Day 30--Half-way Point, and I MADE SOUP!!!!

Well, I'm halfway through this vegan journey, and I just wanted to say a huge THANKS to everyone that's been reading along!  Every few days, I run into someone I haven't seen in awhile and they say "Oh, I've been following your blog! How's that going?"  It's been so uplifting; it keeps me going.  If you're wondering what's in store for the next 30 days, I've been getting requests  for more recipes (links or originals), so I'm going to make sure that happens.  Starting today, actually!

So tonight I came home from work with only one goal:  use food I have in the house to make dinner without going to the grocery store.  I was nervous, because all I had at home was a squash, which I bought impulsively last week and have never prepared before, an onion, and a couple of random fruits.  In my research of what the hell one does with a squash, I kept coming back to soup.  I settled on this amazing recipe for  Vegetarian Butternut Squash Soup with Apples  (which is easy to make vegan with one tiny tweak). 

First thing's first:  I know why people rarely make their own soup--it is involved!!  Cutting a squash is no walk in the park. Seriously, I might have blisters tomorrow.  But it was so worth it.  After all the cutting was done, all I had to do was cook the squash, onion, and apples in vegetable broth and applesauce, then blend it together.  It was a huge hit! Such a perfect savory dish for a nice, crisp autumn day.   And it gave me another "first:" my very first homemade soup.

So, here's to the next 30 days: I hope everything we eat is as tasty as what we had tonight.

I improvised the cinnamon garnish, and even that was delightful!

Day 28--The Sad, Sad Case of My Window Herbs

I've grown basil before.  I think I had one plant for over two years, until it was just too big for its pot.  So I don't understand why the ones I planted in July are gradually dying!  Here's the deal: cooking with fresh herbs is expensive, only if you have to buy fresh sprigs every time you need them.  So I've been growing my own.  The packets of seeds cost about a dollar each, and I used to paint pots as a hobby, so having a window garden seemed like a breeze!  So this summer I planted basil, cilantro, lavendar, and chives, hoping to save a little money and eat a little fresher.

The cilantro and the chives looked really great for about a week, but they promptly died in week two.  Never even got use out of them.  The lavendar, the only one I had outside, took a month to sprout.  It's still alive, I think, but all it is is a few green leaves?  Also, I don't think it has changed at all in over a month.  I don't understand: I followed all the sunlight and watering guidelines.  I used new (but not over-chemically) potting soil. Are they really that fickle?

So, basil seems to be the last man standing.  Barely.  Even that is dying in phases!  I planted three pots of basil because that's the one I use the most, and one of them died last month, too.  The two survivors will randomly have a stalk that goes brown and shrivels up.  And I swear, I'm not a bad plant-mom! I owned the same little souvenier cactus for ten years, I have some really pretty African violets, and I have an ivy plant that's enjoying stretching all around my piano.  So why can't I keep these herbs alive?  Ugh, I guess I have to start over--again.

The one on the left hates me :-(

Day 26--Game Day, Vegan Style!

Football on Sunday is an American tradition.  This week, I was lucky enough to have one of my best buds from out of town and my brother come over for the afternoon games.  All week, I'd been debating on what to put out for appetizers--would people who aren't doing what I'm doing appreciate game day snacks that aren't the typical pizza rolls, spinach queso dips, and bacon-wrapped-whatevers?  I thought maybe I should mix it up, put out some vegan and nonvegan selections.  But then I thought, you know, I'm having a lot of fun with this, what's the harm in exposting people to the good stuff that's out there?  Plus, my buddy recently ditched junk food, so I figured he'd probably appreciate a healthier spread.

Unfortunately, I had a busy weekend, making my own appetizers was out of the question.  The grocery store had me covered, though!  I decided to put out bruschetta with toasted baguette slices, Triscuits and veggies with two flavors of hummus.  Not the most homemade thing in the world, but it was a hit!   The Eagles lost, but the comany was good, so I think a fun time was had by all.

Yes, even our beer is from a 100% vegan brewery.

Oh, and tonight's dinner was too good not to include in this post:  It was the first Asian stir-fry I've done  since stating this thing. A few years ago, it was something I'd make with chicken and chicken broth, and while those were easy enough to replace, remembering the actual recipe was a challenge.  So I pretty much just threw together every vegetable I could find, soy sauce, a bit of veggie stock, garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes for heat, and ate it over brown rice. Man, this dish is even better than I remember it; and look at all the colors!

Onions+Mushroms+Broccoli+Red Bell Pepper+Zucchini+Carrots=All The Yum!

