Friday, April 27

Thursday 26 April 2012

Breakfast
Wholemeal toast with Nuttelex and marmite.

Lunch
Macro Wholefoods Organic Quick Oats (I took a measuring cup with me to measure out the water!), a tub of Goulburn Valley Peaches in Mango Puree, and an apple Leda bar.

Dinner
A takeaway stir-fry with rice vermicelli noodles, tofu, and veggies, in a black bean sauce. I also had a medium fries and cheeseburger with no meat and no cheese (love those pickles!) from McDonald's. I couldn't take a photo of these though as I had to eat them while walking. I only have 2 hands you know!

Snacks
Almost a whole block of Eskal Noble Choice dark chocolate with mint. God this was amazing! It had little crunchy mint bits in it!

Thursday, April 26

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Breakfast
A toasted poppy seed bagel with strawberry jam, which I forgot to take a photo of before I ate it. Sorry everyone, it was a public holiday and I was having a leisurely morning.

Lunch
Hot chips and sauce at IKEA.

Dinner
We had dinner at my mum's house. It was homemade tomato and coconut soup with sourdough bread with Nuttelex. I also had 3 cups of tea with soy milk.

For dessert there were ANZAC biscuits. I ate nearly this whole plate.

Snacks
A little packet of Golden Days Sesame Snaps.

Tuesday 26 April 2012

Breakfast
I didn't take a photo and now I don't remember! Maybe a toasted bagel with strawberry jam?

Lunch
Leftover minestrone soup which I forgot to photograph in my rush to get to work.

Dinner
Homemade pizza on a pita bread base. I had pineapple, capsicum, mushrooms, and Cheezly Mozzarella cheese. This 'super-melting' cheese didn't seem to melt! Even when we put it under the grill! It was still nice though. Like the Edam, very mild flavour though, could barely taste it! I still feel like it added something to the pizza though, maybe it was purely psychological...

Snacks
A whole block of Sweet William chocolate.

A cup of warm soy milk with a teaspoon of golden syrup.

Tuesday, April 24

Monday 23 April 2012

Breakfast
A toasted poppy seed bagel with Nuttelex and strawberry jam, and a cup of decaf tea with soy milk.

Lunch
Minestrone soup, very warming on a cold wintry day!

Dinner
A wintry dinner as well! A Linda McCartney Vegetarian Country Pie, peas and carrots, and sauteed leek mashed potato. As the name suggests, to make the mashed potato you simply saute the leeks and then mix them into your mash. These pies were amazing! I can't even begin to describe how great they were. I bought them online from Vegan Online, but I've heard that South Australians can purchase them at some Foodlands.

Snacks
A little packet of Golden Days Sesame Snaps.

Some Leda Chocolate Rum Balls.

A bowl of Kellogg's Sultana Bran with soy milk.

Sauteed Leek Mashed Potato Recipe

A lovely spin on boring old mash.

As many potatoes as you will need to feed the number of people you have, cubed
As many leeks as you will need (I find that 2 leeks work well in mash serving 3 people), sliced
Margarine, I use Nuttelex

1. While your potatoes are boiling, start frying your leeks in a generous amount of margarine. Fry until soft.

2. Drain the potatoes, return to the saucepan, and add a big knob of margarine. Mash and mix until smooth and well combined.

3. Mix the leeks in with the mashed potato.

It looks fancy, tastes good, and it's easy, what more can you ask for?

Monday, April 23

Sunday 22 April 2012

Breakfast
A toasted poppy seed bagel with Nuttelex and apricot jam.

Lunch
A slice of toast with Cheezly Edam Style cheese. I thought I'd give the number 1 brand of vegan cheese another go, maybe it's better melted? Maybe it tastes better and has less of a grainy, pasty texture? It was awesome! This cheese is definitely meant to be melted! It's flavour was fuller, more nutty, and scrumptious. Still a very mild flavour though so I think it works better on something plain like toast rather than on something with other flavours that would easily overpower it. It melted and bubbled just like dairy cheese and though it was still kind of paste-like it was much more enjoyable because it was 'melted'. If it was still grainy, I couldn't tell because of the toast. Verdict: vegan cheese, made for melting, not for biscuits. Can't wait to try the super-melting mozzarella on a pizza!

Dinner
Honey soy stir fry made using a Coles stir fry mix and my homemade Best Honey Soy Sauce, honey-free of course, and rice. Very delicious and, I like to think, very healthy.

Snacks
A whole packet of Bonvita Rice Milk Chocolate bunnies. They were so silky I just couldn't stop!

One little Sweet William chocolate bar. Well, it always starts with one anyway...

