The Vegan Experiment, and What Came After

So I failed. I hate failing. I failed for several reasons, but mostly because living a dairy and meat-free existence in a Western country is extremely difficult, especially if you have lots of other things going on in your life and eating becomes a quick refuel stop in between real work and derby work. However, living without animal products was a fascinating few weeks, and I've certainly learned a lot about diet, health and what we eat.

I didn't get it either.

Dairy gets everywhere. Really. It's amazing. Shopping became an exercise in small print, as I found whey powder, casein, and various other dairy products in all sorts of foods that you'd think had no relation to a cow at all.

Once you start reading labels, it's hard to stop. There's some learning to be had from starting to read labels. Like the amount of sugar that's added to things that again you'd think wouldn't need it. Since February I've become one of those people you see staring at food labelling, picking up four types of peanut butter and peering at the labelling.

Eating clean. After starting vegan February I was pleased at how, if left to my own devices and with a bit of time to cook properly, I do eat pretty well. Lots of whole grains, vegetables, nuts and seeds, very little by way of pre-prepared sauces or processed stuff out of a plastic box. I eat a lot, but it's quality. Once I started having to really look at my diet, it was nice to see that I do eat well.

Eating out. This was harder. The late night at work and going straight to training. Catching up with a friend for coffee and deciding to grab lunch as well. At the Tattoo Expo in Hamilton, I ate nothing but chips the entire day, and felt distinctly gross as a result.

Cooking. I live on my own, which is totally awesome, but does make trying out the recipes in the numerous cookbooks I was lent by various and wonderful people difficult. Cooking something I'll be eating for two or three days in a row  makes being inventive a gamble, and when combined with a lack of time makes it easier to stick with the usual variations on grain + veggies + peanuts in a stirfry. Though I did discover tahini and how to make it delicious.

Get about a 2/3 cup of tahini
Add 3/4 big sloppy teaspoons of lemon juice
And a couple of teaspoons of garlic (or a couple of cloves chopped up if you kick it old school)
Grind a load of salt in
Add some chilli

Mix together with a half cup of water, then pour over the aforementioned grain/veg/nut combo. Feast.

Gonna go here, walk that. Yeah.

So where to from here? Well, I drink less milk than I used to. Green tea is now my go-to at work (where the coffee is for emergency high-caffeine moments), there's no cheese in my fridge and I still buy vegan groceries. If I'm out and about then I'll eat dairy products if there's no other option, and my orders in coffeeshops are a 50:50 split between soy and trim. I feel like I've been eating more consciously, having also stopped buying products with palm oil in the ingredients list.

I'd like to say thanks to my good friend Jane who has been a smiling, encouraging vegan mentor throughout. She even bought me a copy of the Revive cookbook as a present after my month was up, which I can't wait to get stuck into! The fact she regularly runs marathons, multiple-kilometre swims and does it all eating the cleanest diet I know and with a huge smile on her face means she's an inspiration and definitely puts paid to the myth of vegans being unable to raise their hand to change the channel. We're travelling down to the central plateau in May to take part in the T42 race (she's doing a considerably longer distance than I mind!), and a weekend of delicious vegan food and (hopefully) glorious weather in beautiful surroundings awaits!

Duathlons and halloumi

Week 2 of February Vegan Challenge and a slip has happened. Not even an accidental slip, an actual "Oh bugger it I don't care" and it's all the fault of a duathlon.

As I mentioned in my last post, I took part in the Real Women's Series duathlon (my annoyance at that name can wait) on Sunday. Due to work starting back, stupid high humidity in the evenings and coaching fresh meat, I had let my running training slide in the last couple of weeks. However, I had the arrogance to think that it wouldn't matter and I'd breeze it. The "You're all WINNERS! Beautiful, sexy WINNERS!" rhetoric was also grating a little and went against me taking it seriously.

It was a lesson in hubris.

The free shirt's quite nice though

I struggled. The duathlon took place in either stinking humidity or torrential rain, neither of which were conducive to a fast time. Once again I hit a bit of a wall with the running sections (only 3.5k and 1.5k FFS), and felt like I was wading through treacle on the final kilometre or so. I had set a goal time of 1hr 15 mins, but had secretly hoped for an hour. As it was, I got 1hr 10mins, which is OK I guess but not what I hoped for. No finisher's high that day.

