February Challenge Preparation part 1

WEIRD.

 Today I got the e-mail from work telling me all about the procedures for the new term, which means that February is almost upon is. Thankfully, preparation for the February Challenge is well underway and I've made some interesting observations and research so far. First off, I've been experimenting with milk substitutes. I tried Rice Milk (left, in the attractive penguin glass). I can say, with 100% certainty, that rice milk tastes absolutely nothing like moo milk in any way, and if it wasn't an opaque white colour you would under no circumstances confuse the two. It's gross in coffee, but curiously tasty by itself. There's some soy milk chilling in my fridge now, and it's sort-of passed the tea test, so we'll see how it fares in future trials.



The other day I had a good rootle through my kitchen cupboards to work out what I can keep during the coming month, what's a priority for eating before then, and what can be safely stored. I was actually quite surprised to find that the bulk of my food is vegan-friendly (though not, unfortunately, kind to the orang-utans. I managed to buy a batch of noodles that are swimming in palm oil. They're vegan, but this sucks a bit)

...still good....

All good...

YAY POPCORN!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fridge good

 

 

 

 

I checked all the packaging for sneaky non-vegan bits and bobs like whey powder, casein (made from milk) and various other stuff that I've found out about from reading up on veganism (and there is a lot out there!). My non-vegan but veggie options were pretty obvious, with the exception of the herbs-inna-tube (whey? Really? But whatever for?)

NOT VEGAN

For me, the big surprise was finding out that these flavour packets (one of which, the nasi goreng, has been a staple of my diet since I discovered it a couple of months ago) contain shrimp paste, and the Moroccan seasoning contains, wait, CHICKEN. Wait, what? Yup, chicken. Quite how much or in what capacity, I don't know. I am a bad vegetarian.

Any of you omnivores want some Moroccan-flavoured Laksa goreng?

 I'll admit to being a bad vegetarian. It's only in the last wee while since I got back on the wagon that I've really started to think about my food choices. I guess when the focus has been on getting my body as healthy as possible, considering what goes in it becomes an integral part of that plan. One thing I am hoping to get out of this challenge is a greater understanding of what goes in and how I feel as a result. Today I ate an almost entirely vegan diet and it was delicious (vegetable and cashew nut stir fry with soy sauce, ginger, garlic and peanut butter sauce- NOM) and I'm neither hungry nor wanting. How I'll cope when I don't have an option remains to be seen. Vegan Cooking for Dummies comes unstuck in a lot of recipes by falling back on vegan cheese a lot. I'll be trying it, but I'd rather make a pizza that isn't trying to be something else if I can help it.
Finally, I read this yesterday. Jonathan Safran Foer if you've never heard of him is one of those painfully modern American writers whose first novel I was told is excellent (as soon as I get past page 20 I'll let you know, I've tried twice and owned it for 18 months) and whose website is charmingly/irritatingly called "The Project Museum". I picked up his non-fiction book Eating Animals from the library as I figured I stood a fighting chance of finishing the damn thing and being able to say I'd read his work to the very few people who might possibly care.

As it happened I downed the book in a one-shot and I'm still thinking about it. Like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation it forces the reader to take a long, hard look at the way meat and dairy are produced. Where Schlosser focused on the food most of us would agree is over-processed crap, Safran Foer takes us further and makes a convincing case for cutting out ALL meat from our diet, and at the same time supporting family farms and producers. He acknowledges the intrinsic part meat plays in our culture and history and makes his journey very personal without falling into mawkishness. It does make me question how I can possibly ever eat meat again with anything approaching a clear conscience (see my above comment about shrimp, through the lens of knowing that shrimp make up less than 2% of any shrimp netting exercise. The rest is "by-catch", and thrown dead, dying or injured back into the sea. 98%).

I'm not going to turn this blog into a big ranty "Rah rah meat is murder rah rah eat only lentils and tofu etc." epic, as even I'd get bored of that (not to mention the season starts up real soon and I'll have lots of ACTUAL derby-related stuff to write about) but with a change in diet (even for a month!) comes an awareness of your current choices, and that to me is worth writing down and discussing (in an adult fashion, without recourse to the "steak/bacon/salmon is delicious and I couldn't live without it" argument. That gets frustrating real fast)