29 Byos (BRing youR own snacks

bYos (bring Your

Kennedy Bustos

Let’s face the simple yet emphatic truth — the quintessential movie experience is not complete without snacks. Creature comforts exist for a reason. There exists an inherent bliss in settling into a comfortable chair with your favorite beverage in hand and a bowl of something sweet or salty ready to be devoured. Now that movie theatres are once again back in action, a question brews in the minds of many movie-goers: is it socially acceptable to bring your own snacks to the theatre? In the age of streaming services, those who attend movie screenings are paying for the experience — not the convenience. Those who frequent movie theatres are inviting themselves to the atmospheric sensory smorgasbord: the buttery scent of popcorn floating through the air, the surround sound vibrating straight to your bones, the screen monopolizing every inch of your vision. Yet, if you want to embody the movie experience to its fullest extent — if you want to snack to your heart’s content — you’ll have to shell out a questionable amount of money.

oWn snAcks)

Believe it or not, while it may still be somewhat socially unacceptable to bring your own snacks to the movie theatre, most movie theatres technically allow it. Santikos, AMC and Cinemark

Theatres do not mention food in any of their extensive lists of terms and conditions. As someone with dietary restrictions, the only way I can consume movie snacks is by bringing my own. This used to be a source of subtle shame, despite the practice being technically allowed. Yet, I’d still feel guilty as I nestled a snack in my bag.

However, the postquarantine movie theatre experience has changed my perception. For over a year, we lost the privilege of watching movie theatres anywhere but our home. Now, we can at last revel in the movie theatre experience once more. Why not bring your own snacks?

Photos by Kennedy Bustos/The Paisano. Graphic by Camila Martinez Rivera/The Paisano.

don’T ‘rush’ inTo iT

how one canadian pRo-athlete went vegan, cReating weBsite to help local dog Rescues

Seva Hester Magazine Editor

In 2017, John Rush, a pro-athlete for the Canadian Football League, made a choice that changed his life: he decided to try veganism.

“It’s interesting because before I went vegan, I was anti-vegan. I don’t even think I ever met a vegan but I just hated them. I was like, the picture of toxic masculinity. I was that dude who hated vegans for absolutely no reason. And I’ve always been a big dude, I’m 6’1 …and my weight has always been in that 220-250 pound range,” Rush said. “So one off-season, I was training with a guy and my head coach called me up and was like, ‘Hey we’re thinking of moving you to fullback, how do you feel about that?’ And I was like sure, whatever you think is going to help the team, I didn’t really care as long as I could keep playing football. And he said, ‘Well if you’re gonna move to fullback, we’re going to need you to lose 20-30 pounds.’ And I’m like, alright sounds good, I’ll try my best and you’re paying me to do this, so I’ll do it.”

At the time, Rush was working with a trainer who had seen him try different diets that didn’t help him manage his weight.

“So I’ve always been a big dude so it’s always been a struggle for me to lose weight. I was working with a trainer at the time and he said, ‘You’ve tried going keto, you’ve tried intermittent fasting, you’ve tried all those diets they tell you to do to lose weight, and you haven’t lost any weight.’ He said, ‘Try to go vegan for a month. If you like it, you can keep doing it, and if you hate it so much, we can switch back, no worries. What’s the worst that could happen, you hate it and we just never do it again? We gotta try something, you have to lose weight.’ So I did it for a month,” Rush said.

Rush shared that within the first two weeks, he was beginning to feel a lot better than before. “My body started feeling amazing, the inflammation started going down in my body, I was sleeping better, so I was like, ‘Alright, maybe these vegans are onto something here,’” Rush said. After doing more research about being vegan, Rush found information on it that he never knew before.

“I started learning about how pigs are smarter than dogs, how cows have best friends, how going vegan can be one of the best things you can do for the environment — and that’s when the UN came out with the headline that we have 12 years to reverse climate change,” Rush said. “So I started learning all these things, and how it’s so much better for life longevity. Obviously there’s a bad way to be vegan — like if you eat Oreos and potato chips your entire life, you’re not going to be healthy. But if you eat whole foods and get a proper amount of protein, it’s actually very good for your health and prolongs your life and ward off disease and things like that.”

During this time, Rush shared that he was also growing out his hair for cancer.

“I raised $5,000 dollars for it, so I was learning all these things, and at the end of the month I was like, ‘Man I would kind of be an asshole if I learned all these things and went back to eating meat.’ Like it would be kind of s—y for me to know that pigs are smarter than dogs, and then go back to eating pigs even though I rescue dogs, right? So at the end of the month it just made sense for me to stay vegan,” Rush said. “On January 1st, [it was] my five year vegan anniversary. I’ve been vegan for five years now and it’s helped my life in so many ways. It’s been really great, I love it and I don’t ever plan on going back.”

