Lunar Vegan

One month of herbivore life, unfiltered

[lunarvegan]

Cheese and The Aftermath

I did it!

33 days as a vegan! :)

I'm pretty proud of myself for accomplishing something I never thought I could do. 

As of this morning I am back to being an omnivore.

When I woke up I kind of had to remind myself that I could eat anything again and it was actually kind of anti-climactic. I had tostadas and dried cranberries for breakfast, but this time I could have regular milk in my coffee. Great, but no big deal. 

At lunch I had pizza, which I'd been craving for weeks, but it wasn't that satisfying. It just felt like so much cheese, like it didn't belong there. It took effort to finish eating it, because it was just like this extra thing I wasn't used to digesting. This experience brought me to a discovery that I'm somewhat lactose intolerant. Prior to vegan month, I'd been having some annoying digestive issues which now that I think about it, completely went away for those 30 days.

Also strange..the place I went for lunch had cheeseless tofu vegan pizza and I almost ordered it. Even as I was waiting for my regular pizza, I kept looking at the tofu pizza and kind of wanted that instead. What?! What's going on here?

Perhaps veganism does my body good, mostly because I pay more attention to what I'm eating. Maybe next time I order pizza I'll go for the vegan slice, or ask for less cheese, if the option is available. 

I even got ham on my pizza and it wasn't that good. It felt, again, like it just shouldn't be there and didn't add much. 

Would my experience have been different if I'd gone to my favorite pizza place and ordered a pepperoni and sausage slice? Maybe. But the conclusion is the same; it's best to save the meat and dairy consumption for occasions when I can have something very good or of very high quality. Rather than being an everyday thing, it can be a treat. 

And yes, I'll still be making a trip to Lula's Sweet Apothecary in the east village to try their vegan ice cream, even if I could just go to Baskin Robins.

Why? Maybe it's the novelty of it. Maybe it's the idea of supporting a vegan business now that I know the struggle is real. I have a new found respect for people that can live this lifestyle full-time. Not to mention, I only lived as a food vegan, not a lifestyle vegan. I still wore leather and used products which may or may not contain animal products. 

I can't even imagine having to worry about not being able to wear a pair of shoes I liked because they were made of leather. 

I guess my philosophy on these things is akin to that of the native Americans; if you're going to kill the animal, use all of the parts for something. Don't let it die in vain. 

Happy April. Go outside and smile. 

[lunarvegan]

Day 32 : Making up for messing up

So, despite the fact that March obviously has only 31 days, I messed up a bit, and am making up for the two days that I:

1) Ate Cool Ranch Doritos (not vegan) instead of Sweet Chili Doritos (vegan)

2) Put white sugar in my coffee because I was half-asleep and not paying attention

Anyway, I know I haven't posted in a while, and that's mostly because after the first two weeks or so, I kinda got used to things and they weren't as bizarre anymore. 

Once I got into tofu, it wasn't really difficult anymore. 

I've been eating tofu almost every day, and less chick peas and beans. This isn't particularly healthy, since beans have a multitude of vitamins and minerals that are not present in tofu. 

I've also been eating less vegetables. Rather than altering my eating patterns drastically, I basically replaced meat with tofu. 

I also have eaten more fried foods than I normally would. Somehow it seems okay to have them because I'm not having meat, but this isn't true. 

Over the last month I visited a handful of new eateries in NYC:

Chickpea - many locations throughout manhattan

S'Nice - 8th and 11th - West Village

Peacefood Cafe - 11th and University - Greenwich Village

The Loving Hut - Off the Grand St. L in Brooklyn

My #1 so far has been S'Nice, but Loving Hut has normal people food prices and a great selection, which is much appreciated. 

I've had a hit or miss experience with Peacefood. The pastries are amazing, but I find that their food isn't seasoned well, and they just don't put much effort into it. 

As for Chickpea, it's kind of the old standby. Healthy food, no frills. 

All in all, I have to say this entire thing has been far easier than I ever imagined. I learned to cook a few new dishes and found some new restaurants. I didn't have the crazy meat cravings I thought I would. 

