Well, apparently I passed 30 days and didn't even realize it. OTL

I haven't really been in the mood for doing much lately which is why I haven't posted in awhile.

Anyway, now that my 30-day challenge is over, I feel like I can officially call myself a vegan. I don't know... I feel like this sort of initiation means something. I'm proud, you know? I plan on starting a vegan food blog (rather, I have started one, I just haven't posted to it yet) and I will be participating in this year's Vegan MoFo with it! Woo!

I certainly won't miss recording my meals. Ah, it is such a pain. ;___; Seriosuly, it got annoying ater a week lmao.

Back in my intro I stated that I didn't think I would have a hard time transitioning into veganism, and I have to say it really wasn't difficult. So, I was correct, haha. But more importantly, I'd like to say that the scare people get when they think about veganism (what do you eat?) is really nothing at all. It's not difficult, and you can still enjoy your meals and make delicious food. It's simple. In fact, it's so easy that I think if more people realized that, they would be vegans too. At the very least they would eat vegan more often.

This isn't much of a conclusion, but just for the record: this challenge was a success. Even if often times I forgot to post and was lazy in what I wrote some days, I still consider it a success because it did what it is meant to do: it made me vegan. So here I am, a brand new me. I will strive in the future to work at being the best vegan I can be. Moreover, a the best person I can be. /le cheesy

Thanks for reading my posts while I've been on this journey! ^^

Meals (Day 26):

Breakfast: 2 slices rye bread with peanut butter and chocolate spread (hehe), 1 peach, 1 pear, cinnamon-apple green tea
Lunch: Sesame soba noodles with broccoli and snap peas
Dinner: Balsamic braised red cabbage and red onion, roasted root veggies with Indian spices
Dessert: Slice of chocolate vegan cake with lemon glaze

Well, my birthday dinner was a bit disappointing, but it's ok. Lunch and breakfast were good, though. It was my first time trying soba noodles and they are quite lovely; a good change from rice noodles. My mom made me a cake (I wish she would have let me do it but whatever) and it was ok. She knows I adore lemons like no other and so I appreciated the lemon glaze.

My birthday was mediocre, but I don't mind. Like I said, I'm not much into celebrating myself, lol. Well... it was ruined by the end thanks to my sister, but I don't even want to go there so...

Meals (Day 27):

Breakfast: green tea, kamut flakes with soy milk, 1/2 fuji apple, 1 peach
Lunch:Curried vegetable stir fry with brown rice
 Dinner:   Sauteed savoy cabbage, black beans and spiced sweet potato with Dijon-lime vinaigrette and avocado cubes  
Snack: 1/2 fuji apple, grapes, slice leftover chocolate vegan cake with lemon glaze (keke)

Everything I ate today was delicious. Especially dinner. That vinaigrette was really nice, especially with the spiced sweet potatoes (just equal parts chile powder and cumin, and some olive oil), so I thought I might share it:

2tbsp. Dijon mustard
2tbsp. lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
4tbsp. finely chopped red onion
1 clove garlic, minced
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

I only used about a quarter of this recipe on my salad... thing. I dunno what to call it, haha. A warm salad, I guess.

Also, I finally got around to trying avocado, and it's about time! I didn't find that it had a lot of flavour, but that's ok because then it doesn't overwhelm the spices and vinaigrette. I know they are high in fat (good fat, though!) but I didn't use a lot, and they taste/feel like something that should be low in the fat and calorie department, haha. Overall it was a pretty light dinner, but I needed something light and simple because I snacked on that cake lmao.

I need to learn to manage my time better! I missed three days, yikes!

I suppose making excuses won't really do much anyway, so without further ado...

( Day 18 + 19 )




( Day 20 )

Waaah. Since coreycontagious is asleep I can use this time to finally write about the past two days that I missed.

I've been a busy bee; out for both of these days of the challenge...

( Day 16 )


( Day 17 )

I had the house to myself today and did next to nothing the entire day. It was awesome. :D

I love getting the house to myself. Some people don't like being alone, but I actually love it. I could spend weeks with myself and be totally ok with that. It's not weird lol. I swear. ;__;

This is really embarassing but... I always confuse prunes and dates. It's really weird, but I always think dates are prunes. The point of me saying that is that I made some homemade larabars this morning and the recipe called for dates to grind into a paste and I used prunes. I mean, it still worked just fine, but I'm such a dumbnut sometimes. OTL

I also made and adaptation of this recipe from Joy the Baker (one of my favourite food bloggers tbh and I especially love when she does vegan stuff, of course). I used peaches instead of mango because we have to very ripe peaches that were bruised and no one will eat them like that. Naturally when your fruit get those brown spots (which is where a high concentration of sweetness is, might I add... it's not 'bad' contrary to popular belief) you must bake with them! So bake I did. ^__^

Additionally, I didn't have enough brown sugar and as I am trying to get refined sugars away from my palate now, I turned to some turbinado sugar: I pulsed it in my magic bullet and it came out an off-white powder. It didn't have much taste so I added some molasses and processing again. Heh. I was experimenting, ok? I was skeptical but I added it anyway and crossed my fingers. It turned out fabulously. No need to worry, self! /pat on the back

Meals:

Breakfast: 1 cup coffee, 1 peach, strawberry-peach smoothie
Lunch: 1 homemade larabar (oops... I was lazy idk)
Dinner: Vegetable medley and tofu in red curry with quinoa
Snack: 1 chewy carob chip cookie, 1 slice vegan banana-peach bread


Remember what I said about my weight going all over the place? Well, I lost another two lbs somehow... so now I'm 121lbs at 5'8(~173cm). And if you are wondering why I also am putting my height every time I do the weight it's because just the weight alone would tell you little about how I am affected physically. If I were shorter obviously my BMI would be different and so on.

Oh and on that hemp milk: I ended up dumping it. It ruined a smoothie this morning and I refuse to force myself to finish the rest of it. Now I have no dairy milk so I really had no idea what to have for breakfast, which is why it's smaller than usual. I would normally have toast if I wasn't having cereal or oatmeal but my teeth can't manage that just yet and I haven't any made. Any ideas?

Also, tomorrow coreycontagious is visiting me for a few days! :D I'm pretty excited. Woo!

Ok. I admit it. Sometimes I can be wrong about people or things. It's rare but it happens.

In my last post I mentioned I met with a job councellor who signed me up for a bunch of these workshops that I wasn't too set on. I ended up sucking it up today because A: I had nothing better to do and B: it was about resumes and mine was really horrible. Really.

I'll be the first to admit I learned a lot at this workshop; about different types of resumes and when to use them, what to and not to include, how to use verbs effectively to sell yourself, etc. I normally hate these kinds of things... but I think all-in-all I really needed to attend this workshop.

I got some good one-on-one time with the people there who helped me re-do my resume (and it really did need more than a little tweeking) and I feel confident about it now. ^__^ I would feel good about handing it to a potential employer. This was the point of the workshop so it obviously worked. I'm happy.

And this has nothing to do with veganism. So lets get to that.

Meals:

Breakfast: Puffed wheat with vanilla hemp milk (not a fan of this milk), -1 peach, ½ banana, banana-peach-mango smoothie, 1 cup coffee
Lunch: Lentilles du Puy with rice and vegetables (leftovers)
Dinner: Wide rice noodles and vegetables in a spicy peanut sauce
Snack: 2 chewy carob chip cookies


I know it looks like I had a lot for breakfast but it's really not. Plus I was starving by 11 whaaat even.

That vanilla hemp milk was gross. I am going to say something about non-dairy milk, from my experience: don't buy the non-refrigerated ones. Just do yourself a favour. They taste horrible. Almond Breeze and Manitoba Harvest I'm looking at you. Then again, maybe it's just me. But I really cannot stand the taste of this type of milk. The ones that are refrigerated in the stores are the one's I've had the best experience with. Just putting that out there.

I got woken up at 4:30 am -__- (this happened a lot this summer thanks to someone...). I didn't get back to sleep because my family is obnoxious and I'm too light of a sleeper. I was pissed. Still am, tbqh. That is why I had to make myself coffee this morning. Except it was instant since I broke my fuxxing coffee press in July and instant coffee is useless outside of its use in baked goods. At least that's my opinion.

Uh yeah I lost another pound today so I'm currently 124lbs at 5'8 (~173cm). Not a big change lol. Really, my ideal weight has always been 120lbs but I can never maintain that number; I'm either below or above. Wae matabolism? ;___;

Well. Today wasn't much better, tbh.

I hate searching for jobs. :|

I met with a job consultant today and  I'll just say that he wasn't very good at his job. He would get up and leave me in his office randomly and I'm like "..." He basically just signed me up for these stupid 'workshops' that I don't want to go to. I mean... ugh. I hate shit like that. The only thing that sounded good isn't even a workshop is meeting with a 'job developer' who is supposed to go out and help you find jobs relevant to whatever you want. He did send me this job posting and said he'd pass it along to the job consultant... I'm like buddy, I don't even meet the woman until the twentieth of this month. By that time the position will be filled gdi.

Whatever. I might go to the workshop tomorrow that is supposed to help you with your resume. I gues it can't hurt. But the one on Thursday is about social media and seriously... idgaf. lol.

Meals:

Breakfast: Kamut flakes with vanilla soy milk, some grapes and a strawberry-peach smoothie (I didn't break the mug this time yay!)
Lunch: Veggie fried rice with tofu
Dinner: Lentilles du Puy with rice and veggies
Snack: Some grapes and 1 chewy carob chip cookie

My vanilla soy milk is all used up, heh. I have vanilla hemp milk to try now. ^__^ I hope it's good lol.

Lunch was boring, but it's been a long time since I had a stir-fry. I used to eat stir-frys all the time... it was not a good thing. Ah, but I realized that I can now chew without hurting my jaw and in turn getting a headache, so that's good. I will still be conscious of the back of my mouth though; you never know.

I tweaked a recipe from the America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook for dinner (it's a great cookbook btw, I recommend it). I probably can't post the recipe online but it was just lentilles du puy (French green lentils) with carrots, onion and celery and seasoned with thyme, salt and pepper. It was pretty simple. It didn't call for rice but I added it because I had some leftover and I thought, "Why not?" There were two variations (one with swiss chard and a curried version with golden raisins) but I didn't have the ingredients for them.

This was my first time cooking lentils. And I must say I am a big fan! I had only had lentils once before (I think they were brown) but they were canned and I hated them. Ugh. Just remembering them makes me sick. I have come to this conclusion: canned lentils are disgusting and have nothing on dried lentils that you cook yourself. Legumes are usually this way, I think.

Apparently my brother's meat-loving and vegetable-loathing friend tried my carob cookies last night and loved them. I laughed when my brother called them 'chocolate chip cookies'. I wonder how they would feel if they knew carob is a legume. lol And that I used spelt flour for part of the flour. If they couldn't tell the difference between a vegan cookie and a regular cookie I will assume I did well.