I have the right to use the same freedom to admit in public to appalling feelings of helplessness, physical and mental discomfort, anxiety, and suicidality whenever other people use their own freedom of speech in this manner. I have the freedom to state the obvious, that we live in a world where murder and slavery are still legal, as long as we all agree that the victims don’t matter. Or that for meat/dairy consumers who are sympathetic to the goals of vegans, the consequences of their diet are just as cruel and destructive as those of the outright bullies. We all have freedom of speech; at least I use mine to create, rather than destroy. And who knows, maybe it has already occurred to some of you that the one who stands to lose the most in that scenario is not any of the musicians, not even the vegetarian. It’s is the calf that was needlessly killed to make the veal. 

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Thank you.

The Experiences of a Vegan Working in the Cruise Ship Industry
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Eric Freedman,
Musician
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To anyone reading this, whether you work are a cruise ship employee or administrator, a guest, or just a concerned and interested individual, I would like to extend my deepest thanks. I am writing to discuss my some of my concerns and hopes related to my job and to my life. I only ask that you stay with me until the final page. It was not easy for me to write about these experiences, just as it isn’t easy for me to live through them, which I do every day. The subject matter will be uncomfortable at times, but it is very important to me that I communicate this with absolute clarity, and it means a great deal to me that you have taken the time to hear me out. Imagine four musicians chatting with each other before a rehearsal. Four of them had recently spent time with each other over a steak dinner. The fifth was a strict vegetarian and did not attend, partly because of the expected lack of menu options for him, and partly because of feelings of deep discomfort at having to watch his friends take part in an act he finds deeply unethical. The other musicians start talking about how much they enjoyed their steak, and one of them starts laughing loudly and says how much he loved the taste of the veal. Everybody involved has freedom of speech, and the right to say what they think, but for the veal-eater to express that thought, the vegetarian, who is already uncomfortable, has to go into a deep emotional despair. Things like this are a trigger for him. I put the question to you, in a situation like this, whose concerns deserve the greatest weight? For the last four years, around the time i joined the cruise industry and shortly before, I have tried to live my life free from cruelty to animals. I managed to get a vegan diet up and running (no small feat for a picky eater like me, who used to eat copious amounts of cheese), I made sure my wardrobe was free from things like wool and fleece, and learned as much as I could about vegan nutrition to make sure my health was secure. I knew that when I joined cruise ships, there would be no assurance of any vegan food, but I thought perhaps, somehow, I would find a way to get through it. After all, even vegans have a right to seek better work opportunities and I was determined to let no one hold me back. The person who joined his first ship those four years ago was new to veganism, hopeful, and knew very little about the world at large. Four years later, that person has now seen much of the world, and is considerably more knowledgable, but the hopefulness has turned to defeatism, stress, anger and despair. In a rational world, it should be easy to avoid needlessly harming others, and hard to get away with it. Both the legal systems of free countries and the policies of large companies should have an easy path for those who want to withdraw their participation from anything involving animal cruelty, whether it be food or clothing, furniture, bath products or anything else. Instead, those individuals face an uphill struggle. I have to go it alone, largely procuring my own food, totally at the mercy of whatever the local grocery stores have available on a given day, in a given country, and at the mercy of whatever ship security will allow me to bring on board. Finding things like cruelty-free shampoo and soap, and more and other necessities (including much needed dietary supplements) is even more of a challenge, as these things are not widely available in many cruise ship destinations. The vegan lifestyle itself is not challenging. Fruits and vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and seeds are available almost anywhere. Vegan recipes are easily available online, and most foods not normally thought of as vegan can be made that way with small alterations. It isn’t challenging … when there is support. But it has been proven to me day after day that the hardest thing about avoiding animal cruelty is dealing with other people. It’s people, with their greed and their apathy, and their fear of the unknown, that are the reason I have to work several times harder then everyone else to get adequate food, to enjoy my leisure time, to participate in social gatherings, and to live my life with a clear conscience. It’s people that make casually hurtful remarks about me for doing these things, who offer little to no help in response to my concerns and confront me with a thousand little indignities every day. It’s because of people that I can’t walk more than ten feet in any part of the world without seeing an example of some mistreated animal or another that might send me into a downward emotional spiral at any moment, and it’s people that deny me any truly safe space into which I might retreat. It is very difficult for someone who isn’t a vegan to understand what it’s like going through life like this. I can only compare it to the indignities faced by people with disabilities, in their quest to participate as much as possible in what society has to offer. Many countries and companies have laws in place to guarantee disabled people these rights, but with my situation those policy changes never materialize. My disability, it seems, is that I have a conscience. I have a conscience about animals and I’m surrounded by people who don’t, and they’re the ones that set the policies. This has to change. I cannot maintain my health or my sanity any longer in this environment. It is hell on earth. I can’t keep going through life in a constant state of despair and stress, and an inability to get through to people, with nothing to look forward to but more of the same. The time has come for ship policies to change, for the cruise industry to take active steps in making their facilities cruelty-free and friendlier to the people who are trying to withdraw their participation from a culture of violence towards animals. I know how this can be done; many of my suggestions can be implemented immediately, others are more long term goals. But this can, and must, be acomplished. 

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During my first couple of years on ships with my first company, I learned the basics. The food in the crew mess was notoriously anti-vegan. For breakfast there was mostly just sausage, bacon and eggs. The selection of fruit was limited and often unusually dry. Oatmeal was off limits because it’s prepared with dairy. Even the breakfast cereal was out of bounds because it had Vitamin D3, which is derived from sheep’s wool. For lunch and dinner you’d be lucky if your only options were white rice and french fries, assuming of course that the fries were fried in oil rather than animal fat, which isn’t told to you beforehand. There’s bread, but as with all the other food, it wasn’t explained to you what the ingredients are, and many breads contain dairy, eggs or animal fats. The mashed potatoes contained dairy. And there would be some mixed vegetables and a salad bar near the end of the line; perhaps the chefs believed that vegetarians/vegans only eat salads and steamed broccoli all the time, and that that would be enough to satisfy them. For each port, I check [happycow.net](https://happycow.net) to see if there are any vegan restaurants available. There hardly ever are, especially in the poorer parts of the world, but there might be places that are vegetarian friendly. More often than not, if I can’t find a place like that, I’ll walk around, glancing at menus from nearby restaurants, constantly weighing my options until I find a place that has a few items that are vegan by accident. Ninety-five percent of the time I’ll find a pizzeria and order a pizza with garlic and no cheese, and after the waiter triple checks to make sure that’s what I really want, half the time it comes back overcooked. I often find that when I check with the serving people if my item of choice has any animal ingredients, they themselves don’t even know, the disinformation is so ubiquitous. Because the selection of fruit on the ship was limited and of unreliable quality, I would usually search for a smoothie shop in port. These are not always available, and at the time I wasn’t allowed to bring fresh fruits and vegetables on ships. I would go for days and sometimes months eating nothing in that food group except for orange and apple juice. Fruit smoothies were sometimes available in the crew bar, but not always, and again with a limited selection Each visit to the port often usually ends with a trip to the grocery store. Without the ability to bring fruits and vegetables on board, I would get as much prepackaged food as possible, things like hummus, soy milk, vegan bread and cookies, and whatever sauce was available. However, with the limitations on fruits and vegetables, I basically had no choice but to live off of junk food. If the mess options were too limited on a given day, i’d stock up on Oreos, Skittles, and corn chips and juice, the only vegan options in the crew stores because they were vegan by accident. Sometimes I would hear things like “Try \[this dish\], they don’t use a lot of dairy”, which to a vegan is about as helpful as saying “eat this, it has fewer toenails in it than all the other options”. Indeed, some of the vegetarian dishes are labelled as such, but never, ever in all my time on ships have I seen food labelled as vegan. I also faced several needless inconveniences. Once in a while there would be a crew barbecue and the entire mess would be shut down. I would be unable to have lunch specifically because everyone else wanted meat. Many people would say, I should come anyway, they might have veggie burgers or some side vegetables. I don’t know why people think that that represents fairness or respect, but even if it were true, I would still be expected to have fun in a social setting that glorifies animal murder for entertainment, and so “having fun” would be impossible at any rate. Often I would have no choice but to grab the least objectionable item I could find and pray that it really was vegan Or there would be an ice cream social that I couldn’t attend because there was no vegan ice cream. One time during dinner, a coworker once said to the table “You know what’s the funniest thing in the world? The look on a vegan’s face when he realizes there’s meat in his food!”. Another crew member agreed with him. Everyone else at the table was silent, knowing that I was vegan and waiting for the other shoe to drop. When they finally looked at my plate and realized i was vegan, they were quick to backtrack (“well, a lot of my friends are vegan, etc., etc.). What would happen if someone made a similar remark about a gay person, and then tried to distance themselves by saying it’s OK because they have gay friends. What if they did it at a time when gay people had no workplace protections or support system, just as vegan employees today have no support system at their place of work. When people say things like this in a situation where discrimination is real, its stops being a joke and starts representing a real threat. Those jokes become part of a climate of bullying, harm and neglect. I met two other vegans during my time with that company, one had been doing it for years, had figured things out, and had to go to the same ridiculous extremes that I did. We both knew that animal products are slipped into most of the food, even when it makes no sense. Nobody needs milk or eggs to be in bread or desserts, not even the people who eat them, as long as it tastes good. But the two of us felt powerless to change anything, so we simply adapted to the inconveniences. The second vegan was new to ships and a bit rattled as to the lack of options and assistance. I told her about the chips and Oreos. One of my roommates toward the final week of my contract said he was seriously considering going vegan after seeing some documentaries but didn’t know how to start or how to take the plunge. Another crew member told me she was vegan on land, but due to the limited options on ships, had to switch to vegetarianism. I have since head this from several other crew members, including people who didn’t feel they could pull off vegetarianism on ships and had to start eating meat or fish again. Here's a facebook conversation from cruise ship employees on this very subject for those who don’t believe me ([Cruise Ship Vegans/Vegetarians/Ex-Vegans Discussing Experiences](https://www.facebook.com/Dave.Morehead/posts/10161364771450161?comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22O%22%7D)). Yet another member of the entertainment staff who was lactose-intolerant volunteered to represent the entertainment division on the food committee. He promised me that he would try to get ingredients labelling on the food and ensure that the vegan options were properly marked. I have no doubt he tried his hardest, as he had similar inconveniences weeding out the options that contained dairy. But he couldn’t even accomplish something as simple as that. The food and beverage department wouldn’t even extend that simple gesture to people like us. It sent the message that vegans aren’t important enough to helped. 