But, I can't stop thinking about cheese. All I have wanted for the past week is pizza. :/

[lunarvegan]

Day 18: Overeating is Fun But...

The dangerous thing about vegetarian and vegan diets is the false sense of security that not consuming butter and animal fats gives you about how much you can eat. I just ate a soy yogurt that had 170 calories. I would never in a million years eat a dairy yogurt with that amount of calories. I would, in my usual state, go for the LaYogurt brand, light. It has like 89 calories and tastes amazing. The soy yogurt was great but way too sugary and didn't have any real fruits in it :( Today in general was just a ridiculous day. I had the following: Breakfast: Cliff bar Lunch: Tofu marinara (half sandwich) On the way to work: Black coffee At work: Tofu marinara (other half) Split pea soup Dinner: Rice and garbanzo soup Avocado Mango soy yogurt Did I mention I only woke up at like 10? So all this in 13 hours.. I'm not sure if I'm just hungrier because I'm not eating meat or because I finally found foods I like, but it's a dangerous road. I am definitely consuming more calories than I normally would, and there's no excuse for it. Some of my friends joke that vegetarians are the fattest people they know. I could see how one could go down that road easily. I've never had so many cravings for fried foods until now. Normally I avoid fried things but something about not eating meat leaves a void that can only be filled with French fries, falafel and sautéed tofu; all definitely artery clogging even if I use olive oil at home. So tomorrow I'm gonna bring my focus back to veggies and start watching what I eat a little more, and...maybe also go for a swim.

[lunarvegan]

[lunarvegan]

10 posts!

[lunarvegan]

Days 14-17 : It Gets Better!

I’ve made it half a month without eating meat. This is something I never thought I could do. Granted it has been difficult; I think about eating meat or cheese at least once a day.

The thing is though, I’m making a lot of new discoveries because of these restrictions.

This weekend, I made a breakthrough.

I visited a place called S'Nice where I had a smoked tofu, tomato and pesto panini so good I’m still thinking about it 24 hours later. In fact, I’ve made myself two tofu, tomato sauce and olive oil sandwiches trying to imitate theirs in those 24 hours.

I acquired said tofu at Whole Foods, on a little vegan shopping trip I made over the weekend. The brand is Soyboy . They have tofu specifically seasoned for Italian, Asian and Caribbean cooking.  It’s extra firm too, which resolves the issue I had with tofu in the past; it was always too mushy. This one has a consistency more similar to a block of mozzarella, but a bit thicker.

After I got home from the supermarket that day I put some on my spinach tomato fettuccine. 

The trick was to treat it like chicken breast. I chopped up some garlic and onions, sprinkled some salt, basil, Italian seasoning and sautéed it in olive oil, adding the cooked tofu on top of a bed of fettuccine, veggies and sauce.

I had my sister try it and, surprised at how good it was, she said “You’ll survive” (as a vegan).

She’s right. Once you really start exploring all the options available, try things out and realize that what makes food good is mostly the seasonings (which come from plants and herbs!) , you realize the possibilities are endless.

Other discoveries of the week:

Kale chips

I’d never tried kale before, and am really more of a spinach-lover, but I’ve heard so much about it I figured I’d give it a shot. I found this recipe this recipe and tried making kale chips. It’s a bit hard to get the crispiness right, but I ended up just leaving it in the oven after the 15 minutes recommended. I turned the oven off, so it was really just slowly cooking them while I continued preparing my meal. I overdid it with the salt though, so I could only eat a little bit of them, but they were otherwise really good, and an easy way to get all the health benefits of kale without feeling like a rabbit.  

Vegan brownies

I decided to give Peacefood  another shot, but only to try out the deserts. Most stuff there is really expensive; like almost $8 for a slice of pie. So my choices were mostly cookies or brownies. The mini brownies are only $1.50 a pop, and not being a big sweets person I think they’re just the right size for a light desert. I have to say, I was amazed at how good they are and will absolutely be back and/or try to make my own soon.