It was a great learning experience though. I actually felt like giving up several times, coming up with some "my ankle hurts" excuse, but I pushed through the BS and completed. I learned a valuable lesson about complacency in events, that it doesn't matter how stupid-sounding the event or the extra frills, every event is only ever against yourself and that needs to be taken seriously. As a result, I have set about 6 alarms for Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and successfully managed my first morning run of 2012. My time was crap (I need to look at a 6am pre-run fuel option) but I feel like I'm finally getting into something approaching a decent schedule. Run Tuesday, Thursday, and weekends, derby Monday and Wednesday, coaching other days but that's a bit lower-impact, Fridays day off. Sorted.

Look at it. JUST LOOK AT IT.

As for veganism, I slipped up after the duathlon. I met some friends for brunch, still in my soaking wet running gear. I was pretty irritable, tired, and the cafe we met up at does an amazing vegetarian burger. A. MAZE. ING. It has halloumi cheese on it. I ate it with a kind of nihilistic abandon. I knew it was there. I didn't I care. It was delicious.

But WHY, Bruja? Why cave and eat the cheese? Honestly, because of the grumpy. Because I felt like I'd failed at the duathlon (at the time I thought I was a good 10 minutes slower than I actually was) and so did not give a damn. Because halloumi is delicious. Back on the wagon now of course, I have discovered a quick and delicious stir-fry recipe that may see me through to about August.

Stupid simple, just fry up half an onion and then add a couple of handfuls of blanched peanuts. In another pot, boil up some delicious quinoa (cooks faster than rice, tastes great, and has lots of protein. Also, doesn't leave you feeling bloaty and overfull). Add some veg to your onion and peanuts (I add lots of carrot, corn and peas). When cooked to your liking, add a huge spooge of soy sauce, a teaspoon-sized glob of garlic, one of ginger, and a bit of chili. Cook a bit more. Add quinoa. FEAST.

Me, yesterday.

I have to say though, I am still enjoying vegan month, and I think it will continue to impact on my diet once the 29 days are over. I've swapped out my black coffee addiction for green tea, eating WAY more vegetables (which I'm now enjoying more than fruit. And I love fruit.) After the initial dip in energy (which I can attribute to work starting up I think) I feel pretty good. I've discovered avocado on toast with hot sauce. Exciting things to cook with quinoa. I think I'm cooking more from scratch, and I love that my grocery bill last week came to.... $35. And I probably won't need to restock until next pay day either. Apart from my teenage antagonism on Sunday, I've not really missed dairy or felt a gap in my diet. Given that three years ago I was eating meat almost daily and didn't really give any thought to my diet beyond "Don't eat too much crap" this is something of a development.

Vegan February: Week 1

It's Waitangi Day here in NZ which has meant two long weekends in a row (yay!) and it means I'm a week into the February Challenge. So far, it's gone pretty well. I've only slipped up once, when on Friday I caved and ate a pumpkin filo pastry bite and a little chocolate cake on a stick at a work morning tea. I managed the league's day at the beach today without eating a good friend's chocolate cupcakes, and have managed to eat out twice this weekend with minimal difficulty (thank you Hell Pizza for your Sinister vegan pizza, delicious without resorting to vegan cheese!).

A few observations from the first week:

• Dairy products are everywhere. The bread I thought was vegan? Contains whey products. It took me over ten minutes carefully reading the small print on all the loaves of bread in the supermarket last night until I found one that was vegan friendly (this time I checked twice to make sure). Once you start looking, you see it everywhere.
• Preparation is key. On Saturday a few friends and I checked out the Auckland Circus Convention. We'd be there for lunch and into dinnertime, and whilst circus people are more likely to have a vegan-friendly diet I couldn't guarantee there would be food there I could eat, so I built some time into my day to go to the local whole foods store and get a few provisions. It turned out that we got dinner out anyway, but in a world where almost everywhere now has decent vegetarian options it's interesting being in a situation where there isn't a lot of choice. 
• I miss cake.Though it's interesting for someone who finds it difficult to say no to food being in a (self-imposed, admittedly) situation where I can't just say yes without thought. 