Unfortunately, Rush ended up having to retire early from football once the pandemic hit, after playing the sport for 17 years straight.

“In 2019 I won the Grey Cup, which is kinda like the Superbowl. In the CFL, we don’t get paid as much as the NFL does so our minimum salary is $50,000 dollars and the minimum salary in the NFL is $500,000, so, it’s just a little bit different. And that’s something I was aware of growing up my entire life. I would always have to work after I played in the CFL, it’s just a reality, but during my last off season, I got a job at a bank here. Just to get some experience in the off season, and I was still under contract for two years, and then the pandemic hit and we shut our season down. Then, when we were coming back, they were like, ‘Hey, can you guys take a 20% pay cut?’ and I’m like ‘...no I can’t.’ So it kinda sucks, the pandemic has been s—y for everybody, but it kinda forced me into retirement because I wasn’t willing to play for $30,000 dollars and destroy my body for not much. But yeah, I miss it a lot,” Rush said.

However, while he was still on the team, Rush shared that he hid that he was going vegan from his teammates for fear of being judged.

“A lot of people assume that my teammates and people in football would be the hardest on me and I thought the same thing. When I first went vegan I hid it from the team for my entire first year because I didn’t want to give them a reason to cut me and get rid of me. So I just hid it. But after that, slowly but surely the guys started to find out because obviously they know my social media, it was bound to come out, right? So guys started to find out about it on the team, and for the most part, the guys were just inquisitive. Like, ‘how are you vegan?’” Rush said.

Rush shared that growing up, it was ingrained in them that the only way to get protein was from meat.

“Our entire lives, we’ve been told that we need protein, and where do you get protein? You get it from meat. Then you have this guy sitting beside them that’s 230 pounds doing the exact same thing as them eating chickpeas and mushrooms, and they’re like, ‘What the f–k is going on?’ They’re just like, ‘How?’ So most of them were just like, ‘How are you doing this?’ and ‘How do you get enough protein?’ and ‘How do you feel?’ You know, ‘Is this good?’ They just wanted to know more about it. No one would get on my case about it, it was really great,” Rush said.

However, most judgements Rush has received have been people online over social media. “Most of the stuff that gets thrown at me is from random people on the internet. It always makes me laugh. Some people are like, ‘Oh don’t take it to hurt,’ like, I know. I was a professional athlete. I did the thing. I did the thing in one of the hardest sports in the entire world, I did the thing, I got to that status. It’s a status that all these internet warriors love and they wish they could get there. I did that,” Rush said. “So this guy that is sitting in a basement lobbing insults at me, calling me ‘beta,’ like dude, you put professional athletes on a pedestal. I’m literally one of those people. How do you not see the correlation? That you think you’re more ‘alpha,’ some random dude that couldn’t get there, how do you think you’re more ‘alpha’ than the guy that did? It just blows my mind that some of these people do the mental gymnastics in their minds so I just laugh.”

Rush shared what he’s been called online by some and how he just continues to laugh at it.

“I get called ‘beta soyboy’ and all this stuff, like how do you not make the connection that I did the thing that you didn’t? Like by your standards, I’m above you. I don’t think that, I don’t go around saying that I’m better than other people because I’m not. I’m not better than other people. But by their standards? I am. And how do you not make that connection? It makes me laugh. They’re just so disconnected that they can’t put it together,” Rush said.

Since he started documenting his experience with being vegan on social media, Rush has had an increase in followers, but he doesn’t consider himself to be an influencer.

“I personally just don’t like the word ‘influencer’ because it’s just been so perverted, basically. People have just misconstrued it to mean things that it doesn’t. I joke about it on my Twitter all the time, like I’m just a local idiot. I am no different; I’m some idiot from Niagara Falls that just happened to be able to put his head through a brick wall. So people put me on a pedestal

in society. Like that’s it, that’s all I am. I’m no different, I’m no more special because I can put my head through a brick wall like anyone else,” Rush said. “So I’m just a local idiot that’s just been given this platform and I’m thankful for it, but I don’t consider myself as an influencer more so than like a content creator. I realize that I’ve been given this platform and this status in society, so I’m going to try to do something good about it and not just let it go away. I’m going to try to actually do something and not just be one of those idiots that goes to Mexico and gets stuck there because they partied on a plane.”