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 I came out of my final contract with that company with the conclusion that is was impossible to be both vegan and healthy simultaneously on ships. For that and various other reasons, I spent a year out of work. One thing that doesn’t get talked about often enough is how difficult it is to find vegan jobs. I can’t be employed as a waiter in most restaurants because it would put me in the position of having to serve people meat and dairy. The few jobs available in vegan restaurants fill up quickly. If I were to be employed as a receptionist, I might occasionally have to prepare or order food for the other employees which puts me in the same difficult position. I am only really qualified to be a musician, and the work that we get often involves playing for dinners and parties, which almost always involves serenading people as they eat meat. There’s just no escape. As with my leisure time, there is nowhere I can go for a job that is free of the cruelty. And so, unsurprisingly, during the first half of that year, I fell into a deep depression. I stopped cleaning up after myself, I bathed at irregular intervals. I spent most of my time watching television and sleeping. It became harder and harder to see my family as serious human beings anymore, as every time I brought up the subject of animal cruelty, their arguments, which all boiled down to an unwillingness to give up their favorite foods and the belief that it was ok to slaughter animals because they were different, became feeble and tiresome to me, as well as soul crushing. My parents would occasionally take me to lunch and order vegan food for themselves in an effort to cheer me up, but by then it seemed like a half-hearted gesture, we both knew that they would be eating meat and/or dairy a few hours later, and the same number of animals would have been abused and killed for their benefit. The last time I spoke to my mother was just after Hurricane Irma and it ended in a fight. By the time I left them to move to another country, I didn’t even say goodbye to any of my family. It was easy, like blocking spam mail. Worst of all, in my most depressive moments, I would even lose the taste for food. And so, even with my already limited food options, I couldn’t enjoy what I ate. Talk about insult added to injury. I had every classic symptom of depression aside from suicidal tendencies. I spent the last few months of that year in Melbourne, where I faced all the same obstacles, with the added inconvenience of having to see horse-drawn carriages every day. In the 21st century. Really. Do people think horses like to do this kind of thing in their free time? Or do people not realize this is slavery? Within a few months I had run out of money and credit, and had no choice but to live in a flat share. The one thing at the time that was keeping me going was that i could at least carve out a safe-space in the privacy of an apartment. I was miserable and life was still tough, but I had at least that protection. Now, I had to live with five other people with a shared kitchen, where everybody cooked meat all the time. I couldn’t afford therapy. I had no privacy at all, not even a curtain around my bed. There was no place I could be free from the smell of cooked meat. I couldn’t walk down the street without seeing slabs of meat hanging from a storefront or furs in a clothing store or more people passing by in horse-drawn carriages. There was no one I met that I could fully relate to. I couldn’t escape through movies and television, as even the protagonists are shown to eat meat with no reflection on their character. I went from feeling hopeless and powerless and drifting through life, to eventually feeling nothing at all, except a vague numbness and a sense of feeling dirty. Within a month, I wouldn’t even be able to afford groceries. There was nowhere to go, simply nowhere, not even the refuge of my own mind, to be free of the cruelty. There was no escape. Except one. This is what drives people to consider suicide. At the moment when helplessness becomes absolute and all hope of a better life becomes extinguished, when life becomes a hell on earth, it occurs to people, there is a way to escape. You can be free of it by dying. And so, after holding out for a year, maybe longer if I’m completely honest, my depression finally became suicidal. I would have been dead within a week, if I hadn’t joined an animal rights march down the street from where I lived. After feeling like I was alone in a big, frightening world, the sight and realization that there were enough vegans to hold up traffic for a few hours lifted my spirits considerably. When there is support, genuine support, magic like that can happen. 

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If you’re still reading at this point, thank you. The worst of it is over. 

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It’s still pretty bad, though. 

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I took a job with a different cruise line in order to pay off my debts. When asked during the medical exam, I lied about my depression, as being jobless on top of everything else would risk exacerbating my condition and make it impossible to maintain my veganism. I feel more comfortable talking about this now, as I am one month away from being debt-free after almost a year. Knowing what I had in store for me, I brought a blender on board, and was determined to bring fruits and vegetables in from the outside so that I could make my own smoothies. At that point I didn’t care if I was breaking company policy, it was a matter of health and survival. It transpires that with this second cruise line, the policies on having fruits and vegetables in the cabins are slightly more relaxed than on other ships, but I couldn’t risk losing my job at this point, so every time we had a cabin inspection, I would hide my produce and my blender in a locked closet or under the bed. This is typical for many crew members trying to hide a few small perishable healthy foods, but i had to hide basically my entire food supply twice a week. What does it say about the policies of an industry that there should be a culture of secrecy around crew members who just want to eat healthier? Being a small ship, the crew mess in this ship had fewer options than I was used to. There was basically nothing I could eat except rice, and fries, and pasta if i was lucky (if the pasta comes pre-prepared with meat sauce, i’m out of luck). My first day on board my supervisor, realizing my situation, asked the chefs to prepare for me a vegan plate. The look on their faces was one of grim pity. We both knew there was nothing. It took them three days to come back with that plate. “Don’t worry”, I said jokingly to my supervisor, who was bewildered that everyone kept passing off the responsibility to someone else, “I could always eat tomorrow”. On the third day they came back with a plate of wilted broccoli and eggplant. Another case of people thinking that vegans only eat vegetables. This is typical. Most people don’t quite know what veganism is. If the chefs do happen to know what veganism is, they still don’t know what vegans require nutritionally (bean dishes, for example, are a staple for any healthy vegan diet, and yet there are hardly ever any vegan bean dishes available for the crew). Moreover, hardly any chef know what vegans enjoy. It never occurs to them that vegans might like to eat bread, and desserts, or that they might prefer to eat their greens mixed into a smoothie rather than in the form of a salad, or that vegans might not like mock meat and veggie patties and might prefer a more natural-looking alternative, like bean or lentil burgers, or felafel and hummus. Once again, there are no ingredients lists at the point where the food is served, and no vegan labelling. There is perhaps one vegetarian option per meal, and not to put too fine a point on this, but you can’t call something an option if there’s only one. Unless it’s an option between eating or skipping a meal. Depending on my working hours and the opening hours of the mess, there is usually a limited amount of time to eat, and if i had to personally ask for the ingredients in everything, i’d have no time left to eat. But at least this time I was prepared. The moment I got a cash advance, I started making supermarket trips. I made my own fruit/vegetable smoothies (usually in my cabin, at the advice of my supervisor, who didn’t want me to attract too much attention from the safety officer). I bought all my own groceries, this time including beans and whole grain bread. I got through my first contract with this ship without relying on their food at all. Ironically, I was eating healthier than any other crew member. Again, what does that say about the food/beverage policies, if ensuring your nutrition means procuring all your own food and preparing everything yourself. Eventually I learned how to cook dried beans and brown rice in the microwave. I can even make cake in the microwave. If anyone in the food and beverage department argues that they don’t have the resources or the manpower to make vegan breads and desserts, let alone other foods, take me to the nearest microwave and I will utterly disprove that notion in a matter of minutes. After I do, you should ask yourself why a full team of professional chefs with a fully stocked kitchen can’t accomplish what one individual can do with a microwave and a blender every…single…day, day in and day out, for months at a time. 

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In the course of my work on ships, as a vegan, I am constantly faced with various other dilemmas outside of food. Do i set up the insect trap in my quarters as instructed, or do i “forget” to take the plastic lining off and reward that plucky, rarely seen ant that has the fortitude to climb that far down into the ship? Should I go to a restaurant or grocery store, where some of my money will be diverted to the sale and production of animal products, I do I go to a fully vegan restaurant even if the options are crappy? Should I sit on the leather couch in the club like the rest of the band, or do I just stand the entire time and risk looking eccentric or stuck-up and preachy? How do I deal with a similar problem when the piano bench is made of leather. Is the piano bench even made of leather, or is it fake? How do I tell the guest performer violinist that I don’t appreciate things like horse hair or leather in their musical instruments, and that I don’t feel comfortable enabling that at all? What do I tell my coworkers to explain why I refuse to bring down their late night meals for them, and will they even understand when I give them my honest answer? Do I mention to them that I haven’t been able to have a meal with anyone without animosity for years, particularly if they keep talking about their love of meat, ever since I stopped having dinners with my family? Do they understand? Can they understand? Can anyone who hasn’t lived my life ever really understand why these things are important to me, or do I risk ripping open old wounds every time I have to explain myself? And once again, is there a single one of the above-mentioned issues that isn’t the result of people and polices being needlessly harmful? Does anyone really need the couches to be made of leather, even non-vegans? Is that the only way to imply a luxury cruise experience? Then there are the moments that are not so much dilemmas as they are outright indignities. Is the only way to deal with rats spreading disease on ship to kill, not just the parasite, but the rats? After all, musicians are a famously mangy people. I had an infectious disease once on a ship, but the medical center’s first thought was not to kill me in order to spare the crew. Perhaps the idea of killing rodents comes from the belief that they’re just a nameless, faceless, intractable force, rather than individuals with personalities and the ability to feel pain and suffering. That because they’re different from us, that must make them inferior, and that because they’re inferior, that makes them more disposable than tissue paper. What other shitty behavior have I experienced regarding animals on my last few cruises. Let’s see, there’s the ever looming presence of fur coats and rugs hanging from storefronts in Alaska. How about that cafe in Wrangell whose menu includes a “People Eating Tasty Animals” burger (a reference to P.E.T.A., People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the famous animal rights group). How about being required to attend a lecture on micro-plastic, where the environmental officer expressed his desire to keep ocean waters safe for fish, because if we don’t, that will get in the way of his plans to kill them properly to make sushi for his family. How about after four days on the ship having depleted my groceries, I complain to the assistant cruise director about a last minute switch in my on-board duties, and having to hear him say he will need a better reason to give the higher-ups than “just a trip to the grocery store” (again, it’s my lifeline, people). How about my sixth contract, where at one point half the band was vegetarian, but hardly any of the food in the mess was. I had known the guitarist on that ship from a previous company. He used to be upbeat. By the time I saw him again, he had since become vegetarian, and he looked miserable, particularly during meals. I knew what was in store for him. What would you expect me to tell him? Or anyone else that wants to take the leap in order to help animals but feels that their workplace situation is too bleak to pull it off? How about the short fill I had with a third company, the strictest of the three, where my blender was confiscated, as was all of my soy milk, which was the only reliable source of vegan calcium available to me during a long ocean crossing, and where I went mostly without fruit and green vegetables for 3 weeks. How about the three occasions where I was flat broke when I started a contract and had to survive on fries and white rice for a week. How about Klemtu where, If i take the late shift, I have to help point the guests in the direction of a bunch of fish that were killed especially for them, and then hear the cruise director wax poetically about it for a solid minute at the before the guest entertainer comes on. How about the epicurean event, where they serve meat and fish (the real Epicurus was in fact a vegetarian, and his philosophy specifically preaches against overindulgence. Everyone gets this wrong). How about the training videos exhorting us to “always do the right thing”, which I haven’t been able to watch with a straight face, ever. How about just a few days ago, when upon seeing me eating the last bit of bread I had on reserve, a crew member from the wait staff waved some chicken at me and asked if I wanted some “proper food”. I have so many objections to that one I don’t even know where to begin, not the least of which is that he didn’t even realize he was being malicious. He really did feel sorry for me, and he really was raised to believe that waving part of a murder victim in my face would cheer me up. How about when a guest drops dead of a heart attack in the middle of a cruise, and the thought occurs to me and nobody else, that this person could have been saved if the ship hadn’t served him the meat and cheese he had undoubtedly been eating all his life. Or the realization that we live in a world where people kill animals to produce foods that will eventually kill them, through heart disease or cancer, roasting the planet to death in the process (animal agriculture is responsible for 15% of man-made green house gas emissions). And heaven forbid I should have to play background music for a lunch in the restaurant, or an diner themed event, where burgers, hotdogs, and seafood are centerpieces of the event, which puts me in the position of serenading people while they commit an atrocity. I don’t want to abandon my duties. I’m not lazy. Normally I like my job. But I have to live with my conscience, and every time I play at one of these things, I feel like I’m playing the fiddle while Rome is burning. 

