The Results Are In!

So I guess there's no secret about what this post's about; I got my cholesterol results back after six weeks into my vegan venture!.  From 217 I've been brought down to 210 and from a weight of 196lbs, I've gotten down to 185lbs.  My cholesterol didn't lower as much as I thought it would have, but I also stumbled inadvertently along the way.  My biggest error was not taking into account salt content; by eating only veggies and such I thought I could eat whatever I wanted without repercussions.  After my Moe's discovery, my eyes have been opened and I'm no longer naive and ignorant about the appearance of "healthy" meals wrapped in bright lights and shiny counter tops.

So here's the deal.... I'm going to continue with this diet!  Honestly after a while, I stopped thinking like a carnivore and being vegan ceased to scare me.  Just for the record, over these past six weeks, I didn't try anything crazy.  No manorexia or working out like crazy in the gym to buff up happened; I just changed my diet and continued doing my normal exercises and routine. 

In another six weeks, after applying myself to be more aware of other  factors besides calories, I'm going to get tested again and hopefully the results will be better than these last ones.  :-)

IF I could say one thing about this experience, it would be that I'd recommend everyone to try it.  It may not work for you and you know what?  That's fine.  Not all diets, like pant sizes, are meant for us all.  However, you'd be surprised as to the amount of creativity that can come from replacing some ingredients that you would think are crucial to a meal with others.  Try it!  What would the harm be?  Less hormones in your diet and perhaps a slight dent in your wallet, but it's worth atleast the effort.

For the record, I'll continue to blog my meals, work has just kept me knee high in corporate servitude; the posts though will continue on.  :-)

And This Is My Confession

So I've gotta confess something to you: I haven't been a good boy this past week with my diet.  Womp womp.  I'm not saying I strayed too far from it, but I was slammed with alot of overtime work and just didn't really have the energy to make my meals from scratch.  I know, I know, excuses.  I tried to make up for it though by being as vegan as I could!! 

I found myself this past week eating out alot; some asian, some tex-mex there, but all as vegan as I could make it.  Sometimes I'd slip up.  Ie - I'd have a whole wheat veggie burrito, but would forget that cheese comes on it.  If I was trying to vehemently stick to my diet, I would've sent that food back; after working in restaurants though, I know what they do to the souls of returned plates: hefty bag it!  I'm not willing to throw away a plate of food because of my mistake when there are people around the world who would kill for some of that cheese I forgot to scratch; don't worry though, my tummy got me back every time I veered off course.

Taking this eating out path/faith in fresh foods in establishments, not only did I rack up a bill for the week, but also my carbs!!  I'm sure I burned them all out or most of them during martial arts or some other workout, but the behind-the-scenes facts are scary.  For example, since I was pretty much rushing in and out of work I had to depend on places like Moe's and other joints to keep me going.  Well with Moe's I kept it all as vegan as possible: only veggies, tofu and whole wheat tortilla.  Harmless right?  Think again!!  I just found out this week that yes, the burrito was only 650 calories, but with 102g of carbs and over 2000mg of sodium!!  Outrageous!!  If you don't believe me, go to their website and create your own burrito and you'll see.  Needless to say, I probably won't be eating there again... EVER.  God knows what the nutritional facts are about the asian place I get my steamed rice, veggies and tofu cooked in peanut oil from.  Unfortunately I can't claim ignorance after my Moe's discovery, so with some tears I'll probably have to wave my Asian meals goodbye as well.

After learning these facts one question came to mind: how can harmless veggies (fresh supposedly) be so incredibly unhealthy?!?!  And why do food establishments fail to mention this??  Since I've only been on this diet for a little over a month, I've got much to learn obviously, and this situation has taught me an invaluable lesson: fresh food (veggies) in establishments does NOT equal even remotely healthy.  Honestly, when I found out the nutritional facts of my rushed side venture, it makes me feel like I've back tracked on my whole diet, even if it was unintentional. 

