Follow my plate for a day as I walk you through a day in my vegan life!
Howdy, sunshine. In case you don’t follow me on Twitter or Instagram (which you should, btw) I’ve recently made the jump to a ‘vegan’ lifestyle. Since making that change, aside from a lot of strange looks the number one response I get from people is: “Whoa! What do you eat, then?”
Well, a lot of things.
Truthfully, the switch hasn’t been too difficult on me since I did live as a vegetarian for many years…the last of which were without eggs or milk in my diet. I already had a library of favorite recipes without meat and am able to easily adapt them to be vegan. Really, the catch is a no longer sprinkle things off with cheese. Yup. Bye cheese. Well, dairy cheese anyway.
Rather than bore you with my rambles on what types of food I like to eat on a regular basis, I snapped my way through a Sunday to show you. I’ve always found ‘What I Eat in a Day’ posts quite interesting and it seemed like a fun way to introduce you to some of my favorites right now. Someday, soon, I hope to reboot my YouTube channel and share some of my favorite recipes. For now, just scroll through as I walk you through my day as a vegan and the tasty things I ate. (Including cupcakes…and pizza.)
First up? Breakfast.
As always, my day begins with a piping hot cup of black coffee. Whether I’m lounging around on a weekend morning, or dragging myself out of bed on a weekday…coffee truly is the unsung hero that carries me through.
For my meal, I’ve been kind of boring lately in that I simply can’t stop eating the same cereal by Kashi. It’s their Cinnamon Crumble and it’s so satisfying with a delicious crunch. It’s also loaded with protein, which carries me through for quite some time. On weekdays, I usually don’t even have lunch but just a mid-afternoon snack. Thank you Kashi!
I love to serve the cereal with coconut milk and mixed berries. It’s a cheerful way to wake up in the morning.
If you don’t have berries, the cereal definitely will go well with bananas or even apples. It’s of course good on its own, but I like to add in some fruit to make it a more balanced meal.
The coconut milk of course can be substituted for almond, soy…or even dairy if you prefer. Basically, it’s just a killer cereal that goes well with anything. It’s vegan, vegetarian and meat-lover approved.
Next up? Lunch!
Leftover pizza!
The day before I made myself a vegan pizza using fresh dough from a local market called Fresh Thyme. If you don’t have a Fresh Thyme, Trader Joe‘s also has a great pizza dough. The crust is pizza parlor good and you’ll have a lot of fun experimenting with various toppings.
For this pizza, I chopped up fresh peppers, tomatoes, onion and spinach. I layered a vegan sauce with my veggies before topping off with a vegan cheese. I actually have tried and don’t mind pizza without cheese, but I wanted to go ‘traditional’ here.
After noshing on some pizza, I started whipping up vegan cupcakes using this recipe, here. I used that recipe to make a birthday cake for my step dad the week before and wanted to convert the recipe into cupcakes for a coworker’s birthday. I’ve always loved cooking for others, but since going vegan it’s only an added bit of fun to share delicious, “Oh my gosh can you believe this is vegan?” food with non-vegans.
As hard as it was to resist eating all the cupcakes, I resisted and restrained myself to just one. Best to save that sugary goodness for others, right?
Next? Snack time!
Since this was a Sunday, I fortunately wasn’t laboring over my desk at work. I took advantage of the afternoon off to enjoy a bowl of fresh, juicy strawberries while catching up on the latest edition of Harper’s Bazaar.
Okay, I may also have been marathoning some old episodes of Veep. Usually I prefer dramas, but that show is just so darn hilarious that I could watch episodes again and again.
Sunday afternoons are also key ‘blogging’ hours for me. I prepared Monday’s post, answered some emails and planned some future posts. When dinnertime rolled around, I wasn’t all that hungry but I wanted to make use of the fresh veggies that were leftover from making my pizza and an open container of hummus that I had in the fridge. After baking and decorating the cupcakes, I certainly wasn’t in the mood to cook anything else.
For dinner? Easy veggie pita sandwich with hummus it is!
Pita bread and hummus work together perfectly as it is, but I recently discovered that my favorite ‘Garlic and Herb’ salad dressing mix take them to another level. (See the exact one I use is here.) It’s one of my favorite secrets in the kitchen. Not only is it perfect on traditional salad and pita sandwiches – it also will make your pasta salad virtually out of this world. Whenever I make pasta salad people think it’s some involved recipe, but my secret is absolutely this salad mix one-minute mix. So simple. So tasty!
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post! Maybe you’re not as nosy as me, but I’m always interested in what people are eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes I just browse the #Foodie tag on Instagram and get lost in it. (I’m a weirdo.)
If you’re interested in more posts like this let me know and follow me on Instagram here where I more routinely share my vegan concoctions! It’s definitely not that difficult being vegan and is really an adventure of its own.
Interested in more food related posts? Here, I share 10 things I’ve learned since going vegan.
Stay stylish and keep chasing your dreams!
Oh yum!!! I also start out every day with coffee!
xx Chelsea
http://www.organizedmessblog.com