Lent Goals Revisited | BABY STEPS

Well, a lot has happened since my last post in the Baby Steps series. I’m not really continuing it at the moment because when people are very limited to what they can buy, and are having to buy whatever they can find, I don’t think encouraging sustainable choices is a very helpful option. Of course, if you’re able to still make the more sustainable choice I would advocate for taking it, but equally, when the supermarkets are carrying much smaller selections, and availability generally has decreased, it can’t be a priority. Having said that, I did want to do a follow up to my last post, my Lent Goals post, as Easter has now happened.

Until the lockdown, I was doing pretty well. I had another couple of slip ups in the form of naan bread and pringles, but other than that, I was buying vegan food only. I moved home from university a week and a half earlier than I expected, a few days before the lockdown in the UK was instituted. Since moving home, I’ve not really been buying my own food (I can’t drive to a supermarket, and we’re only sending one person to the shops at a time), so I have less control. As well as feeling bad about asking my family to buy completely different food for me, we’ve been struggling to find vegetarian alternatives as it is, so at the minute, all we can really find is Quorn mince and Quorn pieces. We also have a stack of Linda McCartney sausages (my mum buys them every time they’re on offer, so they’ve been building up since Christmas), so there is some vegan food around, but there’s only so many Linda McCartney sausages I can eat in a week.

Even though Lent is over, this is something I want to keep doing where possible. Going forward, I’m going to try requesting specific brands that I know are vegan alternatives, but if things aren’t available, I’m not going to kick up a fuss. There was a point I was getting worried that we’d run out of meat alternatives, and the only thing we could find was Quorn ready meals, so I’m glad we’ve progressed slightly past that point. Where I live, most things, except hand soap and baking ingredients are pretty readily available, but we’ve still noticed a big decrease in the amount of different brands available. As things start to return to normal, which I hope will be in the next month or so, but who really knows, I should be able to get back on track with this goal.

For now, I’m going to keep eating my vegetarian food, with vegan options when we can find them. I feel so sorry for people with dietary restrictions at the moment, because I imagine it must be so hard to find the appropriate options! I hope everyone is managing to stay safe and healthy, and Baby Steps will return when things start to be getting back to normal. Until then, I’m planning to continue doing Wednesday lifestyle posts, but with a more general theme. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see me talk about, now or in the future!