I Just Want a Cupcake

When I first read that Natalie Portman stopped being vegan during her pregnancy because she was craving cakes and cookies, I scoffed.  I mean, she's Natalie-FREAKIN'-Portman.  She doesn't live/work near a vegan bakery?  She can't hire a personal chef to lavish her with amazing vegan baked goods?

Is there a movie out this year that she's NOT in?  Seriously?!

So it was annoying, and frustrating, and saddening because she became a vegan after reading the same book that changed my life to veganism, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  The worst part for me is that she's looking to buy these products from regular bakeries, which I have a feeling aren't getting their eggs from more humane farmers.  The same goes for butter/milk in those products.  So she's going from omitting these ingredients completely based on her ethics to purchasing products from likely the worst of the worst (see: lowest bidder).  I can understand making hard choices for your baby's health, but laughing about her choice really makes me wonder if we read the same book.  This article discusses the choice she and other vegans have made to give up veganism through pregnancy and the needlessness in most cases for indulging those cravings.

As a young girl, I looked up to Drew Barrymore for a million reasons and one, so she was my first vegetarian role model.  I remember as a teen being devastated when I read an article that she had started eating meat again so she could lose weight for Charlie's Angels.  What a beautiful woman, who felt she had to lose THIRTY POUNDS to look good enough.  She was gorgeous before, and now I just see a thin girl who doesn't know who she is anymore.  When she filmed a movie in my town this summer, one of the local articles said that she was reading a copy of Eating Animals in between takes, which gives me some hope.  But maybe it just doesn't have the same effect on others as it does on me.  Maybe reading it in the wake of a beautiful birth made me more receptive.  Who knows?

It's not like I don't remember just over a year ago when I was buying products and eating food without any regard for their origins or who was hurt along the way, so I understand the people out there still eating meat and choosing their battles.  It's a common excuse we tell ourselves that they, "just don't know," because the truth is that many people don't care about the suffering of animals.

But all that aside, the point of this post is that I want a cupcake.  There is nowhere in Anchorage for me to get a vegan cupcake, unless I spin the wheel of fate and one of two cafes that have once in a blue moon had vegan cupcakes just happen to have them on a day when I can get into a cafe.  I can make my own though, and that's my only choice.  The thing is, I'm over halfway pregnant, I'm cranky, my cravings are so strong I just ate 4 Tofutti Cuties, and I still want a cupcake.  But I'm not going to surrender my ethics because of that.  I'm not going to go down to the grocery store and get the gross bakery cupcakes.  I'm not going to say, "Oh, well I'm pregnant, so this doesn't count."

I'm not better or stronger or anything else than Natalie Portman, I'm just making a different choice.  I don't want to prove that I can do something she can't, I just want to point out that I can, and I do, and in the end it's not that big of a deal.  Like I said, I can make my own.  My cupcakes are better than most I've had store-baught anyway, thanks to my PPK girls and their Bible/cupcake cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  


So for any preggies out there: here's the recipe for a delicious chocolate cupcake.