21 Day Vegan Kickstart Day 1

Some things I've learned today:

1.  Label foods you purchase at the bulk food store, because no matter how long you soak quinoa it will not absorb water like couscous does. 

2.  Recipe prep will take some time and use a lot of dishes, but you'll get lots of leftovers!  The recipes I used today from the 21 Day Kickstart were very tasty and generous portions.  Even if all four of us had eaten the food I made, I would have had leftovers. 

3. Shopping for vegan cooking supplies will require some research and probably involve more than one store.  I went to a bulk food store for most of the dry goods, a higher scale fresh food store for most of the veggies and a couple other ingredients and the discount grocery store for red cabbage and kale (which surprisingly wasn't at the fresh food store).  I asked friends for some tips on where to find the ingredients as I really had no idea.  I'm making stuff I've never heard of or seen before!

Today's Meals

Breakfast:  Easy
                 All Bran Cereal, sliced strawberries and organic vanilla soy milk.

Lunch:  Not hard, but lots of steps involved!
            Couscous Confetti Salad This one was so colourful!
            Carrot and Red Pepper Soup

Dinner:  Pretty easy.
           Kwik Kale
          and left over Couscous Confetti Salad (because I didn't pre-soak the black eyed peas for the other recipe I was going to make).

Snack:  I munched on some dried apricots and some roasted edamame.
Later I made some vegan cookies.  Peanut butter, banana, oatmeal vegan cookies.  They uh, taste, hmmm...like banana and peanut butter, I guess.  Hubby said they weren't sweet enough (probably because I used a sugarless recipe, but we won't tell him that!).  I made them for my youngest who has been asking for peanut butter cookies.  I don't think she's going to like them at all, but we shall see!

Overall, the first day was pretty good.  My kitchen is now cleaner because I need room to cook everything and I have limited coutner space as it is.  My husband and I spent some time together cooking and trying to figure out what substitutions we could make for things I did't have on hand.  It's just a good thing it was a statuatory holiday today, so I didn't have to go to work.  I'm not sure how tomorrow's meals will go, but I know I'm having leftovers for lunch, so that part will be easy. 

I'm going to plan out tomorrow's meals before I go to bed so that I can do any advance prep tonight and not have to worry about what will be for dinner as soon as I walk in the door.  Lay out my clothes and set my alarm again, and I'm good to go.  Big Kid starts school tomorrow, so it will be a busy morning here.

The celebrity vegan today was Alicia Silverstone. I'm still waiting on her book to be available at the library!