Lastly, I googled “vegan ice cream NYC” and got a result for this place this place in the East Village. I haven’t tried it yet, but am planning to soon.

That’s the amazing thing about New York; any strange thing you can imagine (like dairy-free ice cream) probably exists, and you just have to walk 15 minutes. But if you don't happen to live in the area you can always try one of these 29 recipes for vegan ice cream.  

[lunarvegan]

Days 10 -11 : Ah Ee Oh, Killer Tofu! (and Tempeh)

I’ve never been a fan of things that try to be something they’re not.

Still I knew it was bound to happen. I would be at a restaurant and see people eating some delicious food containing little strips of meat, and I, wanting to partake in the joy, would order the same dish with tofu instead.  Simple enough.  So last night I had tofu teriyaki stir-fry. Unfortunately, I’m still not convinced about tofu.

I’m very big on texture.

I will not eat overcooked green beans, pasta, rice, broccoli, and other foods that easily cross the line from chewy to mush as a consequence of just a minute of neglect. I had told myself maybe I just hadn’t tried the right firmness of tofu, but I don’t think it exists for me at all, since I really love teriyaki anything and even that couldn’t convince me.

So I wondered, is  tofu even healthy?

Pros:

Low calorie

High Protein

High iron

No cholesterol

May contain calcium and manganese (depending on how it’s processed)

Cons:

Too much soy can cause some strange reactions, as noted in these articles

(But I guess if you’re a woman, there’s no harm)

So really, the only con for me is the texture and taste. It doesn’t really seem necessary for me to eat tofu since I’m pretty sure I can get those same nutrients from other foods.  Plus, I’d heard about this other stuff called tempeh, which sounded promising.

Tempeh, also made from soy, is very different. First off, it’s fermented and retains the whole soy bean, rather than being made from the soy milk. The result is a higher protein product with more vitamins and a thicker texture that looks and feels more like meat.

It’s featured on this site as one of the world’s healthiest foods. Meanwhile, this article this article points out its advantages over tofu.  I figured, the first chance I got, I’d try tempeh.

Luckily, today as I was trying to figure out what I’d eat for dinner, I stumbled upon Peacefood Café  . It’s an entirely vegan restaurant. When I walked in to the shop, there were a multitude of pastries on display; cookies, key lime pie, even brownies. I thought I’d died and gone to vegan heaven.

I was there for dinner though, so I took the opportunity to try the tempeh avocado sandwich. I was disappointed.

While tempeh’s texture is a huge improvement over tofu, it kind of tastes like fermented nothing. It looks like a pale pork chop in a sandwich, but one bite leaves you wondering how exactly to categorize this mystery food which has a nutty, acidic flavor. Add to this that the bread was very dry, and it was an epic fail; an expensive one.

As I sat in Washington Square staring out at the hippie tightrope walkers and listening to the taiko drummers on this beautiful 60-degree day - an otherwise perfect dinner break – I looked at my strange, little dry sandwich and asked “what the hell am I eating?” I had no choice but to walk to Mamoun's and order some falafel balls.

I’d rather eat chickpeas and black beans and mushrooms (which I’m not a fan of in the first place) than imitation meat products any day. I guess being on a plant based diet requires rethinking the way we eat, going for more natural foods, and not just substituting strange white spongy/ processed stuff and trying really hard to pretend it’s chicken.

When you have a meat craving, killer tofu is not the way to beet it.

[lunarvegan]

Day 6-7: Chickpea Universe

I've basically been surviving on beans, rice, bananas, coffee and the occasional unhealthy fried vegetable thing (falafel, french fries, samosas). 

I have to say, it's not really as difficult as I thought it would be. Most days this week I packed myself a lunch, and today I went to Chickpea which is this amazing place where most of the menu is vegan/vegetarian and the falafel is baked.   

I’ve never been so aware of the existence of chick peas (garbanzos) until this week.

