Vegan Peas (Week of 2/1 to 2/7/2016)

OK me! I'm Tamara, and I am a newbie. DH and I and my girls watched this film a little over a week ago, and boy was I surprised when my meat and potatoes guy suggested we do it. I was totally on board, being a pescatarian (vegetarian who eats seafood) for over 20 yrs, but he blew me away suggesting it. We just finished our first week on Saturday and we are both down 5 lbs. We primarily did it to lose weight, but the prevention of heart disease, diabetes and cancer are just added bonuses. My oldest DD was also pretty impressed with it and would do it if living on her own, but she is in college and her and her roomies all cook and shop together. But she did convince them this week to try almond milk instead of cow's milk, and she has decided she prefers it.

We do raise chickens for eggs, and DH has said that is one thing he is not giving up is an occasional breakfast of eggs. And I am a New England girl living outside Seattle, and I eat lobster any chance I can, and that probably won't change either. But for the most part, we have stuck with it over this first week, and didn't really find it difficult. And both of us already notice a difference in our energy levels and even some of our everyday aches and pains.

I am interested to hear about dining out options. We did go out Friday night and had vegetarian Pho which was yummy. But looking for other ideas and or places you recommend to get a meal out.

There is TONS of vegetarian and vegan options. Chipotle has vegan options. One of our favorites is Indian food. Dal Takda is usually completely vegan and super good. Pizza can be vegetarian/vegan. Pho is always a good choice (just make sure it's veggie broth). 

Thanks for the ideas. Yes, I'm used to ordering vegetarian stuff. I guess I'm nervous about oils in stuff you get out. Vegan is pretty easy to do as well, or find. But sometimes it is hard to know how much oil was used in stuff, that's not as easy to find out.  We do love our indian food, that is a favorite of ours too.

My daughter does not eat meat, so her main dish became our side dish


Our favorite is Japanese pancakes with kale. Yum

Yay yay! I just found this thread. I'm running on about three hours of sleep, so I'm going back to bed for awhile and will post later.
I LOVE the idea of a weekly thread and thank you birukitty for starting us out.
Here's a pic of my vegan pizza I made for dinner last night. I've always been a cheese freak so that was by far the scariest thing to give up.
I've found a vegan cheese brand called Daiya that has shreds in cheddar, mozzarella and I think southwest flavors. I don't use it often but I HAD to put some on my pizza! Oh my goodness it was one of the best pizzas I've ever had in my life. I'll probably make another tonight.
ETA: I took this pic before I put it back into the oven to melt the cheese...and forgot to take another when it was done because I couldn't wait to chow it down! 

So exciting to see this thread!
I started off vegan in June 2015 and did well for about a month, lol. I went on vacation and every night we had seafood so I did eat seafood. When I got back home, I continued vegan and then went to Europe and went vegetarian for ease. I consider myself plant based but really eat a vegan diet. Don't want to label myself as vegan as I do carry a leather purse and occasionally eat something that has milk/cheese in it. I have switched all my makeup over for cruelty free makeup and am continuing to use up any old makeup instead of throwing it out.

I feel my best eating this way and its really not that hard as long as you prepare some meals ahead of time. I have found lots of information on youtube. I really like the starch solution books by McDougall. I like eating potatoes and rice:)

Just found this thread so I thought I'd chime in. My 17 year old DS is a vegan. He has been for about 2 years, and had been a vegetarian since about 1st grade. I so admire his commitment, and although it's hard to prepare several meals or meal variations, I respect his choice and want to encourage his healthy lifestyle. My 21 year old dd is vegetarian, my two youngest DSs are picky eaters but not vegan or vegetarian, I'll eat about anything, and my DH doesn't eat carbs, so meal time at our house can be quite an adventure. My vegan DS is also very conscious of the choices he makes with clothing as well: no leather and tries to shop at thrift stores for environmental reasons. If only we could all be so kind to our environment!

He and I have learned to make a lot of soups, bean-based chili, sweet potato quesadillas, and tofu.

Eating out is harder, but we have found him choices at Chipotle (ours finally has sofritas!) and Noodles and Company. We visit a lot of Thai restaurants in our town as well.

It's hard to find pre-made, convenient "treats" that don't have honey, but I thought I'd list some that we've had success with.

