be vegan

... to eating local foods, and unprocessed foods. I don’t really eat many processed foods anyways, and ironically the most heavily processed food I eat is vegan convenience food, and soymilk (!). I think that gets more at what I think is important – as long as the dairy I consume is local and the cows lived a good life, then its alright. This means I can eat yogurt again… yay! (I always liked making yogurt). But I’m keeping the soymilk.

Was my first vegan day, and I feel very good. Though, this was also the first day in years that I actually took a nap in the afternoon. I’ve always said I’m not a napper, but maybe I am and I just didn’t want to admit it… :)

Also, the vegan “cheese” I purchased earlier this week… well, that didn’t agree with my digestive system so well. Which is funny, because it is soy “cheese”, and I don’t usually have any problems at all with soy products. There’s got to be something else funny in there.. Ah well, scratch that product off the list!

I seem to be gaining momentum here. I am slowly emptying my fridge of dairy products now – I ran out of butter the other day, and replaced it with Earth Balance, and have started taking soymilk in my morning coffee instead of cream. When I drink coffee away from home though, I’ve still been taking it with cream… Well, baby steps.

I bought some vegan cheese yesterday, my first foray into this slightly frightening area. It is a “cheddar”, and… ahem.. it leaves a lot to be desired. The texture is rubbery, the taste soy-y. But, if you don’t think of it as trying to be cheese and instead just being its own thing, then its not bad. It will work in sandwiches, and I’m going to try it on pizza.

I’m thinking I might start keeping track of what I eat, so I can make note if a day is completely vegan. I use Google calendar to keep track of my life, and I wish that there was a function where you could put little “stickers” on your calendar, just like you would with a real calendar. Does anybody know anything about this?

I am learning to enjoy soymilk in my coffee, rather than cream. I think I have gotten there, actually :) Now the challenge will be, when getting coffee out and about, what will I take? Some cafes have soymilk, others don’t.. maybe I will learn to like black coffee, too.. :)

I’m going to Christmas dinner with friends, and I am bringing homemade vegan cookies and bread. However, I am also bring brie and stilton to enjoy with the bread, and for dessert. So… cheese is still a sticking point for me. As are eggs. Milk and cream I can easily live without. But I love eggs! and cheese!!!

I think eggs will be the most difficult thing to replace in my life. Not in baking, but in the sense of.. having a soft-boiled egg on toast for breakfast. So I’m going to start by trying to explore vegan cheeses. I need to find a melty one, a salty dry-ish one, and a nice spreadable one. Any suggestions?

... because they are almost as ubiquitous in the common kitchen as woks and microwaves! And therefore, not incredibly expensive! I am the proud owner of a soymilk maker, and now as soon as I find an appropriate plug adapter, I should be all set when I get home for delicious home-made soymilk goodness.

Provided I can figure out how to use it without the directions (which are, duh, in Chinese).

I’d really like to switch over to soymilk from regular milk, and this is going to make things all that much easier. Not to mention that it is a lot easier to carry dried soybeans on my bicycle than a gallon of milk!

I’ve been in China for three weeks now, traveling for work. As a vegetarian, I don’t eat red meat, fish, poultry, etc etc. As a nation of largely lactose-intolerant folks, the cuisine here doesn’t have any milk or cheese in it. The one thing I am still eating is eggs, which pop up a lot more than they do in typical Western dishes. And really, I don’t miss the butter, cheese, milk, etc.

I think that long-term I would miss milk, but that I would be happy to replace it with soymilk. My main gripe with soymilk is that the stuff you buy in the supermarket has an ingredient list a mile long – not exactly a whole, unadulterated food. So I’ve been making my own soymilk, but it takes forever the way I’m doing it. I’ve heard you can buy these soymilk-makers, kind of like juicers. I may look in to one of those…