Best Honey Soy Sauce Recipe

Everyone loves honey soy sauce so why should vegans have to miss out because of cruelty to bees? I invented this honey soy sauce recipe to solve this problem, and it is heavenly. Screw using it in a stir fry, just drink it!

2 heaped tbs golden syrup
2 1/2 tbs soy sauce
1/3 cup boiling water

1. Put golden syrup and soy sauce into a heatproof jug.

2. Pour in boiling water and mix until golden syrup is completely dissolved.

Easy-peasy! I haven't got a photo of the actual sauce itself, it's just kind of brown and boring, so here is one of a lovely honey soy stir fry. Make it, your taste buds will thank you.


Happy eating! :)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

This is a recipe I got from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

Dry egg replacer to the equivalent of 3 eggs
6 tbs water
1 cup margarine
3/4 cup castor sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 1/4 cups self raising flour
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1 tsp salt
1-2 cups dairy-free 'milk' chocolate (i.e. not dark chocolate)
1 cup chopped nuts (optional) - I have not made them with nuts

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C and line a baking tray with baking paper. I highly recommend you do this as the first time I made them I didn't use baking paper and they stuck like crazy.

2. In a food processor or blender, whip the egg replacer and water together until it is thick and creamy. Then, in a large bowl, cream the butter, castor sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla essence. Add the egg replacer mixture and thoroughly combine.

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, bi-carb, and salt. Gradually beat the flour mixture into the wet mixture until it forms a dough.

4. Mix chocolate chips and nuts (if you're using them) into the dough.

5. Spoon out onto lined baking tray and bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown. Let stand for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool.

As mine didn't turn out because I didn't listen to the recipe and line my baking tray, here is a lovely picture from the book of what they should look like: scrummy.


Happy eating! :)


Sunday, April 22

Saturday 21 April 2012

Breakfast
A toasted poppy seed bagel with Nuttelex and strawberry jam, and a mug of Vitasoy Soy Milky chocolate milk (best chocolate milk EVER!).

Lunch
Macro Wholefoods Organic Quick Oats with coconut and brown sugar. When I mixed the oats and the water together, I also mixed in some dessicated coconut. Then I microwaved it until it was cooked, stirred in a bit of soy milk and some brown sugar and voila! This was soooo yummy!

Dinner
Spinach, tomatoes, and chickpeas with rice.

Snacks
Some Arnott's Jatz with Maggie Beer Spiced Pear Paste.

A nut mix composed of raw almonds, raw cashews, and dried cranberries. I ate about 120g! I couldn't stop!

Saturday, April 21

Vegan-friendly restaurants in Adelaide

So you're a new vegan and you want to eat out but don't know where to go? Or maybe you want to take a vegan friend or relative out for a meal but are worried there won't won't be anything on the menu for them? Or maybe you're a vegan looking for a new restaurant to try. Urbanspoon.com is here to help. This lovely page displays over 100 vegan-friendly restaurants in Adelaide. They are categorised into fine dining, higher priced, moderately priced and cheap eats so you can weed out places you don't want to eat at. I can't wait to pop in to a lot of these places!

If you live in a diffrent city, search for it and then under features on the left-hand side of the page, click Vegan Friendly. Also very handly for when you go away on holiday!

Friday 20 April 2012

Breakfast
I was in such a rush to get to work that I didn't take any photos! I had Kelloggs Sultana Bran with soy milk.

Lunch
As I said, I was in a rush to get to work. I had a tin of dolmades that I got from the supermarket and a big container full of grapes.

Dinner
We went out for dinner at Pure Vegetarian, located in the central markets. Despite its name, the place is actually vegan and serves yummy and really cheap Asian food. I also love the atmosphere of the markets on a Friday night. I had the 3 choices meal: rice/noodles (of which there are two choices of each), 3 choices of main, and a free soy drink (warm or cold), for only $8.20! I chose rice noodles with fish, sweet and sour gluten, and a tofu and bean dish. I also had a spring roll. The soy drink was delicious and so creamy! I had mine cold.

The actual reason we went to eat at Pure Vegetarian though, was because of their amazingly awesome and delicious sago pudding. It's only $3.20 and I recommend you eat in rather than take away because then you get this to-die-for sweet syrup and coconut cream poured on the top. Don't be alarmed by the glow-in-the-dark appearance, just eat it and experience heaven. This was Jeff's first time at Pure Vegetarian and he loved the sago pudding too. They also do a black sticky rice pudding which is really nice.

Friday, April 20

Thursday 19 April 2012

Breakfast
Kelloggs Sultana Bran with soy milk.

