Easter 2014

            Hello once more!  How was your: a) Easter; b) Sunday; c) 4/20; d) all of the above?

            Mine was pleasant enough.  To clarify, I was celebrating Easter and not 4/20.  I wasn’t celebrating it for any religious purpose – mainly it’s just a family gathering for me.  Any reason to get together to eat food and talk and take pictures is good enough for me.  Plus, I had a fun 3-day weekend, which is a rarity unless I request off of work.

            Meal-wise, back when I was an omnivore, Easter was filled with ham, broccoli casserole, and sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top.  I didn’t really stray far from those three staples but I would always overdo it and stuff myself silly.  When I went vegetarian, Easter wasn’t that hard of a holiday to survive since I just cut out the ham and loaded up on the other two dishes.  This was before I quickly realized not even marshmallows qualified as vegetarian but before I realized that, it seemed to work out just fine for me since the remaining two dishes were always my favorites any way.

            In fact, most holidays since going vegetarian and then vegan weren’t too terribly sad or difficult because most of my favorite dishes were already vegetarian.  I had my fair share of turkey or pig but my favorites were always the side dishes.  Sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli casseroles – these were just a few of my favorite things.  (You’re now singing that song in your head, aren’t you?  You’re welcome.)

            Even going vegan wasn’t too bad because my wife always stepped up and dominated.  I was never lacking in amazing dishes holiday after holiday, year after year.  I never felt jealous or disappointed or wishing for a bite of food that wasn’t vegan.  In fact, quite truthfully, I thought the dishes I was eating since the transition were far tastier.  And my favorite holiday dish, my aunt’s sweet potatoes, was still available to me because she used vegan marshmallows on a small portion of potatoes just for me to enjoy.  Seriously, Dandies vegan marshmallows are amazing!  I was a marshmallow addict before going vegan and I am serious when I say these are far superior.  I can eat nearly the entire bag without being violently ill.  Check them out!

Don’t even get me started on the countless desserts my wife would toil away making for each holiday, either.  That’s a completely separate entry.

            This year was a bit more low-key for foods but still amazing, none-the-less.  We kicked breakfast off with zucchini waffles that my wife made, which sounded odd to me but turned out great!  It was a test recipe she made for a vegan blogger (at Cupcakes and Kale), Jess Nadel.  I was sad that there were only two to eat.  I’m sorry but I was in such a rush to scarf breakfast down that I didn’t bother taking a photo or two.  I’m still getting used to the whole “always have a camera handy so you can blog about it” thing.  I’m a fool!  I will just say that you are in for a treat if this recipe makes it to the blogger’s cookbook.

            We didn’t eat dinner at the family gathering but we did bring a chocolate-orange cake from Nava Atlas that could be found in her book, Vegan Holiday Kitchen.  Vegan desserts always seem to go over really well with omnivores.  It goes over even better when you don’t tell them it’s vegan before they eat it.  The reaction is generally always, “It’s vegan?  Whaaaaaaaa?” and then they eat more.  That is, it’s the reaction if they don’t already know you’re vegan.  I quite enjoyed it because it had the perfect balance between chocolate and orange flavor.  Some times you get a lot of chocolate where the orange flavor is overpowering but this was perfection.

When we ended up eating a real meal afterward, dinner included a lemon-asparagus risotto dish, a citrus roasted tofu dish, and a cinnamon-roasted baby carrot dish.  All were quite good but the risotto was my favorite.  I love risotto and I could probably eat it every day.  This risotto was baked in the oven, too, which made it a bit unique.  Not that I could tell.  Like I’ve said, my wife is the cook.  You could tell me you made the risotto on the grill and I probably wouldn’t know what that meant.  The tofu was my second favorite.  I was quite happy that there were leftovers, too.  All three dishes came out of Nava’s book, as well.

Then we had yet another dessert – carrot cake cupcakes.  They were amazing!  Thank god for my fast(ish) metabolism because I could’ve had the entire batch in one sitting.  If you think the picture is mouthwatering, imagine being in the same room with them.  I’m just glad the pictures I took turned out because I was drooling all over the plate.  These, too, came out of Nava’s book.  Have I won you over yet with this book?  Go get it and you can be in flavor heaven, too!

We finished the night with a nice walk to work off all that food.  A very nice Sunday off of work.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat leftovers because all of this typing has made me hungry.  Until next time, keep calm and vegan on!

The Easter Bunny photo was found using Google Image Search HERE.

You can follow Jess Nadel at a myriad of places besides her blog.  On Twitter it's @cupcakesandkale

You can follow Nava Atlas on Twitter, too: @navaatlas2

My Pre-Vegan Days

            I thought I’d start things out by describing my pre-vegan days before we jump into anything crazy or involved.  I think this might be particularly useful since a lot of people think there’s just one path to going vegan or one reason for going vegan, but that’s not the case, obviously.  When ever somebody says they recently went vegan, if you’re an omnivore and if you’re being honest, probably thought they went vegan because they didn’t want to hurt cute, little, baby animals.  You probably pictured that person cuddling a baby calf.