A few years after transitioning to becoming vegan, Rush started up his own website in 2020 called Rescue Dog Kitchen, where he posts recipes that range from breakfast to snacks, and where 50 percent of donations go to local dog rescues. Rush owns two dogs he rescued himself, Bone and Bailey, who have helped him quite a lot.

“I live by myself, so this pandemic has been incredibly isolating, you know, for a lot of people as we all know. It’s been difficult. Because I used to go into the office the first year of the pandemic, but just knowing that I was coming home to them played a huge role in my mental wellbeing and basically helped to not have a breakdown throughout this entire thing,” Rush said. “Humans are social creatures, right, so Bone and Bailey have personalities. People who don’t have dogs or get dogs, they don’t understand that animals have personalities. Bailey is significantly different than Bone, and they live in the same household, they’re not just dogs, right?”

Rush shared just how different Bone and Bailey’s personalities can be. “Bailey is extremely needy and she’s very affectionate, loves to be next to you, she sleeps literally touching me, she can’t sleep not touching me. Bone is the complete opposite: hates touching me, doesn’t wanna cuddle at all, incredibly unaffectionate, but he shows his love in different ways. And it’s crazy because the more time you spend with animals, they do have personalities, they do love you, they do feel those emotions, so you really bond with them. Throughout this pandemic, it’s crazy how much I’ve relied on them for my own personal wellbeing and my own mental wellbeing. It’s been truly life changing, really,” Rush said.

Since creating Rescue Dog Kitchen, Rush has been able to donate to different local shelters, getting donations from merchandise, ads and fundraising.

“We just did another $600 dollar donation last month [December 2021]. So I think for the year of 2021, we were at over $2,200. It kinda sucked in the sense that in the early stages, especially as we grow the blog and grow into a point where we have a lot of people going to use our recipes and things like that, we were relying on in-person fundraisers and it’s a little bit different in Canada than it is in Texas with the pandemic,” Rush said. “A lot of things have been shut down, you can’t do a lot of stuff and unfortunately, a lot of our fundraisers rely on that stuff so we’re really hoping that once COVID goes away eventually, we’ll be able to run some big fundraisers. But yeah, last year was just over $2,200. This year we’re planning on ramping it up quite a bit.”

However, deciding what shelters to donate to is not very easy for him. sort of work, there’s a huge amount of burnout because there’s no shortage of how poorly we treat, not just dogs, but animals in general. Everybody thinks that the humane society is where you get your dogs or cats, but they have rabbits, they have guinea pigs, they have birds, they have reptiles, it’s crazy what we do to animals. These are pets. These are the animals that we’re supposed to respect and love, you know, the animals that we keep as pets,” Rush said. “Like s—t, this is what we do to pets, what are we doing to animals that we don’t consider like that? Livestock? What are we doing to cows? So it’s tough. Everytime we go to donate, it’s never easy because there’s no shortage of stories and shelters in need.”

Currently, Rescue Dog Kitchen focuses on selling merchandise and getting donations locally in Winnipeg, where a majority of the blog’s visitors are from. But that doesn’t stop Rush from sending out orders internationally.

“I’ve sent a bunch of orders to Texas, to people all over America, but right now we stick with local Winnipeg shelters, but in the future we want to branch out and we’re thinking of starting a Patreon page where we’re gonna be able to set it up and have a voting system for people to vote on where we’re going to donate to every single month. Which, it sucks. It sucks because I wish we had enough money to donate to everyone and help everyone out, but at the end of the day, we’re not there yet, and like I said there’s no shortage of people that need help,” Rush said. “You gotta figure it out somehow, so that’s what we’re looking at doing in the future, but right now it’s a lot of local stuff until we can grow it to be a lot bigger and make it make more sense to branch out and go to other places.”

As the website has grown, Rush shared the recipe he’s most proud of.

“The one I’m most proud of is the Big Mac recipe. That one I’m most proud of because I made it for my friend because she was pregnant and she was craving it. And before I went vegan, I have maybe eaten like two Big Macs in my life. I was never a Big Mac guy. I loved Wendy’s growing up, I loved the spicy chicken from Wendy’s. So I was never a Big Mac guy, but I made it for my friend who’s pregnant and had a craving. She doesn’t eat meat either but she had cravings for a Big Mac, and she was like, ‘Dude, this is crazy how good it is.’ So that’s the one I’m most proud of, and I also love those pictures. I take my own pictures. I’m no photographer, I don’t know what the f—k I’m doing, but I’m really happy with how those pictures turned out,” Rush said. In addition to the Big Mac recipe, Rush shared two other recipes that he considers to be his favorites.

