More Meatless Monday Madness

Writing this post Monday night after doing an entire vegan day. The plan is to finish this, shower and hit the bed before some kind of animal related item jumps into my gob. Seriously, how do the vegans do this everyday?
So, get this, Sunday night I actually write a menu like I would for something at work cause it's just about the only way I can be sure to keep it animal free. One of my menued items was a grilled peach snack which I manage to screw up by seasoning with honey ginger white balsamic vinegar. Honey comes from bees so the peaches get put away for a Tuesday snack.
Anyway, here's what I ended up with..
Breakfast: 
Oatmeal and brown rice protein powder cooked in a mixture of water and coconut milk seasoned with cocoa powder, salt, vanilla and beet sugar. Apparently regular sugar can be processed with bone char so that's out. Beet sugar it is. And coffee with Mimic Creme because I learned my lesson the first week. (See my last Meatless Monday post.)
Lunch:
Salad - sliced radishes and radish greens dressed with cinnamon pear balsamic vinegar and olive oil vinaigrette.
Vegan burrito - whole wheat tortilla, BBQ rub seasoned corn pan seared with chipotle olive oil, spelt, onions, garlic and Helen's Kitchen Vegan Chorizo
I have not yet found a premade frozen vegan or vegetarian burrito that tastes like...anything I would want to spend money on or eat again. But mine was quite yummy so I made enough to put up 3 more in the freezer.
Snack:
Suburban Organics banana split and spread with chocolate PB2. So. Damn. Good.
Dinner:
Shirataki noodles stir fried with beet greens and roasted edamame seasoned with fresh ginger and General Tso's sauce over raw kale. Grabbed a double sized side of Sodexo's country kitchen vegetables to go along with it cause I was dining at work.
Snack:
Spelt topped with Italian seitan, tomato sauce and vegan mozzarella shreds. Nuked till warm. Hey- I was out of ideas, had the stuff in the fridge and it worked.
Almost killed it when I passed the empty pizza box from my hubby and daughter's dinner. A little cheese was stuck in it so I plucked it and almost tossed it down the hatch. Stopped myself just in time!
-DK

Meatless Monday Missteps

No - I'm not vegetarian, or vegan. Just a foodie tryin' to avoid becoming a statistic in the (cue ominous music) obesity epidemic. Seriously, the way this is talked about in the media, you'd think it was the zombie apocalypse.

I've been doing the lacto/ovo vegetarian thing on Mondays for a while now. That means milk and eggs but no animal...um...flesh? And at the risk of offending the pescavegetarians...fish are animals so they are not part of my Meatless Monday routine. Of course, I'm an unrepentant carnivore the rest of the week so I'm pretty much offending someone 6 days a week anyway. Why stop on Mondays!?

At any rate, I've found it pretty easy to do vegetarian once a week so I figured, how hard could it be to do the full on vegan thing?

Apparently, it's pretty freaking hard!!!! No dairy or eggs is takes some planning.

Week 1, I had made my lunch for work, planned dinner and packed snacks - all vegan. Ate vegan breakfast and grabbed my coffee. Annnnnnd realized I couldn't put half and half in it. I take my coffee seriously, folks. The almond milk I tried to lighten it with did NOT cut it.

See what I mean...ewwwwwww!

Week 2, I figured would be easier because I got through week 1. After eating O'soy for a snack did I read the cup to find the active cultures came from milk. Why make a cultured soy yogurt and put a milk based item in it? Why?????!!!!! Then I made my vegan pizza with the home made dough for dinner. Cause I never just follow a recipe like a normal person, I brushed the dough with olive oil and seasoned it up my way. Not a prob until I realized halfway through grating parmigiano reggiano over it, that it was no longer vegan. Dammit! But I built it anyway with the vegan mozz and Italian seitan and it was might tasty.

Now THAT's a crust! (and why do I have man-hands in this pic?)

Never do I back down from a challenge - even when I should - so I am determined to make this happen! (I am so gonna Ahab this Vegan Monday thing until I take the whole boat down with me...)

-DK