There's an app for that.

So I did make homemade falafel the other night as said. It was quite easy. Just a can of chick peas, an onion, garlic and spices with a bit of flour then fry it in a pan. I don't feel like typing out the recipe so if you want it, you can find it here on Seeds for Meat.

Then I served it in a whole wheat pita with whatever type of dressing you like. The huz went for honey mustard. It was yum.

Further laziness: I only took a photo of the finished product. Here it is.

You could also choose to be healthy and add in some lettuce and other veggies. I choose to be lazy.

Last night I was very excited to make an Avocado Mango and Black Bean Salad that I found off of the Whole Foods App on my iPhone. The app is quite great for anyone with allergies and/or special diets as you can select what filters you want to sort the recipes by. I obviously chose vegan, and this popped up. They also have the option to search gluten free. I assume I'll use that one eventually. Now if you don't have an iPhone yet, I guess it's just sad being you and you can pretend you didn't read this last paragraph.

I also found my new favorite smoothie recipe on here (1 cup soy milk, 2 tablespoons almond butter, and a cup of frozen strawberries blended together= ecstacy). As a side note, I use a Magic Bullet for all of my smoothies as it's great for small servings and can go in the dishwasher. However, please don't confuse this with any sexual objects that may appear if you choose to Google it. I am definitely referring to the blender, not the vibrator.

But back to the point. Whole Foods and their app definitely let me down last night. My avocado mango salad was not a success. By far one of the nastiest things I've ever tried to eat. The huz wouldn't even try it, and that's saying something. I know the mango and the avocado were delicious as I ate half of each while preparing the salad, so it wasn't their fault. I think it was the nasty vinaigrette. I should have tasted it before dumping it all over my uber delicious produce. What a waste. I wish I had a compost. Then I would feel a bit better about all of this. Instead I wasted half of my lovely fruit bowl and threw it all into the trash. I think this experience wins a point for lazy. An hour cutting all my produce to throw it out. Not cool.

Here's a photo of my very appetizing salad.

And my sad fruit bowl now.

But luckily I had ingredients on hand to make old faithful: vegan happy pizza. If you'd like to see my recipe for that, click here.

Tonight I'm making this recipe for General Tso's Tofu. I'm excited. I'm hoping I can't eff this one up too badly especially since friends are coming over and I have more people to poisen besides the huz. I'll let you know if they're still my friends tomorrow.

A Few Words of Encouragement

After reading my last blog post, one of my best friends' husband's friends (I love friend chains like that) sent me this message. He's also a vegan and was a big help when I first started out my meatless adventures.

Some words of (hopefully) encouragement.

I've been a vegan...almost a year now, wow! I think that if you make it a set of rules to follow or laws to abide by, then this kind of thing is bound to happen. You break the rules, you feel guilty. I try to think of veganism as more of a way of life or a guideline. If I decide one night I want Coldstone Ice Cream I don't feel guilty about it the next day. My lifestyle is such as to lessen the suffering of animals and promote a new way of living in a consumer society. I try to make the best decisions I can but in the end, if I constantly deny myself the things I enjoy I'll go crazy. Maybe once every few months I get real ice cream, and that's about as far as it goes for me.

Next, I want to make a comment about what you said about eating dairy and eggs that come from happy cows and chickens. I think in a lot of ways you're right. However, think about your slippery slope. You stop being vegan, and you eat eggs at home that come from a farm that you know and trust. You even go get your eggs yourself from the farm. This is great. Now you're out in a restaurant, and suddenly it's easier to decide to eat something with egg in it. You don't know where the egg came from, but...you're not a vegan so its easier to make the decision to eat the egg.

Again, this might sound like rule making. I think one of the most crucial parts of veganism is that knowing it's your lifestyle helps make the tough decisions when you're out and about. However if you constantly deny yourself all things you enjoy this kind of thing will happen.

The other part of veganism for me is showing others that there is an alternative way to living. I think of it as taking a stand in a way. Not in preaching as much as in living. That's partly why I don't get happy-chicken eggs at home. The whole lifestyle of being vegan speaks to others that I'm trying to live in a new world, a world that's already available in some ways but not quite here yet.

My final words are to say: every now and then get your favorite non vegan thing and eat it. Don't even worry about it where it comes from if you have to, just eat it.

I'd like to think that if I ate happy eggs at home I'd be able to resist other eggs in restaurants. But I think we all know the strength of my willpower and realize that that's probably a complete impossibility. Boo.

I think I'm just getting nervous because I've finally gotten to my breaking point with gluten. I knew this day would come just like dairy. It's sad. I don't want to say goodbye to another yummy food group. But I can no longer deal with all the side effects that follow right along my gluten consumption. I'm making dinner with pita bread tonight because it's already planned and that is my farewell. I feel like once gluten is gone combined with my vegan lifestyle, I'll have nothing left to eat, especially in restaurants where I seem to live on veggieburgers...

