Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I sit here conflicted and somewhat ashamed as I fell off the wagon last night.

I am writing this blog post today after having just consumed some tasty corn tortillas with melted cheese (quesadilla) and a Clif Builder Bar.

Early yesterday morning, I made plans with some old friends that Jeremy hasn't seen in like 5 years, I had run into the Prellops a few weeks back, a completely chance meeting. I decided on Cracker Barrel, knowing that there probably wouldn't be anything on the menu for me.

I figured this was going to be my defining moment during this Vegan adventure. I would either crack or I would endure. As the pressure to become an omnivore had been mounting this past week, I started too look at this experiment in dietary veganism as something more like a test of my personal discipline.

I apparently lack consider personal discipline, that would be the conclusion of my vegan experiment.

Given what I read in the book Vegan Freaks, I know that my vegan experiment was for all the wrong reasons, so I welcome any comments from the die-hard vegans out there.

Within a few days of the start of all of this, I realized that being a Vegan was hard, very hard. I never thought it would be fall off a log easy, but I never thought it would be this hard. Of course this reminds me of an adage "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.'

Since this post is attempting to be about full disclosure of my experiment, I said a few days in 'Being a Vegan SUCKS!'.

Mind you, I wasn't doing it for any of the right reasons. I am not morally opposed to meat. I was trying to find out what it was like to be my sister back in college.

This week had it's fair share of stress at work, but I managed to be good about it all. I managed to go out to eat with coworkers and stick to a vegan lifestyle. There were some moments of poor planning that bugged me, I should have planned better, but I didn't. However, there was something that snapped, or maybe the term 'fractured' at lunch on Friday.

We went to Sushi Sake, a decent sushi place near the office. I ordered Oshinko (various pickles), Miso, Edamame, cucumber rolls and avocado rolls. Maybe I should have ordered more food, but when Gina and Jeremy were eating their steak Bento boxes, I was overwhelmed with jealousy. I love the bento box, I love steak. I didn't want to continue with the experiment.

Mind you, I had this feeling while folks were eating pizza in front of me. But this time it was a bit stronger.

I ordered a bowl of fried rice at this point, figuring that the jealousy was mainly coming from my continued hunger.

The fried rice had bits of pork in it.

SUCK!

I picked them out and ate the fried rice.

While watching them eat the bento boxes, I thought about how I would probably eat eggs and bacon in the morning with the Prellops.

I think I had resigned myself to falling off the wagon in the morning.

However, then in the afternoon. I had a marathon conference call. This was the straw that turned the fracture into a full on break.

I need a drink after work and more importantly I had an urge for comfort food. Unfortunately, comfort food typically isn't Vegan. I should probably restate that. Comfort food that can be bought at a restaurant is typically not Vegan.

We ordered a variety of appetizers and I had a few drinks. The funny part about the drinks was that, I opened the menu and saw a good looking slush style drink that stated it was a red bull cherry slush. But it didn't come with any alcohol, I asked the waitress:

Ben: Does this come with vodka? (pointing at picture of red bull cherry slush)
Waitress: No.
Ben: Can I get this with vodka? (still pointing)
Waitress: Yeah, I think we can do that.

They brought out the glass, and a full can of red bull. "Some assembly required", I thought to myself, I might have said this out loud as well.

I had sort of wanted to order a steak. However, I was concerned that my body might reject a sudden infusion of red meat.

There was a cobb salad on the menu. It was definitely not the best cobb salad I had ever had. But it was pretty good.

That meal ended my 11 days as a Vegan.

I won't go into the details about what I had for breakfast, but it was not Vegan, and I did find it tasty.

I am not sure that I will ever try the Vegan thing again. I will continue to eat healthy, likely I will eat Vegan meals from time to time.

I salute all of you Vegans out there. I salute your dedication and respect your moral convictions.

Time to grab something to eat.

Laterz

Breakfast: Oatmeal

Lunch: Clif bar and a salad (from Quiznos)

Dinner: Salad from Pappasitos


I feel my sister's pain. There was a bit of a snafu and lunch wasn't ordered. So they ordered pizza. That meant I had to find something else to eat. We headed over to CVS (about a block and a half away), we scoured the protein bar section. They had one Clif bar left. But get this, there was this bar there called like 'Soy Goodness' or something like that, I can't remember the full name. Looking at it, it was a fruit flavored protein bar. In reading the ingredients though, it has butter.

WTF, do you put butter into a bar that specifically has soy protein.

Oh yeah, on the way up here we stopped in Hillsboro, TX and I bought a bag of chips. I had wanted to buy a bag of 'Sea salt and cracked black pepper' chips, but when I was looking over the ingredients and there was butter stuff in there too. So I bought the regular version of the chips the ingredients were 'Potatoes, Canola Oil, Salt'. Your telling me they couldn't just put some cracked pepper in there.

Anyway, I think I have 'Vegan Rage'.

I bought the one Clif bar from CVS and we headed over to Quiznos. They looked at me a little weird when I ordered the salad and requested that they not put any meat or cheese on it (and no ranch dressing).

Then came time for dinner. There were 5 of us going to dinner so that meant I couldn't really force my vegan needs on them. I called a couple of coworkers to ask for good places to eat that were not too far away from the office up here in North Dallas.

Finally decided on Pappasitos, a Mexican restaurant, I figured I could get them to make me a vegan salad. Vs going to Bone Daddy's and eating French fries for dinner.

The salad was good, I should have ordered extra avocado, but live and learn.

My Vegan needs were new to some of my coworkers so we discussed it a little bit.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Breakfast: Granola (with soymilk) and Coffee (also with soymilk)

Lunch: Food Shui

Dinner: Who knows, who knows. Part of it I am sure will be a Clif builder bar.


We ate at Fire Bowl the other day and I had the vegan version of one of my favorite dishes there, as I said it was good but not quite the same.

Food Shui was very good, Jeremy and I went there for lunch. They are a stir-fry type place that also has a variety of other things on the menu like Pho.

I had General Tso's Tofu, it is served over steamed rice and quite tasty. The Tofu was cut into triangle rather than squares, I think this definitely made the fried texture crispier and there was enough General Tso's sauce in the bowl to make everything just right (and spicy).

Jeremy, Eddie and I spent all day in a room working and it is now time to head up to the house, pack a bag and head drive to Dallas.

I am conducting a training session over the next two days in Dallas.

Back to the grind (for a minute or two).

Laterz

Breakfast: Oatmeal & Coffee with soy milk

Lunch: We were going to eat at Food Shui, this stir fry place that has good Vegan reviews. However, they changed their hours, it was 2pm and they didn't open till 4pm. Uggg. So we headed over to Fire Bowl, I had the Vermicelli Singapore, but prepared vegan style with fried tofu. It was good, not quite the same as it used normal, but it was good.

Dinner: I think I am going to make some pancakes.