So far so good.

Almost 1 week in and so far I'm not really having any cravings.

Okay that's a lie, but mainly I just want some regular dairy milk since my vegan milks are kinda getting ugh. I'm also craving some seafood since that's the only kind of meat I really enjoy. I'm thinking that after Lent I'm not going to completely continue this vegan thing - just things I bake. Idk. We'll see.

I like eating vegan - and it's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. But, idk, it's just starting to seem so unnecessary, at least for me. I'm doing it to save the animals, because they are indeed delicious, and I'm not doing it for any health reasons, especially since I can still eat sugar, which is my worst habit. I have a deadly sweet tooth.

Anyway, I did some research about what all those un-pronounceable words are in ingredient labels and found some very useful websites, like this one: http://www.happycow.net/health-animal-ingredients.html.

Wow. This list makes this whole vegan thing seem impossible. How can one possibly go their entire life avoiding every single one of these ingredients? This means I have to look through all of my food AGAIN and pick out stuff that I'm sure has these items.

Buuut how picky should I be? Again, I'm not doing this to be kind to animals. I'm just mainly seeing if I can do it, while trying to reduce the amount of animal fat I intake. Being so picky feels really unnecessary in my situation, but then I can't consider myself vegan. Or can I? Maybe just semi-vegan? Or a lazy vegan? Either way the products are still going to be on the shelves.

Besides, what about other kinds of products that contain animal ingredients? Should I not ride in a car because the wheels might contain something from an animal? Should I toss out some of my clothes? I just don't think it's possible to avoid everything that contains animals products unless I lived in the jungle with leaves as my clothes.

I think I'm just tired.

Spaghetti & Vegan Veggieballs

As I noted earlier, mom and I created some Vegan meatballs this weekend, and they were pretty good! We even made our own vegan sauce, too. I looked everywhere online for some decent vegan meatballs but all seemed weird.

Uncooked balls - still okay to eat! :)

Ready for baking!

Om nom nom!

3 medium potatoes, boiled, peeled, and mashed
2 cups, firmly pressed, grated carrot and zucchini (or really any veggie you want! This is what we used)

1 cup cubed, firm tofu, out of water

1 small onion, diced
1.5 teaspoons minced garlic

Olive oil

1 cup bread crumbs

Dried parsley

Dried basil

Dried cilantro

Dried oregano

Salt

Pepper

Makes about 30 meatballs

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine grated veggies and potatoes in a bowl by hand. In a food process, process tofu (do not add extra water - it is supposed to look chunky and a little dry). Add processed tofu in bowl of grated veggies. Fry the diced onion and garlic in olive oil until just brown. Add to the tofu and veggie mixture. Add bread crumbs. 

This is where you can get creative. Add as much parsley, basil, cilantro, oregano, salt, and pepper as you want. We used some of our Kirkland Organic No-Salt seasoning we had on hand. The fact that everything is a vegetable makes it possible to taste-test to your liking. We added about 1-2 teaspoons of everything.

Form the meatballs. Grease a cookie sheet and place the meatballs on top. Bake on each side about 15 minutes. Be careful when you flip - these are very delicate little balls and can smash or break apart easily. Watch so they don't burn.

Vegan Spaghetti Sauce

1 small yellow onion, diced
1 tablespoon garlic
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped vegetables, such as mushrooms, peppers, more onion, etc. Optional.
2 cups tomato sauce

Dried parsley

Dried basil

Dried cilantro

Dried oregano

Salt

Pepper

Fry onions and garlic until just brown. Add crushed tomatoes, cooking a little bit. Add chopped vegetables if desired. Add tomato sauce. Add as much parsley, basil, cilantro, oregano, salt, and pepper as you want. 

Sugar Maple Walnuts

From my copy of Isa Chandra Moskowitz' Vegan Cupcakes cookbook. Personally I think these would be better with pecans, but I didn't create the recipe.


1 cup walnut halves
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons maple syrup
Dash of salt
Dash of cinnamon

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Spread the walnuts on a pan and bake for 6-8 minutes. Toss after 4 minutes and keep a close eye on them so they don't burn. Remove from oven and place in a bowl to cool. Prepare a lightly greased piece of parchment paper to use in just a minute (I just greased the same pan). Pour sugar, maple syrup and salt into a large, heavy skillet. Heat on medium, stirring with a wooden spoon until the sugar melts, bubbles, and turns into an amber-like liquid. Remove from heat and stir in the walnuts and cinnamon. Stir to coat each nut. Immediately spread coated walnuts on the parchment; use a spatula to keep them from clumping. Cool completely before handling.


If there are massive chunks don't fret - the walnuts break from each other easily when this is dried. Just try to separate them as much as possible before it cools.


Another warning: these are REALLY hard to stop eating.


Note 2/27: These were gone within about 12 hours.

A world of possibilities...

Guess what - I'm not allergic to tofu! Spent the weekend at my parents' house and made tofu stir fry for dinner last night, and had no reaction. I decided to be a little more daring an bought a half gallon of Silk soymilk, which did make my throat scratch a little, but it will taste waaay better in my Peanut Butter Panda Puffs cereal than coconut milk. I think coconut milk will be strictly for baking from now on.

