My vegan day

Yesterday was my friend Monika's birthday. Monika is a vegan (no animals or animal products) but she is not a preachy vegan. She is happy to talk about her choices but her motto is to live and let live. At my birthday and the holidays, I often tell people I would rather have a donation to a charity or something non-stuff but it rarely seems to work out that way.

For Monika's birthday, I thought long and hard about a gift and decided that I would eat vegan for a day and blog about the experience. I always say I could not be vegan because I love cheese too much but I figured I carried 12lbs 4oz of baby in my belly so I can do anything for a day.

My goal was to EASILY be a vegan. With Jon out of town (single mom), most of our house packed up, and a busy work schedule, I didn't have time to simmer soups all day and make my own bread.

For breakfast, I had an apple, almond milk in my coffee, and Count Chocula cereal. The marshmallows in the cereal contain gelatin, an animal product, so I gave mine to Nate. (all crappy iphone pics)




I have been meaning to try almond milk forever. I was not wild about the vanilla AND hazelnut flavor in my coffee, so next time I would go for Silk Creamer instead. The boys both had it for breakfast and liked it. Nate loved it so much he asked for it at dinner and again at breakfast today.

For a mid-morning snack, I had some pistachios and a banana.

Lunchtime... well, this is a tough one. I decided to do take out even though I know Monika advocates not getting plastic containers. But since I planned to write about this publicly, I wanted to demonstrate that you can easily eat vegan in restaurants.

I went to my favorite sushi place and got a veggie roll, cucumber roll, edamame, and a salad. Delicious and cured my sushi craving! It was so filling I didn't finish the edamame.




Before dinner, I had a snack of carrots with Trader Joe's mediterranean hummus (second fave to tomato basil). For dinner, I had Trader Joe's vegetarian chili and some crackers.




After the boys went to bed, I did some research and learned the flocculants used in red wine are often animal based so I popped open a beer instead.

Looking at my day, I didn't eat nearly enough vegetables, which is ironic for a vegan day. And I'm not sure I got enough calcium, perhaps adding both vegetables and calcium to dinner would have helped.

What I learned from the day is that with proper planning, I can have a vegan day even on my busiest days. And we will certainly be adding almond milk to our weekly purchases. Overall I feel like this was a much healthier food day because I couldn't rely on most processed foods since they often contain dairy.

Pop on over to Monika's blog to wish her happy birthday and to check out her list of things she's planning to accomplish in the next year!