Pictures from Vegan Week

As I said before, this is now a food blog.

In act of self-inflicted misery, I decided to try the whole "Vegan" thing for a week. Sadly, I did not develop any superpowers. Why would Scott Pilgrim lie to me?

Instead I felt tired, hungry, and miserable pretty much all week. But's let disregard my first world problems and get to what people want to see - the pics.

If you want to see all the pics, not just selection, they're on flickr stream with live commentary.

(footnote: It's not actually a food blog)

Vegan sushi

This is probably the best one I made. First, cut some vegies into tiny strips:

Then place them on rice and nori:

 Cut into pieces, add some soy sauce, wasabi, and pickled ginger, and omnomnom:

Vegetables

The most obvious way to eat vegan is the whole "vegetable" thing. Vegetables are wonderful company for chicken, but the radical notion is to eat them on their own, or with some olive oil.

Steamed vegetables, could definitely used some butter if it wasn't banned:

Some simple salad with haricot beans, red onions, olive oil, and salt. I'm not saying it wouldn't be better with some tuna:

Fruit

I usually eat fruit with honey or chocolate. Chocolate I have here actually turned out to be vegan, but I didn't even notice that and assumed it must have milk products in it... Yeah, I was just so totally prepared like that.

So instead I tried some maple syrup:

No offense to Canadians, but it's just not very good. I tried with agave nectar as well, and that was even worse:

That was even worse, so I just decided to eat the rest of fruit I had raw:

Caffeine deficiency

The first thing that hit me during the vegan week was caffeine withdrawal. Sure, I had some green tea, and some red bulls (which turn out to be vegan contrary to obvious urban legend).

I tried making vegan mocha with instant coffee, dairy-free chocolate, and almond "milk", and it was just awful:

Constant hunger

Eventually I got over caffeine deficiency, but instead I was constantly hungry. Like I'd stuff my face with everything I could, and two hours later I wanted to eat more. Preferably chickens stuffed with cheese. That was just horrible.

Normally I try to avoid too much non-paleo food, but there was no way more fruit would help at all.

So, some steamed potatoes and carrots:

Some rice with stirfry vegetables:

Bread with houmous:

Bread with vegetables:

All that just slightly delayed coming of hunger.

Desserts

My usual nuts, almonds, raisins, and honey dessert, except without honey:

I already mostly prefer dark over milk chocolates, so it wasn't hard to find something good:

The end

To summarize, the food tasted just fine. Most of it would be better in non-vegan version, but except for that almond "milk" fake mocha abomination, these were things I wouldn't mind eating every now and then.

The problem was how not eating any animal products led to some severe deficiencies to which my body reacted with near constant exhaustion and hunger. At first I thought it might just be caffeine, but I drank generous amounts of green tea (not pictured), some red bulls, and my sleep tracking app didn't notice anything extraordinary, so I doubt that was it.

Half of the last day I spent looking at clock every 5 minutes wondering if it's finally midnight and I can finally eat some cheese.

So it was a fun thing to try once, but never again.