Lunch
Some grapes, 4 salada sandwiches with Nuttelex and marmite, an Aribar, a Leda bar, and a tub of peaches in mango puree.

Dinner
A foot long veggie delight sub on multigrain bread from subway. On it I had lettuce, beetroot, tomato, cucumber, carrot, salt and pepper.

I also had a medium fries from McDonald's.

Snacks
Some chocolate chip cookie dough (which was more like a batter!) from a batch of cookies we were making for a friend of mine.

A glass of soy milk and some of the broken pieces of cookie that we created before we realised that a) we should have listened to the recipe and bought baking paper, and b) the problem could be solved with canola spray. They were delicious though and the recipe can be found here, just make sure you use baking paper!

Thursday, April 19

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Breakfast
Macro Wholefoods, read 'Woolworths', organic quick oats (which are not as nice as the Freedom Foods ones but they are cheaper) with brown sugar and cinnamon.

Lunch
Pasta with a supermarket bought sauce that Jeff made for me.

Dinner
Burritos made using a burrito kit. We used baked beans and poured the seasoning sachet into that, then cooked off some of the liquid. In my burrito I had beans, capsicum, tomato, corn, lettuce, salsa, and Cheezly Edam Style cheese. I have to say the vegan cheese was, yet again, a let down. Though you could grate it, its texture was actually more like a paste and it felt grainy in my mouth. Also, it really didn't add anything to the meal flavour-wise. I am overall underwhelmed by what is regarded as the best vegan cheese brand. I have a super melting mozzarella still to try so maybe that will be better. Hopefully.

In sickness and in health

Hello everyone!

I apologise for my absence, I've been quite sick with a stress related digestive problem that I have, which leads me to the topic of this post: vegan foods to nurse you back to health when you feel nauseous.

At first, I ate only Heinz tomato soup. I tried eating toast but it made me sick so I stuck to just the plain soup. After a few meals of that, I started eating plain quick oats porridge made with water. After a couple of days of eating only tomato soup and porridge, I started adding milk and golden syrup to my porridge, drinking watered down juice, and for dinner had equal portions of boiled rice and boiled red lentils all mixed up with a bit of salt. I have to say that this was actually delicious and I should make it more often! I had this rice and lentil mixture the next day for lunch and that night I had veggie mash. I'm now recovered and able to eat everything again! Yay!

So if you ever feel sick, try eating some of those foods, they were just what I needed!

Wednesday, April 11

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Day 1 of the rest of my life.

So after completing the vegan challenge, I decided to stay vegan. It's been an interesting journey towards this point, with many thought provoking moments, and I'm sure it will continue to be interesting and enriching to my life. Anyway, here it is, the first day of the vegan life challenge.

Breakfast
Uncle Toby's Plus Omega 3 with Sanitarium So Good Soy Milk.

Lunch
Nothing for lunch at home and no leftovers from the night before so it was subway for me! On my wholegrain sub I had avocado, lettuce, carrot, cucumber, capsicum, gherkins, and pepper.

Dinner
Lentilicious Coconut Fusion lentil mix which I bought a while ago from the Organic Market and Cafe at Stirling, rice, steamed beans and broccoli, and a Fry's Chicken-style Burger which I cut into strips. It was really yummy!

This is what the lentilicious packet looks like:

Snacks
Quite a few chocolates from Jeff that I scoffed out of the fridge after work.

Tuesday, April 10

Some thoughts on the 'humans are meant to eat meat' argument

So now that I'm officially a vegan, I've been doing some thinking about the arguments people come up with as to why I'm a weirdo. One of them is "But humans are meant to eat meat, it's our natural diet". If the person who says this is somewhat intelligent it is often backed up with "That's why we have canine teeth".

Canine teeth. Let's talk about canine teeth.

Canine teeth are named, I assume, after the pointy fangs of dog-animals (wolves, foxes, jackals etc), as their family name is canidae (not to be confused with Canada, they are very different), and wolves and dogs are also from the genus canis. Let's have a look at some human canine teeth.


There they are, they're the ones coloured in red. Basically, there are 3 kinds of teeth. Incisors are the ones at the front (the blue ones), they are chisel shaped and used for cutting plant matter; think of biting an apple or a sheep nibbling grass. Canine teeth are pointy, they are used for tearing flesh and are handy if you want to gnaw meat off a bone. Then there's molars (the green ones), they are flat and ridgy and are used for grinding up plant matter that has already been chomped by the incisors.

