First Day Vegan

Yesterday was my first day completely vegan.

I know most advice is to slowly ease into it... But no I went grocery shopping and I committed to it.

So how did it go?

Easy as pie, you guys.

It was far easier than I expected. This may also be due to having vegan parents and already knowing a lot of their vegan recipes. For example, I was planning to make eggplant parmesan even before I realized I wanted to be vegan. There are two problems with this: no eggs can be used to bread the eggplant, and no parmesan can go into the eggplant parm. This was not a problem for me, though, because I already know that one part ground flax mixed with three parts water will result in the same consistency as an egg. I asked a friend what to do about the cheese. Let's face it: I'm hardcore addicted to cheese. He suggested I try some nutritional yeast. I'll say it again for emphasis:

 Nutritional Yeast

Angelic music plays.

This stuff is incredible. It's also packed with B vitamins, including B12, however you only really need a light sprinkle for that cheese flavor, so it's not an adequate source of B12. For vegan eating, B12 has to be supplemented... but it's the only supplement that a well-constructed vegan diet will need. Think about all the people you know on meat-based diets who have to supplement for all the other vitamins they aren't getting enough of. I think supplementing with B12 is a fair trade-off. Oh, and of course vitamin D, because that stuff isn't in our food. It's in our skin.

Now if only I could get Wallace to go for a walk in the day, so we can get some sunlight to make that vitamin D.

But no, Wallace is a coward, and he prefers going out at midnight, when there's minimal chance of seeing any other people, dogs, or moving cars. I'll stick to the supplement for now.

So what about that eggplant parm?

It was delicious! To make it easy, I used to store-bought organic marinara sauce. To add extra nutritional value, I included lots of spinach, mushrooms, and some freshly diced Roma tomato. There will be no picture, though, because I chose the wrong baking dish to make it in, which resulted in a very thin looking meal. I like my food to look as amazing as it tastes, so I'll have to do better next time.

Overall, it was a successful experiment.

I can make any of my favorite dishes vegan.

One just has to know how to substitute.

And speaking of easy as pie...

This photo, and the recipe are from Unconventional Baker. My new favorite go-to site for recipes.

Okay, so I'm not making a pie. I am making a cheesecake. Yes, vegan cheesecake... alternative. It's make with raw cashews (some dry, some pre-soaked), dates, coconut oil, coconut sugar, almond milk, vanilla extract, salt, and maqui berry powder.

Maqui- what? I guess there's a berry called "maqui"? If I hadn't seen this recipe, I would have no idea what to use such a thing for. I wouldn't have even known it existed.