Day 262

We are still in the month of September. Honestly, I haven’t been posting much as of late because mainly I haven’t had much things to write about. I haven’t been cooking a lot, it’s been the basics such as spaghetti, peanut butter sandwiches or peanut butter and crackers, and some fruit here and there. With classes in full swing, my main thing has been keeping up with the gazillion readings we have to do each week and keeping my kitchen routines short and sweet. And this is okay. Sometimes we feel like we need to be rock stars in the kitchen every week but we don’t. I have a simple go-to list of foods that I buy and keep in stock and I kind of rotate around those items with the help of Pinterest.

I’ve been staying away from soy products as much as a I can but I discovered coconut bacon and it’s pretty legit. It does have that texture of baked coconut flakes but it has the seasonings reminiscent of bacon bits that you would buy through the grocer’s aisle with all the salad dressings and toppings.

With two months left in my vegan year, I can say it’s definitely a lot easier now than at two months in. When I get extremely hungry I do crave animal products though, so I try not to get to the point where I feel like I’m starving. Hungry people make poor choices. It’s a fact, just ask Google. During my 3-hour classes I keep granola or biscuits on hand lest I run to the vending machine for the junk food they have there.

I am looking forward to the pumpkin overload that’s going to kick off next month. I’ve gotten started already.

It tasted beautiful. The spices were a great match with the crisp taste of cider and added that it’s starting to get a little cooler, I’m excited for pumpkin mania.

My sad, sad attempt at a baked onion bloom. I used a red onion and I needed to work the batter into the crevices more. Also, note to self: when deep frying vegetables in batter, please season before coating.

Anyway, cheers to the next 103 days left in 2015.

Untitled Dish

After a month in The Bahamas followed by a weekend at the airport for work, I’m now back in my humble abode and can make food that I don’t have to question what’s in it.

I can honestly say that July has been my worst vegan month on my own fault. I didn’t want to spend my outings at restaurants eating a measly salad (because their salads are a joke) so I gave in and ate what was in my surroundings. My stomach right away was not happy about the bits of cheese and certain foods just lost their palate appeal. The meat items were not so much a bother on my system but I have noticed changes in how I feel after ingesting an animal product food versus mostly vegetables and grains. With this month being the 8th month on this journey I feel good about this experience and there’s a lot I will take into my eating habits moving forward.

One aspect of this journey I have appreciated is the ability to have and maintain dedication and control even when others around you are eating cheese and the smell of fried chicken is just so irresistible. This self-control can lend itself to other areas of my life and doing this to means that I can literally do whatever it is I put my mind to. Self-control isn’t just a word and it’s not something you can necessarily teach or learn through one specific task and yet it can affect so many other things.

I called this Untitled Dish because there were just so many thoughts and reflecting about this vegan journey, I knew my mind would be all over the place making random connections. Now that I’m 8 months in, I don’t get as many questions about what I’m going to eat except from new people who observe my meatless and high carb plates.

I have no doubt that the next 4 months will be a breeze but the question still remains: what next?

No Turning Back! Just kidding!

So YouTube determined from previous videos I’ve watched that I’d be interested in seeing why some long-term vegans have abandoned their no meat eating ways and have gone back to chomping on chicken. One guy (a doctor) who had been vegan for 15 years said he started eating meat again because while on a 10-day fast, about half way through he had a dream about eating fish….Um, alrighty then. I dream about food all the time. Earlier in the year I used to dream about chicken. But anyway.

I then went to a Google search which produced results that said about 84% of vegetarians go back to eating meat while 70% of vegans do. The Psychology Today article went on to share other statistics including 43% of persons who were no longer vegetarian or vegan said that they found it hard to stay “pure” with their diet.

I thought the findings of this study were interesting because it seems like a high number of people go back to eating meat. They did say that if persons whose reasons for not eating meat were due to taste, care for animals or religious beliefs were less likely to revert back than people who did so for diet reasons. This rings true for me because I’m still lowkey counting down to the day I can have some sheep tongue souse and and some stew fish and conch.

With any lifestyle change it takes self-discipline and will power. If you believe in the reason for your choices then you should stick with it.

Disappointments….Ehh

It’s been about 134 days since I’ve started the vegan eating and I’ve gotten a few questions about have I noticed changes in my body since making the change. Honestly, I haven’t notice significant changes. I still get acne although it seems to have moved from my upper back to my lower chin area. I am not a morning person so there hasn’t been this huge boost of energy in the mornings. I have not l lost a bunch of weight or have gotten gaunt or super skinny looking. The last one is mainly because I eat around the clock.