It was my great-grandma who introduced me to garbanzos. She’d sauté a pan full of them every once in a while, and I’d get excited to have a bowl with rice waiting for me when I got home from school.  Granted, chickpeas sautéed in oil, (and accompanied by fried beef meatballs as I preferred them) probably aren’t as healthy, but I became a fan of the taste anyway, so there was a positive side-effect.

I mostly stopped eating chickpeas after she passed.

Still, every once in a while someone in my family makes a variation of garbanzos. The first time I went to Florida, one of my relatives made us garbanzo soup. (She’s known in the family as a bit of an expert on the subject) The key of course, is adding ham or chorizo (not currently an option). There are two basic variations passed down from Spain, known as potaje de garbanzos, or the more brothy garbanzada canaria. The garbanzada is my favorite, though my grandma adopted the thicker recipe with potatoes for some reason (luckily she makes a vegan version).

Garbanzo recipes have been passed down in our family matrilineally for generations and across oceans, each person adding their own spin, but I always figured they were just some obscure Cuban food. I literally never ate chickpeas at my friends’ houses and thought my family was just really weird.

But actually, they were onto something.  

Some digging around shows that a cup of chickpeas will provide you with half your necessary dietary fiber for the day, 29% of your protein, and lots of vitamins and minerals including iron and maganese. They also help lower cholesterol, curb appetite, burn fat and stabilize blood sugar   

Even the New York Times touted their virtues and versatility. Plus, they just taste good.  

[lunarvegan]

Day 4/5 : Snack Attack

One of the hardest things about being on a vegan diet is finding snacks. Luckily I am in Manhattan where it’s easier than most places, but out of all the snack foods I may find on a run to the convenience store, I can probably only eat about 10% of them.

Last night I had some of these rice and bean chips, which are amazing btw, as strange as they sound.

Potato chips are one of my favorite foods in the world, though I generally avoid them since they’re obviously not healthy. But as I was eating my rice and bean chips, clearly marked as vegan on the package, I came to the obvious conclusion that all chips should be vegan in the first place, and as good as they are, they cost a bit more than the regular stuff, simply because they’re gluten free, vegan, etc. But if you don’t have a gluten allergy, are broke, or find yourself in a 7-Eleven at midnight with an incessant chip craving, can’t you just eat Doritos?

Well sometimes. Generally speaking, the unacceptable choices are obvious: cheese flavored things, like Cheetos for example. But another thing to be conscious of with all processed foods is hidden animal products; obvious ones like lard, but also others:

http://m.dummies.com/how-to/content/hidden-animal-ingredients-in-foods.html

The list can be a bit confusing, since many of these substances can actually be derived from plants also, but some of them are exclusively animal products.

Rather than hunt down every bag of chips and read the ingredients, I went through Peta’s Accidentally Vegan page and made a shorter list of only chips:

Brownstone Baking Co. Mini Bagel Crisps (Garlic Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Flavored Tortilla Chips Frito Lay Sabritones Fritos (Barbecue) Fritos (Original) Herr’s Onion Flavored Rings Herr’s Salsa and Lime Tortilla Chips Keebler Club Crackers Kettle Brand Potato Chips Sea Salt & Vinegar Kettle White Popcorn Lay’s Blue Corn Chips Lay’s Potato Chips (Natural Country Barbecue) Lay’s Potato Chips (Plain) Lay’s Potato Chips (Thick Cut Sea Salt) Lay’s Stax Lay’s Yellow Corn Chips Mission Foods Pre-Cut Unfried Tortilla Chips and Strips Mission Foods Pre-Fried Tortilla Chips and Strips Nabisco Saltine Crackers Nabisco Triscuit Crackers Baked Whole Grain Wheat Fire Roasted Tomato Nabisco Triscuit Crackers Baked Whole Grain Wheat Rosemary & Olive Oil Nabisco Triscuit Crackers Cracked Pepper & Olive Original Terra Chips Ritz Regular Crackers Ritz Whole Wheat Crackers Ruffles Potato Chips (All Dressed) Ruffles Potato Chips (BBQ) Ruffles Potato Chips (Plain) Snyder’s Jalapeno Pretzel Pieces Snyder’s Pretzel Sticks (Pumpernickel/Onion and Oat Bran) Soy Crisps (Barbecue, Deep Sea Salt, and Garlic Onion) Stacey’s Pita Chips (Baked and Taxarkana Hot) Sun Chips Original flavor Toasteds Crackers (Sesame and Wheat) Town House Original Crackers Triscuit Crackers (Original, Reduced Fat, Garlic Herb, and Roasted Garlic) Wheat Thins (Original, Multi-Grain, and Reduced Fat) Wise Onion Rings

