How it began...

I woke up this morning with the idea I would begin to blog about my vegan experience.  This is how it all happened...

I went to lunch with a dear friend of mine on Monday, April 8, 2013.  She took me to I Love Pho in Factoria.  I was a Pho virgin so I ordered exactly what she ordered, Vegan Pho.  Vegan Pho is vegetable broth, vegetables, rice noodles.  The vegetables included broccoli, carrots, celery, snow peas and green and white onions.  My friend was sweet enough to offer to take my white onions as I am so not a fan of raw or blanched onions.  I worked around the green onions (as I type this sentence I can see my husbands eyes rolling).  We doctored the Pho with red stem basil, a jalapeño pepper slice, hoisin sauce and Sriracha hot chili sauce.  It was amazing, I can not believe I have been missing out on Pho all these years.  This particular friend has been vegan for about a year and a half.  She shared with me some of the reasons she is vegan and some interesting sites/blogs she has been on since.  I asked her to share the sites/blogs with me and that is where my story really begins.

On Tuesday I went to get my nails done and I mention this because my nail artist is Vietnamese   She was so excited to hear that I finally tried Pho.  She informed me that the quick way to tell if a Pho place is good or not is to look at what kind of basil they serve.  According to her, if they serve red stem basil it is good, however, if they serve white stem basil it is bad.  She claims that white stem basil is for cooking only and that some Pho places save money on basil by serving the white stem basil to Americans who don't know better.  I don't know if all of that is accurate but I do know the red stem basil tastes and smells fabulous and that I am a fan of it.

When I returned home on Tuesday, I started looking at the blogs and wedsites my friend had shared with me the day before.  One of the most interesting was an hour video I watched called "Uprooting the leading causes of death"on the nutritionfacts.org website (click the title of the video to watch it).

Some of the sites I went to are listed below.  Many of these sites have cookbooks and and all of them have email subscriptions that you can sign up for.

• Nutrition Facts - nutritionfacts.org
• Happy Herbivore - http://happyherbivore.com/
• Engine 2 Diet - http://engine2diet.com/
• Knives over Forks - http://www.forksoverknives.com/

I decided to become vegan on Tuesday afternoon.  I had already prepared dinner, which included ground turkey, cheese and sour cream and we had my in-laws coming to dinner so I did not change dinner that night.

My vegan experience fully began on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, that being the first full day of eating a plant based diet.  I ate steel-cut oatmeal with brown sugar and almond milk for breakfast with a bottle of water, that was no big change.  I had lunch plans with another friend at 520 Bar and Grill and was a little concerned as I did not recall seeing vegan choices on the menu but I ordered one of my favorites the BBQ Chicken Salad with no onions, no chicken and no cheese.  It has black beans so I knew it had protein and it was delicious.  For dinner I made an old favorite of mine that I call the Pear Walnut Salad (recipe below - no photo for this one yet but I will post one next time I make this salad, it is beautiful) and four Milton's crackers with Athenos traditional hummus smeared on top.  I wasn't sure if this meal would fill up Stephen but even he was surprised that he was not hungry.  I did serve a large portion of the salad to each of us but it is good for you so I wasn't too worried.

Pear Walnut Salad

1 - head of green leafy lettuce, cleaned, dried and torn

2 - pears, pitted and chopped

1 - 11oz can mandarin oranges, drained

½ bag - Emerald glazed walnuts

¼ cup – poppyseed dressing 

Mix all of the ingredients above into one bowl and serve.

Recipe by Paige

Thursday was steel-cut oatmeal with brown sugar and almond for breakfast.  Salad with green leafy lettuce, celery, carrot, cucumber, tomato, almond slivers and croutons for lunch.  I Love Pho for dinner.  This time I took my husband and my in-laws.  They too are now fans of Pho.  Stephen had Pho with beef and Carl had chicken chow mein.  Norma ordered the same as me but with the onions.

A few cookbooks arrived that I ordered on Tuesday from Amazon.com so I plan to spend some time tomorrow marking pages I want to try.

Friday I made my steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast but this time I added some cinnamon and apple sauce and it was very good.  For lunch I had bean burrito, chips and salsa.  And for dinner we had salad with green leafy lettuce, celery, carrot, cucumber, tomato, almond slivers and croutons.

This morning I decided to try a recipe I got off the Happy Herbivore website called Apple Crisp Muffins.  They are in the oven now so I will let you know what I think and I will include photos.