(Semi) Vegan Update

I'm happy to report that our new diet has been progressing nicely. We've still had meat on a few occasions (eating out) but I haven't purchased meat or dairy products at the store in over a month. I take that back...I'm sure I've purchased some things that have traces of dairy or eggs, but nothing extreme. Even when we eat out I try to order non meat and dairy meals. It surprisingly hasn't been very difficult and I haven't really been craving meat. I have two complaints about the new diet though:

1. I spend so much more time in the kitchen! Cutting up vegetables takes a lot of time. Maybe I'm just challenged when it comes to chopping because I don't think it takes most people this much time. I should probably invest in a food processor or at least one of those little hand chopper things.

2. It's so expensive. When I first started this thing I was excited because I was spending significantly less at the store. Then I realized it was only less because Jake was out of town for a long time so I was shopping for only 1 person. Duh. I'm an idiot. Now I'm spending about $50 MORE than I was when we were eating animal products. Not only are vegetables time consuming, but they also cost a lot.

These downfalls are worth the trouble though. My stomach feels much better than it did before. This leads me to believe that perhaps I'm slightly lactose intolerant or something. I definitely notice a difference even when I have one meal that contains dairy or meat. Is their such a thing as meat intolerant too? I doubt it, but I really do feel a lot better.

I purchased the following cookbook from Amazon a few weeks ago and I've really enjoyed making a lot of recipes in it. Not all have turned out great, but most have been pretty good.

I just purchased the following two and and I'm really anxious for them to get here.

(hopefully this one will help solve problem #2)

(I think this is THE book for vegans so I'm really excited, but slightly intimidated by it)

I love buying books on Amazon. They're so cheap! The only downside is that you have to wait so long for them to arrive and you have to pay a shipping fee. But really, the shipping is less than what I would spend to drive to a bookstore in Santa Rosa so I feel like I'm getting a good deal.

My biggest piece of advice related to veganism: Meat and dairy substitutes DO NOT taste anything like the real thing. Don't even bother with them. Except for soy pudding. That stuff is goooood, but it's not available at my local grocery store so I'll have to save it for special occasions.

I keep trying to stress that this is very "semi" vegan or vegan "light" because I don't want people to think we won't eat with them because of our weird diet. The point of this is to reduce the animal products we consume, not to completely eliminate them. So to mom #1 and #2: Yes, we still eat all the cookies you make even if they're made with non vegan ingredients ;)

And in case you're curious. No, we're not losing any weight on this diet. Tortilla chips are vegan. We eat a lot of them. I blame it on our salsa addiction.