The Vegan Experiment - Day1

It's day one of my vegan experiment. 

For all of you who haven't heard about it, yet: 

!!!For about a week I will try to only eat vegan food!!!

Given the fact that meat&chocolate is my favorite food, this means quite a challenge to me. 

I can totally imagine not eating meat for a week. Really, that's fine with me. 

The worst is to not consume dairy products such as butter, cheese, milk or yoghurt 

and food that contains egg. Chocolate usually contains milk, as well, at least the chocolate I like.

So this is going to be a tough call for me.

The reason why I'm doing it is first of all to challenge myself.

But I also want to find out more about the vegan diet and if it is really that hard to be a vegan. 

Let's be honest, I actually struggle with these kind of movements.
Not because I think it's bullshit to only live of "salad and grains".
What I dislike are militant activists who insist of convincing me of their healthier, better lifestyle while constantly rubbing "I'm better and smarter than you and you don't have a clue" under my nose.

I think we all know that the conditions in slaughterhouses are dire. This really is no news to me.
But I love to eat. Indulging in good food makes me happy and is a major part of my life.
I love to try stuff and to have choices, and yes, I love eating meat, cheese, eggs & co
(at least as much as I like to pet animals), and at this point I cannot imagine not eating those things anymore...

...oh well, for the next few days I guess I have to, if I want to fulfill my mission.
I will try to experience the whole spectrum. Therefore I will try some of the meat substitutes, as well as cooking and baking at home and eating at restaurants and cafés.

Will Julia turn into a vegan activist herself? Will she feel better than ever? Or maybe worse?
Will she turn into a bad-tempered monster?

We'll find out soon...

So here is the first day!

Breakfast started for me with a fruit smoothie (only fruits!) and vanilla-soy coffee, which I think is pretty disgusting. I'll try to get used to it...maybe skip the vanilla soy milk and use plain soy milk instead.

Later this day I had a pumkinseed bagel with sliced avocado, cherry tomatoes, roasted pine nuts and balsamico date essence. And no surprise: this was expectingly good.

Thumbs up for bagel with avocado and tomatoes!

After that I tried a bit of the soy vanilla yoghurt...man, that stuff really isn't very pleasing. 

It's not really bad. But there is something - some weird flavour that makes me cringe. 

I don't know if I can eat this again.

But hey, the bagel was good!

(It was actually a hommage to Harriett and Aimee, 

the lovely non-militant vegan/vegetarian ladies of The Bright Young Twins)

Dinner was quite a disappointment. I had these breadcrumbed and fried mushroom cutlets that were DISGUSTING! Far too salty and the flavor was unbearable.

NO!

NO, NO, NO!

 As for dessert I had a little chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing. It was moist and soft but
far too sweet (and I usually cannot get enough sugar) and there was this weird soy flavor again.
It did not satisfy my needs at all.
The whole thing lacked the richness that you would find in cream and eggs.

Looks are deceiving: this wasn't good, at all.

To sum up the first day:
I didn't really have any withdrawal symptons.
But all of the ready-made food tasted really unpleasant.
The food I prepared myself with fresh bread and vegetables on the other hand (the bagel) was delicious. So I guess, I'll try to cook more myself.
 I can tell you that, it will definitely cheaper.
for only a few tiny things (that pretty much all didn't taste good) I spent 23€.
That's ridiculous.