1st Quarter

Before cooking

I have made through the first quarter of the year as a vegan! Yea!!  It has worked pretty well. This past month my only missteps were the almond cheese with casein and the overdose of beet juice.  I am trying different aspects of the lifestyle which meant that least week I had 2 meals of juice a day and one of solid food.  From taste aspect that was very interesting.  I got a much more intense blast of the fruits and veggies.  It definitely did not fulfill by desire to eat and I was much more hungry than usual.  Even with the restricted diet, I only lost one pound during the month.  That part of the juicing experiment is over.  I will still make some juices and they do make a good breakfast.  I will say that during the last week I did have an energy boost.  I do not know if it was from the juicing or a delay in the start of the vegan diet. We shall see as the year progresses.

My breakfast juice was a lovely shade of brown.  It was made from 2 tomatoes, a lime, and arugula. I used an entire container of arugula and it made very little juice. The leftover pulp just looked like chopped arugula. I do not see it as a good veggie for a juice.  The flavor was good, but it seemed like a waste of the greens.

My lunch juice looked very similar. It was made from 4 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, and 6 stalks of celery.   The cucumbers, while not my favorite flavor are good for juicing because of the quantity of juice they make.  the weather was nice today, so I made my juice to go and we took the dogs to Panera to eat outside.

Overall, I would say that juicing is not very cost effective.  Large quantities of fruits and vegetables are used to make a much smaller amount of juice.  Actually eating the plants seems to make more sense.  Also, I needed to make a grocery stop to keep us going for the next 2 weeks.  I will say that this trip figuratively broke the bank.  Mainly because of vitamins. I was out of my B12 and D3 that I normally take every day.  I decided to supplement that with Omega 3 and a multi vitamin.  Buying those at Whole Foods was $100.  Now the Omega 3 lasts for 4 months, the multi and the D are for 3 months, and the B12 is for 2 months.  I also bought some chia seeds that are good supplement for vegans.

What I did get that was more cost effective was dried beans.  I bought some garbanzo and kidney beans from the bulk aisle. I cooked a batch of each so that I would have them for the next few weeks.  Some went into the refrigerator and some into the freezer.

For dinner, I roasted some fennel, red onion, parsnip and carrot in thyme olive oil with salt, pepper, asafoetida, and lemon juice. I like just about any vegetable roasted, that is my favorite preparation.  I  also microwaved some setian and seasoned it with hoisin sauce.