I have to say, I have been feeling quite tired and run-down in the last few days. I am finding work incredibly stressful to get back into though, and my body clock's adjusting to a four-hour shift (left to my own devices and I wake up at 10am, so my 6am work start is taking some getting used to). The last couple of times I've gone for a run I've only managed a few km's before I've ground to a halt but it's also been very humid so I think I need to get up even earlier to take advantage of fresh mornings) I'm eating enough according to MapMyFitness's nutrition program, and eating a good balance of proteins, fats and carbs, so I'm going to keep an eye on it and see how I go once I get used to being back at work.

Next week I have another vegan pot luck on Saturday (which I'll be doing some baking for- molly cake is a vegan fruit cake with no added sugar and it's DELICIOUS), two coaching sessions on two consecutive days (league has started back for new skaters, which I'll save for another post!), a duathlon, and possibly starting a circus skills class. And that's in addition to running and work (and sleeping) so I'll have my work cut out to eat more than endless rounds of avocado on toast! I managed to whip up a tasty lentil curry this evening in about 15 minutes, so I'm hoping this won't be too difficult.

Next post will be about roller derby, I promise.

February Challenge Preparation: The Community

The season comes ever closer to starting up (can't...wait....) but until it does there's not a huge amount derby-related to really talk about. I'm still running off-skates fitness in the park every week (though bad weather saw only four brave souls make it out last time), still working out most days (though this week I've been a bit slack, been fighting off a bug I think?).

I was invited to The Vegan Society of Aotearoa's monthly pot luck dinner last night by my friend/Feb Challenge mentor Jane, as an opportunity to see what kind of food is available to those on a vegan diet. I've been reading through a few cookbooks and the like but to actually have a huge spread of savoury and sweet dishes available to try was great. My contribution was a satay noodle salad (first time I've made a sauce from scratch in ages) and I'm pleased to say that most of it got eaten and I actually saw someone go for seconds!

A lot of the savoury dishes were as you'd expect, a nice mix of salads, stir-fries and even a pie (which straddled the line between sweet and savoury, in a tasty way!). It was the sweet stuff though that really impressed me.

Raw food puddings. TASTY.

Chocolate and coffee tarts that tasted like they had been made with heavy cream (actually tofu), a chocolate birthday cake that was as moist and tasty as anything out of a good bakery, cookies and peanut treats. I was really impressed at how food that you'd never associate with veganism was indistinguishable from the "real" thing.

The vegan community (at least, the part of it I met last night) is an interesting group. There's a popular image of vegans as being white, middle-class, pasty-looking, skinny individuals with an overabundance of political t-shirts and patchwork pants. The room I was in had those people, definitely, but also people from pretty much across the social spectrum. The table I was sat at had some fascinating discussions going on, from the merits of home-schooling to guinea-pigs to Dumb Things People Say to Vegans (and vegetarians). I like being in company where people aren't afraid to ask each other questions and challenge their attitudes so I was a very happy (and full!) person.

Now, I appreciate that so far, I have been extremely pro-vegan in my preparation for the February Challenge. There's a few reasons for this:

• No point in going into something like this with a negative attitude. If you decide to do something for a month, six months, or forever, you can't look at it like a punishment. To look at this (or FebFast, or whatever you might be doing) as a denial won't get you anywhere.
• It's something that interests me, and it wouldn't interest me if I dreaded it!
• I'm still on summer holidays (just) so my mealtimes, meal prep, and time has been entirely my own. I've not had anyone give me stick or be negative at me thus far, or been in a situation where I've had to defend myself or turn down an offer of food from someone. I imagine when I start the challenge and go back to work that it's going to get harder. 

 For the purposes of SCIENCE I'll do a weigh-in and take some measurements on the 31st January, and again after the challenge. I'm not expecting to radically change but it will be interesting to have a comparison. For Science. Delicious science.

Right, I'm off to the gym. It may be raining but that's no reason to stay sat on the couch, wearing my warmest dressing gown (damn you weather!) and watching the rats making a nest.

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)