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I’m nearly done. Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that the current policies on cruise ships is insufficient to accommodate the needs and concerns of those who object to animal cruelty. Perhaps you already knew that, but hadn’t fully appreciated the emotional toll it takes on those people. Perhaps I’m am doing my own industry a disservice by airing out my dirty laundry in public, but you need to know. As do they. You need to know what it’s like. Nobody should be subjected to man-made policies that force them to choose between their job, their health, and their ethics on a daily basis with no real help. That is a nightmare choice, it is undignified, it is avoidable, and it is wrong. I hope I’ve also convinced you that such policies have an unavoidable emotional cost. Every time i face a reminder that I am not treated fairly as an employee, every time I have to work that much harder to avoid exploiting animals, while everyone else can do it straight away and with ease, and have that wish not only allowed but facilitated by their place of work and every level of society, every time a coworker, many of whom would be repulsed by homophobia and ethnic prejudice, turn out to be unashamedly vocal racists with respect to cows and chickens and pigs, when there is no one to admire, when there is no hope in sight… every time something like that happens, and the rules and policies that could be used to help improve things are callous and silent, it pushes me just a little bit closer to contemplating suicide again. I am not the only one going through these problems. Here’s the link to an article related to the growing number of vegans and their stuggles in workplace environments and the social impediments to their otherwise worthy life choices: ([https://www.vice.com/en\_au/article/3k9n9y/vegans-are-traumatised-and-need-help-says-vegan-psychologist](https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/3k9n9y/vegans-are-traumatised-and-need-help-says-vegan-psychologist)) 

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What can I say? I should probably be in therapy, but even doing that would reinforce the stereotype that vegans are mentally unstable (another thing I’ve heard in conversation when the speaker thought there were no vegans within earshot). I could just as easily ask you why 98% of the world isn’t currently in therapy over their inability to break free of their recreational animal murder habit? My only cause for therapy is my anger and despair and having to share the world with them, an anger which I maintain is rational and and based on real problems, not merely perceived ones. If asked to undergo treatment, I would tell a therapist all the same things I’m telling you now, and any attempts to “fix” me, without addressing the social and policy causes that trigger my depression, and without restoring my faith in humanity, won’t fix a damn thing. Vegans are growing in number. This isn’t a fad diet, it’s based on an issue of civil rights, of justice. And injustice can’t last forever. More and more people will want to become less shitty to animals over time, and you will need to put measures in place before that happens, because even If I lose my job over my inability to fit in with an environment hostile to people like me, there will only be more people like me to replace me, and the issue will only become more serious. How much would it cost ships to have smoothie stands available during meals, to ensure guests and crew can ensure enough fruit and green vegetables in their diet, even for the pickiest of eaters, relatively quickly and painlessly? How much would it cost to list the food ingredients at the point at which it is served, so that people know what they’re putting into their bodies. How much would it cost to make the pasta vegan and the sauces too, or to keep the sauces on the side? What would it cost to made ALL the breads and desserts vegan, given that non-vegans don’t care what those foods are made from as long as they like the taste? How much would it cost to have brown rice instead of the less-nutritious, processed white rice, or to use less saturated fats and oils in cooking, and how much money would you save on meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and health insurance if you crowded out those foods with the healthier alternatives? What harm would it do to have a fully vegan meal at least once a week for the crew to dispel some of the myths and insecurities regarding what vegan food is and what it could be? How much effort would it take to go march straight into that cafe in Wrangell, with the offensive name for one of their burgers, and tell them that this kind of mean-spiritedness is unacceptable, and that if they don’t change it, you will take your business elsewhere. And what is there left to say about people’s right to speak their minds? In the example I used earlier about the musicians at the rehearsal, of course the one who bragged about the veal has the right to speak his mind. He has the right to demand that other individuals be killed every time he wants to amuse his taste buds. The law is entirely on his side, since it is corrupt in the same way that he is. He has the right to brag in public about the way his victims taste. But free speech cuts both ways. I have the right to use the same freedom to admit in public to appalling feelings of helplessness, physical and mental discomfort, anxiety, and suicidality whenever other people use their own freedom of speech in this manner. I have the freedom to state the obvious, that we live in a world where murder and slavery are still legal, as long as we all agree that the victims don’t matter. Or that for meat/dairy consumers who are sympathetic to the goals of vegans, the consequences of their diet are just as cruel and destructive as those of the outright bullies. We all have freedom of speech; at least I use mine to create, rather than destroy. And who knows, maybe it has already occurred to some of you that the one who stands to lose the most in that scenario is not any of the musicians, not even the vegetarian. It’s is the calf that was needlessly killed to make the veal. 

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Thank you.

The Experiences of a Vegan Working in the Cruise Ship Industry
​
Eric Freedman,
Musician
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To anyone reading this, whether you work are a cruise ship employee or administrator, a guest, or just a concerned and interested individual, I would like to extend my deepest thanks. I am writing to discuss my some of my concerns and hopes related to my job and to my life. I only ask that you stay with me until the final page. It was not easy for me to write about these experiences, just as it isn’t easy for me to live through them, which I do every day. The subject matter will be uncomfortable at times, but it is very important to me that I communicate this with absolute clarity, and it means a great deal to me that you have taken the time to hear me out. Imagine four musicians chatting with each other before a rehearsal. Four of them had recently spent time with each other over a steak dinner. The fifth was a strict vegetarian and did not attend, partly because of the expected lack of menu options for him, and partly because of feelings of deep discomfort at having to watch his friends take part in an act he finds deeply unethical. The other musicians start talking about how much they enjoyed their steak, and one of them starts laughing loudly and says how much he loved the taste of the veal. Everybody involved has freedom of speech, and the right to say what they think, but for the veal-eater to express that thought, the vegetarian, who is already uncomfortable, has to go into a deep emotional despair. Things like this are a trigger for him. I put the question to you, in a situation like this, whose concerns deserve the greatest weight? For the last four years, around the time i joined the cruise industry and shortly before, I have tried to live my life free from cruelty to animals. I managed to get a vegan diet up and running (no small feat for a picky eater like me, who used to eat copious amounts of cheese), I made sure my wardrobe was free from things like wool and fleece, and learned as much as I could about vegan nutrition to make sure my health was secure. I knew that when I joined cruise ships, there would be no assurance of any vegan food, but I thought perhaps, somehow, I would find a way to get through it. After all, even vegans have a right to seek better work opportunities and I was determined to let no one hold me back. The person who joined his first ship those four years ago was new to veganism, hopeful, and knew very little about the world at large. Four years later, that person has now seen much of the world, and is considerably more knowledgable, but the hopefulness has turned to defeatism, stress, anger and despair. In a rational world, it should be easy to avoid needlessly harming others, and hard to get away with it. Both the legal systems of free countries and the policies of large companies should have an easy path for those who want to withdraw their participation from anything involving animal cruelty, whether it be food or clothing, furniture, bath products or anything else. Instead, those individuals face an uphill struggle. I have to go it alone, largely procuring my own food, totally at the mercy of whatever the local grocery stores have available on a given day, in a given country, and at the mercy of whatever ship security will allow me to bring on board. Finding things like cruelty-free shampoo and soap, and more and other necessities (including much needed dietary supplements) is even more of a challenge, as these things are not widely available in many cruise ship destinations. The vegan lifestyle itself is not challenging. Fruits and vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and seeds are available almost anywhere. Vegan recipes are easily available online, and most foods not normally thought of as vegan can be made that way with small alterations. It isn’t challenging … when there is support. But it has been proven to me day after day that the hardest thing about avoiding animal cruelty is dealing with other people. It’s people, with their greed and their apathy, and their fear of the unknown, that are the reason I have to work several times harder then everyone else to get adequate food, to enjoy my leisure time, to participate in social gatherings, and to live my life with a clear conscience. It’s people that make casually hurtful remarks about me for doing these things, who offer little to no help in response to my concerns and confront me with a thousand little indignities every day. It’s because of people that I can’t walk more than ten feet in any part of the world without seeing an example of some mistreated animal or another that might send me into a downward emotional spiral at any moment, and it’s people that deny me any truly safe space into which I might retreat. It is very difficult for someone who isn’t a vegan to understand what it’s like going through life like this. I can only compare it to the indignities faced by people with disabilities, in their quest to participate as much as possible in what society has to offer. Many countries and companies have laws in place to guarantee disabled people these rights, but with my situation those policy changes never materialize. My disability, it seems, is that I have a conscience. I have a conscience about animals and I’m surrounded by people who don’t, and they’re the ones that set the policies. This has to change. I cannot maintain my health or my sanity any longer in this environment. It is hell on earth. I can’t keep going through life in a constant state of despair and stress, and an inability to get through to people, with nothing to look forward to but more of the same. The time has come for ship policies to change, for the cruise industry to take active steps in making their facilities cruelty-free and friendlier to the people who are trying to withdraw their participation from a culture of violence towards animals. I know how this can be done; many of my suggestions can be implemented immediately, others are more long term goals. But this can, and must, be acomplished. 