Day 24--A New Favorite, and A Kitchen Nightmare

New Favorite Food

I've probably mentioned before that my whole life I've been guilty of drowning things in cheese.  American on my sandwiches (and also as a snack while I made the sandwich); cheddar on anything Mexican; fresh-grated parmesan on pasta; chunks of colby-jack on crackers, or without crackers; extra mozzarella in the fridge for anything that may require it.  Cheese was my #1 comfort food.  Cheese is a lot of the reason that I decided to make this a vegan thing and not just a vegetarian thing.

When I started this I already knew what my substitute for cheese would be--avocados.  They come really close to giving me that satisfied, pleasurable feeling that I get from my favorite dairy substance.  They're rich and creamy and delightful.  The only problem I run into with avocado is that they can be hit-or-miss.  You can buy an unripe one and plan to eat it 4 days from now, and it will be perfect. But sometimes in that amount of time, it will go overripe and start to rot, or be just as unripe as the day you brought it home.  And if you forgot to buy one in advance and you need one that's ripe for tonight, good luck.  As expensive as they are ($1.25-1.50 ea. here in PA), it sucks to get a bad one.  So my avocado eating has been sparse.

And then, and then, I found this:


I had been looking for a guacamole that was as close to all-natural ingredients as possible, and I hadn't been having much success.  But this little gem right here was not in the snacks section, it was in the refrigerated produce bin (you know, where all those expensive Bolthouse Chai Whatever drinks are).  It lists ingredients literally as Avocados, Jalapenos, White Vinegar, Salt, Onion, Garlic; and I can get on board with that.

So I bought it, even though $5.49 seemed like a steep price for such a small box, and it blew away my every expectation. Creamy and delicious with just a bit of zing, it made the perfect addition to last night's vegan tacos.  Erica loved it, too.  Even the value was better than I originally thought.  I misread the label--it contained two 7oz. packages, not one, so we are all set on guac for a while!  And to think.  Less than half the saturated fat of cheese, less sodium, none of the cholesterol, more potassium.  This stuff is amazing.

Spice Cabinet Nightmare

So, more cooking from scratch apparently means owning all the spices.  Which I'm fine with, because I like food that has flavor, but suddenly my spice cabinet went from manageable to, well, this:

It needs a makeover.  I don't have a thing that spins the bottom shelf (is it called a lazy susan?), so sometimes when I'm looking for a particular spice I can't find it, one of us ends up re-purchasing something we already have.  Or, alternatively, when I know I recently bought something and can't find it, I end up emptying the whole thing onto the counter.  Currently we have 3 cans of dried diced onions, 3 bottles of vanilla, 2 pumpkin pie spices, 2 large oreganos, and 2 or 3 garlic powders.  And that's what I can see without moving stuff around.

I'm just not sure how to tackle this yet. Should I alphabetize them?  That would appeal to my OCD.  But so would putting them with like spices--you know, all the sweet stuff together, all the hot stuff together, all the Italian stuff.   It's driving me so crazy right now I want to run to Target and get a spinny-thing.  But alas, I am house-bound because my car is getting inspected.  Which is also why I couldn't go to Central Market today.  And also why today's cooking challenge is: make something awesome out of the random stuff I have here!

I will get on this cabinet situation.  There's always tomorrow!

Day 20--Adventures in Advanced* Cooking!

*Okay, my usage of the word "advanced" is relative.   When I say that, what I actually mean is I'm not used to making things that involve cooking in steps, or using a food processor, and last night's dinner involved both!

For my final step in adding beans to my diet,  I got a recipe for healthy veggie burgers.  Of everything I've made so far, I thought last night's ingredients made an incredibly tasty-looking picture:

Excitingly healthy looking, right?  Well, I was excited.  And then I learned some things:

1. My food processor is tiny.  I could only fit about a quarter of this stuff in there at a time, so, getting the mixture prepped took almost an hour, and got super messy at times.
2. You should read the whole recipe before you decide that's the right one for you.  I actually got the mixture all together, ready to press it into patties, when I saw the recipe called for them to be pan-fried instead of baked (what the hell, recipe??).  And my fallback recipe had only Celcius instructions for the stove (yeah, I'd had too many glasses of wine for conversions).  So I ended up winging the cooking time and temp.
3. All vegan recipes call for way too many onions.  I like (cooked) onions as much as the next guy, but seriously, sometimes less is more.  I'm glad I used my judgement on this one.

In the end, I think my efforts paid off!  I liked it, and I think Erica did, too.  I'm forcing her to be honest with me in this process, because if I make something she doesn't like, I want to know!  She said these are "different," meaning they don't taste like hamburgers, but that's to be expected, I think.  She did eat two, so it couldn't have been the worst thing ever.   Although I have to agree, the average meat-and-potatoes palate would think this is pretty off the wall.  Me, I'm really excited about having the leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

Chickpea veggie burger with lettuce and tomato on whole wheat bun.

