Done Being Vegan - Just in Time for Thanksgiving!

I survived!  Alright, I guess it was never a question of survival, just will. 

As far as the results, I calculated that I consumed 30,000+ calories over 3 weeks. That averages out to 1,468 per day.  I tracked my incremental and cumulative weight change, and I lost 2.6 pounds or 1.99% of my beginning weight. Which is still kind of within tolerance for me since I tend to fluctuate within a range of 2-3 pounds. So...no significant weight change. 

I definitely spent more than I would normally expect to spend on groceries in a month. I spent about $450 in that three week period for vegan food, although to be fair some of that did include dairy products...which kind of broke one of the original rules in that I said I would not purchase any animal products…but I had dinner and dessert to get prepared for tonight, so it was kind of necessary. I still consider the experience a success. :-) 

The only dietary exception I made was for a handful of Advil and one Excedrin.  I’m willing to concede that there may have been some obscure ingredient overlooked, but I very diligently checked ingredients as much as possible. 



Last homemade vegan meal: Seitan and
mashed potatos and gravy.



At the end of three weeks, I was able to answer some questions that I’d vaguely wondered about in the past. Could I be vegan? WOULD I be vegan? I could, yes. It wasn’t the most awful thing ever. But I would likely never choose to be vegan. It can be tough, and I missed being able to go out to eat!



Homemade candy.



Just in time - someone left a tray of homemade candy on the reception desk at work, and I helped myself to a handful for a snack later. And of course Thanksgiving is just a few days away - I have no desire for turkey, but I've got to admit,  the day would be incomplete without macaroni and cheese....and pumpkin pie with whipped cream....and - you get the picture. :)

Till next time! I'm open to suggestions for my next three week challenge. ;-)

Vegetarians Rock! ;-)

If I’ve learned one thing over the past three weeks it’s that I will likely never, ever be vegan.  At the end of the day, I think that is mostly because of CHEESE. I’ve tried several different varieties of vegan cheese, and they’ve ranged from okay-ish to bleh.

I love being a vegetarian. I’ve been doing it for 16 years, so I would hope so! I feel better about myself knowing I conscientiously choose what I’m ingesting. No animal has to die for me to eat. I don’t think it’s a diet for everybody, but it works for me.  But I do get complacent in my vegetarianism, and I don’t always seek out all of the information.  Like the fact that cheese isn’t always vegetarian, which makes me really, really sad. Cheese is made by coagulating milk by adding rennet. The traditional source of rennet is the stomach of slaughtered newly-born calves. Parmesan cheese is apparently always non-vegetarian, because regulations for its production state that it must include the following ingredients: cow’s milk, salt, and calf rennet.  (http://www.vegsoc.org/page.aspx?pid=495)

At the end of the day, you do the best you can. My diet isn’t perfect, but I’ve gotten more familiar with which ingredients I need to watch out for. Trying out veganism definitely helped strengthen that resolve to be more aware of this.

In general, my modus operandi is if it seems reasonable that something doesn’t contain meat or meat by-products, I will eat it. Quiznos’ Broccoli Cheese Soup was one of my favorite soups, but most soups are made with chicken, beef, or fish stock. To be fair to myself, I knew I needed to find additional information. The employees said it was vegetarian when I asked, but they don’t always have the complete picture.  I looked into it myself to be sure, and it looks like I don’t have to give up Quizno’s if I have a broccoli cheese soup craving!

McDonald’s fries, on the other hand, are a different story. McDonald’s was sued in 2001 after telling customers that its fries were vegetarian. However, the “natural flavor” in their fries contained beef extract.  They settled for $10 million and changed their recipe. However, the company has stated in recent years, “With regard to our French fries, any customer in the U.S. who contacts McDonald's USA to ask if they contain beef flavoring is told "yes." For flavor enhancement, in the U.S., McDonald's French fry suppliers use a very small amount of beef flavor as a natural flavoring during the pan-frying process at the potato processing plant.” So, alas, McDonald’s fries are STILL not vegetarian. (http://animalrights.about.com/b/2011/10/26/mcdonalds-french-fries-still-not-vegetarian.htm).

Non-Vegans Suck! Haha, J/K

Today there was a large tray practically OVERFLOWING with cookies in the kitchen at work. Chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, all free for the taking. I ignored them and stuck my vegan English muffin in the toaster oven to heat up for breakfast. Just the other day someone left a box of delicious-looking HUGE blueberry muffins on that same counter, with a note saying ‘Help Yourself!’.  I’m sure my co-workers aren’t deliberately doing this to torment me, but do you have any idea how tempting that is?! I know that stuff is all bad for me though, so that points to probably the top benefit of being vegan: there’s just limited options to dig into giant trays of cookies and miscellaneous other junk food. 