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During my first couple of years on ships with my first company, I learned the basics. The food in the crew mess was notoriously anti-vegan. For breakfast there was mostly just sausage, bacon and eggs. The selection of fruit was limited and often unusually dry. Oatmeal was off limits because it’s prepared with dairy. Even the breakfast cereal was out of bounds because it had Vitamin D3, which is derived from sheep’s wool. For lunch and dinner you’d be lucky if your only options were white rice and french fries, assuming of course that the fries were fried in oil rather than animal fat, which isn’t told to you beforehand. There’s bread, but as with all the other food, it wasn’t explained to you what the ingredients are, and many breads contain dairy, eggs or animal fats. The mashed potatoes contained dairy. And there would be some mixed vegetables and a salad bar near the end of the line; perhaps the chefs believed that vegetarians/vegans only eat salads and steamed broccoli all the time, and that that would be enough to satisfy them. For each port, I check [happycow.net](https://happycow.net) to see if there are any vegan restaurants available. There hardly ever are, especially in the poorer parts of the world, but there might be places that are vegetarian friendly. More often than not, if I can’t find a place like that, I’ll walk around, glancing at menus from nearby restaurants, constantly weighing my options until I find a place that has a few items that are vegan by accident. Ninety-five percent of the time I’ll find a pizzeria and order a pizza with garlic and no cheese, and after the waiter triple checks to make sure that’s what I really want, half the time it comes back overcooked. I often find that when I check with the serving people if my item of choice has any animal ingredients, they themselves don’t even know, the disinformation is so ubiquitous. Because the selection of fruit on the ship was limited and of unreliable quality, I would usually search for a smoothie shop in port. These are not always available, and at the time I wasn’t allowed to bring fresh fruits and vegetables on ships. I would go for days and sometimes months eating nothing in that food group except for orange and apple juice. Fruit smoothies were sometimes available in the crew bar, but not always, and again with a limited selection Each visit to the port often usually ends with a trip to the grocery store. Without the ability to bring fruits and vegetables on board, I would get as much prepackaged food as possible, things like hummus, soy milk, vegan bread and cookies, and whatever sauce was available. However, with the limitations on fruits and vegetables, I basically had no choice but to live off of junk food. If the mess options were too limited on a given day, i’d stock up on Oreos, Skittles, and corn chips and juice, the only vegan options in the crew stores because they were vegan by accident. Sometimes I would hear things like “Try \[this dish\], they don’t use a lot of dairy”, which to a vegan is about as helpful as saying “eat this, it has fewer toenails in it than all the other options”. Indeed, some of the vegetarian dishes are labelled as such, but never, ever in all my time on ships have I seen food labelled as vegan. I also faced several needless inconveniences. Once in a while there would be a crew barbecue and the entire mess would be shut down. I would be unable to have lunch specifically because everyone else wanted meat. Many people would say, I should come anyway, they might have veggie burgers or some side vegetables. I don’t know why people think that that represents fairness or respect, but even if it were true, I would still be expected to have fun in a social setting that glorifies animal murder for entertainment, and so “having fun” would be impossible at any rate. Often I would have no choice but to grab the least objectionable item I could find and pray that it really was vegan Or there would be an ice cream social that I couldn’t attend because there was no vegan ice cream. One time during dinner, a coworker once said to the table “You know what’s the funniest thing in the world? The look on a vegan’s face when he realizes there’s meat in his food!”. Another crew member agreed with him. Everyone else at the table was silent, knowing that I was vegan and waiting for the other shoe to drop. When they finally looked at my plate and realized i was vegan, they were quick to backtrack (“well, a lot of my friends are vegan, etc., etc.). What would happen if someone made a similar remark about a gay person, and then tried to distance themselves by saying it’s OK because they have gay friends. What if they did it at a time when gay people had no workplace protections or support system, just as vegan employees today have no support system at their place of work. When people say things like this in a situation where discrimination is real, its stops being a joke and starts representing a real threat. Those jokes become part of a climate of bullying, harm and neglect. I met two other vegans during my time with that company, one had been doing it for years, had figured things out, and had to go to the same ridiculous extremes that I did. We both knew that animal products are slipped into most of the food, even when it makes no sense. Nobody needs milk or eggs to be in bread or desserts, not even the people who eat them, as long as it tastes good. But the two of us felt powerless to change anything, so we simply adapted to the inconveniences. The second vegan was new to ships and a bit rattled as to the lack of options and assistance. I told her about the chips and Oreos. One of my roommates toward the final week of my contract said he was seriously considering going vegan after seeing some documentaries but didn’t know how to start or how to take the plunge. Another crew member told me she was vegan on land, but due to the limited options on ships, had to switch to vegetarianism. I have since head this from several other crew members, including people who didn’t feel they could pull off vegetarianism on ships and had to start eating meat or fish again. Here's a facebook conversation from cruise ship employees on this very subject for those who don’t believe me ([Cruise Ship Vegans/Vegetarians/Ex-Vegans Discussing Experiences](https://www.facebook.com/Dave.Morehead/posts/10161364771450161?comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22O%22%7D)). Yet another member of the entertainment staff who was lactose-intolerant volunteered to represent the entertainment division on the food committee. He promised me that he would try to get ingredients labelling on the food and ensure that the vegan options were properly marked. I have no doubt he tried his hardest, as he had similar inconveniences weeding out the options that contained dairy. But he couldn’t even accomplish something as simple as that. The food and beverage department wouldn’t even extend that simple gesture to people like us. It sent the message that vegans aren’t important enough to helped. 

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 I came out of my final contract with that company with the conclusion that is was impossible to be both vegan and healthy simultaneously on ships. For that and various other reasons, I spent a year out of work. One thing that doesn’t get talked about often enough is how difficult it is to find vegan jobs. I can’t be employed as a waiter in most restaurants because it would put me in the position of having to serve people meat and dairy. The few jobs available in vegan restaurants fill up quickly. If I were to be employed as a receptionist, I might occasionally have to prepare or order food for the other employees which puts me in the same difficult position. I am only really qualified to be a musician, and the work that we get often involves playing for dinners and parties, which almost always involves serenading people as they eat meat. There’s just no escape. As with my leisure time, there is nowhere I can go for a job that is free of the cruelty. And so, unsurprisingly, during the first half of that year, I fell into a deep depression. I stopped cleaning up after myself, I bathed at irregular intervals. I spent most of my time watching television and sleeping. It became harder and harder to see my family as serious human beings anymore, as every time I brought up the subject of animal cruelty, their arguments, which all boiled down to an unwillingness to give up their favorite foods and the belief that it was ok to slaughter animals because they were different, became feeble and tiresome to me, as well as soul crushing. My parents would occasionally take me to lunch and order vegan food for themselves in an effort to cheer me up, but by then it seemed like a half-hearted gesture, we both knew that they would be eating meat and/or dairy a few hours later, and the same number of animals would have been abused and killed for their benefit. The last time I spoke to my mother was just after Hurricane Irma and it ended in a fight. By the time I left them to move to another country, I didn’t even say goodbye to any of my family. It was easy, like blocking spam mail. Worst of all, in my most depressive moments, I would even lose the taste for food. And so, even with my already limited food options, I couldn’t enjoy what I ate. Talk about insult added to injury. I had every classic symptom of depression aside from suicidal tendencies. I spent the last few months of that year in Melbourne, where I faced all the same obstacles, with the added inconvenience of having to see horse-drawn carriages every day. In the 21st century. Really. Do people think horses like to do this kind of thing in their free time? Or do people not realize this is slavery? Within a few months I had run out of money and credit, and had no choice but to live in a flat share. The one thing at the time that was keeping me going was that i could at least carve out a safe-space in the privacy of an apartment. I was miserable and life was still tough, but I had at least that protection. Now, I had to live with five other people with a shared kitchen, where everybody cooked meat all the time. I couldn’t afford therapy. I had no privacy at all, not even a curtain around my bed. There was no place I could be free from the smell of cooked meat. I couldn’t walk down the street without seeing slabs of meat hanging from a storefront or furs in a clothing store or more people passing by in horse-drawn carriages. There was no one I met that I could fully relate to. I couldn’t escape through movies and television, as even the protagonists are shown to eat meat with no reflection on their character. I went from feeling hopeless and powerless and drifting through life, to eventually feeling nothing at all, except a vague numbness and a sense of feeling dirty. Within a month, I wouldn’t even be able to afford groceries. There was nowhere to go, simply nowhere, not even the refuge of my own mind, to be free of the cruelty. There was no escape. Except one. This is what drives people to consider suicide. At the moment when helplessness becomes absolute and all hope of a better life becomes extinguished, when life becomes a hell on earth, it occurs to people, there is a way to escape. You can be free of it by dying. And so, after holding out for a year, maybe longer if I’m completely honest, my depression finally became suicidal. I would have been dead within a week, if I hadn’t joined an animal rights march down the street from where I lived. After feeling like I was alone in a big, frightening world, the sight and realization that there were enough vegans to hold up traffic for a few hours lifted my spirits considerably. When there is support, genuine support, magic like that can happen. 

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If you’re still reading at this point, thank you. The worst of it is over. 

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It’s still pretty bad, though. 

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I took a job with a different cruise line in order to pay off my debts. When asked during the medical exam, I lied about my depression, as being jobless on top of everything else would risk exacerbating my condition and make it impossible to maintain my veganism. I feel more comfortable talking about this now, as I am one month away from being debt-free after almost a year. Knowing what I had in store for me, I brought a blender on board, and was determined to bring fruits and vegetables in from the outside so that I could make my own smoothies. At that point I didn’t care if I was breaking company policy, it was a matter of health and survival. It transpires that with this second cruise line, the policies on having fruits and vegetables in the cabins are slightly more relaxed than on other ships, but I couldn’t risk losing my job at this point, so every time we had a cabin inspection, I would hide my produce and my blender in a locked closet or under the bed. This is typical for many crew members trying to hide a few small perishable healthy foods, but i had to hide basically my entire food supply twice a week. What does it say about the policies of an industry that there should be a culture of secrecy around crew members who just want to eat healthier? Being a small ship, the crew mess in this ship had fewer options than I was used to. There was basically nothing I could eat except rice, and fries, and pasta if i was lucky (if the pasta comes pre-prepared with meat sauce, i’m out of luck). My first day on board my supervisor, realizing my situation, asked the chefs to prepare for me a vegan plate. The look on their faces was one of grim pity. We both knew there was nothing. It took them three days to come back with that plate. “Don’t worry”, I said jokingly to my supervisor, who was bewildered that everyone kept passing off the responsibility to someone else, “I could always eat tomorrow”. On the third day they came back with a plate of wilted broccoli and eggplant. Another case of people thinking that vegans only eat vegetables. This is typical. Most people don’t quite know what veganism is. If the chefs do happen to know what veganism is, they still don’t know what vegans require nutritionally (bean dishes, for example, are a staple for any healthy vegan diet, and yet there are hardly ever any vegan bean dishes available for the crew). Moreover, hardly any chef know what vegans enjoy. It never occurs to them that vegans might like to eat bread, and desserts, or that they might prefer to eat their greens mixed into a smoothie rather than in the form of a salad, or that vegans might not like mock meat and veggie patties and might prefer a more natural-looking alternative, like bean or lentil burgers, or felafel and hummus. Once again, there are no ingredients lists at the point where the food is served, and no vegan labelling. There is perhaps one vegetarian option per meal, and not to put too fine a point on this, but you can’t call something an option if there’s only one. Unless it’s an option between eating or skipping a meal. Depending on my working hours and the opening hours of the mess, there is usually a limited amount of time to eat, and if i had to personally ask for the ingredients in everything, i’d have no time left to eat. But at least this time I was prepared. The moment I got a cash advance, I started making supermarket trips. I made my own fruit/vegetable smoothies (usually in my cabin, at the advice of my supervisor, who didn’t want me to attract too much attention from the safety officer). I bought all my own groceries, this time including beans and whole grain bread. I got through my first contract with this ship without relying on their food at all. Ironically, I was eating healthier than any other crew member. Again, what does that say about the food/beverage policies, if ensuring your nutrition means procuring all your own food and preparing everything yourself. Eventually I learned how to cook dried beans and brown rice in the microwave. I can even make cake in the microwave. If anyone in the food and beverage department argues that they don’t have the resources or the manpower to make vegan breads and desserts, let alone other foods, take me to the nearest microwave and I will utterly disprove that notion in a matter of minutes. After I do, you should ask yourself why a full team of professional chefs with a fully stocked kitchen can’t accomplish what one individual can do with a microwave and a blender every…single…day, day in and day out, for months at a time. 

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In the course of my work on ships, as a vegan, I am constantly faced with various other dilemmas outside of food. Do i set up the insect trap in my quarters as instructed, or do i “forget” to take the plastic lining off and reward that plucky, rarely seen ant that has the fortitude to climb that far down into the ship? Should I go to a restaurant or grocery store, where some of my money will be diverted to the sale and production of animal products, I do I go to a fully vegan restaurant even if the options are crappy? Should I sit on the leather couch in the club like the rest of the band, or do I just stand the entire time and risk looking eccentric or stuck-up and preachy? How do I deal with a similar problem when the piano bench is made of leather. Is the piano bench even made of leather, or is it fake? How do I tell the guest performer violinist that I don’t appreciate things like horse hair or leather in their musical instruments, and that I don’t feel comfortable enabling that at all? What do I tell my coworkers to explain why I refuse to bring down their late night meals for them, and will they even understand when I give them my honest answer? Do I mention to them that I haven’t been able to have a meal with anyone without animosity for years, particularly if they keep talking about their love of meat, ever since I stopped having dinners with my family? Do they understand? Can they understand? Can anyone who hasn’t lived my life ever really understand why these things are important to me, or do I risk ripping open old wounds every time I have to explain myself? And once again, is there a single one of the above-mentioned issues that isn’t the result of people and polices being needlessly harmful? Does anyone really need the couches to be made of leather, even non-vegans? Is that the only way to imply a luxury cruise experience? Then there are the moments that are not so much dilemmas as they are outright indignities. Is the only way to deal with rats spreading disease on ship to kill, not just the parasite, but the rats? After all, musicians are a famously mangy people. I had an infectious disease once on a ship, but the medical center’s first thought was not to kill me in order to spare the crew. Perhaps the idea of killing rodents comes from the belief that they’re just a nameless, faceless, intractable force, rather than individuals with personalities and the ability to feel pain and suffering. That because they’re different from us, that must make them inferior, and that because they’re inferior, that makes them more disposable than tissue paper. What other shitty behavior have I experienced regarding animals on my last few cruises. Let’s see, there’s the ever looming presence of fur coats and rugs hanging from storefronts in Alaska. How about that cafe in Wrangell whose menu includes a “People Eating Tasty Animals” burger (a reference to P.E.T.A., People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the famous animal rights group). How about being required to attend a lecture on micro-plastic, where the environmental officer expressed his desire to keep ocean waters safe for fish, because if we don’t, that will get in the way of his plans to kill them properly to make sushi for his family. How about after four days on the ship having depleted my groceries, I complain to the assistant cruise director about a last minute switch in my on-board duties, and having to hear him say he will need a better reason to give the higher-ups than “just a trip to the grocery store” (again, it’s my lifeline, people). How about my sixth contract, where at one point half the band was vegetarian, but hardly any of the food in the mess was. I had known the guitarist on that ship from a previous company. He used to be upbeat. By the time I saw him again, he had since become vegetarian, and he looked miserable, particularly during meals. I knew what was in store for him. What would you expect me to tell him? Or anyone else that wants to take the leap in order to help animals but feels that their workplace situation is too bleak to pull it off? How about the short fill I had with a third company, the strictest of the three, where my blender was confiscated, as was all of my soy milk, which was the only reliable source of vegan calcium available to me during a long ocean crossing, and where I went mostly without fruit and green vegetables for 3 weeks. How about the three occasions where I was flat broke when I started a contract and had to survive on fries and white rice for a week. How about Klemtu where, If i take the late shift, I have to help point the guests in the direction of a bunch of fish that were killed especially for them, and then hear the cruise director wax poetically about it for a solid minute at the before the guest entertainer comes on. How about the epicurean event, where they serve meat and fish (the real Epicurus was in fact a vegetarian, and his philosophy specifically preaches against overindulgence. Everyone gets this wrong). How about the training videos exhorting us to “always do the right thing”, which I haven’t been able to watch with a straight face, ever. How about just a few days ago, when upon seeing me eating the last bit of bread I had on reserve, a crew member from the wait staff waved some chicken at me and asked if I wanted some “proper food”. I have so many objections to that one I don’t even know where to begin, not the least of which is that he didn’t even realize he was being malicious. He really did feel sorry for me, and he really was raised to believe that waving part of a murder victim in my face would cheer me up. How about when a guest drops dead of a heart attack in the middle of a cruise, and the thought occurs to me and nobody else, that this person could have been saved if the ship hadn’t served him the meat and cheese he had undoubtedly been eating all his life. Or the realization that we live in a world where people kill animals to produce foods that will eventually kill them, through heart disease or cancer, roasting the planet to death in the process (animal agriculture is responsible for 15% of man-made green house gas emissions). And heaven forbid I should have to play background music for a lunch in the restaurant, or an diner themed event, where burgers, hotdogs, and seafood are centerpieces of the event, which puts me in the position of serenading people while they commit an atrocity. I don’t want to abandon my duties. I’m not lazy. Normally I like my job. But I have to live with my conscience, and every time I play at one of these things, I feel like I’m playing the fiddle while Rome is burning. 

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​

I’m nearly done. Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that the current policies on cruise ships is insufficient to accommodate the needs and concerns of those who object to animal cruelty. Perhaps you already knew that, but hadn’t fully appreciated the emotional toll it takes on those people. Perhaps I’m am doing my own industry a disservice by airing out my dirty laundry in public, but you need to know. As do they. You need to know what it’s like. Nobody should be subjected to man-made policies that force them to choose between their job, their health, and their ethics on a daily basis with no real help. That is a nightmare choice, it is undignified, it is avoidable, and it is wrong. I hope I’ve also convinced you that such policies have an unavoidable emotional cost. Every time i face a reminder that I am not treated fairly as an employee, every time I have to work that much harder to avoid exploiting animals, while everyone else can do it straight away and with ease, and have that wish not only allowed but facilitated by their place of work and every level of society, every time a coworker, many of whom would be repulsed by homophobia and ethnic prejudice, turn out to be unashamedly vocal racists with respect to cows and chickens and pigs, when there is no one to admire, when there is no hope in sight… every time something like that happens, and the rules and policies that could be used to help improve things are callous and silent, it pushes me just a little bit closer to contemplating suicide again. I am not the only one going through these problems. Here’s the link to an article related to the growing number of vegans and their stuggles in workplace environments and the social impediments to their otherwise worthy life choices: ([https://www.vice.com/en\_au/article/3k9n9y/vegans-are-traumatised-and-need-help-says-vegan-psychologist](https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/3k9n9y/vegans-are-traumatised-and-need-help-says-vegan-psychologist)) 

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What can I say? I should probably be in therapy, but even doing that would reinforce the stereotype that vegans are mentally unstable (another thing I’ve heard in conversation when the speaker thought there were no vegans within earshot). I could just as easily ask you why 98% of the world isn’t currently in therapy over their inability to break free of their recreational animal murder habit? My only cause for therapy is my anger and despair and having to share the world with them, an anger which I maintain is rational and and based on real problems, not merely perceived ones. If asked to undergo treatment, I would tell a therapist all the same things I’m telling you now, and any attempts to “fix” me, without addressing the social and policy causes that trigger my depression, and without restoring my faith in humanity, won’t fix a damn thing. Vegans are growing in number. This isn’t a fad diet, it’s based on an issue of civil rights, of justice. And injustice can’t last forever. More and more people will want to become less shitty to animals over time, and you will need to put measures in place before that happens, because even If I lose my job over my inability to fit in with an environment hostile to people like me, there will only be more people like me to replace me, and the issue will only become more serious. How much would it cost ships to have smoothie stands available during meals, to ensure guests and crew can ensure enough fruit and green vegetables in their diet, even for the pickiest of eaters, relatively quickly and painlessly? How much would it cost to list the food ingredients at the point at which it is served, so that people know what they’re putting into their bodies. How much would it cost to make the pasta vegan and the sauces too, or to keep the sauces on the side? What would it cost to made ALL the breads and desserts vegan, given that non-vegans don’t care what those foods are made from as long as they like the taste? How much would it cost to have brown rice instead of the less-nutritious, processed white rice, or to use less saturated fats and oils in cooking, and how much money would you save on meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and health insurance if you crowded out those foods with the healthier alternatives? What harm would it do to have a fully vegan meal at least once a week for the crew to dispel some of the myths and insecurities regarding what vegan food is and what it could be? How much effort would it take to go march straight into that cafe in Wrangell, with the offensive name for one of their burgers, and tell them that this kind of mean-spiritedness is unacceptable, and that if they don’t change it, you will take your business elsewhere. And what is there left to say about people’s right to speak their minds? In the example I used earlier about the musicians at the rehearsal, of course the one who bragged about the veal has the right to speak his mind. He has the right to demand that other individuals be killed every time he wants to amuse his taste buds. The law is entirely on his side, since it is corrupt in the same way that he is. He has the right to brag in public about the way his victims taste. But free speech cuts both ways. I have the right to use the same freedom to admit in public to appalling feelings of helplessness, physical and mental discomfort, anxiety, and suicidality whenever other people use their own freedom of speech in this manner. I have the freedom to state the obvious, that we live in a world where murder and slavery are still legal, as long as we all agree that the victims don’t matter. Or that for meat/dairy consumers who are sympathetic to the goals of vegans, the consequences of their diet are just as cruel and destructive as those of the outright bullies. We all have freedom of speech; at least I use mine to create, rather than destroy. And who knows, maybe it has already occurred to some of you that the one who stands to lose the most in that scenario is not any of the musicians, not even the vegetarian. It’s is the calf that was needlessly killed to make the veal. 

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Thank you.