I'm also get quite nervous for all my travels this summer. It's pretty easy being vegan in NYC and such. I know where to go and what I can eat. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about all these foreign countries. My most horrendous recollection of Spain was the Casa del Jamon (House of Ham) where there are hundreds of carcasses strung from hooks on the ceiling. They'll slice you off some so you can sit at the bar and eat yummy (read: disgusting) tapas. However, they did have marvelous sangria which I consumed copiously whenever there to forget the rotting flesh hanging over my head. I think this experience is where my pre-vegan aversion to ham came from.

Oh well. I will let you know how my gluten-free veganism goes as soon as I begin it tomorrow. I'm debating going out and bingeing on gluten before I have to give it up, but I really don't want to deal with the crazy hives that will produce. Look at me, total addict going out for my last hit. Ridiculous. But yet, I still can't help it.

P.S. If you'd like to hear more of my friend's views on veganism and life, here's a link to his website.

Enough with the dreams already.

So this time I had a genuine nightmare. Nothing comical about it.

I dreamt that I got accidentally pregnant and it was a very unwelcome pregnancy because I hadn't "gone through the motions" that the huz and I agreed would be necessary before attempting a vegan pregnancy.

After the aforementioned discussion where my mom tried to scare me out of veganism by threatening deformed babies, the huz and I decided that if I wanted to be a vegan while pregnant, we would have to be very smart and careful about it. (And PLEASE do not read this the wrong way and start asking me twenty questions about our growing family. We have no plans to have kids and certainly do not want them for ages. Ick.) However, we still discussed what our plan would be and decided that when we are ready, I'll go to the doctor and get some bloodwork done to make sure that all of my chemical and nutritional levels are where they should be and then I'd work with a nutritionist to ensure I'm getting all the proper vitamins and minerals while preggo. This may sound like a lot of work, but I really can't imagine eating meat as I get queasy just considering it now, so it's what must be done to be a responsible preggo vegan.

So anyway, in my dream I got knocked up by accident (by the huz of course) and was very shocked/upset to discover this condition. I was totally freaked out to tell the huz because I knew he'd be ticked that we hadn't "followed the plan." So then I started debating whether or not I should keep the baby since it would probably be deformed due to my lack of nutrition, and then I got extremely upset because I could totally never abort a baby. This is when I woke up.

Like I said, nothing comical about this one... I think it does show that my mom's tactics did get to me. I've always found pregnancy pretty freaky to begin with (Something growing inside of you?? Haven't we seen like fifty science fiction films with this plot? They never end well...) and now it freaks me out even more... However, this does add to my arsenal of why it's necessary for us to wait to have kids. I'm too freaked out.

I really don't think it'll be an issue though. I eat much healthier and much more balanced now than I ever did before. I plan out my day to insure I'm getting the right intake of all the food groups (minus meat and dairy obvi), pay attention to my amino acids and take daily vitamins to keep my B-12 up. These are all things I never bothered with before.

However, I do have to say that I am slightly disappointed with my vegan diet. Yes, watching Food, Inc. did push me over the edge to embark on this journey, but it was also partly done for health reasons. The good news is, my stomach problems have totally disappeared since I began eating vegan. The bad news is my hives did not. I've now been tested for every allergy ever and they've all come back negative, except for apples. Of course of all the things I'd definitely be allergic to, it had to be my favorite fruit, which happens to be in EVERYTHING! I'm not pleased.

It turns out I must have a "sensativity" to something which "unfortunately cannot be tested." In other words, the doctors told me they're idiots and have no idea what's up. I so need to go on an episode of House. Dr. House would totally know what the dealio is. I'm so glad I've drained myself of all my blood for testing over the past few years to discover my 'sensitivity' to who knows what.

But the worst of it is, they assume the sensitivity is indeed to gluten. In other words, this may be my last blogpost because I am soon going to starve to death. No meat, no dairy, no eggs, no gluten? Boo. Huge sad face. I don't miss the meat, dairy, or eggs (ok, maybe occasionally the dairy) but I freaking looooove gluten-filled carbolicious foods. I have heard this is a direct result of my Finnish descent. We were programed to crave carbs to plump us up for the winter when food would be scarce so that we could survive to the next spring and summer. I like this explanation better than saying I lack all self-control or willpower to control my bagel cravings.

So anyway, I'll keep you posted on my slow descent into starvation. I had a bagel this morning at Starbucks. I decided I needed one last farewell gesture. And of course, I now have hives on my eyes. I think most people assume the huz beats me. It gets that bad. Luckily, huge granny sunglasses are totally in in New York, especially when inside. (Don't you know your cool factor raises 10 points if you wear your sunnies inside? Of course you didn't, you're not from New York.) so I just walk around in those all day and people assume I'm too important to make eye contact with them (which is also obviously true).

