Day 3: Yummy Success!

I really need to start taking pictures of the food I eat on my vegan days. Especially now that I think I've gotten the hang of things.

Here's a picture of a beautifully arranged lunch I had last Wednesday, October 28th:



Seaweed salad and three different rice balls from Oms/b NY. Good stuff.

Okay, so maybe one of them had a tiny bit of mayo in it, but I didn't know that when I ordered, and they were pretty busy. Plus like I said last week, PETA does not condone "grilling waiters [or staff] at restaurants about micro-ingredients in vegetarian foods." So I think it's okay.

For dinner, I had prepared tofu spinach lasagna the day before. I should have taken a picture, because my non-vegan non-vegetarian roommate and friends were thoroughly impressed, not only by me actually cooking something, but also by the tofu spinach filling! They said they couldn't even tell the difference between the tofu and the more traditional ricotta cheese filling!

Recipe follows: from PETA

1/2 lb. lasagna noodles
2 10-oz. packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 lb. soft tofu
1 lb. firm tofu
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 cup soy milk
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
3 tsp. minced fresh basil
2 tsp. salt
4 cups tomato sauce

Cook the lasagna noodles according to the package directions. Drain and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Squeeze the spinach as dry as possible and set aside.
Place the tofu, sugar, soy milk, garlic powder, lemon juice, basil, and salt in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Stir in the spinach.
Cover the bottom of a 9-inch-by-13-inch baking dish with a thin layer of tomato sauce, then a layer of noodles (use about one-third of the noodles). Follow with half of the tofu filling. Continue in the same order, using half of the remaining tomato sauce and noodles and all of the remaining tofu filling. End with the remaining noodles, covered by the remaining tomato sauce. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

The only problem- VERY labor intensive! It took me like 2 hours to make since it was such a pain draining the frozen spinach and cleaning out the blender and such. Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you cook by yourself!

Days 2: vegan != healthy

I decided for Wednesday to be my "vegan day" - both this week and last.

I kind of messed it up, though, because I had gum and I don't think that's vegan. Although after reading the following on PETA's website, I feel much better:

"People who have made the compassionate decision to stop eating animal flesh, eggs, and dairy products may wonder if they need to read every ingredient to check for tiny amounts of obscure animal products. Our general advice is not to worry too much about doing this. ..."

PETA's stance is less hardcore and a lot more reasonable than I would have thought. Basically they believe that refusing to eat foods just because they have like... 0.00001% animal stuff is kind of extreme. I mean, people do it, and I have nothing against that; however, I am speaking for myself. Making efforts to avoid animal derived products sounds while not worrying about trace amounts is a good approach, and I am going to take that approach on my vegan days.

(it also will make ordering at restaurants much easier!)

Anyway, on vegan day last week I gorged on vegan "junk food" - apple chips and snapeas crips. Both are SO good and I finished the whole bag, which amounts to FIVE apples and I don't even know how many snapeas. But those things did NOT taste healthy. According to the snapea site it's 12% dv of fat per serving. Yikes.

Needless to say, vegan does not equal healthy. Not necessarily. For dinner I made Simple Sesame Noodles, courtesy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks, since I wasn't too hungry after my peanut butter & banana breakfast and junk food crisis lunch!

intro + day one (Tuesday, September 13)

I am the Queen of unresolved New Year's Resolutions. With my birthday coming up in a few weeks and the year ending faster than you can say Quidditch, I've been feeling a bit down about that fact lately.

So what do I do but make another one, right?

So the story goes like this: I was at a Cobra Starship / Gym Class Heroes / The Academy Is / A Rocket To The Moon / VersaEmerge concert last Friday. Fueled by Ramen 15th Anniversary. Yes, I was there, and I am proud to say that I was, so there... in before you start judging. A young plaid-clad, skinny jean- wearing representative of PETA was there, too, and innocuously asked my friend A. and I to make a pledge to be vegan one day a week.

Adrenaline running high, feeling super cool with my pink hair extension and sparkly leggings, I said "why not? let's do it!" And A. and I both signed. I don't think A. is going through with it, and I wouldn't have, either, if it weren't for that nagging voice in my head telling me I'd better not break another resolution, considering the failed heap of goals that has somehow become my life. *emo me*

Besides, one day a week can't be THAT hard.

˜˜˜

Fast forward to today, September 13th, 2011

YIKES. I LITERALLY HAVE TO THINK ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THING I EAT. I MEAN EVERYTHING. (is that a good thing? ...maybe?)

First of all, being fully vegan means eliminating animal products entirely from everything you consume, dietary or otherwise. In other words, I would have to put my stuff in a non-leather wallet and non-leather purse. I would have to wear a non-wool cardigan. I would have to use something other than beeswax derived lip balm for my chapped lips. Veganism is a lifestyle, more so than I had realized. Luckily I have decided to pursue eating a vegan diet one day a week, so we're just going to ignore that. Cop out? Maybe, but it's better than nothing.

But even just eating a vegan diet requires so much more thinking than I had ever imagined. I had to plan out my meals and snacks well in advance.

Breakfast: banana + 5 almonds, gingko powder drink (tastes kind of like almond milk)
Lunch: salad + v8 juice
Dinner: avocado pasta, recipe from here: http://ohsheglows.com/2011/01/31/15-minute-creamy-avocado-pasta/

I deviated from this because I could NOT eat salad in my freezing cold A/C office building. So for lunch I debated for 45 minutes what I could eat. I'm telling you, as the city that has everything, NYC's vegan offerings in Midtown East are pretty darn slim. I filtered on SeamlessWeb for restaurants that delivered to my building, clicking on vegan... this brought the total from over 60 to just 3! The thing is, I didn't even want to get soup from somewhere because I would have to ask what kind of oil they used, whether there was butter, fish powder etc etc etc. You really never know.

Case in point: just for fun, I checked the V8 label. Looks pretty okay at first glance; but there is an ingredient simply listed as "flavoring." Uh... what?

So I did a little digging (read Googled it) and found on this site http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=24340.0 that "The term "flavoring" refers to the oils or extracts that are obtained from spices and herbs. Natural flavoring may also include onion or garlic derivatives, as well as flavor derived from fruits, vegetables and their juices, or edible parts of plants. Other sources may include meat, seafood, poultry or dairy products, whose significant function in the food is flavoring rather than nutrition."

WTF??? V8 juice isn't even VEGETARIAN, forget about vegan.

And then I paid $11 at one of the vegan places for a tempeh wrap. It was okay, pretty filling but that's about all I can say it has
going for it.

Dinner was uneventful, too. Now I want chocolate but can't have any. First world problems, I know.

Today's lesson:

1. Being vegan is a lifestyle change. Not to be taken lightly.

2. Being vegan means thinking about what you consume, for better or for worse

3. True story: for a short time in college, I worked at a Thai restaurant. People would ask us to make the Pad Thai without fish oil. Or ask us strange questions like "is there pig fat in the noodles?" I always chalked this up to going to school in a hippie town. And yes my college town is one of the most liberal in America. But I would be lying if I said I didn't think about asking the Thai restaurant on 3rd Ave today whether they used animal products in their foods.

Am I crazy for doing this? Maybe. But there are a lot of things about veganism and just consumption in general that are important to explore, I think. Hence my nice little blog here.