My first Official day as a vegan…

and the first day of the VeganMoFo is coming to an end. I woke up and by my bed was half a box of Caramacs. BAM! Start the day with temptation. I just got up and ignored it. And later when I went up stairs to fetch something from my room I scooped up the box and brought it back down and handed them over to my mother.

I really love milk chocolate. I don’t care for dark chocolate at all. But I LOVE milk chocolate. There is nothing I like more, not even cheese. And I really love cheese. In fact my love of chocolate (I eliminate dark chocolate from that label) might be partially responsible for my weight gain over the past several years. I cannot turn down a candybar. Or I should say, I “could not” turn down a candybar. Because although I have not gone to the store today, all day long I have been mentally turning away chocolate every five minutes. Not that I’m fixated or anything. I’ve heard that there are promising vegan milk chocolates out there but I haven’t stumbled across them yet. I might just have to make some chocolate cupcakes tomorrow to take the chocolate edge off.

On the topic of cooking, I cracked open my Veganomicon cookbook and decided to give something a try. I hadn’t exactly planned for this yet, so it was a lot of thumbing through pages and mentally recounting what I have in my pantry. In the end I decided to try the chickpea cutlets. They came out pretty good for a first try. Second time around should be awesome. I mashed the chickpeas too small and I think I’ll adjust the spices a bit, but all in all they were pretty nummy. Of course I had them with mashed taters, gravy & some other green veg. I have no pictures. My food did not come out at all photogenic. Maybe next time.

My initial plans for the day were to make Vegan Dad’s smoked turkey lunch meat, but it seemed I was lacking a couple things and the appropriate steaming hardware. Please don’t give me helpful tips on how to improvise a steamer. I had nothing I could improvise with. I’m fairly certain you can bake it completely and omit steaming, but I’d rather not. I don’t want to have to do variants in a recipe when I’ve never made it before. Compromises should never come at the very beginning. that’s starting things off on the wrong foot. lol So I didn’t make the fake meat today.

I also had my UPS tracking page for my Daiya shipment opened in a tab all day. And every time I would walk by my computer I would refresh it. It’s really sill because it was sent out for delivery (with every other package) at around 7 this morning. Rationally I knew that the status wouldn’t update until after I got my package, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m like a kid on Christmas and the UPS lady is my Santa. That analogy is all sorts of messed up because though I wouldn’t mind sitting on her lap it would not be in the holiday spirit. Maybe it’s the smart little uniform…

Welp, (yes, the P was intentional) I’m tired and I think I’ll lay down and look at my vegan pr0n (cookbooks). Happy Vegan MoFo!