The Vegan Experiment

Day 17:

Hello everyone!! How’s your day going?
For some reason I feel very sick today :( sore throat, stuffy nose and nausea!! Not sure why but I hope it goes away soon because I have work in 2 hours.
So I have been vegan for 27 days and today something odd happened!! When I first began being vegan, I would spend a lot of my time thinking something along the line of “what can I eat that is vegan?” whether I was at my house or somewhere public. Now that almost a month has gone by I’ve gotten into a sort of routine where I know what is vegan and what is not so that every tine I pick something up I don’t really need to check the ingredients. Because of this I’ve stopped consistently reminding myself to be vegan (I know it sounds odd, but being fairly new sometimes I forget hahah). Anyways, this morning I woke up started making myself some oatmeal, and realized that I had put whole milk in it without even noticing. Luckily I didn’t actually eat any of it, and just gave it to my brother :)
Anyways, this suprised me because it shows how easy it is to slip up while trying to be vegan!! Whether you’re unknowingly buying “soy” cheese that actually has casien(milk protein) in it or you just sort of forget, it’s very common to have trouble sticking to this diet. Anyways I promise to be more aware of what I am eating in the future.
Have a great day!!
Aidan :)

Day 21:

Good Afternoon!

How is everyone? I feel mildly sick today. I had to wake up early for work and my head feels fuzzy and not very good. Also, today is incredibly hot and we don’t have air conditioning in our office :( can’t wait until I’m off work in one hour so that I can go buy a 5 hour energy shot and go work out at the gym :)

I wasn’t feeling very hungry this morning because I have a pretty bad headache so I chose to just grab a bar to eat. I found these little bars at Whole Foods called “Goji Bars” from earthling organics. They are so yummy. All the ingredients are recognizable: Almonds, Coconut, Figs, Goji Berries, Real Raw Agave Nectar, Sea Salt, Cinnamon and Vanila. They basically taste like hard cookies and since I live in LA they’re made fairly locally (Palm Springs). I really like them :) !!

By the way I recently found out that the Five Hour Energy Shot is actually pretty healthy! It’s mostly made up of B6 and B12 Vitamins, and you can even get a decaf version if you’re sensitive to the effects of caffeine. I’ve never taken it before working out before but I read somewhere today that caffeine limits the amount of pain most people feel in their muscles while working out! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Aidan :)

Day 19:

Hey guys, I hope everyone is having a good day! I’ve been working a lot, pretty much every single day this week. It’s good though because I was in summer school the first half of the summer and didn’t work nearly enough to pay for classes and books and everything during that time.

Anyways, on to vegan topics :) While I was at Whole Foods the other day o checked out some random foods to get some new things to eat! I found these cute little boxes from a company called ‘Matter of Flax’ that have hummus and crackers in them. The nice thing is that the hummus is dried to a powder (you later add water to make it into hummus) and it’s a travel size little box complete with flax crackers so you can take it to work or where ever! And there’s like seven different flavors! I tried the mexican one and didn’t love it so I think I’ll go for something more generic like Greek flavor or something next time !

Side note: Over the past twenty days I have been going to the gym more because I always seem to have more time in the summer. Combined with being vegan, I’ve actually lost a lot of weight! Although it’s unintentional I went from an average of 124lbs to 116lbs!! Mostly Im pretty happy with the weight I am, but I think being vegan is really helping me become more fit and gain muscle weight, which is a pretty cool side effect that I wasn’t expecting :) Anyways, have a wonderful day! Aidan

Day 15:

Hello! Today is great, really sunny, so I just rode my bike over to meet my boss at his house before an event :) Bike riding always puts me in the best mood!

Before work I had some extra time so I though I’d make some dinner for the family :) we had too many vegetables that I didn’t want to go bad so I made an odd but yummy mix of them! It tasted pretty great and only took me 20 minutes tops to make it (and I’m usually a fairly slow cooker because I always watch TV during) Anyways here is the recipe:

1 mini bag of Mixed Baby Squash (I got mine from Trader Joe’s, they’re crazy low in calories!!!)

