Vegan Week: Wrap-Up

As my vegan week progressed, it seemed to get a little easier and easier - a good thing! However, I know now that it is definitely not a sustainable diet for me. I missed cheese, yogurt, milk, and ice cream too much! This challenge gave me an excuse to finally go to Imagine Vegan Cafe. I was seriously surprised that the turkey cutlets we ordered were actually pretty tasty! We also ordered a sampler platter with buffalo chicken strips, pigs in a blanket, chicken nuggets and cheese sticks all totally vegan. The pigs in a blanket were a little weird... but when you take a gross hot dog and make it vegan, it can only get worse! Haha.

Sampler Platter Munchies

Fake-turkey cutlets!

After dinner we headed to our first flick at the Indie Memphis Film Fest, The Comedy which was nothing like what I was expecting! It starred Tim Heideker, one of the funny guys from the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job but apparently the title was ironic because this one was not really a comedy. Ha. Regardless, it was fun to see something unexpected! 

Saturday, I was really missing my chocolate milk fix after the 16-miler with my fellow Star Runners! Instead, I picked up a cinnamon dolce soy latte from Starbucks (once I learned that the majority of their latte syrups are vegan!). It hit the spot. I think I might actually prefer the soy milk. :-)

That evening, we went to Fuel for dinner. The vegan-friendly dishes were more limited than I had thought. :-( In the end, I got a salad and bowl of their vegan chili. I shared this with Will and he split his veggie burger with me. That veggie burger was actually one of the best I have ever had! BTW - the sour cream and cheese on the chili are both vegan - not sure what they are made of but they weren't bad!

Yummy!

After dinner, we headed back to the film fest, this time for Richard's Wedding. This was such a delightfully different rom-com. :-)

Sunday I had to work. :-/ Luckily, I had the Memphis Farmers Market's Harvest Celebration to look forward to all day long! So much fun. :-) This year we just went for the food and the company, since we were too late for the silent auction. (We had picked up some fun things last year!) I decided to break my vegan diet for the celebration - there was no way I could turn down those delicious dishes! I figured I'd made it - I was only one meal away from an entire week.

Yum!

Chillin' at the Harvest Celebration! (Should have
turned the flash on. Grr.)

I'm loving this new dress and boots - compliments
of Will! :-)

Vegan Day 4: Tortilla-less Burrito!

Howdy!
 Hope you are all having a wonderful Halloween week! I have been having a fun time with this vegan-venture. :-) For lunch today, I packed that walnut-tomato pasta I made the other night. It was actually 10x better as leftovers! Maybe I shouldn't have written that recipe off so quickly. Hmm. I decided to also revisit overnight oatmeal since I needed a quick breakfast again this morning. I think I prefer this made with vanilla almond milk. I loved the hint of vanilla in addition to the pb and bananas I added! Plus, I didn't have to add anything to sweeten it since the almond milk added enough sweetness by itself. Yum.

  Tonight, I was excited to try something Southwest inspired. This was another super simple dinner. I only wish I had some lettuce or tortillas to wrap it in but I forgot to pick any up at the store... and I wasn't in the mood to visit Kroger tonight. To make this dish, I just chopped up a sweet potato and cooked it on the stove-top with a little olive oil and vegetable broth. Once the sweet potato chunks had started to soften, I added the beans, seitan, taco seasoning and a bit more broth. Stir together and simmer for about 5-7 minutes. Served in a pile on my plate with some guacamole and veggie leftovers from the other night! Tasty. :-)
I am excited for Friday! This weekend is the Indie Film Festival in Memphis. I'm hoping to catch some great films!

Vegan Day 3: Keeping It Simple

Whew! I am one tired girl today! Guess I shouldn't have stayed up extra late finishing The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani. It was such a beautiful story I just couldn't put it down. I was actually in tears at one point. Trigiani guides you through the lives of Ciro and Enza as they both discover what it means to have family, love, and a home. It seemed no matter the circumstances, Ciro and Enza kept running in to one another until one day they decided to never live apart again.

Anyways, now to dinner!! I was glad that this dinner was an easy one since I was feeling so tuckered out. Ha! To throw this together, I just sprinkled the seitan with taco seasoning and heated it up on the stove-top for a few minutes. I topped my greens with the cooked seitan, guacamole, a few cherry tomatoes, and a little bit of salsa. Voila!

Vegan Day 2: Pasta Time!

My morning started off right when my friends and I saw a meteor/shooting star today before 6AM on our run!  How cool! We all assumed it was a firework until Emily came across a post by Action 5 News asking if anyone caught a pic of the meteor. :-) Since I have little time to get ready after my morning run, I packed some granola, almond milk, peanut butter, and a banana to mix together at work for breakfast. This kept me going much better than the oatmeal yesterday!
This evening, I cooked up two recipes from Oh She Glows. The first was the Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Brussesl Sprouts with Rosemary and Garlic. I didn't really do anything different than her original recipe except use red-skin potatoes.

