21
Feb
I usually don’t give up anything for Lent, mostly because it’s a religious tradition that I don’t practice. I’m not particularly religious—do I have morals? Yes. Do I have beliefs? Yes. Do I know right from wrong and do I believe in love, forgiveness, and compassion? Yes. But do I go to church or “have a religion?” No. So even though I grew up Catholic, Lent was never really a thing that I did. But this year I’m looking at it as more of an opportunity for personal challenge and growth. An opportunity to improve my eating habits and introduce new foods (and ways of cooking them) to my diet. What, you might ask, am I giving up for Lent? All animal products.
That’s right. I’m going vegan for Lent.
40 days of no milk, eggs, cheese—cheese!—chicken, steak, turkey, honey, gelatin, honey, or ice cream? Gah. Although I’ve thought about veganism before, I keep wondering, What I could be thinking? I’m lactose intolerant (who isn’t?), but even for me, it’s hard to resist a good handful of cheese. Ew. Anyway, when my friend Mark introduced the idea of being vegan for Lent, I thought, “What better time to try this then with someone else who will be doing it too?”
So we’ve decided to make a full-fledge pledge: absolutely no animal products (including honey and gelatin) for 40 full days.
I’ve been “practicing.” I’ve been making vegan meals, going for a day or more without meat or dairy, and stocking up my new vegan kitchen. I’ve got my nutritional yeast ready to go, and I’m gearing up for the challenge! Without acknowledging it at the time, I officially started my vegan diet last night—February 19, 2011. (Three days before the start of Lent!)
Or so I thought. The first photo shown is of a delicious avocado pesto I made from the recipe of a wonderful vegan cook whom I stumbled across online. Her name is Chloe Coscarelli and she is my age and doing amazing things in the kitchen! She’s cute as a button and is true to her word when she says that she makes vegan food that actually tastes good (even to people used to eating good ole meat and dairy). {http://chefchloe.com/entrees/avocado-pesto-pasta.html}
My avocados were a little on the maybe-you-should-have-waited-a-day-or-three-before-you-used-it side, but I was so hungry I thought it was worth the risk. It did compromise the quality of the sauce a little, but overall, aside from needing more garlic, it was pretty tasty! And it would have been completely vegan had I not chosen fancy-shmancy spinach and chive noodles that contained egg whites. Those fuckers.
The second photo shown contained zucchini latkes (I added carrots) that I made from a recipe I found on a blog called Cupcakes and Kale. Cook, Jess, has tons of great vegan recipes including one I’m going to try for fettuccine alfredo. {http://cupcakesandkale.blogspot.com/2011/09/zucchini-latkes.html}
The meal I compiled had no-sugar-added apple sauce to eat with the latkes, and sides of yellow rice (cumin & rosemary cooked in basmati rice) and steamed lemon-pepper asparagus.
Even though it’s only been 24 hours of official vegan-ness, I’ve already found a great support group of people who have recently started messing around with a vegan lifestyle and experienced vegans and vegetarians, along with tons of blogs and websites that have honest-to-god tasty vegan recipes. I’ve also found that turning off my reflex of reaching for that fresh-baked cookie at work (main ingredients, milk chocolate and butter) takes a lot of work. Making time to prepare meals and snacks to take on the go (especially with me at work—because hunger that comes from exhaustion can happen quicker than you think, and that is exactly when I reach for that cookie) requires time to adjust.
I have a feeling that there will be slip-ups along the way like I had with my oops-there-are-egg-whites-in-these-fucking-shamncy-noodles, but hopefully none of the purposeful kind. Who knows where I will be after Lent is over, but I hope that I can at least last until the end.
