Break in Vegan Blogs

Hey everyone,

It's my fourth day of eating vegan today.

This is the point at which my vegan eating "coach" and encourager evaluates how I am doing so far and makes suggestions to help me. After showing her my menu for the last several days she said I am not eating enough. I can easily increase portion sizes and eat more in general of veggies and good snacks.

She also made an excellent point that I should not worry about the dairy slip I had the other day. Her point is that I've been doing without a lot more dairy over the past few days than I would normally eat and that is so true! In I week, I would generally have milk, yogurt or cottage cheese, maybe some ice cream products or cheese. Now I have none of that so indeed, I have cut waaaaaaaaay back. It took Naomi Rose to point that out for me and I thank her for it as I was feeling pretty bad about it all.

So today will be my last day of journelling what I have been eating on this vegan diet now that my new lifestyle is underway. I was only going to give this new way of eating a one week trial but I have noticed an increase in my energy levels and for the most part, I am feeling less hunger than in my regular way of eating. So I have decided to stick with the vegan eating for at least several weeks. By that time, my body will likely be so used to it that it might be hard to return to dairy and meat but we will see. My main purpose in going vegan is to improve my health. It isn't because I am against meat eating.

Even though I am not opposed to meat and dairy eating, the sad reality is that in most of the western world, the conditions for raising animals to supply meat, poultry and eggs is so disgusting that as time goes by I really have a harder and harder time to think about eating animals products. Most of the animals and chickens have been under distress before succumbing to slaughter for our food needs. I don't think that is good way to treat our animals before we eat them. I also don't think that that kind of animal distress can be good for our bodies once we consume the meat, poultry or eggs.

If I lived on a farm and could ensure everything was hormone free and stress free for the animals, I could eat in good conscience. There is also the issue of the rapidly disappearing rain forest to be able to support livestock needs. Another distressing issue for me is all the hormones and junk that animals are fed. Have you heard what they feed to pigs? I have always like pork but I have a hard time to eat when I think of what they might have eaten themselves.

Well, I'll stop there as I am certainly no expert on the rationale for going vegan. But all these things trouble me when I permit myself to think of them and also they all contribute to a poor diet devoid of the necessary nutrients I need to function properly. Now here is my menu for the day.

Breakfast
Porridge with cashews, figs, brown sugar and soy milk.
Half a banana
Lunch
Large portion of Butternut Squash Lasagna
Snacks: 1 square of chocolate and a few small mandarin oranges.

Dinner (pictured above)
Corn, Red Potato & Onion Chowder with pureed garbanzo beans as a thickening agent. Perhaps I should have added flour to properly bind the soup but I omitted it on purpose. I added salt for seasoning and a few crumbs of falafel mix left over from the other day. I found the falafel gave it a bit of a spicy flavour which was good.
Pitta bread was the accompaniement as I have no bread/buns.
Snacks....I will likely have some cantaloupe and other fruit later. Perhaps a choco square.

This weekend I hope to make some muffins, cookies and/or banana bread Vegan style of course so that I have some snacks on hand for next week. I will also start cooking more veggies as side dishes. That way I will ensure I get a broader spectrum of greens, and nutrients etc. I may let you all know in a few weeks how things are going with me and the "vegan way".

Very soon I hope to be blogging here about some exciting projects I am hoping to move forward to aid widows and orphans in Kericho, Kenya. I hope you will come back again soon and let me know what you think when I write about them. I would dearly love to hear from you all and I hope to see you again real soon.

God bless.

Eating Can Be a Challenge

I needed some fibre today so I started off with porridge sprinkled with ground flax, a few raw cashews, dried figs, brown sugar and soy milk. It did the trick.

Lunch was a package of store bought falafel. I'm not a huge fan of falafel. I found this mixture to be somewhat salty though actually better than what I've eaten in restaurants. Due to the saltiness, I only had 3 round balls in a small bit of pita bread with alfalfa sprouts. It was quite good that way and "cut" the salty taste but I've been hungry all day.

This is the package.

This is what it looks like after mixing with water.

This is the mixture after setting for 10 minutes.

Here it is browning in a cast iron skillet with some olive oil.


Dinner ~ I have been wanting to make this Eggplant Dip for awhile. The main ingredients are eggplant, garlic and tofu.

It started off fine. This is the eggplant inserted with garlic cloves and brushed with chili peppers and olive oil.
It looks great after roasting for 40 minutes.
To get it looking like it does below was a bit of a challenge. It required scooping out the eggplant meat from the shells, adding it to a blender along with some mint leaves, some tofu and some soy milk. It kept getting stuck in my blender so that was no fun. After I finally got it looking more edible, I added some more chili flakes and lemon as suggested. I'm afraid I didn't like the taste as much as I had hoped. I found I did not like the addition of the fresh mint so next time I will leave it out.

This ended up tasting quite good however as a base in which to put chopped red onion, parsley and tomato...all wrapped up in pita bread like a donair but without meat and with out the yogurt, lol. It was rather yummy.My hunger was not satisfied today. I need to get something more filling tomorrow. I found I didn't ride the vegan wagon too well today as I had some more pomegranate sherbet purchased yesterday..the one that has milk ingredients in it. Today it wasn't as good...too sweet...so all of a sudden everything seems too salty (the falafel) or too sweet. Other snacks included a cored and quartered apple, about 12 nacho chips, a Starbucks grande soy latte, 1 small half inch square of chocolate (50%) and 1/2 diced fresh cantaloupe sprinkled with fresh juice of lemon. I'm still very hungry. I think I'll have a few more nacho chips, some soy milk. I know that's probably not a good thing but I don't want to have some pasta or beans at this hour. It is really bed time.

At least I started back on my vitamins today at last and my energy level has been up. I got some real work done tonight around the house, hunger pangs and all. Whatever hunger pangs I might be feeling are time limited compared to what my friends in Kenya experience on a weekly basis.

Talk soon.