Slow Start, Ketchup!

Almost a week ago marked the start of the veganizing of our household. For the first many days, due to semi recent change in mine and my fiance's work schedule, I couldn't muster up the ability to cook. We've been stretched a bit thin, as we have different days off in the week. Previously we'd shop and I would cook primarily on our weekend. Without a shared weekend I lost a lot of my desire to cook and in the evenings we preferred spending time together.

However, I decided today that we'd been eating too many lazy vegan foods. I'd made wise choices in getting some vegan soups that I added vegetables too and we'd eat with vegan naan, whole wheat pasta with simple tomato sauce, and salads gleaned here and there. Oh, and lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches-- not exactly the picture of what we were going for.

We went shopping today and picked up some things I needed to cook for the week. I made some extraordinarily good Baked Vegan Chimichangas today, taken from vegweb.com (recipe here ... Baked Vegan Chimichangas!) I didn't change much, except that I omitted the onions (honey doesn't like'm) and swapped bell pepper for zucchini (chopped.) I purchased store made vegan guac, as I didn't have the energy to make that as well.

They were remarkably easy to make, and done in about an hour total. The process of putting them together was a little time consuming, but ultimately worth it. I made about 12 small-medium sized chimis and have enough of the filling left to repurpose later. I made them a little spicier than I had intended, which was only compounded by the spicy guac I had picked out.

All is well that ends well-- so far so good.

We ended our meal with vegan coconut ice cream! a la Turtle Mountain. I am thrilled as I actually am a bit lactose intolerant as well as allergic to soy... so Ice cream is almost never a go. This stuff is delicious. I admit, it is a little different than dairy ice cream, but it is wholly satisfying.

I've found that the breakfast foods for vegan (I eat some kind of Oat cereal) with the almond milk are actually quite delicious- and the fiance quite enjoys his Kashi with coconut milk.

Next on my queue for recipes is a Spicy Crockpot Dahl (Indian) which I'll do tomorrow or Thursday while at work.

Cheers!
Flea

What are these tiny round things...?

A few weeks ago I was following the blog of a friend of mine (how do you link blogs here? blargh, I'll put it in later) and reflecting on the challenges I've had with food addiction. In our dialogue, I considered going vegan for a period of a few weeks to assist me with getting past my addiction.
When I presented this to my fiance, I expected him to at best, grudgingly agree to my change, and at worst, perhaps give me a hard time. However, I was surprised to find that he wanted to join and support me on my journey.

It was my fiance, then, who suggested that we dual purpose this challenge. The two of us decided to go vegan for Lent, using the time for contemplation both personally and spiritually.

Lent began two days ago with our Ash Wednesday service.

I wanted to blog some about the challenges of being vegan when it is not what you are used to, about getting past food addiction, about the spiritual journey of a kind of "fasting".

So, I plan to document everything from recipes to inner dialogue in an effort to search out what works for me (us) as we go through this time.

Cheers,

Flea