Thrift Week, Day 5: The restaurant dilemma

Yesterday, Brian had the day off from work for Martin Luther King Day. He ended up working from home for most of the day anyway, but we did take a break in the middle of the day to head out into the cold for a walk. I proposed the Penstock Coffee Roasters coffee shop on Third Avenue (formerly known as OQ) as a destination, since (a) it wasn't too far away and (b) it would be a pleasant place to settle down for a game of cards after braving the cold wind outside. In the back of my head, also, was the fact that (c) this local establishment would definitely have some dairy-free selections beyond plain black coffee, so I wouldn't have to stress about my vegan challenge when ordering.

However, when we got there, we discovered that a lot of other people had apparently had the same great idea. The place was packed, and with no room to sit down for a drink, there wasn't much point in sticking around. Rather than continue to fight against the wind all the way to the Dunkin Donuts (which also has almond milk, but lacks the congenial atmosphere), we turned around and headed home. Along the way, we passed a couple of other eateries that were open, such as the new bubble tea place on Raritan, and considered going in, but without being able to peruse the menu ahead of time, I just wasn't sure I'd be able to get anything without milk. Heading straight home and fixing a cup of cocoa seemed like the surest way to get a hot drink that would fit my new, temporary vegan lifestyle.

This experience led me to formulate my Third Lesson Learned from my week of vegan eating: It's a lot easier to avoid animal products at home than it is on the go. In your own kitchen, you can control not just what you cook, but what you have on hand to cook with, so making a simple substitution like almond milk for dairy milk is no problem. But when you're out and about, you just can't count on every eatery you visit to have these alternatives on hand. If you have time to plan ahead, you can seek out an all-vegan eatery like the one we went to on Friday, or at least consult the menus of nearby restaurants to make sure vegan choices are available. But if you're just hungry and looking for a quick meal, there's no guarantee you'll be able to find it.

This lesson was further reinforced when I checked my email this afternoon and discovered that my email to Baskin-Robbins about my misplaced Birthday Club coupon had not fallen on blind eyeballs. They sent me a terse but polite apology and a coupon that I can cash in for a free scoop any time before February 4. So, in theory, I could go tomorrow or Thursday, while my vegan challenge is still in effect, and try out the vegan flavor at our local branch. (I checked when I was in there to get my Dunkin drink and verified that they have one.)

The problem is, although I managed to get my birthday freebie by being a squeaky wheel, Brian never got his last month. So what I would really like to do is wait until Brian can go to the Baskin-Robbins with me and get a scoop we can share. Now, if we go this weekend, I could still try the vegan flavor, even if my vegan challenge is over by then — but it's a coffee-based flavor, and Brian doesn't like coffee. So I'd have to choose between sticking to my dairy-free guns or sharing with my poor ice-cream-starved husband, and I think the latter is more important to me.

Once again, this brings home the point that it's just not that easy to eat vegan when eating out. Baskin-Robbins is no doubt ahead of the competition in offering a vegan flavor at all, but it still only has one. By contrast, if we wanted to buy nondairy ice cream to eat at home, we could choose from a variety of brands and flavors just at our local supermarket, with still more options available if we were prepared to venture out to a natural-foods store and pay natural-foods-store prices. (They're a lot higher than the Stop & Shop's, but to be fair, still quite a bit less on a per-quart basis than the regular price at Baskin-Robbins.)

All this is making me quite a bit more reluctant to continue my vegan streak beyond vegan week. I've already discovered that I'm not willing to live a 100 percent vegan lifestyle if it means giving up my warm socks; now I'm beginning to think that even 100 percent vegan eating is too much for me if it means I can't share a scoop of ice cream with my husband, or stop at a cafe for a drink on one of his rare days off from work.