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First of all pictures! https://imgur.com/a/XgXohov
My husband I got married October 12 in Fort Worth, Texas. Our engagement was about 20 months, which was the perfect amount of time to allow us to pay for most everything ourselves (less a gift of about $4000 from my family) , but definitely created the "when will it be here" feelings in an intense way. I also started to feel a little disinterested at the end which kinda sucked, but everything was done by then. 90% of the wedding planning had been completed by March so the last 6 months were kind of torture waiting.
We choose a Friday wedding to save money and while I am glad we did, there were some hiccups due to choosing a non-Saturday date (noted below).
We found an "all inclusive" reception venue that did everything but the flowers and cake. All I had to bring in were the colored linens I wanted ( white or black were included in cost), a teeny bit of sweetheart table decor, escort cards and guest book. This choice was a serious sanity saver
Despite lots of rain and the MOH and I having a friend breakup the weekend before (at my bachelorette party), everything was absolutely perfect.
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\edit* title is incorrect as I forgot to include cost of the cake that was a gift from my brother and sil. Corrected cost was about $25,000*
*edit 2 added pictures*
GUESTS

• Invited: 180 (this included ~80 of my husband's side of the family that lives across the country that we knew wouldn't come, but felt obligated to invite)
• Attended: 75 (including 5 kids, excluding vendors)
• No Shows: 3
• Total Cost : roughly $25,000. Towards the end I kinda lost track a little

VENUE
Total spent: $2,600

• $1,100 for the chapel rental
• $1,500: Ballroom rental

We rented the chapel (Marty Leonard Community Chapel) for a 3 hour package from 6-9. The chapel only had 2 scheduling options and were pretty inflexible about them. The other available time black was too early in the day for our preference. We didn't want our guests to be forced to choose between burning a vacation day to attend or not coming so we chose the later block starting at 6. The problem with this time line was that we were not allowed to take pictures at the chapel before the ceremony due to a rehearsal being scheduled immediately prior. It was pouring rain anyway but the option would have been nice! The chapel was gorgeous and we loved it so I can't complain too much. Since the chapel was inaccessible prior to 6 pm we also didn't have the option of starting the wedding until 6:30 at the earliest. We opted for 6:45 (even though it is a weird time) to make dinner as early as possible and still allow people to arrive. Most of our guests live an hour from the chapel in good weather and the rain caused major delays so we had several late arrivals and a few people who missed the ceremony all together.
Our pastor from church performed the ceremony. During counseling we told him we didn't want it to be too long. By all accounts it was the shortest ceremony anyone had ever attended and clocked in at about 11 minutes from the time I arrived at the end of the aisle.
The reception venue (City Club of Fort Worth), as mentioned above, was amazing. The event and catering manager (shout out to Kelly!) was also the event coordinator and she was incredibly responsive. I probably talked to her during the course of planning more than I talked to my own mother. She was a God send and if she could adopt me, that'd be great. EVERY FING THING was included in the venue and it was so awesome. They had tons of table size and shape options, linens, gold and silver chargers (we used gold), gold and silver chiavari chairs (again we used gold), a fancy cake stand, a cake cutting set, toasting flutes, easels, couches, nice room dividers, staff. I could keep going on and on. The service was absolutely outstanding and we could not ask for more. I would book every event possible with them if I could, but it's a bit of a drive.
FOOD & BAR (major priority)
Total Spent: $6,877 (inc tax and 22% server grat included)

• Food- $3654 ($$48.75 PP): Cockail hour apps- Coconut Shrimp, Mini stuffed potatoes, Vegetable Samosas, and Mozzarella with tomato on an eggplant crisp
• Starter-Roasted Nut Squash Soup
• Entree- Choice-Beef Wellington, Rosemary Roasted Chicken, Bourbon Glazed Salmon, or Vegan (I honestly don't know what the vegan choice was) each served with boursin mashed potatoes and brocollini. Bread baskets, coffee and tea included.
• Cake - $1,005 (gift from my brother and SIL): 4 tier cake with fondant flowers, 2 flavor choices, white cake/ blackberry filling and cream cheese icing and carrot with cream cheese icing.
• Napkin Rental - $100
• Full Open Bar w/ champagne toast - $3222 I'll be honest and say that we drank a whole lot more than anticipated

Catering was venue provided only, but surprisingly affordable for the quality. Not cheap, but excellent quality and a great price for all that we got. We were blown away. The food at the wedding was amazing and I got complements about it for weeks. Almost every single person we've talked to about the wedding has mentioned how great the food was. Our cake was also amazing and I can't wait to eat the vacuum wrapped top layer in my freezer . It was gorgeous and delicious, what more can I say
FLOWERS & DECORATIONS
Total Spent: $2831

• $220: Bridal bouquet
• $180: 6 bridesmaid bouquets (paid for 1 extra because of the MOH melt down)
• $45 : Grandmothers pin corsages
• $40: Mothers wrist corsages
• $156: 12 Boutonniers
• $140 : Pomander balls for the flower girls to carry as we didn't think they would toss flowers
• $60: Cocktail table flowers x3
• $155: Sweetheart table flowers and decor
• $600: Mixed floral and candle centerpieces
• $30: greenery for sign in table
• $544: production and break down fees from the florist
• $80: Table numbers and escort cards
• $160: Confetti sticks (flutterfetti) for Grand Exit
• $300 : Guestbook art and custom frame

Flowers are very expensive and even with paring down cost was still high. Our florist was a dream and worked within my budget to give the look I wanted at a very reasonable price.
CLOTHING & FASHION
Total Spent: $2,280

• $1,500: My dress ($1,000 sample sale!), Veil (gifted from my Nana), alterations ($758), accessories ($100, but my hair piece was a gift from my Nana and I have no idea what it cost) and cleaning ($200).
• $222: His suit rental

TRANSPORTATION
Total Spent: $771
We rented a stretch Escalade to move the big bridal party around. It was the cheapest option to transport 15 people and worked great
PAPER & POSTAGE
Total Spent: $814

• $43: ~100 save the date postcards, made & printed through vista print. I believe I had a coupon code with this.
• $49: Postage for Save the dates
• $468: 100 Invitation suites made through American Wedding Company special on etsy. Included invites, reception cards, rsvps, direction cards and envelopes. I also upgraded and had the addresses printed on the envelopes.
• $122: Stamps for 130 invitations and reply cards.
• $35: programs via vista print w/coupon

These things weren't a huge priority for us. We wanted something that looked nice, but were not willing to spend a crazy amount of money on paper that people would look at and then throw away. The only thing that made this more expensive was the number we had to order for people we knoe wouldn't come any way.
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HAIR & BEAUTY
Total Spent: $540

• $360: Bridal Hair & Make up inc lashes
• $120: Flower girl hair x2 and junior BM hair
• $60: Haircut and manicure for groom the week of the wedding
• ​

We got our hair and makeup done in the bridal suite by a friend who does weddings specifically. Prices that seemed on par for bridal services, in my area. I didn't pay for the bridesmaids but several opted in to services and loved it!
Photograpy
Total Spent: $2,800
Photographer, incl. engagement photos, 8 hours on day-of, 2nd shooter.
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DJ & Ceremony Musicians
Total Spent: $1,600
$500 - Ceremony Musicians (pianist and cellist)
$1,600 - DJ and lighting
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Both were adequate but the DJ pissed me off by not communicating at all the month prior to the wedding. We actually had our final (and only since the booking) meeting about 20 mins before our entrance.
ACCOMMODATIONS
Total Spent: $400
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We booked 2 suites for one night and 1 for the night of the wedding but the hotel was kind enough to comp and additional night for free for the 2nd room, so my bridesmaid was able to stay overnight instead of driving late a night!
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GIFTS
Total Spent: $1150

• $900: Bridal Party gifts for 6 bridesmaids,6 Grooms men, 2 ushers, 2 flower girls and a ring bearer. This
• $250 Welcome bags

TIPS
Total Spent: $500

• $100: DJ (owns his own business, would have been more, but the aforementioned communication issues)
• Venue included in fees
• $50: Transportation
• $150 for hair and make up ( business owner)
• $250: Photographer

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ORIGINAL BUDGET: $20,000
GRAND TOTAL SPENT: $25,000
Given that this is an already incredibly long/detailed post, I'm going to have to call it a day!
I think that's about it! Feel free to ask any questions if needed, and happy planning!

Photos First: https://imgur.com/a/ZGCXagd
About Us: My husband (25) and I (27) live in north Texas. We are both band directors and just bought a house together in March. We met from teaching in the same area and started dating in June 2016, engaged June 2017, and married June 2018.
Actual cost for the ceremony and reception: approx. $29,000
(Additionally, cost for my dress/appearance: $3,500)
(Costs not included in this recap: rings, wedding license, ties for groomsmen, groom attire, wedding party gifts, bachelobachelorette parties, wedding album, rehearsal dinner, honeymoon, many small incidental items that I can’t remember to enough to list or significant enough to track)
We were comfortable with a budget at $30k after contributions from parents and our own savings but started with $25k in mind knowing it would creep up anyway and that amount was spread over such a long period anyway. His parents contributed a significant amount especially compared to my parents but they also represented more family and family friends.
Total invited: 231
Final guest count: 153 that included 4 no-shows (2 we knew about in advance), 3 under 12-year olds, and 3 infants
Location: North Texas
Time: 6:30pm on a Saturday night in June
Wedding Party: 4 bridesmaids, 4 groomsmen, 2 ushers
Attire: Bridesmaids wore Navy Azazie dresses, Groomsmen wore light grey suits from Macy’s, Ushers wore their wedding suits (our brother-in-laws, both got married in 2016)
Colors: Gray and navy (Why was THIS the question everyone wanted to know all along??)
Theme: “Um… nice?” (Again, why was this a question always asked?)
TD;DR
Prioritized: Location and Photographer
Budgeted: Stationary, Flowers, Videographer, DecoExtras
Free: Officiant, Cake Stands and serveware, candle votives, send off bubbles, ceremony arch
Skipped Completely: Party favors, Personalized toasting flutes, Signs (gifts/cards, bar menu, “ceremony this way”, etc), Ceremony/reception/aisle/chair decor, Champagne toast, Fancy transportation, Bouquet/Garter Toss, Flower Girl/Ring Bearer, Photo booth, Uplighting, Bathroom baskets, those tiny ring boxes
BREAKDOWN (wow, this got long fast)

• Planning - Google Sheets

I made on mega google sheets titled “Wedding Planning” where I sorted lists of addresses, gifts, rehearsal dinner guest list, vendor options, budget prices, made table assignments, wrote packing lists, listed out thoughts etc. Just used lots of tabs to keep all my thoughts organized in one place. It was easy to edit on my computer for big jobs or jot down small notes via my phone. I also visited Weddit ALL the time and listened to a handful of wedding podcasts (Put a Ring on It, Bridechilla, Secret Life of Weddings) to get lots of perspectives and considerations. Both of those were way more useful than Pinterest or bride magazines.
TIP: I also made a shared Google Sheet with a timeline of Friday/Saturday for our immediate family/wedding party and made a custom bit.ly link that we sent out Tuesday after it was pretty finalized. I probably should have sent it out sooner and been clear with attire for rehearsal and rehearsal dinner (got a few texts asking just to check, no big deal) but it seemed to help let everyone know who was needed when/where and what was expected along the way and some other logistical things. It especially helped since we had family set out our few decor items and then pack up it up after our grand exit.

• Dress - Stella York 6525, $1586 and $433 alterations for hem, bustle, cups, and sleeves

I went on three dress shopping trips before I found my dress. I said that I wanted to be around $1200 but again knew it’d creep up. The first trip was to David’s Bridal with my mom and MoH. I wasn’t expecting much there that I would seriously consider but it helped refine what I wanted to find later down the road. I had no idea how much I would LOVE the pictures that my MoH took of all the dresses that I tried on - I appreciated how photo-happy she went without me directing her to do so and was obsessed with looking through them. Went two other days with mom, MoH, and another friend bridesmaid. I felt some guilt asking them to invest so much time in seeing dresses but was glad they got to be with me when I picked “the one”. I didn’t feel any special moment but definitely looked in the mirror and thought “I can see myself marrying in this dress” and started to get emotional.
After I chose the dress and got measured, they told me that I was in between a size 8 and 10. I was doing really well with my fitness goals at the time and felt like I could get to the size 8 by the following spring time. Started to measure myself frequently as it got closer to the expected arrival of the dress and although I was losing pounds, my waist size was not dropping that much. It definitely clouded my thoughts so much over the last six months and made me very self conscious. I had a lot of regret for not going with the size 10 even if I might’ve needed more bodice alterations. We had some difficulty hooking the top of the zipper when getting ready but we got that sucker done and it held up all night. It was VERY tight, mildly uncomfortable, but it looked great. I just wish it hadn’t added so much long term stress and anxiety.

