21-Day Vegan Challenge

Last spring, I discovered the amazing world of healthy-living blogs. I immediately became addicted, and I have reaped many lessons and many hours of entertainment since. I admire much about the blogging community and so have naturally flirted with the idea of starting my own. This morning I began the PCRM 21-Day Vegan Kickstart, so along with that challenge, I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to test out the blogging waters as well. I plan to document my experience during these three weeks to get a feel for blogging and what really goes into one. I imagine it will be mostly for my own record and accountability, but I'm putting it out there nonetheless. It's probably going to be pretty rough for a while, blog-wise, but I'm really excited about the vegan challenge.

Soon after my discovery of nutrition and exercise blogs, I graduated from college. With a ton of time on my hands last summer, I started reading up on nutrition and diet, as well as ramping up my exercise regime. After reading books like Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, Alicia Silerstone's The Kind Diet, and Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I decided to become a vegetarian in July. I no longer eat any meat or fish, so the big change for the next three weeks will be cutting out dairy. Along with this challenge, I also recently purchased a pass at a hot yoga studio and will be experimenting with adding regular yoga practice into my workout schedule, along with running, spinning and strength training.

On to the vegan eats! Since I'm pretty comfortable in the kitchen and already have quite a few favorite vegan recipes, I'm only very loosely following the suggested meal plan. Today I started off with a delicious pear before my morning yoga class. When I came home, I was pretty hungry and dove right in to the quick edamame and corn salad I threw together last night. I had a few leftovers to use up and so I came up with this easy salad. I didn't really measure anything, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, so I thought I'd share. It contained:

3/4 bag of frozen edamame, thawed
3/4 bag of frozen corn, thawed
1 bell pepper, diced
1/2 onion, diced
Dressed with approx. 2T lime juice, 3-4T guacamole and salt and pepper to taste

Later, I snacked on half a banana and mandarin orange sections with some plain yogurt that I didn't want to throw out (I don't consider this "cheating", just a transition day) and a little bit of galaxy granola. I also made Alex's Bitter Chocolate Cake for One substituting a flax egg and stirring in a few chopped up squares of a vegan 85% dark chocolate bar. I had half in the afternoon with a cup of green tea and the other half after dinner.

Speaking of which, dinner was fab! I used this recipe for black bean burritos that No Meat Athlete turned me on to, using Daiya vegan cheddar and omitting the sour cream. So delicious. This was my first time trying any vegan cheese, and it seems Daiya is definitely the best brand. I liked how well it melted, but the taste seemed a bit sweet almost, which was interesting. I almost think I would have liked the dish better without any sort of cheese, but I'll have to try it in other applications to decide how I feel about it.

That's it for food today. Even though it wasn't completely vegan, between my meals and yoga this morning, I felt very energetic, light and centered today, which I hope to keep up. I didn't miss the dairy at all and I'm looking forward to the rest of the three weeks! Sorry for the long, not terribly exiting post, but tomorrow, I'm planning a little bit more backstory and some photos :) I'm hoping each post will get a little better than the last and that eventually this will become something readable. Wish me luck!