I feel like I can do anything today, as long as it doesn't require me to wait...

[kleenexwoman]

...so I'm going to go vegan!

I've tried this before, but it didn't take because I just wanted meat too much. Also, because I figured that if I ate any meat or animal products, it would make me Not Vegan and would mean that I had failed in it, like xBREAKINGxEDGEx. (Not that I'm breaking edge, because I'm not xSTRAIGHTxEDGEx, because it's against at least one of my religions. I have four at last count.)

ANYWAY. I haven't really wanted meat for a while; beef has been tasting greasy, I don't care about chicken, haven't been eating pork, and there are only so many things you can do with salmon or tuna before it gets boring. So there's that. I also haven't really been eating cheese, and the only milk I've had is in coffee. And I'm not supposed to eat a lot of soy because it will fuck up my estrogen levels which are already fucked up enough, so I will have to get used to drinking black coffee, which I don't have a major problem with.

The only things I really like which I will have to give up are delivered pizza and that Arizona Iced Tea with honey in it. Which I can do without. (ETA: Also lox bagels with cream cheese, and kielbasa. Darn it. Well, I only get to eat those when I'm at home, so we'll see how I feel next time I get back down there. Maybe I will heroically resist temptation or maybe I won't want them by then or maybe I'll just say, "Screw it, I am going to treat myself.) Shall also have to inform the couple with which I play D&D and who make meat-heavy meals, but I think they will be cool with it.

I'm also going to just apply it to my diet at first; not going to give away my leather jacket or anything. One thing at a time. Doing leads to thinking--if being a dietary vegan starts making me care more about animal rights, then we'll see. I'm mostly doing this because I'd like to lose some weight and not have a heart attack at age 50. And I'm also going to go exercise right now because of that.

...and then I'm going to go home and call my parents and do my homework. I AM SUCH A BUSY LITTLE BEE TODAY

ETA: Almost ironically, now I want bacon. I was planning on making bacon-and-chocolate-chip cookies with maple glaze later in the week anyway (with faux bacon now).

Comments

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Good luck. If you can hang with it I may be inspired to try it again. (Actually I've been more or less vegetarian for the last year -- no meat in mac & cheese and very little in 7/11 hotdogs.)

If you really get hungry for bacon, just rearrange the letters in a Hebrew text of Leviticus 11 (like refrigerator poetry magnets) until you wind up with something that says: "Pig is actually a vegetable. And by the way, cauliflower was a mistake. My bad.")

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Cauliflower is delicious. How can you not like cauliflower? It's like a beautiful, lumpy, fiber-filled blank canvas for Velveeta.

I was thinking of going kosher, but then I realized that I have absolutely no real reason to besides to conform to dietary rules which are economically obsolete, and also that it would be a huge pain in the ass. Kosher laws pretty much revolve around non-vegan items anyway, so I'm safe!

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Cauliflower is edible only if it's been boiled to death and served with buckets of salt and gallon jars of Velveeta. Even then it's a bit suspect. Same with broccoli. Those are two of the three veggies I absolutely cannot and will not eat raw (mushrooms are the other).

The fact that kosher laws are economically obsolete is one of the best explanations I can think of for why American (read: Reform) Judaism decided to give them up. (They hadn't yet figured out that cheeseburgers are delicious.)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Nah, it just puts your stomach and your teeth through a workout if you eat it raw. And I like raw veggies even more than I like cooked veggies. Although it gets sweeter when you cook it, so it tastes even better with Velveeta.

For some reason I hate raw mushrooms but I love them cooked. Quite possibly it is because of the texture. It makes me uncomfortable for reasons I cannot articulate.

Reform Jews made Jewish food delicious.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I much prefer raw to cooked, if I'm just eating them as "vegetables" and not as "one of twenty ingredients in a particular cooked dish". And everything tastes better with Velveeta. Especially more Velveeta.

I have never been able to get within five feet of raw mushrooms, but I didn't mind cooked ones when I was little (especially loved 'em on Little Caesar's). Then all of a sudden I developed a superintense dislike for them -- I couldn't even eat them when they were, say, mixed in with Chinese food, or chopped up really small and in a sauce. I've gotten over it since then. So random-gathering pizzas are once again on my "can-eat" list.

Reform Jews made Jewish food delicious in large part, don't forget, because they made it American as opposed to Russian or Sloboslavian or whatever. It's difficult to cook a decent meal out of a half cup of moldy grain, dead mice, and sawdust. Although a Jewish mother will never admit to that.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Well, I am back into the anti-mushrooms-whether-cooked-or-not camp. We had Chinese tonight, and since there was some leftover pork roast in the fridge, my mother decided it would be best to just get mushroom fried rice and use our chopped-up pork to fill it out. But the mushrooms were huge and disgusting-looking, and the dish as a whole wasn't nearly greasy enough. Damn it.

[anivad.livejournal.com]

You don't boil cauliflower. You stick it on a plate thing, add salt, and steam it for fifteen minutes, whereupon it gets nice and soft and tasty and edible.

