We are three weeks into our whole foods plant based vegan diet experiment. I hesitate to just call it veganism, because I feel like there are a lot of unhealthy vegan animal substitutes out there and we are avoiding those as well. We have eliminated all animal products from our diets (though I accidentally ate a chocolate stick then later read the label and realized it had casein in it, and Ryan ate part of a meatball that our toddler left on her plate).
We decided to change our diets partly for health reasons, but also partly (ok, mostly) out of boredom. We have two small children, one of whom requires approximately 120% of our time and attention throughout all of her waking hours. Because of this, we no longer have many hobbies, and our social lives are somewhat limited. But we still need to eat, and we still need to cook in order to eat, so incorporating dietary changes is one adventure/hobby that we can do at this point in our lives.
In January, I gave up all processed sugary products. No cakes, cookies, ice cream, or brownies. No candy. Only limited squares of dark chocolate - because that has important health benefits. Really. Keeping the dark chocolate was strictly a health consideration.
In February, I started watching food related documentaries. Ryan and I started eating down all the animal products currently in the fridge/freezer. This was quite a lot, because I had been doing once-a-month cooking, so we had a months' worth of freezer meals, most of which were heavily cheese based.
In March, we did not buy any animal products and began focusing on incorporating more vegetables in our meals. It wasn't that difficult for us. We already had a lot of vegetarian and vegan meals on rotation in our diets. Although I like both chicken and turkey, I personally haven't eaten red meat in over twenty years, and I hate both pork and ham. We did buy and consume bacon occasionally, but not often. We did use a lot of eggs (I had recently learned how to make really good quiche, which of course we can't have now), and we ate a lot of cheese. A lot. More cheese than anyone should consume. And we ate far too much ice cream as well, like multiple pints of Ben & Jerry's every month (Chocolate Therapy for me).
After the last animal product was consumed, our first vegan meal was Cauliflower Pizza Bites. We chose it because we happened to buy a cauliflower and didn't know what to do with it. Unfortunately, they weren't very good - probably because we substituted salsa for the hot sauce and didn't have oregano. We'll try the recipe again some other time, with the required ingredients.
I pureed the rest of the cauliflower up with some tofu and tomato sauce and made a couple of pasta bakes. Those were pretty good (two of them went in the freezer for later).
The next new recipe we tried was Vegetarian Haggis (substituting Earth Balance for the butter). Ordinarily, this wasn't something we would have tried. However, a friend (who happened to be vegan) was visiting from Scotland, and she offered to bring ingredients and let us try her local cuisine (and yes, I phrased this like she's Scottish, when in fact she's a US ex-pat who had recently moved to Scotland from Germany). I was more than surprised - I was shocked at how good this was. I had expected it to be something we would politely eat and discreetly dispose of the leftovers. Instead we all ended up practically licking the bowls and Ryan had to fight the baby for the last bite. The toddler, of course, wouldn't touch it, but our seven month old loves everything.
I made some vegan lasagna that turned out pretty well. Rowan helped, and she very carefully left black olives off the part she claimed as hers (and demonstrated her amazing vocal skills when Ryan accidentally served her the wrong portion). I didn't really follow a recipe, it was mostly just a bunch of veggies and the jars of tomato sauce that were in the freezer from my last major cooking episode. We ended up with three pans of lasagna, including one of our larger baking dishes so we can serve one when friends come over.
I also made vegan chocolate chip cookies (twice!) from my new favorite recipe site, ohsheglows.com. On the second batch, I only used 1/8 tsp of cinnamon, and I think they were better. Ryan probably disagrees, but we have different opinions on cinnamon.
Another new thing we tried, a food I am still dreaming about (though fortunately there is a casserole in the freezer for later): Enchiladas with tomatillo sauce. We went to Market on the Move, where you can get 60lbs of produce for $10. They had tomatillos. We aren't too happy with tomatillos, because we did dedicate far too much garden space to them for two years, only to get one tiny fruit. But we decided that since we got a large amount from the Market, we would forgive the species as a whole and use them up. I made the sauce with roasted tomatillos, jalapeno, garlic, and a little bit of salt (as usual, the baby loved it and practically attacked us for the spoon; the toddler wouldn't touch it). The enchiladas were roasted bell peppers, roasted butternut squash (also from Market on the Move), mushrooms, black beans, and onions. Delicious.
Tonight I made mac and cheese, which turned out pretty good. Next time I'll use less of the nutritional yeast. That stuff smells awful. I'm thinking of cutting it down to 4 tablespoons. Incidentally, once again, the baby loved it and ate as much as we were willing to give her, while the toddler declared that it smelled funny and refused to try it.
