Start of Vegan Week

So I’m doing Vegan Week this week with Michelle from Eating Journey and Katy from Silly Tater Tot – and I’ve already screwed up.  I woke up groggy, sat at the desk in my room to turn the desktop on, and found a Junior Mint sitting there in front of the keyboard.  I ate it.  I have no shame.  I thought, “ooh, how serendipitous – this little mint got left behind and is allll miiiiiine.”  Then a couple hours later I thought, “feck.”  Junior mints are most likely not vegan.  The moral of this little story is not “Katherine will eat anything she finds laying around” but “being vegan takes a lot of thought and careful planning.”

So what have I been up to lately?  This weekend I spent a lot of time with these fine folks (my BFF Deidra’s husband’s birthday was yesterday and we went out to dinner Friday night and had a coffee/dessert party Saturday):

…and grew a robot beard.  I took pictures in the grocery store and felt naughty, but how could you resist…

…a giant cardboard turkey?

…a Jabba the Hutt lemon?  (I know it’s not a lemon)

…turkey-shaped butter?

I waited an hour to recycle some old random electronics and scrap metal with mah momz…

…laughed at an internal dilemma I struggle with often, expressed so succinctly on this one sign…

…split an awesome beer with Mom…

…tried a product I didn’t like and actually poured out the rest once deciding it wasn’t worth it (go me! It tasted like bubble gum – WTF?)…

…found an albino pomegranate aril…

…took Maddy to the dog park and for a nice long walk…

…laughed at the hilariousness of my gigantic purse when compared to the size of a 60-lb dog…

…and loaded up on dairy since I knew I’d be kissing it goodbye this morning…

Already this morning I’ve made a discovery in that my usual flavored Quaker Instant Oatmeal contains milk ingredients.  I had a hunch it would, but it was still kind of a letdown.  However, I moved on and made some plain oatmeal (whole-er foods!) and added almond butter, a banana, flax, apple butter, and some syrup (which I should try to find a replacement for…the ingredients in that are kinda scary) .

(terrible picture courtesy of my about-to-die battery and my haste to take a pic while I still could)

So far (one meal in) this Vegan Week has provided the excuse for me to flip my products over and read the ingredients – something I knew I should be doing all along but have been in denial about.  I’m sitting here feeling deprived already thinking of the milk and cheese products I’ll be missing out on this week (I just had some yerba mate tea instead of my new habit/favorite, cocoa coffee), but I’m also hoping it’ll afford me some creativity and maybe even some more weight loss?

We’ll see.

Who else out there is doing this challenge or is already vegan?