In addition to going vegan being an item on my bucket list, I also was kind of excited that may be I would get super glowing, amazing skin and have tons of energy. Perhaps my system is so bogged with toxins and chemical build-up that I need a longer time to really see changes.

In other news I’m not die-hard addicted to cheese anymore!! I still like and love it but I’m okay without it for now. I still feel a little temptation to use it but I make a valiant attempt to not use the Parmesan that’s still in my fridge.

What I have gained is exposure to a wider variety of food items that had I not been doing this, I would not have ventured to try. Tabbouleh, the copious amounts of quinoa, dried mushrooms and the reinventing of common foods like cauliflower and zucchini. I’m still waiting to have this epiphany that I will NEVER eat animal products again. It hasn’t come yet. My mouth still waters when I hear sheep-tongue souse or stew fish. Eating the tongue of a sheep sounds kinda gross but what defines gross is subjective.

What was disappointing today is this failed attempt at “2-ingredient sweet potato pancakes.”

Plant Based or Vegan?

The more I think about the label of vegan and what it truly means, the more I wonder, is this really for me? Maybe I haven’t elevated to my “higher self” yet. I respect that animals have feelings and that they are as I have learnt, sentient beings but my fiance pointed out that perhaps there is a line where being vegan can crossover into idolatry. And I won’t get too deep into it but I looked at commercials of how people refer to their pets as their babies and we are in general attaching a lot more humanistic qualities to animals. People out there want to marry their pets ( I bet they still eat meat) and all sorts of weird stuff. Respect for all living creatures takes a left turn over a hill and becomes a weird obsession.

And I don’t say this to bash anyone’s views one way or another. I just know in the Old Testament, there are tons of laws about what we should not eat but in the New Testament (Acts 10:13) Peter is instructed to “Kill and eat.”

People’s face when you tell them you stopped eating meat and dairy.

This brings me back to the original point of this post. I guess if the vegan label makes it a little easier to understand my food choices then I guess that works. I am learning that the terminology plant-based diet has a different meaning. Of course there are unhealthy vegans just as there are unhealthy omnivores. There are so many vegan processed foods on the market and the food items deemed “accidentally vegan” that it’s entirely possible to be a vegan and not like fruits or vegetables. A plant based diet as I learned from this blog is all about unprocessed whole foods, colorful fruits and vegetables. This is a diet I think people in general should try to focus on.

So anyway, I say all of this to say, right now I can dig the vegan label and hopefully by the end of this process, I’m just a plant-based foodie.

As I Procrastinate… I’ll Admit My Sins

This weekend we had an international food festival on campus, which I sadly didn’t get very many cool pics of. There was lots of food of course and I was off the vegan bandwagon for a bit.
I bought sushi which I asked to find out if it was just veggies but I feel like there was egg or something in there. I still ate it.
I had a vegan friendly lentil soup that was really good. The curry flavor was nice. I wish I had pita chips or bread to eat with it.
Then there was the green tea cupcakes. I only had one and it as good although I wish the green tea flavor was more pronounced.
Lastly, I had two pieces of a chicken skewer. I had been having a strong craving for Country Mart’s fried chicken for over a week. When I went there to give in to the urges, they were all out and being that it was Good Friday, I bought catfish. Worst decision ever. The texture, the flavor, it was all just NO.
I was mentally beating myself up about the fish thing but I decided that it was okay. For me the decision to try this vegan journey out was because I wanted to complete an item on my bucket list. No one else besides me really cares about what I eat so only I will beat me up if I take a bite of something.
In doing more research I think it will get harder to eat meat with a clear conscience. They say when you know better you should do better. Sometimes that better thing is super hard.

Oh yea, had a vegan friendly gordita made with soy meat.

Meat Temptations

For the most part, I think I’m doing well sticking to not eating meat or dairy products. My dreams of meat have subsided to an occasional thing. I find that I feel tempted when I’m hungry or in my feelings. Right now I just want a piece if fried chicken with ketchup and hot sauce. A salad does not comfort food make. Maybe if I stay inside I can resist the urge to go and buy a piece and indulge.

Health Update

So, it is Day 63 of vegan life and here’s is how I feel: I feel sick. Yes, sick. And not because of the vegan diet to clarify. I think I’ve been around sick colleagues and contracted their bug which leaves me with only one working nostril at any given time. I have been drinking herbal/bush teas but I think I’ll need to get some over the counter stuff in the next day or two.

