Almost there....

So, tomorrow the great adventure that is veganism begins. In preparation, I've been feverishly going through my vegan cookbooks, trying to decide which recipes I'm brave enough to try. (And which ones I can trick my man into eating). The problem that I keep encountering is this. Just because a recipe is vegan, doesn't necessarily mean it's healthier than a non-vegan meal. I mean, sure, you cut out cheese and meat, but there are still cheese substitutes and meat and dairy substitutes that are still quite high in fat. Not to mention, so many times these vegan substitutes are way more processed and "fake" than the real thing! I don't want to cut one type of junk out of my diet, only to replace it with an equally bad junk. And there's also the fact that I'm a bit unsure when it comes to meat substitutes.. I know a lot of vegetarians and vegans love them, but honestly, I think I'd rather just eat grilled or roasted veggies than try to choke down tofu, tempeh, seitan, or textured vegetable protein. (Seriously, could they think of less appetizing names for these things?) So trying to find recipes has been a challenge, because most often, vegan cookbooks are chock full of normal recipes with vegan meat substitutes instead of real meat. And then there are the cooking methods. There are so many recipes that look so yummy, but they're fried! And yes, I love french fries as much as the next girl, and it's great that they're vegan but.. umm.. I'm trying to lose weight here!

I have found one book that has been super helpful, and that is the Engine 2 diet book. It's written by a former triathlete and current firefighter who eats only a plant based diet, and trust me, he's still got plenty of muscle. He's also the son of one of the scientists cited in the documentary Forks over Knives, which is what drew me to him. Not only does he advocate eating a plant based diet, but also cutting out all added oils (gasp!), refined sugars, and eating only whole grains. I actually haven't read the entire book.. cause I wasn't looking for just another diet. But in the back, he's got quite a collection of recipes. Some are also on his website, here, if you're interested. Some of these recipes look really great, and so easy to do! There are simply weekday breakfasts and lunches (you know, for those normal people who have school and jobs to go to, and don't have time to spend all day cooking) and some really good looking dinner recipes too. He uses tofu a little bit, but not too often, and hardly ever as the main dish. He also has some awesome looking recipes for oil-free, egg-free, dairy-free salad dressings! Yeah, I didn't know it was possible either.  I'll definitely be reviewing some of those for you here soon! He's even got quite a collection of desserts! The book has definitely been worth the price, even if only for the recipes. 

In other news, I'm still looking for a job. Which sucks. Interviewed last week at Red Robin (Ha! It'd suck to work there and be vegan), but I haven't heard back from them yet. Applied for an administrative assistant job, which pays up to 22 dollars an hour (!), and I'm hoping to hear back from them this week. The man had an interview with Target on Monday, and I have one tomorrow with a daycare, and Friday with a caregiving company. So hopefully something comes out of one of these leads. If not.. well, I guess we'll just keep plugging away. For the moment, I guess I'm off to do laundry and make myself a grocery list. Being grown up is not all its cracked up to be. 

In which our heroine goes on a rant.

You know what I hate? Well.. there's a few things. And I'm about to tell you some of them.
1) People who hold grudges. Maybe its because I'm a Sagittarius, so holding grudges is just not in my nature, but seriously, I don't get it. Get over it, or get the fuck out of my life. I don't have time to deal with your pissy pants. Sometimes, I wish I could hold a grudge, just to get back at them. Cause I want to show them how ridiculous and bratty they're being. But I can't. If you want to hold a grudge against me, you go right ahead. I'm not gonna grovel to get you back. I'll apologize once. And that's it. Then I'll leave you to throw your tantrum, and when you're over it, I'll welcome you back with open arms.
2) People who always think they know what is best for everyone else. For instance, if you've been reading, you'll know that I'm planning on going vegan in T-minus 3 days. (Really, only three days? Jeesh! I'm starting to get anxious!) Now, as I've been announcing this among my friends and family, I've gotten mixed reactions. Some of my friends and family have been really supportive, and I appreciate that support so much! I know this is going to be a tough journey, and I'll need all the encouragement I can get. But there are other friends who have been.. not so helpful. "What, oh my god, you can't do that, it's so unhealthy" "You should do the paleo diet instead, its so much better for you." "But its totally impossible to get enough protein without animal products!" My answer, in all these cases is "'Scuse me. Have you done the research? Are you a nutritionist? Do you realize that there are dissenting views about vegan nutrition even among the world's leading nutritionists? No? Then shut up. Its my body, my decision. If your opinion wasn't requested, you should probably keep it to yourself. Kthanks.
3) Job hunting. I really, really, really hate job hunting. It should not be this hard to find a dead-end minimum wage job that a retard could do. Seriously. How am I ever gonna find a GOOD job, if its this hard to get a bad one!? And job applications too. I mean.. I already went through the work of writing a resume with all the same information. Can't you just read that? Why do you want to read it twice? Doesn't it get redundant?
4) People who insist on coming to a complete stop before turning. If there is no traffic symbol there, it's unnecessary! And those people alway seem to be so old! Shouldn't they be in more of a hurry? I mean, time's running out, do you really want to spend what's left of it making that right turn?