Made some yummy recipes this weekend, including the previous banana bread, and a couple new ones, such as Sugar Maple Walnuts from VGTOW and Spaghetti and Vegan Meatballs (recipes to come later). Mom and I had a lot of fun making up the vegan meatballs - I love trying new recipes and being forced to learn how to properly chop an onion, lol. The meatballs were great and had a few simple ingredients. Plus it allowed us to use up the remaining tofu! :)

So far I have to say this vegan thing isn't all that bad. I really feel like I haven't been eating anything too different than what I normally do. I have been feeling the effects of the extra fiber though...

Good ol' canned indian food

Had a delish vegan meal of canned curried chickpeas over basmati rice and sauteed spinach with coconut. Nothing much else to say here except that I'm sleepy! Glad it's the weekend.

Tomorrow I'm going home for the night. Looking forward to a soak in my parents' new jacuzzi jet tub and making some vegan banana bread for them and Max's family. Goodnight!

Butter and Jesus.

Sigh. Tonight was not a vegan night for me. I received an email invite to a Leadership Dinner (I'm the psych honor society president) and took next year's president with me. Little did I realize that this conference was sponsored by our campus Christian club. There were three speakers who stood up to talk about ways we can be successful leaders in our careers, and each talked about how how God had played a role in their success - the last one, the cheesiest speaker of all, even ended his little spiel with a Bible verse. This guy definitely looked like a typical Christian speaker - fake laugh, bright white teeth, pressed suit. We were so disgusted by the end of their speeches that we just up and left as soon as the dinner was done. There were little comment cards and I definitely left my mark, saying I felt a little insulted because there was so much religious stuff and I had no idea this was sponsored by a religious organization or I wouldn't have come. Now I respect the role that religion plays in others' lives, and am pretty fascinated by how and why, but for me this just wasn't what I needed. What advice would they have given me if I raised my hand and said I couldn't relate? It's just so lame that they assumed everyone there was Christian and relates to what they talked about. I need to read my emails more carefully.

But that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about food. So, the dinner was paid for in full by the three speakers and unfortunately there were no vegan options except the plain salad. Thankfully there was still vegetarian, which consisted of veggies slathered in butter over rice. My stomach is feeling a little gross from all that butter - I never top anything with butter so any amount just tossed over food is weird for me. I'm a little sad I couldn't follow my new diet tonight but I can't turn down a dinner in a conference that someone else paid for. At least I ate vegan for the rest of the day - a bowl of Peanut Butter Panda Puffs with coconut milk for breakfast, PBJ for lunch and some grapes, and then a banana. And now I'm just feeling gross from all that butter.

Anyway, tomorrow night I'm going home for the weekend so we'll see how well I can follow my vegan diet. My mom is going to make tofu stir-fry so hopefully I won't have a reaction to it like I did to the soymilk. I'm also planning to make vegan banana bread Saturday morning.

Did I mention I tried coconut yogurt? It was bad. Just bad all around. Looked weird, tasted weird... just bad.

Vegan dairy

This morning I woke up with a slight headache and just feeling icky all over so I skipped my three classes. In my downtime I decided to test out the three vegan milks I have on me: soy milk (one small carton from my roommate), my usual coconut milk, and flax milk. I have to say, the soy milk was sooooo good! It was creamy and sweet and everything a fake milk should be. I drank the whole thing (again, just one small carton). And then my throat started itching and felt dry and a little while later my stomach felt gross... I felt fine after some time and am almost thinking to just suffer through the allergy because it tastes so good but idk. And then I drank a few sips of coconut milk, and it has just the most bland, empty texture... very watery. It's like going from 2% to skim milk. And the flax milk had a great texture but I'm questioning the taste.

Sigh. So I'm thinking I'll just try to stick with the coconut milk and maybe keep giving soy a try. I bought some tofu yesterday so I'd like to try it, too.

Anyway - continuing the fake dairy topic - I found an amazing recipe for vegan butternut squash mac n cheese and have been raring to make it for my first all-vegan day. I waited all day long to come home and put it all together and was so excited to try out my newest ingredient, Nutritional Yeast (I have no idea what it's made of but it's kind of like fake cheese powder? Or tastes like it? idk). Anyway I wanted to double the recipe so I'll have the cheese sauce for later in the week and had to add 12 tbspns of this yellow yeast stuff. So I poured the sauce over the pasta and tried it. It was.... okay.... but just the fact that I knew it was fake cheese and made of something I wasn't familiar with made me want to puke. I got through half my bowl and then just looked at it and dumped it out, along with the rest of the sauce. What a waste. I think I'll have to eat whole foods and not add crap that freaks me out.

I'm ending my night right now with some Coconut flavored Coconut Ice Cream. Super delish! This stuff is really growing on me :) I love chocolate coconut milk so I'm going to buy some chocolate coconut ice cream and see how it works for me. Num!