Non-Vegan Muffins :(

The vegan desserts made at home this week have turned out really yummy though. Delicious Pumpkin Muffins and Chocolate Rum Pudding Cake – both very moist and flavorful. 

We have a birthday lunch for work tomorrow at Nine Irish Brothers, which is a really good restaurant in town. I shot them a quick email to see what their vegan options were, specifically asking if their Veggie Sandwich would be vegan if I omitted the feta cheese.  Their response was “The veggie sandwich without cheese would be vegan, unless you count the eggs used to make the bread.” OK, now I know that a vegan diet isn’t common knowledge to EVERYONE, but surely a restaurant should be accustomed to ingredient inquiries and be able to have a more informative response than THAT. I’m left to interpret that there is nothing else on their menu that is vegan except for sandwich fixings.   

On the bright side, only three full days left to go! I’m having my cousin over for dinner Monday, my first full day of being non-vegan again, so I need to plan an extra cheesy menu! 



One Week to Go!

Thanksgiving is next week, and I only have one week left of trying out veganism. I am excited to think that in a week, I’ll be digging into some extra cheesy food stuffs! J 

Being vegan, I didn’t think I’d really go out to eat much – and I didn’t at all the first week. However, the second week, I went out to eat not once, but twice! J

Last Thursday, I went to a local restaurant called Thai Essence. I had Fried Tofu for an appetizer and Pra Ram with tofu for my entrée. The appetizer was a bit bland, but it came with a flavorful sauce that made up for it.  I didn’t like the Pra Ram at first, but it grew on me more as I ate more of it.  I had Fresh Mango Mousse for dessert, and this was amazingly tasty and completely non-dairy. I also had a single glass of red wine, and I spent a lot of time scouring the Internet to find more information about the Angeline Pinot Noir, but I couldn’t find anything to confirm if it was vegan.  Red wines seem more likely to be vegan than white, so hopefully, luck was on my side.  ;-)  (Restaurant reviewed here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/thai-essence-west-lafayette#hrid:f8CeXYVKULQf9CABZ4GQyQ.)

 This weekend, I got a head start on Christmas shopping. I was hoping to start the morning off with a soy, no-whip Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks…then learned that their syrups contain dairy. So, another cup of coffee with soy creamer for the road it was. I stopped at the Body Shop at the Fashion Mall in Indianapolis first, then decided to drive another hour and half out to Bloomington to go to a fantastic-sounding mostly vegan restaurant called The Owlery.  Everything on their menu is VEGAN with optional dairy alternatives.

Poutine

I was most excited to try their Poutine. If you haven’t heard of it, Poutine is a popular Quebec (French-Canadian) dish made of French fries layered with gravy and fresh cheese curds. The version at The Owlery used vegan mozzarella cheese instead of cheese curds, and it was pretty darn good! 



Chicken Strips



I also had Chicken Strips, which were hand-breaded and deep-fried tofu, with a side of vegan Ranch dressing. 



Philly Cheesesteak



The main entrée was a Philly Cheesesteak, seasoned, homemade seitan on a toasted sub roll, topped with sautéed onions and green peppers and vegan cheddar cheese. Everything was super yummy, and I’m glad I made the trip out there – even though it did amount to about 6 hours of driving in one day.  (Restaurant reviewed here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-owlery-restaurant-bloomington#hrid:P9bBjPVFVb6N8Q7aCu4Rcw.)

  

Almond Milk Yogurt



Then it was back to Indy to spend some more time shopping, ending the shopping excursion with a final stock-up trip to Whole Foods. We grabbed some Tofu Egg-less Salad for the road as several hours had passed since lunch time. I tried Almond Milk Yogurt for breakfast today – interesting texture, but a bit too watery. Always nice to try new things though.



Over Halfway There!

I have been vegan for over a week and a half now, so I am halfway to my goal!  I think I will be going out to eat for the first time tonight.  I’ve Googled vegan-friendly restaurants in the area, and the strongest contender seems to be Thai restaurants.  I emailed Thai Essence just to make sure and received this response,

“Dear Tabi[t]ha ,

Basically, anything on the menu with the tofu option, they are suit[able] for vegan[s]. Some exceptions are Salad, Tom Yum, and Tom Kha soups (Dressing ma[de] with fish sauce). Also we could serve as vegan without fish sauce.

When you come to Thai Essence, please let your waiters know you are a vegan. She or he will help you to reach your diet restriction.”

