Vegan Challenge: Day One

Don’t worry guys, I’m not going to post every day! But I thought it’d be interesting to do some key days – like the very first. So here’s a round up of day one (yesterday)…

Breakfast

As I said in my original post, I’ve eaten vegan for some substantial periods before, so wasn’t totally freaked out, and I didn’t go out and buy heaps of new, faintly disgusting food. But breakfast proved a real issue. I wanted something filling but healthy. I Googled ‘vegan breakfasts’ to no avail. Things seemed to mostly fall into the camp of: 1. I’ve gone out and bought a ton of vegan meat substitutes and crammed them into a sandwich, or 2. Screw the meat substitutes, I’m going to overcompensate by making a ridiculously unhealthy sounding breakfast that actually looks like pudding.

Seriously. Within minutes I had pages of BREAKFAST CAKES at my fingertips, and even a flipping COBBLER. Look here. While I’m sure these are probably healthier than an actual normal cake, and while I can often be wholeheartedly in favour of cakes at breakfast, I’m trying to eat well here. How about, you know, some actual veg? Or fruit? Anything?? What’s the point in me eating vegan if I’m just going to eat ‘blueberry waffles with lemon icing’ for brekkers. No, ta. Also, ‘tofu scramble’? Save me, Jebus! So I had a big dilemma. I was going to do porridge with cinnamon and fresh apple, but we had no apple (fun anecdote, you can use it if you want. Ahem). Instead, I opted for porridge with fresh raspberries on top, and cinnamon. It wasn’t imaginative, but thankfully it also wasn’t a CAKE.

Snacks

Part of my plan was to try and eat 5-6 small meals a day, which I was mega excited about. Actually working out what to eat for snack food was a little harder. On a normal day, I’d probably have some toast, and over the weekend I got into the bad habit of having baklava. As I said, I haven’t actually bothered going shopping yet, so I’m stuck with what I’ve got in the house. For my morning snack, I opted for carrot sticks with a squeeze of lemon, walnuts, and olives. This is scintillating stuff, eh? By the time I’d planned to eat my afternoon snack, I found I wasn’t remotely hungry. It was insane. I felt like I’d had more than enough food, so I just had a pear and cut my losses.

Lunch

I unashamedly love Gwyneth Paltrow and proudly have her cookbook. It’s a beautiful thing, and the recipes I’ve made so far are delicious. It also isn’t like the vegan recipes I tend to complain about, all nice and fresh ingredients as opposed to some overprocessed lumps of glutinous tofu. Sorry for hating on the tofu, I’ve had some that I’ve liked in the past, but on the whole it can be a bit grim. Anywho, I opted for Gwyneth’s ‘Tortilla Soup’, because anything with chilli, tomato, garlic and lime in it is always going to be a winner for me. It was nice and easy to make, and smelled delicious while I was cooking it. I made enough to conserve some for tomorrow lunch, so saved myself a bit of time as well.

Dinner

I decided to do a couple of recipes I learnt when I did a detox cookery class last year, as they’re tried and tested. Courgettes in chermoula marinade, and baked sweet potatoes with spices. For some reason, I feel like I shouldn’t be having olive oil, but I have to use SOME otherwise I’ll die. Well, I won’t die, but I’ll be bored, and it’ll be nearly impossible to cook anything. I used coconut oil for my sweet potatoes (not much, a little goes a long way), and part olive oil part warm water for my chermoula marinade. Chermoula is so yummy, a combination of coriander and lemon, lime, garlic, chilli, paprika, cumin…so so good. I had it with some peas and tomato sauce, using the leftover plum tomatoes from lunch. My sweet potatoes were delish, I used cinnamon, paprika, cloves, and garlic to flavour them, and they were the perfect balance of sweet and spicy.

Thoughts

Today wasn’t hard. At all. I spent more time in the kitchen than I usually would, but I love taking time to prepare food. Even after just a day, I feel really good (psychosomatic!), and feel like the food I ate was just much more delicious than a lot of things I’d usually have. For this vegan diet, I’m cutting out so many things that I’d usually lazily rely on for ‘comfort’ or texture like cheese or butter. Instead I’m working really hard on flavours, using more garlic and spices to make sure everything tastes as good as possible. I do miss cheese though. Sob. But weirdly, I felt more full than I have in ages – quite a feat considering I had a five course meal on Saturday and a three course meal on Sunday. I already feel much more energetic and focussed. We’ll see if that continues…