Vegan For a Day

This year, Chip got a few bonus vegetarian surprises at Christmas time.  First, Jeff decided to offer up a meatless week (hey, it's a start) and then my son Alex decided to outdo ALL of us and commit to Meatless Mondays for the entire year.  That's 52 meatless days to my 31!  But I did up the ante a little bit with respect to my own sacrifice by offering Chip the opportunity to give me a bonus challenge of his choice, keeping in mind that my attempt at TWO meatless months a few years ago did not work out so well.  His challenge?  To go vegan for a day.  I don't know about you, but I can do ANYTHING for just one day and it didn't take me long to figure out that only a few small tweaks to my menu would be all it took to meet the challenge.  I often have eggs for breakfast (which aren't vegan) but almost just as often I choose oatmeal with fruit (which is vegan).  Switching out milk for Crystal Light would be easy enough and if I stuck to dishes which are typcially cheeseless, I'd be home free.

I'm glad I set the bar higher for myself than that.  I'm glad I'm not the "what's the LEAST I can do and get away with it" type.  Instead, I decided to do a little research about what vegans actually eat, or in any case what they suggest for newbie vegans to eat. And then I ate it.  Here is my vegan menu for the day, which was conditionally approved by Chip after the fact:

Breakfast
Vegan breakfast burrito made with faux sausage, tofu, and sauteed veggies
Coffee with French Vanilla flavored coconut milk creamer

Lunch
Leftover stirfry made with un-chicken over brown rice
Slice of whole grain bread with vegan un-butter spread (which I only purchased out of curiosity)
Crystal light

Dinner
Vegan lasagna (recipe provided by my vegan friend, Kristine)
Garlic bread (toast with un-butter spread, seasoned with garlic etc)
White wine

For you non-vegans out there, you may be just as dismayed as I was to learn that wine is generally not vegan!  You know what that means?  I wish I was kidding but as it turns out, animal products are often used during the fining process.  There are actually lists of approved "vegan wines."  Fortunately for me, Chip has decided that even he doesn't need to go THAT far when it comes to being vegan so he approved my menu on the condition that I read up a little bit on the whole vegan wine thing.  Which I did, but only what he actually copied and pasted into the body of his email to me.  It's not like he asked me to do a research paper or anything....

What I learned from Vegan Day is that it was actually a whole lot easier than I thought - as long as I can continue to exempt wine from the list of offending foods.  I'm not planning to become a vegan at any point in the future, but I do now have a carton of coconut milk creamer and a tub of un-butter spread to use up.  So, there are a few vegan-ish meals in my future just the same.  And wine.  :)

The Wild Cow Cafe

Meatless March started off quite nicely, I must say.  On Friday, the first day of the month, my husband and I left for a road trip to Little Rock, AR to run the marathon on Sunday, intending to stop for the night in Nashville, TN.  Unlike previous road trips, this one was a meatless pleasure!  Both on the way down and the way back, we stopped at Subway for lunch and found BOTH of them carried VegiMax patties!  SCORE!  If you've never tried a VegiMax patty, let me just tell you that as a carnivore, I find them to be quite tasty.  They don't taste like vegetables and certainly don't taste like meat, but they have a unique flavor and texture that I find myself craving even during non-meatless months.  Try one and you won't be disappointed.

Knowing we'd be arriving in Nashville at around the dinner hour, I took some time during the drive to search for and review vegetarian-friendly restaurants in the area.  My selection?  The Wild Cow in East Nashville; a fun, quirky little vegetarian/vegan place where just about everyone looked like a hippie.  Despite the fact that NO meat is served at this establishment, Jeff was amenable to the choice and happily enjoyed a black bean veggie burger - although he did order it "animal style." Some habits are hard to break.  For my part, I decided to try the "philly cheesesteak" which was not at all a cheesesteak but was made with seitan in some sort of sauce, grilled onions and peppers, with a vegan queso.  Now, my brother Chip has told me on more than one occasion that there is no good vegan cheese substitute so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at all apprehensive about this vegan queso.  However, the waitress assured me it was quite tasty so I decided to consider it something of an experiment.  The verdict:  it was somewhat unpleasant in the exact same way that I find Cheese-Wiz to be somewhat unpleasant.  Edible and sort of reminded me of cheese, but I wasn't licking my fingers.  The rest of the sandwich was really quite good, but if I ever go back to The Wild Cow, which I just might do the next time I find myself in Nashville, I'd try a different entree.

You know what is deliciously mysterious to me?  Vegan cake.  And The Wild Cow had some vegan chocolate banana cake for sale which sent my taste buds straight to their happy place where they forgot all about the vegan queso.  I don't know how such a scrumptious treat can be concocted without butter, cream, or eggs but I honestly don't care.  That is some amazing stuff right there.

For the rest of our trip, I subsisted on mostly salads and veggie pizza which was just fine by me. And of course, the VegiMax patty at Subway on the return trip.  All in all, a quite enjoyable weekend for my palate.

And just like that ... BAM!! (meatless)

Suddenly, I am on the eve of another meatless March.  I say "suddenly" because this was, indeed, a sudden turn of events.  But in some very, very good ways.  For starters, my dear Prince of a husband has finally  decided to dip his toes in the vegetarian waters, albeit just briefly.  He's not ready for a full month of meatless, but he committed to a full week of meatless which brings joy to both me and my sweet vegan brother, Chip.  It brings me joy because that is one week where I can relax a bit about the meatless menu - possibly even elicting some help in the kitchen - and also I can act like some kind of an expert on the subject of meatless meals.  I promise to keep my ego in check.  It brings my brother joy because this was my husband's Christmas gift to him, which he later told me he was really not expecting.  Quite frankly, neither was I.  Accompanying this gift of a Meatless Week was Jeff's promise that he and I would spend at least part of that week visiting Chip in New York, where delicious vegetarian meals are almost as easy to find as pigeons.

In mid-December, I applied for a new job at Macy's corporate offices downtown and began interviewing for the position in January.  Just over two months and eleven interviews later, I was offered the job (YEAH!!!!) on February 25th.  In a curious twist of fate, my boss is actually located in NYC and even more curiously, my husband has a business trip planned to that exact area at the end of March - also involving Macy's.  So, to make a long story short, I will be visiting my brand new boss in NYC at the end of March while Jeff is on his business trip, providing the perfect opportunity to fulfill his Christmas pledge.  But all of a sudden, just like that, BAM!  I'm staring down the barrel of Meatless March with nothing to eat in my refrigerator that is meatless besides sour cream, yogurt, blueberry jam, celery, limes, and butter.  Well, there is also cheese.  There is ALWAYS cheese.

Upon realizing my utter unpreparedness, I made a quick trip to Whole Foods to stock up on that delicious "Vegan General Tso's Chicken" (which tastes absolutely nothing like General Tso's Chicken but is finger-licking good just the same) and some Boca Crumbles.  That's two meals down, a bunch more to go.  As long as I don't suck all that General Tso's Chicken down between now and tomorrow - that stuff is delicious and I've already stuck my fingers in the container more than once tonight.  At least I know where I can always get more.