Three Day Bonanza Post

It’s been a busy few days. I had the work event on Thursday, and then yesterday I was working like a madman all day, and felt like I got nothing done.

Kids, stay in school and study and stuff, because otherwise you’ll end up in a job where what you do all day is field calls from whackjob parents of unappreciative kids and data entry.

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Day 15: Bourbon Tofu

This is just going to be a quick one, as it’s late. I left it kind of late in the day to do this one, because I was, well, doing other stuff.

Lunch was fairly dull, I’m afraid: bits of cheddar-style Sheese in wraps with salad. Not about to light the vegan world on fire with that, really.

Dinner was more interesting. One of my favourite things to eat in the whole world is bourbon chicken. It’s tasty and moreish, and I can eat platefuls of it all day long, especially when there’s broccoli in it as well. I was really craving some tonight, but obviously I couldn’t have any.

But then I thought to myself, why not try it with tofu? One of the virtues of tofu is that it takes on flavours very easily when cooked. A classic form of it is to simply marinade firm tofu in soy sauce and fry it. It comes out very nicely, especially if you let it get really crispy. The saltiness of the sauce comes over really well.

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Days 12 & 13

Days 12 & 13 are combined, as per last week, because I regularly visit a family member on a Friday evening. If you’re interested, we drank some beer, watched some comedy panel shows and watched some boxers pummel the living shit out of each other. A good night, in other words.

I’ve been trying to look a little more deeply at the vegan lifestyle this week, and not always succeeding. It’s quite interesting to see the workings of a subculture which you’ve never before seen in any much detail, by which I mean that you see all kinds of interesting arguments. It’s like hearing a fight in a language where you’re sort of competent but not fully fluent — you don’t get all the references and idioms, but find yourself fascinated despite yourself.
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Day 11: Stuffed Peppers

Sorry about yesterday’s rather lacklustre post, folks. I was dog tired and couldn’t do much more than list tofu types. I know my wife is liable to worry that it’s related to the diet, but the fact is that I worked like a mofo yesterday and was just honestly tired. I actually feel more energetic on this diet than I have for a long time, although that may be down to the huge carbohydrate intake.

Speaking of which, I started the day rather badly on that account, eating a white bagel. Eeep. Except it was a tomato and Mediterranean herb bagel, which I consider reason enough to break my vow of carbstinence.

Lunch was no better. I don’t even want to tell you. It wasn’t anything spectacularly good for me, I will say.

And so for dinner I decided to do something a little better. I’ll be having a vegetarian classic: peppers stuffed with couscous, with salad on the side.

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Day Nine: Pita Bread and Climate Change

Not much happening today. I ate kind of badly, if you want the truth: pita bread with hummus for lunch, and left-overs for dinner. Not a terribly inspiring sort of advert for the vegan lifestyle, but to be honest, some days I just can’t get into cooking, which is something of a shame, because I do enjoy doing it and talking about it.

I have noticed that a lot of my bread intake lately has been in the form of pita bread; lots of it in the form of garlic and herb pitas from Tesco, which are actually rather tasty, if a little stinky! That, combined with garlicky hummus, is making me somewhat difficult to be around… Hehehe.

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Day Eight

I’ve said here before that I’m having a hard time with not eating cheese. Milk is also something I miss; while soy milk fulfills part of the desire, there’s nothing quite like a nice big glass of cold skimmed milk.

Coffee is not quite the same without it, but I’m getting used to that, and I’m certainly not about to try using soy milk in it anymore: soy milk is actually what is known technically as an emulsion, or immiscible liquids in a stable blend. Basically, it’s oil, water and small particles. Unfortunately, soy milk is not quite so stable an emulsion as dairy, meaning that unless stirred vigorously every minute or so, it separates into what looks like curds. Not terribly nice, and something of a pain to keep going at. You can get it to not do that by adding it when the liquid has cooled down, but who wants to drink lukewarm coffee? I’ll stick with black and one sugar for now, I think.

Day Seven

So, it’s the end of the first week of my month as a vegan. Things seem to be going well so far, although there have been some things which have been difficult to do or avoid, I think overall thing’s are OK.

Probably the biggest change I’ve noticed is that I tend to snack a little less. I seem to be less hungry between meals this week, and I think that can be put down to a change in habits: I can’t snack as easily, so I tend to eat more of what I’ve cooked at meal times. The absence of easily edible snacks has left me in the position of eating more at meals, so avoiding snacks in the first place has let me avoid them further, if that makes sense…