I don’t really measure my weight using the scale but I would say that my weight has neither gone up nor down since changing my eating habits.  I still feel a bit bloated at times so I’m hoping that this is still detoxification and that my body is still adjusting.

I’ve experienced my second menstrual cycle and it still feels like I want to slit a hole in my abdomen and remove the situations myself. Yes, it is still that bad so from what I can tell, dairy in my diet doesn’t make my situation worse or better. This is something I’m particularly interested in tracking.

My overall energy levels are a bit better despite no major changes in sleep patterns and amount of sleep. Last year when I had to be to work for 8am, I would have to drag mayself out of  bed, but for the past few days I have been getting up at 7 with my alarm fairly easily, and I don’t even have to be work until 9!

I’ve also been researching at the school of Youtube just viewing different perspectives on this whole veganism, veganish ish. One particular comment stood out to me about the component of veganism that is about viewing animals as having equal rights to live and and all that good stuff. Right now, I don’t believe animals should be tortured and mistreated and that they should be killed humanely. Because I’m not totally on board with the animal rights stuff does this mean that I don’t have the right to call myself a vegan?

I watched the Oprah episode where she and her entire staff of 380 persons went vegan for a week. Cameras were allowed inside a particular cow slaughter house and they mentioned making sure that everything was calm and quiet before they killed the animal because it also affects the quality of the meat. This stood out to me because to me that translates into meaning that the energy of that animal before it dies can affect the meat, the meat that some human will go onto consume. “Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form.”

Next month I will turn 26. I’m looking forward to dining out and eating more than fries I hope.

Cheese Addiction…The Struggle is Real

In a previous post I mentioned the idea that I thought I was addicted to cheese. I mean, prior to this vegan lifestyle, I would eat cheese just about everyday. The only other thing I ate as much was avocado. Every time I see a picture of the melted stuff, I begin to crave it and I’m more annoyed of giving it up than the meat.

These thoughts made me Google it because surely I wasn’t the only one feeling this way about cheese. Turns out, there are actual chemicals in cheese that makes you want more.

The primary protein in milk is casein. When the human body digests casein, it produces casomorphins, which have an opiate-like effect on humans. Because cheese is denser than, for example, milk, the casein is more heavily concentrated, meaning that eating cheese produces a larger amount of casomorphins in the body compared to eating other dairy products.

That was an excerpt from The Boston Globe’s Next Generation April 2012 article. Yumuniverse also has a good explanation of this addiction to the dairy crack phenomenon.

I’ve read about different non-dairy cheeses like the Daiya brand I bought the first time I went vegan shopping and I’ve read about cashew cheese and almond cheese etc… I guess the first step is to get it out of my mind that those cheeses will taste exactly like regular dairy cheese. I’m also kinda lazy so I don’t really want to make my own cheese.

Let’s hope that by next month the cravings are to a minimum but I’m still down for experimenting with non-dairy cheeses.

What sort of cheese substitutes do you use? Do you like non-dairy cheese?

Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

So while most people are deciding what they are going to give up for Lent, I thought about some things that I can add to my life. And I won’t go into the specifics but it did make me think about some of the vegan-related IG accounts I have been following. For some persons their decision to go vegan was a means to an end meaning they were sick and tired of being sick and tired and knew that a drastic diet change was just the medicine they needed. Other persons were doing it because they view animal life as equally valuable to human and do not want to contribute to the environmental impact eating meat and meat products has.

It made me understand that while I am on Day 49, I’m kind of looking forward to Day 365 already. I haven’t changed my mind and ideologies about eating meat and so at this point the decision to be vegan is still only for the purpose of challenging my will and cooking creativity.

It’s an ongoing conflict in my mind as to if I want to stay vegan, become vegetarian which is a lot easier or go back to being an occasional meat eater. It’s hard. I guess in some ways it’s like being a Christian. You have to give up certain activities because they are no longer appropriate to your lifestyle. Not everyone may understand or support your decision but you have to do it for your soul.

I’m hoping that some time soon I get this great awakening where I don’t see animals as food and I’m not dreaming of there delicious bodies sauteed, stewed or covered in lots of ketchup and hot sauce. I don’t want to crave cheese. This is sad. Am I a food addict?? Right now I’m looking forward to bowl of sheep tongue souse at the end of this.