He's been a fan of coconut ice cream, but recently discovered cashew ice cream. The snickerdoodle flavor is fantastic!
LUNA bars are not ALL vegan, but some are: the high protein "for women" version of the chocolate cupcake as well as the lemon, and both are good.
Bear Naked granola in Cinnamon/Sunflower butter flavor has no honey, and is delicious.
Chex cereal, which we also use to make Muddy Buddy snack mix (peanut butter, chocolate, chex cereal, powdered sugar)
Chex Mix brand chex mix, original flavor
Most tortilla chips are fine, and we make a LOT of homemade salsa. We use Pioneer Woman's recipe for restaurant style salsa.
Ciabatta bread with roasted red pepper hummus are a good healthy snack.
Oreo cookies and Chocolate teddy grahams are good when you need a bad-for-you treat, as are non-frosted strawberry Pop Tarts
for a quick after school snack, ready made soups from Amy's Organic Soups: minestrone and lentil vegetable are both good.
Enjoy Life brand makes a chocolate snack bar, cocoa loco, that's good.
for fruit snacks, the only one we've found without gelatin is Annie's Organic Fruit Snacks. Even Target carries them.
and for anything we bake that needs chocolate, we use Guittard brand semisweet baking chips. They're usually at most grocery stores and aren't too pricey.

Okay, I am fully awake now, so here is my story.
Right before Thanksgiving, maybe a week or so before, I watched a docu on Amazon called Just Eat It. It was about food waste and boy did that make me sad. It's worth a watch if you get a chance. It breaks my heart that we have so many hungry children, homeless people, and low income people and yet we throw out SO much good food for foolish reasons. It's a damn shame.
Anyway...that led me to watch another documentary called Vegucated. Which led me to watch Cowspiracy. Which led me to watch Forks Over Knives. Which led me to watch the Engine 2 Diet, and so on and so on. Some of these were on Netflix and some on Amazon. I began scouring the internet for information to educate myself. There is a huge amount of info out there in the form of blogs, websites, youtube videos, Amazon, Netflix and of course books. Facebook also has many many groups, pages and communities where you can learn. Real books and Kindle books. I invested in a few books, some with recipes, and soaked up everything I could.
Once my eyes were opened to the whole new way of life, it was a no-brainer for me. It just all made sense. I decided to transition to a vegan/whole foods plant based way of life. I'd lost about 50# over the past two years and was at a standstill. I was barely eating but the things I was eating were not all that healthy. I have a background in nutrition, so I knew my diet was crap, but didn't have a lot of motivation to change it. I didn't eat much meat at all, never been a big meat eater, but oh my did I consume dairy and lots of fat, the unhealthy kind of fat.
My switchover wasn't just for health reasons or weight loss, but also for animal humanity and environmental reasons. Once you learn what animal agriculture does to animals and our planet, it's kind of hard to look the other way, at least it is for me.
I got my labs drawn for a baseline towards the end of December. I had begun to phase out animal products from my life right away when I watched those first few documentaries but I didn't want to just toss everything in my cupboards and fridge. I decided that I wouldn't spend another penny on animal products, but would use up some of what I had up until January 1st, and then I would make the firm commitment to stop eating anything animal.
I couldn't afford to replace everything in my house that was non-vegan. I do have leather motorcycle riding gear that is brand new last summer and I am still undecided what to do about that. I think everyone has their own bottom line. I truly wish I hadn't bought that $500 Harley leather jacket, but I did so before the light bulb came on for me. I still have several months before it's riding season, and I am struggling as to what to do about that. I know that by wearing an already existing coat, I'm not killing another animal. But I sure can't just give it away, so maybe I will sell it come spring. That has really been my only dilemma, my riding gear.

When my baseline labs came back they were just as horrid as I knew they'd be. My cholesterol was 306 (yikes) and my triglycerides, LDL and HDL were way out of whack. My doc immediately prescribed me cholesterol medicine but I knew I didn't want to take a pill to 'cure' what I could cure on my own by controlling what I shoved in my mouth. I had an appointment for a physical mid-January and I'd already lost 8# in one month all while eating about twice as much food as I'd been eating. The difference of course was that I was now eating only healthy food. I had a good talk with my doc at that appointment. I told her I wanted to hold off on the drugs and try to healthy-up through diet. She from India, so a plant based diet is just natural to her, she said. She was very happy that I wanted to avoid the drugs and just get healthy. She said she wished more of her patients would be open to that instead of medicine and surgery. She shared some good meal ideas with me and told me about some foods I'd never tried. I'm actually excited to get my blood drawn again April 1st to see how much of a change I'll make.

