Day Five, full-on day, not much cooking.

Thursdays are my longest working days, and I don't usually get home until after 6 p.m. Today's lunch was a peanut butter sandwich on wholemeal bread, an apple and a banana. I had asked my mother-in-law to make her wonderful winter minestrone (she uses carrots, potatoes, celery, and thickens it with rice). Perfect solution...for the rest of the family, I realised as I was driving to work. The soup gets its wonderful flavour from the rind of parmesan (that would be CHEESE!!!) she cooks in it, and also from the stock cube...and I don't know WHAT'S in that...


Thank goodness for the morning market in Piazza San Faustino, and a thirty minute break at work. I raced over and bought a head of lettuce, a very small (and kind of sad-looking) head of radicchio, some broccoli and mushrooms (what would happen to a vegan who hated mushrooms?). I also visited the best healthfood shop in Viterbo (which doesn't have a website - it is Shao Yang, Via delle Piagge, 1, 01100 Viterbo), and got a new kind of grain to try less-complicated flour-milling. It is a very ancient grain, grown in Sicily - if it is a success, I will post details. I also got some vegan "sausages" made from an Italian product called MOPUR (their site obviously needs a better translator, but you get the idea...). They'll make next week a little easier (mabye). 


Anyway, back on topic - I got home and found I was correct. There was cheese in the soup. I dished for the family, and made myself a simple salad (like last night's, with carrot, lettuce and radicchio), a re-heated pita pocket, and some of the left-over mushroom and walnut pate. An apple rounded out the meal, and everyone was happy and satisfied. 


I had a few hungry moments today, but I always do on a Thursday - banana at 1, and sandwiches at 3 will do that to a person. 


It's all good on the Vegan Frontline! 

Day Four, nature's bounty

Yesterday's Beetroot and vegetable soup, which did for lunch today as well. There is something about this soup - it is like getting a vitamin injection. Beetroot is going to be on my shopping list from now on, and come March  -
 I'M PLANTING IT!

Dinner - take a bow.

Super cooking day today. I feel like I'm getting my chef groove back! After discussion on the forum of The Fresh Loaf, I found that home-milled flour can often have quite a bitter taste, and that one way to get around this is to "soak" the flour for 24 hours. So yesterday I milled a batch of Grano Duro and Barley flour, added a little salt and then 2 cups of boiling water, to make quite a sticky dough. I left it covered on the kitchen bench overnight. It looked highly unattractive, and had that awful smell that has been putting me off using my mill.

But when I got home from work at 2 p.m., it smelled like BREAD!!! I then added the yeast - I used active dry yeast, 1 tbsp sprinkled on warm water (which I'd dissolved a teaspoon of maple syrup in). It went lovely and frothy. In the end, I had to cheat and mix some store-bought white flour, as I'd obviously put too much water in the night before, but hey! It is all a learning experience. I probably added a cup in total, so it was still predominantly wholemeal flour.

I kneaded it for fifteen minutes, then put it to rise. The children helped me shape it into pita pockets - we made sixteen in total. They were left to rise for another 40 minutes, then I cooked them in batches of four for 8 minutes a piece. They were very puffy, just as they should be. When I took them out of the oven, they went straight under tea-towels to soften.

While all that was happening, I also made Walnut and Mushroom patè (which ended up as more of a dip), a mixed salad (cheated! Opened a mixed salad from the supermarket, and dressed it with olive oil. It had carrots, rucola, lettuce and radicchio), and a kidney bean and tomato salad with a simple oil and balsalmic herb dressing. The table looked bright and inviting, and the house smelled wonderful! 

My son was a loooonnnnnggggggg way from impressed (although he loved the bread), but my daughter cleaned her plate. She's getting excited about Mummy's "new diet" because she's been saying for a very long time that she feels sad when she eats animals. Now she's asking all sorts of questions, and I have a feeling that she might be the reason that this new habit lasts more than 30 days :-) She talked me up to 90 during dinner.

Anyway, there was no dessert tonight, just fruit, which is better for us anyway. 

Okay, now I say Veeeeeeee-gan...but the Italians say vey-gan.