            And what’s wrong with that?  I mean, have you SEEN baby calves?  I think the real question is, why wouldn’t you want to cuddle a baby calf?

            But in reality there are many reasons why people go vegan.  My original reason was for health.  I wasn’t suffering from anything – I wasn’t at a doctor’s office listening to grim news about how I’d be dead in a year if I didn’t change my ways – but if there was a way to help prevent developing any chronic or debilitating illnesses and all I had to do was eat better, why not make the smart and easy choice?  

            But how was I even exposed to vegetarianism and veganism in the first place?
            I have my wife to thank for getting me initially on the vegetarian bandwagon.  She was the one who was suffering from a few health ailments and she was sick of it.  Sick of even going to the E.R. just once let alone numerous times to be treated.  She went vegetarian first and within just a few short months – on Thanksgiving, no less – she was vegan.  She had turned her lifestyle around 180 degrees in just months.  Her health problems had gone away in that time period and within the first year of going vegan, she was looking a hundred times better, too.  The best argument for a cause is to see the changes that are taking place right in front of your eyes.
            Yet, in those first few months, I was still in my pre-vegan “glory”.  For years prior to going vegetarian I had largely lost the interest in eating cow flesh.  I still ate hamburgers but I was sick to death of eating steaks and the like.  I think that has to do with the fact that I ate a lot of red meat as a kid/teenager.  I did eat a lot of meat and potatoes but there were still a good amount of veggies and fruits (compared to the average person, I suppose).  Granted, a lot of those veggies were of the frozen variety.  I did eat chicken and pig (bacon and pork chops) on a regular basis with sushi thrown in whenever I could.
            But my pre-vegan palette was pretty limited.  I hated avocadoes, beans, cauliflower, artichokes, and a whole host of things I could never see myself eating in a million years.  Sushi was as adventurous as I got.  If it wasn’t for my fast metabolism, my wife keeps telling me that I should really be a hundred pounds heavier than I am since all I ate were fast foods, pizzas, pastas, potatoes, and other ‘heavy’ foods.
            Even when I worked at a grocery store as a teenager and into my early twenties, and even though I saw tofu, Morning Glory products, and other vegan products, I always thought, “Ew, who eats this crap?”  I also had no idea what one would do with things such as kale or dandelion greens or collard greens or ginger root.  I look back on those days with a smile because I had NO idea what was in store and no idea how well acquainted I’d become with all of those products.  If it wasn’t an apple, an orange, a grape, or a banana, I basically didn’t have any interest in the fruit or veggie.
            So fast-forward several years later when my wife went vegetarian.  She plainly stated at the time that I didn’t have to go vegetarian but that she would not be making any meat-based meals.  If I wanted to eat what she made – cool.  I could also eat whatever I wanted outside of the home but I was on my own, otherwise.  Because I have no cooking skills whatsoever beyond making pasta dishes, I was all for trying vegetarian dishes.  To my idiotic surprise, I loved nearly every single dish she made.  The foods were so delicious and varied!  I had never tasted anything so good in my life.  When she went vegan, I kept eating whatever she was putting in front of me.  It seems silly to think that I was surprised with how full of flavor the dishes were since they were generally using more ingredients and more spices than just plain meat and potato dishes.
            Outside of the home was a bit different.  I didn’t eat any red meat any more but I still ate chicken, pig, and fish (sushi).  I also kept drinking cow’s milk and eating pizza with cheese on it.  However, I noticed that I slowly began to lose the interest in eating animals.  As those first few months of being vegan came to a close for my wife, I had nearly phased out chicken and pig from my diet.

Perhaps it was because of all the information my wife was bombarding me with about animals, factory farming, health benefits of going vegan, and anything else she could soak up on her vegan journey.  Let me point out that when I say ‘bombard’, I truly mean that in the nicest way possible. (ha)  She was so excited about everything she was learning and I was seeing the physical changes she was going through since changing her eating habits, that it was hard NOT to take it all in and get just as excited and amazed.

Finally, my heart and brain just couldn’t take it any more.  I had taken in too much knowledge to ignore that veganism was the way to go.  Nobody told me to stop eating animals.  I didn’t do it because my wife ‘made’ me (a ridiculous notion best suited for a 1950s sitcom than the new millennium).  So, almost two months after my wife went vegan I decided to go vegetarian in January of 2011 and I haven’t looked back.  I didn’t go fully vegan until 2013 but even before 2013, I was mostly vegan with the exception of eating cookies or cupcakes that were made with animal products.

I’ll talk about the transition and the changes I noticed in another entry.  For now, I think this is a good start.  Sorry for the length of writing!

What’s YOUR story of going vegetarian or vegan?  Were any of you big meat-eaters before going vegetarian/vegan?  If you’re still an omnivore that’s curious about going vegetarian, what are the things you see as roadblocks (mental or real) to making the transition?  I want to hear from you all!
           With that, I bid you all adieu for now.  (Still thinking of a catchy closing phrase.  Hmmm)

P.S. - The photo (I'm 99% sure) is from Farm Sanctuary, which is an AMAZING charity and should be supported.