As you’ll notice you can still eat a whole lot of popular potato chips without consuming animal products. Of course, that doesn’t make them a good choice. The rice and bean chips are still healthier, since they are also baked, contain less calories and more protein, obviously.

So I guess spending that extra dollar is worth it if you care about your health as much as you care about that of a random cow in Nebraska.

[lunarvegan]

Day 3: I Want Chicken / Olfactory Meat Mirage

Let me explain. (Not that there ever needs to be a justification for wanting chicken)

Today at work, someone brought in food, which they shouldn’t have had in the space at all, but I digress. I was working and just got a whiff of this incredibly strong chicken smell, like General Tso’s or sesame chicken. It was extremely distracting. All I could think was “Oh my god I want to eat chicken so bad right now!” (Which was ridiculous because it's not like I would've just grabbed and eaten someone else's chicken if I wasn't on a vegan diet)

But… it turned out not to be chicken at all. When I discovered where the smell was coming from, it was actually a plate of French fries.

This is what I call an Olfactory Meat Mirage, or OMM for short; a commonplace phenomenon. 

Just like when people think they see water in the desert, or when you’re waiting on the subway platform and think you see a train coming; it’s that moment when you’re walking down the street on a summer day and you think you smell roast chicken or burgers, but it ends up just being something boring like fries, eggplant or vegetable skewers.

I expect I’ll be having a lot more OMM’s as this month progresses. But it’s not all bad. I spent no money on food today since I packed my lunch and snacks for the day, plus I just had the best vegetable broth, rice and chickpea bowl for dinner. Also, I learned that soy milk makes weird little spoiled-milk-looking spots in your coffee but it's not spoiled at all! Which is odd, and actually kind of gross. 

But hey, here’s this interesting and informative website with vegan/vegetarian recipes to save the day!

[lunarvegan]

Day 2: The Quest for Prepared Food

A few nights before I started this whole thing I stopped by the supermarket to pick up some breakfast bars and things I could take with me so I wouldn’t end up spending all my money eating at HU Kitchen in moments of weakness, because anyone who dines there every day can’t possibly pay their rent or clothe themselves. I’m convinced only models eat there, since they only consume one meal a week, it’s affordable. 

Moving on. See the bag of veggie burgers? Black bean burgers, no preservatives. But when I read the ingredients, I found out they contain egg and dairy. Fail.

So I ate them the night before March 1st and they were really good, but why would you make a veggie product that has egg and dairy? I felt deceived. It seems all the brands kind of follow this same pattern, so I have no choice but to make them at home myself, which is way less convenient.

Next, the Clif bars: when I was shopping it occurred to me that maybe granola bars aren’t okay to eat, so I did a search and came to this Peta page.

Among all the strange concoctions of ‘healthy’ fast food surrounding me as I stood in my local supermarket’s health nut aisle, this site was telling me that the mint chocolate chip bars are okay to eat? Really? A quick glance of the ingredients shows that Clif uses soymilk in their chocolate, but it also says “may contain traces of milk, wheat and tree nuts” Has Peta gone crazy? Another page on their site contained this statement:

*Items listed may contain trace amounts of animal-derived ingredients. While PETA supports a strict adherence to veganism, we put the task of vigorously reducing animal suffering ahead of personal purity. Boycotting products that are 99.9 percent vegan sends the message to manufacturers that there is no market for this food, which ends up hurting more animals. 

