Wow

I’m surprised. Joe’s actually pretty much on board with me being vegan. That doesn’t mean he didn’t tell me today that no one ever gained weight from tuna (if they ate it with tons of mayo they did), and teased me a few times about it. But he said that he hasn’t had any abdominal pain or pain in his side since he started eating right (around me, anyway–he did sneak out to Wendy’s yesterday). And the fact that I’ve lost at least 6 or 7 pounds doesn’t hurt.

(No, this isn’t going to be an all vegan all the time blog, in case you were wondering.)

So today this vegan ate;

• 2 bananas
• cornbread
• black bean chili with whole-grain penne
• 1 orange
• 2 chalupas with lots of grape tomatoes and chopped bell pepper

The chalupas. Since we had an uneaten Haas avocado left from yesterday, I thought chalupas would be good. I stopped on my way home at a new shop that recently opened, Sunflower Market. They didn’t have a huge selection of produce, but what they had was organic. I got another bell pepper, some green onions, and a head of romaine lettuce. I also bought some sprouted corn tortillas, another box of those good flatbreads, and some Bragg’s aminos, I think it’s called. Anyway, when I went to cook dinner, I poured about a teaspoon of olive oil in a small skillet and browned the whites of 3 green onions along with 2 cloves of garlic. I poured in the drained & rinsed can of pinto beans and began mashing away. Then it occurred to me to read the label on the beans. Good thing I did–they had bacon in them.   In the meantime, I had 4 tortillas crisping in the oven (note to self–use parchment paper next time).

Joe was okay with eating the bacon-y beans, so I made his chalupas with refritos, mashed avocado, lettuce, bell pepper and grape tomatoes, and garnished it with some Harry & David’s cherry salsa. Then I made one of my chalupas with the avocado, lettuce, bell pepper and grape tomatoes. For the other one I decided to use hummus with the vegetables (no avocado on that one). Oh my gosh! The hummus chalupa was incredible! The flavours went together beautifully. It was such a beautiful dinner, too. I’ve had a lot of fun trying to make the presentation attractive.

My bowl o’ hummus was sadly depleted, so I made another batch after dinner. I’ve got one crisped tortilla left, so I’ll take it for lunch tomorrow and make another hummus chalupa.

After dinner Gypsy called, and we had a nice chat until Joe plugged in his guitar. (No complaints–he and I spent a very pleasant evening talking about shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.) So it’s been a really nice day, all things considered.

A Comedy of Errors

When I confidently picked up the bag containing my lunch, some extra waters, 3 magazines and a cookbook, and grabbed my cell phone ( to keep track of the time, as we don’t seem to have a clock in the cafe at work), my desk keys, and my bottle of diluted green tea with jasmine, I felt pretty good. I’ve brought my lunch every day for the last week, eating lots of good whole foods, and lost some weight.

The first problem was that I’d forgotten to grab a spoon out of my desk. I started to pick one up from the cafe, but the worker there politely told me that they charge for their spoons, and if I would go to the break room, I could get one free. OK. Free spoon, couple of napkins, and I’m back in the cafe. I proceed to my usual table, pull my plate with cornbread out, and realize it’s got red juicy goop on it. And so did my hand. I pulled out my bowl of chili to realize that the plastic wrap that says you can seal it to the edge of your dish didn’t hold, and I now had chili goop all over everything. I put the dish into the microwave to heat, and began frantically pulling the book and magazines out and wiping them. I didn’t have enough napkins, of course, because I’d just planned to eat, not wipe down a bowl of spilled chili. That fantastic recipe I cooked up last night is now immortalized, in a very real fashion, along the edges of La Dolce Vegan (I heart Sarah Kramer, by the way.)  One of my oranges was still in the plastic bag from the store, but the other orange and apple were covered in chili goop. So I left them in the bag. Our cafe isn’t exactly amenable to fixing problems like that.  There was also chili goop on the chair, where it had spilled when I took the bowl out of my bag.  I cleaned it all up.

I’m just sayin’, it was a messy event. But at last it was cleaned up and I could eat my yummy black bean chili and the cornbread that I really wished I’d baked in a larger dish because it was a little gummy, and the one pristine orange. I sat there and munched away contentedly, reading my magazines.

And then the farting started. It wasn’t echo-y or anything, but it was audible to me. I can appreciate a good funny fart as well as anyone else, if not better, unless the anyone else is an 8-year-old boy, in which case I’d come in a close second. I farted and farted and farted and was really glad that Sarah-bear wasn’t with me, like she usually is. I mean, the farting still would have taken place, but I’d have been a lot more embarrassed about it than I was.

I’ve been reading a lot of vegan blogs and cookbooks and things, and came across something where someone had told her kid about there being a way to reduce the burping and farting, and he incredulously told her that burping and farting is a bonus, not a liability. 

So he’d have been dang proud of me today. I’m just sayin’.

(And I think I’m going to meander over to Vegan Lunch Box and look up one of those lunch box sets she uses, because I felt really bad about all the paper and plastic I wasted today. I didn’t throw out the messy bag, because I can wash it, but a container designed to hold my chili without spilling it would be nice.)