Day Three: It's not easy being Green and Italian.

I know it's bad to skip breakfast, and I've always prided myself on making sure that I have an adequate morning meal every single day of my life; but this morning was different. I was feeling a little apathetic about breakfast, so I turned to my new lifesaver: vegan cinnamon twists.

They're hollow, so don't get your hopes up.

But, they're still satisfying, nonetheless.

They're just mini...mini........um...twists of wheat, I guess? They have cinnamon sprinkled on them, and...you know what, I'm just gonna post a picture.

Here they are:

Kinda cute, right?

It's Sunday, and I'm Italian so that means that I don't have lunch. The clock stroke 2, and I was at my grandma's house, with all of mia familia in la bella cucina for our weekly/early Sunday dinner of lasagna and bread and wine and some more bread.

I practically sat in tears as I watched my family eat my grandparent's famed lasagna, while I was stuck with plain ol' spaghetti, which really is nothing when you compare it to lasagna, especially when your cousin Matt is sitting next to you and listing all the reasons why being a vegan isn't worth it when there's lasagna on the planet.

I didn't think it could get any worse until everyone started pulling out boxes from Capri, and all of a sudden, there was a canoli buffet in front of me, and.....................................................................

I had to walk away.

It was the most shameful moment of my life.

Really.

Have you ever seen what a cannoli buffet looks like?

It's beautiful.

I couldn't even have a proper cup of espresso, I was stuck with tea. I mean, I love tea, but nothing beats a good cup of espresso after grandma's Italian sunday dinner; and see, the whole point of a cannoli and an espresso is the dunking. You don't just eat the cannoli. You dunk the cannoli in the espresso, and then you eat it. It's a beautiful sport, you should try it sometime.

This may be my "deal breaker," as a vegan.

Can I really live my entire life without dunking a cannoli in an espresso when I've been taught to do that since I was three?

The answer is no, sorry vegans.

Well, my family is here watching the Superbowl and I feel a tad isolated right now, so I'm going to end this post because I want to get back to them; the only good thing about continuing this post would be that I wouldn't be tempted to grab a cannoli off of the buffet which was moved to my dining room table after grandma's.

Today was the worst day of Vegan Week, by far.

Italians were not meant to be vegans.

We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

caio.

(p.s: there's two 'vegan thoughts' of the day. I know, it's exciting.)

*VEGAN THOUGHT OF THE DAY 1: Vegan's should be allowed to have their grandparent's lasagna.

*VEGAN THOUGHT OF THE DAY 2: Vegan's should be allowed to have cannoli's. Or they should at least make vegan cannoli's, I mean, COME ON.

Day Two: I wonder if Ralph Kramden ever considered going vegan.

I've never been a fan of waffles. Maybe it's the shape of them, or the way that the syrup gets stuck into the little squares engraved into the waffle; I just don't like them.

But I like vegan waffles.

The ones made by Vans Waffles.

I know.

It doesn't make sense.

They taste more like gingerbread than they do waffles; they look like gingerbread, too. They're fairly small and can be broken into four differen't pieces, which is convenient and pretty cute.
For anybody who has a gingerbread admiration, and likes breaking things, I'd recommend these.
They're also a lot less awkward to eat than regular waffles are, seeing as they're not round nor are they annoyingly crunchy.
So far, in the battle over breakfast, the Vegans are winning.
I swear, these waffles were that good.



Lunch is my least favorite meal of the day, and on the weekends, I kinda just don't have it. It's usually because I'm a busy girl who tries to get 59290510919009 projects done and read 8 different books at the same time before I succumb to texts from Chrissy and Steph asking me to leave my house; I literally will not leave my house until I get everything done that I wished to get done. So that results in me just not caring about lunch. I'll have like a bunch of fruit or something and call it an afternoon.
I gave that dreaded granola bar another try. It was even worse the second time around. So, if you're in King Kullen's organic section, and stumble upon the green granola bar package with a panda on it (oh wait, there's like 75 of those) just please, for the love of all that is holy, do not buy it.
Regardless, my fruit bowl was lovely. Rather than popping dark-chocolate covered pomegranate's or blueberries into my mouth (which can actually, to my surprise, become quite filling) the fruit buffet was energizing.
So far, Day Two has given Vegan's a score of 2 for 2.