So…it’s impossible to be vegan and consume prepared foods is basically what they’re saying, but let’s all try really really hard and be 99.9% vegan and support companies who try also.

Okay, fine. If people who are morally opposed to eating animals approve of “trace amounts of milk” then I’m going to go ahead and eat it, because well, I’m not going to make homemade granola bars every Sunday when I could be watching Netflix or writing a number one hit song.

Lesson of the week, there are three distinct categories of vegan foods:

 1) (the obvious) Vegetables, fruits and nuts, and all things which are not processed and just exist in their natural vegetableness

 2) Products which are explicitly vegan and marketed as such, like the split pea soup above

 3) Products which are accidentally vegan, which includes peanut butter, Oreos and Sweet Chili Doritos :)

What is not necessarily vegan is food marketed toward vegetarians. These foods often contain eggs or milk (like the veggie balls at The Meatball Shop). Alternately, just because it's processed, mass produced fast food, doesn’t mean it contains animal products.

The downside (or upside, depending on your perspective) of course is that you could eat Doritos and Oreos every day, gaining a whole lot of weight and becoming extremely unhealthy in the process, kind of like this guy who reached 475lbs on a vegan diet.

Bottom line, avoiding animal products is hard, or maybe not that hard, but it certainly isn't a recipe for perfect health on its own without some conscious effort to refrain from becoming a french fry addict. 

Sunday’s Meals:

Breakfast - Clif Bar, banana, coffee w/ soy milk

Lunch – Peanut butter soy milkshake, Clif bar

Dinner - Red beans, rice w/ peas & carrots, salad (mango, tomato,  cranberries, lettuce and cucumber), garbanzo soup, orange juice

Snack – hummus and pretzel snack pack

[lunarvegan]

Day 1: Refrigerator Scavenge

It’s my first day as a vegan and so far things aren’t so different. Although, I’ve only been awake for a few hours and haven’t left the house.

After rolling out of bed I made my way to the refrigerator to immediately encounter 101 things I couldn’t eat. Oh look, roasted red pepper Laughing Cow cheese, a new carton of eggs just mocking me from behind their plastic wrapper…Nope. Finally, I dug up some organic grape jelly and made this (which was actually pretty delicious): 

The bread is Dutch Country whole wheat, which according to this website is totally vegan. Yay! Surprisingly though, a lot of other breads are not, and there doesn’t seem to always be brand consistency. The site recommends sticking to Kosher breads, since they generally do not have dairy. Apparently milk and meat are not okay to eat together in Kosherland. Lucky for me I live in the northeast and Kosher products are about as ubiquitous as fried chicken in Georgia.

Another suspicious breakfast food: sugar.

According to some, sugar (especially white sugar) is not vegan because it’s processed with “bone char”. Kinda weird and seemingly unnecessary.  Though others say brown sugar is ok, so I think what I put in my tea is safe (?) But I’ll probably pick up some agave nectar soon too. Which, btw reminds me that most tequila is 100% vegan, thus the plight of the plant-eaters isn’t so bad. If all else fails, I’ll survive on Tres Generaciones for a month.

Throughout my search for sustenance in a carnivorous Cuban kitchen, I was reassured that I’d never go hungry with the endless supply of garbanzos, black beans, dark red beans, light red beans, white beans and split peas quietly stacked in the pantry. I also discovered five bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer. Corn, snow peas, broccoli, carrots and peas. Who knew these were there the whole time? I usually only open my freezer to look for steak or ice cubes, and okay, sometimes frozen spinach, which was not there. :(

 Stir fry Saturday it is. 

[lunarvegan]

My Final Days as an Omnivore

As the big day approaches, I am beginning to get cold feet.

These past few days - my last as an omnivore - I've become more and more aware of the things I'll soon be saying goodbye to. The other night, while preparing a midnight snack of bread and butter (butter!), I began to wonder what was in the bread. Would I be able to continue eating Portuguese rolls? What’s in those things anyway? They just kind of sell them at the supermarket bakery and there’s no nutrition facts or ingredients list. I mean I know I can't eat pandebono or asiago bagels, but these soft rolls are in a sort of grey area between rye bread and heavily-buttered breadsticks. 