Sorry about the rants. There are just some things that drive me crazy. And I've been experiencing too damn many of them lately. I'm sure you all know how that can go.

Prepping for the switch

So for the last few weeks, I've been spending a good deal of time compiling useful vegan tips and recipes. Hopefully, in a week, all this work will pay off by making my life much easier.
I'm actually getting pretty excited for the switch. I guess all this planning is at least helping to mentally prepare me. I had the idea in my head at first that this was all going to be about limiting what I could eat. No meat. No cheese. No ice cream! And I would sit around, trying to think about things I could cook. This is how my thought process would go.

Omnivore Songbird: Ooh, I could do eggplant parmesan. That's vegan right? With just a marinara sauce, not a meat sauce, obviously. -feels so proud of herself-

Herbivore Songbird: Actually... the whole.. parmesan thing kinda makes that not vegan at all.

And it just continued to spiral through my head like that, until I was starting to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Now, I know that I only agreed to this for one month, but in my head, I think of it lasting well... forever. I don't know if I really will be vegan for the rest of my life, and I won't know till after next month. But if, after this month, I feel as good as I hope I will, I don't see myself wanting to change back. Which started to freak me out even more. No pizza. Forever? No mac and cheese? For the rest of my life? And I know in my head that its only food, and as long as I'm getting enough to eat, I'm doing better than most of the world. But it's very difficult to maintain that mindset in the culture we life in. Food is so much a part of our culture. Think about it. Every holiday has it's own menu. For our birthdays, get together and eat. To catch up with friends, we get together and eat. For business meetings, we get together and eat! We live in a world where food is synonymous with pleasure. We live to eat, rather than realizing that we should eat to live. It's a very difficult mental transition to make. Moving on. After having my minor meltdown, I started looking for vegan alternatives to the foods I love. Some of them have really great alternatives, which I'm eager to try. Some.. well.. they have alternatives.. but I'm not sure I trust them. And honestly, I'd rather just eat grilled veggie sandwiches every day than try to recreate a vegan mac and cheese and have it turn out awful. Call my unadventurous, but I don't like being disappointed with things I cook.

But as I looked for alternatives, I came to another conclusion. There are a lot of awesome looking recipes here that I never would have even thought of! You ever feel like you get stuck in a rut, as far as your cooking goes? Like.. "Well, we have ground beef. We can have tacos, spaghetti or meatloaf". I always feel like my weeks go in an unending rotation of mexican, italian, american, italian, american, with maybe a sprinkling of indian or thai in there. Once you get so used to cooking a certain way, its easy to just get stuck using the same recipes over and over. And cookbooks are so often full of variations of the same old stuff! However, vegan cookbooks are different. Because of the limitations of possible ingredients, vegan cookbooks take their inspiration from all over the world. And, they find some really creative ways to use ingredients you are already familiar with. For example, a ricotta cheese substitute made from ground cashews and tofu with some spices? I don't know if I trust it, but its extremely well reviewed! Another upside of the vegan diet is the sheer variety of friuts and vegetables out there! With meat, you have beef, pork, chicken, and maybe seafood occasionally, if you roll that way. And whatever meat you choose, you're limited to building a dish around that. With vegan food though, there are so many opportunities to work with ingredients I've never used before. Like eggplant or collard greens or spaghetti squash or a pumpkin! I've never worked with a whole pumpkin, unless you count carving a face into it, and there's a pumpkin ziti recipe I'm really excited to try. =)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, whenever you're dieting, whether cutting out animal products, or just trying to cut some calories, it is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking about everything you can't have anymore. The key is to change that mindset and focus on all the wonderful things you can have! And the other key, is to be creative! Just because you're cutting calories doesn't mean you have to eat a bowl of plain oatmeal every morning! Take note of all the ingredients at your disposal and put them together to make something better than the scrambled eggs and bacon you would be eating!