Same with broccoli.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Then that may have been what made me super sick last week when I was in Texas. My friend/host threw some of each vegetable into a pot and boiled it up for a side with dinner (and they definitely boiled, didn't steam, it). Maybe it released some kind of toxin. That's what I'll blame now for making me puke all over the hall and spend half the day in the bathroom, rather than the undercooked chicken we had for the main dish.

[sir-dave.livejournal.com]

bacon-and-chocolate-chip cookies

Can those really be made? If I ever wanted a second religion that might have to be the foundation of the second ;)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I haven't bookmarked the recipe, but if you Google the term, you get a bunch of the same recipes. It's apparently as delicious as bacon, carbs, and chocolate would be. :)

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

How does soy fuck with estrogen?

[drworm.livejournal.com]

The research is a little uncertain, but soy contains phytoestrogen, which is sometimes beneficial and sometimes not, depending upon how it's prepared. It may be linked to encourging breast cancer, among other things.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Ah. And also I blame it for making Ohio's landscape look boring as fuck (I was back there yesterday for the first time since college and I'd forgotten just how bland it was compared to, say, Illinois), so fuck it, let's get it outlawed.

[vicfitz82.livejournal.com]

Good luck with your new diet. I personally think vegan is a really difficult diet to stick with, because animal products are tasty, ubiquitous, and to a certain extent, not all that bad for us. As with any dietary change, it helps if you have more than one reason for doing it. I might also suggest not going into it all at once, especially if you're still craving the occasional piece of flesh every so often. Take it slow and you'll have more time to adjust.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I'm swearing off meat for certain, and just doing dairy experimentally...I like milk, and I like cheese more than I thought. (When I figured out how much cheese I ate that I didn't notice, I was stunned.)

I suppose I'm doing it for environmental reasons too...I thought for a while that it was the right thing to do, really, but just didn't quite care enough.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

vegweb.com will become your best friend. Trust me on this.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, yay, website! :D Thank you.

[sighing-echo.livejournal.com]

are you SERIOUS about those cookies? if so, at least one of my roommates wants a recipe

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Totally serious. (http://neverbashfulwithbutter.blogspot.com/2007/12/experiments-in-deliciousness-bacon.html)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Crud. I sort of thought so. Well, I'm going to avoid non-vegan food if I can anyway; I'm not going to stress if I ingest something with a little dairy. The dairy part is experimental anyway because I likes the cheese, and soy milk gets old real quick.

Brown rice, nutritional yeast, veggies and fruit and legumes are staples y/n? Anything else I should start eating to replace the milk/meat-related nutrients?

[superfinemind.livejournal.com]

I'm always frustrated with vegans who give up honey.

I'm going to try not to soapbox.

But it's not like meat. It's not even like milk or eggs, where we modified an animal to suit our needs and desires-- honeybees are evolutionarily wired all on their own to just make honey constantly beyond the needs of their colony. It's all they know how to do, and they do it until they run out of space. Human involvement allows them to do it more successfully, with less disease, less accidentally storing honey where there should be babies, less being eaten by bears. And it's mostly a plant product; all they do is process it and add a little enzyme. It's as vegan as, oh, fortified maple syrup-- except that natural experts are processing it, instead of fumbling, enterprising bipeds. ^_^

I will, however, totally endorse giving up Big Commercial Honey. Go local, support local farmers who love their bees. ^_^ (And if you only have big grocery stores to shop at, McLure's is the best of the giants-- I'm pretty sure they're the one who is actually more a distributor/repackager and buy from smaller farmers.)

There is no animal rights issue when it comes to raising bees-- domesticated bees are safe and happy bees.

Also, please do not become an irrational animal-rights-caring person, because I really can't stand them. Rational ones, sure, but irrational PETA sorts, or ALF sorts, piss me off like there's no tomorrow.

So anyway.

Keep your Iced Tea With Honey. Arizona probably uses Big Commercial honey, but that doesn't mean it's made by unhappy tortured captive bees. (In fact, bees that get trucked about and spend their entire lives in fields of flowers with very little winter are probably happier, in some ways, than bees who live in the same place all year.)

Also, rice milk, if you're avoiding soy, might work for your coffee. I have an aunt who preferred it. Or non-dairy creamer, if that works for you. (And for awesome factor, Cremora is also a major component of many small-to-medium movie explosion effects. Youtube will have examples.)

I have long considered it a testament to the importance of bacon in our society that vegan, kosher bacon is an easy-to-acquire product. Those cookies sound decadent.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the honey-related info. I'd wondered originally how it was even possible to exploit bees...I shall drink my honey tea with happiness. (I use raw honey when I can afford it--my mom got a big jar on her doctor's advice in order to ameliorate her hay fever, and it was delicious.)

I'm going to look up Cremora just for the explosion factor. I've never tried rice milk, shall have to see if any stores around here carry it...I've decided to go slow on the cutting-out-dairy anyway.

I am definitely not planning to become an irrational animal-rights person; if nothing else, simply because I'm too lazy. :)