The first week I basically ate peanut butter sandwiches and panic. I'd been cooking the same five meals on rotation for years—all of them built around chicken or ground beef or eggs. Take those away and I had no idea what to make. I googled "easy vegan recipes" and got overwhelmed by unfamiliar ingredients: nutritional yeast, aquafaba, tempeh. I closed my laptop.

Week two, I went to the Marietta farmers market because I'd heard it was good and I needed vegetables. Lots of vegetables, apparently, if I was going to survive this. I bought things somewhat randomly: zucchini, bell peppers, a bunch of kale I had no plan for, tomatoes because at least I knew what to do with those.

Tom saw me struggling with my canvas bags and walked over. He lives in one of the SILK cottages in Ravenswood and apparently knows everyone. "That's a lot of kale," he said, which was objectively true.

"I'm trying to eat less meat," I admitted. "It's going badly."

"You need a good lentil recipe," Tom said. "And someone to show you how to massage kale so it's not like eating paper."

Massage kale. I didn't know that was a thing. Tom stood there in the farmers market parking lot and taught me, working the leaves with his hands until they softened. It felt ridiculous and also kind of necessary. —  Maya Chen

He gave me his lentil recipe right there—no measurements, just "enough cumin that you smell it, enough tomatoes that it's not dry, salt until it tastes good." I wrote it down on a farmers market flyer. That night I made it in my cottage kitchen, and it was fine. Not amazing, but fine. I ate it for three days.

The Disasters

I tried to make cashew cream sauce. I don't have a high-powered blender, so it came out grainy and sad. I poured it over pasta anyway and ate it while reading about why you're supposed to soak cashews first.

I attempted tofu scramble and somehow made it taste like absolutely nothing. Rachel from across the street tried a bite and said, diplomatically, "It needs... something." We added hot sauce. Then more hot sauce. It helped.

I bought a whole butternut squash, then realized I had no idea how to cut it open without losing a finger. Emma came over with a cleaver and showed me. "You've really never cooked a squash?" she asked. I really hadn't.

What Actually Worked

Bill brought me tomatoes from his garden, same as he does for Elena. I roasted them with olive oil and salt and ate them on toast for breakfast. Simple. Good. No protein powder or meat substitute required.

Sarah taught me to make a bean chili that tasted better than the meat version I used to make. "Beans are cheap," she said. "And if you make a big pot, that's meals for a week." Revolutionary concept: cooking once, eating multiple times.

I learned that roasted chickpeas are genuinely good, that tahini makes most things better, that I actually like Brussels sprouts if they're crispy enough. Small discoveries that made the whole thing feel less impossible.

Jesse showed me his trick for using up vegetables before they go bad: "Just roast everything at 425 until it's brown. Add to grain bowl. Done." Not elegant, but effective.

The thing nobody tells you about changing how you eat is that you're also changing how you think about food, how you shop, how you plan your week. It's not just swapping chicken for chickpeas. It's relearning everything. —  Maya Chen

One Month Later

I'm not fully plant-based. I eat eggs sometimes. I had cheese at Emma's birthday dinner. But I cook differently now—more vegetables, more variety, less reliance on the same five meals. My cholesterol dropped 40 points. My grocery bills are lower. I know how to massage kale.

What surprised me most was the community aspect. People in these SILK cottages just help each other. Tom with his lentil recipe, Bill with his tomatoes, Sarah with her chili wisdom, Jesse with his practical solutions. I thought changing my diet would be this solitary struggle, but it turned into a dozen small moments of people showing me what they knew.

I still google recipes and get overwhelmed. I still make disasters—last week's attempt at vegan mac and cheese was genuinely inedible. But I also make things that work. And when they don't, there's usually someone down the street who's already failed at the same thing and can tell me why.

That's maybe the real lesson: you don't have to figure everything out alone. You just have to be willing to admit you have no idea how to cut open a butternut squash and let someone show you.

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