Vegan Day 3

Weight: 138.4

Some more thoughts from yesterday (it was late and I was needing to get to bed): LG and I went to Sunflower Market to stock up on some vegan stuff, and it took forever. Why not call sesame butter what it is (and not tahini)? How the heck am I supposed to know that tahini is sesame butter and not a fish (well, of course it's not a fish or it wouldn't be on a vegan recipe, but if I didn't know that I think a fish would have been my first thought) or some kind of seasoning?? I ask you. Also, after finding all their packaged counterparts, I ended up getting the cous cous, chia seeds, and quinoa from the bulk foods section (where I also discovered nutritional yeast [hurray! because there was no nutritional variety by the NORMAL yeast. That would be too easy...any insight as to what nutritional yeast is, btw? Haven't had a chance to google it yet], and vegetable broth mix [the liquid variety is expensive!).

And I splurged for vegan cheese ($4 per 2-c bag) and coconut ice cream ($4 per teeny tiny container). Sanity savers. But can I say how annoying it is that if you're looking at trying to add variety in your vegan diet as far as recipes, so many of the options that look good at first always end up having a ton of soy-based food in the recipe?? What is UP with that? Tofu, tempeh, cream cheese, you name it. Soy, soy, soy. Thanks to Alena (Will's sister), I know that soy has a lot of estrogen in it. Add some Internet research to that basic knowledge, and I find that the plant estrogen is not good for females (I wouldn't think males would want any to begin with!) because it interferes with the natural estrogen the body makes and needs. So I don't want soy, thank you very much. And most of the yummy looking recipes I've found that are vegan use it in some form or another. Blech.

Last thought from yesterday is that two bean-based meals in one day is too many. It felt like that's all we ate!

Breakfast: two waffles, pure maple syrup and flaxmilk.

Lunch: One cup worth of this salad. I left out the red cabbage, used green pepper instead of red (is there any nutritional advantage to one color pepper over another?), and also substituted cilantro for the parsley (which I highly recommend if you're a cilantro fan). I didn't use all of the sauce because of the lack of 1-2 cups of red cabbage, and we were both glad I did that. I wasn't feeling too hopeful that this was going to be tasty, but I was very wrong! Will really liked it, too. I think we both agree that this is something we will continue to make beyond our vegan trial (if that ends). Yep, that good. We also had 5 strawberries each and two banana cookies with flaxmilk.

While LG was still in his crib (napping? Nope!), I quickly threw together this recipe for hummus to use later.

You may notice a theme in these recipes. I'm using the 21-day Vegan Kickstart meal plan for most of our meals. Just nice to have a one-stop shop of sorts for recipe ideas, and the site is supposedly run by physicians, so I'm hoping they know what they're doing. We of course have concerns about making sure we're getting all the protein and iron and everything we need.

Snack: Dried banana chips.

Dinner: Curried Lentil Soup (I didn't have crushed tomatoes. The soup was good, but the tomatoes might have made it better) and Ambrosia. Two banana cookies and flaxmilk.

I feel good with all the things I was able to make today and the resulting leftovers. I like that we're trying totally new things (I've never had lentil soup before), and finding that they're all quite good.