• Bride Accessories - $400

I didn’t want to invest much on the accessories after spending as much as I did on the actual dress. I bought a very simple veil on etsy ($39), Anne Klein shoes from Zappos ($87), a clearance petticoat from David’s Bridal that I only wore for pictures and ceremony ($40), earrings and necklace set from etsy ($90), an impulse-buy the day before of a necklace that was simpler from TJMaxx ($22), Philosophy perfume mini size 0.5oz from Ulta ($22), Kat Von D lip liner and color ($40, only makeup that I purchased new), mani/pedi ($65).
I had a hair and makeup artist that did my engagement photo HMU ($90) in October and a wedding trial ($132) in April. I booked a hotel for two nights ($295) - first night was just me with two best friend bridesmaids and then the next night obviously with me and husband. We had my HMU artist come travel to my hotel room starting at 8:30am and I bought lunch delivered to the room ($87) and had plenty of time to leisurely eat. I paid for makeup for all the maids (4) and moms (2) and gave them all options to get their hair done by her at their own cost or to just do their own for the day. Paid $745 myself for all the services, travel, and tip on the day-of. EVERYONE was complimenting our hair and makeup so I felt very good about that investment.

• Venue (with coordinator) - $10,680

Our venue was a fairly new construction - only nine months old when we toured it last summer and booked. The building was split in half - ceremony on one half with a stage and reception on other half with grand staircase. It was the second venue we toured but when we walked out to our car after meeting them, we both looked at each other and said we loved it. We got the site from 4pm-midnight and a one hour rehearsal there the day before. We realized it was a high cost in our budget BUT it included an on-site full time plannecoordinator that made it worth every dollar. She was essentially a concierge that could help me find vendors (we had complete control over who we wanted to hire, no vendor lists). I had most of my vendors picked out but she helped with all the communication to them and I could send her my endless lists of thoughts/questions and she would spend the time to follow up with everyone on my behalf. She ran our rehearsal the day before and completely ran the actual event timing - from making sure all vendors arrived, handing out bouquets/pinning bouts, calling out procession order during the music, keeping us on schedule with table visits/toasts/dances, setting up our grand entrance, packing up our car, etc. Everything ran SO smooth and I’m grateful that she came with our venue. I was chill and calm the entire process leading up to the wedding because I knew she had such a handle on the situation. Venue also provided tables, chairs, and table cloths.

• Food - $6,156 ($40/pp, $12/kids)

This took us a LOT of thought and brainstorming and stressing. I’m vegan and my husband is vegetarian/98% vegan. After attending so many weddings where I could eat only potatoes or was served all of four asparagus spears for my dinner, I knew that I needed a full vegan wedding. I knew it was a little risky and some people would gripe but I did not want “the vegan option” - I wanted to eat the main course dammit. I also did not want to compromise my morals and values on this night. (We also got to have a 100% vegan rehearsal dinner!) We finally came up with an Italian menu, served plated. Passed appetizers during cocktail hour - bruschetta on crostini, fried zucchini with marinara, and meat-less balls with bourbon agave glaze. Typical salad and bread plates on tables. Dinner - eggplant parmesan (vegan cheese), penne pasta with marinara, grilled asparagus, roasted cauliflower. I thought the actual dinner was a little underwhelming compared to how hyped we had left the tasting back in December. But I still enjoyed the meal and finally getting to eat the entire meal at a wedding! We did not advertise having a vegan wedding ahead of time but close friends/family expected it from us. We were able to accomodate for gluten-free friends (just subbed GF pasta) and no other allergies were issues with our meal. Price included food, staffing, and equipment. Included tea/coffee stations. Included cake cutting service.

• Alcohol - $2,500

We opted for an open bar of just beer and wine. We started the tab at $1500 with an option to raise the amount throughout the night. When we sat down for our dinner, our coordinator told us the tab was already up to $1300 so we bumped it up to $2000. During table visits and before toasts, she told us it was already up to $1900 so we bumped it up again to $2500 and left it there. We were definitely surprised to raise it $1000 so fast - the original price averaged out to about 2.5 drinks per person on our guest count before taking out the pregnant women or older crowd that doesn’t drink… But table visits took us a LONG time so understandably people were drinking up to pass that time and then needed refills for toasts (and refills AGAIN for toasts).

• Cake - $757

We used our FAVORITE local vegan bakeshop for our cakes. We always knew that we would go with them. We had a simple three tier round white bride cake with lemon flavor and a one tier square brown groom with with mint chocolate flavor and our last name monogrammed on top. Both were REALLY good and there were lots of compliments on the cake. Definitely my favorite part and I’m excited to keep eating it this week. We are not bothering to freeze the top tier because we would love a reason to revisit the bakeshop in one year. We ate wedding cake every night for the full week between our wedding and honeymoon lol. That total included delivery and three GF cupcakes.

• Photographer - $3000

I knew this was a very important aspect for me and I had a specific look that I wanted to find. I had scoped for photographers online via instagram and was finding wonderful local artists but none within the right price point. Facebook started target advertising photographers to me and that’s how I came across ours. I booked her pretty fast. We got a 2-hr engagement session and then 4pm-midnight for the day (one-shooter). She was a wonderful person and the right amount of assertive to coach everyone through photos and work efficiently to get lots of shots. She was so great at communicating too. Our wedding party photos and first-look were before the ceremony and family formals were after. She had my list of must have groupings and constantly double checked that she got those. We were able to do way more poses because we moved very quick.

• Videographer - $1150

I was very on the fence about this… I wanted one but was going to go without it based on cost. We already invested in the photographer and I didn’t want to spend the same amount on the videographer but that seemed to be the going rate. Then while talking about videographers to my friend who just got engaged, I was inspired and started looking again. Every post of “what’s one thing you wish you had done different” resulted in wishing for a videographer. I found our videographer on CraigsList and thought the price was super reasonable. We had one shooter for 7 hour, included ceremony clip-on microphone, highlight reel, documentary edit, and raw footage. I mostly wanted a highlight reel so I could relive the day and see just how everything was moving and playing out. I watched a few videos of his, he seemed mostly professional and not sketchy, and I was ready to book. Didn’t correspond with him much (even on the day of) but trusted him to do his thing since we really didn’t have much of a vision for the videography. So verdict is still out on this since I haven’t seen the finished production.

• Flowers - $1672

This included a bride bouquet, 4 smaller bridesmaid bouquets, 12 boutonnieres, 4 corsages, 2 large arrangements for ceremony, 16 table centerpiece arrangements for reception. We visited with two florists that were $3300 and $4000. We really did not want anything extravagant for our flowers especially for something that was so short term. I strongly considered silk flowers (didn’t seem any cheaper) or buying online and arranging my own but did not want to deal with logistics of that. We ended up using Market Street grocery store and were so relieved after meeting the florist there. They did a wonderful job and the arrangements were exactly what we wanted. The hydrangeas wilted a bit in the bouquets just from the handling and being in the wind for photos but that didn’t matter to me. They were a mix of hydrangeas, roses, baby breath, greenery. The florist let us buy our own glass vases ($32) to save money instead of using their in-store vases. We had our moms take home the large ceremony arrangements and then assigned aunts and other women to take home the table centerpieces so we wouldn’t have to take all of it home at the end.

• DJ - $1200

My co-worker went to a wedding the summer after our engagement and this DJ was there. He immediately told me that I had to hire her so I just blindly followed his recommendation. She was great - super funny, great personality, totally got our taste in music, and did a great job as emcee running the reception.

• Stationary (STDs, Invitations, Shower Thank-Yous and Postage) - $620

I found a company for the STDs and invitations at a bridal show. They told me that I “won” a package where we got free STDs if we purchased invitations through them so we went ahead and did that. Super simple STDs for everyone and some magnets on VistaPrint for just our immediate family members. Our invitations were one piece designs with our website and online RSVP links. We didn’t want to spend a lot on stationary since it’s super temporary and not important to us. Spent a little extra to have them print names and addresses on the invitation envelopes and that looked very nice and were a relief to not need to hand write. We also didn’t want to spend any money on RSVPs. I really liked the interface of www.anrsvp.com and it was easy to just send the link to people as we hunted down replies after the due date. Bought super cheap generic thank you cards for shower gifts on Amazon. Ordered personalized wedding photo thank you postcards for wedding attendees on VistaPrint during a 50% off promo. Skipped inserts, programs, escort cards, menus all together.

• Ceremony/Reception Extras - $375

We got a custom guest book alternative on etsy ($140) with the frame of our names and small wooden hearts for guests to write their names and drop-in. We love having something to hang up that we will actually see often. Only missed a small full of signatures but can follow up with most of them. We got a custom cake topper also on etsy ($125) that was two clay figurines that looked just like us. It was one of my favorite things for the reception and I even kept it hidden from my husband because the dress was designed to look like mine. We bought frames from IKEA ($27) and spray painted them silver ($15) and I just printed a design for the table numbers that included our Snapchat filter ($6), hashtag, and a Google Voice number for texting photos. I saw a service that does that for about $80 but realized that it would accomplish the same thing with Google Voice. Well, we didn’t really advertise it very much and resulted in one person texting in TWO photos. Very glad we didn’t spend any money on a service for that. Got some used votives from a newly-wed friend which ended up just enough for our reception tables. We found two tall end tables from At Home ($50) for the ceremony flowers. The venue offered to rent two wooden pedestals for $150 total which seemed ridiculous for something we would look at for 30 minutes. We had to visit two At Home locations to find a matching set. They were both kind of beat up (not important since it was far away on stage) so they gave us a discount on both. Then we also got a bonus wooden arch for the stage because the couple that got married the night before us just left it behind. My Maid of Honor’s mom has a cake business and loaned us the perfect cake stands for both cakes, totally free of charge. We SKIPPED custom toasting flutes (were drinking wine anyway and no champagne was served), custom cake cutteserver (used his parents), chair decorations, and bouquet/garter toss items.
We used a glass jar for cards that his aunt had etched our names onto as a shower gift and put an empty Bed Bath and Beyond gift box on a table to help imply that it was the spot for both of those. (And to save money on a sign.) I bought an 18x24” frame also from At Home ($15) and printed our table assignment chart on a poster sized printed at my school for free. I designed it myself in Word - super simple, just the text in columns in nice font. Venue provided easels for us.
I bought us some card prints of Catana Comics ($15). One set was for our love notes to each other to read privately before the ceremony and another one that we wrote in our vows to read from during the ceremony. Planning to get them framed. Our officiant was my husband’s childhood pastor - he is close with the family and would’ve been on the guest list anyway. So he was no charge to us.

