Welcome to the vegan vortex

We’re three weeks into our vegan cleanse and I thought it would be a good point to update you on what we’ve been eating. Full post-date wrap-up to come next week, but to give you a snapshot, here goes….

Fake cheese and lots of it. Not Velveeta of course. Treeline nut cheese has a faintly acidic taste, but overall it isn’t too bad. I have yet to try the White Alder that I bought after seeing a rave write-up in Food & Wine magazine, but will crack open that package this week.

Assuming that any vegan worth his or her salt eats plenty of salad, we jumped on the bandwagon and have been eating our greens. This was the best use for nut cheese so far; a little goes a long way and you don’t have to give up creamy salad dressings. Loved this version with butter lettuce and pomegranate seeds.

As you might have read in this post, I’ve been trying desperately to get my hands on anything that resembles steak, from mushrooms to eggplants, to big fat slices of cauliflower. Meat love dies hard.

Hummus has taken over as a major food group – my favorite combo being with tomatoes and pickled onions. So now instead of 3PM dairy bloat, I have a pregnant belly from too many legumes. Either that or somebody hasn’t told me something…

The toughest part of the cleanse? Finding good beverages. I do miss my morning lattes, despite the bloat.  While I’ve loved drinking tea (from adorable little teapots and with dainty snacks of course) I’ve been less satisfied with my coffee options. I’ve tried it all- soy creamer, almond milk lattes, vanilla soy milk lattes, dirty chais, drip coffee with coconut cream. Not into any of it.  Thankfully cocktails are mostly vegan friendly, I’ve enjoyed plenty of those this month.

On the topic of coconut cream, I’ve learned that vegans (and those on the paelo diet) use coconut milk for all kinds of things. Because when you can’t have dairy cream, cream of coconut is a good substitute. The problem is that after two weeks, the flavor of coconut starts to permeate everything, and not in a good way. I used it here in a green bean and wild rice casserole (dining casually at the kids’ art table that day), but something about coconut with Thanksgiving flavors doesn’t jive. I think it’s time to say goodbye coconut for a few months, at least until the weather’s warmer and I’m into tropical flavors again.

Maybe it was the coconut’s fault. Or maybe because Rodney and I held an emergency dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant….but I’d be hiding something if I didn’t call out the fact that I had a big fat whopping vegan fail last week. I mean, really, how can you go to eat sushi at your favorite restaurant with your favorite dishes, and force your partner to eat cucumber rolls? Not possible, correct? I could have easily picked a vegan spot, but we go out so rarely that I felt that for the sake of a happy marriage I could forego my vegan cleanse for just one night. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway….

And look, I was so good! The next day I passed up my favorite cookies at the City Bakery.

After Sushigate, it was back to business. Back to kale, back to salads. We’ve got one more week on this cleanse and it’s gonna be a good one…Wish us luck!