And Suddenly I Am Vegan

So some day I'll get into the details, but long story short, the rheumatologist has put me on a strict vegan diet.


Have you LOOKED at my blog? To say I whimpered would be an understatement. He also wanted me to quit judo but right now we're all pretending we didn't hear him.

Shhhhhh. I said we were pretending, dammit.

Anyway I'm going to stick a few things in here that have worked - and not worked - for me.

For example, one of my favorites, the Border Cafe? That does not work for vegans. I had a bean burro with a side of beans and rice *sigh*

I added guac ... it helped a little.

What DID work? Bertucci's. Create your own individual pizza with grilled onions, roasted peppers, arugula, drizzled with balsamic. Nom nom nom. Seriously.

Not work? McDonald's. I had fries with that ... actually that was all I had. We rarely hit McD's but when the kids judo tourney runs from post-breakfast til two, parents get a wee bit desperate.

And then more things worked.
I had this ready to cook in the freezer but had kept the veggies separate.... Stir Fry Beef with Onions and Peppers. Obviously I modified it a bit - I cooked the veg first, added some of the sauce before removing from pan and didn't add all the veg back to the pan with the cooked beef. The veg over rice were just Nummy. See that capital N? Yeah.

I was worried about my protein intake since, you know, I'd had none, so I decide to find some sort of filling, easy, decadent dessert that would fill this niche. Dude, I did it.

I keep this bread in the house for the kids ... it's an easy way to get extra protein into the kids AND it has no high-fructose corn syrup. Win.

Anywho, I happened to see a recipe on Pinterest for Vegan Chocolate-Nut Spread. I remembered I happened to have half a jar of organic crunchy peanut butter (which the kids hate but I love) in the pantry. I added a wee bit of coconut butter, a slosh of vanilla (and then a slosh more), some confectioners sugar and some cocoa powder. Angels sang ... and I refused to share with the six year old who was STILL AWAKE WELL PAST HER BEDTIME. And then I poured some wine.

Anyway, there are a million vegan blogs and this one isn't about that, but changing your diet for heath reasons is hard and I needed to post this here for days that aren't so good.

Now if someone would just come put this kid to sleep, I'd be REALLY happy.

**I am in no way connected or receive reimbursement/product/kickbacks/magic powers from any of the companies mentioned here. All products mentioned were purchased by me, generally using standard shipping which I immediately regretted as it takes too flipping long.**