I have no fun pictures for you this post as I have been totally lazy and getting salads out or not making fun recipes from scratch. I did, however, make the Gardenburger Blackbean Chipotle burgers that I blogged about a few posts back. Woah nasty. I hated them. The huz loved them though, so I guess that just goes to show you how completely unrefined his palate is. Just kidding. Love the huz.

Tonight I'm going to search for another fun quinoa recipe to make and well let you know how it goes tomorrow. That is if I actually bother to cook tonight. Don't hold your breath.

I had an epiphany one night. No really, I did.

As of April 21, 2010 at 10:01 pm, I am a vegan. So weird, I know. I loooove cheese. And ice cream. And chicken. How can I be a vegan??

So on that fateful night, American Idol sucked (boo Idol Gives Back, although giving to charity is great, let's just do it without Idol) so Duncan (the huz) actually got to pick what we watched for once. Food, Inc. just so happened to be on PBS that night (and commercial free!) so we decided to watch for a bit. I was engrossed after minutes. We hear about all the crap that goes into our food nowadays, but nobody really seems to care as long as it tastes good. I used to make fun of my one college roommate for wasting all her money on organic food. God, did I have it wrong...

Even though all the hormones, chemicals and pesticides that do end up in our food is totally filthy, what really got me about Food, Inc. was the mistreatment of the animals... I am an animal lover to the core (I try to get a new pet weekly and am always shut down by the evil huz) and the images in the film really got me. How could I eat that meat when all the cute animals had been so abused just for my cheeseburger? I spent most of those two hours with my hand over my mouth in shock and trying to fight back the tears. The second the movie ended, I knew I could never eat meat again...

(If you haven't seen Food, Inc. you really need to. It's worth it just to know what you're actually consuming. We eat a minimum of three times a day. Don't you actually want to know where what you're putting in your body came from??)

So, I decided I'd become a pretend vegan. Pretend because I didn't want to eat meat and I wasn't supposed to have any dairy. I've had crazy weird health problems (read: nasty, disgusting hives) for almost two years now and we believe (although really these effing doctors have no clue) that I can't tolerate/am allergic to dairy. Sooo since I'm supposed to avoid it anyway (although I really never did), I would be a pretend vegan who still enjoyed the occasional (i.e. daily) ice cream cone and scrambled eggs every morning.

A day or two after watching the film, I went to a Barnes and Noble in the city and started browsing the vegan cookbook section. I bought two cookbooks along with The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone. I knew she was a vegan and she looked normal to me and being the weight-obsessed girl I am, I liked that she called it a diet. I read the whole thing through by Saturday morning and was thoroughly convinced that I'd made the right choice in becoming a vegan and that I would be a real one, not just pretend. The way we get most of our dairy products and eggs involves horrendous ammounts of animal cruelty as well. Most chickens have their beaks ground off so that they can't hurt one another. After that all that's left for them to do is be force fed hormones and pop out eggs for us. Have you ever really thought of that?? When we eat eggs, we're eating a hen's reproductive organ. Um, why do we think that's yummy or a good idea? So nast. (And yes, I meant to type nast, not nasty.)

I was very proud of my decision and wanted to tell everyone (as I usually do with everything, don't tell me secrets). However, my friends' reactions were definitely not what I expected. I got a lot of skeptical "Seriously?" with raised eyebrows and "Haha, ok... Let's see how long this lasts." Boo supportive friends. Although, I do totally understand where they're coming from. I'm not exactly known for picking something and sticking with it. I think my current career plan has changed four times just this month...

But that's ok. It made me that much more serious about being a vegan. Now I have to prove to them and myself that I can do it and make it work. I have to do it for the cutiepie animals that we're slaughtering for no good reason. I have to do it for the environment that's being destroyed by all the methane produced by the livestock industry in the US (more than all transportation combined!!!).

One hiccup in my path to veganism, though, was when one friend asked me if I was going to be a real vegan and stop wearing/buying leather, wool, silk, etc. Woah, upsetting. I love my shoes and purses. I definitely see where my future difficulties with being vegan will lie...

So anywho, I'm a vegan, believe it or not. I started this to keep you up to date, find some support and let others know that there are plenty of us out there trying to figure out what's right for us, animals, the environment and the world. The huz told me to start this blog since I'm probably not your typical vegan. The first thing he said when he saw my vegan cookbook (How it all Vegan!) was, "You're not allowed to look like them now that you're a vegan, ok?" Apparently he has a vendetta against tattoos. But he thinks there will be "other preppy, suburban, white girls" who will want to hear my side. He may have a point, but I think I'll still punish him for the comments...

So peace-out for now. I had my first vegan grocery shopping trip today. I'll post about it tomorrow.