any advice for a newbie
Hi everyone. I'm new to the Vegan world. My friend and I had been talking about trying out the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle for quite some time. We thought it would be a wonderful way to make a healthy change as well as a good experience. Well we finally decided to try it out for a week. If we are able to cope with it, we will extend it to a month. After all our talking about it, we decided to document the month and write an article for our high school newspaper of which we are co editors in chief. We haven't told anyone but our advisor about the article and are really excited to share the experience. I would love to hear anyones comments on this and anything that you feel would be a good piece of information to add to the article. wish me luck because I know it will be difficult. It was only the first day and already we had friends tell us we would fail and complete strangers working at the grocery store straight up laugh at us when we asked them if they had any soy burgers.
Wow, good for you! That is awesome! Taking it one week at a time is a great idea. I've been a vegan for about 18 years and LOVE it...I enjoy food more, have much better health, and haven't missed a thing after the initial adjustment (that took about a month).
The main thing is finding out how awesome vegan food is! If prepared correctly, it tastes BETTER than any other kind of food. Once your palate adjusts, you will find that the old foods taste like cardboard...or worse. ;)
I have a blog with lots of FREE recipes from my vegan cookbook if that helps at all. You are welcome to check it out at: www.quintesstestkitchen.blogspot.com. I also teach cooking classes and find every time that people are amazed at how great vegan food can be.
The only other tip I would give you now is to educate yourself on how superior and nourishing a vegan diet is. That way, you will know people are misinformed if they give you any grief! :)
Good luck...you may just surprise yourself with how much you love it! :)
just thought I'd give an update. It has been one full week and i've been doing pretty good. My friend is struggling quite a bit but she doesn't like veggies all that much. I have the occasional craving but nothing too serious. My biggest problem is finding the energy to cook for only myself every night. There really isn't a whole lot of pre packaged veg food around where I live so I've had to resort to cooking every night. It's either that or eat salad and fruit every night which can get very tiring. I have found many great recipes and when the remaining three weeks are over I will definitely continue to visit this site for new ideas.
If cooking every night is wearing on you, why not make some meals you can freeze and reheat, or things that make tasty leftovers? Make a big pot of some kind of soup, stew, chilli, that sort of thing. Then you can just quickly reheat it, nuke yourself a baked potato/make some toast... And voila, food!
I try to make a big pot of SOMETHING on the weekend, then divide it into separate gladware containers and nuke it at work. Things that work well:
vegetable/potato curries
chili
pastas
roasted veggies
casseroles
I am a pretty timid cook, so a lot of my stuff requires similar ingredients with different spices. If you have a microwave, you don't need to cook every night. Just make a lot more on your day off! :)
And keep fresh fruits and veggies pre-cut to snack on. I like to freeze my cut-up fruit because I live in a warm climate and that way it lasts longer. :D Frozen grapes are YUMMY!
I also keep hummus on-hand. It goes good with any veggies or crackers or on toast. It's also filling!
Good luck!