“But as far as my actual favorite to eat myself, there’s two: there’s one that’s not on the blog yet… but it’s a vegan hamburger helper and it’s so good. It’s so good. Or the vegan beef stroganoff, that recipe is unreal, it’s really, really good. I love that recipe. My mom’s Italian so I’m very carb [and] pasta. That’s my s—t, I love that. Those are huge for me, so those would be my top recipes. And I mean I love all the recipes, I don’t post anything that’s not good, I have a bunch of recipes that I’ve tested,” Rush said. “I have vegan jello shots that I’ve tested fifteen times, couldn’t make it work so I just never posted it. Same with my mom’s chocolate oreo cheesecake that I’m trying to veganize right now, I’ve tried five times so far, still can’t make it work. So there’s a lot of recipes that I’ll try and it just doesn’t work. So all the recipes on the site I actually do love and enjoy but those would probably be my top recipes.”

Additionally, Rush shared that one of his main goals include wanting to help end animal suffering.

“I would love it if the whole world went vegan overnight. My whole mission is that I don’t want animals to suffer, you know? I love animals, I want to help end animal suffering, right? So would I love the whole world to go vegan overnight? 100%. Is that ever going to happen? Absolutely not. It’s just not realistic, and I realize that,” Rush said.

For those considering wanting to try being vegan, Rush shared some tips he has. Mainly, don’t suddenly drop everything and go vegan.

“How I went vegan, I would never advise anybody else to do. I just stopped eating meat on January 1, 2017 and then just never ate it again. It was tough. It was very difficult, I had no idea what I was doing, I had no idea what to cook, I had no idea where to get protein,” Rush said. “I had to reteach myself how to cook the most basic meals because my entire life I’ve been using cheese, dairy, eggs, bacon, steaks, chicken, all these things that you don’t realize, when I take them all out, I can’t cook with any of this. What do I cook with? So I had to reteach myself all these things and reteach myself what was good and what wasn’t good and things like that. So it was very difficult.”

Rush advised the importance of transitioning when it comes to going vegan.

“I read a lot, I like studies and I like to read, and one of the studies that I was reading is that people that go cold turkey, they just give something up like smoking, or you know, addicts and things like that. The likelihood of them relapsing is 95%. So for me, when people ask me, ‘Oh, I’d like to transition to go vegan,’ I’m like, great. This is how you do it, this is a sustainable way of doing it, because that’s what we want,” Rush said. “If I could flip that, I want to flip it so that instead of 95% of people going vegan and then stopping because they don’t know how because they did it overnight, I want to flip it to where 95% of people go vegan and stay vegan. You have to slowly transition your way into it.”

In Rush’s opinion, the best way to transition is to find a favorite meal then find the vegan version of it.

“One of the best ways I tell people to do that is to take your favorite meal, whatever that is right now, and make it vegan. Go on the internet, and if you love fettuccine alfredo, google vegan fettuccine alfredo, and either sub what you currently have for vegan alternatives like vegan butter, vegan milk, vegan cheese and things like that, or for whatever recipe pops up. Look what they call for, see how many reviews it has and make sure it has a good recipe and try to make it. I do that once a week,” Rush said. “And after a while, you realize you all of a sudden have an arsenal of vegan recipes that you can make. Because the simple fact of the matter is, you’re not going to like every recipe you make. Just like every recipe you make now that’s not vegan, you probably don’t like. Like just because it has steak in it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good recipe. Plenty of people kind of forget that, so they try one vegan meal and they’re like, ‘Oh I don’t like it, veganism sucks. All vegan food sucks.’ and it’s like, no, that one recipe or Through transitioning slowly to include vegan foods in a diet, and trying out new recipes, Rush said it’s all about trying to have a positive experience with it.

“It’s trying to increase those positive experiences so they’re more likely to try new things, they’re more likely to stick with it. Because life happens, you know, it’s busy, I’m busy,” Rush said. “But with that being said, if you have easy things to fall back on, it makes it so much easier to do than if you give it up all at once, and then you’re like, ‘What do I do? How do I do this?’ and you’re kinda screwed. So what I recommend when I talk to people about this is that they should do it slowly. Transition slowly. Try to replace one meal a week. And all of a sudden, you don’t even realize it, but you’re making three, four, five meals a week that are vegan. Or you took the meat away. And it’s crazy how fast it adds up, and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Well why don’t I just go vegan at that point?’ So it’s all about slowly transitioning your way into it to make it sustainable for everybody.”

Editor’s Note: Want to know more about John Rush? Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @johnrush5 or check out @rescuedogkitchen to stay up to date on all his vegan recipes. Photos courtesy of John Rush/Instagram.