The whole topic of fresh and processed foods is one I haven't given much time to because ever since I started this vegan path, my meals had been made fresh and by hand.  However now when facing shocking facts like this, the topic of fresh and healthy demands its space.

  This will be my time to check up on the facts about this, but in the meantime, no matter if I only have a few minutes every night, I'll have to make up something, or be doomed to pay for overpriced salads. 

In the end though, lesson learned!  Now a not so subtle change of subject... I'm getting my cholesterol tested this upcoming Wednesday.  I'm pretty excited to see if there's been any change, but at the same time anxious due to my recent findings on eating out.  I guess it's all part of the learning curve with changing your eating habits.  Stay tuned and I'll tell you how it turned out and how this diet has affected me overall.  Will I continue to stay on it?  Will I go back to a more vegetarian lifestyle?  Will Tom ever catch Jerry?  Just wait and see!  ;-)

A Quick Jolt on the Go

So last week I came across this little package of joy; I can't help but to say I'm just a wee bit hooked by them.  I've never heard of So Delicious until I started having this caffeinated drink in a carton.  If you go to sodeliciousdairyfree.com you can see all the products they offer.  This mocha coconut milk concoction is fantastic!  One thing I've noticed though is the amount of the sugar and carbs in it.  The carbs don't bother me as much as the sugar; 25 grams can be alot if you get too attached to these drinks, so don't say I didn't warn you.  ;-)  Other than the sugar high that accompanies the taste, I totally recommend that you try these products out and see for yourself if it's better
to be without bovine than with it. 

Chocolatey Vegan Goodness

Sorry guys, I know it's been forever since my last post; life's been extremely busy as of late, but not in a bad way.  It's just been one of those, have to get to it at what counts kind of time.  Anywho, a week ago I decided to make a chocolate dessert.  It all came from a conversation I had with a girlfriend of mine; I wanted to show her that one can be vegan and yet still indulge in some savory goodness of sweets.  So began my little baking session into what turned out to be quite tasty.

First things first: when it comes to desserts and baking, I've always got to set the mood.  So reggae?  Check!  Incense?  Check!  Plenty of windex for post flour warfare?  Double Check!!  Most of the ingredients are cheap and easy to and can be seen here.  Besides the fact that I love chocolate, the budget friendliness of this treat attracted me to it as well. 

For those who find baking to be a pain and messy, well I can tell you one thing: this cake is very easy to make.  Messy?  Hmmmm, I guess that depends on the strategy you take to combat such a nemesis.  I always tend to lose my battle with flour, so I have the utmost respect for said ingredient.  Back to the cake....

After mixing it all in a square pyrex dish, you just set it in the oven for 40 minutes and relax, all the while thing of other vegan side dishes that could accompany such a sugary treat.  I will warn you of one thing: this cake has ALOT of sugar!  How much you may ask?  Exactly one cup!  So it may be vegan and all, but it borders on diabetic.

What I ended up with at the end of it all was a not so fluffy cake.  It turned out more like a hybrid of a brownie and cake; in other words it was a dessert going through an identity crisis.  The best thing though is that the cake still remains soft and moist even after a few days in the fridge.  Don't tell me you thought I could eat it all in one day???  I am a glutton, but even us gluttons have our limits.  ;-)

Amateur Protein Bar Maker

So like the title says, I'm a rookie homemade protein bar maker in training.  On homecooking.about.com I found a tasty recipe for those budget minded protein bar eating fanatics; fair warning though... it's not vegan!  Womp womp!  But don't fret!  It can be morphed into a tasty vegan snack with a few adjustments.  Case in point would be one of the main ingredients: yogurt.  That can be solved with tofu.  On holycowvegan.net there's a helpful list of vegan substitutes for everyday not so vegan ingredients.  I've become intimate friends with tofu and have stock piled some of it in my fridge just for moments like these.