I seemed to spend a lot of today cooking and washing dishes. So much for keeping it simple.
Lunch was wonderful though! I wanted to make a beetroot soup, because in spite of claiming to hate beetroot, a vacuum pack of four steamed ones looked mighty good today. I found a recipe which called for vegetable broth, so I put a pot of water on the stove, added 2 carrots, a zucchini, some celery and parsley, and a little salt and got it boiling. When it was done, though, all those vegies looked pretty good, so instead of just using the water, I threw a potato in, waited ten minutes, then threw in the beetroot...cooked it for another ten minutes, then pureed the lot! Blow me down! What a bowl of energy that was! Brilliant red colour in the plate. A swirl of our oil on top, a few of those nutritional yeast flakes, and I was in Vegan Heaven! I rounded it out with a couple of bruschette, and I am glad I did...
because although after lunch I was bursting with energy, by the time 5.30 rolled around, I was CRABBY!
Mind you, that could have been because my dear wee boy is going through a "Loudest Boy In The World" phase.
Dinner was the roasted potato salad with the parsley pesto, which was definitely A KEEPER! Yummy. I also made a very simple grated carrot salad (just grated carrot, with an apple cider/olive oil dressing), and had bowls of sultanas and mixed seeds on the table for adding.
My find of the day was the Vegan Society of New Zealand website, and their recipe for fat-free, gluten-free vegan Brownies!!! I halved the recipe, and used Cannellini beans instead of black beans, because that was what I had on hand, and WOW!!!! I was sure the kids would turn up their noses, but NO...everyone came back for seconds, thirds...fourths...lucky I saved two for the kids' snack boxes tomorrow.
Now I am searching for a source of Agave syrup which doesn't involve a trip to the earth-friendly supermarket in Terni...

Day Three was a success food-wise, but mood-wise, not so much. Bearing in mind that my body is probably beginning some fairly serious de-tox process right about now (or probably right about 3 p.m. this afternoon, when the bad mood kicked in), I am NOT going to give up, but am going to ride it out, stick with it, and continue to enjoy this experiment. After all, IT IS ONLY THIRTY DAYS, and you can do anything for 30 days...

Please remember, if you read this blog, I love comments, and if you are a vegan, and have any advice, suggestions, great sites to visit...don't be shy now!

I say Vey-gan, you say Vee-gan (Adventure Day Two)

...and I still don't know how you say it in Italian, which is fine, because I don't intend to make a big announcement to those around me any time soon.

Today was the first day back at work after our three-week Christmas break. I thought it was going to be tougher than it actually was (mainly thanks to Genki English, but that's for another post). Last night was a mega-insomnia night. Perhaps I'd had a tad too much green tea (??), too late in the day. Perhaps I was just feeling a little stressed.

So, in spite of very little quality sleep, I've been able to keep going all day, with only two coffees (in the past it probably would have been a four cup kind of day). Is it the new diet? I doubt it, after only one day. It is probably more likely that I'm just happy to be back at work. A person who loves his or her job is truly blessed.

Down to it! Here is today's menu, as it panned out. I knew there'd be no point posting my weekly menu plan until AFTER the week :-) Nothing is ever carved in stone in my kitchen.

Breakfast: Overnight oatmeal (again - easy, tasty, gets me through to lunchtime without the munchies. You have to love that.)
Lunch: I made it before I went to work, because I knew I'd be home late. I cubed some pumpkin (there is going to be a recurring pumpkin theme this month, as we had a bumper crop this year), sliced a carrot, and put them in a pot with water and salt. Once it was boiling, I added 50gr of wholemeal pasta (penne rigate), and cooked for ten minutes. I drained it, put it all in a glass bowl, and poured a little olive oil over, then covered it with a plate, and left for work. When I got home, all the flavours had melded, and it was a delicious, creamy pasta salad.
Dinner: was meant to be roasted potato salad with parsley pesto, but I didn't get it started in time. So it was back to pumpkin. I roasted it with garlic, rosemary, drizzled in balsalmic vinegar. Yummy!

The roasted pumpkin, still in the pan

And then there was the sudden rush of inspiration from Vegan Piggy, so I made stuffed mushrooms with what I had on hand. Fresh breadcrumbs, a little red onion, a little garlic, mushroom stems, basil, parsley, and baked for 30 minutes.

