My Vegan Experience

My friend and I decided to try out veganism for one whole week. Why? Who knows. We both love meat, even to the extent that my friend’s nickname is “meat.”

I love to cook, so I prepared by looking up recipes on Pinterest and messaging a couple of my vegan friends asking what their favourite things to eat were. I decided my meal plan for the next 7 days and went grocery shopping Sunday night. Here is how it all went down:

Day 1:

Breakfast:

Smoothie with mixed frozen fruit, cashew milk, spinach, half a banana, and chia seeds.

I woke up excited for this challenge and all the good food I would eat. The smoothie continued to be my breakfast for the duration of the experiment. I liked it, so I stuck with it. Also, this was the first time I ever put spinach in my smoothies because I thought it would throw off the taste, but it didn’t. It even added some extra nutrients! I would drink this smoothie even as a carnivore.

Lunch:

Spinach salad with red cabbage, snow peas, cucumber, and balsamic and olive oil dressing.

I normally eat salads like this for lunch so not much changed here.

Dinner:

Butternut squash tacos

LITERALLY THE BEST TACOS EVER. I loved these and physically forced myself to eat three even though I was completely full after two. I even had another one later that night because I just couldn’t stop from eating them. I highly recommend this recipe and used Wholly Guacamole instead of making my own guac.

Day 2:

I ate all the same things, and enjoyed some leftover tacos for dinner.

Day 3:

Lunch:

Dole Pomegranate Salad

I was excited for this salad and it was kind of a letdown. I even didn’t eat it all. It was no BBQ Ranch, but it did the job.

Dinner:

Portobello mushroom steaks with couscous

I have made this before and loved it. I am a sauce queen (aka I love extra sauce on everything) so I doubled the recipe. It may sound weird combining soy sauce and balsamic, but it works. Trust me.  And because I am a student, I made three medium sized mushrooms and had one and a half for dinner this day and the next.

Day 4:

Lunch:

Salad—it’s good to be predictable right? I want to note that I added edamame beans to this one so I really got fancy. ALSO, why is there like no vegan food on campus UWO? I was hungry and had no place to turn. Eventually, I went to Argo Café (in Weldon) and got a $5 raw bar, which was actually pretty good, and a vegan iced chai tea latte.

(half eaten, sorry)

(Sample of the great snaps I send [double chin and all])

Dinner:

~Leftovers~

Day 5:

Lunch:

Freshii!

I got the Buddha Satay—it was a bit bland so I added some sriracha and salt.

Dinner:

Coconut curry with coconut quinoa

This was pretty good! I added some medium-soft tofu for some extra protein. I love spicy so I used a spicy curry powder. I also added more than the recipe called for because I am a wild child and can’t be tamed. I had so much leftover that I froze three portions for extra meals.

Day 6:

Breakfast:

Peanut butter and bananas! 

Lunch:

Salad, and yes I was sick of it by this point. I had plans to make a bean soup but I didn’t. Sue me.

Dinner:

Leftover curry.

Day 7:

Breakfast:

FAIL. So I caved and had McDonald’s breakfast. But let me explain myself. Being the arts student that I am, November is a time for essays and assignments so I haven’t gone out or socialised basically since Halloweekend—which I’m totally okay with. My roommates, however, decided to go out the night before and I was kept up until 3 am due to noise, and woken up at 8:30 am, also due to noise. It happens—gotta love roommates, right? So I got up at 8:30, showered, and decided that the smoothie just wasn’t going to cut it for me today. I needed meat and grease and a peppermint mocha, and I needed it ASAP.

Lunch:

Farmboy salad with Asian sesame dressing. I can’t remember what this one was called but it had mixed greens, raw beets, edamame, carrots and was great. It was a premade salad, not from the salad bar.

Dinner:

Quesadilla. I failed with the breakfast and caved with dinner. I couldn’t finish the week but I think it was due to the lack of groceries I bought, and lack of snacks.

Takeaway:

I went into the challenge feeling pretty good about it, and didn’t think it would be that hard. The only hard part, to me, was the lack of options on campus to eat, and the fact that I wasn’t doing this out of environmental concerns, I just did it for fun. I think that if I had been really driven, and bought more of a variety of food, I could have finished the Sunday off strong.

I also want to say that being vegan doesn’t mean eating salads every day and having a lack of options for meals. I ate like that because I chose too, not because vegans are limited to it. I found a lot of great dinner recipes, that I will definitely make again (tacos) and also recommended to my fellow carnivore roommates.

• i tried it
• meat
• vegan
• week