My brother, Ryan, is the smartest person I know. I have previously mentioned that he was a 4-time Jeopardy! winner, who went on to play in the Tournament of Champions last year.
Yes, that's really him.I sent him a copy of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation a few years ago for Christmas, in hopes of having him understand why veganism was so important to me. I never expected him to go vegan, himself, but that's exactly what happened. For me, being vegan is a very emotional experience. I learned about the animal suffering, correlated my love of cute, fuzzy animals with the suffering my eating was causing, and that's all it took - it flipped a switch in my head and I was done contributing to that industry.
For Ryan, it was a more academic approach. Peter Singer poses the ethical/logical conflict to how we should live our lives, with how agribusiness works. And for Ryan, *that* flipped a switch in his head and he decided to make drastic changes. I love having him as an advocate, because he's much better at explaining "why vegan?" to people than me. He keeps a cooler head than me, because my passion just runs so deep. I tend to get frustrated when people know the facts, but don't make a change. I'm thankful to have him as a resource and ally.
I digress - what I'm getting at is that this trip to LA was filled with lots of veg-friendly restaurants (Mom was outnumbered) and some great sight seeing. Below are some highlights.
Mom's first experience with Ethiopian Cuisine @ Rahel Ethiopian
On the Santa Monica Pier
Ry and I on the doubledecker tour bus
I love LA. It was a great trip where being vegan was easy. I can't say that about every city I've visited. Oh, and I felt very at home with the traffic. Very similar to DC traffic. Sad, but true.
But the main perk of this trip was I got to spend some wonderful quality time with the fam!
I've got some new recipes to post soon! Stay tuned...