1 whole onion, chopped fairly fine

6 baby potatoes, coarsely chopped, I used red but I doubt that it really matters for this recipe

1 package of firm tofu, coarsely chopped just like the potato, again I got mine from Trader Joe’s

Garlic Salt and Olive Oil to taste

(1) After you cut the tofu into about 1 inch squares or smaller, sauté them in a small pan with a little bit of olive oil and garlic salt until they’re lightly crispy. I don’t like to use more than a teaspoon of olive oil because that’s pretty unhealthy.

(2) While you’re sautéing the tofu heat another pan and put your chopped potatoes and a small amount of oil and garlic salt in there, cover them with a lid and just let them steam for about ten to fifteen minutes, or until they’re soft. WHILE you are cooking your potatoes, place the onions in with them for the last 3-5 minutest so that they can cook as well, you can tell when they’re done once they look like they are becoming clear.

If you want either the onions or potatoes to be slightly browned then take off the lid near the end and sauté them as well for 2-3 minutes.

(3) While you are waiting for the potatoes and onions to finish you can put the bag of mixed baby squash in the microwave for about 3-5 minutes, when it’s finished they will be steamed and I chopped mine up and then mixed the whole crazy vegetable tofu medley together :)

It’s a fairly simple, rough recipe, but I loved it. This makes about 6 servings, and came out to be extremely filling and low on calories :)

Anyways have a good, I should get back to work

Aidan!

Day 14:

What up kittens!? How is everyone doing? I can’t believe I have done this for 2 whole weeks!!!!! I haven’t posted anything in tumblr or twitter (twitter.com/veganexperiment) in a few days because I had a slightly busy weekend. I’m a photography major at UCLA and I spent the weekend working at an event so I was only home to sleep and shower. Now that I’m all rested up, I thought I’d discuss my vegan journey so far :)

Everything is going pretty well, I haven’t run into any major hiccups. At my work event this weekend I actually was worried I wouldn’t find anything substantial to eat, but since it was an outdoor barbeque type event, there actually happened to be a lot of vegetable platter type things. I’m sure more of the food there was vegan but being new at this I was too worried to experiment!

Also, I got offered some jelly beans, which I usually love. But I was hesitant to eat them because I assumed that most contain gelatin which is not vegan/vegetarian? I decided to do a little research:

“there are no animal or animal-derived products (including gelatin) in Jelly Belly jellybeans, but vegans may want to avoid them because they are coated in a mixture that contains beeswax, to give the beans their glossiness”

So usually if gelatin is not on the label of your various candy items, then it is vegetarian. But if you do not eat honey or beeswax, then I would stay away from these!

Back to work! Have a nice day, Aidan :)

Day 10:

Hello everyone!

I have been vegan for 10 days now :) it has been going pretty great, so far I haven’t run into any major problems. I slipped up once yesterday by eating sugar :/ but I don’t think it is a major problem, and I of course don’t plan on doing it again!

To try and get around this sugar problem I decided to head over to Mother’s Market today, which is a store in my area that sells a ton of natural products. I found some sugar substitue that is documented as not being tested on animals, and also does not use the bone tissue like many white sugars do. While I was at Mother’s Market I stumbled upon this amazing drink called “Bossa Nova” which I have never seen before!

They have a bunch of different flavors but i decided to try the Mangosteen Juise w/Dragonfruit. It was really good, only 100 calories, and supposidly each drink has a bunch of antioxidants that helps with specific things. Anyways it was delish :)

I’ve also had a huge craving for Jerky lately, which I haven’t had in around two to three years (being vegetarian and all) and today I found some “Soy Jerky” at the store. The brand I got doesn’t taste much like real beef jerky, but I don’t mind, it has the texture that I was initially craving so I am satisfied!

I’ll check in again tomorrow, thanks for reading :)

Aidan