Take a look at the set of human teeth, the incisors are actually the longest teeth, if you're canines were longer than your incisors then you'd look like a vampire and people would be creeped out. In fact, people tend to find people with big incisors quite attractive, just look at American celebrities. The widest teeth are the molars, and humans have quite a lot of them, 20 in an adult, and they are nice and flat for grinding. The canine teeth in humans are actually quite small and inconsequential. Sure they might be sharp, but they're no sharper than any of the other teeth.

The argument is that, because humans have canine teeth, they must be 'meat eaters'. It is true that some herbivores lack canine teeth, look at a cow for instance:


 And elephants, in fact, lack everything except molars and 2 incisors (their tusks):


However many, nay, most, herbivores do have canine teeth. Here is a good example of canine teeth in a horse:


The thing about evolution is, it's not neat and simple. There are dead ends and there are leftovers. All animals are descendants of animals which, at some point along the line, probably engaged in a bit of flesh eating. When diets and lifestyles changed over millions of years and generations, the evidence of this didn't disappear, it just started to shrink. In animals that weren't eating as much meat as they used to, canine teeth began to shrink as they became useless. That's why herbivorous animals such as horses, sheep, and deer have little canine teeth that are not suited to meat eating. Why is this relevant? Because people have little canine teeth that are not suited to meat eating.

Cats are one of the few types of animals that are truly carnivorous. While they do occasionally eat grass, they seem to do this to make themselves vomit, rather than for sustenance. Here is a great picture of cat teeth:


Can you even see any incisors? They are virtually non-existent because they are useless to a cat. Cats don't bite apples or nibble grass. Ok, so maybe they do nibble grass, but you'll notice they awkwardly do it with their tall, pointy molars, made for slicing meat rather than grinding like our short, flat ones.

Some will say that the reason people don't have large canines and tiny incisors like cats is because we are omnivores. Is this true though? Dogs are omnivores. Their teeth look like this:


Kind of similar to a cat really. The incisors are bigger but the canine teeth are still huge and the molars are not flat. However, dogs do eat a fair amount of meat so let's take a look at an omnivorous animal that eats very little meat. Grizzly bears. People usually think of bears as carnivores and indeed some bears have to be, such as polar bears. Most bears though are omnivorous and eat mainly plant matter. The majority of a grizzly bear's diet is plant matter, with a few small animals thrown in every now and then. This is a grizzly bear skull:


Those incisors are starting to look familiar and the molars sure are looking nice and flat. However, the canine teeth are still long and very thick. Maybe this is because grizzly bears are more closely related to dogs (and many other animals!) than to humans. People often say that chimpanzees are out closest relatives and indeed their behaviour is very similar to ours. Chimpanzees eat plant matter, but they also hunt mammals and meat makes up a fair percentage of their diet.


Their teeth reveal that it has probably always been this way, or it has been this way for a very long time. While they have large incisors and flat molars, their canine teeth are huge. They overlap each other and protrude as far out of the jaw as those of a grizzly bear. The jaw is also very thickset and strong. Compare this to our actual closest relative, the bonobo. Bonobos are quite peaceful and sociable animals whose diet is almost entirely made up of plants. They do not actively hunt mammals for food though they will eat small ones if the opportunity arises. Mostly the animal-product part of their diet is made up of insects, eggs, and honey. They are foragers, and their teeth look like this:




So let's go back to the human teeth.


We have short flat, molars, largish incisors, and very small canine teeth. This evidence suggests that humans are inherently vegan. We are foragers and scavengers, opportunists who would eat meat if they found it (probably dead) but otherwise lived quite happily on what they could eat from plants. It appears that, up until quite recently, our natural diet consisted of less animal-products than the diet of a bonobo. So why do we eat meat now? Well, lots of reasons really. Farming livestock is easier than foraging, eating meat means that you eat smaller meals and less often than if you were eating only plant matter, and the main reason? Dogs. Dogs hung around people, people hung around dogs. Dogs kill animals and leave leftovers. It doesn't take long for opportunists such as ourselves to work out that if we work in partnership with the dogs we can get a free feed.

Does this mean that we need to continue eating meat and other animal products though? When we are now lucky enough to be able to access our natural diet without the inconvenience of foraging, why would we pass this up? It's been widely shown that eating meat is not very good for our health. It contributes to cancer, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure, heart problems, obesity, and a whole range of other, and related, health problems. Since going vegan I have really felt the change in my body. I have energy, I have vitality, I feel as if I work properly now. I believe this is because I'm now giving my body what it needs, its natural diet.

Canine teeth do tell us what our natural diet is. Our natural diet is pretty much vegan. So take that somewhat intelligent people that try to make me feel like a weirdo because I don't consume the breast milk of another species. Weirdo.

Happy eating! :)