Truth
*This post originally appeared in The Times of Israel on Oct. 31, 2013
So there I was, in 2008, newly kosher and eating a meal with my vegan friend and trying to get her to understand my confusion regarding her question. You’re a vegan. To me, that seems difficult and requires quite a bit of discipline and creativity. But from her lens, however, veganism was a no-brainer; something that came naturally to her. At that point in my kosher-keeping journey, I was still craving the occasional cheeseburger so it wasn’t as natural to me as it is now. We went back and forth on the differences and similarities of keeping both of these diets. Eventually, the conversation naturally flowed to the challenges of starting a new diet; expense, limitations, family judgement, trying to get creative with cooking, etc., when it hit me. Vegan is her kosher.
Kosher used to be exotic. Having a specialized diet that required shopping at specialty grocery stores, declining dinner invitations to certain restaurants or other people’s homes due to dietary issues and budgeting to afford diet-specific items was considered strange and even too much work to consider. But in 2013, everybody’s got their kosher. With the rise of diets including, but not limited to, gluten-free, grain-free, vegan, paleo, strictly organic and/or only eating unpastruerized dairy products, etc., kosher just isn’t that strange anymore and I gotta say, I am a little relieved. Heck, at this point, kosher is old news. So you can’t cook meat and milk together? Big deal. Try going sugar-free, gluten-free and paleo.
Continuing reading at The Times of Israel
Jewhungry 
You are so exactly where I am that I stopped reading for a moment and wondered if I was writing this! I have explained so many times that I enjoy the creativity needed to cook for my family, which includes nut-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, fish-free and kosher. Somehow we manage to eat very well!
We always do, right? xox
Try being Kosher AND Paleo. People still can’t wrap their heads around the fact that I can’t and won’t touch bacon.
I’ve been Paleo for 6 months now, and I still get the question: “But you can’t eat anything. What do you eat?”. It hit me that everyone views Paleo as so restrictive by itself, let alone trying to live a kosher paleo lifestyle. But to me? It’s become my norm. I’m never hungry. It’s not hard for me to go grocery shopping or hang out with my friends. It’s simply the way I live my life.
It’s funny because I actually end up cooking a LOT of Paleo because my private-chef client is Paleo. It really made me nervous at first but I don’t find it restrictive in the slightest. Good Luck Kosher Cave Girl 🙂