Vegan for a Week, Part Two

Sweet potato enchilada

(Vegan for a Week, Part One link)

After a week of vegan eating, I am surprised how little I missed meat. I missed dairy a lot more, especially cheese and yogurt. I am sure, though, that if I did this for a longer time I would develop some serious cravings. I can’t imagine never having a cheeseburger again, or pancakes, or butter. I missed animal-based accents to meals more than big servings of the foods themselves. I wanted to sprinkle Parmesan on my soup and cheddar on my chili. I wanted to make a roux with butter. I wanted to scramble an egg in my stir-fry.

I did feel really great throughout the week. There were times when I felt pleasingly “clean” after a meal. It’s hard to describe—sort of a hungry feeling without being hungry, an absence of that bloated feeling that a greasy meal can cause.

Here are the rest of my meals from the week and some final thoughts.

Thursday

Coffee with soy milk

Cereal with blueberries and soy milk

Vegetarian chili over brown rice

Applesauce

Granola bar

Hummus with pita chips

Stir-fried vegetables over brown rice

Friday

Coffee with soy milk

Cereal with blueberries and soy milk

Vegetarian chili over brown rice

Apple

Pretzels

Vegetable dumplings

Hummus and pita

Sweet potato enchilada with beans and brown rice

Beer (Wolaver’s organic)

Day 5 comments: We went out to dinner with another couple on Friday night to It’s Only Natural, a vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Middletown, CT. It was really good and felt like a real treat after my Spartan meals throughout the week.

Saturday

Coffee with soy milk

Oatmeal with banana and blueberries

Hummus and pita bread

Homemade “clean the fridge” soup

Day 6 comments: I ate breakfast very late and didn’t have an appetite at lunchtime. For the soup, I used all the leftover vegetables from throughout the week and also threw in leftover brown rice and some quinoa and spinach.

Sunday

Coffee with soy milk

Oatmeal with banana and blueberries

Edamame

Vegetable sushi

Veggie burger with chili wrap

Pretzels

Day 7 comments: I entered the foods I ate into a calorie-counting web site to see the percentages of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. I did end up light on protein, getting about 13-15 percent of my calories from protein, rather than the recommended 20 percent. I didn’t use any tofu, having disliked it in the past, but I would add it if I did this for the long term.

Final thoughts

I want to incorporate more vegetarian and vegan meals into my regular diet, and, when I do have meat, use it more as an accent rather than the center of the meal. I also have wanted to avoid factory farmed meat and eggs since seeing Food, Inc. a few years ago, but I have never made the change. Just now I punched in my zip code on the Food, Inc. web site, and there is an organic farm within five miles of my house, so I plan to check it out.

A few more photos

Food, Inc. movie site

I thought of this old commercial a lot during the week: