Welcome to Day 5 of my 7 day Vegan Challenge! Oh boy... before I even tell you about what I made for dinner tonight... let me tell you my first try at dinner making was an absolute and utter disaster. I had to do an onside kick late in the fourth quarter but I recovered it!! Here's to my trials and tribulations in day 5!
Breakfast: nothing fancy or worth reporting
Lunch: Oh boy, going to a catered lunch meeting is the worst when you're trying to eat vegan because you have no idea what's in anything! My options were potato soup (which is usually loaded with cream... but I wasn't sure so I skipped it), turkey wrap with cheese (obviously a no), and a veggie wrap with some type of clear dressing (winning?!) A couple bites into my veggie wrap (which was delicious by the way), I realized there was FETA CHEESE in it!! So, I had to start digging out each of the cheese bites (luckily they were in big chunks) and putting them on my plate. My colleagues probably thought I was crazy but... whatevs. I also had a bag of Lay's Potato Chips. Yum!
Lunch: Oh boy, going to a catered lunch meeting is the worst when you're trying to eat vegan because you have no idea what's in anything! My options were potato soup (which is usually loaded with cream... but I wasn't sure so I skipped it), turkey wrap with cheese (obviously a no), and a veggie wrap with some type of clear dressing (winning?!) A couple bites into my veggie wrap (which was delicious by the way), I realized there was FETA CHEESE in it!! So, I had to start digging out each of the cheese bites (luckily they were in big chunks) and putting them on my plate. My colleagues probably thought I was crazy but... whatevs. I also had a bag of Lay's Potato Chips. Yum!
Dinner: And now the kicker... dinner. I guess the odds of me "striking out" sometime in my 7 days of Vegan cooking was pretty likely but I should have known better. I selected a Vegan alfredo sauce for today because, well - to be honest, the picture looked amazzzzing. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. That's right, I fell for the it, hook, line and sinker... if I would have really looked at, or thought about, the ingredient list I would have known there is no way this is going to taste good. But I went in all free-spirited and didn't use my knowledge of flavors and, well, good food, to think about it.
The alfredo sauce had soy milk (sounds OK), garlic (duh), dijon (ok that's a bit strange but OK), cashews (hmmm), tahini (say WHAT?!)... etc. Yeah, there is no way that can taste good and guess what... it didn't. Shocker. Or as my husband said last night, "it ain't good... that's for sure". I ran into a similar problem once making a shrimp dish with a bunch of weird ingredients, but the picture looked good. PEOPLE, TAKE MY ADVICE, IF THE INGREDIENT LIST SOUND WEIRD, MOVE AWAY FROM THE RECIPE. TAKE TWO STEPS BACKWARDS AND DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT 100 DOLLARS.
The alfredo sauce had soy milk (sounds OK), garlic (duh), dijon (ok that's a bit strange but OK), cashews (hmmm), tahini (say WHAT?!)... etc. Yeah, there is no way that can taste good and guess what... it didn't. Shocker. Or as my husband said last night, "it ain't good... that's for sure". I ran into a similar problem once making a shrimp dish with a bunch of weird ingredients, but the picture looked good. PEOPLE, TAKE MY ADVICE, IF THE INGREDIENT LIST SOUND WEIRD, MOVE AWAY FROM THE RECIPE. TAKE TWO STEPS BACKWARDS AND DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT 100 DOLLARS.
OK, sorry for the dramatics... it was bad. The good news is the sauce didn't need to be cooked so while the pasta was boiling I scoured my cupboard for what we could eat with the pasta. Behold, a jar of basil and tomato pasta sauce (Vegan) from Wegmans. If you've never been to a Wegmans grocery store, just know you should be jealous. I also had randomly picked up some boca crumbles at the grocery store the other day just for kicks. Who knew they'd come in handy for a fourth quarter come back?! So I browned the boca, added it to the sauce and pasta and blamo - an awesome quick come back! It only delayed dinner like 3 minutes. Go me. Winning.
Day 5 was a disaster. Mostly because I made a few rooky vegan mistakes. Lessons learned you may ask.
I will say that my husband went for lunch yesterday at Chipotle and had an awesome burrito with beans, rice, fajita vegetables, lettuce, salsa and guacamole. He just had to research it before he went... said it was delicious. #jealous #mighthavetogotheretoday!
Happy vegan eating. Day 6 - I own you... here I come!
*knowgirl Scarlett
- If a recipe looks bad, but a picture looks good, it's probably still bad
- Assume everything has cheese in it and bring your own food... even if the food you would have received is free.
- Eating Vegan when you're not making everything yourself is HARD.
I will say that my husband went for lunch yesterday at Chipotle and had an awesome burrito with beans, rice, fajita vegetables, lettuce, salsa and guacamole. He just had to research it before he went... said it was delicious. #jealous #mighthavetogotheretoday!
Happy vegan eating. Day 6 - I own you... here I come!
*knowgirl Scarlett