Tag Archives: Food

Level five vegan

22 Apr

I now have five different kinds of dairy-free milk in my refrigerator: soy, rice, almond, hazelnut, and oat. I’ve used soy and rice for a long time, and have tried almond a few times, but hazelnut and oat are new to me. I actually don’t think I’ll buy either again because they’re more expensive and don’t seem any better. Almond milk has really grown on me over the last few days.

Incidentally, I refer to these milks as “dairy-free” rather than the more common “non-dairy” because the latter term has been corrupted by the milk lobby. Unfortunately, “dairy-free” isn’t perfect either, but it hasn’t been explicitly corrupted.

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I’m not sure why I do these things to myself

22 Apr

I went to a panel discussion earlier on food sustainability as part of Earth Week. Of course, food is the last things somebody who can’t eat for another eight days needs to hear about. Actually, the discussion itself wasn’t too bad in that respect because much of the discussion focused on some of the less appetizing aspects of food, but it didn’t help that they served vegan food there. I’m fairly used to going to events with (non-vegan) food and not eating, so going to an event with vegan food when I couldn’t eat was perhaps a little bit masochistic.

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A culinary success

17 Apr

For dinner today, I had a smoothie which I might actually want to make again after I’m able to open my mouth again. Then it won’t be a meal, of course, but it was really quite good. I didn’t write down exact amounts of ingredients, but I’ll call it a Peanut Butter Apple Cinnamon Smoothie. I made it by blending a So Delicious Cinnamon Bun soy yogurt with a few tablespoons of peanut butter and maybe 1/3 cup of applesauce, a little bit of soymilk, and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. After that was all blended, I added more soymilk until the volume was about three cups, and blended some more.

The smoothie felt as though it was just thin enough that it could pass through the straw, and the flavor was really very good. Something about the flavored soy yogurt made it particularly so.  The peanut butter has plenty of fat and protein, so it was nice and filling, too.

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A challenge

17 Apr

I’ve found my oral surgeon’s assurance, “You’re going to lose some weight” replaying over and over in my head over the last couple of days. I’m not exactly sure why. I wasn’t particularly disturbed by the idea of losing a few pounds. It may well have just been his level of confidence in his prediction that made it stuck with me like this. It also reminds of the nurse last week saying that I’m “already such a little guy” (which did bother me). By now I’ve come to see these remarks as the basis for a challenge to avoid losing weight while I’m wired. I haven’t weighed myself since two weeks before the accident, but I’ll aim for the most recent measurement I have: 155 pounds. As a rule, I’ll try to refrain from doing anything particularly stupid, like consuming to the point of feeling sick or drinking vegetable oil from a cup.

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Muir Woods

12 Apr

Today, my brother and I went to see Muir Woods, but we encountered a couple of injury-related problems early on.

First, shortly after we left, I found that the flexible foam bandage on my elbow had come off. I don’t know if I’ve ever been satisfied with the way one of those bandages stuck. It seems like they always come off. Fortunately, we passed a pharmacy shortly after passing through San Rafael, and so I was able to purchase a box of better bandages.

When we got to Muir Woods, I was hungry enough that I wanted some of the smoothie I had made before leaving. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had left it at home. Luckily, the concession tent at the edge of the parking lot sold little boxes of chocolate (and only chocolate) soy milk. The price, naturally, was excessive, but it held me off until we got home, if only barely.

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Shopping

11 Apr

My brother has come to visit and drive me around in a rental car for a few days. Our first trip was to Whole Foods, where I bought some canned soups, soy yogurts, rice milk, and chocolate soy milk. The chocolate soy milk is just to make things a little bit more interesting, and the rice milk is so that I won’t be drinking several smoothies a day with soy milk, soy protein powder, and soy yogurt.

Thereafter, we went to Bed Bath and Beyond, where I purchased a strainer, which I plan to use to remove particles that are too big to blend from my soups. In buying the strainer, I also hoped to be able to remove the oatmeal from the smoothie I made the other day. Also in Bed Bath and Beyond, I found that there were towels on sale, so I purchased a couple. For reasons I don’t understand, I intended to buy two towels in different colors, but somehow I managed to inadvertently choose two of the same color without noticing that they were the same color until after I had checked out.

Upon my return home, the strainer did prove successful in removing the oatmeal from the smoothie.

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Vega

11 Apr

On Wednesday, a few hours after my surgery, my concerned mother talked with my landlady over the phone about my medical situation. My landlady is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and she had agreed to serve as an emergency contact for my mother. After the phone conversation ended, my mother reported to me that she had talked my landlady out of buying cans of Ensure for me. Ensure is a dairy product, so I was grateful for this. This morning, though, thinking about the story reminded me that I had seen a vegan meal replacement at Whole Foods once. After a few Google searches, I determined that the product I was thinking of was Vega.

I could see on the website that the  nutrient content of Vega was very impressive. It also happens to be free of all major allergens, including soy. Since I want to have some sources of protein other than soy, this made it particularly worth trying. I purchased a few snack-size packets at Whole Foods today, and  I tasted two of the flavors. The taste certainly wasn’t anything special, but it didn’t taste bad, so I’ve decided to order a larger supply. At first, I hesitated because of the price (retail is about $5 per serving), but I decided that for something that replaces a whole meal, it really isn’t too bad, particularly given the circumstances. The best price I could find was at Food Fight Grocery, a vegan grocery store in Portland. I’ll order two large containers (which results in a substantially cheaper price per serving), and keep one in my office and one at home.

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The wired diet

10 Apr

Now that I’ve been wired for a couple of days, my nourishment habits are starting to fall into a pattern. I drink a lot of smoothies, perhaps four to six (each about 3 cups) per day. The ingredients of the smoothies aren’t exactly the same each time, but usually I use soy milk, soy protein powder, and some soy yogurt. I have some frozen fruit and some bananas, but they tend not to blend well enough to pass through both the straw and the small gaps between my teeth. I’d like to get some rice milk to use instead of soy milk so that I’m not taking in so much soy.

I’ll usually also eat one can of soup per day. This requires the soup to be pureed in the blender. I wish that I could eat a bit more soup in a day, but I’m hesitant to try because of the sodium content.

Much of my perishable solid food has gone into the freezer. This includes some pasta, a loaf of bread, and some Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon that I made on Saturday. The red bell peppers and salad greens in my refrigerator will unfortunately probably rot before I can eat them.

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Oatmeal fail

9 Apr

I tried making oatmeal. I ground the oats in the blender before preparing the oatmeal, but when I put them in hot water the oat fragments expanded enough so that most couldn’t pass through a straw. Even many of those that couldn’t pass through a straw ended up getting stuck in the wires. In a last ditch effort to use the oatmeal, I tried taking just a little bit and adding it to a smoothie, but this made it impossible for me to drink the smoothie. I left the smoothie in the refrigerator until I can acquire a strainer with which to remove the oatmeal.

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A failed experiment

7 Apr

I had some kale and about a third of a block of tofu in my refrigerator, so I tried steaming the kale and adding it and the tofu to a smoothie last night. The result was pretty unpalatable, so I ended up dumping it and making a more conventional smoothie.

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