Sounds promising…and it’s been a while since I’ve had Thai…plus, I’m pretty sure this is a new-ish restaurant around here that I haven’t been to, and I love trying new things!

I’ve been almost exclusively eating leftovers for lunch, but today I had Amy’s Baked Ziti Bowl, which is entirely non-dairy.  I’ve loved all of Amy’s products and eat them for lunch fairly regularly. I believe that all of their products are vegetarian-friendly, and they have a handful of vegan options as well. 

On average, I’ve been consuming between 1,300-1,400 calories a day. I find myself wanting to eat more, but it’s more because I have a craving for a Reese’s peanut butter cup or pizza or something. Since I can’t have those items, I *may* consider having another Pumpkin Oatmeal cookie, but I’ve been eating them all week, so I don’t really *want* another one unless I’m really hungry. So, I guess this way of life kind of works to control over-eating. :-P

It's Hard Being Vegan!

I broke my veganism today. :( I didn't sleep well last night, and this morning, I had this dull headache I was hoping would fade away after my coffee. It didn't, and it started to feel like it was going to develop into a migraine, so I took an Advil. I knew this was going to be my weak point in my three-week trial - it's just so frustrating that there are no confirmed animal-free pain relievers on the market! 

I'm sure that even die-hard vegans occasionnally have to make exceptions - my cousin actually confirmed that a friend of hers who was vegan for a good portion of his life would still take Aleve just because there aren't alternatives on the market. Recognizing that, I'm still going to continue to be vegan except for the odd ibuprofen tablet. :-P 

Last Friday was the Annual Business Managers Retreat at work.  I had a plate full of fruit for breakfast since I couldn't help myself to the mounds of bagels that were set out. Come lunch time, I got in line to get my vegetarian/vegan chili. Then sadly passed the platters of sour cream and heaping mounds of shredded cheese. I grabbed a bag of Fritos, figuring those had to be safe and I could at least have something to add to my chili.  I gazed longingly at the trays of cheese and crackers, but moved on the platter of cold veggies for dipping. I snagged a few cucumber slices, but I couldn't have any dip since it was almost certainly a ranch or sour cream base. There was randomly a couple of loaves of bread and a big jar of peanut butter, so I helped myself to a big peanut butter sandwich. The grand finale was the trays of cookies at the end of the table, which of course I had none of!  What a test of willpower! 

I was starving by the end of the retreat and looking forward to going home, having a glass of wine, and popping a frozen vegan pizza in the oven. Then I saw that there was an asterisk next to the "soy cheeze", indicating that it contained a milk derivative. Grr! Honestly, why would anyone buy a soy cheese pizza unless they're trying to avoid dairy?!?  A quick trip to the grocery store and I finally had a vegan pizza for dinner for the night.

I haven't gone out to eat once since trying veganism!  And I usually eat out fairly regularly.  The only confirmed vegan options I've found are Thai places, and I'm not the biggest Asian fan.  I know there are other restaurants out there where I'm sure I could find something, but it just hasn't seemed worth it to go out to eat. I'm not a big salad person either - which I think some people find surprising since I'm a vegetarian. :-P

In conclusion, it's hard being vegan!  Certain situations can really be challenging to navigate and are really testing my willpower! 

Things I've Learned in the First Week

I would have saved this entry for tomorrow, but I will be at the annual Business Manager Retreat all day, so I doubt I’ll be on a computer much, if at all.  I already emailed the coordinator of this event to see if there would be a vegan meal option, and she responded that there is “a vegetarian chili that is considered vegan”.  And they usually have fruit laid out for breakfast, so I just need to avoid all of the questionable pastries. ;-)

So, since going vegan on Monday, what have I learned?

1)      There are surprisingly a ton of vegan options out there in grocery stores. I thought the local selection would be limited, but I’ve been fairly surprised. I stocked up on some things in Indy, like Trader Joe’s THIS IS NOT A TUB OF CREAM CHEESE, but I’ve gotten some pretty convenient options locally as well, like Gardein’s Ultimate Beefless Slider. 

     



Beefless Sliders



Not Cream Cheese



 

2)      Alcohol isn’t as vegan-friendly as you would think! I had bought a couple bottles of wine recently and thought to confirm their vegan status. Yellow Tail’s website states that “All [yellow tail] red varieties are vegan friendly. White varieties are not due to the use of animal products (gelatine) in the fining process. All the gelatine is removed during filtering before bottling.” http://www.discoveryellowtail.com/faqs.php

It was a little bit harder to find information about Oliver, but I found a vegan beer wine, and liquor guide, http://www.barnivore.com/wine/m-r#.  In an email featured on the site, the company stated “We do use animal products in several of our wines on as needed basis to fine out unwanted tannins. Some wines tend to get gelatin, an animal derived product, and some wines tend to get egg albumin, an egg product.”

