Adventures in Veganism

After reading the title you are probably thinking one of two things, "Well it's about time she came to her senses! Hopefully she will convince others to go vegan." or "Has she lost her mind? Now she's going to try and get us to give up meat!" Actually it's neither of those. I haven't joined PETA and I'm not going to change the world, one carrot at a time. At the recommendation of my doctor I picked up a book by Rip Esselstyn called "The Engine 2 Diet." Rip is a firefighter/world-class triathlete who is introducing others to the vegan lifestyle (which he calls a plant-based diet) and basically has a 28 day challenge, hoping that that the end of the 28 days you will be so much healthier that you will never call a cow "dinner" again. I honestly have never had any interest whatsoever in becoming a vegetarian of any degree. I love meat, poultry, and cheese so much that I don't see any reason to let them go. Besides, I live with 3 staunch carnivores who are definitely not going to join me in any diet altering experiment and have made that quite clear. However, in the interest of getting my digestive system in proper working order, I could do it for 28 days, or so I thought. I read the book and thought "hmm this won't be so bad." Well, I'm here to tell you, it's a lot harder than you might think. I decided to give up dairy first and enjoyed a delicious veggie sub, sans cheese for dinner that night. Wow! this won't be that hard. But the next morning I blew it when I had to put milk in my coffee because I had nothing to replace it with. The next thing to go was meat. That first day went pretty well until Tom made these amazing chicken wings that I couldn't resist. I felt a little weak trying to survive on just fruit & vegetables for lunch so I added eggs back into my diet. I'm getting better at making food choices, but still have some trip ups. One day while waiting for my veggie pita at Roast & Toast I munched on some cheese popcorn. Halfway through the bag I asked Tom if powdered cheese on popcorn would count as dairy. Dang. After a few weeks I am adjusting to my new life without foods that I once thought I couldn't live without. While I have still have no desire to learn to cook with tofu or watch as my family devours a Thanksgiving dinner without me, for now I will make a go of it, expecting a few moments of weakness now and then. I think I may be more of an egg-eating vegetarian who enjoys the occasional bag of cheesy popcorn. And no, I won't try and convince you to join me.