Prologue, Part II: The Adventures of a Vegan Carnivore

Original Post Date: Mon, Feb 21, 2011

Today brings my last day of “pre-cleanse” before this carnivore goes vegan! I should mention that this particular 28 vegan diet is part of a detox program. It’s not simply eating vegan, it’s about ridding your body of toxins, so there are specific dietary requirements and since I, quite obviously, have no idea what I’m doing, I am following the eating plan set forth by the nutritionist who runs the program.

There are 2 options for entering this program:

1. Gradual approach - weaning yourself off animal products, caffeine and sugar to lessen the effects of withdrawals/headaches, etc.

2. All In – flip the switch to gluten-free, caffeine-free, processed-food-free and all those other “free’s”

Guess which one I chose?? If you said 1, you'd be ... wrong. None of that weaning for me. Bring on the withdrawals! Sorry roomie! 

Then, there are 2 eating tracks: the no-cook and the adventuresome cook.

Guess which one I chose? There should be no guessing here. While I am actually a good cook, it is the rare person that knows it considering how often I do it! HOWEVER, part of the answer to “why on earth are you doing this” is to be more deliberate in my eating, which includes meal planning and cooking.

Tomorrow’s faire has already been challenging!! I’m supposed to toast the quinoa and millet grains tonight in order to make my hot cereal tomorrow morning. Prior to toasting, you are supposed to rinse the grain. Do you know how small these little grain-lets are? Knowing that they will fall through my strainer, I get the genius idea to line the strainer with paper towel. It’s a genius idea until you pick up the paper towel, it breaks and millet goes everywhere!  At least it smells good – we’ll find out how it tastes tomorrow morning!!

My last snack today was (surprise, surprise) VEGAN! I had cereal and Almond Milk, which I find surprisingly tasty, especially in cereal. Not being familiar with milk in a box (I prefer gallon jugs!), I read the label and see “shake well”. So I’m shake, shake, shakin when I hear poof-splash! Learn from my mistakes people, don’t shake and squeeze the box too hard or you’ll be cleaning up your Almond milk instead of enjoying it!

Closing thought … must get fashionable lunch bag!