• Weather

I definitely started trying to check weather every day since one month out. It ended up being a very clear day - pretty hot but it’s Texas so that’s expected. MAN the 10 min drive from the hotel to venue was burning up. I think the high was 93 but a heat index in the 100’s. The outdoor photos were pretty windy but not bad. (Glad we opted for up-dos!) Our original plan was to have the bar on the back patio and direct the audience from the ceremony to the patio for cocktail hour. We just kept everyone inside instead and it seemed to be no problem since there was space for it. No problem being flexible.

• Reflections

Everything went exactly how I had envisioned it. I enjoyed having a calm time getting ready in the hotel room. My hair and makeup was exactly how I wanted it to look. Photos all went smoothly. The music that we chose for wedding party/bride procession was timed perfectly (Lily Allen, Somewhere Only We Know). The ceremony was sweet, light-hearted, personal, and didn’t get long winded. We had beautiful toasts from our dads and MoH and BM (who are engaged and getting married next summer!) that ended up as my favorite part of the reception. MoH/BM did SO much for us and were on top of everything. There was the right amount of dancing time and although not much there was always the amount of guest dancing that I expected. We were surprised how quick the alcohol went and how long the table visits lasted but had a great time during the reception. We had a sweet bubble send off (given to us for free from his sister and another newly-wed friend) and got to head out from the event on a high.
The whole time planning, I felt like I was just prepping and getting ready to go to someone else’s wedding. Everyone kept asking us how the planning was going the months leading up and we were both “Mmm… if it’s not done yet then it’s not THAT important.” The whole event was surreal and I kept trying to soak everything in and appreciate/memorize how everything looked. I was very calm (thanks to our coordinator) and made most big decisions well in advance. With my teaching job, I regularly plan events and logistics for 150 kids and am comfortable going with the flow. I’m also comfortable in front of crowds and completely zoned out the audience during the ceremony and it felt like just us and the pastor (in all the best ways). I thought I would care about having an unplugged ceremony or if infants might get fussy (one did mid-ceremony) but none of that mattered to me. The venue felt a little naked without additional decor so it would've looked a little nicer with more decor but that wasn't very important to us. We waited pretty late to buy a few things so that helped prevent us from buying anything we did not need.
I really can’t think of anything that “went wrong” that day or that I wish we would have changed! It was exactly what we wanted and had so many wonderful vendors helping everything fall into place.

Hey guys! So my venue prove provides 3 glass cylinders as centerpieces. We bring what we want in them and they set it up. I love the idea of flowers and a floating candle. They showed us pictures of that and it looks really nice. My problem is I'm not a flower person. What kind of flowers do I use that work in that kind of centerpiece? I'm trying to not spend too much money on them. My colors are dark purple (like eggplant ish? More of a red purple than a blue purple, so whatever that is), light purple or blush (whichever looks better, haven't decided yet), and gray.
Thanks in advance!

• Prices are as is, no offers.
  
• I can do F&F (at your own risk) or I can send you an invoice. If you'd like an invoice, you'll need to cover Paypal fees. Please specify which payment method you'd prefer.
  
• Items will only be held for 1 hour.
  
• Shipping starts at $3 and is USPS First Class. This comes with a tracking number! There's a $5 minimum before shipping.
  
• I use bubble wrap & sanitize everything I can with 99% rubbing alcohol!
  

I've got over 160 positive flairs! My MUE flair threads:
Part 1: http://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/2320tm/meowlephant_flair_thread
Part 2: http://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/2jc3g8/meowlephant_flair_thread_2/
Part 3: http://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/32w6ho/meowlephant_flair_thread_3/
Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/4rrq53/meowlephant_flair_thread_4/
Verification photos: http://imgur.com/a/H2G46#0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Body

• CocoaPink Underarm Deodorant "Fluffy Green Tea" (brand new) $6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Skincare

• Innisfree The Green Tea Seed Oil (used once) $10
  
• Missha Sample Lot $1 for all 4 samples
  
• Yehwadam Heaven Grade Ginseng Regenerating Toner x2
  
• Yehwadam Heaven Grade Ginseng Regenerating Emulsion x2
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lips

• Sephora Cream Lip Stain Liquid Lipstick "01 Always Red" (used once) $7
  
• MAC Patentpolish Lip Pencil "Kittenish" (Amount left rolled all the way down: http://i.imgur.com/asiQZWe.jpg) $7
  
• MAC Mattene Lipstick "Eden Rouge" LE (packing is really worn, the top half's rubberized finish wiped off and the bottom's is patchy, heavily worn, amount left rolled up: http://i.imgur.com/skP9Zv2.jpg) $2
  
• NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil "Cruella" (amount left: http://i.imgur.com/ExyctU9.jpg) $1
  
• MAKE UP FOR EVER Artist Plexi-Gloss 3mL / 0.1 fl oz. sample "202" (used once) $1
  
• Hello Waffle Lipstick "Polyp" (used once, amount left rolled down: http://i.imgur.com/IHiou3q.jpg) $1
  
• Shiro Cosmetics Miyazaki Tinted Lip Balm "It's Called Love" (amount left rolled down: http://i.imgur.com/WhrlxNF.jpg) $1
  
• Epically Epic Lip Balm "Strawberry Pancakes" (amount left rolled down: http://i.imgur.com/k5P0qfe.jpg) $1
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eyes

• ULTA Beauty twist up Eye Liner "Eggplant" (brand new, please note this appears to be metallic) $1
  
• ULTA Beauty twist up Eye Liner "Matte Black" (brand new) $1
  
• Hello Waffle Cosmetics Centerpiece full-size (used once) $4
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tools (Brushes will be freshly washed before shipping)

• IOPE Air Cushion Puff (brand new) $1.50
  
• Bdellium Tools 942 Green Bambu Slanted Contour $7
  
• Sephora PRO Airbrush Concealer 57 brush (labels are a little rubbed off) $10
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perfume Oils

• Arcana Peaches Craves Vanilla full-size "Sugared peach, glorious vanilla, marshmallows, sweet milk, and sheer musk." (used once) $16
  
• Haus of Gloi Black Tea & Strawberry Vanilla full-size (used 3-4x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Blood Orange Marshmallow full-size (used 3-4x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Marshmallow Rice Treat full-size "Sticky marshmallow combined with buttery puffed rice." (used once) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Marshmallow S'mores full-size "A classic treat! A big puffy marshmallow sitting on a chocolate square sandwiched between golden graham crackers." (used once) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Peach Milk full-size "Fresh ripe peaches doused in milk." (used 5-6x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Strawberry Marshmallow full-size "Clouds of marshmallow fluff dotted with sun ripened strawberries." (used once) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Golden Corn Cakes full-size "Corn cake baked to a golden perfection, topped with butter and honey." (used once) $12
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOLD

• Prices are as is, no offers.
  
• I can do F&F (at your own risk) or I can send you an invoice. If you'd like an invoice, you'll need to cover Paypal fees. Please specify which payment method you'd prefer.
  
• Items will only be held for 1 hour.
  
• Shipping starts at $3 and is USPS First Class. This comes with a tracking number! There's a $5 minimum before shipping.
  
• I use bubble wrap & sanitize everything I can with 99% rubbing alcohol!
  

I've got over 160 positive flairs! My MUE flair threads:
Part 1: http://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/2320tm/meowlephant_flair_thread
Part 2: http://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/2jc3g8/meowlephant_flair_thread_2/
Part 3: http://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/32w6ho/meowlephant_flair_thread_3/
Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/mueflaicomments/4rrq53/meowlephant_flair_thread_4/
Verification photos: http://imgur.com/a/H2G46#0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Body

• CocoaPink Underarm Deodorant "Fluffy Green Tea" (brand new) $6

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Skincare

• Innisfree The Green Tea Seed Oil (used once) $10
  
• Missha Sample Lot $1 for all 4 samples
  
• Yehwadam Heaven Grade Ginseng Regenerating Toner x2
  
• Yehwadam Heaven Grade Ginseng Regenerating Emulsion x2
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lips

• Sephora Cream Lip Stain Liquid Lipstick "01 Always Red" (used once) $7
  
• MAC Patentpolish Lip Pencil "Kittenish" (Amount left rolled all the way down: http://i.imgur.com/asiQZWe.jpg) $7
  
• MAC Mattene Lipstick "Eden Rouge" LE (packing is really worn, the top half's rubberized finish wiped off and the bottom's is patchy, heavily worn, amount left rolled up: http://i.imgur.com/skP9Zv2.jpg) $2
  
• NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil "Cruella" (amount left: http://i.imgur.com/ExyctU9.jpg) $1
  
• MAKE UP FOR EVER Artist Plexi-Gloss 3mL / 0.1 fl oz. sample "202" (used once) $1
  
• Hello Waffle Lipstick "Polyp" (used once, amount left rolled down: http://i.imgur.com/IHiou3q.jpg) $1
  
• Shiro Cosmetics Miyazaki Tinted Lip Balm "It's Called Love" (amount left rolled down: http://i.imgur.com/WhrlxNF.jpg) $1
  
• Epically Epic Lip Balm "Strawberry Pancakes" (amount left rolled down: http://i.imgur.com/k5P0qfe.jpg) $1
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eyes

• ULTA Beauty twist up Eye Liner "Eggplant" (brand new, please note this appears to be metallic) $1
  
• ULTA Beauty twist up Eye Liner "Matte Black" (brand new) $1
  
• Hello Waffle Cosmetics Centerpiece full-size (used once) $4
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tools (Brushes will be freshly washed before shipping)

• IOPE Air Cushion Puff (brand new) $1.50
  
• Bdellium Tools 942 Green Bambu Slanted Contour $7
  
• Sephora PRO Airbrush Concealer 57 brush (labels are a little rubbed off) $10
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perfume Oils

• Arcana Peaches Craves Vanilla full-size "Sugared peach, glorious vanilla, marshmallows, sweet milk, and sheer musk." (used once) $16
  
• Haus of Gloi Black Tea & Strawberry Vanilla full-size (used 3-4x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Blood Orange Marshmallow full-size (used 3-4x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Marshmallow Rice Treat full-size "Sticky marshmallow combined with buttery puffed rice." (used once) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Marshmallow S'mores full-size "A classic treat! A big puffy marshmallow sitting on a chocolate square sandwiched between golden graham crackers." (used once) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Peach Milk full-size "Fresh ripe peaches doused in milk." (used 5-6x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Pink Marshmallow Milk full-size "Magical pink berries and frothy cold milk." (used 5-6x) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Strawberry Marshmallow full-size "Clouds of marshmallow fluff dotted with sun ripened strawberries." (used once) $12
  
• Haus of Gloi Golden Corn Cakes full-size "Corn cake baked to a golden perfection, topped with butter and honey." (used once) $12
  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOLD