I like to call myself an "in-progress" vegan these days. I'm not big on labels or restrictions but I realize that I have decided to live a more compassionate lifestyle again and for good this time (I've been vegetarian off and on again for 15 years) that labels can assist on this path. I'm not quite vegan, but I'm getting close. In progress.
My ultimate goal is to be healthy which I find to be a very challenging endeavor in a society that is addicted to chemcially grown, overly processed, refined foods, meat, dairy and sugar. A society that blindly defends eating meat meanwhile being oblivious to what goes on behind those pleasant looking packages and tasty bites of steak. Ignorance is not bliss, and the disgusting, cruel practices of the meat industry are reaping what they sow. Three year old children are dying from eating contaminated hamburger meat (e. coli) , and don't even get me started on what these meat industries environmental impacts are (you can google it or youtube for yourself if you want to go down the rabbit hole).
I want to do my part to live a conscious, compassionate, healthy life for the sake of my own body as well as for the planet. Our home is a constant work in progress to keep it as green as possible, organic gardening, using green cleaning processes and products, recycling.
In just shy of one month's time since my last post on my "health kick for life". I have almost completely cut out cheese. I still crave it from time to time but I have found that it is suprisingly easy to cute out. It wasn't even my direct intention to cut it out, I just thought I should try cooking without and save for a pizza that I ordered and forgot to ask for it without cheese, I have not eaten any cheese, no ice cream (I have had sorbetto though which is dairy free) and very little butter. We have replaced butter with extra virgin coconut oil. It's delicious and so good for you. I still eat butter but I can see that I will be eliminating that product quickly too. We still eat eggs, but we are getting them from free range organic producer's. Eggs and butter. The last to go on our vegan process here. We didn't even start out to become vegans but here we are and I couldn't be happier about it. We have incorporate more raw foods into our diet, always trying to find/purchase organically grown, non-GMO and food that is not irradiated.
In cutting out all these animal derived products meat, cheese, dairy, we have not been replacing them with the convenient soy based meat replacement products. Since soy products are not healthy, and GMO soy doesn't have to be labelled GMO and is an environmental nightmare, I refuse to consume soy based products now that I know. Knowledge is power and hopefully the more people learn of the horrors of soy both on our health and environment they will stop eating soy products as well. There are some alternatives out there. Quorn is a good one, tastes like real chicken without the guilt. I believe Quorn products do use eggs though so they are not vegan. They have some really tasty non-meat balls! Gardenburger has a Vegan soy free patty that is really tasty! I like those. There are some sausages I like to get at Whole Food's that are made only of potato and apples. They are delicious and go well with breakfast foods or things like spaghetti.
I have found it is actually pretty easy to just substitute what you normally would have used meat for, with just healthy vegetables. I like to lightly saute a mixture of all the produce I can get like red, yellow and orange bell peppers, red onions, mushrooms, zuchini and yellow squash, even eggplant sometimes! I just throw it into spaghetti sauce, scrambled eggs or hashbrowns. Add some spices and it is a healthy delcious meat-free meal that is full of flavor! It makes great curry! Yummm!! We eat ours over a mixture of whole grain rice. I love the richer flavor or whole grain rice. Making homemade pizza without cheese has been a blast! I don't even notice the cheese isn't there because the sauce, whole wheat crust and all the fresh vegetables are so tasty and full of flavor.
I am starting to incorporate more raw foods and less grains into our diet as well. I am not opposed to cooking yet, as I know that even our bodies denature proteins in the digestive process, but I want to learn everything I can about how to get the most value out of the foods I eat to be happy and healthy. If you have any questions about how to do this yourself please let me know. I've found substituting ingredients into recipes to be much easier than I thought.
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