This year, I decided to do a vegan week every month to help reduce my carbon footprint, make me cook more creative recipes, and hopefully increase the duration to two weeks, three weeks, and forever. Hereâs how my first vegan week went this 2019.
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To be honest, I didnât have that difficult of a time. The one thing I really wanted was the chocolate in my room, but there was dairy in it. I donât consume that much dairy anyway because Iâm lactose intolerant, but I do have Lactaid pills whenever I want some. I did have a loaf of bread with honey as one of the ingredients so I couldnât have it that week, so that was certainly a bummer. However, it wasnât that hard of a week for me. I donât buy meat when I go grocery shopping because itâs expensive and deli meat isnât my cup of tea. Even if I did buy meat, Iâm not that great of a cook and it can be hard for me to tell when something is done cooking.
I did experiment more in cooking because making plant-based food is a lot easier for me. For me, the goal of the challenge is to be more creative with my cooking. I cook all of my meals and going plant-based for a bit challenged me to add more variety to my diet.
I prepped a green juice for myself the night before every day so I could have a cold, refreshing drink in the morning. I liked having it every morning because the lemon and ginger made me feel awake; it was also so delicious. The recipes I found online usually call for a whole apple, but because my blender isnât strong enough and I couldnât find apple juice at Trader Joeâs, I opted for orange juice and really liked it. I sort of just threw the ingredients together and didnât really measure it, but these are my guesstimates. After you blend it, it wonât look super green, but once you strain it, chill it, and skim the foam on top, the drink is a vibrant green. So good!
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Ingredients:
- 3 cups kale
- Half a peeled lemon
- 1/3 cucumber
- Inch of ginger
- 1 orange juice
Every day for breakfast, I would have oatmeal. Iâd take some Quaker Oats and microwave it, for about a minute and a half to two minutes, with some almond milk, chia seeds, maple syrup, and frozen raspberries. Mixing it all together creates a really cute pink oatmeal and it tastes really good too!
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- 3/4 cup quick-cooking oats
- 1 cup almond milk
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- A handful of frozen raspberries
For lunch, I made two different recipes. I made a burrito bowl with vegan nacho cheese. The guacamole recipe is pretty standard for a kind of âthrow what you have in your pantry into this bowl of avocadoâ. I didnât use any fresh onion and garlic because little things like that can add up on your grocery receipt. Using these seasonings sufficed and the dip still tasted delicious. With the cashew nacho cheese, I used the recipe on Nora Cooksâs blog, with a little bit of tweaking. Honestly, it didnât really taste like nacho cheese, but it wasnât bad. I also donât have a good blender, so my sauce wasnât as smooth as I wanted. I wouldnât make it again with my current blender, but I wouldnât say it was the worst thing Iâd ever eaten. Overall, this lunch recipe was tasty, and I enjoyed eating it.
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Ingredients:
- About 1 cup rice
- Some corn
- Some black beans
- Some salsa
- Some chopped lettuce
- Guacamole (3-4 servings)
- 1 avocado
- Juice of half a lime
- Onion powder (I eyeballed this)
- Garlic powder (I eyeballed this)
- Red chili flakes (optional â used this because I didnât have jalapeno)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Cashew nacho cheese (this recipe makes a LOT of servings)
- 1 cup of soaked cashews
- 2 cups of water
- Âź cup nutritional yeast
- Âź tsp cayenne
- Âź tsp paprika
- ½ tsp onion powder
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- Juice of half a lemon
- Salt and pepper to taste
I also had a salad with homemade lemon vinaigrette. I sort of just throw a bunch of vegetables in a salad container and my dressing was SUPER good. Itâs now my go-to salad dressing recipe. I love salad and I usually have it dry (crazy, I know), but now Iâm going to keep a jar of this dressing in my fridge, so Iâll have it handy whenever I make salads.
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Ingredients:
- 2-3 cups of spinach
- Some corn
- Some black beans
- 1/3 sliced cucumber
- 6-8 thawed frozen broccoli florets
- Handful of craisins
- ½ an avocado
- Lemon vinaigrette
- Olive and lemon juice (about 1:1 ratio)
- Garlic powder (I eyeballed this)
- Maple syrup (optional for sweetness â eyeballed)
- Salt and pepper to taste
I made two kinds of dinners that week. I made a curried tofu scramble on top of rice and soy sauce. I made this recipe up randomly in my kitchen the last term and itâs my go-to when I have tofu in my fridge. This recipe makes two to three servings.
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Ingredients:
- 1 block of tofu
- ž tbsp yellow curry powder
- Paprika (eyeballed amount)
- ½ sweet onion
- ½ potato
- Salt and pepper to taste
I also made a pasta dish with a green sauce. I wanted to make a pesto sauce, but I didnât have any basil or pine nuts/walnuts. I replaced a lot of ingredients in the recipes I found, and this is sort of my bootleg pesto sauce. Honestly, it tastes nothing like pesto, and I like using a lot of lemon juice (itâs basically a bright green basic pasta sauce). This dish isnât for everyone, but itâs a good âthrow things in a blenderâ recipe. This recipe makes two heaping servings.
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Ingredients:
- 2 cups fusilli pasta
- Cherry tomatoes to garnish
- Green pasta sauce
- 4 cups spinach
- Âź cup soaked cashews
- Juice of a lemon
- Âź cup olive oil
- Âź tsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- Salt and pepper to taste
Overall, Vegan Week wasnât bad at all and I am definitely going to continue doing this. I like to cook, and this week encourages me to be more creative in the kitchen. I would highly recommend incorporating plant-based recipes in your everyday life.