... MOSTLY Vegan...

You know the joke from the Princess Bride. As Miracle Max examines a seemingly deceased Wesley, this transpires:

Inigo Montoya: He’s dead. He can’t talk.
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What’s that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

That sums up my vegan experiment pretty well. No matter how hard I try, I find a part of me that is only mostly vegan. It is not an easy thing to be 100% vegan without a complete readjustment in your senses. Cheese is something I really needed to kick- I've had serious problems with overindulgence. I talked about my difficulty in abandoning it entirely here. After about two weeks of mostly veganism, I can say my cheese habit is nearly dead. I don't crave it anymore. Well, I do crave the slight tang that a good aged parmagiano reggiano imparts to pasta dishes. I don't think I will ever be able to kick that. But all of the other cravings are seemingly gone. I can't afford to lose that momentum.

One of the factors that killed my cheese desire was, ironically, the nasty flavor of most fake cheeses. I struggled in vain to get into Teese and Daiya. I still can't stand them. They taste so obviously artificial; it never blends in with the other flavors. (Although I do kinda like daiya browned in the pan and eaten on its own as a cracker of sorts.) So, in response to this, I have adjusted recipes so they really don't require cheese. And that is how I kicked the habit.

I do have to give a special shout out to Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese, though. It may not be better than cream cheese, but it is remarkably tasty. I use small amounts of it to give pasta dishes just enough creaminess.

Another factor has crept into our meal planning: the high cost of vegan replacements for non-vegan products. (that's the "checking the pockets for loose change" part of the analogy.) We really can only afford to have one or two of them around all of the time. The one dairy replacement that is not expensive at all is nutritional yeast, which is pretty darn cheap if you can get it in bulk. So we keep some meat replacers- mostly Morningstar and Quorn- around, and the Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, and the nutritional yeast. fake cheese we'll get periodically (Abbey finds the taste of Daiya just fine, thank you very much) but I don't think it will make a constant appearance.

Also, tofu, as versatile and genuinely tasty as it is, is a little hard on the budget if you want to use it many times throughout the week. Especially if you buy organic, which I usually try to do. So, for a cheap source of protein, I've decided to morph into what you might call an ovo-vegetarian and eat eggs. For breakfast this morning we had burritos with black beans, salsa, Morningstar sausage, scrambled eggs and green onions. I put some diced green pepper in mine as well. I don't anticipate going overboard with eggs, but I think I will have some periodically to simplify the preparation of some dishes and, as I said, gain a few protein points.

Other dairy issues have been solved for the most part as well. I gave up my much beloved lattes for black coffee and the occasional soy latte, which I discovered is not gross. Soy milk is also great in smoothies and with cereal. Abbey prefers almond milk, which she likes for the same purposes. I can definitely say my desire for milk is gone.

Milk caused us health issues, anyway. After not eating any dairy for a couple of weeks and then having a pasta dish with milk in the sauce, Abbey had some familiar bad feelings in her gut that reminded her a lot of her problems with IBS. Could she have been lactose intolerant all that time? Maybe or maybe not, but it seems she definitely to be now. For me, my sinuses are bothered by milk, so that was an easy choice.

This morning we had a nice treat: a chocolate smoothie made from chocolate syrup, frozen chunks of banana, and soy milk. I added just a splash of vanilla and blended it until smooth. It tasted decadent.