I'm kind of loving this...

I know it has only been 2 days, but I'm kind of loving this whole vegan thing. With Trader Joe's right down the street, it is pretty easy to eliminate animal products from my diet. It is also forcing me to be more creative with my meals. We got our CSA bag this week, so that has helped a lot as well.

For dinner last night, I made the most amazing pesto pasta. I used the romanesco broccoli that was in our CSA bag and while it looks like it is from another planet, it was really delicious.

I used this recipe for the pesto, from VegWeb:


3 cups fresh basil leaves
6 tablespoons pine nuts
2-4 cloves garlic
3/4 teaspoons course sea salt
6 tablespoons good quality olive oil

Directions:

Put the basil, nuts, garlic and salt into a food processor or good blender.  Process (blend) until all the goodies are finely chopped. Add the oil and process till its all worked intogether.  Enjoy.

Serves: about 1 cup

Preparation time: 15 mins


My husband blended a little bit of parmesan cheese into his serving as he isn't avoiding dairy and while mine was delicious, he said his was one of the best pestos he's ever had. And he's been to the town in Italy where pesto was invented.


I cooked some fusilli pasta, toasted some extra pine nuts in a dry pan, sauteed the romanesco with garlic and olive oil (I also added a some water and covered it for a bit to cook it faster) and tossed everything together. I made a lot so we had enough leftovers for lunch today and tomorrow. It was such a great dish and I didn't even miss the meat or dairy.


We also had some wine last night. When I say "some" I mean a lot. Too much. So, the hangover combined with this new vegan diet, it gave me some... um.... stomach issues today. The most embarrassing thing happened and I don't want to write it, but it is pretty funny, so I'm going to pretend like there's nobody reading and just do it.


We have a faculty restroom really close to my classroom. It is one room, no stalls, so you're alone when you do your business. However, we have 2 on each floor and at least 25 adults work on each floor, so we have to share and we all have the same short breaks. At lunch, I was in desperate need of using the restroom, if you know what I mean. It was not pretty. I left and a teacher from down the hall - we'll call her Ms. Smith - was headed straight for the bathroom. She stopped to chat with me and I was dying because she saw me come out and would know that the... stink... was left by me **blushing**. We're talking and another teacher from our hall - let's call her Ms. Johnson - comes toward us and asks us if we're waiting. We say no and she says she tried to use the bathroom earlier, but someone was in there for a really long time **dying**. Then, Ms. Smith joked that it was me **crawling into a hole**. Ms. Johnson goes into the bathroom and Ms. Smith is still talking to me as I'm trying to escape and just as I make it to my classroom door, Ms. Jackson comes out and starts making faces to Ms. Smith about the smell. I unlocked that door as quickly as I could and escaped to the safety of my room. Then, I melted into a puddle of mortified mush.


Aside from that one horrible situation that was probably more a hangover symptom than anything else, I like being a vegan. I like following rules and these aren't too hard for me to live with. I would like to eat less processed foods, but I will continue to work on that as I cook more and learn more about healthy eating.


Have you ever tried vegan-ism? Would you ever consider doing it for a short period of time?