My family has quite a few February birthday's; my aunt, my grandma, and I are all born in February (but I don't have to share a celebration like my aunt and my grandma do). So tonight, mia familia and I went out to our usual Honeymooners-esque (Jackie Gleason, anyone?) Chinese restaurant (I swear, this place looks like it came straight from Brooklyn). I was a tad nervous. My old-fashioned Italian family fails to understand what a vegan actually is, and 99.9% of the responses I recieved from them about this challenge were "what the hell a ya doin'? fuggedaboutit!"

Their faces looked something like this:

(Yes, that's Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, in an episode of The Honeymooners, a la Brooklyn circa the 1950's)
So tonight, as we gathered into the restaurant, I was, as I always am, the one who was picked on. However, as it turns out, vegans may just be the happiest people in the world in a Chinese restaurant, for they are certainly the only ones who can walk out of one not feeling as though they've just gained 582258814194909052099502295009525902109194 pounds. The only part of my dinner that I didn't enjoy was the miso soup (it tasted a bit like windex). Other than that, I was perfectly content with my asian-hippy meal, which consisted of scalian pancakes (it's like Chinese pizza and is totally vegan friendly, check it out), vegetable dumplings, vegetable lomaine, and brown rice. May I just note that I had very relaxing tea alongside my plate so I was in vegan heaven, and it was wonderful. So the answer is yes, my friends, vegans can survive in Chinese restaurants, believe it or not you don't have to order ribs and eggrolls, there is other (and healthier) stuff on the menu. Just think of Ralph Kramden's stomach if you're tempted.
A few minutes ago I tried a vegan cookie, and although it was a tad hollow, it was actually a pleasant surprise. It tasted a little more....what's the word I'm looking for here....crumbly. Is that a word, "crumbly?" Well, it's a word now, because I can't think of any other way to describe this cookie. But, it was delicious, just the way a normal non-vegan cookie would be; except, it doesn't make you feel guilty about eating 'junk food' because well, it's not junk food.
Oh, the beauty of being a vegan.
I've been stalking that Vegan News guy on YouTube, and so far the most interesting show I've found is one about how piglets react to being placed in a cage. But, you're in luck. I found a video from a CNN news special on veganism, and I think it's worth a watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYX18NGTwls
ciao, non-vegans.
*VEGAN THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why do vegan waffles smell like perfume?

Day One: I'm going to have a problem with the soy milk

I feel like a walking-talking advertisement for wheatgrass.
I'm not really sure what a vegan should feel like, so I don't really know exactly what I should feel like. But, it's safe to say that as of now the taste of wheat has been defacing any normal taste buds that I may have possessed.
I woke up this morning feeling chipper, like I always do; and when I say "chipper," I mean, I felt chipper at 5 AM, which yes, is very rare, my friends. I decided to get up a half hour earlier this morning to make my proper vegan breakfast, which consisted of, don't laugh, vanilla flavored soy milk (may I just note here that I generally loathe any edible substance entitled with the term "vanilla.") with whole wheat Cheerio's and.... the only thing that tasted as though it was real....orange juice.
I think right here is where I should admit that I'm now afraid of soy milk.
It's not that I don't like it, it's just that every time I go to pour it down my throat I have to close my eyes and chug it as if it's poisen.
Okay, so I totally don't like it.
In a fit of desperation, I grabbed the vanilla flavored soy milk, a much more toned down version, and survived my first vegan breakfast.

