Happy Valentine's Day!
I'm still vegan, but I'm not doing a great job with journaling because life caught up with me. Since my last entry, I've decided that gluten-free is not for me, at least for now. I have a special love affair with sandwiches and it's hard to find a good bread that's GF and vegan at the same time. So for now, I'll just focus on being vegan and will revisit a GF world another time.
We celebrated Valentine's Day early just to avoid the crowds. My family ate at Claim Jumper. My husband has been wanting to eat ribs, and Claim Jumper was the only restaurant where we both could eat. I ordered a California Citrus salad without cheese and a mini veggie pizza without cheese. The food was good, but for the first time ever, I walked out of Claim Jumper hungry. If I ever go back there, or anywhere else that serves murdered animals, I'll have to remember to bring a vegan sandwich along.
I've been vegan for 3 weeks now and I feel great. I don't feel hungry and I'm always looking forward to the next meal. I'm having fun discovering new vegetables and grains that I've never eaten before. I do miss sweets sometimes, but I just remind myself how that junk will make me sick and has made me sick in the past. I plan to make YumUniverse's Flourless Black Bean Brownies.
These look delicious and will be a perfect healthy treat for me (and anyone
else in my family who wants to try them) on Valentine's Day.
Because I'm having trouble keeping a daily journal, I'm officially dropping out of #YU30. As much as I want another Vitamix blender, journaling has never been a strong point for me. So I will still continue to be vegan and stalk the YumUniverse website and Facebook/Twitter pages.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Day 1 #YU30 Plant-Powerful Challenge
A bunch of organic vegetables and bulk grains, nuts, and legumes cost how much? I went shopping today at Whole Foods and my bank account and I feel like I'm eating like royalty! I'm sure once I figure out this whole vegan thing, I'll learn how to stretch the dollar a bit more.
Anyhow, I've been a vegan for over a week now, but today is the first official day of the #YU30 Plant-Powerful Challenge to go vegan and gluten-free. I've been doing to vegan part, but now it's time to start gluten free. I had a few pieces of bread and one tortilla last night and made sure to eat them before today. I don't have wheat sensitivity, so I'm going to test-drive a gluten-free diet for the sake of the #YU30 challenge.
Breakfast:
My cereal concoction was inspired by the Rawtarian's raw breakfast bowl. I toasted some oats with flax meal, coconut, peanut butter, and maple syrup. Then I added dried cranberries, shredded granny smith apple, buckwheat groats, chia seeds, and rice milk. I let the milk soak for five minutes so the chia seeds would plump up.
Lunch:
Unfortunately, my lunch wasn't gluten-free. I had made some tofu soup with a box vegetable pho broth and soba noodles yesterday and needed to finish the leftovers. The soba noodles i used were not gluten-free. I tried picking the noodles out, but decided that it was too much work. But my meal was still vegan and I don't view that as a setback. I have one more package of gluten soba noodles. I will eat those just because I don't want to waste them. After that, I will strive to be totally gluten-free.
Dinner:
I had some mushroom barley soup that was being demonstrated at Whole Foods today. I realized barley was gluten after I ate it. Oh well. The guy serving the soup assured me that it was vegan, and my 5-year-old loved it. Because a quart of soup doesn't go a long way for a family of four, I made green smoothies to finish off some greens before they went bad. I made a "training wheels" spinach and fruit smoothie for my family, but mine was more fun. I blended arugula, cucumber, lemon (peeled), 1/2 cup frozen mixed berries, banana, and coconut milk. Delicious!
Snacks:
The only snacks I had today were grape tomatoes and cucumber slices. I made sure to drink lots of water so I didn't feel hungry.
How I feel today:
I feel great, but I really want to try to get more green vegetables in my diet, especially because I'm trying to go gluten free. I will miss my sandwiches, but if I want them that bad, I can always fork over more money to buy gluten-free bread.
On another note, I find myself not craving sweets so much today. I actually threw out the rest of my gluten-free vegan cake. Giving up the processed sugars will be a challenge for me, but I'm confident that I'll get by. I've found lots of great baking recipes on YumUniverse website. I can't wait to try them out.
Anyhow, I've been a vegan for over a week now, but today is the first official day of the #YU30 Plant-Powerful Challenge to go vegan and gluten-free. I've been doing to vegan part, but now it's time to start gluten free. I had a few pieces of bread and one tortilla last night and made sure to eat them before today. I don't have wheat sensitivity, so I'm going to test-drive a gluten-free diet for the sake of the #YU30 challenge.
Breakfast:
My cereal concoction was inspired by the Rawtarian's raw breakfast bowl. I toasted some oats with flax meal, coconut, peanut butter, and maple syrup. Then I added dried cranberries, shredded granny smith apple, buckwheat groats, chia seeds, and rice milk. I let the milk soak for five minutes so the chia seeds would plump up.
Lunch:
Unfortunately, my lunch wasn't gluten-free. I had made some tofu soup with a box vegetable pho broth and soba noodles yesterday and needed to finish the leftovers. The soba noodles i used were not gluten-free. I tried picking the noodles out, but decided that it was too much work. But my meal was still vegan and I don't view that as a setback. I have one more package of gluten soba noodles. I will eat those just because I don't want to waste them. After that, I will strive to be totally gluten-free.
Dinner:
I had some mushroom barley soup that was being demonstrated at Whole Foods today. I realized barley was gluten after I ate it. Oh well. The guy serving the soup assured me that it was vegan, and my 5-year-old loved it. Because a quart of soup doesn't go a long way for a family of four, I made green smoothies to finish off some greens before they went bad. I made a "training wheels" spinach and fruit smoothie for my family, but mine was more fun. I blended arugula, cucumber, lemon (peeled), 1/2 cup frozen mixed berries, banana, and coconut milk. Delicious!
Snacks:
The only snacks I had today were grape tomatoes and cucumber slices. I made sure to drink lots of water so I didn't feel hungry.
How I feel today:
I feel great, but I really want to try to get more green vegetables in my diet, especially because I'm trying to go gluten free. I will miss my sandwiches, but if I want them that bad, I can always fork over more money to buy gluten-free bread.
On another note, I find myself not craving sweets so much today. I actually threw out the rest of my gluten-free vegan cake. Giving up the processed sugars will be a challenge for me, but I'm confident that I'll get by. I've found lots of great baking recipes on YumUniverse website. I can't wait to try them out.
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