I – lover of all things meat and dairy – recently accepted the first of Michigan Spoon’s Editor vs. Food challenges: to spend 48 hours as a vegan. After negotiating down the length of my challenge with the rest of the editors, I still left our meeting with a mild sense of dread. I was about to knock out an entire tier of the food pyramid. A truly vegan diet consists of any and all foods that don’t come from animals. This meant 48 hours of no butter on my toast, no cheese on my salad, no milk in my cereal, no turkey sandwiches, no omelets, no chicken cutlets, no fish filets, no burgers…you get the point. Read on as I share my mini-food diary of how the challenge went for this total non-vegan.
Late Tuesday evening, hour 1: And so it begins. Did you know that honey isn’t vegan? Yeah, I didn’t either. That rules out my Kind bar for tomorrow morning’s breakfast…
Hour 3: Almost reached for a handful of Halloween M&Ms. And it’s only hour 3! Yikes.
Wednesday morning, hour 13: Staring at my fridge. Eggs, cheese, yogurt, milk…what is there for a vegan to eat for breakfast!? I settle on a banana.
Hour 15: Lunchtime. I remember the couscous in my cabinet and find a red onion, spinach, mushrooms, and some grape tomatoes to sauté. Voila! I’m soo vegan.
Photo by Amy Henson
Hour 18: Just got back from the Fall Career Expo and all I want are those damn M&M’s. Grapes just aren’t cutting it. Must. Resist.
Hour 21: Wait – I can have No Thai! I can have No Thai! I can have No Thai! …One order of Pad Basil with weak sauce and tofu, please.
I’ll admit I was a little scared to try tofu for the first time – but it was deep fried and thus, amazing. Photo by Maggie McGuire (roommate and fellow 48-hour-vegan experimenter)
Hour 25: Well, watching my friends eat apple pie sucks.
Thursday morning, hour 36: Don’t have time to figure out a vegan breakfast, so I skip it all together.
Hour 36.5: I’m hungry.
Hour 39: Peanut butter jelly time! Mmmmm.
Nooks. And. Crannies. Photo by Amy Henson
Hour 42: Also, check out how non-vegan my freezer is:
(…I would have nailed this challenge had it been an exclusively meat and dairy diet…) Photo by Amy Henson
Hour 45: Eating pretzels and hummus and realizing that I have more vegan snack options than I initially thought (I do really miss cheese, though).
Hour 45.5: But seriously.
Hour 47: The Last Vegan Supper. I decide to pick up a burrito (with mexican rice, black beans and corn-cilantro-lime salsa in a whole wheat tortilla, spicy tomato dipping sauce on the side) from Seva, a solid restaurant option for the real vegetarians and vegans of Ann Arbor. I would have taken a photo to share with you all, but I was too hungry to style the shot.
Hour 48.1: Note to all you full-time vegans: kudos. It’s a meaty, cheesy world out there, and it’s awesome that you stick to a diet you believe in, despite temptations.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a slice of pizza from NYPD to attend to.