What I ate Wednesday #13

When I was doing themed posts for WIAW I considered doing a vegan post – but I didn’t know how I would get around my love of cheese and yogurt.

Well, as I mentioned on Monday – I’m dipping my toe in the vegan water 🙂 So it just so happens that this WIAW post is my first Vegan day – whoop whoop!

I’m focusing on plant based eating – eating real foods.

Ok, so that’s not really the challenge, but work with me here 🙂

I quoted Michael Pollan in one of my very first blog posts.  Another quote from his 2008 book, In Defense of Food:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Sounds like good advice 🙂  There is so much advice out there, and so many fads – it’s hard to know which to listen to.  I like the way One Green Planet summed it up:

“So the message here is this: Eating real food matters more than what diet you choose to follow. So don’t stress about which fads to follow. But do choose mostly foods direct from nature. Plant-based eating is the way to go!”

And don’t forget the latest news that we should be eating 7, not 5-a-day.  Since focussing on plant based eating at the start of the week it’s been easy.  Having said that, I’ve done this before, and somewhere along the line (usually when a new fad comes out) I get lost along the way.

So what did I eat on my first vegan day?

• Breakfast: I made a chocolate dough-boy smoothie.  I suppose it’s somewhere between a thick smoothie, and runny overnight oats.  I soaked my oats in unsweetened almond milk, with a teaspoon of raw cacao powder and a teaspoon of flax seed. Then in the morning I blended it up with a banana.  I think it needed more cacao. I sprinkled half of one of my snacktime fruit ryvita over the top for crunch.
• Snack: I had a filter coffee with almond milk when I got into work.  I’ve quickly realised that I don’t like tea with almond milk – but coffee isn’t bad.  Come about 10.00 I was hungry again so I toasted a wholewheat mini bagel and mashed some avocado on top. With a green tea.
• Lunch: I made a mixed quinoa and squash salad inspired by Delicioulsy Ella and the coquina squash that I bought at the weekend.  With some steamed broccoli and halved cherry tomatoes.  I remembered too late that I’m not a fan of black quinoa, it is a bit crunchy like poppy seeds – I usually buy the red to mix in with the white, but I forgot.  Oh well, better get used to it.  To follow I had a Berry Cheeky Nakd bar – I picked up the wrong one in the morning, I wanted a protein one with soya crunches, never mind – it was delish 🙂
• Snack: I couldn’t even wait until I was on the train, I was peckish again at about 4pm.  My snack was some tinned apple slices I had leftover from a recipe, with cashew butter and cinnamon. I was going to have that as a snack, but I decided it would keep me going longer if I had some starchy carbs in there, so I had 1 and a half Fruit Crunch Ryvita (remember the other was sprinkled on my brekkie) – I love the chewy sweetness of the raisins hiding in there!
• Dinner: After a yoga session and a wun (Ben said because I ran and walked it should be classified as a wun rather than a run) on the treadmill I was ready for my dinner.  I bought some funky new tempeh in town from a new health food shop.  The beans in this are chopped up and it creates a lighter less dense tempeh than the stuff I usually buy online.  So I made a vegan tempeh chilli with leeks, tinned tomatoes, flageolet beans and a dash of sriracha sauce over brown basmati rice.

Have you dabbled with veganism? What would you miss the most? How many portions of fruit and veg do you eat?

Tagged: apple, avocado, bagel, breakfast, cacao, cashew, chilli, chocolate, Cinnamon, dinner, dough-boy smoothie, Lunch, nut butter, plant based eating, Quinoa, ryvita, salad, Smoothie, snacks, squash, tempeh, vegan, What I ate, What I ate Wednesday, WIAW