Day 19--Buying Local vs. Buying Organic vs. Food Variety

I haven't really posted a lot about where my food comes from.  It's something I'm still struggling to figure out.  A lot of what I've read and learned suggests we should only eat fruits and veggies that are in season locally, and we should buy from local vendors.  Others say you should buy organic, even if you live in Pennsylvania and that organic orange came from California.  And then there's those who say that the ideal, of course, is to buy produce that's both organic and local.

The reason I struggle, and I'm sure many Americans run into this, is because I really only know how to shop at a supermarket.  The "local" produce there is really limited (right now it's pretty much corn), and the organic produce is also limited (bags of lemons, apples and oranges), and there is no cross-section.  So for the time being, I'm relegated to traditional produce.  I will say this for my supermarket:  their selection is fantastic, their produce is always good-looking, and I almost never have to worry about something going bad before its time.

And, of course, this isn't the only grocery mart in town.  We also have a less-awesome supermarket, two family-owned local grocery stores, a central market, and a few organic/local marts.  Oh, and of course, this is Central PA! Home of the summertime Amish roadside stand!  So it's not like I don't have options.  They're just not always the most convenient ones.    The markets are downtown, and some are only open on Friday (while I'm at work in another county); the family markets have  less selection and sometimes obscenely long checkout lines that make a quick after-work stop for soymilk into the stuff of nightmares; and the Amish--I have ethical issues with them that are probably better served by another post.

It doesn't help that I'm still torn on the idea of whether "organic" really does equal "better."  It's not an easy question to answer.  If my high school civics teacher didn't teach me anything else, he definitly taught me about questioning sources.  Every movie that's out there touting the horrors of pesticides and GMOs has an agenda.  However, so does every government study that say there's no harm in these things. (Really, it would undo the entire American farming industry!)  So where is the truth, and how would we even know to trust it if we saw it?  What you feed your family seems like one of those things where you'd want to err on the side of caution and buy organic--but if there really is no difference, then that's a lot of wasted money!

I think my ideal lies in a combination of local and regular food.  Local food just tastes better; anyone who's ever grown their own tomatoes can tell you that.  But I still need variety.  I don't think I can live without avocado, and they just don't grow around here.  I'm going to try to make it to Central Market this Friday, see how I can make out with local food (and how I resist the temptation of apple dumplings and other orgasmically good PA Dutch treats).  Oh, and it's officially fall.  I need a pumpkin!

Day 15--Quarter of the Way There, and Last Night's Surprise

So, today officially marks my 1/4-of-the-way point with this vegan cleanse, and I'm feeling really great about it!  As soon as I gave up the caffeine, I started falling asleep almost as soon as I went to bed, whereas, I used to have to lie awake for an hour, maybe two.  It was affecting me way more than I thought.  As a result, my energy is way up.

Food temptation is not at all what I thought it would be.  In the grocery store, I really enjoy shopping for all the produce, and I have no problem skipping the "bad" aisles.  I really only eat processed food once a day, and usually, that food is Cheerios, so I can't even feel too bad about that.  To be honest, though, I miss cheese like crazy. It has always been my biggest weak spot, and it's one of the reasons I'm glad I decided to make this a "vegan" thing--otherwise, I would be justifying my need for cheese at this very moment.  I love cheese on everything.  I don't think there's such a thing as "too much" cheese.  If I decide to add it back into my diet when this is over, I need to find a point of moderation.

The biggest thing I struggle with right now is the work.  I put so much time into this!  Finding new recipes, cooking from scratch, longer trips to the store because I'm being careful about the choices, more frequent trips because no matter how much I plan, never get everything I need in the "big trip."  And the dishes. Dear Lord, the dishes are never ending!  I feel like I'm always doing a chore.  It's definitely not easy.

Which is what made last night so nice:  I worked until 6, I knew we were in need of a grocery trip, and I kept trying throughout the day to get online and get an idea for dinner, but I wasn't getting the chance.  I texted Erica in desperation for ideas, and she texted back with those four magic words: "I've got dinner covered."  It not often that she start-to-finish handles a meal, but I was so happy just not to have to deal with it, I would have eaten anything.

Turns out she made us vegan burritos,  a Tony Horton (of  P90X) recipe, and they were amazing. See, we like to say we don't eat fast food, and for the most part, that is true: we don't do McDonald's or any of the various burger joints ever. But, but, we do occasionally indulge in Chipotle or Qdoba burritos because they are made by gods or something.  We've been saying we should find a healthy recipe that mimics them and Erica really hit the jackpot.  No cheese or sour cream, and brown rice instead of white, but otherwise, it was just like it!  (Minus the food hangover, because we could also control our own portion sizes.)   If you're interested in the recipe, she got it here.

Anyway, I was so proud of her. And she was so into it, it was fun to watch her cook.  I hope this bug strikes her again sometime soon. *hint, hint*