Like A Vegan, hey!

Do you have any idea how much I love food?

I LOVE FOOD!!

Even though I am all vegan-ish now, I still love food and am thrilled to find that eating healthy can actually be tasty.

I have been experimenting with some of the packaged vegan food that I got in Indy last weekend. I made a “taco” salad with Mexican-seasoned tofu, lettuce, tomato, vegan cheese, vegan sour cream and avocado. We are talking a lot of faking it with soy! The “meat” actually reminded me of the taco filling that they served in school lunches when I was growing up. It was definitely passable and with all of the other stuff, pretty darn tasty.

But THEN, the next day, I heated up Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza and it was Ohmygod, knock your socks off good! I am even willing to say that it is the second best pizza that I have ever eaten in my entire life (second only to Bloomington’s Mother Bear’s).

And I am also quite impressed by LaraBars. I tried the Cinnamon Roll flavor and the ingredients are very simple and basic: only dates, walnuts, almonds, raisins, cashews and cinnamon. While it definitely wasn’t the equivalent of a candy bar, it was still amazingly yummy.

Not everything that I’ve been trying has lived up to my expectations. I’m willing to give a little on the cheese issue, but I’m sorry, I cannot approve of soy ice cream. It is just wrong. I feel very strongly about my ice cream and I’m afraid that the cows score a point on this one.

And rutabaga? Never again. Blech.

The interesting thing is that I thought that I would prefer the frozen, convenient vegan foods over the simple rice, noodle and veggie dishes that I had been making. It turns out that after a couple days of eating prepared vegan foods, I started missing the brown rice and vegetables.

Tonight, I made the most smashing dish ever! First, I coated a frying pan with olive oil and put in a diced red onion. Then, I cut baby carrots and zucchini into matchsticks and added them. After a few minutes, I added snap peas and a whole bunch of sliced baby portobella mushrooms. As the vegetables were all cooking together and creating the most intoxicatingly delicious smell, I added shoyu and 3 cups of cooked brown rice. The aroma itself was enough to floor me, but eating it was a truly transcendent flavor experience. I cannot believe how absolutely amazing vegetables in olive oil and shoyu can be! I’m so regretful that I have not been eating this my entire life. It’s not just that vegetables are healthy, but they are also so freaking delicious!

I LOVE FOOD!