Stuffed mushrooms (bad photo - they look like eggs!)

And the kids have been asking for tapioca pudding for ages, so I thought I'd try making it with the home-made soy-milk I made yesterday. I needed to add vanilla essence to cover the rather strong taste, but the kids came back for seconds (and even thirds!).

Home-made soy milk. I added oil, but won't do that again. Needs a good shake before using.

And so, Day Two is drawing to a close. Any changes yet? Perhaps a little too early to ask this, but my forearms are no longer itching. Perhaps it is the clay which is doing something - Too Much Information coming up (been going to the bathroom WAY more than usual! - this is often what happens at the beginning of a vegan diet, so I've read, but not usually so soon, as far as I can tell).

So far, so VEGAN :-)

Day One - Challenge Begun

The Menu:

Breakfast: Overnight oatmeal (the quantity in the recipe (see previous post) was enough for me for two days. It probably would have been enough for three days, if I hadn't been a little greedy. It tastes good.

Lunch: I made spinach and ricotta ravioli for the kids. For hubby and myself, I cooked two cups of Venere wholemeal rice. In a pan, I heated through some pre-cooked spinach (yay, thank you, Mother-In-Law!), with some herbs and spices (the Pasta Mix we got from the market in Campo di Fiori in Rome), and a little oil. Then I stirred the rice through that once it was cooked. We had yeast flakes sprinkled on top instead of parmesan, and it was delicious.

Dinner: Hubby was still full, so he had green tea. The kids had sandwiches (peanut butter for one, Asiago cheese for the other) and fruit. I nearly took the easy option and had peanut-butter sandwiches myself, but then gave myself a hearty shake. I don't mean to opt for cop-out on the first day! So I cooked half a head of cauliflower, and made a peanut sauce.
RECIPE: 2 big dessert spoons of crunchy peanut butter, 2 tsp of soy sauce, some chilli pepper, cumin and coriander, as well as some dried garlic. Thinned it down with boiling water, and whisked until it was creamy. I poured it over the cooked cauliflower, and ate with the usual seeds, and nutritional yeast. I served a big PAT ON THE BACK on the side :-)

I'm not going to mention all the fruit, because that would just get boring, but rest assured (in case you were feeling a little anxious!), that I'm getting my 5+ a day - plenty of mandarins and apples being devoured.

Bring on Day Two, I say.

I also should mention that we picked up some Green Clay (Argital) from the earth friendly supermarket, and so we are also trying this drink for a month. Well, 4/3/3/4, as you're supposed to do.

The Beginning of my Thirty-day Vegan Adventure

I became a vegetarian at university, 18 years ago, and I remained a strict vegetarian (lacto-ovo) for 13 years. Because of low iron levels during my first pregnancy, I began eating meat again. We’re careful to get our meat from a known source, avoiding factory-farmed meat. We also keep chickens, so know that our eggs and chicken meat are free-range.

That being said, eating meat doesn’t sit comfortably with me, and my husband has been slowly moving towards a meat-free (or at least, a meat-lite) diet for the last two years, after reading Dr Ehret’s book “A Scientific Method Of Eating Your Way To Health.” That is too extreme for my tastes, but the idea of going vegan has appealed for years. My reasons for not doing it are that it seems too labour intensive, too complicated, too difficult, and too easy to get wrong.

So why now? The coming year is going to be very busy. I’m teaching full-time, raising two lively children, keeping house, AND beginning the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching). So WHY is now the right time to add a “complicated” diet into that mix?

Health. That is the main reason. In September I had my gallbladder removed after many years of trouble. I hoped that would solve the other issues (mostly digestion-related), but it didn’t. Then I found out that I have a hiatus hernia as well, which probably explains a few of those other issues, but still not all. While doing this challenge, I’m going to be monitoring these things: the acid reflux, the aching knees, the brain fog, mood swings, hair-loss, and general energy levels. I'm hoping that weight-loss will be a welcome side-effect, so will be monitoring that as well. 

