'sgetti

Made veggie pasta. Brocoli and cauliflower and zucchini and onions and garlic in the sauce. We have that a lot, but with a mound of parm on the top.

I missed the parm, won't lie. But it wasn't as bad as I thought.

It, will, however, be the first thing I buy when the experiment ends. :)

mid term report

OK, so we are 2 weeks into the 4 week experiment. Feels like more, sometimes, especially when I am grocery shopping.

"Oh, we can have this!" then I read the label. Nope.

I am learning a lot. Like how many products have milk and/or egg in them. If you are adopting a vegan lifestyle for life, for ethical, environmental or health reasons, there is a looooong learning curve.

I don't feel healthier, although Russell says I am showing more energy and glow. I dunno. I think he just loves me.

I am learning wonderful recipes for fresh food to make at home that are, coincidently, vegan. I will definitely be making vegan meals 3 times a week or so.

The biggest draw back for this foodie, is having my ingredients limited. I love to cook, appreciate different flavors, love to mix things up. I told Russell it's like being an artist and having someone take half of your paints away. You have to learn a whole new style, palette. Not sure I want to do that.

No. I'm sure.

Carbs are an issue, too. There is a tendency to add more slices of bread to make up for what you are used to having. Stuff like that.

I made sweet and spicy beans and rice last night, with a big green salad that had strawberry vinagrette on it. Baked an apple crisp. Sometimes you don't feel the sacrifice at all.

cream?corn

I was sorely tempted today. Russell off to a meeting. I could have gorged on wings with extra bleu, who would know? But I persevered. Morning Star grillers are the best veggie burger ever. Got one cooking. Looked in the pantry. Corn. Good. No. Cream corn. Hmmm. Read the label.

Do you know there is no cream in cream corn?

I'm not sure if that makes me sad or happy.

Grocery shopping this week. Need to stock up and read labels.

success and temptation

My Autumn stew was really good. Root veggies like turnips and rutabaga and some carrots and squash and onion and garlic. Veggie broth. Yum. I called for white wine but I had fresh apple cider and used that instead. Good choice. Some red beans, stirred in fresh spinach. I tell ya, it was great!

A little parmesan would have made it awesome. Heh

The vegan chocolate cake was really wonderful, too. It is an old old recipe that uses white vinegar and it is rich and moist and decadent. It is not health food by any stretch of the imagination, but it is vegan. Vegan does not automatically mean healthy. Tortilla chips and salsa are vegan. Ya know?

But I am already getting a little bored with the novelty of it. If I was committed to the lifestyle for ethical reasons it would be different, but I'm not. This is a health experiment. A learning experience. I think it has been valuable so far. It will be helpful as I work toward eating healthier. I can already tell that I will make vegan meals a few times a week, even when the experiment is over.

Last night, Russell, was at a meeting and I was on my own. I could have had left over stew but I was jonesing for something different. I called the local pizza joint. Got an order of spaghetti with marinara sauce, used my own soy butter on the bread that came with it. Looked at the miniscule container of parm and thought about it, knew it wouldn't really make a difference either way, but washed it down the drain before I could be tempted.

I do miss cheese. What can I say?

dodging pot holes

The pot holes are those empty hours when you need a snack and nothing "qualifies". Another pot hole is the office. Yesterday at our big Jersey Boys on sale event there was pizza, and ice cream and donuts and candy. I watched, but stayed away.

But, then, you get a nice surprise, like the vegan "grillers" we found. Just veggie burgers, but they are the first ones we ever got that actually tasted like a burger off a grill. Awesome.

And dark chocolate with orange is vegan. another lovely surprise.

I'm making a hearty stew today and baking bread, so there will be no potholes today. But then I'm working all week and it is going to get tougher.

I am not going to adopt a vegan lifestyle. I can see that already. But what I am learning is invaluable. I am learning that you don't need dairy and eggs to have good food. I'm learning to omit things that are just unhealthy. I'm learning flavors.

I will use soy butter forever now. It actually tastes better. No more half and half. A teaspoon of parmesan will now be a burst of flavor when I used to pile it on.

I've taken a step back and all of a sudden I can see better.

Weird, eh?

Big girls don't cry

OK, that was the only Jersey Boys song that fit. We had a work happy hour meeting last night about the Jersey Boys show and I knew what the pit falls were going to be. Yup. Pizza and wings. Blue cheese. What else do you snack on in Buffalo? Tofu? I had a beer and was brave. Big girls don't cry.

What I have learned is that for this to work, I need to have the right food in the house. I know, seems like a no-brainer, but what I am realizing is that this is easy unless you open the fridge or the pantry for a snack or for lunch and everything is a "no". I need to have a lot of "yes" food readily available. A whole lot of no makes one irritable.

