Seven Days A Vegan, Part Three

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​SEVEN DAYS A VEGAN, PART THREE

      Day 5: Friday, July 9
      For the past five days - that is, since the beginning of my foray into veganism - my pajama weight - that is, my weight first thing in the morning while still in my pajamas - has been bobbing between 131 and 133 lbs. In other words, between half a pound and a two-and-a-half pounds below my normal pajama weight of 133.6. (See post from 7/15/2021, "Seven Days A Vegan, Part One"). I figure this must come from having cut out ice cream, butter ( in cooking and on my bread), and cheese, three things that, now that I've cut them out, I think were probably a greater source of caloric intake than I'd realized.

     For Friday dinner I concocted a vegan variation of my seafood pasta (see post from 2/22/2021, "A Tale of Two Linguines"),

...which involved leaving out the dairy and for the seafood substituting mushrooms and cannelli beans.

      I served this with a side of oven-roasted corn, for which I'd recently learned the recipe,     

...which I'll share here:
   
      Oven-Roasted Corn-On-The-Cob

  1.  Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees      
   2. Remove husks from corn
   3. Slather corn cobs with butter, or (to make it vegan) a plant-based spread, such as margarine 
   4. Sprinkle the corn with salt
   5. Place the corn on a pan or cookie sheet.
   6. Bake the corn for eighteen minutes, then flip the cobs and bake for eighteen minutes longer.
   Perfect ready-to-devour corn on the cob!

      That evening while preparing my dessert of peanut butter powder and cherry preserves on multi-grain, I made yet another discovery: If one adds more water to the peanut butter powder than called for on the package, one can make a peanut butter drizzle. 

        I could see a number of future topping possibilities on the horizon. 
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   Day 6: Saturday, July 10:
   Another great discovery spun from yesterday's discovery of peanut butter drizzle:
    Fresh cherries on multigrain topped with a peanut putter powder drizzle and a dusting of sugar.

      Life just gets better.

      Day 7: Sunday, July 11
      On Sunday I weighed 131.6 lbs. (Now, in the first week of my my post-vegan phase, this seems to have become my new - though mayhaps just temporary - pajama weight.). 
​     As this was my final day of being a vegan, I decided to throw a special "Farewell to Veganism" dinner. As it turned out, my son and daughter were free that evening so I invited them to come for the feast.
      With memories still fresh of the delicious Bibibop meal I'd had a few days ago, I opted to try my own version of Bibibop.
       It was simply a matter of preparing a line-up of vegan dishes,

...including purple rice,

...oven fries, cauliflower rice,

...black beans, oven-roasted corn off the cob, spinach,

...beets, sprouts, carrots,

...and garlic teriyaki and (non-vegan) yum-yum sauce for the dressings.

    Maybe there's no comparison between my fixings and Bibibop's, but it was genrally agreed that mine were nonetheless pretty darned good.

     I also tried my hand at making a vegan dessert, which in fact turned out to be a piece of cake when I learned that both canned icing and boxed cake mix (in and of itself) are vegan.
       Using the following ingredients I cobbled together a desert that I'm calling Vegan Blueberry Cake.

​Vegan blueberry cake
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1 box yellow cake mix
1/2 cup vegan spread
4 cups blueberries
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Canned vanilla frosting

      Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 pan.
    In one bowl mix the cake mix with the spread until it's crumbly. In another bowl mix the blueberries with the sugar and cornstarch. 
      Divide the cake mixture into two halves. Pat one half into the bottom of the pan. Pour the blueberry mixture on top. Top with the rest of the cake mixture.

​   Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. (After 35 minutes the bottom of my cake was brown but the top was still on the pale side. I placed the cake under the broiler for one minute and this browned up the top nicely).

    After the cake is cooled, melt 1/2 cup or so of vanilla frosting in the the microwave for 15  seconds.

     Drizzle the melted frosting over the cooled cake. 

       The cake was wonderful.  However I made the mistake of topping my piece with some vegan Reddi Wip,

...while everyone else used regular Reddi Wip. The vegan Wip looked appetizing, but tasted gross.

      Live and learn.
      Which is what I did during my seven days as a vegan.  Did I feel better while I was a vegan? Can't really say that I felt better. Or worse. Was my mood better? Can't say that was better or worse, either. Did I sleep better? Except for the first night of carb-loading, I slept about the same as I always do, which is generally not great. However, I suppose that one really wouldn't expect much to change after only a week. Except that I did lose two pounds. 
​      Still, I did make a some positive discoveries over the week, most of which are chronicled in these blog posts. However I think the most salient discoveries I made are these: 1. I can do vegan and enjoy it, but 2.there's a challenge to doing vegan when you're also preparing meals for the non-vegans in the household, and 3. though I don't think my vegan week has completely converted me to veganism, I believe that in the future I will definitely dabble from time to time.