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!