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In which I rattle on about VVO
Jul. 11th, 2013 08:43 pmI haven't had a vegan meal in 4 days. I've also only eaten meat twice in the last 4 days (none for the last two) so I'm at least not going back to old ways either.
Vegan!Fail basically comes from not knowing how to cook a satisfying vegan meal and thus finding all the horrible snack foods instead (fritos are vegan, y'all!) So I've gone to the library and checked out a bag of vegan cookbooks, although I'm not sure I'm going to have time to put them into effect for a few days. (Saturday morning the water gets cut off for several hours. Long story.)
I have gotten past the "it's a fun game!" stage of the diet, and also mostly gotten through the "this is a horrible imposition" stage too... even though some days I *am* telling myself "you can have that for dinner. Dinner is in 5 hours... hold on, it's only 4 hours... you've made it this far, hold on for 3 hours more..."
There has been one really big breakthrough, though. There was a day at work when I got really angry that my plans had been derailed and thus my meat meal of the day was going to end up being bad institutional spaghetti and meatballs. I was furious to have "wasted" my daily opportunity! This thing is making me focus very hard on what I eat, how it relates to the rest of what I eat, and the quality of the treats I allow myself.
I don't want vegan (or vegetarian) substitutes for meat products; I want vegan recipes that focus on how good and satisfying the actual plant materials are, not pretend they're something else. For instance, I've just discovered saag aloo. I need to learn to make that at home, and maybe figure out how to substitute tofu for paneer in matar. That would be vegan and satisfying and healthy.
Vegan!Fail basically comes from not knowing how to cook a satisfying vegan meal and thus finding all the horrible snack foods instead (fritos are vegan, y'all!) So I've gone to the library and checked out a bag of vegan cookbooks, although I'm not sure I'm going to have time to put them into effect for a few days. (Saturday morning the water gets cut off for several hours. Long story.)
I have gotten past the "it's a fun game!" stage of the diet, and also mostly gotten through the "this is a horrible imposition" stage too... even though some days I *am* telling myself "you can have that for dinner. Dinner is in 5 hours... hold on, it's only 4 hours... you've made it this far, hold on for 3 hours more..."
There has been one really big breakthrough, though. There was a day at work when I got really angry that my plans had been derailed and thus my meat meal of the day was going to end up being bad institutional spaghetti and meatballs. I was furious to have "wasted" my daily opportunity! This thing is making me focus very hard on what I eat, how it relates to the rest of what I eat, and the quality of the treats I allow myself.
I don't want vegan (or vegetarian) substitutes for meat products; I want vegan recipes that focus on how good and satisfying the actual plant materials are, not pretend they're something else. For instance, I've just discovered saag aloo. I need to learn to make that at home, and maybe figure out how to substitute tofu for paneer in matar. That would be vegan and satisfying and healthy.