I have a strange fetish with granola bars; they're my crutch. When in doubt, go for granola. There's just something nice about a granola bar that I can't really put my finger on. When I was vegan-shopping, I only managed to find one adaquete granola bar package (note to self: find more granola bars) and the box that it came in was green, so that was a bonus point. There was also a really cute picture of a panda on it, which could potentially make the buyer go "aww, I should totally give up every nutrient my body needs because there's a cute panda on the package telling me to!"
Needless to say, the granola bar sucked.
If consuming burnt plastic was the objective of my challenge then it would have been perfectly appropriate, but one can only hope.
I may sound a little tense about this whole shebang right now, but on the contrary, the rest of my lunch was, again...don't laugh...normal. I had a perfectly scrumptious peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread with some Wheat Thins and some pretzels. Was it the most creative lunch? No. I have yet to get creative with my dietary vegan experience (sorry, I'm still wearing leather boots.) However, it was healthy compared to the predicted lunch of a typical teenager, and I felt, for lack of a better term, refreshed, for the remainder of my school day.
(note to self: never use the word "scrumptious" in this blog ever again, I'm not Willy Wonka.)

Dinner harshed my Italian-mellow, unfortunately. I'm sorry, but too much wheat in pasta is a sin and any respectable Soprano-loving Italian would concur. I've had whole grain pasta in the past, but this new brand from Barilla that I tried took it overboard. I wasn't eating whole grain spaghetti, I was eating cardboard with sauce on it. Dinner was a tad bit of a failure, and hopefully Mother Theresa will give me some of my Italian descent back after that horried pasta-wannabe dish.

There are officially 14 minutes left of Day One of my vegan week. Can I quit now?
Yes, I'm kidding.
I actually found this guy on YouTube who reports on "Vegan News" every week, so I'll be posting some stuff from him later on if I find any "oh wow, that's interesting," shows, if I still have my sanity.

'till next time, my non-vegans.

*VEGAN THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why does every vegan package I buy have a picture of a panda on it?

I'm a vegan.

Vegansim: the practice of eliminating animal products and the commodity status of animals.

I've often heard the term "vegan," coupled with the term "crazy." You can add the words "hippy," and "anorexic" to that list as well, if you'd like. Basically, this is the conversation you may hear between a vegan and a carnivore:

Vegan: "Oh, I'm a vegan!"
Carnivore: "Oh, so you don't eat anything."

People have seemed to have a warped misperception of vegans (and other types of people who use the term "veggie" to describe themselves), so I'm here to get to the bottom of that. Are they really as healthy as they say (or think) they are? Are they just insane hippies who secretely crave the flesh of animals when they're in isolation? Well, I don't have any answers for you yet; but I will.
Being a vegetarian, I guess I was the most likely candidate for this challenge when The Chief decided to do a double-truck on fitness/health. It's an experiment, I guess. For one week, I'm sacrificing my health and my sanity to go vegan for an investigative report on veganism for the paper, and this is the outlet in which I will pour out all of my tears, laughs, and maybe some extra soy milk that I can't bring myself to swallow.
...and I just "liked" Veganism on Facebook so that makes this project so much more legitimate now.
One week
One girl
One shred of sanity to keep intact
$80 worth of "food"
Can I do it?
Stay tuned to watch me go green and beyond.

you and I walk a fragile line, I have known it all this time, but I never thought I'd see it break, never thought I'd see it.

British journalist, Misha Adair sits down with author Tom Rachman to talk about his debut novel, The Imperfectionists.

just listen

2011

I haven't blogged in a while. I'm sorrry. the truth is, I've been waiting for this. I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what I wanted to say. and maybe I still don't know what to say. but I know that one day I'll know how to end the year, I'll know what to say, I'll know who the care about, I'll know who cares about me, and I'll know where my life is going. so, today, the last day of the year, I don't know anything. but that's okay. imperfection is beauty, and not knowing always leads into the answer when you least expect it. sometimes we don't even realize it. at midnight, I'll remember the times I was lost, and know that soon, they'll be times that I know I was actually, found.

I never thought I'd feel so used. I thought he was something that he's not. I guess I just closed my eyes for too long and somewhere along the line, I lost him.