The first few weeks in January I ate pretty repetitively when it came to variety. Rice, potatoes, cous cous, beans, fruit and vegetables. Usually separately. But everything I ate was yummy. I love food. I can't eat yucky food. It has to taste good, dangit.
Since then, I have started being more and more creative, slowly. My husband doesn't eat this way. He's rail-thin (too thin) but doesn't realize that think doesn't equate to healthy. But...he's a big boy and I would never tell another person what they can or can't eat. That's just not me. He has tried a lot of my new food creations though, and actually likes what I make! He even ordered off the vegetarian menu when we went out to eat last week, all of his own accord, and he loved it!

I find that I really enjoy chopping my fresh veggies for each meal, or roasting some garbanzo beans for a snack. I know a lot of people use the excuse that they "don't have time to eat healthy", but seriously, it takes just minutes. I think that most of us could steal a few minutes away from Facebook, game playing, TV watching, web surfing, etc. and not feel a bit of pain, lol. Another plus is that I save a lot of money on my food. I no longer hit the drive-thru or buy food that has little nutritional value. Though I definitely spend more on produce these days, that cost is more than offset by the money I no longer spend in the meat section. In my mind, there really is no excuse not to eat healthy. Again, I respect other people's eating decisions for themselves, but I won't accept any excuses from myself for myself.

Now, I live in a small town. No Whole Foods anywhere near. I think the closest is about 4-5 hours away, so not practical. I've been doing pretty good finding things anyway. I searched high and low for nutritional yeast to no avail, so I just got it from Amazon.com. Luckily we have a brand new Meijer store and their produce rocks! It was a challenge to find vegan cheese, but I did. I could only find it at the most expensive grocery store last month, but I was in Meijer yesterday and they now have it as a new item! Yay! I think this way of eating is becoming more popular as people try to improve their health and so I'm betting that some things like that will start becoming more readily available here.

Eating out is a bit trickier. We have 3 McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Arby's, Pizza Hut, Applebees, Big Boy, KFC, and a host of other restaurants both fast food and sit-down mom and pop places. We do have three Subways though, and if we are in town and I NEED to grab something quick I go there. It's always been my favorite place to eat anyway. We have ONE groovy little restaurant in town called the Fresh Palate that serves a vegetarian menu with plenty of vegan options. It is owned and operated by a fantastic chef and is known for it's 'fancier' and more modern food. It's a bit pricey, so we have only gone there a few times, but that is the new favorite for both me and my husband. Again, as this catches on, hopefully we will get more choices for dining out. I can always order something very basic at any of the restaurants but it sure is nice to have a really creative and yummy meal.

I'm so happy to see this thread and I'm looking forward to new ones weekly. As we all know, the peas are a wealth of information, and I can't wait to learn from and share with all of you.

xo,
dawn

So...I'm a total thread hog here today. Sorry, not sorry.
Did you know that you can sign up at the Forks Over Knives website for them to send you emails that are filled with tips and recipes? I just got one today with Super Bowl 2016 Recipes, and man are there some yummy easy ideas.
Here's a link!
www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/super-bowl-recipes/?mc_cid=e49cc0e5c8&mc_eid=cdd0edc149

If you're eating garbanzo beans use the liquid for making things that need eggs! There's a link somewhere here for a Facebook group with great ideas aquafaba.com/

I'm not vegan but dh has to eat a vegan and gluten free diet per his doctor for the next 6 months. I will say it's been fun looking at ideas on pinterest. I spend a lot more $ on organic produce now, but less on meat so I guess it evens out. I actually detest chopping up all the veggies for salads and was thinking if i could find some precut stuff and then make a fancy curry dressing. We are going to the native foods cafe for a bogo tonight, it's really yummy. Of course I think I'm gaining weight because I am now eating all of my son's leftovers and all the junk food, plus vegan baking, just made a vegan and gluten free cake with a vegan ganache for my son's birthday and it was pretty good!

Debbie, is the Beyond Meat Crumbles soy based? I am also hypothyroid and try not to eat much soy.