There is another reason why “NOW” is the time. I found this article by Steve Pavlina while in the “going vegan right now” mindset, and it really lit a fire under me. I know about creating habits from being a flybaby, and so I know this works. 30 days? I can do anything for 30 days. Then I can reassess the situation. No harm, no foul, as Steve Pavlina says.

My goals for this month are to KEEP IT SIMPLE. I’m not looking to replace meaty meals that I make now. I’m trying to keep things as easy and healthy as possible. I’m going to be thinking about cooking methods (steaming, stir-frying, slow-cooking), ingredients (heavy on vegetables, low on processed “vegetarian food”). I’m also going to be experimenting with making soy milk, making vegan “cheese”, and making our own bread – starting with this wholemeal pita bread recipe.

The main recipe book keeping me company on this month-long adventure is The Veganomicon, by Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romero, and I’ll be reporting on recipes I’ve tried, and the reaction the family has had to them.

Oh -  the family! I’m not making my family do this with me. I still am not convinced that children should be vegan (which may sound strange, considering that I am doing it for MY health). I think my children have a very healthy diet, with lots of fruit and vegetables, and hardly any processed food. I think they will benefit from the changes I’m going to make, but they will still be getting everything that society thinks they need. If we do decide as a family to go vegan, I’ll be taking them to a doctor who specializes in children’s diets, and making sure we do it right.

The Challenge So Far:

Day Zero:

Breakfast was Overnight Oatmeal (delicious! A keeper for sure!)

Lunch was not vegan. (mother-in-law made lunch).

Dinner: I steamed cauliflower and pumpkin cubes, grated a carrot, and mixed them together to make a warm salad. Sprinkled with sunflower, pumpkin and linseeds, and made a dressing of tahini, lemon juice and a little soy sauce. I thinned it down with the water from the steamer, to add back in some of those nutrients which may have been lost. I loved it. The rest of the family (who had pan-fried halibut with carrot sticks and a little taste of my salad) were not so keen. Hubby said that there were too many tastes mixed in there for him. He prefers cauliflower alone, just dressed with olive oil. I like it like that, too, but wanted something that looked and felt vegan for my first real vegan dinner.

Today is the first full day (Day One), and although I have my menu planned, nothing is carved in stone, so I will write the menu for each day the day AFTER, as a record of MY THIRTY-DAY VEGAN ADVENTURE.

Any questions, comments and advice much appreciated.

The First Annual Paliferi Family Very Rustic New Year Picnic

...bring your own damper.

It may have been the strong Pugliese wine I drank last night, or the fact that it was 2 a.m. before I got to sleep, but when I awoke this morning, all I wanted was Damper.

Not entirely true. I knew that a trip to our difficult piece of land (called "La Bastarda" for a reason) was on the cards. Mr Hubby had to burn some clippings and general undergrowth after he and his dad cut down an unwanted tree yesterday. I also knew that I didn't really want to go - the pull of studying for the DELTA is getting very hard to ignore, and the idea of a morning kid- and hubby-free was admittedly appealing.

Then I got to thinking about the OTHER book I'm reading right now - Dale Carnegie's very famous, very old, yet still very relevant "How To Win Friends and Influence People", and I thought "What does everyone want today?".

My answer was DAMPER :-) And potatoes cooked in the embers.

Mr Hubby in charge of the fire

Yes, I was a Brownie, and then a Girl Guide, and yes, some of those memories are the best of my life. I was up before everyone else anyway, and it wasn't hard to find a recipe on-line for Damper. I used this one, and it was perfect. Very light, cooked very well, and tasted wonderful. (Next time I would double the mixture, even though this made six good sized rolls. 

Potatoes cooking in the embers

Our potatoes are quite big, so I cut six in half, and also cut crosses in them, because we didn't want them to explode out of the fire. I oiled and salted them before wrapping them individually in tinfoil (al-foil for those non-Kiwis reading this!).

Then it was off to La Bastarda, where we gathered large handfuls of damp leaves to get that fire going. It was smoky, and it was hot, just as I remember Girl Guide camp-fires being. I also remembered saying "I hate rabbits." to make the smoke go in another direction, and some rather silly camp-fire songs came back, too! Quartermaster's Store anyone???



 

Showing the children how to cook their damper