Vegan Week Day 2: about a 66% Success

**I’m doing Vegan Week with Michelle from Eating Journey and Katy from Silly Tater Tot**

I’m sitting here chugging water because I’ve got to get some lab work done tomorrow morning, and I’ve got terrible veins, so I’m trying to fatten them up as best I can.  I’m gonna wake up every 2 hours to pee.  Oh joy.

Today’s eats were far less successful than yesterday’s.  For breakfast, I had a Green Monster; the usual protein powder I use has dairy derivatives, so I pulled out my prized packet of Amazing Grass Green Super Food I’ve been hanging on to for a few months.  I finally found Amazing Grass products at a health food store on the other side of Columbia from me (read: a 40-minute drive) but couldn’t justify the expense, so I got a packet of Super Food and a packet of Wheatgrass (still not ballsy enough to try that one) and they’ve been sitting in my kitchen, unloved and unused ever since.

My Green Monster contained spinach, almond milk, Amazing Grass, a banana, frozen strawberries, and a dollop of canned pumpkin (with some Splenda…I’m a wuss without my vanilla protein powder).

I missed the protein powder but could get used to this.  I used to drink my GMs without protein powder when I first started making them, so I could do it again.  It’s funny, the first sip I took today reminded me of summertime since that’s when I last had it sans protein.  Alongside this GM, I had a Sandwich Thin with peanut butter on one half and pumpkin butter on the other.

Mess-Up #1: the sandwich thins I was using contained honey, which vegans avoid.  Didn’t remember that until the bread was already on its way to my tummy.  Ooops.

Lunch was rice noodles with steamed veggies and peanut sauce (the bag o’veggies wasn’t my usual “stir fry” preference…baby potatoes aren’t usually welcome in a dish like this, but I made do with what I had)

I like ingredient lists like this:

Snack/dessert was pom arils:

I joked on Twitter that I felt like Ace Ventura in the sunflower seed scene, because I can’t eat the seeds whole…I had to spit out the little insides.  Mucho attractive.

Mess-Up #2: At around 3pm, I was blindsided by a terrible headache that wouldn’t go away.  I tried napping and drinking Coke Zero, but neither helped.  Then I tried chocolate.  Yep, I caved.  And surprisingly, it seemed to help.  Sorry, Vegan Weekers.

Another snack later in the day was a disgustingly vulgar-looking tortilla smeared with chocolate peanut butter and a banana.

Around dinnertime, I shared this pumpkin beer with Mom:

I think so far this has been my least favorite pumpkin ale…the spice and bitterness melded and made it not very drinkable.  No beer aficionado magazine is going to call me any time soon to write for them.  I read on No Meat Athlete’s site last weekish about an ingredient used in beer brewing/storing called isinglass that’s derived from fish (read his post here).  I don’t know how often it’s used or even in what products, but it’s something for vegans to look out for.  Me?  I threw the whole veganhood thing out the window when I had that headache-curing chocolate (though I was surprised to find that the chocolate peanut butter is vegan – that is, if I read the ingredients right…).

For dinner, I was really struggling with what I wanted to eat.  I was hungry but couldn’t think of anything I wanted.  I was tired, cranky, and my head was starting to hurt again.  I broke down and had dairy with my dinner.  I partially feel like a failure because I really wanted to complete an entire week of veganism 100%, but after doing a day and a half of it, I know this is something unrealistic for me (at this point in my life), so I wasn’t devastated when I broke down for one meal.  Also, I felt deprived and didn’t want to cave later by bingeing on something terrible.  If I give in a little now, I won’t give in a lot later.  I had a salad with yogurt ranch dressing, olives, and sliced almonds…

…and a baked potato with cheese and FF sour cream.

Then I had a piece of chocolate for dessert.

Another thing I’ve been enlightened about during this week is the many facets of veganism.  I’ve known that they don’t use/wear leather, but I never really stopped to think about other aspects.  I was looking at a website about veganism and beer, and it displayed Anheuser-Busch beer as being non-vegan since they “employ” cart horses.  Katy mentioned in an earlier post about considering makeup (and said that Michelle will be writing a post about it later this week!)…didn’t really think about that before.  Side note – one thing that’s always bugged me is when products have text saying “this final product not tested on animals.”  Obviously I’m not worried about the final product since it was safe enough to package and sell, but what about the scary raw chemicals you guys probably tested on animals to develop this final version? 

I say I can’t be a vegan at this point in my life because I’m living with my parents and they need to be considered as far as fridge space is concerned.  Just like having junk food in the house, if there are cheese and dairy products in there, it’s definitely harder to turn them down.  If I lived alone and had no dairy in my fridge, it’d be a lot easier to keep away from it.

I’m going to keep trying at this vegan thing, and definitely Thursday will be all-vegan (I’ll try to plan a fun new recipe for dinner – that’s the meal I’m usually most concerned about), but I won’t beat myself up if I “screw up.”  Like I’ve said before, I’m thankful that I’m lucky enough to not have food allergies and that double-checking the labels isn’t IMPERATIVE for my health.  However, I would like to be more responsible for and aware of the things that go in my body.  One day, hopefully soon, I hope to only eat foods from smaller, more local sources where I can be 100% sure of where they get their ingredients and how their animals are treated.