The omnivore is converted

      For the last few years, my weight has been a real struggle for me. What with college class schedules, working two, sometimes three jobs at a time, and trying to find time for a social life and a boyfriend, life gets pretty hectic. And I know thats no excuse to not find time to work-out and eat healthy, but seriously.. I just want to sleep when I can, eat something without the invested time of shopping and cooking, and when I don't have responsibilities, I just want to veg out in front of my computer or tv. But that has to stop. Over the last few months, I've slowly been building up to a change in lifestyle. First, my friend Rachel made the decision to run a half-marathon, and she's been training her butt off to get there. So with that bit of inspiration, I started spending a bit more time on Pinterest looking at the fitness pins rather than the recipe pins. Though I still haven't actually made the changes I need to, I've slowly been storing up my willpower and inspiration. Then, Rachel made a new group on facebook for people who are trying to get fit and be healthier, which I have joined. So now I've got the support group I need and some motivation. I just needed a plan.
      And I believe I found that today. My grandparents have been vegan now for a few years, and they've been begging me to read "The China Study", which is the book they base their lifestyle on. Today, I started reading it, and found some really interesting things. He details a lifetime worth of scientifically based experiments dealing with the relationship between consumption of animal proteins and the occurrence of various diseases including heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. The results are pretty compelling. For example, in one study, they took two different groups of rats and exposed both of them to equal amounts of a certain dangerous carcinogen known to cause liver cancer. To one group, they fed a diet of 20% animal protein (approximately the amount of animal protein the average American eats) and to the other, they fed a diet of only 5% animal protein. In the group consuming 20% animal protein, 100% of the rats got liver cancer or cancerous lesions. In the group consuming only 5%, none of the rats exhibited signs of cancer. Isn't that amazing? Especially in the environment we live in today!? Its nearly impossible to limit our exposure to carcinogens completely, but if we can limit our chances of actually getting cancer from those sources? By something as simple as diet? It seems worth a shot, right?
      If you're interested in looking into this book, its kind of a difficult read. Very scientific, but more readable than I expected it to be. However, if you're more interested in the abbreviated version, there is a documentary on Netflix that addresses this study called "Knives over Forks"
      And I'm curious to see how this kind of diet will affect my body. I don't have diabetes, or high cholesterol, or heart disease, like so many cases cited in this book, but I do have a few bothersome ailments that I'd like to see disappear. I've had headaches almost every day for longer than I care to remember. I've tried documenting them to find the root of the cause, but I can't seem to find a common thread. I have them whether I get 5 hours of sleep or 12. I have them whether I drink caffeine or not. I have them whether I read or look at a screen or not. I have them inside or outside. I just can't figure out why. But who knows? Maybe its diet related. I already addressed my complete lack of motivation and energy in my last blog, and I'm really hoping this dietary change will improve those problems as well.
      So yes. For the month of August, I will be vegan. Not because I'm concerned about the exploitation of animals, but out of curiosity. And if it doesn't do anything by the end of the month, I can always go back.  I'll use the time between then and now to continue planning and learning more about this lifestyle. Including how to cook! Its a whole new culinary art for me. Hopefully by the first I'll be able to gather up some good vegan recipes and inspiration! If some of you are wondering, no, the carnivore I live with will not be joining me in this venture. The man loves his steak way too much. But maybe I can convince him to try a few vegan meals at least.
        If anyone has some good vegan recipes that they want to share, share them in the comments! I'll need a whole month of them, and salad is gonna get old real fast!