When I got home from the meeting party, I had some humus and salad and bread and guacamole. Just a hodge podge of left over "yes" food. Not a smart plan.

White bean Tuscan soup tonight. I'll make enough to have left overs.

I'm learning.

2nd day reality

Oh, I was sooo cocky. This would be easy. I had all day to prepare perfect vegan food, so it seemed like a breeze. Then Monday came.

Today at work, 2 people had birthdays. There were cupcakes everywhere, or so it seemed. Every time I turned around, someone was slowly peeling back the pleated paper of a chocolate extravaganza. Licking frosting off fingers. Saying yum. I made it through. even though I hadn't had lunch because our schedules were floopy today. I made it. Not easy.

Dinner was veggie burgers with peppers and onions, parsley potatoes, corn, salad. It was really good.

I'm OK now. But tomorrow, the Jersey Boys company is giving us a happy hour party in advance of the Saturday on-sale. That is really nice of them, but I wonder what snacky food will be served. I'm guessing the usual. Wings. Pizza. blahblah. This could be tough. I'd prefer the usual t-shirt or keychain. I'll make sure to eat before I go.

Day 1!!

Well,that was an unqualified success. Russell sauteed thin slices of Japenese (I think) turnip with some onion, slivers of red pepper and some kale and we piled it on toasted pieces of garlic Tuscan bread from Wegmans (with soy butter on the toast of course) It was sooo good.

We just had PB and J for lunch.

Then I made a zowie dinner from the Vegan Planet Cookbook: Portobello/ green bean ragout with marsala wine and tarragon served over brown rice with a salad of mixed greens and apples with a red wine dressing. Another slice of that Wegmans bread to sop up the "gravy" Oh Mama.

Gotta watch those carbs, though.

Ended the inaugural day with an apple crisp that I made by combining several recipes until it sounded like what I wanted. The only downside to that was that any nondairy topping or ice cream was over 6 bucks for a teeny amount and I was NOT going to be hoodwinked into that! So I just dribbled a bit of vanilla soy milk over the top, just a touch.

For a snack we had guacamole I made the day before with corn chips. Just a little bit. We were really full from the day's experiments :)

Yes, I know the initial enthusiasm will wain and I will be whimpering about cheese and oreos. But this is fun.

So far, very good.

vegan Eve

We went shopping for our new vegan food today. Soy margarine, lots of veggies, non-dairy coffee milk, sherbet, veggie burgers. But first, a "last meal". What would we have as midnight approached?

We are vegetarians that eat fish. There is a name for it. Maybe "fake vegetarian", but whatever. So, I made talapia encrusted with parmesan and lemon zest. It was too late to make mashed potatoes with sour cream by the time we got home, so we had Wegman's potato salad, heavy with mayo, slices of hard-boiled egg in it. A big salad with pear and feta. Ben and Jerry for desert. Chunky Monkey for Russell, Cherry Garcia for me. I feel naughty.

Back to "Vegan Planet" for recipes and encouragement.

3 hours to lift off.

How did this happen?

Well, we gave up red meat when we hit middle age. So many people do. From there it was easy to leave pork behind, especially when the taste and texture of ham started to seem icky. Russell went strictly veggie as part of a program to heal his high blood pressure, but I was still in love with chicken.

Then I started to see things, like that video of Sarah Palin at Thanksgiving with the guy behind her feeding an innocent fluff ball of a turkey into a mechanism that killed it, I guess by beheading it. *shudder*. That reel kept playing in my head but I pushed it back because of chicken cutlets and chicken marsala and arroz con pollo. But the thrill was gone. Replaced by an odd sort of guilt that no amount of reciting the food chain could ease.

About a week before we left on our yearly cross country road trip, I downed some whole milk (chocolate) for the first time in decades with a grilled cheese sandwich and there was some ice cream for desert. A little while later, there was pain and a balloon of a stomach (well, more than usual) and lots of discomfort that took a couple of days to go away. I started to notice the discomfort happened usually after dairy was consumed. Bummer. I love cheese. If I could marry cheese, I would leave Russell and run off with it.

Some prilosec and a week without dairy made me better. Bummer again. when we got home I made my killer mac and cheese and realized killer was a good description for it. On the way home, Russell had suggested we try a vegan diet for a month, see how it affected our health. Oh, OK.

We start tomorrow, on his birthday. That's sort of how he got me to do it. Birthday guilt. "Do it as a birthday present for me. Honey"

But, truly, it is for me. For the little alien that lives behind my belly button and tries to carve his way out whenever I drink milk. For the slimmer whiner I want to be. For renewed energy and life in my clogged up, pudgy body.

We'll see. I'm happy for the chickens.