Veganism—11 Days In

I've been vegan since March 25th, 2013. That puts me at 11 days today. There have been some very difficult challenges for me and it's been hard to overcome.

One challenge was going out with a group of friends to a brewery. One person swore there was food there I could eat (to be fair, I don't think they knew I had started my veganism and believed I was still vegetarian). We got there and what were my options? Maybe a couple salad options and a veggie burger that may or may not have been vegan. I was STARVING and I wasn't going to settle for a mother fucking salad (I've also not recovered from 4th of July last year when I ate a lot of salad before doing heavy drinking and got alcohol poisoning). Anyway, I chose the veggie burger and it was fine. It wasn't fantastic. It wasn't too terrible. But I was also pissed because it was my 3rd veggie burger in 4 days. From this I learned that if I don't know where we are going out (to eat) with friends I need to either: 1. Eat beforehand or 2. Speak up and say there needs to be vegan options (which is a little tough for my introverted self)

I've also just started a new term at PSU and I've found it very difficult to find cafes that have vegan options for breakfast food. Do you know of any places? Today I was wandering around in the rain and went to 3-4 different places, and none of them had vegan options, or if they did they were lunch/dinner types of food (soba noodles, veggie wraps, etc...). I finally found a little convenience store type of thing that had sliced apples and a banana. I swear, that banana was the best one I've ever had.

It's been hard, but there have also been some good things! I made this awesome vegan recipe that my boyfriend actually enjoyed. It's a pasta primavera with lemon pepper tahini dressing and avo-spinach walnut pesto. It. Was. So. Good.

Here's what it looked like:

I used a different whole grain pasta, otherwise I followed the recipe.

I was really happy that there were some leftovers! I feel so good that I could cook something vegan, healthy, and nothing had to die for me to eat it.

I've decided that I will probably continue to be vegan after this "challenge". I watched the above video yesterday by Gary Yourofsky. It really solidified what I am doing and I feel good with my decision, even if it is tough sometimes. Did you know that when cows give birth, their babies are taken away from them so WE can drink their milk and eat their cheese when really all of that should be going to the calf? The calf is sent to a slaughterhouse or put in a cramped pen to grow for meat. The mother cow is wailing for DAYS trying to find her baby. How fucking SAD is that because people WANT to drink milk and eat cheese?! I think it's really fucked up and fucking selfish.

Oh, also, can I just say how awesome my boyfriend is? After complaining to him that I couldn't find any vegan breakfast food around campus he says this:

I'll end this here, but I want to tell you about the vegan breakfast casserole I made for Easter brunch next time. :)