Veggie Thoughts

Lazy Vegan Soup

1 cup Vegetable Cocktail (yes I'm frugal and buy Safeway's Vegetable Cocktail. If you can afford it, buy V-8 Juice)

About 1 cup torn Kale

In a small, covered pot cook on medium high for five minutes, stirring after a few minutes if you remember. Pour into soup bowl, garnish as desired. Serves 1. You could probably double or triple this as needed. If you want to make it Vegetarian, add some cheese cubes.

I created this when I was having a picnic lunch on the front porch. The city was pruning trees. Kidlet didn’t want to miss out on the fun of watching big machines at work. I had an open face egg sandwich in honour of Meatless Monday but was still feeling hungry. I dashed inside, quickly tore up the kale, got the soup going and went back outside. When I heard the timer, I dashed inside, gave it a stir, poured it into a plastic bowl and sat down on the porch.

As I ate the soup, I found myself thinking They Say are wrong about anything Vegetarian being bland. My next thought was whether or not a single Vegan Male would be like his Meatitarian counterpart and just eat the soup right out of the pot. From there I found myself wondering what sort of stereotype Vegan males experience. For example, did they receive invitations to hockey games? Did Vegan and Vegetarian males get asked the same inane oral sex question their female counterparts would sometimes get asked? If a woman has a meatitarian husband who is into hockey, football and stock car, she’s married to a good ole boy and no one thinks anything of it. Given the stereotypes about sexual orientation and food, if a woman has a vegetarian or vegan husband, would people whisper in her ear that all those sports interests are over-compensating and she should be prepared for him “coming out”? My final thought was wouldn’t the world be a great place if it didn’t matter what you ate, what your sports interest were, all that mattered is whether or not you were a law abiding citizen who did the best you could with whatever abilities you were blessed with?

Vegan Day 7

My dad says there is a fine line between can't and won't. I know I would become frustrated when I saw something Vegan but was still off limits to me because it was made with the type of flour I am allergic to, or it had yeast in it. I think if I didn't have to look to see what type of flour something is made with, and whether or not it has yeast in it, I could probably live a vegan/vegetarian life. I have now tried it all, meatitarian, vegetarian, vegan. I've decided what is best for my current lifestyle is an eating lifestyle that allows flexibility.

My two guys were very much unaffected by my Vegan week. It did help that there was some leftover meat and a precooked meatloaf in the freezer, as well as only three nights the whole family home. As for my one indiscretion on the weekend, that's all on me. It would have been very easy to look at the pizza in the crew room, think "I'll make a Vegan variation of pizza toast for breakfast" and leave it be.

This was not about reducing carbs. I ate the way I usually do when I am on Phase 3 of Ann Louise Gittleman's The Fat Flush Eating Plan, which means 2-4 servings of carbs a day. Since I was going Vegan, I decided to count legumes as protein, not carbs. Peanut butter was moved off the bonus food list and added to the protein list. The heavy exercise days were Tuesday, which was Day 1 and Monday, which was Day 7. In the last week, I've lost two pounds, one inch off my hips and two inches off my belly.

My guide verse for Monday was Psalm 27:1 The Lord is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?