Besides the yogurt dilemma, I came across a few more ingredient issues; I didn't have brown sugar or oat bran available.  For some reason I was of the belief that if you don't have brown sugar at your disposal, then get some good ole plain white sugar and molasses and you're set!  Hmmm, I should've thought about that some more.  After being laughed at by friends about my Paula Dean sugar concoction, I decided to stick with my experiment and made my protein bars borderline diabetic.  The truth is that if you want to make brown sugar, you have to use unrefined white sugar and not the already processed kind.  Lesson for another future day for me.

When it came to the oat bran debacle, I learned that with ome rolled oats, almond milk, banana, flax seed and a blender, you can spin up your own batch for free!  Just beware of how much you need, because you could easily end up with a small pot of oat bran to spare; as much as I love oats, I can only eat so much of it before it sprouts out of my ears.  If you noticed, the recipe asks for chocolate chips,
with alittle bit of effort you can find dairy free chocolate chips that taste just as great as regular ones!

The recipe says that between prepping and baking your bars, it should all take about 30 mins.  Due to all the vegan adjustments and experiments gone wrong, all in all my protein bars took about three hours to make and bake and so far a week to enjoy.  Don't let the amount of time deter you; if you're good with coming up with vegan substitutes on the fly, then you'll probably take far less time than me to make these treats.  I say give em a shot and you won't regret it!

A Tasty Treat for Cheap

So I must say I found a really tasty soup on girlmakesfood.com that can be made in just a few minutes!  It's a kale and lentil concoction that only took me about ten minutes to put together.  It's essentially onions, carrots, lentils and fresh kale made in a vegetable broth base.  I totally recommend it to anyone who's just wanting to make something in a pinch; but I'd definitely suggest slicing up some serrano peppers for that extra spicy kick.  Only problem I found with this stew is that it's pretty light on the tummy.  If you want to make it more filling I'd say add more lentils or accompany your meal with some whole grain bread; other than that, this definitely tops my list of quick, easy and healthy meals... and did I forget to mention cheap?  Ah yes, cheap as well.  If you're on a shoe string budget, the ingredients for this meal can all be bought for less than $10 bucks.  Now just you wait for my all day labor of love homemade protein bars tomorrow; that's a story that'll have you laughing. 















One more thing: a glass of wine always makes a meal even better.  ;-)

An Explosive Mix

So this morning I was awaken by the sound of leaf blowers and lunacy; I took my early morning wake up call to cook up a breakfast and have leftovers for a fresh lunch at work.  Like I've said before, most of my work meals are pretty generic plates of just veggies and the such thrown together; the only difference today was that it would be a fresh basic hodgepodge of things!

I've come to learn that I love making pan seared meals.  In fact to me, there's nothing easier and quicker to make than tossing some things in a pan and just seasoning away.  The only thing I had to really wait for was the rice cooker to keep up with the pace, aside from that I just started tossing things in my flat cauldron.  This morning's culinary piece consisted of rice, serrano peppers, a half dozen mushrooms, half a red onion and half a tomato. Hmm, can you really halve a tomato and expect it to stay fresh later?  I guess I'll find out.  If it doesn't turn into jello by tomorrow morning I'll be able to recycle it into another plate.

The meal turned out pretty tasty for a spontaneous breakfast, but to continue the rude awakening kind of morning I'd been having with the leaf blowers and such, my cooking feat would come back to haunt me.  I ate just enough to put some leftovers in tupperware for work today; the tab you can rack up on meals can be ridiculous sometimes.  I decided to give my food one quick shake in its new plastic prison, when BAM!!!  Rice and veggies flew everywhere!  My kitchen looked like a garden massacre had just occurred.  Needless to say, I was short time and rice, so I found myself dumping another $9 bucks on a meal.  Womp womp!!  My victory this morning was short lived but oh was it ever so tasty!

A random side note: I realized that I didn't blog on friday about the meal I made.  It was just a simple spaghetti concoction I had come up with along with more serrano peppers and mushrooms.  Anyone notice what I have in abundance from the farmer's market yet?  I forgot to take a pic of it, but I'm sure it doesn't take too much imagination to see what it looked like.  Since it was really on the fly, I didn't have much time to be creative, but the next time I make pasta I'll sure snap a pic of it for all of you.