The Vegan Diaries, Day 7: Taste Management

As I have mentioned in previous posts, there’s some drawbacks to the vegan lifestyle. First, it requires a lot of planning on your part. Like someone going through Weight Watchers, you’ve now got to sit down, plan your meals out several days in advance, and then generate a mega-list of ingredients to go locate at five different supermarkets around town. Then you’ll spend even more time in the kitchen since you’re practically making everything from scratch. And with more homemade food comes more dishes to wash, so by the time you’re done with that, you suddenly realize that the day is over, and you’re still hungry.

However, despite these small setbacks, there are some real advantages of going vegan. The one I’ve discovered recently is that food just tastes better for some reason. In the past, I never added much to the food I was eating, since most of it was premade in some capacity. But now I don’t have a choice… I have to add flavorings and spices to what I’m eating, or else everything will taste like soy. I feel like I’m now a mad scientist in his lab, dabbling with sauces and onions and garlic and what-not, trying to bring his food to life.

Sometimes I have misses. Like yesterday—I tried adding soy sauce to tofu, but it didn’t seem to improve it at all. But now that I think about it, I was just adding soy… to soy. No wonder it tasted like nothing.

But then I have moments where what I’m making is to die for. Like my hummus… outstanding! Or the olive oil and balsamic vinegar I use with my sour batard bread… oh yeah! When you know that you’re making something that’s going to taste great, the amount of time it takes to make it doesn’t really matter anymore. It actually becomes a fun process that you look forward to, and you enjoy your food more, because you made it yourself.

Today’s Vegan Scorecard:
Breakfast: Organic granola and (can you guess?) soy milk. Also had a half banana I found sitting around getting black.
Lunch: Peanut butter and ligonberry preserves on toast, along with a banana and orange and celery sticks. The bread I used was called Ezekiel 4:9… a holy wholey grain bread, you could say. If you look up Ezekiel 4:9 in the Bible, God gives a recipe for making bread. No disrespect, God, but eating your bread is like chewing on a crunchy sponge.
Dinner: Apple butternut soup, salad with red curry sauce, and sour batard bread. Man, I missed bread this past week. Glad to have you back again.