Wow, it has been quite a while since I last blogged. So much has happened since then.... Let me get you all caught up really quickly.
Firstly, and most importantly, my wonderful boyfriend flew over here from New York in May, and moved in with me. It has been an adjustment, for sure; I had never lived with a boyfriend before this.. or with any boy who wasn't my brother. But I've loved every minute of it. He actually drove back home with me to meet the family! ( An event we had both been a little terrified of) And it went surprisingly well too. Except for the one little slip up from my lovely grandmother, when he was petting her dog ("I wasn't sure if he was gonna bite you or not. I don't think he's ever seen a black person before...") it was actually quite enjoyable.
In other news, the bar that I was working at went out of business, so I'm on the job hunt. Again. Boo. And since the bar was bankrupt, they have been unable to afford to pay my last paycheck. Double boo. So now I have to jump through all kinds of governmental hoops to try to get a lousy 200 dollar paycheck.
But on the bright side, I just had an interview at another little bar yesterday, so I'm reallllllly hoping I'll be hired there, and I can stop all this job application nonsense.
As far as everything else goes... well... it's going. I seem to be losing motivation for everything lately. Thank God it's summer, because I definitely wouldn't be able to do school right now. I think the only reason I did as well as I did last term (not very well, by the way) was because Kasheef was here pushing me through dead week and finals. And this loss of motivation is not a new thing by any means. The last year of school has just been torture. I don't know why it's been so hard. Maybe its watching other people from my high school class graduate, and knowing its not my turn yet. Maybe I just burned myself out during fall term with my three jobs and overloaded course load. Or maybe I'm just a little bit depressed. It seems weird to think that, because I don't really feel sad, necessarily. Its just that I feel completely unmotivated to do things that I used to like doing. Really, I just want to sleep, all the time. I feel tired, no matter how much caffeine I consume, no matter how many hours of sleep I get. I have headaches almost every day. I don't know, maybe there's something neurologically wrong with me, but I'm just really struggling. I am just so tired of feeling like all this work, all this striving towards a goal, just leads to more of the same. I've felt that way since my sophomore year of high school, and nothing has changed! Sure, I graduated high school. Great. I have a high school diploma, which, by the way, does next to no good in the job market. And now I'm in college, doing the same things I was doing in high school, but with maybe a little more direction. And once I finish that, I'm gonna have more college to get my Masters and start my career. And all that's even without the Peace Corps.
And all around me, I see people doing it the "wrong way". Getting knocked up out of wedlock in high school or college, moving in with their parents, or taking the other route and taking care of themselves. I see people entering into marriages that I'm sure won't work out. I see people living off of WIC and food stamps. And yet.. its hard not to be jealous of those people. At least their lives have started! It just seems like there is so little reward in this world for the people who want to work hard and take care of themselves. In a world where the government says, "what? You got pregnant, and you can't afford to take care of that child? Thats okay, here's some money. And some free pre-natal healthcare. Oh, and by the way, this is way more that you would earn working that minimum wage job, so why bother?" or a world where they say, "No, if you're a college student, you can't earn any unemployment. You have to find a way to pay for tuition and books on top of food, rent and bills, while working a minimum wage job, because that's all you're qualified to do. In fact, after you graduate school, that's still all you'll be qualified to do, because you don't have any real world experience. So now you've got 50,000+ dollars of student loan debt and you can barely pay your bills. Good luck." Not to mention the fact that its damn near impossible to find a job while you're a student, because employers don't want to work around a student's schedule, when it changes every three months. Especially not in this economy, when people with PhDs are competing with me for work at McDonalds. My mom tells me that I just need to work full time during the summer and save up so that I don't have to work during the school year, but that math just doesn't add up to me. Even if I saved every additional penny I made, I might have enough to last me through the first term of school, but definitely not the whole year. I don't mean to whine, or throw a pity party here, but its just the way society is, and it is so unfair. Call me a cynic, or say that those are only the exceptions, but you see it everywhere! The girl who came into a job interview dressed like a whore, who flirted her way into the job that you should have gotten. The family with 6 kids living off of welfare and making more than you'll probably ever see in your college educated life. You even see it on talent shows like America's Got Talent or American Idol. If a contestant has a sob story about how they screwed their own life up, on drugs, or as a single mother, or living on the streets, even if their talent is only mediocre, they will make it far. And someone who has worked hard, who has done everything they were told, they'll be cast aside, because they aren't marketable enough. Why does our society reward the screw-ups while ignoring the rest? I understand, they had a long way to come. They had to work hard to get where they are, but so did I. And I did it without messing up.
Maybe that is really the biggest contributer to my motivation problem. It's really hard to feel motivated to complete something when you know the reward is greater when you fail.