The good news is that Bacardi is listed as being vegan friendly. J  And so is Malibu. This is a super-handy list. 

3)      Vegans apparently never get headaches. I scoured the shelves of CVS and there did not seem to be a single vegan pain reliever.  I ended up emailing CVS about one of their products that seemed like it might be vegan. I got an email response today stating  that they are contacting the vendor and will be back in touch with additional information. 

Day 1 Report

Food report for day one!

The Silk creamer was good in my coffee. Not as good as my usual International Delight, but I probably need to scale back on my creamer anyway.  I’ve gotten enough comments like “would you like a little coffee with your cream?” ;-)

 I had soy yogurt for breakfast with homemade strawberry syrup – it was a bit too sweet, so I can probably omit the extra sugar next time. Francisco made a tofu scramble for his breakfast, and I had it for lunch. It had tofu, onions, garlic, spinach, and mushrooms.  It was pretty good. He cooked it in the morning while I was working out in the living room – I swear, my eyes felt sensitive all day from that onion and garlic smell filling the house.  I had vegan apple pie to snack on and dinner was extra yummy. 



Trader Joe's Mandarin Orange Chik'n



I had picked up some Vegan Chicken-less Mandarin Orange Morsels the last time I was at Trader Joe’s, and these are super yummy.

Inspired by this product, dinner was Asian-inspired with Vegetable Spring Rolls, brown rice, and baby broccoli. 



Day 1 Dinner



I had actually just tried orange chik’n for the first time ever recently when I went to Vegan Mania in Chicago. The food there was superb; it would be awesome to have that kind of restaurant variety in my current town.  Sadly, there aren’t any vegetarian restaurants here and definitely not a vegan one. Needless to say, I don’t expect to go out to eat very often, if at all, in the next few weeks. Unless I end up making a trip up to Chicago.  :-P

Vegan Rules

At the heart of things, the rules are simple. No animal products. No beef, poultry, fish, eggs, gelatin, milk, cheese, etc. Vegans usually don’t eat honey either.  As I mentioned in the first vegan post, veganism is more of a philosophy than a diet. There are some products that don’t actually contain animal by-products, but vegans don’t use these unless it is clear that the company supports animal welfare and doesn’t use animal testing. So, you may have seen vegan cosmetics, clothing, accessories, etc. 

I bought vegan vitamins in anticipation of this – that and I’ve found most other vitamins contain gelatin, which even as a vegetarian, I shouldn’t eat.  I actually just recently had a conversation with someone about gelatin as I was lamenting not being able to eat marshmallows and Jello and I had to Wikipedia it to be able to describe what it is and why I shouldn’t eat it.  Gelatin is a mixture “produced by partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted from the skin, boiled crushed horn, hoof and bones, connective tissues, organs and some intestines of animals such as domesticated cattle, chicken, horses, and pigs.”

I also just recently learned that many bread products contain an amino acid called L-cysteine, which is used as a dough conditioner (http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/faqingredients.htm#cystine).  This is derived from human hair or duck feathers as well as pigs’ bristles and hooves. The most common source used to be human hair found on the floors of Chinese barbershops; today it is derived from Chinese duck feathers 80% of the time.  Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the bread aisle this weekend and had to put back several loaves of bread after spotting that ingredient on the label. 

I also just learned today that Advil is not vegan.  Someone had apparently contacted the company about this and posted this message in a blog: “Advil is not considered a vegan product. Advil® tablets and caplets contain stearic acid which is used as an inactive ingredient and is derived from a bovine source.” I knew I should have checked into this one sooner since I tend to get a headache at least once a week. I’ve been scouring Google and Drugstore.com to find an alternative, and so far I am coming up empty-handed. The good news is that I don’t have a headache yet…but I’ll probably get one soon if I keep scrolling through all these results and seeing ingredients like stearic acid and magnesium stearate and of course gelatin is a common one.  So…I may have to make pain relievers a possible exception if I wind up with a headache and haven’t found anything more vegan-appropriate.  Ugh.

But my emphasis will be on following a vegan diet as I don’t have the time or funding to replace my wardrobe and sort through all of my other accoutrements. I would venture to say that probably the majority of my belongings are probably not vegan-friendly.  Sadly enough.   However, I will commit to not purchasing any new household items that aren’t vegan during this time period.  I imagine that most vegan-converts don’t just completely dump out the contents of their home and go on a massive shopping spree to replace everything, so this approach seems fair enough. 

So, in summary, no purchasing or consuming animal products or by-products! 