Ready for the oven!

Alongside the roasted sprouts and potatoes, I served the Tomato Walnut Basil Pasta. I really did want to try the nutritional yeast that she calls for in the sauce for this recipe, but it was too expensive to buy at Whole Foods just for the sake of experimenting. I didn't want to be stuck with a whole tub of it if I didn't like it! Anyways, the pasta was pretty tasty. Not sure I am a huge fan of walnuts in the sauce, but I figured I could use the protein!

Dinner is served!

I must confess, I have really been missing milk in my life. Almond milk just doesn't make my coffee as creamy as cows milk!

Vegan Day 1: Pumpkin Curry Soup

Day 1 of this vegan week! Woohoo! I started the week off with a bowl of banana, walnut, brown sugar and almond milk oatmeal. Yum. :-)

This evening, I experimented by roasting a pumpkin to use for soup rather than going with canned. It was quite a bit of work! That pumpkin was a bit tough to cut up. I tried to roast it like The Pioneer Woman did in her blog, but it took much longer in my oven and didn't soften as much as I'd hoped. So, the dish ended up being a much thicker stew-like dish rather than a creamy soup - but it wasn't bad! I think I'll need to do a little more tweaking with this one so I won't include a recipe this time around.

Mmm... pumpkin stew!

However, speaking of good vegan recipes, I made this lentil and polenta dish last week that was awesome! I found it in the local Memphis Health + Fitness magazine complements of Whole Foods Market. When I went to make this after picking up the ingredients at the store, I didn't realize that it was a slow-cooker meal! Instead, I just prepped it on the stove-top and it worked out just fine. :-) I had to cut the recipe in half... and I still had leftovers!

Slow Cooker Lentil Stew with Polenta

(By Whole Foods Market in Health + Fitness - directions edited to cook on the stove-top.)

Ingredients:

- 1 1/2 cup brown lentils

- 2 onions, sliced

- 1 large green bell pepper, diced

- 4 cloves garlic, minced

- 1 can plum tomatoes with juice

- 1 teaspoon dried oregano

- 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

- 1 1/2 cup vegetable broth

- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

- 1 cup quick-cooking polenta

Directions:

Cook lentils according to package directions using vegetable broth as the liquid. Saute onion, bell pepper, and garlic in a separate pan in a bit of olive oil until softened. Add tomatoes to the other vegetables and cook until it starts to simmer. Add cooked lentils, salt, vinegar, oregano, and red pepper to the tomato mixture. Simmer for 7-10 minutes. Serve on polenta! Yum!!

Vegan Challenge

Since it has been about 6 months, I revisited my "25 While 25 List" and realized I still have a lot of work to do! So, I committed to buckling down and trying to cross a few more things off. This week - it's #13, "Go vegan for a few days". When I told Will about my plan, he was like, "you can't just do a couple of days, you totally need to do a week!". Hmm. Well, I guess I have to now! After perusing some great vegan blogs like, Oh She Glows, The Vegan Stoner, and Peas and Thank You I think I was able to come up with a good plan. As long as I can resist the temptation of the ice cream social at work on Tuesday... I think I can make it happen! Haha.
When I think about my usual diet as a vegetarian, my meals are not too far from following vegan diet rules. If you are unfamiliar with the difference between vegetarian and vegan, here's a brief comparison:
Vegetarian: Refrains from meat such as chicken, beef, and pork. May or may not also restrict fish in their diet (I don't!). Dairy and eggs are ok.
Vegan: Eats no animal products of any kind. This means they restrict everything from steak to honey, gelatin, milk, eggs, other dairy, and in some cases beer/wine.
It's funny to see some people's reaction to when I say that I'm a vegetarian. Usually, they immediately assume I am a vegan, ie. "crazy person". Ha! As you can tell from the blogs I linked above, the vegan diet is no longer just for hippies or Hindu monks!

Shopping to prep for vegan week!

Each day, I plan to post about what I ate and any good recipes I came across. Here's my plan for dinner each day:
Monday:
Creamy Roasted Pumpkin Soup 
Tuesday: 
Tomato Walnut Basil Pasta by Oh She Glows
Wednesday: 
"Taco salad" with crumbled seitan and guacamole
Thursday:
Black bean and sweet potato tacos 
Friday:
Lentil and Squash Curry Stew by Oh She Glows
Saturday:
Dinner out - this could be a challenge!
Sunday:
Leftovers or Lentil Loaf by The Vegan Stoner

I am really excited about this experiment! It will be tough to miss out on cheese, milk, and greek yogurt for a week, but here goes! Maybe I'll love it and never want to go back...