Some of you may know that I have chosen to become a Vegan! After 30+ years as a vegetarian, I think it is just a natural progression. To be honest, I do not know what took me so long (cheese, maybe?). I wanted to start this journey after my birthday (the end of this month) because Mason and I started a tradition last year of making a trip to Pittsburgh to celebrate my birthday at The Cheesecake Factory (yummm, cheesecake!). I wanted to take a week and try it out before I went "cold tofurky." I went grocery shopping and loaded up on the usual vegan supplies: fruits and veggies! As long as I wash and cut the fruit, Mason will devour it. Breakfast was not too much of a change. I usually eat a smoothie with whole wheat toast, very rarely would I eat eggs. Lunch was a different story, I would choose cottage cheese or a Chobani (ohhh, chobani, you stole my heart) yogurt. Dinner went either way. So, with a few adjustments, I was ready to tackle that week animal-product free. I started eating a big salad for lunch with any and every veggie (or fruit) that I could find to top it. Sunflower seeds for some crunch and a low-fat dressing, YUM! I started craving and looking forward to building a new (and much different) salad everyday! After a week of creating new, interesting recipes (most off the top of my head), I have to say, I LOVE THIS!! I feel so good! I found a lot of resources online that have been very helpful in making the (not so big) switch.
My dilemma: Friday night pizza night. Every Friday night Mason and I have pizza. Sometimes it is plain cheese, other times it is mushroom and black olive, but my favorite is green-salsa pizza! It is so good and easy! What to do? So, in an effort to try and solve my problem, I looked for Vegan Cheese. Yep, they make that. I found a company on facebook that makes all kinds of dairy-soy-meat alternatives. So, I "liked" them on Facebook and wouldn't you know it, they had a contest to win full-size packages of their Vegan Cheese! It was a timed contest, the first 75 people (they have almost 35,000 fans, so my chances were not that great) that filled out the form on their page won a bag of their mozzarella or mexican shreds. I WON!! I chose mozzarella but they sent me BOTH flavors!
How exciting! It arrived UPS on Tuesday and I had it sitting in the fridge until this afternoon, when I planned on making the pizza early (Mason has to be somewhere tonight). Ok, I put on the green salsa and opened the bag of mozzarella. Yep. My enthusiasm stopped there. It was odd and crumbly and smelled a little "off." But, I gave it a shot anyway. I baked the pizza as usual and when I opened the oven, I was a bit disappointed, this is what the pizza looked like:
Uh.Yeah.
Now, looks are not everything (I'm not that shallow), so I decided to cut a slice and give 'er a try.
The truth is, it did not taste *horrible*, but after the first few bites, I was done with it. Oh well. I think pizza night will resume with pizzas made with lots of extra veggies, sans cheese. I like pizza like that anyway, so no biggie!
After all that I have been reading about dairy and the dairy industry, the less I miss it. I really think that, as a nation, it has been forced on us how dairy is so good for our bodies. I'm not so sure about that, and after this week and a half without it, I cannot see a point in my life where I will want to have it again. But, with foods like this:
Whole grain toast with vegan cream cheese (that is good!), fresh dill, ice cold sliced cucumbers topped with sprouts:
Homemade Tropical Oatmeal with creamy almond milk:
Who needs dairy? Yum!
~Apparently Blogger removed spell-check. This isn't good...
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