Day 0





Saturday morning, we perused a cookbook to get recipe ideas for the coming week. I had happened to buy a vegan cookbook a couple years ago called Vegan with a Vengeance, and we’ve already found a few winners in there (like the Fronch Toast, which is yum-tastic). 

 

Cookbook of choice for the next three weeks.



  We compiled a shopping list and ventured out for first grocery stop at Sunspot. We came back with a pretty decent selection including vegan mac and cheese, yogurt, shredded and wedge cheese, sandwich slices, and vegan pizza.  They didn’t have vegan coffee creamer, so I was starting to get concerned.  It was a pricey grocery-run though, so we went to Target to get the majority of the stuff.  I decided to just buy some coffee syrup and almond milk to put in my coffee.

Sunspot groceries.

 

Sunday morning, I did a test run with the coffee, and it was not good at all.  I was starting to think that going vegan was going to entail giving up coffee as well.  Yikes! But then Francisco had to run out to Payless to get the rest of the produce, since that’s almost always the most affordable store for those items, and voila, he came home with Silk (soy) coffee creamer. Yay!  I was thrilled to know that Payless carried this product.  It’s the small victories obviously…



Coffee creamer!



 We snuck in some time for me to get my scary movie fix and went to see Paranormal Activity 4 and over-indulged at the Indian buffet since we know we won’t be seeing the likes of that place during this 3-week lifestyle change. Our big hoorah meal ended up being at Olive Garden Sunday afternoon – we had the Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta, the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno, and Pumpkin Cheesecake for dessert. 

Olive Garden
Appetizer & Entree

Olive Garden Pumpkin Cheesecake

We baked a vegan apple pie Sunday night to have as dessert throughout the week. And even though I was stuffed from all the food at OG, I had to give it a try and it was pretty yum!



Vegan Apple Pie

Experiment #2

It’s been over a year since my last experiment, so it’s about time to take on another lifestyle challenge. While it wasn’t my intent to make this all about food, it seems like those kinds of changes make the most sense.  Although I’m always open to suggestions!  Plus, I just finished another A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically, and he was listed as a source of inspiration in my first blog entry about trying different lifestyles. 

So, for three weeks, I have decided to go vegan.  I have thought about this for a while, and I’m very interested and excited to try a vegan diet…although I don’t think it would be something I would be committed to long-term. I definitely love cheese too much!

Some people might think this will be easy for me. I have been a vegetarian for the majority of my life after all.  While I concede that my lifestyle would inherently be closer to a vegan’s than an omnivore’s, veganism and vegetarianism are still very different lifestyles.  Eliminating all animal products from your diet is a huge step – especially for me.  I usually have yogurt for breakfast, and lunch and dinner almost invariably have some kind of cheese. But honestly, taking a look at my diet, becoming vegan could do me a world of good. 

Last week, I ate pizza for four days in a row.  Three different pizzas. It started on Thursday night when I went to Uncorked, the local wine bar, with a friend. I had the Wild Mushroom Artisan Pizza along with the Cheese Fondue. I took the majority of the pizza home with me as leftovers since the fondue proved to be plenty filling, not to mention the three free samples of wine and resulting two glasses of wine. ;-)  Friday, I finished that off, plus Francisco popped a Red Baron frozen pizza into the oven to complement my leftovers and give him leftovers for the next day since I planned to be out. Saturday, I went to spend the day in Indianapolis with a friend.  For dinner, we ended up ordering pizza from Bazbeaux, which has gourmet pizza toppings. I took the leftovers home with me, so guess what I ate Sunday? 

So, vegan vs. vegetarian…what’s the difference? A vegetarian diet excludes all meat, including slaughter by-products, fish, and poultry. There are several variations of the diet, probably the most common being lacto-ovo-vegetarians, who eat eggs and dairy products.  As I mentioned, I love cheese – and I also eat eggs – so I would fall into this category.  Veganism is more of a philosophy, and vegans strive to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.  On top of the items that vegetarians avoid, vegans won’t consume milk, eggs, or any food that is derived from animals.

Last weekend, while in Indy, I stopped at Trader Joe’s to stock up on some vegan options. I ran out of time and didn’t make it to Whole Foods, which was going to be the main stock-up store. So, I have a few essentials, but I’m going to have to make a grocery run this weekend to get started on the right foot.  Sunspot Natural Market is a local store I intend to check out; I’m really hoping they have vegan coffee creamer or I’m going to have to get creative with my morning coffee next week.  The nearest Whole Foods is about 70 miles away, which is a mild inconvenience. :-P

I think the plan is that I will start on Monday, so I plan to have a really cheesy weekend!