V to the T

After being surrounded by vegan (commonly pronounced vee-gun)** eats for the month of October for Vegan MoFo and then seeing many bloggers participate in “vegan for a day” challenge last week I decided that I would try my own challenge of trying to abstain from all meat, seafood, dairy, and eggs for one day. I knew not eating meat would be easy because I’ve been a pescatarian for over a year and half now, however, dairy and eggs would be a wee bit hard for me. Although, definitely not impossible!

**I know most of my readers are from the healthy living space and probably know how this word is pronounced but I also know that I have readers who aren’t familiar with the term so I thought I would throw that out there for anyone interested.

Monday I took a walk on the wild side and was vegan for the day!

I had the standard oatmeal/ oatbran combo for breakfast only I didn’t use a banana and stirred in 1 tablespoon of Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese for some added creaminess.

The “cream cheese” made for a decant bowl of cream oats. I enjoyed it very much especially when topped with a blob of homemade pumpkin butter and a better n pb.

The morning at work went well and I didn’t get hungry until lunch time. While walking home for lunch I kept trying to think of something vegan to have. The fridge was lacking healthy foods because I had been out of town all weekend so there was plenty of beer but no veggies. However, I just so happened to have a Kashi Ranchero Beans meal in the freezer. And, guess what? It’s vegan!

I heated it up and served it along side some roasted butternut squash. The ranchero beans were filling and flavorful. I really liked the whole grain pilaf- particularly the wheat berries and the serving size was large for a frozen meal, which I liked because I am a volume eater and typically frozen meals can be quite small. With 7 grams of fat, 11 grams of fiber, and 12 grams of protein, this meal is also balanced and nutritious. It’s a winner in my frozen meal book!

I ran by wal-mart after work to grab some ingredients for the Thanksgiving feast we had planned at work. I haven’t been to wal-mart in ages for reasons I won’t go into detail about but I was shocked to find they had organic spring mix, carrots, cereals, yogurt (Stonyfield) and other veggies I wanted. I was a happy wal-mart shopper. I came home and made a quick dinner. It included my favorite veggie burger- Amy’s California cut in half – one piece served with ketchup and the other tossed into a salad with tomatoes, butternut squash, yellow bell peppers and left over tahini dressing.

Overall, eating vegan for the day wasn’t too hard, but I ate all my meals at home and prepared them myself – I could see it being much more difficult if I were eating meals out. At this point, I often have days were I don’t eat dairy or eggs just because I don’t want them, however I don’t see myself ever becoming vegan because I do enjoy those foods and there really isn’t a reason for me forgo things I enjoy.

Speaking of things I enjoy, we had a food-filled Thanksgiving Feast at work today.

I brought in homemade sun-dried tomato and garlic hummus with some pita bread and carrots.

And a Double Layer Pumpkin Pie. I made this same pie last year for the office and a couple people asked for me to bring it again.

I must admit, it is quite delicious!!

I didn’t get a picture of the whole spread but here are some of the other desserts, and this isn’t even all of them!!

I tried all the homemade desserts expect my own- some apple cake, a slice of sweet potato pie, and sour cream and raisin pie. The apple cake was my favorite and I couldn’t stop grabbing bites throughout the afternoon. For lunch I had a plate with spring mix and butternut squash (I brought this from home just in case there weren’t many veggie options), a piece of nann bread, hummus, homemade falafel and greens!

Both the falafel and greens were my favorite parts- so yummy!

If you’re on twitter you’ll know that we also had wine. I didn’t have any with lunch but around 4 the CEO poured me a glass and brought it to my desk. Love her!

So Thanksgiving hasn’t even begun and I’m already full… guess today was just my training session for the main event on Thursday. Unless, we don’t end up going- Isaac is sick with flu like symptoms and if his fever doesn’t go down we won’t be going to his grandparents to celebrate as we don’t want to risk getting them sick. :/

Do you have any plans? Are you cooking anything special?

- Brittany