So after googling it and realizing that no one outside North Jersey has any idea what these are, I posted on my Facebook page, and the consensus was that they are not vegan because they use milk in the recipe. I’ve yet to confirm this but will be calling Texeira’s Bakery in Newark to see if I can solve the mystery.

Among the foods I will miss most during my temporary estrangement from the bovine universe: 

Pizza

All cheese

Meatballs

Chicken Masala

Tacos, quesadillas and chilaquiles

Eggs, in all their glorious varieties

Chai lattes

Some of the tastier breads of the world

Steak

Grilled chicken, chicken filets

Hot chocolate

Ramen bowls

Honey-infused cocktails

Vinho Verde

Ribs and burgers

Any rice that is cooked in chicken broth, eg. all the good ones

Ice cream

Sigh…

Tonight will be my last omnivorous supper. I think it will be Mexican.  After this, I go down the rabbit hole. At least I can still drink beer.

[lunarvegan]

From Carnivore to Herbivore; Discovering How the Other 0.5% Lives

I was born a carnivore.

I've eaten meat every day of my life since I was old enough to chew, except on Fridays during lent, if only for fear of eternal damnation. Even on those days, I'd usually end up searching frantically for fish, my body begging for the satisfaction of devouring a snapper or tilapia and waking up extra early the next day to make bacon and eggs. Dead animals are delicious. I like them barbecued, baked, fried, sauteed, and even boiled. While my friends' mouths water for desserts, my taste buds swoon for steak and pulled pork. I don't get excited about cupcakes, but if you say the word 'yakitori' my head will turn faster than a wind turbine in the middle of Chicago. As a kid I ate entire chickens by myself. I wouldn't touch a vegetable unless it was blended and snuck into my food without my knowledge or consent, or otherwise chopped in small pieces to garnish a savory, succulent filet. Surely as I grew up I expanded my eating habits to include green things. But even as my aversion to eating crunchy plants subsided over the years, I've never been able to shake my addiction to expertly-seasoned, well-cooked animal flesh. Rather, green beans have learned to coexist with my steaks and chicken filets quite happily. So, this year, I decided I'm going to challenge myself to stop eating meat for 30 days. But I'm going to take it one step further and go entirely vegan. No eggs, no fish, no dairy. Not even milk or honey. I'm not sure how my body will react; if I will go through withdrawal like an addict, or pass out and end up crawling into Chipotle and shoplifting a bucket of carne asada, but one thing I'm sure of is that this will be one of the most difficult goals I've set for myself in a while. Talking to some friends and family, I was asked why I would do such a thing, so I've started to ask myself what the benefits are and have come up with this: 1) Challenging myself - I like to make a sport out of deprivation sometimes. I proudly wear my willful deprivation like a badge of honor; a reminder that my willpower is alive and well. 2) Health - In all seriousness, eating meat every day, every meal of your entire life is probably not that healthy, especially in America, where animals are probably fed all kinds of crap 3) Body Image - Without all that animal fat, I'll probably drop a few pounds and run off into the sunset with someone who's really really ridiculously good-looking!  J/k. But..I'll probably expand my current wardrobe options. 4) Expanding my palate - I'm a meat and potatoes kind of girl, but I get bored sometimes and wonder... what if I tried to make a whole meal without meat?! It's like Shakespeare. If you set limitations like iambic pentameter, you create a creative challenge and come up with combinations you never would've arrived at otherwise. If you're all Allen Ginsberg all the time, then how would you know what else you're capable of? What I am not is someone who is morally opposed to eating meat. I really don't have an issue with it at all. I also know that this is not a permanent lifestyle choice (at least I'm not planning on it), so really it's just about trying something new in life. To chronicle my adventures in herbivoreland I'll be keeping a food diary, a daily blog, and making periodical youtube videos. I start on March 1st. Until then, it's research and excessive beef-consumption time.

[lunarvegan]